note: first part has descriptions of gore, strong implications of a character dying
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Every living thing wants. They are full of want. The honeysuckle withers from the want of water, birds who ruffle their feathers want to soar in the air, rabbits in the meadow want to live yet another day. The heart wants, yearns for connections.
And a boy from a distant realm wants a second chance.
A divine being loomed above a battered body on the ground. Its lips parted into a wicked grin, the inside of their mouth red like blood. Their amber eyes filled the boy's vision. His limbs were sore, a little piece of his own flesh stuck to the cheekbone of the seraph that stared down upon him cruelly.
He was breathing in the scent of his own blood, his own dying body. He felt excruciating pain across his back, his teeth aching, his nails digging into the palms of his hands. Why? What did he do to deserve this? His vision swam like shaken bedsheets, colors swirling in places they shouldn't be. The sky was green, the mud red. Was his blood always this blue?
He lifted his heavy head, meeting the eyes of the holy being that loomed above him, and he saw his own blood - orange? No, red, his blood was red - spattered on its face. He tried to crawl towards it, his belly scraping across the ground. Wet mud stuck to the linen on his chest, soaking through to touch his stomach. The grit that mingled with the dirt streaked across his face. He tried to strangle out a cry, but he only bit his tongue clumsily. Iron filled his mouth.
He felt a new warmth on his back, almost indistinguishable from the searing pain he felt. The thing above him rose its open palm towards him, as though it were to bless him. heat surged towards him, turning the air around his face thick and stifling.
"No," he croaked out, too weak to shriek anymore. The pain was slowly gnawing away at his consciousness. "No, let me stay," He pleaded, his fingers clawing at the ground, peeling grass from the ground, his nails leaving gashes in the sodden earth and his hands stained with mud. His back was shreds of skin hanging onto organ meat and bones. Black-red sludge seeped out from his mouth, pooled around his body and fed the earth.
Gray matter seeped into the ground; his blood gave its rich nourishment to the roots of the earth, returning to the terrain where it belonged. Returning to something deeper beneath the crust of the earth, returning to something on the opposite side of the sky. Returning to something the opposite of Heaven.
He was only a young man, barely old enough to start exploring the world. He was on a small adventure until he collapsed into the cave of something dark that should've been destroyed eons ago. His blood since then was tinged with an evil plague. He was found by a wandering nomad that must've seen the way he went almost berserk from what was coursing in his veins. He was found by a holy being with gyrating wings and the so-called righteous hand of God. He was rejected from his mortal life, to be put out of his "misery," just to live one where he was a creature whose legends said he bore talons and horns. One with blunt molars, and one with fangs.
He only saw the red behind his eyelids before everything went dark.
(12/17/1342)
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He awoke in a tall man's body, sprawled on the ground. His body felt foreign, with muscles he didn't recognize. He glanced down at his hands, which were large and sprawling but seemingly normal, except his fingertips were tainted black and his nails were talons, long and sharp. His teeth were pointed and honed to a point.
He had no recollection of his past, except for a burning hatred that seemed to settle in the heart of his chest. He reached to clutch the shirt on his chest, only to find remnants of cloth hanging by mere threads on his shoulders. Fragments of images slowly passed through his head, but he could only grasp onto an image of bright white light blinding him, with his dirtied hand held up trying to shield himself from the glare before those images dissipated like smoke.
He had no name that he knew of. He must make one for himself. And so he did, in this new realm he found himself in.
He would lead astray countless men, women, those in between and those undecided towards certain death, his icy blue glare pulling them in like opposite poles. That kind of icy blue that changed like water, from the pale shores of a beach to the darkest depths of the arctic. To his victims, it was a smoldering desire; but to him, it was a cheap imitation of lovers. Lips pressed to lips, hands around throat, and claws digging into supple skin. Arms splayed useless and akimbo across hotel sheets.
They never would've expected it. Claws teared into flesh right as his victims sank within the comfort of the solid beneath them - whether it'd be ground or bed, eyes glazing over with death. Ayther merely watched as their body would twitch and struggle, clawing at the gash in their neck, ruby-red blood seeping out and spit frothed at their lips. Their eyes were bloodshot and wide, their weeping and struggling groans causing bubbles of crimson sludge to burst at their throat. And then, they would finally settle. Those sharp talons dug into their chest and ripped out their soul. He would press it against his lips and ingest their mortality.
Every living thing wants. They only wanted to be loved for a night.
Ayther dipped his cigarette into the candle flame on the table beside him, the tip igniting as he sucked in a breath of smoke. He licked the blood from his fingers before leaving the body to be found by some poor civilian workers.
Ayther was a demon. But demons are demons, no matter how much they'd try to be good, no matter how much they just wanted a new start in life. Because nevertheless, people will always point stakes at their hearts. It wasn't like Ayther had much of a choice, except to feed on spirits. Demons are savages, as per the monolith of legends say. Demons don't deserve second chances, carried hushed whispers. They were legends though, twisted words that retold great epics and the dangers of mankind.
Ayther was a demon who wanted a second chance.
Of course, he was never able to attain one. Not with his black-stricken fingers and claws.
