*ONC 2024 entry*
**Round Two Ambassador's Pick**
**Shortlisted**
She's an angel of love; an ill-fitting name, as she's no angel. She strives for a world devoid of pain and sorrow. A world of love; of sex and debauchery without consequences. Unattach...
I visit her dreams for weeks. And every time I creep in, she doesn't stop me. I'm not sure she knows how.
I lavish love on her, make love to her, and seduce her; but my progress is slow.
And she still won't tell me what she is.
She has no power in her dreams, I know this; but somehow, her subconscious is protecting her from me. It lets her disrobe and spread her legs, but not open her mind.
Her heart, however, is mine. It's shifting but taking a long time. Bazroth has growled at me more than once now, but he's backed off, realizing how delicate this task is.
How delicate Dru is.
I know my king is angry, but he has to understand that she's no regular target. She's a being of an unknown nature whose heart is tougher to pierce than anyone else's.
Of all the options in Hazelvale, I had to go and choose the most difficult.
I've opted not to check in with Bazroth anymore until the deed is done. Until Dru has completely succumbed to her heartache and is officially broken. His groans are distracting, and I need to focus on Dru to complete this task.
To break her.
But I'm the one who's broken. Every time I leave her mind in the morning, I'm exhausted, drained. This power is hard on my body and my psyche. It pulls at my heartstrings in ways I didn't think were possible.
Every morning, I watch her struggle to wake. I watch her pain slide over her face, her body transforming. She's thinner than ever, all that was once so seductive about her gone.
She's still beautiful; she always will be, to me. But it's a haunted, tragic beauty that shatters me to pieces every time I see it. Which is why I stay away during the day, preferring to visit her mind at night.
I've done enough damage that there's no point torturing her twenty-four-seven.
Her heart thuds, contorting as it fights the disease, but it won't win. No matter how slow my process is, it is working.
I get my confirmation one morning as she jolts awake, her spine stiff, her eyes wide as if she can no longer close them.
It's done. She's done.
Her heart...is black. Fully. Not a trace of red remaining.
Dru is finished.
I wince as she stands up, completely naked, ribs protruding from her pale skin. She settles before her mirror, stretches, and perches there, ramrod straight. Her reflection is that of a ghost; pallid, hair thinning, skin sagging from her face.
"My heart is broken," she says aloud, her chin tipped up, as if she's addressing the ceiling.
The atmosphere shifts around us. A whoosh of air whips over me, as I huddle in a corner of her room, invisible to her. The breeze destabilizes me, and I almost lose my balance, almost topple into one of the few porcelain vases she hasn't destroyed.
If I were to nudge that vase by one millimeter, she'll know I'm here.
She can't know I'm here.
She throws on a satin robe and sits at the edge of her bed, her gaze vacant as she directs it to her door. "I'm heartbroken," she says, and her words send another wave of weirdness about the room.
It's the disease—she's spreading it to the world simply by confessing that she's aching, that she's no longer the same.
I cringe as I take advantage of her drawing herself a bath to make my escape.
Escaping is what I do best.
Outside, I take a breath of air—but it's not fresh. It's tainted, smelling of rot and sickness. It's a dark stench that I recognize as sorrow. Decay.
Heartbreak.
She's started the process of infecting the entire city, and she doesn't even know it.
My belly clenches as I step away from the temple, far from its holy grounds that I'm still unsure how I'm able to walk on.
I reenter the town, bypassing the angry glares of folk arguing in the streets, ignoring the negativity that floats in the air. The sickness has infested the streets, drawn people outside to air their grievances.
My deed is done.
And yet...
I'm unsatisfied. It feels wrong, so wrong, to do this to these people. They were happy. They were kind. And I swept in and took it all away from them.
What gave me the right to do that?
Bazroth.
I snarl as I prowl through the maddening crowd and head to the portal.
It's unsafe up here for me. Now that I've wounded someone as lovely as Dru, now that I've destroyed her, the rest of the world will soon follow.
I shouldn't stay up here to witness the consequences. Repercussions will be in order once the goddesses show up.
If they do. One of their own—Dru—has been harmed, suffering for weeks, and they haven't showed their faces. I don't know what she is, truly, but she must be sacred to them.
But then again, maybe not as much as I thought.
I check left and right as I arrive at the portal; a large hedge through which I walk and disappear from Exivaria.
Something rubs me the wrong way as the magic transports me home, to the dank darkness of Hell.
I stride down the halls of Bazroth's palace, but I can't fight the strange feeling that something's off, way off. That all this is wrong.
I was bred for this. My purpose was this: to bring about heartbreak and enable my fellow demons' escape. To enable Bazroth's victory.
But why is it not satisfactory to me?
I care for her. Dru. I wasn't supposed to, because she's so close to pure, and I'm the opposite. Yet in my hard work to pull her apart, I've pulled myself apart, too.
I'm suffering because she's suffering. And I hate that I was forced to do this to her.
I wasn't supposed to care, but I do. And now, as she extends her horrific heartbreak to all of Hazelvale, I stick to the shadows and pray for a miracle.
Demons don't pray for miracles. But perhaps I'm not an average demon.
Perhaps I'm a man in love with someone he spent weeks trying to rip apart.
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