It was already the month of October in the lonely and quiet small town of Gravefield. And the air around Gravefield was getting colder and chiller but only mildly. A rather perfect to enjoy on a walk, especially at night.
The Hexside group, along with Vee, were looking in the Gravefield Library to look and search for a way back to the Demon Realm. Unfortunately, their efforts turn up no such luck, they kept trying. They keep on looking and searching through the library... until one of them had found a random book when they've found and discovered it upon picking it off from the bookshelf where it was sitting on, being a still rather old book but was one of the newer ones at only a couple of decades old - looking like it was created and made somewhere around the 1960s to 1970s, probably between early 60ish to 50ish old, at least- by the looks of it, before examining the book itself.
The witchlings and Vee look at the title of the book, took a look at the title and name of this book. They scrunched their eyebrows up in confusion at this upon checking and reading of this book before one of them decided to ask Luz to answer their questions about this for them.
"Hey, Batata?" Amity asks her girlfriend.
"Hmm? Yes, my hermosa?" Luz immediately lifted her head and look up from the book that she was reading and checking out in her hands.
Hunter holded up the book & turns it around in his hands and show the front cover of the book, specifically the book's title, to face it toward Luz as Amity asks her human girlfriend with the important question they have right now.
"What's "The Devil Beast of Gravefield"? Do you know what it is, Luz?"
Luz just simply blinked at the book blankly in confusion for a moment as she stared at it in mute silence and she remembered it, she tried to remembered it, from somewhere. Before she finally remembered what it is.
"Oh. Oh! Oooh. That. The Devil Beast of Gravefield. Yeah, I do know about that. It's a relatively popular but slightly obscured local folklore tale and legend around here if you ask me. Since it's not as popular or well known as the stories of the Whittlebanes brothers from what I've seen and heard. They tell about this creature in those stories." Luz explained. "It is said that it's a demonic creature that's depicted and portrayed as a horrifying chimeric monster of a mish-mashed nature with different features from different animals and other oddities: The bare skull of a stag -either a deer or an elk, it doesn't matter- including antlers for a head; Two shining crimson dots glowing inside the dark sockets where its eyes are supposed to be; A body that looked more like it's a dead corpse than a living body with what appears to be its ribs poking out of its body; Long slender and thin-looking gangly limbs that are so gangly they look like either twigs or thin frail-looking tree branches that look like they would snapped under pressure yet are strong enough to easily crushed a bear's head in one bare hand or ripped a tree trunk in twos; A pair of disproportionally huge hands comparative to its arms to the point it could easily hold a pumpkin in one hand with seven long fingers that have an extra joint that ended either in large, conical-like, blunt-looking but sharp claws fused to where their fingertips should be or in curved, hook-shaped, scythe or sickle-like retractable claws on the tips like those of cats depending on which you goes by; Its legs resembling the back legs of either a horse or a deer or any other graceful-looking ungulates you can think of; A pair of heart-shaped backward-pointing hooven feets along with a pair of two bird-like sickle-shaped claws & talons hanging above beside the hoofs on each of its sides on each foot; And the two skeletal wings of either a crow or a raven found on its lower back."
She then paused as she took a quick breather after telling the numerous details of what the Devil Beast of Gravefield look like from what she could remembered before she continued.
"There are many different versions and interpretations on the origins of the Devil Beast and how it came to be in the myths and legends. Some tales says it's a monster that was send by the Devil himself straight from hell to do the Devil's dirty work. Other tales says it's a demon that was the creation of a witch -well, that was either created or summoned by a witch- (the human versions. Not you guys.) to help them with their deeds or a guardian spirit that was trying to protect and rightfully defending its territory and turf from the settlers who are invading and intruding its home without giving nor feeling a damn about it. There's even one story where it was a devil summoned by an evil savage Native American of a cannibalistic tribe to do their bidding with murdering and terrorizing the white settlers (which is seriously racist. Which is the reason why it's the least popular origin story by such a margin for the Devil Beast if it's only told in one story for that sole reason alone). But the most popular and famous story for the origin of the Devil Beast of Gravefield out of them is where the Devil Beast was created from when God was enraged -like, he was beyond livid & outrage- against the witch hunters by what they did, for their lies and their claims & accusations toward many innocent peoples as witches -lying, claiming, and accusing innocent people they targeted for being witches- for their own selfish goals in getting rid of them because they perceived them to be only a threat to themselves and unhesitantly used them to be the scapegoats to get rid of them by using his name as an excuse, along with those who willingly believed their lies and many who involved & participating in the witch hunts, and punished and condemned them for this by cursing a newborn child of a witch hunter, transforming that baby into the Devil Beast of Gravefield itself upon birth just after being born into the world, to hunt them down, making sure their live were completely misable without a once of reward and that their deaths -if they ever granted one- are slow & painful as monstrously possible, as punishments for the sins and crimes of their deeds, or what i've read and heard from my memories anyway."
The demon realm refugees are silent before looking down at the book Hunter was holding in his hands, thinking to themselves internally with different sorts of thoughts about what Luz have told them.
"... So, it's fictional? The Devil Beast of Gravefield is not real?" Gus asks Luz out of curiosity, asking her a curious but understandable important question, after thinking it over what they had heard while staring at the book for a while.
"In all honestly, Gus; Before I came to the Demon Realm and learn that magic is actually real, I would have most likely said yes if it was. But now... i'm not really sure to be honest. Now that I already know that magic after I'd entered the Demon Realm when I followed Owlbert through the portal, i'm not sure if it's fictional or not. I'm not so sure if it is actually real or not, since it's such a long time when the folklore legend was created that it's difficult to know for sure if the Devil Beast of Gravefield is truly real or only a made-up creature at all to be honest. The folklore legend itself and the events that inspired was created such a long time ago that nobody knows for sure if it is just a story of fiction or something actually real that happened in the first place..."
