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Fighting my (literal) inner Demon

  The facilities of the Institution were known for a lot of things. Hectic was one of them. Usually, every part of a facility was filled with Knowledge Seekers and Enforcers, all trying to finish their tasks as quickly as possible. All this to say, seeing an entire section of a facility silent was more than unusual.

  The silence was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Three people were making their way down the empty halls. At the front was Facility Lord Werth, followed by two loyal Enforcers. He was the reason for this emptiness. As Facility Lord, it was his job to manage the day-to-day runnings of the facility. Assigning personnel so that this section would remain empty for an hour had been laughably simple.

  As Werth headed towards his goal he couldn’t help but think about the message he had received shortly after his talk with the Champion. “The Exodus shall commence in 12 hours,” the voice from the orb had said. “All necessary information has been relaid. Glory to the Engineer of Humanity.” That had been 10 hours ago. Werth’s had been preparing from then on out and now there was only one detail missing before his plan could begin.

  He and his two followers stopped in front of the communication chamber, where the first problem popped up. Two Enforcers guarded the entrance and blocked them from entering. “Halt! This room has been restricted by orders of the Administrator. Nobody is allowed to enter without authorisation.”

  Werth barely stopped the disdain from showing. It was insulting that these men would rather follow a monster than him. Despite being part of one of the greatest organisations in the world, they seemed to lack common sense. Mind Read showed, without a shadow of a doubt, that these particular Enforcers were more loyal to the Administrator than to him. Luckily there was a simple solution for this.

  The Facility Lord allowed himself a small smile before snapping his fingers. The Enforcer who had just spoken couldn’t even react before a barrage of small stones obliterated his head. His companion tried to raise his weapon but a crossbow bolt to the neck stopped that from ever becoming a reality.

  Werth casually stepped over the still-twitching body, making sure to avoid all the blood. The door to the communication room was magically sealed, but his authorisation card automatically opened it. His two underlings waited outside and made sure that nobody would interrupt him.

  The room was empty, except for the communication orb secured on a pedestal at the center. Without hesitating, Werth infused a bit of his divine essence into the device, making it light up. After a short delay, a bored voice started speaking. “Facility E4, you are requesting contact outside of the scheduled timeframe. What is the reason for this-.” The voice cut off. It was replaced by someone else, who sounded more like a construct than a real person. This voice rattled off a series of numbers and letters, which the Facility Lord committed to memory. When the code was done, the orb became inactive again.

  With nothing left to do, Werth turned around and walked out of the room. As he made his way back, the two loyalists followed close behind. Their surface thoughts reeked of excitement. As far as they knew, this was the start of a civil war, that had been long in the making. Both of them were ready to do whatever it took to gain control of this facility.

  Sadly for them, this wasn’t Werth’s plan. While Project Exodus marked the start of a civil war within the Institution, Facility E4 wouldn’t take part in it. No, Seran and this facility would go up in metaphorical flames to further the cause. Only the Facility Lord knew this. Every other loyalist who had helped him here had unknowingly signed their death warrant. Their deaths would be tragic but sacrifices had to be made.

  Darkness was everywhere. Probably, because my eyes were closed. I was sitting with crossed legs and closed eyes on the bed. The reason for this was to concentrate. After what that strange human had said, waiting was impossible. I didn’t even want to think about the wider implication of his words, other than the fact that I needed to escape. Luckily, he had given me an idea.

  “No unity was achieved.” Those had been his words. Furthermore, he had said that the important side was suppressed. Obviously, he meant the demon part of me. So, shouldn’t I try to achieve this unity? The demon had shown how powerful it was when fighting the bandits, so maybe that power would help me escape.

  I opened my eyes. That… sounded extremely dangerous and borderline stupid. It had tried to take control of this body several times and would have succeeded if not for Adam. The demon was dangerous.

  Although, it wasn’t mindless. The meeting/fight with the not-angel had shown me that the entity living inside the mindscape could be reasoned with. Did that make it more dangerous? Absolutely. But, right now I was desperate. I couldn’t escape through my powers and an unknown timer was pressing down on me.

  Before I could question myself any further, I made my decision and appeared in the mindscape. With a thought, I teleported to the top of the wall. My copies ignored me and continued working. Looking across the wasteland, I could see that nothing had changed. The wall of writhing smoke still remained, feeling as dreadful as the last time I had seen it. I knew what I had to do, but that didn’t make me feel any better. With one thought I teleported directly in front of the darkness. Tendrils of smoke reached out to me but stopped before contact.

