Gabriel huffed, coughing up little specks of blood. Oh not again. It didn’t help that it rattled his chest. “Just—“ He growled in aggravation. “I don’t fucking care how you do it, just splatter his brains everywhere, kitty cat.” He wheezed again, coughing into his arm. He dashed back off to his house, entering his home. Gabriel noticed the warm temperature and the glowing red signals. “I need to stop activating portals to hell.” He waved his hand over the markings and they shimmered to a black. “Better.” Gabriel made it upstairs, tearing his satchel off his person. He threw it against his desk and grabbed another vial. Just as he uncapped the vial and put it to his lips, another voice spoke.
“Tsk tsk. Don’t drink that.”
Gabriel stopped looking around paranoid. Did he let another goddamn demon into his home? The first one was a mistake. But when he looked around, he spotted a cat. A cat that spoke, made unnatural expressions and had a very convincing tone. “What is with you demons pawing your way into my house!” He yelled. “I want you out! And don’t you dare think about shifting back, I don’t wanna see another demon-shaped fellow.” Gabriel screeched, and he drank the blood despite the other demon’s dismay. Black cracks formed over his left hand. All the nerves in his hand died, leaving him with no sensations.
Nyx takes days to hunt down the man, slowly creeping up on him the entire time, making the man look over his shoulder at every noise, keeping him up at night to stop the nightmares that then start visiting him in the waking world, slowly driving him insane with eldritch whisperings of foul threats and rites.
Then comes the day that Nyx has an idea.
He gives the man an ability; well, more of a semi-permanent condition.
He now existed in what humans thought was the 4th dimension.
He understood what it meant to live a life where none of the rules he used to be bound by existed. He understood principles never fully explainable.
Then. . . Nyx takes that all away again, leaving the man broken and mad, all alone in his house.
He goes back to Gabriel's place.
"So. I have news. He broke pretty quickly."
Gabriel, however, was fighting with a cat demon over the next few days his demonic overlord was gone. It was silly, a grown man fighting with a cat, but this one was beyond a stupid animal. When Gabriel went to bed, the cat would jump onto the bed, licking his paws. It would stare Gabriel down, angry that his bond with Nyx grew. The cat would follow him about, criticizing Gabriel on how he lived his life. The demon had a lot to say, but they were not a great thing to hear. At one point, he contemplated throwing himself out of a window to erase the cat's echoes from his mind. The day Nyx was done driving Kaz insane was the day Gabriel snapped. "Don't you have anything better to do than follow and mock me all day? I get it! Your ass isn't happy I am connected with a certain demon. We get over it! Nothing is going to change because I opened a portal." The cat hissed, shifting into a 7-foot demon. Gabriel swallowed harshly. "Fuck."
The door clicked open, and there was Nyx. Gabriel couldn't tell if this was a wonderful time or a bad time. All he could tell was that there was a weapon around his neck. "Great to know, Nyx. Look, I'm a little.." He paused. "Busy at the moment." The weapon around his throat was pressed in further, creating more pressure.
Nyx blinks, then laughs at the demon who had a knife pressed to Gabriel's throat.
"Nice to see you, old friend. Tell me, why do you have a knife at my servant's throat?"
The demon growled, its shadowy form flickering in the decaying light. Gabriel desperately tried to back away, but the tip of the knife lightly opened a small cut in his throat. Gabriel did not move a muscle. Today had been very awful. I am not your friend. The demon’s voice echoed around the room. But your servant opened a gateway that invited me in.
Gabriel laughed. “That wasn’t an invitation, you idiot. That wants you to call an accident. I don’t invite random demons into my home.” The knife was pushed deeper into the small cut. SILENCE! Gabriel promptly shut his mouth. But once I noticed the scent of you on him, I thought it would be better to put him down. Take his soul to where it belongs.
“Listen, I don’t have a soul. I haven’t had one for years! My parents—“ The demon snapped his fingers and soul with major cracks appearing in its hand. “I— you can’t drag my living body along with it! I don’t belong to you!” The demon hissed and drove the tip of the knife into Gabriel’s throat. Not too deep to kill him, but deep enough to shut him up. I think you have what is mine.
Nyx tilts his head curiously, but a murderous gleam appears in his eyes as he places a hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Well, I'd love to keep you here, but I have business to attend to with Gabriel. So. . ." he says, drawing his sword.
