Wood Demon - Chapter 18
Chapter 18: A Brother’s Plea
The chaos Jack had unleashed with his `Titan Root Eruption` was a maelstrom of splintered wood, heaving earth, and panicked, demonic shrieks. It had bought them precious seconds, a desperate, jagged tear in the fabric of Rui’s controlled pursuit. Jack, Saya’s hand still clasped tightly in his, was already calculating their next move, his mind a whirlwind of escape routes and tactical possibilities, even as the Mother and Father scattered into the undergrowth like terrified phantoms. The sounds of Rui’s furious threads, already tearing through the remnants of Jack’s botanical barricade, were a terrifying spur to their flight.
But then, something in Jack, something beyond tactics, beyond self-preservation, made him hesitate. He skidded to a halt at the edge of a small, moon-dappled clearing, pulling Saya gently back with him. He glanced towards the direction of Rui’s rage, the sounds of splintering wood and hissing threads growing louder as the Lower Moon inevitably blasted his way free.
A pang, sharp and unexpectedly painful, resonated in Jack’s chest. Pity. It was an absurd emotion to feel for a creature like Rui, a Lower Moon 5 who had terrorized and tormented them all, who had just moments ago been intent on their slaughter. Yet, Jack couldn’t shake the image from the mountaintop – Rui, not as a demon lord, but as a small, sobbing child, his face contorted with centuries of misunderstood pain and loneliness. Beneath the layers of cruelty, beneath the Demon power, Rui was fundamentally a lost, misguided soul, trapped in a cycle of his own making, desperately trying to recreate a love he’d never truly understood. And now, that lost child was about to throw himself into the maw of certain destruction.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Saya whispered, her voice taut with fear, her eyes wide as she tugged at his arm. “We have to go! He’s coming!” The sounds of Rui’s approach were indeed closer now, a furious, destructive wave.
“I know, I know,” Jack murmured, his gaze still fixed on the path Rui would take. His tactical mind screamed at him: Run! This is insane! You have a responsibility to Saya, to the others who are trusting you! But that small, empathetic part of him, the part that remembered Rui’s desolate tears, couldn’t just leave it like this. It was tactically unsound, a monumental risk, but he had to try. One last time.
“Rui!” he yelled, his voice cutting through the sounds of the forest and Rui’s own destructive rampage. The word was a raw plea, stripped of his usual sarcasm, his defensive humor.
The sounds of Rui’s advance paused abruptly. A moment later, the Lower Moon emerged from the tangled wreckage of Jack’s root eruption, his small form radiating an icy, murderous fury. His white hair was disheveled, his kimono slightly torn, and his threads, dozens of them, were live and shimmering in the air around him, twitching like agitated viper’s tongues. He looked from Jack to Saya, his crimson-flecked eyes blazing with betrayal and an almost unholy rage. He was clearly expecting another attack, another trick.
“Rui, listen to me!” Jack called out, taking a half-step forward, his hands held open, palms up, a universal gesture of non-aggression that felt utterly inadequate in the face of such demonic fury. Saya gasped beside him, her grip tightening on his arm. “This is insane! You can’t win this fight! The Demon Slayers are everywhere! The Hashira… Rui, you have no idea what they’re capable of. Staying here, fighting them… it’s suicide!”
He saw a flicker of something in Rui’s eyes – surprise? Confusion? It was quickly swallowed by renewed rage.
“This isn’t about your ‘bonds’ anymore, Rui!” Jack pressed on, his voice earnest, desperate. He was trying to reach that broken child he’d glimpsed on the mountaintop. “This is about survival! Yours! Ours! Remember what we talked about? The fear, the confusion from your past? Don’t let it happen again! Don’t let them destroy you because you’re too proud, too scared to see the truth!”
Then came the plea, torn from a place of genuine, if reluctant, empathy. “Rui, come with us! Please!” Jack’s voice cracked slightly. “We can get away from this mountain. We can find somewhere safe, somewhere they won’t look. This fight… it’s too big for you! It’s too big for any of us to face alone like this!”
Behind him, he could hear a stifled whimper – the Mother, probably, cowering nearby. The Father was a silent, hulking shadow, tense and unmoving. Saya was practically vibrating with terror, her nails digging into his arm, but she didn’t pull him back. She seemed to understand, on some level, what he was trying to do.
Rui stared at him, his small chest heaving. For a moment, just a fleeting, heart-stopping moment, Jack thought he saw a flicker of uncertainty in those cold eyes, a glimmer of the lost child beneath the monstrous facade. But then, the mask of the Lower Moon slammed back into place, harder, colder, more impenetrable than ever.
