Demon Child - an Urbis Arcana short
I have been thinking about the whole concept of demon children - kids destined to become word-destroying Anti-Christ types when they grow up. We’ve seen this type of character crop up a lot in media over the last few decades. Whether they embrace their destiny or try to avert it, it’s compelling stuff.
And I started thinking about what would happen to the apocalypse they were preparing for fizzled out before they had a chance to decide other way. What happens when the very thing they were created for was rendered moot?
And so, I decided to start writing it see what happens.
I would like thank phoenix_anew and Bethany for being my betas for this story. As always, comments, suggestions and any sort of feedback is very much welcome.
Extra Acrana: 1 Tristan Gibbons made a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in Still My Ward. Sumitra Laungani, who gets referenced here, had a much more prominent role in the same story. Jarek is the main character in my still in progress Urbis Arcana novel, and April gets referenced in the prologue. She is going to play a prominent role in the novel further down the line.
Demon Child
(An Urbis Arcana short)
Some people spend a crapload of time trying to figure out who they are and what they were supposed to do with their lives.
Me, I know exactly who I am. I'm a harbinger of doom. A spawn of evil. A commander of an army of an insane god wannabe. I was supposed to break the divide between the world of demons and the world of humans, take command of the demon army and conquer the world for the glory of the Prairie Dragon.
The Bloodknights of the Prairie Dragon kidnapped my mom and... used her. She don't like to talk about, and I'm not sure I would even want to know. She is just starting to get back to something like normal. She doesn't even take sleeping pills anymore.
I don't remember the Bloodknights' compound. I was still a baby when Uncle Micah managed to find us. The rest of the family figured my mom ran off, but he didn't believe it. He tracked us across several states. Found help. Got us out.
He died trying to give us time to escape. And then my mom had to shoot him, after Bloodknights sent his corpse after us.
That was the first thing I remember. The awful smell, the blood, and my mom hitting that thing with the shovel again and again until it finally stopped moving.
So much of my life involved running. Always on a move, never staying in more then one place for more then a few months at a time.
I still can't believe it's over. We've lived in Chicago for almost three years now, and I still can't quite relax. Every day, I come back home, and I wonder - is this the day we're going to have to move again?
I know better. I mean, logically, I know better. I saw Sumitra Laungani tearing the Prairie Dragon with thousands of strings of burning crimson. I helped the wizards of Special Research Group round up the remaining Bloodknights. I saw the Skeptics remove the magic from their hideouts and turn their spellbooks into ordinary bundles of paper.
Since then, there have been no Bloodknights. No assassins. No trackers. No demons. At least not the kind that could kill me. Most of the demons I run into in Chicago are just curious. One even asked me for an autograph.
I want to relax. I want to feel safe. I'm just not sure I can.
I'm not sure I know how.
***
Once the Prairie Dragon was defeated, the Special Research Group tried to help us out. They found us an apartment, helped my mom get a job, put me in school. My mom goes to a therapist once a week, and SRG helps cover the bill. And I get to talk to Mr. Gibbons.
Every Sunday, I take the Blue Line ‘L’ train down to West Town. I've lived in a lot of neighborhoods like this - old, cramped buildings, broken sidewalks, bunch of boarded-off storefronts. But most places I grew up at had more graffiti, and it was mostly gang tags, not the artistic stuff. The big streets looked a bit better - you get a whole bunch of laundries, furniture stores, lawyers' offices, Mexican restaurants and a few artsy stores here are there.. And, if you looked east, you could see the downtown Chicago skyscrapers rising in the distance. Talk about contrasts.
Mr. Gibbons and I met at Pulaski Park Fieldhouse - an old-school four-story building that covers nearly half a block. It belongs to the Park District, but they only use about half of it. Which is good - otherwise, SRG wouldn't be able to keep renting out rooms.
Most people don't see the magical energies unless they try. Thanks to Bloodknights, it's the other way around for me. So as I walked into the room, I could see the rope-like patterns weaving across the walls, crossing and twisting together into complicated circles at each corner. And, as I looked at Mr. Gibbons sitting in the chair, I saw purple glow of barbed wire through his clothes.
But most importantly, I saw the thing that the enchantments drawn all over his body were trying to contain.
“Hi, Mr. Gibbons,” I waved. “Hi, Celph”
And the Farsider inside Mr. Gibbons opened its eyes and looked straight at me.
