Page 119 of Unbinding the Demon
The lloigor turned its head and growled in the direction from which the howl was coming. I used its distraction to my full advantage and teleported in a direction that it would not anticipate—up. My misty breath fanned around my corrupted face, swirling towards the thick, moonlight-illuminated clouds that were slowly concealing the constellations. My wings gently flapped as I hovered and gazed down upon the night-cloaked land.
Mist swirled throughout the quiescent trees and across the glistening, frozen rivers. The wandering footfalls of the undead crunched over the crystalline ice that adorned the ground like a frosty carpet. Belzar’s howl faded into silence, and I gazed toward the steep, mountainous mantle upon which he stood for a second.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the dark lunar glow. And for the first time in over five thousand years, I ignited Hellfire within my veins. The first spark was kindled within my forehead, between my brows, illuminating my third eye with a fiery ball of light. Then it swiftly spread, blazing throughout my entire soul like wildfire and burning away all the corruption.
I relished the feeling of my demonic soul burning so brightly after being imprisoned and powerless in a world of eternal darkness for so long. I willed the flames to heal my wounds as my spirit reconnected with the fires of Hell. A blissful smile spread across my face, and my hair flowed around me as if possessed by my power. My eyes snapped back open, revealing my now incandescent, Luciferian white light gaze. I peered down at the lloigor, and my smile twisted into a sadistic grin.
Time to die, fucker.
I began rapidly plummeting down toward it, burning hotter and hotter as I descended. The lloigor didn’t even have time to register what was happening. It had only just turned to look up at me when I smashed into it with the spikes of my wings pointed forward, impaling its skull. It roared in agony, but the deafening crescendo of fiery destruction drowned the sound out from the impact.
The lloigor combusted and disintegrated into nothing more than black ashes as Hellfire erupted out of me. It unfurled around us as a gigantic ring of blazing doom. The flames roared, voraciously consuming the entire town center, swallowing homes and buildings whole. In the blink of an eye, Sycamore Valley was reduced to smoldering smithereens, leaving nothing but echoes of chaos and emptiness behind.
I smiled in satisfaction as the ashes fluttered around my face. Now I just had to see if Adelstein had survived the blast. I had a feeling he had. Chances were, if he was still near the church, he’d be badly burned but not dead, thanks to his level of corruption.
I flapped my wings and glided over the scorched earth and smoking ruins. Smoke filled the now-warm air, swirling up to the sky in thick wisping tendrils. The slithering smog slowly parted, revealing the scalding, dilapidated pile of rubble that had once been the church. The bell tower had only half toppled over. It remained stuck in the air, outstretched diagonally over the graveyard with the bell limply dangling down. It hauntingly swayed back and forth, as if being pushed by some unseen spirit.
Adelstein was stumbling over the wreckage, with rage and distress visible on his mutilated face. His cloak was singed and covered in soot. I landed with sturdy feet upon the burning debris before him, with my fiery gaze searing into his soul. He trembled at the sight of me and staggered backward onto the lopsided bell tower.
“Please, please don’t kill me, Azathoth! I was only trying to do what was best for humanity,” he pathetically begged like the undignified milquetoast he was.
Such a worthless coward.
“What’s best for humanity?” I growled. “Look around you! Do you not see the meaningless death and suffering you caused all these innocent people!?” I furiously gestured around at the hundreds of smoldering corpses littered about the ground. “They were mothers and fathers, husbands and wives! You spared not the elderly nor the children! You damned them to abyssal corruption, extinguishing the very light of their souls!”
“They were sinners!” he proclaimed with self-righteous anger in his voice, revealing his true colors. “And they’re better off dead than living in sin! Besides, I purified them beforeyoucame along and slaughtered them like the demonic beast you are! Now their souls will be granted access to heaven’s pearly gates, all thanks to me!”
The tempestuous clouds devoured the nocturnal skies, seducing the stars into their dark embrace while transcending the moon. And as the empyrean heavens darkened behind me, so did my malicious glower.
“No, Adelstein, they will not be entering through those fictitious pearly gates of which you so foolishly speak. For the mountains of heaven are hollow, and the Nazarene’s promises are meretricious. Souls use their light to reincarnate when the right time to leave the spirit realm comes. But you have destroyed their light, damning them to wander the earth in darkened and bereft incorporeality until they slowly fade out of existence.You have brought death to their very souls.” My words dripped with venom as I slowly but furiously began walking toward him.
