the demon king accepts his role

He had to stop.

Hurt.

He had to—

Blurry.

Hard to think.

Hurt.

Something clawing out.

He had to focus.

Something—

No.

He had to focus or else—

What?

What if?

Who cared if...

The hunter broke free.

Counter-spell, maybe.

This whole town was made of paper.

The world was made of paper.

Blood... why was it...?

Not red.

Fire.

Debris.

He had to stop.

But had he?

Wasn't this what they wanted?

His fault.

Hard to think.

Fear.

So much.

Everywhere.

He couldn't think—

Everywhere!

He had to—somehow.

Someone. 

No one. 

No one would help.

No one would help.

Why would they?

No one would help.

Why not just die?

Hurt.

Breathing hurt. Himself and others.

Then why not just...

But...

It was selfish to want to live, wasn't it?

But to get killed while hated and feared by everyone...

...it truly was fitting for a demon king.

...perhaps it'd be best to just let it happen.

The hunter was strong enough.

He'd manage...

Brave hero, slaying the demon king, bringing peace to the land. Eventually, the cycle would renew. It always did, always would. Someone had to be the villain. Better for it to be Sionn than anyone else. Right? Someone had to be the sacrifice. People believed in the afterlife, reincarnation, that kind of bullshit. Sionn was not people.

He was not 'people'.

"So be it," the demon king mumbled. 

***

Lev had just tossed Reem over his back when the gravity went from mildly annoying to crushing. If not for the warding spells, the whole town would've instantly collapsed. Paradoxically, dust and pebbles swirled around, as did Demonsbane, who carried more anti-demon gear than entire associations did within their headquarters. Doing honor to his name, Lev supposed, but anyway.

Breathing hurt. At this rate, assuming Hanan didn't blow Sionn's head off, Lev and Reem had a few minutes at most before the warding spell (which, ironically, the demon lord had raised) collapsed. If it did...

No, it would not.

"Did you die?" Lev asked, wobbling forward.

"...not yet," was Reem's response. "H-how are you like... walking..."

"Long story."

"Demon?"

Lev said nothing.

"I thought demons had no, um, no sense of taste. But you always drink choccy milk?"

"Yes," he said. "Let's focus." Plan Only You Can Stop Him: In Action. It was that, or getting flattened. "What will you tell the demon once we get there?"

"Once we're whe—watch out!"

Lev staggered backward, narrowly avoiding another void-sphere. A couple of steps later, something cracked. Him? It hurt a lot, so probably? Like a lot. "Fuck," he hissed, but thankfully Reem was unharmed. Not only were there random voids that turned everything around them into themselves, but it seemed as though there were random, hyper-pressurized zones where the ground had begun to collapse into itself. Stepping into one had sprained an ankle.

On top of this, Hanan had finally stopped playing around; with magic-enhanced bullets, a single shot, stray or otherwise, would kill Lev instantly. The demon lord avoided this by casually beating electron degeneracy pressure with a look, yet—

Wait.

Wouldn't crushing bullets into black holes cause a shockwave?

As if on cue, somewhere in the desert, something cracked—multicolored lights, then a cosmic scream. The ground rattled hard enough to make him stumble. "Great," Lev mumbled, "At least he's... they're... I don't even know what they're doing anymore."

"Pretty," Reem mumbled. It took a moment for him to realize she meant the fucking auroras at the desert. "I think he.... mentioned storing explosions once. Like in magic bottles, I dunno. It's like that, but the opposite. I failed the... the spacetime module at school."

Everyone did. So would Lev if he hadn't dropped out of school, anyway. "Right. I don't know what that means. But—" Another faraway explosion. "—we still HAVE to reach them somehow."

"Mhm."

"Reem?"

"I'm fine I'm fiiine I got it. I'll tell him to stop throwing a tantrum."

"I uh. I really don't think that'll help."

Demonsbane could've used buildings—and thus the people hiding within—as shields, yet he did not. He had yet to use any powerful spell. He dodged, countered, and shot. That was it. The town stifled him. 

The demon lord could've twisted the field like silk if he wanted to, yet he did not. He barely moved. Was that due to the wounds? Perhaps the town stifled him, too. 

Due to spacetime distortions, not-so-far-away explosions from bullets turning into black holes as they were teleported to the desert, Lev's sprained ankle, and his dust allergy flaring up, every step felt like the last.

Reem, who was less stupid than she acted, didn't take long to notice this, so she said, "Yeah, no," and then, "Throw me at 'im."

"...no?"

"Yes. Hurry up."

"Are you insane?"

"Unhinged, yeah. Hurry up. It'll be fine." 

A normal human would not have been able to stand, let alone hurl a person across the street. 

Lev knew. 

At this rate, it was very much an either-or situation. 

Either they reached the demon lord in time, or... 

"Oh, yeah, but say something first. I would but I can't scream. Right now. It's hard enough to talk. Just say that you're throwing me so that he doesn't do what he's doing to the bullets I don't wanna explode thanks please hurry."

Grimacing, Lev hurled her.

It'd be fine.

It'd work.

That's what Lev's scheme hinged upon at the end of the day: hope.

He bellowed: "REEM MISSILE INCOMIIIING!"

