Blessed are the Punished: Chapter 1 – Hunting Evil

Chapter 1 – Hunting Evil

The swamps of Abaddon are filled with all kinds of sinners. Both the repentant and the wretched call this place of the Holy Land ruled by the dark elves home. Many of its dead trees reach toward the skies and look as if they are hands clawing to get help. I’m in a purposefully unnamed settlement that I had to find by finding the right people to put it on my map. This place doesn’t appear to be any different than any other off-the-books settlement with small houses, a church, and a small market district.

Most people here are dark elves such as me with a few beastmen and ratmen inhabiting it. Going into one of the inns, I take a seat and look at the menu. The items are dishes primarily made in Abaddon. Most if not everything here is poisonous to eat unless cooked properly or mixed with ingredients found in this region. One particular item on the menu is the one I’m searching for and I tell the dark elf waitress that I want my steak extra rare.

“Heh, do you want it still mooing?” the waitress asks.

“Yes, I like it when my meal makes noises when I eat it,” I say.

The waitress looks at me, smiles, and then nods. She brings me my food with a side of veggies, and by the time she comes back, my dish is clean.

“You must be hungry. Would you care for seconds?” she asks.

“Yes, please, if you have any more. I know meat like this is hard to obtain.”

“It’s not as difficult as you think, especially in times like these. Come downstairs and I’ll let you have as much as you want. You can even have a bit of me if you want.”

The waitress reveals much of her naked skin to me to which I turn my head and hand wave it away.

“I’m a married man. My wife is more than enough for me.”

“Well, we’ll see if you change your mind downstairs.”

Going downstairs, I find what I expected, men, women, and children of various races, sizes, ages, and body weights all chained and gaged in a room with soundproof walls.

“Take your pick of meat. I’ll have one of the butchers make your dish for your viewing pleasure. You can also pleasure yourself with me if you wish. Please, do pick the second option. It’s been so long since I last enjoyed such an experience,” the waitress says as she undresses and has a seductive look on her face.

I do my best to ignore the waitress while looking at the victims and walking close to the butcher. Once I’m close enough to the hulking man, I take out my black, gold, and crimson dagger, stab him through the face, grab the waitress by the neck, and slam her against a nearby wall.

She smiles at me and says, “I don’t know if you’re a secret agent or if this is part of your fetish.”

“This is serious,” I say.

“Then why are you smiling from ear to ear and why do I hear a faint laughter from you?”

“Don’t mind that. Where are the necromancers meeting next?”

“I’ve never known an agent that ate human meat. Are you sure you aren’t on our side?”

“Here’s how I got rid of your meal.” Casting a spell, I make tiny droplets of flesh-eating acid form and fall from my fingertips and on the waitress’ bare skin. At first, she tries to bear the pain until she starts to scream out the more and more flesh gets eaten away by the acid. “Where are the necromancers?”

“They’re meeting in the stone temple north of here! If you leave now, you may catch them still preparing for their ritual.”

“Was there a dark elf woman with dark blue skin and crimson hair with them? If so, did she have two boys with her?”

“Ye…yes, there was. Was she your wife? Heh, is she into this kind of play with you?”

I intensify my spell so that more acid forms in my hands before placing my entire hand on the waitress’ face, killing her, melting her face, and laughing uncontrollably while it is happening. After I regain control of myself, I turn around to look at the captives who appear confused and scared as they look at me.

“Do not worry. I’m going to let you all go,” I tell them.

After releasing the captives, I leave the settlement and head to the stone temple north of here. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of life besides the fire burning on the stone fire pits. Before I can investigate the site any further, several people start walking out of the temple with walking corpses behind them. Three of the group are the people I’m looking for, but the two boys look like life-sized doll versions of themselves, something that I wanted to prevent.

“Peter. I’m so glad that you’ve come. We can finally be a happy family now that you’re here,” my wife, Leah, says.

“I’m not here to join you and your cult of degenerates. I’m here to save you and bring an end to the necromancers,” I say.

“We don’t need saving, but you will if you don’t join us. Look at our boys. They’re better than ever and won’t ever have to fear death.”

“I know what you did to them and it was worse than death.”

“Is that so? This doll-like shell that I’ve put them in will prevent them from dying like our other children have. Don’t you know that we’ve lost enough children to fill a town’s graveyard over the centuries we’ve been alive?”

“I know. A parent should never live long enough to bury their child, but this isn’t the way to protect them. I also know you skinned them alive while casting foul hex magic on them as you put them in those shells. Now, their bodies are under the control of devils.”