Everyone fell into silence at this as all of them silently contemplate over this information of what they just learned and heard from Luz...
Somewhere in the forest that surrounded Gravefield; Belos was crawling and slithering along the forest floor weakly like a snail as he looked and searched for a host, for anything to be a host to him, something for him to possessed against its will to do his bidding, in his weak goop state. After being reduced to this state by a simple flick of a finger from a child god of the stars. A rather fitting fate for someone who claimed himself to be the savior of humanity when he tried to attempted genocide on an innocent race of witches and demons for being themselves with living their own lives and not human like him.
Belos crawled and slithered around the ground of the dirt in the forest like the lowly being whose more lower than even the single-cell organisms living in the dirt he truly was, swearing himself revengance on the girl that lead to his predicament and being reduced to this state, as he searched for a host -any host- for him to take over... until he see something, notice and see in the forest. He sees the shadow and silhouette of something in the unusually darker than normal shadows of the forest with also being covered by a light mist from his point of view that was behind the thick bushes. Judging by the outline and shape of its shadowed appearance -the creature's shadowed appearance- in the forest's darkness, especially and specifically the outline of its antlers, he guessed that the creature was a deer, either a white-tailed deer or a elk of what he could remember from the last time he was in the Human Realm, that was standing behind the brushes with its own back turns toward him if it doesn't know he was there looking at it.
Realizing that he has a host for the taking and for him to possessed right within his reach, Belos mentally grinned savagely in ecstatic in his mind at this, at finding one for him to use for his purpose. All as he slowly slithered toward the creature that he assumed to be a deer or an elk behind the brushes.
But however, as he got closer and closer to the creature while crawling and slithering along the dirt, Belos started to notice that there was weird and unusual things about the creature, that there was something... off about the creature; It was much more taller than a normal deer or elk, its forelegs appears to be far far more longer than its hind legs, its back seems to sloped downward as if it was either standing upright or sitting down on the ground, and the creature itself was appeared to be sitting on the ground behind the brushes with its shadowed head covered by the shade of the forest canopy's darkness.
Odd. Belos thought and mused mentally to himself, but he quickly dismissed it as probably nothing important. While he continues crawling and flowing on the dirt at the prospect of taking over the creature and getting a host for himself & his purposes.
He slithered and crawled the ground through the brushes toward the creature as he went through them until he had flowed & exited right out of the brushes to see before he got a good look at it...
What the-
He was immediately caught off guard and took by surprised when he instantly got stabbed by sharp claws that thrusted and pierced him through, that suddenly thrusted and pierced him straight right through, into his weak goopy & slimy body and immobilized him down to the ground with ease. Belos tried and attempted to take advantage of this by attempting to escaped from the creature's claws, attempting to escaped from the creature's claws grasping him & holding him down to the ground, and take over its body, taking over its body for him to possessed against its will, to be used as a host body for him to do his deeds... but only for him to immediately start screaming in pain and burning away in flames, only for him be taken by and reacted in shock & horror as he immediately started screaming in shearing pain and burning away into fiery flames, slowly upon his body suddenly instantly bursting and combusting, upon being set aflamed and consumed, into what can be best describe as an intense fire of whitish purple/blue flames and set on fire all over as anti-magic -as in real anti-magic, not the one the Basilisks use as an ability where they're only absorbing magic to be use for something else not destroying it and thus is not true anti-magic. The one where it interact with magic in it act like how anti-matters interact to matters.- was coursing through his entire body, coursing right through all over inside his entire weak slimy body, when he'd tried and attempted to possess and take over the creature's body for his own purposes in his current yet fitting weaken state, ravaging and weakening his goopy body from the inside out with pieces tored from his body turning to ashes, as he was consumed and engulfed in the blazing flames of the raging & furious blue fire burning him away.
Belos tried to escape, tried and attempted to escape from the creature's grasp, with his life, with whatever little pathetic wilting & withering life that he has still left, when he tried to crawled and get away from the creature while he was consumed & engulfed and burning & wasting away, being consumed & engulfed and burned & wasted away, in blue scorching flames, the blue blazing flames of the flaring fires themselves ravaging and wrecking his weak goopy & slimy body while slowly burning and torching him alive to cinder & ashes, a fitting fate for someone of Puritan faith who lies to everyone including himself to the point of self-delusions in believing his own lies and refused to admit his mistakes nor accept responsilibity for his actions & learn from them to instead blame others else for his own crimes to the point he will blame anyone else but himself for them for one -after seeing his true colors & personality and who he truly was- to realized that he will never regret what he had did and won't take nor accept his responsibility for the consequence of his own actions in his deluded belief he did nothing wrong in his refusal to change his way and what he'd done to everyone was only justified in his megalomanic mind.
But the creature itself was having none of it, as it simply yet instantly lifted one foot up and then immediately stomping it down on Belos hard with zero prejudge, killing him via the spluttering of his body in its current weak state that cause the breaking and fracturing of his sentience, leaving him in a state where he could do nothing but only scream in this state he deserved, before the shimmering flames of the hot fire have finally burned and destroyed the pieces of his body to cinder & ashes with only a single stomp of its foot, showing no forms of mercy to him, grinding the spot a few times for extra measure.
The creature stood still, staring at the mark where it killed, covered under the darkness of the forest's shadows, in its silence for some time. Before a bellowing and shrieking sound was heard echoing across the forest...
A/N: This was originally made and supposed to be posted for Halloween last years, but I got writer's block and procrastinated before I decide to post this for this year's Halloween.