Suddenly, a blade plunged its way into my thigh. I howled with pain. Mitriell laughed with amusement. His eyes grew wild, and then, he proceeded to inflict one cut after another across my whole body. My voice cracked, and fizzled out. Mitriell soon grew bored of cutting my responseless body. After about five minutes. I couldn’t see myself right now, but I could tell that there was not a single inch of my body that was not drenched in my own blood. And probably not a single inch of unharmed skin either.

“Oh…dear. We are getting tired of this aren’t we?” I only lay on the floor, watching the blood creep out of my body. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to inflict everything that he had done to Anna and Ron back on him, a hundred times over. A thousand times. I wanted him dead. I wanted him to feel the pain. I was to stuff his vile mouth full of deadly nightshade berries, and slowly watch as he realized that he was dying. Then throw his body into a pit of vipers, and listen to him scream in pain as the boiling venom of the vipers crept their way through his bloodstream, while I would temper it by applying some antivenom every couple of minutes, and kill him slowly and painfully.

“Now…let's find a better source of amusement…ah-hah!” The despicable elf closed his grubby hands around Chryssie, and shook her awake. Chryssie opened her eyes, and I could see the sharp fear that cut through her.

Her voice trembled through to me. “Mist…? Mist?” Her eyes welled with tears, and I wanted to cry with her, only I didn’t have the energy to anymore.

“Run…run! Run, Chryssie! Please…”

“Mist, help…he killed Mommy…he killed Daddy…I don’t know where they went…” Their bodies had been so mutilated beyond recognition, and for a moment, I was grateful for that.

“Mist, help! Help me…I’m scared, Mist.” Mitriell laid his long fingers on Chryssie’s cheek and softly stroked it. “Mist…please help me.”

“Oh, so your name is Mist is it? Well Mist…she needs her help! COME SAVE HER! COME ON!!”

I tried to find my way back up. I tried…but my body just wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t even make a sound anymore.

“Hmm. Looks like you need a little motivation. Have you ever seen a child’s head split open slowly, as you hit the skull repeatedly with a crude hammer? No? Then let me show you today.” Mitriel reached behind him, and picked up any random stone. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, he took it, and slammed it downward onto Chryssie’s head. A sound came out like an eggshell cracking, only there was something watery about it too.

Chryssie screamed and began to cry, her voice as loud as it could go, wailing the intense pain. Every tone wretched at my heart, and hurt me more than it had when he had cut me.

I don’t know where I found the strength to scream with her. “CHRYSSIE! CHRYSSIE! NO!” I howled a cry of anguish. “AH!”

And as if it was the key to time, everything stopped. Nothing moved. Color faded. The sound was emptied. The world quieted, and faded away before me.

I don’t know how long I lay like that, listening to that deafening silence. That pure emptiness. And then it came to me. I wasn’t dead. Nothing was moving.

Who was it? Who had stopped it? I tried to get up, and found that I could. I rose, and I saw my bloodied, battered body underneath me. It was as if my skin had come in red, not the pale peach it was supposed to be. My slightly long black hair was like a tassel that had been dipped, then mussed up in a well of red paint. My robes might as well have been the dirtiest rags possible.

Oh my god. Chryssie. Chryssie. I saw that her perfect, angel-like face like me, had been dyed red. And there was a crater on her crown. The center had a hole, where I could see the glint of gray matter beneath it, and it was absolutely pouring blood. I fell to my knees, and gasped, and retched, and finally broke out in sobs. Why…why was I like a curse? Why was it wherever that I went, carnage and destruction followed? Why?

And at that moment I knew.

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you are. As long as you heal her, and make him die…I don't care what you do to me!”

A strange sigh seemed to come resounding through my ears. I whirled around to find a strange figure behind me. He looked like an elf from afar. But as I approached him, I could clearly see the circlet of horns that sprouted out of his crown. His body was covered by torn bat wings and over that a coat of black smog, and under his feet was a trail of bones and blood. The strange figure opened his eyes, and bared his sharpened teeth at me. “You have come here, at long last. The man unfurled his bat wings and I could see what he was for the first time. His eyes were a deep blood red, and he was crowned with black horns and clothed with gleaming black scales. The skin that showed out was scarlet and covered in strange black markings that were hypnotic. From the waist down, he had a goat’s legs, and where his hooves should have been, were six talons. His tail stretched out behind him and brandished its wicked point at the end.

“Did you stop it?” I asked.

The strange figure grinned. “Yes. I stopped it.”

“Can you kill him…and heal her?!” I ran up to him, and tried to grab his shoulders. The figure blinked out of existence and then reappeared behind me.

“You wanted to know who I am.”

“I don’t care. Just heal her! And then kill him!” I screamed.

The man grinned even wider, showing his jagged teeth. “I have a price. “

“Name it. As long as it’s within my power.”

The man leaned closer to me. “I am Deseray. Or I was. By the way, I have to thank you and your friends for killing him. A long time ago, the Solarian Gods decided to seal me away. Within the egg of a Dragon to hatch in four thousand years. I had challenged their authority, you see. I was one of them. But then…when the ones that I knew started dying as well…and there were no reparations…I chose to become…this.”

The man fanned his wings. A searing blast of something that smelled of rot and blood blasted my nostrils.

“And so Deseray came to be. I lay within him, sealed in the body of the dragon for another thousand years. And you have finally set me free. Firstly by slaying Deseray. And now by reviving my slumbering spirit. Your anger, your bloodlust, your hatred has given me rise anew.” And I thank you, little friend.”

The man flapped his wings again, and he lifted off the ground. “Here is the world at your heart. And here, I am free to exist, though my true body is somewhere in the metaphysical parallel to this world.”

“And we are free to make our exchange. For reviving me, I give you a present: I shall revive the girl. Now. to kill the man. I can give my power to you, and you can use it to kill him. You will be unstoppable! Your power will be immense. None will stand in your way. Much less this useless Fae thing.”

I stepped backwards. I realized I was dealing with being older than anything, perhaps the world itself. “Who…who are you…?”

The man grinned and rose higher into the air. “I WAS LUCIFER, BUT I DEFIED THE SO CALLED LORD AND GOD…I AM SATAN, I AM ANTICHRIST, I AM THE FATHER OF LIES, OF UNFAITH. I AM EVIL INCARNATE. I AM THE DEVIL. AND YOU, MORTAL, WILL DO BUSINESS WITH ME. I WILL GRANT YOUR DEEPEST DESIRE…IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR SOUL.”

Solarian faith believes in the existence of the Lord of light. The Lord created all. And there were angels under him that fell. I thought it was all just myths…but it was true.

“Half. Half my soul.” I looked up at the glowering demon, and said slowly. “I need to take care of Chryssie. I can’t lose everything yet.”

The Devil looked at me for a long moment. A trickle of sweat rolled its way down my forehead. He then grinned manically and burst out in a fit of laughter.

“I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! A MORTAL, BARGAINING WITH ME! VERY WELL, MORTAL. HALF YOUR SOUL. THOUGH THIS WILL NOT BE YOUR LAST TIME BARGAINING WITH ME. MARK MY WORDS! WHEN YOU NEED ME AGAIN, YOU NEED ONLY SPEAK OUT MY NAME.”

The Devil pointed at me with one scarlet finger tipped by an obsidian talon, and hissed with delight. Suddenly, I felt an irresistible draw to the me back on the ground. The black and white world around me faded, and time, started again.