Chapter
3 – Alone, but Never Truly Alone
I look at the death around me and
the blood on my hands and see myself reflected in my actions.
This is who I am. This is what I enjoy,
causing chaos and death for my own purposes and enacting my will on others.
This is a part of myself that still
lingers and curses my soul with its sins. Where was I? What was I doing? Oh, I was
in a town with Idelle and Kane, because everyone was fighting one another for
an unknown reason. I don’t know where either of them is, and all I see around
me are corpses, some of which I recognize as being the dead bodies of my pregnant
wife and child, and the many others I remember killing. This must be the trick
of some superhuman who has psychological or supernatural powers.
I should thank whoever they are.
Being with Kane and Idelle suppressed my inner desire and true self. Perhaps I can
find them and ally myself with them so I can find Kane and Idelle to kill them.
I need to find Kane and Idelle so
they can help me fight against my sinful self. Wading my way through the
corpses around me, I try searching the area to see if I can find a way out. As I
keep walking, I see the other version of myself, who is clothed in black, rise from
the bodies of corpses.
He grabs my neck and says, “You
think you’ve killed the self that you created, but I will always be a part of
you. You will always want to kill and create chaos, and betray your so-called
new family. You don’t deserve them. You don’t deserve anything other than to
die in the dirt like the rabid dog you are.”
I transform my arm into a white
shield with three inner-connected circles on it and push away the false version
of me.
“I die to myself daily and rise
again after every sin. The past may haunt me, but it’s not my master. God alone
is,” I say.
“You mean the new God that you’ve
embraced, the same one who allowed you to fall to such sins and kill your family?
Is He the same God who forces you to endure challenges with little to no rest
and has put you in the situation you find yourself in now?”
“Your questions are dishonest. I
have no room to judge the judge of all when I am a flawed, idiotic, and impulsive
man. Begone.”
My right arm turns black with
tendrils and sharp fingers reaching out. Using it, I cut through my false
version and continue forward. Still, it appears and bothers me with its words.
“It won’t be that easy or simple.
God has abandoned you to suffer with me for the rest of your life, and at a
moment’s notice, my sin can forever damn me. How is that fair?”
I cut through myself and say, “I
will abandon myself to His mercy.”
Again, he appears and says, “You abandoned
yourself and get let down anyway. The last time you sinned wasn’t too long ago,
and yet, you trust someone who lets you down?”
Cutting through myself, I say, “Yes.
I won’t always know the reason behind everything God puts me through, but I pray
that I will.”
Appearing again, the false version
of myself says, “You’ll never attain perfection in this life. The catechists and
your friends said so themselves.”
“I don’t need to be perfect to be
loved or receive mercy. In fact, my imperfection is the reason why I receive
mercy, and a blessed curse that always reminds me of my need for God.”
After cutting myself again, I find
a tear in the fabric of reality. I go through it and see that I’m in a black
and white void with floating pieces of cities and towns I’ve been in around the
area. At the other end of the voice is a towering, dark figure.
The being’s voice says, “I am the
god you’ve abandoned, the god of Nexum. Give yourself to me, and you’ll be free
and happy forever.”
Refusing the false god’s offer with
my action, I leap from floating structure to structure with my black arm and
white shield out. The god sends corpses at me and projectiles of light, which I
either block or cut through.
“The world is against you, and so
is your new master. You need me,” the god says.
“Like hell I do,” I respond.
I jump from the ruins of Meridian
and Solis to those of Poca Bellezza and Nexum.
“You’re nothing but a traitor to
all you pledge allegiance to. What makes you think you won’t get over the
honeymoon phase you’re in, get bored, and embrace some other god or ideology?”
“I am committed more than ever to
the road I’ve chosen, and I know that it’s the only true one.”
Leaping to the next set of floating
structures, they move away, and I hardly manage to grab onto the edge.
“No one knows how much you suffer. No
one will help you.”
“My struggles internally are mine
alone, but I suffer them with the help of others.”
As I’m about to fall, Idelle and
Kane grab my hands and pull me up.
“Zandro, you alright, brother? I’m
glad to see you alive and right state of mind,” Kane says.
“I told you he would be. He’s our
friend, a member of our family,” Idelle adds.
I have no words for the kindness
shown to me, so I instead remind them of our objective and the enemy in front of
us. “We need to take down that false god. Doing so will free us from this spell,”
I say.
“Let’s get it done, Castigators,” Kane
says.
Together, Kane, Idelle, and I leap
towards the false god, Kane shooting at the thing with his ebony pistols, and
Idelle and I blocking the incoming projectiles and helping him through the crumbling
structures. When we get closer, Idelle leaps at the false god, taking it down,
but it separates in half. Going after the other half, I see my face in it;
however, that doesn’t stop me from decapitating it. With his head off, the
spell lifts in an instant. Idelle, Kane, and I find ourselves in the middle of
the town we were in, and a decapitated woman at our feet, cloaked in black, who
is presumably the one who put the spell on us. Around us, we see the townspeople
waking up as well and coming to their senses.
Investigating the woman’s identity,
we find that she was a big fan of ours and, according to her diary that we find
in her apartment, she researched our history before putting the town under her
spell, using them to get us to come to her, so we could be under her spell as
well and make her change the world in the way she wanted.
“What she failed to learn about us
is that we’re a team, not a solo act,” Kane points out while reading the diary.
“We rely on each other, rather than ourselves, to get things done, and together,
we’ll change the world.”
Idelle and I agree, report to the
Dominion that the job is done, and head back to Idelle’s parents' house for
dinner. During dinner, Kane receives a call from the Dominion office. He’s told
that the people we’ve helped over the past few days want to work under us in
the places they’re in, and he accepts.
“Castigators are expanding their
ranks,” Kane further says. “If we keep this up, we’ll be more than a subsidiary
of the Dominion.”
“We could have Castigator groups
across all the places that the Dominion are in, accepting ex-criminals and
repentant troublemakers, just like us, and turning their chaos into help,” Idelle
says.
“I wouldn’t think that far ahead,
but it is an alluring idea,” I say.
“That’s what’ll happen,” Kane
decides. “The Castigators will embrace reformed criminals and villains and turn
them into heroes for the greater good.”
Idelle and I agree with Idelle’s
parents. Together, we toast to a brighter future. Even Idelle and Kane’s son
wants to toast with his little bottle and gets loud and excited like his
parents are. I didn’t expect to ever have a family again, and part of me still
feels like I don’t deserve one, but being here with my friends and their family
is nothing more than being with my new family. Who would expect that an
extremist like me would find togetherness with people like me, and we would be
the ones to convert like-minded people to have an organization for our own? Never
did I expect that things would turn out this well.
“Praise be to God forever,” I say
out loud, to which my new family around me repeats and toasts again.
The End
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