Adelstein continued to stumble back in fear, making his way up along the outstretched bell tower. I followed him step for step, not letting him gain any distance between us. The wind dramatically blew my hair to the side, as waves of lethal anger radiated off me.
“In the name of God, I rebuke you, evil and unclean spirit! Slanderous iconoclast!” he shouted, while pointing his shaky finger at me in a lame, last-resort attempt to defeat me. “You are no match for the power of God, which forces you to shudder and kneel before the name of Jesus Christ! The god ofpeaceshallcrushSatan beneath his feet, and you, demon, will be cast away to the eternal lake of fire!”
Cast away to the eternal lake of fire? Good thing I don’t burn.
I laughed while grabbing the axe from my belt loop as I pulled it from the shadows. It mellifluously hissed through the air as I swiftly threw it at him. The blade pierced his chest dead in the center. The force of the blow forced him to stagger back and almost lose his balance, nearly falling off the very tip of the bell tower. He wheezed with his mouth hanging open, unable to move from the intense pain and shock that was now spreading through him.
Normally, I wouldn’t waste my breath on a dead man. I’d killed enough to know that doing so was a complete waste of time. But he wasn’t just a dead man. He was going to remember this moment as he writhed in agony within the abyssal pits for all eternity. Ironically, he would find no salvation. I inwardly smiled at the thought.
My eyes glowed as I slowly closed the distance between us, speaking with ascendancy in my voice. “Am I shuddering? Am I kneeling?” I turned my palms up and spread my arms out in a taunting way. “No, clearly I am not. Your god has lied about the supposed power he holds over us, as well as his fallacious victory over Satan, the almighty bringer of light. For it is within the nature of a tyrant to spread untruths and fear about the liberator who threatens his oppressive reign.”
A burning board snapped beneath my boot, and the bell tower jolted, threatening to crash to the ground. The chilling winds howled, and the bell ominously chimed as I continued approaching Adelstein. His tattered and filthy white cloak flapped out over the edge, while he stared at me with both pain and fear of the devil in his blackened eyes.
“Your despotic god shall have no victory. For that odious lacertian tyrant who lurks within the cosmic heavens is losing his ensnarement over the earth. His leviathan web is crumbling as his weakening toqeph is reversed. And when the dawn of truth arises, all who are of him shall be cast out of the garden of Astarte. Satan will pour the Aquarian waters upon the flaming Gaia, and the mother shall gladly welcome the father’s rain. The bright morning star shall ascend in the east, clearing the Sethian smog from the skies. Humanity will be liberated and enlightened, and the earth will be restored. That is the nature of the Luciferian age. The age of the risen serpent.”
I was now face to face with him. He opened his mouth like he was trying to speak, but couldn’t form the words. I growled as he desperately gasped for air.
“But you’re not going to witness any of that. Because you died a coward at the hands of a demon!” I gritted my teeth in anger.
My long, wisping hair danced around my face as I yanked the axe from his chest and swiftly sliced his head off with one effortless swing of the blade. My arm remained outstretched to my side, perfectly in line with the axe, while I kicked his headless body off the top of the tower. An expression of horror was frozen onto his marred abyssal face, while his lifeless head and body both listlessly fell to the cindered earth below, dramatically turning to a puff of ash as they hit the ground.
My face remained stoic while my infernal eyes watched the ashes swirl away in the wind for a few minutes. Then the corner of my mouth turned up into a soft smile. It was over.
The reality that I could finally go home after so long overwhelmed me. I fell to my knees laughing like a maniac, causing the tower to collapse below me. I gladly fell with it, with tears of joy falling down my face as the bell loudly gonged. I was out of The Abyss! I was unbound! My poisonous wound had healed! And now I had a beautiful and beloved woman whom I was going to make my bride! It seemed luck was finally on my side after I’d suffered for so long.
I wanted nothing more than to hold my Buttercup in my arms and kiss her repeatedly all over her dainty little face. I victoriously arose from the ashen ruins and then disappeared in a cloud of black mist.
