Deep in the bowels of the isle's volcano, four curved black horns slowly rose from beneath the molten surface of the lava lake that filled the mountain of fire. The Demon Lord Amatricina the Avaricious waking from her meditative slumber, having sensed a family energy nearby. At this point she could detect it easily out of a crowd, the Knight of Manus, Sir Nickel Gallius. The warrior still did not know how to suppress his power level, and his aura flowed like a wellspring from his body at all hours of the day. The demoness shot up to the summit of her volcanic home, landing with grace and poise on the rim of the volcano's mouth. The great plumes of black smoke at her back, heat and ash rising from the mountain in great choking clouds that reminded her of her home world. Amatricina smiled, scanning her view of the isle for the whereabouts of the knight. "Gallius..." She muttered to herself, ruby gaze locking their dread sight on the island's western beaches. "So you have accepted my offer..." She spoke only to herself, still somewhat surprised the knight had gone through with her offer. He was brave, and truly determined to free his soul of its affliction if he would so easily accept a Demon's offer.

It would make the second time a mortal had eagerly accepted her offer to help. Amatricina thought of Kamui as she leapt from the summit and dashed through the air towards the beach where the knight yet waited. The young Frost Demon had been gravely injured, kept alive only by cybernetics and sheer force of will. She had returned to the warrior what he longed for most. His own body, though one of her creation. His original form restored, renewed, and improved. Enhanced and augmented by the power of her dark magics and demonic ki. The change had been drastic, giving the warrior a dark color palette, and his own vestiges of demonic power. More than that, it had restored Kamui's pride, the warrior once more feeling confident in himself and his own ability in combat. Freed from his mechanical prison, once more able to transform as his race was evolved to. Now, it was Gallius' turn. Though his ailment was of the mind... not the body. Matters of the mind were less predictable, and even an ancient and wise demon such as herself could never truly hope to grasp the infinite complexities of a thinking, knowing mind.

Amatricina landed with a weighty impact only a few feet in front of Gallius, a sinister smile already painted across her face. Things had changed since they had last met, she was far stronger now. An inky black smoke wafted off the demoness, secreting out heavily from beneath her cloak. Her Dark Miasma, a nightmarish demonic haze born of infusing the ancient Destron Gas of the Tuffle Destron Gas Machine that once existed on the isle with her own demonic energy. In its passive form it was inert, merely giving of a malevolent feeling born of the 'Power of Hate' that the Tuffle scientist Dr. Lychee infused his creations with. Though Amatricina knew nothing of this scientist, or his creations in truth, she knew of their intoxicating effects on her kind. And she had greedily absorbed every whiff of the Destron Gas into her being in spite of its debilitating effects on most life forms. "Gallius... so good to see you again." Amatricina said as she spoke through her mischievous grin. Wafting trails of the dark vapor leaked from her mouth as she spoke, and the demoness inhaled slowly breathing the order back in through her nose. "How rude of me... I had forgotten I had company coming." She said teasingly, tensing her muscles and drawing back the Dark Miasma into her physical being through magical means.

"That's better..." The demon purred, walking slowly towards the knight with a heavy sway to her every step. She rubbed her right hand slowly along Gallius' cheek, smiling at him with sinister intent in her ruby eyes. "So, I presume you are here to accept my offer? To expunge your soul of the parasitic consciousness that feeds off your energy and shares your body." Amatricina smiled a wide, fanged smile. Her canine teeth glimmering in the tropical sun, porcelain teeth serrated and pointed like rows of tiny daggers in her mouth. "I've been looking forward to this... I have so much to show you." She said cryptically, withdrawing her hand and blowing the knight as wet kiss.

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Word Count: 764
Andrew C. Creed

"Hmm... You are unwell Gallius." Amatricina replied as her brow furrowed in sight of the warrior. Where once he was determined and stalwart, he now seemed more haggard, more worn. Was it the strain of the second mind dwelling in his thoughts finally getting to him? Did he lose sleep over it, or because of it? The demoness grimaced at the short of a dark mirror of herself keeping her endlessly awake, trying to drive her mad. It spoke to the knight's fortitude. Once upon a time Amatricina had thought Gallius a daft moron. Nowadays she had grown to realize he was quite daft, but hardly a moron. While the knight seemed to make questionable decisions out of his idealized vision for peace and prosperity, he did so out of a misplaced sense of honor and duty. Those were two virtues Amatricina could respect, even if she shared little else in common with the mortal. Gallius' duty lied with his people, both those lost, and those found. It mirrored her own steadfast determination to the well being of her clan. A sacred oath the Demon Lord would never break, even to her dying breath.

