Sophia’s POV
After I had told Veronica about my new friend being a human, she became understandably bewildered. After all, we were immortal beings, so to actively engage with someone who only had the lifespan of a couple centuries, depending on how much they grew their soul, was like a human talking about how they made friends with an insect.
“I contracted with him Veronica, and not a small one either. Full on soulbond, he’s a warlock now. Given his absolutely absurd growth rate, he’ll probably be a full fledged demon in a matter of decades, one century at most.”
It was a side effect of the soulbond I hadn’t yet told Leo about. Partly because I feared his reaction, and partly because I wasn’t yet ready to commit. I had only known him a few months, and I still had ways of severing our connection. It would cause me a fairly significant amount of soul damage, which would take a decade or so to build back up to how I am now, but what are a few years to an immortal?
I knew that I would need to make a firm decision one way or another soon, as if I did nothing and allowed our relationship to continue to build like this, I would become hopelessly attached to him, unable to leave even if that would be for the best. Currently I only had a sort of light fondness for him, like a cute puppy I had recently been dogsitting, but it couldn’t stay like this forever. If I continued in this vein, I would start seeing him as something like a pet, which, given his intense need for freedom, Leo would no doubt despise. I had to make a choice, whether I would completely cut him off, or accept that this human would become a highly important part of my life, a decision had to be made.
I spent the next couple weeks staying with Veronica. We fought regularly, me being disgusted with the condition of her living space and her being annoyed that I was effectively an uninvited guest talking shit about the way she lived her life. Oddly enough, I did in fact feel that same sense of security I felt when spending time with Leo, so clearly that was simply a matter of me enjoying having someone to talk to regularly, but there was none of the inherent warmth in our interactions that I had become accustomed to. I felt myself longing for Leo to reach out, to start talking to me again, to make fun of him for having his experiments blow up in his face, even for him to make fun of me for my attempts to demonstrate my magnificence.
This is bad, I thought to myself. Clearly, I was already far more attached than even I had realized. I thought I would have more time to make my decision, more time before I reached that inevitable threshold where I would have to decide whether to keep my life as it is, or accept a fundamental change to my being. How the hell can I make this decision already?! It had only been 3 months, 90 days!! Yes I like spending time with him, but that’s nowhere near enough time to base your entire life around!!!
While I was panicking over the unreasonableness of my species and our ridiculous bonding habits, the voice I longed for, the voice I dreaded hearing had entered my head.
“Hey Sophia, sorry about the radio silence, I totally lost track of time there.”
I started to respond, then covered my mouth with my hand. Indecision. Procrastination. Panic. A surge of emotions flooded through me as I realized, 3 months truly is not nearly enough time to make a decision this important. I kept silent.
“Sophia? Hello?”
“Look I’m sorry man, really. I just get really obsessive when I throw myself into a new project. Please talk to me?”
With tears in my eyes, I reached out, about to sever the bond that connected us, when I froze. The same flood of emotions, the fear, the panic, the indecision that had stopped me from responding, was also preventing me from severing this connection. I just…I couldn’t decide. I don’t know what to do, I can’t interact with him, I can’t cut myself off from interacting with him, so what? How the hell do I reconcile this, WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO??!?
There was only one option.
I did nothing. I waited, and he grew silent. I couldn’t tell his thoughts yet, I couldn’t read his emotions yet, as the soulbond was not developed enough to send over that extent of information. Tears flooded from my face as I imagined him accepting that I was done speaking to him. Would he care? Would he think back and remember me? Would he spend his whole life waiting for me to speak to him again, desperate to hear my voice? Or would he simply forget I ever existed, banishing me from his thoughts, the same way he had told me he did to his parents, his family?
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
As the silence from him lengthened, turning into hours, I wept. This is necessary, I told myself, He’s becoming too important to you too fast, you need to make some distance, by force if you have to. Oddly enough, this thought failed to comfort me. The rationality of it was particularly unsuited for life as a demon, and was a perfect example of how much Leo had truly affected the way I think.
I wasn’t pulled out of my spiral into despair until I heard a phrase from Leo that made my blood run cold.
“You’re going to kill me.”
I scrambled to check his surroundings, immersing myself into the connection I had almost severed, and saw him surrounded by a small group of humans. I heard them converse as Leo sounded almost bored, verifying the details of the people who planned to end his life. It was so ridiculous that I nearly felt like laughing, only Leo would treat his own imminent murder like an errand to check off a list. I would have laughed that is, if not for the intense feeling of fear and despair as I pleaded to myself: Please, not him, please don’t die, you can’t die. Please Leo, find a way to survive this.
