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Fire.
Fire everywhere.
His world was reduced to nothing but flames before his very eyes.
Soon enough, it would be nothing but ashes.
He should run.
He should look for a place beyond the fire.
Some sanctuary where he wouldn’t be burned by the fires of his own making.
This was all his fault.
But he didn’t want to die.
Please, don’t let him die.
He wanted, no, he needed to live so bad, he needed to find a way out, he needed to find a way home, he needed to escape.
He would do anything to live right now.
He would do anything to get back to the safe world he’d lived in before.
The world seemed so bright, too bright for his eyes to bear, and yet it was clouded with smoke and agony. It was radiance as he had never seen before, and it was unknowable, because he couldn’t see, not like this.
His vision seemed to be getting darker and brighter at the same time.
It was heaven and hell all at once.
All the divine fury of angels and all the wicked hate of demons descending on his fragile body, working their cruel and beautiful designs to make his body their masterpiece wrought of pain.
It was pain.
It was beauty.
It was deserved.
It was horrible.
He had to get out, he had to get home, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to die, don’tdiedon’tdiedon’tdie—
He screamed.
It truly was fitting, that one such as himself should die in such a way.
Someone as wicked and sinful as him should perish in flames of his own making before being judged as he so deserved to be, and sent to burn once more in the flames of hell hubris finally meeting its downfall, and the world should be better off without him. Who wouldn’t be better off without him?
It wasn’t like anyone alive would miss him.
He was an ungrateful brat, a boy who’d never been able to do anything right, a bastard of a son who’d never be able to meet his father’s standard and never would.
No friends.
No family(at least, not any that loved him).
No one to cry for him.
He wondered if he’d been given a funeral.
It wasn’t likely.
They’d never liked him much.
They looked at him, and they knew he was different, knew he didn’t belong, knew there was something wrong with him that no amount of his father’s beatings could fix.
He was that broken.
He let out another scream.
The flames only rose higher.
The world was without mercy, without kindness, without any kind of hope for one like him, because he never had any hope to begin with.
The only good man was one who he could never be.
The flames roared around him, and he knew he was dead, deader than dead.
He had known what his father would do if he caught him doing it. He had known the consequences. He had known what happened when he didn’t do what his father had asked, no, ordered him to do.
If he said stop, stop.
If he said be silent, be silent.
If he said he should have died at birth, he should have died at birth.
If he said to stay still next time he beat him, he would stay still next time he beat him.
If he said that he should be grateful he hadn’t reported him to the church for having such sinful thoughts about other boys, he should be grateful he hadn’t reported him to the church for having such sinful thoughts about other boys.
That was how the universe worked, to him.
He should have followed his orders. He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have gone and disobeyed.
But his father was away, getting himself drunk to the point of getting sick on himself for the fun of it, and he’d been so bored, and he thought that what his father didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, so he decided to risk it, and he was just a kid, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to get hurt, girls did it all the time, and they didn’t get beat for it!
But he knew as well as anyone that he could never do anything that his father had decided was for girls. He was a man, a boy, and he had to act like it.
All he’d done was play with dolls.
He hadn’t thought it would end like this, please, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t —
But he had done it, against his father’s express orders, and now he was paying for it.
The fire was getting stronger, and he couldn’t get away from it.
He was trapped by a fallen beam of their burning house, and he couldn’t get past it as the fire prepared to devour him fully. His whole body was soaked in sweat, but he knew that wouldn’t help him.
Nothing could.
He doubted anything would, if they knew his circumstances.
They would see him for what he was — a horrible boy that would only go on to get worse and worse, more and more sinful and unholy, irredeemable from the start, and it was a mercy to the world for him to be ended here.
After all, had he not caused this fire? Was he not the reason his father was —
He had forgotten that.
For one brief, glorious moment, he had forgotten what had happened just seconds ago to land him here.
He choked out a horribly wet sound.
A sob.
He flinched on instinct, knowing his father hated it when he cried, but no blow came.
Because he’d just killed his father.
Oh, he was a monster.
He wasn’t ever going to be fixable now or ever.
He’d just used witchcraft to kill his father!
His own father!
He hadn’t meant to, but the flames had come unbidden, answering the call he wanted to be heard least, and his world had literally gone up in smoke.
He’d felt it coming on, screamed that something was wrong, something was happening to him, something dangerous, but his father had scoffed.