The demon nodded as Gallius expressed his dedication to his task, and his desire for it to be over. "So be it, I will not delay you any longer. But first, did you bring a suitable magic construct in which to house the consciousness I intend to tear from your very soul? If not, I suppose I will have to forge one myself." Amatricina was already running ideas through her head for a worthy vessel. Perhaps a sphere of pure obsidian, or the skull of one of the mighty lizards that lived on her isle. Or an enchanted pearl from one of the strange sea creatures on the beaches. Or a coconut, albeit a magically enchanted coconut. The possibilities were nearly endless, though she didn't bother to think too hard on them. The demon placed a hand at her hip, waiting patiently for the knight's reply. All the while psychically probing the edges of his thoughts, her malicious presence trying to root out the malignant voice within the warrior.

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Word Count: 374
Total Word Count: 1,137
Andrew C. Creed

Amatricina raised an eyebrow questioningly as the knight of Manus withdrew his chosen focus for her ritual. It was a small wooden letter t. Why that particular letter, she did not know; or why it was lowercase. Regardless, if that was what the knight wanted then so be it, she would make due. Amatricina reached out a gilded gauntlet, carefully grabbing the wooden t between her thumb and pointer finger. "How peculiar..." She stated idly, rubbing her chin with her free hand as she carefully eyed the tiny trinket. She herself had something more grandiose in mind, like a skull. Possibly a human one, she admired the spherical shape of its cranium. The small wooden bauble had a weak vestige of ki stored in it, accidentally absorbed from the knight's aura. It alone would be insufficient to house a fractured soul, modifications must be made. The demon floated the trinket above her hand with her psychokinesis, as her eyes shimmered with fiery ruby light. She bubbled the focus in a small sphere of molten ki, the roiling orb of onyx and crimson shimmering with demonic light. Amatricina then exhaled slowly, breathing out an inky black smoke that seemed to move with a mind of its own. Her free hand directed the smoke into the orb, pulling it along with the wispy touch of her fingers. The dark vapor filled the orb, shrouding it in darkness as the demon focused her magics. She didn't want to damage the trinket, it apparently held sentimental meaning to the knight. But it was a small focus, made of a flimsy material, and she needed to work carefully.

After a minute of prolonged silence, Amatricina's concentrated gaze lifted, and she let out a sigh. "It is done." She said simply, dissipating the protective barrier of ki around the wooden t. It floated in the air for a moment, before falling to land in her outstretched hand. "Behold. Your chosen vessel." The t was now vantablack, a black so dark it drew in all light and appeared textureless and featureless to the naked it. The wood infused with pure Dark Energy carefully weaved between the material to add the needed durability and magical conductivity to house a soul. Amatricina looked at the knight, grinning a cocky grin at her own ability. It took a great mastery of dark magic to hone such a finely balanced vessel out of such a miserable bauble. "That is the first step, now... meet me at the center of the isle Gallius. I have prepared the ritual." With that Amatricina dashed into the air, black cross clutched in her first as she flew to a tall hill that stood at the isle's center.

The hill itself was unimportant, but it offered a flat area and sufficient stone for the Demon's purposes. Amatricina landed, immediately inspecting the area for tampering by the local wildlife. She had erected five stone obelisks, carved from local boulders and carefully positioned in a pentagram shape. Connecting them, and outline the evil rune on the ground the demon had burned trenches with her hellfire, filling them with rock. She pressed a hand to the pentagram seal, flooding her demonic heat into the stone and causing it to melt into molten sludge. The fire demon smiled, she did so love her flare for the dramatic. This entire site was wholly unnecessary for her ritual, but she liked making mortals think such fanfare was needed to invoke dark magic of this magnitude. The demoness to her place at the center of the burning pentagram, on a raised dais of obsidian she had carved from a cooled hunk of magma with her psychokinesis. She placed one hand on a wide hip, the other still clutching the vantablack cross as she carefully inspected it. Now all that was needed was Gallius, and the show could truly begin.

