Jack's thumb twitched over mine after a moment. From that tiny, involuntary movement, he seemed to realize something. Something horrible—a sharp jolt to his brain that instantly filled him with regret.
Something that suggested he wasn't in control of his body anymore.
He lurched forward, my hand being pulled along with him, and made an odd noise like holding in vomit or being force-fed. He reached up and dug a hand of claws into my upper arm, latching on tight as he was dragged down by some unseen force.
"Wh-what are you—god! What are you doing?! What is...!"
He was struggling to keep his voice above an empty rasp, and it sounded like something was caught in his throat. Chernobog spoke over his continual gasps and questions.
"You must be released," he said, practically whispering. "You, boy...you are not only of no use to us, but a burden. Protecting a human you've fallen in love with..."
Each sentence seemed to weaken Jack further, as if another knife to the heart.
"Disobeying direct orders from your true father, your owner..."
He clung to my arm as Chernobog continued, wincing, his breathing choppy as if he was holding himself back from doing something horrible.
"Not bothering to improve yourself for our sake...your most recent combat supervisor, Edith, informed me of something quite interesting." I could hear the smugness in the demon's voice, cold and sleazy like he had some ripe blackmail material at the ready. "Up until the tenth round of your training, you were successful, if not by a slim margin. But as soon as you were defeated by the human, just once...you left."
Jack sounded like he was choking on nothing, desperately holding onto the last bits of his sanity. He let go of me—I heard a shuffle and knew he'd fallen to his knees. I reached out to comfort him, unsure of exactly what was happening, but he shoved me away.
"You gave up."
"Sawyer, you need to get away from me—"
Chernobog laughed. "And now that you see what is happening, you realize what is best. You still only act for the sake of—"
"Shut up, old man," Jack hissed. His voice was getting worse by the minute, he sounded as if getting each word out was its own individual battle. He started coughing, gasping, hacking up something thick and awful onto the ground.
"There is a beast inside of you, sonur minn, waiting to be released. Perhaps now is the time to let you run loose."
I almost tripped over myself running forward and was met with a cold, hard surface akin to glass. My increasing heartbeat and stream of panicked, irrational thoughts told me he was keeping Jack behind this wall.
"Stop it!" I curled my hands into fists and started punching, trying to break through. When I failed to do so, Chernobog seemed to realize how little of a threat I was, because the wall shattered audibly without me even touching it and I fell to my knees. Tiny shards dug into my skin through the fabric, and I barely noticed. I yelled into the air,
"He hasn't done anything to you! You've used him, abused him for the last five years of his life, just let him go!"
"Oh, that is exactly what I intend to do, young human." I knew for a fact the bastard wanted to laugh again. "Jack, dear, what is that curious word you call me by...? 'Boss'?" He let out a chuckle. "If I were to sink so low as to use that sort of language, I might say that you're being fired."
"Bull...shit," Jack mustered between gags. I didn't need him to keep talking; I knew exactly what he wanted to say.
You're not firing me. You're killing me.
"Where are you?" I whispered frantically, sinking further to the ground and trying to feel out where he was crouched. He stifled another yell, as if to not give himself away. As if he knew something horrible would happen if I got too close. I couldn't care less; I asked again.
"Where are you—?!"
"Stay away from me! Please!"
Before I could protest, something was pressed to my face and clipped on around the back of my head. The stench of blood and sweat, the burn of his tar hit me like a brick wall. I fell back, my limbs shaking.
Chernobog had put Jack's mask on me, and no matter how hard I pulled, I couldn't get it off.
"Why do you struggle so, human? It's only a mask. What harm could come of it?"
"No. No, no, you bastard—!"
Jack was cut off from far away by a painful choking noise, and suddenly it all disappeared. Everything went silent; I could only hear a ringing in my ear, my own panicked heartbeat shaking my skull, my fingers digging into the ground for some sense of stability. After a moment, just when I was starting to think we'd been left alone, the demon spoke again.
"Look."
It was just that one word. And yet I got a horrible, queasy feeling at the way it had been said.
"This is a human. Do you recognize it?"
He was clearly waiting for an answer, and though I didn't hear anything, I was sure he'd gotten what he wanted. Anger started burning in my chest the second I realized he had called me "it." Already knowing he was a hypocrite didn't soften the blow.
