The monster was gaining on her. She could hear its chitinous-bladed legs tearing through the dense vegetation and obstacles like chainsaws through paper. Each time she jumped over a rock or skirted around a giant tree, it simply bulldozed through and gradually caught up to her.
She slid on the slippery ground, her bare feet failing to gain purchase in the thick foul mud. Her balance collapsed and she tumbled down. Pain jolted from the bleeding gash in her side. In her fall, she caught glimpse of the creature chasing her as it toppled a whole copse. The giant black centipede was larger than a freight train and covered in armored shell plates.
It screeched, she gasped, coughed a mouthful of blood and scrambled to her feet, ignoring her ragged breathing and the gore oozing from her abdomen. She ran. Fear pulsed in her head, bile crept up her throat, yet she felt determination.
The scenery blurred around her, changing fast, not just from speed, but with the disjointed succession of dreams. Marshes soon gave way to dry land, then suddenly the world abruptly ended. The dark woods ceded place to a black void filled with multi-colored stars and two huge moons, one blue and the other red. The ground disappeared from underside her feet and she plunged down into the abyss.
Spinning in the air, she grabbed a root protruding from the cliff and coiled it around her wrist. The root was ripped off the rock, snapping and recoiling each time it tried to resist the sudden traction, until it brutally tensed, interrupting her dive. Her shoulder was yanked up with enough force to dislocate it, the supple wood dug into her wrist and she slammed into the stone wall. The shock wrenched a yell out of her.
Her shout of pain was echoed by a louder screech from above. She looked up just in time to see the centipede bursting out of the woods and tumbling down past her, its humongous body and countless sharp legs twitching uselessly as it plunged to its death.
Panting, she closed her eyes and took a second to catch her breath. Then, with her teeth and fit hand, she uncorked the goatskin dangling from her shoulder and bathed her ripped abdomen in water. The clear liquid poured over the gory filth, revealing dark lacerated flesh and severed muscles already knitting themselves back together. Pulling on the root, she dragged herself up, straining her muscles until a satisfying snap accompanied her shoulder jerking back into place.
Holding to the cliff, she cut the root loose with her fangs then started her long trip down. She moved so fast her descent was less climb and more haphazardly controlled free-fall. But she couldn’t idle. Losing time to safety would only lead a slower death by starvation. If she wanted to eat tonight, she needed to get to the corpse before the bigger and meaner scavengers were attracted by the smell of her prey's blood.
In this wilderness, the monstrous centipede was only a small fry.
* * *
9 October 2017. Justice City. New Industrial Park. NovaTech Industries Headquarters.
“Hah!!”
Morgan jolted awake, heart pounding, breath short and broken, skull aching, a foul taste in her mouth, and hair sticking to her face drenched in cold sweat. Her wild eyes darted around the room and in the darkness her panic peaked, before slowly receding as the haze of her nightmare faded away. Eventually, she recognized the small office she had been forced to rest in after she’d refused to go home.
Her gaze switched to the door, closed, a faint glow filtering from underneath. Just down the hallway was the mission control center set up to keep contact with Merlin’s surveillance team, the very room she’d been thrown out...how long ago exactly?
Her left hand moved her forehead, pointlessly trying to keep her pounding headache at bay. With the other, she groped in the dark for her phone. She eventually found it on the floor, next to the sofa she was lying on. Bringing it to her face, she squinted against the sudden bright light and glanced at the time displayed.
A quarter to one. She had slept less than an hour. She dropped the device on her heaving chest with a groan. Her whole body screamed for rest but she knew she wouldn’t willingly go back to sleep. Not when those nightmares lied in wait for her. She knew none of it was real. She was no stranger to nightmares. But these felt real. She could have sworn she still felt the sensation of her clawed hands peeling away chunks of broken shell off a monstrous corpse. She still tasted the disgusting tang of raw bloody meat on her tongue.
O, Lord. A gag shook her throat. She jumped to her feet and rushed out the door and into the bathroom across the hall.
Bent over a toilet bowl, one hand on the wall to keep her balance and the other holding back her long black hair—distractedly cursing she’d cut it shorter—she heaved drily for several minutes, trying to empty her stomach of something it didn’t contain. In fact, her stomach didn’t contain much of anything. She hadn’t eaten a proper meal since...when? She couldn’t remember.
A noise from behind Morgan caused her head to jerk back. Her eyes searched the white bathroom fearfully. But she was alone. With a curse and a sigh, she pushed herself up and away from the wall. She walked out the stall and to the bathroom door and peeked out in the hallway.
Before the door of the office she’d been sleeping in, a member from NovaTech security was standing, fidgeting, a fist raised and visibly hesitating to knock. From Morgan’s position, she could see a quarter of his back profile, and something in the man’s expression made her insides to twist again. He had bad news written all over his face.
“What?” she barked, harsher than she’d intended—but she was too worn out to care.
The way the guard jump nearly to the ceiling would have been comical if she had been even remotely in a mood to laugh. He spun around fast enough to give himself a whiplash and his face lost two shades of color when he met her gaze. That pissed her off. She didn’t look that messed up, did she?
His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Morgan was already beyond losing patience. “Are you dumb or just plain stupid? Come on. Spit it! What went wrong?” She almost added a barb on how the CEO’s plan was moronic and bound to fail, but her respect for hierarchy was hardwired deeply enough that, even in her state, she still kept herself from trash-talking her superiors.
The guard’s face whitened some more. NovaTech didn’t make a habit of hiring wimps and weak-minded individuals, but being shouted at by a disheveled and bleary-eyed version of one of the world’s most successful heroes was especially nerve-wracking. “We, We lost contact with the stakeout team. The leader thought...you'd want to...know...”
