The Birth of the New World

Nathaniel

Walking forward through the ashes of war, I approach the place where I know her to be. The others have all moved to fight off the monsters and give those fleeing a chance to get away. Only I remain here, walking forward as monsters come pouring out from the woods, breaking though the now undefended wall to move further in.

I don’t move to fight them back or join my fellow Demons in holding back the hordes, instead simply walking forward. Compelled to do so by some calling force that pulls on my soul. Any monster that tries to get in my, no matter how large or quick, I slap aside or grab and rip them apart. Anything that gets in my way is quickly turned into meat as I walk forward.

Some tentacled monstrosity screams as I rip it apart, tossing its limbs aside as I keep walking, other monsters, those that are smart enough to think, see this and keep their distance, instead choosing to join the others in breaking down the wall.

Discarding another broken monster, I find the place. The earth here is still hot, and the monsters are parting around it as if it is an impassable ravine. I step inside, not caring about the searing heat as it burns through the soles of my boots and threatens to cook my feet. As my body becomes drenched with steaming sweat, I approach its center and punch my fist into the ground, finding something hard and hot as I close my hand around my target.

Pulling it out of the hot earth, I find a small black skeleton in my hands, not a speck of meat or even a strand of hair remaining on its head, but I know who it is. I know that they are still alive despite being reduced to such a state.

Taking her into my arms, I carry the little skeleton out and away from the burning field, setting her down carefully even as the earth shakes from the footsteps of some towering monster off in the distance. I don’t care about any of that. I have only one thing I need to do.

Dragging over the corpses of several monsters I killed, I leave them lying nearby before proceeding, my instincts guiding my every move as the voice that she had previously locked away inside of me continues to whisper what to do.

She is weakened. This is her first death, and though she normally would have been able to come back on her own, she is too weak right now. With time, she would eventually rise again on her own, but we don’t have time.

Her contracts must be fulfilled. The humans must be protected. And as her Demon, her Fiend, her First Warrior, it is my duty to see her brought back. I will do what she did for me back then. I will share a piece of myself to bring her back from the brink.

The Demon reassures me that what I am offering will eventually grow back, but I care little for that. If it means bringing her back and protecting everyone, then I would give her my life, gladly and without resistance.

Drawing my knife, I take and slash my own wrist, a part of my own soul being severed willingly as I shed my own blood onto her skull, dragging the flow down her body to spill onto her exposed teeth and then her ribs, my red blood dripping into where her heart used to reside.

I can feel as that severed part of my soul leaves my body, flowing down with my blood to soak into the small skeleton at my feet.

The pain is like nothing that I have ever felt before, my entire body feeling as if I had just been slashed by a hundred knives and lit on fire, but I don’t falter as I continue to poor my blood and soul onto and into her.

Slowly, my wound heals, and the flow of blood comes to a stop. My inner Demon whispers that that is enough now. I have done my part and only need to watch.

I have served my Queen well.

The skeleton quivers as my blood somehow soaks into her bones, disappearing like water into dessert sands, greedily drank away until not a drop remains. I collapse to my knees, my body exhausted like never before. The Demon reassures me that, while painful, soul damage isn’t permanent. It whispers that it had taken the brunt of the damage for me, that it is simply returning what she had once given to me.

I don’t care, I can’t care, all I can do is watch as her skeleton twitches and jerks. From her back where she lies on the ground, shadows begin to gather until they are in such thick consistency that they become like wet tar, pooling up and over her body until her skeleton is fully subsumed. The tar like shadows then spread out, flowing out and over everything, and even my own legs, like a searching ameba until it finds the corpses of the slaughtered monsters and even that of so many dead Goblins.

The corpses are dragged and pulled down, absorbed into the flowing liquidly shadows like they are being dragged into the bottom of the ocean, the shadows bubbling and gurgling as meat is digested and useless gasses are released from the mixing mess of fluids. The smell of rot and shit soon fills the air, but I pay it no mind. My entire focus is only on what is happening before me. My every instinct screaming that I am witness the birth of something great.

From within the turning mass of black oily sludge and shadowy tar, the sounds of cracking and shifting bones can be heard, the occasional clawed hand showing through before falling back into the shifting mess.

After some time passes, the cracking begins to slow and the movement becomes more fluid, a single long bone structure exposing itself to the open air before being joined by a second. Meat and tissue flow up these structures as the black material is slowly absorbed into the mass and converted into new flesh.

From ash grey skin, black feathers sprout out and along the twin limbs, carpeting them in black foliage as they twitch and spasm from newly birthed nerves coming to life. Outstretched and alive, the pair of wings move slowly as black slime slides down the length of their long black feathers. Aside from the pitch black of the wing’s feathers, three markings of golden eyes on the interior of each wing are slowly exposed as the black sludge drips away and glops in steaming piles on the floor.