"Bye-bye."
He cuts a portal into the air and warps towards the demon, disarming it and tossing it into the portal, closing it after the demon.
"Now that that's dealt with, your other attacker has been properly broken."
Gabriel watched the demon be disarmed, then thrown into the portal. He coughed as the pressure was released from his throat. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to get a knife dug into your throat. "Oh, that's good." He croaked. "Break the entire council while you're at it. They love eradicating us." He moved to sit at his desk, trying to remotely recover from 3 major injuries in two days. "I don't know what the demon was on about." Gabriel grabbed a journal, flipped to a random page, and started to write in an old language.
Nyx shrugs.
"Later. I need rest now."
Gabriel looked up from his journal, ink dripping off the tip of his fountain pen. “Later? You don't have to do it at all. It was something called sarcasm, but I don't think you know what that is. " He growled. He wasn't writing anything important. It was a scramble of words written in Latin. Many of them devolved into gibberish. “Rest? Where the fuck are you going to possibly rest? In a cocoon on my ceiling?” Gabriel slammed the book closed. “I didn't think demons needed to rest, either. It feels more like a suggestion than a necessity.”
(Sorry, trying to figure out either how to break Gabriel further or break any number of his targets)
(That's alright. I'm personally curious how breaking Gabriel would affect his personality. Like how badly would it derail everything)
(Lol, I can derail this without breaking Gabriel, but it's funner to do it by breaking him; anyways, you'll have a response in the next hour-ish, I'm still hammering out a couple details)
(Yeah! Now we’re talking ;) Derail by derailing the main character)
(Lol)
Nyx chuckles darkly.
"I do, child, but I don't overly familiarize myself with petty human linguistics unless it helps me in the long run."
"Demons rest in a way that may seem a little. . . disturbing. Especially those of us who have ancestry linking to Ré'Lâkhab, the first dark elf, and Ûr, the Lord of Dragons. Like me."
Gabriel scowled at the demon. He hated being called that word 'child'. "How many times must I tell you? I am not a child, I am not your child." He continued with his work. His hand with the dead nerves cramped up, and he screamed in agony. It wasn't of his own or accidental doing. "I have no idea of which you speak. You speak strange words that correlate with no meaning to my life. Now go play your little game. I'll be right here when you return." Gabriel looked up, staring Nyx into his eyes.
"You are a child. You are a spoiled brat playing at being a bad guy." Nyx shrugs.
Nyx stares right back into Gabriel's eyes, crimson orbs reflecting only Gabriel's own past back at him. "Both have been names lost to most texts and works. My past is filled with the deaths of gods and universes, child. My games play into a larger goal than you could understand without me shattering your mind."
Gabriel growled, snapping the pen he worked with in half. "I am not a fucking child. I am not playing the bad guy for fun! I was forced into this position. You wouldn't understand that. People need to pay for their sins." He stood, staring at the reflections of his past mistakes, friends, family, and upbringing. It was unpleasant to see a less disheveled version of himself in the eyes of a demon. "Larger goal, you say? I am part of no one's games. I will not play into your "larger" goal. I can handle most, and your goal— it's probably not that incompressible. You've already told me parts of it."
"I understand perfectly well, thanks. I didn't just fucking decide to become a demon, I was forced to become one. And I fucking started enjoying it. Ever have to live with the fact that your mother was raped by a demon and had you unwillingly? Ever have to deal with your own mother, your own fucking family, treating you like a mistake, like a fucking animal? Ever have to learn how to withstand brutal beatings at the hands of other adults and children? Ever have to learn how to fucking hunt for your own food with powers you could barely control? Ever had the sheer pleasure of ordering everyone around you to die, and watching their corrupted souls flee their bodies, their lifeless corpses falling to the ground? Have you ever had the pleasure of shattering your own wretched mother's mind and body slowly? No? Then shut your goddamn mouth. You know nothing of true pain, until you've lived through centuries upon centuries upon centuries of brutal beatings and violence towards your person. Consider yourself fucking lucky. Because compared to what I've been through, and the thing that my own people turned me into? You are a fucking worthless brat playing around in your own sandbox of regret and despair and petty vengeance." Nyx screams.
