1The bedroom that was 'Ava's', a foster home, really, was quite cold and empty. It was simply quite dark and ominous looking.
If not for the glowing, malestrom of fire and light floating in the middle of her tiny room, visible to only herself.
The smoke wreathed around her head. The spirit, demon, whatever, twirled her hair around a sharply clawed nail, breathing out smoke in shapes of hearts and crescent moons and the stars, the smoke ringing itself into galaxies and shapes only the liquid form of vapor could produce.
Ava stared.
"Erm..." She called, her small, tiny hand reaching out to the magma woman, still chubby with slight baby fat, trying to grab her hand. "Why are you here?"
The demon smiled and turned herself to face the little child. "A tiny child asking me, an empress, why I'm here? You've never bothered to talk to me before, you stupid little brat."
Ava frowned, her cheeks tightening with the grimace. "Urgh. I've had you with me since I was born, I just..."
"You just what?" The spirit grinned, the smoke shaped crescents, once looking soft and pristine, now looking sharp and jagged looped in the air. "You what?"
Snarling, Ava knocked her lamp off her small nightstand, her eyes flashing with a magma colour and her brows furrowing with fury which sat deep within her. "I want to know why you attached yourself to me and who you are! You just try to hurt me and kill me off, I want to know why!
The demon's face sobered into a neutral, angular face that snapped into the regal empress look that she claimed to have.
"Fine. Everyone who worshipped me called me a saviour and their empress, but you may have the everlasting privilege of calling me by my real name-"
"Wrathia Bellarmina." Ava quietly murmured.
Wrathia's body suddenly glimmered with the force of a sun, anger beneath the surface growing white-hot with the vengess' firey temper.
"Do not interrupt me, you impudent little idiot! Like I have mentioned time and time before, I'm an empress, who should not have to stoop to these heights! How do you even know my name?!"
Ava curled her hands in her sheets, tightening them with whitening knuckles and a heavy heartbeat echoing in her ears. This was one of the few times where Wrathia had gotten this angry, and it was a day with her violent mood swings.
"You.. you've said you name to yourself when you talk... you talk to yourself... to help? I.."
The magma glow minimized, and the jagged, angry stars and moons faded into something lighter and softer.
"I see. Am I permitted by your lowly self," Wrathia drawled, her goat-like eyes roving across the room, relaxing into a dormant state. "To continue my tale?"
Ava nodded silently.
"Well then..." Wrathia breathed, blowing some dark smoke off the palm of her hand, smoky shapes rising into the shape of a landscape, buildings and wires and a sunset so lovely it was breathtaking.
"I was once the empress of multiple galaxies, a perfect kingdom in all terms, and I was one of the most powerful creatures in the universe. "
"As was my husband, Pedri." The vengess smoothed the smoke into a shape of her husband, lovingly making it so that a visage of her husband floated gently in the air, raising its arm in greeting, the skull on his head shifting to the side so a gentle smile could be seen, dragonflies of purple whispering through the air and kissing Wrathia's hands and fingers.
"We were almost unstoppable."
Ava was furrowing her brows. Where was this whole spiel leading?
"It was a day when the two suns had risen and the universe seemed right and good, for once. I was sitting upon the throne, with my heir in my arms, chatting quietly to my husband."
"An heir?" Ava had blurted out before she could stop herself. "A child?"
Wrathia snarled with badly hidden anger, smoke rising from cracks in her skin before all the magma cooled off.
Lovingly, caringly, all the emotions Wrathia has not once shown Ava, she forms an egg shape out of smoke. There is a moon and a heart shape embedded in its shell, molten cracks of gold amongst royal purple, a pulse of a heartbeat echoing in the golden light.
"My egg. Not yet borne of light and valour, but something even newer and lovelier to me." Wrathia whispered, the smoke dispersing into the air before the demon continues her tale.
"That day we had been given word of a creature who had taken all of our galaxies hostage in a single night. The so called 'god', TiTan. He ordered us to surrender or he would destroy all of our subjects and all we had created. He wanted our power."
Ava listened with rapt attention, the smoke shapes of Wrathia and Pedri arguing over how to save their empire.
"I was absolutely livid with the very idea of surrendering to that awful thing. But there was no other choice."
"My husband had said something alarming while I was in a rage..."
The smoke shape of Pedri murmured in his soft, dulcet tones, "Be smart... Surrendering may not guarantee our survival."
The sheets under Ava rustled as she clambered out of her sheets, her nightgown fluttering to rest by her knees as she sat. Scars on her arms visible in the low light.
"I came up with a plan." Wrathia simpered, her face transforming into a rather horrifying sneer, her goat-like eyes narrowing. "If we could not claim victory in life..."
"We could claim victory in death. I brewed poison wine, with the intent, to attach our souls to the next being that immediately came to life, once we drank it."
