Demon — Ferris

As Ellie and I run towards the demon, it gives us a theatrical bow. With one hand still clamped around Talia’s neck, it removes her helmet, tossing it away. Then, it holds her off to the side so that we can see her face.

She is terrified.

The demon holds up its other hand, raising its first two fingers while smiling at us. It then proceeds to jam those two fingers into Talia’s left eye. She screams. The demon twists its hand and pulls, ripping out the eyeball as Talia cries out in agony.

It shows the eyeball to us before popping it into its mouth. It chews the snack with a satisfied expression on its face.

“You fucking sick fuck! I’ll fucking kill you!” Ellie screams.

It shows us its first two fingers again.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Ellie shrieks.

It jams its fingers into Talia’s other eye, once again twisting its hand and ripping out the eyeball.

“You will eat this,” the demon says to Talia.

The demon’s voice is a hoarse whisper that echoes across the ruined city. It makes me shiver in terror, and turns my blood to ice. I almost want to burn out my ears, just so that I won’t hear it again, though somehow I doubt doing that would make a difference. There is true power in the demon’s words.

“Open your mouth,” it says.

Talia opens her mouth. She shouts in shock, as if she is not believing her own actions.

The demon gently places the eyeball on Talia’s tongue.

“Swallow.”

Her mouth snaps shut and she twitches. She is unable to stop herself from swallowing her own eyeball whole.

The demon laughs. It seems utterly indifferent to the fact that I am jumping towards it, preparing to impale it with my spear. I resolve to make it regret underestimating me.

‘Piercing Star!’

A brilliant point of unstoppable heat appears at the tip of my spear. The earth boils, the clouds evaporate, and all of the weaker demonic beasts within my line of sight catch fire instantly. As the world burns from my power, I stab towards the demon’s heart.

“No,” the demon says.

With a single word, the burning star of heat at the end of my spear is extinguished completely. My strongest manifestation sputters out with a pathetic little puff of smoke.

Despair fills my heart. How are we supposed to fight something like this? What kind of unstoppable monster can cancel your magic by just saying no?

Then, the momentum of my strike carries the phoenix talon that is Radius’s spearhead into the demon’s chest. I obviously do not expect to do any damage at all.

Like a hot knife through butter, my spear pierces straight through the demon’s body, impaling it completely. I feel almost no resistance whatsoever. Moreover, the demon’s flesh sizzles like a steak on the grill where the phoenix talon touches it.

The demon screams, dropping Talia as it grabs the shaft of my spear with both hands and frantically pushes it out of its body. It shrieks with pain as the spearhead passes through its body backwards, a loud hissing noise coming from the wound as the spearhead burns the demon’s flesh. As soon as it pushes out my spear, it leaps away, landing on a nearby rooftop.

I have no idea why the demon is weak to the phoenix talon, but I won’t curse my unbelievable luck. We might have a chance to survive after all.

“Let us go, and I won’t stab you again,” I say.

Demons may be insane, but they are also intelligent. I can only hope that, when faced with an unknown power capable of severely hurting it for unknown reasons, the demon will choose to prioritize its own safety. I’m not terribly optimistic, but it’s worth a shot.

“You will leave,” the demon says.

I am immediately overwhelmed by an intense compulsion to leave the city. I can tell the compulsion is unnatural, but it aligns quite well with what I already want to do. Without a word, I turn and run towards the city wall. My teammates follow after me. Ellie pulls Talia by her hand.

“No. Only him,” the demon says.

Hands made of black tar come out of the ground and wrap around the legs of my teammates.

Zack is incapacitated, no longer able to dodge the attacks of the spider woman. She impales him with one of her legs.

I stop in my tracks.

“Ferris, go!” Ellie shouts.

Fuck that.

I do not go. I run towards my friends. The strange compulsion pushes back against me, but I break through it with pure willpower. The compulsion vanishes in an instant, and at that same moment, the demon shrieks in pain. It clutches its head as if it is having a terrible headache.

The spider woman raises a leg, preparing to land a finishing blow on the already impaled Zack.

I smile. One of my manifestations has recharged.

‘Volcanic Blade!’

The wall of vaporized earth chops the spider woman in half, killing her instantly. Zack pulls the chitinous leg out of his torso. He drinks a healing potion and the wound begins to close.

“You should’ve gone,” Zack says.

