Chapter 10

Galena left the apartment shortly after Nihasia. She needed help with the Daemoness and only one person came to mind, Darius. She knew appearing in his office without warning could be risky if there were humans there but this was an emergency. With a simple thought she arrived in his office exclaiming, “Darius!”

“Galena! What the Dark Realms?” he exclaimed unhappily as he stood up from his desk.

“I need your help! Theanna... she’s released Nihasia, who wants to destroy Damian and Ikisat!”

“What? Who the hell is Nihasia?” Darius asked, confused and angry.

“Nihasia is Theanna, only her Daemoness side that Theanna has kept locked up and controlled. She’s given herself the name Nihasia and has all of Theanna's suppressed powers,” Galena hurriedly explained.

“The curse! If she consumes even one living human soul she’ll be doomed to forever replace her father as the Cursed One. Gaia warned us that it would throw the realms into a darkness none had seen before!” Darius stated as panic started to rise in him. “Where is she now?”

“She is blocking me from finding her through Theanna so I don’t know. She wanted me to find her in some sort of twisted hide and seek game. Can you sense her anywhere?”

Darius closed his eyes and shook his head no, “Not in this realm but my ability to do that is restricted only to the realm I am on. Where else would she go?”

“Ikisat!” the both exclaimed in unison.

“She wants to hurt Damian. He and Theanna had a rather nasty fight before Nihasia was released.”

“Ikisat it is then,” Darius stated with a nod to Galena as they both left to head straight for Damian's home there. When they arrived they found Damian’s home nothing but a pile of rubble. “Wow, she was really mad at him!”

“This wasn’t Nihasia. It was like this when I went in search of Theanna. We need to avoid Damian if Nihasia isn't with him.”

“That bad of a fight?” Darius asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Worse.” Suddenly they heard a roar of pain. “Damian!” Flashing them both to where her brother was, they found him facing off with Nihasia and by the looks of things he was losing badly.

“Ah, Galena! So good of you to finally join us and you brought Darius, wonderful! It is time he saw our true power,” Nihasia stated as she held Damian by the throat, large chunks of torn flesh hanging loose from his chest, his black blood a large puddle beneath him. One of his wings also appeared broken as it hung at an odd angle while the other appeared to be almost torn off.

Galena looked at her brother worriedly. His wounds weren’t healing and he hung limply in Nihasia’s grasp. Either he’d given up the fight or Nihasia was so strong and powerful that she'd easily taken down the Daemoni Prince of Ikisat, the most powerful of all Daemoni princes.

“Thea-mia. What is this?” Darius asked, shocked by what he was seeing.

“Do not call us that foul, weak name! Our name is Nihasia. We are what you created when you decided that Theanna's Daemoni blood was evil and tainted. We exist because you tried to remove us from her. You can never remove us, we are as much a part of her as her human side, even more.”

“We made mistakes with Thea but we tried to do what was best for her, for everyone,” Darius started to explain.

“You worried more about everyone than you did about Theanna. We were brought forth to truly protect us because you would have had us be weak and worthless, working for your human company, stuck in an office, day after day. You kept us in a box, kept us sheltered, and left us vulnerable. No more! We will never be weak again!” Nihasia snarled at him.

“Nihasia, I thought you weren’t going to destroy Damian because of the bond he has with Thea,” Galena stated in an effort to change the path of their conversation.

“We will survive, we will make sure of it. He deserves to feel the pain he has caused us,” the Daemoness stated as blood once again started to flow from where her claws pierced his skin as her hold tightened.

“He does! Have you not seen his home?” Galena asked, trying to appease her.

“LIES!” Tossing Damian away like a bag of trash that weighed nothing, she headed towards Galena. “Why do you continue to lie to us?”

“I don’t. See now!” Galena ordered as she suddenly reached up and placed both her hands on Nihasia’s temples, taking her by surprise.

Nihasia screamed as she fell to her knees, Galena continuing her mental assault. She showed Nihasia
what she’d seen with Damian over the last several years: the raw pain she felt from Damian, how miserable he was, and mistakes that had been made. Finally, while she had control of Nihasia’s mind she ordered her, “Sleep now!”

