Exodius Demon

Alucard

A cool breeze flowed into my room from the open window across from my bed, bringing with it the smell of spearmint and jasmine as I sat in my bed gazing at stars. I couldn’t sleep this evening no matter how hard I tried—and it wasn’t the first time, either. Sleeping was often difficult for me, especially when I got to thinking about my mother, who I’d left behind to come here.

I was one of over three hundred magic-sensitive people living in a castle that could house two thousand, but that many probably didn’t even exist these days. It was common for people to stone magic users to death out of fear, long before the magi ever learned any form of control over their abilities. I suppose in a way I understood, because with the right teacher and the right amount of control, magic was a devastating force. But to think I had left my mother, who I loved and was all I had left in the world since my father disappeared, to become a prisoner in a place I now hated with every fiber of my being: was it really for the best?

Oh, yes, I had come willingly, but I had been deceived by the Master Magus, Argus Arcturis, and his mage hunters. He never left the castle without them, on the rare occasions when he did leave, and he often came back with at least one more person to be imprisoned here. “You’ll be with your own kind, where you won’t be judged,” he had told me. “This is the best thing for you.” The rotten, lying bastard. What was best for me about being locked up and constantly watched by his hunters?

I was a little angry with my mother, too, for encouraging me to come, but she’d been taken in by Argus’ lies just as I had, so I couldn’t feel much contempt towards her. I had no idea what had become of my mother since I had left her. Sometimes I wished I had stayed with her instead of following Argus. But had I chosen to stay, he would have performed a ritual he called annulment, which he warned me was very painful, to strip me of my magic. I had no idea whether or not it was true, and I wondered if it was part of his devious scheme to get me here.

He did let magic users leave on occasion, if they requested to do so, but he performed the annulment on all of them before he allowed them to go, sending them out the door alone and lost without a second glance. It seemed strange to me that he was so insistent about performing the annulment before he let anybody leave, but I knew nothing of such magic. I had mostly studied the basic elements such as fire, water, earth, and air, and their variations, such as water to ice.

A bird flew in through my open window and landed on the foot of the bed; its black eyes stared back at me like depthless wells. Then it flew out again, freely, despite the wards on my window that kept me in. There were powerful wards upon all the windows and doors of the castle so that nothing with magic could pass through, either in or out, without Argus’ knowledge. He could temporarily remove the wards so he could pass through the front doors whenever he wished, but nobody else knew how to do it.

The only time he ever let anyone out of the tower—and then only with him—was if he received word from the king summoning the magi to reinforce him in war. It did not bother Argus at all to do this; he gathered anyone he wished and had the hunters keep them under control, so even when they were away from the castle they couldn’t escape. The only way out then was to die for the cause of a power-hungry king and his foolish noble court, neither of which would I ever see.

“That’s not the death for me,” I mumbled into the darkness of my room. I had no desire to go to war for something I didn’t believe in, for somebody I would never meet. That’s why tonight I planned to escape; I was just waiting for my friend Merrick to come with the book he’d stolen from Argus.

Merrick was the only friend I had here, and the truest a man could have. He had arrived at the castle three days before I did, and we met when I was getting picked on by some older magi. I was a rank newcomer and still unable to use my magic at will, but Merrick could. He stepped in to help me, and while the end result wasn’t what he intended, I was still grateful that he tried.

He was, of course, less experienced than the ones picking on me, but he put up a good fight and demonstrated great control of air magic, which I later found out was his favorite. Merrick and I often spent time together through the years I spent learning what I could from the various instructors. Merrick even taught me a few tricks that I found helpful for a prank or two, and with his help they were a lot easier to do. We did everything together, right down to training each other to concentrate better when trying to cast spells. We even impressed Argus and his hunters.

Merrick knew I didn’t sleep very well most nights, and he soon started sneaking to my room to keep me company in my wakefulness for as long as he could before he had to sneak back to his own room to sleep. He really didn’t need to do it, but I appreciated it greatly. He had been there for me whenever I needed him since the day we met.

Eventually Merrick started telling me about his home when we sat up talking at night. When his parents had refused to either give him up or let him endure the annulment, the hunters took him from his family by force, not even balking at murder. Merrick had not come to the castle willingly, but he had little say in the matter. He had hopes of learning enough to someday get even with those who had killed his family.