Then, the hands of tar come out of the ground, grabbing my legs as well. The demon glares at me from its perch on a nearby rooftop. The air shakes with its fury.

“My mercy is a rare thing. You will suffer for squandering it. Because you treasure these people so much, I will take them away from you one by one. Then, I will take you too. You will be reunited with them, but only to watch them be tortured and transformed into my pets. You will be saved for last.”

The demon jumps off from the rooftop, landing in front of me, just outside my spear’s range. There is still a charred, smoking hole in his chest where Radius struck him.

“When I am satisfied with your suffering, I will stab you through the heart with that abominable spear of yours. Only then will you be allowed to die.”

The demon turns away from me, walking over to Talia and grabbing her by the neck once more. The hands of tar let her go, and the demon drags her away, walking towards the castle in the center of the city.

The demon spares a glance towards the adventurer who has been transformed into a writhing ball of tentacles that floats in the sky.

“Tear off their limbs and eat them,” the demon commands.

The deformed adventurer descends down, screaming at the three of us that remain. It reaches out towards us with its tentacles.

“Fuck no. Eat this!” Ellie shouts.

She pulls out a small flat disk, around the size of a coaster. She throws it through the air, and it flies straight into the monster’s screaming mouth. Runes light up on the disk as it hits the back of the throat. Centered on the disk, a flat circular barrier ten meters wide flashes into existence for just a moment. The barrier cuts the monster’s body in half along a perfect flat plane. The two huge pieces of the thing fall down, crushing a nearby building.

The demon shrugs. It jumps over the rubble, hopping away as it pulls Talia by her neck.

Ellie struggles against the hands of tar that still grip her legs.

“That fucker took Talia! Damn it!” She shouts, pounding her fist against the impervious tar.

“We need to get out of these restraints. We might be able to make a run for it,” Zack says.

He blasts his flesh-melting magic into the arms that bind him, but it does nothing.

Ellie glares at him

“He took Talia! Weren’t you the one who was against running earlier? We have to save her!”

“Hey! We can argue about this after we get free. Does anyone have any ideas?” I ask.

Ellie looks at me and frowns.

“Your spear, maybe?”

I suddenly feel like an idiot for not having already tried that. I poke one of the hands of tar with Radius. There is a sizzling noise, and the tar melts away like a shadow in the sunlight.

“What the hell is up with that? Why can your spear hurt him?” Ellie asks.

“I don’t know. It’s a phoenix talon. Maybe it has some kind of special property.”

Ellie furrows her brows.

“A phoenix talon? What are you talking about? Phoenixes don’t exist,” she says.

“They’re extinct. My mother said this is the last one.”

I stab the hands binding me one by one. Each of them melts away.

“I would say she was telling you children’s stories, but I can’t deny what it did to the demon,” she says.

I walk over to her and start freeing her too.

“Phoenixes created all life. At least that’s what the stories say,” Zack says.

His words bring back a vague memory, something my mother said to me once. The nemata created the world, the phoenixes created life, the krakens created death, and the cambians created dreams. I asked her what the nemata are, and she said they’re big worms that live deep underground. Then, I asked her what cambians are, and she said they’re gods.

I should have asked her about phoenixes instead.

“They created all life, but what does that have to do with demons?” I ask.

Ellie and I walk over to Zack. I begin to free him as well.

“It’s the primordial flame, probably,” Ellie says.

“What’s that?” I ask, looking at her with a confused expression.

“Well, demonism is a disease, right? Maybe the phoenix talon cleanses him somehow. In the academy, they taught us about the relationships between different kinds of magic. Pyromancy is related to healing, and also stuff like phytomancy and sacromancy, everything to do with living organisms. The primordial flame is the theoretical force that unites all of these things.”

“Theoretical?” I ask.

She ignores me, instead frowning at the now free Zack.

“So, you’re gonna run like a coward?” She asks.

“Yes, I am. We have an opportunity to escape. We would be fools not to take it,” he says.

“I agree,” I say.

As much as it pains me to side against my old friend, this is not the time to let sentimentality get in the way of good decision making.

“Talia would want us to run,” Zack says.

Ellie grits her teeth.

“Fuck both of you,” she says, walking towards the city wall.

Zack and I share a look.

“Are you boys coming? Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The three of us run together, sprinting at superhuman speed to leave the ruins as fast as possible. Some demonic beasts attack us, but they are all weak. They do not stand a chance.

