Demon

“Dad, are you okay?” Kuikinu, a bipedal, aqua golden retriever, made efforts to console his father, Archie, a bipedal, broad, yet firm canine with a prodigious mane.
“I don’t know if I can say yes or no to that, son.” Archie’s intense head migraine put him in excruciating pain to the point where the clutches of his hands on his face could crush metal beams. As a demon he had to consume at least one soul a day, even one as miniscule as an ant, although he preferred the souls of the vice. However, on the planet of Fruilluna, not even one ant was present, not in any of the thirteen continents; some force caused organisms across the planet to hide. After ten days of venturing across two continents of Fruilluna in the hopes of finding at least one vice soul, Archie slowly became more and more bedeviled by his demonic need for any soul.
“Dad… If it comes down to desperate matters, just take m--”
“I’m not consuming your soul, Cj.” Archie spoke this statement with such duress that it completely shut up Kuikinu, whom he called Cj.
The pair continued trekking through Roduin, their third explored continent, in the desperate search of a soul, hopefully an ant’s or any just as insignificant. “Do you think the Gerion in Aconolley are able to help? We’re not that far from their forest, Dad.”
“Do you think that they’ll accept a demon, Cj?”
“They could… Bagner would understand; he loves me.”
“I can’t imagine that they would; they’re a species highly protective of their kind, and with me, they’ll--”
“Dad, it’ll be okay, we’re all a family, even if we aren’t tied through blood.”
Before their discussion could continue, two elderly wolves, Danina and Frankie, came up to them nonchalantly. “Look who it is, Kuikinu and Archie, darling!” Frankie waved to the pair, but neither waved back; Archie stared at the elderly couple with a look that would far surpass Medusa’s stare, while Kuikinu felt surges of fear circulating in his body. “Maybe they didn’t see us, I’ll wave again.”
“Dad…” Kuikinu tried pulling his father back, but his muscular physique far exceeded the little retriever’s. Archie, however, vacuously plodded toward the couple; the red iris of his left eye lost its pupil, enlarged, and became surrounded by a black sclera while his right eye followed suit, only with blue instead of red.
“I think they’re coming, hubby. Looks like we both need our contact lenses!” As the couple laughed ignorantly, Kuikinu exerted more of his energy and strength to restrain Archie, only to fail.
“Dad!” Archie couldn’t hear his son’s words of sheer terror; he continued to plod toward the couple. His orange fur morphed into an anthracite color, his black stripes changed from straight to jagged and a dead black color, his fluffy tail flared to appear spiky and also dead black. Now looming over the airheaded couple with double of his initial height of six feet and eleven inches, Archie glared down at the couple with a purple light radiating from his chest, remaining perfectly still. Kuikinu stood next to the demon, unfortunate enough to see the familiar elderly couple many feet below Archie.
“Hey Kuikinu, your papa here is really big!” Danina smiled at the golden retriever with his tail between his legs, all while Kuikinu felt a glance caress the back of his head.
Before anyone could speak another word, the demon’s colossal hands grasped the couple’s faces rapidly, the veins of his arms glowing an intense purple, to which soft, broken cries snuck past the hands before falling completely silent.

The demon softly let go of the paled faces, which, forthwith, collapsed with no life remaining. Archie opened his eyes to see the damage, with his tail immediately drooping the instant he witnessed the bodies. Kuikinu’s own paws couldn’t leave his mouth. At least not until he turned to see Bagner, a bipedal wolf/husky hybrid with luscious green hair who also happened to hold Kuikinu in a special place in his heart, appearing to have watched the entire scene of horror due to the cake being dropped and splattered on the ground. While Kuikinu gazed pitifully at Bagner, Archie took one look at him and broke any sort of eye contact since Archie knew Bagner was close to the elderly couple. Kuikinu gave a universe-sized amount of willpower to finally utter one single word: “B-Bagner…”
“What are you doing with that demon, Cj?” Bagner sounded worried at first.