“Come with you?” Rui’s voice was a low, venomous hiss, laced with a pain so profound it was almost a physical blow. He gestured wildly with a thread-wreathed hand, encompassing Jack, Saya, and the unseen, cowering forms of the Mother and Father. “You, who defied me? You, who shattered the sacred bonds of our family? You, who turned them all against me, filled their heads with your poisonous lies about freedom?”
His gaze, burning with a fresh wave of betrayal, fixed on Jack. “You offer me escape? Pity? I am Rui, Lower Moon Five of the Twelve Demon! I do not flee! I do not need your contemptible pity!” His voice rose to a hysterical shriek. “My family was perfect! My bonds were real! You corrupted them! You destroyed everything!”
He was too far gone, Jack realized with a sinking heart. Trapped in his own web of pain, paranoia, and twisted ideals. His entire demonic existence, his carefully constructed identity, was built upon the foundation of his absolute control, his manufactured family. To admit Jack was right, to accept help, to flee – it would be an admission of failure, a negation of everything he had forced himself to believe for centuries.
“I don’t need any of you!” Rui screamed, his small body trembling with the force of his emotions. “I will show them! I will show those pathetic, arrogant humans the true power of a Demon! I will show them the true, unbreakable bond of family – a bond they will never understand, a bond I will forge anew in their blood and their fear!”
His gaze, almost manic now, lifted, fixing on some distant point in the chaotic, battle-scarred forest. Jack could almost feel Rui’s demonic senses lock onto a target – the lingering scent of Tanjiro Kamado’s desperate struggle, the unique aura of a determined, compassionate Slayer who represented everything Rui had lost and could never reclaim. Or perhaps it was simply the nearest, strongest concentration of the enemy, the most defiant challenge to his crumbling authority.
With a final, contemptuous glare at Jack and the others, Rui turned his back on them. It was an act of ultimate dismissal, of final, tragic defiance. “I am Rui!” he declared to the night, his voice ringing with a desperate, almost suicidal conviction. “I will not run! I will make them all acknowledge my strength! My bonds! They will all become a part of my true family!”
And then, he was gone, a small, white specter storming off into the heart of the raging conflict, drawn by an almost suicidal compulsion to prove himself, to validate his twisted existence, or perhaps, on some subconscious level, to finally find an end to his centuries of pain.
Silence descended on the small group, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the distant sounds of Rui’s power erupting anew as he undoubtedly engaged the Demon Slayers. Jack watched him go, a profound sense of sadness, of failure, settling over him. He had tried. He had reached out. But Rui was too ensnared in his own tragedy, too defined by his pain.
Saya’s grip on his arm loosened. “Jack…” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Why did you… why did you try? After everything he’s done?”
Jack let out a long, weary breath, the adrenaline of his desperate plea and Rui’s furious rejection leaving him feeling hollow. “Because…” he said, his voice heavy with a sorrow that felt far older than his few weeks as a demon, “because for a moment, up on that mountain when he told me about his human life… he wasn’t just a monster, Saya. He was just a lost, broken kid who never understood why his world fell apart. I had to try. Even if it was stupid.”
They stood there for another moment, listening. The sounds of Rui’s battle were terrifying – the whip-crack of countless threads, demonic roars that echoed with pain and fury, and the answering, explosive whooshes of what could only be powerful Breathing Techniques. They couldn’t see the details, only feel the shockwaves of power, the flashes of demonic energy and what looked like elemental swordplay illuminating the distant canopy. The tactical assessment was grim, unspoken but understood by all of them. Rui was powerful, a Lower Moon, but he was throwing himself against the combined might of a Slayer task force, potentially including at least one Hashira. His fate was likely sealed.
There was no satisfaction in that knowledge for Jack, only a weary, profound sorrow for the lost child beneath the demonic facade. The cycle of pain and violence that had defined Rui’s existence was reaching its tragic, inevitable conclusion.
He turned to Saya, then to where he knew the Mother and Father were still hiding, their fear a palpable miasma in the air. The weight of Rui’s tragic choice, of his own failed plea, was heavy, but the immediate imperative of their own survival reasserted itself with brutal clarity.
“He’s made his choice,” Jack said, his voice flat, devoid of its usual inflections, heavy with the grim reality. “We have to make ours. We need to get out of here. Now. While he’s… keeping them busy.” The word ‘busy’ tasted like ash in his mouth. Rui, in his final, desperate act of defiance, had become an unwitting, unwilling distraction.
With a final, somber glance towards the sounds of Rui’s doomed battle, Jack gently pulled Saya further into the shadows. The Mother and Father, after a moment of terrified hesitation, followed, their hope for escape now tinged with the chilling finality of what they had just witnessed. The broken family, or what little remained of it, began their desperate exodus anew, leaving Rui to his tragic, self-orchestrated destiny.