i’ve been both a saint & a viper
They come for him. They will always come for him.
In what used to be his most precious and safest place, the demons thrive. The darkness that once was his only cloak of protection they writhe, blaspheming what used to be his sanctuary with their demonic laughter and spitting. Their shadows bounce off the damp cave walls, their howls echoing through stone and stalactites in between the sound of their clicking jaws and drool, snapping their teeth just inches from his flesh, set on tearing skin from bone. Each night is a new scene but the same characters - blood-stained and half-rotten, hobbling towards him with sickly smiles and hollowed-out, eyeless sockets. They are as real to him as his own flesh and bone, yet he knows they are hidden amongst the nooks and crannies of their cave, unseen by others.
Yet he hears them always, champing in his ear and whispering terrible, unfeasible things in his ears.
Kill, kill, kill.
Kill, kill, kill, like you killed us.
It’s never ceasing and he screams out in protest, cursing them and throwing them away from his flesh with bucks and pressing his weight into them against the walls until they disappear; but they always return, and always with the same request.
Kill, kill, kill.
So he did.
Black as their own shadows he had come, and with cloudiness in Balto’s gaze he tore into actual flesh and bone, severing arteries and pressing his forelegs into a shattered rib cage until organs and muscle became nothing but mush beneath his hooves. They cackled and howled with pleasure as it occurred, the walls splattered with rubies of blood and pieces of sinew as he shredded his only friend into nothingness.
The act had gifted Balto with immortality - the demons had told him.
Now you’ll live forever, now you’ll live forever.
They whisper excitedly in his ear and it tortured him even more than anything previously - he would never die, never die.
Never die.
A sound - a real sound, not one in his mind - rouses the beast and silences the demons.
The vines of his cave whisper against each other as moonlight begins to spill inward, a shape creating a massive shadow at its front.
Kill, kill, kill.
Eyes - glassy and blue as the moon - sharpen and fixate on the unfamiliar shape, remaining hidden beneath shadow and his own writhing demons. He dare not move forward, he dare not listen to the demons that entice him with sickly sweet ideas. “You’re not safe here,” comes the harshness of his voice that trembles with resistance, slick with warning. It’s the same words he had told Faulkor, before his eyes became blind and his mind became theirs.
Balto
Strangely had muse for this one.