Morgan was already halfway down the hall by the time the poor man finished his first sentence.
* * *
9 October 2017. Justice City. Old City. Eastern Side.
In another hallway across the city, on the second floor of a decrepit apartment building, where the drab stained walls differed much from the austere cleanness of NovaTech’s basement, Merlin was unknowingly mimicking his sister’s actions. Sidestepping a leaking garbage bag, he reached the window at the end of that hallway.
He stuck close to the wall and peered through the dirty glass. Beyond and below was an obscure side-street filled with trash and darkness. This was the opposite side of the block from where NovaTech’s mage was stationed. Unfortunately, the window couldn’t be opened and the sound of breaking glass would undoubtedly catch the attention of anyone keeping watch outside. Discretion might be a moot point if NovaTech had an adept at divination or scrying magic amongst their ranks, but Merlin couldn’t act recklessly on a supposition. Although all this sneaking around is so unseemly.
Pushing his discontentment aside, he shot a glance to the closest door to his left. The wood wasn’t quite rotten yet, but like everything in this foul place, it had seen far better days. Closing his eyes, Merlin focused on his magical senses, searching for presences behind the door. He detected one. Unfortunately, non-mages in this world had too little in the way of aura for him to determine whether that person was awake or not just from sensing them.
Not one to waste time pondering over things he could do nothing about, Merlin took a running step, jumped and slammed the sole of his shoe on the panel right next to the lock. The shock rippled painfully up his leg, but his thin yet excellent muscles did the job. The door frame splintered and the door brutally swung inwards. Merlin rushed forwards and caught the handle before it banged into the wall. He stepped in and closed behind him, eyes scanning the darkness inside.
This apartment mirrored his own to a tee, except tidier and with actual furniture. The cans and bottles of beer were also notably absent. Confidently, Merlin crossed the short hallway and walked into a living room. His gaze wandered around, glossing over two armchairs wrapped in dusty quilts, a low table covered in lacework, a thick carpet on the floor, a closet topped by a bookshelf and a few other items that looked old but well cared for.
He snorted. The room was in no way luxurious, but compared to Merlin’s own flat, this might as well be a queen’s boudoir. He’d really gotten a drab starting point in life.
A movement from one of the armchairs caught his eyes and he found himself staring straight into a pair of green eyes with slit pupils. His senses perked up and a sigh escaped him. “I don't have time for this.”
He stepped aside, and out of the way of a vase aimed at his head. His annoyance hadn’t been for the cat—which slithered under the table when the pot shattered on the floor—but for its master standing behind him. Moving by instinct, Merlin pivoted, arm extended. His sideway chop caught the old lady in the cheekbone. She went down with a gasp and didn’t get back up.
Merlin looked down impassively at the old woman, rubbing his hand, numb from the blow. A slight frown wrinkled his eyebrows. From under the table, the cat yowled at him. A quick glare from the former demon silenced the feline and even caused it to flee the scene. Merlin’s gaze returned to the collapsed elderly. He could almost imagine Elise shaking her head in disapproval. “She’s fine,” he grumbled to the silent room. Of course, no one replied. He looked away and resumed walking to the window.
A peek through the lacy curtains confirmed another deserted street. This world’s humans seemed to possess the same aversion for being out after dark as the ones in Zarath did. Merlin could already draw a few conclusion on this place day-night cycle. The Demon Realms saw more night than day, so demons never really cared for daylight. Many were even nocturnal by nature. Humans were pretty much the opposite.
Bringing his backpack to the front, he opened it and pulled out the rolled-up porn magazine. From within the booklet, he retrieved two large kitchen knives. He’d slid them inside earlier while putting away dishes. Again he didn’t know how he was being watched, but he moved under the assumption the surveillance wasn’t perfect and could be deceived. Maybe he was wrong, but he could not do nothing.
Sadly the blades weren’t too sharp. But beggars didn’t have the leisure to choose their tools.
Merlin slid a knife through two belt loops on his pants and held the second one in his right hand. He then unlocked the window and slid it open. Cold air blew inside, rustling his black hair and causing him to shiver. He grabbed the ledge and was about to haul himself out—when another flash of his beloved’s disapproving face shot through his mind. He stayed frozen, a hand on the windowsill, for a heartbeat, before sighing and stepping back in.
With irritated gestures, he ripped a quilt from the closest armchair and threw it over the limp body of the elderly woman, making sure to cover her extremities and not suffocate her. Humans were such fragile creatures. At least this way she wouldn’t freeze to death—since he’d have no way to close the window from outside. “There. Happy?” The empty room once again met his growl with only silence. He shook his head. I'm losing my mind.
He leaped back to the window. The knife he was holding was relocated to his mouth. His jaws closed on the handle of the blade, he checked the one at his waist, then pushed himself up with both hands and stood crouching on the ledge.
A quick glance and a magical sweep of the area revealed no one outside nearby. But he didn’t know how long before some night howl strolled by, or if someone wasn’t presently watching him from one of the many buildings around, so he quickly lowered himself from his perch. Holding the bottom of the frame, he let his feet dangle down. The smooth painted concrete offered little hold for scaling, but the floors were low enough that he could stand on the upper ledge of the window below him.
His feet found the narrow platform just as his feeble arms were about to give out. He heaved a sigh of relief and even had a small wry smile. This brings back memories. When was the last time he’d had to physically exert himself in a pinch? Even that last fight against the Hero had been more of a contest of magic power rather than strength or technique.
However, his mood quickly returned to sour. Those distant years of daily struggle had been a time when Meria could have died any day just to find food or shelter. The parallel was nothing to rejoice about.