  “Hey Adam, is what I’m about to do stupid?”

  “ADAM does not judge the intelligence behind actions.”

  I chuckled. So that was a yes. With a deep breath, which was unnecessary considering the nature of the mindscape, I took the last step.

  I felt a slight resistance, like I was walking through a thin membrane, before the smoke surrounded me. Immediately I could feel my ability to manipulate my surroundings drop. Almost like the smoke was blocking my mental essence, only allowing a trickle to reach me. This also meant that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with Adam.

  Since my visibility was practically zero, I did the only thing I could and walked forward. How did I plan to create this “unity” that the human mentioned? I had no idea. This entire operation would rely heavily on improvisation.

  Suddenly, the world around me shifted. The smoke disappeared and a ruined city surrounded me.

  As I looked around I could only imagine how it had looked in its prime. Located in a gigantic forest, where every plant was at least five times as large as in Noctus’ realm, almost all of the homes would have been built on the upper branches. However, the inhabitants wouldn’t have used the forest as just a resource. It would have been a symbiotic relationship with both give and take. A city that lived in harmony with nature.

  The fantasy quickly died as I gazed upon the wreckage of the once-beautiful place. Everything was blackened, no plant having survived what had happened here. The trees, which had once stood tall, were barren and cracked, with most having collapsed under their own weight. Of the homes, only charred wood remained. Every single surface was coated in a thin layer of ash.

  In a daze, I simply wandered through the ruins. What had happened here? Since this was the mindscape, I could assume that this place had been created in this broken state. But why? Did the demon create it? Most likely. But was it a copy of something that existed in the physical world? Maybe.

  My musing was interrupted by a growl. It resonated through the ruins and made my ears ring. If this had been the physical world, I would have blood coming out of my ears. Despite this, I didn’t stop walking towards the center of the ruins, where the sound had come from. If a scary noise was enough to stop me, I wouldn’t even have considered coming here. Finally, I rounded a gigantic tree stump and the source of the growl became clear.

  Before me was a clearing, devoid of anything resembling nature. In the past, this would have been a place to gather, maybe like a marketplace or some sort of sparing ground. Now it was a flat plane, completely covered in ash. All of these were background observations, since my eyes were immediately drawn to the being standing right at the center.

  A couple of days after I was created and still wandering the desert, I had a dream. A dream of a four-legged beast, with claws for fur, ready to eat me. Of course, I now knew that it hadn’t been a dream, but the first appearance of the demon inhabiting this body. And now I was reunited with the beast.

  It stood motionless, towering over me, and watching. At the back of my mind, something clicked. ‘That’s a wolf’. Sarvad’s memories were slowly bleeding into me and one of them was the name of a very similar creature he once fought. Standing before me was a black wolf. Of course, there were small differences, like its size and the “fur”, but the similarities were striking.

  After this rather rational thought, I started to notice some other things. The word “towering” didn’t fit in this situation. Yes, the wolf was big, its eyes being on the same level as mine. But I distinctly remembered it being huge. This realisation was followed by me noticing its injuries.

  Three purple bolts, that were the size of my arm, were sticking out of various places on its body. One in the leg, one in the shoulder, and one in the back. Even from here, I could sense Adam’s densely packed mental essence which made up the bolts. Apparently, the demon hadn’t escaped the mind war unscathed. While I couldn’t see any leaking essence, those injuries had to hurt.

  “So, ah… First off, hello,” I began speaking. The wolf/demon didn’t move. Not seeing any other option I continued talking. “Maybe I should start by introducing myself. Hello, I am Vindict, the person currently in control of this body.” I wasn’t really surprised when there was no reaction. “To be frank, the entire situation here in the mindscape is a mess. I don’t think three consciousnesses fighting in here is normal or healthy. So, we need some way to resolve this.” I took an unnecessary breath. To be honest, I had thought about this problem before. Everything about this felt so… unjust. Especially my current ‘solution’ with Sarvad.

  “The point is, Sarvad, me and you didn’t choose to be in this situation. None of us ‘deserve’ this body more than the others and fighting over it seems pointless. The only reason I am doing so well is sheer luck, which doesn’t matter when we could all die at any second.” Pause.

