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The muscles of my calves ached in protest beneath me, barely able to stand. The wounds I had accrued over the course of a day of arcane assaults howled with fresh pain. None of it mattered. The only things that mattered were the shadow-streaked crimson eyes that filled my vision. The eyes that, even now, burned only with hatred and contempt, without a shred of sympathy or regret. The eyes of a monster I had once called my sister. "You wanted to open a gate to Hell, Lhradrul," I declared, my voice steady and cold, the burning anger replaced by remorse I could not hide, "And that's exactly what I'm going to give you." After one more determined push, I released her palms, letting gravity take over as her balance abandoned her, casting her backward into the center of the glowing circle. The smoke that had filled the room was now pouring back toward the gateway from whence it came, drawn downward by a cyclone that stretched from floor to ceiling. Lhradrul laid at the center of the dark maelstrom, too stunned to even scream. The black mist consolidated itself into a stain of inky blackness before me, slowly flowing into a vaguely anthropomorphic shape that loomed menacingly over my sister, staring down at her with pinpoints of malefic ruby light that hovered within the formless smog I assumed to be its head. Lhradrul's mouth opened wide in a scream that never came, as coiling smoke immediately began to pour in through the orifice, choking back any sound from escaping. Tendrils of ashen haze similarly began to curl up into her nose, and even flood her tapering ears. My sister's mouth and eyes both remained wider than I thought was possible, and her body began to convulse, her back describing an impossible arch as if her chest was being lifted by the fumes that filled her lungs. The body of my sister began to lift into the air, as though an invisible hand rested on her back, raising her toward the ceiling in presentation. As the last of the mist drained into her limp form, the remaining vestiges of color drained from her eyes, replaced by inviolable gloom. The summoning circle dimmed until only the outline on the floor shone at all, then flared up with blinding intensity, obscuring Lhradrul inside a pillar of infernal luminescence. Trapped within the shaft of fiery light, her body pitched forward suddenly, wracked with convulsions that caused her limbs to flail madly like a marionette under the direction of a maniac. An ear-splitting howl echoed through the room as I lost sight of her completely in the hellish column of flames, blinded by the intense light that was so rare to see in drowish lands. The spots faded slowly from my eyes, leaving me first with a tunnel of vision directly ahead fringed entirely by formless white color. The blaze was gone, leaving in its wake a mass of shadow given flesh, a man-shaped entity of darkness whose boundaries were defined only by an aura of roaring, smokeless crimson fire. A shimmer came from the gem-like points of life I had earlier beheld in the fathomless depths of the demon's head as it took in its surroundings. |
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