For a few moments, nothing else happened. Vual, David, and Ayata watched the body of the woman rest, only the strange vapor leaking out of her empty head, indicating that she had been moving and fighting just a moment before. Then, Vual began to laugh.

“Oh dear, I suppose the lone, heroic savior of these people has failed. How unfortunate for them!”

“You’re welcome,” David replied. “Ayata and I are going to-”

“You two will stay,” Vual snapped.

David and Ayata both tensed up, but they did as Vual commanded. After all, they had both seen what she was capable of at this point.

“What is it?” Ayata managed to reply after a moment.

“I just…” Vual began before she collapsed into a fit of laughter, like a person whose thought of a joke so funny that they can’t tell it without putting themselves into conniptions. “I find it so funny that you, of all people, would help me. I tortured you for years, you know. You must have forgotten the things that I’ve done to you~”

David held Ayata close as Vual spoke, his eyebrows furrowing, but neither dared to defy the Demon before them.

“Humans are such sad, pathetic creatures. I know all about the both of you, you know. Father was an alcoholic, wasn’t he? And he just loved to hit you both like the pack animals you were born as. Didn’t he?”

Ayata nodded vigorously as if degrading herself in such a way would make Vual’s words sting less. David trembled but didn’t do anything other than clutch his sister, as if he could hug her so tightly that this entire situation, from past to present, left like smoke in the open air.

“And it ruined the both of you for the rest of your lives. You didn’t get one,” Vual punctuated by pointing to Vual, deliberately making the motion to summon a concussive blast just to watch the girl jump in fright. “And you, David, will never be free of him. You’ll die afraid of that man.”

“What’s your point, Vual?” David finally replied. “Jabbing at old wounds with a stick is befitting for a demon, but leave Ayata out of this. Please. She’s suffered enough.”

“I just find it hilarious,” Vual admitted. “You can resurrect the dead, but you can’t get over your father. It’s remarkable how a parent can ruin their child. I also wanted you two to know just how much you both disgust me before I kill you.”

David and Ayata barely processed that last sentence before Vual raised both of her hands, this time pointing her palms at the both of them. There was a moment where the world stood still for the siblings as they realized what ‘kill you’ meant in this context, and then two powerful concussive blasts rang out at once. The top halves of both siblings were ripped from their waists, and all four segments were flung across the hallway in a bloody mess as they were slain instantly. The streaks of blood stained Emily’s corpse as they collided with the magical barrier at the end of the hallway, and Vual cackled at the sheer beauty of the splotchy red streaks stained across the alabaster walls and floors.

Then, something odd happened. Emily sat up. Vual watched as the woman sat up, with blood streaking across her face and clothes, and the top half of her head miraculously healed.

“Does nothing that dies stay dead around here?” Vual bemoaned as Emily stood up, staring at her with an intense gaze.

“You’re a very bad person,” Emily stated.

Vual didn’t feel like dignifying this projection with a taunt. Instead, she pointed her palms at the woman and let loose another blast, this one denting the floor and seemingly vaporizing her. For a moment, Vual wondered if she had somehow surpassed her previous limits out of pure hatred for this projection, as normally there would at least be ripped clothing and viscera left behind. Then, she felt a grip on her ankle.

The Demon looked down and saw a familiar pale hand emerging from the floor. The Demon immediately made the connection; Emily had gone incorporeal and sunk beneath the floor before the blast could reach her, using Vual’s surprise at the resulting crater to ambush her in such a manner. She pointed a finger at the hand and let loose another blast, resulting in Emily letting go and sinking back beneath the floor.

By this point, Vual had stopped having fun with this predicament. This damn projection was completely ruining a beautiful massacre, and if it had its way, it’d probably delay her until the Runes could be removed, and this place could be flooded with people much more powerful than either of them. The Demon had to end this quickly, and she couldn’t think of a better way than tearing down this entire building on top of both of them. She couldn’t truly kill a projection without finding its source, but she could deny that source the pleasure of saving a single person more.

Vual began to launch concussive blast after concussive blast into the ceilings, the walls, and anything else she could. Stray blasts and rubble would surely catch anyone who was hiding up here, and when the ceiling came down, that’d be the end of it. But she took her attention away from the projection beneath her, and that was her fatal mistake.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Emily’s hands emerged from the floor once more, with both of them wrapping around Vual’s ankles. Vual looked down and watched as the arms, vaguely transparent now, swayed through the floor. Emily made all of her body incorporeal except for her hands, which allowed her to swing upwards, applying all of the force to the ankles of the body Vual inhabited and swung upwards through the floor. Vual was shocked by such a move, enough that Emily could land on her feet, spring backwards, and collide her back with Vual’s front.

