Demon's Virtue

The Warden stared back at Eiro with a terrified expression. After all, the Demon was standing there with his wings loosely hanging behind him, just twitching around every once in a while, and his horns were reflecting the moonlight. The noble man pressed his palm against his eye due to the burning pain he was experiencing after this being in front of him pushed the lit cigar into it.

He took a step back with his teeth grinding against each other, "Wh-Who are you?! What are you?!" He exclaimed, and Eiro leaned back against the railing of the balcony while he took the cigar out of his mouth, "I'm just the guy that's going to kill you tonight, not much more than that." The Demon explained with a light smile on his face, and the Warden's immediately turned a pale white like the snow that was laying on the ground around the manor.

"B-But, you-" He stuttered in a panic, "What do you want from me?!" The warden interrupted himself, simply asking the question that was most on his mind right now.

"You've already seen that I have your little 'Memento'. All I want is to ask a few questions about it, and then slowly and painfully rip you to pieces. Of course, to make it clear, it would be painful for you, not for me. Just so that we understand each other."

"This has nothing to do with you! Leave! Leave me be!" The Warden yelled out, and tried to slowly run toward the door of the manor to lead him back into the Ballroom, but his feet were soon stuck to the ground due to a thick layer of ice that had grown around them out of nowhere.

"Don't even try. They can't even hear you, you know?" Eiro pointed out as he slowly closed his eyes, the whites of which were still dyed blood-red, "Now answer me, or I'll have to resort to torture. And trust me, you don't want me to torture you." The Demon said with a slight grin.

The whole time, the Warden had already been nervous and panicking due to the aura of pure fury that Eiro was giving off despite the calm tone of his voice. It was eerily creepy and terrified the shit out of him.

Nervously, the Warden slid his hand over toward the glass cylinder holding the heart that had been turned into a clock, before picking it up and pulling it to his chest, "I-It's mine... This is all I have left from my son, you know?!"

"Well, that would be fine and all. Honestly, even I would keep similar things as something to remind me of my children, not that I like to think about the fact that they may die before me. But usually, that would be in the form of their ashes, and not of their hearts that were kept beating using necromancy. Not to mention how you're displaying it freely after turning it into some kind of sick magic-item." The Demon said bluntly, not playing around with his words at all. To Eiro, it seemed like this kind of thing, that what the Warden was doing with a child's literal heart, was beyond sick.

But the Warden himself thought otherwise. Although he said something else that was quite interesting as well, "You don't know anything! Do you know what it's like to lose your son?! Do you?! What was I supposed to do, let him be taken from me forever?!"

The words that the Warden chose were slightly... weird. It was kind of like... "What happened to your son? What did you do to him?"

The Warden's shock and fear slowly started to turn into pure anger that he was nearly unable to control, "I know it! I did something horrible to my son, but what else was I supposed to do, just let him die right in front of me?! He was sick, not even expert healers were able to help him! It was the only way to make sure he wouldn't die on me! I didn't know it would turn him into that... that... that... thing!"

Slowly, it doomed on Eiro what exactly was going on. What exactly the Warden had done. Everything started to fall into place, "Death is timeless. Death is forever. Death does not waver no matter after how many ticks of a clock." Eiro muttered quietly, his whole body tensing up, and the Warden's anger immediately disappeared again. It was like the anger he had built up just now to be able to answer Eiro's questions was just a lie. And it was just completely replaced with despair.

The Warden dropped down onto his knees and stared up at Eiro, "Wh-Where did you hear that...?"

And that was the one confirmation that Eiro needed to tell him that his one horrible suspicion really was correct.

Amongst the cards of the Major Arcana, there were only two that could affect those that were non-monsters. One, [The Fool]. It was a card that any living being could connect to, without exception. Monsters, Magic Beasts, People... one of the former owners of [The Fool] was an old oak tree that the card was wedged into at some point in time. Not even a Dryad, just a normal oak tree.

