Darkness swallowed the light here – whole. Not a single lumen penetrated in the place. Heat rose from the stone under Midnight’s knees and hands, scalding her skin even through the ridiculous suit they’d dressed her in. She didn’t feel the pain. Rising in muggy oppressive waves, the humidity of it would have stolen the breath of lesser beings. She didn’t need the air.

The creature – the demon the handlers named Midnight – shifted. The soft clink of chains going taught rose above the miserable moans and wails of helplessness and pain from some other chamber in this hell.

A scream, high and shrill, punctuated the thick atmosphere, riding out for a long time before dying away. The sound elicited no response from the captive.

Midnight possessed the form of a young woman, small, petite, and pale. Dark hair wreathed the, at once, youthful and sunken face. The body she’d been forced into was clad in glossy black leather, straps holding the flesh together, restraining her from breaking free of this lesser form.

She pulled at her chains once more, thick across her body, weighting her down and keeping her from all but minute motion. Time without counting had passed since she had last been released. Held to the floor as she was in that kneeling and curled-up position, she should have been numb or in pain. But she didn’t feel that sort of ache anymore.

Twisting her wrists in the bands forged directly over her forearms, she watched the play of the heavy links holding her immobile; hands low to the floor.

With rheumy eyes, she blinked and refocused on the heavy hook forced through her right thigh, point up, ensuring that even if there were slack, the iron would not fall out. Viscera the color of a long neglected infection ran from the entry and exit wounds, down the black leather, to join a growing pool of it on the floor. Ragged, clumsy stitches held the pale, nearly blue flesh there together with coarse thread.

They had stopped her as she had tried to dig the object out of her thigh. Stopped her – reinserted it, sewn the wound shut, and then bound it with cursed wrapping. For that night, merely one cycle of the world around that baleful light of a sun ago, she had been unable to touch it again. By the time the binding forced her to return, it was too late to try again.

Gnashing her pointed teeth, her heavy black brows lowered over her eyes.

They feared her.

Her handlers feared her.

As they should.

Only their arcana held her in check. And she was slowly overcoming even those fragments of magical items used in her binding.

She could feel it. The slight vibration against her femur marked the fragment’s location. The hook contacted it on occasion, sending shocks through her body and reinforcing the binding on her immortal soul.

Midnight snarled silently.

This was her punishment? To be shackled – turned into a guard dog – a toy for the whims of the demon lord of this realm? Her punishment was to be sent in to the human realm and reap their lives at the urge of that petty creature?

A scoff left her blue lips.

Vaguely she could remember having a real purpose, even when she couldn’t now tell herself what it had been. Grander, she was certain, than a common demon sent to terrorize lesser creatures. A wisp of a memory told her she was once worshipped.

That time of year was coming again – the night where creatures such as her could slip through the veil between this world and the human world with ease. All Hallow’s Eve – Halloween.

Those dead, blue-tinged eyes slid shut, as she swore to herself she would be free of this place. Each errand gave her one more opportunity to weaken the invisible shackles – to be rid of the shrapnel that kept her powers in check.

Flexing her left calf, Midnight felt the pull of muscles against scar tissue, the grind of the metal against bone.

Two more…

Just two more bits of arcana and she would show these petty demons the true reason the thought of her sent chills up their bony backs.

Her gaze focused as a creature materialized inside the cavern – her tomb had no walls or windows. Much like their lord, the creature looked much like a malformed bird. Wicked beak and tusks gnashed together twice as three others materialized behind it. By the bright blue of the cheeks, Midnight was certain she was looking at the necromancer who year to year ensured her compliance to Demios’ wishes – her binding to this rotting body. The ones in behind had a bare blush of sky blue under their predatory eyes.

The undersized wings, sprouting from the necro’s back, flexed to their full expanse three times in quick motion and then pulled tightly once more across his leathery brown back. She’d seen this dance too many times, knowing this was the beginnings of the ceremony to reinforce the spells that kept her bound to this form, malleable to the will of this realm’s lord. Heavy horns – not quite as grand as Demios’s – weaved in a slow pattern through the air as he swung his head, strange mutterings beginning to issue from his mouth.