“They are under my influence and their own. Unlike other necromancers who simply defile the dead with rituals and marks on their bodies only to use the dead like puppets, what I’ve done allows my boys to act on their own with minimal involvement from me. The process was painful to go through, but its fruits are more than worth it. Our boys will not die by disease or serious injury, unlike our other children.”

“All our children are dead now and your soul will be damned forever unless you repent and come back home with me.”

“You’re wrong! My last two children will live forever with me and so will you whether you choose to or not. Your skills in the Church’s thieves guild and as an agent of our king won’t save you from resisting our will.”

“Let’s put them to the test then. Shall we?”

I can’t help but laugh as I conjure dark fog from my hands and merge my body into it.

“This trick of yours won’t work on us! You better come out of the fog because you won’t want us to force you out. Our hex magic can dispel this fog and turn your body into bits! Don’t you want to live forever with us?!”

A few seconds pass until Leah blasts the fog with greenish-blue beams of energy that come out of her hands, a display that makes me laugh again. I then conjure a sword out of the darkness of the area, cut one of the necromancers in two, and retreat into the dark.

“That laugh of yours always worried me and sounds like it’s gotten worse and darker.”

“I’ve told you, it’s the result of my centuries of killing and suffering. I can’t control it,” I admit.

“Then run away from it with me and our children! You don’t need to be the blade of the Church or the king anymore!”

“I have always been a blade of God and that will never change.”

Again, I laugh and this time coming out of the darkness to spray acid from my hands to melt the walking corpses. The necromancers who held control over them curse me for destroying the bodies of the people they “cared” for. While they try to salvage what they can from the melting corpses, I stab each of them in the back of the neck, so that if my stab doesn’t kill them, the acid on the ground will finish them off by melting their face off. Now, there’s only Leah, the two dolls of my boys, and two other necromancers, both of whom I kill while they try to run away, which causes me to laugh.

“You’re sadistic, Peter! What happened to the man I loved?!” Leah says.

“What happened to the woman I loved who was always optimistic for the future? Who kept having children despite losing so many and was content in how every child lived faithfully for God until their dying breaths?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about! I hated God for every loss which felt like spit in my face every time it happened! Every time you and I told ourselves that it would be different this time, but the only thing that changed was the ways our children died and the ages they died. I’m sick of it all and you should be too!”

“I’m cursed with a numbness to it all and a laughter I can’t control. Regardless, if you won’t see the light in the dark, then I’ll have to force your eyes open to see it.”

I conjure more dark fog while in the darkness itself and approach the two dolls of my boys, however, before I strike and can break the dolls, I feel a chill stab me like a knife stopping me in place. The shells of the dolls open revealing the skinned remains of my boys who look at me with hollow eyes and unnerving grins.

“Father, don’t you see that this is really us?” I can hear them say in distorted voices that sound as if they’re talking inside my head. “Mother saved us. She loves us. She loves you and wants us all to be a happy family. Is that so wrong? Isn’t that what you want as well?”

Lord Jesus Christ, give me the strength to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately, I’m too slow to act as Leah has just noticed me and flings the boys back with her necromantic powers.

“You won’t ruin what I worked so hard to accomplish! Never chase after us again or else you’ll be the one suffering a fate worse than death!”

Leah’s hands produce a crimson and pink light that goes out to the dead around us and in the ground and raises them all. She then raises a bone horse from the ground, puts the boys on it, and flees. You’d think I’d be able to act quicker but something about the voices of my boys hit me like no other. To be fair, I’ve never dealt with this situation before nor have I faced demons who use the flesh of humans to act. Before I can put the dead to rest by myself, a couple of dark elf agents come riding on horseback to my aid, help me out, and then criticize me for acting on my own.

After they’re done speaking, I say, “Have you found anything on your end?”

“Did everything we said just go over your head? Yes, we found information on our end and came across our fair share of necromancers and their sympathizers. I’ll repeat myself. You’re not alone in this,” Gad asks.

“Let’s go find a place to rest and discuss our findings then after we scour this place for any possible leads.”

“Tch, fine.”

“Don’t be so annoyed at him. He is your senior,” Dan says.

“By like what, a hundred years? I still have centuries of experience under my belt.”

“That gap in time means more than you think.”

“It doesn’t feel like it and I know time hardly means a thing to you nowadays.”

“True, but still. Peter knows what he’s doing and will ask for our help if he needs it, right?”

“Sure,” I say while thinking about my next move and searching the bloodied stone temple that is full of human and animal corpses, body parts, maps, and papers all over the place.

I’ll still chase you down, Leah. As long as you live, there’s a chance that you can be saved.