[Capitaine]

  “You fucking traitor, I trusted you!”

  The Camp Leader writhed on the ground in front of me. His bulbous insectoid eyes buzzed with rage as he clutched the wound in his chest.

  I had already shot out the knee, leaving him in a kneeling position, unable to escape me. Around us, the camp burned. Masked demons tore through the tents, shattering the ranks of those who I had called comrades. They could not put up a fight in the face of the invading force for they had been poisoned by my hand.

  It was not a simple task, the timing. As soon as they ingested it, their health bar would immediately notify them. No long-acting poisons would be effective. It had to be a fast-acting poison that could spread to the entire camp.

  Which meant that I had to be the one who administered it.

  With no choice but to trust that the forces outside would act in time, I dutifully poisoned the upcoming feast.

  It’s regrettable. The demons of this realm acted like people. They ate regular meals and drank and slept when it was not needed. Everybody knew that the meal wasn’t the point; it was the socializing.

  And I lived for it.

  But that’s all gone now. The songs, the stories, the laughter; all ended by my own hand with the delivery of a single message.

  “Do it.”

  I committed to my task quickly and I had to harden my heart to these people. Maybe they would be my friends another time, when all of this was over, and we could laugh about how stupid all this fighting and killing was. But, for today, they were nothing to me; piles of flesh that needed to be excised.

  It was a special occasion, the Camp Leader was celebrating his twelfth marriage. It was really just a new girlfriend, but who really cared? What was the point of real marriage in a place like this?

  “Capitaine, get over here,” the Camp Leader encouraged, motioning me closer to them.

  I was pushed up front and center, a place that I normally adored standing in. I allowed my smile to take over and grinned widely at the attention brought to me.

  “Now, if there were best men in Hell, I’d make Capitaine my twelfth best man!” The Camp Leader called out to raucous cheers. “Let’s hear a bit from you!”

  Wine poured into cups, raised in preparation to down a cup in the Camp Leader’s honor. I made a show of being coy, looking around the room for greater engagement from the audience while scanning over the contents of each and every cup. Loyalty and joy ensured that each and every demon had a full cup.

  “What an honor for someone like little old me to be the man of honor in this celebration,” I said magnanimously. “Though, hearing how you’ve had as many best men as marriages, I might not make it to be the thirteenth.”

  “Nonsense!” The Camp Leader called out to a chorus of laughter. “I just have too many friends that I couldn’t possibly use them a second time.”

  “Whatever it may be, I appreciate being the one called up to the center to kick off this newest relationship with flare,” I continued. “I haven’t been here long, compared to most of you. But, wow, what a group this is where I see you all asleep more than I see you awake. I wonder how this outfit can be considered one of the most dangerous. If I were to guess, it’s the care that you all feel for one another and the belief that it’s going to be all of you that make it to the top. And, well, I’m starting to believe it too. When you make it to the top, be sure to make naps actually feel good. To the couple!”

  “To the couple!” The rest shouted as they downed their cups.

  “And goodbye,” I said softly, seeing the eyes of the first drinkers widen with the shock that it was tainted.

  “Enemies! Enemies are attacking!”

  Which is what led me here. Standing over someone I treated as a friend for the better part of two years. His partner was dead only a few feet away, shot in the head before she even knew what was happening.

  “It’s the will of my benefactor,” I said solemnly. “The more hurt, the more confused you are, the more joyous they feel and the more powerful I become. Your bond was too close and they wanted to see it ripped to ribbons.”

  I aimed the gun up to his head. The rage had changed to sadness and despair at the helplessness of the situation.

  “You were just too kind for this place,” I said.

  A burst of red light ended him and, with it, our friendship. A pang of mourning entered my heart as I watched his lifeless corpse be collected by invading demons to put him in chains and lock him somewhere I would take centuries to break out of. Hopefully, by then, I’d have been able to fix it all.

  “Well done,” the strike team leader said to me. “We’ll move on to the next target.”

  They turned their backs from me and led me away from my newest former home. The only relief I felt was the message from my benefactor detailing my next target. A chance to get a little bit of revenge for my friend’s sake.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “You’re next.”

  [Vendetta]

  I was beginning to understand how beautiful death was and what tragedy had befallen us that we lived in a place where dying was no longer possible.

  A church, the bastion of Mikha’el and Armaros and my family and everyone that I hate, was burning wildly. My flames coursed through each and every flammable object to belch unholy fire from every broken window of the structure. Demons tried to flee from the shattered glass only to be ripped apart by arrows and spells and spears. Gleeful hands delivered the final blow.

  My new organization was built with only one requirement. Hatred towards your home religion. Whether you prayed next to me on the pews or knelt towards Mecca or believed in breaking all earthly attachments, as long as you had become disillusioned with those systems, as long as you felt wronged by those systems, as long as you harbored hatred for those systems, you would be a welcome member of my cohort.

  My desires had shifted after my conversation in the manor those years back. I still want to get my hands on Armaros, more than I do anything else in this piteous existence, but I realized that just getting my hands on him isn’t enough.

  Even if I were to kill him over and over, it would not be enough. Even if I were to boil his eyes out of his smug, beautiful skull, it would not be enough. Even if I were to pare off his skin and douse it in alcohol and fire, it would not be enough. At the depths of my cruelty, he would not break because he will always have hope.

  Mikha’el.

