Page 4 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

My fingertips are met with slime. Sludge.

It’s too dark to see what color—it could be blood, or puss, or some other detestable thing—but I can’t bring myself to lift the wet device and squelch that liquid into my ears, even if it means I’d be able to hear a comforting voice.

Sometimes the hellscape interferes with that too, and Cornelius doesn’t sound like himself.

Something clatters, outside. I feel my body tense and coil more tightly, eyes searching the darkness. The wood of the cupboard is mostly intact, but there are a few holes and spots that have worn away—a shadow moves across one, and my heart thunders against its best interest.

Phantasmus is…different.

He’s less animal than the other demons. He’s an evolved animal.

He’s smarter, keener on what real-world things I use to hide away in.

I’ve seen him open doors and break obstacles in hell, to reach me.

I’ve seen him stalk me, hunt me, sniff me out.

Getting hidden from his line of sight isn’t enough.

He’s got just enough human in him for rational thought .

Even speech . Though his voice is unhuman and unholy, and I’ve only heard it a handful of times outside my nightmares.

His words sound like they’re spoken through water, like he’s actively drowning while he speaks, but you can hear the snapping of wood on a fire and the popping of ash and spark in some sounds, too.

Drowning in fire, perhaps. It burns my ears to hear it.

I know to stay still, and stay silent, but when the cabinet door is ripped from its hinges and a clawed hand digs inside to grab at me, I’ve lost. It’s over. He has me.

Screaming, kicking, scratching, I do anything I can to get him off of me, to break that contact of his ice cold hand on my leg.

I’m dragged out, his claws linking like forceps into the meat of my calf and beginning to siphon my energy like a weary man downing cold water on a summer day. My energy, fueling him.

Unacceptable.

I lash out at the bend of his elbow just as my upper body is pulled from the cabinet to fall onto the floor—the force of my kick does what I intended, shredding my meat straight through his claws and rendering my body with incredible agony, but I’m free and that’s what matters.

Having a torn up leg decreases my chances of running away, sure, but at least I still have the leg.

At least it hasn’t been gnawed off slowly over the course of half an hour.

At least it hasn’t been broken in so many hundreds of places that the bone turned to sand inside my muscle.

This is a decently optimistic outcome, all things considered.

I grab the cabinet and lift and heave to toss it between us, getting his arm almost pinned underneath as I scramble and stand.

Stray’s ghost quickly moves out of my way, his afterimage shifting dizzily, as I turn the corner around the couch and try to flee, at least so far as to something I can use as a weapon.

The shadows of the stairwell drip and ooze and coalesce into the shape of a phantom, smoke drifting out to form his wings as he crouches and tilts his head at me.

The blood-stained fangs of his mouth grin at me darkly, teeth the shape and size of a wolf’s set into the bend of a mostly-human mouth.

The black tongue licks at his lips as I double-back and turn around, running along the backside of the couch and ignoring the jolts of pain and weakness in my injured leg.

I can hear skittering, then hands in my hair—pulling, fisting, tugging, a palm seizing me under the jaw from above and fully lifting me from the ground.

I swing my legs to try and wiggle my weight out from him, I draw my nails across the front of his face even as it dips lower and licks across my eye and cheek to sip at my energy from his lips wherever we make contact.

My forced-closed mouth keeps my screams a bit quieter, fangs chewing at my neck and shoulder to draw my soul from there, and I feel Phantasmus flinch too when there’s the sound of breaking glass.

My heart tumbles and soars, ready to be rescued from this place, but I lock eyes on a bleeding, injured man who looks as shocked to see us as we are of him.

A human .

But not like me, not fully-formed and clothed and solid in mass.

This human is blurry at the edges, wispy, nude, his body giving off a slight smoke that dissipates into the air not far behind him.

How he got in here is well beyond me—damned souls are supposed to be in an entirely different area—but he seems to have recognized his mistake in trying to take refuge in this house.