"And everyone is a part of my game, child. Everyone is my pawn, a petty, insignificant ant just waiting to be crushed by the hand of their master. I live to cause pain and suffering. I am pain and suffering. I am Nyx, the lord of Hell itself. I fought my way to the top, killing and maiming and betraying for my own personal goal of killing the bastard that made me." they laugh, broken, mad, violent.
(Yeah, Nyx is a bit. . . broken, 😅)
Gabriel gritted his teeth, moving closer to the demon. "I don't have that experience, you're right. But I do have a right to have a grudge. Those pure little angels condemned me, tried to hang me, beat me around like a ragdoll. You're not the only one, bastard demon child." He hissed. "I've had the sheer experience of watching everyone I love die at the hand of those posers. You can't speak to me about traumatic experiences, bitch. I am like this because my species made me into this. Molded me into this!" He wrapped his hands around Nyx's throat. "I have every right to talk. I know true pain. I've lived a few centuries to know." His grip tightened. He knew he would be battered by the creature, tortured, maybe even killed… but Gabriel didn't care. He hated how Nyx spoke to him. "I may be a pawn, but I will not fall by your hand. You're my pawn. You are no lord. You're a fallen soldier. Killing me will get you nowhere toward there. I have no connections to that demon."
Nyx's eyes widen, then close.
They open again, and the world twists and bends around Gabriel, Nyx's eyes cracking like glass prisms, refracting light weirdly.
"Oh, child. . . you poor, poor arrogant child. . ." they grow in a howling chorus of rage and grief, Gabriel's hands cracking and twisting, being forced to realease his neck.
"You really, truly think to challenge ME, your MASTER? You ARROGANT fool! Killing you will do WONDERS for finding my father. Killing this entire BLASTED WORLD WILL GET ME WHAT I DESIRE! YOU WILL NOT HINDER ME, YOU POMPOUS FOOL." he screams, a now taloned, scaly hand reaching out and slamming Gabriel into the ground, the ground cracking with the force of it, the earth rumbling as Nyx's anger overflows.
"I WILL BREAK YOU, RIP YOU INTO SUCH TINY SHREDS SLOWLY, SO SLOWLY THAT YOU WILL BE BEGGING ME, SCREAMING AT ME, FOR IT TO END. I WILL SHATTER EACH AND EVERY FACET OF YOUR MIND, CRACK YOUR SPIRIT LIKE AN EGG, UNRAVEL THE VERY ESSENCE OF YOUR BEING. YOU WILL WATCH THIS ALL HAPPEN, AND I WILL MAKE SURE YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH THIS PATHETIC, UNDESIRABLE PLANE OF EXISTANCE DIE WITH YOU."
Gabriel didn't think he would gain the upper hand, no. He thought he would be put down like a rabid dog with a bullet to its head. He didn't expect his surroundings to melt and twist around him. Everything recognizable had been distorted like a wonderland. He didn't look up at the demon to know everything would reflect a broken world. Gabriel had taken everything for granted, but now he felt as if trapped in a nightmare. He screamed through his teeth as bones crack in Nyx's effort to displace Gabriel's hands. "You are not my master. You are not my original master." He hissed. The world crumbled around him. In a flash, he was slammed against the ground, gasping for a desperate breath. "Killing me will not draw your "father" closer to you. I told you, I have no connections to him." Gabriel clawed at Nyx's hands, tears pricking at his eyes. "Kill me if you dare! It'll give me relief. It will give me relief from you. TEAR ME APART. LET ME WATCH YOU KILL ME. SHATTER MY FUCKING MIND! I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY!"
Nyx howls wordlessly, a clawed hand slamming down against Gabriel's chest, all his ribs ribs cracking and shattering.
"Original master or not, I AM your master! I OWN you! You will NOT question me! By destroying this world, by destroying YOU, I shall finally draw my father out, so I may RIP OUT HIS HEART AND EAT IT." he shrieks.
"I WILL NOT KILL YOU YET. Didn't I TELL YOU what would happen, CHILD? You will cower at my feet, a DOG for me to COMMAND. When I tell you 'SIT,' you will SIT. If I command you 'STAY,' you will STAY. If I command you to 'DIE,' you WILL DIE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? YOU ARE NOTHING. WHEN I BREAK YOU, THAT IS WHEN YOU WILL WATCH EVERYTHING BURN. THEN YOU WILL DIE."
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