“There he is!”
A shout pierced the nightly silence and Merlin swiveled his head to the left. At the furthest corner of the building had appeared three men sprinting in his direction. The runaway ex-demon swore colorfully and jumped the last floor down to the ground. He landed in a controlled roll on the hard pavement and was on his feet running in a heartbeat, thanking his hard bones and cursing his new future bruises. This was a stunt he was sure to regret in the morrow.
A brush of wind and a tingle of his sixth sense alerted Merlin an instant before one of the men materialized seemingly out of thin air to block his path. The man hadn’t teleported, however, only moved faster than the human eye could follow.
“You can’t run—”
But Merlin didn’t rely on his human eyes, and there was no way he’d missed the mage in the group. Merlin’s spirit senses hadn’t lost track of him an instant, and when the mage seemingly materialized after his high-speed race, it was to receive a kitchen knife in his own human eye. Under the force of his own inertia, the blade dug into his eye socket and eventually impaled his brain. His speech was abruptly cut short and he collapsed into a flaccid heap of limbs that rolled another few meters before coming to a definite halt.
Merlin took off after the corpse. Passing by, he bent down and retrieved the knife, then increased his pace as fast as he dared. His feet hammered the pavement and propelled him through the backstreets.
“Stop! You gutless bastard!”
As if anyone would, imbecile. Merlin could hear the curses shouted by his sole pursuer. The last of the trio had stopped to check on his dead comrade. A mistake. Merlin might have been in some trouble fighting two opponents, but one-on-one would be child’s play if he was smart about it.
And speaking of child’s play, Merlin suddenly remembered the tracking beacon stuck to his own aura. With a thought, the coil of power he’d prepared beforehand constricted and crushed the elegant construct like a giant stomping on a glass sculpture. Brutal but efficient. A bit like Merlin as a whole.
The former demon took the first turn left, which lead him further away from the building where he’d sensed NovaTech’s agent.
On that matter, he had no idea if his current pursuers belonged to that same group, but he felt no remorse for the man he’d killed, nor for the one he was preparing to kill. At present, Merlin’s greatest weakness was his endurance. He had good muscles, but far too little of them. He needed to get rid of his hunters as fast and surely as possible before his stamina hit rock bottom.
As soon as he was out of sight of the man after him, Merlin jumped behind a large dumpster and held his breath. Not an easy feat when your lungs felt on fire. He cursed silently. This wasn’t like when Meria had survived in the wilderness, this was much worse. Back then Meria’s body had already been a fearsome weapon in itself. Now Merlin was weaker than the average human.
Although, on second thoughts, the enemies back then had also been on another scale entirely. So all things considered, the odds evened themselves out rather well. And by “well”, he meant in his favor.
Soon his pursuer stormed blindly into the alley, convinced his prey was still running away. When he passed the dumpster, unsuspecting, Merlin rushed out, silent as a whisper, and swiftly stabbed both knives into the back of his neck. The tall guy slumped down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He’d been well-built and fast, and he might have put up more of a fight if he hadn’t been so upset from seeing his much stronger companion be taken out almost immediately. Coldly thinking, that should have made him more cautious, but the mind worked in mysterious ways. Emotions were a double-edged sword.
Merlin retrieved his two weapons and wiped the blood off on his victim’s own clothes. Distractedly, he noted the stylish garb reminded him of what the elderly councilmen at NovaTech had been wearing, only with a sharper cut. Some sort of uniform? Or a formal wear perhaps? He didn’t dislike the design. He’d see to get one for himself.
Shaking theses useless thoughts off, he started running again at a leisurely jogging pace. He didn’t mean for it to be leisurely, but this was the fastest he could currently manage without dropping out of exhaustion.
Not too much later, a guttural shout informed him the third member of the group was catching up and had most certainly happened upon his second colleague's corpse. Merlin looked around and clicked his tongue. He was in a narrow street with nowhere to hide. He had no choice but to lengthen his stride and hope to find a good ambush place before his legs failed him.
However, before either could happen, a light *pop* echoed from behind Merlin, and nearly instantaneously, an acute burning pain stabbed through his right thigh. “Argh!” Eyes widening, he stumbled and tumbled down. His body agonized from the impact against the hard ground and his face scraped against the pavement, the uneven asphalt ripping his skin away.
“Damned Ptaeesh! You fiend! That's twice today I fall on that shoulder!” Merlin’s muffled roared escaped through gritted teeth. Although, the petty complaint wasn’t really the point. He’d long ago discovered anger was an efficient way to cloud the mind to hurt. One just had to care not to get lost in it, for it clouded judgment just as well. And currently, Merlin’s whole body felt like one big bruise, especially his thigh, where an unpleasant yet familiar warmth was spreading around the throbbing hole in his flesh.
He tried to push himself up, but a sudden blow to his nape sent him right back down. His chin hit the pavement and he tasted blood. A rough hand grabbed him by the shoulder—the left, unfortunately—and flipped him over. Merlin found himself nose to muzzle with the man’s gun, fitted with a large silencer. The edge of the books in his pack was digging painfully between his shoulder blades.
“You’re lucky the boss wants you alive, you piece of trash. Or that bullet wouldn’t have missed your brain.”
Merlin’s squinted at the weapon pointed at his face. His gaze then slithered up the barrel, a hand and an arm, up to a visage that looked…like the blood felt on his thigh. Unpleasantly familiar. But the blows to his head had jumbled his thoughts too much. He couldn’t recall where he’d seen those black hair and slanted black eyes before.
