Demons (Damirae)

Chapter Sixty-Four

Death's claws, the spindly twigs poked the sky, almost seamless melding in to the blanket of midnight blue, save for their blackness. They grasped at the sky, shaking to and fro as Zeus' breath whistled through the branches around, yet they reached out to the heavens all the same- as if the door wasn't closed.

Spring would reawaken them, bursting forth in a carnival of green, soon to be celebrating amongst all colours to grace the rainbow. Til then, the dying things were alone, stuck in a silent envy of the evergreens rejoicing besides them. Didn't those bare branches look like they wished to strangle a proud, full-leaved tree?

They only had the moist ground to thank, standing naked in their soil, begging the Earth mothers and fathers for their green dress. Without that blessed dampness, the clawed ones would be dead- husks of what once held pure, unadulterated life. How cruel the winter was.

It pulled and drained and sucked away the vigour of life, casting the world under a cloth of heavy grey in the day and consuming black-blue before the time was due. There were months before the release of springtime and the returning of life. Grey for now. Things would be grey for now. The wild things would condemn themselves for a long while still, reducing their great selves to no more than mounds of heaving meat. What a curse was hibernation for the powerful.

The breeze that trembled through the tree-claws danced about the curtains, drawing them in to the swaying motion that carried it along. A sea of crimson the curtains continued their waltz until Adyn closed his window and they fell lifeless once more. Walking back, the demon sat on his bed, sinking in to the cloudlike duvet.

Night came too early in these months, capturing the sky and taking its blue hostage til sunrise. The night was a thing of beauty, but a bringer of sin. Adyn's keen ears could hear the gurgling, scratching mess of monsters crawling about Gotham's streets from the Manor (the humans were, of course, none the wiser). Never had the demon come across a city so overcrowded with sin, overflowing with humanity's vices and in a famine of virtues. As a creature of Wrath, a true Sin, Adyn thrived off of it. No city was better suited to a creature of his kind.

Unable to sleep at such an early hour, Adyn employed his minor skills in the field of magic for entertainment. Minor, not due to a lack of knowledge in the subject, nor a lack of power, rather, the inability to control strong magic. It was a situation most in the preternatural world were in- save the creatures of magic, mages, witches and the like- often referred to as being 'batteries': holding a great store of magic; being incapable of utilising it.

Fire was something Adyn could do.

Fire was something all demons could do.

It ran through a demon's very veins and made up the substance of their souls. A single glance at the inferno within a demon's heart could blind the holy creatures.

The flamenco dancer twirled across the pink flesh of Adyn's palm, sparking from the a violent sunset to a chilling twilight and back again. The small fire was extinguished with a closing of his hand as the demon fell in to boredom once more.

With all the grace that had been beaten in to him, Adyn rose from the bed, walking around to face his vanity. He smiled at the person in the mirror and he smiled back. The room's white lighting served to enhance the danger in his bite, canines flashing menacingly. His eyes were no less threatening in colour, red as the blood his kind were born to spill, but kind in shape (softened, telling of his open heart- but an open heart that could yet be corrupted by the Sin whose name he bore). Fitting the look of his people, Adyn's angular face was both harsh and welcoming, relieved of a harsh look by his easy eyes and smile-lines. The pale pink complexion did little to aid the endeavour for a natural, humanlike appearance: it wasn't that of a pinkish-white human, but a more vivid hue, enhanced by the colour of his eyes.