Distant agonized screams echoed through a cavernous expanse. It was a world of death, left without order. Yet, in one cell atop Hell's roof, a cage of stone and blackened iron, a fragile peace endured within. A mother sang to her son. Her voice trembling, serving as a fragile shield against the horrors that fought endlessly beyond their prison.
"Hush now… my shadow, my dear little one,
The night is long, but the dark is our home.
Close your eyes, let the spiders spin~
They'll weave you a blanket, so soft, so sweet.
The wind sings low through the cracks in our wall,
The rats hum along with their tongues so small.
The moon's a pale eye that watches you rest,
But mother is here~ you're safest in my nest.
Dream of the whispers that curl round your bed,
Of fingers that tap on the floor near your head.
They'll promise you secrets, but don't say a word~
Just listen… my darling, and cling to my skirt.
One day you'll grow, and the dark will be kind,
cradles the lost and the broken of mind.
But tonight, you're mine, so sleep without fear…
The world outside? Oh, my love… it's not here."
The mother knew the lullaby was a lie. There was no softness here, never any sweetness, only the hollow noise of a world that never was… but she sang it anyway. Her voice frayed in false comfort, whatever lie was all she could give. So she cradled it like a blade, pressing its hilt into his small hands, and prayed he would never learn the weight of its edge.
She remembered the first time she sang it to her son. Her voice would crack on the promised lies. but then he'd sigh against her, his tiny body curling into her, and for a moment she could almost believe the fiction.
So, within a decade the lullaby became a ritual, one she'd reside each night. Her son watched her with eyes too innocent, reflecting the landscape below.
Some nights, when the weight of the lie began to crush her, she imagined tearing the song from her throat and letting the truth spill out. It was short lived, his small hand would clutch at her sleeve, seeking his only salvation in their cell, and she would force the bitterness down. Let him have this. Let him believe, if only for a little longer, that there is something in this world worth gentleness.
"Mother, tell me about the knights again!" Her son's voice was too bright as squirmed in her lap, like a restless caged animal. "Please! I want to be one, they're so strong! Like you!"
His horns were still so small, so soft as they grazed her palm. His eyes glowed like twin rubies, and for a moment, she let herself forget the cell, or the chains.
She sat him on the rough bed and told him his favorite story. "Listen well, my shadow, my little Aamon. I'll tell it just as you like." She pauses, patting his small back, admiring his excitement. "The Knight's Oath: Sir Aldric was brave, but never cruel. Sworn to protect Noctharis, a kingdom of golden fields and just laws."
She pulled his head into her lap, letting lies roll off her lips. She'd never known a just law, only the cruelty behind them. She looked at her son, hanging on her words. His youthful face alight with a devotion she could never deserve. "When a dragon scorched the villages, Aldric rode out. Not for glory… but because the weak burned brighter in the dark…"
"Mother!! Do you think I'll ever see a dragon? A real one? Big enough to swallow the sun?" He was looking out at the chasm, as if expecting one to erupt from a river of fire.
She simply patted his horns, washing away his childish delusions. "Yes, my shadow. Every dragon meets its hunter. Someday."
She tucked his head beneath her chin, her voice dropping into a lullaby tone. "Aldric found the dragon, broken, its wings torn. A darker evil had driven it mad; a sorcerer, starved for thrones. But the knight saw the truth in the beast's pain. He knelt in the ashes and offered it water from his own helm."
She drew him up in her lap. Aamon settled into her lap "Together, my little boy, they exposed the sorcerer's lies. Not with fire. Not with steel. But with mercy. When the king offered Aldric a crown, he refused. 'Some things,' he said, 'are worth more than a kingdom."
Silence.
"…Mother? Is mercy stronger than a sword?"
Her smile was sweet for him. She smoothed a hand over his hair, her hand was cold like her sorrow, and whispered the words, keeping the tears at bay. "Ask me again when a dragon kneels to you, my dearest shadow~"
Eighty years.
Eighty years of playing knight with a sword of moss… of watching the same rivers of fire transform into anew. Those once burning rivers were no longer. They had dried up, growing into all sorts of inspiring plants.
All had changed in the depths of silence, just as she had. Her flesh had withered, peeling back from her bones to reveal the cradle of her ribs. Then her voice stained till failure… swallowed away, until all that remained was silence.
