I never had been comfortable dealing with children. Looking at Knell, I could tell he could use a long hug…one that I could not give.

So I simply crawled over to him and sat beside him, in a show of solidarity. “Knell,” I said, “Your secret is safe with me.”

“But…?”

“But nothing. That’s it.”

“So you don’t want to kill me? You’re not going turn me in to anyone? This is all okay with you??”

“No, it isn’t. You’re very creepy, and I feel like a fool for believing your angel act. But if what you say is true, you only did what you had to do to survive. I can’t fault you for that.”

“Besides,” I continued, “Since we’re being truthful…I first started to trust you back when you said you ‘wanted to show people that you could do good.’ Now I understand what you really meant by that. I don’t know if it’s admirable or foolish, but the fact that you’re still willing to help normal humans after all they’ve done to you…it definitely shows that you have courage.”

Knell smiled brightly. “That’s what you told Peal,” he said. “I heard everything you were saying back then, you know. I wasn’t dead, just paralyzed.”

“If you heard all that, then why were you afraid that I would kill you? I was defending you the whole time.”

“I don’t know. Maybe you were in denial. And then…it has to start somewhere. Before, I thought my parents were doing the same thing: that they just wanted to keep people away from me. I never expected what came next.”

Suddenly, the air was filled with cheers and applause. The mother demon was making more human noises. It was starting to become unsettling.

Knell stood up. “This demon is going to split,” he said. “It’s getting ready to separate into hundreds of little demons.”

“Yes, Peal explained that to me. It might be too late to do anything about it now, though…”

“No, it’s not! We can destroy it together! That’s what we both came here for, right? Everyone is depending on us, and we made it this far. We can’t give up now.”

“Well, what do you have in mind?”

Knell sank his hands into the colors, turning them shades of red. “Since I don’t have to pretend to be an angel anymore, I can go all out: I’ll fuse with this demon and control its body, so it won’t hurt you. Then you can take it out with one strike, like you always do.”

“But if you’re fused with the demon…won’t you be destroyed, too?” I asked, as the redness spread over our surroundings.

“No, I don’t think so. Don’t worry about me.” Knell grinned.

I couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not, but I didn’t have time to argue with him. The cheering was getting louder by the second. Knell opened a hole in the mother demon’s body, and out I went.

The outside was just as disorienting as the inside: it was an endless sea and an endless sky of swirling colors, as far as the eye could see.

The centers of Fonts were always like that. Like a space outside of reality.

I took a deep breath and thought about the falling rain I’d seen on the day I met Knell. Up was up, down was down. Gravity still existed. The feelings of vertigo would soon disappear.

Suddenly, the mother demon screamed and shook me off of its body, throwing me into the Font. The cheers became screams as well, and the sound was deafening. The colors oozing from its wound were all shades of red. Blood red, like Knell’s jacket.

As I staggered to my feet, I sized up my enemy. The mother demon’s current shape was that of a giant tunneling worm, which explained why it liked to attack from underground. It was above ground now, however, probably so that its “daughters” would be born straight into the Font’s nourishing colors.

The front of its long body writhed madly, almost to the point of changing shape, but as it wasn’t going anywhere, the base of its tail lay relatively still. That was where I would strike. I started to run.

The mother demon kept lurching towards me to devour me, but each time it was pulled back, as if it had been yanked by a chain. That was Knell’s doing. I had to act now, while it was still fighting his control. As soon as I reached the slightly shifting tail, I seized it and hung on.

To my astonishment, the mother demon began to speak over the screams. “YOU AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE, AND NEITHER ARE YOUR CHILDREN,” it said in an impossibly loud, distorted voice. “YOU SAID EVERYONE HATED ME, BUT YOU WERE WRONG. AND NOW WE ARE GOING TO STOP YOU.”

I had no idea what it meant, but I wasn’t about to miss my chance. I took a deep breath. Then, with silver delta in hand, I sank my fist into its flesh.