“It’s not what you think Bagner…”
“Not what I think?” Bagner calmly walks over to Kuikinu. “I think I saw that demon drain away the souls of two elderly wolves.”
“But he didn’t mean to, B--”
“Just WHAT do you think you mean when you say ‘he didn’t mean to?!’ He’s a DEMON. I don’t know why you haven’t killed him yet!”
Kuikinu loved Bagner, but his desire to protect his father now clouded over his fear of losing the guy he loved. “Listen. Archie’s… Archie is my father, Bagner.”
Bagner’s face contorts into one of disappointment, since not only did Bagner love Kuikinu, he looked up to and respected him. “So you’re willing to destroy everyone around you by protecting this demon father of yours rather than doing us all a favor and eradicating him? You’re a protector of Fruilluna, aren’t you?” By this time, he had already picked up the corpses.
The questions were painful for Kuikinu to listen to because of the cold stare Bagner gave him, but he still had the courage to stand up for his father. “I am one of the ten protectors, I have to protect the people of Fruilluna. That includes this demon. That includes Archie. That includes my father. I can and will tell you that he couldn’t take the pain from resisting anymore and this freak accident occurred. But Archie has raised me better than any father ever could and I don’t even have my blood tied to him; I’m adopted. I don’t care what anyone says, I am going to protect my father no matter what it takes.”
Bagner remained silent, lowering his head in utter dejection. He broke his silence with one cold and broken word: “Fine…” He jumped away towards his home forest in one attempt using his particularly strong legs; Kuikinu felt a cold tear fall on his cheek after the wolf fled.

Kuikinu was wracked with onslaughts of emotional pains, but kept himself from crying in front of his father; he needed to be strong for the big fluff ball, especially now. “Dad?” Archie remained silent and lowered his head, shaking it while full of grief. “Dad, I’m gonna set up a warp to home from here. You go there and rest; I’ll sort this out.”
“I can’t, I have to be here with you, son. I have to protect you; I’m your father…”
“Dad, it’s my job to protect you as the protector of Strawvil.”
“But if you go to the Forest of the Gerion, they can kill you. You’re water based and they’re all grass based.”
“I don’t care. I will find a way to fix this, for you. Just go back home; your son will be fine.”
Archie couldn’t hide his sadness, but he still listened to his son. After Kuikinu set up the warp, Archie kneeled down to his height and embraced his son. With no words and only a face of perturbation, Archie warps away, leaving Kuikinu to uphold his promise.

“I’ve got to get to the Forest of the Gerion to get those bodies, and maybe he’ll be able to bring them back somehow.” Kuikinu kept thinking of ways he could get past the other Gerion to get to the bodies that were most likely buried while he trekked through Roduin and Aconolley. Before long, he arrived at the Forest of the Gerion. Kuikinu made plans to stay out of the trees since the Gerion could control them, especially the ones surrounding their village.
Instead of going through the forest, Kuikinu decided to dig under it, and he knew from playing with the Gerion approximately where he should dig up. After digging for ten miles, Kuikinu dug up into the main center of the Gerion village, which wasn’t populated, fortunately. Kuikinu then, using his developed nose, searched for the bodies; however, right as he located the bodies, he was caught by Jerry, a Gerion with ostentatious, green hair, to which he immediately lowered his ears and tail.
“Hey Kuikinu, don’t worry; I won’t hurt you.” Jerry opened his arms for a welcoming and comforting hug to soothe the golden retriever. The little dog much obliged, embracing the big wolf tightly.
“I’m so scared, Jerry… I’m sure I’m being hunted now…”
“It’s okay, Kuikinu, I have you and I understand.” Jerry rubs the little dog’s back for only a short while, with Kuikinu feeling relaxed until then. Relaxation transformed into sheer terror once Jerry’s chest heaved and he threw his head back to utter a deafening howl. Jerry, in a manner of kicking a dead canine, tightened his confining embrace to prevent the little dog from escaping; while Kuikinu still tried to struggle against the embrace, his efforts proved futile. Little did Kuikinu know that Jerry’s howl summoned almost every Gerion, bipedal, tribal-like husky/wolf hybrids, of the village, surrounding the dog and the wolf menacingly.
