Kaleidoscopic Memories

Yo what's with the cliffhanger, guy?

WE HAZ ADDICTION THAT MUST BE SATISFIED!

I rearranged my whole week's schedule for HP Deathly Hallows premier, yo.

deathly hallows premier was hot, yo.

Day 203:

Celebrating my return meant torturing live captives and raping them.

Tonight, I contemplated suicide.

I am a horror now; I have become what I hunt.

As I sat in my room, human in form except for one clawed hand, I wondered how much it would hurt if I took those claws and ripped my own throat out.

Whatever pain it would be, simply put, would not be enough.

And yet it was once more Maje who stopped me.

If you enjoyed it, I would let you kill yourself. But you have not, and you know as I know that we must masquerade for now.

There was a knocking on my door, and I went to open it, forgetting I was still human in form.

The carcass of that demon has been removed from my room. I suppose the process has been sped up; I had claimed he had immediately tried to kill me, and now everyone thinks there was just an assassination attempt on my life.

I have more guards now around me, and some slaves in my room.

The upper ranks are now unsettled; we now suppose that maybe me being captured in the first place was someone in our ranks defecting and trying to demolish our plan from the inside out.

Oh, if only they knew how right they are.

I foresee complications to this plan of yours, Sectum. Let's see where it leads us.

Really hard to keep this up with term ending and finals coming, I'll try my best.

So you have finals in what, 2, maybe 3 weeks? Just tell everyone that you have to take a break for school and will update once you're on vacation. That's what i would do. ;)

Day 209:

Two more demons have been killed, and this time I have had absolutely nothing to do with them. I am curious to know more.

I do not oft get time to write now, for I must have at least a single human hand to do so. With security so much tighter and with a constant parade of slaves around me to be used as human shielding if need be, I don't get much time alone.

Currently, I am back in my chambers and my slaves are asleep. They tire easily, although this body may just simply make it so that it's more that I simply don't tire as easily.

I can sense inside of the slaves that they are puzzled that I have become a gentler master.

If only, if only, they could know how much I hate this whole ordeal.

But on to business.

Maje and I have decided to put our plan into action.

Tomorrow evening, one of the other twelve will die.

I hope you manage to finish this before you don't have any time to write anymore. I wanna know what's gonna happen at the end!

Day 211:

Today, I woke up and realized something.

I turned seventeen yesterday.

Funny how that works, I suppose. Maje and I were too busy to even think about that.

We had laid out a trap. There are several parts of the Vahzl castle that are barely traversed.

When I had killed the demon that had seen me human I had taken and broken his damned soul on the spot. Maje had at first questioned this.

Yesterday morning, I stared into a glossy wall--we don't have mirrors, but there's this really glossy wall that I use as one--and let myself relax back into my human form.

Hey Maje, I had thought, do you feel what I feel? Physically?

Such do I not.

Lucky.

And I promptly willed my soul to take me back into a damned, demon form. Except this time, I didn't turn into Crim; I had taken on the body of demon that I had killed.

He was a relatively unknown, generic, unimportant demon. There must have been fifty of him walking around.

Oh child; how your ways have changed.

"I know," I said aloud, testing to see if my voice had taken on a different guttural tone. It had. "Besides the whole squid bit, though, I seem to be only able to go demon."

The Crimson One and myself must have given you enough of us for you to be as us.

I shrugged.

"Probably," I said.

With that, I left the room without a word and walked down the steps of my spire.

My plan was simple. Pit them against each other.

After a few minutes I had been climbing up the tower where another higher demon resided; this one, Jag Mae.

Jag Mae is a demon that neither I nor Crim ever really concerned himself with.

I introduced myself as a messenger of Kana'Vulu to the guards, to his chamber servants, and to everyone else I saw.

He had allowed me entrance to say my message.

"Kana'Vulu has sent me to warn of danger amongst the ranks," I had said to him. "Two amongst the ranks have betrayed us, though I know not who."

"What else has your master sent to say?"

I almost smiled.

"He wishes you to flee with him, for he believes you to be just to the cause."

There was a very stiff silence.

"It would be good to flee and kill the traitors."

"Such it would," I replied. "Kana'Vulu wishes to leave now. He will be leaving through the Southern wing. Pack lightly, speed is of the essence."

As I left, I could but hear Maje in the back of my mind.

The tongues of demons were thought to be cunning; you, my friend, place shame upon me.

You do what you can.

