CHAPTER I: The nightmare

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Complete and utter silence enveloped the air. Tall trees surrounded me, their crowns to high to even see their ends. Between them, a clear path of dark soil and little rocks was made for foreigners like me, who didn't know their actual position, lost in the deepest of the nature.
And there I was, in the middle of a trail in a thick forest, appeared from nowhere.

I was trying to hear something, anything: the chirping of a bird, a branch being broken by some animal or someone, a howl... nothing. My hearing was highly developed, more than a simple mortal, humans. Usually, I heard even the low-pitched sounds, and I was wondering why my body wasn't working correctly. It was impossible in a forest not to hear even the trees dancing at the wind's melody, leaves joining in the mother's nature waltz.

It was disturbing.

I had no idea to where I was or what I was doing in there, but something inside me, started to get alarmed, sending to my body a clear message: what I was living wasn't real. Intuition never failed me, people even called it 'woman's intuition', but it was far from that, and sometimes I hated it, because I wasn't able to change the current situation, even if I knew danger was near.

Taking a deep breath, I decided to close my eyes, and when I opened them again to see if I was inside a dream, I looked down at my left wrist. The vintage gold bracelet Rolex I usually wear struck 3:09 pm. Few seconds later, I checked it again. The watch my mother gave me as a last gift, indicated 3:57 pm. Yeah, definitely I was living my own nightmare. I knew it before it all started.

It wasn't the first time, far from it, but I had to learn methods scientists proposed to verify if I was deep asleep or conscious. One of them was to check the time, since one hour may be translated to a mere five minutes in real world, or even less, they moved slower. Another one, more drastic, was to kill yourself to wake up but, as the last time didn't work, I skipped the idea.

I cleared my mind, a cold chill running down my back. I expected the worst.

My eyes switched upwards, but I still couldn't see the sky, only a few sunbeams going through the intensity of the vegetation. Sighing, I started walking. The only thing I could hear were my biker boots making contact with some little branches and dry leaves in the path.

Lost conception of time, I walked for what seemed like hours, and stopped when I heard something move between the wild shrubs. I tried to follow its movements, but the speed made it difficult.

My steps halted when I felt someone, or something, behind me, making me turn around as fast as I could, but no one was there. Eyebrows furrowing in confusion, I looked around again for the creature, or animal. It was too small to be a human still, nothing caught my attention, nor my hearing. But, when I turned around again, a gasp was released from my throat, facing someone more or less 65 ft (20 m) away from me. 

I licked my dry lips, trying to give voice to my thoughts, "Who are you?" I couldn't see her face because of the darkness, but I was sure she was a young woman. Not receiving any answer, I saw how the girl turned on her heels and started to walkaway. "You! Wait!" Yet, there was still no answer.

I ran after her. She was walking at a normal pace, and her long brown wavy hair came into view as I got closer. When I reached the girl, I hold onto her shoulder while I got my breath back. "Hey! Please, just wait." I panted hard while she waited for me, and when air was again in my lungs I turned her around to face me. Then, for a moment I was shocked, frozen in my spot, my mouth let an involuntary gasp.

A faceless face: no eyes, nose, mouth, or ears. Nothing. I let her go and stepped back, not knowing if she could look at me or even hear me. "Help me, please." A wobbly voice echoed through the towering trees and thick vegetation. It was her? How on earth could she mutter even a single word? "Can you speak? But how is that possible?" My question didn't catch her attention.

I was incredulous, and I didn't understand how she could talk. "Just..." The next thing I saw shocked me: she was sobbing. I heard and saw her shoulders shaking, but still couldn't see her features. When she brought her hands to her face, I decided to come near the trembling body. "Hey, why are you crying?" My calmed voice soothe her, but it wasn't enough.

"My brother, he will die. Help him, please." Her plea made me think about who he could be, but I came with nothing. "Do I know your brother?" She nodded. Who could it be? I sniffed her smell: she didn't have a scent, and her voice wasn't familiar. I didn't know who she was, but she seemed to know me, just for the fact she assured me I knew her brother.

"How do you know I know him?" She caressed my face, her fingertips bringing an electric touch with them, piercing my body, running down my every nerve. I closed my eyes from the discomforting and painful feeling, waiting for it to end, but when I opened them again, I was in the same place with the woman 65 ft (20 m) away from me.

My breath hitched yet, my mind still wasn't processing the situation, "Hey! Wait!" I wanted to know how she knew me and who washer brother, but she started to walk away. "Please wait! I'm just trying to help!" Deciding to run after her, I stopped when a grey smoke in a sphere form hovered in the middle of the path, blocking my way, until it decided to swallow me between its coldness.

