"For the Kingdom" was the last mortal voice he heard before the arms took him.
The voice was nervous yet full of conviction.
Despite the circumstances, it believed this was right.
This needed to happen.
Alec was pulled through the portal, dozens of arms yanking him back with ease. The knight didn’t know it was a portal until it closed in front of him.
As he was dragged through, he didn’t understand that he had crossed realms. He was too occupied to notice the change in the air. The hue of the light in his surroundings.
At first he thought it was a magical attack, enemies trying to infiltrate the palace. He was no magic expert at the time, but even he knew doorways of travel were a possibility, if not exceedingly complex and rare.
The thought of it being an attack quickly disappeared from his mind, as he remembered the blade in his chest. The pain from it had started to grab his attention, now that the doorway was closed.
Being flung to the ground, the arms released him. It was then that Alec took stock of his surroundings.
People unlike any he had ever seen were standing around him, staring down at him in shock.
They were like normal people, but different in places. Shades of skin, shapes of their faces. Some had pointed ears, some had jagged teeth.
Some were completely purple, others were just like Alec.
But all of them. All of them had those eyes.
Pure black eyes, with white dots in the middle.
On reflection, it was funny that they seemed more shocked by him than he was by them. At the time, Alec was unaware, but those demons were looking down on him in an unofficial historic moment.
A mortal in Hell.
They snarled and shouted at each other, obviously confused about what to do. Their accents were harsh, like an assault on the ears. Some sounds were familiar. They were speaking the old tongue, something Alec wasn’t fluent in.
Regardless of what language they spoke, Alec could read their intent in their posture, their alien eyes.
This wasn’t what they expected. But they were going to make the best of it.
Alec, sitting on the ground staring at them, had unconsciously started to back away. His wide eyes fixed on the unexplainable audience, his brain working on a different frequency. Thankfully, it was, as his survival instincts took over.
One of the creatures, growing more irritated with the argument among the seven or eight of them, had enough.
He was shorter than Alec, sickly thin, but his stick-like grey arms were knotted with visible muscle. Like all the moisture had been drained from its body. Its irate, gaunt face flicked towards him as if it had made a decision, then the demon quickly stepped forward, reaching out to grab him.
Alec had other ideas.
As that hand came for his throat, he had pulled the dagger from his chest and sliced cleanly through the side of the grey thing’s wrist. The demon clasped his wound, jerking back with a howl of pain.
The others’ argument stopped.
Their anger and confusion instantly became collective fury. Standing around him, they all came for him.
The knight reacted.
Despite the rising pain in his chest, amplified by his actions, Alec swerved to his side, launching his feet out. One of the smaller approaching attackers, his feet thrust into theirs. Despite his target’s size, it felt like he was kicking a tree. But it was enough to knock them back.
Kicking off them, he spun round from the ground, whirling the dagger around with him in a defensive motion. Two of his assailants were caught in the attack, with unlikely slices in their chests and thighs. They retreated back with shouts and curses.
The movement swirled Alec to a kneeling position, quickly getting onto his feet, drunkenly. Raising the dagger, he held guard against his foes. They approached more slowly now, the anger now raised to an intense and snarling focus.
That was when he heard the step behind him.
Not even fully turning, he ducked just in time.
A purple fist the size of his own head passed over him, flung so fast Alec could feel the wind on his face from the blow.
A monstrosity of a man was before him, easily over 7ft.
Before the knight could even push up his dagger to gut the thing, the creature had already wrapped its other huge hand around Alec’s wrist. It squeezed him like a vice, attempting to get him to drop the dagger.
Alec had already flung his left arm to punch the thing in its stomach. It may as well have punched a rock.
The purple demon flung its other arm around him, lifting him and crushing him against its huge chest in a hug, holding him still. It roared to its companions in the old tongue, giving instructions.
Despite the air of this strange place already being dense, now Alec found it difficult to breathe. The purple thing was crushing the life out of him with one arm, the other squeezing his wrist like it was trying to get juice.
The knight didn’t know when the thought came to him, or even if it did at all.
But the beast’s neck was right in front of him from this position.
Flinging his head forward, he clamped his teeth right into the purple man’s taut neck. Savagely biting and gnawing, he tore into its flesh with ease, its dark blood flooding his mouth.
Its blood was black, like treacle. And the foulness of its taste was beyond comprehension.
The purple demon released Alec, dropping him to the ground. Both its hands went to its neck as it howled like a child in pain.
The knight spat a lump of blackened flesh out of his mouth, and just bolted straight past him.
Alec didn’t look back, didn’t look where he was going.
He just needed to get away.
Running straight, he cut through black bushes that had surrounded the clearing he had arrived in.
He didn’t care what he ran into.
It seemed he was in some sort of forest.
With enough time and distance, he could hide for a moment and look at his chest wound.
The shouts and roars quickly grew faint behind him.
The memories sailed through Remus’s mind without any waves.
He stopped spinning the dagger, dismissing it back to his spatial storage.
Then he gently rubbed a vicious scar above his heart, before laying back down on his bed, attempting sleep.