“I-I don’t understand, why are you--” Kuikinu’s panic-stricken speech was interrupted by Jerry’s outrage, who threw his head back down to meet Kuikinu’s fearful eyes.
“You know damn well why I’m doing this to you, demon lover.”
In an effort to escape while the Gerion closed in, Kuikinu forced himself out of Jerry’s embrace, causing him to only get pinned down by the wolf as a result. “You won’t get away, pup,” Jerry uttered in his ear.
All Kuikinu could see was the ring of Gerion closing in on him, and each one pulled out sharp weapons that could cut diamond. “I apologize for this, Jerry,” Kuikinu stated solemnly, blasting the wolf back with a jet of water from his paw. Because the attack was weak, Kuikinu could rapidly get up and flee, even if he felt more guilt than any other emotion.
“SEIZE HIM!” Jerry bellowed. The Gerion increased their pace in closing their ring on Kuikinu tenfold, but the little dog had a trick up his sleeve; he jumped, formed a platform of ice to land on, forcefully expelled water from his feet as he jumped from the platform, and repeated until he fled from the forest, exhausted. With the first attempt failing, Kuikinu decided to give himself an hour to try again so the Gerion could disperse.
Kuikinu digs under the forest again, stopping to listen in on a conversation between two Gerion.
“You know that demon we fought a while back? The one with plenteous, regenerating souls?”
“Yeah, that was our hardest fight. We had to kill the core since it was the one creating all of the expendable souls. It’s symbol is still kept in Chief Biyeron’s quarters.”
“Just think of how much energy we would’ve lost had we not gotten to the core; we would’ve had an endless supply of souls to fight. Also, good thing purple is a good sign.” Kuikinu had heard enough.
With two missions now, Kuikinu continued to dig toward the couple, reaching them shortly. With another ability up his sleeve, he coated the couple in a blue liquid, transporting them to his home. Much to his dismay, Bagner precisely grabbed Kuikinu’s neck from the upper ground, threw him down and pinned him with a hefty wolf foot, glaring right into the dog’s eyes.
“B-Bagner…” Kuikinu grasped the wolf’s ankle, only enticing Bagner to push harder. While the wolf remained silent, Kuikinu quickly ran out of air, but managed to utter more words. “You need to understand why I have to do this,” the dog stammered. Bagner, the now calmly enraged wolf, stabbed at Kuikinu’s eye with his spear, piercing it had Kuikinu not suddenly jerked his head to the left. Even though the spear hit the ground and his eye remained intact, Kuikinu’s heart shattered; he just stared at the wolf with an anguished face. “I’m sorry, Bagner…”
The dog blasted the wolf with the same blast of water that hit Jerry. Because the trees now blocked the view from above, Kuikinu fled to the south using his same escape method. Another deafening howl pierced the whole forest itself, to which each Gerion came out to join the chase to hunt Kuikinu. Despite his top speed being higher than the top speed of the Gerion, Kuikinu’s escape method exerted too much of his energy to the point where he began to become dizzy. Before long Kuikinu stopped abruptly at a cliff, turning to see Bagner and his coalition of powerfully built wolves growling and baring teeth. He held them back with just a palm, signaling them to kneel. “Go ahead. Jump.” Bagner, along with a few other Gerion, plodded toward Kuikinu after his threatening proposition, closing in on him once more. Pressured by the wolves, Kuikinu leapt from the cliff, but didn't notice that the Gerion had formed an immense wolf made of trees until the very last second. With monumental hands, the newly formed wolf grabbed at Kuikinu, who narrowly avoided with one last jump from an ice platform whilst facing down into the lake.