Falling on the ground from a height of 6'5'' (2 m), I realized I was in another forest, darker and sinister. Creepier. Standing up and looking around, I saw a little figure running and crossing the new trail before my eyes. It kept doing the same for over few minutes and, already feeling irritated, my mind spoke by its own. "Who is it this time? Lubernov? Valdiklow? Girdiwa?"

The ancient cultures of demons, werewolves, vampires and other creatures, had some things in common, one of them was the three nightmare's guardians. In our days, it was just a myth to scare little kids if they refused to sleep but, little did they know they were real. My first meeting with them was after my change into what I was, for unknown eyes, a monster.

Suddenly, I heard a laugh of a little girl at my right, back, front and left, exactly in that order. She was moving faster and faster, she was playing with me. "Girdiwa! Get out now! Then kill me so I can wake up!" The laughs lasted until I felt her behind my back, and I decided to turn around "You son of a bit-!" My word were cut by a gasp.

Lubernov was in front of me, a diabolic pale and thin kid with two piercings below his lower lip. A piece of black cloth was all he wore. I shivered when he bent his upper half, so he could look at me more closely. I was lost in those black sclera and wide eyes.

All of a sudden, he did something I didn't even expect, he was smiling, and it was the first time I saw him feeling some type of emotion. The sharp teeth made me step back until I collided with a tall, but thin body. Turning around, I saw Valdiklow, always with his black cloak covering his entire figure and a wildebeest skull on his head.

Nobody knew their age, or where they came from, which world, in particular. Some legends said they were spirit demons, came to the human world, as other creatures, from a magic portal opened a millennia ago. Drawing power from their victim's sleep, they needed just one night to kill them. They never appeared together but, if the target was strong enough against one of them, they joined forces, collecting energy bit by bit, slowly killing the chosen one.

Even so, something was wrong, I felt confused. "Why are the three of you here? Normally it's just one of you in every nightmare." A laugh erupted again from the deepest of Girdiwa's throat and stepped in front of me, stunning me to the ground. "Today you'll meet someone very, very special." With a grin on her face, she looked at my body now sitting on the ground from the our impact. My eyes widened, and I saw her little face now turn into a smirk.

I knew it, it wasn't a simple nightmare, it was hell itself.

Feeling two arms lifting me up, Valdiklow, he started to drag me to the trail of the new forest. "W-Wait! Who am I going to meet and why?!" Desperately waiting for an answer, I struggled between his arms. Girdiwa took Lubernov's hand, disgusting kid. As if he heard my thoughts, he looked back at me, and the creepy girl started to laugh.

She faced me again, "A werewolf sent the three of us to you." Giving me a smirk, she started humming a random melody. "So that means you exist, as demons, in the real life?" It was what every creature would have asked, if they were sent by someone it meant they existed. "Mh, that's a good question. I think you should decide if we live in your world or not. Everything you need to know is inside your mind, but you didn't realize. Yet."

I hated how she wasn't being clear, something I really needed at the moment. "What? You're saying I have all the answers, but I still don't know them? That makes no sense-" Before I could finish she interrupted me, "Yes, it does. You're living with a wolf, a bunch of creatures, and your inner Alpha demon inside your own body. They have the answers. Why don't you ask them?" Not meeting her eyes, I swallowed hard. "I-I can't."

For humans it was already hard to understand the existence of creatures as werewolves or vampires, they just thought it was something it existed only in books, fiction, but the crude reality was way too different. To explain their routine or how their bodies worked was easier than a demon, they lived under the leadership and protection of a leader and their comrades.

Demons were more complicated, to be stronger they killed the weak ones, they sought it. They were subdivided into categories, as a pyramid, the tip was taken by the strongest, an Alpha, not a king, but a tyrant, almost impossible to defeat and abusing of its power.

Girdiwa release a sort hum, "Oh, yeah. Sorry honey, they would surface. Well, why don't you let them? It would be very funny to see." Narrowing my eyes and clenching my jaw, I frowned at her words, they made my blood boil and my body tense. "Who sent you? Tell me or I'll try to wake up." Her sigh was all I could hear before she turned around. "If I tell you, will you follow us without hesitation?" Not thinking twice, I nodded firmly, needing to know the answer.

She took a moment before answering. "Your father invoked us." My jaw literally dropped to the floor, probably with an astonished expression on my face. "My father? He's dead. It's just-", taking a deep breath, "-impossible." She shrugged, not minding my troubled expression, or the tension on my shoulders. "Well, it was him. Think what you want."

