Father

A gasping breath of fresh air fills his lungs as he comes back to life, his naked body lying on the cold forest floor as acidic rain falls in curtains from the sky and wets his body with dirty water. He blinks as his eyes come back into proper functioning.

Looking up from the ground, he finds the Grey Demon sitting on his chest, her chest and lower half covered by a layer of shifting shadows that leaves most of her small and lithe body exposed. Rainwater runs down her grey skin and flows along the ridges of a subtle sixpack and defined muscles before disappearing past her bellybutton and down between her thighs. She is looking bored, holding her head in her hand with her arm resting on her knee, tail lazily waving in the air behind her of its own accord. Her black and gold eyes shift and look down at him when she notices him moving.

“Felt like ten minutes or so… So, you can come back from decapitation and having a destroyed brain, neat. Honestly, I was betting on you growing a new body, not to grow a whole new head…” She says as she picks up a black skull with a single horn, placing it on his chest for him to see. The empty sockets of a cleaned skull stares right back into his red eyes, unblinking.

“Ah…” Father opens his lips to speak, but she interrupts.

“Hey, you are still in there, right? How does it feel to have a brand-new brain? Lose your memory perhaps? New person maybe? Ooh, maybe you are suffering through some existential dread right now? You did just die after all. Oh… but wait, you did say this wasn’t first time dying, right? You’ve been eaten and torn apart, you’ve drowned, I ate your heart… this must not bother you too much, right?”

Father grits his teeth and then screams, the skull tumbling off his quaking chest. “I will kill you, Gre’dem! If you think that-!”

He is interrupted as she stabs two clawed fingers through his eyes. He screams as he is blinded, her flaming claws burning through the back of his eye sockets and into his skull, slowly enough for him to feel it. He flails and screams, hitting the little Devil sitting on his chest with blows that would have folded a human in half, his flames burning her body, but she just continues to shrug them off until her claws finally break through, stabbing into his brain. With a burst of flames that escapes out from his eye sockets and burns away those red orbs of his, he dies.

…

Father wakes up, hanging upside down from a tree. The cheery little voice of the Devil speaks up from behind him, but he can’t see her from where he hangs.

“Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Ran right into that little Devil’s ambush…” She drawls off with a giggle.

“What...? Do you think that this will stop me? Ahhh!”

A stabbing pain pierces his neck as he is forced to turn. His feet are bound by several tentacles and are hanging him from a branch. Once he comes to a stop, he immediately spots the two skulls sitting on a nearby boulder, unmistakable in appearance with the single horn growing out of the center of their crown.

“If you think this will make me stop, then you are a fool! I will tear you apart and devour your flesh, Gre’dem, do you hear me!?”

He screams and tries to move, but his body won’t respond, the Grey Demon’s claw is buried into his spine and severing his connection to the rest of his body. He can’t even turn his head with the Grey Demon holding him by his neck.

She moves to stand in front of him, smiling as she looks into his eyes, seeming to take care as to not block his view of his own skulls.

“Hello again. Welcome back to the world of the living! How’s the new head, does it have that new car smell?”

“What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? I won’t stop in my path, I never will!” He growls in her face.

She just shrugs, not perturbed in the slightest by his anger. “Nothing. I already told you; I have better things to be doing. People keep joking around and calling me the Demon Queen, but if you want to get in my way, then I might as well start act like one, I guess…” She says with disinterest.

Even if he can’t move his body, his magic is still his to control. Welling up his power from his eternally burning core, he attempts to explode with searing flames.

The little Devil tuts, clicking her tongue with annoyance, like she is dealing with a naughty child.

“Now, now, none of that.”

The claw in the back of neck goes in deeper, fully severing his spine, black flames ignite and removes his head. His vision suddenly becomes much lower as his head drops to the ground and rolls to the side. The Grey Demon picks him up by his hair and says something as she looks into his eyes, but he can’t hear her voice as his consciousness fades to black.

…

He jolts awake again, breathing heavily. How many times is this now? How many times has he died? He only has to look to the side and count to find out.

In a cruel display, the little Devil, the Grey Demon, continues to collect and set aside his skulls. Each one is cleaned and lined up neatly in a line, placed with great care and cleaned spotlessly of any remaining flesh and blood.

