CHAPTER 439: PRIDE GOETH BEFORE THE...

For the past few weeks, Malachi hadn’t had any real problems controlling his anger.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that he was afflicted with demonification. Until he remembered that he couldn’t have sex, that is.

Malachi was actually thrilled to hear that his best friend and his sister would be coming to stay with him. It was just what he needed.

He would have something to be happy about instead of just living in a muted world of gray.

However, things weren’t going like he pictured.

Aisha was here. But she was mad at him. Ignoring him.

It wasn’t what he wanted. His excitement was crumbling.

He couldn’t figure out why Aisha was so mad at him. All it would have taken was a simple conversation to get to the bottom of things, but Malachi couldn’t get that into his head.

His feelings were hurt. And his afflicted mind broke those feelings down incorrectly and turned them into anger.

So he lashed out at his friend, instead of just trying to hug her like he should have.

Aisha was also not feeling like herself.

A dragon’s love and rage are so tremendous that a human mind would melt before it could process that amount of dopamine or adrenaline. Someone turned like Aisha would need years to learn to control herself.

Aisha was mad at Mal because she loved him. She just couldn’t find it in her to say that out loud.

They were both dealing with some heavy emotional burdens. It was quicker to fight than to shed them through conversation.

Chains rattled in the distant darkness.

Aisha surrounded herself in a cocoon of fire as a pair of bladed weapons came at her from both sides.

They sailed into the wall of fire and struck something hard and rocklike.

The sound of metal breaking reached Malachi’s ears and shocked him immensely.

There was a rush of air, and a huge figure rushed out of the red flames.

Aisha was terrifyingly beautiful.

Her muscles had grown so large that they’d started to tear through her clothes.

Red scales covered almost every stretch of her flesh, and her white hair burst into a column of orange flame.

"Are you actually trying to kill me now?! Then don’t get mad if I knock you around a bit because of it!"

Malachi wasn’t worried. His body was formless like the void.

Aisha could swing all she wanted. She wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

Or at least, that was what he thought.

He was left shocked when Aisha summoned a flaming sword in her right hand.

She executed a simple downward slash. She didn’t even aim at anything in particular.

And yet, Malachi still felt the burning sensation rip across his chest.

He screamed out of pain and confusion. The sound seemed to bother Aisha on a deep level, but Malachi was never going to notice that with his current mental state degraded so far.

"Y-You... How did you do that?!"

Aisha scoffed.

"It’s all about intent, you great big asshole! A little intangibility isn’t anything to be scared of-"

Aisha saw a flash of green light and felt an enormous bolt of lightning strike her in the chest to send her flying.

As she flew through the air without any semblance of control, she felt a hard fist strike her in the back of the head, temporarily making her mind go white.

She snapped out of it quickly, only to realize Malachi was looming above her.

Aisha scoffed at the sight. "Bet you feel like a big man now, don’t you?"

"The hell are you on about? If you’re going to say nonsense, then just go to sleep!"

Malachi dropped his fist like a meteor, yet despite her dizziness, Aisha caught his attack in her palm.

Her teeth sharpened to a point as black horns began to protrude from her head.

She yanked his arm toward her and took an enormous bite out of his bicep.

At the same time, her knee sailed into his gut and threw him off of her.

Malachi’s wings shot out to keep him from going too far away.

While he worked to steadied himself after being thrown, he felt Aisha coming towards him at full speed.

With maybe seconds to act, Malachi started to channel a bundle of lightning in his palm.

"You’re so fucking stupid... All I ever wanted was for you to act like you give a fuck about me!!"

Aisha’s words were so rattling that they made even an enraged Mal hesitate.

Capitalizing, Aisha struck him hard in the back of the head. And now it was his turn to briefly lose consciousness.

When Mal came to just a few seconds later, his chest was screaming in pain as Aisha dropped fist after fist onto his already cracked sternum.

She used her knees to pin both of his wrists and keep him from lifting his arms. Aisha had him exactly where she wanted him, and she unleashed all of her anger.

"You son of a bitch! How could you not tell me that you lost a child!? I’m supposed to be your best fucking friend!"

The thudding of blows against Mal’s chest was deafening, but he could still hear everything she screamed at him.

He barely managed to get his own words out in defense.

"Jo and I made that decision together! We didn’t need everyone pitying us, and-"

"DON’T GIVE ME THAT SHIT!"

