- I need you to see the reason for my actions. Dear brother.

Our father has gone mad. He dances with crows, and cries when the sun set.

He still knows how to fight however. The blood he spills in the coliseum every night is enough to drown a thousand wailing infants.

- TALES BY MOONLIGHT.

I should have expected that my rampage in the forest would draw attention. The sudden violation of my body snapped me out of self-adulation.

The jarring assault made me experienced again that awful feeling of dissonance in my self. If I could look at a mirror, what reflection would I see?....... Mine? Or a ball of snakes, writhing as they consumed each other.

I knew instinctively that I was not alone, however the lines were blurred between the puppet and the puppeteer, for all I knew I just committed a sickening slaughter. And I glorified in it!

No! That was not me!. Whatever I had become in those moment of awful carnage was horrifying. Any further introspection was ended when my senses snapped shut like a vise and I fully captured what just drove a fist into my chest.

It was a demon, no that was an understatement, it was The Demon, red skin straining to contain a muscular frame that was horribly distorted in mass and size, shroud like bat wings that ended with sharpened point.

seven horns adorned his head, black saliva pouring from its mouth, that burned the ground, the resulting fumes striking me with a spell of dizziness, two sets of shark like teeth that poked through skin, and blue eyes that was human, and surprisingly beautiful.

“What a sight". The demon spoke with voice like rumbling thunder “ a little orisha, who can command the aether”.

Like an octopus, my limbs flexed backward, and I pulled myself from the arm that impaled me.

“how fascinating", the demon mumbled. Before I could react, a blur was before me, a clawed hand came to seize me, but I shimmered sideways, claws that suddenly burned with bloody flames swiped at my torso, so fast I knew I couldn’t dodge, so I stepped closer, my arms pulled up to my shin, I avoided the claws but the demon fist struck me with a might of a thousand locomotives. the ground shattered, my hands were pulp, my body ploughed through the ground.

I struggled to stand without a functional arms and a broken body which was rapidly healing, I was too late.

Everywhere went silent.

Then with a crack like a whip, ferocious winds erupted above me. The winds were being summoned, but not by me.

Looking up in dismay a cloven hoof that glowed red with abyssal flames that were being fed by the wind stomped on me, I was pushed deeper into the earth, which turned bright red and vaporised. The grounds erupted upwards like a volcano. The shock wave blew into the air tearing the diseased clouds apart, rapidly followed by huge flaming chunks of earth.

My body was a myriad of cracks that poured out steam. My arms dug into the ground that had assumed the tenacity of diamond after being compressed under unearthly flames and pressure. I tried to find leverage, but another stomp pushed me deeper into the ground which compressed further, I felt I was inside an hydraulic press.

I forcefully expelled blood from my mouth when another stomp nearly flattened my torso, trying to shift sideways, another stomp, I raised my head, anger further distorting my ravaged face, a flaming hoof piledrived my head into the ground, my hands seized it, but with a laugh it drew back, and he stomped. The demon surgically crushed my body. I was been forcefully driven hundreds of metres into the earth!

“ Stay still, little orisha, else I break you beyond repair" . A hand seized my bloody hair drawing me closer to his nightmarish visage.

The demon spoke:

“ to which power am I addressing?”

I choked in my fury. The air drew wavy current, as my anger caused the surrounding to smoulder and heat up further.

” hmmm.....silent? Your body is shattered, but your ori is aware"

The demon drew me closer, my mouth opened and a rush of tendrils enveloped his face. Sparks flew, as the skin of the demon could as well be metal and my tendrils noodle. The demon smirked, furious I looked at the deep blue eyes and pushed all my tendrils at it. with a bright explosion, everything went white...

I came to awareness a few moments later. I was being launched towards the heavens, my ascent tearing the air apart. My body a broken toy.

It appeared that I have been hurled so hard, I had tore through the burning clouds approaching the darkness of space. Tendrils from my heart strained to keep me together, and a shadow covered me.

I approached an open tear in space, my body went through it, and I arrived at the skies of another world. It was being ravaged, the force that threw me still persisted and my body pierced the skies of this new world as I approached the zenith of its heaven.

I felt my connection with the stars cut off. I knew not of this constellation.

I was wrong I realised. This was not a new world, it was a mirror of mine, I passed through a shade gate. I thought those were all gone.

I needed a bit more time to recreate my connections with the stars, if I did, no matter the damage I took or how long, I would still be Invincible. He would have to snuff out every star in the universe before he could kill me.

Space was ripped apart, and the demon came through. It followed me, mouth moving in a silent incantation.

With a broken face I looked at the demon who was keeping pace with my ascent and laughed.

Inside my mouth was an eyeball, the expression of the demon was amused..

“hmmm, little orisha there are things even you can’t swallow”...

The eyeball suddenly went white hot in my mouth, as seven bright green line shot from the pupils and like wriggling snakes, bisected my body into mush. Pain consumed me, this was the first time my tendrils were cut...my body scattered into pieces as the demon seized my black heart.

“ this is not a neidan of an orisha. reveal yourself”

A silver coloured cresent appeared on the demon chest, it was throbbing like an heart.

