Heroes Among Demons

Prologue

Dante stood amidst the ruins of the once grand city of Ax’hibra, the ancient City of the Damned. The once great, sprawling city now lay in ruins, the ancient city of stone and obsidian now lay desolate and abandoned, robbed of its glory but not its power. Around him, the twelve Archdemons stood in a circle, a circular platform covered in ancient glyphs and runes. Kneeling in Dante’s direction, their heads fixated on the rubble-strewn ground, the twelve evil beings chanted in the guttural language of the demons, invoking the ancient forces placed within this city by the original Lords of the Damned. A twelve sided star glowed around him, made of inscriptions in the demon language, glowing a deep blood red. He felt the dark forces of the city begin to flow through him, changing him, morphing him, turning him into… he himself knew not.

          “From now on,” Sel’ix, the eldest of the Archdemons, hissed, “thou, Dante, shall be known no more as a lowly human, bound by mortality of the flesh and the laws of mortals. Thou are now, and forever more, a demon. The powers the Lord of Darkness bestowed upon our race will now be yours. Do not disappoint us, young one…”

          Dante’s body was wracked with a fiery agony, it felt like liquid fire ran through his veins, his bones felt like they were heated in a forge and his mind reeled from the pain, he felt like he was going mad. He screamed in agony as his skin turned black as obsidian and tattoos were seared into his flesh, runes burning red like those of the star he stood within. He heard Sel’ix’s last words before he succumbed to the blackness of a waking dream.

“Do not disappoint us…”

Chapter 1

Dante’s eyes fluttered as he awoke in total darkness, without a light source in sight. He groped in the darkness for his blade, Daemonia, the blade forged through the ancient style of “blood crafting”, infusing blood with the white-hot steel, giving it an iridescent scarlet colouring. After locating his weapon, Dante stared at the tattoos that burned ruby red in the darkness. They resembled a dragon curling about his upper torso, it’s head coming to rest over his heart after arching over his left shoulder. Similarly styled tattoos adorned both his arms.

          Using the new powers now coursing through his veins, he uttered a word in the demon language. “Arishok!”  In a flash of red light, Dante left the cavernous maw of the City of the Damned, leaving it once again as silent as the dead that rested beneath the once great granite and obsidian buildings.

          Dante returned to the land of the living in a brilliant crackle of scarlet lightning at the mouth of the cavernous edifice shaped in the likeness of a demon with ram horns, the entrance to Ax’hibra. It was time to remind the angels why Hell is so feared by the humans.

“Humans”, he thought to himself, “Strange not to think of myself as one anymore…”

          Kestrel suddenly felt a spike of fear in his chest. It was apparent Adelaide and Amylia felt it too.

          “Kestrel,” began Adelaide, “Did you feel that?”

          “I did, that does not bode well for us…”

          “What does that mean, big sister?” Amylia inquired. Adelaide was Amylia’s older sister and her teacher. The Covenant Council sensed the flows of magic shift, a sign that almost always heralded a changing of hands in power. They had the three of them live amongst the mortals to find out why, and also a perfect opportunity to train Amylia, who recently obtained the rank of an angel, no longer a cherub awaiting her lessons in the Glorious Heavens. Kestrel would teach young Amylia in the art of the blade whilst Adelaide instructed her younger sister in the use of the arcane arts.

          “Kestrel, I think what we just felt meant we are…” Adelaide trailed off as her own words sunk in. They took a quick look around before letting their travelling cloaks fall. They stood fully armoured in silver and gold armour, with emeralds and diamonds on their gauntlets and breastplates. They stretched their wings gracefully and took flight, unaware that a new evil already stalked the land, and that they truly were too late, for a new age was soon to begin…

Dante stood atop the snow-capped mountain, feeling the cold against his bare chest. His armour was only his gauntlets, armoured greaves, battle-worn pauldron and boots. From afar, he spotted three lights, so bright and magnificent; he almost mistook them for stars. Now, he had the power to repay the angels for what they stole from him…

          Dante descended the surface of the mountain quickly, free falling time and again to reach the ground as quickly as possible. Even with his newfound powers, powers that he barely understood yet, he knew he could not hope to defeat an angel. Not yet, especially not three. He would need instruction in the arcane arts, possibly with the blade as well seeing as he could strike harder, faster and more accurately than ever before but lacked the finesse that came with practice and battle.

Seeing smoke rise in the distance, Dante checked the map he always kept in a pouch on his belt. Torn and not without fold lines and creases, it was his father’s. The top left hand corner was burned, a reminder of the fire that consumed his home at the tender age of ten and all that he could save was some of his father’s armour, which he now wore, the map and a necklace his mother gave him. It was tinted blue, his mother’s favourite colour.

Shaped like a heart, it was very simple and unadorned, but he treasured it more than anything. She always said, “A warrior is born when he fights; a hero is born when what he fights for is right. But a legend, a legend is born when a person would sacrifice the last thing he can for what he believes in. This necklace once belonged to a legendary hero, he died knowing he did the right thing for the right reason. Someday, you can be just like him. A hero...

It was just a tale that his mother used to tell him. He used to believe in it, but the reality of it struck him eight years ago...

          The three angels stood among the ruins of the unholy city of Ax’hibra. The celestial beings could feel the seething evil of the long-dead city permeating the very air, the ground beneath their boots almost seemed to pulsate with dark energies.

          “Looks like we really are too late, Kestrel.” Adelaide remarked, laying a bare, unblemished hand upon the stone platform riddled with runic glyphs and recoiled with a yelp of surprise and pain when a painful red spark struck her finger. They felt a great nexus of dark power bloom within moments, strong and ancient forces were at work and very recently, at that.
“It feels like… Yes, a binding took place here.” Adelaide remarked. They followed the well of dark power to this accursed place, and although they could feel the residual energy here, the pulsating magic found here did so freshly, the evil intent so great that it could still be felt.

          “It appears so. We must tell the Council immediately, they will know how to deal with this matter. Those monsters from Hell are planning something, and I’d bet my blade that this is for some new, secret weapon.” Kestrel said with a troubled expression on his face.

           “Can we not simply find it and destroy it ourselves, Master Kestrel?” she inquired almost innocently. Instead, Adelaide answered her younger sibling.

          “Amylia, to hunt a weapon of the demons could be suicide. Demons mastered the art of war, battle, death and chaos. Whatever it is that we are hunting, it is sure to be a harbinger of death. If we fail, the humans and angels are in grave danger.”

          “The Council will hear about this, but I will hunt this fiend. Alone. Amylia needs a teacher, Adelaide. So you two stay out of it, I will hunt him myself.” Kestrel announced to both sisters’ horror.

          “Kestrel, you are known for being a true hero among the angels, but now isn’t the time for it.” But Kestrel wouldn’t have it, he took off with a flap of his large wings and was out of sight.

          Kestrel flew, the rain beating down upon him and blurring his vision. But he flew not with his eyes, but with his other senses. Not his physical ones, the senses only a user of the arcane had. He felt the atmosphere around him change. Where once he felt a balanced neutrality permeate the air, he now felt darkness and evil. Magic shifted  according to the flow of powers, and right now the shift he felt did not bode well for any celestial powers…