An hour later, I had heard footsteps approaching the Southern Wing; an area that is often scarce. There were no demons in sight, and in a shadow I hid as the Crimson one.

He had approached, slowly, cautiously.

I had crept out of the shadow slowly, as though I was afraid to startle him--to be fair, I had been--and slowly said, "Brethren Jag Mae, it is not safe, hurry!"

And he crept forward.

And that was the last mistake he ever had time to make.

Ooooo Crafty!

Day 211 - Part Two:

Jag Mae shrieked inside of me until Maje and I silenced him forever.

There was a moment of pure rapture as I fed on him and learned his secrets, but his mind is for Maje to figure out.

And such was the previous evening.

Kana'Vulu is being tortured in the dungeons.

And so there are ten demons left to kill.

I have my plans for Kana'Vulu. For now, there are nine that which I must focus on.

I suppose the suspicion will be on myself soon. I come back, and this madness begins.

The moment I lose the element of surprise and the cloak and dagger methods fail, I will be killed; and while I can kill many demons, I will surely fall to a castle's worth of their finest.

Tonight, I aim to kill two more in the midst of this confusion; and this time, I shall not hide under the guise of a demon body.

If I am to keep my cover, I'll need them to be targeting someone else. A human boy assassin would be a fine target for them to look for.

Your avatar reminds me of Roland from the Dark Tower series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)

That's because it is Roland.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 212 - Part 1:

At approximately half past nine in the evening yesterday I grit my teeth as I sliced my arm and flailed it around wildly to send my blood everywhere. I then proceeded to punch my window open, release a howl, and as my guards began to barge in I sent my bed flying into the door.

"An assassin!" I howled, and as my guards forced through the door I punched threw the window again, shattering what was left of it. All my guards had time to see was my demon self clutching its arm and gasping before I yelled to them, "Send warning! He is on the roof below!"

One of the guards ran to alert others, one forced himself through.

"We must stop him!" I called out, and I promptly tossed myself out the paneless window to the roof two floors below.

Oh, thank Altana that these demon bodies are unnaturally strong. That would have broken my limbs, but their exoskeleton makes them so easy to manage.

The guard followed suit.

The roof area we were on connected the North East Towers (where I resided) and the South West Towers.

I had a window of opportunity, I had figured, of around sixty seconds from the time my guard and I began to run to play this out properly.

I smirked. It was so terribly annoying to be running around in this demon body, and while it had its uses I still preferred my squishy flesh.

And so, as we ran, I suddenly shuddered and before my guard's eyes I suddenly turned back into my barely seventeen year old body of fleshy goodness.

With my golden sapara, the gift I took from Aht Urhgan.

My guard let out a howl of confusion and shock.

It was that moment of confusion that allowed me to continue the plan. I spun around to lunge at him and jabbed my sapara just barely into his throat.

We couldn't have him talking, but he needed to be alive long enough to be part of a crowd chasing me so that I could be known to be the assassin.

Oh, the lengths that Maje and I go to plan these excursions...

But I digress. Being in my own flesh for so long yesterday has left me in such an amazing mood, I'm so very excited.

I went back to running. I had gotten used to the heavier, stronger physique of Crim and being able to move so swiftly was an amazing thing.

It is good for you to be back in this body to fight, we shall need you to stay deft in your own skin for the final parts.

It was at this point that other demons began to jump onto the roof and join the chase.

When I saw five of them, I spun around and began to fight.

These were soldiers, and damn fine ones.

But even demons are scared when your arm turns into a batch of tentacles and rips a comrade's jaw clean off.

I left two of them alive, and heavily damaged, but still able to talk. I needed someone to verify my story that a certain human was seeking me to kill.

And I needed to move quick enough so that any who saw that Crim wasn't chasing me were killed.

I could have none going against my story.

The South West towers were within sight. The air was cold and it scraped my lungs, but I had to keep running.

The hard part was in that I could not jump through a window this time; I had to scale the three floors of the tower and kill or seriously maim everyone on the way.

Nothing new, to be honest.

But with now a tower alerted that there was a crazy hume assassin on the loose, I would have a hell of a lot of demons on my tail.

I would have to jump down a floor and then begin to work my way up.

No problem, I told myself. I didn't decimate the Mamools on luck alone.

I jumped off the roof once more and busted through the doors to the tower, and the slaughter began.

Holy Christ, I've been writing this for almost a year?!

Day 212 - Part 2:

I traumatized those poor *** from the start. Who would think that a human boy could spit fire?

