Everything goes white.

Samael walks down the main road of the city, his bad arm hangs at his side. His eyes nervously dart every which way as he eyes the shadows all around himself. They could be anywhere. Behind any wall, inside any alley, beyond any window, they could be there, watching him, stalking him, right now. Right this very second.

He flinches together, his hand grasping the knife on his belt as a flurry of noise explodes before himself on the street.

“Get your cart out of the way!” yells a man. Two carriages seem to have gotten into a mix-up of sorts.

“Fuck you!” yells the other carriage-driver. “Move your cart, jackass!”

Samael sighs, his hand letting go of the knife. It’s just a false-scare. Nervously, he looks around himself, spitting down onto the street before quickly ducking into an alley to get away from the scene.

The ensuing scuffle would draw a lot of attention, they might see him here. It’s for the best to go somewhere quieter.

Everything goes white.

He sits in the corner in the very back of the warehouse, hiding behind some boxes and listening to the voices of the people nearby. His pursuers are among them, he’s sure of it. But how could they have found him all the way out here in this city? They really do have eyes everywhere.

Eyes.

Eyes.

Samael rubs his itchy arm, lifting up the sleeve and quietly spits onto the dried out wound, rubbing it in. It’s better than nothing, right? The voices draw closer. He holds his breath, not moving a muscle.

“So I showed his wife MY magical staff!” says a man’s voice.

Several others around him start laughing, except for one disgruntled voice to the side.

“Good gods, put that thing away, you degenerate!” they say, causing the crowd to laugh even louder.

Samael releases his breath, waiting for them to leave. Magical staff? A magical staff? His eyes dart around the darkness. He could use a magical staff… It would be useful to get rid of the followers, of the pursuers, of the people that are after him, they’re after his eyes. They’re after his enchanted wizard-eyes. They know about them. They know that they allow him to see them, the demons.

He pulls his sleeve down, looking up over the boxes and quickly runs off into the night.

Everything goes white.

Samael sits there, wincing, as the blade of the knife cuts over the wound on his arm. He has to get rid of the rot. He has to get rid of the disease. His mouth waters. He can’t stop salivating. Running the knife along the freshly bleeding wound, scraping off the meat around the bite, he lets his spit fall down into it to wash away the blood.

He hasn’t found the magical staff yet that the man was speaking about. He needs it. He needs it to kill the demons. He needs it to protect his eyes.

Samael has been hiding out in the warehouse for a day or so now, waiting, listening for tidbits of information. He has identified the man by his voice and peeped at him from around the corner. He knows what he looks like now. He’s been watching him. Studying him. But he has to be careful. The others are here. The pursuers. He can feel them. They’re coming after him. It doesn’t matter how far he runs, they’re coming after him. They want his eyes.

But he’s going to take theirs first.

The knife sinks deeper into his arm, stopping as it hits the bone and scrapes along it. Drool runs out of his mouth.

Everything goes white.

“WHERE IS IT?!” screams Samael at the bleeding man, bound to a chair in the back of the warehouse, his mouth gagged. He presses the knife against his cheek. “TELL ME WHERE IT IS!” he demands. Red runs out of the sides of the crying man’s face. Foam runs out of Samael’s mouth, the disease caused by the festering bite having spread throughout his body. He tears the rag out of the man’s mouth.

“I TOLD YOU!” shouts the man. “IT WAS A FUCKING JOKE, YOU LUNATIC!” He rattles around on the chair. “THERE IS NO FUCKING STAFF! I WAS TALKING ABOUT MY DICK!”

“LIAR!” screams Samael, shoving the rag back into his mouth and pressing the knife down along the side of the worker’s face, cutting through his cheek. The man screams.

Everything goes white.

The man didn’t divulge his secret. He was willing to take it to the grave. Did he work for the demons? Or was he simply afraid of what would befall him if he sold them out? Samael doesn’t know. He twists the knife around in a circle, removing the second eye from the corpse.

He has to remove the eyes, otherwise they can see him through them.

The second one plops out, dribbles of foam fall onto the man’s lap from Samael’s mouth. He looks down towards the spot, seeing the bulge there. The magic staff?