I heard distant scuffling, a high-pitched wheeze, frantic chittering almost like a scared animal. Chernobog started to coo:
"Look at the mask, my dear boy. Nothing to be afraid of. It's just a human." After a few more seconds, he seemed to be nudging Jack in a certain direction. He wasn't getting the response he'd expected. "The mask, Jack. Pay attention. It looks familiar, does it not?"
I stood up on shaky legs, my breath hitching at every new sound and breeze that hit me. I tried one more time to take the mask off, to no avail; it was like it had been glued to my face.
"Who does it belong to, Jack? You only have to say one word for me. Who have you seen wearing that mask before?"
Something close to a snarl reached my ears, and I stumbled back. Jack's voice hadn't gotten better, not in the slightest, but it didn't shake this time.
"...her," he said, disgust and fury threatening to make his voice tremble. I realized what was happening the moment that word left his lips—I knew exactly what his boss was doing, who he thought I was in that moment.
"Jack?" I couldn't regain control over my voice no matter how hard I tried. It was on the verge of completely disappearing on me, giving out to a gravelly whisper. "It's me. Please, just—"
"Kill."
He didn't need to be told twice.
Jack launched himself at me, quiet as he could have possibly been, latching on and making desperate attempts to maul my face. I screamed and kicked him off, tears streaming down my cheeks and collecting at the bottom of the mask's rim. It really was sealed on. I started to hyperventilate, falling back onto my elbows and trying to predict his next attack. My head was jerked back, and something slashed at my throat. Before he could cut too deep, I let my head fall back along with my body and grappled for his hands.
"Jack! Stop, i-it's me, Jenny's dead—!"
"Is she?" Chernobog mused as Jack wrestled himself out of my grip. "I thought she had been standing right in front of him, seconds ago."
I was kicked to the ground, Jack remaining wordless as he sliced into my shoulder near the base of my neck. I let out the loudest shriek I could, praying somebody outside this realm—hell, this room—would hear me. He slammed my other shoulder into the earth, and I knew he was winding up to strike again. I headbutted him in the chest, knocking him down and holding both of his arms in a cross over him.
"Jack! Please!"
"I'm afraid he can't hear you in there. Stupid boy doesn't hear much of anything when he's consumed in his own anger."
Though my layers of fear, I was almost glad I couldn't see his face right now. I wasn't sure if I could have taken seeing him this furious, this bloodthirsty, and towards me to boot. He broke out of my grip and threw me off with a strength I hadn't seen in him before, and the slow shuffling noise nearby told me he was taking his sweet time getting up again. I started to sob, wincing in pain as the sting of my wounds started spreading to the rest of my body. It was as if his claws were coated in poison, or a crude mixture of salt and dirt that seeped into the cuts. I knew he was only acting this way because of the mask; nothing I could say or do would change his mind in this angry state, not as long as my face was blocked...
Oh, this will so get me killed.
But fuck it.
"Jack!" I stood up and waved my arms in the air. Something cracked in one of my shoulders in a way that worried me to no end, but I kept waving. Oddly enough, he wasn't attacking now. Maybe he'd gotten tired out already; after all, Chernobog had worked him up pretty badly before. I heaved several deep breaths, preparing to stake my life on whether he would listen to me or not.
"Attack my face!" I yelled, pointing both hands at the mask. I still couldn't tell where he was after that last attack. I felt a strange rush of panic, adrenaline, and pure hope as footsteps started approaching me from god-knows-where, and looked wildly around for some sort of indication as to which side he was coming from.
He barrelled into me from the front and dug his claws into the right eyehole of the mask, nearly chipping off a piece into my eye. I squeaked and covered my neck, hoping he would be distracted enough for the next couple of minutes to allow me a breather. He continued to slash and cut and even bite at the thing, for Christ's sake, until it was no longer a mask, but a piece of shredded blue plastic that had once been a cat's plaything. Jack was quietly growling throughout his concentrated rampage, so much fury and vengeance building up in his voice that it sounded like he might start crying. Before he could actually claw into my face, I kicked him off and tore away the mask's mutilated plastic, panting and on the verge of another bout of sobs.
"Jack, look—it's just me. Jenny's gone, she can't hurt you. It's me."
"Just what do you think you're doing, human—"
"Don't listen to your boss. I-I'm not one of them, I would never hurt you, I'm your anchor, remember? Jenny is dead—"
"No."
