Pael’s soul was rejected, and left behind, but Shokin’s essence was drawn to its other half, with a violent intensity. Soon after it had passed the barrier, the molten crystal corroded the symbols away completely. The power of the Seal was no more. The once smooth and polished face of it was left nothing, but a pocked, and indistinguishable ruin.
Pael’s soul was not demon kind, nor was it substantial enough to even be considered evil anymore. In the world of demons, souls, and spirit essences, what was left of Pael would be considered more or less a gnat, or a pest. It tried to enter into the young man crouched against the pile of stones, but could not. It started at the lazing dragon, but the great predator’s heat warned it away. As the hissing puddle of liquefied stone finally began to cool, Pael’s pesky spirit darted out of the dragon’s lair, and went searching for something familiar.
Gerard Skyler scratched at the sharp, bony protrusion that was growing out of his elbow. His other elbow had stopped itching a while ago. The dragon’s yolk he had drunk to replenish his bloodless body had changed him, changed him from the marrow of his reforming bones, out to his thick plated, slime covered skin.
The darkness of the Nethers was so potent, that he couldn’t see himself though. It was a blackness that the eyes could never adjust to, but Gerard didn’t need, or care to see what was happening to him. He was on a stairway that spiraled down – forever down, and getting to the bottom had become his passion. He drifted in, and out of consciousness, sometimes waking in mid step, sometimes curled in a shivering ball on a landing that bore no door. He always woke in that blackness, and when he did, he would start plodding downward again, as if his destiny lay at the bottom of the shaft.
Shaella spoke to him sometimes. Her soft voice soothed the pain of his twisting bones, and hardening flesh. When she was in his head, the part of Shokin that Pael had left behind would stop its endless screaming and babbling to listen. His boiling insides would cool, and his dizzy confusion seemed to organize itself into a relatively pleasant train of thought. When Shaella was with him, Gerard Skyler found a way through the swirling chaotic transformation of his mind and body. It was the only time that he wasn’t hungry, afraid, and lusting manically to reach the bottom of the shaft.
When the other half of Shokin slammed into Gerard’s elongated skull, his head filled with visions of chaotic destruction, of undead armies, and falling castles. Had the yolk he had eaten not hardened his mind and body so well, he might have died on the spot, from pure shock. As it was, he relished the distraction from the emptiness around him. He somehow isolated the two halves of Shokin in his brain, and he observed them curiously, as they carried on a psychotic single-voiced argument, that was as entertaining as it was disturbing.
The two halves of the once mighty demon eventually began trying to rejoin, trying to become one again, but Gerard wouldn’t let them. He would permit them to confer and conspire, but he would never let them combine back into one.
Instinctually, he knew that if he did, he would lose any part of him that was still his. Somewhere in his mind, he knew he was still Gerard Skyler. He might be covered in spikes, hard bony platelets, and greasy slick skin. He might have nearly tripled his body mass, and formed into some sort of monster, but he was still somewhat Gerard. His brain told him that even though he was trapped on the seemingly endless stairway, that he would find the power to lead legions once he reached the bottom.
The old crone had told him so. Sometimes, he heard her old cackling voice, cutting over the demon’s chatter, to remind him. He began to leech bits, and nuggets of knowledge, and power, from the two halves of the demon, and use them to his advantage. Already, he knew that there were other ways out of this place. Part of Shokin had seen them described through Pael’s eyes, in the texts the fool wizard had kept in his tower. It was Shaella’s tower now, and since he could talk to her sometimes, ideas were already forming.
Gerard nearly stumbled, and fell, as the stairway abruptly ended on a smooth hard surface. The floor was cool on his clawed feet, and all around him, he felt the presence of dark things. Some were alive and hungry, some were merely spirits, and some were just evil intentions. Everything else was prey.
As he stood there, on the strange level plain, he felt them cringe away from him, and withdraw. They were afraid of him, of what he had become. He knew that they had no reason to fear him. He was barely alive, so very weak, and hungry. He was glad they were cautious, because he needed to rest. As he settled, he felt something out there, in the empty space, something darker, and more intense than the other things. This form didn’t know fear. It was a hunter searching for prey, but it moved away, to chase after something else, and left Gerard to his rest.