Chapter 3 The Blackgoat Prince’s Mama is ridiculously beautiful! And also scarier than death! Part 2

“Tch.” the demon said staring up at the shrine. “Well other-worlder, I think it’s time we took our leave. He’s sensed me now.

“And like I told that idiot… the other me,” he said in answer to her confused expression, which only confused her more. “We cannot win in a straight fight. Not like we are now, anyway. So… time to go.”

The black plates spread out on his back like they were wings, and in defiance of physics stretched out and somehow caught the air launching him and akane above the heads of the knights before they shot through the brief opening in one of the gates leading to the dungeon below, leaving behind the astonished knights who watched them until they disappeared.

"Um… mr. Demon?" Akane said, holding tight to the demon's back as he leapt out of the reach of chains that struck at them like the many necks of a hydra who had heads that were manacles instead of dragons.

"Urgh… yes?" The demon clutched his head and groaned, though whatever pain tormented him didn't stop him from leaping through the rapidly closing gate to their side right before the one they stood upon swung open and swallowed them.

The lower city was a labyrinth out of a lunatic's nightmare. Physics' laws and reason did not apply-gates that lead to deadends when their thresholds were trespassed would lead to different halls when they retreated; at times, even while the unlikely duo watched, like a living three dimensional puzzle, the paths they were on could shift in any direction.

Keeping cognisant of their route was impossible, at least for Akane. The demon even looked like he was getting frustrated, sucking his teeth at dead-ends and running a steady stream of curses and denials to himself.

‘Not yet! Not yet! I cannot give you back control yet, you imbecile!’ he would mutter, frustration gnawing at his tone as he glared at the abrupt appearance of a wall that denied their passage with absolute finality.

“Are you really the same demon as before? You seem a bit d-eek!” Akane’s question was cut off as a man shrieking with the desperate cries of a trapped rodent flung himself at them, only to be rejected by bars that obstructed the prisoner’s path with iron indifference.

“H-help me!” the desperation was clear in his voice even as he fought to gather enough air to etch out a sound.

They had only just enough time to blink at him, Akane in terrified pity-the demon in blank indifference, before hooks soldered onto chains came whipping out of the darkness and bit into his flesh. Akane shuddered; she didn't know which made her tremble more the way the man screamed as he was dragged into the dark or the ominous chuckling of the one waiting deep in the pitch.

“Hmm… an interesting query… I both am and am not…” the demon said. He was dispassionate as he ignored the screaming, focusing instead on searching out a path that the city of Chastening seemed intent on obstructing.

“What?” Akane was as lost by his statement as they were in the prison laberinth.

“Your question. You wanted to know if I was the same demon as you met before, correct?” He spoke as he ran up the sheer face of a wall, deft in his dodging the various obstacles the city put in their path. “I am a part of him that has… its own will, to make it pedestrian enough for a human.”

“Ah! You mean like a split personality?” Akane said. Her eyes had grown wide as saucers as she watched the demon stomp flat the steel bars that sprouted to trap them.

“...Yes and no.” the demon lashed his tail over their heads where it curled around a pillar, launching them forward through a gate that was rapidly closing. “Though there is no real separation of our conscious. I am he and he is me. Even now I hear his voice clearly, raging about my theft of our body. I am a mere fragment remaining of something dead, after all.”

“He’s… he’s not coming back, is he?” Akane MUCH preferred this version of the demon, even if he was, in some ways, even more unnerving than the other version.

Even the demon’s chuckle was musical. “I don't have long, sorry. As we speak he is wrestling control of this body from me, and it craves his return. Though I am a part of his mind, I am just a part…. You humans would call it a conscience. That’s as close as I can describe my being. Like the little voice in your head that tells you to do the right thing.”

“Sorry but you’re not really doing a very good job.” Akane said. Just closing her eyes brought up the tyrannical laughter and rampant malice of the demon as he rampaged and slaughtered.

“Hahaha!” the demon seemed genuinely amused by her observation. “I am not that kind of conscience, I’m afraid.”

