Friends and Magic

Screaming, falling, and then darknesss.

I chuckled ruefully with a bloody cough from my spot on the ground. "Your move death you bitch."

Death snarled and roaring down in a burst of shadows. He recollected himself and his tendrils slowly phased in from the etheral as he snarled. They wrapped themselves around my body and neck but I felt no pain, no fear, no remorse. Only peace as I cooly stared back into his glowing eyes of hatred and contempt.

"Guess she made it then after all?" I chuckled upon noting the distinct lack of that cocky smirk he'd held mere moments ago.

"Want me to call her up on my cell for ya?" I chuckled to spite him and he growled lowly. The tendrils grew in numbers and strength and he spat in my face. He readied his claws with a sickening shlick.

"Go ahead then I dare ya." I spat blood in his face with a shit eating grin as the edges of my vision started blurring

Then he tore his way into my chest and I screamed.

Death didn't take long to finish the job. He smiled in victory when my struggling stopped and I went limp. He pulled his bloodied claws out and with my soul firmly clenched within them he held the prize up to to his eyes.

I tore his gaze away from it with a bloody gurgle when I attempted one last laugh and he looked at me with a scowl. He opened the gates to hell before running his claw up my neck.

"I'll be back for you." He whispered.

After throwing me bodily in the gates started to close but I could still hear his mocking laughter. I haplessly reached out towards him in pain but with a final resounding click the gates shut and this time a different kind of darkness claimed me as my hand fell with a soft thud.

Hell. A place a soul is meant to burn in for all eternity for their sins but what happens when most of your soul is missing?

It'd been over a decade now. A decade of pain, suffering, and physical torment all for the amusement of one being. With my soul in his possesion he decided it would be a good idea to toy with me as he waited. Most of his days were spent trying to find new ways to gut me or rip me apart. Other days he'd poison me with his powers and laugh as I lay there agonizing in pain for days, maybe weeks. Screaming as I tore open my own chest with my bare hands until I finally passed out.

Today was a different day.

"I must say I am enjoying the new you Cale." Death was in a particularly good mood for some odd reason.

I stood wheezing and coughing covered in a multitude of bloody scars and wounds that he never heal with a blank emotionless expression. He did always put my physical form back together again after our little sessions but he also always leave a memento of said occasion somewhere on my body. At first the scars and wounds were bareable but over time and countless sessions my body was under the constant struggle of just trying to keep itself put together.

Tracing the bleeding wounds gently at first he smirked upon seeing the blood on his claws and then slashed me open with mirth in his eyes. He started bellowing with laughter when I fell back and screamed in agony and wiped a mock tear away from his eye.

"Ahh I suppose you've earned this. For keeping me entertained all these years." Death concluded with a smile as he sealed the wounds close with a burning white claws.

After blowing his claw out with a sweep of his hands he opened up a portal.

"Behold Cale, its the people you've been dying to protect all these years."

The void was full of screaming and pain that came together in a horrific cacophony of suffering.

"They've been locked away while you and your little friend were evading me back on Earth. Now they exist solely as shades, mere shadows of what they once were." He licked his fangs. "Personally I find their new look quite charming."

I stared blanky into the void and he calmly walked up to me and placed a single claw in the middle of my forehead.

"Though I do suppose I'd need to give you your soul back for this to mean anything to you?"

I blinked owlishly and stared at him.

He leaned in close. "How about I give you a gift?" Summoning up a shard of my soul he held it up high.

"Meet some of your old friends Cale."

He slammed the shard into my chest and laughed again when the world disappeared in a flash of white.

I found myself in a field in the middle of nowhere. The stars were out and I lay there gazing up at them when suddenly there was a bright flash of light and an I noticed an coming from that direction in the distance.

Dusting myself off I stood up on my two feet and found myself feeling curious. I hadn't felt any sort of emotion during my stay in hell but oddly enough I didn't pause to reflect on this new devlopment and instead found myself heading in the direction of the light. The closer I got the more the light and the field starting glowing bright orange. It wasn't until I could finally see a house burning under the night sky that I understood why.

There were broken shards of glass everywhere and I found a small child lying in a bloodied broken heap softly sobbing. I approached the child and looked up to see his mother and father still in the house. They were screaming for him in anger as their flesh melted off and screamed for his blood till their final moment.

Still the kid clung on to life and took in each and every second of his parent's last moments with cries of grief and sorrow. He never did stop calling for them and it was only when a twig snapped under my foot that he stopped long enough to blindly reach for and grab onto my ankles. Shaking with grief or fear I do not know he begged me to go and save his parents.

