Chapter 323 - Good and Evil (Patreon)

Zeke smashed his hammer down on the prone figure, sending metallic shards flying away to embed themselves in the nearby walls. And then, he did it again. And again after that. Over and over, he pulverized the tangled mass of metal wires, each blow sending slivers of dislodged pieces flying in every direction. The sound of screeching metal filled the air, but Zeke could tell that the odd creature was on its last legs.

Still, it took almost a hundred more attacks before he spotted the gooey center of it all. A mass of pulsating, green flesh quivered in what Zeke thought might be anger. Or maybe fear.

“It’s pain,” supplied Eveline. “Finish it. Please.”

Zeke nodded, and a moment later, brought his hammer down upon the quivering lump of flesh. It exploded like a water balloon, showering him with white blood, verdant flesh, and bits of its innards. Finally, the quivering ball of murderous metal went still, and Zeke felt shoulders sag in relief. Stepping back, he sighed and looked around.

The entire room had been destroyed, ripped into pieces by the metal strips that comprised the demonic monster’s body. When he’d first ascended onto the level, the thing had been hanging from the ceiling by the hundred-foot-long, razor-sharp strips, but the moment it had noticed him, it had whirled into action. Spinning like a metal dervish, it had flayed the room almost as much as it had Zeke’s body. Only when Zeke had landed a few dozen attacks had the monster wrapped those metal tendrils around itself in a protective cocoon that it had taken Zeke hours to bypass.

And now, it was dead. Just like the previous eight guardians.

He glanced around, spotting his golems. One was missing an arm. Another’s leg had been sheered off at mid-calf. But the third was mostly intact, though it sported quite a few gaping gashes across its body. Those metallic tendrils had been incredibly sharp, and they’d ripped through the golems’ durable bodies without much difficulty.

“One more?” he asked, turning to Eveline. She floated nearby, a solemn look on her face. She didn’t acknowledge his question, so he raised his voice, saying, “Eveline!”

She flinched in surprise and looked in his direction. That’s when he noticed the tears glistening on her cheeks. Her wide-eyed expression was so childlike that he almost stepped forward to comfort her. However, it only took a moment for him to remember that she was an ancient demon who’d only adopted that appearance to make him lower his guard.

“That’s untrue,” she said.

“What is?” he asked.

“I didn’t choose this…visage,” Eveline stated, her voice low and tinged with a hint of melancholy. “It was chosen for me. You might be the only person in this entire world who would react to this façade with empathy. Other demons would only see weakness. Vulnerability. And we are not so evolved that we would ignore our natural instincts.”

Zeke nodded. Back on Earth, predators would often target young and feeble members of a herd because it simply made sense to do so. They were slower and less likely to escape pursuit. Demons, apparently, were little different.

“No. We are beasts. Cunning and often intelligent, but beasts all the same.”

“But let me guess – you’re different.”

“Me? Of course not,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m probably worse than all of them put together. I do have a unique perspective, though.”

“In what way?” Zeke asked.

She looked away, and for a moment, didn’t answer. Then, in a soft voice, she asked, “Do you know what it feels like to be ripped to pieces, one sliver at a time? I do. That creature was barely intelligent, but it was aware enough to feel pain. It died in agony. It died being tortured.”

“I didn’t –”

“I know you did what you had to do,” she said. “And it would have done the same to you, given the chance. I know that. But that knowledge doesn’t make its mental screams any easier to endure. I’ve felt that for most of my life. In the beginning, I relished it. I was cruel and power-hungry, and I fed on my prey’s pain. But as I progressed, as I grew in power, my mind cleared, and I came to hate my nature.”

Zeke listened as she continued her self-recrimination, but he wasn’t certain he believed it. After all, Eveline was a demon, and he’d yet to meet one of those who wasn’t evil. That he’d stumbled across the only –

“We’re not all evil,” she said. “Most of us are just trying to survive. Others are mere products of circumstance. Some, like me, wish for a different life. A different nature.”

“But they still do evil things,” Zeke said.

“Most do, yes. I have.”

“So, what’s the difference?” he asked. “We are what we do, aren’t we? We’re the sum of our actions. If you do evil things, then you’re –”

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Zeke countered.