The arch of her spine had curled protectively toward where Aamon still slept, a final gesture of love. So he talked to her. Every day.
"Look, Mother!! I'm a knight now~ just like Aldric! Sir Aamon, and I'll save a dragon someday! But umm… But first I'll save you too." A mournful sound escaped him as he stared at the ground. "I want to be able to sleep with you again, Mother. I want to feel your chest rise and fall as you sing to me, again."
Aamon looks up from the ground. "I know it's greedy, and you say greedy people should die, but I can't help it."
His voice wavered a little. He'd practiced this, kneeling beside his mother, gently lifting her hand from the mattress. A tear fell, It landed on her knuckles, sizzling for a second before vanishing.
His voice dropped to a whisper as he gripped her hand a bit tighter. "…Mother, I promise you I will get out, I will make a friend, and I will take mercy on a dragon." He swallows, preparing his next words. "That is my oath, no knight will break it." He declares it with all his innocence. "I'll be stronger tomorrow."
But tomorrow would be the same as today, and today was the same as the ten thousand days before it. He was not a knight in a cell, he was just speck in a void. The stories were just sounds she had made. The moss made blade in his hand was not a weapon of destiny, it was weakness. This is not a prelude. This is the entire song. There was no strength left to gain, only more time to endure.
For ninety years these walls had been his entire world. This is a tomb that even Hell seemed to have forgotten.
Aamon's horns now scraped the ceiling as he stood at his full height. His once small body now grew lean and tall within the decades of imprisonment. He had tried to break out, shouldering the iron bars until his bones ached, clawing at the stone until his fingers were raw and bloody. Nothing had worked.
Beside his mother's remains, his fingers brushed against the polished curve of her skull. "Sorry… Mother." The words felt like betrayal to his heart. "I'm so sorry. But I can't stay here anymore." It was the truth. He couldn't keep pretending this was living. There were no knights in here, no dragons to slay or save, only endless darkness and the slow erosion of hope.
He snuffed out his sorrows, and struck a pose, chin lifted like the heroes in his mother's stories. His eyes set on the ceiling where he knew the mortal world waited. A world of sun and wind, a world he knew only from stories.
"I'll find a way out. And when I do-" He left the promise unfinished, not needing to use what's unsaid. For the first time in years, Aamon felt something answer from deep within the heel's roof, a power that recognized its own waiting just beyond the veil.
He gathered her ribcage, letting them finally fall apart from his grasp. He reached down again, pulling up her bones, clutching the larger bone fragments to his chest. Aamon sobbed as he whispered the command.
"Reformare."
The word hurt to say to his own mother's remains, but it had to be done. This was the only malleable material inside the cell. He let Reformare engulf her bones in shadow, forcibly reshaping them. He twisted and stretched her clavicle into the long handle, and her sternum curved and flattened into its blade.
He stared at it for a long moment, processing what he had just done. Is this really gonna be my first step into knighthood? Is this going to be my first act of mercy? To myself? Sir Aldric never did this.
"Stop thinking Aamon! Knights are strong, and this will not bring you down. Mother would be proud… I hope." He took a breath, bringing in the memories of his mother as he drove her into the packed soil behind the stone ceiling.
The first impact sent a jolt of pain up his arms, along with a hard feeling of wrongness. This was her clavicle, the bone nearest to her voice, the one he leaned on after days without sleep. Hearing it crack was a blasphemy. A painful one, killing more of him. "No, no. This can't happen, don't break, please go back." Aamon asked his mother, hoping that by chance she would listen.
Aamon shook his head, taking a second blow. "I can't stop, too far." The bone that had once peeked as she sighed splintered, blackening at the edges. They decayed in his hands, withering into coal, her final sacrifice burning away to lifeless ash in his trembling hands.
He choked on the dust of her as he carved a shallow pit above him, bleeding dirt atop of him. His arm buried in pain, he was sobbing, choking on the ash of his own mother. The hole was only deep enough to bury his head and shoulders. When he struck this time it wasn't stone or dirt. A root.
"Mother? Am I doing it right?" He struck it again, it snapped this time. The moment it gave way, the ceiling above him ceased, releasing a sound that would define him. The sound that begins his story and ends his childhood in the same instant.