The mass of sludge moves then, a women’s back slowly pulling itself out of the mess as ash grey skin and healthy muscle grows over a ribcage of black bones, a black heart beating away powerfully within its indestructible cage, soon to disappear from view as flesh fills in and nothing but perfectly smooth skin and the golden markings of divine light in the motif of a tree are left to be seen.

With her shoulders and arms growing back, the rest of her body returns as flesh flows over her skull, hair growing out from her scalp and cascading down her back like a river of black, a single line of crimson red flowing along with it like blood flowing down the River Stix.

She takes in a gasping breath of air, sharp white teeth of now mostly canines showing from behind her soft black lips. With her breath, her chest rises into the air, a pair of modest but beautifully shaped breasts rising in the air as the black liquid runs down her skin. Rising to her feet and pulling her naked body out of the sludge, I look on and watch in awe as she stands tall on a pair of long legs, a long and pointed devil’s tail moving through the air behind her like a sinuous snake. Her tail and lower half, from the tops of her thighs on down, are now dressed in a layer of pitch-black snake scales, their edges shining with faint lines of gold and red like stars decorating the night sky.

Slowly, her eyes open as she looks down at me, a loving smile adorning her black lips. They are mostly unchanged, still being those golden halos that rest atop black sclera, the slits of a predator’s eyes as her pupils. But now, within the confines of those golden halos, as if trapped inside by their golden light, black and red flames now burn in her irises, looking as if her very gaze could burn a hole through a person’s mind just by staring long enough.

Atop her head, a crown of six ivory white horns now grows out and up from around her skull, two in the front, two on the sides, and two in the back, with those in the front being the largest and most prominent of them all as large, curved things that arc upward in defiance of heaven.

Reaching forward, she sets a hand, the back of which is now also adorned in scales up to the wrist, atop my head and pets my hair lovingly, much like a mother would their own child. Her hands are soft and gentle, the claws that had always been there, magically shifting to become regular fingernails so as not to harm me on accident as she runs her fingers through my hair. When she pulls her hand away, I have to stop myself from reaching out to stop her, to grab her arm and ask for more, some part of me longing for her loving touch.

Standing before me, at maybe five and a half feet tall now, black wings growing from her waist, and body changed in many little ways, Lain smiles with the kind of smile that only an angel can have, the divine markings of her promises to us, etched onto her body in gold that flows up her left arm and covers the top of her chest with the golden branches and the leaves of a divine tree.

She is beautiful in every sense of the word, with every inch of her body now seemingly sculpted by a god’s hands for the sole purpose of being adored. As if one of God’s angels had fallen from heaven in order tempt mankind into sin.

And then she speaks, her voice seemingly lacking her normal self, sounding monotone and listless like a person talking in their sleep.

“Good work, my First Warrior. You have served me well; I will be sure to reward you properly when things are done. Now, rest.”

This knocks me out of my stupor, my conscience mind coming back to the forefront as instinct returns to the back. My inner Demon purrs with contentment at having accomplished its task, slinking away into the darkness to fall into a deep sleep as I regain control.

With a startled breath, I lurch forward from the pain in my soul but force myself to look up at what Lain had become. Her eyes are dull right now, her motions lacking her normal liveliness, her presence feeling muted and asleep.

“Lain?”

The smiling fallen angel, the Devil of black wings and glistening snake scales, slowly raises a delicate finger to her beautiful, roselike, lips and blows a quiet, ‘Shhhh.’

Her smile grows a little devious as she speaks, “Lain is sleeping right now. Don’t wake her up. Hmhmhm~”

Turning away from me as I fight to climb to my feet, my legs refusing to move under the pain of my wounded soul, she speaks again.

“Now then, time to deal with these intruders. I will protect what is mine.”

With a snap of her finger, black and red flames spring into existence as a pilar reaching to the sky and cleanse everything around us. Her now cleaned body is left untouched by her flames, my body being cleansed of the black sludge as well, and every monster and everything, from corpses to plant life, for hundreds of meters around us are just simply gone. Everything burned out of existence and not leaving even so much as a speck of dust or ash behind.

With another gesture, her body is suddenly dressed in long flowing sheets of shadowy silk that wraps around her body like a toga, a burning halo forming above her crown of horns as her hair moves of its own accord to straighten out and flow down her back and over her shoulder, with a part of it tying itself into a long braid.

“There we go. Lain will complain if she wakes up naked again...” The Devil in Lain’s skin says simply before flexing her wings and shooting off into the sky.

“Lain!”

With my arm outstretched towards her shrinking figure, I fall forward, my body exhausted and tired like I have never experience before.

I want to stand and go after her, but I just can’t build the strength to do so. As my eyes slowly start to fall shut, I am sure that I can hear the voices of Sam and the others calling out and drawing close. But by then, I am already falling asleep, my mind heavy with fog and unable to do anything more today.