[ Sebastian ]

No, nothing will be fine. My entire life had been the perfect example that, in the end, something definitely ruins our lives. I was made to kill someone. Ok, just this once and everything will be fine, I'd convinced myself then. But nothing went fine. The killing continued and I finally had to murder my father. At least now, everything will come back to normal I'd thought then. But was there anything good in my life for coming back to? No, there wasn't. The first person to take away my virginity was my cruel fate. It screwed me bad, pretty bad.

If just my uncle would've gotten hurt, I'd have controlled myself. If just my aunt had disappeared, I'd have controlled my devastation, somehow. But what completely shattered my soul was the one person whose misshapening would break my soul in a billion pieces. It was Laura.

I recalled how I'd been lying on floor, fighting against the pain, trying to get up and somehow kill or at least send Alzaknos back to hell. But I couldn't. All I did was lie there, struggling against my pain and trying to get up only to fall again. If it weren't for my aunt to come down there and save me, I still would've been struggling down there, or perhaps I'd be long dead.

For some reason, Aunt Jane, who wasn't aware of this small little hideout came running towards the door, holding a small goblet. She quickly came towards me and helped me rise up. I tried to grab the dagger which had cluttered down somewhere where I'd been lying but Aunt Jane assured me everything will be fine. I wished it wasn't my aunt who told me this. She's the only person who had the capability of making me jump off a cliff if she willed to. Her position in my life was irreplaceable. She was never an aunt to me. She was a mother, a mother far better than any angel or even perhaps god himself.

Like a small kid, I nodded. But even though she was an excellent hunter in her age, I couldn't just let her get in Alzaknos' s way alone, could I? I quickly approached her as she tried to convince myself. But there was no time. Alzaknos had already sensed our presence. Now, I clearly wasn't a threat. But when he saw my aunt, his eyes flickered with a passing feeling of anger and when his eyes slithered down and fixed on the goblet my aunt had been holding, they widened with the feeling I'd thought Alzaknos must never had felt or will never feel ever - fear!

While my aunt kept Alzaknos distracted, I approached a fallen Laura and quickly regretted it. I wished my eyes had popped out or at least I'd been hallucinating.

For, before me, there was not the Laura I knew. What rolled in the red puddle was some miserable creature, drenched in the nasty liquid, blood all over body. But what made my heart fall by a million miles was her face. While her tongue was curling against the bloody floor, her face glowed with a sense of pleasure as if the rotten taste of the frothing liquid calmed her soul.

Wondering what to do, I quickly ducked down to grab Laura. But as soon as she was separated from the spilled blood, like a dying fish, she struggled against me to get back to the rot. Holding her was the most difficult thing I'd ever done. It was as if I'd been holding a hungry tiger from it's prey, or a bloodthirsty vampire from its fresh meat. She dug her nails in my flesh and longed for the freshly oozing reddish liquid - my blood.

"Laura, Laura!" I'd shouted as she'd managed to bite me on my injury and slip away. Then, when I happened to look at her eyes, somewhere beneath the big brown eyes I loved, I could sense a darkness lingering,  growing stronger with every drop of blood she devoured.

"Knock her, Sebastian!" My aunt shouted over my shoulder and I realised I didn't have much time. Though my aunt had been a great warrior in her time, she was now in no position to fight a devil as dark as Alzaknos.

But could I ever hurt Laura?

"Laura, Laura snap out of it. Look at me. Laura, can you see me?" The brokenness of my voice felt unnatural even to me. But I still believed her to fight the spell Alzaknos had been brewing up.

"Sebastian, there's no time! Knock her down." Aunt insisted and I realised I'd no other option.
The goblet my aunt had been holding conveyed that she was trying to do a casting. And if Laura and I were trapped in that spell, something could go wrong, terribly wrong.

Finally, I made my mind and forced Laura in my arms. She struggled again but I somehow managed to hit her head just enough to knock her off.

The chants my aunt had been doing rose higher and Alzaknos became more and more restless. For some reason, he wasn't attacking my aunt now. Then I realised he had been bound. The chants grew higher and finally the chains of fire erupted through the goblet. It was a really advanced spell I'd never known.

Alzaknos stared calmly at the chains danced around him, winding against his skeletal body. Wherever the blazing chain touched his skin, it burned, rising smoke. But, as I'd anticipated, he didn't feel a slight pain nor fear.

"You are not strong, Jane. You don't have enough soul to summon the Gates, nor can you manage the Chains. They don't affect me Jane, have you forgotten? You can't defeat me."

He laughed while my aunt broke out sweat and increased her chantings, her black robes fluttering against the spontaneously arising wind.

"I don't think so, Alzaknos." She whispered as the chains got thicker and blazed brighter.

"Chains of Hell, I command thee, cast this foul to your fiery lands."  She chanted one last time and smirked, sweat trickling down her forehead.

The chains thickened against Alzaknos' s pale skin and started binding him, tearing against his metallic skin while he moaned softly.

