Eremancer

Wisps of dark smoke seeped from the wound in the human’s chest as the man slowly collapsed to the ground. The alley was suffocatingly silent, the sounds of nightlife muted by an unseasonable blanket of fog. Golan watched with a twist in his stomach as the human coughed weakly, blood dribbling from his lips.

“This pain is nothing compared to what they’ve done to me.”

He grit his teeth and touched the spot on his head where his second horn should have been, long ago broken off, the phantom pain fading. Humans had done that to him. He didn’t like hurting people, it made him sick to his stomach.

“But they never learn. I have to stop them.”

“Demon--”

A flare of hatred rushed through him as he stared down at the human. It turned cold as he channeled that rage, dark miasma gathering in his hand like freezing night. Slowly, he pressed his hand into the man’s throat, cutting off the scream that nearly ripped through the night, the dark energy suffocating and tearing. He watched as the man choked on nothing but darkness and blood until his eyes faded and he slumped fully to the ground.

It was sinful, what he was doing. Golan’s mother would be horrified with him. She’d had such high hopes, high beliefs. Named him after some famous general, went to the Church of Light every week even though they all but spat on her. She’d tell him over and over that their ancient rebellion had been a mistake, had been demon-kind’s greatest sin. That they just needed to trust in Kari and Her Providence. But that didn’t keep her, his family, his friends safe. So he’d sin and sin and sin. For them. And in the quiet times, the dark moments, it was as if he could hear approval.

“I’m the only one who loves your sin.”

With a grimace, he poured dark magic at the corpse, scouring it from existence. Only a stain on the paving stones would mark it and that evidence would be gone with the next rain.