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

For a precious moment, as the knights rounded on me to avenge their fallen comrade, I stood perfectly frozen. The emotion that kept me rooted in place wasn’t regret, disgust, or anything people might associate with a first-time murderer.

It was fear, plain and simple.

That fear wanted to take me away from the knights, to make me run when their gleaming swords turned in my direction. But the demon kill-orders pulsing through my veins fought back. The precious wiggle room I’d been able to reason out with the demonic command was gone now that I was right in front of potential victims.

The murder-compulsion jockeyed for control, won decisively against my fear, and dragged my body towards the knights. Instead of trying to fight the command and getting myself skewered for my trouble, I gave in.

With a scream of bloodlust and panic, I drove my sword through the gap between a knight’s helmet and the rest of their armor. The man choked on the steel and his own blood. My bag grew a tiny bit heavier.

That should have been when I died. The other three knights were enraged at the sudden dispatch of their two friends, and I was right in the middle of the mess.

My salvation came in the form of a frenzied mob. They fell upon the backs of the remaining knights, slashing, kicking, stabbing, and doing whatever else their crazed minds demanded, driven to end the lives of any humans free of demonic influence. The knights had broken ranks in their moment of anger, and the demonic slaves were taking full advantage of this opening.

No, not slaves.

The thought was mine, but it came with a kind of grainy, echoing quality. As my body gave in to the demonic command, images flashed in front of my eyes. Men, women, and children, dirty and underfed and all wearing manacles. They bore their blows silently, because they were already broken. But their tormentors were not demons. Other humans were making their lives hell, while demons watched and jeered and made bets on their survival. Those were the true slaves.

We, despite everything I was seeing, were the lucky ones. Slowly but surely, the demonic command receded. When the last bits of the hazy memory went along with the command, I found myself on top of one of the knights. His face had been obliterated from repeated shield bashes and his chest plate was scratched and dented. In my left hand was a shield still dripping blood and my right wrist was burning in pain.

Several of the other demonic soldiers were still around, hacking away at the knights’ bodies like demented ghouls.

I had been like that. The thought sent shivers down my back. A dry, sweet smell assaulted my nose. Blood. I stumbled up and away from the corpses, then paused, trying to get my bearings. I was reeling, both from the memory and what I had just done.

It’s kill or be killed. I can’t fight the command. It took a couple of seconds to jump through all the mental hoops required to justify myself. But once that was done, I turned around and started examining the corpses.

My left arm chose that moment to start throbbing painfully. A glance told me that one of the knights had managed to give me a long, angry gash. A nice souvenir to remember him by.

I ignored it, concentrating on my search. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. One of the knights, the first one I had killed, was relatively close to my new body’s shape and size. Kneeling next to him, I tore off my thin, useless shirt and cut it into several long strips of cloth. I wasn’t skilled at first aid. In fact, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. My new body’s instincts had no relevant help to offer. Regardless, I bandaged the wound as well as I could, and then failed to tie it off several times.

Hollywood lied when they showed how ’easy’ it was to hold one end of a bandage in your teeth while tying it off. Who knew, right?

I eventually managed. Then I fought to ignore the pain and the growing red splotch on the ’bandages’ as I stripped the knight of everything he was worth.

The armor I claimed instantly, even though it took a while to figure out how the two plates meant to cover my front and back were kept in place. Naturally, I also took the man’s padded shirt, or gambeson, or whatever it was called. Sure, it had a hole where my sword had somehow punched right through. And it was soaked in blood, but so was I. This wasn’t a time to be picky.

The next thing I claimed was a tower shield. The one that I had picked up on the field was pathetic. The weapon crafters for the demonic forces clearly hadn’t wasted much time or resources on the dregs of the army. For starters, it was barely big enough to properly cover my upper body. And at this point, the gear looked like it had gone to hell and back. Or the reverse, I suppose. Compared to the quality of the dagger, it was downright insulting. A way to force us not to waste time on defensive gear, perhaps?

Regardless, the tower shield of the knights was a much better substitute.

Then I got to the pants, and faltered. I wanted them, sure, but the smell alone was unbearable. The growing wet patch between the man’s legs said exactly where all the unpleasantness was coming from, and I was pretty sure I could smell more than piss.

I decided to keep my own thin pants for now.

I did steal the man’s boots though. The size of them was a tiny bit off, but it didn’t matter. Anything was better than the flimsy things I was wearing, which were falling apart with every step.

Finally, I tried on the man’s helmet. Wearing it was a distinctly uncomfortable experience. It smelled of sweat and desperation, however the hell I was perceiving the latter. And, like everything else, it was just a tiny bit too small, so I felt like someone was clamping down on the sides of my head. It also looked a bit weird, like a cross between a bucket and some pointy implement. If I wanted to impale someone, I could just bend over and charge them. I’m sure it made me look ridiculous.

I kept it on.

Only an idiot gets killed by a stray arrow for the sake of style or extra comfort points.

With the new loot, I was a new man. Literally and figuratively. For one, I was much better equipped than I had been at the start of the battle. For another, I now looked like all the other knights scurrying around the city, bloody and battered. As the command to kill once again rose to an intensity I couldn’t ignore, a small twinge of worry pierced through my seemingly perfect plan.

There I was, completely surrounded by unstable demon-controlled soldiers, and I had just decked myself out in the gear of our enemies.

