It was eons ago that Hell was gifted to the demons by the angels of Heaven.
Well, perhaps "gifted" is the wrong word to use. Demons were forced to stay there, never to again plague the surface en masse. Upon their forced migration, their new home was thrown into chaos as the demons fought among themselves for supremacy. One demon rose above the rest, more powerful, wicked, and ruthless than any other demon in the realm. He brought organized chaos to Hell and asserted himself as the dominant and solitary ruler of the realm. His name lost to the ages, he became his title. The Demon King.
The key to the Demon King's power was his heart. He had torn it out of his own chest and hidden it somewhere, granting him immense power and ridding himself of his emotions. Only cold calculation remained within him.
But the Demon King, as powerful as he was, was always kept in check by the leader of the angels up in Heaven, who was of equal power to him. So long as the angels had the the Angel Queen, the Demon King and his forces dare not leave their realm.
There was uneasy peace for many millennia... until the Angel Queen disappeared one day. The Demon King hurriedly amassed his forces, ready to invade the mortal realm of Earth. The angels knew they had to do something, so they began a mad search for the Demon King's heart to use as a bargaining chip against him. The heart was eventually found, and on Earth no less, deep beneath the surface. It was excavated by an angel courier to be transported to Heaven, but in his haste to find a safe place to make his return, he ran into a rogue demon who had escaped Hell to avoid the Demon King's tyrannical reign. Thinking the angel was out to get him, he attacked. In the ensuing scuffle, the heart was dropped to Earth...
It was soon found by a young man. The heart reacted to him, embedding itself within him. The disembodied heart now having a host, the Demon King felt it. His emotions returning. Happiness, sadness, disgust, fear... rage. Everything he had discarded, rushing back to him and spurring him to move.
And so, the Demon King rose from his throne and arrived in upstate New York... to hunt the bearer of his heart down.
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He sighed as he walked down the street, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Ugh, he hated working evenings... Then of course his boss loses the key to the storage room, so he has to stay until
two freaking A.M.
At least he got overtime for it. He swore, his supervisor would lose her own head if he wasn't there to keep her organized.
Still, there was something nice about walking home in the dead of winter at this hour. The streets were quiet, nearly empty... It gave him peace to think. A peace of mind was a rare thing in this day and age, and the scenery certainly helped with that. New Paltz, NY was a great town. He was from Illinois, but he'd definitely fallen in love with this eclectic college town. He'd only been there two years, but... Well, he wouldn't mind staying the rest of his life, that was for sure. He wasn't much of a wanderer... More of a homebody.
He raised his mitten-clad hand as a snowflake fell in front of him. A glance up at the sky showed that it was, indeed, starting to snow. The snow hadn't melted from last time and it looked like they'd be getting more. He was used to blizzards from back in the midwest, though. Most saw winter as a cold and dead time, but he saw it as a time of peaceful quiet. A season of rebirth and new beginnings.
His breath came out in a visible white puff and he raised his scarf up to cover his mouth. Ugh, one downside to winter was the cold... He needed to get home. He could probably cut through the parking lot behind Los Agaves. The young man turned and cut across the snow-covered lawn, his snow boots leaving footprints in the thick frost. As he got past the lawn and into the parking lot, he was jarred from his mental wanderings by a protrusion in the snow rudely catching on his foot, resulting in him falling flat on his face. Ow.
He pulled himself up, dusting off his jeans and turning to see what he tripped on. A rock? No, a... A box?
He scrambled to his knees and picked up the snow-covered wooden chest. It looked almost like a jewelry box... Did someone drop it here? He should probably take it to the police station. Someone might be looking for it, after all. But what was in it? Yeah, if he was going to report it found to the police, he'd need to know what it was...
Looking both ways as if to check for anyone who might catch him, he opened the box, gazing inside to find... a pendant? He reached in and picked up the piece of jewelry. It was a heart-shaped ruby, set on a gold lattice chain. He held it up to the floodlight shining on the parking lot from the roof of the second floor of Los Agaves. Huh... If he didn't know any better, he'd assume that the pendant was glowing.
Wait... Yeah, it was glowing. It was warm, too. Hot, even. Burning!
He attempted to drop it, but it seemed stuck to his palm now. The lattice chain seemed to have wrapped around his hand of its own accord. The light from the ruby heart started shining and a bright light flashed from the pendant. A gust of wind shot outward from it, knocking him back into a nearby car with surprising force. The blow knocked the wind out of him and he struggled to sit up. Ugh, his head hurt. Wait, where was the locket? He searched around for it, finding it gone. Did he drop it?
Yooouuu.
His gaze whipped upwards, eyes falling upon the figure standing there that wasn't before. The creature before him was... demonic. That was the perfect, and perhaps only, word to describe it. Utterly demonic.
Four jaggedly curved horns. Two whip-like tails. Wings like a massive gargoyle or bat. Jagged plates covering its body that, while at first seeming to be armor, on closer inspection were in fact biological chitin. Hands that were more like jagged claw-talons. Feet vanishing into flickering red, purple, and black flames that melted the snow below it, making the creature bob up and down as if hovering a foot off the ground. It easily stood at what must have been eight feet tall, dwarfing his own exceptional six foot nine. In contrast to the white of winter, it was completely pitch black except for two glowing red embers for eyes upon its blank and featureless face.
Huuuuumaaaaaan...
The voice, if it could be called a voice, was hoarse, raspy, and sounded more like an ominous wind than the vocal chords of a person. It didn't even seem to be coming from the demonic figure, but rather, hanging in the air all around them, no true point of origin or true point of destination. An omnipresence.
Do you realize what you have done, foolish mortal?
It (he?) raised one jagged talon, pointing at the young man's chest. Specifically, his heart.
You have bonded with my heart! The wretched organ I, the Ruler of Hell, cast aside so I may obtain absolute power! MY heart is part of you now! It feeds on your being and it has given me the despicable emotions I sought to be rid of!
He frantically looked down at his chest, seeing a singed hole in his jacket, through his shirt, and into his undershirt. But there was no wound in the visible bare skin?
The creature stepped, no, glided forward a bit.
