Inner Demons: Rebirth

"Wake up," a voice spoke from what seemed to be an endless black void. Arkos opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Where am I? he thought, though the roof held no answers. "Wake up, Arkos!" The voice called out once more. Arkos sat up. He was in a room, a room that felt very familiar.

The room was slightly messy, or rather it was cluttered, at least that what Arkos told himself. He recognized the bed on the opposite wall, the television set on the nightstand, the clock hanging from the wall...

"8am already!?!" Arkos shot out of bed and ran to his closet to get changed. School was starting soon, and if he didn't hurry he was going to be late.

The passed by fairly quickly, though Arkos hardly paid attention to his classes. He was more caught up in trying to figure out the voice he had heard in the morning. It was calling to him clearly, but it wasn't the voice of his mother or of Jason. What was even stranger was the fact that the voice sounded like it was coming from inside of his room, but no one else was there. As Arkos walked out of the classroom he looked up at the sky. It was already darker out than normal. He wondered if that meant that it was getting closer to winter, though he wasn't sure as he couldn't bring himself to remember what day it even was.

After staring up for quite some time he came to the realization that it wasn't getting dark because it was close to winter, but rather because something quite large was casting a shadow over the school. It seemed to be a bird, or rather, two halves of a bird with a spine-like structure holding them together. And then something he would have never imagined occurred. What seemed to be plates on its left wing started to move, and beneath them were what appeared to be giant eyes. They all were looking directly at him, and suddenly the creature let out a loud screech.

Arkos remembered something that seemed to be completely random, and possibly out of a dream, but decided that if the monster before him was real, it just might work. He concentrated and held out his right hand. White energy gathered in his palm, and then transformed itself into a sword. He knew the name of the blade without even having to think about it. It was Masamune.

He tried to repeat the action with his left hand, knowing that Masamune's sibling, Muramasa, was also under his command, but it wouldn't form. No matter what he did, the Darkness wouldn't come to him.

"What's the matter?" A voice spoke to him. It seemed to be coming from the bird-like creature, but it was definitely his brother's voice. "Missing something?"

His brother began to laugh maniacally as Darkness formed around Arkos' feet. It seemed to be surrounding him, and then the ground began to move closer as the Darkness absorbed him. He tried to scream, to contact his brother in some way, to prevent himself from falling further into the Darkness, but nothing worked. He found himself unable to move as the Darkness encased him.

"Wake up, Arkos!" The voice called again. And from where it emanated, a light broke through the Darkness. As the Darkness faded away Arkos once again found himself in a familiar place, although this time it was not his home, it was the hideout for Kody and his crew. He looked over to see Cassie beside him.

"Are you serious? It's about time you woke up. I swear, it was like you were in a coma. Whatever. That doesn't matter now, we have to get out of here."

Arkos got up and made his way to the door, still half asleep, but it wouldn't budge.

"What are you doing?" Cassie asked. "This way, hurry."

Arkos followed Cassie through what seemed to be some sort of secret passage way, then up and staircase that seemed to go on forever. When they finally reached the top a large steel door was standing in their way. Cassie threw it up, clearly in a hurry to get out; however, behind the door was something unexpected. Something that made the whole situation a lot more clear to Arkos. On the other side over the door, staring Arkos and Cassie in the face, was the head of a massive snake.

This is not only a cool as f*ck universe, but the story is also really well written

Wow, thanks.

You're very welcome!

The next chapter will hopefully be coming soon. Need to come up with enough ideas to make it long enough to be a chapter first.

That's always difficult

Yeah, although the reason this story died originally was because I planned way too far ahead and didn't like how it turned out. So now I have to come up with things that don't follow too closely to where it was headed before while still building off of the same base.

I often have the problem with the motivation

Yeah, that can be a big problem.


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Arkos and Cassie stared at the monstrous creature that stood in their path.

"Is this why you woke me up?" Arkos asked.

"More or less..."

The snake didn't seem too fond of either of them. Its head shot forward and its mouth opened to reveal massive fangs. Arkos rolled to the left practically a split second before the snake reached them. Its head smashed into the doorway, sending bricks and debris flying and leaving the snake dazed. Rising to his feet, Arkos wondered if Cassie had gotten out of the way in time.

Before he could ask aloud a gunshot rang through the air. At first nothing happened, but barely a moment later, the snake's eye burst as the bullet flew right through it. The beast reared its head back and flailed about wildly, allowing Arkos to see that both of its eyes had been hit and the creature was blinded. In a fit of rage the snake slammed its head into the ground directly in front of Arkos, causing him to jump back.

It turned to face him, but he wasn't sure how it could tell that he was there. He tried to back away slowly, but as he stepped back he found that there was no ground behind him. He looked over his shoulder to confirm his fears and found that he was standing at the edge of the roof.

"Arkos! Look out!" Cassie called to him, but it was too late. He turned to see the snake's gaping maw as it engulfed him. He was unable to react in time and found himself falling as the snake raised it's head back up. Not wanting to be eaten, he looked around for something to slow his descent, but no such thing existed. The inside of the snake was too slippery for him to get any sort of foothold. As he fell through the darkness he remembered something. He reached out to find the nearest wall, and once he found one he closed his hand as if grabbing onto something. The sword Masamune reacted this, appearing in his hand and embedding itself in the snake. He held onto it, but it only served to stop his descent.