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Word Count: 656
Total Word Count: 1,793
Andrew C. Creed

Amatricina grinned as the knight approached. Though she still wondered to this day how Gallius failed to know how to fly with his ki, she had long since given up asking questions about the strange warrior who served a cruel fire god. Gallius was an oddity among mortals, but that made him an object of great curiosity to the demoness, for better or worse. "When your kind lives as long as mine does, you find plenty of ways to occupy your time. This... this is just a hobby I picked up back when I had a mortal cult or two worshiping me and begging for demonic power. I humored them, until I grew bored of their presence." The demoness flashed her fanged smile, running her forked tongue over her pointed teeth. "Mortal flesh tastes best when seeped with fear and terror." Amatricina's eyes betrayed a savage cruelty, but she quickly focused back on the task at hand.

The Demon Lord let go of the blackened cross, and it hovered near her from her psychic might. "All I need from you Gallius, is to stand on this dais and prepare yourself for the true definition of agony. But first, remember back when we first met? You first accidentally summoned me into that wretched catacomb. How weak I had been. This mortal realm was so unfamiliar back then... my body felt emaciated, deprived of my beloved Dark Energy. Have you heard of it before? I can't recall if I ever explained it to you properly." The demon held out a hand, open palmed. With her other the claws on her gauntlets began to glow a searing white hot. She reached out, rending her hand down slowly... carving through the very fabric of time space like a hot blade through flesh. It rent a wound in dimensions, the ancient demon technique known as the Dimensional Rift. Through the gash began leak a fel black energy so dark it drank in the light around it like a living shadow. Amatricina lovingly coalesced the energy into a small orb in her open hand for the knight to see.

"Behold, Dark Energy. It is a chaotic, ruinous power beyond mortal comprehension. It is the antithesis of gods, the void from which even voids are lost. It is my kind's birthright, our greatest gift and our truest strength. Ours alone to wield, it corrupts and maddens lesser beings. When we first met I was like an addict in withdrawal, cut off from my precious Dark Energy for the first time in millennia. I could fight at only a fraction of my true strength." Amatricina pointed skyward, to the metal shape looming high overhead like a second moon. The Omnipotence, Emperor Carambolis' flagship hanging high above the earth in a lazy orbit. "Now though... now I am close to matching the Kabochan Emperor's might. I have trained my body tirelessly in this absence of my demonic birthright; I have lost my dependence on the malevolent power of the Demon Realm. No longer do I need its might to operate at my peak strength..."

Amatricina trailed off, crushing the orb of darkness in her hand. It splattered like black blood, coating her gauntlet before seeping into her very skin. She breathed out, like a junkie on a fresh high as it did. When the demoness opened her eyes they glowed with fiery orange light. She clenched her fists, and they crackled with ominous black lightning as her aura began to shimmer and surge violently outwards. Crimson demonic ki giving off an oppressive feeling of malice and hatred as it roared around her and crackled with black lightning. The skies above began to darken, billowing clouds forming and blocking out the sun as the seas around the isle were whipped by heavy waves. The very air was blown into hurricane force winds, extending outwards from Amatricina's auras sheer pressure as it threatened to snap trees like matchsticks. Loos rocks and stones hovered and split apart from psychokinetic power, and the animals of the island fled for shelter.

"Gallius! Witness my true power!" The demon boasted, straining herself as a vein throbbed at her temple and she clenched her teeth hard. Amatricina's breathing grew labored and heavy, grunts of exertion clear as she pushed her body to the limits. Ruinous malevolence begin to coalesce around the Demon Lord, and more dimensional rifts tore open like split seams in reality itself around her. Through them could be seen distant planets and stars, a whole galaxy of demonic nightmares that lurked in a dark mockery of the mortal universe. Amatricina roared, an almost feral cry of sheer exertion as she willed force vast quantities of Dark Energy from her home realm into the mortal plane. It poured into this dimension the small gashes she had cleaved in reality, lacerations in space itself Amatricina tore open with her dark magic. The Dark Energy poured forth like blood from a wound, flowing into the demon freely and being absorbed into her body like a sponge drinking in water. After a brief moment the small dimension rifts sealed shut, Amatricina no longer mentally straining herself to maintain them. She roared out in lustful wrath as her body was enveloped in pure darkness. Her silhouette began to change slightly, her horns sharpening to grimmer points at their ends. The demon's already long crimson mane of hair extended down to the small of her back, and her already buxom and curvaceous figure was further accentuated with increasing lusciousness. Her voluptuous curves swelling to even more grandiose proportions as her lithe musculature gained new, more toned definition.