Thirteen now. Thirteen skulls lined up neatly in a line.

Father roars with wrath and tries to flare up his flames. A cold claw pierces his brain and cuts off his thoughts.

…

Twenty-seven skulls.

Laying on the ground again, body soaked in sweat, mud, and dirty rainwater, Father stares up at the sky in a daze as he comes back to consciousness yet again. His body is healed, but his soul is flayed and tired. After the first dozen resurrections, he had stopped flaring up his magic or trying to move and fight. Every time he had tried, he was killed instantly again. It took a number of deaths to learn that the Devil wasn’t going to give him a chance to fight back anymore.

Looking down at himself, not even bothering to look towards the line of skulls, Father finds her sitting on his chest again, blushing furiously as she slowly drags her claws down his chest, slowly carving lines into his skin, cutting letters into his naked body like she is a kid with a pocketknife carving into the side of a tree.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Hehehe~ Something I normally can’t do… Ah, how nice this is~ You see, my dear little Goblin friend, I am something of a bully. Always have been. It’s a serious character flaw of mine that has gotten me into trouble a bunch of times, but no matter how hard I fight it, I just can’t resist the temptations sometimes. Hehehe~ Ahhh, I learned that I am a Sadist, you see. Out in public, I can keep it down and act normal, but in private, I just can’t help but to want to hurt my partner. Oh, you have no idea just how much self-control it takes for me to not rip into Sky’s perfect skin and leave her covered in scars. Bless her heart, that amazing, crazy, lover of mine actually wants me to do it to her, hehehe~ Haaaaah… She begs me to do it sometimes, pleading as I have her pinned to the bed, laying naked and exposed under me, every bare inch of her beautiful and unmarred body just waiting for me to sink my claws in like a blank canvas just waiting to be painted... I can feel it as she quivers under my touch, you know, anticipating the moment that I might finally, actually, do it! And I have to hold back with all my will. Oh, it takes so much self-control!” She screams out as she sinks all of her claws in deeper, their sharp blades scraping against ribs and poking at his lungs. Her face is alite with a blush of black blood against grey skin, her eyes wide and pupils dilated with predatory hunger, and her pearly white canines showing as she smiles.

Licking her lips, she lets out a hot breath and sighs. “Ahhh, it’s too bad I can’t keep you… I may be gay, but it would be fun to keep someone like you that just keeps healing. I can break you over and over and over and over again, even killing you, and you just keep coming back for more~” She says as she pets his muscular chest, leaving a trail of bloody finger marks over his skin. “Regretfully, I already promised Xander that I would kill you, plus, one of my promises prevents me from making slaves…” Her grip tightens, her one hand still buried in his flesh, squeezing his chest from the inside, bruising and tearing muscles, claws ripping in even deeper and drawing more blood that mixes with dirty rainwater and flows down his side to soak into the mud. He grits his teeth as he rides through the pain, though he is used to much worse by now.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“If you think that this will be enough to stop me- UUurrhhhHh- AAAaaaaahhh!”

“Oh well…” She sighs, ignoring him completely. “I guess I’ll just keep killing you until you stop coming back. I did give you the chance to walk away, so you can’t claim that I am being too cruel.

“I will kil-!”

His scream is cut short as flaming tentacles spring up from the earth and force their way into every hole in his face. They wiggle into his ears and nose, force open his jaw and clogs his throat, push aside his eyes and fill his sockets. Yet again, his skull is burned and drilled through as he screams in pain and rage. And then he dies.

…

Thirty-two skulls.

Father opens his eyes only to suffer as one is painfully plucked out of its socket, the optical nerve snapping painfully as it is pulled taunt. The Devil tosses it aside after giving it a look over.

“Yuck… Eyes are weird. It’s like holding a ball of weird, solid, Jello…”

Father tries to punch her in a fit of rage, but when he raises his arm, he misses, only finds a bloody stump at the elbow.

“Hmm? Oh, I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to see how hard your bones are. Easier to test if they aren’t attached to your body, you see. Thinking of the future, I need to take into consideration the possibility of running into more people like ourselves. I am immortal after all… Anyways, your body has a lot to teach me, I hope you don’t mind. Now, go back to sleep, I’m still playing.”