Before I could freak out, my new body’s instincts assured me I’d be fine. It took a brief moment of introspection to figure out why. I could feel the others. All I had to do was focus, and I could pinpoint the location of each and every demonic soldier in a couple yards’ radius around me. It was like I had a built-in radar for friendlies. Thinking back, I realized I’d managed to avoid hurting my nominal allies, and vice versa, even when I blanked out during the scuffle with the knights.

So, I wasn’t liable to get stabbed in the back by mistake. That was comforting.

Less comforting was the realization that my body started moving, on its own, while I was thinking. I was now much deeper inside the fortress city. My legs were pumping against the stone road, in search of the nearest enemy. Apparently, any lapse in my concentration allowed the murder-command to take over fully.

I swore quietly, then quickly dove into the nearest house. The door wasn’t even locked, making the maneuver easy.

I’m not hiding, I’m scouting for hidden enemies.

Once I’d repeated the mantra for the dozenth time, the command finally started to agree. It bought me just enough time to relax and look around.

I was in a small foyer. A doorway at the other end of the room led to the rest of the house. Two pairs of boots stood right next to the door I’d just come in, one larger than the other. The space wasn’t furnished richly, but it did have a bench, hooks with coats hanging off them, a weapon stand, and a low table of some weird design.

The table was knocked over and the weapon stand was empty.

I crouched lower before going further. There was no door separating the foyer from the next room, which lessened the chances of an ambush. I still crept around the corner like I was expecting a hostile SWAT team to jump out at me.

The caution proved unnecessary. The large room was empty.

It was some kind of mix between a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. Knickknacks, personal items, and general proof of people living in the space abounded, but I paid them no mind. There was a door to my immediate left, probably leading to a room the same size as the foyer, and another door across from me.

My stomach whined when I looked at the kitchen area, reminding me just how hungry I was, but I ignored it. Instead, I concentrated on taking a deep breath and busting down the door on the left with a movie-inspired kick.

Or rather, I tried. The kick made my leg ache, and the door didn’t budge. I cursed as quietly as could. With my face flushing with embarrassment, I just opened the bloody door normally. A wave of cold slammed me in the face. This was a pantry. Shelves full of food lined the walls, kept cool by a large basket of steaming ice in the center of the floor.

For once, my inner geek came out to play as I marveled over the locals’ solution to their food storage problems. The ice had to be magical somehow. It didn’t look natural at all, not least because there was no water to be found at the bottom of the basket or on the surrounding floor.

A quick assessment told me that I was now the owner of various staples that looked mostly familiar. Several kinds of possible fruits and veggies were completely alien to me, but some could have passed for Earth variants.

Suddenly, a creak sounded behind me, the subtle yet unmistakable sound of someone placing their foot wrong. I whirled around as the murder-compulsion exploded in my mind.

A terrified man was in the middle of the room, his eyes wide and full of desperation. He was clutching a knife in his right hand with a white-knuckled grip. But he had made up his mind. The instant I turned, he charged right for me with a scream.

My movements were simple, almost mechanical. I stepped forward, took his knife’s blow on my new shield, and then slashed out with my sword.

And that was about where my newfound instincts stopped. I wasn’t a master swordsman, merely a trained buffoon who knew just enough not to treat a sword like a bat but not enough to know where to place it. Instead of neatly ending the man’s life with a blow to the neck, my blade raked across his face.

Blood burst out of his cheek, and he instantly crumpled, clutching at his eye. His fingers were stained with red and white as I brought my sword down again. This time, I caught the back of his neck and a bit of his shoulder blades. He crumpled further, whimpering and gurgling now. And then I landed the killing blow.

I wasn’t shaking. My hands were completely steady and sure. I wasn’t throwing up either. But deep inside of me was a mounting horror at what I was doing. My body was almost moving on instinct, thanks to the flare of the murder command and the pulse of something scalding hot inside my chest. It sent waves of heat through my body, relaxing muscles and banishing the ill effects of adrenaline.

The warm, unnatural calmness was disturbing, but I couldn’t focus on it. I was preoccupied by my feet. They kept moving, propelled by the command, dragging me towards the room I’d originally ignored.

The door was open now. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard the man when he started sneaking up on me or that I had been so stupid to have been distracted by the food. Hovering somewhere between demonic rage and a panic attack, I barged inside the room.

My thoughts screeched and ground to a halt.

I was obviously in a bedroom. It was a simple affair, with shelves on one side, a couple of storage chests on the other, and a bed in the center. At the other end of the room was a woman, likely the wife of the man who just tried to kill me. A ray of sunlight splashed across the top of her head from the small window behind her.

My demonic compulsion drove me forward.

Killing the man was one thing. I knew he was innocent, and that I was part of a demonic army invading his home. He had, however, taken up a weapon and tried to ambush me. I could reason something out there, find a way to feel a little less guilty.

There was no such reprieve with the woman.

She was crying and had her hands raised. She wasn’t a threat, just someone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I tried, with everything in me, to fight the compulsion. I tried to step away and just go raid the pantry. I tried to reason that my hunger, and the potential weakness that would ensue, was more important in that moment than cutting down a helpless woman.

I failed.

I was stuck there, screaming inside my mind, as I approached the woman and lifted my sword. Her eyes widened with terror as she bumped against the window. There was a subtle glow to the window frame, coming from runes etched into the trim. An instinct told me the runes were for muffling enchantments.

The woman had heard her husband die. She watched the approach of the murderer, mouth open in a silent plea.

I brought my blade down, right through her chest.