Still I stood there emotionlessly as I looked down upon him with a cool gaze. I noted his gouged out eyes that were streaming bloody tears and just stood there quietly watching the house turn to ashes and collapse in on itself silencing his parents forever. Anthony was the kids name, and he stopped shaking only when his parents screams had echoed off into the distanc. I felt a twinge in my heart and gently picked him up off the ground but he didn't budge. He just sat there limp in my arms as the last of his tears dried off in the heat leaving behind nothing but ashes and blood.

"Can.... Can I be with them?" He croaked.

I felt something crack within my chest and a coldness unlike anything I'd experienced in hell spread. I stood there dumbfounded and confused as the pain came crashing heavily through me. The moment passed and I lost my chancethough when the kid died in my arms as the last of his crying echoed through the fields. I suddenly found myself back in the middle of an empty field yet again but this time I could recognize the bright flash followed by the sounds of a crying child in the distance.

I walked.

The years passed by and I watched soul after soul slowly succomb to madnesss and darkness. Still I forged on clinging onto what I now realized as my revived humanity.

Thank you

The kid... I still don't understand why I hadn't helped him and ever since then there'd been a growing pain in my chest.

Can I be with them?

His face and those empty eyes... I fell to my knees and held back a choked gasp as a lone tear fell unnoticed from my eyes. The faces. There were so many faces... All of them begging for me to help them

I croaked and fell over onto my side.

"I.. I don't deserve this." I whispered as the tears continued to fall.

"I don't deserve life." I whispered to my terrified self.

Suddenly I was whisked back to Death's side. He gripped me by the neck and I was hit by a sense of dejavu.

"You're damn right you don't deserve it but you want to know something funny?" He asked with a sadistic smile before the claws plunged into my chest once more.

"You don't deserve death either."

My eyes rolled back up into my head and I found myself falling. Falling and screaming before I broke the still surface of a vast ocean smothered in the darkness. With a gasp I broke the surface and ripples flowed across the murkiness as I desperately whipped my head back and forth in a panic.

"WHERE IS IT?!" Death's voice bellowed out across the expanse.

I could feel sense a niggling in the back of my head and I turned around to see a bright light appear in the distance. I calmly put out a hand towards said approaching light as it cut through the waves and it started flying towards me with renewed vigor. Just before I could grasp the shard though a clawed hand burst out from my chest and I screamed in agony.

"To think you were still holding onto this one after all these years." He chuckled. "I must say I am both impressed and disgusted by your actions Cale. I'd expected you to have given up on your own by now."

The shard growed brighter and brighter as cracks started to appear on its surface. "But I'm afraid I'll be taking this back now."

Before it could shatter completely though I grasped the shard tightly. Fighting through the pain I grit my teeth and pulled, the cracks on the shard starting to recede from my touch.

"You just don't know when to give up don't you?" Death growled.

Tendrils burst from my chest and pulled my arms back immobilizing me completely but I still fought on struggling against my bonds.

"Now then where were we?" Death pushed another clawed hand through and grasped the shard firmly. "Ahh right."

"NOOOO!" I screamed as the shard glowed blindingly bright.

Death screamed in agony as his arms were melted away by the light. The shard was on the verge of shattering now and so I desperately reached for and grasped the shard.

"No!"

Control over my body became a fight between me and Death . I could feel the control being wrestled away from as slowly bu surely a new presence took hold in my mind/. My arms went limp and the tendrils came back out of my chest as Death's bellowing laughter ran out from my mouth.

"And now to claim my prize." He reached for the shard.

"And theres nothing you can do to stop me." He taunted.

Technically he was right.

A ray of light shot down from the heavens and expelled him from my body. The entirity of my body was cleansed and I felt a warm comforting presence land down on my shoulder.

Death growled "I should've known it was going to be you two again."

I looked up in surprise at the little ball of light on my shoulder. I could feel its power coursing throughout my body and I felt like my old self again as the memories came flooding back into me.

"Sarah?" With a bestial roar Death leapt at me catching me off guard. I quickly turned back around to face him but an ominous schlick of his claws came told me it was too late.

"THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH CALE! YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE AGAIN" With a roar his claws came rushing at me but the ball of light gently shoved me out of harms reach.

Everything was gone with an explosion of light and the shard in the confusion embedded itself in my heart.

My eyes shot open and I found myself atop of a yellow mare.

"Oh.." I whispered. "My" A quiet feminine voice finished for me with a whisper.

"Ohhh no." I whispered in horror when her eyes widened and she pulled her hooves back in fear.

Almost all the wounds on my body were torn open again when I hit the ground from that small impact. I guess the explosion had done a number on me already weakening my body even substantially.

"It's not your fault." I mumbled upon seeing her teary eyed face before passing out from the blood loss.