  “I have a proposal for you. It isn’t perfect, but it’s what we need to stay alive. Lend me your powers. With your help, I can hopefully save us from death. In exchange, we can try and share the mindscape. Not in this constant battle over space, but peacefully. You could even interact more with the physical realm, although, I am not exactly sure how we will accomplish that. Also, Sarvad will hopefully join us later down the line.” A moment of silence. “So, do you accept?”

  For a long time, the demon didn’t move. With every passing second I got more nervous. This was my best shot at not only saving us but to taking a step towards solving the myriad of internal problems.

  When the answer came, it wasn’t in words. Pressure washed over the entire field and with it came a will. I almost took a step back at the unfamiliar sensation. The demon didn’t speak but I could hear its desire. A battle of strengths. The strong would lead, while the weak followed. I wanted to argue, but I felt its resolution. Words wouldn’t convince it.

  At this realisation, I started assessing my chances. Winning by overwhelming it with mental essence wouldn’t work. Here, at the center of the demon’s power, our minds were at a standstill. Both of us would only be able to use small amounts of mental essence to influence our immediate surroundings. That made this fight very similar to one in the real world. Which meant that my chances were abysmally low. No matter how much Lilith trained me, I wouldn’t be able to match a giant wolf. It may have been injured, but it was still a giant wolf.

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  Another option was to escape. I wasn’t certain, but I gave myself good odds of pulling off an escape. However, that would leave me with no solution and the likely chance of death. But wouldn’t that be better than dying here? My thoughts returned to my first memory. The flowing river that had pulled me along. The pain of not existing. It had been a while since I had actively thought about it. Normally it just occupied a place in my subconscious.

  Suddenly, I became calm. No, I couldn’t avoid this. It was either to face my metaphoric and literal demons or to die trying. I took a step forward and covered myself in a thin layer of mental essence. There wasn’t enough for armour. The wolf growled and also took a step forward. Both of us were ready.

  We began by circling each other. Every step blew ash into the air, but none of us reacted to it. On a normal battlefield, we would both have trouble breathing, but this was the mindscape. The wolf was the first to act.

  The only reason I didn’t die right then and there was because I saw how it tensed its hind legs. That gave me just enough time to leap out of the way of its pounce mostly unharmed. And by that, I mean receiving a cut across my thigh that almost severed my leg and getting launched across the plaza. As soon as I came to a stop I tried to get up. With a wince, I realised that my injured leg radiated coldness. It quickly dissipated, but my essence storage had taken a massive hit.

  When I looked back at my opponent I was surprised that I wasn’t the only one hurt. After landing the wolf had tried to quickly turn around, but one of its legs had collapsed from underneath it. Apparently, jumping with three rods sticking out of your body wasn’t a good idea. That gave me hope. Under normal circumstances, I would have no chance against this beast. Even with all my mental essence, it would have been a challenge. But these injuries presented an opportunity. Now I just needed to figure out how to exploit it.

  With a growl, the wolf slowly stalked forward. It had had enough of this waiting game and wanted to finish the job quickly. I responded by running straight at it. The demon hadn’t expected this and its retaliation came slightly too late. I clumsily rolled under the swipe, landing uncomfortably close to biting distance. Before the jaws of death could close around me I threw out my claw toward its leg. I barely managed to touch the bolt.

  To be honest, I was hedging my bets on something happening. If I couldn’t get access to Adam’s essence then this battle was finished. Luckily I bet right. As my hand brushed against the foreign essence it reacted to my User status. In a split second, I had several options opened up to me.

  The most simple would be to agitate the essence, making it drill deeper into the wolf’s body. A brutal option that would give me the advantage in this fight. I didn’t like it, but my life was on the line. Just as I was about to do it another option opened up. One that was more to my liking, but carried with it countless risks. With less than a second before my head would be no more, I had to make a choice. And with no hesitation, I picked the second option.

  With a thought the bolt dissipated. What remained was a hole that exploded with essence. Before I could react the ruins disappeared.

  A tropical forest of giants was laid out beneath me. The trees stretched into the sky and shone in a vibrant array of colours. It was almost difficult to separate the city from the forest. Its architecture blended into the surroundings and connected a large portion of the trees. The structures didn’t look like they had been built, but more like they had grown out of the trees to house the inhabitants. The entire settlement looked less like a city and more like a giant organism.

  From my bird’s-eye perspective, I could barely make out the figures moving around down there. They may have been taller than a human, but from here they still looked like ants. I frowned. The movements didn’t look like something one would expect from a normal city. It looked a lot more ordered, more… militaristic. I squinted to get a better view. Were they wearing armour? And were those weapons? This wasn’t a normal city. It was a city ready for war.

