Salvation Through Death: Chapter 4 – A Righteous Kind of Suicide

Chapter 4 – A Righteous Kind of Suicide

I am dropped off at a seemingly abandoned church that has overgrown vegetation on it by the representatives of Corvus.

“In death, there is salvation,” they say to me before bowing their heads and leaving.

I say the same back and head into the church. Looking around at the outside, I see that the vegetation is all thorny, which reminds me of the plants back home. Further inside, the artwork depicting death, crows, and decay is also of Corvus. To be honest, I was unaware that we had our own churches outside of our kingdom since it was agreed among all kingdoms that we’d attend the local churches and not carry over foreign ones so that we don’t fight over semantics, especially since the liturgy between all cultures is the basically the same and all masses said in Latin. In the back of the church lies a sealed doorway. Beside it is a large key-like hole. Hmm. The keyhole is a weird shape. I could probably put my entire arm and then some in it. Ah! I think I know what the key is.

Using my sword as the key, I can turn the lock and open the door at the same time. Trying to get my sword out results in the door closing so I’ll have to leave my sword in the lock for now. Here, I find penitents and more of my own people who are praying, cultivating little bits of fruit and vegetables in the inside gardens, and keeping their weapons sharp. When they see me, they bow their heads. It surprises me to see more of my people here. Their presence here must mean that there’s something incredibly important here besides the monstrance in the adoration room.

Two of my people completely cloaked in black at the end of the long hallway silently point me to the door behind them while they bow their heads. Going into the room, I find a guillotine, nooses, crucifixes, swords, and all manner of weapons of execution. The two people who were by the door close the door behind me as I understand what is going on. I go to the guillotine, kneel by it, and put my head through the hole where my head is supposed to go.

“When I bring down this blade, so I pray that this poor sinner will merit the grace of eternal life,” one person says behind me before the blade comes down and cuts my neck.

I remember everything I went through in this moment that feels like forever. All my mistakes, the opportunities I could’ve taken to do better, and the times I was less than charitable, repent of all of them and then feel a weight lift off me as if my entire body was weighing me down. With my death done, I remove my head from the hole and stand up as a new man.

“Congratulations on your death. May you now live as a more perfect vessel for God’s will,” both people cloaked in black say to me with their heads bowed.

I bow my head in return and walk past them. Everyone in the church is on alert and arming themselves because of some approaching danger. When they see me, they bow their heads and walk behind me as I lead them to meet whatever or whoever is here. What I find meeting us is a large group of bandits comprised of beastmen, ratmen, orcs, and other rogues from other kingdoms.

“If you are here for any other reason than to repent, then you should leave or your only mercy will be an agonizing death that will make you regret your sins,” I say.

My words have only seemed to amuse the rogues as they laugh at me.

One of the men approaches me with a confident expression on their face and says, “Hah! We’ve come to erase this church and the people within it since you’ve been causing us and our friends so much trouble, and uh, don’t you think you should have some kind of weapon on you before you threaten us, mister one-arm?”

“I am the weapon, a weapon of God.”

The armor falls off my remaining right arm. I plunge the decayed arm into the ground and make thorny vines that are larger than horses come out of the ground and strangle the sinners around us. From the thorns also come poisons and armor and flesh-eating acids both of which give them equally painfully slow deaths. As for my people and I, we are unaffected by the poisons and praise God for this ability they have given me to use to protect us and ask God to give these sinners the humility to repent, to sacrifice the part of themselves that is full of pride and sin because, in death, there is salvation.

The End