Chapter 11 - Soul Eater
Demons came in a variety of forms. There were the major categories of soul eaters and flesh eaters, of course, but those didn’t necessarily predict their shape, size, or even their strength. The most that the seraphs of Elysium could come up with were rough associations that were often, but not always true.
Soul eaters were usually more powerful than flesh eaters, but the latter had been known to ascend as well and could cause just as much damage. Stronger demons typically adopted more humanoid forms, but there were also plenty who didn’t fit this mold.
Lazar had always found demons intriguing. Not quite enough to call it a real interest (he’d learned early on that it was better not to have those), but enough to make a distinction between them and other topics. Elysium was defined by strict orders and boundaries, from the physical realm itself to his own daily routines. He’d never known anything else. Perhaps because of this, as he stood listening in on Julius’s lessons, off to the side, a silent guard, he would always perk up a little whenever the topic of the Abyss was brought up.
Unlike seraphs, born with an innate understanding of essence and magic, demons had physical abilities that often involved warping and manipulating their bodies. If Elysium was a place dedicated to the soul, then the Abyss was the embodiment of the material.
The inconsistencies and lack of rules were to be expected, Julius’s instructors would say. The realm was a place of chaos, after all, and that lack of order was present directly within its inhabitants.
As Lazar studied the demon, grey eyes moving rapidly, those common associations flashed in his mind.
Twisted wings resembling rotted branches flapped perfectly silently, and the demon hovered without any effort. The rough surface of those wings was broken up with clusters of blinking, twitching eyes. There was no consistency to their sizes and shapes except that all of them were a bright, flat yellow.
The demon himself was by far the most humanoid one that Lazar had encountered so far, nothing like the amorphous or insectoid flesh eaters in the field. He even wore clothes.
His skin was violet, and yellow eyes similar to the ones on his wings dotted the backs of hands and trailed down his neck. He didn’t carry any visible weapons, like some ascended demons were known to do, but Lazar noted that the skin around his hands appeared harder, gleaming in the faint red glow of the walls like polished stone.
His instinctive, immediate thought was that this was exactly the sort of demon that Julius’s instructors had warned about. The obvious intelligence, the humanoid form—they were all markers of power far beyond his current abilities.
The more logical side, the one that he’d trained to take over whenever anything resembling panic appeared, pointed out that the demon’s presence within the Abyss meant that he likely wasn’t strong enough to have ascended. Demons had little incentive to remain in the realm once they were able to leave to higher ones.
Lazar met the demon’s gaze, keeping his expression neutral even as his eyes continued to scan for a possible attack. The demon watched with what looked like amusement.
He lowered himself fully to the ground, landing just as soundlessly as he’d flown, and took a step forward. It did little to reassure the seraph. A voice that sounded like Lord Andire’s berated him for ever allowing the demon to get so close, for failing to notice him. Weak. Pathetic.
“Not going to respond? That’s terribly rude of you, you know.”
“My apologies,” Lazar said slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you want me to say.” He kept his hands steady on the halberd. The demon’s movements were casual as he stepped forward again, but Lazar recognized the subtle threat. He was trying to intimidate him into backing into the wall and trapping himself. Lazar kept his feet rooted firmly in place and didn’t move.
The demon raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’d say an introduction would be in order. Or do humans not do such things?” His grin widened, and each one of those golden eyes stared unblinkingly. He hummed, a low rumble that reverberated throughout the enclosed space. “But then, I suppose you’re not technically a human anymore. Fallen belong to their own category, do they not?”
Lazar saw the attack coming a mere second before the demon surged forward, but it didn’t matter. His body was too slow to react.
The demon’s hand shot forward and wrapped around his throat, slamming him into the cave wall before letting him drop back down, as if he wasn’t worth the effort of keeping in place.
Lazar coughed, the air pulled from his lungs, and slumped back down onto the ground, struggling to regain his breath. Stray black petals scattered from the cave wall, revealing the glowing bare stone beneath. The demon stood casually over his hunched form, none the worse for wear. His entire demeanor remained lax and deceptively mild.
“Ah, I almost forgot to ask.”
One of the demon’s wings extended, those yellow eyes peering directly at him as the lower section of the appendage twisted and grew outwards like a branch and pointed directly at his throat, its tip sharpened and shining in the dull light.
“How long ago did you fall? I like knowing how old the soul is beforehand. Some of the more damaged ones can taste rather bitter, you see. It’s something of a necessary evil.”
Soul eater. Lazar remained silent, eyeing the steady point of the wing. He tightened his grip on the halberd, glad that he hadn’t lost hold of it. The demon, for his part, seemed utterly unconcerned by the presence of the weapon, as though he was certain that it couldn’t hurt him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The demon cocked his head at the lack of a response, and when he next opened his mouth to speak, Lazar threw himself to the side and swept his halberd out in an arc, digging the edge of the blade into the demon’s leg.
