The Rekirath

“I have to stop at the lab.”

The boy was not convinced, puckering his small lips and tossing his tablet aside. “I thought you said that you wouldn’t slay demons anymore.”

Artemis paused behind the steering wheel, contemplating what to tell her son. She faked a smile at Lucas, putting forth her words carefully for the young child to digest. Of course, he saw through her lies; covered in black blood, tattered clothes, sweat, and a stop to the lab after a mysterious house? This was the schedule of a slaying, and young Lucas was no dummy. She didn’t expect him to be one anyway; at least this made Artemis feel better than her son mindlessly believing her lies. “This was the last one; I promise.”

Truth was, Artemis needed money. Opening a laboratory was expensive, and Casiphians didn’t want to wave money on her projects unless it was to rid their house of a demon. They didn’t put money into anything unless they saw a dollar sign; what was she to expect? Investors didn’t see her studies in demonology as worthwhile. We already know how to kill them. They’d argue as she presented her projects. What is studying their psychology and culture going to do if we know they can’t be reasoned with and must be killed and bound to hell!

Artemis believed that perhaps there was a way to reach a Lausmer entity once more, that part of them, deep down, was still mortal. Newly created Lausmer demons slowly surrendered to the energy or extreme emotion that had turned them in the first place. Artemis wanted to reverse it and explore the complexities of this process. She wanted to understand the general dynamics and cultures of other entities and how they worked besides feeding. Casiphians didn’t care. Kalpana didn’t care. Hell, Confederation Tenn didn’t care, but Artemis did. She wanted to know everything about demons and how they tick. Maybe she could use psychological warfare against them, as some were able to do to her in battles. All she had to do was study them and figure out how they could do such things. But no one ever listened to her rambles; only when she slit a demon’s throat were money and praise thrown at her.

Beneath neon lights catching Lucas’s brown eyes, did he see the city buzz to life from the cold alleyway that he had sat so patiently in. Hums of spaceships vibrated his soul, and the cracks in the empty road made Artemis’ old truck dip and groan. Gloomy buildings of alleyways infested with slerns and roaches turned into blinding lights, squawking species bustling through streets, and the low thunder of a thousand footsteps. Lucas fiddled with a dried French fry in the cup-holder of his car seat. Stealing glimpses of his mother from the window. Artemis’ eyes were a glass of sparkling cognac. Thickly arched eyebrows that coincided with her stone-like cast on her face when she looked away from her son.

Kalpana’s beating heart faded as Artemis steered into the Academic District. With glossy, sleek modern buildings standing tall along sandalwood-white pavements and manicured lawns, the two had arrived at Artemis’ laboratory. A small office space, but much nicer than the garage she used to experiment in. Occasionally, the house had become damaged…or in flames, when she had practiced her work. Realizing she couldn’t control the potential damage, Artemis moved to a more secure place, even if it meant opening a loan to do so. These studies would pay off one day; she couldn’t put her finger on when they would, but Artemis knew that she would prove the Casiphians wrong. Artemis’ work was important; knowing the entity's culture would provide useful information rather than just killing them.

Unveiling the universe’s secrets in an office space that the rich saw as a room fit for a closet, Artemis unlocked the car. “Stay right here for a few, okay? Mommy just has to get some-”

“-I don’t want to stay in the car anymore!” Lucas’s round cheeks glowed red in anger and resentment that his mother had left him in the car so long. Artemis swallowed the rest of her sentence, swallowing her shame for a moment before Lucas whined once more. “You never let me see your office!”

“I know-”

“You promised!”

She rolled her eyes, nearly cursing herself for that promise. Lucas would grab anything he could get his hands on, and she just wanted to go in only for a moment. A moment she murmured to herself. Only for a moment. How much could he touch then?

“Alright, Squirt- don’t touch anything, alright?”

Lucas’ lips quirked up, dancing with satisfaction. He quickly unbuckled himself, throwing his tablet on the other seat.

Artemis’ office had three rooms. The first was a traditional office space with a desk, bookshelves, and papers strewn across the floor. The second room was a typical lab room with test tubes, flasks consisting of demonic slime and other abnormalities that Artemis would poke under a microscope, and slides with samples of each demon she had sent back to Hell permanently with her blessed blade. Atlas, the third room held cages where Artemis kept entities or summoned them. Somehow, she got her hand on 10-11 Council-grade steel coated and engraved with spells from the Book of Genzüles. Just brushing against the bars could send a demon’s flesh melting off its bones, unable to rejuvenate or dance with immortality as they have done so many times.

