Chapter Text
Alastor grinned widely as he dodged yet another jabbing swipe of the Exorcist’s spear.
She had him cornered in an alley. He had no where to go unless he could manage to escape through his shadows.
He could tell she was frustrated the more he fought back, going impressively toe-to-toe with her.
With a swipe of a tentacle, he managed to knock the Exorcist into one of the parallel buildings. The bricks crumbled around her, but she was far from dead. Such an attack couldn’t kill her. He wasn’t dumb enough to think it would.
The Exorcist sat up from the rubble, looking enraged. Half of her mask was torn away to reveal an eye and a shock of her short, white hair.
“Well, it’s been fun, my dear. But I really must be going,” Alastor said, casually brushing dirt from his shoulder.
He summoned his shadows to portal himself away, but just as he was about to escape, the Exorcist burst out of the rubble with an angry shout. He felt a hard thud against his body that nearly knocked him over, swiftly followed by an unpleasant crack and tugging from within.
His eyes widened in shock.
Blood spilled onto the ground.
Alastor looked down to see the sharp end of the Exorcist’s spear sticking out of him, extending from his body by almost two feet.
He brought a hand up to touch it – in a stupor of disbelief – when it was harshly yanked back out the way it had gone in. Blood rose in his throat and spilled past his lips.
Sound rushed back to his ears, bringing him back to the grim reality at hand.
Not allowing himself another second of falter, he sent a flurry of tentacles toward the Exorcist, adrenaline allowing him to ignore the pain. For now.
The Exorcist grunted as she tried to fight him off, but was ultimately brought down. She was pinned to the concrete, the black tendrils slithering tightly around her wrists, ankles, and neck. She struggled against them, but that only caused them to restrain her even tighter.
Alastor gripped his staff harder, ready to tear this foul woman apart to the best of his ability.
If he was going to die, he wasn’t going down easy. And definitely not without dealing her significant pain and damage first.
The Exorcist glared up at him as the tentacles continued slithering over her skin, wrapping around her body over and over again like tight vines.
The demon glowered down at her as well, sinister smile drawn up almost to his ears to reveal his bloodied razor sharp teeth. His red eyes were aglow with malicious intent, radio dials spinning in place of pupils.
“You can’t win,” she said, strained as the tentacles wrapped tighter around her neck. “You’re just making this harder on yourself!”
Alastor continued striding toward her, not even bothering to swallow down the blood still rising from his gut. He allowed it to ooze past his teeth and lips and drip thickly down his chin. His stab wound was also bleeding freely, leaving a concerning trail on the ground in his wake.
“Just accept your fate, demon! ” the Exorcist shouted.
Alastor froze, coming back to himself and realizing what he was doing.
No. This was not his fate. It couldn’t be.
The faces of his husband and daughter flashed through his mind.
He couldn’t leave them. He wouldn’t. He refused to die here.
Alastor’s lip curled and he retracted his tentacles.
The Exorcist coughed as the tight grip on her throat ceased. She looked up at the demon in shock.
Had he just...let her go?
Why?
“Don’t take me for a merciful man,” he said, voice sounding more fatigued, yet still confident. “I merely have a family to return to. You...simply aren’t important.”
He said it with such cockiness and contempt. He was looking down at her like she was the dirty sinner.
Alastor channeled as much power as he could despite the deep, shimmering wound weakening him more and more with each passing second. The dark shadows formed underneath him, ready to pull him in and transport him back to the palace.
The inky blackness was up past his ankles - the shadows moving far more sluggish than was normal – when the Exorcist extended her wings and gave an angry shout, flying at him with her spear raised.
Despite the blood loss and shimmering infection quickly taking effect on his body, Alastor’s senses remained keen enough to dodge.
While he managed to avoid getting skewered through the brain, the attack did still manage to hit its primary target.
Alastor screeched as the weapon stabbed him directly into his right eye before dragging deeply down across his face, taking with it the damaged optic.
Alastor knew immediately that his eye had been torn from its socket, effectively cutting his vision in half.
Alastor fell to his knees within his shadows, holding his face in his hands as the pain began to overwhelm him. The shadows were still swirling, yet halted from the new blow of the Exorcist’s weapon.
She stood in front of him, staring down with no mercy or remorse in her eyes.
“Enough. This is over," she stated darkly.
Alastor removed his hands from his face to reveal the gory mess. Blood poured freely down from the deep slice across it as well as the empty socket.
Yet, he smiled manically up at her despite it all.
His shadows were awakening once more, slithering over his legs and up his sides.
“You’re right. That is enough. But this is not over,” he growled menacingly before his shadows swallowed him up.
“No!” the Exorcist cried angrily, stabbing her spear down in the space the demon once was.
“Vaggie! What happened?” another Exorcist asked in concern, landing behind her.
Alastor’s ears were ringing as his shadows essentially coughed him up at the palace.
Pain was overcoming his senses now that the adrenaline had faded away along with the battle at hand.
Yet, through it all, he could hear familiar voices.
“Dad?!”
“Alastor!”
He tried to respond, but he found that he couldn’t even move his lips.
Was he still smiling?
He honestly wasn’t sure.
If he were in any normal state of mind, he would loathe for Charlie to see him like this, but the pulsating burning of the divine wounds overpowered any rational thought.
Blood was continuing to rise in his throat, making it difficult to breathe.
He could hardly see past the gore that was his face.
Yet, through it all – Charlie holding his hand and his husband working desperately to keep him from dying his second death – the image of that Exorcist glaring down at him remained haunting his mind.
“Stay with me, Al! Stay with me!”
Alastor could barely comprehend his husband’s voice. It sounded like he was deep in a well, and his family was calling down to him.
"Please, Al! Please! D-"
"Dad, stay awake! St-"
His world faded to black.
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