"Hmm, you are clever, to bind me than to try to kill me. But you still are a fool, Jane." He frothed.

"I comman thee." Aunt Jane said with a pained voice, her legs now shaking. Whatever the spell was, it demanded huge power, huge soulpower.

The goblet glowed brighter as more chains started slipping through its mouth,  thrashing against the floor and making its way to Alzaknos, destroying everything in between. One of the chains passed thrashing against my shoulder when a horrible pain erupted through me. When I looked at my biceps, a big blazing red mark had appeared there. The fiery chains didn't flamed normal fires, it was something else, something worse - the flames of hell.

I looked at aunt who looked like she'd collapse any moment. The lights in her eyes were fading with every new chain erupting. I wondered how much soul would the goblet use up if just a touch could do so much harm.

The circling of chains around Alzaknos thickened as every chain thrashed against his pale skin, setting it on fire, a fire which even he couldn't bear. Finally the chains dug in him and soon his entire body was shrouded in the fiery chains, fire dancing around him. Now, only his face could be seen. His mouth was indeed twitching in pain but his dark eyes still showed not even a hint of pain. Then suddenly,  even though the chains tightened their grasp and dug mkre violently, he suddenly smirked.

"As I said, you're a fool, Jane. You are attacking me with the same fires I'd played with in my homeland."  He hissed and focused his attention on a chain of fire which was about to pierce his mouth. Suddenly, as he smiled, the chain changed its direction and swiftly bent towards Jane who froze in horror,  her determined eyes widening in shock and disbelief and a hint of despair.

The rest of chains started tightening around Alzaknos's face whose cold laughter could be still heard even through the bindings of the fiery frothing chains.

As I watched in horror, the chain hit straight against the goblet which burst into a web of flames and chains which hissed and destroyed anything in their reach. I quickly made my way towards my aunt, Laura in my arms as the chains continued the thrashing. But before I could get there, my soul shattered in a million pieces when I saw my aunt half covered in the fiery chains.

"Run!" She managed through the pain, her eyes wet and exhausted, despair and emergence flowing through them,  as the chains tightened around her.

"Run!!" She managed again while I stood there, wondering what to do, my eyes swelling with tears. But before I could do anything, the chains grew stronger and soon, Aunt Jane got completely shrouded in the chains and fire. I rushed towards her but as soon as my hands reached one of the slithering chains, it expanded and threw me at the wall. Dazed, I looked at the disintegrating flamy chains swirling in the air, deteriorating in ashes. As I looked in horror, when the chains finally disappeared, besides me and Laura and the broken Goblet, there was nothing there. There was no Alzaknos. There was no Aunt Jane.

"Sebastian,  Look out!" I suddenly heard Laura shout and I snapped back to reality.

"Sebastian!" Laura shouted and I realised I was nearing a cliff. I quickly pressed on brakes as the car slipped against the road, fortunately coming to a halt.

"I looked at her and through the reflection in her widened eyes, I  saw tears in my eyes. I quickly wiped them off but Laura naturally noticed.

"Sebastian. Everything will be fine, believe me." Laura assured me. But her assurance only proved to make matters worse.

"No Laura. Nothing was fine and never will be. You don't know what happened. You don't know!" I shouted. For some reason, I was getting really angry. The fact that my uncle had gone missing and my aunt had gone on a summer vacation to hell, and that Laura had just been stopped from getting converted into a bloodsucker was too much to bear. I wondered how Laura was keeping cool. The Laura I knew would have made the car go ablaze by her questions and overwhelming worries. But instead, today, I was behaving as Laura. I realised how much Laura had grown. Or was it because of the incomplete ritual, that she had changed? I gulped down the latter thought.

"I know, Sebastian. I know. I know everything that happened, to the finest detail. Yes I do."

I looked at her, my eyes widening with horror. She can't know. The creature I saw back there wasn't Laura. It was a dark form materialised by Alzaknos to complete the ritual. If she knew what happened, it meant she was awake during the whole ritual. It meant it was she herself who enjoyed the blood!

"Yes, I remember now. I remember Alzaknos making me drink the blood. I remember Aunt Jane saving us. I remember everything." She repeated.

"But just think about Aunt Jane. Do you think that a mere chain would stop her wrath. Do you think the woman who saved both of us cannot save herself ?"

"Everything's fine Sebastian. And if it's not, I'll make sure it will be. It was my fault Aunt Jane suffered and it's therefore me who'll bring her back."

I looked at Laura. She definitely had changed. Unlike my eyes which were flooded with despair and confused anger, her eyes were calm and determined. She was determined to bring my aunt back. Her determination somehow eased my heart.

Maybe when people say everything is fine, they don't mean that everything is fine at this instant. It's like promising ourselves than convincing. It's a promise meant to be kept. By saying that, they assure themselves that one day, everything is going to be fine one final time, and to make that happen, they have to act, they have to traverse through the dark path.