The convulsion that followed slammed Aamon into the cellwall. The pressure drop made his blood burst from his ears and nose, as the world dissolved Above him. The hole split, making a spiderweb with thousands of connections rip at his cell, pulling up the floor from beneath him. Through the ringing in his head other sounds fought their way in, but beneath it all, from the darkness in the walls… her voice came. Not a shout, but a whisper, desperate command poured directly into his heart. "Climb."
Aamon moved, grabbing the last of his mother and thrusted his fingers into the nearest glowing connection. He pulled himself up, kicking against the floor, his horns scraping and catching on the breaking stone. Dirt and shards of rock rained down on him, but he continued, forcing himself through the disintegrating reality.
He climbed into the sound of wind, his mind echoing one word word. "Climb."
A forest sat in a hanging silence, broken only by the whistling winds between the branches of pine trees, and drips of rain falling from the bare branches. It left the air in a cold scent of wet wood, a smell of an ending winter. A chubby tabby cat, its fur fluffed against the chill, strouted its way through the damp soil, its paws leaving tiny prints. Its ears, tufted and alert, swiveled twice before freezing. There, between the dying blades of tall grass was the prize. Prey.
The cat dropped into a hunter's crouch, its belly fur brushing the cold earth. A grey furred mouse stood across from the cat, oblivious as it nibbled on a fallen seed. The mouse's whiskers trembled with each tiny bite. The cat's tail lashed once before giving fifteen precise butt wiggles.
Pounce.
A flash of tabby fur, along with a single crunch of tiny bones. The mouse spasmed briefly in its jaws before going still. A pleased thrum of victory ran through the cat… until the earth beneath its feet moved.
PWUH!
Dirt and leaves exploded upward. A pale clawed hand burst from the soil, fingers clawing at the air, relying to grip anything it could. The cat leaped backward, inflating to twice its size, a hissing spitting puffball of terror. Its prized mouse dropped, and left forgotten.
"Hiss~!"
Aamon emerged into the open air, gasping his first clean breaths. His lungs, accustomed to the thick breath of hell, didn't know how to react with the fresh new smells. The smells of damp soil, melted snow, or even wet leaves. His ruby eyes went wide, darted across the new shapes and colors, ones which he had no name for.
Finally, after a lifetime in a too small cell, he stood at his full height. His bones popped in relief, making him stumble forward slightly, bumping his obsidian horns into a low hanging branch. His large, batlike wings stretched out fully for the first time, blotting out the grey sky. He looked down at his bone spiked tail, one that swung behind him with the rhythm of a puppy's.
His eyes went wide as they met those of the hissing cat.
"OH MY GOODNESS!! You must be a kitty!" Utterly fascinated, Aamon dropped to his knees bringing himself to the cat's eye level. "My mother said so many wonderful things about you all!" The cat was familiar with humans. The creatures who sometimes offered fish and scratches. But Aamon was not human. He was a demon. His very essence carried the scent of evil, no matter his intentions. Yet, Aamon's own tail wagged in with a hopeful excitement, swaying in the open air.
"WOW! Look at those ears! They're so pointy! And I've never seen hair like that. It looks so soft, can I touch it? Oh, wait!" Aamon clasped his hands together in hopeful glee for his next words. "Can we be friends, kitty cat?" His bottom lip trembled. His one goal, the oath he had sworn, was to make a friend. Reaching behind him, he clutched the cold fragment of his mother, needing her for this new endeavor.
Hiss~ Squelch.
The cubby cat's paw moved too fast for Aamon to track, cutting him in the eye with its ferocious claws. Aamon pushed himself to his feet, one hand clutched to his eye where tiny slashes throbbed. The chubby cat turned and dashed away into the brush, vanishing among the trees. Tears welled up in his eyes. The pain was bearable, but he'd never felt anything like rejection. Seeing that fluffy tail disappear into the brush without a backward glance, that stung.
By the time he noticed, the flesh had already healed, rebuilding his cut ruby iris in moments. He looked down at his mother's bones in a genuine innocent shock. "That hurt. Why did it attack? I thought cats were nice." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, trying to process this new rejection. "Maybe I came on too strong? You know, scared it off because it was insecure."
His eyes dropped to the barely twitching mouse, a small stain spreading around it on the ground. He felt a pang of sorrow for the little creature, its life bleeding out because of someone else's hunger. Aamon put on a serious face, the face of a knight from his mother's stories. He placed her remains carefully on a bed of soft grass. The mouse's body was limp when aamon lifted it. He was shocked by the fragility of it, the simple fact of holding something so small and recently alive.