It is not long before we reach the city wall. Though it surely once provided some level of defense against invaders, there are now many places where the wall has crumbled down to little more than a pile of rubble.

There is a gap in the wall right in front of us. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I cannot bring myself to celebrate our escape. The demon’s words still echo in my mind. It might just be giving me hope so that I will feel greater despair in the future.

Sure enough, as we approach the gap in the wall, a pit of black tar forms in the middle of it. The demon rises from the tar, a sickening grin on its face.

“Choose who I take.”

I feel a powerful compulsion to make a decision. It is not a difficult choice. I try and fail to keep my decision a secret from the monster. I glance at Zack.

The demon follows my eyes and looks at Zack with a big smile, revealing its black pointy teeth.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“You are the one he betrays. You will come.”

The demon lunges at Zack.

“No!” I shout, jabbing my spear at it.

The demon is way too fast. It dodges beneath my blow in a blur of motion. It grabs Zack by his ankle, and runs away with him, dragging him in the dirt. Zack kicks and screams, but he cannot escape the demon’s grasp.

“Fuck!” Ellie shouts, gripping her hair with both hands and tearing it out in frustration.

“We need to go. We have to find help before it comes back,” I say.

She nods.

“At the very least, we should tell someone that the ruins have become a demonic domain. There is a town fairly close to here. It should be southeast,” she says.

“Let’s go.”

We leave the ruins, sprinting southeast.

“We might still be able to save them, Ellie.”

I don’t look back at her. The rapid thumping of her footsteps tells me she is still there.

“I think the demon was making a spirit declaration when it said those things to me. It should be bound to its word, to a certain extent,” I say.

“What’s your point?”

“It said that it would only turn us into monsters after capturing me. That means that if we manage to escape, it will probably wait to transform the others until it can find us. We can rescue them when we come back with reinforcements from the guild.”

“You’re assuming that it cares more about fulfilling its declaration than fucking us over. I’m not sure I believe that.”

“It’s something, at least.”

“Yeah. It’s something.”

We take no breaks as we run. Sprinting as fast as possible is the only thing we can do. I am reminded of my grueling trek out of the ruins of Elania. The whole time, I had been terrified that Malazo would return just to finish me off. That had been an irrational fear. Though now, there is no doubt that the demon is coming back for us.

We enter a forest, running through the tree cover for a while. It almost makes me feel safe. Then, I feel something catching up to us from behind. I recognize the aura as that of the dog monster that Talia blasted away earlier.

“He sent the hound after us,” Ellie says.

“It’s faster than us. We’ll have to fight it.”

We stop running, turning around to fight the coming beast.

“Has that manifestation of yours recharged yet?” I ask.

“Not for another thirty hours or so,” she says.

Damn, and I thought Piercing Star had a long cooldown.

“How about you?” She asks.

“I have two manifestations ready. Hopefully it will be enough.”

The huge muscular canine beast bursts out of the nearby trees. My eyes go wide in horror.

Ellie’s aura pulses with rage as she sees the macabre necklace that has been draped around the giant dog’s neck.

There are three pairs of arms and three pairs of legs, hanging like beads on a rope that goes through holes made in the hands and feet.

“That demonic piece of shit cut off all their limbs!” Ellie screams.

The dog pounces at her.

‘Volcanic Blade!’

My blade of vaporized earth erupts from the ground, but it is not enough to cut the dog in half. A deep gash is burnt into its stomach, cutting most of the way through its body.

‘Diving Phoenix!’

A huge bird of white flame forms above me. It flies into the gash in the beast’s body, exploding right below its spinal cord. The blast finishes the job, sending the front and back halves of the monster flying in opposite directions.

Ellie closes her eyes and turns away, not wanting to see the twelve human limbs that have been strewn about the forest by the explosion.

“Let’s go,” she says.

We run southeast once more.

It is almost nighttime when we reach the village. It consists of around two dozen buildings, encircled by a tall wooden wall made of tree trunks that have been strapped together. Smoke is rising from chimneys behind the wall. Everything looks fine until we get closer.

The village gate is open, and no guards are manning it.

“Hello?”

The village is uncomfortably quiet. My stomach sinks as we step inside.

“Hello.”

The demon is sitting on a pyramid made of human corpses. Men, women, and children have been slaughtered indiscriminately and piled up in the village square.