“Didn’t you abandon an entire continent to an apocalyptic fate?” she asked. He hadn’t spoken of that choice, so he could only guess that Eveline had gleaned that from his thoughts. “Isn’t that evil? You could have helped. You might have saved them.”

“They were already lost,” he said.

“Don’t lie to me,” Eveline said, floating closer. She was only an inch or two away, her face hovering before his. “And stop lying to yourself. If you truly wished to save them, you could have fought. Few would have survived. It would have taken years. Maybe decades. And it wouldn’t have been pleasant. But you could have made the difference. With your help, some of the people of the Radiant Isles would have made it. And yet, you chose to pretend otherwise. You abandoned them because you didn’t want to bother with saving them.”

Zeke frowned, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he turned away and stared at the ruined room. Like the first – and the others since – it was lined with columns that looked as if they were comprised of intertwining tentacles. More than one of the columns had been destroyed by the battle, but most still stood.

But that wasn’t what was on Zeke’s mind. Instead, he thought back to his choices in the Radiant Isles. Was Eveline right? Could he have saved all those people? Maybe. By the end, he was strong enough to take on hordes of zombies by himself, and that was saying nothing of his companions’ potential contribution. Still, the numbers were overwhelming.

That wasn’t anything new, though, was it?

No. Of course not. He’d been fighting against long odds since the very beginning, and he’d always come out on top. The reality was that he’d been lying to himself, and not even very convincingly. In the back of his mind, he’d always known the nature of his choice. It was selfish and born of resentment.  After all, he’d put everything on the line to save the people of Jariq – and more than once – but they’d hated him. Feared him. They certainly hadn’t appreciated his sacrifices. If he’d been any weaker, they would have killed him.

Was that why he had chosen to abandon the Radiant Isles to an undead apocalypse?

“It’s more complicated than that, and you know it,” Eveline supplied, floating above his shoulder and sitting cross-legged on nothing. “You wanted to progress, too. You need to grow. It’s part of your nature.”

And in the end, there had also been the issue of the broken skill. Could he have spent years like that? Probably, but it would have been more than a little unpleasant. It was just one more factor in support of his ultimate decision.

He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, asking, “Am I evil?”

“No.”

“It was wrong, what I did, though. I should have stayed.”

“Maybe. Perhaps not,” Eveline said, reaching out. She tried to rest a hand on his shoulder, but it passed right through. She was incorporeal, after all. “I didn’t mean for this to devolve into a treatise on good and evil. You’ve made the choices that seemed best at the time. None of us can do any better.”

That wasn’t very comforting. But then again, Zeke didn’t want to fall into the trap of wallowing in his past mistakes, either. He needed to keep moving forward. As he did so, he would try to make the right decisions, but he was self-aware enough to recognize that he would sometimes fail. Going ahead, he could only hope to minimize those failures.

“That’s the spirit,” Eveline said, raising her fist into the air. Her voice, though, was deadpan. Clearly, she hadn’t recovered from being showered with the creature’s anguished thoughts. She added, “They weren’t thoughts, per se. More like screams.”

Zeke ignored the comment and bent down, touching one of the intact metal strips. With a mental command, he looted it, and after an instant or two, all that was left was the fleshy bits. He’d looted all of the metal.

“Might be useful,” he muttered, straightening to his full height. Then, he latched onto the most intact golem and drained a little earthen energy from its core. Once he’d gathered enough, he funneled it into [Cambion’s Awakening], healing his body. It took a few minutes – and more energy than he’d hoped – but soon enough, he was in almost pristine condition. With that done, he sent the three golems down the stairs. They wouldn’t stop until they reached the ground, where they could recharge their cores.

Then, Zeke settled down to wait. Sitting cross-legged on the ground – as far away from the mass of green flesh that had once been the guardian – Zeke closed his eyes and sank into a meditative state so he could examine his skill runes. Soon, he’d reach the point where he could create another skill, and when that happened, he needed to be prepared. The experience with creating [Colossal Legion] had been invaluable, but each set of runes was different. Still, he was making progress.

For the next couple of hours, his golems recharged, and Zeke planned his next skill. Finally, the clank of the golems’ metal feet sounded their return, and he opened his eyes to see that they were completely repaired. More, their cores were practically blazing with earthen energy.

