The amount of information that flooded into my brain was petrifying. I spasmed, mouth agape, then froze completely as the demon’s mind melded with my own. Visions seemed to flash before my eyes—seemingly random words and numbers forcing themselves into my brain.
I could feel when the traumatic, violent part of forcing two minds into the same vessel was over and the two of us could relax for a moment. Some shadowy substance, created by the demon, slithered over the stub where my right arm used to be, sealing off the wound.
We lay still for a very long while.
It spoke to me inside my head.
It didn’t startle me. Somehow I knew that it could do this. Yes, I can hear you, I thought back to it.
After some considerable silence, I said out loud: “Did you hear that?”
I sighed as I mulled this over. “I’m going to look like a mad man, randomly talking to myself on the street.”
I was apprehensive, but I agreed. It moved the edges of my mouth slowly, making strange shapes one by one, gingerly testing its limits. I grew more unsettled with each movement. It tried to force air through my vocal cords, but coughed instead.
“That’s enough. No more, no more,” I said, taking back control.
“Ugh.” I threw my hand over my eyes, feeling overstimulated. “Let’s not do that again for a bit.”
<…Ok. I’m tired anyway.>
There was a feeling of indignation coming off of it. “...are you pouting?”
The realization that I would eventually have to let this creature move me around like a marionette fully hit me. “Just…baby steps. Please. This is a lot right now.”
A strange feeling came over me.
Information was shot into my brain like a beam of light. I comprehended it all at once.
[NAME] Garreth Collman/Lesser Demon
[HP] 8/100
[MANA] 1/10
[PAIN] 3/10
[LVL] 1
[SKILLS]
Devour Suffering: (MANA: 1) reduce a target’s PAIN stat and use it to increase your own HP or MANA at a rate of 1 per sec
Shape Shadow: (MANA: 1) create any shape out of shadow. Shape must be connected to the body in some way. When shape is dissipated, gain 1 MANA.
“This is…about us?”
I picked through the information, surprised to find that I instinctively knew what each heading meant. I even knew that I would evolve every ten levels, although I wasn’t quite sure what that entailed.
“What does evolution look like?” I asked.
I hoped it was right. I didn’t want to suddenly grow horns or claws after leveling up.
I tucked my elbow underneath me and pushed myself to a sitting position. I felt my PAIN stat spike considerably.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I groaned. “Before more of your friends come along.”
I finally managed to unbuckle my breastplate and cast it aside. “We won’t survive here.”
I slid myself onto my knees and stood, wobbling as a wave of dizziness hit me. I was still in shock, obviously, but refused to let myself fall. I took a few zig-zagging steps until I reached the wall and was able to hold onto it to steady myself.
I did too. I shivered as I leaned against the cold stone wall. “Any other ideas, then?”
It stayed silent for a moment.
“No one will find us there?”
I sighed. There weren’t really any other options.
“Alright. Lead the way.”
We made our way through the winding tunnels, leaning against the wall to steady ourselves. At first, the demon would show me where to go by turning my head in the right direction, but after I expressed discomfort with that, it started to lead me by the hand instead, lifting it in the direction I needed to go.
The barracks were a series of holes in the wall evoking honeycomb. Some of them had personal items left behind by the demons, all of whom were probably dead now.
It guided me into a hole close to the ground. It wasn’t spacious enough for me to spread all the way out, and I had my knees tucked upwards a little bit, but it definitely wasn’t too tight for sleeping. There was a little bit of bedding, too. Not bad at all.
“They won’t look for you in here?”
“I’ve seen this type of structure in dungeons before. I wasn’t aware that they were barracks.”
I pointed at a small ball of dark green fabric, suspended from the ceiling by some string and glue, with some sticks poking out of it. “What’s that?”
<...that is a…good luck charm.>
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I reached up and turned it around. It had two little eyes drawn on it, and two horns protruding from the front. “...is this a doll?”
I gently tugged it, breaking the glue and bringing it down from the ceiling. “I think we’d better take it with us, then.”
<...yes. I believe we will need it.>
It was easier than I thought it would be to sleep. I thought I would have trouble, because of the pain and the unfamiliar setting, but my shock had long since worn down into exhaustion.
I was awoken by a sharp sound, sort of like a bird’s call, being beamed telepathically directly into my brain. I clutched my head and yelped.
The sound came through my head again. I could feel the demon react to it as well, as if it was perking up its ears like a dog.
We waited in silence. I couldn’t hear any signs of life. I leaned forward and peered out of the small entrance of the hole, scanning the room. There weren’t any demons in the barracks at the moment.
“What happens if they don’t find anybody?” I whispered.
A loud whoosh came through the tunnel, and all of the silvery torches lighting the room went out.
It was pitch black. I couldn’t see my hand two inches from my face. “Oh! Great! How are we going to get out when we can’t see, genius?”
<...I forgot that humans can’t see at all in the dark.>
I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance.
“But there might be living demons there, right?”
I clambered out of the hole. “We’d better hurry, then.”
The demon directed me through the pitch black tunnels. We navigated with my hand on the wall, occasionally taking it off to measure how wide the tunnel was. It got wider at the forks, so as long as we could figure out where those were, the demon could get us out.
