Chapter 2: Terrible Day

As my eyes opened they were immediately met by a blinding light. My whole body felt weak and sore, not even having the strength to move. When my vision had cleared and adjusted to light, I looked around me to find that I was inside what looked like a hospital room. 

The bed that came with a remote that featured a hundred different buttons, the tacky and out-of-place furniture, and the nightstand that had a random plastic plant on top matched every description I'd heard about hospital rooms, and I guess the medical supplies and IV bag attached to my arm helped in discerning where I was, but those don't matter as much. 

"Where am I?" I let out softly, my voice concerningly raspy. It felt like my vocal chord had been sanded down into thin tubes that were just bumping into each other now. 

'Saint Agatha General, a hospital located 2.2 kilometres away from your home.' A calm voice sounded out inside my head. 

Had I the energy, my feet would have been on the floor in seconds, and I would have been swapped to a ward for more special individuals, as my first instinct was to start attacking my head. Instead, I freaked out calmly, or as calmly as one can freak out when they're unable to perform any basic bodily functions, before realising that screaming internally was very much an option. 

'Who the hell was that!' It felt refreshing to yell, even if no one else could hear me. Had it not been directed to a voice in my head, the yelling could have potentially aided in relieving some pent-up frustration. 

'You'll learn my real name once you're ready, for now, you may call me Hadeon.' 

I paused for a moment, thinking the voice would continue. But it seemed like he decided that his response was sufficient enough. 

'I have three follow-ups to that terrible question. Why can't you tell me your real name? Where the hell did you come from? Finally, how are you in my head?' 

Maintaining my composure wasn't hard as something inside me was convinced that I had already died and that this was the afterlife. Just a hospital room that I'm stuck in alongside some random voice in my head. 

Wait, I died!? How am I still here? 

'Well, to answer-' 

"Not now, scratch all those other questions. What did you do to me? Why aren't I dead? I saw that freaky plunge his hand into my chest!' 

I shifted around uncontrollably, trying to get into a seated position. Slowly lifting my hands toward my chest, noticing a severe lack of a chest cavity, my internal crisis was starting to feel a little more serious. 

The process of moving my body into an upright position and then finally manually moving my feet to hang over the bed took what I believed to be around 15 minutes, and as it was accompanied by a very loud set of moaning and groaning, my thoughts drifted to thinking about how not a single doctor had come to check up on me. 

Here goes nothing.

A loud thud accompanied my graceful face first fall onto the cold hard ground, indicating that at the very least, my current situation wasn't a dream. That did, however, prompt the thinking that the hospital room was some strange form of purgatory, and that was not a better situation to be stuck in. 

The door was slammed open as a man in a white lab coat and blue scrubs rushed in. Following behind him was a woman wearing a grey suit and a long black trench coat. The doctor was the person I was the most thankful to see, as it settled my nerves and told me that I was still alive. The woman, on the other hand, gave me a bad feeling. 

Her attire immediately reminded me of the two men who had broken into my home, and the images of one of their hands being pulled from my chest replayed in my mind several times. 

I tried my best to scurry backward, far away from the two that were approaching me. Even if the doctor seemed legit, it was as if my body was warning me. Telling me that I had to get away. 

"Stay still you oaf! You'll worsen your condition if you keep moving!" The doctor panted as held onto me tightly before picking me up and placing me back onto the bed. 

My breathing calmed down, but my heart still pounded lightly. My eyes were still glued onto the woman, who hadn't moved from her position next to the door. Her eyes met mine, but she quickly averted them, only adding to my worries. 

"Where am I? What happened to me?" My voice was still hoarse, but it was no longer strenuous to try and speak. 

Coming to terms with the fact that I was still alive wasn't the hard part. The difficulties lay in how my body was discovered, the hole in my chest patched up, and how I'd woken up the next day. 

Nevermind. I lied. Just how the hell am I alive? 

The doctor sighed. 

"Well, for starters you should be thanking the woman behind me." He paused to gesture towards the woman, motioning for her to walk closer, to which she obliged. 

Every step she took felt like an eternity. My mind was creating endless possibilities of what she could be planning. Everything from her ending my life and then the doctors to her kidnapping me and torturing me to find out just how I was still alive. Every scenario seemed lifelike, nearly causing me to faint from pure panic alone, but I couldn't lose consciousness. Not while she was in the same room as me. 

"She found you passed out under an overpass near the half of the city that had been destroyed during the war. To be honest, before checking your and her IDs, we all assumed you were just some bums that had overdosed on some new drug." 