The pair of them sprawled to the ground, but Emily moved much more quickly than Vual could. The redhead scrambled on top of Vual, assuming the position she was in at first, but this time, she grabbed Vual’s hands, intertwining their fingers, before rotating her wrists in a manner that was entirely inhuman. Vual’s wrists snapped loudly, and she let out a cry of agony, and yet Emily kept twisting. The skin pulled, the wrist bones were ground into a fine powder, and eventually, the Priest’s hands came off altogether. This caused Vual to let out a wail of pain.

“How sadistic,” it panted before smiling up at Emily. “What a wonderful way to die~”

Emily frowned before she raised her clenched fist and hammered it down on the face of the body Vual inhabited. Over and over again, the skull found itself lodged between the hard tile floor and the unnaturally hardened hands of Emily. Dozens and dozens of times, Emily hammered down on the skull until she felt something give, and her upward swings resulted in flecks of blood flying across the hall. Emily took a second to calm herself, and Vual moved no more.

A few moments after this, the barrier Brenton had put up vanished, and a small group of Guards and students from the local University rushed in to see the bloody, tragic scene. They saw two bisected bodies; the stench of their blood and bile spread around the room, dizzying their senses. They saw Emily climb off of Vual’s body and look back at them, her front so thoroughly splattered by blood that she looked like she had taken the worst beating of all. And then they saw the Priest on the floor, the demon long having left her body, and her own life leaving long before then, with her brains and blood leaking out onto the tile.

Emily did not respond, as she could not discern if these young people in robes or the older people in armor were friends or enemies. However, one of the younger guards made the immediate and, in some ways, rational decision that the strange blood-covered woman surrounded by corpses had to have been responsible for the horrors they had all seen downstairs after breaking the Runes. He let out a war cry and rushed forward, closing the distance between them in a few short seconds before he tackled Emily to the ground.

“Hey!” Emily protested as she was wrestled to the ground and forced onto her stomach with her hands pinned behind her back.

“I’ve got her!” the guard proudly declared as his leader walked up behind him.

“Is that so?”

“Yes! I’ve clearly restrained the demon responsible for this massacre!”

“I’m not a damn demon!” Emily protested.

“Demons aren’t usually fond of denying their demonic nature,” the guard captain pointed out, and the guard begrudgingly stood up and allowed Emily to do the same.

It was at this point that Brandon revealed himself. Rounding the corner of a room, clutching at his pelvis and leaning against the wall for support, he declared his presence with a loud command. “Get back from her! She saved us!”

The students murmured among themselves as the guards split up to check the other rooms on this floor, marking the deceased,wounded, and still living. Emily followed the guard captain over to Brandon while still periodically looking back to make sure that Vual stayed dead.

“Is that so, Brandon?” the captain asked.

“You’re damn right, Michael,” Brandon exhaled. “A demon possessed the Priest we brought in. She walked right through a human barrier I put up, so I know for fucking sure that it was a demon.” As he spoke, he raised one finger towards Emily. “This woman brought down a demon by herself. I couldn’t see what went on, but I heard it, and the fact that she’s still standing makes it clear enough to me. If there’s any justice in the world, that young man who just tackled her gets a fine tanning because she’s a damn hero.”

The captain nodded before turning to Emily. “And what say you?”

Emily nodded. “My name is Emily. I was doing some research when this… demon attacked. I fought it off. It had two assistants. One of them was David, the librarian. All three of them are dead now.”

Michael was clearly surprised by this response. “David, the librarian? He seemed like such an upstanding young man. I suppose you never know what those odd, bookish types get up to in private, do you?”

Brandon nodded. “Whatever his reasons were, I hope, loyal servant of Hell that he was, Hell treats him very well.”

Brandon and Michael both laughed morbidly, understanding the intended meaning of the statement, but Emily found herself confused. She had heard David speaking to Ayata in the library, and now that she thought about it, Ayata was the woman helping him in that battle. And when her consciousness was returning to her body, she recalled that demon speaking to them about their father. It was clear enough to Emily that the father was the cause of this in one way or another. Something he did to David and Ayata prompted the chain of events that led to them summoning Vual.

This was a realization that stunned Emily, leaving her to think as Michael escorted Brandon to the nearest Healer who could treat his pelvis. She didn’t understand what would make David and his sister assist such an evil demon. They were hardly evil people in of themselves, as far as she could tell. And the father killed Ayata, so he was an evil person. In some way, the father’s evil had spread, like mold across fruit, and consumed David so intensely that he would engage in necromancy and serve demons. So why would David go to Hell? His father was at fault.

But when Emily thought about it, she supposed that was also flawed. By what standard was anyone ‘at fault’ for this situation? David summoned the demon, so by that logic, everyone who had ever wronged David was responsible for the mental conditions that would cause him to engage in such actions. Such a decision would damn the entirety of Richardsville for merely existing, so Emily thought that this was an improper line of thought.

The morality of the situation made her consciousness hurt, and she decided that she needed more answers for this situation. She needed to speak to the man himself.