ONE

Dreams.

Everyone had them; aspirations for the future, goals to be completed in life, hopes for something better than they’ve got now. Everyone dreamed for that bright tomorrow; everyone, even demons.

That’s right, demons, got a problem with that? Most humans did, there was just something about demons that humans didn’t like. Was it the fact that we were stronger than them? Better looking than them? Was it because we had more charm? I think the ripping out internal organs and overall torture may have something to do with it. Apparently humans don’t like that.

Yeah, I was a demon but I was on a whole new level to the drooling, mindless drones or the psychotic human killers. So I was demon, so I occasionally relished in a little chaotic mischief every now and again, big deal, right? You burn down one village and you’re marked for life, go figure! It’s not like I let anyone die because of it, I’d had a bad day and needed to let out a little angst. Everyone needs a tantrum now and again.

No, I wasn’t like the other demons, I didn’t kill humans. Played mind games, yes. Cheated and conned them in every way possible, of course; that was the entertainment in life and my main source of income, but I didn’t kill them. Taking my clothes to the dry-cleaner every weekend was not my idea of an ideal life or good time. You could only have blood spattered over your face so many times before it became dull and nauseating. Not that I would know, I was a conman, not a murder. My dreams were bigger than that.

Much bigger than that.

My dreams were actually so much bigger that it had become the bane of my existence. They were the reason I got up in the morning, sure, but they were also the reason I’d burned down a village. The reason for all my temper tantrums, actually. They were also the reason I was where I was at the moment.

Like I’d said, I wasn’t like the other demons but more importantly no demons were like me. I didn’t hang out with my demonic colleagues so to speak, I wasn’t invited to the birthday parties or club nights filled with trickery. Let’s just leave it as I didn’t really fit it. It didn’t bother me any, it was the path I’d chosen for myself and it worked out fine, I didn’t have any problems with it.

Until I was put in a situation where I had socialize with other members of my kind.

“Arleigh!” I looked up from the bar that seemed to be exclusively for demons and monsters of a higher breed. The bar was located in a run-down part of Headquarters, the capital of Itarea. Humans didn’t come here, not unless they were tough, hunters, or stupid and arrogant as hell. This was the Nightmare part of town, here, demons ruled. It had become known as the Devil’s Keep but I was unsure if the name had been given to the neighborhood by the humans or the demons themselves. A demon walked over to where I leaned against the bar, watching the “party” before me. He’d made himself appear young, possibly late-twenties to early-thirties in human years. He was short, just over five feet, and his straight black hair reached his shoulders and covered at least one of his dark, almond-shaped eyes the color of red velvet.

“Kirin,” I nodded as he leaned beside me. We both looked out to the crowd of demons and the poor drunkard sap that had wandered into the wrong bar. He was an older man, possibly Caeldian but it was hard to tell. He stumbled from his drunken stupor while the demons around laughed at him. He was pale with fear, hands shaking, and eyes bloodshot.

“A thousand Pieces that he dies of a heart attack,” Kirin said with a grin and I shrugged.

“Two thousand that he simply faints but is then torn to shreds,” I replied dryly. Kirin grinned.

“Alright,” he replied. We were both silent as we watched the old man and the torture  of being shoved, clawed, and shouted at by the demons who I had earlier dubbed as psychotic. The old man’s breathing became heavy and he clutched his chest. Kirin nudged my shoulder and smiled triumphantly as the man fell.

“Pay up!” Kirin said and held out a hand.

“Not so fast,” I said with a smile of my own. “Look again.”

Kirin turned back to the old man who was still on the ground, breathing not as heavy as it had been. He was still alive, unfortunately, poor sap. Within seconds the psychos of the psychotics were upon him until the old man could no longer be seen.

“Damn,” Kirin grumbled as he reached into his pocket. He handed me a small velvet pouch which I shook to make sure it really held my prize. “You always win the bet.”

“And yet you keep trying,” I turned to the bar and ordered the two of us shots.

“Y’know, Arleigh, you should’ve went over there and joined in the fun,” Kirin said as he took the shot in one gulp.

“Nah, it’s not my style,” I said and followed his example. “What about you?”