Jack spoke quietly and with the full, traumatic weight of what had just happened. There was no noise after that for what seemed like forever.
When forever was over, he started shuffling toward me, and I instinctively took a step back. Conscious or not, he was still unpredictable. I couldn't be sure if that was really him, or whether he'd snap again under Chernobog's influence. I squeezed my eyes shut, not that it would make a difference, and waited for the next horrible thing to happen.
After minutes of silence, I felt a trembling hand on my face, and heard the clack of his mask falling to the ground.
"...Sawyer?"
Yeah, he's totally crying.
"Oh, my god, you...no. What did I do? Why are you—what happened to your shoulder?" His voice was mellow now, still breaking but smoother than it had been before. It was as if all that fighting and growling under his breath cleared something out of him. Something coarse and evil and violent. I had the feeling he was too afraid to hug me, so I took that chance for him. He melted at my touch, holding me tightly but gingerly, burying his face but making sure I had room to breathe.
"I'm so, so sorry," he choked out, weaving his fingers through my hair. "I-I didn't mean—I thought you—"
"I know," I said, trying not to add to his little cry-fest but having a pretty damn hard time doing so. Everything in me wanted to collapse on the spot, curl up into a ball and sleep on the floor for ages and ages. When I took the tiniest step forward, something shifted at my feet, and my eyes snapped open.
The mask had been destroyed.
"...Jack, I...I'm sorry, your mask—"
"I don't give a shit about the mask, are you kidding me?" He let out a small gasp as he spoke, drawing in a shudder of a breath; the first one he'd taken since we started to hug. I shook my head and held him closer.
"I-I don't know. I thought you...something about your face, I didn't even realize until you said it. That's really why you wear it? You think people will be afraid?"
"Not really," he hastened to say. "I-it's a lost cause, anyway, people are going to be scared of me no matter what—"
"I think you look beautiful."
Of all the things I could have said, I chose the most shallow option. But it somehow felt right. Even though I couldn't see him now, even though I was still blind, through the tar and missing eyes and him basically being a walking corpse...he was beautiful.
Chernobog didn't like that too much.
"I shouldn't have wasted my time trying to bring out a purpose in you again."
His voice boomed throughout the giant hall, causing both of us to flinch. Jack turned away from me and held onto one of my hands, for once...calm. Pitying, even. I could hear it in the way he said,
"Good thing I found one for myself, then."
"You, boy, are utterly useless. You couldn't even kill one last human, bring back one more soul to me before I rid myself of you for good."
"Then do it," he snapped. "I think I've caused enough damage for one lifetime."
My eyes widened, and I reached out my other hand to grab his arm. "What are you doing?!" I hissed, trying to turn him back around. He wouldn't budge. But he did say to me in a gleeful whisper,
"Just wait."
Chernobog stayed quiet for some time. Awfully quiet. For a moment, I was afraid that he'd try yet another evil trick on us, or even kill Jack on the spot like he so clearly wanted to. I was afraid until Jack spoke again.
"What's wrong? Do it."
Nothing. He let out a small, expectant hum at the lack of a response.
"Now, if I'm doing the math right—I mean, I was a computer science major—I've only got two parts to me. Demon and human. Or, according to you, the part that you can control...and the part that you can't." He clicked his tongue, and a shuffling noise told me he was rolling back and forth on his heels. "Wanna take a wild guess which one's still standing here?"
There was an uncomfortably long silence. Jack didn't seem to mind; on the contrary, I had a feeling some devilish grin was starting to cross his face.
"C'mon, boss. You only have to say one word for me."
Another silence. After a moment, he muttered, "Music to my ears." I didn't let go of his arm.
"Oh, and I'm turning in my..." He seemed to pat himself down, then hummed thoughtfully. "Right. It's just...not there anymore, I guess."
I furrowed my eyebrows. He couldn't have been talking about the mask; he already knew it was gone. Something else was missing now.
"Useless," Chernobog repeated scathingly. "That blade we gifted you—the demon essence, it's been removed from your body! And you expect us to leave it in your possession for a single moment longer—"
"God, okay, I get it. I was gonna give it to you anyway." Jack gave me a pat on the shoulder as a signal to turn around. How on Earth he was planning to leave this place when Chernobog had sealed us in, I had no idea, but he didn't seem too preoccupied with that.
"Well, later—"
"Not so fast."
