“You left me!” Goxhandar roared. With that came a piercing headache and pressure behind my eyes, like they would pop out and burst. I almost dropped to my knees. “You left me behind, even though you said you would take me with you! And then you reappeared with those… jailors and then left again.”
“What?” I cried out loud.
“What?” Florencia almost screamed, and she grabbed my shirt in her fist. For the first time, she was angry and out of control. “What do you mean? I’ve been asking you the same thing! Please, Jonas, tell me what is going on. I saw you set fire to one of the… And this thing—” she pointed at the maul, “What is that?”
“Demon hunter… soulbound? What do these words even mean?” I thought.
“You now act like you don’t know what you did? Like you don’t remember?” Goxhandar said, but then he stopped. “You tell no lies, I feel it. You did forget, as you said you would.”
“Forget what?”
“I cannot tell,” Goxhandar then said clearly, almost forgetting the anger, though I felt it still lingered. “I made a promise and I can not break it.”
“Jonas!” Florencia was half-shouting and half-suppressing some tears. “Are you listening to me? I’m talking to you!”
“Can she hear you?” I asked the being named Goxhandar.
“If I so wish. But now no, she cannot…” Goxhandar said. “I sense you care for her. Is she the one you talked about for all that time?”
I had no answers.
“It must be, but you cannot remember. I sense it. Your mind is blank, exactly as you said it would be.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t say what?”
“Jonas!” Florencia shouted. She tried to get my attention by punching my chest with her fists, but she had very little strength left in them, and it was like she was punching a stone statue. She looked into my eyes, trying to break through the fog that had consumed me, but I could not meet her gaze. I could not focus on her at all. All my thoughts were with Goxhandar, whose presence I felt weighed down on my shoulder.
“I cannot say,” Goxhandar said. “Because you threatened you would cast me into the void if I ever told you. You yourself forbid me to tell you anything. You said the amnesia would happen, that you would remember nothing. And you made me promise to not say a single word.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t even know who you are, or how I could do that—”
“No, right now you cannot. I can sense it. Right now, you are a husk of your former self. A meek shadow of the demon hunter that they all cursed in a thousand tongues. The greatest one. Now you are lessened and weak.”
All the while, Florencia still stood in front of me. She had grabbed the sleeve of my jacket that now had a small rip in it. She desperately tried to look for some answers in my eyes, but her words were muted and lost in the maze of my own confusion.
I strained to understand her and quickly stopped trying to do so.
Jace and Iskander rushed to her side, abandoning the Scorro guards to their own devices. They were now a cowering mass of steel, shields, and lost will all pressed against the barred doors of the town hall. Captain Molin tried to rile their courage with some loud words, but those fell on deaf ears, and the captain ran to us, winded and limping.
I saw Jace reach Florencia and grab her shoulders, trying to calm her down perhaps, but she recoiled from his touch and wrapped her arms around herself. Jace put his sword away and looked at the massacre in front of him, and kept mumbling something under his breath, rubbing his self-improved medallion. But Florencia said nothing to him and was torn between me and her own panic.
With heavy steps, Iskander sprinted to me, on his way, pushing captain Molin aside. He fell to his knees, dropping his chipped and bloodied sword on the ground, which let out a loud, bell-like ring as it hit the ground. The passion on Iskander’s face was unmistakable, his words spoken with great zeal.
“I have never seen anything like this…” he said, but the following words faded away. I could not make out the words he spoke.
Almost out of thin air, I saw Jaxine appear from the corner of my eye and ran to Iskander. She was such a little thing, thin and frail-looking, but she was the least shaken out of them all. Her small hands grabbed Iskander’s arm and whispered some words, but he shook his head, again looking up at me, mumbling something. His thin face was lit up, fierce with purpose now, but violent in intent.
“Who are you, Goxhandar? Tell me!” I asked then, as from a moment of clarity.
“There are no simple answers, for I know not the laws that govern the creation of a being such as myself,” the being said, its deep voice rumbling through my skull, and I felt its overbearing presence loom above me. But there was a clear sense that it did not have power over me.
“I am only vaguely aware of how I came into being, for it was many, what you called eons ago. In the most beginning, I remember above me was an eternally black sky and a world that was devoid of light or warmth. There was only murder and suffering. Murder for pleasure and murder for survival, and suffering for those who succumbed. When I became aware of myself as a separate being, I was in a different place where the sky was green and there was much noise and change. But it was in that cursed, lightless red realm that I became what I am now—a tool of destruction. There is where you found me and claimed me for yourself. That is all I can tell you.”
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“Claimed you?” I asked.
“Yes. Before that, I was an instrument of whoever was the strongest. I was fought over and conquered, used to gather power and strength and deal mindless death. I remember countless hands gripping the same haft that you did only moments before. Some were like yours but with black thoughts, while others were altogether more strange and vile. I despise them, master, all of them.”
“Them? Who—”
“I despise their crude and repugnant thoughts that I had to endure for so long. You, indeed, claimed me by a violence of the most delicious kind when—” the being stopped. “No. I cannot continue explaining that. You claimed me, yes, but I allowed it because in you I saw my own betterment. Over time we grew, man and maul, and many fell before us. It was then they began calling you the cursed one, or the great one, depending on who or when. That is all I can say without breaking my promise.”
“So you are… that maul,” I said out loud.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand how that is even possible…” I told the being. “Would you tell me all if I promise I won’t hurt you or cast you into the void?”
“I will not take that chance, master. You forbade me to tell you what happened in that hellish realm.” Goxhandar’s thoughts wandered for some time. “I do not know what will wait for me in the void, and I will never take that chance.”
“But you could explain other things. You seem to understand who we are fighting. You can help—” I said, but the train of thought was broken.