“Well, you see, I’ve got nothing to prove,” he said. “You’re the black sheep of the demonic world, guy! Did you realize the place went silent when you walked in? You’re weird! Nobody here knows what to think of you, they don’t know if you’re a badass or a pansy and that may come back to bite you in the a*s someday.”

“Well aren’t you the poster child for self-esteem boosters. I’m fine, Kirin,” I said and ordered another shot. “The other demons leave me be and I do the same for them. It’s called business, Kirin, I like my privacy.”

“That excuse can only take you so far especially with that human girl you keep around,” he said. “You’re lucky I’m the only one that knows about that! If anyone else did they wouldn’t be so understanding.”

“I’m just using the human girl, I have no attachments to her,” I said and Kirin shrugged. “It’s true, Kirin!”

“Whatever,” he said. “Tomato, to-mah-to, I’m just saying that’s it’s weird!”

“What do you got for me anyway, Kirin?” I asked, changing the subject. He sighed and pulled out an envelope which he slid my way. “What is it?”

“Something about the whole First Apocalypse thing or something,” Kirin said with little interest.

“You didn’t look?” I asked suspiciously. I didn’t trust him, though, being a demon surrounded by demons, I didn’t trust anyone but this was a delicate matter. Many a creature, not just demons, would do anything to get what I held in my hands, and I mean anything, a full on massacre could occur within seconds should it have been announced in the bar. No, Kirin must’ve looked at what was in the envelope, it wouldn’t have mattered, I’d even taken that into account when I’d hired him to retrieve it.

“Nope,” he said and watched without offence as I checked the seal.

“Why not?” I asked with just as much suspicion. One couldn’t be too cautious in this world.

“Let’s just say I think it’s a waste of time,” Kirin said. “I don’t want to look like a loon too! Besides, if it does exist, you’re already way ahead of me in the research department. How long have you been-?”

“Two and a half thousand years,” I said and he whistled.

“Exactly, so, if it does exist, you’ll likely find it first and if you do, hypothetically you remember, then you won’t come and hunt me down. ‘Little Kirin helped me find this,’ you’ll say, ‘I’ll just leave him be!’”

“In those exact words?” I said.

“In those exact words,” Kirin confirmed and I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, like I said, I have no interest in legends. I prefer to create mischief in the here and now, why bother with something that may or may not have happened millions upon billions of years ago?”

“Why not?” I shrugged and smiled. I tucked the envelope under my arm and stood up. I tossed the pouch back to Kirin. “Thanks again.”

“Wait, aren’t you going to pay me?” He asked and I grinned a devilish, sharp-toothed grin.

“I just did,” he looked down at the pouch.

“B*****d,” he grumbled.

“Here’s a word of advice,” I said and put down a few ruby Pieces for the shots on the bar. “Before you take on a job maybe you should find out how much you’re going to be paid exactly.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kirin sighed as he ordered another drink. “Go back to Wonderland, would ya already?”

“As long as you promise to stick to tricks and leave the cons to the big boys,” I said and turned to the door.

 

I moved around a lot, never really settling down anywhere or setting up shop either. If someone wanted my business bad enough they’d come and find me. I’d been in this area of Itarea far too long for my taste but I had to stay until Kirin returned.

I’d picked a temporary apartment between the Devil’s Keep and the human side of Headquarters, had to keep myself open to business on both sides while I waited. If a human wanted to sell his soul then let him I say, sure a soul meant nothing to me but I knew many a demon that would pay big bucks for a human to torture.

To say that I didn’t like the finer things in life would be a lie and while I was pretty good at lying, I tried to make it a standard not to lie to myself. No, I wasn’t going to deny that I liked to be pampered or that I liked shiny things, it was all evident in the apartment. Well, more of a loft/condo type place.

It had come fully furnished with cushy white furniture, tacky rugs and wallpaper, confusing artwork and absurd sculptures. Hey, it couldn’t all be lavished. I could care less about the grotesque carpet or ludicrous decorations because while I liked the finer things, the finer things were hard to carry around. I didn’t grow attached to much but what I did grow attached to I put in a warehouse. Well, more of hide it in the warehouse. I neither wanted to pay for the space or have the things sold out from under me.

One would think that my Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous living would call for a cleaner apartment but the fact was that I was in the middle of a job. Jobs were messy.