Against her own words (and the laws of physics and biology), Reem screeched as she zoomed across the hypergravity field. The demon lord turned to look, ink-black blood spilling down his face. Bizarrely, there was nothing but ice in his eyes. With such chaos unfurling around them, Lev would've expected to see... rage? Spite? Panic? Yet the demon's expression was as infuriatingly detached as usual.

Then the Reem missile struck.

***

Reem was passively accepting her doom when she realized that Sionn was freaking out and that's why he was pancaking Sun's Edge. Things began to make sense after that, once again.

After the gunslinger had first attacked, Sionn had stopped time to toss Reem into her apartment (through the window), then had told her to stay put until he returned. It was sensible advice, delivered with characteristic insensitivity which, of course, Reem ignored.

She managed to reach the corner just in time to see the gunslinger emptying his revolver on Sionn's face. Before she could even grimace, Reem collapsed; so did everything around her, under a sudden, unseen force. Thus began a new conundrum: to reach him.

Sionn being the kind of person to lose it the more he tried not to lose it made perfect sense. The problem was that his downward spirals were cataclysmic. No wonder he was afraid to even crack a smile...

Since she couldn't walk under such grueling conditions, Reem had begun to crawl, and even that felt like dragging a train tied to her ankles. "Stop..." She couldn't speak and grovel at the same time. "Gfffhhh..." And when she did, neither Sionn nor the gunslinger listened. Thus had begun her doom spiral... or not, since other lives were at stake. She couldn't even get flattened in peace...

...and then Lev showed up. Reem would've kept crawling, but him being conveniently resistant to magic helped. With a full-body cloak, a hood, and a concealing spell, even a toddler would've been able to tell that Lev had been hiding something. Himself, in this case. 

So then he used his demon strength to launch Reem through the skies.

So then Reem landed on a demon lord's arms. She had known, not assumed, that he would catch her. The look on Sionn's face was the exact same as when she'd taken a bullet for him, back when he was a stranger. Unfortunately, the sheer force of the impact squeezed all the air from her lungs, so she wheezed instead of telling him to stop. Hopefully he—

"Oh..."

—would... yes, exactly. The giant, invisible claw that'd been crushing the town flinched, as if aware of itself for the first time. As it retreated, Sun's Edge was freed. 

Buildings stopped cracking.

Dust settled. 

Most of its citizens could breathe again. Reem, now crushed by literal claws, was an exception. She didn't mind that much. It didn't hurt. Everything else did. Thinking. Existing. Being so useless and bad at everything.

Sionn, too, was an exception. Even if his eyes concealed pain and exhaustion—which, to Reem, they didn't—his shaking breaths and tense body could not. He felt way too hot to the touch. "Reem," he whispered, "I told you..."

She squeezed his cheeks.

Strangely, him scowling at her didn't faze her. "...to shtay back, you dullwit."

"Dullwit, he says." She snorted.

"The absholute—"

The gunslinger shot. As someone who'd yet to wield a firearm, even Reem could tell that he'd missed on purpose. This time. She'd probably have to become a meat shield again. This was her life now.

...or so she would've thought, but the gunslinger's aim was as steady as his eyes were not. "Again?" He asked, not to Sionn, but to Reem. 

"Mhm." She would've squeezed Sionn's face again for emphasis, but he batted her hand away. "Again."

"Why?"

It was hard to look at the gunslinger when under Sionn's vicegrip, but if he let her go, she'd plop onto the floor like a wet rag, and they both knew this. "...because... you guys are too mean?"

The gunslinger blinked. "Mean?"

"Yeah. Mean. I get going after bad demons, but... all the demons? Not all of them are—" She coughed. "—bad. Sionn isn't. If he was, then everyone would be dead."

"Ff he was good, then he would be dead."

"He only does bad things because you guys keep tryna kill him."

"His existence means danger."

"It doesn't." Reem said this while surrounded by the consequence of Sionn's existence. To quell the fires, someone had summoned rain. It wouldn't take long for either to dissipate. Soon, people would emerge from their broken homes, disoriented, wounded, and angry. Medical centers would flood with those who'd been hurt. Had there been any casualties... "It doesn't have to."

"It already does," said the gunslinger.

"Because you guys keep being mean!"

"Eventually, they all succumb. Why would yours be different?"

The gunslinger was the second person to refer to Sionn as Reem's.

Unfortunately, there was no real answer to this. What made Sionn different from other demons? Nothing. What ensured that he wouldn't fall prey to the curse? Nothing. He very well could. After all, as a person, he could hurt, and panic, and resent.

The gunslinger asked, not to Reem, but to Sionn, "What makes you different?"

"Nothing." Sionn didn't even hesitate.

Dullwit. Was he still putting on a show? 

As if knowing this, the gunslinger gave him time to reconsider his response.

Sionn refused to.

"...so be it."

But that was fine. Reem the meat shield was right there.

"Then—"

"Wait!"

Lev the wonder boy limped towards them. Without looking at him, Sionn said, "Unless you have a death wish, I'd advise you to leave."

Instead, facing the gunslinger, Lev spread his arms in front of them. "He won't kill me. Can you smell why?"

Knowing Sionn, his silence meant yes. 

The gunslinger lowered his weapon.

Again.

Did Sionn even realize when he let out a shaky, relieved sigh?

A moment later, he turned to leave, not to his castle or a health center, but to Reem's place.