His voice changed, growing dark and his brows lowered towards his eyes which were alight with the fires of fury and retribution. “Even you humans have two sides to your conscience, correct? Pleasant as you may find me, if I am to be considered a conscience, I am one that pushes my charge further down into the cesspool of darkness we have chosen for ourselves. I am the taskmaster that reminds us of the dark path we chose when we refused to die.”

“Dark path? Wha-Mr. Demon! Are you alright?” Akane’s voice came out a little squeakier than she would have like as the demon collapsed to his knees skidding to a stop meters away, and gnashing his teeth in apparent agony.

“Ergh! N-not yet! I-if I give it back to you, you’ll challenge him! We are not ready!” he was snarling to himself, worrying his head back and forth like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. Akane whimpered after taking a timid peek at his face, it was twisted in a mad mix of agony, rage, defiance and bloodlust. But the most menacing of all was the red leaking out of his goat’s eye it was like blood turned to fire and smoke.

“I know he is tracking my power! Fine then! Take it! But only after you swear upon your beloved Mother that you so admire, that you will wait to attack [Punishment]!” A storm of dark red consumed a side of his face in ethereal fire as he made his demands. “Agreed then! No going back on your… our word. That’s Law… y’kno?”

Akane was in a panic, and not only because of the private one man play of madness she was forced to be audience to. Like it was a living thing Chastening seemed to have noticed the demon’s lapse in his flight. It had begun building walls around him meticulously enclosing him, quickly shutting their window of escape.

“M-mr. Demon? A-are you ok?”

“THAT SHITTY BASTARD!!!” that broken, villainous voice shrieked through the griding sound of the walls which were darkening their surroundings in growing shadows as they got closer to shutting them in. I’d make him pay, yo, but how? It’d just be makin’ me suffer, y’kno? It’s a very difficult problem.”

It seemed like the violent, vulgar personality of the demon had replaced its more chivalrous personality.

He shot Akane a look with the corner of his wolf’s eye which had shrunken from a silver nova back into a full moon on an otherwise empty night.

“Didn’t want me back, eh boob witch?”

“That is…!”

“Nevermind all that!” the demon said, slashing his tail as though to cut down her denial before it could leave her lips. “I must find away to deal with you first. That bastard was right. I cannot face that traitor until I first solve this busty little problem, y’kno? Wait! It is I that knows! I will ask Mama! She will solve this dilemma, yo.”

He had reached this epiphany at an unfortunate moment, at least in Akane’s eyes. His voice echoed in a room that swallowed them in unmitigated dark after the walls that sprouted around them grew to their peak. Akane couldn’t even see her hand when she held it right before her eyes; that’s how absolute the darkness was. Weirdly though, she could still somewhat see the demon, it was as though the darkness of his skin was so deep it overawed the shadows around it.

“Hmm? We are closed in, yo.” the demon said sounding more curious than concerned. “Ah, I know! This will be the perfect place to experiment. Then I will call Mama.”

As the demon was discussing his plans with himself the walls began to groan shuddering as they shifted until they morphed into a door that looked as though it was built to fit a giant. And it was a giant that shambled through it, gripping the walls and crouching just so he could cram his way through a doorway that somehow managed to seem cramped when matched against his girth.

Akane trembled as she took in the imposing intruder. The mammoth of a man made the bishop and that enormous knight look shrimpy, even the torch in his hand dwarfed bonfires Akane had seen on Earth.

“Foundja!” the giant said adjusting his conical torturers hood with a hand about the size of a trashcan lid. He spoke like his tongue was too big and was missing more than a few teeth and when he grinned exposing a bloated tongue peeking through the gaps between shattered and pulled teeth, that suspicion was proven true. “B-boss wants me ta keep ya here till he comes.”

His eyes were hidden behind mirror lensed glass that gleamed in the light of his torch, but by the debased way he ran his tongue over a carriage sized butcher knife shaped blade Akane could imagine his sordid expression. “Boss said long’s yuse alive ‘e don’ really care whut I do to ya. So even doe I’m da Executiona I gotta keep ya ‘least a little alive.”

“I did give my word, yo…” the demon spoke as though the giant wasn’t lurking behind them caressing a blade that looked capable of bisecting a bear. “I suppose I should not let [Punishment] find me. He might not be able to sense my old power now that the whiny bastard has fled back to where he belongs but if I don't do something he will find me, y’kno…”

He tilted his head back and forth as he pondered his dilemma while ignoring the one Akane felt was more pressing. A problem that shook the ground with every step closer, a problem that was testing the edge of his blade on his thumb which by the looks of the thin stream of blood dripping down it, was quite sharp.

