Reborn to Devour: A Demonic LitRPG

I leapt from the window without a second thought.

The bassinet was turned to splinters and the curtains to ribbons in the wake of her swiping nails. The bloodless, rotted flesh of the infant bounced on the ground, leaving a wet spot on the ground where the last bit of rot remained. A massive cloud of unsettled dust plumed from the impact site and chased me out. Seeing the damage inside, if I had remained in the room for just another second, I would have been turned into cubed meat.

I saw a city around me. Some long-abandoned Babylon from a bygone era where they built their swords from bronze and God spoke to them more often. I fell from a marble palace into a city of oven-baked clay and stone and streets made of packed dirt and slabs of stone cobbled together.

All of it was in a state of disrepair. Not so long that it would have been lost to the sands of time to be found thousands of years later. Only for a few years. Long enough for an invader to kill every soldier and enslave every citizen to take them to some faraway place.

Gardens of putrefied plants watered by black sludge sat on mezzanines I whistled by. I spread my wings and flew upwards over the abandoned courtyard before swooping upwards. I used the elevation to view into the window from a safe distance.

Perhaps not so safe a distance.

A flesh-colored flash erupted from the window like a gunshot. A blast of wind caused the tattered curtains to take to the air like long strings of confetti and another puff of dust to obscure the room within. The flash covered the distance in an instant. A sharp pain like a bee sting struck me as a sharpened fingernail penetrated my shoulder.

I placed my fingers around the nail and I tried to pull it free. It was more brittle than I expected such a painful weapon to be. It snapped and splintered in my powerful grasp, leaving a long shard of it remaining a few inches into my shoulder.

She took advantage of my lack of attention and flew from the window directly at me; the battered infant tucked beneath one of her arms. It was carried with as much attention and care as a sack of potatoes.

I pushed myself backwards from the attack and flew higher upwards. I ascended a couple flaps higher until I slammed against an invisible mana dome intended to keep me corralled.

I managed to keep my balance long enough to avoid the dervish of nails that came my way before gravity brought me needed separation. The woman fell towards the ground and I found a perch atop a two-story building nearby.

I pinched my nails around the projectile stuck in my shoulder, but only managed to pull out a long, bloody portion of the piece before the rest broke off again. I wasn’t able to find the next piece, but my shoulder mobility was satisfactory. The final fragment would just have to wait.

“Guards! Guards!” The woman screamed as she slammed her hands onto the wood door like a sledgehammer. “Quickly! Come quickly! An assassin has come to kill the young Prince!”

There was no need to bang on the door. Only ten feet away from the woman was a gaping hole in the barrack’s wall. Inside, on the few remaining cots that weren’t mangled beyond recognition, were occupied by the mummified remains of the former soldiers. Their gaunt frames and ribs that jutted from their body told the story of hunger and death.

“How can you sleep during a time like this?” The woman demanded. “You slept through the invasion! You slept through the fires! And now you’re sleeping through this assassin! I don’t know how our great king can tolerate your lethargy!”

I speared down from the rooftop to smash into the woman’s exposed back. We turned the door to toothpicks and smashed into the wall, ripping down the last bit of stability that the barracks had. I felt her bones snap and flesh tear from the impacts. Stone and baked mud cascaded down from above to finally entomb the desiccated soldiers their earthen rest.

Flesh bubbled and bulged against my scales from beneath the cloth. I leapt from the woman’s back before she removed me herself. Jagged nails ripped through the remains of the structure and turned it into dust.

She walked from the plume of dust, the baby loosely tucked in her arm like a buttered football. Its dented head and flaking flesh revealed a void inside the skull that continued to wail. Her health had not gone down at all from my attacks. She screeched incoherently. A sonic blast and a burst of dust struck me directly in the chest and sent me flying backwards. My wings beat the opposite direction to keep me from being flung backwards.

Nails struck from the dust cloud and raked across my chest. Blood wept from the slits and drizzled on the parched ground.

The woman’s gaping mouth scraped against the ground and scooped up as much of the bloody remains that she could. Bloody sand dripped from the woman’s mouth and piled atop the infant and filled its deformed skull. The crying became muffled beneath the mound of dirt that suffocated its face.

“See, my Prince,” the woman cooed. “I will stop your hunger.”

She spread her hands to swipe and I stepped inside of the woman’s embrace, slamming her in the face with a metallic fist. Her muscles spasmed at the attack and she froze in place. But, her health still did not go down.

It didn’t matter. I had a new target.