Fucking great.
The way he said that, through no uniqueness of its own, managed to send a chill down my spine. I didn't know why; this was all over. He couldn't keep us here, he couldn't keep torturing us. Jack had gotten him to shut up for a minute straight because there wasn't a thing he could do to him anymore! So why was I still on edge?
"You forget that your tie to me has been severed."
Jack grumbled something incoherent, as if to say, this condescending shit again.
But he stopped. He fell silent, and his hand slipped from mine. I turned again and grabbed desperately for something, anything to keep him still. He was starting to float backwards, lifeless in my grasp. I held on tightly as I could to his hand, but ended up getting pulled along with him.
"Since you must think of yourself as human, it would only be suitable for me to punish you as one..."
"Stop it!" I yelled, wondering how many more times I'd have to say that. "Can't you see how—how immature you look right now?! It's not that hard! Let us go—!"
"My apologies, human," Chernobog said without an ounce of sincerity. "Doing that would make you the first pair of insolent brats I've ever let off the hook. And, well..."
He laughed as Jack rose up further into the air, almost being ripped from my hold, the voice growing louder and louder in my head.
"...we can't have that happening, now can we?"
"Let go, Sawyer," Jack muttered, like he was in a daze. "I can't..."
Something usurped the sound from the room.
I say that like everything went quiet; that isn't what happened. Something absorbed the sound, whisked it from the room in one stroke like a tablecloth in a magic trick. All I could hear was the sound of my own racing heartbeat, my breath, hell, I could even hear the blood flowing through my veins. I dug my nails into Jack's hand, my teeth gritted, unwilling now more than ever to let go.
Someone else spoke. A softer voice. Loud, but soft. It echoed in my mind the same way Chernobog's did, but for whatever reason, I felt safer with this one.
"Leave the boy alone."
Then the previous noise exploded back into my ears.
I held back a gasp and pulled on Jack's hand, in one final attempt to release him from his boss's grip. I managed to reel in about half of his arm.
"No, no, no—keep to your side!" Chernobog hissed at no one. "This doesn't involve you—"
"Let go of my child, brother."
The voice blared menacingly throughout the room. I felt like I'd been struck with a mellow bolt of thunder; something about that sentence shook me.
"Brother?" I blurted, still clinging to Jack's arm.
"Child?" Jack breathed.
"I should go so far as to say, this does not involve you. You will leave these two be and stop claiming that which is not yours."
"He is mine," Chernobog said, with the closest thing to bared teeth a thing like him could have.
This other being, his "brother," let out a sound—a wail, a screech, somewhere in between—that pierced the air and my eardrums. I made the mistake of covering my ears and let Jack's hand go again. I gasped and ran forward, only to collide with him from behind. He had been standing on firm ground for some time now. And he didn't budge.
"All be damned, will you stop that screaming—?!"
"Leave."
The awful, earsplitting sound came to a halt just so the other being could utter that one word in a fantastic boom. I heard glass shatter to our left, walls crumbling everywhere else and the very ground swaying below our feet.
Without a single piece of proof, I knew boss had left.
"Jack," I said without thinking, once everything had settled down and I regained my balance. "Jack, are you—"
"I'm fine. What the hell just happened." His words were monotonous and hushed, like he still hadn't processed any of this yet. I blinked and swallowed; it seemed we were in the same boat there. I reached out one hand awkwardly and placed it on his shoulder after a brief moment of search.
Whoever had driven out Chernobog spoke, and we both jumped in our spots.
"I—we apologize for the commotion, you two. The demon is gone. Allow us to—"
"You called him your brother." The words slipped out as I pointed a shaky finger ahead, though I wasn't quite sure where the voice was coming from. Jack's mind was on another track.
"You said I was your child," he said breathily.
"What are you?" I asked, beyond caring if they were offended by such a question. The thing, whatever it was, sighed with about fifty different voices.
Oh, god. There's more of them, too.
"There is no need to fear. We will not hurt you," they said, if not a bit unconvincingly. Who in history has ever calmed down when told to not be afraid?
"But what are you?" I felt I was owed an answer of some sort. I was done blindly following every demon, creature, whatever that crossed my path.
To my surprise, they didn't seem annoyed or offended.
"Try to understand; there is no human word for us. Some call our kind angels. Spirits. Those are the more recognizable names.
"But you may call us Belobog."