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Purified (Ch. 2)

Purified (Ch. 2)

By Madeline PetersonPublished 5 years ago 18 min read
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I slept poorly, so I was awake before sunrise. I had hoped that watching the sunrise would make me feel better. The colors were so beautiful. But, because of me, many people weren’t alive to enjoy the sunrise. Watching something that made me happy felt wrong.

Breakfast was a brief, hurried affair, and it didn’t take long for us to get ready to travel. Soon, we were on the road again, heading toward Heartvale, the town with the bandit problem. Like yesterday, the others rode while I ran alongside.

It was agreed that I would shift back into my human shape to enter the town. No one felt like going to the trouble of explaining to the townspeople that I had been purified, and was, therefore, not a threat. After a brief chat with the elder of the town, we continued onward, toward the bandits.

The others left their horses and packs at the base of the hill the bandits’ hideout was on. Esthera spelled us invisible. Then, we crept toward the bandits.

And we were creeping. It was hard to trust that the bandits couldn’t see us when we could still see ourselves, so everyone aside from Esthera was darting from hiding place to hiding place.

Esthera sighed. “Can’t you just trust my magic for once?”

Devon hesitated, then stood. “Esthera’s right. We’re completely invisible. We should act like it.”

Herkon grunted, “Speak for yourself.”

Devon shrugged. “All I’m saying is...”

I tuned out as I looked around. There were three bandits at the window. They were talking to each other, but it seemed too casual, almost forced, and my keen eyes could detect the darting glances they kept throwing in our direction.

“Devon and Esthera are right.” Thender stood. “It is silly to—”

Suddenly, the bandits’ bows were out, and arrows were nocked. I opened my mouth to warn the others, but it was too late. My keen ears heard the bows release.

Devon was closest, so I dove in front of him, taking the arrow aimed at his heart. Nearby, Thender cried out, and Esthera made a horrible gurgling sound.

Devon and Herkon froze in shock. Before I could jolt them out of it, Herkon was yelling orders. “Devon! See to Esthera first; it sounds like they hit her lung. You,” he ordered, pointing at me, “Make sure Devon doesn’t get shot. They take out our healer, we are dead. I’m going after the bandits.”

As he said the last bit, he was already charging up the hill. The archers loosed a second time. Herkon took two arrows, and, once again, I took the one meant for Devon. Making a face, I pulled the arrows out. Not silver. Good. The wounds were already beginning to close. I placed myself between Devon and the archers.

They had time to get off two more volleys before Herkon got to them. Most were aimed at Herkon, who was starting to look like a pincushion, but I intercepted another meant for Devon, this time catching in my hands instead of taking it in the gut.

Devon and Thender, now healed, stood. Esthera tried to stand, but Devon pushed her back down. “You just took an arrow to the heart. I healed it, but still, you nearly died. Lie here for a bit.”

“But—” Esthera began, trying to stand again. She slipped on a puddle of her own blood and fell.

“Stay,” Devon said. “Healer’s orders.” Thender was already charging up the hill, but, mindful of what Herkon said about the healer, I stayed with Devon.

Then we were running up the hill. I took the lead, keeping my body between Devon and potential danger.

When we got there, Thender was keeping the bandits at bay with a wall of fire, standing between them and the unconscious Herkon. The heat kept them from getting closer, but some bright spark had gotten his bow. He nocked an arrow.

I tackled him. With no time to be subtle, I punched straight through his ribcage. “I’ve got them. Thender, drop the wall so Devon can get to Herkon!”

I ripped a sword out of one man’s hand and disemboweled him in the same motion. No time to shift back to my true form. My human form would have to do.

A fireball from Thender dropped another. They’d forgotten about her in their focus on me. That left two living bandits. The looked around at their six dead comrades and then tried to run.

“Don’t let them get away!” Thender yelled. I hesitated. She went racing after them. A moment later, she returned glowering. “One got away,” she informed me angrily.

“But they were running away,” I protested. “We didn’t need to kill them.”

“Do you have any idea how many people these guys have killed?” Thender demanded. “Without numbers the survivors can’t take caravans, but they are still very much a danger to lone travelers.”

I winced. “I’m sorry.”

“You can still go after him,” Thender said. “You’re a lot faster than he is.”

I thought of killing a helpless, fleeing human. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I looked down at the blood on my hands, and then down at the dead bandits on the floor. I began to shake. “No…”

Thender frowned. “Okay, you don’t have to go after him.”

