Student Publishing Program ::

Young Jin Hur

Ex Pax Pacis

Dmitrii grinned, the smoke from the freshly cast spell still emitting from his palm. His snake-like eyes locked unto his fallen opponent. With the back of his left fingers, he brushed those long, silky light brown bangs from his serpentine eyes, the grin refusing to fade. The man who reluctantly knelt before Dmitrii gritted his teeth as beads of cold sweat ran down his face. The recent battle had cost him dearly, and his midsection was severely burned, his skin sizzling where the hole had been burned in his shirt. With his left eye twitching, the man addressed Dmitrii in a hoarse voice.

“Dmitrii… T-traitor.” He barely managed to say, still cringing at the burning sensation in his midsection.

Dmitrii on the other hand, continued to grin, and delivered his response to his former master and leader.

“Hardly, Beelzbeus,” he said in a gentle, calm tone. “You preached about recreating the world, making a paradise where human and diobolus could live together in harmony. I’m just helping the cause.”

“By d-destroying our organization?! You… preach that you help the cause… but really you… are against us!” Beelzbeus coughed, hunching even lower towards the ground as a small river of blood trickled from the left corner of his mouth.

“I pity your lack of sight, ‘master’. You think good deeds alone can create that world? Have you failed to notice that every time you help the humans along with the Ex Pax Pacis, we, the diobolus, are still blamed for the very crimes we stopped? In your quest to make peace, you’ve given humans more excuses to attack and terrorize our own kind.” Dmitrii paused, and threw a friendly smile at his former comrade. “Unintentionally, of course.”

Beelzbeus gritted his teeth, and made a failed attempt to stand. Dmitrii just continued on. “If one way fails constantly, why keep trying that way?”

“People… have thanked us before… Dmitrii.”

Dmitrii let out a chilling laugh. “Ha! Yes, I admit that people have thanked us for those good deeds, but how many was it? One or two? And how many have we helped? Hundreds? You still fail to see!”

“It is… possible… to create harmony between our races,” Beelzbeus uttered.

“Beelzbeus, you read too many comic books. The kind of harmony you are thinking of is a mere fantasy! A dream that will always slip through your fingers, never becoming a reality! You fail to see that the world already is in balance! Life, and death, survival of the fittest, this battle between our races is a part of nature itself! It’s like a form of natural selection! It’s the harmony of dissonance, can’t you see that?”

“You’re insane.”

“You’re naïve.”

Dmitrii brushed his light brown threads of silky hair from his eyes again, taking a few steps forward and bending his body at the waist at a ninety degree angle, sticking his face over Beelzbeus’s.

“I know you have good intentions, my friend, but unfortunately, your quest for peace between the two races is disrupting that delicate balance. I’m afraid you’re going to have to die.”

The eyes of Beelzbeus widened. “How am I… disrupting the balance?”

“Let me put it this way. You can’t grasp your ideal world because the false accusations against Ex Pax Pacis make the humans more hateful towards us. They accuse innocent diobolus of being involved with us. So with Ex Pax Pacis out of the picture, our pain should lessen a bit.”

Beelzbeus glared at his Judas, feeling sorrow and rage as he fixed his fierce black eyes on Dmitrii, who smiled, and erected himself to his full height once more. Dmitrii then turned his back on Beelzbeus as he slid his hands ever so smoothly into his pockets, turning his head around once, getting one more look at Beelzbeus, and throwing him one more smile before beginning to walk away. Beelzbeus was in all senses confused by this.

“What are you doing?” He asked Dmitrii. “I thought you said I had to die.”

Dmitrii stopped, and spoke without looking at his former comrade. “Oh, you will.” The young, brown haired diobolus said. “You wanted to unify the two races and bring peace between them. In order to do that, there needed to be a common cause to fight for. And I discovered it. It’s the destruction of Ex Pax Pacis.” Dmitrii turned his head a little so one eye would be facing Beelzbeus. “The humans have been hunting down Ex Pax Pacis under false accusations made by the people we’ve claimed to help, right? And for bringing more pain unto them, the diobolus too are looking to destroy this organization so that their suffering may be eased. As we speak, politicians, both human and diobolus, are negotiating, uniting to destroy Ex Pax Pacis. So in a way, your dream has been realized. Congratulations.” Dmitrii smiled again. “If you wish, run. It will only strengthen the ties between man and diobolus as they hunt you. Farewell, old friend.”

[TABLE OF CONTENTS, LHS CLASS OF 2009 EDITION]