Chapter
4 – Not Over, Just Beginning Again
Liron and Iris are communicating and
uploading the information we found to our allies while Crane and Nadine are
resting, watching the news, and keeping an eye on how the world is reacting to
what we did. Meanwhile, I’m sitting by myself still trying to control my
burning rage. Mikheil and the Light are out there in the capital, close by.
This entire conflict can end this instant if the Sufferer allows it and lets me
loose on him, and yet, He is silent. Still, another voice inside me is pushing
me forward and denounces my friends for being stupid for waiting while the iron
is hot. I am the leader of this group with the closest connection to truth
Himself, so I should know better than everyone here what needs to be done.
As I look at the TV and see the faces of
Mikheil and the Light staring back at the camera, the expression on their faces
further fuels my rage. Their smiles are begging me to go after them and the
feeling I’m getting from looking at them is that we’re actually looking at each
other in the face. “That’s it! I’m going out there to finish this and you can
either join me or stay hidden,” I say as I get up and storm out of the door.
“Adler, you can’t just…Wait. Does anyone else
hear a beeping-get down!” Explosives blow up in the hideout from all sides as
everything in it is destroyed apart, including the statue of the Sufferer.
In the smoke, I see men dressed in dull gold
armor with guns at their hips and sharp blades that stick out of their hands.
Before I’m able to transform, I’m hit by a flurry of hits and knocked out.
When I wake up, I see that I’m in a dark
room, tied to a metal bed with my hands and legs restrained, and Mikheil and
the Light standing in front of me. “Took you a while to wake up, brother. I
told the assassins to go easy on you, but I can’t blame them too much because
they’re all mad at what you did to the capital.”
“I’m actually impressed at what you’ve
managed to accomplish in such a short amount of time. You did more to the
capital than our home city in the week that you’ve been there.”
“I’ll show you what I can do if you let me
fight you, man to man, or if you’re going to kill me, then you should just get
it over with!”
“Ah, always so hasty. You know if you hadn’t
caused so much damage so quickly, I wouldn’t have been convinced by the Light
and Lyana to go after you. Also, I don’t want to kill you. It would be a better
image for us if I converted you to serve alongside me, but if you want death,
that will also look good in the history books for me because of all the
destruction and death you’ve caused. Either way, I’ll let my friend here decide
which fate you want.” Mikheil and the Light fade into the dark and a new person
emerges from it, a woman who has a form not too different from a Necessary form
except hers is more horrifying to look at.
She has mouths for eyes, an excessive amount
of fingers on her left hand while missing one on her right, three sets of
breasts on her upper chest, what appears to be a face in her midsection along
with another set of breasts, long black hair, and red lipstick to top it all
off. “I am here to feed your every pleasure, Adler. What would you like?”
“I’d like nothing more than to kill you,
Mikheil, and the Light.”
“Shame! I cannot give you that. I can give
you your old friends back. I have their corpses, wear their skins, and be them
for you. I know that you want Morticia, your girlfriend, out of all of them.
Back in the day, I used to have her power of Necessary Death, but I gave up
that curse and gave into the Light along with the love of my life who you
killed a month ago. Do you remember him? He had the power of Necessary
Suffering like you do and he suffered so that everyone could live in
everlasting happiness and peace. You can do the same and take me as your wife
if you take your brother’s offer.”
I scream out and say, “He’s not my brother
and I’m not taking anything he offers!”
I transform and break free of my restraints
as the woman retreats into the darkness.
The woman jumps out at me from the darkness,
gets in my face, and says, “There’s no use resisting.” I cut her throat with my
long black knife-like fingers only for another copy of her to jump out and say,
“You’ve lost. It’s already over.” I stab this copy through the head with my
fingers and another copy jumps out. “You never stood a chance.” I kill this
copy by crushing her head with my hands. Yet again, another copy jumps out.
“The Sufferer abandoned you. He gave you up to us and you know that He had the power
to prevent this.”
Yelling out hysterically, I grab the woman’s
head and forcefully separate it from her body. “Face me yourself instead of
sending these copies at me!”