Nihasia collapsed onto the cold stone floor, unconscious as Galena released her. Running over to Damian she also found him unconscious but still alive. “Bring Nihasia and follow me,” she ordered Darius. As they flashed to Galena’s home she stated, “I hope what I did works. Nihasia is a creature of pure unrestrained emotion.”

“I’ve never seen Theanna like that. I didn’t even know Nihasia existed,” Darius muttered as he tenderly laid Nihasia down next to Damian. Running his hand through his hair he just shook his head at them. “I didn't even know Nihasia was a possibility. We just wanted Theanna safe and happy and we wanted to protect the world from the Cursed One,” he tried to explain.

“Before tonight, she didn’t exist, not really. We all have that voice inside of us, the angel and the devil on our shoulders as the humans refer to it. Thea is so incredibly powerful that her sheer emotion gave form to Nihasia. Nihasia is Thea, Thea is Nihasia. They are one in the same.”

“Like a split personality. All her training to control her Daemoni side, to protect herself, and this is the result.”

“Yes and no. She was taught that her Daemoni side was too dangerous so she put it away. But you can’t put away that which is such a big part of you.” Galena sighed as she looked for the right words, “It’s very hard to explain. Think of it like this. Lycans in human form are creatures of human thought, in wolf form they are creatures of instinct like all animals. Nihasia is Thea’s Daemoni form, her wolf form if you will. They are one in the same, two sides of the same coin.”

“Ok... but what the hell happened between her and Damian? Damian hasn’t visited her in a year. She’d pretty much given up on him. I gave her my approval to have fun and to date. She deserves to do that,” Darius stated with all the frustration in his heart when he sat down at her table.

Galena joined him at the table as she proceeded to explain what she'd shown Nihasia. “He may not have visited her but he was always aware. He watched from afar. He worried from afar. He loved her more with each passing day and that’s why he stayed away. She wasn’t ready because she was too young. He didn’t want to hurt her but he knew no other way.

“He tolerated the dating, it caused him so much pain and torment but he tolerated it. He wanted tonight to be the night he told her the truth and to explain why he'd been avoiding her. Then he saw them kiss, saw her smile at Averic as they said goodnight and the Daemoni prince of old took over.

“He’s been ruler of Ikisat since the beginning. Before Nira and Mikael, especially before Theanna, he was very different. More like what the humans think demon princes are like, cold and ruthless and evil. Theanna saved him, Darius. He loves her on a level that terrifies him. He’s never loved anyone before so he’s rather stupid in the ways of love. Think about when you first met Helen and how you were.”

“About the same in many ways I’m sure,” Darius nodded, thinking about what she had said. “He may have watched from afar but he didn’t know how many times we heard her cry herself to sleep when another day passed without a word from him. For her it has always been him.

“Recently, though, something changed in her. The pain turned to anger and resentment. She hated her parents for bonding her to him. She hated the idea of being his betrothed. She was angry and then the anger changed to coldness. She informed us she wanted to work at D Corp full time.

“She found friends, good friends, and in many ways she grew up. Then she came to me and told me she'd met Averic and I wanted her to be happy. He worked at D Corp, was young, only a bit older than she was and he knew who and what she was. She didn’t do this to hurt Damian, she simply wanted to be happy.”

Galena sighed tiredly as she ran a hand over her face. “Their whole relationship is a mess. Do we force them together or let them figure it out?”

“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” Darius sighed as he looked at his granddaughter. “Well, the good news is that I think what you did worked. She’s becoming Theanna again.”

“And Damian’s wounds are healing. I have an idea. There’s a place literally in-between realms where there’s only one way in or out. We put them there and tell them they’re to remain until they truly talk and listen to each other. This way they can't run away, they can't destroy anything important, and if Nihasia appears again she can't harm anyone.”

“I like it. Let them decide what is next but only after they've talked. How’ll we know when they are ready to come out?”

“They simply have to summon me.”