The walls of the concrete ally were lined with blood, shit and piss as he stood there unbothered by his surrounding. The men sprawled out across the entire alley were all knocked out cold, unable to put up a fight against the walking nightmare he was.
"Haha… you and me, we're the same" The man with a broken face beneath him muttered, laughing through the pain.
He looked down at the man struggling to talk through his broken jaw and wondered what the hell he could was talking about.
"Don't you see.. haha… the world is a playground for men like us!!" The man or rather teenage boy in a school uniform laughed.
"This world was always ours for the taking, we're both monsters, after all, Noah" He added.
Noah took the man's words in, savouring every single syllable. His thoughts drifted to those eyes again. Filled with such hope, ambition and empathy that they outshined the sun. He couldn't remember the face they belonged to, distorted for his sanity but he could remember what they'd become.
What the boy beneath him had turned them into.
"That's where you're wrong," Noah replied, straddling the almost dead man.
'You don't deserve happiness'
'You aren't a human being'
"I'm not like you," Noah said, his cold dead voice coming back as his mask of an expression dissolved in front of the boy beneath him.
'You don't care about others and only pursue your own means to an end. You're a broken mistake, who only takes and infects those around him destroying their Faith in you and bringing nothing….'
'… but Despair'
The boy reeled back slightly seeing the true expression Noah always kept hidden. Those dead eyes and that face that could only be described as empty, devoid of any type of feeling. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. Maybe Noah wasn't lying? Maybe they really were two different breeds? Because right now he felt like a meek prey in front of the ultimate predator.
Him of all people, who thrived in violence and cruelty, standing above all others was reduced to a meek prey with nothing but an expression.
As the one-sided beating began again the boy could've sworn that at one point Noahs face itself was swallowed by the shadows of the barely lit alley, leaving nothing behind but somehow remaining the same. It still kept the same unnerving emptiness within the blood-stained alleyway. At one point the boy tried to beg but it didn't help as Noah slowly broke him down piece by piece.
Sometimes the purely logical side of Noah told him it was a good idea to stop, but he didn't. For the first time, Noah honestly felt joy, watching this thing suffer, watching it's hope slowly fade away. A wicked smile started to etch itself onto his face, growing wider and wider with each scream.
'No matter how much you try to run from or avoid it, Noah, you will always be…'
"…A Devil" Noah muttered, remembering the words a person he tried to forget had once spoken too him
Noah could see himself in the reflection of the boy's eye's, his face's features had been swallowed by the shadows leaving only his eyes which were dyed red and that demonic smile.
"ARHHHHHHH." Faith screamed rocketing forward, awaking from his nightmare.
'Faith?! Are you okay?!' Luna asked, or rather shouted through their soul space link, checking if he was injured.
The Rexel was already resting on top of Faith so it wasn't hard for her to check if he okay but when she used one of her innate abilities moonsight, she was met with something strange. Before he'd had an abyss behind him that she worried was threatening to swallow Faith whole, now though it had changed. The abyss had back away as tendrils of darkness and chaotic energies radiating from the depths of Faith threatened to swallow it instead.
'Faith?' Luna asked unsure if the boy was okay.
"Huh? I'm fine Luna, just had a nightmare is all. Just a bad dream" Faith replied, his eyes slightly distant as the memories he'd stumbled on were slowly trying to lock themselves back up. He wouldn't forget again though.
He knew what he did back then had felt completely normal and the only course of action but now Faith was forced to question whether he'd lived like that again. Whether those dead eyes had belonged to him at one point.
"Yeah I'm fine," He told himself, trying his best to ignore his buried demons.
"How long was I out," Faith asked, seeing Luna looking at him slightly worried.
The last thing he remembered was listening to what his body had wanted to do, fighting Ervis the way he felt most natural and comfortable. Faith couldn't remember the fight too well as he was in a trance-like state but he did recall collapsing as he completely exhausted his mana and stamina.
'About three days.' Luna replied yawning now she knew her bond was safe.
"Shit, where's mom?" Faith asked, worried about Eshir who was on the edge of her third trimester. Throughout the entire time of her pregnancy Faith had noticed that Eshir had pretty much stayed the same.
Though she did seem a little more attached to Faith with each passing day, it hadn't become that much of a problem… apart from the night when she'd almost crushed him to death with a hug.
She'd also broken into his room one night and rather aggressively braided his hair like her own Which as you can imagine had frightened the living daylights out of Faith, waking up to his mother giggling like a maniac.
Apart from those two times though it'd mostly been the same.
'If I remember correctly Sapphire came in a few hours ago, saying your mother had gone into labour and trying to wake you up' Luna said.
Hearing this Faith hoped up from his bed, cotton pyjamas as his only attire while he rocketed towards the door.
"We gotta go then, I'm not missing the birth of mini-me!!" Faith replied in a hurried tone, picking up the full-sized Rexel on his way.
It should be mentioned that Luna when at her normal size was actually bigger then Faith himself, it wasn't that surprising considering she was older than him and would be bigger when fully grown. At least when Faith was in his default form.
'Faith, you don't know about the birds and the bees do you?' Luna asked while Faith was earnestly trying to pick her up, and failing abysmally.
"I don't see why that matters, I'll miss the mini-me magical meeting if I don't go now" Faith replied trying to move the lazy stone pillar that was Luna.
'I don't think childbirth is as magical as you imagine it is, a lot more screaming, blood and things you can learn about when you're older.' Luna replied.
"Fair but counterpoint, Mini-Me!!!!" Faith prompted, summoning ever drop of strength to lift the fairly heavy Silver cynic off his bed and towards the door.
What followed was a scene most servants and residents of the Exodus castle would never forget as, during the labour of their sovereign, the crown prince in all his wisdom and presumed black-hearted plotting ran through the castle halls carrying a fluffy silver Rexel one and a half times his size.
It didn't take Faith long to get to his mother's room located within the upper wing of the castle reserved for the ruling branch of the Exodus family. For reasons pretty easy to imagine Faith's room was as close to Eshir's as it could be.
'Faith, I'm telling you childbirth isn't something so spectacular, just wait till it's done and then meet your new sibling' Luna said, finding it extremely uncomfortable to be held in such a way.
"I will be moral support for mom if nothing else Luna" Faith replied, determined to be by his mother side like the good little demon boy he was.
'Dude your mom gets into a fight with the king of dragons for Sunday brunch, she'll be fine' Luna said, little scared of the sheer amount of blood lust the woman had.
"But mini-me"
'Wouldn't your child be a mini version of you instead'
"No they would be a mini version of me and whatever dumb fuck decided making a little person with me was a good idea" Faith replied, his cynical side showing a little.
"My sibling instead is a mini version of mom and dad, thus a smaller version of myself. As much as I love Ascilia she's not a mini-me" Faith replied, seeing the door to his mother's room guarded by servants and a seemly very nervous father.
Impatient Faith performed a quick shadow step, travelling a more than 30-metre hallway in an instant while still holding onto the cynical silver fur ball. The door to his mother's bedroom was manned by guards and a few servants but none of them had ever seen Something like shadow step before, giving Faith almost enough time to swing open the door.
That was until a familiar hand grasped him into a familiar hold.
"It's best you don't go in Faith," Alzeor said, holding the raging ball of demon that was his son back.