His mouth felt stiff and heavy when he tried to speak. “And whom may thy ‘boss’ beest? NovaTech mayhaps?” Honestly, Merlin had his doubts these people belonged to the same company as his sister. Too many things didn’t fit.
The gunman’s face twisted into a nasty scowl. He pressed the metal of his weapon painfully against Merlin’s nose. “You trying to be funny, trash?” Then he added, half to himself. “What’s with that way of speech? You think this is the Heian era or something? Shut up, gaijin. Your accent is making me sick!”
Merlin blinked in confusion, suddenly realizing, a bit belatedly, that for the first time since coming to this world, he was understanding someone’s words—for the most part. Several terms still slipped past him, but he got the gist of it. He’d even instinctively switched his own speech to match. But obviously, there were some discrepancies. What in the name of...
Then it hit him, like a sudden lightning bolt. Those slanted eyes, those black irises and hair, and this dark yellowish skin. Merlin hadn’t recognized the similarities right away because this man was older, and his vicious facies looked so remote from the youthful determination full of sickening naivety which the former demon had come to associate with those features. But certainly, Merlin wouldn’t forget the appearance of the brat who’d killed him.
Saitou, Hero of Mankind. More like ‘Saitou, Pawn of the Empire’. Merlin was still bitter about it.
However, the words Merlin had spoken weren’t related directly to that particular Hero. In his past life, the demon monarch had known of nearly every language on Zarath and mastered more than half of them. Those words belonged to a dialect spoken in the easternmost province of the Empire, an island called Atarashii Nihon, allegedly populated in great part by descendants of a former Hero. The man had indeed been recorded down in History as having many wives, and most inhabitants of the island did exhibit those traits habitually connected to summoned heroes. Traits Merlin was now recognizing in his attacker.
Is this really the world heroes come from? The thought speared through his dazed mind, reminding him suddenly why he was running away so recklessly in the first place. At the same time, another discreet thought formed at the back of his mind, barely a whisper. If humans could be summoned from this world, could Merlin maybe reverse-engineer the process and “summon” himself back home? Could he possibly go back? His heart clenched. Elise…
He closed his eyes and ground his teeth together. Here and now wasn’t the time to dwell on wishful theories. His dreary situation was a much more pressing and tangible issue. He needed to turn this around. But how? His brain worked furiously, inventorying the means at his disposal. He had dropped his knives in the fall. Glancing around for them, he tried to distract his assailant, while also fishing for information. “What art thee going to doth to me?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
That question earned him a kick in his side. “I told you to shut up! The others are coming and we’ll see then if you still dare run your mouth. You’ll soon regret I didn’t grant you a swift and painless death.” He spat on Merlin, and the latter had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Who exactly was running his mouth?
Finally, from the corner of his eye, he spied the glint of a silvery blade a couple feet away. Discretely, he tried to extend his left hand in that direction.
“Don’t even think about it!” A foot came down on Merlin’s creeping hand. He gnashed his teeth and swallowed a scream of pain. But his goal wasn’t only the knife.
The thug had briefly looked away from Merlin’s face to stomp his hand. Merlin took advantage of the lapse in attention. With his free hand, he grabbed the man’s wrist and yanked the gun away from his face. At the same time, his good leg lashed up and his foot slammed into every man’s infamous weak point. Asphalt shattered in a blast inches away from Merlin’s face, the noise of the fired shot covered by a high-pitched squeal that brought great satisfaction to the former demon.
Nuts crushed, the brute stumbled back a step. As soon as Merlin’s left hand was free, he used his hold on the man’s wrist to pull himself up, while clenching his injured hand.
His fist connected with the other's nose in a downpour of blood, and an explosion of pain for both of them. Not slowing down, Merlin, danced around his stunned opponent, pulling his arm along. Once behind his back, the limb in an arm-lock, with a firm jerk, Merlin dislocated the man’s shoulder. He shouted. “BASTARD!!” The gun fell out of his limp grasp and clattered on the pavement.
Merlin ducked under a backward elbow sweep by crouching and kicks his opponent’s right leg from under him, breaking his already disrupted balance. A crude bodyslam finished throwing him to the ground.
They struggle on the pavement. Merlin’s opponent clearly had the upper hand in brute strength, but the former demon fought viciously, poking eyes, biting and ripping hair.
Merlin’s bony hand eventually grabbed a fistful of short black hair and he violently slammed the man’s back of the head into the hard ground, ignoring a punch to his own face that almost knocked the light out of him. Barely conscious, he slammed the head again, and again, and again. The sounds impact grew wetter with each blow. Blood splattered around, dappling Merlin’s forearms with red.
Dazed by the many blows he’d received to the head, it took the former demon a moment to notice after the man had stopped moving, the back of his head now a gory mess of brain matter and mangled bones. Panting, Merlin released his grasp. He had some trouble prying his cramped fingers open. The sticky hair clung to his skin. Blood was pulsing in his ears and dripping from his nose, face, mouth and hands. Only half-awake, his eyes two pools of solid darkness, he reached out, covered the man’s face with his bloody palms and summoned his power, his groggy mind drifting to distant memories.
* * *
Year 12,976 of the Imperial Calendar. Zarath. City of Nox.
Meria was seated on a stone chair hovering a few inches from the floor, in the middle of the immense library of her castle situated in the Demon Capital Nox. Or was it more accurate to say the castle was the capital? The whole gigantic complex had been carved eons ago into a single huge volcano, which remained active up to this day.
