I yearn for a life without weakness. Without pain.
Yet living through pain is considered a triumph.
I am lucky for it. Or else I would have nothing.
Except the blood of more weaklings washed across my blade.
**Rest In Daemon, Act 0 (Birth of Daemon)**
The day the humans took my family from me. I remember it well. That day holds me prisoner-- and I am dragged screaming back to it unless I can find a distraction.
It started at the farm. With fifteen-year old me tilling the dirt. The sun beaming down on my green-skinned arms. Drying up my black hair so much I had to run my fingers through it every so often. Mind adrift, like always. But what was coming would wrench me back to reality.
'...What's that noise?'
A faint whistling in the air. At first I brushed it off as a fly buzzing past me. Before long it grew louder. I could hear it in motion, cutting through the air.
A few more seconds and I could trace the direction. Straight ahead, above us. Swirling, barrelling.
I stopped working completely. This was not a fly, not the wind, not a tree. This was... new.
A few more seconds and I could see them.
Figures atop birds. Black birds. But not normal ones. Unnaturally large. They rode them through the air like horses. The figures themselves glistened, shining in the sun-rays. As if they were made of water, or metal.
'Wait... metal...? Doesn't that mean...'
All thought ceased. My hoe thumped onto the grass.
A few more seconds, and I was warning the other villagers.
"HUMANS!" I roared. "HUMANS INCOMING!"
The hustle of the village grinded to a halt. Heads twisted in all directions. They fixed on me. Where I was facing. The sight I couldn't look away from. They saw it too.
Chaos erupted.
Screams of terror. Parents shooing their kids inside. Farmers fleeing the scene, tripping and tumbling downhill.
Rusty nails and planks of oak being boarded to windows with shaking hands.
The fathers and sons unsheathing their swords for the first time in years.
Everything in motion, and yet I was frozen. Trapped by curiosity. I was so used to boredom, even fear was new to me.
"Eli! Get inside, now!" Mom cried at my back.
My legs shifted. Trance broken. Death approaching.
Gasping, I turned and bolted back through the field. Mother poking her head outside our front door, hand on the knob. I bound through the grass, looking back. They had almost landed. Mother waving me in, I dived back inside. Rolling at my brother's feet. Mother slammed the door behind me and started hammering a barricade into it. She could barely hit the nails.
"What's going on!?" My youngest brother Mickey asked.
"Shh!" Mom hissed. Mickey flinched. Mom always coddled him and this time she had forgotten to.
I made no effort to comfort him either. I was too busy peering through the cracks in the boarded window.
The blackbirds had landed. My first glimpse at humans. Their garments gleamed in the sun. Metal after all. The village elders told me they called it 'armour.' Yet what struck me most was their skin. None of it was green, but a range of beige and brown. A few patches of red, and more than a few scars. Their hair was just the same as ours, yet their eyes sparkled with colour.
I had been warned to death about humans. Countless stories. What was in front of me did not feel real either, but yet another story. A dream. I was simply waiting to wake up. Soaking in every detail before I opened my eyes to my regular life.
In my absorption, one human stood out to me.
Dark-skinned. Older. His 'armour' more detailed than the rest. Black, with a sharp silver embroidery. A pattern split like lightning across his chest. His greying hair flowing past a face unmarred by scars. Nothing like the others. Looking around, scowling at each house as if the wooden walls and roofs of hay had wronged him.
'Is he their leader?'
From a distance, he was somewhat admirable. Then he opened his mouth.
"Right! Out you come, moss-rats! Show yourselves!" he bellowed, spitting each word. Waiting for an answer, for movement. Gritting his teeth when he found none.
"Don't tempt me to force you! You know full well how much we would love to!"
The other humans chortled at that. Then silence once more. The leader continued.
"Fine, let's make a bargain! We only want the children. You men can keep your dirty lives, your dirty gremlin whores!"
Mother let out a whimper.
Before that day, I thought I knew it all. Seen everything I would ever get chance to. I knew everything that would happen, because it would only be what happened yesterday. I lived life as if I had lived it all before.
But in all my false understanding of life, I had never known hatred like this. Never known fear.
My biggest issue was once having none.
And I would soon wish it was never resolved.