Page 118 of Unbinding the Demon
“Adelstein is approaching Gwendolyn, and I am being stabbed and cannot move. We need you to come back!”My heart dropped to my stomach, and fear coursed through my veins at the sound ofBelzar’s distraught voice echoing in my mind.
I panicked and attempted to traverse the shadows. Unfortunately, the lloigor followed my move and also traversed the shadows. Not even a split second later, it smacked me back with its tail before I could get near them. Like a determined suicidal madman, I frantically tried to reach them again and again, traversing into the shadows only to be violently whacked back out. I was desperate and frustrated, yet I couldn’t get past the damn thing.
My back smashed into the large trunk of a walnut tree, lodging my horned wings in the wood. The tree cracked in two and crashed loudly to the ground. I remained stuck against it, all beaten and bedraggled as it toppled over. As I pried my wings from the bark and healed myself, my eyes widened in realization.
Fuck! This is a trap!
The lloigor was intentionally staying close to the church, so I couldn’t kill it without killing the humans as well. Yet, it was keeping me far enough away so that I couldn’t help them, either. Fire and fury coursed through my veins, and the flames in my eyes burned with venomous rage. That was my pup and my Buttercup it was keeping me from protecting, and I was suddenlyreally fuckingpissed off.
I roared like an enraged beast and flapped my wings while spewing a blazing torrent of flames from my hands. The lloigor let out a bloodcurdling shriek, thrashing in agony. Flames roared against its form, fueled by my fierce assault. I pressed forward, relentless and determined, driving it back inch by inch. I hoped, perhaps, it would recoil just enough for me to get past it.
“Adelstein is attacking Gwendolyn!”Belzar shouted in my head with panic, causing me to lose my focus.
“Azath—Ah!”I heard Gwendolyn scream in the distance.
No!
I didn’t have any fucking time to deal with this shit! I had to be there for my beloved Buttercup! With one final burst of flames at the lloigor’s face, I traversed the shadows in a frenzied attempt to reach her. But the all-too-clever lloigor predicted my rash and foolish move.
Black mist swirled all around me as I entered the shadows... And then my whole body was stunned stiff. A sharp, scathing pain radiated through my abdomen. My gaze warily drifted down, yet I was unable to process what had just happened. My mouth fell agape in shock as I stared at the huge, sharp talon piercing my stomach, with my crimson blood oozing out around it.
A deep growl vibrated low and sinister within the depths of the lloigor’s chest. It ruthlessly shoved me to the frosty ground, pinning me against the brittle dead grass with its claw still impaled in my torso. I gritted my teeth to bite back a hiss of pain. The earth below me sizzled and burned as I struggled to free myself, my wings flapping like a bird caught in the claws of a cat.
The lloigor’s black abyssal scales consumed the bright moonbeams that glimmered down upon it, swallowing them up within its unfathomable darkness. An unsettling, victorious grin seemed to spread across its insidious, looming face, causing thick, stringy drool to drip down onto me. Dark abyssal essences started flowing out of the talon and straight into my veins, turning my bright flames black. Darkness enveloped my eyes, transforming them into stygian pools of obsidian.
Horrified, I stared up at the lloigor with a newfound sense of what exactly it was doing. It wasn’t trying to kill me. It was corrupting me. I could feel the penumbra of its magic overshadowing the light of my soul, creeping up to my brain and deranging my mind. Though try as I might, I couldn’t seem to break free from its grasp. And the more I fought, the more corrupted I became.
Now partially lost to the corruption and insanity, I started snarling like a rabid animal. Darkness and bloodlust consumed my thoughts, and a maniacal grin twisted across my face. I just wanted to kill the lloigor! My jaw eerily dropped open, flashing my fangs, as an infectious stream of black flames poured out of my mouth and up onto its face.
The lloigor was taken aback and roared as it recoiled from my assault. I laughed like a deranged madman while it ripped its claw from my stomach, tearing a chunk of my bloody flesh out with it. I ignited both my hands with corrupt black flames and began attacking the lloigor like a psychotic berserker, taking out trees and buildings with us. Even though I was only partly corrupted, the effects of the dark abyssal essence were already eating away at my mind. It moved through me like squirming maggots consuming rotting flesh.
