[Akira rises, crazed, confident, power in his tone and in his stance. In his minds eye, the same words echo from 5000 years prior, with an outstretched hand and desperate determination in the strength of it, throat aching. The call goes out, a demand for an answer without a pact to bind it, a blind but brilliant shot through the depths of hell.
Something grabs up immediately in return.
Into the space between the mortal and the non, an icy claw digs into the soul, a grip that tears in deep and yanks. Payment, payment, payment, the spiraling of hell demands its payment of humanity. Is this the vessel, this frail one with the brilliant soul? They grip, and grip, and grip. They pull at you. At your soul. Feed them. Serve them. One more into the fires, one more into the flies, one more into the mouth.
Even with such a tremendous amount of magic at your disposal, you can already feel that a piece of this portal you have made is missing. And you, yourself, are making up the difference, as your body starts to deteriorate under the payment. It all happens within a moment, the taste of blood hot in your throat as your chest burns for air.
Then the connection settles, a brief and brilliant pause, before a rippling blast explodes outwards in a swirling of demonic smoke.
Solomon and Akira are both sent tumbling in different directions. And the phantom, the young man, now clearly a much younger Solomon, rattled and bleeding and broken, crumples backwards into a heap next to the haphazard circle.
In the middle of the seal stands a creature. It looks down, with dark and cold eyes, at the man crumpled. Its gaze narrows. It doesn't speak.
He splutters. His breath is so shallow, fists gripping tight as though the sensation is leaving them.
--P---power...
A choking wheeze, an attempt not to cough.
He's dying. You feel it, in the weakness, in the cold, in the way the surroundings seem to blot. But every drop of energy he has is spent in locking eyes with his prize, in a confidence that shouldn't belong to a dead man, that shouldn't echo in his battered voice.
Barbatos...
Obey me... that whomst hath summoned y-you...
Lend... me your power...
L...
Lend me your power...
There's the quietest of chuckles, smooth and sinister, even as Akira is finally let free of the bitter connection. The demon slides to the crumpled man, the lightest of touches to his shoulder.
A beat, in which the air flashes brutally cold. And the two vanish completely.
And as they vanish, so do the colors, back out into the snow where both wizards now lay prone in the brush of the forest.]
cw: demon stuff, death
Something grabs up immediately in return.
Into the space between the mortal and the non, an icy claw digs into the soul, a grip that tears in deep and yanks. Payment, payment, payment, the spiraling of hell demands its payment of humanity. Is this the vessel, this frail one with the brilliant soul? They grip, and grip, and grip. They pull at you. At your soul. Feed them. Serve them. One more into the fires, one more into the flies, one more into the mouth.
Even with such a tremendous amount of magic at your disposal, you can already feel that a piece of this portal you have made is missing. And you, yourself, are making up the difference, as your body starts to deteriorate under the payment. It all happens within a moment, the taste of blood hot in your throat as your chest burns for air.
Then the connection settles, a brief and brilliant pause, before a rippling blast explodes outwards in a swirling of demonic smoke.
Solomon and Akira are both sent tumbling in different directions. And the phantom, the young man, now clearly a much younger Solomon, rattled and bleeding and broken, crumples backwards into a heap next to the haphazard circle.
In the middle of the seal stands a creature. It looks down, with dark and cold eyes, at the man crumpled. Its gaze narrows. It doesn't speak.
He splutters. His breath is so shallow, fists gripping tight as though the sensation is leaving them.
--P---power...
A choking wheeze, an attempt not to cough.
He's dying. You feel it, in the weakness, in the cold, in the way the surroundings seem to blot. But every drop of energy he has is spent in locking eyes with his prize, in a confidence that shouldn't belong to a dead man, that shouldn't echo in his battered voice.
Barbatos...
Obey me... that whomst hath summoned y-you...
Lend... me your power...
L...
Lend me your power...
There's the quietest of chuckles, smooth and sinister, even as Akira is finally let free of the bitter connection. The demon slides to the crumpled man, the lightest of touches to his shoulder.
A beat, in which the air flashes brutally cold. And the two vanish completely.
And as they vanish, so do the colors, back out into the snow where both wizards now lay prone in the brush of the forest.]