He dies as he watches her claw stab through his remaining eye, piercing his brain again.

…

Forty-seven skulls.

“Why do you even keep coming back? You know I’ll just kill you again. Is your revenge that important to you?” He hears her voice ask.

Each time he comes back, he finds parts of his body to be missing now. Severed before his healing can replace them anew, each one carefully cut away and removed at the joint, since his bones can’t be easily broken or cut through.

This time he has a tongue, so he can still respond.

“I will keep coming back, until I kill you, Gre’dem… You cannot, kill me. Not permanently…”

He can’t see it, due to his missing eyes, but he can feel it as she shrugs, her weight sitting on his chest shifting ever so slightly.

“Meh. I’ll just keep doing this then. I do have better things to be doing, but it’s not as if I am in any rush. My people can take care of things on their own for now. I trust them, and all my Demons seem to be doing fine.”

“My children will kill your people… Gre’dem…” He answers with an exhausted voice.

“You’ve left your children to die, you big red fool. What, did you seriously think that a bunch of Goblins, even ones with magic, could take on the Army? That they won’t get shredded by machine guns and blown away by artillery? We’ll take some damage, yes, we’re prepared for that, but your people will be culled down to the last in exchange. I mean, fuck… You guys are still basically cavemen. Sticks and rocks don’t beat modern army men with guns. Haven't you ever played Age of War? Oh, that’s right, no, you guys don’t have High schools and bored teenagers playing flash games in class. But don’t you worry my friend. I’ll take care of the survivors. Those that surrender will live peacefully under me. I’ll treat them well, as if they we’re my own. Those that don’t, I’ll exterminate them down to the last little green Goblin… It’s the least I can do~” The Devil purrs as she removes his right leg from the knee down, severing the connecting tendons and cutting muscle from the ball joint. Father can’t remember how many times his legs have been removed like this now. He doesn’t want to know. It is already bad enough on the rare occasions when he can see the now pile of his own skulls, each one still diligently removed and cleaned after every death before being neatly stacked off to the side in a growing pyramid.

He is getting tired; his soul is exhausted more than he even knew possible.

“You’re a monster…”

The little Devil stops her grewsome work and looks toward the mutilated Goblin King’s face, not a drop of blood on her body despite everything she’s done over the past few hours.

“Am I? Hehe… Perhaps… You know, deep down, everyone is a monster. It just takes a bit of poking and prodding in the right spots to tease it out. If I am a monster, then it is because you made me one. After all, aren’t I your people’s big bad boogieman? You told your people about me, made me out to be the bad guy, and then attacked me and my people when we were just minding our own business. You wanted me to be your monster. I just wanted to stay at home and cuddle with my girlfriend. It’s your fault that we’re in this situation… You could have backed off at any time. I told you not to step into my territory!... But you didn’t listen. People never listen… Hheeehh, I really don’t want to be the Demon Queen. I hope you know this. I really do. It’s not like I asked for this, you see… But it just seems like the world is constantly pushing me towards it. No matter what I say or do, it’s like I just can’t escape it… I guess I am a little monster… But oh well. I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to roll with it, ya know? So, if people like you are going to show up and cause trouble, then why shouldn’t I play the part? Why shouldn’t I be evil occasionally and give in to my darker desires against my enemies? At least then I won’t have to worry about hurting the people I love. If I get all my dark desires out on people like you, then I can keep acting like I’m normal around everyone else! At least for the most part… Awesome right? It’s a whole, two birds one stone thing. It’s great!”

A loud and wet tearing noise sounds out as she digs into his guts, pulling out lengths of intestines and setting them aside as he grits his teeth in pain.

“Now, if I could just find your darn core… You see, I know we both have one, I can feel mine inside of me. But it doesn’t show up on any of the scans… X-ray, CT, ultrasound, MRI, PET scans, none of them could show me my core… Damn metaphysical things. Personally, I am of the opinion that our cores are like, four dimensional or something, ya know? Like, they are there, just sitting on the edge of our reality, just enough to be perceived, but not enough to be seen or touched… Do you have any idea how annoying that is? I mean, I keep trying to prove that it is there for Doctor Doe to study, but short of cutting me open again, we just can’t find it… Now where is yours? It should be just under the navel…”

“Ahhheeeehhhrrrrrrr!”