“U-um…” Akane said gripping the back of the demon’s hoodie so tightly she drove all the blood from her fingers.

“I know! I will use that!” the demon said snapping his fingers. “Get out here! Special summons [Grimoire fou kabrit la] Mad Goat’s Grimoire, let’s get wild!”

Akane could only describe the respondent sound as metal tearing singing a discordant duet with a nursery of screaming children, a sound terrible enough that Akane soon found herself screaming in concert with it. It felt like her ears were bleeding, tormented by a sound that no human ear was meant to hear.

“‘Top dat!” the giant was flailing his butcher knife around clutching his head with his free hand, groaning and drooling as he suffered. “Stop dat horrible sound!”

“Such babies, yo. Wimps, y’kno?” the demon shook his head as a book materialized above his cupped hand. The book’s manifestation seemed to only annoy him a bit, though perhaps it was the reactions of the others. It was hard to tell.

The sound died down as the demon examined the book hovering just above his hand, until it was nothing more than a whisper. In its place a dominating chill breathed a numbing iciness through the room which made the humans fall victim to a feeling like many needle-legged spiders were playing tag across their skin.

The book was even terrible to behold. It was like a living thing; the dust jacket alternated between spiny scales and outright thorns to being smooth and fleshy as a human or a slug. As the demon waved a hand over it the grimoire opened and hands reached back out towards him, gripping, grasping, attempting to catch him and pull him in to their mysterious depths. The demon’s lips curled as he flipped through the book muttering to himself, paying as much heed to the grasping horror movie hands as a buzzing fly.

Akane and the giant were transfixed in terror, however. Both kept a wary eye on the movements of the hands which would, on occasion, stretch out towards them, though they would hiss and dissipate into ashes once they strayed to far from the book.

“Let’s see. Let’s see… ah! Here, yo!” the demon jabbed a finger into the book which shrieked like a dying wild beast. “Perfect. This one will do.”

“Wait… I don’ like what’cher doin over dere.” the giant said finally getting to his senses. He hefted his butcher blade and began to lumber towards them. “An’ I bet da Boss won’ e’ther.”

He loomed over them grunting as his blade swung over his head carving deep gouges into the ceiling. “Boss’ll prolly give me a big ‘ol rewards fer dis one.”

“Just about got it, yo.” The demon who had been rubbing his hands together while his eyes zipped back and forth over script, a terrible script that twisted Akane’s stomach up if she even glanced at it, ignoring Akane’s insistent tugs on his hood. “Whelp, won’t know until I give it a shot, y’kno?”

Akane, whose eyes had been focused on the lumbering executioner towering executioner preparing to purge them, was distracted by the demon’s tail as it began to dance back and forth as a snake entranced by a charmer’s tune would. Akane was momentarily mesmerized by its serpentine movements, before a horrible scraping sound called her eyes upward. The executioner’s blade had began to descend, carving the ceiling apart as it fell, and raining friction sparks upon them all.

“MR. DEMON!!!” Akane’s screech would be good competition for the Mad Goat’s Grimoire’s summoning.

Her scream had hardly left her lips when the demon’s tail blurred, then… vanished. More sparks were birthed as the walls screamed, scratched and scarred by something unseen. Akane eyes reflexively chased the sounds and sparks, but couldn’t find their source only what they left behind.

They were… words? Letters? Hieroglyphs? The etchings were similar to things Akane had seen on Earth… some of it was anyway. She recognized some western letters. She even saw some kanji, hiragana, katakana, but some of the carvings… just looking at them was enough to churn her insides.

Looking at the writings all at once made things distorted somehow. Like she was trying to read things through shards of broken glass; her vision warped amd twisted, and she began to think… unspeakable things. Akane clutched her heart. It felt like it was being assaulted within her chest, filling with despair. Her head was not much better off, she fought to keep her eyes open, for every time they were forced to close… nameless elder horrors stretched and yawned as they lazed in endless abyss, staring at… no through her with countless eyes on faces formed of tentacles, pus filled boils, and oozing tumors.

