Title: Fragments

Series: Demon Diary

By: RubyD

"Don't cry, Chris," she whispered, and looked up at him with her own wet eyes.

There was noise outside of their home, but he couldn't hear any of it. There was no sound and no sight except of his mother's shallow gasps and the blood pooling under her long, dark hair.

His mother believed in the God Rased and taught him that Rased was kind, loving, and would be there to protect his believers. God must be a lot like his mother, Chris had decided as most children do at one point in their lives. She cared for him, held him, was the one who laughed and danced with him. She also scolded him when he was unreasonable and even boxed his ears on occasion. However she would still, somehow, be there to put him to bed every night no matter what he did. He wanted to believe in him, because Chris believed in her.

Please God, please... he started, but didn't know how to finish. Because in the end it was really someone else he prayed to, but he already knew she could not answer him.

Still, somehow, there was an answer.

Many times that day Chris thought he saw long, dark shadows cross the doorway of his home, but they always managed to move on just before reaching him. Did they not see him, standing there? He couldn't call up the will to quake or even try to hide. He just wanted it over with. Were they playing with him? Would they come back to finish him off, too?

Demons, he thought, distantly. The word was echoed by someone far from there, as a stuttered scream.

Like his mother before him, Chris would not move from his spot for days.

There was heat outside, fire, and he could hear the cries of countless people as their lives fled. It could have been a neighbor or a friend from the market, but their voices were warped with terror, and anger, and what emotions he'd never imagined he could hear balled into one last wail.

Chris had been relieved when the screams outside stopped. He thought it couldn't get worse - but if fate had been listening they took it as a challenge. There would be no rescue... he would have to wait for it.

Her eyes were opened. He couldn't even pretend she was sleeping.

Even in the feverish heat of the summer, he wasn't thirsty. He felt no hunger and no need to sleep. The town around him was silent now and had been for longer than he could count. The bodies outside expanded then shrunk, dried, and burned under the high sun. He walked through what was left of his home, and regretted it.

Chris wouldn't cry. She had told him not to. He gulped down the thickness in his throat and walked on.

He would not get very far, however. The bridges had been crushed and the steep walls of the valley were more than a boy like him could climb. He had no where to go except back.

It wasn't completely silent, he realized later. There were black birds, whose calls sounded angry to his ears. The buzzing of flies as well. Ants scattered over the ground, busy, unaware. He watched and listened to it all and found it almost a comfort to know not everything had ended, yet.

Chris was in a daze. Perhaps he was dreaming? There were men in the valley riding through with horses. They collected the bodies of his town for a massive funeral pyre - and the smoke could be seen for miles.

He approached them but his feet moved in slow, practiced steps. His heart was a different matter - fast, racing. Was he excited? Relieved? He could no longer tell and had forgotten how his face should move. Everything felt heavy. All at once, he was tired... but he had to make it.

Fragments of a gem held together by the strength of their will - that was the symbol of Rased. These men that turned to him, clerics, wore it. They thought he might be a ghost. An older man knelt and, after a moment of what was either horror or awe, hugged Chris.

"I will take him with me," said Hejem, the High Cleric of Rased. "I will raise him."

The end.