Chapter 23: What in the…

Each step I took sent sharp, searing signals up my legs. My knees buckled under me more than once, and my gait was more a stagger than a walk. Both my arms hung limp and blackened, crackling weakly with the last remnants of power. The nerves in them had all but died, and I could no longer feel where the pain ended and where numbness began. I should’ve collapsed by now. I should’ve been dead. Maybe I was dying, but that wasn’t my priority.

Irene lay twisted on the cold stone floor, the skin of her face melted and fused with her armor, making every motion a new punishment. She no longer looked like the composed schemer I had spoken to minutes ago. Her words now were jagged breaths between sobs.

“H-help…”

Her voice was brittle, like something already broken trying to pretend it wasn’t. She tried to crawl away, dragging herself by her elbows, leaving a glistening smear of blood and skin behind her. Her fingers clawed at the ground like they could dig a tunnel to safety. Her armor creaked with every tremble, sticking and peeling from her flesh in raw, slow layers. I’d seen pain before. I’d inflicted it. But this was something worse and profoundly human.

I raised the mace. My hands barely listened. My fingers were stiff, scorched, cracked open at the knuckles, tendons exposed. The weight of the weapon felt like it belonged to someone else. The iron head of the mace swayed above her, hungry, waiting.

Irene turned her face toward me or what was left of it. One eye hung loosely from its socket, weeping blood. The other stared at me, round and gleaming, wide with horror.

“Please…” she whimpered, her voice wet and shaking. “I d-don’t want to d-die…”

For a moment, I faltered. Not because I pitied her. Not because I forgave her. But because the part of me that used to be human still recognized her as one. The fear in her voice wasn’t for show. It was real, pure, and undeniable. But that didn’t change anything.

I brought the mace down. My body screamed as the weight dropped from my ruined arms. The blow glanced off her temple, not clean enough to kill. There was a loud crack followed by a pop… her eye bursting outward, her cheek collapsing like brittle pottery. A splatter of blood sprayed across the floor.

She screamed, or tried to. It came out like a gargled cough, thick and cut short. Her mouth opened, unhinged, pouring blood. The skin beneath it sagged, unrecognizable.

I raised the mace again.

This time, I didn't stop. Again. And again. And again. Bone gave way with every strike. Chunks of skull scattered across the stone floor, some still pulsing with gore. Brain matter splashed onto my robes, smeared the pews, dripped from the altar rail. Her face caved in completely, her head reduced to a ruin of splinters and mush. The twitching stopped. Only then did I stop swinging.

And the silence that followed was louder than her scream.

The church had become a grave.

The once-holy walls loomed above me like silent judges, scorched black where magic had burst and cracked the stone. Wind howled through the shattered stained-glass window at the back, shards of color scattered across the pews like forgotten offerings. The giant double doors stood wide open, as if screaming in horror, letting in the full force of the storm. Rain poured sideways into the sanctuary, lashing at the stone floor. Thunder cracked overhead, each peal flashing white light against the cavernous gloom. Puddles had formed in every uneven crevice, rippling from the cold wind and the dripping blood. I could taste iron in the air.

Jaime’s body sprawled lifeless on the soaked carpet, arms twisted unnaturally beneath him, a half-smashed face staring at nothing. Jan’s corpse lay crumpled at the church’s threshold to the right, just beyond the shadow of the door, his blood mixing with rainwater and seeping into the cobblestone. Far to the left, Irene’s body sat slumped against a cracked column, what remained of her face unrecognizable beneath the ruin of bone and pulped flesh.

And Eric… or rather, what was left of Eric… dropped to the floor with a heavy, lifeless thud, smack in the middle of the carnage, caught between Jan and Irene like some kind of morbid punctuation mark. His eyes were open but unseeing, his limbs awkwardly twisted, like a puppet with its strings finally cut. I had let go of him, released the possession cleanly. I no longer had the strength to hold on.

Lightning flashed again, illuminating the wreckage in a stark white for a breathless second.

And then came the sound of hurried footsteps, squelching against wet stone. Boots stomping down the aisle.

Lydia burst in through the open doorway, breathless, soaked to the bone, hair stuck to her face and shoulders like drowned ivy. Her eyes darted wildly across the bloodied pews, the bodies, the ruined window, the floor littered with shattered weapons and glass. She took it all in, step by agonizing step. I didn’t say anything. What could I say?

Her eyes landed on Eric’s body. Then Jaime’s. Then Irene’s mutilated skull.

She dropped to her knees in the middle of the nave, rain pounding around her, her voice cracking as she screamed… “What in the Nether and Nine Hells happened here!?”