Page 48 of Chaos Demons

She nodded.

I turned. Ramsey was still with Ana, trying and failing to pull away from her.

My heart lurched, hoping this wasn’t going to be the last time I saw my beloved.

It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it be. I’d do everything in my power to stop Nari and hopefully not lose control.

Then Ramsey tore himself away from Ana and the three of us were on our way, bounding over rooftops and avoiding the zompires as we closed in on our target.

RAMSEY

It had beenpure torture tearing my lips away from Ana’s. But I had a daemon to subdue, and she had people to save. So all I could do was savored the feel of that last kiss, so desperate and passionate, as if we could somehow stop the world with the force of our love.

Her last words to me had been, “I… I can’t lose you, Ramsey, my beast of a man. Promise me you’ll return, and keep the others safe as well?”

It was a promise I knew I might not be able to keep, but still, I’d sworn to her that I’d come back and bring the others with me. Then that sizzling final kiss had burned into my soul and I’d turned away. I hadn’t looked back, because if I had, I would have stayed with her. I’d told myself she was safe, then I’d left with Fen and Grey.

Even though we’d parted, I still had a part of her with me. Her marks on me — at my nipple and the base of my cock — still thrilled me with a tinge of pain, doing their job to keep my strife and conflict at bay.

Thankfully the pain worked, ensuring my chaos was there, ready for me to call on when needed, but not threatening to overwhelm me. I’d be able to surge it into my strikes, empower my attacks, or just infuse it into my body and become a literal fighting machine. I couldn’t recall any time in my life when I’d felt this in control of my chaos. I could truly unleash all my power and not have it affect those around me. Ana was a genius to have thought of this solution and I’d be forever grateful.

The three of us stopped, perched on the I-278 overlooking the western side of the cemetery. Cars were strewn, abandoned all over the highway, indicating that the zompires must have climbed up onto the road and swept over the commuters.

The fact that there were no bodies here sickened me. It meant everyone had been killed and were now part of the undead army marching on the city. For now, though, things were quiet on the interstate. The green space below us was also calm, dotted with holes of erupted earth where the dead had risen.

We all knew where Nari was. His immense power radiated like a beacon from a lightly forested area around a church toward the southwest side of the cemetery. Grey had been using his aspect of The Hunt to mask our presence so Nari wouldn’t sense us like we were sensing him, but still, I didn’t know how much we’d gain from the element of surprise.

Grey looked at Fen. “You said he had some sort of underground lair?”

Fen scoffed. “Not a lair… though, I don’t really know for certain. It’s his home. He likes to be underground, like his charges. But I don’t think he’s in there at the moment. It doesn’t feel like he’s below ground to me.”

I agreed. He was somewhere among those trees.

“What should we expect?” Grey asked.

Fen sighed. “I honestly don’t know. The last few times Nari did this, it was just a bit of fun with a few dozen corpses, scaring the locals. This is far different. I’d say… expect the worst.”

“Which means?” I asked. “He’s the daemon of corpses, is there anything else he can control? Or are we looking at just a protective detail of undead?”

Fen shrugged. “As powerful as he is right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s able to sneak a bit of power from other related aspects. He might have control over spirits or some reach into the underworld. I don’t know.”

That wasn’t helpful.

“Then we go in hard, expecting… anything.” Grey didn’t seem happy, but we didn’t have much of a choice. “Let’s get this done.”

Fen shimmered into his wolf-man form, all claws and fangs, and I summoned my conflict and infused it into my bones, truly embodying The Lord of Strife, ready for a fight.

We all leaped away, able to launch ourselves high and far over the cemetery, and landed in front of the chapel only to find Nari casually leaning against one of the nearby trees.

He flinched when he saw us, but recovered quickly, a vicious smile contorting his features. He didn’t look like much: ashen skin drawn over a skeletal frame and messy, limp black hair. But his eyes, a sickly yellow, radiated with the power he now possessed.

“Stop this Nari, or face the consequences!” Grey shouted.

“Hellobrother,” Nari hissed at Fen. “I see you brought friends! Good. I can truly test my power.”

And before we could charge in, he snapped his fingers. Nari instantly grew into a giant, towering dozens of feet over us, and three ice giants materialized around us, surrounding our little group.

No… not ice giants… at least not living ones. He’d summoned the corpses of ice giants, well preserved, but still dead with hollows for eyes. They’d be even harder to fight. A living ice giant would feel pain and had vulnerabilities one could exploit, but a dead one would keep fighting until ripped apart entirely.

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