A million questions replaced all previous thoughts, but the pounding of my heart stopped. A sigh of relief replaced the shaky and frightened breathing my body was experiencing previously. I looked at the woman, first with a smile to indicate my gratitude, but then as a realisation hit me, I quickly tugged on my shirt and peered down my chest. 

Not even a scratch could be seen. My hands moved under my shirt, feeling for the smallest of deviations, anything to show that my brain wasn't playing tricks on me and that my chest cavity being the resting spot for a stranger's hand wasn't a figment of my imagination. 

Both the doctor and woman watched in confusion for some seconds, before turning to each other to confirm that they were indeed seeing the same thing. 

"Um. Just what exactly are you doing?" The woman was the first to break the silence. Her voice did not match her appearance whatsoever. 

My mind drew blanks, as it was torn between being awestruck by how beautiful the woman's voice was and thinking about an excuse that could substitute,

 'Oh well two people came into my house, pretending to know my parents, one killed me by plunging his hand into my chest as the other searched for the final gift my parents ever gave me. You know, just regular Friday things.'

"Uh, I had a … chain! Yeah, I had a chain around my neck, it was a gift from my grandmother. Have you seen it?" 

As the idiotic excuse flowed from my mouth, the realisation that even a three-year-old could tell I was panicking and that a person doesn't feel for a missing chain on their chest. 

However, it seemed as though you only needed to die once for luck to shine down on you. 

"Oh, I'm sorry. When I found you I didn't see any chain. I could go back to look for it if it means that much to you?" The woman seemed genuinely apologetic, causing me to feel slightly guilty about my previous attitude towards her.

"I see." Trying my best to match her tone, grateful that she had fallen for my excuse. 

"It's alright, I think my grandma wouldn't mind that much. More importantly, thank you for saving me." 

"It was no problem." She smiled back at me. 

"However, I would like to know just how exactly a kid like you ended up on that side of the city. I mean it's understandable, you're what? 18? 19? Kids that age enjoy partying and all that, but you should make wiser decisions if these are the types of situations you end up in." 

"19? Truth be told, my memories are still fuzzy so I'm not sure how I ended up where I ended up, but what I can assure you is that I'm only 16?!"

 I retorted. Having my appearance made fun of was a soft spot of mine, and seeing as we were in a hospital and she didn't seem to be the type to kill me for speaking up, I found an opportunity to finally stand up for myself. 

The woman paused once more, this time I watched as her mouth curled up into an awkward smile, and a small chuckle was heard. 

"And here I thought people didn't want to relive their glory days till they were 30. Well, I wasn't expecting much of an answer anyway. I hope you get better soon." 

She nodded towards the doctor before leaving the room. I pouted unhappily. 

Whatever, I wasn't even that thankful anyway! 

However, the regret of not even asking the woman for her name started to well up inside me. 

The doctor and I sat in silence as he removed the IV chord from my arm and the weird finger holder of my middle finger. Rubbing my wrists did make me feel like the main character of an action movie, like I'd just woken up after the big final battle and now my wife and kids were gonna rush into the room and cling on to me. 

But the actual soreness of my entire body didn't let me enjoy the thought for very long. 

My mind has played me a full movie today. 

"Doc, just how long have I been out anyways?" 

Being the first to speak up certainly felt a little embarrassing, but my curiosity couldn't be suppressed for much longer. From how the doctor and the woman were speaking, it had to have been a max of a day or two since the incident. 

"You have been taking up much-needed space in this hospital for two weeks. So I am over the moon that I won't have to see your face anymore." He spoke without even looking up from what he was doing. 

My body stiffened. 

"Two weeks?! How? No, you're lying!" 

The yelling caused the taste of metal to fall down my mouth followed by an intense amount of coughing. The doctor grabbed a small handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the blood off my mouth before placing it in my hand. 

He grabbed the clipboard sitting at the end of the bed, picking it up and writing what looked like his signature in a small box, before placing it back down and turning to leave. 

He paused at the door, before turning his head to face me once more. 

"First of all kid, I have no reason to lie to you whatsoever, so I don't appreciate the accusation. Second of all, and you're lucky I didn't bring this up when that woman was here, is that we found traces of LSD and Zolpidem in your bloodstream. So maybe think before you act next time, and then maybe you and I won't ever have to meet again." 

Storming off before I could even speak up, he slammed the door shut behind him. 

'Was it you? Did you do this to me?' I thought to myself, trying to get a response from the voice. 

'Answer me!' A yell isn't as effective when it's inside your head, but it seemed to have done the trick this time around. 

'The LSD was to calm you down and the Zolpidem was used to keep you asleep while your body healed. I will tell you where it came from and how it was administered if you calm down, and before you start freaking out, I am also the reason you're alive.' 