In the darkness, I hear her laugh and then
say, “They aren’t copies, my dear. They are illusions created by a friend of
mine who also used to serve the Sufferer. Take a closer look at who they really
are.”
When I realize who I actually killed, I
revert to my normal form. I’ve…I’ve killed my friends, Crane, Nadine, Iris, and
Lirion. “I’m…I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Believe it or not, you did good, Adler. Ah,
how you’ll make a good servant of the Light. You used your own strength and
listened to the tempting voice of the Light rather than relying on the powers
of the Sufferer. If you had, you might’ve heard your friends screaming at you
as you killed them. You may not think it, but you’ve already given up on the
Sufferer without thinking about it.”
My hands are now shaking with rage as I hold
back my tears. “If you want me to use my own strength, I will so that I can rip
your throat out with my hands!”
“Ah, ah, ah! Not yet! You still have to deal
with my friend here.”
Four assassins surround me. One of them says,
“One of us is the one who is making these illusions while the others are the
people you turned against the Light. Better figure out which is the right one
before you take the life of another friend.”
I transform and feel myself change into
something different as my anger and hatred overtake me. “I’m not going to play
your games!” My fingers can now grow the length of a sword and easily cut
through everyone around me. “Haha! How’s that for choosing the right one?! One
of them had to be the right choice!”
“There we go! Now, you’re one of us!” Homing
in on the woman’s presence in the room, I leap at her, tear her throat out, rip
her face to pieces, and then use her left arm to beat her to death.
“So, this is what real power feels like?! If I
knew it’d be more satisfying to bring justice to people this way, I would’ve
done it earlier! Oh, Sufferer, how you deprive me of everything that makes me happy!”
Using my fingers, I rip my way out of the metal cell I’m in and start tearing a
bloody path toward Mikheil and the Light by ripping apart every guard I come
across. “Do you want to die for your god?! Do you want your reward of eternal
damnation?! Come and receive it from my hands! Hahaha!” As I near my target’s
location, I also sense two others who are on my hit list. I break my way
through the walls to reach them and stare at them with a wide bloodthirsty grin.
Hazin, my nephew, and Lyana, Mikheil’s wife,
sit in a camera room with a dozen guards surrounding them. “Uncle Adler, it’s a
pleasure to see you after so long. I can see the potential in you that the
Light was talking about. Maybe you can even overthrow my dad and become the
world’s new king.”
“Don’t say that and get behind me, Hazin,”
Lyana says as she steps in front of him. “I’ve told Mikheil that you turned
into a monster and should take the Light’s advice. He wanted to save you and
even questioned his fight against you, but I knew the Light knew better and you
just proved our thoughts were right.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong. I’m not just a
monster. I am death! I am suffering itself, damned to live in pain as the
Sufferer’s tool until he grants me a well-deserved, miserable end!” I tear
apart the guards in the room and make Lyana watch as I twist Hazin’s head
around in circles until it falls off. After, I turn my attention to her and rip
her to pieces with my fingers. With both of their dead bodies in my hands or rather
what’s left of them, I take them to Mikheil and the Light and throw them at his
feet. “Was this part of your plan too, ‘brother’? All who love and follow you
will suffer the same fate! Haha, I’ll make sure of it!”
Mikheil’s face twitches as he tries to keep
his confident smile on his face. Once his face settles back to his normal
expression, I can hear the Light’s voice come out of his. “It was. You can
serve alongside me or try killing me and taking the world for yourself. In either
scenario, the world wins and becomes a happy and peaceful place again. It’s
what we both want, isn’t it?”
“All I want is the both of you dead and
bleeding!” I say as I charge at them and then immediately blown through a wall
by a burst of dull golden light that comes out of them.
“There’s only one way for you to survive
this, Adler, and that’s by submitting yourself to me. You’ve already done it through
your emotions and finally giving in to them after I’ve sent you so many temptations.
Why not take the final step?”
“Because everything you offer is a lie! All I
want for you is to die and myself to die afterward! Let’s end this once and for
all!” I get blown back into room after room until I end up in a room with the
broken statue of the Sufferer.