Only one human has been spared. She is a little girl, with dark hair, perhaps ten years old.

The girl is sitting on the demon’s lap. Tears wet her cheeks, but she is not crying anymore. She shakes in terror, staying as still as she can.

“I saved one for you. You may kill her. Be grateful that I like to share,” the demon says.

The little girl starts sobbing, and the demon gently picks her up beneath her armpits. The demon hops off of the pile of corpses, landing in front of us.

“Let her go. Please, she has nothing to do with us,” Ellie says.

“You will kill her, or I will torture her and then kill her anyway,” the demon says.

Ellie clenches her teeth and hisses in fury. I tighten my grip around Radius. The girl looks at us with terrified eyes.

“Help,” she whimpers.

That does it. I dash forward, flames erupting from my feet. My spear stabs towards the demon’s head. It can clearly live without its heart, but what about its brain?

The demon raises up the little girl into the path of my spear. I barely manage to stop my strike in time, blasting my body to the side with flames so I do not hit her. I roll on the ground from my own momentum, crashing into the pile of corpses. The demon laughs.

“You are weak to children,” it says, a gleeful smile on its face.

“Just put her down. You can take us, but let her live.” Ellie says.

“Kill her now, or watch her suffer,” the demon says.

“No!” Ellie screams.

The demon’s spirit stirs, crystalizing into a manifestation more powerful than any magic I have ever felt since Malazo’s breath. The ground trembles from the demon’s raw power.

‘Symphony of Suffering.’

The girl screams. It is a sound that I know I can never forget. It is not a noise that should come from a human being. The suffering she expresses with her shriek is utterly beyond my comprehension. I am unable to move, stunned completely by the bone chilling cry.

It goes on for an instant and an eternity. Ellie and I watch on in horror as the child experiences a level of excruciating agony that we are simply unable to understand. All I know is that I never want to hear this noise again.

The screaming decrescendos and the demon’s magic fades. The little girl vomits.

“A peek at what awaits you.”

The black veins spread from the demon’s hands on to the girl’s body. Her flesh begins to warp and distort. Her face becomes wrinkly, growing a piglike snout. With hideous crunching noises, the bones in her arms and legs shatter into many small pieces which then stab out from her flesh, turning her limbs into spiked tentacles. Her body inflates, becoming fat and bloated. After several seconds, the transformation is done. She has become a pig-like monster with tentacles for limbs. The demon lets her go.

She mindlessly charges at me with her teeth barred, stumbling as she attempts to run using her boneless limbs.

I stab Radius through her head, putting her out of her misery.

“Good pet,” the demon says.

Ellie kneels down beside the corpse. She places her hand on it. Her other hand is trembling, clenched into a fist so tight that the enchanted steel of her gauntlet creaks from the pressure.

“If we’re smart, we kill ourselves while we still have the chance,” she says.

“I’m not that smart.”

“Me neither.”

There are no words to describe the rage that is erupting within out hearts.

This demon cannot be allowed to exist. We will kill it or die trying. That is all we know.

Ellie pulls out what appears to be a small pocket watch.

“Here’s a gift,” she says, tossing it to the demon.

The demon catches the watch, looking at it with curiosity. The watch ticks twice, then shatters.

The demon’s movements slow down to near stasis.

“His time is slowed! We have five seconds!” Ellie shouts.

I charge at the demon, raising my spear. It tries to dodge. Even with its time slowed this much, it can still move shockingly fast. Not faster than me, though.

‘Piercing Star!’

The clouds are vaporized, the earth boils, and every house in the village is set on fire.

‘No.’

Even in its extremely slowed state, the demon still manages to speak through its spirit.

My rage breaks through the pressure of its voice. My flames refuse to be extinguished.

Radius pierces straight through the demon’s skull, boring a hole through its head.

Aside from some light charring around the wound, my flames do nothing. It is not my magic, but the mysterious power of the phoenix talon that damages the monster.

I pull my spear out of the demon’s head and jump back. The blinding point of light at the tip of my spear fades away. The demon’s time returns to normal.

The demon shrieks in rage.

At this moment, I realize that we do not stand a chance. At best, I might manage to poke a couple more holes in it, succeeding only in angering it more.

