Devil to the Damned (Prequel #2 )

2|20 - Midnight Oil

Stepping through the doorway always felt like a ragged copy of every instance before, which only hindered the mental stride of proceeding time. The blinding glare of porcelain sand and looping white nothingness isolate my movement to bare learned behavior. Willess for the initial few. The major grounding force was the near-insignificant pressure of another tainted light behind me.

I moved swiftly through the Rift door, and my companion was eager to follow. I couldn't help but cycle the exchanged words and break them down as perhaps pandering. He tried to hide it, but a devilish sneer never goes unnoticed by me. Still, he agreed to meet my partners. If only one more recruit can prove themselves loyal, then that propels this dire operation into further legitimacy, and will establish a modicum of confidence in our advancements.

After so many failed attempts, it would be a substantial relief to find just one more. . .

But of course, that couldn't happen. Why, in this cruel fate, would I be allowed the slightest reprieve?

Only ten steps into the Rift, as our entry door closed behind us with a muted click, did the air around me charge with hostile energy. A tickle on the back of my neck, a snapshot vision of his growing rage.

I sighed, averted my eye to the floor, and lowered my head. He didn't make a sound, something I noted as a key aspect of his ability; yet, I intercepted the attack long before he would connect.

I twirled in a half-circle, wiping my left arm across and deflecting the boy's fist bound in protruding thorns. A surface-level scratch ran across the top of my hand but that was nothing compared to the damage inflicted in rejection. His arm snapped halfway to the elbow; the forearm almost bent at a ninety-degree angle with the bone jutting out from the skin.

Blood squirted onto my neck, and face while his shocked expression began to take over. Before he could get a word out, my right hand launched forward, and the round of my palm crashed into his left eye socket. A concussive wave followed past his head and I heard his eyeball burst as the skull crumbled beneath the flesh.

It all happened so fast, that the Teufel remained locked in an offensive pose, while his body shut down from the double retaliation. My arm retracted and pose regained, staring him down with disappointed ire in my wide eye. He returned the gaze with a clouded look. Blood drooled down his face and side, collecting into the sand, and being absorbed into the mysterious properties of this barren place.

He crouched, but held his position; a smirk, and bated words locked behind his teeth.

I felt my jaw tighten, "Why?"

His voice came in pieces, "A good son would never raise a fist to. . . his father."

"You are lost, little atrocity. Together we could have freed you from this battle, this curse. You mean nothing to him."

He stumbled to the side, barely catching himself as the sand began swallowing his feet. "He loves me. I was created to serve his purposes; to carry out the will of God. He cannot be wrong, for he is eternal, he is one." The last words started to come in airy gasps.

I bit my tongue, there was nothing I could've said to truly convince him. A zealot.

He gripped his arm in the other, twitching uncontrollably and still smiling like a madman. I looked through his good eye and saw the brown of a suffering soul within. He was in so much pain beyond that of my infliction.

"Pity," I whispered as the Teufel collapsed and died right before me. That little light within snuffed, and I was left alone in the Rift. Contemplative in limbo.

Pockets of mystery reside regardless of persistent introspection. No matter the nightly delve into Sin's work or peeling my fingernails back with aggressive mental digging; there is still much left to discover. In a way, I've never felt more complete regardless of the paint-spattered voids in my head. Another fallen has tainted the speck of optimism I coddled.