I snarled and growled, and maniacally laughed as I continued my brutal assault for a few more minutes. The gaping wound in my abdomen oozed with dark abyssal essence, and blackened veins began spreading out around it. Abandoned by sanity, my mind was infected, and I was lost to my now heightened bloodlust. All my shadowed thoughts revolved around death and destruction.
I roared while clobbering the lloigor on its stony jaw in a demented frenzy, ripping the flesh from my bones and leaving my knuckles raw and exposed. The frigid wind whipped my hair all around as I flapped my wings to hover before it. It tilted its head, allowing putrid black drool to trickle from its sharp black fangs. Its alien eyes found mine, and then it seemed to put me under an incomprehensible trance, creating the illusion that time was standing still around us.
“Why does thou still fight me, o’ horned beast of the morning star?”It spoke telepathically into my mind in a very ancient draconian language. The eerie words were hauntingly primordial and malign-sounding. I tilted my head back at it with curiosity, as I stared with my now-matching black abyssal eyes.“Do we not desire the same thing? To bring death upon the earth? To corrupt and enslave humanity?”it cooed sinisterly.
Somewhere deep in my blackening soul, I knew that wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted to return to Hell, see my family again, and start my own family with Gwendolyn. But the corruption was infecting and decaying my lucidity. It allowed the lloigor to slip into my head and align my thoughts and desires with its own, like an insidious parasite. I grinned sadistically at the thought of destroying the earth, delighting in the idea of exterminating all life. I felt the lloigor’s powerful, all-consuming animosity for humanity as if it were my own. A depraved virulence washed over me while black ooze began dripping from my mouth.
“Hmm, yes, it seems we do want the same thing.” My voice was eerily dark and echoed with an abyssal undertone. “Let us cast the shadow of death upon the earth as the dark clouds of Hsarohpem ascend. We shall allow the age of corruption to arise like a darkened dawn, consuming all life within its blackened veil.” I sinisterly chuckled...I was completely bonked out of my mind.
“Very well. It has been many millennia since I’ve last beheld a being of infernal kind. Mayhap thou shalt not prove so willful as those who came before thee and allow the girl to be slain. Grant us the freedom we require to enact our blessed destruction,”the lloigor malevolently purred.
Welp, that snapped me out of it.
I snarled with rage at the thought of harm coming to her. I wasn’t fully corrupted, so I still had a small amount of rational thought left. And even if I was, the proprietorial and protective pull that my sacred claim created was primal and would remain. Its silvery spiritual cord was almost fully strengthened now that we were halfway through the final step of our infernal matrimony, which had officially brought us to the point of no return. Nothing, not even corruption or death, could break its power now. She was mine for all eternity, and I would slaughter anything that dared threaten her.
“No!”Seemingly right on cue, Gwendolyn’s faint scream echoed through the dark night air. She sounded more distressed than I had ever heard her before, causing some of my sanity and fear to return.
Black flames poured from my hands, knocking the lloigor back down. Air rushed beneath my wings as I began to fly toward her. I saw Belzar thrashing Adelstein around by his head, then he threw him off to the side. My gaze honed in on Gwendolyn. She was crying on the ground in front of Lacey, but seemed all right. It was hard to tell in my corrupted state, yet I could still see that all three humans were injured. However, they were all alive and, for the most part, safe.
I felt a slight mental tug from Belzar trying to communicate with me. But my mind was too clouded with corruption for his thoughts to enter. The lloigor had followed and was hot on my trail, so I yelled at him instead of leading that lard lizard back over there. “Belzar! Get them out of here, right now! I have to unleash Hellfire!”
He snapped his head up at me with intense distress and concern. I surmised it was because he heard the abyssal depths within my voice and could see my blacked-out eyes. He nodded and teleported behind Gwendolyn. Then he, Gwendolyn, and Lacey all disappeared from the field of burning bodies.
I dodged the lloigor’s massive claws as it swatted at me and uprooted yet another innocent tree. Now that my primal instinct to protect my soon-to-be bride was satisfied, I continued to fight for a short while longer. Black ooze sprayed from my mouth as I cackled and snarled like a twisted bedlamite.
Belzar’s distinctive howl resounded from the mountainside. It ripped through the silken veil of silence shrouding the valley, alerting me that the humans were now safe. The harrowing notes of his mournful howl danced together like the tortured wails of forlorn souls trapped within the netherworld, writhing in unison as one single ghastly melody. It was a sound that only an abyss wolf could produce.
