Demon Soul

Demon Soul (Prologue)

It was a dark day, following a dark week and Brownie already knew that this would happen. She had been fighting it for weeks now but it was already too late. Even if she could save him, his love was already dead. It left with his memory changing. Brownie watched him leave for the last time with tears falling from her eyes, knowing his soul had died, long ago. She knew that he wasn't the one she fell in love with, and she knew he was a completely different person, unable to love her anymore. But those thoughts didn't make it easier, seeing him walking away from her again reminded her of her vain quest to bring him back. Maybe she would try again, not for his love, just to give him his soul back, that would be the last thing she could do for him, but despite weeks of efforts, she hadn't found the way yet.

When she first met him, she knew he was the love of her life, behind his demonic manner, she had seen his soul, a beautiful purple light dancing in his grey eyes. In few seconds, it had stolen her heart. Then she had worked so hard to make him love her, to make him believe that her love for him was beyond his demonic condition, beyond his powers, to make him believe that she could love him, no matter what. She was there when he came back from fights in the Demon World covered in blood, and she was there to bring him back when his dark side was devouring him. Each time his purple soul was dancing in his grey eyes and each time he was coming back for her.

"You make me feel strange", he had said. "It's normal for a demon to feel unloved".

Then she had promised to make him feel loved every day and that made him laugh. But now it was all gone, that time it was different. When he came back after one more fight that night, he didn't rush flying through the window, he calmly knocked at the door and apologised for the trouble caused. Something broke in her heart, she instinctively knew that something was wrong but she couldn't put a name on it. For the next few days, he acted like a ghost and had violent crises due to headaches, pushing her away when she wanted to help. Finally, he started to space their meetings. She cried, yelled and questioned him, but the only answers she obtained was that everything was fine, that she was the one acting strangely. In despair, she locked herself in the library, reading books about demons and magic, looking for an answer, looking for a way to bring him back. But all was vain. She couldn't find what was wrong, until his dark side told her how happy he was that the demon community had decided to get rid of his soul. She felt so empty and hopeless that she couldn't fight anymore. She realised that each time before when his dark side had buried his soul deep inside him, she just had to call their memories together to bring it back, but now it was gone, and the memories of them were erased from his mind one by one as they were torturing his soul. Desperately, she still tried, each time she saw him, she cried but became more determined to get him his soul back. However, she never managed to have enough powers to bring him back to her. Without his soul, the demon she had loved has died inside his own body. She never saw his soul again, dancing in his eyes, she couldn't bear anymore to see him like that and he didn't love her anymore, he didn't remember their time together, the joy they had felt once, he was coming to her just by habit. So this moment, now, was meant to happen. Since that night, she always knew it, she pushed it away as much as she could but now, he was walking away, leaving her with an empty heart.

She sighed deeply and dried her tears; he was just an empty shell. She had read so much lately, her way of thinking had changed. But even if he was just an empty shell, his soul was still here somewhere in this world or another and wherever it was she was going to find it. Her new knowledge tortured her; she was imagining his soul in the worse possible places. She had been having nightmares for weeks, she had been dreaming with opened eyes barely noticing the world around her and she had been waking up at night covered in cold sweat. She needed to find it back and to protect it, no matter what it took. Nobody would care for a demon's soul; nobody would ever care but her. She saw it and now it was her responsibility.

She looked at him until he disappeared behind the trees, then she stayed longer, staring at the trees, lost in dark thoughts. She noticed she was home when she reached the wooden door and heard her little siblings arguing in the entrance. She sighed again. Living in a house full of kids wasn't the most restful place she could dream of.