I shook my head helplessly. “No!” I had killed again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I sank down to my knees, head in my hands, trembling. “Oh, gods, it hurts.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Just breathe, all right? Focus on breathing. Air in, air out. Don’t think. Just breathe.” Devon’s voice.

I tried. I really did. But my chest wouldn’t stop heaving, and my breath hitched in my throat. I whimpered.

“Thender, go get Esthera. Enko, count with me. Just count with me. One, two, three—”

My lips moved, but no sound came out. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t have just—

“Can you knock him out, Esthera?”

“I can try, but demons resist magic.”

“He’s not in any shape to resist anything. Try.”

I felt another hand on my shoulder. I jerked as magic entered me, but I didn’t fight. Blackness…

*

“The thing is, there’s a very good reason I wanted him out of that fight, Esthera,” Devon said angrily.

My eyes were still closed, and my mind was foggy.

“It wasn’t my fault they had anti-illusion charms!” Esthera protested.

“You should have sensed them. That’s your job.” Thender’s voice now.

Devon sighed. “It’s partially my fault. I should have ordered him to wait with you, Esthera.”

“If you’d done that, we’d probably all be dead,” Herkon rumbled.

Devon sighed again. “True.”

“So why did he react like that, Devon?” Thender asked.

“It’s a documented reaction to the purification spell,” Devon replied. “Enko’s the first demon to be purified, but, through the centuries, there have been plenty of mortals who’ve needed purification. You see, every time someone purposefully does something that hurts someone else, like killing, or lying, or stealing, their soul gets tarnished, just a little. Less if it’s something minor. More if someone died. By the time they reach adulthood, most people have a minor amount of tarnish on their souls.”

“Yes, we are all well aware of how tarnish works, Devon,” Herkon grumbled. “There’s no need to cover the basic stuff.”

“Ummm… “ Esthera said. “I kind of need it. I forgot.”

Herkon snorted.

“What? It’s not my field!” protested Esthera.

“So I should assume you know nothing?” Devon asked.

“Uhhhh… Yes?” Esthera answered.

Herkon grumbled under his breath.

“So, tarnish. The more tarnish you’ve got, the less guilty you feel when you’ve done something wrong. Criminals, like those bandits, have some pretty heavy tarnish, but even normal people have some,” Devon said.

“Sometimes,” Devon continued. “Someone who has accumulated a lot of tarnish wants that tarnish to go away. It is impossible to remove only some tarnish from someone’s soul. Purification gets rid of all of it. So, someone who’s been purified, someone with no tarnish, feels intense guilt for stuff normal people feel very little guilt about.”

“For example, the rest of us might feel a little bad about killing the bandits, but we can shrug it off by reminding ourselves how necessary the killing was. Enko can’t. He feels intense, crippling guilt every time he takes a life, no matter why he’s doing it or how evil the person was. To make things worse, he’s probably having flashbacks to other times he’s killed, and feeling guilty about that,” Devon added.

“His reaction is a documented effect of the purification of especially tarnished souls. That’s why I didn’t want him in the fight. It will be a long time before he can kill criminals without it essentially crippling him,” Devon finished.

There was a pause. Finally, Herkon spoke. “He saved our lives. If an arrow had hit you, if you had gone down, we’d all be dead. If he hadn’t stood between us and the bandits, we’d be dead.”

“I know,” Devon said. “That should help. But it might not be enough. He’ll wake up soon. Esthera, you need to be ready to put him back out. I’m not sure if he’ll have calmed down. We may need to figure out a more long term way to keep him unconscious.”

The fog cleared a bit. I opened my eyes.

“What are you going to do with him if we have to keep him unconscious?” Thender asked.

“I’ll take him to the temple of Hermat in the capital. They have a mind healer there who might be able to help,” Devon said.

I reached out with my mind and snapped the remains of the spell that had kept me asleep. My natural resistance had been wearing away at the spell as I slept, but, now that I was awake, I could resist it consciously.

I closed my eyes as guilt struck me. It hurt. It hurt so much. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I just couldn’t. I had gone from being a carefree killer to someone crippled by guilt and pain. I needed a way out. Something. Anything!

There was only one escape for me. Only one way I could be free. I had to end my life. I didn’t want to. I’d rather live. But I couldn’t keep going like this. I just couldn’t. And that was my only way out.