As I fall into despair, the demon moves in a blur. It tears Radius out of my hands and kicks me in the chest. I am sent flying into one of the nearby burning houses. My ribs are broken and my organs are severely damaged from the impact of the demon’s foot.

Through my connection with my spear, I watch the demon. It moves towards Ellie. She tries to counterattack by throwing something, but the demon dodges it. The demon stabs Radius through Ellie's stomach, impaling her completely. She cries out in pain. The demon puts the spear over its shoulder with Ellie still impaled on the shaft, her limp body twitching in shock.

The demon runs out of the village, carrying Ellie and Radius back towards its domain.

I stop watching.

Time passes.

Ellie’s suggestion of suicide is echoing within my mind.

It is a difficult decision whether or not to kill myself. I cannot hesitate forever. Sooner or later, the demon will come back for me. Then it will be too late.

Essentially, it is just a question of how much I want to suffer.

So, do I want to suffer more or less?

The obvious answer is less, but that is not the truth.

I want to suffer. It is what I deserve, for so many reasons. I should have died to Malazo’s breath, but I lived. Like a fleeing mouse, I ran to the the edge of civilization. I trained hard, preparing for the life that I wanted to live, but the moment my journey began, I failed my sister with my stupidity and my weakness. I still do not know exactly what she sacrificed to save me, but I doubt it was worth it. Now that I became an adventurer, I failed at that too. When the demon finally kills me, I will have made my pathetic life complete by breaking my promises to Maribelle and disrespecting my mother’s dying wish.

I am a failure of a son, a failure of a brother, and a failure to myself.

That is why I decide not to kill myself. The demon will probably do it better.

I’ll just lie in the ash until the demon comes back. I cannot go anywhere else. Doing so would probably bring the demon’s ruthless cruelty to another helpless village.

When the demon returns, I have not moved from where it left me, though the house I set on fire has finished burning down around me.

“You will come,” it says.

The demon pulls me out of the ash, slinging my body over its shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

I do not resist.

As it carries me, it runs so fast that the wind pressure stings my face. It does not take long for us to reach its domain. I am carried deep into the ruins. The demon takes me into the old castle that it has made its home.

The black veins that cover every surface within the domain are denser here. The oppressing aura of disease and corruption is so powerful here that it is hard to breathe.

The demon heads down a stairwell. Unsurprisingly, it chose the castle dungeons for its nest, rather than the royal chambers.

The nest of the demon has been made in the castle’s torture chamber. Old rusty instruments of unspeakable function lay on a stone table in the back of the room. Radius is on that table too. Every wall is covered in the demon’s inky black tar.

My teammates are not bound in any way. Instead, the demon simply removed all of their limbs to prevent their escape. Caps of black tar cover the stumps at their shoulders and hips, likely stopping the bleeding and preventing Norton’s healing magic from regenerating the lost appendages.

Ellie looks up at me. There are tears on her face.

“Ferris.”

That is all she says. My name. It is a word of mourning. She has given up too, it seems.

“Rejoice in your reunion,” the demon says.

We do not rejoice.

I am tossed onto the floor. It is my chance to make a move. I could try to grab Radius, attack the demon, or try to escape. However, I know from the bottom of my heart that I would fail.

I do nothing.

“You may decide who will suffer the most, and who will suffer the least.”

“I suffer the most, Ellie suffers the least,” I say.

I am sure that nobody will blame me for my choice.

“You will decide who goes first. Do not choose yourself.”

I hesitate for several seconds. The demon watches me patiently.

“Any volunteers?” I eventually ask.

Talia lets out a hoarse laugh.

“Fuck it. Let’s get this over with,” she says.

I close my eyes.

“Fine, her then,” I say.

The demon pinches my eyelids.

“You will watch,” it says.

I open my eyes.

“Talia.”

She shudders as the demon speaks her name.

“You are a warrior who takes pride in the strength of her flesh. You also take pride in being a leader. To perfect your existence, I will make those two things one and the same. When you are my pet, your strength will come from your subordinates, and they will live inside your flesh.”

Out of the walls of tar, thousands of cockroaches emerge.

“They shall spawn inside you. Is it not the goal of living organisms to reproduce? You shall be the mother of millions. Be grateful for my generosity.”

Talia screams.

The cockroaches swarm her, burrowing into her body. She shrieks and thrashes in horror, but she has no arms or legs. She is helpless against the swarm. The insects can be seen as moving lumps under her skin as they burrow through her body.