A million and one questions floated around in my head, but not a single one could be put into words. I wanted to cry from confusion and frustration, but my eyes were dried out. 

A few minutes passed before my mind was finally quiet, and my mental state was not in full disorder. 

'Explain everything. And I mean everything from what you are, why you're inside me, and what happened to me.' 

'Well, the who and why will be explained later, as I said before. But as for what happened to you, well normally I'd tell you to lay back and keep calm, but that doesn't seem like the smartest idea right now.' 

If it was possible to strangle the painfully unfunny voice in your head, I would sell my soul for the opportunity. 

'Tough crowd I guess. Well then, you, Damon Ewell, died.' 

He paused as if it was shocking news and he was expecting me to sob uncontrollably at the information. I'd deduced that much, all he needed to tell me was why and how I'd come back.

'You're dying regrets caused me to awaken, and in your final breaths, I took over your body. I kept your body alive using my power but it wasn't enough. You see, your body is severely weak so I couldn't use my full power to regenerate back to 100 percent. So instead I combined the wonders of modern medicine to put your body into what my people call eternal rest. 

In that state, I was able to slowly heal you back without damaging your body any further. The only thing I didn't account for was you being found by that woman.' 

'So you're a contractor? But I thought there was a whole process to become a chosen, how would you contract with me if I was dying?' 

The idea of me finally being a chosen would have had me over the moon in any other situation, but with my head fully ready to implode, my emotions were pushed deep into a corner, lying in wait for me to get more answers out of the voice. 

'I'm not a contractor.' 

. . . 

A human body can only take in so many shock-inducing words before their blood pressure can no longer drop low enough to make them faint. Up until this point, I thought my life was strange enough. Nothing could ever 'flip my world upside down', and then Hadeon appeared. 

'What?! What are you then? No, no, no, what am I?!' 

My hands grabbed onto my scalp and tugged at my hair in panic. If Hadeon wasn't a contractor then there should be no reason for any of what was happening to be happening. As strands of falling hair turned into clumps, my whole body was shocked, and I promptly fell back onto the bed. 

'You are the world's most easily frightened person and it's starting to get annoying. So now I'm going to keep explaining and you're going to lay there quietly, without cutting me off or freaking out. Is that understood?' 

I did what looked like a mixture of a nod and a neck spasm, which was all my body could muster. The shock itself felt similar to being hit by a Taser, which was not something I wanted to relive. 

'Good.' 

In the next second, a dark mist started to form on the ground next to me, and once it cleared, a tall man wearing a white suit, and a black mask appeared. The mask seemed to have the design of some kind of monster, with large tusks protruding from both sides of the mouth and large and hollow, curled-up eye holes in the middle. 

Nothing of the man's actual appearance was visible. The mask showed no signs of facial features underneath, the suit covering his entire body, and white gloves covering his hands. His black hair was slicked back but it wasn't any help in trying to make out what he looked like. 

The man stared down at me for a few moments, before unbuttoning his jacket and sitting down at the end of the bed. 

Must be the comfortable side of the bed, I thought. 

"This feels much better." The man finally spoke, his voice deep and serious, quite unlike what I had been hearing in my head. He rubbed his hand across the front of his neck as he spoke. At the sound of my restrained muffling, he let out a small 'oh' and waved his hand. 

"Anyways, as I was saying, you Damon Ewell died. As for how you were brought back to life, you did form a contract of sorts, but I wouldn't classify it as the type of contract you're accustomed to." 

"So then how would you classify the contract?" I responded through gritted teeth. Seeing the voice, Hadeon, in front of me was bringing back my earlier desires of wanting to strangle him. I restrained myself however, my body shivering at the thought of being shocked yet again. 

"Well, too, as you humans say 'rip off the band-aid', you're now a beast. The only problem is, I'm not sure how to classify you. You're not like me, so I've ruled you out from being of the same race as me." 

He said in a tone that only further infuriated me. However, I couldn't move. It wasn't out of fear, cowardice, anger, none of that. I felt defeated. His words sounded fake and playful, but in a way, they made sense to me. After waking up, I felt something inside me, something trying to break out, something that was hungry.

But that wasn't where the story ended, that feeling inside me wasn't human. It was as if my human side, and whatever I was now, were engaged in an intense fight, and my human side had lost miserably. What scared me the most was that whatever was living inside me, felt evil. A kind of evil that made me too scared to even think about what it could possibly be. 

My mother used to tell me stories about how an evil spirit would appear in front of people in their time of need, offering them the power to do whatever it was they wanted to accomplish. Whether it was for revenge, money, fame, or power, anything and everything was given to those who needed it, but at a cost. Their souls, from that day forward, belonged to the spirit. 