The sneer adorning the face of Wrathia fell into something almost regretful.
"I brewed one for all the most powerful emperors in my army, so we could all take back our homelands. My plan was to possess something stronger than myself, and hopefully get my revenge with all of my army and people by my side."
Ava's eyes grew wider as the smoke turned into a battlefield filled with blue lights crashing into the buildings which once looked so lovely. TiTan and Pedri and Wrathia stood, facing each other in a duel, not a physical one, but one of who would back down first.
"As we planned our fates, TiTan grew impatient. We stood, gave him his share of wine, and poisoned ours."
The smoke shapes suddenly looked hazier than normal.
"I don't know if Pedri tried to fight or... if he drank it after me.. but all I remember is feeling weak... and small."
"And you got stuck with me." Ava said smoothly, despite her fear of Wrathia getting angry again.
Surprisingly, Wrathia did not get mad. She simply sighed and waved her hand through the smoke, making another scene form.
"I was furious. I was attached to you, something so weak and small compared to my race."
Smoke visages of failed attempts to unnerve Ava, images of knives and lava and red crayon scribbles.
"I tried so hard to get you to form a pact, and yet, you, a tiny, stupid little brat with no notable will or power, resist my every move."
"You keep mentioning a pact!" Ava snapped, fed up with all the insults and disgusted looks Wrathia kept throwing her as she grew older. "What the heck do you mean by a pact?!"
Wrathia's face suddenly glowed with joy or maybe irritation, and she quickly summoned an image of two souls, resembling herself and Ava.
"A pact is when the possessed and host soul have a deep and desperate desire. They can combine to fulfill this pact, combine their minds and powers."
Two half hearts glimmered in the open air. One pink, one a desperately pulsing orange.
"When it is fulfilled, both souls separate and live on in different bodies as nature had intended." The dusky two tone heart split in half, before disappearing.
Ava's mind was whirling, half formed thoughts and dreams spinning wildly. They could become reality, she thought, oh gods, they could be real-
"I want to make a pact." She had blurted out. Ava slapped her hands across her face, surprise written on her face at her own idiocy.
Wrathia grinned widely. "Good. What do you want out of this pact, little Ava Ire?"
What.. Ava wanted? This was the first time she had been asked this. No one wanted her. No one really cared for her, aside from the foster parent she lived with right now, and even then, their guardian was emotionally distant, as they had only gotten Ava to seem caring.
What did Ava want?
"Tick tock, Ava. The clock is metaphorically ticking down to zero. Hurry up, you're wasting my time." Wrathia had drawled, examining her nails in fake interest.
"I want the universe to know my name." The whisper was so small, and yet, it encompassed the entire space between the two.
"Then it will be so."
ooo
Ava has to kill herself before she can make this work.
The knife in her hands is so, so deadly looking all of a sudden, and she wishes that she hadn't promised.
"Ava, what is taking so long? Surely even someone as puny and weak as yourself should be able to do this." Wrathia is hissing, her hands clenching and unclenching with anger. (Ava knows that Wrathia is trying to retain her composure. It isn't working.)
"You're asking a ten year old child to kill themselves." Ava murmured, lowering the knife so she could look at her hands. "This isn't easy."
"Do you want me to do it for you?" Wrathia groaned in annoyance, twisting her body so she could glare at Ava.
Ava remained silent.
"Oh, for all the crying Covetesses-" Wrathia snarled, grabbing hold of Ava's arms and thrusting the knife into Ava's chest.
A spatter of blood reached the floor before Ava's body could, and suddenly Ava was bleeding out on the floor.
Of course, her soul was watching this from a foot above her body.
"I'm dead?!" Ava screeched, slapping her hands over gossamer transparent cheeks.
"No, you idiot. You're almost dead. Now, we have to complete the first stage of the pact before your soul turns into stardust and I get reborn." Wrathia impatiently explained, putting her hand out for Ava to grab.
Ava grabbed the demon's hand quickly before the snappy, angry demon could get even more tempermental.
Suddenly lights shaped like little suns and swirling, cryptic markings lit up both of their spectres and Wrathia was grinning widely, all of her fangs bared in a horrific show of absolute joy.
"W-Wait- before we- before we do this- is there any- anything I should know about?!"
Wrathia looked momentarily stunned before she grinned again, blood draining out through her teeth.
"Don't worry!" She cooed, wrapping her arms around Ava's middle, both of their forms starting to melt. "I won't let anything happen to you!"
Blobs of otherworldly flesh melted into each other, fusing into a dusky orange, patterns of gold light snaking their way across Ava's eyesight.
As strange as it sounded, Ava couldn't really think. She was drifting, feeling her body melt into Wrathia's. It felt good.
And then the pain snapped into reality as their now conjoined soul drifted back into Ava's body.
They screamed.
Chapter End.