"Sanescere."
A soft, glowing white light emanated from his palm, enveloping the tiny creature. In seconds, the small puncture wounds sealed, and its flesh knitted. The mouse's neck straightened with a pop. The mouse twitched, its legs pedaling the air as consciousness returned.
"Hey, little mouse, I saved you from death." His words were shaky. The last animal he'd asked had given him a stinging lesson in rejection, but these words felt different to him, filled with a desperate hope. "Since I did that… will… you maybe be my friend?"
The mouse twitched its nose. It didn't scramble away in immediate fear, instead, it sat up in his palm scratching his little claws against his hand in movement. For a second it seemed to look at him. Its bright black eyes took in the strange, suited boy with the tear streaked face, the horns.
Then, fear overcame the small creature. Its prey instincts making it skitter its tiny claws against his skin. It turned and leapt from his hand, disappearing into the safety of the long grass. Aamon's hand slowly lowered to his side. He watched the grass settle from the mouse, feeling another sting of rejection. He had still been left alone, and for one second he hadn't been met with claws or immediate flight. He had been seen. He had been considered.
"Oh, I understand, little buddy… Be safe." He sadly retrieved his mother's bones from the moss. "Now where do I put you, mother? I can't leave you here, and I'd be wrong to put you with the dirt, you shouldn't get dirty…" Aamon closes his eyes in deep concentration. "I got it." He gripped the bones tighter, an idea forming from desperation and a need for permanent closeness.
"Reformare."
The familiar shadow consumed the bones. They cracked and reshaped, merging and forming not into a tool this time. The shadow retreated, leaving ten rings, one for each finger. A permanent embrace from his mother. He slid them onto his fingers, keeping back the tears.
"Come, mother. I have an oath to fulfill." He sniffed the air, filling his sensitive nose with the new scents of the world. "What's that smell?" One was dominant, foreign, and compelling. It was something savory, nothing like what hell had to offer. His wings were stiff, against his back as Aamon stretched them. The flesh tight and new to him. With only a single stroke, it launched him into the air, tearing through the winter branches. Finally he saw it, the world. The snow capped mountains with a giant great tree peaking out behind them, rivers tearing through the ground like cracks, and beyond it all, a castle stood alongside a mountain. Its towers reached high, dark and jagged against the dark twilight.
Aamon's breath caught in his throat. It was too vast for a shut in demon. This… this is beautiful, way more than you described mother. Do you th- The thought got cut off as a gust of wind blow through his wings. He tipped his head back and laughed. "Oh, wow. I can see everything, mother. Now just to become a knight, like in your stories."
Aamon looked back towards the smell, following a thread of cookfire smoke. His flight was wobbly, and eager carrying him over the trees until he found its source, a clearing by a river. Tree stumps and mud carved into the forest, leading down to the blue river. A pile of freshly chopped logs sat stacked against a house with its lights off. Proof of people. His people. The friends he would finally make. His spiked tail wagged, enthusiastic whoooshes~.
"Wow, an actual village…" Aamon's heart is swelling with hope. "Maybe one day I'll own my own house here, with a little garden. I can ride out from here to save people like a true knight."
He slowed his descent, his great shadow falling over a child's wooden doll, left in the mud. As he dropped lower, his joy began to curdle into confusion. It was empty. No one chopped wood, no one tended the fires giving light.
"That makes sense. Everyone must be inside." He landed softly, his boots sinking into the soft earth. His wings folding flush against his back, and so he stilled, listening.
There was the same chubby cat from earlier, now licking a wounded paw. It was missing patches of fur, the skin beneath blistered where it had been burned by Aamon's blood. He brought a hand to his cheek, to his eye that had healed without a scar. The phantom pain of the rejection remained.
Aamon's stomach was filled with butterflies, he might be able to protect people, find a meaning for his capture. He was so nervous he felt he might sweat. He walked into the village, but didn't see anyone at first, so he continued down the central path. He admired the different homes, each with its own unique design and smoking chimney. Hmm, I wonder how mine will look. Aamon freezes that thought. Do you think I'll have to build it? I don't know how to build one. I hope that doesn't become a inconvenience to them.