The golden retriever plummeted into the lake like a rocket, reaching the bottom fairly quickly. Being water-based, he sat on the lake bottom, forlorn. Did he have the willpower to keep going against his love? Did he have the willpower to give up and break his father even more? Did he have the willpower to ruin more relationships? Saltwater radiated around the dog’s head.
He needed to show the Gerion that not all demons are bad, that they were beings just as the Gerion were. With a shake of the head, he swam through the freshwater back to the Forest of the Gerion. He only had one more mission: to find that demon symbol for Archie.
After climbing out of the water, Kuikinu had noticed that the sun set and that he had climbed into Chief Biyeron’s central tree. With hopes that his stroke of luck would continue, Kuikinu searched the vast tree for the symbol. Several minutes passed until he noticed a glimmer of light in Biyeron’s quarters, to which he charged toward. One variable he left out of his equation, however, was that he was dealing with Gerion, a species who carefully considers every aspect of their plans; the poor dog set off a trap made by Jerry, one of which an entire tree trunk came at him at such a high speed that he couldn’t evade it, instantaneously knocking him unconscious.
Hours passed by since Kuikinu had been knocked out, but he eventually woke up, with his hands tightly restrained by thick, sharp vines. The same vines, but without the spines, clasped his muzzle shut. Fighting the pain of the spines, Kuikinu struggled to overpower and break the vines, stopping in complete shock and fear the second Bagner walks into the room. His face of vindictive anger matched his face of calmness that he wore while walking toward the hapless dog. “You’re in a bit of a mess, aren’t you?”
Kuikinu’s already shattered heart somehow left his body as Bagner kneeled to his level and stared into his eyes austere enough that his soul was crushed. “The poor thing, coming all this way for absolutely nothing, or to just play with me.” Bagner edged close to Kuikinu’s ear, whispering: “You’re wrong if you think you’ll live through this, pup.” The wolf met with the horror-filled dog’s eyes once again, maintaining constant eye contact and gently placing his hand on the root of the vines connected to Kuikinu’s hands. As if to control the spines of the vines, Bagner slowly moved his fingers upward to extend a sharp thorn into Kuikinu’s left wrist, exerting just enough pressure to avoid puncture but apply extensive pain; the vindictive wolf could see his damage being done due to Kuikinu’s face of utter suffering. The wolf extended his finger rapidly, causing the spine to rupture the dog’s skin; only tiny yelps could be heard from the dog due to the tightness of the muzzle restraints. “How…naive of you to protect a killer. You should’ve just let us raise you. If that happened, I wouldn’t be doing this, now would I?” Bagner swirled his fingers in complex directions, bent them, and ultimately met with an artery, to which he just prods; Kuikinu endured the pure agony coming from the one guy that he loved, even becoming physically exhausted due to his intense muscle tension. Bagner prodded the artery in a taunting manner, exerting more force with each prod but keeping the artery intact. Much to Kuikinu’s luck, an alarm went off just before Bagner decided to cut the artery. “Hmph, I forgot about Jerry’s honorable commemoration for capturing you. I can never skip out on any of these. It only took you long enough to wake up. Unlike some, I have to keep my promise.” Bagner pulls the spine out, receiving a look from Kuikinu as if to ask: “Why?”
“Because I want to see you writhe for what you did to me.”
Without any additional commentary, Bagner left the room.
Kuikinu couldn’t struggle much longer due to his new injury, but his fear and sadness accommodated for his ice powers that he used to freeze both sets of vines and break free. The breaths coming out of the dog’s freed mouth came out broken, the fur on his face were tinted dark blue and on his wrist tinted purple and crimson. Nevertheless, he still fled to find Biyeron’s quarters. Only one room away, Kuikinu’s luck struck again; he ventured inside only to find the symbol to just be placed outside. Without a thought, Kuikinu leapt from the window and landed next to it. Concealing the symbol with the same liquid as he did with the couple, Kuikinu teleported it home, only to realize the symbol was put there as a trap; Biyeron, the well-built Gerion Chief, stood a sizable distance from the dog. “Kuikinu.”
