He sat outside the church, looking at the wreckage. The Nrv graffiti was everywhere, and goons were piling up around it with strange metal music playing from someone’s speaker. They were eating the church’s food, sleeping on their cots. They were even using some of the women as slaves to cook the food and warm the cots.

  Ellie was not among them. She was always the fighter and would die before letting something like this happen. Her remains were within the heap of bodies outside. They were stacked like a pile of garbage 15 feet high.

  Even Arthur. Despite the problems he gave him, T’balt hated seeing him above the church. His body was limp, and a noose was the only thing holding it from a 20-foot fall from the church’s balcony.

  The sight left T’balt unable to breathe. It was inhumane. Disgusting. He couldn’t believe that a teenage kid could be responsible for this. But Nrv wasn’t here. It was his thugs carrying out all this business, doing what they wanted with the remains of humanity.

  T’balt wind looted himself up to the top of the cathedral to cut Arthur’s body down. He held him in his arms. His corpse must’ve been days old by then.

  “Who the hell are you?” a thug said behind him.

  T’balt didn’t remember what happened after that. For some reason, he blacked out. When he opened his eyes next, many of the thugs were dead. Their bodies were mangled, split into pieces. There were at least twenty new bodies to mix in with the rest. Some of them were still alive, but the light in their eyes had been replaced by an ungodly fear—like looking into the eyes of an eldritch horror.

  He stood on the roof of the church, smelling the thick blood that painted its parking lot, old and new. He then realized that it wasn’t him who had killed everyone. Well, in a way, it was. It was the loot sucking life from his neck.

  Above him to see his own summon, haunted the church like a benevolent god. The giant apparition synced with his movements. It stared where he stared, and it felt his own emotions. He could see it shaking, blood dripping from its disembodied claws.

  “Hello, old friend,” he said to the Fury.

  That was Monan’s loot. His gift. His handicap. T’balt could’ve laughed. This thing had once been used to kill him. With its thousand-mile scowl and dead, black, limbless body, its presence felt almost liberating.

  Killing was wrong. He knew it. But he still wanted them dead in that moment. Now he could justify that it was this beast and not him. He supposed it didn’t matter. He’d already broken the seal with Chosa. He was a killer now. He wasn’t saving himself from anything.

  The Fury somehow felt even his despair. It lowered itself around him with a strange, motherly sense, as if shielding him from the world as he fought his own tears. But that comfort only made him feel more disturbed. He made the warmth disappear into a cloud of black smoke.

  T’balt took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, you all.”

  He went to see Nrv next, flying to that hotel where he saw much of the same scene. The hotel was destroyed by what looked like a warzone. Nrv soldiers still occupied the grounds, but it wasn’t in as high numbers as before.

  Only some still wore their jackets, and most were free from their masks. T’balt charged the first one he saw, grabbing him by the throat. Like a worm on a hook, the bandit squirmed, unable to touch his feet to the ground. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

  “Screw you, man.” Then the fear struck the man into terrified silence. When he looked into T’balt’s eyes, he also looked into the eyes of the Fury and its presence threatened to devour him whole.

  “Where is Nrv?”

  “Huh? He’s dead. They killed him yesterday.” The man wrenched at his throat, T’balt’s grip tightening around his neck.

  “They killed him... He was a child.” T’balt didn’t know why he was so bent on defending him. A child who was still a killer. But he remembered the kid—the one who liked baseball and stealing snacks from the pantry. He must’ve been a killer then, too…

  “It wasn’t me. I swear.”

  T’balt dropped him, not out of some sense of sympathy but because a bigger threat presented itself. The man and many others scurried to get out of the street when a giant shadow overtook them. As if the moon hadn’t suddenly run away, the city was shrouded in darkness.

  The seraph with its statue stone eyes and four silent wings stared right down at T’balt, fawning over its target like he was lost treasure.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  All the people in the area coward away from the sight. It was a terror to them. It wasn’t a thing to be fought but only a thing to fear. It stalked the skies searching for corrupt souls to bestow its judgment. And it had always wanted T’balt since the very first iteration. He could’ve sworn he could see it smiling.

  But T’balt was in a grand mood to fight. He looked up to it and gave it his most holy middle finger. “You can tell the Redeemer this is what I think of him. The bastard. I’m glad I killed him.”

  The angel pointed its finger back at him. A spark of light shot from its glowing finger. T’balt moved quickly enough to dodge even light. More so, he reacted to the movement of the finger.

  Then a fire boiled his insides. “I wonder what kind of loot I’ll get by killing you…”

  He flew towards its head, which itself was the size of a small house. He landed on its shoulder and drove himself to punch it in its oversized cheek. It did no damage as expected. Without a strength loot, he wasn’t even a tickle.