Papers were scattered about the place, making it appear as the site of a hurricane disturbance. Every available surface was hidden under a spread of papers both ancient and modern. Some had been crumpled, some laid out neatly.

“Huh,” I muttered to myself and kicked aside a pile I knew was useless. I wasn’t the most organized of creatures, I also didn’t deny that, but I could clean up quick. I didn’t even really have to keep the papers, I had a photographic memory. You could say that my brain was the only part of me that was organized.

I placed the envelope on the table and stared at it for a second. I’d done the same thing for all the other envelopes that had been handed to me. As with every other package, it could make me or break me. It could be what I had been looking for all these years or it could be another dead end.

Dead ends never end well. You could go ask the villagers who were now refugees of a “Demon Raid” just how badly dead ends ended. I turned away from the envelope to be met with an image of myself in the large mirror over the fireplace.

I inspected myself in the glassy reflection. Most demons preferred their original forms, they were more terrifying but I’d grown pretty attached to my human form. It’d been a thousand or so years since I’d been to Abbadon, since I’d shown my demon form there. I almost forgot what it looked like but I can tell you that it was not as sexy as this one.

I was tall but some would say that I was puny. I didn’t have overly large muscles but neither was I too skinny. Where puny came from? It was a mystery to me. My hair was sandy brown, reaching just past my ears to barely brush my shoulders and my bangs were black. In the mirror I could see exhausted gray-lavender eyes, something about human forms took immense amount of energy to pursue and you had to keep up with it as though your body were actually human, otherwise you’d use all your own energy and poof! Bye, bye demon. Demons had a lot of control over their human forms, they could pick the ethnicity, hair color, eye color, height and weight but there were two things we had no control over. Our blood color and the shape of our ears.

Our blood was black, it may have been part of the reason we were christened “monsters” by humans. They’re blood was red, ours was a black sludge, go figure! Our ears were also distinctive, usually large and pointed, just as in our natural forms. I decorated my pointed ears with various shiny metals that sparkled in the apartment’s light.

I ran a tired ivory toned hand through my black bangs and over my sleepy eyes. I’d been wearing this form thin the past few weeks, committing all the information I had to memory just in case the envelope lead me to a destructive mood. I turned back to the mosaic coffee table where the envelope sat. I narrowed my eyes at it, almost as though it were mocking me when I knew that, in reality, that was impossible.

“Oh, what the hell,” I sighed and grabbed the package. I sat on the soft, white cushions of the couch, sinking deep into the fabric. “What have you got for me, little friend?”

I opened the envelope slowly but surely, taking as much time as I could, prolonging possible disappointment. I took a deep sigh after the envelope was opened, staring at the slip of ancient parchment that sat inside. I pulled it out slowly and discarded the envelop to the side, leaning back to sink further into the cushion as I kicked off my boots to rest on a stack of books and papers.

It was a very ancient form of writing from Sa’hariel, a written language that I’d taught myself over the last couple thousand years. Anything about the First Apocalypse was just that ancient. Humans had lost the legends of the First Apocalypse, which I found absolutely ironic. One would think they would keep better track of what wiped out more than half their species. Sure, many demons had forgotten too, in fact, we didn’t even have the whole legend, but we had most of it and that’s all that mattered.

No one knew for sure what the so called First Apocalypse was, not even the oldest of the demons, all we knew was that it had diminished the human population and it had opened up this world for demons. It was an object, it was a creature; the ultimate weapon or the supreme being. The First Apocalypse.

Sure, many dismissed it, actually most did and I should have probably done the same. There were actually many times in the past few hundred years that I felt I should just give up but I didn’t. Yeah, many dismissed the legends, but at the same time they would pay a fortune to get it. Not to mention the power I would get just by having it in my possession.

I read the parchment carefully, leaning forward as I read on. A grin, far more frightening than I’d done in a long time, I’m sure had the old man seen it, Kirin would have one that bet.

“Got you.”

Author's Note

Gasp! What's this?
That's right, I'm starting this story now! Yay! Now that ANWA is finished (I haven't put all the chapters up yet but I finished writing it the other day :'(.. update will be up soon)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I'm still figuring things out for it but I'll just see what people think!