“N-noooo.” Akane said, retching and groaning as she fought her rebellious stomach.

“I don’ like dis.” the executioner said, mirroring Akane he was gripping his chest. His eyes were dominated by whatever nightmares he was forced to bare witness to. “No more… No more!”

His muscles swelled as they tugged the massive blade towards the source of his living nightmare. This enemy of the Boss… no the enemy of everything that walked beneath the sun, he would cleave it. Cleave it and free the world from the blight. The Boss would surely reward him for that! And the nightmares would end.

As if noticing the giant executioner for the first time the demon half turned his way, a single eyebrow raised in mild interest.

“Kuhahahaha!” the demon’s lips tugged upwards baring his fangs as his derisive laughter filled the chamber. “Humans sure are interesting, y’kno? Yo! Don’cha know you’re already dead? How’re ya still movin’, y’kno?”

“Sh-shut up! You jus’ gotta die an’ I can have peace again!” the executioner’s brought his blade down to crush the demon and his smug smile to pieces… or that was what was supposed to happen.

The executioner blinked. The blade never fell? The demon and the girl were still in one piece. The demon’s cocky grin was still in place on his smug face?

“Kuhahaha! What’s wrong, big yo? Ya missing something?” The demon clutched his stomach doubled over as mirth overcame him. “He ain’t… he ain’t even notice ye-kuhahaha!”

“Notice? Ah! My sword! Where? Ah! Ah! AHHH!”

The executioner had turned to look for his delinquent blade, and found that not only was his blade missing, but his whole arm had gone missing beneath his shoulder. Crimson fell like a waterfall from his missing appendage, splashing at his feet and dying the floor and his boots red.

“I gotta stop the bleedin’.” the big man groaned reaching for his shoulder to stem the flow… or at least he tried…

“N-nooo.” he groaned when he came up short. His jaw swung open in shock as he stared at a stump where his giant hand used to be. “Where did it go? Where-- ugh! B-Boss save me!”

The demon was pounding on his knee shoulders shaking with mirth. “He finally noticed, yo! He finally noticed! Kuhahaha!”

The giant could only moan as he watched chunks of flesh slide off his body, slurping as they plopped onto the ground in cuts pristine enough to make a butcher proud. He was still groaning as his jaw plopped to the floor landing at the peak of his lost mountain of flesh, not stopping until his head rolled from his shoulders, spinning as it stopped in front of the demon’s boot.

The demon’s eyes lingered on the head for a moment narrowing in bliss at the executioner’s final expression.

“That about does it, yo!” the demon’s tail blurred back into sight behind his back, its spear tip dripping red until it was sponged away into the endless black. He licked his lips whether he was savoring the taste of the executioners expression or his life essence was a mystery.

“Perfect! That shitty bastard should not be able to find us now! Its time for experiment number one, yo!” The demon said ignoring the disturbing popping sound his arms made as he twisted them in an impossible angle to lift Akane off his back.

“Huh?” Akane said, her mind was still disoriented though she could keep her stomach stayed under control long as she didn't stare to long at the markings on the wall.

With tentative steps the demon began to creep away from her until he stood in the middle of the room.

“Success!” the demon declared putting his hands on his hips in arrogant triumph. “A mystery solved! This room is under a demonic spell powerful enough that even [Punishment] would not be able to discover us even if he was standing in that doorway. Seems like the distance you can take from me depends on how much danger your in, yo!”

“Oh! I see.” Akane said nodding along side with the demon. That was good information to know. Now she could figure out how much danger she was in by how far away the demon was allowed to get from her.

“Yes. Yes.” The demon crossed his arms as he nodded. “Now for experiment number 2, yo.”

He closed one eye and stared at her with his chin tucked into his neck as he addressed her seriously. “For this I need to ask you a favor, Boob witch.”

“I really wish you would stop calling me that.” Akane said puffing her cheeks up in exasperation. “W-what do you need?”

The demon’s tail arched behind him and swished back and forth slowly like a prowling cat’s. “Can you do me a favor and…”

He tilted his head and grinned with a smile overflowing with wickedness, cruelty and malice. “Can you die for me real quick, yo!”

