He had to reach the girls heart, to stop it, but he had no idea what other tricks the demon might have in store. It hadn’t been rogue for long, but Rahzi hadn’t really had a chance to observe it directly before hand. Fortunately, it had no reason to think he wasn’t human. It had taken a great deal of effort and concentration, but a simple mechanical task like opening a door was within Rahzi’s capabilities. He had so far behaved as a human, even stopping himself at the boundary when he sensed the presence of the wall. For Reapers physical objects could be described as being somewhere between a liquid and gaseous substance. To make it easy to imagine you’d have to reverse what you knew about matter, essentially the harder a substance was the more intangible it would seem to a Reaper, likewise the more intangible it was to a human the easier it was for a Reaper to manipulate. But Rahzi was very skilled in this department, his interaction with the wall had been something akin to standing on water, much easier to him than turning a knob to open a door. So he moved back down the hall, his hand dragging against the wall, skimming the surface as he positioned himself. As she came around the corner he resumed his stance. He had to take the charge, and reach for her heart. The beast would go for a physical attack to try and lock him into meeting its gaze. That would be his chance to kill the girl, but just for a while.

As it came for him, Rahzi reached out to grasp at the girls heart, his hand plunging into the human’s flesh as if it were a pool of honey. Had she been herself, she would of felt the peculiar sensation as if something cold or wet had met with her skin, followed by a sudden chill running through her body. But the girl inside was essentially asleep, trapped in a nightmare of meaningless despair. As his fingers found purchase around the organ he sent a jolt through it, and then banished all traces of energy flowing through it. This took the demon aback, not because his attack could not find flesh to rend, but because he did not expect the sudden panic his opponent had thrown his new body into as it began its collapse to the floor beneath him. He was dying all over again, and this provoked the memories of terror that the souls within him had felt at their own demise. The sense of dread overwhelmed him, forcing him to flee the body, but Hollas was more enraged than he had ever been.

The venom seeped from the girl’s fallen corpse, as a blood red miasma began to fill the hall around her, scorching the air as it rose like flames of crimson. The demon soon to manifest before him, Rahzi readied his weapon to strike, careful not to choke on the spoiled air around him. He’d breathed in deep just before his air was fouled, and now exhaled so slowly it would be impossible to tell he was breathing. Yes, even Reapers drew breath, but in their world it was more akin to eating. It was the energy around them which they drew in, replenishing and sustaining them, subtle expressions of energy which overflowed from the renewal and maintenance of reality. In a sense they were bottom feeders, recycling the inevitable waste lost in the flow of it all. But the miasma was pungent and thick, polluting even that which normally remained undefined by the rest of existence. Exhaling in this way slowed the renewal of energy from which he drew strength, but it also prevented the reflex to inhale. After all, Rahzi was sure he’d sorely regret inhaling even a little of this miasma.

The dark silhouette of a man started to take shape in the crimson mist, appearing as if a pool of blood was congealing into the form before him. Then came the telling glow of a soul buried in its core, one that was much larger than it should be, bloated with the remnants of the other souls it had consumed. The impressions of other faces rose and fell from the surface of the creatures body, as skin-like patches began to form. This was the way it thought of itself now, as a monstrosity of a broken man, patched together from the tattered scraps of its life. But Rahzi couldn’t make out any of the details, only that his prey was now standing before him as he took action.

As Rahzi swung Anata Shesha around, its blade passing through the walls, the lights in the hall flickered from the temporary interruption. There was no damage to the walls or what wiring ran threw them, but the same would not be true of the demon he was now slashing into. Rahzi’s flurries were quicker than the demon could react to, the man in front of him had become something incomprehensible, he had become a living weapon… each strike descending as if it were a shadow of the last, a fluid succession which seemed to randomly change paths as the lights around them flickered. Hollas could not understand what was happening, how he was being overwhelmed by the flourish of whirling slashes which issued from the hands of a man who surely could not even see him. No matter that this man should not be able to focus on the world around him in this moment. Bit by bit Hollas was cowed by the attacks, until he could no longer resist Rahzi’s will. Finally, the demon’s soul had been pinned under the blade of his executioner, drawn completely into the other world, Rahzi’s world. Nothing in this moment or the ones proceeding it made any sense to Hollas.

“But how?” the demon asked, “your eyes, even now I see the venom growing within them.”.

“You have taken only my sight from me… Anata Shesha, my treasured companion, she guides me to her prey. It is I that am in her hands, and so long as she is with me, by my side, I could never be defeated by the likes of you,” replied Rahzi with utter calm and a certainty which bordered on reverence to some greater truth.

“But what companion…” Hollas asked, “I see no one else?”

“You see the weapon in my hand, she is more valuable to me than you could imagine, it is her that I speak of,” Rahzi stated in response, his enemy defeated, he could indulge its last words as the souls of its victims escaped its fading grasp.

“Treasure,” its words coming out almost in a whisper, “your treasure… then you’d never abandon it,” the demon pleaded to know that he had found someone who shared an understanding of his sentiment.

“No, I would rather give my life,” answered Rahzi, the regret and bitterness in its voice had subsided. Its response had not so much even been to Rahzi, but perhaps to itself, as it spoke its final words. With the souls it had captured released into the other world, and no more venom to fuel its rage, Rahzi’s eyes began to return to him and the demon’s life expired. But this last part had not been as Rahzi had been taught to expect. It did not seem that the demon’s soul had become an empty one, rather it seemed to have simply vanished into red vapors, which Rahzi cast from his blade like a samurai might flick the blood from his sword.

Rahzi returned to the hall to bring the girl back, placing his hand over her heart and giving it a start. He forced it to beat until it resumed doing so on its own, and then as she began to wake he left her. Perhaps she would be OK, perhaps not, there was little more he could do. But the threat to her life had passed, and it would be up to her now.

Rahzi did not notice the wisp of red mist, like loose threads hanging from the ring at the end of his weapon. For now he would return to his world and reflect, the Reaper’s sleep, a meditation like respite to purify his body and restore his peace. They were required this after a battle, though Rahzi never felt he needed it. Perhaps, this time, it wouldn’t seem as much of a chore.