Malachi barely managed to move his head out of the way as Aisha switched her target towards his face.

Shadows wrapped around Aisha’s neck and threw her clear away from him.

Malachi got up groaning, suffering a brutal chest injury that was making it difficult to breathe.

He ignored the pain and rushed at Aisha again, landing a clean blow into her stomach that lifted her off her feet.

"We were grieving, and we needed time! We still do! Me not telling you had nothing to do with-"

"Shut up!"

Aisha grabbed him by the head and slammed her skull directly into his.

She recovered quickly and slammed her fist directly into the side of his jaw.

Aisha growled at him through gritted teeth.

"You are the single hardest person to care about that I’ve ever met! Your head is so fat with pride that you think you don’t have to tell anyone ANYTHING!"

She punched Malachi square in the nose and felt a satisfying crunch beneath her knuckles.

Aisha drew her remaining arm back for another punch that would assuredly leave a crater in her friend’s face.

"You’ve been like this since your parents passed! You get hurt and you just bury your head in the sand and don’t let anyone help you! You’re a fucking prick!"

Malachi caught Aisha by both fists and held her firm.

"You don’t get to throw that in my face! I was doing what I had to do! I was being a man!"

Aisha’s eyes flashed with rage.

She drew back her head and slammed her skull into his mouth. Giving him the nastiest split lip he’d ever had.

"Don’t give me that macho man shit, you ugly bastard! My parents tried to help you! I tried to help you! I had more money than I knew what to do with, but you were content to starve with the lights off just so that you could say you were doing stuff on your own!"

Malachi was blind sided. Not just because Aisha slammed her head into his face a second time. But because he wasn’t expecting her to dredge up such a long-buried part of their past.

"Aubrey is my sister, providing for her was my responsibility! I wasn’t going to put that on anyone else!"

"You should have come to live with me! I could have helped you both! But you couldn’t stand to take anything from me because you thought it made you less than! Because I had powers and you didn’t!"

The two somehow wrestled each other to the ground with a strength that was evenly matched.

"I let that go because you got powers and turned things around for yourself! But now I’m finding out you lost a child four WEEKS ago and you didn’t tell me!?"

Aisha wrested her arm free and punched Malachi again.

"You probably still wouldn’t have told me if Aubrey hadn’t found out, would you, you piece of shit?!"

Malachi uppercut the raging dragon from below. The sound of her teeth breaking against each other was jarring.

"I... needed time..!" Mal said breathlessly. "You have no idea what it was like for us...!"

Malachi braced himself for Aisha to punch him again, but she didn’t.

Instead, she raised her hand to her chin and snapped her jawbone back into place.

Malachi felt drops of water splash onto his face. He was almost dumbfounded.

Aisha slowly brought her hands to his neck and squeezed. He didn’t stop her.

"Of course I don’t know what it was like, you bastard... You didn’t tell me anything..! You didn’t let me in!"

Aisha put more strength into her grip. Enough to kill him.

And yet, Malachi wasn’t concerned about his life for even a moment.

"You make reaching you and caring about you so fucking hard sometimes... I know we’ve got families now, and I know we’re not kids anymore, but damn it that doesn’t mean that we have to stop telling each other stuff..! Your wives aren’t the only people who care about you and want to support you!"

Something inside of Mal finally eroded.

He looked up at Aisha’s sobbing face and he no longer felt angry with her. On the contrary. Looking at her was painful.

Malachi loved Aisha like his own sister. She was unequivocally, his best friend and the one person who knew him the best.

He couldn’t stomach looking at her, knowing that she was hurting and that he had been the one who did this to her.

Malachi lifted his arm to cover his face.

His bloodied teeth were clenched together tightly.

"I’m sorry... I didn’t know..."

The spell of anger over Aisha was also broken.

In that moment, she felt a wave of regret rip through her.

Despite her correct diagnosis that they were no longer children, in that moment they may as well have been. Their inability to properly convey their regrets, their disappointments, and how much they meant to each other, had set them down a completely unintended path.

Aisha wanted to tell Malachi that she was sorry. That she was only hurt because she loved him.

And with a few more seconds, perhaps she might have.

But just as she tried to get her words out, Malachi let out the most horrific scream she had ever heard.

Shrinking back, her world turned completely upside down as her closest friend became immolated in a sea of ominous magenta-colored fire.