The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss

Chapter 4: Take a Promenade

Slowly, deliberately, I brought down the knife, cutting off a decent slice of the sausage I had found in the pantry. It fit nicely between two slices of bread. I now had a passable sandwich to chow down on amidst a demonic invasion.

In the home of a family I had killed.

The food tasted like ash, and not just because the bread was oddly stiff and rough.

I didn’t let myself dwell on what I had done. I couldn’t because then I’d drop everything I was doing and head for the door, looking for my next victim.

I had thought my plan to search the houses was so clever. Distract the compulsion and get some loot to help me survive the whole mess, all in one convenient package. Now I had a dead woman’s blood on my hands, and the corpse of her husband bleeding on the floor while I fought to ignore it all and down some food.

I managed, somehow.

The only thing to drink in the entire home was a pitcher of wine. I helped myself to it after I was done eating, since my throat was about as dry as the bread had been. Then I helped myself to some more of it because I really didn’t want to be aware of everything I had done. Or was about to do.

It didn’t help. In some literally cursed way, even when I drained the whole pitcher, my hands refused to shake. My body was like a fine-tuned instrument. It would not collapse under stress. My mind stayed clear, completely calm, and under my control.

Well, as much control as the command driving me to murder allowed.

Food ingested, the only thing that kept me from marching out and looking for more people to kill was the argument that I needed more gear. Thankfully, a brief search of the storage chests in the bedroom netted me something that resembled a backpack and more leeway with the murder command.

For the next few minutes, I procrastinated by packing as much food as I could. Slowly, I wrapped each item in the clean clothes of my victims. Methodically, I arranged the food in the backpack. I drew out every part of the process as long as possible, hoping that would be enough for other unfortunate souls to get out of my section of the city, or at least die by someone else’s hand.

Finally, the command was back. I couldn’t stop my legs from moving towards the door. All I could do was snag a few more precious moments of delay by checking on the hip-bag I’d been so graciously gifted at the start of the whole mess. It took a few seconds to gently loosen the bag’s strings and reach inside, ones in which the command slowed its urging.

There were four items, all roughly circular and with straight edges. Pulling one of them out, my heart skipped a beat as my limbs felt suddenly cold.

The object had many faceted sides, like a d20 die. Nothing too chilling there. What was chilling was the face trapped inside the item. It was the face of a man, caught in a tangle of pain and anguish, practically snarling at me from the object’s confines. Even more chill-inducing, my instincts helpfully informed me exactly what the object was. This was a soul, trapped and gifted a semi-physical form so I could use it as currency.

The demon commander had said we were expected to earn at least ten souls on our campaign. Somehow, despite the fact I was dealing with actual demons, I’d thought he was speaking figuratively.

I didn’t check the other three objects, I already knew what I’d find. I couldn’t take the sight of a helpless woman’s face staring up at me again.

That did, however, leave me with a problem. I needed another six souls, or I wouldn’t survive, even if I managed to hide until demons razed the city to the ground. That meant looking for more knights, more fighting, and more chances to face down someone with actual combat skills.

Alternatively…

My eyes swept over the houses that I was now marching past. Chances were good that they held more civilians. Other souls I could claim at little to no risk, satisfying both my compulsion and the need to prove myself to my demonic masters.

I kept walking.

The command might have some control over my actions, but it could do nothing about the dread and disgust pooling in my stomach. I couldn’t live with myself if I was forced to kill someone helplessly caught in this conflict.

I wasn’t sure I could live with myself even now.

A door opened to my right, and I froze before forcing myself to face that direction. My eyes landed directly on a helmeted face peering back at me.

I brought my sword up, readied a charge, and then stopped. The murder urge wasn’t pushing me to attack.

"I didn’t expect this," the person in front of me sneered, his sharp eyes filled with a madness that I knew was also reflected in my own. "I figured the rest of you were little more than murderous husks at this point."

"Yes, well, not all of us are weak-minded idiots," I replied. It was the first time I had paid proper attention to my voice, and I noted that it was satisfyingly deep and rumbling.

I also noted that the other demonic soldier’s sword was covered in dripping blood. I didn’t need to look inside the house he was coming out of to know exactly what I’d find there.

"Well, it’s always nice to have reliable allies, ain’t it?" The man grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Those stayed hard and focused.

"Maybe. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any locals around? Of the armed and dangerous variety?"

"Not in a while, no. I think they’re retreating behind their second wall, but I wouldn’t recommend approaching it. That’s where their mages are. Can’t handle those yet, and it would be a shame to die when things haven’t even properly started."

The man was relaxed, and obviously much more at ease with what we were being forced to do. He also seemed to have a better grasp on controlling our compulsion than I did. His limbs were still, while mine still twitched occasionally. Now that I heard the fact that there were enemies in the fortress city’s inner area, it was all I could do to keep from running there and murdering them all.

"Then best be off to find some easier prey," I said, nodding in what I hoped was a confident manner.

The man smiled wider. "Would you like some company, perchance? We would have much better odds together."

The offer sounded sincere, but I didn’t like the way he eyed me and my backpack as he spoke.

"Sure," I replied. "Want to lead the way?"