  Abruptly I was pulled from the vision by a loud howl, which would have shattered my eardrums in the physical world. Here it only made my essence storage dip lower. With no time to grapple with what I had just seen, I analysed what had happened.

  The wolf had stumbled backwards and was twitching uncontrollably. Looking at the hole left behind by the bolt I could see that only a slight trickle of mental essence was pouring out. As I observed the wound it became obvious that it was slowly closing. The twitching was also becoming weaker, the demon seemingly regaining control of its body.

  Before my opponent could regain more power I went for the bolt sticking out of its shoulder. I dodged an errant swipe and ignored a bite that barely missed me. With a jump I managed to reach the bolt, marking the start of a new vision.

  My position above the city hadn’t changed, but this time I focused on its surroundings. The forest looked the same, except that it was covered in shadows. I looked up. Metal monstrosities filled the sky. Behemoths of shining bronze, unlike any flying creature I had ever seen, floated above the forest, surrounding the city.

  Before I had the time to process this, reality split. In front of the city, a hole in reality opened. It reminded me of the crack I had seen shortly after my creation, except the size of a castle. Through it, appeared a building-sized head. If I had a body, I would have probably fainted.

  Seeing this monstrosity, I was very happy that the demon in the mindscape only shared that thing’s appearance and not its size. Staring into the eyes of the giant wolf made another difference very clear. The eyes of my demon showed its cunning and domineering nature. The eyes of this demon only showed insanity and hate.

  Just before the vision ended, a much smaller crack in reality opened up next to me. A humanoid figure encased in golden armour stepped through it. Six glowing wings unfurled behind it and chased away the darkness. The demon growled. The figure raised its arms.

  After returning to my body, I found myself lying on my back, with several wounds that were slowly healing. If I had to guess, the demon had accidentally knocked me away during its seizure. Luckily I wasn’t the only one injured, as shown by the howling of my adversary.

  “Only one more bolt to go,” I muttered as I got up. Although, maybe nothing would happen after I dissolved all three of them. All of this was more of a gamble, based on a feeling I couldn’t place.

  Before I could attack for a third time the wolf recovered. I expected the demon to go on the offensive immediately, but instead, it stayed crouched in one place and stared me down. It looked wary of me as if it didn’t know what exactly I had done. The only movement it exhibited came from the claws on its back, which randomly grasped at the air.

  Slowly, it inched closer to me. I did the same. The demon was more cautious in its approach, but its body also moved more fluently than before. Unhindered by the bolts it would be even faster. This was demonstrated by our next couple of exchanges. Instead of charging straight at me, it settled for swiping at me anytime I got close. This cautious approach left me with no opening to go for the bolt in its back.

  I could have created a weapon for myself, but that wouldn’t have been helpful. Fighting it with a dagger would be useless, not just because of its size, but because I would have to get close. Any bigger weapon would substantially impact my mental essence, which I needed for taking hits. Moreover, I wouldn’t even know how to fight with any other weapon. ‘When I see Lilith again I need to ask her to teach me a different weapon.’

  After another couple of minutes of these exchanges, I knew that I had to do something. This was a war of attrition and I was losing. After taking some glancing blows my mental essence was at around 10%. The realisation came quickly. My only chance was one final all-or-nothing attack. Before my doubts could put a stop to this idea, I charged.

  This time the wolf expected my approach. The demon took a couple of steps backwards and readied itself. If I continued charging forward, it would bite me in two. If I tried to dodge, the claws would be ready to eviscerate me.

  Shortly before reaching biting range, I jumped. In any other situation, this would be stupid. The wolf was ready and now I couldn’t change my momentum. It would take a bite out of my torso and I would die. This would be the case in the physical world.

  I could practically feel the surprise radiating off of the wolf when a small platform appeared beneath my feet. It immediately tried to contest my use of mental essence but it didn’t work. The demon wasn’t a creature of the mind. And while I wasn’t one as well, I had the best teacher/assistant one could ever ask for.

  My foot landed on the platform and I jumped again. The wolf quickly recovered and tried to bite me. It partially worked. With a crunch, I lost control of my legs. However, the rest of my body flew over my opponent’s head and landed on its back. The claws slashed at my body, but with my last remaining strength, I touched the bolt.