In a flash of obsidian light the darkness was dispelled, leaving Amatricina visible to the naked eye once more. Her attire had changed noticeably, her armored gauntlets now sporting long shoulder-less black sleeves and the metal belt at her waist having grown to form an armored mail skirt that reached half way down her thighs. Most notably, the Fire Demon's hallmark red and gold color scheme had darkened considerably. Where once her armor was a vibrant crimson shade, it was now obsidian black, and the once gilded trimmings and ornamentation to her attire had become a rich, deeper shade of crimson. Amatricina breathed out heavily, almost a sigh as she finished. She placed a hand at her hip, lovingly feeling its newfound prominence as she silently admired her own demonically enhanced beauty. She shifted her attention back to Gallius and spoke with total confidence and self centered pride. "I call this my Darkness Demon form, though you may call it as you like." Amatricina flashed a fiendish smile, her canines had grown slightly longer and more fanged like a serpent's. "There were legends among my race, ancient myths that I now see to be fact. That we could ascend or forms beyond our body's natural limits. I have rediscovered the way, by training my body to lose its innate dependence on Dark Energy to draw forth my full might even in its absence. I can now harness my realm's ruinous power to augment my form further instead!"

The Ascended Demon reached out, snatching up the black cross. Her aura now a shimmering black tinged in ruby flames, she flashed the knight another sinister grin, motioning him to step forward. "Step forth Sir Nickel Gallius, Knight of Manus, Defender of Ferusalem. It is time."

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Word Count: 1,261
Total Word Count: 3,032
Andrew C. Creed

Amatricina nodded as the knight stepped forth. There was no more time for words, now was the time for action. She had promised him endless pain until her task was complete, now it was time to make good on that promise. The ascended fire demon raised her hands, fingers flexing as she willed forth more of her dark power. Tendrils of Dark Energy began to emanate forth from the edges of her aura, like appendages prying free of a shapeless, formless body. These whip like protrusions lashed around, wrapping tightly around Gallius' wrists and feet, binding them. The demoness' Malicious Intent, a normally offensive technique used to paralyze and bind opponents so she could inflict severe wounds while they struggled to break free of her restraints. This time however, it was a needed precaution. The tendrils would bind Gallius for his own safety, so his body did not thrash or flail too violently and injure himself further from the pain he'd soon experience. More importantly, the tendrils could siphon off excessive amounts of Dark Energy that would otherwise kill the man if left unregulated.

The demoness had learned of mortal fragility eons ago, and her realm's Dark Energy was antithesis to most mortal beings. Its ruinous power too great for their fragile bodies and corruptable minds. It broke them the way a whip breaks a beast. When Amatricina restored the changling Kamui's physical body with a demonic ritual, she had needed the husk of the Tree of Might to do so. The massive corpse of the godly plant served as a necessary conduit for excessive demonic energy. Here though, on earth, there was no such conduit the demon knew off. So she would need regulate it entirely by hand using herself as a feedback loop. However, the expenditure of energy would be far lower. Gallius was nowhere near as injured as Kamui was, Amatricina did not need to reconstitute most of a physical body and create a suitable vessel to harbor a soul. This time was the reverse, she was trying to tear a soul from a body, well, a fraction of one anyways.

The tendrils of demonic magic lifted Gallius a foot into the air, holding out his limbs as if he was being crucified by the demon. It was a typically uncomfortable position, but it regulated the body's flow of ki into a more neutral state. Amatricina needed as little variance in conditions as possible. A soul is a very fragile thing, and what she was doing was the magical equivalent of operated on a brain tumor. The demoness breathed out, slowly stepping towards Gallius, the isle shaking with her every footfall. She slowly removed one of her armored gauntlets, revealing the pale immaculate skin and black claw like fingernails of her hand below. Amatricina lifted her hand, coming to stand before Gallius she placed her hand on the warrior's forehead. Her palm was hot to the touch, like molten lava made into flesh and blood. It seared with a heat both chemical and magical, every fire in the demon's arsenal a product of both biology and dark magic. This heat would be a mild, searing pain compared to the agony that was to come.

