“Die you beast!” Felix screamed, hurdling himself toward the netherform demon creature, flail in-tow. He really didn’t have a battle strategy. Just heated, unchecked rage and fury. He would destroy the monster because he would not allow anything bad to happen to his sister ever again. “Die!” Felix’s cry might’ve sounded like desperation to the netherform demon, but to the contrary, it was confidence and passion so violent that it shook the very nerves of Felix’s calm, the stability of his voice and the rationale of his mind. This feeling flowed from his heated heart throughout his arms and legs, up his neck and into his brain. He was overrun by a consuming heat, a fire that would not be quenched until Khali was safe and the netherform evil was dealt with.
“Come and take her, if you think you can!” The creature’s voice resonated from its curled and split lips and assaulted the air around Felix in the cavern with its tone: rough and brutish were the words of the dumb spirit, spoken to give doubt to Felix’s mind. He didn’t flinch or so much and bat an eye as he faced down the creature.
Felix was upon the duo in less than moments. The netherform creature set Khali on the stoney ground and stood straight to face the oncoming attacker. The demon set its feet and flexed its body. Shards of hot red steely scaled slid through the skin-like, serpentine exterior shell of the netherform demon, which glowed with the fires of the underworld. The creature readied itself for the coming onslaught as Felix sprang into the air so as to bring a devastating downward stroke upon the evil one’s head. But even the most stalwart of defenses is no match for the strongest of battering rams.
Felix’s foot left the ground as he moved to grasp the handle of the flail—which followed him over his shoulder—, with both hands, firmly gripping his weapon as it was the neck of the villain in his hands instead. In the air, while Felix leapt at the netherform demon, he ducked forward and swung the flail, two-handed, over his shoulder and straight down upon the evil creature with all the force of his anger, his momentum, and every bit of strength he could gather. The demon knew the blow would be too much for it to bear full on, so it sidestepped with unearthly speed. However, not fast enough as the edge of Felix’s flail landed on the shoulder of the beast and tore it clean off of its hideous body.
Blood did not spurt from the hole in the beast’s body, rather, fire from inside of it with a life of its own formed a new arm identical to the first where the other once was. Netherform demons were crafted not out of human material, they did not borrow the forms of statues or the bodies of animate things to exist in the physical world. This breed of evil was formed of the very fires of the underworld: an everlasting, burning torrent of heat, blazing black and white. Felix’s eye sight began to return as his energy was spent on his first strike and he felt himself slipping out of the spirit world.
When Felix landed from his blow, which was meant to be a kill stroke, he fell hard to the stone platform and tumbled into a roll forward, the flail impeded how far he could roll away. He had never intended to miss his strike, and the landing was more an afterthought. The demon momentarily had the advantage. True, it was regenerating an arm, but Felix had the breath knocked out of him and was fighting to stand, feeling himself lapse out of the spirit world, beginning to see color and shape around him. No! This was all distraction. If he allowed his mind to lose focus he would be dead for sure. Think of Khali! That always focused him, calmed his mind.
As the netherform demon’s arm spawned from within itself, it looked down at Felix on the ground. The beast felt no pain, knew no emotions other than disdain for human existence and a select few tasteful biases.
“You pathetic human.” The nether creature snarled as wild animal. “You really thought you could beat me. Me! The great confounder, Arubix. What are you but a squishy bag of meat and bones!” The demon’s distaste was abundantly clear in his tone, which shook the wall of the red stone cave. Felix could see colors and could make out different aspects of the room. It wasn’t entirely round, there was a few large hallways of escape heading different directions. There was water above them. Not like dripping water, like a lake on the ceiling, as if he were underneath a river, but not buried in sand, simply looking up from the bottom. What a strange feeling. Felix was losing his calm and his nerves were returning with a vengeance. He froze.
“You worthless scum!” Arubix barked, his hand on his good arm gripped Felix by the shoulder and lifted his body into the air as his other arm formed into the shape of a sword and Arubix thrust it into Felix’s abdomen, laughing as the life drained from Felix’s eye. Arubix let the man go limp completely before releasing his grip on Felix’s shoulder and allowing his body to slide off the sword and hit the stoney floor, lying utterly still and silent as the grave.
Khali lay a short distance away, fighting inside her mind for consciousness. She knew she was under some kind of spell: magic she had used as a ranger for nearly a decade had taught her various trances under which she could snare a victim, but she’d never been in one herself until now. It was a frightening feeling to hear and smell, even sense everything going on around you, but be mute and blind to it all. She was paralyzed in body, but not in mind. She needed to find a way to break the spell from the inside. What was the trigger? What caused the paralysis.
“Come on, Khali. You don’t have much time!” Khali’s own voice inside her head insisted. Khali knew what she would have to do, but hated to resort to such drastic measures, even here, when her life and the life of her brother depended on it. What other choice did she have? It was not meant to be used until the greatest need, and above all, to save the human race. Was this really how she wanted to use the one ultimate gift she had to give to the world? Was this the way she would honor her father’s life long work and plan?
Could she wait? What would happen to her if she waited? If she lived through this, and that was a big ‘if’, there may never be an opportunity to use her power for good. If she held back now, Felix would surely die, if he was not already dead; and so would she in all likelihood: then where would the purpose be? It was now or never. But… James Savoor entrusted her with this gift. It was to save al mankind from the coming destruction. How could she use it to only save herself? Then again, how could she use it to save others if she was dead?
There seemed to be no options left. She had to do this. She had to resort to this final recourse no matter how much she dreaded it, what it might do, what consequences it might incur. Doom the human race and thereby destroy her one last chance at redemption. After a lifetime of evil done to mankind, Khali had really hoped her ultimate gift would be enough to save her, redeem her soul of sin by one act of true selflessness: payback. But now her soul was a good as gifted to the devil in white wrapping on a silver tray.
She was weak. She had no choice, and she hated not being able to do as she wanted. Nobody forced Khali Savoor to do anything against her bullheaded will. At least, not until now. With a huff, Khali cleansed her mind. The last thing to cross it before she went under was her final huff of desperation and defiance. “Curses.”
All went black.
