In the next second, a dark mist started to form on the ground next to me, and once it cleared, a tall man wearing a white suit, and a black mask appeared. The mask seemed to have the design of some kind of monster, with large tusks protruding from both sides of the mouth and large and hollow, curled-up eye holes in the middle.
Nothing of the man's actual appearance was visible. The mask showed no signs of facial features underneath, the suit covering his entire body, and white gloves covering his hands. His black hair was slicked back but it wasn't any help in trying to make out what he looked like.
The man stared down at me for a few moments, before unbuttoning his jacket and sitting down at the end of the bed.
Must be the comfortable side of the bed, I thought.
"This feels much better." The man finally spoke, his voice deep and serious, quite unlike what I had been hearing in my head. He rubbed his hand across the front of his neck as he spoke. At the sound of my restrained muffling, he let out a small 'oh' and waved his hand.
"Anyways, as I was saying, you Damon Ewell died. As for how you were brought back to life, you did form a contract of sorts, but I wouldn't classify it as the type of contract you're accustomed to."
"So then how would you classify the contract?" I responded through gritted teeth. Seeing the voice, Hadeon, in front of me was bringing back my earlier desires of wanting to strangle him. I restrained myself however, my body shivering at the thought of being shocked yet again.
"Well, too, as you humans say 'rip off the band-aid', you're now a beast. The only problem is, I'm not sure how to classify you. You're not like me, so I've ruled you out from being of the same race as me."
He said in a tone that only further infuriated me. However, I couldn't move. It wasn't out of fear, cowardice, anger, none of that. I felt defeated. His words sounded fake and playful, but in a way, they made sense to me. After waking up, I felt something inside me, something trying to break out, something that was hungry.
But that wasn't where the story ended, that feeling inside me wasn't human. It was as if my human side, and whatever I was now, were engaged in an intense fight, and my human side had lost miserably. What scared me the most was that whatever was living inside me, felt evil. A kind of evil that made me too scared to even think about what it could possibly be.
My mother used to tell me stories about how an evil spirit would appear in front of people in their time of need, offering them the power to do whatever it was they wanted to accomplish. Whether it was for revenge, money, fame, or power, anything and everything was given to those who needed it, but at a cost. Their souls, from that day forward, belonged to the spirit.
Now the spirit could choose to torment them while they were living, but according to my mother, that 'wasn't fun enough for him', so the spirit would wait for the person to die, so that he may torment their souls for the rest of time, making them live each day in the afterlife, wishing they could go back.
And I, in all my stupidity, sold my soul for the sake of petty revenge and a second chance at a very shitty life. Now if that isn't the tagline for the world's worst movie, I don't know what is.
"You seem to be taking the news well, which is rather surprising. But based on your facial expression, I'm assuming that you think you've now sold your soul and that I have full claim over your life correct?"
My eyes shot up to meet with his.
"And you're telling me that isn't the case?"
"No."
I almost shot up from bed in excitement but was stopped by both the soreness of my, well, everything, and by Hadeon raising his palm to indicate that he wasn't done talking.
"Don't get too excited. I can see that you think you know a lot about demons, but you do not. You see I wasn't in the greatest of situations when I bonded myself to you. Bonded is the right word, yeah. Anyways, the bond we formed was not at all similar to that of a contract between a contractor and a chosen. Me and you are now one. My life is yours, and yours is mine. Should either of us die, the other shall perish with them.
The good news however, is that I don't have a physical form for now, what you're seeing right now is a kind of mental projection, and you're only seeing it because I thought it'd be better if you heard this from somewhere not inside your brain."
"Are there any upsides to this? Other than me being alive, which at current doesn't seem all that great."
His words, although shocking, weren't too surprising. I didn't quite understand what he meant by him being 'weak' or what he meant by being bonded, but judging based on what he'd said up until this point, I wasn't holding off on him explaining any further.
I also wanted to get down to the need-to-know information before anyone walked in to see me talking to myself. Being discharged from one place just to end up in a different ward, was not any more appealing than it was 10 minutes ago.
"Well, for starters, you ungrateful prick, you're alive, so you're welcome for that. Secondly, my status and power before bonding with you were unfathomable to a brain like yours. And now since you and I share everything, you get my powers."
"Really? So can I shoot out fire from my mouth? Or maybe you have a summonable pitchfork? Or, or maybe could you shoot water out of your hands?"
If this is what chosen felt like once they formed their first contract, I fully understood why they acted the way they did. I felt like a kid on Christmas after opening up the gigantic monster truck toy. But once again, Hadeon had to suck up all the joy in the room.
"You're just extra with all your emotions, aren't you? First, you curl up into a ball at the drop of a hat, and now you jump with joy like a little kid at the slight mention of receiving an ability."
"Uncalled for. Don't forget, I'm in charge of this body now. Wouldn't kill you to treat me nicer."
I retorted, believing that the information presented to me would act as a form of leverage against Hadeon.
"And you don't forget, I get to choose whether you get my powers or not. And before you ask, because I know you will. Just because we aren't of the same race, I can still pass my abilities to you. There's no compatibility issues like with humans."
I promptly piped down.
"Much better. Anyways, if we were to put beasts into tiers, and not the tiers that humans came up with, you would be outside of the scale. So far down, that a newborn could kill you by thinking. That means two things."
Yeah that you're a conceited idiot.
My body spasmed once again.
"You interrupt my lecture one more time and you can live the rest of your life as it was before. You being weak means I can't give you all my power and abilities at once, or you'd explode just from experiencing a fraction of it. It also means that you encounter the wrong people, and you and I get to enjoy the afterlife together. So we need to get you stronger, and I mean much stronger.
The only problem is, I can't train you how I'd train someone normally. The resources you have available just aren't the same."
The question of what he meant by 'the wrong people' did occur to me, but I was growing more and more tired of being shocked by my own body.
It seemed like ages before Hadeon spoke up again. His eyes lit up instantly as he turned to me and placed his hand over my eyes. Instinctively my body tried to pull away, but I was stuck in place.
After a few moments, the hand, alongside Hadeon, had disappeared. And in the next moment, a small screen popped up in front of me. It read:
<Hadeons Idiot Training Academy>
"Uh, Hadeon, just what exactly is this supposed to be?"
I said while swiping my hand over the screen. Seeing as it was fully permeable meant that it wasn't actually in front of me, which in turn meant that it was once again one of Hadeons weird little mysteries.
'While you were asleep I went through your memories, and while sifting through them I saw that you enjoyed playing something called *Slay the dragon to save the princess!* Now I won't waste time on saying anything further about that, but as a grown man that is kind of embarrassing.
Anyways, in the game something that struck my interest was the little system window that displayed all your stats and abilities. So I thought, why not do the same thing? So what you see in front of you is your very own system.'
…
'WHAT?!'
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