But how?

I decided to pretend to be better. I was calmer now. It shouldn’t be hard. I sat up and looked around.

We were still in the bandits’ hideout, but someone had removed the bodies. I was grateful for that. I might have broken down again if I’d been confronted with physical evidence of what I had done.

“He’s awake,” Esthera said.

Devon turned to me. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” I said. “Sleeping helped.”

Devon smiled. “Good!”

“What did you do with the—” I abruptly cut off. I couldn’t say the word. My hands began to shake.

Devon saw my shaking hands. “Breathe. Just focus on breathing for a minute.”

I focused on the flow of my breath. In, ever so slowly. Out, just as slowly. In, out. In, out.

“We’re burning them,” Devon said, watching me carefully. “Is that alright?”

I nodded. In, out. In, out.

Devon nodded. “Good. Once the bodies are burned, we need to go to Heartvale. They owe us the payment for killing the bandits, and we recovered some stolen property that needs to be returned. Are you well enough to travel? It won’t be far. And then we can rest.”

I didn’t want to rest. It was when I was still, when I had nothing to occupy myself with, that it hurt the worst. “I’m okay to travel. And we don’t need to stop in Heartvale. We can keep going.” I needed to keep going.

“How about we get to Heartvale,” Devon said, “And then we decide. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

We traveled back to Heartvale. When the townspeople heard that the bandits had been dealt with, they began planning a celebration, and insisted that we stay. In fact, the elder refused to pay us until after the party.

Devon took me aside. “Are you okay with this? I can take you somewhere else while the party is going on.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll be fine.” It was getting easier and easier to hide my pain.

*

I cocked my head to the side, enjoying the music as I watched the townspeople dance and drink and sing. Herkon was dancing with a busty maiden who was twice his height. Thender was huddled up with a cluster of brawny farm boys. Even Esthera had someone. She was fluttering her eyelashes at a local half elf painter. He was sketching her as they talked. From where I was sitting, it looked pretty good.

Devon and I had been approached by multiple women, but we’d managed to fend them off. I would have felt bad about keeping Devon from having a good time, but he looked even less interested in the women than I was. That was saying something, considering that, for me, the ladies weren’t even the right species. The only thing I responded to was female demons, and, even then, they had to be in heat.

A rather drunk young man stumbled toward us. He stopped in front of Devon, eyes lit up with desire. Then he leaned forward, and kissed Devon full on the mouth. They both jerked, and the man stumbled backwards. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he gasped. “I don’t know why I… I didn’t mean to—”

Devon slipped an arm around the man’s waist, and kissed him. The man froze in shock, then abruptly returned to motion, sliding a hand behind Devon’s head and pressing him more firmly against his mouth. I watched, feeling mildly weirded out. Two men? What was the point of that?

The two of them didn’t look like they were coming up for air anytime soon, so I wandered toward the food table. I grabbed a cookie and another glass of ale. How many glasses was that now? I hadn’t been keeping track. It didn’t matter. Alcohol had very little effect on me.

A local maiden slid up beside me. “Hey, handsome.” I froze as her hands slid around my waist. “How about you and me have a dance?”

I tried to remember what Devon had said to the other women to make them go away. He’d been so smooth, making them laugh while at the same time making it clear neither of us were interested. I didn’t want to just tell her to go away. What if I hurt her feelings?

She pulled me out into the circle of trampled grass that was the dance floor. Okay, one dance, that wouldn’t be so bad. I could do one dance. And then I’d tell her I wasn’t interested. Without hurting her feelings, somehow.

I matched my movements to hers, gracefully flowing through the steps of the dance. Dancing, I decided after a moment, was fun.

We finished this song, and then moved on to the next. The next song was familiar. Where had I heard it before?

Abruptly it came to me. Several years ago I’d attended a harvest festival. Halfway through the festivities, I’d slaughtered half the town. I’d threatened the musicians with death if they stopped playing, so they’d played, going through several songs while the screams of their neighbors split the night. This was one of those songs.

I jerked away from my dance partner and doubled over, clutching my stomach. As I gasped for air, I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder as my dance partner guided me off the dance floor and away from the crowd.

I forced the pain back down, stuffing it into a tiny box in the back of my mind. I needed to act normal. I straightened.