Something clicked in my head, erasing the dark clouds that were blinding me, not letting me see things as clear as the water. If it was a werewolf who invoked them, then- "Wait! You said you're demons, and I know my father was a werewolf-" She interrupted me, "Is-", but I corrected her, "Was. But werewolves cannot invoke a demon unless they are from-" Girdiwa finished my thought for me, "Yes, from royalty and are hybrids."

It took a long moment for my head to process the new information, something I never imagined to hear. "No way in this fucking world." My voice came up more like a released breath, for a moment I almost thought my ears betrayed me. She fake gasped in horror, "Honey, that mouth!" I growled at her when she chastised me, it just couldn't be real. But why? I didn't understand anything.

Why did my father never tell me, or my mother?

Why all the secrets?

Why all the deaths?

Why all the pain and suffering?

Why me?

"We are here." Thankfully, Girdiwa's voice stopped the flow of my thoughts.

Breath caught in my throat when I saw we were no longer in the woods but in a meadow with a huge three in the center. My eyes focused on the two people who were hung on the lowest branch but I couldn't see their faces for the intense fog. It was cold, really cold, making my body shiver and my hair stand to end. Then, I smelled, oh God, that smell I loved so much, the smell my demons made me love so much: blood. That particular scent was too familiar, but I didn't know where I had smelt it before. My eyes switched and met the back of a tall masculine figure and then, Valdiklow dropped me to the ground violently.

Growling at him, I was cut off by Girdiwa. "We, Lubernov, Valdiklow, and Girdiwa show our respects in front of the most powerful master, Lucius." My eyes widened at the name. Who was he? I knew I saw him before, but where? His presence exuded power, authority, and cruelty.

He turned around, his features were blurred, as if I was wearing some type of contact lenses, but I was able to catch his hair color: dirty blonde. "Hi, beautiful, you sure have a lot of questions. Don't you?" Nodding in response, he hummed. "I'm sure I've seen you before, it's just... I can't remember." His voice was familiar too, but it seemed like if I had a black temporal hole in my mind. "Maybe you know the name of Dux Ducis." For a moment I couldn't breath, that name. It couldn't be, I didn't want to believe it. It was the name of the devil itself. "What about him?"

He tsked, taking his sweet moment to study my tensed shape, "I don't want to answer your questions, just yet. You will have all the answers after the execution of your mother and sister." With an evil smirk, sweat started to form from every skin pore, for what was coming. It couldn't live it twice, and I was on the verge to beg him to stop.

The fog slowly vanished, replaced by a dark atmosphere. I could see my mom and sis hanging on the tree with wounds in all their bodies. They were screaming my name and crying. Why weren't they already dead?!

"Mom! Ana!" I started to panic. I saw how Lubernov and Valdiklow approached them with sharp knifes. "My beautiful girl! Don't you worry, just run away! Please!" The screams of my mother broke my heart into tiny pieces. "Sis! Run away before they catch you! Don't be stupid, sis! Please run!" My beautiful sister, my other half. I wasn't going to be able to watch the scene.

Once the two demons were in front of them, I saw how their knifes cut their bodies, opening them from limb to limb, from the throat to the belly. The same exact way I ended the life of a miserable soul, someone who really deserved to die.

"Mom! Sis! No!!"

All I could smell was blood, their blood. I heard how Lucius and Girdiwa shared a laugh, I just saw red, I was more than furious, to the point my demons would surface, and I didn't know what would happen if they freed themselves inside one of my dreams.

I turned to the 'powerful master', "How could you, big shit?!" My growls just amused him. Answering me with an evil smile, I started to run to my mother and sister. When I was about to reach their bodies, I felt a sharp pain on my neck. Something was wrong, and when my heard rolled on the cold ground I understood my head was just separated from my body.

Behind my limp frame, I saw Lucius with a sword in his right hand, laughing at my current situation. Girdiwa took the small part of me, that was just cut, in her little hands and whispered in my left ear. "Don't trust nobody who has been keeping secrets from you. Find the truth and execute the real culprit. Embrace your demons and you will be invincible." She got away from my left side and, before my head could process what was happening, she showed her sharp teeth, to bite me.

Suddenly, everything went black.

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➳ Dux Ducis (LATIN): Leader of Leaders.  

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Here you go the first chapter guys!

Thoughts? I know most of people wouldn't have chosen a nightmare to start a book, but just let me tell you this is one of the most important chapters in the book! Especially at the end of the book!!

Hope you liked it, and if you did, I'd be really grateful if you vote!!

Thank guys! See you in the next chapter!

25/11/2015

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Awaken Demons: Stheno
2015© BecomingApocalypse