I knew I was dreaming. A demonic contagion was spreading throughout the world like an epidemic. Everyone infected by it became blind. I spent a few seconds groaning at the recycled tropes from the 80’s before realizing that despite my awareness, I actually had very little power here.
I only happened to be immune.
One of the infected tried to claw my eyes out. They were screaming that it was my fault this plague had descended upon the world. If only I had submitted to Ziegler and allowed him to take my sight, then the demon using him would have been placated. My refusal to be sacrificed has doomed the world.
This was no longer amusing.
The Raven had said that Ziegler had continued to exist by feeding off his victims, but said nothing about something feeding off of Ziegler. But there are many puppets and masters in the otherworlds and the distinction is not always clear.
I tried to remove the demonic infestation from the now incoherent victim. None of my usual methods worked. I was successful in calling my feathersword to my hand. I might as well tried striking at the air with a wet noodle. It would have been less comical.
Around me the world continued to fall into accelerated, red-tinged decay. The demon began using the voices of its innumerable victims to taunt me.
“I will make a deal with you. Give me your sight, and I will release this world and all within it.”
“I don’t trust your deal. Because there is nothing that prevents you from retaking it once I surrender to you.”
It laughed. It made many threatening gestures. It caused all sorts of filth and rotting flesh to fall on me. But I noted it could not harm me. It was still horrific to be trapped in this decomposing realm. The bodies of victims melted where they stood.
“I can’t leave. But I can’t do anything. I refuse to take responsibility for the actions of others, but at the same time I don’t know what to do!” All my attempts to force myself to wake up failed.
«Have faith.»
I looked around at the reddening world. Even the sunlight was tinged with red. “Faith in what?”
«Faith in yourself. You know what to do, but you will not allow yourself to consider it.»
I felt the red in this world concentrating. The demon was gaining power. The time for talk was over, and soon one of us was going to strike the other for triumph.
Through the voices of its victims, it spoke to me again. “Yield to me. Become as Ziegler was to me. You have the potential to take away the pain of others. I will help you relieve and succor others, and in return you alone will feed me.”
“Yea… you’re fulla shit.” A thought burst into my consciousness, and I realized it was a thought I had had several times already in this dream, but I had snuffed it for its implications as soon as it had appeared. This time, I entertained the thought, even as it scared me more than the idea of being devoured by the demon.
“Deceiver, with holy light, I rebuke you.” I drew an equilateral triangle before me. Lines of light were left in the wake of my finger. “Devourer, with holy light, I repel you.” I drew a second equilateral triangle over the first, creating a six-pointed star. “Defiler, just as the sun continues even though it may be eclipsed, so I remain untouched though you have surrounded me with decay.” The star burst with a flash of light and heat.
I had created a bubble of sunlight around me. The demon’s form of red mist retreated from it. The thought I was afraid of had called up a deep instinct. Yielding to it, I stretched out my empty left hand and closed it.
The long bow that materialized in my grasp was both foreign and familiar. With my empty right hand, I pinched at the area over my heart. A bead of light formed there, and I pulled it into an arrow of light. I fitted the arrow to the bow and drew it back.
The demon taunted me for using a weapon that requires a target to be useful. “I am everything in this world now! Shall you strike the planet itself?” The voice came from everyone and every object around me, even from the ground under my feet.
“I am not afraid of you.” I was afraid of what I had felt myself shift into. I was terrified of the shadowy presence that had become inside the sunlight bubble behind me. “You are using my fears as a shield and my identities as a blind. I am not afraid to kill what I perceive as myself, to save myself.”
I closed my eyes, blinding myself. “I have faith in the promises.”
The angel reached from behind me and steadied my arms. «The promises will be kept.»
“Let me see past the illusion. Let me see my target.”
The angel turned me slightly to the right. I heard the visor of their helm lift. Even though my eyes were closed, I could see as they saw.
The demon manifested in the spiritual realm as a large, floating, bloodshot eye. From the pitch black pupil it was projecting illusions and hallucinations that covered the world just enough to make things look “right”, but still led the unwary astray into traps and pitfalls.
The eyeball turned towards me as the demon realized I wasn’t interacting with the illusion anymore. As the iris contracted in surprise, I let the arrow loose.
The arrow moved as fast as light and pierced the eyeball in the center of the pupil precisely. I heard a terrible scream as the arrow also pierced a hole in the fabric of the spiritual realm. As the arrow continued into whatever alternate realm it had found, it dragged the eyeball body of the demon with it, turning it inside out before being swept along with the arrow. The golden fletching on the end of the arrow pulled together the seams of the rip, closing the hole behind it and leaving me alone with the black armored angel.
The mantle of [the Bow-Wielder] lifted immediately and the bow dissolved into the nothingness surrounding me. The angel remained behind me, holding me steady. I heard their visor lower and my own sight returned to me.
I opened my eyes to find the world was normal, as if the demon never happened. Well, relatively normal, as no one in the park was giving me and the angel strange looks for being here. (Maybe they thought we were cosplayers?)
I thought the angel’s armor would be cold. What was pressed to my skin was warmer than I was. They were holding me upright, which was a blessing, because my legs had failed the moment her mantle had lifted.
I had forgotten what it felt like to be in the presence of a holy angel.
As I was being reminded, I also remembered all the pain, suffering, and abuse I endured by my fellow True Christians™ because I could experience the presence of a holy angel.
«Peace. Be still.»
“I… I have no weapons and no fury to power them. And you’re holding me, so I’m about as still as I can get.”
«Will you face me?»
I was reminded of the dream of the dragons and a young Saint George. I faced the angel then, but I could not take their offered hand. I wanted to do both at this moment. But instead I shook in uncontrolled fear and started to sob. “I… can’t.”
«When you can, I am here.»
The angel lowered me gently to the soft grassy ground under my feet and laid me facing away from them. They knelt over me, spread their wings to cover me, and guarded me in silence.
Something rapped the bed frame with two solid and distinct knocks. The resulting vibration being greater than the random spring sproinging pulled me from my sleep.
From under my bed, directly under my pillow, I heard an unidentifiable voice ask, “You okay?”.
I clutched my pillow tightly. Wet spots revealed where I had been crying in my slumber. “Yea, I’m good. Just a frustrating dream, that’s all.”
That same voice (somehow changed and unchanged) now came from the space between the headboard of the bed and the wall. “Sorry to wake you, just checking. Go back to sleep.” The voice sounded relieved and comforting.
The idea that someone cares about me to check up on me in the middle of the night was very soothing. But in my barely awake state, I was now worried about the one who was worried about me. “Yea, I will. You get some rest, too, okay?”
The voice took on its most inhuman timbre yet. I heard it clearly emanating from inside the outer wall. “I am beyond rest. As long as you’re good, I’m good.”
It wasn’t where I heard the voice coming from that finally caught my attention. It was its declaration that it was “beyond rest”. My eyes opened as awareness chilled me. With full wakefulness came the loss of the voice’s disembodied presence.
“… Cool.” Like I could say anything else!
I then remembered the dream leading up to the encounter and decided to go on with my day.