“W-what do you mean?!” Akane said panic seizing her heart as she retreated from the demon’s terrible expression.

“No need to despair, yo.” the demon said. His tail coiled on the ground beneath him lifting him into the air where he crossed his arms and legs, looking for all the world like he was sitting cross legged on thin air like it was ground. “Matta a’fact, rejoice! Ya get ta die by my full power, y’kno? Kuhahahahaha!”

Black energy exploded around him in static bursts that licked his body like the tongues of affectionate dogs formed of corrupted energy. With a terrible grin the demon reached out a had and black flame answered the gesture crackling and hissing in the air until it solidified into a raven bandana adorned with the white skull of a goat.

His horns surged from his skin until they were as long as a man’s forearms, the ones growing from his cheeks twisting around his ears until they almost looked like headphones. The features on his face began to change as well, Akane only just saw what looked like fur begin to sprout on his face before the demon pulled his hood over his head and darkness swallowed his black skin from sight.

She could see his teeth though. They elongated and curved until they became like barbed hooks like a crabeater seal. They grinned, gleaming out of the dark at her until the demon hid them away when he wrapped the bandana around his mouth.

“I must devour more mana, yo.” The demon said as sword blade-like wings expanded and spread behind his back. “All so you can witness my full magnificence when you are destroyed.”

His head arched back and his chest swelled like he was drawing in a great breath. A breeze of cold air that seemed to sweep away the very life of the air as it was drawn towards the demon washed over the room. All around Akane color was devoured from the walls, leached away in the demon’s direction.

He swelled with it his chest expanding further and further like an inflating balloon until it seemed as though his ribs would burst. Then…

Like a puppet with its strings cut, the demon collapsed into a heap in an anticlimactic crescendo.

“Pfft!” Akane covered her mouth to hold in her laughter. “Like a gag in a manga! No need to try so hard Mr. Demon… Uh, Mr. Demon?”

There was something… off about the demon. He really did seem like a puppet with its strings cut by the odd, impossible even, angles his arms and legs were jumbled in heap. Even his eyes were lifeless, all the fire on his goat eye had burned out and clouds had hid the silver moon of his wolf eye in complete dark.

She had just considered perhaps venturing over to him and poking his still form with a toe when that broken puppet form of his twitched.

“Yeek!” an involuntary shriek eskaped Akane’s lips when the puppet began flopping around like its strings had been reattached and an inexperienced puppeteer took over its manipulation. The demon rose in a ponderous fashion, lifting into the air his arms and legs swaying lifelessly, his body held aloft only by his tail.

“Can… ya… die… for… me…?” the demon’s mouth was moving, but his voice wasn’t matching the movement of his lips… in fact it didn't seem to be coming from his mouth at all. The room echoed with his words the sounds coming from every corner repeating those words in confusing sporadicness made ever more fearsome by the fact the they seemed to be spoken by a thousand different throats.

The chatter grew louder and faster the words becoming indecipherable as they ran together into a shrieking hurricane that pressed Akane’s mind until it teetered in the realm of the unbearable, and then…

It just stopped.

All at once the voices went silent, though Akane could not feel at ease. The demon still hung in the air limp as a dead body if dead bodies could float. Her teeth chattered in her mouth, the silence only driving her terror higher. She felt the terror of being in an empty room even with the demon right there in front of her, every sense but her eyes told her she was there by herself…

Every sense but her eyes and that nameless sixth sense. That sense of the unknown, the supposedly unreal. The one that’s stronger in babies and cats, who see things in corners where there’s nothing there. That was why Akane knew that her other senses were lying; there was something massive and evil in that room with her even if she couldn’t see it.

As her eyes roamed the empty room examining every corner desperate to find the elusive horror, she was distracted by a sound that started faint enough to be overlooked as white noise in the background, that grew louder and louder until it could not be ignored.

Tears rolled down Akane’s face as she turned towards the source, a strange hissing. The puppet parody of the demon’s skin began to bubble and hiss like a liquid. Then, steam roiled over his limp form until it swallowed the demon’s form completely hiding it from sight.