“I can grant you part of your wish, but not
the other. Look up the destroyed remains of your God. See how He’s left you to
this pathetic fate and the damnation of your soul.”
As I look at the broken statue, I see a white
snake coming out of it that has cuts all over its body and red eyes. “Adler. Come
back to me.”
“Look at this wretched thing you call a
servant. I told you he would turn his back on you when tested.”
“Stay out of this,” the Sufferer says as Mikheil
and the Light are blown away by a force of light and darkness that comes out of
Him. “You’re not too far gone to repent.” The snake comes out of the statue and
wraps itself around me, turning me back into my normal self, and clearing my
head of my rage, hatred, and despair.
“I…I don’t know if I can repent. I’m not worthy
of mercy or pity. I am not worthy of living anymore or your love.”
The
Sufferer puts His head up to mine and says, “Your sins are the reason I have
mercy on you and suffer for you. You were loved before I created you and still
are no matter what you do. Your tears and honest confession are enough penance
to make up for your sins. Come, my servant. There is much work to be done.”
Trusting
in the Sufferer, I thank Him and hold him close to me.
“What a precious moment,” the Light says with
Mikheil’s voice mixed with his. “What’s the point of repenting? You’ve messed
up before and will sin again. It’s in your weak nature to do so, so you might
as well give into it.”
“The Sufferer also created me with the
capacity to repent and become a better person, the person who He originally
created me as and you have the same capacity, brother. Stop being a puppet of
the Light and serve your true God with me.”
“Oh, I’m your brother again? Whatever the
case is, you’re the one who is a puppet here and who is still at a
disadvantage. You won’t be escaping here alive now that you’ve crawled back to
your master’s feet.”
I pray and embrace the pain of my stigmata as
I say, “I was at a disadvantage, but now I have the strength I need to defeat
you.”
My transformation is different again, but
this one feels right, more right than my Necessary form felt. A torrent of
golden and black mist comes out of my hands, filling the building we’re in, and
pushing back Mikheil and the Light as I walk towards me and they uselessly try
to charge at me. “I now see that the Light has been clouding your true self.
How could I not when he’s always been behind you like a puppet master
controlling his doll?” I point at Mikheil and shoot a beam of light and dark
energy to pierce his heart.
“What…what did you do to me?” Mikheil says
his voice is now the dominant one and both he and the Light still try to appear
confident.
“Put a crack in your heart of stone so that
the Sufferer may reclaim it. Simply reach out to His already outstretching hand
and allow Him to save you. You can finally be free from the Light and we can
fix the world together. Please, brother.” I see the expression on my brother’s
face change before the Light snaps his fingers and the two are teleported away
in a flash of light.
Now that my work here is done, I leave the
building along with those who are repentant as we leave while leaving everything
else behind us in the dust. Since there’s not enough room for me in the trucks
and cars parked here, I let the repentant take them so I can walk alone with
the Sufferer and my thoughts.
“Mikheil and the Light escaped again. What do
we do now?” I ask the Sufferer while wandering on the road.
“Chase
after them. Our final battle with them approaches,
“What
about those who were lost? What happened to their souls?”
“The
souls of your friends that you’re referring to are saved, but Hazin and Lyana
were damned since you hadn’t used your powers so I could break into their
hearts and attempt to change their minds.”
“I…I’m sorry. I knew the answer, but I just
had to ask. Hazin was so young.”
“He
was past the age of reason and knew what he was doing. Do not grieve over him
nor the lost chance to save him and simply pick your head up and continue on.”
“Can
I really? I’m back where I started with another set of dead friends, family members
damned to Hell, and chasing down Mikheil and the Light.”
“It’s
okay because I will be with you as I’ve always been. You’re stronger now and
closer to me than ever before and more ready to take on your brother and the
Light. The world will be free and know real truth and love soon.”
“Okay…okay. Thank you, Lord. Lead on.” Again,
I wander the roads chasing after my brother and praying along the way. Mother
Mary, Father Joseph, be a mother and father to me now. Guardian angel, be at my
side to protect and strengthen me. Sufferer, grant me strength, knowledge of truth,
and the will to always return to you, my first true love.
The End
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