When the skeletons in your closet finally break out to haunt you, ravage your mind to the brink of insanity and turn you against yourself. What do you do? Stand and face your demons, or scream and pray someone hears you? ...We chose war.
"Why me?"
Ella's eyes tear up ,she drags her feet to Johnathan who was carrying Emberle out of the water.
"Purge the demon."
His order goes unanswered, the knights who stood there finally given the time to get a closer look and process everything, had realized something.
"Sir, that's no demon. That's Ella."
Johnathan's heart banged in his chest and he stopped right where he stood. He turns around to look at the now blood thirsty child as the former happy ghost of her appears in his mind.
"...no."
In his arms ,Emberle began to float and stayed fixed in the air. "...Emberle?"
Within her ,Eve was enraged.
"Emberle, Emberle! EMBERLE!!"
As she opens her eyes ,she finds herself seating in Eve's arms with Tiyanak in his demon form standing in front of them.
"...it worked? [gaze] worked?"
"Of course it bloody worked ,it's my spell! The question is, why would you ever use it!?"
"....."
"Inviting another demon into your sphere, do you have any idea what this will do to your physical body!?"
"Aww ,are you worried about me?"
"How many times do I need to explain this, If one of us goes, the other will follow, and I really don't want to die! Revoke that thing!"
"I can't do that, there's no one outside who can beat him."
"That's not my problem!"
"It is now."
Tiyanak walks closer to them.
"Give...me...heart."
He enters a battle stance , preparing to charge as he growls. Eve steps Infront of Emberle. Her chest begins to glow and two lines stretch from it and run all the way over her eyes and disappear in her hair.
Both of their chains rise from their skin and rattle. "Emberle, you and I have a lot to discuss after this. As for you." she points at Tiyanak, "I hope you understand that this is my domain."
"...You are...reject... unworthy."
"I wish your precious prince thought the same. It's not like I asked for this curse."
Eve conjures a gold spear in her hand and charges at Tiyanak who wasted no time either.
***
Grey opened his eyes in the white space again and the old man was still sitting right next to him, quietly drinking his tea. He looks at him and stares into space ,with his back on the ground.
"Just making sure I remember this right, uhm ,did Emberle... kill me?"
"yes."
"Wow, well , it's been a long time coming I guess but...wow."
"Do you still wish to return?"
The old man's voice is calm and soft but clear.
"Yes, I have to or... Tiyanak is gonna kill her and her psychotic father who started all this crap is gonna blame me and behead me!!!"
"You want to save her, does that mean you plan to delay the seal?"
"If you have a better idea ,I'm all ears."
"Hadraniel will not stand for it and you know that...so why are you suddenly interested in helping them? I thought you wanted to leave as soon as possible."
Grey sits up straight and folds his legs with his head bet down. He replies in a quiet tone, "I do but she's..."
"I see ,you're starting to have hope that she might actually recall who you are. Shouldn't you have moved on by now? there's no guarantee things will go back to how they were even if she does somehow remember."
"I know but...how do you expect me to forget someone who gave me so much to remember?"
"The same way she forgot you."
"Hey ouch , okay? That's just mean...and it's not like she wanted to."
"But you were going to leave her anyway."
"...Why does it suddenly feel like I actually owe Tiyanak something."
"It was your thieving hand to brought you together."
"Like I'd admit that...I have to go, I think I'll see you again soon though."
He closes his eyes in hopes of leaping back into his body, but he's instead hurled out and thrown in a desert of gray sand and dark skies. No color to be seen whatsoever in a sea of sand that stretched out as far as the eye could see.
Grey stands up and dusts his clothes, his body now made of white wavy fire, "*sigh* what am I dusting? I'm a soul."
An angel descends from above with his wings gently flapping in the wind, his blonde hair bright under the dim glow of what looked like the sun , creating a shadow over his face. "Welcome back to the veil of shadows, young human."
"Ah ,yay ,the land of the dead, why am I back?" he asks sarcastically
"It is much more sacred than that. It's the land between heaven, hell and earth where souls come before they ascend."
"And the difference remains unclear. Again ,why am I back? I haven't broken any of the rules. Take me back! I have to go back!"
Hadraniel closes his eyes and exhales, gold chains rise from beneath Grey's feet and wrap around his wrists and neck, then pull him to his knees , "You were planning to ,you know very well I can't let you delay the seal."
