Demon Ascension

Death Harbinger

Lith Continent, Hell / Demon world

***

The absence of moon and stars uncompleted the night sky, not even the mighty clouds danced beyond this theatric space and a  thick swarm of smoke conquered what seemed supposedly beautiful.

Dreygo Mondus lay on top of a large, high rock overseeing a sea of fire. He missed the feeling of hope and happiness as he glanced at the cloudy and sunshiny day when he was alive. Dreygo had lived in this wretched place for centuries. Not actually living, but never-ending dying. He smirked at the thought.

His hands behind his skull and his legs stretched outwardly while ignoring the stench of slaughtered demons scattered around him had made him stare blankly at a seemingly empty sky filled with suffering and depression.

No stars. Only ocher-colored, bloody cloud of smoke.

He forgot what was like to sunbathe and feel a slight scorch of sunburns as he swam in the lake pool for hours when he was on Earth. This was the only memory he had about the sun, about daytime, about hope. There was no daytime here, even no nighttime, only darkness.

'When will this end? So much agony. So much pain.'

He stood up and pulled his sword dug deep into the crimson-colored soil with a deep sigh. Not fertile, not loam, but a combination of burnt soil and bathed with never-ending spills of blood from the demons that the Death Harbingers killed.

'Never-ending killing. Never-ending death.' He grimaced at the thought.

He glanced beyond the horizon for the hope of a silver lining beyond rotten structures, emulating that of the earth like Chernobyl but much worse. 'Silver lining?' There was none. He chuckled. 'Why am I still hoping? I know there is one way to end this…. To kill the Hell God – Kragus Manaroth!"

But the question remained, 'Where is he? He has been absent in Hell.'

***

The Hell God sanctioned 5% of the Demon population to reduce its uncontrollably increasing number. They called them, Death Harbingers. Not all were qualified to become a Death Harbinger. If a Demon proved its resilience, endured the Hell's suffering for at least a Century, and with an innate skill of a warrior then he or she is qualified.

Kragus Manaroth gifted these Harbingers a portion of his power to kill demons. The Hell God blessed their weapons, provided them with armor– for heat and cold resistance, and intimidating enough to cast fear to lower demons and augment their demon strength just to effectively kill humanoid demons.

Death Harbingers were stronger than all Demons below them but weaker compared to the six Demon Lords who served as Lieutenants under Kragus. Without this power from the Hell God, demons cannot kill other demons.

They are scattered around the Demon world assigned each country to control the populace just by killing older demons. After a Demon's death, they will be reincarnated to Earth or to be dispersed to nothingness. They were never sure, but a necessity just to maintain the balance between the three worlds - Heaven, Earth, and Demon.

These three worlds are of the same vastness and size, like interdimensional worlds, but of different environments. Hell was getting crowded each day like crawling pests multiplying in an irrepressible manner. The Death Harbingers, designed to kill, were the pest controllers.

***

Dreygo took a few steps and took his sword, a small-width blade with a skull design in its cross guard and perfectly arranged skeleton-like metal from its handle down to the pommel, and struck it in his holster. He perched on top of the rock just inches before a cliff, 30 stories high equivalence.

He hovered over his vision below and noticed a vast crowd of humanoid demons walking in random directions, individually, some in clusters, who seemed to find a hint of hope or maybe an escape to a place invaded with hatred, greed, and sin. They had no purpose.

Very few of these humanoid demons begged him to be vanquished by his blade. But mostly, these demons tried hard to survive. Hell provided them the eternal indulgence of sinful desires which are rooted in the cardinal sins - lust, greed, pride, gluttony, wrath, envy, and sloth.

Hence, the desire to live outweighed the harshest of all environments. These sins fueled these lowlife demons to live eternally. Thus, they had a tremendous fear of being dispersed or turned to the nothingness from the three realms.

It seemed that almost every inch of this forsaken land was populated with these demons. A place called Lith, was not vast enough to accommodate new descents coming from Earth. They overcrowd the place, augmenting the true definition of hell.

'These low life.' Dreygo cursed.

Kragus cast Dreygo in Lith alone. It was one of the Demon countries with half of its land covered with extreme heat and fire. Other Continents were exactly the opposite. Instead of fire, was an agonizing and extreme cold - a freezing temperature.

First few years of being a demon, one could wish for death because of the harsh and painful environments. But every waking hour, one could learn to live with it and be immune until their skins become numb.

The Harbinger maintained his vision looking at the horizon and took a large step towards a deep chasm. He fell but his body was still in an upright position. He spread his arms halfway through the fall, slightly impeding his descent, and -

'Thud!'

