Animal Writes Blogfest

So I signed up super last minute. No big deal, right? Nah. Here's your redirect to the PARTICIPANTS.

My piece comes from the 3rd person account of a tiny demon. He's a supporting character, if even that, in my manuscript, Bond of Darkness. This is the only scene he ever has, but I enjoy it, and hopefully you feel the same.

It's a scene that shows an example of my antagonist's return to power, and what is being done to bring him back.

Word Count: 192 (I know, rather pathetic).


* * *

Er’aln was a tiny demon, his skin shriveled and baggy with age. Four shriveled arms curled along the lines of his shriveled body. In his dank chamber of the Nether Void, he remained locked away, appointed to spearhead their Master’s resurrection process. 

He lagged his crippled leg around the chamber and cursed the useless appendage. He flicked his crimson hooded cloak aside and reached out to test his next formula. A clink and pop exploded behind him and Er’aln masterfully dipped away from his work station. He drew his cloak up to his nose and eyes to shield them from the noxious fumes in the air. The efficiency of his mind was matched only by the ineptitude of the demon mechanics he was forced to associate with. Such poor craftsmanship, he observed, as scrap metal plates hung off his Master’s incubator. Steam poured from its pipes with violent life and the needles on its meters occasionally spiked.

For more than seventeen ages, he had despised and cursed his subservience for having been given this role in the exhumation of their Master. His words were of little value in the baking temperatures of the resurrection chamber. Er’aln, the tiny demon, had finally had enough.

“Master never know of Er’aln,” he grumbled with his four arms hard at work. He approached his work station and poured various dark liquids together. Before he could attend to the next phase of his formula, a clink of a different tone sounded behind him. Again, he dropped his work and rushed to the incubator panel. He twisted and turned a series of knobs. He looked up at two vents that had creaked open and released yet more steam. The regulation of the energy pods jutting from the incubator’s exterior demanded unnerving patience. 

“Master never be told of Er’aln. Er’aln not cared for, so why Er’aln care for them?” Forcing out growls and mumbles under his breath, he tumbled over from a cracked pipe that sprayed fumes at his face. “Stupid machine!” His voice cracked in the heat as he punched the iron pipe with his fist, rupturing it further. Er’aln then realized the burn corroding his face. The burn came slowly, but with intense pain. It seared his checks and the shriveled skin peeled away.

“Fool!” The warlord’s wispy voice rattled the machinery and trembled under Er’aln’s feet. Er’aln glanced with a quivering lip at the incubator. The hefty coiled wires and pipes strung off of the incubator buzzed and swayed and his eyes moved to the glass shield. The smoky barrier shifted into a florid face that barely showed life.

“You’re the mechanic?” Mithrus’ voice emptied from the glass shield and hung in the atmosphere. 

“Answer me!”

“Er’aln.” His grunt was low and he averted his eyes.

“How long...have you been here?”

Er’aln cringed at the voice that wafted around his head. “Seventeen ages,” he said.

The multi-hued smoke crawled from the incubator and slithered through the crack in the pipe. Er’aln swiveled around, clutching his hands together.

“You are relieved,” Mithrus said.

The smoke entangled Er’aln’s body and he squirmed to no avail. It snaked into his orifices—eyes, nose, mouth and ears. The tiny demon squirmed further, ravaging against the gaseous invisible hand around him. Loss of breath came as his innards shrank to leathery bags. He claimed his last sights—that of the unfinished formula sitting on his station—and for a moment wished it had all been different. Er’aln crumpled over lifeless.