Chapter
2 – Mind Broken and Spirit Breaking
Part
1
The men and women who guard the
house give me the pleasure I crave, but never satisfy it as my beloved does.
When they’re gone, I watch the entrance of our house, hoping to see their car
coming from the distant city of Meridian, which almost looks like it’s on the
horizon. I need more pleasure! The people here can only give me so much of it
until they get tired or annoyed, and pleasing myself gets boring after a while.
Something is happening in the Meridian that’s making them stay there longer. I
hope it’s nothing too serious and something my beloved can solve quickly so
they can spend more time with me.
Oh! Here they come, and it looks
like they brought company, and the best kind as well. They’ve brought their
horned friends from the city. The guards around here are afraid of them, but
I’m not because they know how to treat me right, which is exactly what happens.
I have more than my fill of ecstasy since they are especially rough with me,
and I pass out for several hours afterward. Waking up at night, I get out of
bed and sneak downstairs to see them having a party without me with other men
and women.
Going up to my beloved, I say, “How
could you have this party without me?”
They laugh at me and say, “I
thought you had your fill of pleasure for the day.”
“I’m never satisfied.”
Again, they laugh. “That’s good to
hear. Nevertheless, let’s see if we can satisfy you tonight.”
What follows is a night of drinking
and seemingly never-ending love and pleasure that passes just as soon as it
arrives. When I wake up in the early hours of the morning in a bed full of
people, I head downstairs and start to clean up the blood, other bodily fluids,
and mess on the floor, as it is my duty to my beloved. While cleaning, I can’t
help but feel strange. Huh? What is this? Where am I? What am I doing?
Part
2
“Are we getting closer, Penelope?”
Zahara asks.
“Yes, we are. I can already hear
the demonic whispers and screaming that sounds like scratching a chalkboard in
my head,” I say.
“Stay strong and keep praying,”
Raziel says with his scythe alight with supernatural flame. “God has not
abandoned us, and our guardian angels are hard at work, my angel says.”
Despite Raziel’s comforting
reminder, the screams still scratch at my mind. Those damnable screams. I hear
them when I enter the minds of the members of the sixth family, and when I do,
I hear not only one voice but also one or more voices that must be demons,
voices that sound like a reverberated male and female voice combined, along
with their screams. Right now, the Compassionate and I are exploring the
underground city beneath Meridian, where it’s said more members of the sixth
family are hiding. We had an escort from the seventh family who kept the sixth
family in check, but when we reached the meeting point, we found only their
desecrated remains decorating the walls and warnings not to follow them written
in blood.
Still, for the sake of justice and
finding Polina, we continue forward, following the trails of blood that will
probably lead to a trap. We can’t stop now after weeks of effort. Polina
would’ve spent days without a moment’s rest to find us, and would’ve found us
already knowing her intelligence and unstoppable will. Her pursuit of me is the
reason why I’ve changed. When we first met, my grief of being a disposable tool
of the government was being used by Lily, and I let that grief aid in the
assassination of the previous mayor, his deputy mayor, and so many other
innocent people who supported them, but when confronted by Polina, she showed
me mercy, helped me overcome my grief, and gave me a chance to make amends.
Zahara was almost manipulated by
Lily into doing the same, and is motivated in the same way I am, due to the
same kindness shown to her. Even now, she uses that memory to push herself
forward and motivates her to find our best friend. Raziel is containing a
passionate, burning rage within himself. I can hear the whispers of the
guardian angel; only he can see and talk to him, and even though I can’t hear
the exact words, I can tell that the angel is doing a lot to keep him calm. I’m
certain that when we find her alive and she recovers from what was done to her,
he’ll propose.
The whispers and screaming keep
bothering me, even as I try to keep my mind off them, so I ask Raziel, “This is
where the majority of them used to reside, and you and Polina drove them out
of?”
“Yes, it’s where we first met.
Under the guidance of the dark hero, L’Obscruite, the aid of my brother, Kane
Mundr, and the help of the seventh family, we ended the sixth family’s
supernatural hold of Meridian,” Raziel explains.
“It seems like you missed a few,”
Zahara comments.
“We didn’t. If anything, the
members of the sixth family we are facing are those we converted, but have
reverted to their sinful ways. The demonic influence that has scarred their
souls isn’t something that can be easily removed. Look at Lily. Even she has to
spend most of her days isolated in prayer and penance to keep herself away from
sin.”
“Raziel, can you intensify your
flame? It’s getting darker in these tunnels,” I say.
The flames on Raziel’s scythe burn
brighter. As the light increases, I see some dark things creeping away at the
edges of the shadows.
“What was that?” Zahara says with
her sniper up and ready to fire.
“Devils or demon-enslaved souls.
Did you think they wouldn’t keep a close eye on us?” Raziel asks.