We all heard loud and echoing steps, a crash, and then a war cry. And then running.
“It’s Pasquinne,” I said out loud again and Florencia shuddered beside me. She had been exchanging words with Jace, but their conversation had been lost on me, and it still felt like I was in a half-dreamlike state. “The monster is coming back here for revenge. We killed too many of his—”
“Thralls,” Goxhandar interrupted. “We have killed countless thralls, you and I. These here were no different, only that they were lesser. Like you are now, master. But you will grow again, I know it. Already I feel the unlocking within your mind.”
The being was right. I felt a process unfolding within me. The colors were more vivid and sharp and if I focused, I could sense the emotions of everyone around. I felt a connection to all the things I saw around me and could move them with only the power of my mind.
But in the distance, there was something unholy that had set its attention on us. Even from this far, I sensed its perverse patterns of thought. I felt in my heart a kind of irritation, that there was something here that violated the rules and balance of the world.
Coming towards us was a dark creature commanding an aura of death and hatred. It was Pasquinne, or what had been the secretary not more than an hour ago. Now it was a dark thing, absorbing light and radiating fear.
“What is that thing?”
With only a quick thought, one that felt more like instinct than a conscious decision, I reached out with my right hand and willed the maul to me. In an instant, the maul creaked and snapped into my firm grip with a whisperous thunder. A trace of black smoke and powdery dust of stone left lingering in the air.
I swung it around in a wide arc, marveling at how it seemed to be entirely weightless in my hand, and rested it on my shoulder.
“The thing drawing close is a host,” the deep voice of Goxhandar said. “A cowardly host. But the one taking over his body and mind is a demon. While right now you do not remember what a demon is, I can assure you that you were most skilled at killing them. I cannot sense its name from here, but it does not matter. We shall crush it all the same. I am not at my full strength here yet, the same as you. I feel slow and unaccustomed. It is so different here; it is delicate and balanced. I can see far, and the thoughts I sense are so… stimulating. So many different appetites. Ah! I can see why you wanted to come back.”
“That thing is a demon?” I mumbled. That was the first time I ever heard that word, but it was also so familiar that I had no reaction.
“No. The physical body is simply a host for one. In such a manner they are as a single thing weaker, slower, and dumber, the worst attributes of both. The shadow you see around him is the demon.”
“Before the... the ritual. I saw a shadow consume the secretary before he changed into this—”
“A demon has taken the mind of who you called Pasquinne. They are the same body now, the flesh of man, thoughts of a demon, and the strength of both and neither. But such cowardly bargains take more than give, and the host shall not survive the ejection of the demon, should it choose to escape. Neither of them is at their fullest power. That will be their undoing. Come, master, this will not be difficult.”
As the demonhost came closer, I began to sense its dual thought patterns. I saw a black figure wade through the mass of corpses, watching out gleefully at the death it had wrought. It moved on hooved legs that seemed to be bleeding a dark, viscous liquid onto the ground. It had powerful and coiled muscles that had now spiny growths, and as it advanced, with it came a darkness and shadow that seemed to envelop everything in its wake.
Despair almost took a tangible form, and I felt its weight bear down on me, but I saw it for what it was—illusion and tricks. Those seemed to be the tools these devils used. Even the brave captain Molin recoiled, jumping back and falling on his side, bruising his wrist bloody.
The demonhost came closer and I saw its face was that of a horned beast of a dark nightmare, with eyes black like an abyss. The demonhost—how easily I adopted the word—had no weapons, and had used its impossibly wide arms and thick fingers to tear apart whomever it wished, and seeing the red blood drip down, the thing had reaped a plentiful bounty.
There were two beings in that single fleshed shape that fought for power, but one had won, and the other was pressed far back into the recesses of its own mind. The victor had a mind of great malice, overbearing and entirely alien.
With the coming darkness, I heard echoes of threats fill my mind, drowning out Florencia and Goxhandar. There were cries for help and pleas to escape, like back in Veneiea. But… I felt this thing was not as powerful as the beast of Veneiea, nor was its mind as strong.
That creature would die through my hands. Through my hand and through the strength of the Blood Maul.
“This cannot be,” Jace cried out suddenly. “This violates every rule, every law that we have! I don’t understand… I don’t understand! What should we do, Warden?”
“I—” Florencia said, but she stood frozen a few steps behind me.
“What do we do?” captain Molin asked with a voice stolen by terror. He took more steps backward, sheathing his sword, and wiped his bloody wrist on his broached cape. “How can we fight this? We can’t! We have to run! Bar ourselves in the town hall. It is safe there! We can’t—I can’t fight this!”
“Jonas,” Florencia said with a weak voice, not unlike the captains. “I… I think we should listen to the captain. Let’s fall back to the town hall, gather the troops there and attack the… thing in force!”
“No,” I said.
I felt a surge of power flow through my chest and into my arms and fingers, filling me with renewed strength. The pain in my left arm subsided, and I flexed my muscles to test their newfound vigor. All worked well, even better than before. I took a step forward, kicking a jagged piece of timber into a pile of debris nearby.
“I will kill it,” I said quietly. “Keep back, keep away.”
The ground was now shaking and the light faded, but Goxhandar’s weight was a comfort.
“Jonas, please, no. I need you to stay safe,” Florencia said, but I ignored her words and kept advancing. “Please come with me. Please—”
Up above, the light darkened even more, as if consumed by the unholy creature. The wind died down, leaving an all-encompassing silence in its wake. And then came the sour stench of death that took my breath away. And as I stepped ever closer, the echoes of murders past and future filled my mind.
“That coward will not have a future,” Goxhandar said.
I was certain of that, and a magenta-colored flame began to burn between the fingers of my left hand.
“It will not.”