The man laughed and motioned me onwards. "I would not dream of it. You look much better equipped than I do, so you must be doing something right that I’m missing."

With another nod and a forced smile, I set off down the street.

My eyes roved over the towers dotting the breached wall. Most of the knights and any of the city’s remaining soldiers were likely falling back, like my new companion had suggested. But I was willing to bet that more than a few of them had been trapped in the outer city that was now a demon-infested hellscape of slaughter. If I were one of those survivors, and if I had a defensible position like those towers to hunker down in, I’d probably take my chances.

The other thing that I was looking at was my new companion. The man was slowly but surely drawing closer to me. He was incredibly careful. He’d take one extra step for every six or eight of mine. But while he started off a couple of yards behind me, he had gradually cut that distance in half.

I didn’t make any sudden moves. I didn’t tighten my hold on my weapons. I tried to appear perfectly relaxed, just another demonic soldier marching in search of my next victims.

It was only when he drew within stabbing distance that I spun around and thrust my sword at his face.

Snarling, he batted my weapon aside with his shield. Then he answered my attack with a vicious riposte. I fell back a step, managing to raise my own shield just in time and feeling the impact hit my arm.

After the hit, the man retreated a step to judge his options and afford me a chance to size up my new opponent. He wielded a bastard sword one-handed with the ease and mastery of a man thrice his age. While my long sword wasn’t far behind in reach, that first exchange was enough to give me pause. This was a man I had no business fighting.

"How?" His frustrated growl was sweet balm to my frayed nerves. Despite the ongoing peril, I couldn’t help but smile.

"Too obvious, friendo. If you want to stab me in the back, at least be subtle about it," I taunted, hoping to put him at least somewhat off-balance. The truth was that he had seemed somewhat friendly. But in a world like this, it paid to be a bit more careful, especially when my instincts were screaming that something was wrong. It was some weird extra sense, like I was somehow picking up on his emotions.

Yet another gift from the new body I’d been thrust into.

"No matter." The man looked rabid now, his eyes widened to comical proportions. "I’ll end you, and I’ll distinguish myself in this invasion. I don’t need competition or fools that could get in my way."

Whatever his motivation was, it was apparently powerful enough to make him do stupid shit, even without the compulsion driving us both.

"I’m not competition," I assured him, trying to deescalate the situation. "Listen, I just want to survive this. I don’t want to prove myself or — gah!"

I cut off my speech when he lunged, with a low slash. It was an awkward angle to defend, and I had to twist sideways to get my shield between us.

That was when it became clear that my instincts with the shield were even worse than my minimal sword abilities. I was treating the thing as a board, just shoving it between myself and any oncoming blade.

This sad lack of shield know-how nearly cost me everything.

The traitor moved as soon as his blow landed. While I was struggling to find my footing, he was already on my left with another attack. Backpedaling further, I felt a burst of red-hot pain as he nicked my side, but I had retreated far enough that the wound was relatively minor.

I flailed with my sword in response, and found my stupid shield blocking the sword’s momentum. He easily turned the blow away with his own blade, then lashed out and scored a mark right through the bandages on my arm that I had struggled to apply such a short time ago.

Biting down on the pained whimper, I rushed forward, forcing him to lock his shield with mine. With a grunt of effort and every last shred of strength I could leverage, I shoved.

Somehow, he wasn’t ready for that. I heard a gasp before the pressured loosened, which gave me just enough confidence to plant my foot down and push again. That was enough to send him all the way over, and then I was raining down blows on his shield haphazardly in an attempt to get at the soft flesh underneath.

Even like that, off-balance and disadvantaged as he was, he still managed to lash out again and score a cut that burned angrily across my shin.

Frustration, fear, and pain all bubbled up inside of me, leaving my chest in a scream of rage. Force exploded out of my body, rattling doors and windows and flattening the man to the ground.

His face, startled and afraid, briefly became visible when I pulled his shield down to his chest. Driven by rage alone, I brought my shield up, then drove the relatively spiky end of it into his ugly mug.

There was an ugly wet squelch, but I didn’t relent. I pounded my shield into his skull again and again, even as his limbs spasmed out and the noises grew more disturbing. A dozen strikes later, I felt a pulse, where the flame inside my chest briefly wavered, as if hit by a gust of wind. His head was just a mess of bone shards and mangled flesh.

The body of the demonic soldier started to disappear. His flesh turned gray, then flaked away in countless motes of ash that spilled over the street. His armor silently sagged, and his shield slid off into the dirt.

I couldn’t look away. The process was practically enchanting. I hadn’t gotten to see what happened to the bodies of the slain before, being a tad distracted by the whole issue of charging at enemy fortifications, but I guessed my end would be identical.

Finally, the compulsion reared up, reminding me where I was and what I had to do. I snapped out of my daydream and began to search the man. I knew he had killed at least one innocent, which meant I would be able to loot at least one extra soul.

To my surprise, there was no sign of his hip-bag. I did, however, find three shiny soul stones on the ground where the bag presumably had just been. Sighing, I scooped them up and quickly deposited them in my own unholy storage device, then turned back to my destination.

My stroll wasn’t over yet.