  The fallen angel reaches the pinnacle and, with it, Armaros will slip from my grasp and he will rule over me until the end of time. Mikha’el needed to fail. The world was not allowed to change. Only then, when Armaros had no one that could save him would I be able to punish him in a satisfying way. I would put him in the dark where the only light was mine.

  I was a cockroach, nibbling away at these monasteries and castles on the third rung and now on the realm above. Each nexus of power I defeated was less resources that would reach Mikha’el and further empower the Demon in Red.

  My hand-picked followers reveled in these orders, never tiring in destroying these symbols of a world that scorned them. The hate and pain within them manifested in beautiful ways to show their righteous displeasure.

  “Ma’am, we have finished,” a steel golem reported. “All inhabitants have been killed.”

  “You’ve done well,” I complimented.

  For once, I meant it. My old group, pulled together under my banner, was made up of incompetent weaklings who used my name to pretend that they were strong too. They would have never survived here. They wouldn’t have a chance to defeat even my weakest member.

  I could watch the butchering from here. Their hateful eyes taking glee as they tortured their victims, taking shuddering joy in their pain. No good person would do this.

  But, I did not want good people. I wanted killers.

  “This was but a small outpost guarding the true forces deeper in.”

  “Ma’am, we have captured their leader,” another set of demons said, dragging a half-dead corpse from the building to my feet. A demon wearing a cross heaved in pain as they looked up at me.

  “You are in charge of this place?” I questioned.

  “I am in charge of nothing,” the demon spat. “All things belong to Mikha’el and all things belong to God. Including my life.”

  “How many of you are on this plane? Where are your locations? Tell me now and your death will be painless.”

  “I would rather die a thousand deaths than to concede even one piece of information to you.”

  Good. It was the reaction that I hoped for. I hated whenever cowardice gripped their hearts and they gave away information for a swift death. This leader’s fate was sealed by such a coward. But, this one had a thick skull and unwavering faith that they would be saved. I would enjoy roasting that faith out of them.

  I pressed my hand to their chest, allowing my heat to spread into them. They immediately began screaming as their body grew unbearably, blisteringly hot. But, not as hot as I felt.

  “Remember this while you roast. We are Never Heaven and we are going to kill your God.”

  [Yoshitsune]

  Ping

  Another message filled my attention. I pushed it away as quickly as I could and slashed outwards with my sword. I felt the blade cleave through armor, bite into flesh, and scrape across bone.

  “No hesitating, Yoshitsune, you’re going to get us killed!” Tisiphone’s hissing voice pierced my ears as I swung down again.

  “Sorry,” I said swiftly.

  “We’ve almost killed him,” Seift said. “Maintain formation.”

  Why was this happening?

  Five years without contact became a cascade of messages that ranged from casual greetings to full explanations of what had transpired to calls to meet up and be a party again. As much as my heart fluttered when I saw who sent it and what was written within, I did not allow myself to feel joyful or to send a response in kind.

  I did not think it was possible, as I had been down here for hundreds of years, but five years is a long time. This mission, my mission, had gone on several times longer and these bonds that I formed with my squad mates and with Avalon were impossible to break on a whim.

  “Focus!” Seift screamed, her body rushing in without her head.

  I shook my head and moved into place. Tisiphone would tangle them in place, Seift would break their armor, and I would deal the killing blow.

  We had done it so many times that I could do it perfectly in my dreams. My mind shook free of distractions as my feet placed themselves without thought. My body memorized the moment I leapt, the moment I activated my abilities, and the moment I swung down. It was perfect.

  “That was not your normal,” Tisiphone said in frustration. “Where was your mind?”

  “Sorry, Tisiphone,” I apologized. “I was distracted by messages.”

  “Whose messages?” She pressed, her eyes narrowing. “All correspondence is supposed to be delivered Seift.”

  “Ah, well.”

  I looked away from them. For some reason, I couldn’t look them in the eye. Was I ashamed? Of what? Myself? No. We were allowed to have romantic companions. The Chivalrous Demon specifically encouraged it saying that love was the only way that we could know his future Heaven.

  Was I ashamed of Ishmael? Was I ashamed that I allowed someone so awful to earn my affection?

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t look at them.

  “Ah, him. Finally remembered you exist?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I denied. “He was just stuck in a Dungeon.”

  “Sure.”

  I believed him. He hadn’t lied to me before. I was hurt that he never reached out to me, but I had not done much better. I was so engrossed in the war, in pursuing to be a better person that I felt that I could not reach out.

  And, now that I finally got that message, something within me felt wrong.

  “Do you want to meet with him? Seift asked. “If you need to have a proper separation to focus, we can accommodate.”

  “Yeah, we won’t let him do anything to you,” Tisiphone agreed.

  “No,” I answered sharply.

  A meeting between Ishmael and myself would end in disaster. How would I feel when I laid eyes on him? What would I think if he asked me to go with him? I can say that I wouldn’t right now, but what about in the moment? Would I find my heart light and my resolve weak so that I could spend more time with him?

  More importantly, what would he do to this world?

  My heart told me an answer that I did not like but could not refute. My heart and my head both agreed that the future that would spawn from following him would be one that was filled with suffering for everyone.

  It wasn’t a future that I could be proud of showing my family.

  “No, Avalon must be victorious. Only then can I save him.”

  -End of Book 2-