A large sound vibrated the ground and echoed through a smoky space. The soil depressed like a small crater and both his feet were stable with his knees and back slightly bent. His arms maintained their span like a flying eagle. His long wavy hair fell behind his back synchronizing his landing. The humanoid demons jerked and caressed them in a stream of breeze that carried imminent death.

The previously crowded area was now dispersed as Dreygo invaded their space. He slowly gained gentle and slow strides and his manly and handsome face was plastered with the utmost indifference.

The humanoid demons screamed in fear in unison and ran away at first sight. Dreygo grasped his bladed weapon and instantly took it out from its holster. The blade sliced through the smoke and a slight deafening, friction of metal sound, was perceptible at the ears of every demon in the area. The screeches and the guffaws increased, staggering with their steps with the intent to escape.

"You can only run, maggots!" The Harbinger taunted.

He crouched from his position ready to launch and his sword pointed forward. With one step, it catapulted himself still perpendicular to the floor. He sliced against the wind creating small tornadoes in his path. In an instant, he buried his sword in the back of a Demon's skull through his nose bridge.

Then a bursting light appeared on the demon's eyes and mouth and it quickly burnt and turned to ash. That was the closest demon and others gained distance every second.

For Dreygo, the distance was not significant enough to escape his blade. He collected his strength in his knees and jumped with a vertical height of 3 stories comparable and 500 meters horizontally, and upon landing, his left hand captured the head of an escaping demon and smashed it on the ground. The Demon's brain splattered on the floor like squash.

He veered to his side and swung his sword, slicing the demon in half like paper and another Demon was caught by his blade as he quickly turned to his opposite side. This went on for a few minutes, killing demons on his path with incredible speed. Lights appeared in their eyes like Christmas fireworks and burnt to dust.

Dreygo looked upon the sky and recalled his death count. For 24 hours, he managed to kill 500 demons over the required quota. Finally, he smiled. He pierced his sword to the ground and slammed his body against the field, his armor clanking against rocks.

He just stared again at the blank sky with smoke still polluting it. He sighed.

'Another day's work.'

Dreygo started to close his eyes, ready to succumb to a day's retirement.

Suddenly, the blank sky cracked. It generated an enormous thunderous sound and a light forced itself to appear in between. The cracks weaved through the blank sky, but on its epicenter, the light increased its size and illuminated the area like faint sunlight.

It came through a small ball of light like a meteor increasingly descending fast and crashed a few meters away from Dreygo's position. It exploded and threw Dreygo and slammed himself against a building's wall.

He quickly reached for his holster and realized that he had no sword. He surveyed the area and tried to look for it but all he saw was rubble and debris of rocks from the explosion.

He sensed hostility. As the sand particles subsided, an almost glowing being revealed. He had black wings like a black albatross, spread over his shoulders demonstrated majestically as shown in its span. His wings were not actually made of feathers but lethal metallic blades, a material not known to man.

In between those wings was a man or a woman, more likely a fusion of both gender features, his armor was very shiny, slightly glittering with every motion he made. He does not have a helmet but his hair was long, its strands touching his shoulder plates, straight, and blonde. He had no weapons with him as supposedly expected for an Angel warrior invading the Demon space, should at least have a sword or a bow and arrow.

The Harbinger felt a sensation that he never revisited for the longest time, his excitement to kill an Angel. Dreygo with no need for further conversations to partake jumped high beyond the angel's overhead and tried to land a punch.

The angel still in his position, closed his wings covering almost every inch of its body. Dreygo knew that Angel's wings were stronger than their armor, nevertheless decided to punch it with all his might.

His punch landed so strong that it made the ground vibrate and wind forcibly thrown, creating a vacuum between these beings. It was not damaged, not even a scratch. The Harbinger threw punches again against the angel's wings maintaining his defense.

'Clank. Clank. Clank'

Every Dreygo's punch created enormous sounds of metal trying to puncture one another. But the angel maintained its position. In a blink of an eye, the angel's wings suddenly opened, creating a strong wind pushing Dreygo outward and throwing himself again hitting the ground. It was so strong that even humanoid demons looking at a distance felt the force.

The Harbinger regained his stance and planned to launch another attack now that the angel's wings were open. He launched again taking dizzyingly fast steps but he stopped as the Angel spoke, his voice was soft, so peaceful, close to a whisper but very audible, and echoed through the air.

"Dreygo, I am not your enemy… for now. I will pull back you to earth. I have a job for you there."

Dreygo listened but was still skeptical thinking maybe to make him lower his guard. Even so, he disengaged himself. It was not the nature of Angels to lie or create a trap. They were born warriors and fought to the death with honor.

He admired these Angels for what they were and their sheer will to fight to their fullest abilities unlike the strong demons he fought, very loathsome to even think about.

The Angel continued with more emphasis and much louder,

"Do you want to ascend?"