  A beam of light blasted him off into a nearby skyscraper, where he crashed into a row of cubicles. He winced at the sudden pain and pressure in his body. Despite it, he struggled to his feet.

  “Stronger. I need to be stronger.”

  Another blast of light came at him. But the fury appeared in front of him to block the sharp ray. Which was a strange thing to see, weaponized light. It had a physical form like a beam of condensed force. It reflected off the Fury's claws.

  T’balt smiled. “You just appear when you want, huh?”

  That angel must’ve had some sort of light loot. It was a strength beyond any others he had experienced. He had to have it. Then he might be strong enough. He just had to figure out how with just the Fury and wind.

  He launched himself out of the window. The Seraph turned with a quickness so he had the wind carry him behind a building to stay out of sight. Maybe surprise it. T’balt didn’t know if it had some other sense for him or another loot that he had to look out for. But if he could surprise it or find a weakness, then he could possibly take it out using the Fury. Then it's loot would be his.

  He waited till its back was turned and then sent the Fury to swipe right at the nape of its neck. The Seraph swiped at it with its wings, but the creature was half apparition. The Fury shifted its form to smoke through its attack. Then it reformed on the other side of its enemy, slashing at the Seraph's face.

  It cracked the stone skin, leaving T’balt impressed with its strength. It made an impossible fight look almost easy. It swerved and dodged around, attacking the giant in its blind spots simply because that’s what T’balt willed it to do. But it wasn’t going to do any fatal damage due to the lack of size.

  He needed something more. Something bigger. Then he noticed the street and the arsenal he had at his disposal. He turned the wind over and over in front of him, ever increasing its velocity and force, until it was as strong as a controlled natural disaster. It picked up the cars around him, and T’balt used it to catapult them at the Seraph’s head.

  One of them drilled right on target, causing it to reer. That was an opening. He flew up. “Strike at its head!” he commanded the Fury. The she-beast then did something he didn’t know it could. It screamed, shooting a laser of lightless energy right into the Seraph’s many eyes.

  Its face exploded when it hit. And the thing fell down to the earth at last. T’balt flew to find where it fell between the buildings and saw it taking a knee, in a crater befitting its size. It rubbed its eyes of the pain, but it still seemed to realize him when he landed near it.

  It scooped a chunk of concrete earth with its hand and flung the debris at him. The attack was scattered. He had to summon the Fury to shield him. Even still, a piece of debris winged T’balt in the shoulder, and the Fury took heavy damage. Small chunks of its ghostly body were red and burning like a demon being doused with holy water.

  Then the angel rose again. What looked like a holy book appeared in front of it. It closed its eyes in a meditation that resembled a prayer. A hymn emerged from its lips so loud that it made T’balt’s vision blur momentarily.

  The damage upon its skin began to clear, and its body shone with holy white light.

  “It’s healing.”

  That’s when he remembered something he had picked up before he left the church. It is always shown with a similar white light when used. He found it near Ellie’s body. Maybe the two were connected in some way. He put the coin to his neck and straightened his back to draw the Holy Bow.

  As soon as he did, the hymn grew louder, as if it was suddenly shouting with anger that T’balt had such a thing. T’balt loosed an arrow at it, but as soon as the arrow took flight, the giant disappeared.

  “What?”

  Then there was a flash behind him—a blinding flash and out of it came the hand of the angel. It snatched T’balt like a pebble on the ground and threw him halfway across the city.

  It was like the neon. It could move in streams of light. The thing had a loot stack of 3. Three strong loot that made it a near impossible enemy.

  The string of light followed him through the sky, and the angel then appeared above him. Catching him mid-flight and smiting T’balt to the ground with a chop of its hand. If not for the Fury catching him before he hit the ground, the attack would’ve ended him.

  But still, the damage was irreversible. The Fury held him with its giant hands, but its body soon faded, dropping T’balt on the ground, half unconscious. He was lying on the street with no protection. The Fury was damaged, and with T’balt’s weakness, it had automatically deactivated and disappeared.

  The angel floated above him, its face back to stone, no longer smiling. His body wasn’t listening to him. It was only barely able to move him to his feet, but not to throw another attack or even resummon the Fury.

  However, the feeling running through his veins then was almost intoxicating. He could tell by the shaking in his hands that he wasn’t himself. He still wanted this fight. He wanted to win, or he wanted to die. He must’ve gone crazy after everything. After Chosa and the world had given up on him. He had become this person, manic in the face of his own death.

  He pulled at the choker around his neck. “Is that all, you bitch!? I’m not done with you yet! I want everything you got!”

  https://www.instagram.com/ajaxwritesback/ or search @Ajaxwritesback (original name, so that's me on all socials), where I'll start posting pictures like the ones above, as well as occasional extra content for Death by Rebirth and maybe some teasers for future stories.