“Stay here, alright?” Artemis pulled open her desk, finding some pink bubblegum to hand to Lucas. Lucas accepted the bubblegum, smacking his lips with each pop. Artemis went to her lab, carefully pulling a piece of the Rekirath’s skin from her pocket. She then snipped a piece and placed it on a microscope slide. The woman couldn’t help but slide it under a microscope, admiring the complex nature of its unusual physical makeup. Its anatomy was much more complex than that of cells. Artemis was curious whether their energy type was encoded in their genetic makeup; perhaps this would tell her whether it was even possible for a newly converted Laussmer demon to act against its foreign nature. The small round circles moving underneath her microscope stole her attention, luring her in with each swivel and twirl.

Suddenly, a scream ricocheted off the walls, slicing through Artemis’ concentration. Instincts kicking in, her feet nearly bounced off the walls, ice skating to where her son was. Lucas was in the corner of the office, tucking himself away in the corner of her office. The shadows blanketing him, yet those shadows began to slowly glide to his right, making Artemis’ heart sink.

“Artemis Belinski.” Its murmurs were knives slicing slowly around Artemis’ back as dread overcame her body. “The one you couldn’t kill!”

“Baby, Lucas,” Artemis' words were soft, but electrified with anxiety. “Listen to me very closely.”

The creature chuckled behind her, enlarging his presence in the shadows. The office grew unnaturally dark, sweeping every bit of light into the hallway, where the lights flickered and coughed. Behind Artemis, Lucas saw a great white smile with sharp teeth overcrowding one another like weeds. Stained, chipped, and coated in dried blood, the creature’s several eyes opened, one by one, revealing twelve multicolored eyes that glowed in the darkness. “Yes, Lucas, listen to your mother very carefully.”

In a clash, Artemis swung around and lunged at the beast. Pulling out Cressida’s blessed blade, she made a deep incision in the creature’s flesh, sending them both crashing into a bookshelf. In the clamor of another bookshelf crashing to the ground, Artemis’ voice was a whip against the uproar- “Lucas, out now!”

Lucas scrambled to the end of the hallway, running towards the door that held him back from the cages. If things ever go wrong as they did at home, you put yourself in that cage, you here? But Lucas was too short to unlock to reach the passcode completely. The cage at home wasn’t locked behind a door. A cold wash of panic washed down the boy’s small frame, breaths quickening as he heard his mother’s body being swung back and forth. Books flew into the hallways, and papers became a dust storm, making it easy to slip into the demon’s grasp.

Lucas pressed his frame against the door, wishing that he could phase through mortal constructions as demons could. Artemis was thrown out of the office with a sneering laugh ripping through Lucas’ shaking body. “Kill him!” His words came out fragmented, broken, but he still believed in his mother's strength.

“I can’t!” Blood rushed down his mother’s nose and forehead. Fingers looked as though they had been stained with blackberries and strawberries. Clothes, even more tattered than they had ever been. “He’s too dangerous to kill- I have to send him back to Hell!” She raised her voice, spitting blood into her office where the demon stood.

“Unpopular you are in Nephthys; imagine the rubens I’ll get just for bringing you there, yet your blood is mine alone to drink!” The only thing that Artemis could do would be to kill it with mortal weapons, so that she wouldn’t really kill the entity but send it back to Kenina to be rebirthed. This would only buy her time before it returned to Evulka for her again. She hated demons like these. She had always refused to do them, no matter how much xyrinn her clients waved in her face. A demon with you as a target will never leave you alone. But one that a mortal dreads to kill? One that can be rebirthed or damn the mortal with it in its death? Artemis would wave her clients away, feeling pity for them. I kill Asmodite entities with servants that they created, extensions, Asmodites without servants at all, and crazy Laussmers. That’s it. When Asmodite entities adopt their own servants, they live on beyond the entities’ death and attach to the one that slew their master. Somehow Artemis had found a way to piss off an Asmodite with servants that adopted servants, so after its death, if slain, its servants would attach to her. Artemis Belinkski didn’t want to risk becoming a demon herself in properly slaying the entity. Worst of all, it had come in contact with Lucas’ soul, and it would haunt him as well.

Claws half the size of Lucas tore into the floor as if it were cheap fabric. Its bones groaned and snapped with each step and shatter of the floor beneath them. Artemis prepared her mortal gun at the creature, hoping that this time enough damage would make the demon run away to heal itself and at least give her time to figure out what the hell to do with this entity. From the darkness emerged a face that was just a skull that was mutated between a deer and a spider. Hollow, empty eyes that glowed with the multiple colors that had scorned Lucas in the darkness. Multiple horns of different types crowding its skull, its teeth and jaw able to unhinge to speak without moving its mouth, or to sing horrors through its smiling, demented teeth.

With the skins of its enemies draped from its horns, it towered over Artemis. Its stomach tore open, revealing a gaping hole with more teeth spiraling and infesting its black, slimy organs. Out came several of its servants- horned creatures dressed in slime and rage, crawling out of the demon’s flesh. Artemis screamed, pulling her gun at every chance that she could and slicing the necks of its servants with Cressida’s blade when she could.

