(Huh... no info dump at all, just another POV with characters that will go further with the story instead of being one-hit wonders. I hope you enjoy this chapter and can overlook all the mistakes I made since I finished this when I was extremely tired.... Anyway, enjoy! :D )
(Right, I baited more readers with the infamous 'Harem' and 'Romance' tags, sorry but I do everything for 'dem views.)
My old bones rattled, my limbs ached and my vision was dim.
*Cough Cough!*, I spat out a mouthful of blood as a painful coughing fit assaulted my poor lungs. The ash and heat in the air turned breathing unbearable, the soot waited for the moment to enter one's lungs and slowly make you wither away.
Each breath pained me, my eyes watered and even blinking became painful as more of the ash entered my eyes. My hands ached in a similiar fashion, my skin was reddened and a few pieces of hard and splintered wood pierced into my palm. Heat and pain surrounded me, the sky was blotched by black smoke obelisks, piercing straight into the moon and beyond.
For a moment I believed to catch sight of our beautiful moon and the breathtaking dots that we call stars, so far away but so close to my eyes. I... I too had family. I am old, I know, but I still had family. A single son, father of three kids, one boy and two little girls, and a wonderful wife. How I loved my grandchildren, Lily, Lea and Sven. Whenever they played, be it around the church or with those other little monkeys, smiles and warm laughter filled the air. It was the joy of youthful innocence. And yet, not even one turned ten, not one lived to see the next day. All I could do was guide the few survivors, I had no weapons, I had no strength, I was but an old man. A coward.
My son, dead, what else? His wife, dead. Their children, my grandchildren, dead. And I? The oldest of the pack. Nothing more than an old and half-senile crock that had luck, mere luck! I, yes I am still alive, the one doomed to death in naught but a few years is alive, alive and well. It is just... it makes no sense.
I lived a life in austerity, prayed to our goddess of the skies, Sylvana, and yet... and yet everything was taken from me. The worst is, I can't cry. I lived through so much already, I have seen death brush past my shoulders; I am good friends with him. I lived through TOO many things, I am lost already, my heart in a too far away place. Why wasn't it my time already?
Relishing in pity I could barely hold my body straight. All the time I was on the verge of collapsing, wondering why I had survived. Obviously the answer stood right before me, with back turned from us, from all of us humans here. It barely looked at us, this demon of fire, it only slaughtered. Bah, slaughter was unfitting. This demon, from beyond legends, crushed existences with a mere flick. It was a beautiful sight to behold, a painful and gruesome sight.
Ash, fire, no trace of blood or a fight, simple cataclysm. I had hardly noticed this deity lowering itself from the skies, from its rightful place, and onto this world. It mumbled in a foreign language -'The tongue of Gods.',I believed-, but for the inept listener it came off as a primal growl, a menacing rumble deep in your chest cavity that made your hairs stand on end.
And then... and then, then someone shot at it. At the corner of my vision, with my old and dry eyes I could see this particular man, drawing his bowstring, the same that killed many of his fellow kin. I knew it won't work, he knew it, but for a reason that shall forever remain unknown he shot. The man in the demon's graps was longst one with the fire, turned into a warning for all of us, and the man still shot.
The arrow darted with the cover of ashes and night, I lost sight of this scraggy finger of death, and then a low hum etched itself into the silence. Before the arrow even had a chance it was disintegrated by the very aura of the demon. Its ashes taken by the wind into unknown places.
I wondered as a grim wind passed my face, 'What happened?'. Torpid, by surprise maybe, the demon stood still, his body growing dim; the lave veins cooling. My breathing was loud and so was the fire. Suddenly the demon shuddered, his head writhed towards the man, slowly and dramatic. A grin with black teeth that will forever haunt my dreams. I feared, not for myself, not for the bandits, but for humanity as a whole. In that moment I feared for every breathing and living being, be they cruel or not, I feared for our future and our world.
Then it came, and I could hear it, a silence thicker than anything I ever felt. It was obnoxiously loud, echoed in my mind and drilled into my ears, the silence was unbearable! My breathing failed me, my heart tripped over its beats, my limbs shivered by the chill; it was freezing, ice cold even. Believe it or not, those flames, surrounding black, demonic rock, were nothing but ordinary. They flared, lashed out through the wind and screamed like the banshees do. Those flames tasted the air and suddenly everything halted, stood still. The fires turned cold, cold enough that I felt my body grow numb.
A second, no, after a fraction of a second, the devil dissappeared. He vanished, and I could only stare with bewilderment at the clout of burned earth where once stood a demon of flame, fire and destruction.
I drew a large arc with my eyes, trailed towards the man but in his place I only saw a pillar of living and laughing fire, a shadow, a rough shade of a dancing and burning human swallowed into its crimson belly. The torched human crouched down screaming and his lines blurred into a heap of darkness in this red and blinding world. All around me, and us, the rest of the survivors, those same pillars of snapping and billowing red scorched the night.
The heat crawled over my skin and made me so painfully remember those that I have lost in flames much like these. I tried to remember but the faces of my children were singed, nothing but ash and the cry of despair filled my thoughts. More of the bandits succumbed to the fire, more humans' lives were claimed but I smiled, I grinned, haphazardly and the smile kept growing, cutting my face in half. I enjoyed it, seeing those monsters' very essence of life slowly being consumed. I enjoyed it so much!