Around the Demon Queen floated blue orbs, diffusing a soft glow to the surroundings and revealing tall heavy bookshelves that seemed to go on forever in every direction. Far above, near the high vault shrouded in darkness, pointed windows decorated with stone traceries allowed dim moonlight in. It was all that ever passed through those windows. The three suns never shone upon Nox, located on the exact opposite side of the planet to Empyrea. But the three moons of Zarath were always visible in the eternal night sky. Most demons liked it that way, the Queen included.
Meria’s metal-gloved hands delicately closed the book she’d been reading. In her large palms, the thick grimoire appeared like a small pamphlet. With a sigh, she dropped it on a pile to her left and reclined in her seat. "Put them away."
Three servants exited the shadows—literally. They emerged from the shadows, vaguely humanoid figures looking as if made of gaseous shadows themselves. In complete silence, their black vaporous limbs coiled around the books and they faded back into the darkness. Meria had a fondness for shades as servants. Those creatures were simple, both of mind and nature, but very diligent if properly taught. They fed on fear, and Meria’s surroundings were always full of it. Their relationship was very mutually beneficial.
Sitting a few feet away from her, at a table covered in a mess of books and parchments, a young man, looking barely out of boyhood, raised his head from the cramped scribbles he’d been reading. He glanced at the Demon Queen, long straight silken black hair framing his delicate features. A single braid hung across his pale face, black tribal tattoos crept up his cheek from the collar of his simple black robe, and tiny black scales encircled his eyes which were two golden orbs crossed by vertical slit pupils.
“Giving up already?” His tone made it sound like a disdainful taunt, but his affectionate half-smile betrayed he was only teasing.
Solid black eyes met the golden eyes and Meria’s lips twisted in a scowl, rows of black fangs peeking from inside her mouth. “What’s the point? There hasn’t been a death mage since Ptaeesh vanished! And writing had even been invented back then! The gods were too worried about keeping the races under their heavenly boot.” She stood up and started pacing angrily. Her struggled to keep up with her.
In contrast, the boy calmly set his quill down on the table and linked hands before him. “In fact, precursor dwarves had already developed a form of logographic script at the time.”
Meria paused her steps, clicked her tongue, and rolled her eyes before sending a glare his way. “Big deal. When has there ever been a dwarven mage? Those rune fanatics wouldn’t know how to cast a fireball if their life depended on it. This is pointless. I’m going to the dungeons.” She needed to work off some frustration. She abruptly pivoted and walked away. The enchanted seat began to follow, but she dismissed it with an impatient wave.
“Mother.” Shadow’s voice stopped the Queen in her tracks as she was about to disappear behind a bookshelf. She slowly turned back towards the young dragon. He only ever called her mother when he thought the matter important, and he did it scarcely enough that she was willing to listen when he did.
Arms crossed, she stared him down in silence, something that would render anyone else to groveling in a puddle of tears, but the dragon boy only interpreted it as having his adoptive mother’s attention.
“What do you believe death magic is?”
She raised an eyebrow but answered without even the need to think. “It is an indiscriminate power that brings destruction to anything that lives or ever lived.” There was neither pride nor scorn in her voice, only prosaic flatness.
Shadow nodded wordlessly, though more in acknowledgment of her reply than in agreement. He calmly stood up and walked to a shelf, where he pensively stroked the backs of old tomes, his own back to Meria. His every movement were slow, deliberate and regal, belying his youthful appearance and hinting at the true age and wisdom behind those golden eyes.
“I think that you underestimate yourself.” he eventually said, his voice merely a whisper that she had no trouble hearing. He turned around to face her. “In my understanding, your magic does not destroy life, it feeds off it.”
“What difference does it make? Destroy. Feed. In the end, there’s still nothing left.”
“Perhaps...” He returned to stroking the books, from left to right, until his hand stopped on one particularly thin volume. He pulled it out and skimmed through the pages. To many, this conversation might feel frustratingly slow and interspersed. But to them who’d lived for centuries, time flowed at a different pace.
“Did you know,” he once again broke the silence, sounding keener, “there was a tribe, in the elven lands, who believed life itself was an energy that could be harnessed, shaped and used? Like an alternative to magical power. ‘Lifeforce’ they called it. There isn't much know about them sadly. This is about all I've found on the subject.” He raised the pamphlet to her attention, then continued skimming through it. “They were exterminated in a raid of the Empire, about a millennium and a half ago. The paladins were rather thorough in getting rid of their legacy. A shame. I think they were on the right track.”
Meria scoffed. “I bet that shiny harlot didn’t take it too kindly to people infringing upon ‘her’ domain.”
Shadow remained wisely silent. His mother’s hatred of gods, and especially the Goddess of Life, wasn’t anything new. Although he felt the need to point out the followers’ actions weren’t always a reflection of the divinity’s will, he preferred to stay on track.
He suddenly slapped the book shut. “My point is: If life can be manipulated to such ends and extent, then what about death? Life mages in the empire are taught to heal through magic, but I think they’re limiting their potential!”
His voice rose a pitch and enthusiasm sparkled in his golden eyes. The faintest wry smile lifted a corner of Meria’s mouth.
Shadow always got livelier when he talked about his theories on magic. In fact, dragons as a species were infamous for their greed, but most failed to realize this greed wasn’t always focused on wealth, jewels, and coins. Some dragons were hoarders of plants, other of shiny pebbles. Meria even once met a small dragon who collected farming tools with single-minded passion. Shadow, on the other hand, was obsessed with the inner workings of magic. An obsession that made him every bit as fearsome as his adoptive mother.
“You are alive. That should be proof enough your power isn’t as indiscriminate as you think it is.”
“I’m abnormal,” Meria retorted.