Who could expect a hand of tentacles that ripped out eyeballs?

Who could stop a creature that was so far pumped with what Cid once called "adrenaline" because he knew if he stopped moving for but a moment, he was dead?

It was beautiful, the way the heads flew from their shoulders. This sword, this work of art was a wonderful thing.

And not to mention my magic.

The last time I had lit something on fire was to fake my death. Apparently, it was like riding a Chocobo; you just don't forget.

My goal wasn't to kill them all quickly and cleanly; it was to absolutely massacre them and leave some to live to tell the story.

And so some were left alive.

I scaled the tower, and it took me almost twenty minutes to get through them all. It would have taken much longer if I actually killed everyone in their; but since I was only taking the stairs, I was able to skimp out by blocking the doorways with piles of burning corpses.

The two guards at the top of the stairs, in the Arch Demon's inner chambers, were a fair bit of trouble. They were much more trained.

So it became a fight of three versus me as I broke through the door and the Arch Demon was forced into joining the fighting.

I don't even know what this one's name was. I didn't care to remember.

But alas.

It was almost an exact mirror of the Mamool Sage Lord's death. The Arch Demon ran at me with a spear.

I buckled my knees and dropped to the ground. He was tall, I was small, and the demon behind me was then impaled.

There was a howl of pain as I rolled to the side and hacked the Arch Demon's leg off as he tried to pull his spear out of his comrade.

What I did not expect was for his guard, with his dying breath, to buck away and try and ram himself into me as the other guard grabbed me.

It was my turn to shriek in pain and everything started to go black.

And then there was the screaming in my head.

YOU MUST NOT FALL!

It was Maje.

I gasped for air and forced myself not to fall into trauma.

It was hard to stay conscious, and every nerve I had was on fire.

If you pass out, you'll die!

I knew this to be true.

I gasped for air as the Arch Demon dragged himself towards us, my sword in his hand, ready to finish me. The guard in front of me was dead, the guard behind me dying, and I was going to join them.

Do you want her tears to be for nothing? Do you want to die before the world is saved?

I did the only thing I could think of: I let my right arm go demon and I snapped the spear.

The Arch Demon in front of me was temporarily stunned by what he had just seen.

I pushed the demon that impaled me off of me, and I fell to the ground with the other guard on top of me.

Maje what do I do!? I'm dying! I screamed in my head. I couldn't stop the panic; everything kept pulsing black around me.

I suppose it was Maje who used my body next, because I knew I didn't know what to do.

He took my arm and pushed me up so that I was on my side, the demon stuck behind me growing still.

And then he reached into the hole in my torso where the spear was and pulled it out.

FLAYER NOW!

And I could think of nothing but follow his order.

How could I have forgotten that that Flayer body rapidly regenerates?

Maje says it was simple panic.

All I know is that I fed on that Arch Demon, and that I left his head on the table. The next thing I had remembered was that I was human again, running down the tower, with no wound bothering me. There was a new series of bodies, most of them with their stomachs ripped open. I felt sick; I had, apparently, been feeding on them.

Unfortunately, you'll probably be addicted to feeding on creatures again. We had to feed on many of them.

It's a small price to pay, Maje.

And we fled to the second tower on our list for the evening.

Day 212 - Part 3:

I fed often as I ran up the next tower, and I felt better by the time I reached the top. It was the same as the previous tower, except this time I played safer: I burned the two head guards to death before they could even tell what was going on.

I paused before forcing the door open. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.

The next demon, Unhaku, was waiting for me to break down that door. I could tell.

I took a few steps back and burned the door down with but a few mutterings of black magic.

He came at me through the flames. Unhaku was not known for his intelligence; only his ravishing bloodlust.

What I had not anticipated was that a second of the higher demons came right after him. This one was another crimson demon; his name was Generon. I had to fight two of them at the same time.

Meh.

Even now that I was feeling taxed and getting tired, I was still much faster than these two.

Generon had a sickle. Unhaku had a great axe.

Now what do those two things have in common?

They're really big.

There's a particular thing about staircases; they're not known for being very spacious, you see.

It took them each around three swings to realize that they would only keep scraping the walls, and that they would have to ditch the weapons and fight close range. They would have to bite and claw at me to kill me, and I was fully prepared for it. I was small, and I was nimble; it was unfair, really.

Unhaku grabbed a torch off the wall. It was a mistake on his part.

Wood likes to burn.