And a wrath so great erupted from my heart colouring the heavens.

The demon gasp in shock “ you can still summon this much power, even at this ‘hierarchy of life?’. No matter the conclusion is forgone”'.

The demon strained and silvery veins flowed from the cresent to the palm holding my heart, and a silvery flames erupted from the palm.

I once thought pain had a limit, I was wrong.

My pain reached its threshold and overflowed it. in the hands of this creature, I knew a pain that could be a line strung up till infinity, different chords, and strings were played, the symphony my seemingly endless torture.

My mind went blank as my heart went mad.

Tendrils poured out of it, only to be sliced away, my body was rapidly reconstituted only to be blown apart, a river of gore formed below me as my flesh fell like rain, below me was a red cloud made by my fallen flesh and blood.

The silver fire burned and my torment did not end.

My black heart beat for the third time.

And a pain that exceeded all of the pain I have ever felt began at what I felt was the centre of my soul, then it drew down and bisected my existence apart.

And I realised I was one yet more!

Horror dawned on me, coiled inside me was a presence that tore my mind like a thousand needles in my eyes.

It was ancient and incredibly hungry. It has shapes like a thousand coiled snakes. It’s form defy meaning, it was as small as a speck yet had crowns made of stars billions of miles wide. it was complete and whole yet was ever hungry. it was antiquity. it’s root stretched before the universe was conceived.

yet I was its sheath.

My soul was being worn like a shell, and the intruder had just tore its way out. The skies went dark. And thunderous tribulations covered the skies, and at the moment a heavy crack resounded, the moon shattered as the creature emerge amidst silver flames.

Ten thousand serpent head rose towards the sky, the fallen moon was its Cape. But the eyes were close. It was asleep and only a minor fraction of itself was awake.

With a shock of might it was forced back into the black heart. The confusion that plagued me disappeared. I was whole once more, and my fury burned scarlet. Memories bubbled up slowly, torn from its lethargy by my most hated enemy. And I spoke:

“ HERALDS FLAME! AEDOMUS, YOU DARE HALT MY ASCENT?"

The demon smiled. Wrapping both hands around my heart, the flame intensified. "A bargain has being struck. A seat is now open. And eternity for you will draw to a close"

The Black Heart spoke and the heaven itself trembled

“ Oh foolish slave, you made deals with the herald, they do not suffer opposition, they will warp your beauty and chain your light ,I crossed the seven gates to end their reign. You could have been at my side at the helm of creation ”

“ At your side?” the demon guffaw as the intensity of the flames doubled “or at your feet Liege Lord?. I kept your dreams the longest. your court. Your champion. Your queen. All detested you. Many a night Ismael warmed my bed and whispered to me the truth. Power is meant to be taken. You have kept yours for countless eons. Invincibility has dull your senses. Strength has made you weak..... 'Oh how we all envied your gifts', we were eternal yet feared death at your choosing. How does it feel to know that long silence that seemed so ever distant from you, now so near. In the countless eons there was, and the finite more to come....there will only be this moment where you are vulnerable..... Yet you trusted that bitch with your secrets"

A sudden sadness seemed to come over the demon, "how foolish. Rest now Liege Lord ...perhaps Horun was right, only the Herald is perpetual. It is time for me to rise to ultimate divinity!".

“ foolish slave, I have always been a god, yet I found it wanting".

At this moment my soul was now separated...The foreign soul dragged from mine, a writhing coils of snakes. It hovered next to the demon, covered by silvery flames. The pain then mercifully ceased. The heart had turned a cerulean blue and melted into a orb, that sparkled like all the stars in creation. My soul rose up like smoke and merged into the orb and was seized by the demon, who peered deeply at the orb in surprise. The orb melted, transforming into a pale green flame.

“ How can this be?. An absolute soul! Does your machinations go so deep Liege Lord?”

Observing the pale green flames that was my soul he said “ the herald flames are truly merciless, every memory and legacies burnt away, even the flames of a Nephilim, corrupted.”.

His eye turned to the ball of writhing snake in greed. He seized it and strained as he lifted it up, the stars in the sky mirrored the movement of that fell mass. He was dragging the stars or perhaps they followed the creature. He shoved it into his empty eye socket. He shuddered, then screamed in agony, tendrils grew from his eye, making sickening squelch as they bore into his head rapidly forming a cocoon around his body... he threw the green flames that was my soul to the side..

“ That absolute soul is pure, and has no use to me. do with it what you will, servant of Herald, I am on the cusp of ascension"

A tear appeared in the sky, and he floated through. By now I was numb... there was no mushroom or psychedelics strong enough that could have taken me through this hallucinogenic trip. Maybe my state of being kept me sane, after all I had no heart , or brains, their was no hormones or electrical impulse In my brain being triggered to make me feel panic.

Could a soul go mad?

How was I still aware? I pondered, I was just a ball of ectoplasm gooey stuff after all, the lights dimmed a little as a glass covered me and a pale dwarf bottled my soul

Oh... this was who that demon was referring to, the so called “servant of Herald”.

In a moment of whim, I said, “please be gentle with me, my heart has been broken too many times".

The dwarf looked down, and said to an unknown person" this one is insane"