Together we had come up with a plan to escape, but it was very risky, especially the part that involved stealing a book from Argus’ personal office. The way to take the book was to get sent to him for discipline after breaking some rule or other, which happened often enough to most people even for small infractions. Merrick and I were sent there for setting our books on fire in the middle of a lesson, then refusing to put out the flames. It was a common protest when people got tired of being stuck in the castle all the time, as we had seen. It wasn’t considered severe, but it was enough to get us sent to Argus’ office.

When we arrived we waited patiently while he lectured and scolded us. Strange as it might seem, the book we wanted was right on top of his desk; he had been reading it when we were dragged in by one of his hunters.

The minute Argus turned to look at us, Merrick knocked the book to the ground and threw several more books from the shelves on top of it, which infuriated Argus so much that he used magic to force Merrick into his seat. He warned me not to try the same thing Merrick had, or he would turn us into bugs and kill us both. Then he turned his back on us. I sneaked over and grabbed the book, giving it to Merrick to hide. He hid it using a wind spell that simply shrank the book down small enough to fit in his pocket, where he promptly tucked it. The only thing we had to worry about then was that Argus might notice the bulge in Merrick’s pocket, created by the circulating wind that was shrinking the book.

We were successful in getting the book out of the office, but before we could do anything with it we had to get into the same room together without the hunters noticing. I waited on my bed for Merrick to sneak to my room again, since that seemed so easy for him, but I wasn’t sure he would come. Earlier that day Argus had discovered the book was missing, and he was furious; but apparently we weren’t the only ones who could have taken it, luckily for us.

A sudden urgent knocking at my door snapped me out of my thoughts, and I slowly got out of bed and headed for the door. “Who is it?”

“Merrick. Let me in quickly—I think one of the hunters saw me,” he whispered anxiously, and I opened the door quickly. Merrick slipped in, the book tucked under his arm, and shut the door behind him.

“We should hurry,” he said. “I have no idea how long we have before the hunters catch us.” He set the book down on the floor. It was bound in red hard leather and the cover bore a silver rune I had never seen before; a single strap was fastened across the center of the book, holding it closed. “I found the one we should do; it should give us the ability to pass through the wards, if not actually remove them.” Merrick opened the book and rapidly flipped through the pages until he came to something that looked like a summoning ritual.

“This one—we can do this one, and then we’ll make the spirits we call break through the wards for us.” Even as he spoke, he was already drawing the circle on the pages.

Real power at last, I thought to myself, and I began to help Merrick with the circle. It was all I cared about at that moment: the power I would gain from the ritual, and being able to escape. Even if the spirits were only a temporary solution and eventually left us, still we would get out of here.

“All right. Now that the circle is done we need to draw the runes around the outside of the book, and say this chant at the same time.” He pointed to the runes on the open page and the chant under the picture. “Are you ready for this?” He looked up at me as he handed me something to write with.

“Are you joking? I can’t wait to give that liar Argus what he deserves and get out of here.” I prepared to write my share of the runes.

Merrick nodded and we began to write the runes on the floor, chanting together in almost perfect unison. As we progressed, the runes slowly began to glow in solid colors, mine a deep purple and Merrick’s red. The air grew heavy and the runes glowed more brightly the further we progressed. It was getting hard just to breathe when I suddenly felt Merrick shaking my shoulder roughly.

“Alucard, this was a bad idea. We should stop.” He sounded scared, but I didn’t even look at him. I kept writing furiously, despite his concern. I was determined to do what was necessary to escape this place, no matter what.

“Why should I? We’re so close now.”

Merrick pulled me around to look at him; there was a terrified look in his eyes, like he knew something I hadn’t yet realized. “Please, Alucard. I’m sorry to go this far and stop, but please don’t write any more.” Tears streamed down his face, and I nodded reluctantly. I was about to set down my chalk when an unseen force gripped us both and forced our hands to continue writing.

“ALUCARD! What’s happening? I can’t stop—something won’t let me!” Merrick was panicking badly behind me as the circle drew near its completion. I tugged on my own arm as hard as I could, trying to pull it away from the floor, but I couldn’t budge it.