The demoness looked into Gallius' eyes, her own glowing with fiery ruby light. "This hurts you more than it does me." She offered up simply, a flash of hellish light emanating from her eyes. Amatricina's own Agonizing Gaze, a nightmarish technique that combined a demon's natural ability to sense and read another's soul with her own total mastery of dark magic. The pain was without description, every nerve in Gallius' body screaming out in perfect harmony in a song of debilitating agony. Whether he blacked out, thrashed against his bindings, or screamed in pain or terror it did not matter. The link was established, Amatricina's gaze cut deeply into the man's soul. He could feel her presence within her mind, like a black storm of smoke and cinders, rolling through the ashen forest of his consciousness. Amatricina had invaded the minds of mortals before, but this time she did not do so out of a desire to pry secrets, or to inflict undue suffering. No, the demonic storm in Gallius' mind pushed forth unphased stopping for neither emotions nor memories. It was here for a more direct purpose.

The soul is a difficult thing to physically describe. In many ways it is like an aura, except composed of thought, not of energy. It is the crux of what makes a being who they are. The brain is just a vessel that controls the body, the soul houses the mind that controls the brain. This is why there were zombies, and necromancy. Attempts to revive a body without a soul yielded only a brain with no mind, following instinct not rational thought. Gallius soul shone with a blindly golden light, like a righteous flame. The demonic storm that was Amatricina's psychic presence within his mind shuddered at the sight of it. She suppressed great, terrible urges to destroy such a thing of beauty. To see the soul carved into ribbons and scattered like dust in the winds of oblivion. The storm came to envelope the soul, smothering it within its being. Black lightning crackled around the soul and ethereal onyx smoke tried to suffocate the golden light that was Gallius.

Amatricina's physical body stood in a deep, trance like state with her hand pressed to the knight's forehead. Her concentration absolute, with much of her waking consciousness forced violently into Gallius' own. He'd be able to feel 'her' within him, like a parasite burrowing deep into a foreign host. Within Gallius soul storm the cloud of nightmarish black smoke felt along the golden edges for what it sought. The demonic storm could not 'see', it did not have eyes, but it could feel. Feel the emotions and desires of the soul, its fears and its ambitions. It could distinctly tell what was Gallius, and what was not. There was a dark stain on one side of the golden soul, like a bruise of otherwise ripe fruit. It stunk of treachery, deceit, and malice. This was The Voice, in its truest form. Nothing more than a decrepit parasite hanging onto a much grander being's very existence. A malevolent ulcer born of the many sufferings the Knight of Manus' mind had tried to bury and expunge from itself. A cancer that tried to spread itself, corrupting the man utterly but would soon be cut out by the hand of a much darker power.

Wisps of demonic energy began to form from the demonic storm of energy. They formed cruel hooked appendages, like scythes and talons as they slowly moved towards the marred soul. The tendrils plunged into the flame of Gallius' being, sinking deep into the soul to cut out this corruption at its very core. The pain of this action, defied mortal comprehension. It was if the man's very being was being ripped in two. The psychic scalpels slowly hacked and carved through the soul around the corrupted blight. They worked slowly, methodically, every motion with great purpose. One errant slip, one incision too deep, and they would damage the rest of Gallius' mind beyond repair. Too much damage, and the soul would collapse under its own injuries, effectively killing the man in both this life and denying him an afterlife. His spirit simply gone from existence. This slow, tedious pace only drew out the agony, making the suffering feel like lifetimes. But Gallius was not the only would enduring it, for whatever pain he felt, The Voice felt far worse. Amatricina did not spar the malignant growth the same benevolence she did the Knight of Manus. Little caution was spared to prevent damage and suffering to the Voice, his pain was a punishment levied for Gallius' souls continued protection.

Then at last in one final moment the black malignancy was wretched free, hooked scythes digging deep into the meat of the tainted soul and ripped it free like a scrap from a wound. The demonic storm quickly enveloped the Voice's being, making sure it could not escape to take root elsewhere in Gallius' being. As quickly as the storm descended on the knight's mind, it now left. Spiriting away back through his waking consciousness making a hasty retreat with its quarry in tow. Amatricina's Agonizing Gaze faded, and she gasped as if resurfacing for air, her trance broken as she was once more seeing the world through her own eyes. The demon slowly pulled her hand from Gallius' forehead, and as she did a black, tainted presence was drawn forth with it. Dark Energy crackled from the black cross, and Amatricina forced the two entities together, sealing what was left of the Voice within the knight's chosen focus.