The grey vapor swirled around like it was being teased by a wind Akane didn't taste on her skin, until it erupted like a geyser. The mist dashed against the ceiling and dispersed blanketing the ceiling with dark heavy clouds pregnant with the promise of storm.

Pitter. Patter. Drip. Drop.

Akane had never heard the sound of falling rain inside before. It sounded perverted somehow, like it was a sin against nature. But all around her rain was falling. Black rain. It hissed and burned like acid, greedily eating away everything it touched. The black liquid left the ground a pitted pockmarked mess wherever it fell.

But it didn't fall on her. Not a drop touched Akane’s skin, a perfect circle remained unmarred around her. The steady patter of rain began to die, and Akane gathered breath to sigh in relief.

But that sigh died in her throat before it was born, for after the clouds emptied themselves and faded away, and the black rain finally came to an end a new horror quickly took its place.

Pools of acidic black rain left behind after the rain ended started writhing before belching forth thousands of roaches, ants, beetles, rats, and snakes. Thousands became tens of thousands, that became hundreds of thousands, that became so many that they coated the walls painting them a black as absolute as the demon’s skin.

They swarmed and crawled everywhere turning the floor into a sea of clicking pincers, slithering scales, and gnawing jaws. The only island untouched was again, around Akane. Though she danced fearfully on her toes at approach of the dreadful beasts, they could not touch her. Try as the creatures might to feast upon her supple flesh, they were always repelled by some unseen force.

Then all at once, like the beasts were possessed of a single mind they stopped. Still the creatures were almost as unnerving as they had been moving, especially with how they all turned and watched her with the solidarity of a single organism.

“Hmm… guess killing ya won’t be that easy, yo.” Akane’s head swivelled around for the source of the voice, that sounded something like the demon’s only… squeakier.

“Eek!” she said, letting out a squeak of her own when she spotted a solid black, obese rat with the red eyes of a goat, waddling up to the edge of the barrier protecting her.

“Yessss.” a black mamba hissed as it rose up on the opposite side of the barrier. “We must try harrrrrderrrr, y’kno?”

A thousand voices cried out at once made from the clicks of mandibles, feet, and chitin from a mound of various insects. “It’s troubling to call, Mama. If she sees how much we have fucked up she might make us go back, yo!”

“It’s true, y’kno?” All the voices said at once as they melded together, beginning to dissolve. “Might’s well give it our all, yo.”

The voices faded as the various creatures melted and lost individuality until nothing remained but ripples on a tranquil lake of pure black. Black that stretched over the horizon, black that stretched to the sky, black that was so deep it made the room disappear. Akane spun searching for something… anything to relieve her from the totality of the dark but the abyss stretched eternal everywhere she turned.

“H-hello?” Akane screamed into the dark.

“Hello? Hello? Hello?” Only her own voice answered her back. Akane fell to her knees. She was really alone. She was too afraid to take even a step off of the little island of stone, all that remained of the room. She just knew if she took a single step in any direction she would fall forever. Then she would be lost to the darkness forever.

“Hello? Hello? Hello?” and the echoes of her voice refused to fade away. They sounded like they could go on forever.

It would drive her mad eventually, if this would be her only partner for conversation forever. “Shut UP!”

“Hello? Hello? HELLO? HELLO?!!!” Akane twitched, as her echoe… stopped being hers. Emotions filled that voice that she had never felt, screamed in pitches far beyond the range of anyone human… anything living really.

What every was throwing her own words back mocked her in a basso rumble deeper than the furthest legions beneath the sea, while at the same time screeching at her so shrilly glass would break and dogs would howl had they suffered the sound.

Male, female, both, neither, human, beast, divine, nightmare and every combination joined together in a discordant cacophony all screaming a barely intelligible, “HELLO?!”

Akane clutched her ears and screamed, her nose ran like a broken faucet, and tears soaked her cheeks completely. If her heart beat any faster she just knew it would break. And that seemed to be the demon’s goal.

“You’re tougher than I thought, y’kno?” A mouth formed out of the dark. It was large enough to swallow an elephant whole, equipt with teeth built to shred metal spoke to her with a voice that was as mocking as it was hoarse.

Akane scooted backwards on her butt until her hand slipped over the edge of her little sanctuary dipping, for a moment, into eternal open space.

