Chapter Seven: Soul Prison

Grishom sat there,his flesh burning and cracking, shedding off once it blackened it ash. His eyes were red, dry, tears of blood making their way throughthe ravines and crevices upon his mared face.

He held aloft a dark bony hand. The skin was pulled taut against the bone.

He was postively fearsome. He was postively dead.

He was postive he would find a way out.

The sky about him swirled ina fiery storm of brimstone and ash, sulfur and dust. Chunks of things unknown fell from the sky, flaming and scorched.

The gorund itself moaned and cried out, ripping asunder as streams of hot air were released.

This wasn't even the worst part of hell.

Though he could feel the pain,feel the hunger, feel the thirst, his worst pain came from the betrayal and his loss at the ultimate magic. to die forever down here knowing he was so close.

Perhaps another deal could be made.

He would find the demon Torgrath.

He looked over the peak form which he sat. Down below in a the inforno raged thousands of wayward souls, crying out in a thousand voices of a thousand different tongues. some had just come here, so had been her for...well, an eternity. All had given up hope.

All but Grishom.

As he stood, he found himself naked, unrecognizable. Everything was gone.Taking his first step, sapped him of his strength and he broke down to the ground, hitting it hard, panting, trying to speak, to plead for just a drop of water. But not plea was heard. A monster to impossible to describe save that evil appeared in its visage, and insatiable sadism in its every word.

Something that made Grishom feel raped, physically, emotionally and most apparently, spiritual permeated his every fiber at the sound of the demons voice.

He had no control over his fears, for here all things made one fearful.

This was the overwhelming display of the loss of hope.

A single red form approcahed him, barely visible in the blowing winds.

Two long thin horns protruded form its gaunt skull. The eyes were rolled back into its head.

A single elongated head was stretched over his fallen body.

"Grishom..."

That voice. Hope. Despair. Power. Defeat. It was his demon.

When he spoke, re thought himself to maintain his power and calm, yet the voice he heard was tiny and weak, saturated in anquish and discomfort, longing for release.

"yes, master?"

Master? Grishom cursed himself, yet the words came as naturally as breathing did. Torgrath caused him to stand.

"Mortal, do you dare the worst of hell, punishment beyond what is given to a man's soul? Punishment fit for the betrayer of the heavens? Do you dare beyond that? Do you dare to embrace a demon, to become one, to share your thoughts, open and untimately revealed, for the sinle chance of escape?"

Grishom had one thing no one lese had here. Hope. Before he would give up his thoughts, a single synapse flashed.

If there were a way, evne if the demon knew it, he would find a way to split him from his symbiote, and then he would walk the world one more.

Their hands met, and the two became one.