Light in the Darkness

Before he stepped through the portal, he expected the experience to be void of any stimuli, but it was not like that at all. It felt weird and not really pleasant. It seems that his body reacted to the fact that he crossed such a huge distance in such a short amount of time, even though it seemed like he just went from one room to another. 

As he came out of the portal, he was met with complete darkness, which was what the portal showed before he went through anyway, so he wasn't surprised. What surprised him was the ground he was walking on. It was not solid, and it felt like sand.

He could hear the portal close behind him. He was cut off. Cut off from his master. Cut off from his home. Cut off from safety. He was completely alone in the darkness of a place miles and miles away from anybody who could offer him any help.

He couldn't see anything, but he could still feel. Except for the sandlike ground he stood on, he could feel the unpleasant cold. It couldn't hurt him, for both angels and demons are highly resistant to heat and cold, but he still felt it, and it seemed like the cold itself was somehow alive, trying its hardest to chill him to the bone. If he were not an immortal being, it would undoubtedly make him shiver.

This was not the only thing that he felt. He could feel them. The demons. They were close, and there were many of them. He didn't know if they had yet noticed his presence or whether they were already watching him, but he did know that they were near.

The darkness was the home of demons. They could see in the dark as clearly as one sees during the day or with the help of a light. He couldn't see anything, and he was currently easy prey for the demons.

Though it meant giving away his position to the enemy, it didn't make any sense to stumble in the dark, so he decided to summon his lighsword. He held out his hand, closed his eyes, and focused. In a few seconds, light appeared, driving away the darkness that surrounded him. When he opened his eyes, there it was in his hand. His lightsword. The signature weapon of the angelic warriors. A sword made out of pure holy light. A perfect weapon to fight the forces of darkness.

Now that he could see what was in his immediate vicinity, he noticed that he wasn't walking on the sand at all. It was ash. Interesting. He was curious about what the outpost would like for a reason, and it was telling him quite a lot regarding what he could expect.

Every domain ruled by the hellish forces belongs to a certain demon. There is a whole hierarchy of them, from the lowest and most worthless servants who can't even own any land up to demon lords that command huge armies. Regardless of who it belongs to, every territory has a distinct visual appearance from the others based on its master's esthetical preference and, most importantly, power. Because all of this didn't exist in the physical world that mortals inhabited, what was here depended only on the power of the one who willed it to existence in this spiritual world. This meant that every piece of this spiritual world owned by angels and demons didn't at all need to mimic the real world that it neigboured. The spiritual world was a completely different layer of existence, tied to the physical world only by the presence of spirit and those who possessed it. For the most part, this meant that wherever there are human beings, there is also a spiritual world for which the angelic and demonic forces battle.

If he wasn't missing a bigger picture, he was in the middle of nowhere, or, to be precise, in the middle of a field of ash. There were no structures around him (or he just didn't see them yet), just a bunch of bigger and smaller rocks scattered around, like a meteor shower hit the field.

This basically meant that this outpost probably wasn't ruled by a terribly powerful demon, for he would surely boast of his power by making some kind of a big and tall structure that would be guarded by his soldiers. Either that, or this was a trap.

Well, if this was a trap, he fell into it as soon as he walked in here, so there was no use in worrying about it. Instead, he did the only thing that he could. He began slowly walking forward, trying to discover the location of his enemies while trying his best to be on guard for an ambush.

Since he couldn't see all that much to begin with, he focused on listening, which made him realize that this place was awfully quiet, which he hadn't noticed until now since he was focused on other things. The only thing he could hear were his own footsteps.

He didn't like this. Even if he found the demons, he couldn't fight them if he could barely see them. At least not efficiently, and fighting inefficiently was the same as accepting defeat before it even came. No... He wasn't going to embarrass himself. He will not be the one who is left lying dead on the ground today!

He raised his lightsword towards the sky, and from the lightsword came out a flash of light, which flew up, staying up above and lighting up the whole field he was walking through like some sort of a very bright signal flare.

"Ahhh... There you are..." he said, noticing them.

They were indeed watching him the whole time. Dozens of them were forming a big circle around him, sitting or standing on rocks that were out of the reach of his light a mere seconds ago. They weren't very happy with being discovered by his light, and they covered their eyes and growled at him. 

He quickly took a fighting stance. His right foot was in front, and his left one was at the back. He held the sword with both hands, just above the ground, to ready himself for any kind of strike. Now that he saw his enemies, there was no fear in him. Only complete determination.

Furious that their enemy dared to come here and bring holy light with him to their lair of darkness, the demons rushed at him like a pack of rabid dogs, and so began the first fight of his life.