the figure's eyes was sunken, coarse and old, with wrinkles that webbed along charred flesh.
"Dear God, this thing is evil," Mural declared in his head.
The whispers from the orb finally pieced together in a vibrating mutter that shivered down Mural's spine. It's words came as an impression rather than a voice.
"Run," the blue orb pleaded, "Please run. He is a great deceiver."
Time seemed to speed up as this demon, yes a demon, began to speak.
"How do you plan to do this?" The demon asked.
"Allow her to live and I'll do what you ask. You're obviously here for me."
"What makes you think that? What makes you think I can do these outlandish things you ask?"
"I do not know what you are, but the sphere does, and it speaks to me. You come at this terrible time with such theatrics that you must have some influence. This is no coincidence."
"Well, at least you are right about the orb, it does tend to babble," the demon hoarsely chuckled.
Everything noble within Mural seemed to compile on his lips without any thought to himself. Mural began to feel human again.
"I will agree. Deal." The dark demon spoke so quickly that Mural got his second hint of a mistake. "Kneel," it ordered. Its blood red eyes ached, glaring deeply into Mural's eyes, "Time is of the essence."
Mural lowered his massive frame to his knees as the blue orb still quivered on the palm of the dark hand before him. Clouds of baleful cries poured from the sphere and pilfered Mural's psyche telling him that he was making a grave mistake, but his love for Veronica still clung and itched to exist.
The blue sphere shuttered so quickly that it appeared elliptical. Its screams were so loud in Mural's mind, he expected the whole city far behind him to wake. The shrieks gored his brain until the hand closed its fingers into a fist to contain the orb. The demon's forefinger and thumb came down and pinched Mural's nose shut. Blue light pierced out through the small gaps between the demon's fingers and shot off in heavy filaments, while the other hand waved with a curl of the fingers at Mural's gaping mouth, egging something out.
Subtle movements stirred deep within Mural, slowly turning into sluggish jerks, as something reluctantly woke inside him. With another beckon from the demon, this thing within Mural climbed from his chest, clenching sharply up his throat. It scrambled, one hold after another in ascent, until it finally crept from behind his tongue and leapt out of his mouth. Left dumbfounded, he watched a frail glob of light, a darker blue than the orb, shoot from his mouth to the open hand of the cloaked figure.
The demon balled up the object into its fist and placed it atop Veronica's mouth. Mural's liberated dark blue bubble sat wedged between her lips with the demon's fingertip nestled in the cleft above her upper lip. The blue entity wiggled in the divot between her violet lips until the stranger pressed its finger down. Its finger seared into her skin and burned down to the front of her teeth. Mural's dark blue ball sucked down into Veronica in a sick slurp.
Mural sat and watched, light-headed and dazed, as slivers of life gathered, causing shakes in her fingers and twitches in her legs. The demon's finger was pressed firmly on her lips when her body awakened as if she burst free from submersion. Veronica's eyes fluttered and color returned to her face, clinging loosely to her cheeks like it knew full well it wasn't supposed to be there.
Fastened to the ground with fatigue, Mural was lost in a feeling of incompleteness that spread throughout his body, and became more and more sorrowful of the cavernous space within him that used to harbor his soul. The demon removed its finger from her mouth and she slowly leaned up. A notch that was once her cleft, previously extending from the bottom of her nose to her upper lip, reached further down to her chin. Her lips were sealed shut. Veronica tried to speak, but only vague sounds sputtered out
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