A feminine figure walked past him, long robes covered most of her body and legs, but leaving her arms and neck free, with long dark hair flowing behind her. She walked alongside his father and scrutinised him closely. With her face in profile, Shiro could see the horns on her forehead, the white only serving to highlight the light red of her skin. And her eyes... Black orbs that seemed to sink back into forever.
She pursed her lips, pulling back and turning to face him. “In all his years as a Law-Bound Master, he has never faltered in his duty. Never faltered in the face of sacrifice for the greater good. His loss of control and hesitation over you torments him, makes him believe that he too could Fall. And you.” She stepped over to him, cupping his chin in a clawed hand her skin was unimaginably soft. “Sacrificing you is the hardest thing he has ever done.” Glancing back, she added “I should know, I was there for many of them and have heard from my kin of the rest.”
Shiro’s mind reeled. All the training and dogma about the daemonic and their ilk that he had received matched nothing in this calm demeanour. Trying to gather the frayed ends of his wits, he stammered “W-w-who are you?”
She smiled. “My name is Azaphor and I am your future, little one. Or the final witness to the end of your story.” She lithely folded to the ground and sat cross legged next to him, revealing again the sword frozen in it’s downward arc.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it not obvious? We are joined now. I am part of you. Until, as you humans say, death do us part.” Her lips quirked up on one side “Which I admit may be sooner that I was imagining.”
Shiro struggled to make sense of what was happening. Sitting calmly discussing his descent into darkness with a beautiful daemon, while a sword hung over his head while a silent, brooding audience looked on.
“You would just leave? I mean,” he swallowed hard, “if I die, surely you die?”
She waved a hand. “Oh, certainly it is not a pleasant experience for me but nonetheless fairly painless. For you... well, I have never died so I would not know.”
Her manner was calming, or he was finally reaching the final stage before death where acceptance is the only way forward. “What did you mean, you could be my future?”
She smiled again and stroked the side of his face. “I mean that I can grant you power, little one. Enough to escape this death and forge your own destiny.”
“You mean through chaos and mayhem?” Somehow Shiro found the strength to laugh bitterly. “I know of your kind, you want nothing but destruction and oblivion.”
She grasped his hair and pulled his head towards hers. Her black eyes smouldering red as small flames flickered out, her beautiful face transforming into a vision of rage. A beautifully, terrifying visage. Her words came out as a low hiss, “Listen to me, little one. You and your kind know NOTHING of me and mine. You Law-Bound are almost as bad as these cretins who forcibly summon me to this plane.” Her grip tightened, lifting his head up until his knees came off the floor. “Did you know that your Order”, spitting the last word out, “have hunted my kind for centuries? Did you know that THEY initiated the hunt? That the entire premise for their hunt is nothing more than their OWN desire for supremacy.”
Only Shiro’s feet were touching the floor now and only because she had lifted him until his chains reach their full extension. She brought her face close to his, her eyes narrowed to slits but the small flames around her eyes were huge. “You know nothing.” She gradually lowered him to the floor, the fires diminishing until her eyes were again black orbs.
“But I do not visit the sins of your anscestors upon you. After all, you were not there and I should not blame you.” She settled back into her relaxed cross-legged position.
Shiro didn’t know what to think or believe. A lifetime of dry education versus real life claims, but also data from people he trusted who had raised him against something he had just met. The being seemed to read something in his face and sighed deeply.
“In the end, my little Law-ling, it matters not if you believe me now. I know my efforts to persuade you to my side of the story would seem hollow and empty, especially given the circumstances where I seem to be invested in staying on this plane.”
She turned to look at his father, the gleaming sword still hanging immobile two feet away from his head. “The only question that matters is whether you chose to die now or embrace the power that I can grant you.”
Shiro turned his head back as well. His father’s grimace seemed so out of place in a gaze looking at him. In this moment of unreality, he wondered what was going through his mind and whether there was a possibility that what the being was saying was actually true. He had never met a daemon, nor seen carnage and destruction wrought by their hands. He had only heard the stories and listened to the tales. True, these had come from people who had protected him, raised him. He swallowed back a lump in his throat. Even his family.
Still looking into the face of his father, he finally asked himself the question: after everything, did he want to die?
