Ruin, The Turning Read Free

instantly, Isadore’s screams tore the air. Ruin gasped on the heat in his lungs. He was burning, literally on fire. He fought to get away from the heat, different than any fire he’d felt, pressing in, crushing while it burned.
    “You both will burn this way,” a deep voice said nearby. “But only say the word, and I will save both of you.” Ruin’s frantic mind picked up the final words save both.
    “Yes! Yes, yes!”
    The fire disappeared but Isadore’s screams continued. Ruin’s vision cleared and he roared in agony at seeing her chained to the wall across from him, trembling and naked, her skin bubbling from the fire that had just consumed it.
    “Stop it,” Ruin roared. “I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll do it!”
    The beast walked toward him. “Good,” he whispered suddenly next to his face, his claws digging into his burning flesh. “So glad you’ve come to your roots.”
    Ruin thrashed in agony as he touched various parts of his torso setting assignments.
    “No, my son. Not an assignment. You destiny, your heritage, your home.” He waved his hand and Isadore fell to the floor, a heap of unconscious, twitching limbs. Whatever the being had done set off something in his body and Ruin fought to breathe through the heat slowly getting hotter from the inside. “This may hurt just a bit,” he said.
    The pain struck, brief and with an eternal potency. Though Ruin only endured it for a few seconds, he was sure that the horror it brought couldn’t be worse than enduring it for even a second more.
    Until he realized what the beast had done. Until he realized what the beast had made him.
    “Don’t worry about looks. She won’t even see them,” he purred next to his ear. Ruin turned to the flaming words that licked along his face. “And that filthy assignment you rightly disobeyed is now hidden from their self-righteous sight.” Thick black lips broadened but didn’t thin in a smile. The messy cluster of onyx teeth in the large mouth glistened with saliva that resembled watered down lava. But it was the eyes that terrified Ruin. This close, he could see the blood of countless soul’s swirling and roiling in agony.
    Ruin’s breath billowed out as black smoke, the fire inside him slowly cooling. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what he was. “Is… she safe?” The deep rumbling in his voice confirmed his fears. He was a monster too. He turned his gaze to Isadore, peaceful on the floor despite her body being raw and burned. What had Ruin done? God…what had he done?
    “You saved her, that’s what you did!” the beast growled, annoyed.
    Saved her. Yes. Saved her. For now. What else was left doing? What was there that he wasn’t willing to sacrifice for her. Eternity? Life? Love? Without her, it was torment. It was the red agony in the devil’s ugly gaze. That’s what it was.
    “Now go and fix what you have disrupted my son.” The Devil waved his large hand with the dagger length claws. “You have much to atone for.” He turned and sat on his burning onyx throne, the flames caressing him like a neglected lover.
    A tempest of black smoke suddenly swirled up from the floor before him and grew instantly into a growling roaring vortex. Ruin’s shackles fell off and he was sucked into the cyclone and propelled up at the speed too great for even light. When he opened his eyes, he beheld a clear blue sky then jerked his head right at hearing Isadore’s whimper.
    “Oh God.” He crawled quickly to her, aware that his body seemed no different. But Isadore….fuck. Her skin was covered in third degree burns wherever her clothing didn’t cover her. Why were her clothes in-tact? It made no sense like everything else in his life suddenly. She laid there staring up at the sky, like she’d been abducted by the alien ship and made to endure unspeakable trauma. What had the beast done to her? And how the fuck was he supposed to fix it?”
    Even as he wondered, the raw peeling skin began to heal