“Caaaarefuuuulll.” a breath moist as rotting meat licked at Akane’s neck, as she rolled back to safety. She somehow overcame her dread and managed to force her eyes up to the source.

And immediately regretted it. Fear stole her control away, warm wetness drenched her legs as her bladder voided itself. No one would blame her for letting fear master her. There weren’t many who could retain control when under the gaze of a house sized eyeball the color of blood with the rectangle pupil of a goat glaring down upon them.

“Seems like your curse stops me short of scaring you to death as well, yo.” The giant mouth had swollen until it burst forming thousands of tiny clones that screeched at her from every direction.

“Whelp, yo, guess I got no choice but ta tear through it with brute force, y’kno.” The great eye rolled back until the red sclera had been replaced by black and a silver moon like pupil stared down at her in place of the sideways slit of the goat.

Akane’s eyes darted back and forth between the sources of her torment, until they faded away completely. As her heartbeat slowed down to normal, and her breathing lost its raggedness she was happy to welcome back the eternal black nothingness the demonic apparations had disturbed. It was lonely but at least she was at peace.

For a moment anyway…

Clip. tick. Tick. tick. Tick. Clop.

There was that sound… the same sound that she had heard before the demon stepped out of the darkness of the carriage that brought them to this hellhole. The demon said that the bond she inflicted him with didn't allow him to even scare her to death, but she did not think her heart could take much more fear.

Trembling she turned towards the source of the sound and wondered what nightmare she would be forced to face this time.

Clip. tick. Tick. tick. Tick. Clop.

She could only just make something out as it began to trespass into her scant bit of light from the darkness. It was a beast of some sort. Covered in thick curly black fur, with four legs that somehow had both a goat’s hooves and a wolves claws, it watched her with large eyes that were the same as the demon’s.

With the four horns of a hebridean sheep, ears long enough to sweep the ground as it walked, and teeth shaped like wicked hooks, this couldn’t have been anything but a beast summoned from some pit of Apocalypze. The sight of it was enough to make Akane’s heart stop beating. Her mind went blank. The only thing she could think was…

“Cuuuute!” Akane squealed.

The creature which looked something like a cross between a wolf pup and a goat’s kid, had floofy, poofy fur, large soulful eyes, and a magnificent voluminous tail. Akane would not be alone in her diagnosis.

But her words caused the creature to flinch, and it snarled out with the demon’s broken voice. “I am not cute, yo! Be terrified, of my beast form!”

“Your voice is usually terrifying, but in that body its adorable.” Akane cooed at the creature. She was not trying to be insulting. Not really, but her words only served to enrage the demon.

“I will show you adorable, yo!” the demon howled, then did something that was very much not adorable.

His body trembling the creature stood on his back legs and began to do a hopping, skippin, stumbling parody of a human’s walk. It should have still been cute, it should have been but it was somehow… wrong, perverted. Something that should not have been.

Akane fell back to the ground at the first snapping sound. The demon made it when he twisted his neck at a sideways angle that would have killed any animal but an owl. The snapping continued as the strange beasts muscles bulged its arms bursting apart until they reformed into three pairs.

Cloven hooves tore the darkness on the ground apart as they dug into it propelling the beast towards Akane. Its teeth gnashes making a horrible metal screeching sound as they tried in vain to reach Akane and tear her apart. Its six arms gripped the dark eternity surrounding them like it was solid, bulging and twisting in strain as the beasts many horns crashed against Akane’s protection thwarted from skewering her every time.

The ground shook with the beast’s roar, pregnant with impotent fury. Its mouth stretched wide with rage, its forked tongue lashing whip-like from side to side growing in length until the beast vomited its source.

The massive black snake slithered free of the monster’s throat arching once before it struck. The snakes fangs oozed dark venom that splashed against the barrier and hissed and smoked wherever it struck, though it could not pierce Akane’s protective veil.

The latest failure drove the demon into a rage. It arched its back flexed its arms and screamed its fury, looking like an enraged old, dark god, preparing to rampage. Just as Akane began to wonder how the demon was going to vent its fury next, the demon’s giant form swelled and burst like an overfilled balloon, deflating into the demon’s more familiar form.