  The world was on fire. I stood amid an inferno consuming the city. Screams rang out as buildings collapsed and trees toppled over. Above me, two titans clashed. Every time the demon moved reality trembled and cracks opened up. I saw one of the inhabitants getting bisected by a tear opening up inside of them. From these tears, monstrosities pulled themselves into the physical world and contributed to the carnage.

  However, these monsters weren’t uncontested. Every time one of the creatures emerged, a group of winged beings would descend from the sky and engage it in battle. They also targeted the metal behemoths in the sky, which retaliated by using a litany of different weapons. As I watched, one of these metal giants, which had bombarded its surroundings with some sort of red beam, was brought down and crashed somewhere behind the city. The ground shook and more trees collapsed. Staring at one of the winged beings, I couldn’t help but make the comparison to the not-angels. So, were these just regular angels? It didn’t matter.

  But the most chaos wasn’t caused by the angels, the metal giants, or even the demon. No, the king of this carnage was undoubtedly the creature of light. It looked like a second sun had risen into the sky and now rained flames and death onto the city. Every tree-top had caught fire from simply being near the creature and it looked like even the tears in reality were being burned away. Every time the figure pushed back the demon another part of the city collapsed.

  Suddenly, my eyes were drawn towards a small object falling from the sky. It was a claw. A very familiar claw that had been cut off of the demon. It, together with other claws of various sizes, were falling from the sky, while also damaging the fabric of reality. Most of them quickly burned up in the fire or were snatched away by the otherworldly monstrosities. However, the claw in my focus simply fell to the ground.

  As I watched, a robed figure suddenly appeared next to it. A human hand grabbed the claw and, as fast as they had appeared, vanished. All of it occurred in less than three seconds.

  As the third vision ended I realised that I was dying. Both of my legs were gone, my essence storage was empty and I couldn’t move. The demon stood a couple of paces away and just stared. All three bolt wounds had closed, leaving it unharmed. A couple of seconds passed. With every moment another small part of my body disintegrated. I could feel the wolf’s confusion. Another couple of seconds passed.

  Suddenly, the will controlling the area disappeared. Immediately my connection with Adam was reestablished. They assessed the damage, which was severe, and started sending mental essence. Bit by bit my body reassembled itself. The demon continued to keep its distance.

  When the process was finished, I took a deep breath. That had been too close. Every fibre of my being was screaming at how stupid I had been, but I just smiled. It had worked.

  I glanced at my former adversary. The wolf wasn’t calm, but at least I didn’t sense any overt aggression. When I approached it, its claws became agitated and it growled. I immediately stopped getting closer. While we weren’t friends, far from it actually, this was still an improvement. I smiled gently, trying to communicate my peaceful intention.

  “Look, what I said before the fight was true. I don’t want this to be a simple exchange. I want this to be the first step towards peaceful coexistence. Will there be problems? Of course. But we will work to fix them.”

  The wolf looked doubtful but didn’t raise any objections. With a thought, I communicated my intentions to Adam. They didn’t raise any objections, which made me a lot more confident.

  With that, I waved at the wolf to show that I had to go. After all, there had been a very pressing reason for why I went through with this ordeal. Hopefully, working together would give us a chance at surviving.

  As I opened my eyes, I immediately noticed a difference. The vision from my left eye felt a lot more detailed. Not in the way of sharper vision, but more like I could see the building blocks of reality, which made up everything. It reminded me of the time I had transmuted stone into glass in the mindscape, but more complicated. I blinked. That would take getting used to.

  Moreover, I could feel the wolf’s presence more clearly in the back of my mind. Instead of being confined to the mindscape, it could now see the world through my left eye. Its emotions were hard to parse, but I could sense that it was happy. Only time would tell if this development was good, but right now I was happy.

  Smiling, I glanced at my claw. Outwardly it hadn’t changed, but there was a new power hidden beneath the surface. With a thought, I asked the demon to lend me its power. There was some reluctance at letting me control the power, but it was trumped by the desire to affect the physical world.

  I moved my claw and reality split. A small crack had opened and increased in size as I moved the claw. Before it could get too big I deactivated the power. I had seen what could come out of these holes if they were large enough. While I didn’t understand much about the structure of reality, I knew letting these monsters into the physical world would be bad.

  Without any further hesitation, I pushed my claw into the blue barrier. Like previously, it stopped me from getting all the way through. Then I activated the power and the resistance disappeared. The runes in the frame lit up before fading out. The barrier was gone.

  I readied myself and stepped outside. Time to escape and hopefully get some answers.

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