Midnight clenched her jaw, feeling the demon’s words binding her soul tighter once again. Her muscles relaxed, and she had to plant her long, bone-clawed hands flat across the heated ground in front of her to keep from being choked by the chain at the back of her neck. Grogginess overcame her consciousness, even when part of her fought against the feeling. She could not go through this one more cycle. She could not abide being another’s plaything.

Yet for all her inner struggle, Midnight felt this vessel give over its will to the incantation of the necro.

Through faded vision she watched the necro’s expression turn to one of sadistic humor. Satisfied she was under his thrall, he and his contingent stalked closer to her. With a wave of his hand, the demon made the chains weighting her down disintegrate. Her body lurched a little with the lightness, and at the same time something in her snapped. Her vision clarified and her body came back under her control once again. Her powers were just stronger than the remaining arcana, it seemed. Though she was surprised by the shift in her senses, these were things she did not let her visitors see. The most she did was tense her bony claws against the heated rock beneath, and the slight scritch of the motion reached her ears.

If Demios’ priest heard it, he made no sign, still closing the gap between her and them. Midnight let him, knowing this ceremony intimately after so long in servitude. He had to touch her forehead, which was her permission to rise from the binding position in this tomb.

His beaked face opened, ready to speak the words she had heard too many times in the past, even as one clawed finger rose to touch her cold, dead flesh. She didn’t let him make contact. The action came without thought – without understanding of what she was doing. Something that had been locked away in her tore free and she welcomed it. Behind him rose gouts of pressurized steam, surrounding his enforcers and cooking their flesh even when used to the punishing temperatures. Midnight’s eyes remained locked on the lead handler as he spun to watch his compatriots bubble and melt. It was obvious, when he faced her again, that he didn’t associate the event with the prisoner. That was, he didn’t until he looked into her eyes and watched her blue lips curl into a dreaded smile.

Midnight’s muscles answered her swiftly, even after so long forced into that cramped and constricting position. She rose to her full height in this form, not much more than about 68 inches. She leapt across the small space, beheading the creature in one swing. The force of the blow sent his still mouthing head across the expanse of her cell, to bounce off the wall before settling in a blood-spattered mess on the floor.

Not pausing to watch her handiwork, Midnight was already working at the half rotten flesh of her thigh, feeling the pulse of the arcana. Like all magic items, it could sense its own danger and was trying to get help. Flesh shredded quickly, and the ooze from the hook previously laced there spilled out threefold. It was mere seconds before she had the jagged shard out, bringing her own brand of power to bear in its destruction. The magic flared stronger this time, as a flame finally catching a breeze, and decimated the shard. The dust had barely crumbled off her pale palms before she began digging for the second one in her opposite calf.

Midnight crushed that one just as swiftly as the first, and then glanced about the room. She could feel it – her power – welling up seemingly from the very floor under her feet. Her body began to tremble as it filled her – and with the return of her full power came the return of her memories. Her rage mounted as she came to understand the true indignity forced upon her all these years.

The quaking in her flesh intensified, and she lifted her eyes as Demios himself graced her prison with his presence. He seemed to have brought every minion of his realm in order to subdue her. Midnight wasn’t sure just how he’d found out so quickly that his priest was dead, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Every nerve in her frame was alive with power, and she could feel the skin begin to stretch, her frame to grow – and in turn the meager trappings of the dead mortal they had contained her soul in ripped asunder as she began her transformation to her true form.

Demios moved to stop her, and she bellowed – a gout of wind filling the space around them. Before Demios could cross a quarter of the distance, the winds rose to gale force, pushing him and his minions back.

*You think to stop ME?* She sent, unable to speak her rage, her tongue removed by her own hand very early on in this imprisonment. But the demons understood her none-the-less.

Demios found a way to resist the force of nature she had pinned them to the far wall with. He staggered forward, calling his own brand of power forward. The creature laughed in the face of his feeble magic.