The demon relaxed her tendrils of dark magic, drawing them back into her hellish aura and letting the knight fall to his knees. Amatricina re-affixed her gauntlet, then extended the hand to the knight. "Arise Gallus, Knight of Manus. My task is done, you are freed from your curse. Through my darkness I have burned the flame of your salvation. How does it feel?" In the Demon Lord's hand she held the small cross, holding it out for the knight to take. The evil of his tainted soul now housed within, it could be conversed with by anyone of sufficiently powerful in either psychic or magic techniques. No doubt it was already trying to escape, but Amatricina's dark magic were far beyond its feeble power, and the vessel now served to house it. If it did escape, it would return to the ether of creation in moments without a suitable host. Just as all bodiless souls did outside the Other World.

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Word Count: 1,645
Total Word Count: 4,677
Andrew C. Creed

Amatricina raised a hand to shield herself from the light that engulfed the area. How had she not sensed this intruder's arrival? Was she that lost in her trance? Ruby energy pooled at the demon's eyes and orbs of Dark Energy formed in her palms as she readied herself to retaliate. The being that appeared was unlike any she had seen, a shimmering creation of brilliant metallic lights. The fire demon lowered her guard, if only slightly, as she listened to the stranger speak. It greeted her as kin, to which she raised an eyebrow curiously. With every word the being spoke, Amatricina's violent only intensified. She now realized the depth of the deception that had been placed upon her. This entire time, Gallius had been the facsimile, and the Voice within him had been the true being. A demon, not just a demon, a fire demon no less. Not of her race, not of her clan, but kin nonetheless. It was as she had said when they first met. There could not be shadow without flame, they were two sides of the same coin.

The Demon Lord clenched her fists, her rage intensifying her aura. Omyx lightning crackled violently from her, and the blackness of her Dark Energy clashed violently against the white void created by the stranger. She knew his name, Gallius had stated it enough Manus, the Fire God. He was no God, and his entire purpose was a perversion of their kind. Amatricina clenched her fists so tight the talons of her gauntlets pieced through her own armor on her palms, causing the demon's molten blood to flow freely from the wounds. "MANUS!" She roared out in hatred, her aura flaring with her anger. "I SHOULD CARVE OUT YOUR HEART, AND FEAST ON YOUR SOUL!" All of her usual regal grace vanished, replaced by unyielding demonic rage. The very ground beneath her feet buckled before her, and the island began to tear itself apart as earthquakes shook Banbuku Island. "I helped Gallius to satisfy my own curiosity. To see if I could carve out a portion of a soul. He helped save my life once, I owed him the same debt. A debt... now.. paid... in... full..." Amatricina spoke through the gnashing of her teeth, seething rage held back only by greater restraint.

"You left, because of the violence?" The demon asked rhetorically, stunned by the audacity of the comment. "To play at being a GOD!" Her muscles clenched from rage and the very air around them heated to such a point grass was set ablaze and trees began to smolder. "A GOD!? WE SLAY GODS. WE ARE THE ENEMY OF ALL DIVINITY!" Every word from this Manus creature's mouth for a blasphemy upon her race. Only Amatricina's bargain with Emperor Carambolis kept her wrath in check. Her words echoed in her ear. Deliver onto him the earth, unblooded, unconquered, willing to join his Empire. In exchange, the Dragonballs, and hopefully with them the power to liberate the Demon Realm once and for all from the Kais' prison. Amatricina dug her talons deep into her flesh, the pain reminding her of her purpose. "The Kais helped you..." She said with a deadly calm, her rage having reached the threshold it circled back to a controlled boil. "The Kais, the beings that imprisoned our kind in an empty abyss seventy five MILLION years ago. You accepted their help... for your own delusions!"

Amatricina raised her right hand, blood dripping freely from it as she pointed an accusing finger at Manus. "Manus." She said bitterly eyes locked on the creature. "I proclaim you a traitor to all of demonkind. You are worse than a traitor, you are a heretic, a blasphemer. The destruction of your clan's planet, ending your perverted experiment in peace, is the only singular act you have done that is even remotely correct. Demons are lustful, destructive, conquering monsters. Sin isn't just in our nature, it IS our nature. To try and deny it is to deny breathing or sleeping. There will never be peace in the universe, and only sin is truly eternal." The demoness marched towards the false god, every step sending tremors shaking through the island as her power flowed forth in untapped measure. She lashed out, grabbing Manus by the neck, squeezing tight enough to draw blood.