The servants clawed the walls, chewing and breaking through glass, and setting small fires with each step they took. Aiming her attention at the creature, Artemis let bullets rain on its face. The creature shrieked, not being saved from the same very pain that mortals feel. Only had it been blessed with immortality on certain terms, of course.

Artemis growled at the creature, pulling on its horns to the point that she snapped one off. Latching its teeth onto her arm, the demon tore a chunk of flesh off the demon slayer’s arm in response, making her unravel at the pain. The demon quickly hid itself from their mortal eyes, slicing at Artemis' legs, tormenting her as it bounced between the Dagrun plane and the original. Lucas screamed, seeing his mother being cut so deeply, blood running from her legs as he had never seen before. Up until this very point, Lucas had seen his mother as invincible. Maybe even a god, with how she only came home with bruises and sweat as trophies from her battles. With the wit of Pandora and the strength of Venus, Lucas had never thought that his human mother would bleed red before him.

The demon’s head snapped to Lucas, sounding as if its spine had been compressed into broken glass. Lucas’ heart leaped from his ribcage, shakily trying to push the passcode, assuming the number was the same as the one Artemis gave him for his tablet. Taking the opportunity, Artemis sliced into the creature’s face with Cressida’s blade before it vanished into Dagrun once more.

Then it reappeared, moving towards her son.

Fighting through her pain, Artemis timidly pushed her back against the wall, stomping on the demon’s small servants. Her weight crushed them to Kenina, and her blade kept them there.

“Who said that I couldn’t have a snack to go with such a meal?” The demon twisted its head with unearthly cracking sounds that sent Lucas into a high-pitched scream. Her son’s raw fear numbed Artemis’ body immediately, and she lunged towards the entity with all her might.

At that moment, she didn’t care what happened to her. She didn’t care if she became one of them. With claws not even an inch away from Lucas’ face, she jumped onto the demon’s back. It squealed, throwing its back into the wall, crushing at least two of Artemis’ ribs. Gasping through bloody teeth, she held Cressida’s blade to its neck and ripped a gash so deep that it felt like a guillotine’s dull blade had cut into the demon’s muscle. A weapon of a celestial would always truly kill a demon, but at what cost? The stunned servants watched as their daunting leader collapsed to the ground. The bones that made up its face slowly began to envelop its skin across the rest of its body. Turning into bones, the creature began to feel heavy as rocks and stones. Its movements could only lifelessly lurch and twist as its fate overcame its demonic shell. The statue tumbled to the floor, destroying the body into broken pieces that covered Lucas in a great poof. Artemis leaped to him, brushing off the dust from Lucas’ hair and clothes.

With motherly instincts, she checked if Lucas was scratched, bruised, or bleeding. Then she checked again as if her eyes were lying to her. Embracing him in a hug, Artemis began to feel her body change. Fingers began to feel as though they were holding ice, skin becoming unnaturally thin, cheekbones seeking in, and her eyes glowing as the demon had once before. Her brown curls had fallen into straight, silky white hair, and pieces of her flesh where the demon had bitten into her began to rot and fall. Grasping her arm, she tried to hide her transformation from Lucas, who began to become overstimulated with panic. His screams were worse than when the demon breathed down his nose or ran its claws through his hair in complete darkness. Artemis fell backward, now hiding her face as half of it turned. Half of her beautifully crafted face had been juxtaposed with a black skull with slime dripping off of it. Skin torn and hanging over the skull as frayed thread; the darkness eating away at her very mortality.

“Don’t look at me!” Artemis’ voice wavered between her frightened voice and the sound of several voices. “Look away! Look away!” Lucas could not look away from his mother. He tried to grab her, hoping he could pull her out of this curse if he tried hard enough. She slipped backward from her son’s advances, sobbing with each attempt. She hollered in pain as her painful metamorphosis continued, blurring her sight. “Get away, Lucas! Listen to your mother!”

Lucas kept moving towards her, frightened, sobbing, but nevertheless, worried about his mom. Abruptly, a portal ripped open behind Artemis, showing a hazy red version of their original plane. Her new servants began to crawl into the plane.

Shouting, Lucas attempted to swipe at his mother’s tattered clothes, but it was no use. She was already falling through the portal, feeling the intense emotions of longing for fear being fed to her by her son. Her body felt electrified at Lucas’ fear, and it frightened her, yet nothing had ever felt so good to her.

“Mommy, no!”

“Mommy loves you, Lucas. Mommy will always love you.”

Artemis let herself fall through the portal, closing it behind her before Lucas could run in after her. He ran into the wall, bruising his shoulder with all his might. He crumpled to the floor, engrossed in tears that stung his now swollen eyes.

Whenever the world started to fall apart, that’s when she was with him. Now, the world had fallen apart, and Lucas vowed to bring Artemis back to her true form. No matter the risk. No matter the consequences. No matter the anger from the gods. Lucas Belinksi would get his mother back, even if it meant tearing the world apart a little more just to put it back together.