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The path is cold. Footsteps echo against stone in the dark space, filling his ears with the buzz of broken silence. He likens his measured steps to the sound of a metronome.
One foot in front of the other.
He doesn’t sweat, though it is a near thing. To show fear is to show weakness, and it’s not like he truly fears the beast. What he truly fears is becoming one himself. There is no god on this earth and beyond that can protect him from that.
The end of the long hall is even darker, flickering lanterns barely piercing the way. They are mere glow sticks among the gloom. This kind of dark is hungry; it eats at everything in its path. The door is frigid to the touch, steel and wood and chain. Countless incantations and scriptures are carved or nailed into the surface. Beyond it is the cell, their own personal jail for the Unkillables. Demons that are better left locked up to rot for eternity instead of being sent back to hell where they could crawl back up again.
It creaks open easily under his touch. The locks fall away and the world grows ever colder. He narrows his eyes against the chill, but doesn’t outwardly respond. Not even with a shiver. He’s grown accustomed to the feel, terrible as it is. Walking into the Unkillable cell is a lot like wandering a desert at night. Eerie, bitingly cold, and barren. Boredom within containment is a hell all on its own, to both humans and demons.
“Come again, have you? You little shit…”
The voice is a high pitched hissing. A bit grating. The figure it belongs to is sat in the center of the empty, bleak expanse. They’re chained to the ground, wrapped so tightly that they couldn’t move a finger even if they wanted to. Sigils are carved into the ground, into their flesh; all in the efforts of holding them. Permanently.
It’s worked for fifty years now.
But fifty years is nothing to a demon.
So they continue to update and maintain the seals. This time, the duty befalls Gaara. After his untimely death, neither his brother or sister wanted to take up the family business. They were off having their own lives and Gaara...well, he never had much of one to begin with.
The creature laughs like a howl. It shakes the air and makes the hair on his arms stand up. They look disgusting, a bulbous mass of flesh that might have once belonged to a poor human vessel. Now it’s cracked like fine china, grit and sand crowding the breaks as though the beast is a statue facing erosion. Large, unnatural yellow eyes stare through Gaara, bloodlust in every inch of the demon’s aura.
Gaara looks at it dispassionately. He’s not sure he’d call himself a sympathetic man, though he does find something pitiful about the creature. It doesn’t stop the disgust and apathy he generally feels, however. The demon is a being of chaos. It would kill him and a thousand more in an instant if it could. Happily, at that.
But it’s stuck here all alone, with only its voice and walls to talk to. So he lets it scream and jabber in his direction as he strengthens the wards and makes sure every incantation and chain is in place. Curious as he is, he’s been told not to engage it in any sort of conversation. Demons don’t have casual chats. They like to pull and prod at whatever they can when given the opportunity. If he spoke to it, it would certainly say something that would either confuse, distract, or hurt him.
Gaara is not in the mood to be hurt, and he can’t afford to be distracted.
“YOU STUPID BOY! LOOK AT ME! I can help you, you know. I can make all that pain in your chest go away. Who is it? Who do you want to get rid of?”
Gaara looks up to meet its eyes, piercing and ominous and gleeful in the dark. He tightens the last seal without expression, much to the demon’s annoyance and rage. It starts screaming again, high pitched calls ringing in Gaara’s ears as he leaves. It curses and shrieks but nothing happens. The world doesn’t shake or darken, no deathly ill falls upon the redhead as he walks back out the door. The seals hold, and the door swings shut, locking the demon in for years and years to come.
Making his way back down the hall, Gaara pushes away the curiosity and pity. Instead he focuses on more trivial, worldly things. Like what he’s going to have for dinner tonight.