The transformation from man to demon happened in an instant. One moment, Seed’s grey eyes were fixed on me, filled with annoyance and anger that his will was about to be suppressed, and the next, they flickered and turned a sickly yellow, the color of bile.
With these wrong eyes fixed on me, tentacles erupted from his mouth with a wet, tearing sound, and the body of the old man began to stretch, until his head was lost in the darkness above, and I could only see the glow of the yellow eyes.
And then laughter that was thick with the pleasure of taking control... this damned demon relished the moment it took charge of the body of the Sovereign.
"Ah, there you are, little mage. I was wondering when you would come out to play. You’ve been hiding from me, haven’t you? Running through my house, touching my things, speaking to my prisoner." The yellow eyes seemed to be drinking in the sight of me, and I felt the weight of the demon’s attention settle on my soul. "That was rude, you know. Very rude. I had to wait for so long to taste you again, and you’ve been making me wait."
And the one reason I hated fighting against something at the Sovereign level began to happen as darkness flooded around me and began to press against my skin, almost drilling into my channels, and if I tried to fight back, it would be many times harder to fight back against this suppression.
With the amount of power in my channels, I still had the capability to run. I could have activated Stormstep and fled back through the passage, and maybe thrown a shot or two at the demon. But I was tired of running. After all that I had learned, I wanted to ruminate on everything, but more importantly, while Seed seemed to have struck a deal with me, I could not be entirely sure of his intent, and I wanted to test it.
"Clean," I said, pressing my hand against the wall behind him. With the appearance of Sad, the opening had closed up, hiding the room behind the wall, but now I was activating it again.
The spell activated, and the wall rippled, revealing the space beyond, and Sad’s yellow eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"
I did not answer the demon; I thought about the movements of Seed’s finger, and I replicated them, making sure that I was following the right pattern even though I was not facing the door. I pressed my hand against the open space, making seven presses, and the invisible ripple vanished, and the room was fully open.
The demon’s eyes widened with shock and fury, and it lunged, but I was already throwing myself through the doorway, and I felt an invisible ripple close in front of me. Sad’s claws struck the threshold of the room and stopped. A shimmer of invisible light flared around the doorway, and the demon’s arm recoiled as if it had touched a hot stove.
"WHAT IS THIS?!" Sad roared. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
I did not answer, as I was on my knees, gasping. The moment I crossed the threshold, the pressure of the darkness pressing against my channels was drawn away, and I had to take a moment to experience what it felt like not to have the permanent fog of darkness over me.
There was no darkness inside here, and I could not taste the power of the Sovereign on my tongue. Laughter bubbled from my chest. I had been under the suppression of darkness for so long that it was as if I had been drowning for so long that I had forgotten what it was like to breathe air.
I spent several seconds just laughing before I looked around me. The room was small, barely large enough for me to lie down in, but for now, it was safe. The Inscriptions on the walls were pulsing with a faint, steady light, and I could feel the weight of Sad’s presence pressing against the threshold, unable to enter.
The demon’s yellow eyes glared at me through the doorway, and it slammed its claws against the space repeatedly, but it could not cross. Ripples of light emerged from the space, showing dense Inscriptions that repulsed the force of the demon’s attack, and I could not even feel anything inside this space.
"You think this will save you?" it hissed. "This is my house, little mage. You are in my belly. You cannot hide in there forever. Believe me, little mage, I will put you back in the vat, and I will feed on you until there is nothing left... your soul is mine!"
I pushed myself to my feet, "If you are not doing that, then sod off,"
The demon’s eyes narrowed. "What?"
"I said if you are not doing anything, then you are nothing but a fucking distraction...sod off." I took a step toward the doorway, and the Moon Fox, who had been holding in her voice for a while now, laughed, "You heard him, smelly demon, this is our room now, and you are spoiling the ambience! Elric, it’s ambience, right? It seems you are not too familiar with this word."
Sad’s face contorted, confusion and rage warring on its twisted face. The tentacles around its mouth lashed out, striking the threshold of the room, but they could not cross.
The demon screamed. It was a sound of pure frustration, and it echoed through the chamber like the cry of a wounded beast. Then the yellow eyes faded, the darkness receded, and I was alone.
The fox let out a long breath. "That was terrible. It’s not gone right?"
"No, I think it’s going to find a way to destroy this place, but we have time to breathe and understand how safe this place that Seed created is. In the next loop, if we are discovered, it would be a good thing to know how long we can be safe, and the manner in which this place can be destroyed, but at the moment, it seems that Seed was not lying to us."
I looked around the room. The walls were covered in Inscriptions, dense and layered, and even though I wanted to lose myself inside them, I needed to arrange everything I had learned inside my head.
"You’ll be okay," the fox said, pressing her nose against my jaw. "You’re safe now."
I did not feel safe, but I smiled at the fox and pet her soft fur. I did not feel safe, but I felt... hope.
I sat down cross-legged in the center of the room and closed my eyes, and I felt sleepy, and not fighting against this instinct, I lost myself in a calm darkness that did not hold monsters.