Page 41 of Dark Rapture
When the last vestiges of Belial dissolve into my body, a strangled gasp leaves my trembling lips. Battered and war-torn, I collapse to my knees, hands gripping at my chest. Though the fire singed the blood away, the wounds remain. The biggest wound ripped across my very soul, as Belial threatens to take up permanent residence inside of me.
His mocking laughter echoes in my head, and I know without a shred of doubt that I must obliterate Belial by exorcizing him from my body before he destroys my soul. My soul that is bound to Stolas, my soul that sits dead center of a catastrophic bomb—a bomb created when my power collided with Belial’s.
“Stolas. STOLAS!” I scream, feeling the fabric of my physical body threatening to split open. I cannot contain this energy, not without my demon’s help. If he cannot hear me, I am going to die, and the calamitous detonation may take all of Hell with me.
Belial’s lesser demons roar in my direction, lumbering towards me, intent on helping rip me to shreds for consuming their master. My vision darkens, and my body trembles as power radiates in dizzying pulses from me.
The ground is rumbling beneath me again, dark stone fracturing and cracking wide. My skin burns with the pain of all I am holding inside of me, and in that moment I am certain that I am dying.
Until the tranquil wave of Stolas’ dark lifeforce crashes into me, knocking me away as a large fissure splits the ground beneath me. My vision returns just as tendrils like thick, black smoke descend upon me.
“Stolas…” I whisper, falling to my back as those dark tendrils snake around me and engulf my body. Before darkness descends on my vision, I see the terrifying manifestation of Stolas charging towards me.
A cool calmness captures me, just as his massive arms wind tightly around me and pull me up and against his heaving chest. My sight returns in flickers, coming and going, giving me glimpses of Stolas and the black blood dripping from the countless wounds that adorn him.
“I’m here, Selene. I’m here,” his voice is deep and dark, soothing despite the inhuman fluctuation of its tones.
He must have bulldozed through the legion of Belial’s lesser demons descending on us, because when I gaze through a gaping hole in his colossal body, I see an opening in the festering crowd. An opening leading down into the fiery pits of Hell, where Stolas’ own war-torn demons rise to join us.
“I’m going to die,” I whisper, my body suddenly shivering violently as though I’ve been dropped deep into the coldest level of Hell.
“No, little witch, I forbid it,” he growls, rocking me soothingly against his otherworldly chest, while the power radiating off of me scorches him everywhere my skin connects with his. “But you must cast Belial out.”
I shake my head, dizzy from the pulsing waves of energy from the unstable bomb inside of me.
“I c-can’t. Don’t kn-know… h-how,” I respond as my teeth chatter ruthlessly. Have you ever felt so cold, it burned? That’s what my entire body feels like as Stolas cradles me against his inhuman body, shielding me from everything but him.
“You must release it, Selene. Let it go, cast it out,” he tells me urgently.
“No… everything… destroyed…” I manage to say as my teeth clatter together so hard they must be chipping.
Stolas growls, and we both know time is running out. Or perhaps he knows, and that knowledge is also mine by right of our bond. “Listen to me, little witch. Trust that I will hold you together. Cast him out, do it now!”
I’ll kill him. I can’t do this. I can’t kill my Great Prince of Hell. He saved me, he showed me that I can be strong, and gave me the vengeance I could not give myself. He found me in the darkness, just like he found me dying here in Hell.
Belial’s dark laughter fills my mind, the remnants of this infernal entity interwoven with the power I consumed. He’s inside of me, festering like a parasite, threatening to take hold.
I shake my head, and his voice booms around me with unyielding authority. “You are mine, Selene, and you will obey. CAST. HIM. OUT!”
Stolas’ darkness sweeps inside of me, no longer needing permission to invade. His possession of me feels so different from Belial, so comforting and safe where Belial wants to destroy me just as I’ve destroyed him.
Stolas pushes at the fragile trigger inside of me, and the sensation has me gasping. My trembling hold on the explosive force my body is failing to contain gives out, and my eyes open wide as the bomb detonates.
The force of the blast breaks the sound barrier, and the brilliant gold light of the shattering inferno is silent until the sonic boom strikes. A rippling wave of immense pressure sweeps out in the wake of the explosion, colliding with the horde of demons. The nuclear fission is ruinous, ripping the demons apart on impact – until they are nothing but particles of ash disintegrating in the blaze surrounding us.
Everything in the bomb’s path is leveled. The obsidian structure of the terrain, the tormented souls lanced upon the cruel spires, and even the canopy above is incinerated. Darkness descends and swallows Belial’s dominion in Hell, leaving nothing but dust, ash, and demolished rock.
The entire realm trembles as Belial’s power decays, his place in Hell utterly destroyed.
When the damage is done, my wide eyes flutter closed against the creeping nothing that sweeps in to take up residence here.
I feel like I am a dying sun trapped in the depths of Hell, my skin made of plasma as radioactive decay has gentle pulses of unstable energy wafting out from my ruined body.
“St—” My throat burns until something cracks, and his name dies on my tongue.
“Shhhh,” he soothes, this eldritch horror of a demon holding me securely against him as he lowers his strange mouth to mine. What I recognize as lips press against my own, absorbing the blazing heat emanating from me at devastating temperatures.
His dark power slithers further inside of me like an insidious serpent, dark tendrils like living ink slipping between my scorched lips from the cavernous depths of his jaws. He fills me from head to toe, taking full possession of my body, sinking in deep where Belial once took hold.