"I can see now that helping Gallius was a great mistake on my part. A mercy granted out of a sense of obligation to a warrior who assisted me when I needed it. You however, I hold no such pact with." The demoness leaned in painfully close, her face inches from the false god's. "Your disdain for our kind was well placed. For you have earned my disdain, and I promise you it would take far more than a single planet sate my wrath." Amatricina wanted to headbutt Manus into the ground and stomp on his throat until her heel has cleaved his head from his spine. She did not, instead only glaring for several seconds of silence. "Consider it my final mercy to Gallius that I am still bound to Carambolis' will for this planet. It is the only thing saving you from my wrath. So I offer you this last act of 'compassion'. Run... Flee. Find the blackest pit, in the darkest corner of the universe, and pray I do not so much as sense your energy or I will not rest until I can feel my magic ripping your soul apart sliver by sliver." Her words were a deadly promise. There was no love in the demon's heart for a traitor to her very race. It took every once of strength and restrained for the demon to not level this entire hemisphere as she pummeled the false god within an inch of his life. She longed to feel the life force of Manus slip between her fingers with every blow from her mailed fists.

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Word Count: 1,004
Total Word Count: 5,681
Andrew C. Creed

Amatricina turned sharply, the figure before her had just been an illusion created by Manus. "You can never understand my rage, craven." She snarled through clenched teeth. The traitors words fell on deaf ears, she would have nothing of it. "A bird betrays its flock when it leaves to lie with hunters. Do not try to make yourself the victim in this! All suffer in the Demon Realm, it is a prison, but a prison of our choosing. One we must shatter if ever we are to return to our true glory." She clenched her fists, loathe to suffer the false god's false words. "Your soul is split among failed creations that served a traitor's purpose. I only wish their deaths had caused you greater suffering."

She listened as Manus lamented his own failures, his hubris. It was a detestable display of self pity, and the demoness merely clenched her teeth and tolerated the brief speech as she thought of ways to kill the creature once it was through. "So... an elaborate way of saying you're dying. Good. It saves me the trouble of slaying you myself. You have failed on your purpose Manus, your life's great work destroyed, your soul a shattered fragment, and your time among the living numbered. Our kind sings no tales of failure. You will be lost and forgotten to the dust of time for your sacrilege. I can think of no more fitting a punishment." The demoness turned up her nose, looking away from the other demon, she would not even deign to look upon him further.

When Manus uttered his final words, Amatricina snatched up the black cross in her hand and turned to the creature as she coldly offered up her response. "Sine fine dolorum, Manus." Her words harsh, void of sympathy or empathy. She held no love in her black heart for the traitor, and her rage would not allow her to relish his passing. Once he was gone she was left only with the cross, her ritual site, and the unconscious knight. Her ruby gaze turned to Gallius, and she contemplated killing him where he lie. He couldn't so much as defend himself. It would be an act of mercy, ending the wretched life of the last of Manus' false creations. But, it would be a dishonorable killing. The warrior could not defend himself, and she had sworn a vow to help him rid himself of his curse. She had done that, and was not bound to offer him more.

While Gallius was slowly coming to, Amatricina was already hard at work. One hand clutched the black cross, the other glowed with Dark Energy, clawed talons rending open a gash in time and space. The Fire Demon was carving a dimensional rift between realms, a portal for her to return to her home. By the time Gallius stirred from his slumber the demoness had cleaved her open her portal. The burning lands of Monsigneus sat on the far side, a thin membrane of magical energy all that separated the two realms. The ascended demon turned to her once companion, gazing down upon him as he spoke. "I have saved your mind, though you will never know the truth of what it was truly from. My debt is paid in full, our pact has completed." She held the cross in her hand, gazing over it one last time. Her eyes narrowed, and she threw the trinket down at Gallius' feet. "That is yours to keep. I have no need of it..."

With that the demon turned sharply on her armored heels, walking back towards her portal as it crackled with demonic energy. Amatricina stood before it reflecting for a moment, before turning her head back to the wounded knight. "I must return to my own kind, there is much I must reflect on. I was right, there cannot be shadow without flame, we are two sides of the same coin. Farewell, Sir Gallius." With that Amatricina stepped through the portal, the dimensional rift closing behind her without her magic to sustain it from this end. Gallius was left alone, the violent storms around the island instantly dying down without the demon's chaotic and unbridled power to afflict the land. There was an eerie stillness to it all, and a beam of sunlight broke through the dense clouds to shine down upon the knight.

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Word Count: 742
Total Word Count: 6,423
Andrew C. Creed