Demon Anomaly System

Chapter 11: Layers

Charon raised the lantern a little higher.

"So, I will help you leave."

"Leave?"

The word hit harder than it should have.

The imp had never considered it. He'd seen green fields in his dreams. Creatures that looked whole. Healed. Not born from gore and sin.

But he thought those places were somewhere in Hell. He thought he just had to find them. Now, something deeper stirred.

Leaving Hell meant there was more. Much more.

And then, just as fast, it collapsed. Suspicion clawed up from his gut.

"Why help me? I'm just an imp."

Charon laughed again.

The sound made the little demon grab his tail. Squeezed it hard, grounding himself in the feeling. That envy returned, thick and twisting.

"Twice now, you have made me laugh. Just an imp?"

He held the lantern over the blood waters. The light concentrated, focused. And below it, the surface began to shift.

"I told you. You wear death like a cloak."

The imp stared as the blood moved. It rose. Lifted from the surface in thick streams, pulling itself together... condensing, forming shapes.

Him. It was forming into the imp.

He watched himself crawl and bite and tear through his swarm. Watched his own teeth sink into flesh. It wasn't just memory, it felt like he was there again.

For a moment, he almost cheered for himself.

"Your kind is not meant to be by themselves. That alone makes you... different."

He watched himself wrestle atop the swelling boil. Watched it burst, hundreds of his kin shrieking, dissolving, returned to the blood ocean below.

He leaned forward, claws digging deep into his tail without realizing it, eyes locked on the image of himself flying through the air.

Feeding. Fighting. Surviving.

"But here, this was where you were truly meant to die. But as we both can see...you did not."

The vision shifted to the club-wielding imp. The swarm of Scorch Gnats. 

He watched with envy and jealousy as his blood image consumed the corpse, unknowingly along with the system. 

His first want.

Then nothing. The blood stilled. Splashing back into the ocean like it had never moved.

He almost looked back toward Charon's face, but stopped himself.

"Pretty. But I still don't understand. Why? What do you want from me?"

"There is more to your cloak of death, but if it makes you feel better, then yes, that is part of it. At some point, I will expect the favor to be returned."

A pause. Then...

"But the real answer? I'm bored. And you… you seem like something that might change that. That is all."

That answer twisted something in the imp's gut. It wasn't the words. It was how simple they were.

"What kind of favor?"

"One that cannot be refused. That is all I will tell you. Do you accept? Or shall I return you to where I found you?"

'Where he found me! The bead...!'

He quickly glanced down at himself, bracing for something. Then exhaled. His body was healed and looked unchanged. No extra limbs, no different from before.

He'd read what Soul Corruption could do. Mutations, uncontrolled and permanent. But he was glad to see that everything was normal. All limbs and scars accounted for.

What he didn't see were the two small nubs beginning to push from his shoulder blades.

He sat back down.

"I don't want to go back and starve. So I agree. But... where do I go? I've never left before."

If the imp had looked up...

If Charon had a face...

He would've seen him smile, slow and warm.

"You need to go to Earth. Where the humans rule."

Earth.

The word hit him like a nail through his skull. Images, words, sounds, disjointed pieces of knowledge suddenly clicked into place.

Cities. Execution. Laughter. Disease. Rain. Life... Green.

"Humans..."

Drool slipped from his mouth. His claws twitched. Hunger itched through his bones.

Charon's unseen smile deepened.

"I will still take you to the passage I mentioned. But you will need this."

Charon raised his lantern, and light burst from it, flooding the space in every direction. Then, just as fast, it collapsed inward. Drawn to a single point.

The imp's feet.

He scrambled. Tried to move them, but the light followed. He tried crawling, no use. The light climbed up, reaching his crotch, crawling up his chest, until it stopped at his forehead.

"This might hurt."

It did. 

The imp went stiff. Body locking, jaw clenched. Another flood of images tore into his skull.

But this time, it was all Hell.

It started at a dark shoreline, where blood lapped against stone. Where the boat was headed. There, a path revealed itself. A slope of stone winding upward, slick with marrow and oil.