“Biyeron…” Not only did the dog become terrified of Bagner, but he had to deal with his father, who scared him the most out of anything. He only backed away while Biyeron walked toward him.
“You want to protect a demon, Kuikinu? You want to kill all of us?” Biyeron concealed his anger behind calmness better than any other being on the planet.
“It’s not like that, Chief, Archie’s not--”
“I do not care about what he is like; he is a demon, a killer.”
“He doesn’t kill good people, Chief.”
“Then tell me about Danina and Frankie, and my own son Bagner.”
“He was desperate…”
Biyeron now stood mere feet away from the dog. “So you knew about him consuming souls?”
Kuikinu refused to answer, but instead looked for escape routes, only to slowly realize that he was trapped. “Don’t be a coward; fight me or die.” Biyeron pulled out his sword.
Kuikinu couldn’t escape if he tried, so he just solemnly utters: “Fine.”
The two stood off silently, only the sound of the wind pierced the night silence. Being a good leader, Biyeron allowed Kuikinu the first strike; the little dog blasted a vast stream of water that completely missed Biyeron. Instead, the hot stream hit the ground, creating an immense cloud of steam. Before the steam faded away, the dog buried himself immediately afterward, covering the ground as perfect as it was prior. “I should have known. Coward dog…”
Kuikinu pushed his energy even more by digging at a pace faster than a lion’s top speed. Once exiting the jarring forest, he dug up and absconded for the warp he left from before. The dog reached the warp in one piece, but looked back to see Biyeron was pursuing him. Around the dog, the grass began to grow rapidly and immensely. Hyperventilates rushed out of Kuikinu’s mouth while he hysterically tried to make the warp activate; his frantic attempts finally proved successful the slim moment before the dog was trapped by vegetation once again.

“One more thing to do…” While warping back home, Kuikinu looked at his grisly wrist, thinking about the entire escapade, about his father, about Bagner. He didn’t have to wait long before he hit home; the familiar, safe grass clouded his head with emotion. Before anything, however, he destroyed the warp. “Here goes nothing.” Picking up the crimson symbol he had teleported, he removed the liquid and tapped the center, with tentacles of dead black color shooting out instantaneously. “All I have to do now is tame this thing,” the dog thought, now standing before a tentacle demon over twenty times the size of him.
The demon did not wait to attack; a tentacle threw itself at the dog, only to be slashed off by claws and to leave behind a faded, white symbol the same shape as the center. Relentlessly, the demon swung more of its tentacles as if it were a lumberjack, which were slashed off once more, and the demon roared in frustration; the roar the demon emitted didn’t resemble anything but nails on a chalkboard, putting Kuikinu through an intense earache. The demon took its opportunities to catch Kuikinu off guard with relentless tentacles, knocking him into the air and suspending him with painful blows before throwing him down forcefully.
“This enemy really is too much to fight alone, there are too many tentacles…” Kuikinu remained on the ground, immobilized from the pain, but looked around to see another ring of Gerion, only with Biyeron controlling the ring. The dog couldn’t tell which threat would have been more imposing to him: the ring of Gerion or the tentacle demon with an appendage aimed at his heart. “This is it. I did this all for nothing, all because I wanted to protect a demon. Now, we’ll both perish…” The tentacle came down as fast as lightning. “I’m sorry, Dad…”

“CJ, LOOK OUT!” Kuikinu opened his eyes to see his father blocking him from the tentacle, impaling his chest. Archie’s eyes turned demonic as they did with the couple, and his bellows of pain matched that of the demon’s; Archie radiated purple light from his body that broke through the demon’s body, and the soul of the symbol of each expendable tentacle swarmed to Archie’s impaled symbol.
“Dad, wh-what are you doing?!”
“D-don’t worry son, I’ll be ju--”
Archie’s entire body vanishes, leaving behind a vast cloud of smoke, two floating, colored soul symbols, and one broken, colorless soul symbol.
“D-Dad…”