"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET! THE GODS ANSWERED OUR PRAYERS!", I screamed and rocked my body into a trance, forwards and backwards and forwards and backwards, leaving my self behind with each wobble. I lost count of the flames that shoot for the stars, to ignite them and challenge their eternity. In those same demonic flames I saw nothing but delight, and they cackled with me in deep resonance. Tears welled from my sere eyes, from my ancient and dried up eyes. I cried with clenched throat and fingers that clawed at the ground, with bloody palms and frenzied mind, with coarse screams and dead spirit.
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What remained of the bandits was nothing less than ash, blown away by wind, taking it away like they took our loved ones. Sobs and cries of sorrow drenched the air in gloom and poignant grief. All around, all I could see and witness were broken husks of what was once people I have known throughout the years. They all despaired as the flames settled, their wonderous light gone we were left in the dark. We were all downed, our souls pulled away with the dying flames, now shimmering embers that edged our homes.
Perplexingly it was not one of us, the adults, the mature ones, but a little child, a little girl, that stepped forward. Her hair shone like small flamelets against the colossus of obsidian she was following behind.
Shocked, terrified, I tried to wanr the little girl, warn her from this demon, despising life itself. But my mouth, my chapped lips, were to weak. My words fell from my lips onto the cold hard ground, nothing more than weak babbles left me. Kneeling on the ground I offered a silent prayer.
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Feeble, meek and trembling the small girl brought her bruised hands forward, her dirty dress crinkled with each step. 'Y-you can do it!', she voiced out in her mind, her hands balling into fists. The ash and dirt gnashed under her crude leather shoes, like snow, but dark and hot -tribute to the fire-.
With her small hands she gripped for empty air, sprinted through the assaulting heatwaves that surged from the creature in front of her. Something deep in her heart commanded her to thank this being, be it good or bad it helped her and those she knows or might not know in their direst time. Her mother always told her to be thankful, to be grateful for the helping hand that reaches out for you, and so she would follow her mother's example.
One week step after the other she set foot after foot forward, fear gripped tightly at her heart but the words of her mother, echoing through her ears, gave her the much needed strength to march foward. Soft and warm hands pushed her frail back.
The juggernaut, this unstoppable incarnation of fire, troded forward, slow and majestic, each step making the earth quiver. But in all its glory, in all its divine and overbearing demeanor the girl still reached out, still stood straight, albeit with weak legs, still faced her fear, like none of the others did. They just simply stared at the sky, the ground, the fire, contemplating their cursed existence and the demise that had befallen them. Weaker than a little girl, they were weak. But understandably so. Having everything taken from you, from your long life, the love and affection you amassed like riches, all gone. Just. Like. That.
Yet, whatever the girl tried, she couldn't reach this being. Her wobbly steps could only take her that far, she keeled over and embraced the earth as exhaustion and fatigue took control. Now she was in a panic, the demon growing further apart from her with each step it took. Unhindered by the corpses, the fire, the ash, it simply strode forward, uncaring about what was insolent enough to stand in its way.
"W-wait!", the girl cried with a muffled shout. But the demon wavered not, his pace did not slow down, he did not stop.
"P-please wait! Please!", she tried again, her head lifted from the ground, with her freckled cheeks and her upturned and pleading eyes she watched closely as the being's back left her sight.
"I beg you! Wait, please.....", the girl broke down in a stream of tears and cries, whether she was only now lamenting her loss or she was truly, truly seeking the demon's company, only she knows.
"M-my name is Elena, in one week I will be ten. Mama has already invited uncle Livus and aunty Isabell. I am good friends with my cousins Marcus and Julia, they are my best friends.", the girl said with pride, rather whispered into the wind. "We like to go through the city and play pranks on the old lady Poina, she is really funny, always walking with her big cat. I love sweets, papa bought some when chief Da'an gave him a raise. They are really yummy and make me happy. I also love summer, the fresh wind and warm light, I really do love it... I really do...", she burried her face into her sleeves, cried pitifully into the earth, her worries and pain falling on deaf ears.
"Yesterday I saw a big stag in the forest, it was really beautiful and I told everything about it to mama and papa. They were so proud... so proud of me.", with that final sentence the girl turned silent, her eyes casted on the dirt she laid on.
"So pitiful, so endlessly miserable! No, such a tragedy! Please, my heart it will tear apart!", the girl collected her shattered spirit and gazed upwards. There stood the demon, his black claws folded over his chest. "NOT.", his obsidian claws ripped the stone beneath apart and revealed a hollow core, filled with fire and chaos.
"That is why I hate humans, you cry, you scream but can't help yourself. You who has lost everything, I will take whatever is left.", the demon muttered and reached out with his feral claws. He gripped the girl by her delicate wrists and pulled her upwards into the air. "Th-thank y-!", the girl tried to spit out with effort, but her words were cut short by a pain so intense that her words stuck in her throat.
"You are human, that is what is left. Let's change that! AHAHAHA!!!", the demon's roar blended into a thundering laughter, mixed with the low screams the girl managed to squeeze out; a painless sleep never graced her through the whole process.