The Great Fall

Chapter Thirteen

Julius and Curator spoke while they rode south, though only in the brief intervals in which they allowed the horses to rest. In the time that they picked up again, Haxa was allowed to surface, so that she did not fall apart completely. Twenty six cities, millions of precious lives, had fallen in Julius's absence. Malhechor had surfaced, claiming dominion. The imperial army had stood against them, and they were wiped out completely, their corpses possessed and made into the same monsters that had kidnapped Haxa. According to Curator, they were not very intelligent, which is probably why they had taken Haxa instead of Julius. "But I had met a demon before this. It tried to kill me, not capture me," Julius protested. Curator shrugged. "It was most likely a rogue who had a personal agenda against you. They are not known to obey Malhechor's wishes," Curator replied.

Their journey seemed unending. The horses had to rest often, and they were slow and underfed. He could still see Tutum's small and pathetic farms with ease. Julius looked over to Haxa, who gave him a weak smile and turned her eyes back to the path ahead. He wished that she could know of the angel inside of her that was driving her insane. Even if it would come as a small comfort, it would come as a comfort all the same. He resented Curator for having possessed her. Throughout Julius's life, he Curator could easily possessed any stranger and made his way into Julius's life to do...whatever it was that he was here to do. Julius had not really thought about it until then, but Curator had not done much for him. Of course, Curator had revealed some secrets, but the ghosts he had met seemed more than happy to do the same, and the angel had seemed reluctant to do so at all. Curator had not helped protect Haxa, and he had not protected Julius until his death was almost imminent. The angel had only really done one thing, and that was to be a silent observer.

Julius's thoughts were brought to a halt when he heard a crackling beside him. He looked down beside his hore and saw a circle of green flame. One long, twisted horn had already emerged, and the tip of another's stub could be seen. Julius hopped down from his horse. He grabbed the horn and pulled the rest of the head from the portal forcefully. It felt like the horn was on fire, which made sense, since it had just passed through some strange, flaming portal. He held the demon down and bound it as it flailed. He let out a shout of victory.

"How special you must feel. You are stronger than an imp," squeaked a voice from beneath him. Julius looked down at the demon, and the smile fell from his face. The enormous horn that he grasped was connected to a being no larger than his forearm. It was a sickly green and covered boils and blisters. Its face looked as if it had been kicked in by a horse and fixed by a half sleeping child, and its teeth ranged in sharpness from dull stone to duller stone, each tooth sticking out at an odd angle. Both hands and feet were webbed, each finger a different length, with no thumb. It was ugly, but it seemed harmless. Either way, it was bound, and therefore unable to harm him. He removed his hand from the small demon and stepped back.

Julius sat and watched the imp for a short period of time. While he had somewhere to be, the being perplexed him. It spoke nothing more than its first two sentences. It just stood, arms crossed and staring back at Julius. He tried asking the imp questions, but he was met with only silence. Eventually, he grew tired of waiting, so he grabbed the imp by the horn and climbed back up onto his horse. Haxa had not dismounted through this, so they were able to leave immediately. The imp struggled and thrashed about. It did not seem fond of being manhandled, but Julius had nowhere else to put it, and he did not wish to leave the being behind, for the fear that another demon may find it and be alerted to their general location.

Julius noticed that the horses seemed uneasy around the imp, and when he held it out behind his horse, he noticed a significant increase in its speed. Julius smiled. "Good for something, aren't you, imp? Even if that something is not conversation." The imp huffed and thrashed about a bit more before settling back down. "Filthy traitor," the imp muttered. Traitor. The first demon had called him that. Whom had he betrayed, and why did the demons care. He saw Haxa flinch, and he could see Curator clearly. He had taken over, and the imp's word choice seemed to bother the angel. A thought crept up on Julius. What if Curator had not told him everything about his role to play? He looked down at the imp. "Betrayer to whom?" Curator opened Haxa's mouth in an attempt to protest, but Julius held up a finger. He had only meant it as a warning, but without his knowledge, Haxa flailed around behind him, incapable of speech altogether. The imp chuckled, though Julius was unaware of the reason, and would remain so. "To your lord, your patron, and your god," the imp said. Julius raised an eyebrow in question. "My god is my creator, and I carry out his will as we speak. In what way have I betrayed him?" The imp broke out into a violent fit of laughter. The sound was awful, like that of grating metal, wailing children, and dying screams rolled up into a single, twisted auditory hell. When the laughter subsided, the imp had tears in his eyes, the color, and possibly composition, of blood. "You have no creator, fool. Your lord is not some upstart god with an affinity for construction. Your lord is the one you left to serve a pathetic child of somewhat divine nature for a promise of humanity, which he failed at! You are no man! You..." the imp was cut off. Curator may have been unable to speak, but he was able to jump down from his horse and slice off the imp's head.

Curator hopped back up onto his horse and pulled up beside Julius and pulled down his hand, which had been left up to keep Curator quiet. "I am sorry, but I could stand his blasphemies no longer. The wicked monstrosity was filling your head with lies about the Creator, and lies about yourself." Julius looked over at the angel, a scowl on his face. He brushed Haxa's hand off of his arm and urged his horse away from hers. "I am beginning to think that you may be doing the same."

They continued on their journey. He thought about the imp's words, trying to come to any conclusion other than the obvious one. It made him sick to think of himself as anything other than human. Surely the imp had been lying. His lord would be destroyed soon, and he was simply trying to buy time for Malhechor. Yet, it gave him an explanation for what had been said to him by the other demon, and it followed the Creator's theme of divine hybrids, as opposed to his supposed human nature. A demon. There was a strange irony in that. He was going off to kill the lord and master of all demons, possibly being one himself.

They stopped for the night and set up camp. They spent a few hours just staring up at where the stars should have been. Haxa had packed some jerky, which they finished quickly. When all formalities of the evening were finished, Julius lay down under a rough and scratchy blanket, and thought some more about what the imp had said, how Curator had reacted, and everything else that had transpired. He thought of his father, murdered and strung up by some unknown demon, and a single tear rolled down his cheek before he succumbed to the embrace of sleep. A tear that was the same color, and possibly the same composition, as blood.