The soul eater hissed, and the wing pierced into the wall where Lazar had just been. The seraph quickly rose back to his feet and made to run, but the other wing stabbed into the wall just in front of him, cutting him off. Lazar backed away and held his halberd defensively in front of him.
A thin trail of blood dripped down the demon’s leg. Lazar could see that the skin there was shiny, much like the flesh around his hands. The swing hadn’t caused more than a shallow cut given his weakened state.
The demon frowned. He wiped at the cut with a hand and held it up to inspect, studying the blood left smeared on his skin.
“How—”
His voice cut off and his eyes landed on the weapon in Lazar’s hand. Yellow eyes widened, sweeping over the metal blade, and he laughed incredulously. It started small, barely above a chuckle, and grew until the demon’s entire body was shaking with laughter.
“You’re a seraph? A fallen seraph?” The words were equal parts disbelieving and giddy.
The soul eater’s wings contorted and stretched outward, cutting off any escape points and casually blocking the exits. Those yellow eyes still hadn’t left the halberd, trained on the shining silver and the subtle, but distinct engravings along the shaft and socket, a signature of Elysium.
“You know, some don’t think your type exist.” The laughter had died down, leaving only a wide grin in its place that was just a little bit crooked. “Tell me, what did you do? Did you kill a guardian? Disrespect the Light? What exactly does it take for one of your kind to fall?”
Nothing, Lazar thought. There was a sharp pang in his chest. His hold on the halberd tightened. I didn’t do anything.
The demon snickered. The casual ease, the almost elegant laxness from before had disappeared almost entirely from his demeanor. Yellow eyes gleamed wildly.
“That bad, is it? Well, at least tell me how high up you were. I need to know how much I can brag.”
Lazar’s eyes kept darting around, searching for an opening, but there were none. There was only him, the hard stone walls, and the soul eater before him.
“I’m waiting, seraph.”
He exhaled, deliberately keeping his voice even. “I’m no one,” he said. “I’m nothing more than a simple servant.”
The soul eater snorted. “A pathetic lie. No servant would have a weapon of that caliber.”
“It’s the truth.” Lazar inched subtly to the right, but his eyes never left the demon. His wings weren’t perfectly symmetrical, and the one on the right had just a little less reach than the left wing did. Maybe—
“I can see you.”
A wing slammed into Lazar’s chest, throwing him back. He landed hard against the central stone structure. Stray rocks tumbled down. He hacked and struggled to get back up, but his limbs refused to respond. He could vaguely register a burning pain spreading across his back. He needed to stand. He needed to run.
Another blow knocked him back into the stone, disrupting his attempts at rising. Lazar’s vision blurred, his hearing muffled and indistinct as he tried to force himself to concentrate past the growing dizziness and disorientation.
“—always believed you were above us—” The demon’s voice came in disjointed, muffled pieces.
“—could never survive—”
A loud ringing resounded through Lazar’s head and he grit his teeth, the noise growing more and more piercing as the demon kept speaking, kept stepping closer and closer.
“—understand—”
And there, in the middle of that cacophony of noise, a low voice rumbled clearly in his mind.
“Can you hear me?”
For a moment, it was as though time itself had slowed down. Lazar could feel every ache and wound, his ragged breaths, the smooth surface of the halberd shaft in his fingers that remained cool to the touch no matter how hard he squeezed it. The rough stone under him, manic yellow eyes, the glowing red light emitting from the cracked structure he leaned against. The voice had come from behind him.
He exhaled.
“I can hear you,” he thought.
“Let me out.”
A second impact knocked Lazar away, and he slid across the ground, coughing. He struggled to get back to his feet, but before he could, a vice-like grip wrapped around his throat. It slammed him back against the stone and squeezed. The seraph choked, feeling his strength waning as more and more of his breath was cut off.
The soul eater sneered.
“Tell me, do seraph souls taste the same as everyone else’s? Or are yours special?”
Black dots appeared in his vision, and Lazar felt his consciousness fading. He clenched his fingers and found them just barely clingnig onto the halberd, an instinct born from years of training and discipline.
“Let me out.”
With shaking hands, he slid his fingers so that they rested just under the blade. The demon pressed harder against his throat, and he blacked out for a second.
“Let me out.”
Mustering every last ounce of strength he had, Lazar aimed the halberd tip at the stone behind him, right over the damaged area, and grit his teeth. He swung as hard as he could, digging it deeper and deeper into the structure.
He heard a crack.
“—usually so good at speaking—”
Another crack.
“Answer me.”
“Let me out.”
And then the stone behind him exploded.