The process lasts hours. Her screams do not cease, and the demon does not allow me to look away.

When the cockroaches are done, Talia’s body is covered in tumor-like lumps, thousands of egg sacks that have been implanted beneath her skin. Many bleeding cuts mark the places where the insects burrowed into her flesh. Some are still inside her, but most have returned to the tar.

“Decide who is next,” the demon says.

I am certain that there will be no volunteers this time, but I am proven wrong.

“I will be next,” Norton says.

The demon looks at me. I nod.

“Norton,” the demon says.

Norton is as stoic as ever. He calmly awaits the demon’s torment.

“You are blind. I will grant you sight, but only so that you may witness your greatest nightmare.”

The demon’s magic crystalizes into a potent manifestation.

‘Theatre of Despair.’

Norton starts to scream.

“No! Please don’t hurt her! Don’t do that to her! Stop! Stop!”

He seems to be witnessing something horrible. He is suffering within a personalized hell created by the demon’s magic. The pain and desperation in his voice is sickening. His cries do not stop. He is trapped in an unending nightmare. Once again, it lasts for hours. Eventually, Norton’s screams die down, and he sobs quietly.

“Zack,” the demon says.

Zack cringes.

“For poisoning too many of my pets, you will be poisoned too.”

The demon holds up its hand. Magic surges as a blood red sphere of fluid forms above its palm. The demon drops the fluid onto Zack’s body, and it seeps into his flesh.

He starts to scream. Hideous lumps and pustules form on his body. His flesh boils and twists and he shrieks in unimaginable pain. Hours later, his screams die down to whimpers, but his body has become too deformed to be called human. He looks like one giant tumor.

The demon looks at Ellie.

“Now, the finale begins. You will be the first to become my pet,” it says.

“Fuck you,” she says.

The demon laughs as it places its hand on her face. The black veins on the demon’s body spread onto her skin. She screams.

Her body warps and distorts as she is robbed of her humanity. Her face becomes covered in eyeballs. Goat horns grow out of her skull, and dozens of arms grow out from every surface of her body. A long slug tail comes out where her legs should be.

True to the demon’s word, one by one, each of my companions are made into monsters.

Zack’s tumorous body grows six large insect legs. Several tubes grow out of him, from which toxic green smoke billows.

Talia inflates, all features of her body fusing together until she is just an ovoid lump. Many tiny fingerlike legs come out from beneath her, allowing her to move slowly over the ground. There are thousands of holes in her body, from which cockroach monsters continually enter and exit.

Norton is changed the least. A giant eyeball grows on his chest, and many tentacles grow from his skull, making his head look like a squid.

“Ferris.”

I meet the demon’s eyes. I do not care what it does to me.

‘Symphony of Suffering.’

The demon activates the same manifestation that it used on the child from the village. I cannot help but feel a twinge of satisfaction that I am finally getting what I deserve.

That feeling lasts only until the pain hits.

I must escape this agony. For this pain to end, I would piss on my mother’s ashes, kill Maribelle, and feed myself to Malazo. Nothing can compare to this suffering. It does not end, though.

I am broken a million times over. My screams fail to express the shattering of my soul.

I do not think I am human anymore, not after feeling this pain. At the very least, whatever I was before is gone.

Ferris Vermillion is no more.

As I lie on the hard tar of the demon’s lair, a cold hand is placed upon my face. Something vile invades my body. My flesh warps. Scales grow on my skin, my teeth become long and sharp, and wings grow from my back. My last intelligent thought is that I vaguely resemble a dragon.

I have become a sad imitation of the thing that I hate the most.

“The suffering of an animal is not entertaining,” Master says.

I cannot comprehend Master's words. I simply want to sink my teeth into something warm.

“Therefore, I will now allow you to die.”

Master picks up a stick that seems strangely familiar. It is at once frightening and comforting.

In a flash of movement, the sharp stick pierces through my heart. It hurts. I am dying.

Something burns within me. The fog that clouds my thoughts begins to clear.

There is a voice. It comes through a connection that is deeply familiar. It sounds like my mother. It sounds like love and hate, joy and sorrow, victory and defeat, and crackling flames.

“One who has abandoned hope, we are the same. Perhaps together, we may regain what we have lost.”

There is a path through the darkness, and at the end is fire.