“ALUCARD!” I could hear Merrick screaming my name over and over again as the last few runes were written. The glow in the room had become so bright that I could no longer see anything, and I had to close my eyes tightly to avoid being blinded. They were burning from the light, and still I was unable to pull my arm out of the unseen grip that held it, no matter how hard I tried.

“Foolish humans.” A voice boomed through the room, shaking the very floors. “You have opened the door. There is no turning back now.” It cackled at us tauntingly.

“Yesss, you are ourssss now,” hissed another voice.

The moment the last rune was written, an enormous pressure pushed down on me, and I felt as though I was going to be crushed. Merrick’s cries were slowly being drowned out by a screeching sound that grew louder the longer it went on.

“Merrick!” I squeaked weakly, and then everything went black.

When I woke up I was lying on my back looking up at dark clouds; the sound of thunder rumbled low in the distance. My body ached all over, as though I had fallen from a great height and somehow managed to survive. After several minutes I finally sat up and noticed almost immediately that I was situated atop a large mound of bones. I screamed at the top of my lungs, fear gripping me tightly, and suddenly my flailing hand landed on a body—not bone, but soft skin. I looked over to see Merrick lying next to me, his eyes open but expressionless.

His skin was freezing cold and very pale. I quickly checked him for a heartbeat and then for breathing, but found neither. I began to cry uncontrollably. I didn’t want to believe what my senses told me was true, and I tried to convince myself it was a dream; but it was one from which I couldn’t wake. Merrick was dead—and I had killed him by not stopping the ritual sooner. I had continued to write even after he stopped, and by doing so I had killed him. Nothing had been forcing me at that point, and it might not have been able to had I just quit when Merrick had begged me to. I had killed the only friend I’d ever known.

When I finally regained enough control of myself to stop crying, I dragged his body off the bone pile and began to dig a hole in the ground with my bare hands. It took me several hours to get it deep enough, and then I put him in it—a more proper burial for my friend than leaving him to rot on top of a pile of bones.

There was nothing left for me now, including returning to the castle. I had indeed escaped, but at the cost of someone dear to me. I began to wander, not paying any attention to my direction but just walking. I had lost everything, including hope, and I had no desire to continue living. Whatever might happen from here on, I no longer cared.

After I buried Merrick I stumbled aimlessly through the land without stopping for several days and nights. Finally my body could take no more, and fatigue took over, causing me to collapse in the dirt where I stood. All I knew about my surroundings was that I was in some kind of field. The dirt was soft although fairly dry, and the night air was almost as cold as the ground on which I lay. I was freezing and starving, with no reprieve in sight, and with a prayer that it was finally the end of my misery, I closed my eyes.

Nightmares ensued, taking over my mind and filling it with the most horrid images I had ever seen. I found myself being chased through endless darkness by Merrick’s rotten corpse, still begging me to stop writing the runes. I tried continually to escape him as well as beg for his forgiveness; he would not hear me but kept begging me to stop writing. I had no idea how long I ran, but eventually Merrick caught up with me, still pleading with me to stop.

I dropped to my knees before him in tears and begged him to forgive me for my foolishness, but he just repeated the same thing over and over again, no matter what I said. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and just as abruptly he lunged towards me and sank his teeth into my neck.

I sat up screaming and in a cold sweat. I realized at once that it had only been a dream, but the effect of it was still very present in my mind. Then I noticed I was in a bed, with a blanket over me and a pillow under my head. There was a table in the middle of the room with a few wooden plates on top, and a fireplace with a bright, roaring fire that warmed the whole place. It was a hovel, but whose I did not know. I looked around but didn’t see anyone. There appeared to be only a single small room, from what I could tell, with furniture crowded into it. One chair stood close to the table and others were gathered in a corner to one side of the bed, which was placed up against the wall. There was a stand on the other side of the bed, with a book on it.

I got out of the bed and stood up slowly; my legs felt weak and wobbly as I tried to walk forward, only to fall over. I heard a door open and close as I tried to get up off the floor.

“Hold your horses, boy. Let me help you,” said an elderly man who shuffled over to me.