If the dragon caught the bitter note in her tone, he didn’t show it. Lost in his own explanation, he only took her comment in stride. “I think what’s abnormal is that you have a ludicrous amount of that ‘life force’!” He tapped the booklet to make sure she knew what he was talking about. “That’s what offset your death power. That’s what keeps you alive! But it’s still not enough to compete with your magical power, which is why you instinctively reject the surplus outwards. That’s your so-called curse!”
“Shadow...”
“It makes sense!” He took a step in her direction, a feverish smile on his face. Meria, on the other hand, remained impassible. “There’s no demon with stronger regeneration than you. You can regrow half your body in mere seconds. Seconds! How is that an ability linked to death?!”
“Shadow.”
“If we could someone find a way to increase that pool of life force. With your magic, you should be able to interact with that energy. Maybe siphon it from an elder being. I know there’s an ancient dragon in the Kashar desert. We could capture her and—”
“Shadow!” Meria hadn’t raised her voice but the exuberant boy reacted as if he’d just been whipped. He stopped talking and gesticulating and raised an uncertain gaze towards the towering figure of his parent. His previous air of wisdom had all but vanished. He might be a tri-centenarian dragon, but before her, he still was and always would be a little kid. “I appreciate the intention. Maybe you’re in the right. But it wouldn’t work. I don’t have enough control to pull off something like this.” Her tone dropped slightly when she added. “All I can do is kill.”
At her words, Shadow almost looked like he physically deflated. He sighed and looked away. “Right. I…forgot. Sorry. I thought I was onto something this time.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s a good theory.”
“It’s not good enough if it can’t work!” He made a gesture to throw the booklet on the ground, but stopped mid-swing and instead dropped both his arms and his head. “I just wanted to help you...”
A rare soft smile graced the most feared visage on Zarath, though no one was there to witness it. Without thinking, Meria raised a hand, as if to pat her son’s silken black hair, which she’d always imagined so soft.
However, when she caught her gesture, her smile abruptly vanished and she froze. Concerned by her silence, Shadow raised his gaze and, seeing Meria’s deadly claw inches away from his face, he gasped and took an instinctive step backward before he could stop himself. Immediately his eyes widened in horror at what he’d just done. He looked up to his mother, opening his mouth to say something, but the words died on his lips as soon as he met her gaze.
Several emotions twisted Meria’s features—none positive—until they settled into a cold emotionless mask. She retracted her hand and whirled around, walking away and disappearing into the darkness of the silent library.
Left alone amongst the books, the young dragon could only stare at the lonely departing back of the strongest being on Zarath, with sadness filling his magnificent golden eyes.
* * *
9 October 2017. Justice City. Old City. Eastern Side.
In a dark alley, a not fully conscious former demon was straddling the cadaver of his victim.
With both hands on the dead man’s face, for the first time since coming to this world, Merlin wilfully summoned his death magic. His dazed mind ignored the agony that instantaneously tore through his entire body. Functioning on instinct with only a vague subconscious intent as direction, he sent his power inside the human body below him.
The scraps of soul still clinging to the cooling corpse tried to oppose a resistance to the invasive force, but they were pushed aside like blades of grass in a flood. Merlin’s power remained feeble, but this was less a contest of strength than the failure of a dwindling will at blocking a single-minded assault.
Tendrils of power coursed through dying flesh, leaving trails of shriveled blackened cells behind. The heart had stopped pumping and the blood had stopped flowing, but a fading life still lingered, which the power eagerly consumed.
Abruptly, the tendrils paused in their mindless destruction, shivering, as if looking around for something. One single tentative thread reached out for a cell, which immediately blackened and dried up. The thread recoiled, then hesitantly moved to the next closest living cell. It approached gradually, carefully, but the result was the same. Death. A third time, it tried, slower, lighter. And failed. A fourth. Then a fifth. Slower. Lighter.
Then, it felt it. A power, faint, foreign yet familiar—like something that always was there, but just beyond notice. It shrunk away from the tendril, concentrating in the farthest point inside the cell, pressing against its wall. Seeing its prey fleeing, the tendril lunged and wrapped around the power akin to a constrictor snake. But as soon as they touched, the latter collapsed out of existence and the cell shriveled.
The tendrils paused once more, shivering again, but out of excitement this time.
Once more that same thread slithered up to another cell. However, instead of piercing through, it spread out, flowing, coating the cell like dripping paint, obscuring the organic tissue with its sickly green pulsing shade. Inside, the foreign-yet-familiar power trembled and converged to the center of the cell, away from the dreadful predatory energy. If the death magic had possessed a mouth, it would have definitely smiled at this moment. Merlin certainly did, of that dazed, vacant, unfocused grin that showed he wasn’t fully there.
Inside the dead man’s body, the thread began to slowly pull back, dragging the husk it had formed. The wall on one side of the cell and the immaterial border of the husk overlapped, then the latter passed through, unimpeded by the physical layer. The speck of life, trying to escape, pressed against the opposite wall of the cell. It pressed, and pressed, and eventually, it broke through. The particle flickered when its connexion to the organism was abruptly severed—as if disoriented—but contrary to before didn’t dissipate. It simply dimmed faintly then remained to hover passively inside the bubble of death.
Like a fisherman who’d just hooked a fish, the tendril of power recoiled forcefully, returning to its origin and hauling its catch along. As soon as the last of it crossed the threshold between Merlin and his victim’s body, this thread of power unraveled, freeing the life force, which burst, expanding furiously, and was immediately sucked into the closest of Merlin's cells, undoing some of the damages his own power had caused.
The microscopic firework was followed by an instant of deadly quiet—as if the magic itself was holding its breath. Then all the remaining tendrils simultaneously erupted into a flurry of activity. They roamed the fresh corpse, hunting for any lingering sliver of life force, driven by the survival instinct of their semi-conscious wielder. Cell by cell, the countless thin tentacles of power dismantled what had become to them no more than a source of nourishment.