With but a single muttering, I caused the flame to erupt tenfold and burned his right hand.

Generon was lunging at me, and I was jumping backwards down the stairs.

He lunged at me and managed to grab my shirt. I let him pull me forward as I thrust my sapara forward into his chest.

But he was strong; that didn't stop him. It did slow him down, however, and he let me go.

Unhaku swiped at me in pain as the fire died out on his hand.

These two, I would play with until more came to see the tale.

I wrapped my arm around Generon's neck and, as though I was one of those famous Buffalo Riders--or now that I think about it, when I rode that Behemoth--I used the fact that he was twice my size to swing around and wrap my legs around him.

He was flailing to get me off of him, and I reached over his chest and grabbed my sapara's handle, pulling it upwards. It sliced up through his stomach and pulled it out as he fell forward.

I scrambled up and turned just in time to parry Unhaku's next swipe at me. My goal now was to isolate him back into his room. With Generon down--dead or not, I'm not sure--I would be able to play with Unhaku as long as I could.

Good, child. Maje was telling me. Reassuring me that I was doing a lot better this time than last. I could hear hurried footsteps now of demons coming to try and kill me.

Unhaku was strong, but that doesn't matter if you can't hit your target.

He swung at me again and my left arm did its thing. The tentacles wrapped around his arm and constricted tightly. He let out a howl and his arm finally gave out and snapped.

Unhaku realized that he wouldn't be walking out alive at that point, and I saw a flicker of panic in his eyes for what may have been the first time in his life.

Two demons charged through the demolished doorway and directly at me. I grinned as I pulled Unhaku forward, still gripping his arm with my tentacle, and used him as a shield as I thrust my sword clean up through his throat and scrambling his brain in the process.

I pulled the sword out and I ran to the nearest window.

Just one step left...

As I ran through the window and tumbling downwards I immediately began to change back to my demon form. The exoskeleton had to take this hit.

And it took it nicely, and it was dark enough that they never saw that I turned back into Crim.

I was slower, and I was tired, but I had to do this final part. I had to be injured.

I tossed myself down to the snowy ground outside the castle; I was back in Xarcabard. I took my sword, gritted my teeth, and stabbed my left arm clean through the elbow.

I had to make it seem like I was a victim, too.

I tossed the sword into a cave, and I let myself bleed out, throwing myself into the snow. Someone would find me, and that would be that.

All I had to do was wait.

I...I...I don't know what to say that...that was an amazingly written little episode and the plan was perfect as well.

Maje is both brilliant and lucky. Sect just has the body and will to keep going.

Thanks for the feedback.

Wow, that was a lot more than the past few installments.

Keep it up, the ending is almost here, right?

Dude, that was AWESOME! I swear i check this page multiple times daily just to see the next update. Keep it up man!

Day 212 - Part 4:

And that had been my previous evening.

I was found sometime the next morning, unconscious from blood loss.

To say that I am under heavy guard would be a slight under-exaggeration.

Maje's been sifting through all the information I absorbed last night. He says he's starting to understand the process that which the resurrection requires.

So I'm just sitting here, munching on some Mutton, as the few remaining higher up demons try and figure out what in the name of Promathia to do.

It doesn't really matter.

Maje and I think we may need some time to recover. We are fortunate that we ended up speeding up the process. There are eight demons left, and I assume that they all are probably paranoid now.

Well, not paranoid; in this case, there really is someone out to kill them.

Supposedly, a meeting will take place some time tonight amongst us to discuss how to rectify this situation. So far as they know, only four are dead and Kana'Vulu is the traitor.

Day 215:

Sometimes, it all comes together by accident.

And sometimes, it all comes together in a single moment because everything just went wrong. The latter had finally happened. All our planning, honestly, was pretty much for naught.

A group of four of the remaining demons in the upper echelon had come down to the medical ward with the intent of killing me.

They had sent the guards and shamans and slaves away. That was the first clue.

There were four of them, and I was laying on a table just waiting to see what would happen. Of course I had my suspicions. I had learned it was best to take the approach that everyone was trying to kill you. You could barely even trust yourself.

There were no words exchanged. There was an awkward silence, and then one demon approached me. I stayed still; I could not let any emotion betray me at this point.

"Bifron, has he who works against us been killed?" I asked the approaching demon.

Bifron said nothing.

Guess that means us.

Such it does, I would imagine.

He stood before me for just a moment, looking me over, as though he were inspecting me.

