Right there, set up in the stone floor, was a hospital bed, and a medical ventilator to its side, producing those beeping and air pumping sounds Kurt knew so well. And on this bed, and strapped to the apparatus, laid a boy of pherhaps 4 or 5 years of age. Dark hair fell onto the child’s face, as if trying-and failing- to hide his pained expression from the world. The boy’s skin was an unhealthy shade of pale, product of his continued-if necessary- imprisonment in that bed and alongside that apparatus. No one sat at the kid’s side to comfort him. Nobody cared about his plight, the boy thought. He was just a broken toy no one wanted.

  Kurt wasn’t guessing this last part. He knew well about it.

  The child’s brow furrowed for a moment, and his eyes opened. Eyes with irises of dark amber looked at Kurt.

  He knew it very well.

  Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass resonated through the void, and the image in front of Kurt exploded in a rain of multicolored shards. And then the shards reformed, and the picture they formed managed to be even worse than the previous one.

  The same child as before, this time at age seven, sitting besides a different hospital bed, and a woman lying on that bed.

  And what sorrowful image was the woman: Her once long, fair hair had long since fallen away because of the chemotherapy, and her figure, once merely slender, was now downright skeletal. And yet it was her dark amber eyes, twisted in fear and regret, what would really go on to haunt the boy.

  "Kurt." Called the woman, her voice choked with emotion, while placing a hand on the kid’s cheek. "Please forgive me."

  The boy looked at her for a moment before speaking. "M-Mom, what are you talking about?"

  "Please forgive me." She repeated. "I’ve been… such a horrible mom to you." She began tearing up. "And now I don’t have time to make up for it."

  "D-Don’t say that." said the boy. He looked scared. He didn’t know how to handle any of this. "The doctors said the operation could save your life. You… you are not gonna die."

  The woman just looked at him, her eyes telling the boy the harrowing truth she didn’t dare say out loud.

  Instead, she said. "S-Still, please forgive me for everything. So I can be at peace."

  "B-But…"

  "Kurt, please!"

  "M-Mom…"

  "I'm begging you, just say it! "

  "Okay!" yelled the boy, looking on the verge of tears. "I… I forgive you, mom."

  At this the woman seemed to relax immensely, even smiling lightly.

  "Thank you. Thank you so much." she said. "I love you and… I promise everything’ll change once… I get better."

  "Okay, Mom."

  She didn’t make it through the night.

  The image dissolved into the floor.

  "My, my, that’s a terrible mother we got ourselves here." said a voice. A voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. A disgustingly nasal voice. "Putting such a curse on her own child."

  "What is this?" Snarled the boy. "What are you playing at?!"

  "Playing? " Asked the demon."Now young man, is that a way of talking to someone that’s trying to help you?"

  "Help me?! What the fuck are you talking about?!"

  "Now, don’t get me wrong." Continued the voice, ignoring his outburst. "At first I just wanted to toy with your mind a bit, try and hurt you as much as I can before you kill me. But this? Oh boy, you are quite filled with hatred. I love it!"

  Kurt gritted his teeth. "Are you done speeching, you bird fuck?! Come here so I can kill you!"

  "Tempting offer." Snarked the demon. "But I really don’t think it’s going to be necessary. You see, I think of myself as a helper, someone that aids you silly humans to act on your true natures. To be free. And your true nature?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Another image formed. Kurt again, this time at age eleven, getting the shit beaten out of him in sword practice. It was the natural conlussion of a mere Unveiled One facing someone with genuine magical abilities. The boy lied on the ground, bruised and humilliated. He heard the people around him snicker.

  "Your rage and craving for strength are astonishing. It’s kind of a no brainer why, but still it surprises me just how deep they go. Those ‘special ones’ that surrounded you and surpassed you no matter your effort? Your-" The creature chuckled. "-family? The entire world? You craved revenge against them. To prove the worth of your existence through violence and make them all regret having ever thought you irrelevant. To have ever made you feel like a… how was it? A broken toy?"

  "You…" said Kurt, voice more dubitative than he meant. "You know nothing about me."

  "On the contrary my boy. I know you better than yourself. How much you hate to feel powerless, weaker than everyone else around you. And the lengths you’re willing to go to avoid it, to keep yourself stronger than others. Shall I remind you about the canister?"

  The canister? What was it talking about?

  And then he remembered, all the way back to that Pneuma class Blair had forced him to impart. But the demon wasn’t satisfied with just that, so it produced yet another vision.

  A long, thin cilinder made of bronze, with a small, silvery crank on one end. A failed magic tool that Blair had discarded, and that he had used to trick his class into thinking it would help them reach the first stage of Pneuma.

  "Poor kid." said the demon. "That bitch half-sister of yours. Trying to force you to give away the one thing that put you on equal standing with your peers. Trying to push you back into that hell, where you are weaker than everybody else. You had no choice. You had to do something to avoid it. It was just a desperate move, done by a scared child that received no one’s empathy."

  Kurt tensed, confused. Was it… reasuring him?

  "Why would you have to hand out YOUR hard-earned knowledge to some bastards that hadn’t earned it? They don’t deserve to be strong like you do. How have they suffered to earn it? They have fucking superpowers!"

  Yeah, Kurt thought, I didn’t have a choice. Why can’t they figure it out themselves?

  Clouds of demonic energy began floating around Kurt’s head, and from them sprouted tendrils that started to crawl into his head through his eyes and ears and nostrils. He didn’t feel it.

  "My poor child. This world hates you. You know that, right? Your mother hated you because you were sickly and useless. Anderson hates you because your whore mother had you with some other guy after she abandoned him. And your peers? Other kids at the order? Your own sisters? They hate you because you’re stronger than them through your own effort alone."

