Figure out how to save the human and kill the demon.
I hadn't even been thinking about that, only the useless words of the book and the ruined mess that was my life. Like the words, Aquanaya's words, had been planted in my mind.
Your test.
There was no test.
Your test is not over.
There was no test.
There was no test.
The demon had been a fake, I had dissipated the thing, not killed it, and there was no human alive but me down here.
There was no test…or was there?
Bring her in, she had said. Her. The subject of this test was female.
That moving wax statue could've been any gender. Gods were non-binary; but they tended to stray to one side or another in the end. That left the only biological female here… me. Oh Aquanaya—that cunning goddess. Immortal, with all the years in the world to polish her worded weapons.
A powerful, buried voice filled the empty chamber of my mind.
There is a demon inside you.
You were too strong to let it in, but you are opening the walls wide. You are letting it in through the front door. You are letting yourself fail.
I was letting myself fail. Letting.
The word echoed through my mind, an echo of a roaring voice. Only a fraction of the strength that could cleave my mind with half a thought.
Letting. Letting. Letting.
Save the human—because once the demon got its claws in me, I was dead. And in a twisted version of the marriage oath—till death do us part—the demon would only flee before its dark creator, the Lord of the Afterworld.
I shuddered at the thought of me as a copy of the ravenous demons that were now my mama and grandma. The grisly fate that might have awaited me.
But I reached in, to the deepest corners of my brain. There was a wall of black stone, not grave like the stygian city surrounding me, but depthless and eternal like the sky. An inviting sort of darkness. It was brimming with both enticement and warning, as if I could stride through into another's mind, but I might never be able to find my way back to myself. It was tall, imposing, strong. A barrier built of my magic.
A barrier, whose gates were wide open.
-----
I dared a peek beyond, and I threw myself back into my mind when I set my eyes upon what waited there.
The demon, a beast of dark and evil. It slithered slowly forward, like a tank about to open fire, a thing with no substance, a monster with no shape. It was a fearsome dragon ready to sink its claws into my mind, a black mass of evil that would smother my senses.
A growl escaped from my throat, more animalistic and savage in the deepest corners of myself, more primitive and uncaring. A wicked laugh reverberated around the walls. I grabbed hold of the gate; its unyielding metal heavier than I thought. The demon screamed, sensing what I was about to do. In the eternal void outside my mind, there was nothing but space, nothing but a road to death. But there was no mercy in my heart for those who had stolen my loved ones.
I clenched my hand tighter around the gate, mentally gathering my strength for the demon's killing blow.
Too easy. It seemed too easy. Surely the demon would fight, it would fight back with its unholy power.
But you have been expending your power unwittingly to tear it apart.
It has been breaking apart from the inside out.
That made sense—I could tell that it was weakened. It didn't turn my insides to slush like the Branokann's shadow falling across the sea or shove me down the darker corridors in my mind that I had long locked away and destroyed the keys to. At least it didn't make me remember the tang of my blood the first time my nails broke the skin of my palms, or the wind on my face as he fell through life into death, or the cold that leeched from Grandma just before she plunged darkness into my mother's heart.
As the demon screamed and pleaded, something loosened inside me, like an elastic springing back. I felt a lightness in my soul, a hidden damper removed. The thrill of triumph thrummed in my veins.
Bloodlust a song in my blood, the gate drove back. It screeched as it swung forward, and with a mighty, final BOOM! slammed into the barrier with the force of a bomb and melded into the fence to form an impenetrable wall.
I heard the howl of the demon as it was flung back from my mind, heard its bellow of rage as its claws loosened their grip. But I was not done. I would make it pay, make it suffer on behalf of all its kind had done to mine. It did not belong here. This world was mine.
The demon had stopped fighting—it was no longer leeching my power. I flung my hands out, snarling, forced it to hold on. I encircled it with my flame, a living beast of heat and gold, kept the cocoon wrapped tightly around it, sending dust and gravel to peck at the most vulnerable parts of it. My fire obeyed me; it was a melody in my veins, its beat engrained in my soul. Then I let it go. I kept the fire burning, kept the earth stinging. I heard its shriek of agony as it burned, relished in it, heard the echo of its ghastly cry gradually growing quieter as it bolted from my mind…
And into the night beyond.