We rounded a corner and finally saw light. I picked up the pace, breathing a sigh of relief.
At first I didn’t listen. I was too sick of wandering around the pitch blackness. I needed light.
The demon seemed to telepathically reach out, doing a frantic scan of the area.
[NAME] Lesser Demon
[HP] 100/100
[MANA] 10/10
[PAIN] 0/10
[LVL] 2
[SKILLS]
Devour Suffering: (MANA: 1) reduce a target’s PAIN stat and use it to increase your own HP or MANA at a rate of 1 per sec
Shape Shadow: (MANA: 1) create any shape out of shadow. Shape must be connected to the body in some way. When shape is dissipated, gain 1 MANA.
I jumped as the information suddenly came to me. There was another demon up ahead. We waited, concealed in the shadows. It didn’t move from its spot.
I gritted my teeth in annoyance. There was no way we would be able to sneak past in a tunnel this small.
Fine, I thought. Whatever gets us out of here alive. I nodded quickly.
Before I could do anything to protest, the shadow around my stump dissipated, leaving it bare and bleeding profusely again. I gasped, my PAIN stat increasing as the pressure the shadow was putting on the wound suddenly disappeared. The demon quickly shaped shadow around our whole body, including sealing off the stump again.
I tried to focus on my breathing. I can chew it out later, I told myself.
Later. Later. I repeated to myself.
I looked at my hands, of which I did have 2 now. The left one was controlled by me, but the right one, having none of my flesh inside, wasn’t available to me. They were both clawed, as were my feet. The demon had also generated a tail, two horns, and a strange veil-like shadow for my face, which I assumed made my eyes glow white, but did very little to my vision.
I did, eventually, put one foot in front of the other. We emerged into the silvery light of the dungeon with shaky steps. The guard noticed us and rushed forward.
my demon said quickly. It sounded slightly different, and somehow I knew it was speaking in a way that both I and the guard could hear.
The guard circled around us again. <...I am glad you are ok, comrade.>
The guard made a small chirping sound, seemingly a goodbye. I started to walk again, quicker this time, trying to get out of there as quickly as possible without arousing suspicion.
There was a prickle on the back of my neck. The guard gasped.
I broke into a sprint, but only made it a few steps. The guard shaped shadow into a hook that caught my ankle and tripped me, sending me tumbling to the ground. The impact radiated sharp pain across my shoulder, skyrocketing the stat up to an 8. I hissed, tried to stand up, and was pinned by the guard.
my demon breathed.
The guard’s tail lashed, showing its disgust. It brought us to our feet roughly.
I was in too much pain to struggle, but my right arm shot out, grabbing the guard’s neck. It choked for a single second, then shaped shadow around our whole body, pinning our arms to our sides and suspending us a few inches above the ground. The guard coughed.
“Please,” I said deliriously. “Just let me go.”
Its head whipped around. It stared at me with something like curiosity, the way a cat stares at a bug.
“Let you go?” it said with its mouth, seemingly unaware that I could hear it telepathically. “You will be lucky if you are simply served for dinner.”
I barely heard its threat. I was distracted by the fact that my demon had just used our last MANA on devour suffering when our opponent’s PAIN stat was at 0. I was confused, until our own PAIN stat started to decrease, and our MANA started ticking up.
“Don’t just sit there, get us out of here!” I snapped.
The guard cocked its head in confusion. In a flash, my demon shaped shadow into a long needle point that sprouted from our mouth and pierced its eye. It whipped its head back, spraying silvery substance onto the walls, and my demon generated a blade that grew from our chest and cut away our restraints, landing us back on the ground.
I started to turn tail and run, but the other demon reached a shadow tendril towards us blindly, grabbing at my arms and ankles, tripping me up. It flicked the silver from its eye and gave chase, bounding after us with a horrific, screeching war cry.
The surface wasn’t far. The tunnel sloped upwards, and I could soon see daylight streaming in from the end. The guard used shape shadow to extend its arms, grabbing hold of our tail. My demon responded by dissipating all the shadow around our body, leaving the guard holding nothing but air. My stump spewed another puddle of blood as my demon reformed shadow around it and siphoned off the pain into our HP.
We stumbled out into the daylight. The guard was still following. I drew my sword and, clumsily, with my non-dominant hand, swung it in the guard’s direction. It balked, taken by surprise, and my demon used the opportunity to swipe its legs out from underneath it. I slammed down on top of it, pinning it to the ground, and raised my sword, aiming for its throat.
I felt my muscles stiffen. My demon was holding my arm back, preventing me from ending the fight.
“Let go of me,” I said darkly.
“It wouldn’t give you the same mercy! Let go of my hand!”
The guard wrenched its arm free and raked its claws over my leg. We jolted in shock, my demon let go of my hand in its surprise, and I brought my sword down onto the guard’s neck, spewing cold, murky shadow all over the ground. The guard let out a guttural wail, flickered once, and disappeared from underneath us.
I wiped my blade in the grass and stood up. “The sun will set soon. Let’s go find some firewood.”
Anger started radiating off of it in blistering hot waves.
I shrugged. “Killing demons isn’t fratricide for me. It’s a Tuesday.”
It went silent for a long, long time.
I smiled to myself. I could finally enjoy some peace and quiet.