Pandemonia Chronicles: DAWN

CHAPTER FIVE: SPLASH!!

Gestalt awoke to find himself in a dark, formless place. He didn't know how he had ended up here— the last thing he remembered was falling helplessly through the air— but the next thing he knew, he was inexplicably in pitch-black emptiness. Gestalt wondered if he had died?

"You are not dead just yet."

Despite wildly scanning this dark space, Gestalt was unable to find Anu.

"Is someone there?" asked Gestalt.

Gestalt's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw thick iron bars before him, like some kind of gate.

No— not a gate; these bars were the entrapments of a prison cell, like the one he had been in before. But Gestalt was not trapped inside a cell this time. He sensed something else was inside the pen, something now stepping out from the darkness to greet him.

The figure of a tall man with long flowing silver hair and vermilion armor stood at the other end of the bars, and at once Gestalt recognized who he was— it was the man he had met before; the one who had pointed out the medallion to him at the Renaissance Fair.

"Who are you?" asked Gestalt.

"Who am I? Who am I, indeed. You should know."

"Anu Malsumis?"

"See? I told you that you knew," said Anu. "This isn't so hard, is it?"

"Why did you pick me?" asked Gestalt. "Why did you possess me and bring me here?"

"You had latent magical power, apparently a rare gift among humans in your world. I needed to possess a body that could use magical power in order to use my own through it. That's all there was to it, really."

"Well, now that you're back, you can find someone else, right? I don't really want to be possessed by a demon king. That's not really what I had in mind as far as career choices go."

"Are you afraid?" asked Anu. "Afraid of the power we could wield together?"

Gestalt thought about the time Anu summoned a legion of ghouls and destroyed Deus' castle.

"I don't think I really have the stomach for it," said Gestalt. "I'm kind of a nice guy."

"So am I," Anu grinned devilishly. "I didn't turn the humans into zombies and make them eat each other—but I could have!"

"You're listening to my thoughts, aren't you?" said Gestalt.

"It's kind of hard not to. We're talking inside of your head," said Anu.

"Inside of my head?"

"What, you think someplace like this can't exist inside you?" Anu grinned. "Where do you think your mind wanders when it dreams? There are all kinds of places like this buried deep inside you."

'This conversation is going nowhere,' thought Gestalt. 'This must definitely be some kind of dream.'

"...I have a favor to ask of you," said Anu. "As you can see, I'm a little bit trapped in this particular part of you. So, I need you to help me carry out my revenge against the world. To perform this task, I will teach you how to use my power—the power to rule death. You can do anything you want with it, and will have to answer to no one!"

Anu extended his right hand through the gaps between the prison bars. With a flick of his wrist, a bright red apple appeared in his palm.

"Come and take a taste of my power," said Anu. "All you need to do is take a bite and our contract will be complete."

A feeling of dread built up inside Gestalt, and it felt like every hair on his body stood straight up.Even though he felt a cool liquid sensation around him, a hot sweat rushed through his pores.