Seen from the outside, the man was visibly thinning and drying, mummifying at an accelerated rate, as life was literally sucked out of him. His skin turned a sickening dark gray. His hair fell. His eyes shriveled like dried plums. His lips pulled back, uncovering white teeth that soon started rotting and falling. Adding to this vision of horror were the bulging black veins pulsating along Merlin’s bony arm.
When the death magic found no more to rip from its prey, it retraced its steps and squeezed what remained till the last drop, till the desiccated cadaver crumbled into dust, leaving only its clothes lying flat in a pile of ashes.
Panting, head thumping, blood dripping from his face, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands and right leg, Merlin stood up, stumbling like a drunk man. Mechanically, he picked up his knives and checked he was still carrying his backpack, then slowly resumed walking down the deserted alleyway, using the wall to keep himself upright, blind to his surroundings and only focusing on his magical senses.
He needed more. Much more. Using his power had wrecked Merlin’s body, and what little life force he’d extracted from the already cooling corpse had barely compensated the damages done by drawing it. The slow degradation he’d been suffering since awakening hadn’t been cured yet and instead compounded with the wounds sustained from the fight.
He was dying—his whole being was acutely aware of this—and in this dire state, his dazed mind was reverting to his younger days. Hunt. Kill. Eat. Hunt. Kill. This mantra circled in his mind again and again. Nothing else mattered beyond survival. All he needed was a prey.
“Stop right there!”
And as fate would have it, a fresh batch of living bodies had willingly come to throw themselves into the grasp of the starved predator
* * *
Eye aligned with the front sight of his raised gun, which he kept trailed on the skinny back who had frozen at his call a dozen yards away, Jirou addressed a quick nod to three of the five men by his side. They obeyed without question, each pulling out from underneath their suit jacket a gun fitted with a silencer and moving past Jirou to capture their target.
Each was as tall and twice as wide as Merlin, but Jirou didn’t think this was overkill. He licked his dry lips, unable to shake off the indefinite feeling of dread that had grasped his guts as soon as he’d stepped into the alley.
Not that he didn’t have any valid reason to feel uncomfortable. What was supposed to be a simple grab and run had already turned into an unhallowed mess—with two of his men down, including one parahuman, and another missing. Granted, Tanaka had been an overconfident prick, thinking himself immortal like so many of his superhuman peers, but the skill necessary to stab someone running faster than a racing car right into the eye, and the cold resolution to go straight for the kill, neither was something to scoff at. This man, Merlin Pendragon, was dangerous. At least far more than hinted at by the report Jirou had received.
However, the fear he felt was different. It was basic, primal, a deeply buried animal instinct that screamed at him he should be running away, that there was something here he should strive to stay as far away from as possible. Jirou couldn’t understand where this originated. He was an experienced killer, trained to take lives efficiently and with sound judgment. He lived with death and had learned not to fear it.
Yet why did he feel like he had somehow stepped on his own grave?
Trying to hide his nervousness from his subordinates, he cast a rapid glance at the two men remaining at his side.
One looked like a carbon copy of the three who just left. Tall, wide, a brute with small slanted eyes and a military-styled cut of black hair. He wore a black suit identical to Jirou's own, if of a lower quality. He was holding a large black cube the size of a microwave, and for what Jirou understood, it worked about on the same principle. They would need to activate this device next to Merlin to neutralize the anti-teleportation measure NovaTech had surgically implanted in his abdomen. Then Carrier could zap them out and back to the Black Lotus headquarters.
The second man looked much different. He was garbed in a spiked leather jacket and his spiked hairs were bleached white. Burn marks crisscrossed over a face riddled with piercings. “Satsu, be ready to act on my command,” Jirou shot sharply. For all response, a studded tongue poked out between Satsu’s callous lips. The small metal bead shone red and a faint smell of burned flesh drifted in the air.
Jirou looked away from the parahuman and licked his own dry lips again. He’d rather not use Satsu if he could avoid it. The man was unstable, not to say insane. Sufficed to know most of his scars were self-inflicted to understand how screwed up he was in the head. Thankfully he followed orders. But, as soon as he stepped in, it would mean the mission was a failure. Like his name suggested, Satsu only intervened when someone needed to be put down, definitely.
The three others had finally reached Merlin, who still wasn’t moving. The inexplicable sentiment of dread torturing Jirou flared up again and his hand gripped his gun tighter. They were alone in this deserted backstreet, yet he had the impression some humongous predator was staring at him and breathing down his neck. He’d seen a tiger once, freshly captured from the wild, and the sensation was similar. Only much, much worse. A shiver ran up his spine and cold sweat drenched his back. He started to worry he might simply be sick. Or maybe he just hoped he was.
Everything is going to be alright. He forced himself to calm down. He was only nervous because it had been a long time since he’d lost someone under his supervision, let alone two—or three. Everything is going to be alright. One of the three men grabbed Merlin’s shoulder and forced him to turn around. They had him. Everything is going to be alright.
And then everything wasn’t alright anymore. If it had ever been.
Before any of them could react, a knife appeared, buried to the handle under the jaw of the man who’d grabbed Merlin, piercing through his mouth and into his brain.
Jirou blinked, uncertain of what had just happened. Those three weren’t just mindless brute. They were trained henchmen of the Black Lotus and competent martial artists. Yet this man with literally only skin on his bones, who they had been certified possessed no offensive power, had disposed of one of them in an instant. Jirou’s mind simply couldn’t comprehend.