But wait, something was wrong.
Why was he smiling like that? Like he’d finally been freed from a long held burden?
Why did he have that look in his eyes, like he was accepting a fate worse than death?
Was he truly ready to die? Was he about to….
“Sophia, please close your eyes.” Calm, collected. The same tone he used when he was about to bathe himself, and wished for privacy. Normally, I respect his request when he asks, but this time, I couldn’t. If he was to die, I would witness it. This was my fault, I am the one who brought him to this world, I am the one who stopped talking to him the moment he needed me, I’m the one who…
I froze as he murdered the first. It was cold. Calculated. There was no emotion to it, no hatred, no pride, no arrogance that he had bested his fellow man. Only simple and quick thrust of what he called a war scythe, with no hesitation, like he was performing the most mundane of movements. Like he had simply taken a step, only with this one ending in death. And then the screaming came. And with it….with it came the laughter.
It was high, higher than I would have thought possible for a man to produce. It was a terrible, manic sound, the sound of a man with nothing left, embracing insanity. It was the dying scream of an innocent man, and the vagitus of something else. Something…different. Twisted. And cruel. A savage beast that cared nothing for the lives of others. And like a beast, I watched as he ripped out a man’s throat with his bare teeth. I watched as he charged, as he fought and killed, not caring when he got hit, only concerned with killing them first before he died. It was ugly, it was carnal, and it was terrifying. Not in the sense that I was worried he’d ever turn it against me, but similar to how you would feel if you watched a housecat grab someone by the throat and kill them. Something you had previously seen as kind, and gentle, suddenly turning around and showing the capacity for gruesome murder could shock anyone. But despite how ugly, how carnal, how terrifying it was, I couldn’t help but also find it beautiful.
He was beautiful. Not in the way some men are, with perfect features and charm for days, but he was beautiful in his savagery. In his desperate scramble to survive. He was beautiful the way that a fight for dominance between bears can be beautiful, in a raw, and primal way. Once his opponents had been chiseled down to just one, I watched as he took his time, toying with his opponent like a cat, avoiding attacks and delivering his own, causing his enemy’s eyes to fill with inescapable dread, like he was fighting a beast who would hunt him down to the ends of the earth, with no hope for survival, no hope for escape. Finally, he collapsed onto the ground dead, and I heard Leo speak, in the same casual tone I’d heard so often before. The dissonance between it and the gruesome, savage scene I had just witnessed shaking me to the very core of my being:
“You can look now Sophia.”
Despite everything else, despite what he had just gone through, despite my ignoring him, he still was trying to protect me in some way this whole time. When I thought he was trying to avoid the disgrace of being watched die, he had actually been trying to spare me from him. From the trauma of seeing someone you cared about and trusted completely shatter your opinion of them and make you unable to trust anyone again. My throat closed up in guilt, as I still couldn’t reply, as he continued,
“Hey Sophia, tell me. Are you going to leave me now too?”
This one had not been said in the same casual tone. This had been quiet, as though expressing what he never meant to say aloud. A whisper, a silent scream for help.
I fucked up. Hearing the silent despair in his voice broke something in me. I had thought that it was still early enough, that I wasn’t yet so attached that I could still sever our connection. But no. The time to choose, the time to commit wasn’t approaching.
“No.”
That time had long passed. It wasn’t during the weeks he had been engrossed in enchanting, it hadn’t been during the months we spent talking every day, and it hadn’t even been during the year I spent with his unconscious body, tuning his existence to the frequency of this world, of mana. The time to commit had passed the moment I used his blood to sign the contract between us, and the entire time since then had just been me being in denial.
Remembering the year I spent in that subspace, I accepted to myself that this human, this man, Leo. He’s an important part of my life, and has been for a long time. I created a subspace, entered it, then used our connection to bring him to me. For the first time, truly looking at him with my own eyes, and allowing him to see me as I truly was. I looked into his eyes, seeing him look so lost, so hopeless, so…broken. Blood drenched his body from the wounds he didn’t even notice he had sustained. It tore at me, as I wrapped my arms around him, holding him close and I spoke the words that were both true, and that I had dreaded saying for so long.
“I’m not going anywhere Leo. No matter what happens, from now until the end…You’re stuck with me by your side.”