Phantasmus drops me abandoningly, my weak leg immediately giving out and sending me to my ass. I feel Stray’s ghost behind my back—not sure if that was intentional of him?—as I fall, his physical body in the real world making contact with mine in the real world, affecting me here in hell.

I feel his body shaking rhythmically as he barks—the sound doesn’t transfer through the realms, though.

Even if it did, all I’d be able to hear is the slop of flesh being ripped from the bone and the wailing of the poor, tormented soul being feasted upon.

I don’t mean to look as I get to my feet, but I also can’t help it.

Phantasmus’s hands are tensed, fingers bent and furious, claws raking through either side of the man’s torso as that dark mouth is agape far too far, teeth buried in the condemned’s shoulder and sawing side to side until a hunk of it releases.

His gurgling screeches drift to silence at the same time as his color fades.

The tan of his skin, the dark of his hair, all sapped away and fading to a dim, lifeless gray.

The details of his face, his body, become lost. Any identity or individuality he once had, is gone.

The body now being torn apart by Phantasmus’s gluttony is now as unique as a mannequin.

He’s nothing more than a silhouette of shadow, a thing that once was and is no longer.

True death. The death of one’s soul when there’s no more light within it. Not just passed out, not just crossed over, but gone in every way a thing can be gone.

Phantasmus is still having his fun, playing around in the vague wetness of his sandbox toy, laughing giddily at his enjoyment, so I take this chance to turn and run through the side door and out into the yard.

Hiding is rarely successful with Phantasmus, but if I can make him hunt me for long enough, that’s all that matters. I just need long enough for?—

Stray’s ghost slips around my legs and bounds up onto two paws—softly pushing at my chest, stopping me from going further. All I see is a small bramble bush and that arid, dry, dusty ground, but he’s trained to stop my real-life body from walking into hazards.

I use his little push to toss myself to the side a bit, dodging whatever he’s trying to block me from, spotting the bench along my low fence and bracing myself to run to it, jump up, and over.

There’s a crashing sound up ahead though, splinters of wood exploding off the trim two dilapidated houses down, and I scramble to a stop.

My rescue!

A bleating, squealing, bloated wail sends tremors through the air and knocks that hope straight out of me. I hear the crashing of a fence, heavy items being ran into and effortlessly shoved aside, and I dive away and run for my life moments before the behemoth charges through my fence too.

Its face rams into the corner of my house and through the living room—I can hear the banshee wail of Phantasmus’s scream as he’s ploughed into, the hulking demon rushing forward and causing the house to collapse in on itself.

I can’t tell whether to look up and watch for the falling debris, or to look ahead and make sure I’m stepping safely, and somewhere in between the two I’m sent to the ground beneath the weight of rubble.

I’m bludgeoned in the back, the head, something grating against my torn leg and something else piercing through my gut.

It doesn’t matter, it isn’t real, it isn’t real ? —

As long as I have my soul, I have my energy, and the worst this world can do to me is give me pain.

I can hear the rubble shuffling, demons bellowing at one another, as a fight breaks out.

Fine by me—I assess what parts of myself I can move, the wood and metal and glass above me not so heavy that I’m fully pinned.

Knowing I can’t die—not matter how very much I may ever wish to, here—I brace against the sturdy something sticking through my lower stomach, and rip myself from it.

I do have to give myself a pair of moments to just process the pain and grit my teeth, forcing my hand to the torn flesh and urging some of my insides back into place.

The wood clanks on my back as I get my legs under me, standing up and out of the debris pile, panting through my pain and trying to assess the next best place to go.

Here, the fence is absolutely smashed—but it still exists perfectly pristine in the real world, and even though I see a perfect hole to run through, I won’t be able to.

And there’s no bench in this world, for me to use as a boost up.

I have to take the back exist, limp-running and half- hopping across the yard, only glancing over at the two demons when one of them lets out what sounds like a sort of victory howl.

I don’t see Phantasmus anywhere.