***
Within Emberle's sphere, Eve is pushed back by Tiyanak with a loud growl. He comes at her fast ,with his hand turned into a sword but she can easily deflect his attacks.
Tiyanak launches a downward slash from above that Eve deflects and plunges her spear in his chest hard enough to push him back. He cries out and tries to remove it but another one locks his arm to the left side of his chest.
"I can't kill a ghost, but I can sure as hell make you beg for death." Eve says as she conjures another spear.
She runs towards him and throws the spear to his stomach, she appears behind him and drives another one from the back. Faster and faster, she drove countless spears through every corner of his body until he couldn't even move.
Tiyanak raises his head and released a scream in the infinite darkness. She walks to him slowly and gently places her finger on one of the spears and says ,"[hell spawn blaze]"
Dark purple flames run from the tip of her finger ,on the spear to Tiyanak, engulfing him in fire that burned demons like the true flames of hell.
"Mm- reminds you of home, doesn't it."
Tiyanak screams even louder from the blaze as he tries to force his body to move. Most of Eve's spears were stuck to the ground so he couldn't do so.
She walks closer to him and gently slides her hand on his cheek while she draws her face closer, close enough for their foreheads to almost touch. "I warned you, demon filth. This fire may not be able to kill you like the humans, but I know the pain is real."
Tiyanak stops screaming and just grunts angrily in her face, then forces out the words, "[Red...Rose...Perdition!]"
A blood red flame spawns around Tiyanak and blooms like a flower, canceling out Eve's magic and melting away the spears as it blows her away.
"Fake...hell...does not...compare."
The red flame now envelopes Eve who screamed painfully near the dumbfounded Emberle. Tiyanak releases a deafening furious roar that causes the flames to burn further.
As Eve's flesh is slowly burned away ,she painfully looks at Emberle ,"E-Emberle...Rev-revo- REVOKE IT!!"
In the real world, her physical body is ravaged by mysterious cuts that appeared out of thin air.
Emberle hesitates as Tiyanak stomps closer,
"DO IT!"
The space around them starts to crack as some of Eve's limbs are burned to nothing. "EMBERLE!! YOU HAVE TO MOVE!!"
She finally gives in and rushes into Tiyanak's hell. When he notices her coming, his fire grows stronger. Emberle's skin starts to burn away but she just screams and keeps moving.
When she reaches Tiyanak, her other arm was gone and her body was almost covered in ash. Tiyanak grabs her head and picks her up, hastening the burning, "Stay...out...of my...WAYYY!"
Emberle's other leg and half of her body is burned in almost an instant as the pain gets real. She can hardly raise her remaining hand, which was already missing a few fingers.
*The cuts on her physical body get more intense with dark malice rotating around her.
She places her hand on his arm and tries her best to say the spell that just seemed to not want to live her mouth as half of her face started burning away and the cracks around them got wider.
"[Rev-revo-ke]"
At her voice , Tiyanak and his flames are suddenly hurled out of her sphere, including the flames that engulfed her and Eve.
She falls to the ground , groaning and grunting as her form reshapes itself little by little.
Eve had only lost her arms and bits of her legs but the flames had weakened her so much that she couldn't hold herself together.
She screamed above as phantom like white sparks burst out of her eyes and mouth ,then folds herself and fights to keep everything in.
The sparks that had escaped filled the grumbling dark space as Emberle caught ear of her laughter. She forced her head to turn and saw them gracefully hovering over her. inside them ,Emberle could see her younger self ,almost like her life flashing before her eyes.
Tears formed and hung on her half formed face, while she slowly stood up straight , watching millions of them fill her ears with echoes of a distant past. Eve growled and screamed, trying desperately to keep herself together.
"Are these...these...these are my..."
"DON'T...touch-touch them!"
As she stared helplessly with tears leaking, one of them caught her attention, different from the rest. It showed a piece of her earlier dream. Her sphere started shaking and cracking faster.
"... DON'T!"
Cracks appeared at her feet as she ran as fast as she could to the globe, "STOOOOP!! EMBERLE, YOU'LL KILL US!!"
She leaped over Eve to hug the globe that instantly shattered in her arms as her eyes flashed white, with the echoes of laughter and the clear picture of the boy playing in her mind, clear as day.