Crimson Rein
For the first time in a long time, you had slept in. As the last surviving member of the Rodoken Monk Order, you had ventured out into the modern world, bumped into what was surely the most beautiful woman in all the worlds. As enchanted as you were, she was equally so by your reserved manner, your forearms of tattooed incantations, and your bald head—the exact opposite of her bountiful head of red curls, her light skin, and her personality that swelled to fill the room.
She had laughed the night away in your company, finally accompanying you back to your order's bastion. Her curiosity was boundless, her questions endless. While you didn't go into ritual details, the arrangement your order had made with the arch angels, or why there was a large open pit that descended down through a keep's roof, you did tell her that your safeguarding duty was very important to everyone's safety.
She had kissed you on the cheek then. Had even called you a sweet hero. Then, the two of you had lay down atop the keep's tower and fell asleep admiring the stars. Ursula—that was her name. And as she slept alongside you, you slept deeper and more peacefully than ever before. The dreams hadn’t even visited you for the first time in as long as you can remember. The dreams of failing. The dreams of someone performing the rite and unlocking the pit. The same pit that was a locked door into hell. The same door that could just as easily become a door out of hell.
You finally awoke to the sound of sobs. Ursula was sobbing. An intruder clutched her hair and pulled her head back while holding a knife to her throat. In harsh, hushed tones, he bayed her be quiet as he and three of his compatriots edged her closer to the pit.
You lunged, the inked script along your arms turning blue as you channeled their words of power.
The thug leader must have known the rite. The key that opened hell's door. The fresh life blood that the pit's floor demanded as payment. The leader must have known because as soon as they reached the pit, he dragged a scarlet ribbon around her throat and shoved her in.
You loosed daggers tucked along the lines of your ribs. They sailed ahead of you, two of the thugs turning your way but never glimpsing your attack as the blades slammed home, their bodies rebounding as if riddled by a hail of gunfire.
Heaven, your aid! you thought, calling your allies for support.
The third member was oriented on you and swung a sword—a short sword, the sword of a rogue. The leader stood behind the rogue and reached to draw an axe sheathed along his back.
As the sword fell, you sliced up with your reversed-grip dagger, severing the inside of his forearm before plunging your blade back down into his collar bone.
As his sword rolled free of his hand, you snatched it from the air, shoving him back and pivoting, spinning past him to lunge, the short sword burying into the throat of a wide-eyed leader.
"Activate!" you commanded, the blue of your arms flaring as you shoulder checked the leader and sent the both of you over into the pit.
Your gravity altered, the pit's interior wall becoming your floor no matter where you stood. You sprinted down the pit's wall as the bandit leader fell, his body racing you to the bottom, but losing as a stream of his blood arced away from his wound and tethered to the blade in your hand.
You needed a new spell if you were to make it in time. You raced around to lap the pit, then repeatedly bound back and fourth until the ribbon of blood traced a pentagram of falling blood, an emblem that spaned the entire space.
"Activate."
The force rocketed you down the corridor as if you had departed a cannon. Soon, your tattoos glowed anew, their light swelling out where Ursula's limp body fell ahead of you. You kicked off the wall and slammed into her, the two of you turning about as you whispered, "Activate."
Ursula's wound closed as you oriented to alight on a stone, rune-covered floor. You crafled her in your arms while hrr head lulled into your shoulder. She did not stir, and you did not look away, her shed blood soon drifting down around the two of you as the scarlet rose pedals you had changed it into.
A pentagram of blood clapped down around you like a burst of rain. Then, the bandit leader struck with a wet splat, the floors runes flickering to life like kindled embers.
Splat-spa-splat! The other three bandits caught up with their leader.
The rite to open hell's door damned the soul of the one slain to open it. While you had saved Ursula from that fate, you had no power over death.
"One, two, three... four?" someone counted behind you. You didn't turn back to meet his gaze, but the glowing runes cast a monstrous, horned-shadow on the wall before you. "The Rodoken Order is as fearsome as ever," said the Devil. "Alone as you are."
"Leave," you said without looking back.
The Devil looked about. He could see it now, your last spell, the four sacrifices against the pentagram that landed ahead of them. The symbol had opened the door, a door that you had immediately turned into a bridge, a bridge that required four sacrifices against a pentagram in order to bind all of hell's power to yourself, a bridge that could only ever close if you willingly relinquishing the tether.
"Well played, warden," said the Devil. "I sense that there's a deal to be made."
"I'll say it but once more," you said, your tattoos glowing red, soon washing the Devil's shadow from the wall before you. "Only I won't use the word."
"Very well," he replied. He snapped, Ursula's body drifting up from your arms and then dispersing in a rain of more flower pedals. "That's the best I can do without a bargain. She'll begin the life cycle anew, compensation for returning my wayward flock."
As the door drank everything in in order to lock itself anew, the Devil's parting words hung in the air. "May you live long enough to see her again, warden. But do try to be dead before the gate opens anew. My nightmares tire of seeing you bar the gate."
Writing prompt: You did it, you stopped the devil himself from taking control over the world by killing it's cult. It doesn't seem too bothered though, if anything it seems impressed and look at you with some respect before giving you a nod and leaving.
