Fleeting Memories

Chapter 37: When it began and ended

He closed his eyes and through it, he allowed his imagination to wander in the abyss created under his shut eyelids. He envisioned the countless battles he had participated in and the thousands of lives he had taken with his two hands...

Within the hellish landscapes, the word peace didn't exist. Each and every waking moment was pure carnage with a single moment to spare for rest. In the lands dubbed by the demons as the underworld, war was commonplace and it wasn't odd for wars to emerge daily...

During these enormous clashes, hundreds to thousands of demons would throw themselves upon one another, slaughtering one another and creating an endless stream of blood that seemed never to stop flowing. Yet, there was no merit nor achievement for this cause...

Other than to stand at the peak of strength and satiate their thirst for blood, the battles that take place would never amount to anything... Only leading to incessant killings that continued to tear the bleak landscapes of the underworld apart slowly but surely.

He opened his eyes and with his raven-black eyes with a hint of red, he stared toward the horrid purple skies, dreaming that his time within this realm would cease to end. He was fed-up with the world and longed for the determination to keep living on...

He despised the unruly demons whom he was associated with and never cared for the prospect of fighting and killing. All he wanted to do was to find his purpose, and yet, even that was hard to discover in a realm that consisted of nothing but bloodshed.

Having wandered the landscapes for hundreds of years already, his will to continue on was faltering with every subsequent step he took to move forward. He couldn't take it anymore and just as he was about to allow himself to succumb to his madness, he noticed something...

Behind a random boulder that stuck out on the side of a small hill, the demon came to notice something particularly odd. Before him stood a door that sat atop the earth with not even as so much as a shack supporting it. It led to nowhere and as he approached to observe it...

He felt traces of black magic flowing throughout the wooden base of the door. Though seemingly ordinary, it was clearly much more than what it really was. It was then that he recalled stories of the demons of these realms suddenly coming across strange doorways...

Doorways that when entered, would make them disappear out of thin air, with the doors following suit shortly after. It was unknown whether these stories were a hoax and although he wasn't one to believe such things, he was brimming with curiosity.

With nothing to lose, he outstretched his arm to turn the knob and the moment he pulled the door, he found nothing but the desolate plains of the underworld before him. He felt foolish for even believing such a ridiculous story to be true...

Yet, just as he walked through the door, he suddenly noticed an odd presence before him. He was on the bare dirt right then and there and although he felt perfectly fine, something about the being standing but a few steps away from where he was stood out to him.

He turned his head upright and the one who stared back at him was a skeletal being donned in ragged and torn clothing. It was an odd sight. Aside from a flame that was lit in both of the undead being's eyes, he seemed weak enough to fall apart with a single gust of wind...

"Demon... The one who had crossed from the realm of the underworld to ours... The one I had summoned with every ounce of my remaining mana... I implore you to become my subordinate and become my right-hand man..." The skeletal being spoke as it reached a hand out to him.

To suddenly request the help of someone he had not even been acquainted with and to a demon of all beings... It was almost laughable for him to spout something so ridiculous... Yet, something about the person standing before him felt almost compelling...