And this worked by turning whoever or whatever may be able to pair with it into a monster. No specific one, really. Usually, it was a monster that simply fit the being in question the most. Other times they were turned into completely unique species.

But there was one other card that worked with a similar principle, but it didn't turn the user into a monster itself. It requires the user to have been turned into a specific kind of monster just before, and that was a sort of monster that any living being could turn into.

That card was the Major Arcana card [The Death], and it requires to have been turned into an Undead being, and after connecting to the card, it would turn them into a fearsome Lich.

Or so, that's what many thought. But Eiro knew that this wasn't the case directly. Eiro found a book in the magically hidden library of the former owner of his manor. It was probably common knowledge compared to some of the other secrets Eiro read about there, but the truth was that there have only been three beings that ever held the title of [The Death]. The first held it for a few hundred years, but was killed by the Pope to the church of the God of Life.

The second 'Death' held it for a thousand years, but became bored of unending life and ended himself. And the third... Has held it ever since. And it has been more than just a few thousand years.

The only reason why this was the case was because of the type of monster that had connected to the card. Actually, it wasn't impossible to be a living being while holding the card [The Death], it was simply hard due to the seemingly infinite stream of necromantic energy that you would be suspect to.

And surprisingly, the being that held the card of [The Death] right now was a 'Mind Robber'. A vile being from a realm of darkness that was capable of literally taking over others' beings.

It was technically a sort of slime that simply dug itself through its victims' mouth, nose, or ears before dissolving and replacing the brain before taking control of its whole body.

A Mind Robber was unable to cause much damage, cast magic, or really even think on its own. It was ironically nothing but a mindless being that fed on brains and then took over someone's body before it inevitably broke apart. But on top of that, it would take over different abilities of whatever body it was in. Personality, knowledge, skills and abilities, basically everything there was. Just that over time, all of that was warped into the worst possible direction. A kind and loving person would often turn into a vile killer.

And then, once the body broke, the Mind Robber would leave its former host's dead body and then make his way to the next. The only thing that would be carried over were a few loose memories in the form of dreams, as far as Eiro knew. Most of the time, after some living being with a brain was taken over by a Mind Robber, they wouldn't even know that they were 'infected', or that they technically were the Mind Robber themselves. They would act like normal, as if nothing ever happened. And after a Mind Robber switched to a new body, all that was left from the former were loose memories that would show themselves in the form of dreams, more often than not, they were like nightmares.

But after becoming [The Death], the Mind Robber changed. Instead of just taking over others with the abilities they had while they lived, the Mind Robber gave them incredibly strong necromantic abilities. In the end, this led to the Mind Robber being discovered and killed rather quickly.

However, the moment it died, something else interesting happened. Since it was alive until then, it had now been turned into an undead version of itself, a 'Mind Robber Lich', practically.

And from then on, whenever it took someone over, it turned them into Lichs themselves, with the heart of the creature being turned into the Lich's Phylactery. On top of that, it didn't lose all knowledge anymore, but was able to take certain bits of knowledge as well as certain abilities into itself and to the next person.

The Phylacteries started to take on a certain theme over time as [The Death] took on an obsession with the concept of time. The state of what seems to be the current Lich's Phylactery is just a sign of that.

It seemed like the Warden had let [The Death] take over his son's body.

Eiro looked at the man in front of him with a blank expression. He took one step toward him. Then a second. Then a third. Until he stood right in front of the Warden while he was sitting there on his knees in complete despairing fear.

The Demon slowly reached down and grabbed the Warden by his throat before pulling him up and staring deep into his eyes, "And then, you imprisoned [The Death] inside of that giant, suspended cube in the lower area of the prison, huh?" Eiro asked, and the Warden slowly made the effort to nod his head, but couldn't speak due to the hand that was currently crushing his throat.

"I see." The Demon slowly replied. And then, by tightening his hand for just a moment, Eiro snapped the Warden's neck.