On a fateful night I came back home exhausted. No one wanted to pay a human for their work, after all, the Meridian already had problems with overpopulation of beastmen, who received preferential treatment in both paying out wages and getting the better paid jobs. I ended up becoming an errand boy for a criminal organization, the name of which I cannot recall. My days were spent on delivering packages for various people on the Middle Layer. When I was lucky, I was selected to entertain guests during some unimportant receptions, but even then I barely could catch my breath before I was sent out to the other part of the Layer again.

In the meantime, my wife broke down completely. She stopped working conventional jobs long ago and tried to herself for even the slightest bit of income. But who would want her? From a beautiful flower she was before, only a dead and withered stem remained. Her skin, once full of life and rosy colors, had an unhealthy hue of yellow and was barely able to cover her thin, bony body. Her eyes were popping out of her face, swollen due to abuse by customers, employers and crying. 

When I entered our one room apartment, I saw a scene I saw hundreds of times before. She laid down in the far corner of the room, sobbing quietly. Directly across her, in the corner close by the door, laid our children, sobbing as well. The three malnourished bundles of life under a thin blanket, trying to fall asleep while the dark blue circles on their skin delivered pings of pain every now and then. She did it again, she beat them. She used to love and cherish them so much before, even in trying times, but now… She’d beat them for simply being there, as if they had a choice not to. 

This time, something broke within me. I have tried my best to save us from the impending doom, but for what? For this? How did I save anyone here? Maybe, maybe I shouldn’t have done all of that. Maybe dying and becoming a Fungus mutant would have been a better outcome. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

In a trance I took a sharp metal prod we used to break the ice open in winter. If I couldn’t save them, if I couldn’t help them escape the hurt, I should at least help them by releasing the chains of a life in suffering.

CRACK

The prod pierced right through her neck, making a hole in her windpipe and letting a small pool of blood to form underneath. 

SMACK

The next attack landed right in the head.

She didn’t even move her eyes to see who the attacking party was. She was exhausted both mentally and physically, this was an act of mercy, or so I told myself.

That’s when I looked back and locked eyes with one of the children by accident. Their pure eyes were filled with pure soundless angst. They saw their mother as a monster of indiscriminate violence, but the one who slayed that monster was, in their eyes, just as bad if not worse. I will never forget those eyes in my life.

I continued looking them in the eye. They have endured so much. They have suffered so greatly. If I was the one who brought them ruin, I shall be the one who’ll bring them salvation as well. I thought this as I readied the prod.

Finally she could spot its core. In the middle of the mass of blackened flesh, grayed teeth and countless remains of its victims, there was a crystal giving off a whitish glow. 

If only she could get there, past the dangers that the flesh of the monstrosity posed, and ruin the thing that powered it.

She readied her weapon once more, this will be her last attempt. It’s do or die, miss Inquisitor.

I buried them in a park in shallow ground. In the end, I couldn’t even give them a proper burial and their souls might end up wandering these cursed rocks for centuries to come. I couldn’t save them after all. I cried.

But what was the reason for these tears? The inability to do good? The powerlessness that enveloped my whole existence? Or were it the tears of selfish will to free myself of the consequences of my past decisions? I pondered and cried further, I thought and accepted my sins as my, and only my, own.

This is when I was approached by the Black Hand. One of their associates tapped me on the shoulder as I sat near four small hills of dirt. “Good sir”, they said, “we make it possible for you to have your rest, but now we think that it is time to repay us. Follow us and we will absolve your sins.”

How weak and pathetic I was, how stupid and naive. As if one should count on anyone else than themselves to repent for your actions. As if anything can change what you did and what you did not. However, back then I didn’t think of that. I could barely hold onto my sanity for doing something as atrocious as what I did, let alone thinking about something like a mere criminal syndicate. 

I followed them and became their plaything. They shoved magical metals into my body, bound countless amounts of lesser demons to my flesh, they made me manifest powers beyond their own comprehension. And yet I was not the one leading, but following. 

What happens now, is something that they kicked off several weeks ago. Their leader wanted to fuse me with a greater demon for some scheme. They’ve been trying for quite some time, and once succeeded, they watched as I was completely breaking apart. The thing, the demon, whispered knowledge into my ear, through it I have obtained the current form. I have lost everything I had, my life, my home, my wife and children, and now my humanity as well. I will exact revenge, I thought, I will let them see what I went through, I will show them how pain of loss feels when you’re on the receiving end. But even now, I was wrong.

They know the pain as much as I do, but they choose to redirect it onto others in order to protect themselves. All I did here was forcing my pain onto others. As much as I am filled with regret, I cannot stop this shell around me from enacting revenge and massacre, so please, end it here.

The blade flickered in the morning light and split the monster, along with its core, in two parts. For a second, black smoke rose from the two deformed halves of the round monster. Its tentacles dissolved into black muddy solution. Its flesh started decaying. Only seconds later nothing was left, only the words “May he not fall in the same pits as I did” lingered in the wind. The woman standing on the ruins of the mansion collapsed the moment that the white crystal dropped on the cobblestone walkway, littered by blood and other organic matter.

My dreams were restless. Those dreams didn’t have pretty landscapes or beautiful people, all I could see were parts and bits of the story that I was told. A monster born from someone’s ambitions and another man’s sins. An unholy alliance of two selfish wills. To think that one could manifest such powers… It was unseen since the days when men learned how to conquer gods. 

One worrying memory followed another. I tossed and turned in my sleep, I could feel my wounds send out signals of pain when I did so. Thoughts followed each other and formed a hypothesis. Once I was done doing my analysis, I woke up.

Laying in a simple hospital bed, I was greeted by a person I didn’t expect to see here.

“Good morning, Miss Inquisitor. Welcome back to the Islands. You were gone for.. about a day, which for someone who had endured so much damage, is utterly surprising. Elves really do heal fast, just like my master said they do.”

The monologue was delivered by none other than the butler who led us around the mansion.

“You knew”, thoughtless words have left my lips.

“Yes, we did, that’s why we could evacuate our personnel early enough to suffer as little casualties as possible. Now, let me remind you that the establishment we currently find ourselves in is owned by the Black Hand syndicate. I think we have several things to talk about, but we can do so after I relay a certain message from our master”

I nodded, knowing very well that that was the only choice I could afford to make.