I stood over the aftermath of what I had done. Pieces of my happiness were strewn across the battlefield, seeping blood into the dusty soil of the ruined fortress. The eviscerated body twitched as the parts slowly started to reform themselves.

  All of my emotions extinguished at once. I was the aftermath of a house fire; still and absent, wisps of the passionate flames wafted out of the still-hot beams.

  “There are no futures where this wouldn’t have happened,” I say into the still surroundings.

  A plume of smoke appeared next to me followed by anguished screams. Vendetta returned with the melting body of Armaros pinned beneath her. Her black flames coated his body, the flesh falling off of the bone like a well-roasted pork.

  “You’re back,” I commented. “Why?”

  “I have failed in my own mission from The Demon in Red,” Vendetta answered. “I may have destroyed the fort, but I have lost all of my followers in the process. It is far too late to rebuild, so I decided to see what you were planning.”

  “What I’m planning…” I repeated, my eyes staring deep off into the horizon. “Tell me, Vendetta, do you find yourself compatible with this world?”

  The flaming horse-skulled woman took pause at my question. It seemed that I didn’t strike her as much of the philosophical type.

  “No, I do not. I find that this place lacks the suffering required to make me feel like we truly belong,” Vendetta answered. “Too many that deserve worse don’t get it because of the same power that protected them while they were alive.”

  “You want this world to lose powers?” I asked.

  “I want endless torture. I want people to suffer for what they did to get here. I want them to repent from the bottom of the heart. They need to feel true regret or there was no point in bringing us here.”

  I knelt down next to Vendetta. Armaros was still burning to death. The muscles in his arms and legs had failed, leaving him to gurgle in his boiling saliva.

  “Do you feel regret?” I asked the burning demon. “Will this make you feel remorse for what you did to her?”

  Armaros looked at me with eyes full of hate. He opened his mouth to show a half destroyed tongue. He grunted something incoherent at me before he once again succumbed to Vendetta’s inferno. Even if I didn’t know what he said, I knew that it wasn’t apologetic. If it was, it wasn’t genuine.

  “Eventually, he’ll be forced to reckon with what he’s done,” Vendetta said on the corpse’s behalf. “That’s what we were taught. This is the result of wicked life. I’m doing what this place has failed to.”

  “What’s the point of repenting?” I replied. “Even if he does feel bad for what he’s done, he won’t be leaving this place. If he gives you a genuine apology, would you let him go?”

  Vendetta pounded the ground with a fiery hand, igniting the dust that surrounded her and causing a small explosion. Frustration and hate burned off of her body.

  “Never,” Vendetta said definitively. “I am just a person, it isn’t my job to be good enough to forgive. Something stronger than me, wiser than me, was supposed to make that decision on my behalf. I was as overjoyed as I was furious when I saw him. But, there is no joy left. I’ve been down here for hundreds of years and this is the first time I’ve witnessed him truly suffer. That isn’t divine providence, that isn’t anything.”

  “What did your Demon in Red want?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “To keep the status quo and to try to reestablish order. There is an entire coalition of demons from the old alliance that want the world to be no different.”

  “I’m surprised that was someone you’d put your faith in,” I commented. “You won't get what you crave from that.”

  “Then, what is it that you want?”

  I rose to my feet and stared out over the horizon. It was all fake, manufactured by some entities for a reason that I did not know. My eyes turned towards the mountain and at the structure at the peak.

  It was the ending.

  “To be done,” I answered with a sigh. “It’s been a long time since I thought the powers that governed my faith ruled over this place. It is not built upon justice or fairness; it’s barely built upon anything at all. Nobody is satisfied; nobody wants to be here. We can’t agree on how we want the world to be shaped and nothing gets done. So, might as well end it for everyone. I will cast this entire place into the void. Who needs justice and hate and joy when you are nothing?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “You’d make that decision for everyone?”

  “I’d give them a choice,” I replied. “If you are too scared of nothingness, you are more than free to continue to waste away in this place. I think you’d be surprised just how many people would accept my mercy.”

  Vendetta kept her gaze on Armaros’ steaming body. He would keep coming back in perpetuity. Unless, of course, someone removed him from this plane.

  “I can get rid of him for you,” I offered. One of the mouths of [The Devouring] opened up beneath his body, but did not bite down. “I can make it so that he never returns so long as I am alive. I don’t even need your loyalty.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I answered plainly. “There’s nothing I need from anyone anymore. I’m just curious how you’d live your life if he was gone forever. Would I see someone at true peace or would I witness something even more tortured than before?”