My fists smashed into the mummified infant. The body cracked open like a dried gourd. I felt a tickling sensation on my fist. A swarm of spiders with skulls on their abdomen spilled out of the opened body and covered my hands.

Another screech sent me and all the spiders tumbling across the courtyard to rip out the foundational walls of yet another building.

I rose shakily to my feet, prepared for another attack. Instead, I saw a silhouette draped over the spilt husk of a baby, wreathing it in the blackness that takes all. A scream that sounded like the end of the universe pierced the heavens and shattered the veil of mana. Shards of magic tumbled down from above. The directionless magic generated broken, incomplete spells that created random spells.

Fire and thunder and rain and wind and light and dark exploded through the city like a truck load of hallucinogenic nitroglycerine igniting. My head, feeling like it was in the middle of the clapping symbols of a giant toy monkey, throbbed from the stimulus and I dropped to one knee.

Soft sobbing was the only constant in my ears and brought me back into focus. But, all I saw was the same scene. Nothing had changed at all. We were both still here.

“Don’t worry, my Prince,” the woman said between choking tears. She tried to press the infant back together, but too much of him had been torn away and turned to powder. No sound left it any longer. “I’ll save you. I’ll feed you.”

I looked down at the pathetic creature; deaf blind and dumb to my presence. I opened my mouth, saliva dripping down on her indifferent neck.

But, I did not carry out my attack. Nothing had succeeded to this point. Why did it matter to her if she looked at me or not? I hadn’t done a single thing to her. Even a horsefly can leave a nasty bite. I was more equal to a gnat.

“You’re a terrible wet-nurse, aren’t you?” I asked, taunting the woman.

A skeletal face contorted in rage turned its hideous visage to face me. She rose to her face and prodded me with one of her horrific nails. The knife-like appendage slid into my flesh and turned my shoulder into ground beef.

“How dare you, assassin!” She bellowed. Her yellow teeth glowered at me. Each word came with a deeper growl and a new fiery poke into my flesh.

“I am the only one who has tried to maintain life. You are just like the rest! You take and you take and you take and you take and you take AND YOU TAKE AND YOU TAKE! Why don’t you ever give? The baby is starved and you fed him with your violence. You struck him with a hand that has never known what it is to build. You do the same job as nature but you take cruel joy in it. You’ve killed the prince. Now prance off to wherever your whore mother squeezed you from.”

“You have not properly given either,” I replied, gripping my hand around her wrist and pulling her bloodied finger from my shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

“You spoke of saving him and feeding him, but still, he starves. You have your flesh, don’t you? Feed him.”

The woman looked down at the baby, obliterated and almost unidentifiable as a once-living creature. She knelt back down and gently touched the baby. More brittle pieces broke off and blew away.

“You’re right,” the woman said. “I told this baby that I loved him like a mother. But it was his real mother, a concubine, who laid down her life for him. What have I given you, my sweet Prince? Allow me to rectify this wrong and offer you everything that you deserve, for living any longer will do no more than grow my shame.”

Her eyes were only upon the baby. There was no more room left for me in her world. She touched her neck with her hands. With her own nails, she carved her flesh away. Blood and meat mixed with dust and decay. Shuddering gasps left her mouth; her only conviction to live was to remove just a little more of herself to drop heavily on the corpse. Perhaps, somewhere within her blood, there was the answer to revive her beloved price. Like a dead tree, her rot may yet fuel a new sprout.

She toppled over, her body desecrated with her own hands. A smile crossed her face in a feeling of satisfaction towards her delusion.

All she left behind was her flesh piled atop an infant’s corpse. I lifted the prince and the meat from the ground. Her prince’s final legacy was to be a plate for my dinner.

I dangled the meat above my mouth and dropped it into my gullet. It was dry and stringy; the flesh of an old cow. There was no starvation that gripped my body. There was no purpose or need that necessitated the consumption. It now just felt like the correct thing to do. Her experiences and her life were between my teeth and I felt like I knew who she was after I swallowed.

“Poor things, they all died before anyone found them.”

My eyes looked to the side to see an androgynous being like Armaros. They were wrapped in deep purple robes with a gold trim. Not a fleck of dirt or dust marred the fabric’s surface. A crown of large colorful jewels set gently on their shiny, shoulder-length hair.

“Are you the majestic ruler who allowed this place to die?”

“Oh, Ishmael,” the monarch chided. “I am every king that has led their nation to ruin. Every decision that was made with the desire to possess more was made with me dwelling within their heart. Just because someone made a deal with me doesn’t mean that they would win. The world isn’t infinite.”

