Demon of the Black Gate

Cerra sat looking at the person that stood in front of her. It was so novel that her eyes should send any signal at all. The blues and glowing platinums of the visage radiated with energy, the figure pleasing to her. His eyes were lost and troubled though.

She didn’t know what to say. She was formulating a question in her mind when the demon solved her dilemma.

“You ask what I am.” the demon spoke. The voice was low and raspy, as though long unused to speaking. “I cannot answer other than I have.” There was a pause. The demon coaxed the language forward, a forgotten skill. “You see me in your blindness. Show me who I am.”

“I don’t know how.” said Cerra. She thought for a moment. “Well, though I can’t see your body, I can certainly tell you that you are much too big. Can you make yourself a little smaller?”

She stood, and stepped closer to the demon, braving the heat of it. She raised her hand to a spot above her own head, looking into the glowing blue eyes that appeared in her vision.

“About this high” She let her hand exhibit the correct height, a head taller than herself. She backed away with uneven grace as she felt the shaking and tremors of the demon shifting.

The demon let himself be guided by the woman’s words. The low tones of her voice were calming. The demon felt detached for the moment. The press of the void was lost as the blind woman bade it consider its own being. The demon measured itself against her hand, ridding an accumulation of elements. The creature that stood before her was more earthen, the fires and airs of its being diminished. The demon condensed itself, cognizant of the elements that coursed away.

“You are too hot for me to touch.”

The woman’s voice came to him. Spaces of time could lapse in the demon’s mind. A long span or a moment crossed its memory the same. Her voice came again and the demon focused its eyes on her.

“You should be a nice warmth … ” Cerra thought for a second. “ … like the lake. It is a most comfortable temperature.” She held her hand out, palm facing the demon, sensing the heat, afraid to touch. She could feel the radiant heat of him diminish. The demon felt the fires of its existence slowly extinguish, and with it a rage it could not identify. It felt odd, for there was no energy replacing its might.

Cerra laid a fingertip tentatively against the demon, half afraid that she would get burnt, but the touch, though tingling, lay without pain.

“Let me shape you.”

She began with the lightest of touches. Both hands were needed to shape its head, and she had to press close to him in order to do so. The demon stood as still as stone and malleable as clay. There was no breath to betray the life within, though Cerra could feel the power of it emanating around her. Her fingers traced the slight hollow below its eyes, above the strong cheekbones, she looked deeply into the purl of platinum and blue fires of its eyes. It was hard to get a sense of emotion from those orbs, though she felt a stoic sadness.

She tried not to think of what she was doing as she shaped the broad shoulders and powerful back. Her hands glided across the chest. slowing as she reveled in its heat. She held her palms flat for a moment, searching for a heartbeat, a breath, and trying to still her own. She drew her hands down each of his arms as if drawing the power to its fingertips.

Cerra worked steadily and without word, the vision in her eyes the model for her sculpture. The demon felt both like clay and air as her fingers lightly rubbed and pressed the surfaces. She had to work close to the demon. The heat and power of its body left her body flushed and excited. Her hands traced and felt the swirling plasmic surfaces that broke through the darkness of her sight. She circled and formed, sometimes finding she was holding her breath as she worked. She knelt and shaped the long legs, ankles, the smooth curve of the knees, the strong thighs, and finally, she added the touches that made the demon’s masculinity complete. Cerra may have been generous with her vision, or the man trapped in this ensorcellment had been favored. Either way, she shaped the root of him well, that dangling anatomy so different from her own.

The demon had settled itself into dark place in its mind, chasing away the puzzles of its visions and past. Where the woman’s hands pressed or shaped, it gave way. The effect was sedating and the scraps of thought that entered were scant specters of another age. The form laid upon the demon felt too compact for the powers that coursed through it. The energies of the world threatened to break the mold, push its being to the edges of all that it felt and saw. The demon barely felt her hands as it thought of the clays of the earth and the waters that permeate all. For the demon, the time it took for the transformation was a jot. For Cerra, she felt as though she had been working hours. How long it took didn’t matter, for now it was done. Cerra stood, letting her palms run over the length of its body, checking for flaws in her work, the chest, and finally the shoulders in one last caress. The shaping was done, though Cerra found herself longing to run the length of her body against it and was reluctant to stop. She took a deep breath and instead stepped away, brushing back the many wayward tendrils of her hair and twisting the mane of it behind her shoulders. She rubbed at an itch on her cheek and wondered if her hands and dress were soiled. She straightened her blouse, the scooped neck pulled so as to nearly expose her breasts.

“You are complete.” she said, searching for her breath. And impulsively added in a soft whisper. “Thank you.”

The demon moved, the limbs familiar and strange both. There was an air of appropriate space about the shape she had left. It felt the wave of warmth that came from her when she spoke, though gratitude was a lost and alien emotion. But a corresponding wave generated within the core of the demon, a strangeness that flared causing the sculpted surfaces of its body to flicker with golden flame. Cerra could not see the field of flame that erupted over the surface of the demons new skin, but she could see its eyes change, remoteness burning away.

“Go ahead. Look.” She knew the water of the lake would mirror her work to the demon … to ‘him’, she corrected herself.

She let herself settle back on the stone bench. Kamir had not moved. She wondered what his feline eyes had seen. The demon stepped over to the abrupt edge where the lake brushed the rock shelf. It looked down, the water reflecting back the shape of a man, a being like those alive in this stretch of time. Although the visage was stonelike and not flesh, the demon reflection crashed through its scattered memories. A face blazed, a haunting likeness that was as elusive as its own name. It vanished as a mercy, though not before eliciting a howl that came from deep within the demons core.

The demon lost the semblance of its being, heat melting the clays and the water of its being steamed and tore at the skies. Cerra ducked her head and fell back, the heat like a bonfire suddenly stoked with wood thick with pitch. She heard the agony of its cry, the winds of its sudden transformation tore at her clothes. She hazarded a look amidst the raving tempest to see the shape of the man dissolving and curling into the sky.

The tempest of its passage ended as suddenly as it began, though it took moments before the sense of her hearing returned. Kamir ventured from behind her back to settle on her lap without preamble or revolutions. She felt the anguish of its passing. His passing.

“Oh for the gods, what have I done now?”