  Kurt gritted his teeth. His eyes began tearing up. More unholy power entered his skull.

  "But… there is one way out. One way for you to never feel powerless or hated ever again."

  Another illusion, this one covering the space’s floor as far as the eye reached.

  A valley of fresh, bloody corpses appeared at his feet.

  Kurts eyes scanned the corpses around him. Mr. Anderson. Blair. Abbigail.

  "Come on, boy! We both know you thought about this. Wouldn’t it feel amazing?"

  Marcus Campbell. Jason Adebayo. Galton. Conrad.

  Melalo’s head appeared besides him, sprouting from between the cadavers, and began talking. "I’m simply asking you to show them the same level of clemency they’ve shown you. Help me escape this seal. Let’s plunge this world in carnage together! Doesn’t everybody but you deserve to suffer?! Wouldn’t it finally bring peace to your heart?!"

  Another corpse. A small, pale figure laid heavenwards, pale blue eyes looking at nothing. Tears stained her cheeks. Her chest had been pierced with great force right through the sternum and her heart ripped out. Dry blood covered her chest and lower jaw. Kurt’s eyes snapped open, and the demon energy purged from his mind.

  Melalo didn’t notice.

  "Just think about it! It will be amaz-Hrrk?!"

  Kurt’s hands closed around the thing’s throat with the force of his willpower. He felt a scream vibrate his skull before realizing it came from him. The sound of breaking glass echoed around them with the force of a gale wind.

  And then everything stopped, and Kurt’s body was back in the seal.

  "What?" Murmured the boy. His hands felt empty. "W-Where am-?"

  The blunt side of a massive talon crashed against his chest, sending his body skittering through the floor before crashing against the seal’s edge. It was only his ability to use Pneuma on instinct that kept the blow from killing him.

  "You fool!" Screamed the demon, his anger greater than ever before. "Do you know what you just turned your back to?!"

  Kurt just looked at the creature with contempt. "Yes… I do."

  The demon now stood at the center of the seal. The staff and Silver Demon at its feet.

  "Humans and their damned principles." Its remaining claw started vibrating before flaring in a yellow sulphuric hue, charged with the most horrible plague the creature could muster. "I hope you can keep them intact while vomiting your own guts and I'm eating your heart!"

  And then it lunged at Kurt, all notion of self preservation forgotten, now that its foe had no means of harming it. No means, that is, that it knew of.

  Od flared across his body, and his feet stomped mightly against the stone floor, sending his form rushing towards the demon’s head. Kurt’s body crashed against the flat of the creature’s beak. Before it could react to the blow, the young warrior reached his hand and held onto its left nare like if it were a handle.

  The beast thrashed its head, and tried to stab into Kurt’s body with its flaring claw. Both angles of attack fail: The thrashing isn’t strong enough, and the wing’s morphology simply doesn’t allow for the claw to reach the demon’s face. But the beast is determined, believing that its rival can’t hurt it now that he’s lost his tools.

  So convinced was the creature of this, that it didn’t see the dark cilinder that materialized in the boy’s hand, or the red glow that came from it.

  Instant power, Kurt thought, I need something more powerful than Fireball or Blowtorch, to obliterate this fucker’s body.

  Red energy pooled around his wand.

  First, he conjured a Blowtorch, and around it a small swarm of Fireballs. Then, moved by the creativity that his hatred gave him, he wrapped the Fireballs around the core of Blowtorch, which charged them with its heat and melded them together in a vibrating, bulbous mass of destructive power that stretched forwards.

  Fire Sorcery: Inferno (Rank D spell)

  A mass of superheated, interconnected fireballs that shots forwards in a sealed cone of destructive explosions.

  Power increases with MND stat, Aetheric Attunement skill rank, Evocation skill rank and AP spent.

  A torrent of explosions blasted towards and around the demon’s torso, enveloping it in a soundless maelstrom of pressure and heat that washed over its frame.

  The thrashing stopped, replaced by a sense of fall. Both head, with Kurt still holding onto it, and wing landed simultaneously. At the very base of the demon’s neck laid a pulsating sphere of yellow flesh, towards which the shadows emanating from the wing's stump seemed to flow.

  Kurt walked towards the center of the seal, and picked both staff and sword from the floor. He pushed the staff back into his inventory before grabbing his sword in both hands.

  "What…" Came a weak voice. "What was that?"

  "A fire spell." said the boy as he approached.

  "But…how did you cast it?" said the demon. It was so confused that it almost drew sympathy. Almost. "You didn’t have your staff."

  "Slat Tighearnais." Answered the boy. "A spell that can act as a foci for other spells. It was invented after you were sealed."

  He was now standing over the core. Sword held overhead.

  "WAIT!"

  Kurt looked at the creature’s head.

  "What? What do you want?"

  "P-please forgive me. Spare my life and I'll do anything you want!"

  The boy looked down on Melalo’s head. No sympathy could be read on his face.

  "I want you to die."

  The demon was panicking now. Its head thrashed around as violently as it could which, given that it was just a head, wasn’t much. "A contract!" It yelled. "Let’s make a soul contract! If you spare me I… I'll agree to whatever terms you want, and I'll have to fulfill them no matter what!"

  Kurt looked at the creature for a moment, pondering.

  Silver Demon fell down, burrowing itself in the floor right at the core’ side. The creature released a pathetic whimper. Kurt walked up to the head, before crouching in front of its one good eye.

  "Fine." he said, glaring at his fallen enemy. "Let’s make a contract."