The two other henchmen looked equally stunned, because they didn’t react when the body of their colleague collapsed backward, nor when, ignoring them completely, their target jumped on the corpse.
Everything had happened so fast, barely a few seconds had passed, and Jirou finally regained his wits. “What are you doing?! GET HIM!!”
The pair, at last, pointed their guns at the skinny man, who again ignored them and continued to…strangle the corpse? The alley was too dark for Jirou to see clearly. He swore silently. Everything would already be over if they could just kill the crazy gaijin. But their orders were to capture him alive.
However, nothing said he needed to be whole. Why these two hadn’t already shot him in the leg or kicked him off the dead man was beyond him. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Jirou was beyond losing his cool. His legendary composure was already nowhere to be seen.
One of the two henchmen looked back at him. “Brother, he…he’s—”
Jirou would never know what the man had been about to say, because suddenly a flash of green light filled the street, engulfing the two men and their target, and the voice was abruptly cut off. Blinded, Jirou heard the sound of two bodies falling to the ground. His breathing caught inside his throat. What’s going on?!
When his vision returned, he saw the target, standing straight up, surrounded by the bodies of the three henchmen and looking down at them.
Unable to understand, Jirou stopped trying and decided to act. He lowered his own gun at Merlin’s legs and fired…and missed. He blinked. Did he just miss a stationary target at barely twelve yards of distance? Impossible. He thought he saw some movement, but a normal human couldn’t have just dodged a bullet, could he? Before Jirou’s brain could form the thought that nothing about Merlin had been normal so far, they gaze met for the first time.
Jirou froze. Two bottomless black orbs stared back at him, surrounded by a web of blackened veins on a face that could only belong to the Grim Reaper Itself. Unthinking, Jirou raised his weapon. He didn’t care about the mission anymore. He only wanted to get rid of this monster before it killed him.
A stab of pain in his chest halted his movement. Looking down, his eyes widened at the knife protruding from his chest. Blood poured out of the wound in thick spurts, directly out of his beating heart that now pumped the vital fluid straight out of his body. His forces were quickly leaving him. His breathing became laborious. He dropped to his knees, vaguely conscious of the noise his gun made when it fell clattering on the pavement. He vacillated and collapsed to the side, numb to the impact against the hard ground. Darkness crept in his vision, cold, final, ineluctable. He’d thought himself prepared, but right now, Jirou was afraid of this darkness.
More than anything else, at this very moment, Jirou feared death.
Jirou blinked. Two bottomless black orbs stared back at him, surrounded by a web of blackened veins on a face that could only belong to the Grim Reaper Itself. He blinked again. One of his hand left his gun and shakily patted his chest. He blinked. No wound. His suit was intact and his body even more so. Had he hallucinated everything? No, he couldn’t believe it. The pain, the feeling of life leaving him, of the freezing, eternal, unforgiving cold creeping inside him. This was death. Something visceral in him knew this was exactly what death felt like. No peace, no angels’ choir, no salvation or hell. Only black, endless, all-consuming void.
Nothingness.
His gaze jerked back up to the black eyes still staring fixedly back at him. Then the Grim Reaper’s thin lips arched in a smile and he took a step in his direction.
Something snapped in Jirou’s mind.
Stumbling back, he tripped and fell on his back. Instead of getting up, he started crawling backward, without an ounce of care for appearances. Using his gun didn’t even cross his mind. This monster couldn’t be beaten. It couldn’t be killed. His only hope was to get away. Flee. Escape. Mad, he pointed at the approaching figure of Death. “KILL HIM!! KILL HIM!! KILL HIIIM!!” His subordinates wouldn’t be able to. No one could. But maybe they would gain him some time, delay the monster long enough for him to flee.
Satsu was the first to move. Like a tensed spring that had awaited to be released, he dashed at Death. He drew two cutlasses from his belt and their blades immediately turned white hot, igniting the air in their wake. Flames danced around the insane killer as all his piercings lit up and the smell of burnt flesh once more drifted to Jirou’s nostrils. Fiery blades assaulted Death, leaving blinding after-images as they moved at impossible speeds, displaying the swordsmanship taught to Satsu by the Oyabun himself.
Yet all was in vain in front of the monster in front of them. Death sidestepped each strike with almost disdainful nonchalance, like an adult dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. In his morbid fascination, Jirou even forgot to flee. Death’s movements were neither complex nor elegant. Each was efficient and purposeful, with no wasted energy. Using his own knife, Death deflected all of Satsu’s attacks, never directly blocking, but hitting the side of the burning blades and using the killer’s own inertia to throw him off balance.
The fight ended before the last henchman could even jump in. At one point, it seemed like Satsu would against all odds succeed. Death stumbled, like victim of a dizzy fit, and one of Satsu’s cutlasses broke through Death’s guard. However, the slash was avoided at the last second. The blade still seared a long gash in Death’s cheek, but the attack left Satsu wide open, and Death’s knife found its way between the killer’s ribs.
Just like that, one of the Black Lotus’ bests was executed.
The last henchman was dispatched so fast and easily it wasn’t even worth mentioning.
Jirou had abandoned all hopes of running away. Laying on the ground in a puddle of his own urine, he stared up in terror at the lanky figure standing in a hell of flames and dancing shadows. Even though only a single of Satsu’s attacks had hit its target, all the misses had still set the surrounding ablaze.
Death stepped through the fire, unharmed, like a demon walking out of Hell. In his hand was one of Satsu’s cutlasses.
The last thing Jirou ever saw were two orbs of pure darkness in which no flame was reflected.
Then nothing.
He didn’t even have time to feel death.
* * * * *