Before he could finish his home's blueprints, he reached the middle of the village. Finally he saw them, the first faces, the first souls, other than his mother's. He couldn't help but walk closer, quickly and desperately, shaking in his boots with excitement. "Hi, I'm Aamonith, or Aamon for short. Does anyone know where I can find a friend?"
The village center stopped all at once. Aamon's innocent smile remained with misplaced hope, even as every face locked into terror. His own expression faltered, the smile twisting into bewilderment as the silence stretched. Then a single wail cut through the quiet, and another child pointed a trembling finger at Aamon and began to cry.
The child was the setting stone, shattering the people into a cacophony of fear.
"DEMON!!"
"Leave, you vile creature!"
"KILL HIM!"
Aamon's ruby eyes went wide, searching the faces, looking for a flicker of the welcome he'd dreamed of. A young boy, his own fear turned into rage, snatched up a rock and hurled it. It struck Aamon's obsidian horn. The sound was insignificant, but still the effect was heavy on the demon. Tears broke from his eyes, fueling the mob's fury. The men converged, building a wall of pitchforks, knives, and wooden tools. One man held a shiny sword, its point aimed at Aamon's heart.
Aamon looked around, examining the armed men. He cowered like a kicked puppy, his massive form making the gesture of submission, all the more pathetic. He made no move to fight, only to plead. Aamon's weeping eyes begging for a mercy that would not come.
The men charged all at once. The swordsman was the first to reach him. He put his full weight behind a single thrust, plunging the blade deep into Aamon's shoulder. Aamon felt the cold metal grind against his collarbone before it shot into him. He looked up at the swordsman, then down at the blade buried in his flesh, stunned from the act. Aamon had felt pain, ones from his desperate attempts to flee his cell, never like this.
"OUCH!! NOO, STOP! I'LL NOT HURT YOU! PLEASE! I PROMISE-" His plea was cut short as a bigger man swung a wooden pole, splintering as it met the side of his head. The impact was deafening, killing his eardrum into a loud ringing sound. Aamon's vision exploded into white stars as he crashed to the ground. The taste of mud and his own blood running from his ear, filled his mouth. He tried to push himself up, getting to a knee before a boot stomped on the back of his head, mashing his face into the moist soil. He couldn't breathe, only choke on dirt and blood as more kicks landed into his ribs and back.
"Mmm, a demon's tears." The swordsman spat on Aamon, leaning down to his beaten form. "I'll be a hero after people find out I made a demon cry. Maybe the queen would even give me some of her cunt. We all know those royals be fucking up there."
Before Aamon could form another useless plea, a pitchfork was driven into his face. The central tine speared through his cheek, immobilizing his tongue. The others tore through his lips while another dug right below his jaw. The pitchfork erupted from his mouth, spraying his black blood and shattered teeth.
"Mmfff… Oouthh! S'th huthh!!" The swordsman barely heard the pleading Aamon, too busy staring at his own warping sword. The steel was writhing in his grip, the edge bubbling and falling away where Aamon's blood had touched it.
"You damn demon!" The man's face turned into a new type of disgust. "You better hope those rings fetch a good pri-" Aamon moved. Not with purpose in mind, it was a panicked reflex. His hands came up and pushed against the boot, throwing himself against the swordsman's chest. He put just enough to make space, so he thought.
There was a loud crunch of shattered ribs from where his shoulder met. The man flew backward, his body smashing through the farmhouse wall, its wood being nothing more than splinters and straw, his scream cut short by collapsing timber.
Aamon didn't wait to see if the man rose. He just ran. "SORRY!! I REALLY AM, PLEASE DON'T HURT ME ANYMORE! I DON'T WANT THIS!" Aamon cried out between coughs, throwing out his black blood. Aamon's spiked tail lashed out, sweeping to balance his hurried flee. It did more than balance, it worked like a scythe against nearby legs. The men behind him collapsed to the dirt, as it severed their legs at the knee. Aamon's boots tore into the ground as he fled, his blood leaving sizzling puddles down the road behind him.
Somewhere in the ruin of his mouth, his tongue pulsed with pain, where the fleshy hole where the pitchfork had been. He felt the jagged edges of his broken jawbone already knitting back together with a grinding sensation, the torn flesh stitching itself closed.
It was already healing.