The young woman had guided me into the woods surrounding the town. She was watching me anxiously. As I straightened, she smiled. “Feeling better? Maybe you should lay off the ale for a while, until things have calmed down.”

She thought I was nauseous, I realized. “Sounds like a good idea,” I told her, smiling weakly.

“So, have you ever been in this area before?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. “I don’t think you have. I would have remembered someone like you.”

“I haven’t,” I confirmed.

She tugged on my arm. “Then you’ve got to see diamond point! It’s one of the local landmarks. It’s amazing. You can see for miles.”

She led me through the forest, her grip on my arm firm. “You’ll love it,” she told me. “Come on. I’m Sera, by the way.”

Soon we reached a break in the trees. Beyond that—

I gasped. “Wow.”

Sera leaned against me. “I know, right?”

Diamond point was the top of a huge cliff. Sera was right, you could see for miles. I looked down on an endless expanse of trees.

Sera cuddled up to me. “I like coming here at this time of day. At sunset. It’s so romantic!”

We stood there looking at the view for a moment. Then Sera leaned in to kiss me.

I pulled away. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Sera smiled mischievously. Her hand began to slide up my inner thigh. “Sure you—” She stopped. “Oh. I see.” Embarrassed, she stepped away from me. I could see her disappointment. I winced.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again. “Thank you for showing me diamond point, though.”

She nodded. “Sure. I’m… I’m going to go back.”

Sera moved swiftly away from me. When she was beyond human hearing range, she burst into tears.

Hurting her like that hurt me. The whole mess of pain and guilt rose in my chest, until I wanted to scream in agony.

I looked out at the view. This was it. A fall from this height would overwhelm even my ability to regenerate. I could make the pain go away.

Did I really want to do this, though? The thought of dying terrified me. I didn’t know what came next. A lot of human religions talked about a paradise for good people and a hell for sinners. If there was any justice in this world, I would go to hell. Or perhaps there was nothing at all. Perhaps the flickering candle that was my soul would go out forever. Gone. I shivered.

I thought of going on with my life. There was nothing in my future but pain. Hell couldn’t be much worse. Oblivion seemed like a release. An end to pain. That was what I wanted. Wasn’t it? I stepped to the edge of the cliff, took a deep breath, and prepared to fly.

Suddenly, a blue barrier sprang up between me and the cliff’s edge. I stumbled back and whirled around.

Devon, Herkon, Thender, and Esthera were racing toward me. “Enko!” called Devon. “Wait! There’s got to be a better way!”

I snarled and turned. The barrier moved with me as I tried to go around it. If I knocked out Esthera… Guilt rose inside me at the thought, but could I do anything else?

When I raced toward Esthera, Herkon blocked my charge. The two of us fought. I was constrained by my desire not to hurt him, but, with my regeneration, Herkon didn’t have to worry about me.

Thender held up her hands. “Enko, come on. Just calm down. We can work through this. We can…”

I tuned her out, focusing on the fight. For several minutes, Herkon and I struggled. “I don’t want to hurt you, Enko,” Herkon growled.

I snorted in disbelief. “Right. Of course you don’t.”

Herkon blocked my punch with his ax. “I mean it! I was wrong about you, Enko, and for that I’m sorry. Please just stand down. We can talk about this.”

“I’m done talking,” I said. “This has to end. Just let me go, and I’ll never trouble you again.”

“Damn it, Enko!” Herkon bellowed. “Don’t do this!”

“I have to—” Suddenly, my arms snapped to my sides and my legs clamped together. Bound once again, I toppled to the ground.

Snarling, I fought my invisible restraints. Everyone just stood there, looking at me. They all looked so very sympathetic. I stopped fighting and began to cry. “Please. Just let me go.”

Devon knelt and placed a hand on my forehead. “I can’t. You’re my friend, Enko, and I can’t let you kill yourself.” Everyone else nodded.

“You barely know me,” I sobbed. “And I’ve done such horrible, horrible things.”

“I know you well enough,” Devon said. “You’re a good person, Enko.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Devon insisted. “You’re a different person than you were before the purification, and that person is good.”

I just cried.

Devon patted my shoulder sympathetically. “Don’t worry. You won’t be bound forever. Just long enough for me to place a leash spell on you, to keep you from trying this again.”

I said nothing. I just sobbed.

Devon sighed. “Herkon, pick him up. I’ve had enough of Heartvale. Let’s leave.”

fantasy
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