The Bane of Light

Eulalia O Fontaine

"There is blood everywhere and I am lost in it. I breathe blood, not air" -Kelly Cherry, Rising Venus; "Lady Macbeth on the Psych Ward"

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I was going to kill him. I was actually going to kill him. Never, in my measly seventeen years of life, was I so tempted in taking another human beings life. Small demons, maybe, but a human? Never. Too overpowering and too flighty for me to control on my own. With one more witch, it may work out, but where was I going to find another premature witch, with enough gall to kill someone? The mirror on my wall, that's where, because this academy had a fecundity of weak-willed, soft hearted incompetents, utterly useless for sacrificial murder.

Paris Arobynn, our class golden-boy know-it-all, with an insufferable dexterity for attention seeking acts of heroics, was standing in all his golden-glory, in a pool of blood and decay, in my dormitory bedroom. He had just completed the barbaric feat of dismember my demon, slicing off it's left leg. Never in my life would I have expected to have one of my routine demonic-seances to be interrupted in such a grotesque, inconsiderate manner. In fact, the presence of any manners at all was severely questionable.

Admittedly, he was not entirely to blame for the bloody mess of the night. There had been many indicators that the night had been destined to go terribly wrong. I had simply been too drunk on power and bloodlust to properly heed the ominous warnings for what they were, before it had all begun to unravel to Hell. I had been too eager, in anticipation of the sacred slaughter, to notice.

There had been too much blood spilt, too much skin split, too many bones crushed to dust. I had given too much of myself to the ritual, enough to loose myself in the sacrifice. Too much darkness had been summoned within the walls of my dormitory bedroom. The shadows had begun whispering. Even the darkest, ancient ones, which usually remained dormant and silent, had roused, curious.

They had sensed whatever was clawing to me was more horrific than usual. They were curious to see.

I only sensed the true severity of my heedless mistake, when I felt the weight of a creature much larger than anticipated, being pulled through the other side of the Veil. It clawed its way through realms, using my lifeline as its tether, ravaging and ripping apart the fabric of worlds, all to reach me, using my very own magic to rip its way through.

Then for a terrifying moment, I had almost been unable to pull it through, and in turn, it had nearly dragged me back into its Hell realm. It had been me that began clawing then, scrambling to get away from the summoning circle, when the doors of my bedroom slammed open.

In a flash of light, my locked dormitory doors had crashed open. Light assaulted the room, making my shadows scatter, like startled, fleeing wisps of smoke. I had nearly shouted out in outrage at the sight of my allies being sifted. He would leave me to face the demon all alone.

Simultaneously as the golden goon of a hero burst into my room, the demon had crashed through at a dizzying speed, and emerged from the summoning circle much larger, and much more Hellish, than the one I had initially anticipated. Anyways, it was too late to do anything about it. I had already invited it to enter our realm, and it was now my responsibility to rid of it. That was until Arobynn interfered, and ruined everything, of course. The demon hadn't been the one to bring Hell down upon my world, it had been Arobynn.

Never in my life would I have expected to find myself running after the said golden-boy, as he chased down my demon, which was summoned with my finite magic, for all sacrificial intents and purposes. Now there would be no sacrifice, if the blockhead sprinting around my room got to the six-foot serpentine demon before me, and wasted all my strenuous efforts.