“Do you have any idea how unfair that is?” asked Eveline. “You have walking batteries following you around.”

Zeke just shrugged and climbed to his feet. After a few stretches, he said, “This should be the last guardian, right?”

“Second-to-last, technically,” she said. “But the final one isn’t really part of the Spear. It was put there to…well…I don’t really remember, if I’m honest. That period is a bit blurry for me. By the time it all slid into place, my soul had been torn into six different pieces.”

“No idea what to expect, then?”

“Not really. I’m sure it’ll be horrible, though!” was her chipper response. The few hours had done wonders for her mood, and she’d returned to her inappropriately cheerful self.

Zeke shook his head and walked past the clump of green flesh that had once been a fearsome monster and made his way to the stairway at the rear of the room. After taking a deep breath, he began his climb. In his experience, the height of the previous staircases had all varied pretty widely. One had only been thirty- or forty-feet high, but most had taken hundreds of steps to climb. This one veered toward the latter, and it took Zeke more than two hours to reach the platform at the top.

He stared at the pair of huge double doors before him. They were made of wood that looked like it had been covered with black lacquer, and they bore carvings of various demons, each of which were in some sort of anguish.

“Pleasant, right?” remarked Eveline. “I don’t know what it is about demons and suffering, but it seems kind of like our go-to. Does nothing for the place’s ambiance.”

Indeed, in addition to the various horrifying monsters he’d fought over the past week or so, he’d noticed a prevailing theme with the Spear of Desolation’s interior design. Whoever had picked its décor had clearly had issues.

“Well, they were probably a demon, so,” said Eveline, holding up her hands, palms to the ceiling as she seemed to weigh two options. “I don’t want to veer too far into stereotypes here, but I’m guessing they were horribly depressed and terribly focused on torture.”

“Right. So, typical demon.”

“That comes very close to racism,” Eveline said. “But…it’s probably accurate.”

“Any ideas?” Zeke asked, resting his hand against the door. It was warm, as if it had been sitting in sunlight all day.

“Hit whatever it is with your hammer?” she said with a shrug. “I don’t know. Do you have any other moves?”

Zeke sighed. “Not really.”

“Then that kind of ends the discussion, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“You know what? I guess it kind of does,” he said.

For all Zeke’s power, his skills really didn’t lend themselves to a wide variety of strategies. But that was fine. He was a straightforward kind of guy. And besides, the more complicated a plan, the more things that could go wrong.

“That’s a fancy excuse for being too dumb to think of –”

Zeke interrupted her, sighing, “Just shut up.”

“Shutting up. Right now,” she said. “I mean, now. Wait. Okay, after that last bit, I’m definitely shutting up…”

As she mumbled to herself, Zeke pushed the door open and stepped inside. Behind him came his three golems, each of them blazing with unspent energy. Eveline floated above him. And Zeke squared his shoulders and strode forward.

The chamber was much like all the rest, save that it was much, much bigger. If it was less than two-hundred yards wide and twice as long, Zeke would have been surprised. And it was filled with a veritable forest of those same twisting columns. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout, and to Zeke, it looked entirely haphazard. But in the distance, Zeke saw his nemesis.

“Well, that doesn’t look so bad,” he muttered to himself.

And it was true. The creature looked like a horse. Pitch-black, it appeared to be wearing bulky armor, and a huge spike jutted from between its eyes. Zeke couldn’t make out any more details than that, though.

“Oh, this is bad…”

Zeke glanced at Eveline out of the corner of his eye and asked, “What is it? It’s too far for [Inspection].”

“It’s…it’s a unicorn…”

“Uh…like, a sparkly pony with a beautiful –”

“More like an equine monster of unmatched vengeance and terrible power,” she breathed.

“That isn’t –”

“Uh…it’s coming. Don’t get stuck with that spike. It’ll drain the life right out of you,” she said.

“I really hate getting interrupted,” Zeke groaned, locking his eyes on the unicorn. It had already noticed them. It charged. And so did Zeke. In the back of his mind, he knew that Eveline was shouting something at him, but with the battle so close at hand, he tuned her out.

That’s when the unicorn burst into flames that, even though it was still almost a hundred yards away, boiled the air around Zeke.