The vision dragged him along it. Upward. Through a passage that cut back up through the Maw, rising through the veins of Hell. Until he reached the Flesh Fields. The ones that never stopped growing.

He hovered above them, watching imps feed on the meat that pulsed from the ground. They gorged themselves without end, snapping at one another, ripping limbs off slower kin.

The vision kept moving. Over the hills of ash, over the mountains of skulls. Then it stopped. 

A fortress. Black stone, shaped like jagged ribs. A structure built for pain. Its walls were alive. Lined with Imps. Their flesh peeled, screaming into the wind. Hung like trophies, like warnings.

At the center of it all, a formation of stone. Oval and massive. Embedded into the ground like a buried eye.

The vision burned it into him.

That shape.

That place.

And one word, carved into his skull. Gate.

It all vanished the moment he collapsed into the boat. His breath came ragged. His skin soaked in foul-smelling sweat.

And beneath it all, anger.

Everything hurt, and he was getting tired of it.

"What was that?"

Holding his head, he forced himself upright. Stumbled to the boat's edge. He dipped his claw, scooped up a handful of blood, and took a drink.

He swished. Spit it back out.

Still bitter. Still hungry.

"That was where you need to go. You have three days. On the third day, the strongest demon there will perform a ritual, one that opens a gate. If you can reach it, that gate will take you to Earth."

"Three days?"

 The imp scowled.

 "It looked far."

"It is. And if you fail, your chances will end there. You will most likely die, consumed back into the Maw."

Gulp.

The thought curled in his gut. Another impossible task. More possible death.

He clenched his claws.

"You can't just send me there? I swear I'll—"

"I cannot. Not now. My reach means little outside the Heart."

"Heart? What heart?"

His stomach growled before Charon answered.

"The Heart of the Maw. This ocean of blood and meat. It is the Maw's core, part of what fuels the spawning of your kind."

The imp blinked, then spat into the water. He didn't have the ability to piss. But he understood the concept, and wished he could.

"Appropriate. You should never forget your origins. But do not look back fondly. You were nothing before. Do not forget that."

The imp frowned. He couldn't see Charon's face. Couldn't tell if he was being mocked or warned. But it didn't matter. Either way, the truth stuck.

He would never forget.

Never.

Charon nodded once, slow. The still purple light beneath his hood stirred, just a flicker, like breath on glass.

They traveled in silence after that. Only the sound of thick crimson lapping against the sides of the boat.

The imp had questions. Dozens. But his mind was elsewhere, sorting through the flood of images and names now etched into his skull.

Earth.

Humans.

Even now, the thought made him drool. The word alone sent a shiver up his spine. It was deeper than hunger.

He had found a strong, new want.

"We have arrived."

The voice snapped him out of it. He turned, expecting a shoreline, but what he saw left a empty feeling in his gut.

"What is that?"

"The shore. What else would it be?"

It didn't match the image in his head. There was a rock shelf. Blood crashed up against it, painting the stone red. But that was it. Nothing beyond it. No cliffs, no caverns, just a narrow strip of land.

And behind it? Only darkness. Pure. Hollow, and endless. One even his Dark Vision couldn't peer into.

"If you had come here alone, and stepped into that blackness... not even a god could have saved you."

The imp stared.

"That is where even death can die."

Charon paused. Then added...

"Purgatory."

The imp's stomach twisted again. That was where he was going? Something didn't add up.

"How am I supposed to cross that?!"

"Silly poxling. Do you think I brought you here without knowing the way? I am the Guide. All paths are known to me."

The boat slowed, and Charon raised his lantern, light flaring. And when it touched the wall of darkness ahead, it didn't bounce off, it peeled. A section of the black fizzled, warped, and hissed. Then it opened.

A narrow slit carved into the void itself. The passage. The same one he'd seen in the vision. His way forward.

The imp stared, frozen.

Then Charon spoke again.

"You will need something else to help you. Take these."

The imp turned.

Charon stood with both arms extended. In his hands, the two cleavers. The same ones he'd seen held above the altar, above the bead of blood.