But Not Gone (Writer's Cramp Winner)

But Not Gone

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

         I recited this carefully and with reverence, though it wasn’t a spell by any means. Tonight was a dangerous night for casting, tonight was the Ides of March and the full moon rose like a temptation in the sky. Power, that moon promised, but also folly. The words might have swayed my present course, but my mind was made, and my preparations done.

         “The Ides of March are come….” I whispered into the night, “… but not gone.”

         Fear was powerful, but desperation proved a stronger contender and I dipped my head low over the broken text before me. Summons I had done, but never alone, never on a full moon, and never on the Ides.

         With trembling hands, using only the dangerous light of a watching moon to read by, I began the cast. Soon the verse took me, wrapping its binding tendrils about my naked flesh, a very real indication that what was done was indeed done. There was no turning back. I chanted and my voice grew raw as I tasted sulfur. Another voice melted with mine till it sliced through me like a blade across brittle flesh. Close to illness, I sliced the palm of my hand and let the blood drip into the silver bowl set before my shuddering knees. The drops clinked against the metal like fallen jewls.

         Oh, such folly. Too late, too late now.

         I said his name though I knew now I was sealing my own ruin. No, not only mine, but many others, all who I had touched.

         “Asmodeus.”

         And he was there. He did not materialize, he did not appear on a plume of smoke or mist, he simply was not and then he was. He stood, a tower of presence, just outside my circle made of salt and crushed bone, but I knew it would not keep him at bay. He smiled and it was both devastatingly arousing and horribly terrifying. I was sick, and emptied my stomach into the bowl that had held my offering. The blood was gone; he’d taken that.
 
         “Beware the ides of March,” the demon King said, and terror trembled through me as I wavered where I sat.

         “I command the will of revenge; I command the will of eternity.” I gasped in a voice that didn’t sound like my own; it held no strength, no power, and the demon King laughed. It sounded like screaming children and the puncture of stabbing flesh. I lost all means of speech; I could not draw breath and deadly heat began to radiate through me.

         “You command only the means of your own demise.”

         By fighting fate, I had only brought it to my door step all the sooner. The demon King, shifting from mortal man to horrific beast that went beyond comprehension in the sputtering of the candle light, stalked toward me. He shattered my meager protection circle and the moon was a glaring mocking eye. I tried to warn you, it said; I tried to bring you back. There is often no way back through the tangled bramble of one’s own disparity.

         Asmodeus offered out his hand, which was also a bloody smeared claw and I felt my mind slip from terror to madness. It was almost audible, my slip into insanity; like the snapping of a dry twig or the shattering of a crystal glass. I took the hand of Hell and Hell took me eagerly into its embrace. I had hoped to change my fate, and in that, I had succeeded. There are fates worse than death, and the Ides’ Moon mocked my plight. Betrayed by my own weak heart, I was lost. Asmodeus drew me near.

         “Cowards die many times before their deaths,” he murmured seductively against my breaking flesh.

         And so, I did.