I alone am the honoured

who gon' pray for me?

•Elvira Klawe•

Thousands of needles prick my face as I run a finger down my bent nose, forever damaged from my self-inflicted assault.

Physical-healing specialists can only do so much with their powers without sacrificing something. In the same way a person cannot grow a limb back or revive the dead, for what is lost is forever lost unless you sacrifice something equal or greater.

My nose was fixable but I didn't demand it to be when the specialist left me alone after the blood stopped leaking. A ragged scar runs across my eyebrow now, another ornament added to the multiple pre-existing ones littering my body.

I explore my face further, touching the perfect imperfections. They show that I have lived despite the every day torment coursing through me.

I was born in blood and agony. I live in blood and agony. I will die in blood and agony. That is my fate.

My Mother's name haunts me. As soon as it left the King's mouth, every hour has become dreadful, awaiting the moment a guard will pick me up and drop me to her feet, a smug smile encompassing her lips at my failure. The physical suffering of my body is no where equivalent to the horror that paralyses me at the sight and mention of her. I'd rather endure the wrath of Akraton than die by the hands of the monster who birthed me.

I stop caressing my face at the sound of a guard announcing guests. I do not bother to look, staring at my hand with moles scattering across the limb like stars in a midnight sky. I count them.

Nobody speaks for a while. Minutes passed before someone cleared their throat. I counted twelve moles.

"Who dare visits me in my Kingdom," I drunkenly call out, waving my hand dramatically in the air. "Thy shall die by my bloody hand for disrupting the peace."

Without a response, curiously, I peek my head up and see two people I least expected. A snicker almost passes my lips as their battered bodies flood my mind. I lean back and stare at the ceiling, ignoring their presence.

"We're required to go through and identify all of the victims we believe you are the perpetrator of," the siren says emotionlessly. A clattering noise echoes behind me and I look back, seeing her hand pass a file through the gaps of the bar, pushing it so it lands beside me. A guard arrives and hands them two chairs. The duo sit and open the duffle bags they were carrying, beginning to sift through mountains of paper.

Watching them busy themselves, I drag my body up, chains clinking from my wrists, and retrieve the file cautiously, sitting down on my own chair opposite them. Upon opening it, their eyes shift to me, waiting. I hum at the grotesque pictures, the coil of Asmodeus' presence wades beneath the surface, eager to see our masterpieces.

"No." I throw the paper to the floor, moving onto the next. "No." And again. "No."

I pause at the next one. "Maybe. Wow, she's hot. Why did I kill her?"

"This requires you to be serious, Angel." I'm surprised at the lack of an insult or degrading name. I meet their eyes and they're both expressionless. The hellhound, however, seems off, fidgety almost. I eye him closely. "Please."

The process continues methodically. I say yes or no and they update their notes. Behind them, I catch glimpses of green skin and curly horns peering through the darkness that ever looms inside the cage opposite me.

I reach the fiftieth group of victims and Asmodeus skitters along my skin in deranged excitement. It wasn't just our crimes that aroused the creature but the overall morbidness, gore, and passion. It is his sole  diet, after all. And my abstinence from killing has taken a detectable effect on our bond. It is sickening to call it that. Master and puppet is more accurate. Despite how I feel about our relationship, my hands are not clean still. I willingly sought out my victims without possession and murdered them for my sanity's sake.