The One Who Upholds Honor and Justice

How long has it been since The Deletion?

Gerhart has lost track of the days and the hours. Each waking moment was spent roving the demon realm. Time not spent killing demons or satiating his thirst and hunger was reserved for rest.

Sleep. Stalk. Slaughter. Sleep. Stalk. Slaughter. Sleep. Stalk. Slaughter.

Thus was his current way of life, if it could be called that. The only shred of humanity left inside was his hatred. There was little separating him from the beasts that he used to sustain himself. But it mattered little to him.

By the time the sun had vanished, he had trekked to a frozen creek surrounded by dormant trees, their rime-covered branches carrying a muted, resinous aroma. It was a vaguely familiar scent for him, traces of his past lingered in some hidden corner of his brain. There was a time in his life when he foraged in the woods as a man-at-arms, before he was inducted as a knight, but those years were a blur, a relic of his earlier years.

But decades since then, even in the harshest of climates, the woods felt like they never changed. And in the future, they would remain as such, spared from the effects of the corruption. Even as man and demon lose themselves, it would be the flora who would have the last laugh.

Gerhart sat by the creek, at the edge of the ice-packed stream. His ears picked up the burbling of water underneath the layer of frost. The tune of the stream’s song caused his throat to shrivel slightly, the sensation of dryness more apparent than before.

The knight drew his sword, breaking apart the frozen layer on top with a few taps of his pommel. The ice groaned, letting out dozens of drawn-out creaks as tiny fissures splintered across its surface, diverging outward like a spider’s web. As the thin layer loosened, he carved a hole, clearing the slush to make enough room for his helm to pass through.

As he took off his helm, it dawned on him. Before he could dip his headgear into the stream as a makeshift bowl, the surface of the water settled, casting a reflection of himself.

His hideous, deformed self.

The effects of the corruption had begun to warp his appearance. The right side of his face, mangled with scars and old wounds, was starting to regrow, an unsightly film of pink draping to his mouth. His lips were unnaturally scale-like in texture, as were his eyes, having lost their brilliant green, replaced with a reptilian’s pupils. Only a patch of his golden hair remained on the left side of his dome. He was an abomination, a far cry from the dashing visage of his youth.

And yet, a rare wave of relief washed over him as he realized how repulsive he looked. He hated his handsome features. If he was ugly as this, maybe he would not have been married.

Maybe Winika would still be alive.

Remembering the love of his life, the relief he felt was replaced with numbness. The kind of aching one felt when they have been hurt for far too long. The only thing he could do now was to share his pain with his nemesis, demonkind.

He drank from his helmet, the frigid water somewhat soothing his soreness. It did not matter whether the water was clean or not; he had his corrupted physiology to thank. No longer did he suffer from tainted food or drink. Eating his prey alive and raw did not bother him. Neither did ingesting contaminated liquid.

Having survived another day, he retired to a large tree nearby, leaning his metallic body onto its large trunk. The wound in his right thigh had fully healed. The invitation to his prey had closed. Now, he could rest. He was not concerned about the starving wildlife attacking him in his sleep, for the same reason they did not attack hibernating bears. The only creature foolish enough to attempt to ambush him would be demons. And he relished that thought.

Gerhart drifted off into a deep sleep, still in his armor, wrapped in his decrepit cloak. His sword hand rested on his hilt. Even as the metal he was confined in amplified the cold, he could barely feel the chill. His human dermis inside had lost almost all sensation. He was more comfortable in his iron cage, the plates practically his skin.

Hours passed before he awakened, his senses warning him of movement nearby. Rustling in the snow. Footsteps. Based on the sound and how the snow shifted, his heart pounded in excitement.

A demon.

The knight was pleased, knowing that the decision to wait by a source of water was paying off. Better still, the demon was oblivious of his presence. He reined in the desire to strike his enemy down then and there. One demon usually meant more nearby. And if this one could lead him to the rest of the party, he would be even closer to his goal of genocide. And as the saying went, “a demon in hand was worth two in hell.”

After a few more seconds of listening, he had discerned the nature of his target. A low-ranked, adult, humanoid male. Likely a scout, surveying the lay of the land. A common profession, given the fact that the demons have regressed to their nomadic, tribal way of life after the death of the Demon Lord.

Unfortunately for the scout, Gerhart silently shifted his position, using the tree trunk as cover. Despite being a lumbering suit of steel, the knight produced no noise. He had completely adapted to the arctic biome, no longer an alien in unfamiliar lands, but a force of nature personified. It was as if the snow itself had submitted to him, letting the nearly eight-foot-tall giant creep on all fours with no trace nor sound.

The demon scout made note of the boreal forest, unaware that death was lingering merely several yards away. It crawled like an ancient, primordial beast of yore, before dragons evolved the ability of flight. The scout led the creature back to his comrades, where it watched from a distance behind a boulder buried in snow.

Gerhart was careful to hide his bloodlust, almost bursting out of the gaps of his armor. He had struck gold. This was not the scouting party. This was the entire tribe itself. There had to be over a hundred demons calling those tents their home. He felt his nerves tingling, his heart beating against his sternum, begging to be let out. The overwhelming impulse to massacre every one of them in a mindless rampage was intoxicating.

He stood up, unsheathing his blade, bathed in the light of the moon. He approached the tribe, taking slow, deliberate steps. Before the guards even noticed him, a maelstrom of malice swept past the entire village like a natural disaster. So great was the Gore Knight’s ruinous wrath, it was as if a hyperborean blizzard had come from the deepest layer of the Frozen Hells to deliver them to whence they came. Fear was not an emotion demons typically experienced. But this time—this time they felt it in their souls.

The blizzard of bloodlust froze the demons in place. If they so much as ran, their souls would shatter. Gerhart trudged toward the middle of the village like a vengeful god, the ground quaking in terror with each step. Nobody blinked. Nobody dared to move. The demons watched breathlessly as their judge, jury, and executioner took his place. But before he could deliver his sentence, a voice squeaked out from behind a tent.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

For a single moment, doubt beset the knight’s heart. Did a higher-ranked demon somehow elude their presence from him? Had he let his senses dull after bringing down the Demon Lord?

“Behold! 'Tis I, Ryllis, have come to uphold honor and justice!”

The bizarre cry came from a petite girl who emerged from behind the tent. Standing on a stack of wooden boxes, she did not even reach Gerhart’s chest. As the dark slits of his helm met the girl’s blue eyes, the knight was stunned. He understood why he was unable to notice her presence.

She was human. No horns. No tail. And as she was surrounded by a tribe of demons, he had mistaken her for one of their livestock.

Thus begged a deeper question; how did a human child end up among demonfolk? The closest human settlement was several regions away. There was no logical reason for her to even be here.

“Umm, hello?” Ryllis said, cocking her head to the side, wondering if there was somebody within the suit of armor. “You don’t…know who I am?”

Gerhart had no recollection of such a child. Wearing a thick coat of fur and holding what seemed to be a spell tome, she was an enigma. And if there was anything his battle experience told him, it was to eliminate the unknown variables first.

Believing this to be a demonic illusion of some form, Gerhart readied his sword, its tip lunging toward the girl’s neck in an attempt to put an end to this farce.

But his blade was unable to reach his target. Matching his speed, a gargantuan wolf pounced at him, emerging from beyond the village in defense of its master.