New Kevin

Kevin awoke to the prickly numbing sensation of icy wind caressing his face.

As he came to, he slowly started to recognize the bright blue hair swishing against his face. He was being carried piggyback style behind Amaya, the tall, blue-haired, amazonian cat-woman. Looking around, Kevin noticed that the entire party was once again on the road.

The hero party seemed to be making their way down a familiar mountain path. It was the same path where they had engaged in an uphill battle against the demon lord’s minions while pushing towards the demon lord’s tower. The bodies of the vanquished demon lord’s minions lay strewn around the mountain path, half-buried in the snow.

“Nyaaa! Kevin’s awake, nyaaa,” Amaya the catgirl said, upon sensing him stirring behind her.

“There’s a cave coming up. The same one we camped in last night,” said Roland the hero, “We’ll take a break there and check on Kevin.”

The rest of the party murmured their agreement and continued to descend the mountain peak. Kevin turned his head to look over his shoulder. The demon tower, once perched ominously on the mountain peak was now gone. In its place was a streaming column of smoke.

It would seem like everyone had survived the final battle with the demon lord. The party had even acquired a prisoner. Jasabera, the female dwarf, was leading a dark-cloaked prisoner clapped in heavy black chains up ahead. It was the girl with the blood-red hair that had appeared back at the demon tower. Ramione was her name.

Ramione seemed to instinctively know that Kevin was checking her out. She glanced back at him and flashed him a curious, knowing, smirk.

After another hour or so of trekking, the party finally arrived at the cave which they had discovered and spent the night before.

Inside the cave, Amaya set Kevin down against some rocks while the others poked around the cave to make sure no monsters had made itself at home in their short absence. For some unfathomable reason, Kevin was absolutely certain that there were no monsters in the cave, nor anywhere in the near vicinity either. They’ve all fled upon sensing the demon lord’s demise.

The blue-haired cat-woman checked Kevin’s wound in his abdomen. To Kevin’s surprised, his injury seemed to have completely healed.

“Sirene healed you the best she could, nyaa” Amaya said, “But you still wouldn’t wake up. We were afraid we might have lost you, nya.”

“What happened?” Kevin croaked.

“We did it! We’ve destroyed the demon lord,” Amaya said jubilantly.

“I-is that right?” Kevin asked.

“Yes, nyaa,” Amaya replied, “Just rest now, nyaa. We’ll set up camp and have something to eat shortly.”

Amaya promptly turned away from Kevin, thus failing to notice the malicious, evil grin which quickly spread across his face and the pitch blackness that suddenly permeated the whites of his eyes. The change in Kevin’s visage lasted only a split second and it was gone the moment he blinked.

Kevin didn’t feel like his old self. He felt like a completely new being who had his old memories. He was fully aware he had changed. Kevin quickly worked out that he had morphed into the new demon lord. However, rather than feeling alarmed, he felt strangely jubilant. It felt liberating to feel his humanity crumble away and renewed by demonic essence. An alien lust for power and dominance was burning brightly deep within his heart, corrupting him to his core.

“Sit down and don’t try anything,” a nasally voice spoke up to his left.

Glancing over, Kevin watched as Jasabera, the dwarven woman, drove a big nail into the nearby rock wall of the cave with a hammer. She was using the nails to secure the chains that held Ramione.