Without another blade he was unable to do more than simply hang there. He was unsure whether or not Muramasa would respond to him, especially after the dream he had, but figured it was his best shot at getting out of the snake. He raised his right hand and focused as much Dark energy there as he could. Slowly, the blade of Darkness began to form in his hand and he plunged it into the snake. The beast cried out in pain. Arkos pulled Masamune free and was about to begin his ascent when a bullet whizzed by, nearly missing his head. Startled, he lost his grip on Masamune and dropped it. The blade fell downward into the snake before fading away.

Arkos had fortunately managed to retain his hold on Muramasa. He hung there for a moment, and as he did so he faintly heard voices coming from the bullet hole nearby. He couldn't make out what they were saying but there was definitely more than one of them. A small amount of light also filtered in through the hole, which Arkos was grateful for as the snake was rather dark on the inside.

After a short while the voices stopped and something like a massive razor blade cleaved the snake's head from the rest of it. The blade had come incredibly close to hitting Arkos, but had just gone barely over him. He was relieved by this, but it was short-lived as the snake's body came crashing down on the roof. The sudden impact dazed him and he tumbled out of the snake's open neck.

Kody and Randell stood over him. Kody looked ready to kill somebody, but Randell offered to help him up. Arkos grabbed his hand and got to his feet.

"What the heck was that?" He asked

"A demon." Kody said, not looking at him. "It was sent here to kill us apparently. You're lucky. If Cassie hadn't told me you were in there I would have sliced you in half as well."

You mean that blade was his? Arkos asked himself. If that was the case, it made sense that he was the leader.

"There's probably going to be more of them." Kody said. "It's likely that that one was sent here just to test us, meaning that the others are probably going to be much stronger. Try to avoid getting eaten again."

With that Kody walked away. "He can be a little rude sometimes," Randell said. "Don't let it get to you."

"Still, it couldn't hurt to train occasionally." Cassie added "At least then you can be more... useful next time."

Arkos knew that he hadn't really done much to help slay the snake demon, but he wished that they wouldn't rub it in so much. He had just been caught off guard. Next time he would kill the demon all by himself. At least, he wouldn't be completely useless.

....

After they had all returned to the base and the others had gone to sleep, Arkos reached out and called to Masamune. He had to be sure that it would still respond to him, even after losing it inside the snake. Sure enough, the blade began to form in his hand; however, this time it brought with it a faint glow. He sent it away to avoid waking the others up and decided to get some sleep. Tomorrow would not be an easy day.

Oooo! An exiting chapter continues the noble story of valiant Arkos the snake eaten

lol, yeah. He isn't really much of a hero at the moment.

Already doing better than most people

I suppose.

I, for example, would have petted the snake. And promptly die.

Well, I would certainly not have done that. I would probably just go back down the stairs and pretend that there was no snake.

Which would prolong the situation

Yes, perhaps indefinitely.

Or until it came to fight you

Well, it is very large, so I don't know how it would get through the building. Unless if course it was actively trying to murder me and was willing to go out of its way to destroy the building to kill me, which in the case of the snake in the story, it was.

Then the building would be destroyed and the snake would have to pay for the damages.

Yep.

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Over the course of the next few days, Arkos spent his time hunting the minions of the Chaos Reaper. They were clearly on a much lower level than the demons, but he knew he wouldn't get any stronger by still in a room all day. Occasionally, one would come up behind him while he was distracted, but Cassie kept him covered from the rooftops. As time passed Arkos grew dissatisfied with his blades. They were working just fine, but being made of Chaos as the minions were, Darkness and Light weren't incredibly effective. In his mind he knew what the solution to his problem was.

He had seen it before in a dream, a blade of strange green energy that countered the powers of Chaos. The sword itself was known as Oathkeeper, and the energy that was used to form the blade was called Balance; however, he had no idea how to obtain such a strange power.

During his training he tried to figure this strange energy out, but was simply unable. He worked on training his sword skills and physical strength as well, but learning this new power could be the secret to saving this apocalyptic future from the rule of the Chaos Reaper.

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One day, before heading out train, he saw Randell and began to wonder something. "Hey, Randell." He called.

"What? You need something?" Randell asked. He didn't seem to be busy, though Arkos wasn't sure what besides survival there was to accomplish in a place like this.

"Do you have any weird powers?"

"What, you mean like everyone else? I suppose so." He held out his hand and a small ball of fire began to form in it. "I guess you could say it's kind of like Kody's power, except I can only summon elements."

"What do you mean by 'like Kody's power'?"

"Well, it's not like you or Cassie, where you just pull things out of thin air. Me and Kody's power are things we were born with, and for most of my life I couldn't control my power, in fact it was solely controlled by my emotions. After learning to contain and channel my emotions I became able to use my power, rather than have it run wild."

"Oh." Arkos said. "Wait, Cassie has powers too?" He hadn't really payed a whole lot of attention to that.

"Yeah. The gun she uses is kinda like your swords. She can just summon it from what seems to be nowhere. It doesn't fire bullets either, but some weird concentrated energy or something."

Arkos let that sink in for a moment. He had never heard of a gun being a weapon of Light or Darkness, so it seemed that Cassie was a master of some other power. Perhaps it was the power that he sought.

"Yep," Randell said, talking more aloud than to Arkos directly. "Pretty much everyone here has some weird magic stuff. Everyone except Kody's girlfriend that is. No idea why."

Arkos made a mental note of that. Also of the fact that Randell seemed to have information on everyone. Maybe it would be best not to put too much trust into him. Regardless, he set out to find Cassie and ask her about her strange power.

Is Randell going to betray them in the end?

Would you actually like spoilers or are you just wondering aloud?

both, probably.