The child had been silent, but a mere slip of a thing when he'd first started the experimentation process.
There'd been no guilt within him when the black blood of the child had flowed free from the incisions made by him personally, nor when she'd whimpered with pain and began to cry out in unintelligible garble as he carved harsh symbols and ruins of power into her very flesh.
He'd never even permitted the thing to speak, nor did he ever teach her how.
However, when there was speech, he could tell that the child who was more beast than intelligent could understand, with how their dark eyes flashed with knowledge and understanding; he'd known from the savagery hidden in her gaze, the way her eyes threatened to tear him apart and swallow him whole.
Nonetheless, he could no longer quench his thirst for knowledge, nor could he stop the profitable experiments, even as he let her starve and as he split her mind apart, looking inside to find what made her tick so perfectly.
Carve, beat, torture, study, surgery, repeat.
Carve, beat, starve, dissect, torture, observe, repeat.
The patterns of experimentation slowly became more and more elaborate, on his part, the proceedings he'd inflicted on her multiplying by the weeks as the oh-so intriguing child slowly became both tamed and rebellious, calm and savage.
Madness, and sanity.
However, when she first died from starvation, he concluded that he'd have to start feeding her, or else the experiments would no longer be as insightful—so he found a sinner among even the demons, and murdered them in front of the child.
The blood had splattered against the walls and floor, slowly moving towards the scarred and tiny child as she hunched against her corner even farther, tears in her eyes as she realized something wrong was about to occur.
Grabbing the entrails of the fallen demon, he'd approached the child who'd once again came back to life—as she had so many times before—and then shoved the still warm organs into her mouth, forcing her to chew.
Again, whimpers and resistance was offered against him, as the child showed impressive will in trying to deny the food proffered before her, but he was an adult demon, and she was but a half-breed child, still within her infancy—she couldn't win against his strength, and eventually, the terrible food was consumed.
This too was an experiment, to see if this unnatural existence could get away with taboo acts without any or minimal punishments.
From then on however, the child changed.
After eating the organs, there'd been silence... and then movement. She tore into the flesh of the demon, shoving the meat into her mouth before he restrained her hands. Then, she only used her mouth, acting as if she was a starving beast that had finally caught prey, and soon, she had picked the demon carcass clean.
Usually, when demons performed cannibalism, they get severe debuffs in their Charm and Temptation stats, and are viewed as outcasts among the Demons—however, this unnatural hybrid received no debuffs, but rather, she only gained stats and strength from devouring half of her own kind.
It was terrifying, and yet, so very insightful that he continued the experimentation of her eating, making sure never to get too close, for fear of her eating him as well. Her appetites grew by the day, until finally, she acted out for the first time.
It had been just another day, and she'd finally reached the point where even when she was carved up, she neither cry nor screamed, her pain tolerance reaching an all time high to the point where she was, quite literally, unable to feel anything anymore.
She was lifeless, and he was pleased—her screams that had often grated on his sensitive ears were finally sealed forever.
However, when it came time for the feeding, one of his assistants had turning their back to her as they'd reached for the bucket of organs they used to feed her... and the chains that had restrained her had snapped like butter.
He, who had also turned his back to the then thought to be docile child, had spun around when he heard a blood-curdling scream from his assistant, only to see them be torn apart and silenced by the girl who was no older than three years of age.
The sound of bones snapping and flesh being torn off was all that could be heard, and with frightening clarity, he realized that this child was eating the demon alive—she'd only torn off his vocal cords so she wouldn't have to be subjected to the screams... just like... he had, when he had started to experiment on her...
The child, whose eyes gleamed red with murder and hunger had turned to him, blood dripping from her mouth, and bits of flesh and bone lodged within her sharp, sharp teeth, as she smiled, looking as if she was free from the constraints that had once burdened her.
It was then he'd realized that he'd created a monster.
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The demon awoke from his recollections, his expression calm yet faintly perturbed as he recalled the scene he'd witnessed not long ago, the anxiety that had been on her face as she'd communed with the World.
'It seems the monster has learned how to hide her nature.'
Ironically, he criticized the small child for being a monster, instead of reflecting on who was the creator of such a horrific creature—the creature who hunted him now and even then, the madness that she hid behind her beautiful face growing by the minute as she watched him with a calculated eye, desperate to discern flaw within him.
However, he, the first demon ever created by his Lord and Restrainer, Satan, would neither be restricted nor mocked by a filthy half-breed of ill-repute. As such, he silently chastised himself for the vague anxiety that had long since been with him, ever since he'd realized that he no longer knew what that creature was thinking.
Sighing, he got up and began to pick up his clothes from the floor before putting them on, the events of last night bringing a snide smirk to his handsome face—what would his master think if he knew that even when the infidelity was discovered, Lilith still came to him for "comfort"?
He would laugh, if only he wasn't aware of his status to the beautiful demoness, and why she sought him out all those years ago; put simply, he was a replacement that she had used ever since Satan had began to refuse her controlling affections.
Drowning in her obsession for him, she searched for methods to regain his attention, settling on Baal to satisfy her love and yearning for affection. He'd accepted initially for the sake finding a way to be free from the shackles of his existence, but his feelings had long since began to change... while Lilith's stayed the same, even when Satan's heart had been received by an entirely different woman.
Truly, she was a loyal woman in the most twisted of ways.
Even so, what had begun could not be stopped, and Baal quietly left the Queen of Demons room with no sense of shame or guilt in the least after having spent the night with her, a sense of arrogance on his handsome countenance as he walked to his study to complete the days work.
Although he searched for various ways to rise above the station that his Lord had built him to fit, he still completed the work assigned by him—he could not afford for his usefulness to his master to fall, lest interest in him was lessened, and he was snuffed out by him.
He couldn't afford to die, but to achieve that goal, he had to destroy the thorn in his side that he had unwittingly created.
Entering his study—which was filled to the brim with organized and perfectly placed books within endless bookshelves, and a perfectly controlled and ordered environment, with everything from papers to pencils to sheets to strategies placed exactly where they should be—he took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down what he knew, as well as the possible actions he could take against her.
The first thing that stained the vanilla parchment was the only discernable weakness he'd ever found in over 2000 years.
"Ryosei, was it?"
A cruel smile spread across his terrible face, his dark gray eyes flashing with curiosity that his creator had implanted within him from the beginning as he began to plan the necessary steps to finally rid himself from the insipid child and the fear she had instilled within him.
'Shall we play one last game, Eika?'
Laughing, the man who had made Eika into the monster she was, plotted one last, final scheme against the broken and oh-so exhausted child one last time.
'I won't allow you to continue living your pretty life any longer. Mark my words, I will take away what is precious to you, regardless of the consequences.'
After all, had her own father not designed him to be as merciless as he was ambitious?
Might as well reach for the stars, no?