“I expect you both to let me know
when you see them and start fighting them because I don’t have any
psychological or supernatural powers like you do.”
“Get ready then. The whispers and
screams are intensifying,” I say.
Raziel’s flames continue to
intensify until they explode from his scythe like a volcano, spreading around
the area and homing in on several people around us, killing most, and sparing a
few. Among the few, I’m surprised to see one of their leaders surviving, who
has more horns on their body than the others, and I say “they” because I’m not completely
sure if this person is a man or a woman. This mixed sex appearance is unique to
the leaders we’ve come across, and another show of the sixth family’s
perversion of God’s original design and making themselves look like their false
god.
The leader says, in a distorted
male and female voice, “Thank you for freeing me, but my demons will chain my
mind to my sins again. You have to kill me before I cause more suffering!”
“We can help you, but you also have
to help us,” I say.
“It’s about Polina, isn’t it? She
tried to help me…but…but.”
The whispering and screaming of
demons is coming back.
“Don’t listen to the demons! Pray
and talk to us while we get out of here.”
“You can’t escape the immaterial.
Polina tried to help me, but the demons were too strong! They have an eternal
hold over my soul, and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing you
can do about their influence. We’ll all be damned.”
The screams of the demons are all
we hear and somehow shake the ground, walls, and ceiling. Raziel’s scythe
flames go out as the ceiling collapses on us, knocking me out. When I wake up,
I don’t see any debris on or around me.
“Zahara? Raziel?” I call out.
I don’t see either of my friends
here, and the bodies of the members of the sixth family are gone. There’s nowhere
else to go but up to the surface, so I climb up the debris and find myself back
on Meridian’s streets. Hearing gunfire in the distance, I run to it, hoping to
find one of my friends or some help. For some reason, when I arrive at the source
of the noise, I see Zahara shooting people who are already dead, with bullet
holes in their heads and bodies.
“Get away from me! I’ve already
changed! I’m not the same person I was before!” Zahara says.
“Zahara, who are they?” I ask.
“People I’ve killed. Help me get
out of this, Penelope! This has to be some kind of mind trick.”
Right. This has to be some kind of
psychological trick. Using my powers, I am immediately met with more demonic
scream that feels like fingers tearing at my mind. Regardless of the pain, I
fight through it to try to push through this spell; however, I am only met with
laughter.
“Do you think your powers have any
effect on us?” the demons say.
“We are eons old, while you are a
newborn in comparison.”
“You are no saint or angel. You’re
not a virtuous woman of any caliber.”
“Polina thought she could save the
sixth family, but we reminded them that they’re beyond saving. They’re ours,
and you are, as well.”
I’m not. I know that. Remembering
Raziel’s advice, I offer up my pain as penance for my sins, the sins of others,
and those in Purgatory. This makes the demons stop laughing and go back to
screaming. The air around me feels like it’s vibrating, and I feel like my
entire body and head are going to explode. Flames start to engulf my body, but they
don’t hurt me. In fact, the flames empower me and allow me to shatter this
illusion. A loud glass breaking sound breaks my concentration, and I see that
Zahara, Raziel, and I are back in the underground city in the area we entered
it in. Raziel’s body is engulfed in flames, and Zahara is drenched in sweat and
struggling to stand up.
“It…it looks like we haven’t gone
anywhere. Did anything we went through even happen?” Zahara asks.
“It happened on a spiritual plane,”
Raziel says as the flames on his body die down. “Let’s go see our escorts.
Hopefully they’re alive in reality.”
We go to the meet-up location and
thankfully find them alive. We explain to them what happened, and they don’t
seem all too surprised.
“The powers of the sixth family are
terrifying, yet not absolute,” one of the members of the seventh family explains.
“It is only through God we can beat them, and God is the reason why their
powers are limited.”
“Never give in to doubt or weakness,
and if, or rather, when you do, don’t allow your failures to drown you in despair,”
the other seventh family member says. “That’s how they had control over me, and
as a former member of the sixth family, I can confidently say that they can be
redeemed, and aren’t invincible.”
Continuing, we find a strange sight.
The area that Raziel previously lit up in our shared hallucination, but the allies
and members of the sixth family here are either already charred corpses or
writhing in silent agony with flames burning on their bodies.
“Impressive. What happened on the spiritual
plane carried over to reality. God has blessed you with a truly good friend, Raziel,”
the seventh family member says.
We all thank God, each of us
grateful that we don’t have to go through another shared hallucination.
Interrogating the repentant members of the sixth family, we find that they’re
keeping Polina and others they consider valuable in the suburbs of Meridian.
They don’t know her exact location, but the information we do get is invaluable
now that we have a general area to search. We’re so close, yet so far, and I
pray that we’re able to find Polina soon. If what we went through is a taste of
their true power, Polina must be going through the same daily.
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