Page 57 of The Misfit Mage and His Darling Demon

“Why isn’t this working?” Wally said, gritting his teeth.

I clamped my jaw in protest to the painful grind of his molars. I felt it. Felt him. Whatever he’d done was working. I swam through the sludge toward the trickling crimson blobs. Reaching out with a hand, I pressed clawed fingers and popped the bubble.

Wally shouted, and flashes of him appeared. With his teeth ground, stifling the urge to shout, black tendrils laced with my crimson aura whipped erratically. They smacked his face, slicing his cheek and cutting his arms, but he kept resisting their protests.

Holding the Demon’s Demise with both hands, he cut into his tender stomach, swirling the tip of the blade and yanking out essence. My essence. Why was he carving out our bond?

I backed away from the crimson, unwilling to watch further. I’d failed him, and now he literally wanted to sever all ties between us.

“Wake the fuck up, Bez!” Wally shouted. “I need you. I need to know you’re okay.”

The crimson whirled around me, tearing apart the blackness and pushing the devil essence back into the subconscious where it belonged. Dormant and obedient to my will.

Wally…What are you doing?

I flexed my muscles, still incapable of talking to him but unable to ignore the pain he endured. What began as a searing burn against my phantom body became a slight discomfort. The more I felt my flesh return, the less I felt the connection to Wally, to the man I loved.

I ascended further, unveiling my wings to surge upward and be released from the prison of my sleeping mind.

“It isn’t enough essence,” Wally said through wispy breaths. “Must’ve wasted too much, or Bez really is… No. NO! Tony, hand me the grimoire. There’s gotta be an incantation I can use. Something to help him heal his…his missing body.”

Something slammed. The grimoire, perhaps.

“If I weren’t so weak, I would’ve grabbed his body, reattached his head, but now all that essence is gone, and Bez is…”

That was what happened. That fucking prick Eligos decapitated me.Dammit.

I huffed, continuing my flight toward Wally’s voice. His need to ramble guided me, and I loved him even more for being my chatty beacon of light. Although, he had a point. He’d lost my body, and it’d take forever to fully recover my lost essence now.I wasn’t even sure where to draw on enough energy to restore it swiftly. One thing at a time.

I collided with a hard ceiling, blocking my escape from this infinite slumber. Not fucking happening. I slashed the barrier, one made of bone, easily defeating it with my claws. Ripping my way through, I lunged forward in a huge explosive rage.

Blood and bone and meat splattered this tiny dark storage room where Wally hid from Eligos. I panted, taking in his frazzled expression, the blood soaked into his shirt, the chunk of grey matter dangling in his blond curls.

“Where the hell are we?” I asked, approaching him to remove the bit of brain in his hair.

“You’re…you’re…you’re…” Wally bit his lip.

“Yes, yes, I’m alive, and I’m infuriated. I’m going to slaughter that f—”

“You’re tiny!”

“Excuse me?”

Wally pointed at me.

“I’m what?” I scrunched my face and turned to find the disassembled remains of my former host body. Well, the part of the body my essence instinctively coiled within after some asshole chopped off my head.

My head. The crater of where I’d erupted lay in pieces after I broke free of a host and reformed my essence into a fully-fleshed demon body. Bone and blood were splattered at my feet. My busted jaw looked rather large. An oozing, bulged eye hung from the socket and stared at me with a glossy stillness, reflecting my image in the iris no longer possessing my crimson touch.

I looked more or less true to form with all four curled horns atop my head, three tails lively as ever, and claws sharper than any blade. My gray skin looked a little flushed, but I was soaked in blood and covered in meaty chunks after escaping a fatality.

Wait. Wait.

“Wait a second.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Walter rudely interrupted my train of thought.

I furrowed my brow, closely inspecting my proportions in comparison to the head I’d broken out of. The busted eye was almost at my height level. The eye, hanging from a head lying on the floor, was almost as big as me. “Goddamn motherfucking piece of bullshit biscuit twat licking cock guzzling cuck.”

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