*Whelp! I am the depths of the primordial sea…I am the tempest! I am CHAOS incarnate! What power you had over me is no longer! I am the master of my own fate now!*

The creature that had been in human form, swelled and curled over, grand wings ripping free of the leathers stretched taut across her back. Black hair faded to the dead blue of her lips, lengthening and swirling about a transforming skull like a gorgon’s. Jaw and face stretched, dead flesh peeling back until it was merely tatters against a draconic form. This flesh was not meant to reflect her true appearance, but she forced it to her will; made it do her bidding. She could feel the skin tear much like the clothes had, exposing rotted muscle and growing bone.

The boots at her feet split out from the toes accommodating claws and extra joints. Her hands grew longer, two digits absorbing into their sisters. The bony claws remained, first joint fused to better work at butchering others.

A long tail, spiked along the spine and fanning into a mer’s fin at the end lashed behind her, reflecting her growing rage at the situation. The draconic creature bellowed and screamed at her opposition, shaking loose rocks from above. Water spouts sprung to life all around her and the tatters of her wings swept them towards the remaining demons.

Demios threw his protection around his minions, thwarting the destructive forces the creature had unleashed, and then, ordered them after her.

While they tried, they failed utterly at subduing the ancient being.

*Damn you, Marduk.* She swore in the demons’ heads. *Too long have I been absent from this place…they have forgotten me, because of you.*

Another wave of demons swarmed over her, stabbing at her, cutting flesh already long since dead – she felt none of it. She swept them away from her just as easily as a horse swats flies.

*How DARE you! I birthed your entire wretched race! I am the reason for your being! I am your Mother – and you would trap me like a common ghost, inter me in a body only to wreak havoc on creatures much beneath my station?*

She stormed about the small space, crushing creatures under her heavy feet, mincing their bodies with claws the length of swords, and biting chunks from their flesh with jagged, dagger teeth.

Curling her lithe new body, she turned to face the Lord of the realm. Demios backed towards the far wall, and she could feel the pull of his magics as he tried to escape her. Barreling forward, and countering his spell, the creature slammed into his thick body with one shoulder and then allowed him to slump to the floor.

Before he could regain his wits, she had him pinned, both hands and a foot keeping him immobile. She leaned into his face as his yellow eyes blinked her into focus. Drool leaked from her lipless mouth onto his colorful face.

*You know me demon. Your eyes say you do. You were the one to find me in the ether.*

“No.”

*You were the one to tease my soul out of oblivion and trap it here on this plane.*

The demon shook his head, his trapped wings trying feebly to flap free.

*Marduk, my own son, slew me – he created this ball of mud from one half of my body and dotted the stars into the sky with the other. You’ve heard of me, Demios. You know me.*

“No.”

*Say my name – give honor to your mother, demon.*

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Midnight.”

*That’s not it…* Digging her claws into his gut she said again, *Say my name.*

Defiance reflected in Demios eyes. But she saw concession coming from a mile off.

*Say it. You know my name. SAY IT!*

“Tiamat!” he spit.

She reared back, smiling through a dragon’s jaws. When she came down again she shredded his body into little pieces. *Good boy.*

The Demon Goddess Tiamat surveyed her handy-work, elation welling at the death all around her. Dead blue-white eyes searched the seamless rocks for long moments. Exerting just a little of her power, she found a weak point and exploited it. Steam and pressurized water from the pockets around this hell aiding her effort in splitting rock asunder.

More of Demios minions awaited on the other side of the wall as it cracked and crumbled. Fear read in every line of their faces, and they were quick to note their lord was dead, and just as quick thereafter to throw down their arms. They fell to their knees, begging her mercy, promising her eternal servitude if she would only spare their lives.

Their pleading went unheeded, and she tore through their company.

*One hell cannot satiate me!* She bellowed into the melee, laying the minor demons low. *The new God, Marduk, tried to end me – he and his followers will soon find out that I am eternal. Chaos cannot be contained!!*

A/N: Finally, after two years, I managed to get the sequel to Midnight into my computer!! SAWEET! Not quite as twisted as the first installment I don't think, however, I really like the way it came out - how Midnight ended up being much grander than the role they forced her to...

Hope you like it and Happy Halloween!