He’d never know what the rest of his father’s response would be.
He’d been too close to the explosion of flames when it happened to have any potential of survival.
He could have saved him. He was sure of it. And he’d failed. He really was a failure. His dad was right. He’d never be enough. He’d never make up for what he’d done.
He’d never be the son his father wanted.
Another sob tried to force its way out of his throat.
He pushed it down as hard as he could.
He refused to cry.
He wasn’t going to die being so human, he should die like the monster he was, like the monster his father saw when he looked at the place his son should be.
But he couldn’t.
He was choking on the sob he was holding back.
It would kill him faster than the flames would if he didn’t let it out.
He thought about holding it in.
About letting it kill him.
He was too much of a coward for that.
He let it out, and he felt his father’s disapproving sigh as he brought out the belt and prepared to start again all the way from heaven, because that’s where a good man like him would surely end up, surely? There was no way God would do that to a man like him, right? Hurting him was only a means to try to fix everything that was wrong with him, not to cause suffering like someone who would go to Hell, like he would.
It had to be true.
There was no way it wasn’t.
Right?
But the blow would never come, not anymore, because his father was dead. And that terrified him. Who would correct him when he was bad? Who would fight to purge him of the horrible thoughts that lived in him? Who would be ever vigilant for signs that the day that he was too far gone for fixing had arrived at last?
Who would hurt him?
No one, he realized. No one.
Not unless he took matters into his own hands.
That was what had to be done. If he didn’t die in the fire, he would have to go and find a lake, the biggest, deepest he could find, and he would strap stones to his feet, and he would dive in and let himself drown. That was the only way to ensure he didn’t hurt anyone ever again if he didn’t die here.
And that was another odd thing.
The fire was hot, yes.
It burned, yes.
It would probably kill him, yes.
But it didn’t hurt.
Not like his beatings or any other pain he’d ever felt.
And there had been a surprising amount of that in his short life.
That was when he realized.
Heat had never been of much pain to him.
He always ran hot, hotter than most any boys his age. His mother died of what seemed to the doctors to be burns when he was born, but he’d been fine, and it was impossible for her to have died of burns when giving birth like any other person. His father had mentioned to him, once, that he had seemed to glow when he was born, and that was what the midwife had named him for after he’d refused to do it himself, and he’d then remarked on how lucky he was that he hadn’t killed him when he was born for such a freakish thing and to have been named in the first place. He’d touched candles and not gotten a single blister.
This was far more than a candle, however.
He knew that if anything could burn a witch, er, demon, or whatever he was like him, it would be fire as great as this.
Surely he had to die here.
Surely the flames would take him.
Surely he would die as he should, in the flames of holy retribution, and no one would mourn him as they should, and they would grieve his father, a great man who tried his hardest to fix his son and died for it, and all would be as it should, except for perhaps the fact that his father was dead, but that couldn’t be helped now.
All that could was his death.
He wondered if God would let him meet his mother before casting him off to Hell.
He doubted he would.
But it was a nice thought.
A little hope to have at the end.
It never came.
Xanthous woke with a start.
He couldn’t escape the dreams or the memories of the night his father died as long as he lived, could he?
He sighed.
He knew better than to give in to the thoughts of his young self that his father had planted there.
That he would go to Hell.
That he was a monster.
That he deserved to die.
That it was his fault his mother died.
That his father beating him was justifiable or deserved in any way.
That being gay was sinful, or just about anything he’d said about God. Xanthous still didn’t know how to feel about God. His father had used him just a few too many times as an excuse to hurt him, but the religion itself and their core beliefs weren’t outright flawed. They were fine. He just had too many bad memories to unpack about it all to try believing.
Plus, he was also the Demon King now, so that was something.
He hadn’t asked them about how they felt about God and stuff yet, and they hadn’t said a word either. They weren’t anything like the demons his father had talked about from the Book of Faith that he thought gave him the right to hurt his own son.
They were kind.
They were gentle.
They were family.
Just like Brystal and the other fairies.
And Elrik.
Elrik, his boyfriend.
Also literal elf royalty.
He definitely scored high in the boyfriend department.
So yeah, there was all that to love, and his life was definitely better than the hell it’d been under his father.
He smiled a tired yet happy smile.
He was still fighting to get better after everything.
But he was doing okay.
And that was enough.