I managed to get up to my hands and knees, and then the old man put a hand under my arm and was gently pulling me to my feet. He had a full, bushy white beard and wrinkles all over his visible skin, and liver spots dotted the top of his head. A thin bit of hair grew around the sides of his head, and none on top.

“You’ve been asleep for a day or two, lad. Are you hungry? I have some bread and water I can give you—it’s not much, but it’s nourishment.” The man smiled at me widely, showing that most of his teeth were missing, and those that weren’t looked as if they were rotting.

“No, let go of me!” I snatched my arm away from him, but I was too weak to stand unaided and I fell over again. “You should not have helped me, old man.” My voice was very raspy as I was deliberately rude to him.

The old man only chuckled a little to himself as he reached his hand out to me, politely offering assistance I needed. But my need didn’t stop me from weakly smacking his hand away as I tried to stand up again, only to collapse before I was even fully upright.

The old man walked over to the table and took something off of it; when he walked back over to me I saw that he had bread and a cup in his hand. He knelt down in front of me and held them out with a smile on his face, saying nothing.

I couldn’t understand where his patience came from or why he was willing to help me after what I’d done, until I realized that he didn’t know. I kept trying to get up despite my inability to to stand on my own, and the old man just stood there quietly and watched my clumsy attempts.

“Stop trying to help me. I killed somebody—now let me leave before I kill you, too,” I blurted out, and I began to sob, partly because I was still thinking of Merrick and also because I was frustrated by my weakened state.

“Lad, who could you have killed at your age? You’re only a boy. Now, calm down and eat this.” He held out the bread. “You’re safe here, lad. Don’t fret about anything for now except getting some food and water in your belly.”

Eat it and become strong—strong so I can feast upon your soul when it is most tasty. A voice that wasn’t my own was speaking inside my head. I looked around the room, confused as to what it was. I had no idea that I was hearing my demon for the first time. All I knew about the ritual Merrick and I had performed was that it had killed him; I had no idea that I’d become possessed by a demon at the same time.

Eat the food—or eat the old man, he looks tasty enough. The voice echoed again in my mind, and it began to make my head ache. Eat something, damn fool, or I shall eat you now! My head began to throb and I gripped it tightly as the voice railed at me.

“Is something wrong, lad?” the old man piped up. I grabbed the bread from his hand and ate it as fast as I could, hoping it would shut the voice up so my head would stop hurting. But it only ceased for a moment before beginning again, this time nagging at me to drink something. I snatched the cup from the man and drank as much as I could, spilling most of the water on my lap and the floor.

The old man smiled brightly. He took the cup over to the table and came back with some more bread. “Here, lad, hope this helps. You seem very hungry all of a sudden.”

I took the bread and ate it before the voice could begin again and make my head ache. When I was done eating, I flopped over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. It was made of straw, with very small holes that let in what I guessed was moonlight, since the old man had a fire lit.

“Come, lad, back to bed. In the morning we’ll see what to do with you.” He held out a hand to help me up, which I took this time, and he assisted me as I wobbled over to the bed.

I got comfortable in the bed and he wrapped the blanket around me; then I closed my eyes and soon I drifted off to sleep. More nightmares came, of Merrick and what had happened. Now I also heard the voice, which taunted me about it. The voice spoke of how it was going to consume me one day, no matter how hard I fought to resist it, and of other things I didn’t understand. The most disturbing thing it said to me was that it was a part of me now, and there was no getting rid of it.

“Alucard?” I heard a soft voice. I realized I had been lost in thought again as I stared at the fire.

“You can’t sleep again?” The voice came from the young elven girl lying on the ground a few feet away from me.

Her name was Leliana. She was a winged elf from a mountain range I once traveled to years ago on my own, several years after I had got my life on a path of some kind. Her skin was tinged with gray, rather than the pinkish color of most of her people. Her eyes were dark blue, her hair long, silky, and black, and her body was delicate and well-shaped—but only a fool would judge her by her appearance. She was one of the fiercest warriors among the people in her city, high in the Dar’Gol mountain range. She had decided to travel with me a few years ago, when I was passing through her home and something very unfortunate happened.