Now the spirit could choose to torment them while they were living, but according to my mother, that 'wasn't fun enough for him', so the spirit would wait for the person to die, so that he may torment their souls for the rest of time, making them live each day in the afterlife, wishing they could go back. 

And I, in all my stupidity, sold my soul for the sake of petty revenge and a second chance at a very shitty life. Now if that isn't the tagline for the world's worst movie, I don't know what is.

"You seem to be taking the news well, which is rather surprising. But based on your facial expression, I'm assuming that you think you've now sold your soul and that I have full claim over your life correct?" 

My eyes shot up to meet with his. 

"And you're telling me that isn't the case?" 

"No." 

I almost shot up from bed in excitement but was stopped by both the soreness of my, well, everything, and by Hadeon raising his palm to indicate that he wasn't done talking. 

"Don't get too excited. I can see that you think you know a lot about demons, but you do not. You see I wasn't in the greatest of situations when I bonded myself to you. Bonded is the right word, yeah. Anyways, the bond we formed was not at all similar to that of a contract between a contractor and a chosen. Me and you are now one. My life is yours, and yours is mine. Should either of us die, the other shall perish with them. 

The good news however, is that I don't have a physical form for now, what you're seeing right now is a kind of mental projection, and you're only seeing it because I thought it'd be better if you heard this from somewhere not inside your brain." 

"Are there any upsides to this? Other than me being alive, which at current doesn't seem all that great." 

His words, although shocking, weren't too surprising. I didn't quite understand what he meant by him being 'weak' or what he meant by being bonded, but judging based on what he'd said up until this point, I wasn't holding off on him explaining any further. 

I also wanted to get down to the need-to-know information before anyone walked in to see me talking to myself. Being discharged from one place just to end up in a different ward, was not any more appealing than it was 10 minutes ago. 

"Well, for starters, you ungrateful prick, you're alive, so you're welcome for that. Secondly, my status and power before bonding with you were unfathomable to a brain like yours. And now since you and I share everything, you get my powers." 

"Really? So can I shoot out fire from my mouth? Or maybe you have a summonable pitchfork? Or, or maybe could you shoot water out of your hands?" 

If this is what chosen felt like once they formed their first contract, I fully understood why they acted the way they did. I felt like a kid on Christmas after opening up the gigantic monster truck toy. But once again, Hadeon had to suck up all the joy in the room.

"You're just extra with all your emotions, aren't you? First, you curl up into a ball at the drop of a hat, and now you jump with joy like a little kid at the slight mention of receiving an ability." 

"Uncalled for. Don't forget, I'm in charge of this body now. Wouldn't kill you to treat me nicer." 

I retorted, believing that the information presented to me would act as a form of leverage against Hadeon. 

"And you don't forget, I get to choose whether you get my powers or not. And before you ask, because I know you will. Just because we aren't of the same race, I can still pass my abilities to you. There's no compatibility issues like with humans." 

I promptly piped down. 

"Much better. Anyways, if we were to put beasts into tiers, and not the tiers that humans came up with, you would be outside of the scale. So far down, that a newborn could kill you by thinking. That means two things." 

Yeah that you're a conceited idiot.

My body spasmed once again.

"You interrupt my lecture one more time and you can live the rest of your life as it was before. You being weak means I can't give you all my power and abilities at once, or you'd explode just from experiencing a fraction of it. It also means that you encounter the wrong people, and you and I get to enjoy the afterlife together. So we need to get you stronger, and I mean much stronger.

The only problem is, I can't train you how I'd train someone normally. The resources you have available just aren't the same." 

The question of what he meant by 'the wrong people' did occur to me, but I was growing more and more tired of being shocked by my own body. 

It seemed like ages before Hadeon spoke up again. His eyes lit up instantly as he turned to me and placed his hand over my eyes. Instinctively my body tried to pull away, but I was stuck in place. 

After a few moments, the hand, alongside Hadeon, had disappeared. And in the next moment, a small screen popped up in front of me. It read: 

<Hadeons Idiot Training Academy> 

"Uh, Hadeon, just what exactly is this supposed to be?"

 I said while swiping my hand over the screen. Seeing as it was fully permeable meant that it wasn't actually in front of me, which in turn meant that it was once again one of Hadeons weird little mysteries. 

'While you were asleep I went through your memories, and while sifting through them I saw that you enjoyed playing something called *Slay the dragon to save the princess!* Now I won't waste time on saying anything further about that, but as a grown man that is kind of embarrassing. 

Anyways, in the game something that struck my interest was the little system window that displayed all your stats and abilities. So I thought, why not do the same thing? So what you see in front of you is your very own system.' 

… 

'WHAT?!'