"Your arm has met steel," he noted, picking it up to see.

"Such it has."

And then the next part happened very quickly.

He twisted my arm so quickly and so powerfully that it just broke on the spot. As I let out a howl of pain, two of the others ran to restrain me.

Bifrons took a step backwards and pulled a sword off his back.

"We have no room for weakness."

I glanced at my right hand. It was near the lower torso of one of the other demons.

"Such is good," I muttered. I gritted my teeth.

And then there was the usual explosion of flesh that happens as my arm does its thing and suddenly it's got tentacles like those poor blue eastern ***.

They were all momentarily stunned and in that moment I pulled the demon to my right forward by his... extremities, we shall say.

With him releasing my right arm and the other demon jumped back in pure shock as he shrieked in pain I had thrust my hand forward and gripped Bifron's arm as he went to stab me.

"Such is very good," I said.

My face was grinning and I couldn't stop it.

Don't lose it... I heard Maje warning me.

But now, back in this sort of position, looking into the eyes of a prey... I lost it.

Everything went back to the bloodlust that I felt in the East.

My body molded right back to its human self as I smiled maniacally. And then the giggling began as I constricted his arm so tightly that it snapped.

The other three demons were genuinely scared and backing away as I began to cackle like a lunatic.

"How the tables turn!" I shrieked giddily, a human in their tongue, and with that I took the sword out of his now limp hand as he stood there, too shocked to do anything.

I butchered him in front of the others, whom were too petrified with fear to do a single thing.

I claimed their souls and filed them away, broken and shattered, for Maje to look at. I lit their bodies on fire. It took four hours for the ensuing blaze to die out; the whole medical ward fell to that.

You crazy ***...lol

You guys probably thing I have some crazy tentacle fetish by now, come to think of it.

Day 218:

It has become entirely a hunt now.

All the rage I have felt, all the suffering I have had, all of it has finally accumulated. All the friends I've lost, all the lives I've ended, all the horrors that I've had to endure have all led up to this one final stretch.

Espionage be damned. It's much quicker this way. How many remain? Bifrons and three comrades died; Crim had fallen so long ago; Unhaku and Generon fell together; Jag Mae and that other one fell too easily.

And Kana'Vulu is in the dungeons below. Alive? Dead? Who knows?

Nine of the thirteen are definitely dead.

I see campfires in the distance. I can only assume that either the demons are fleeing, or other forces are finally coming to join the fight.

It is no matter, though. I intend on burning this castle down, just as I had razed Jeuno. It is such a shame that so many broken and battered slaves will perish when I do that.

Yet such is life.

Tonight, the hunt shall recommence. By morning, who knows how many will be dead?

Day 219:

My head is exploding.

Here I stand at the top of the world Altana has made, and I am faced with a grim truth: these next minutes are the last minutes I shall live.

And there is a grimmer truth ahead of me: where I go, Altana be damned, I must walk alone.

It had been the death of Kana'Vulu that had let me see the final pieces fall together. A true comprehension of life and of the life after life.

He had known all along that this would happen. Kana'Vulu had known that Crim would fall in Jeuno. He had known that Maje would first corrupt me. He had known everything. He had known that I would be the one to "stop" their plans.

He had known everything, and he had placed all the pieces onto the chess board.

He had known that there would be a boy in Jeuno who murdered his best friend, who would fall in and be so broken, trying to dehumanize himself to cope with what he had done. He had known, and as I walked down the stairs to the dungeon, body after body falling as demon after demon had come to try and stop me, and he had laughed because he knew.

He knew it was his ending, and that he was the last one.

Kana'Vulu, the demon whom had set this all in motion. A prophet amongst the demons, whom knew to never speak of this talent because if he did, when I killed another demon I would learn of it and stop in horror.

I was just a pawn all along. I had no option, I was just following the path that the cosmos had already set forth.

Yet then why, why can't I just brush off those I killed?

The plan that we had extracted from Crim's mind wouldn't work. Kana'Vulu knew it.

And that is where I came to play: a battered, broken soul that would house all the demons at once and start the wheels in motion for the real tearing between the worlds.

And now I write once more in my own blood, as I lay here on the floor of the dungeons, trying to steel myself to plunge my scimitar into my heart next time, rather than just take my remaining limbs off one by one so I become useless and dead at all costs, just as I had hacked off my left arm.

Yet there's a laughing in the back of my head. A taunting.

Would my suicide be the final step to open this portal, then?

WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!?