Author's note: This is based on a writing exercise I did today. Let me know if you want me to flesh this out into a full-on story.
I loved you, of course as you are a demon hunter, you can't fathom the idea that a monster like me could even know what you humans called love. I sought out those who wanted to kill you, humans who wanted to kill you. It was a competition to see who could murder the most of my kind, the demons who moved through your dreams, tantalising you with what you desired with all your heart. Yet your fellow hunters were envious of your skills and wanted to end you before you made your last kill. I ended them just as they ended the ones I cared for, mounted on the walls like prizes on display, to be gazed upon in awe by those who don’t know any better. You sold bits and pieces of us to be weighed on scales, crusty old merchants and miserly hags spending hours deliberating and putting a price on them. You compete to see who can cull the most of us from this world, and somehow we demons are the monsters in your eyes.
There was no escaping the moment you walked in, gazing at me in horror as the bodies were strewn across the floor like worn shirts. The faces of my victims frozen in terror, I revealed myself to you as what I truly was in that moment, the very thing you wanted to wipe from this earth…a demon. Horns, tail, wings and all, I give you credit that your face showed you were immediately thinking of how much those things would fetch you in the dark and grimy marked. I hid in that feeble human shell for my own safety and you fell hard for my disguise, hook, line and sinker. Yet it was you who pierced the very core of that shell without firing a single bolt from your crossbow. You didn’t even dare reach for it as you saw me, I don’t know what kept you from doing so. Fear? Anger? or you were too disgusted by the revelation that the very thing you hated came to love you instead of fear you? There was no joy in that moment as you fled the scene of what I had done. Perhaps you would come for me later, I could only guess what would come next after this fateful day.
I remembered the day you found me, hiding in the marketplace as I watched the pelts of my kind being traded, bought and sold for gold. You found me and I froze in fear, hoping my disguise would not go to pieces in that moment. Yet it did not, instead you mistook my disgust for fear and told me not to fear the faces of the butchered demons staring down at me. Their faces immortalised in their own terror and agony, I dare not think about what they were trying to cry out in their final moments. Yet as you took me under your wing, I was far too trusting for my own good, I thought perhaps that you were different from the other hunters. You killed to protect yourself from demons, you told me of how demons slaughtered your family when you were just a child. I fought to protect you from my own, I fought to keep them from breaking the weak, thin, human shell I hid inside. I started to fool myself into thinking that perhaps I could change your mind, in that not all demons were the creatures who killed your family. I overheard your fellow hunters conspire against you, thinking that with you out of the way there would be one less person to split the earnings with.
One by one they vanished, one by one they died like insects being swatted away. I should have known better when you found me in that moment, that I was deluding myself the entire time I knew you. I knew that there was a bolt in your quiver waiting for me now, for the day when you would gather the strength to avenge your fallen companions. I there is no justification for what I have done, my only wish is that in time you would have understood why I did what I had to do. Whether or not I truly loved you or if a creature like me is even capable of love, I’ll let you decide. I only hope that I die a cautionary tale, word of my death at your hands will spread. I can only hope that others will be wiser than me in my absence. A warning to other demons to take care as to not only who’s dreams they wander into, but also who unknowingly and unsuspectingly wanders into theirs.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