The pain of having someone root around in his guts pushes him to fight back, but like every other time, he is quickly killed, a waiting shadow tentacle spearing him through the ear. Another skull is cleaned and added neatly to the pile.

…

Fifty-one skulls.

Father can feel them. Now that he is paying attention, he can actually feel them. He has stopped moving or resisting now, simply staring blank-eyed up at the stormy sky as acid rain falls onto his mutilated body. He has even stopped accelerating his healing, only leaving his natural healing to slowly mend his body as the little Devil continues to tear him apart, peace by peace.

He can feel them. His children are dying, one by one, each connection being severed and cut away from his grasp. So many Sons and Daughters that had talent, smothered before they could even grow to the heights of their elder siblings.

But even they are all dead now… The eldest generation, the first, reduced down to a single member. His own, true, biological, daughter… Turned traitor and having run to the enemy to side against her own father…

He had known for a while that she hated him, ever since the day that he watched her kill her Brother, Arigaly. Father hadn’t stopped him when Arigaly had pushed her down and she screamed for help, and he hadn’t stopped her when she froze his limbs and broke his body apart, piece by piece. He had hoped that it would create strength, growth for his people. Either Gra would become pregnant with a strong child, or she would become stronger from her experience, using it as fuel for her own personal growth.

Part of Father had never expected her to actually resent him for this… The thought had never crossed his mind at the time. But eventually, he had come to realize that his actions, and lack thereof, had pushed her away… He had always waited for her to eventually come for his head after that, to step up and use that experience as motivation to replace him as ruler. Just like how his desire for revenge against the Grey Demon had led himself to power. All for the sake of killing the little Devil that is currently rooting around in his ribcage and talking to herself like a maniac. Maybe she thinks he is listening to her monologue again? Father doesn’t care, and she probably doesn’t either…

His daughter never did try to rise up and get revenge. Instead, she became detached and sequestered herself away from everyone else, spending all her free time sleeping her life away…

He is losing everything, isn’t he? His son is dead. His daughter had abandoned him for the safety of his enemy’s protection. His people are being slaughtered. His dream of building a Kingdom, where he and his people stand at the top and everyone else is the food… it is slowly falling apart, brick by brick by brick with every death.

Could he have done something differently? What if he had been there for his daughter? Would she still be standing by his side? What if he had led from the front, leading the charge into this battle instead of waiting for his rival to arrive before him? What if he hadn’t listened to the gods and let them lead him around by the nose? What if had just let go of his hatred for this little creature that is rooting through his insides? Would he have been able to build his Kingdom? Would his children still be alive? …Would his daughter still walk beside him like she used to, looking up towards him with admiration in her eyes?

Why did he even come here?

What would have come after, if he succeeded?

What would be left for him, but a mountain of his own dead? Can a Kingdom be built on the bones of your own people?

Father doesn’t know… He is exhausted. His soul is in pain and his children are dying one after the other…

Father… does he even still have the right to use that name if he can’t be there for his children? King… does he still have the right to wield that title, if his people are to be slaughtered while he dies out here, alone and separated from his people, cut open and being torn apart on the cold forest floor, his insides filling with blood and dirty rainwater in the place of ripped out entrails?

Who is he then?

…

He’s just Grigut. A name chosen by a barely developed mind because that was a sound he liked to use back then. Back when he was nothing more than a simple little Goblin, living with his nest mates. Nothing more than a couple of grunts formed into a word, holding not an iota of meaning beyond simply being, Grigut...

Slowly choking on his own blood as rain pours on his face, Grigut’s memories go back to one of the last few times he ever talked with his daughter, with Gra, who has a similarly meaningless name. Nothing more than a grunt…

She had asked him a riddle, and he is certain now that he had given her the wrong answer.

“This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stone to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountains down.”

Ah, so it wasn’t me at all… It was time. After all, this was inevitable, wasn’t it? Eventually, I would run into someone that I can’t beat. To think that it would the very monster that made me… I should have just stayed away…