The natural forms of demons and spirits look kind of like drawings come to life - bold lines, flat colors and inhuman proportions. Celph was something else entirely - a creature made entirely of darkness. It had four limbs, body and a head - but only because it was inside a human. It started at me with eight glowing, unblinking, unmoving eyes - but it could always open more.
Traian, a demon hunter and one of the many people who got killed trying to help us, explained it like this.
“The demon world is another world, but it's right outside ours. It's like an egg. You get the yoke - that's the regular, solid world. And you get the white - that's the demon realm. But Farsiders - they come from somewhere else. If our world is in an egg, their world is... an orange, or something.”
But perhaps most importantly, Farsiders eat demons. Whole. I've seen it. Mr. Gibbons swore that Celph wasn't interested in eating a demon child, but sometimes, I wondered.
“Hello, Micah,” Mr. Gibbons said. “Have a seat. How's everything?”
I pulled up a chair, sat across from Mr. Gibbons and focused. The glow of the defensive wards in the walls faded, and the barbwire-llike enchantments all over his body became simple tattoos. He was just a bald, muscular man in his 30s, wearing the leather jacket/jeans/T-shirt combo you'd expect from a bald guy with tattoos.
But no matter how hard I concentrated, I could still feel Celph's eyes staring at me.
“I'm okay,” I said. “The school is fine, I guess.”
“You guess?” Mr. Gibbons tilted his head.
“It's the usual,” I said. “Assholes make fun of me, everybody else acts like I don't exist. I'm used to it.”
Mr. Gibbons looked at me, waiting for me continue.
“I mean, assholes will be assholes, right? Not much I could do about that, except mind-control...” Mr. Gibbons shifted in his chair. “Which I'm not going to do. Ever. I'd never inflict that on anyone.”
Mind control comes naturally to me. It's part of the whole Evil Spawn package. But once you've seen a normal person, a regular person who got mind-controlled into chasing me, completely losing it the second I undid the spell... At least when you know about magic, you can understand what happened to you, but the poor guy had no idea. Seeing it once was bad enough. Seeing it happen again and again...
Mr. Gibbons nodded.
“I know you wouldn't,” he said. “I don't think you'd want to. You know better than anyone what it's like on the other side. But if those guys are getting to you...”
“It's not that. I mean, it hurts, but I've fought demons. I've been shot at, poisoned, cursed, seduced... After all that, getting called names is just, I don't know... anti-climatic.”
Mr. Gibbons smirked.
“True,” he said. “But if you ever feel like it's too much - you can tell me.”
“I know. I said. And I will. Right now, it's just...”
“What?”
“It's just that it seems that people either notice when I screw up or don't notice me at all. It's like I'm wallpaper. Nobody wants to sit with me. Nobody wants to talk to me. Even when I do group stuff, nobody really cares what I have to say. It's just... I don't want to be the most popular kid at school or whatever. I just want somebody to notice me and not make fun of me. Is it too much to ask?”
Mr. Gibbons gave me an empathetic look.
“It's not.”
“I've been thinking - what if I transmute some of my thrift store crap,” I gestured at my outfit clothes, “into something designer?” Celph's stare suddenly got even more intense “I know - I'm not supposed to use my powers for my own selfish purposes, but it's not like I'm turning lead into gold, right?”
“You could,” Mr. Gibbons shrugged. “But it's not going to help you. Not really.”
“How come?”
“Micah - we've talked about this,” Mr. Gibbons said. “It's not about how you look. It's about how you act. You spent most of your life running away, not knowing who to trust. You didn't really have a chance to settle down. You don't know how to make friends...”
“... Because I never had any,” I finished. It came out too bitter. “I know, I know. That doesn't really help me.”
“And I keep telling you - it's like taking a plunge. You can sit by the edge of the pool all day, but until you actually dive, nothing is going to happen, right?”
I nodded.
“The only way to break the pattern is to try to change it. You can't wait for people to reach out to you. You need to try to put yourself out there. If there's someone you want to talk to - talk to them. Could turn out they wouldn't want to talk to you, but it's still experience. The more experience you have, the better you're going to get. You just need to keep at it”
“So you keep saying.”
“Look... I know it's hard. I know it's scary. There's nothing scarier than taking a chance. You reach out, and you wait for them to respond....Trust me, I know.”
And he did.
Back when he was a kid, a sorcerer kidnapped a bunch of kids and stuck Far Siders inside them. That way, he would have the power of Far Siders and kids he could control.
