Demon of the Black Gate

The demon sank down into the rocks, merging with the long lost magma energies that gave life to the basalts and granites. It sank through the earths and coarse rocks before dropping in a hail of burning, hissing rain and stone into a cavern.

The cave lay open in the dark weight of earth like a cathedral without glass, forever unlit. The demon gathered into a churning, smoldering beast of its own creation and sat on a black cropping that yawned out over the cavern. An ancient bridge, evidence of the presence of men, lay broken over a gaping abyss.

The demon ached for the weight of the earth, the blackness. The cave was like the prison it knew, but without the bonds. The glowing embers of its frictions blazed weakly, his demonic presence stewing like a gargoyle. It sought the black, the familiar, the eternal: where it had been before the voice called. But there was no use. The apparition of a face that had looked back in the lake, a vision of another time and place, haunted the fringes of the dark. The blackness of the cavern, lit by the faint moistures and white creatures that clung to its walls, transformed in the demon’s mind to fabled structures, towers and houses with colorfully painted walls, all teeming with people dressed in familiar wraps and wavering silks. Gilt minarets and lush gardens hung from the balconies. Verdant, lush, bright with color and life. A phantasm, a ghost of a woman, came spinning into view. White swirling about her as her eyes gazed brightly, a tight beacon in the wavering illusion. A bright memory, a casting from out of time. Her eyes danced with her energy and beckoned with desire. She drifted near, the white of her cloak dissipating like fog as she spoke, the words a worm inside its mind.

“I love you, my darling …” and the name spoken crackled as though suddenly ignited and lost. Another churning vision displaced the ghost as a city shook. An old wizard gazed down from his tower and recognized its form in the winds and clouds. The vizier cried out a spell to blank the portals of time.

The vision shattered completely. The hallucinations evaporated from the cavern. Even the feverous glow of the demon sputtered to a faint glimmer, a near-dead pulse that couldn’t penetrate the blackness. The demon sank into the blackness, refusing the consciousness that kept pulling at its mind. There was no telling how long it sat there, married to the slow tempo of the stone. The blind things that lived in the nooks and crannies glittered red and gold in the rocks, caught by the dim reflection of the demons simmering glow. It may have been moments or weeks that the demon sat brooding. But it was aware of the passage of time, something the void didn’t allow. There was no vacuum to draw away its thoughts. The demon let the crystalline memories of the ages run through its essence. The near black of the caves instead fed its awareness. Of a past. Of the monster it had become. It couldn’t describe the agonies it felt, the loss and pain and anger. Life had both been ripped from its core and instilled in ways it couldn’t understand. However, the cool and slow cadence of the earth eventually calmed the demon.

At length it stirred. One hallucination had eluded it during its simmering haze, but now the apparition returned with the calm. A woman with a head surrounded by flame. A woman blind to its demonic nature and horrible form. It stood, and allowed its shape to return to that she had molded. It regarded the limbs and torso of its contours. Whatever it was now, it had once been a man. There was a glowing with that realization that spread from the juncture of its legs to the top of its crown.

The perception added a word: ‘him.’ The demon’s sentience grew. There was no blackness that could crush it, only the void; and that held little comfort at the moment. The demon didn’t move until the cave no longer felt reassuring. When the restlessness gave way to action, he let the fires of earth and stone consume him, and sifted through the veins and fissures of the mountains. Reaching the ether of the sky, the demon shed the anchors of stone and felt the far presence of the red-haired woman.

’Cerra’ … the name came to the demon. A name an identity that was refused him.

“Cerra” the demon spoke aloud. Without knowing why, the demon let the airs carry him, reaching for and feeling the currents that surrounded her. The touch came like a scent. A thread of connection that only the void could snap.