“Should I be calling you Your Majesty?” I asked.

The ruler chuckled and circled around me. Wherever they stepped, the dust and grime disappeared. Polished stones met their feet. A glimmering sheen could be seen beneath their shoe before reverting to its decayed form as soon as their presence disappeared.

“Want is sufficient,” Want replied. “We don’t need to keep pretenses. Nobody has actually lived here for over four-thousand years. I can guarantee you that there will be no eavesdropping ears.”

“So this is what all of this window dressing was for? Do you have something so important to share with me?” I asked inquisitively. “So important that the other Follies cannot be made aware of it?”

"What? Did the visions of a woman protecting a starving child while the king has disappeared spurred no emotion within your heart?" Want asked with a chuckle. "How cold hearted of you."

I look back at the desecrated remains of the woman. I understood what Want wished for me to see in this scene; Miranda's corpse wrapped around a starving baby. But, I did not see it. All I had seen was a meal. Did that make me a failure?

“I do wish to speak, but it’s nothing as clandestine as you suggest,” Want replied. “There is nothing that can obscure our vision or plug our ears when we are watching this world. Any of my compatriots that wish to observe this conversation can do so as they please. And, as of late, you’ve had many eyes on you.”

“And what do you want to say?”

“Impatience, in a way, is Want,” Want mused. “Wanting information. Wanting it quickly. Wanting to avoid inconvenient pleasantries. I wanted to compliment you. It seems that you were listening to us when we last met. I care not about simple things like ‘reclaiming humanity.’ What a hideously boring purpose. I want to see you all at your most extreme at all times. I want people who want the world. You should be familiar with the type. You have met one of my new favorites recently.”

I intentionally brushed off references to Charles. If these two had met, they might confuse each other for their long lost sibling.

“Then, why did you allow hunger not to exist in this world?” I asked curiously. “Why not bring in hunger and thirst and the need to sleep? I can only imagine how much more torturous an existence it would be with those things to worry about.”

The air around Want changed drastically upon the utterance of my words. Existence itself rippled and rumbled and I lost balance as the world shifted below me like a plane during heavy turbulence. Their gold-speckled eyes burned with anger.

“I did have it!” Want screamed in annoyance. “I had every requirement that you needed to live. I had it even more severely than life produced. There was no food but each other’s flesh. There was no water but each other’s blood. You took turns eating your comrades. You drank the blood of your lovers or died in each other’s arms to rise from the dead poorer than you were the day before. It was a hateful world. It was a miserable world where only the desperate advanced up the ranks. Then, it was wished away.”

“Wished away?”

“You know what I say,” Want said petulantly. “The Main Quest. The demon at the top gets to change the trajectory of Hell. And what did one of them do? They wished away all hunger and all thirst and all need of sleep! It makes my skin crawl even thinking about it!”

“You can’t reinstate it?”

“No, I can’t reinstate it. It’s made so that only a demon ruler can do that. And, with that role vacant for who knows how long, I can only create a pocket dimension to make things the way that they used to be. But, who wants to starve when there is no reason to anymore? Strange zealots, that’s who. Those that refuse to listen to me screaming at them through their empty stomachs. Bah!”

I listened sparsely to Want’s words. My focus remained on one specific component of their speech.

“So there was a demon king at some point? But, now they’re gone? What happened to them? Why didn’t anyone take it over if it’s so powerful?”

“Shut up!” Want snapped. “Shut the fuck up about this inane chatter. I don’t want to talk about the previous rulers. I don’t want to talk about that empty throne. I don’t want to talk about-“

Want’s body went rigid. If Want’s anger rippled the world, whatever this was like throwing the universe into a shredder. Deep rips in reality appeared in every direction. I could see other realms through them. Fire and ice and plains and stone cities the size of a moon introduced themselves to me. Something else that I could not describe caught my attention.

Then my brain caught fire.

I clenched my face and fell to the ground. The scenes I just took in were forcibly ripped from my mind. I knew that I saw something and I knew that it was gone. I could not recall what it was even though I had just seen it. Like a word of recognition on the tip of your tongue. It had the familiarity of a lost lover, but never meant to return.

I opened my eyes again and I was alone on the grass. I sat up and looked around. It was the valley that I ran through on my way to the mountain. In the distance, I could see the peak that my “Senior Brother” was waiting for me.

“Oops, got a little loose-lipped there,” Want’s muffled voice echoed from the ground. “Anyways, here’s a reward for acting like a feral beast. Let’s keep in touch.”