  A twitch from Yoshitsune’s slow reformation made Vendetta’s flames spark up before they quickly died back down. She looked at the burnt remains. She squeezed it with her hands and parts of the body collapsed into charcoal.

  “I’ll help you reach the top, but I want you to do something for me first.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I want for you to inflict upon him what he inflicted upon me,” she requested. “That’s the only way that he’d understand what he did. If that doesn’t work, then there is no hope for anyone.”

  “Are you implying-“

  “I am," she said with burning eyes.

  “Not interested,” I answered. “Find someone else to be your violator.”

  “But I can’t do it myself.”

  “I thought you were more creative than that,” I said, disappointed. “If you lack the tool, then make the tool. All you need is a stick or a club or a spear or anything that you can dream up. If you want to be the driving force, you just need some belts to fasten it to you. Just, don’t involve me in it. As much as I do find fascination in the violence, I have other things that I need to do.”

  She followed my eyes to Yoshitsune’s body. It was still a couple minutes away from fully forming. I had my own decision to make before then.

  “Are you going to take her with you?”

  “Only if she wants to be taken. Here, join my party. Teleport to my location when you are done and I will dispose of the corpse. Now, please leave.”

  In a flash of fire, Vendetta disappeared to find her own sense of justice. Desperate people do desperate things. It was a bizarre request; a prayer that empathy could be brought through tremendous pain. I didn’t believe in it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to try.

  “For your sake, Armaros, I’ll pray she didn’t pick something sharp.”

  My attention turned back to Yoshitsune. I wondered what was going through her mind when my fist ruptured her stomach and brought an end to her life. Anger? Despair? Peace? It was hard for me to say.

  “Ask her yourself.”

  Miranda’s voice nagged inside my head. She once told me that the best way to figure something out is to ask, except the dumb bitch changed her mind all the time. I should just devour her, remove her from this plane until it was time to end things. It would spare me so much grief if I just took matters into my own hands. It was better than the conversation that would occur in a couple minutes.

  Why did I have to sit around to hear the words I already knew were coming?

  I did anyways, like an idiot. It wasn’t my place to decide how the rest of her existence would go. I just knew that I didn’t want these freaks to run the afterlife.

  Yoshitsune’s body twitched and she immediately sat up and drew her weapon.

  “She’s alive,” I quipped.

  “Ishmael,” she said with part disbelief, part anger, part sadness, and part joy; a soup of confusion. “Where are my friends? Tisiphone and Seift?’

  “Gone.”

  Her head turned as she surveyed the empty battlefield with her senses. It was just the two of us. Abandoned equipment was strewn about. Her attention settled on the snake-haired woman’s shield. She moved towards it, lifting the shield up and staring at it was a despondent expression.

  “Give them back,” she requested, her voice on the verge of tears. “Please, give my friends back to me.”

  “Then what will you do?” I asked. “Will you band together to try to kill me again? In the name of some demon who claims he knows God? Its bullshit, Yoshitsune, all of it is bullshit. It’d be better if all this just came to an end. Let’s just accept nothingness together. If you wait, I’ll bring it to you.”

  “I don’t want to disappear!” Yoshitsune shouted. “I want to be with you in a peaceful place. I’m sick of the fighting. I’m sick of the killing. I’m sick of the hate. You must feel that all of it is pointless. We can make something so much better.”

  “Not them,” I answered.

  “At least they’re trying,” she retorted. “You just want to end things. You just want to run away because you can’t imagine the place that I’m thinking of.”

  I gritted my teeth. What was I doing that was so wrong? Why was what I wanted incorrect compared to what everyone else wanted? Why was she considered nobler than me for her decisions? Why did I agree?

  “Fine, I will give them back to you. I will try to imagine a place that will bring us happiness. Just, please, come with me.”

  “Let me stay here for a while,” she said. “There are things that I need to think over and you standing there is going to make me lost again.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “It is how much I love you that’s the problem,” she answered. “Don’t worry, I won’t get in your way anymore.”

  I spat out her friends. They spilled out on the ground, their eyes wide with confusion. Before they could speak, I took off and flew away at max speed. I didn’t look back, I didn’t want to see them embrace. I didn’t want to see any of it. There was only one thing that I wanted. I needed to kill everyone in my path. Maybe then, when there is nobody that could stand up against me, I could think clearly.

  I flew in through the window of the tower and skidded across the floor. Everyone inside froze with my sudden appearance. Only Charles seemed unbothered by the entrance.

  “You’re back,” Charles commented. “I’m surprised you bothered to return at all…Hold on, what’s with you? You look different.”

  “I have what I need. It’s time to make the push for the top.”