64 Loop
+Warning! There is gore in this chapter!+
The ground shook, giving Isiah an eery feeling of being exposed. The atmosphere was not cold. In fact, it was quite warm, yet he felt a cold sweat drop in his back.
He looked around, wary of anything that prompted the ground to shake. He did not know this place, yet he knew that an earthquake signaled something wrong.
Out from a distance, Isiah could see two faint figures that floated towards him. One of the figures was broad and did not have a humanoid shape, the other was slimmer than the other, yet its limbs were strangely long.
Isiah blinked, and the two figures were suddenly in front of him. He flinched in surprise at the bluish-black color of the enormous demonic monster and the reddish-black devil with long arms.
Isiah's hairs stood on end as he gazed at the monstrous figures in front. The two conflicting auras coming from both of them only seemed to amplify the fear in Isiah's heart.
His knee-jerk reaction was to flee and never look back, but there was something inside him that prevented it. There was a sort of pride that would not allow retreat in the face of danger.
After fear came anger. He was furious that he was ever afraid of some monster in front of him. He stomped his feet in defiance, standing his ground and facing the problems in front of him.
As he stared at the two demons, a sense of familiarity overcame him. Like a flash of inspiration, Isiah saw bits and pieces of his history with them.
It was not long until he remembered everything that had transpired before he came to this place.
"You. What did you do to me?! Where am I?!"
"That does not matterrrrr."
"You are...inside....yourself."
The two demons spouted out puzzles that Isiah could not understand. He did not know that he was inside his own soul space because he never knew its existence. It was like a 4th-dimensional being describing the 4th dimension to an average human in the 3rd dimension.
Isiah could not understand the complexities of the soul space, so the demons did not bother explaining it to him.
Isiah became angrier as his questions were not answered the way he wanted to.
He looked around his surroundings, the horizon, the sky, and the black powder underneath his feet. This was like his paradise.
"Am I in a dream?"
Isiah prepared himself as he asked the question.
"No."
Isiah still could not understand his current situation, nor did he need to. All he wanted to do now was to kill the perpetrators of this occurrence.
He planned to kill the demons, which would possibly return him to reality.
He gathered the power in his hands and found it more comfortable than before. He raised his hands, and a wave of black powder raised from the ground and surrounded him like a blanket.
His capacity to channel his power seemed endless, complemented by the sea of black powder underneath his feet.
He felt more powerful than ever, like a newborn god.
He looked at the two demons and directed the surge towards them. The wave of black powder was several meters up in the air, swallowing everything in its path.
The wave quickly swallowed the demons. Isiah felt one with the wave-like it was an appendage within his body. He felt the fine and coarse sand-like powder tear through the bodies of the two demons.
He felt exhilarated at how his newfound power was so mighty that he could crush the two demons so easily.
It was a short moment of happiness until he realized that he trounced them. It felt like a script, fake and artificial. This realization was like a bucket of cold water poured on his face.
His nightmares came true as the two demons materialized out of nothing. Isiah felt the pressure from their aura build exponentially until he was forced on the ground.
His teeth chattered from the fear he felt just from feeling the aura emanating from the two demons. He looked down, trying to avoid looking directly at the two demons' bodies, afraid that he will pass out from the fear.
His head was suddenly forced up to look at them, and even closing his eyes did not work. The demons wanted him to see them in their proper form.
What he saw was abstract. How do you describe death as personified? How do you describe the force that keeps the atoms together?
Their forms mutated into strange shapes that only seemed to strike fear in his heart. In one moment, it would be as small as a fist, and another moment it would grow as large as a whole planet.
Isiah tried to run, but he was stuck in place, forced to watch the horror and abomination his mortal eyes couldn't comprehend.
Isiah's body started to convulse and constrict until he felt his arm stretched to its limits. He could feel his arms start to lose their feeling due to blood loss. His arms were brutally separated from each other.
"AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
Isiah shouted his whole lungs as blood spurted away from his body. The pain was so intolerable to the point that he wanted to pass out, yet the two demons did not allow that.
He had to watch as his body was torn apart from limb to limb without giving him the time to die. He was conscious the whole time, and he could feel every bit of pain that the two demons inflicted upon him.
It was too gruesome to even think about. Every part of his body was butchered like meat. The worst part of that was he could see everything until the very last moment that he died.
Isiah woke up to a sunny exterior in the city. Brick buildings surrounded him as colored ornaments filled the sky.
A banner was displayed on one of the buildings with a text.
"Happy 10th Birthday!"
Kids surrounded him and congratulated him; he was met with familiar smiling faces as he savored the moment.
He enjoyed this moment of spending his youth with his friends and family, away from all the problems in the world.
The sky suddenly went dark as though an intense storm was passing by. He was the only one who seemed to notice as the kids kept on playing.
Two figures came from the sky and landed next to him. It all suddenly clicked as he remembered everything that had happened.
He remembered the torture he had to endure until he died with pieces of him left on the ground. His heart stopped as he saw the abstract horrors of the two demons.
He tried to run, but he could not. The kids in the party stopped and looked at Isiah dead in the face. They watched as his body was torn apart piece by piece.
Isiah was helpless as he once again died.
He woke up again in a different memory, only to be killed grotesquely by the two demons.
This cycle repeated numerous times until something inside Isiah broke. His psyche was torn into pieces as total fear of the two demons replaced it.
Isiah woke up, and the dim light of the Dreaded Valley welcomed him. He looked around and saw that Blair and Bodt were running towards him.
"Isiah!"
"Leader!"
His two subordinates helped him back up as he tried to piece together what had transpired.
"What happened?"
Isiah looked towards Bodt, inquiring him of the events that happened when he was unconscious.
"I don't know, leader. You trapped the two demons in your domain. After a few minutes, the domain vanished and left you unconscious."
Isiah shivered at the mere mention of the two demons. His memory was blurry, and he could not remember the two demons, yet he felt fear from hearing them mentioned in a sentence.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw two distinct figures barely standing. His heart stopped as flashes of memory seemed to fill his mind.
First, he remembered the fight in the domain. Then he remembered about the black powder desert, then the birthday party, then the inauguration, and many more.
His knees buckled as he saw the two demons. His strength faded away from him, and he seemed to age a thousand years.
His two subordinates looked at him, confused at his strange behavior.
Isiah crawled away from the two demons, utterly scared out of his wits.
"D-d-demon-s!!!"
Isiah seemed to be a deranged person as fear filled his eyes. The horrors and tortures he had to face from the demons were beyond what an average human could take.
Isiah could not think of anything else besides retreat. He had to get away from the two demons as fast as he could without regard for anything.
He gathered all the strength in his legs and stood up. He stumbled his way towards Andy, who held the holy grail. The holy grail was a relic, and it was the only possible way that he could think of to get out of this mess.
Isiah snatched the holy grail away from Andy's hands. He bit his tongue and created a strange symbol on the gold plated chalice.