Leli was able to defend herself with weapons and in hand to hand combat. She also possessed some minor magical abilities, one being that she could make her wings disappear if she wished. Their size made it easy for them to get in her way, so she had learned to make them appear and disappear at will. Aside from the potential for damage to her wings if they were out at an inconvenient time, she just plain didn’t like them; she wished she didn’t have them at all, though I never knew why.

Leliana looked more like a dark elf than she did a winged elf, especially with her wings hidden; though personally I found them fascinating, I couldn’t change how she felt about them. She never told me what it was about them that she hated so much—but then, she never told me why she’d decided to follow me, either. Smugly, I imagined she found me fascinating as well—me, the monster who was trying to redeem himself by doing some good with the power I now possessed.

Before we ever left her home town I told Leliana everything about Merrick and me so she would know what I was and what she was getting into, but it didn’t deter her at all. She was the first person other than Merrick I had ever told anything about my past. I thought it would make her leave in disgust, if not try to kill me herself.

“Something bothering you?” She brought me out of my thoughts a second time.

“I can’t sleep tonight. Don’t worry about it, Leli. Get some rest—you need it.” I stared into the fire some more and thought about Merrick. Leliana felt that what had happened that fateful night wasn’t my fault—that Merrick had been just as capable of saying no as I was, and long before things ever went as far as they had. The demon within me didn’t bother her because, for the most part, I had control of it. I still heard him speak inside my mind at times, and now I knew who—or what—it was. If I didn’t use his power too much, were I to use it at all, I wouldn’t lose control of myself. I had used too much of it around Leli before, but she said somehow she’d managed to bring me back to my old self, although she never told me how she’d done it. I never remembered what was said or done when I was vying with my demon for control of my body.

Leliana and I had traveled together for a long time now and had become fairly close. We were good friends, and I found myself wishing on occasion that we could be more. But just because she was willing to travel with me didn’t mean she would ignore what I’d done to Merrick.

And even if by some miracle Leliana was willing to overlook everything that had happened between Merrick and me, she could hardly ignore the demon inside of me. That was just wishful thinking on my part; the desire to be loved was just a side effect of my guilt—as though it would give me redemption if somebody could care for me as I might care for them!

“Alucard, what is bothering you?” Leli sat up, gazing at me with her soft blue eyes.

“It’s nothing, Leli, you don’t—“

“I want to know. You can tell me, Alucard,” she interrupted quickly.

“I was just thinking about the past again, is all. It still haunts me, even after all this time; and I can’t say I don’t deserve it.”

“Alucard, what happened to you and Merrick wasn’t your fault. You were both young; you didn’t know any better, and if what you told me is true, I would have wanted to leave that place, too. As for Merrick being killed, that was unfortunate, but he was perfectly capable of saying no before you ever began the ritual.” She got up and walked over to me, then sat down and put an arm around me.

“It still isn’t something I should forget about.” I twiddled my thumbs as I stared at the hot embers that glowed a bright crimson.

“True, you shouldn’t forget it, but learn from it. And instead of torturing yourself the way you do, you should live your life to the fullest. Be the best person you can be, for both your sake and Merrick’s. I doubt he would want you to torture yourself about it for the rest of your existence.” She patted my shoulder gently.

Yes, he would. He would never forgive such a fool for robbing him of his life. The demon was inside my head, making it throb again. I shook my head lightly in an attempt to make the pain stop. You didn’t want to stop the ritual, even when he realized what was going on. You were the bigger fool! My demon taunted me in my head and the throbbing got worse.

Leliana drew me in close to her and rested her head on my shoulder quietly. “I’m just guessing, but if your demon is bothering you again, tell him I said to shut the hell up and leave you alone.” She giggled a little as she said it.

How dare she! the demon shouted in my head, and the throbbing was nearly more than I could stand. The demon tried to force my hand up to attack Leli, but I stopped him immediately. He was fighting hard to hurt her for daring to tell him to shut up. I’d been able to tell long ago, when I had first met Leli, that the demon didn’t like her.

“There, you see? That’s what makes you human despite that thing inside you, Alucard. It wants to hurt me, I can tell, but if you were really so terrible you’d be letting it. That is only one of several things that I think make you very worthwhile.” She shook me gently before getting up and going to lie back down where she originally was. She had our only pillow, which I let her keep along with one of two blankets.