Mr. Gibbons and the other were locked up for eight years. And nobody came looking for him. Until a SRG mage killed the sorcerer, nobody even knew they were there.
And after all that, he had to go back to the real world, live a normal life...
I spent all my life running - but at least I was free.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I feel like an ass.”
“I'm the one who should be sorry,” Mr. Gibbons replied. “I wasn't trying to to make you feel bad. I just want you to know that I know what you're going through. I mean, it's not quite the same thing, but I get it. And I know you can do it.”
“I guess...” I sighed. “It's just..”
I cut myself off.
“Just what?” Mr. Gibbons said.
“It's stupid.” I mumbled.
Mr. Gibbons just looked at me.
“Okay. On Monday, I was running to class and... I tripped. Didn't fall, but all my stuff flew everywhere. Complete mess. I thought - play it cool, just play it cool, pick everything up and leave... And then, I see April - she's in my history class - coming up to me,” I felt myself blushing. “She helped me pick up my stuff. She asked me if I was okay. And I nodded - nodded- like a goddamn idiot. I didn't know what to say!”
“It's okay,” Mr. Gibbons said. “Happens to the best of us. So then what happened?”
“She told me to be careful... and then she left. And I just sat there. Probably would've sat there for the rest of the period if the bell didn't ring.”
“That pretty, huh?”
“She is,” I grinned at the memory. The luscious red hair, the warm gray eyes, the bright smile, the... The... other parts. I've seen her before, but never that close. “But it's not just that. She was nice to me. Like, really, genuinely nice. First time anyone at this school has ever been nice to me.”
“That's good,” Mr. Gibbons smiled. “Did you try talking to her again?”
“I was going to...”
“But?”
“I saw her after school,” I said. “I was heading for the bus stop when I saw her chatting with Jarek from English. Their souls were touching.”
“So she has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “And a serious one. I don't know... I just thought... She seemed so nice. Maybe... I don't know.... Maybe something could happen. But she's taken. I don't know... I just feel so stupid.”
Mr. Gibbons looked at me closely.
“Okay... Let's back it up a bit. It turned out the pretty girl has a boyfriend. That stings. I get it. But it's not the end of the world.”
“I know, I know,” I sighed again. “I just feel... I keep waiting for something good to happen, and when it looks like it does, I get my hopes up - for what?”
Mr. Gibbons shook his head.
“You're missing the point, kid. By a mile. April has a boyfriend. But you're forgetting something important - she was nice to you.”
“So?
“She saw that you needed help and she helped,” said Mr. Gibbons. “She tried to make sure you were okay. You said it yourself - this was the first time someone at the school seemed to care. How does having a boyfriend change it?”
I couldn't answer that.
“People like that are rare,” Mr. Gibbons just said. 'But they do exist. And just because she's dating someone doesn't mean you can't be friends.”
“...Friends?”
“It won't happen overnight,” said Mr. Gibbons. “Heck, it might not happen at all. But don't just write that girl off completely. Would you want to be her friend?”
“I guess...” I didn't really have any friends. A girl who's a friend - how was that supposed to work?
“Guys and girls can be friends,” Mr Gibbons offered a reassuring smile. “I'm not saying you have to be. I'm just saying - don't close off the possibilities. The worst thing you can do is say 'oh, things didn't go my way, so I'm not going to even try.'”
And I had to admit - that made a lot of sense.
“I can do it,” I said.
“Absolutely,” said Mr. Gibbons.
I took a deep breath.
“Does it ever get easier?” I asked.
“It does, over time. Slowly but surely.”
“Will I ever feel normal?”
“Kid - I have a Farsider living inside me. You can see spirits without trying. We're never going to be 'normal.' But normal is overrated. If you you keep trying, you will find people who like you for who you are. They'll watch your back. They'll be there for you. You may never feel like a regular person, but you won't feel alone. I can promise you that.”
Mr. Gibbons had a light smile. A confident smile. Even Celph's glare didn't feel quite as intense.
There we were. A living weapon, trying to help a demon child.
Mr. Gibbons is probably right. I would never be quite like the other kids.
I thought about April, who helped me when she didn't have to. I thought about Jarek, who never made fun of me - never said a single bad thing about me, come to think about it.
I could do it.
I had to.
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2013 © Strannik01
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1. At phoenix_anew's suggestion, I decided to add a note explaining some of the connections between stories posted so far. Does it help? Does it get in the way? Let me know.