No.

Just some keys in the man’s pocket. Samael blinks. Keys… keys… OF COURSE!

Everything goes white.

It’s got to be here somewhere.

Samael digs through the dresser of the man’s house. A staff… a magic staff… where would it be? It’s got to be big, right? The closet?

He shakes his head, he can’t stop the flow of drool anymore and it stains his entire front side. He already checked in the closet, it isn’t there. It isn’t there… Why can’t he see it? His enchanted wizard-eyes should be able to see it… Where would the man hide something so precious? So rare? So valuable? He needs it. He needs it to survive.

“Daddy?” asks a voice from outside the hall. Small foot-steps come his way. Samael tenses up and looks around for a place to hide. The closet! He slips inside, closing the door behind himself. “Daddy?” asks the child again, opening the door to the bedroom and stepping inside.

Samael feels his heart beating in his chest as the child, some girl, looks around the room in a state of disarray. The staff… where is the staff…

There is a loud thudding. Someone is knocking on the front door outside, loudly, fiercely. The frightened child tenses up, yelping to herself and scrambling onto her father’s bed to hide under the covers. The door knocks again. There are voices outside. He recognizes them. The others. The people who worked with the man. The demons…

HE NEEDS THE STAFF.

But where…

Samael realizes, his eyes opening wide as he quietly opens the closet door.

Everything goes white.

She didn’t scream. They didn’t see. He put the knife right through her eyes and it was done.

Her body is flipped over on the bed and he tears into her back with the blade. People are pounding on the front door. They’re running around, yelling, shouting. They’re going to break inside soon. He needs to hurry.

The knife presses in deeper into her body, cutting entirely through and down into the mattress below.

Everything goes white.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” screams Samael, holding the flesh covered, bloody spine out in front of himself. “I SEE YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE!” he yells at the ‘men’ in the room. The ‘people’ dressed as soldiers.

“Don’t get near him!” yells a man to the side, wearing a white-robe. “He’s contagious!”

Samael swings the spine at him, spit flying everywhere.

“YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE WITH ME, DEMON!” shouts Samael. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU! YOU’LL NEVER TAKE MY EYES!”

Samael’s movements are disrupted as a man from the side throws a large net towards him. He flails, trying to get it off. Something else strikes him and he finds himself pinned down against the floorboards by some kind of pronged spear that goes through his shoulder.

The man in white sighs, nodding to the soldier. “Good work.” He looks down towards Samael. “Poor bastard, must’ve got bit by a feral in the woods,” says the priest.

“Father!” argues a soldier. “How can you have sympathy for such a monster?! LOOK!” says the man, gesturing to the mangled corpse only feet away from them. Samael squirms, drool and blood pooling by his face. He needs to destroy his eyes, before they can get them he needs to use the staff…

“It’s detestable,” says the priest with a hiss to his voice. Samael looks up towards the kind face of the hooded man who looks down his way. “But I can’t blame him for what the disease made him do,” says the priest. Samael glares at him. He looks up, staring at his eyes. At his black, light-less eyes that only he can see. He’s one of them. The demons. “Let us hand this man over to the gods, their judgment is wiser than ours.”

The staff is no good. It was a trap. They tricked him. This was all a trap from the beginning… “YOU’LL NEVER TAKE MY EYES!” screams Samael, driving the knife sideways through both of his eyes at once before they can stop him.

Everything goes white and this time, it stays that way.

Canta stands there in the void. “I mean…” He looks around. “I know I say this every time, but… what the fuck?” He looks for someone, anyone. But there isn’t a soul here to be tried. It’s just empty. It’s just the void and himself. Samael isn’t here. Something happened to his soul. It seems to be… missing. “Can we just roll the world back?” asks Canta. “Like back to when I was alive the first time? It was better then.”

Nobody responds.

Canta sighs. “Whatever. Fine. Like I give a fuck. I’m going to eat the fucking demon-king and then I’m coming for you, you got it, shit-head?” he barks up at the emptiness above himself.

It doesn’t respond.

The void slowly dissipates and Canta gasps for air, spitting out the chunk of old Samael that he still had lodged in his throat.