Consumed by Purpose

The blood of the fallen smothered the meadow of white tulips, sullying their radiance with crimson. Bodies of friend and foe littered the once pristine field. Rainier distanced himself from the iron taste of death around him. Justice was at hand, and he would deliver it himself. Rainier would avenge the slaughter of his brother, no matter the cost.

A towering figure, dressed in tattered clothing, stood among the minor demons, slaughtering the poorly armed farmers. Protrusions and growths reached for the heavens from his target’s ruined body, a melted wax candle in reverse.

The last of the imps fell to the vengeful men, only for the remaining farmers to be slain in turn by the demonic form. Rainier had saved the last of his energy for this moment. He had always struggled with his attention, but an unfamiliar focus honed him in on the horrible beast; a burning hunger for violence sang in his heart.

Only the two remained, both leaking onto the trampled field of wildflowers. The great beast pulled a spear from its bowels and cast it away. It laughed heartily at the chaos it had wrought. Blood surged from its gushing wounds with each laugh, though it remained standing long after it should have fallen.

Rainier moved with purpose, stepping over the dead, careful not to lose his balance and falter so close to the end. A single misstep would mean that this evil would continue to terrorize the countryside. He would deliver justice for all the fallen and for his own shattered heart.

He did not dare let his eyes wander from his enemy, lest it cast a spell on him while his attention was elsewhere. He closed the remaining distance, his knife at the ready to finish it.

“Farmer, you and I are not so different; we are both consumed by purpose,” it said, blood pouring from its misshapen mouth.

“I am nothing like you. In the name of the enlightener, I rebuke you, demon,” Rainier proclaimed, crossing himself, fearing a hidden spell in its words.

Within arm's distance, it became clear that the devil was using the last of its strength to remain standing. It couldn’t fight any longer. Cuts and slices covered its ruined form. Rainier pitied the man it must have possessed. It shook violently, each muscle taut as a longbow.

“Stop please, for your sake,” a grotesque gurgling sound came from the creature’s throat, pitiful and small.

Rainier snorted at the pathetic plea and roughly grabbed the horns of the devil. He yanked down, dragging it to its knees.

“You stole my mercy from me, but you can have my blade,” he whispered.

Purpose guided Rainier’s knife into the beast’s chest. Satisfaction surged through him as it plunged deep, until it could go no further. In the eyes of his brother’s killer, he saw resignation and peace. Rage supplanted his reason; this monster could not know peace after taking his brother from him. He pulled the knife free and drove the metal into it more times than he could count, until he was panting and he tasted its blood on his tongue. In his blindness, Rainier only hastened the end of its pain. The anger, the likes of which he had never experienced, rich with uncontainable energy, evaporated in an instant, and he was left empty over a ruined carcass.

He stumbled free from the mess and surveyed the battlefield. Friends and neighbors he had known his whole life were corpses. They would be burnt to ash and scattered to the wind, reduced to a memory like his brother had been the night before. Just another toll that the devils had taken from him and his village.

He would take the devil’s head back home as proof of their costly victory. Bending over the remains, a sliver of paper peeked from a ragged pocket, catching his eye. He pulled it free with blood-soaked fingers, the red staining the folded page.

My dear Veronica, today I will get revenge on those who hurt you, and will not come home until I bring them to justice. If you receive this note, I fell while slaying the devil. I will always be with you, unto judgment day.

The writing was sloppy and hectic. A man’s last words before his life drew to a close. Rainier’s heart ached for Veronica; she had meant a great deal to this fellow and would never know he had died fighting for her. He had succeeded in his goal, where this man failed. The letter weighed heavily in his fingers; he swore it hadn’t when he first picked the parchment up.

Rainier read the words again, trying to understand how this man could have turned into such a beast. He glanced down. The malformed devil’s body was gone. In its place was a man, around the age of his father. He looked like he could have been a resident of Rainier’s village, not a monster freshly minted from the pits of the abyss. Likewise, the imps had disappeared, and in their place were the bodies of normal folk, though they were unfamiliar to him.

“What fresh devilry is this?” he asked.

“One of your own making,” the corpse said below him, though its mouth did not move.

He jumped backward, fumbling for his knife with numb fingers. The stained note was forgotten as the breeze carried it away, laying it to rest at the edge of the stream. He held the blade between himself and the suddenly animated dead. Frozen in place, he watched the body, but it did not move.

His knife hand. Rainier’s fingers had been replaced with dagger-like claws, making his grip of the blade tenuous. Panic overpowered him, furiously, he checked himself for changes. Spines and bulbs had sprouted out of his skin and through his clothes.

Rushing to the stream, he had to be sure. His reflection in the gentle current, though shifting, was enough. He was hideous, hardened flesh had dripped upward about his head, forming a grotesque crown of shame. His eyes were endless pits of black, and his mouth full of gnashing fangs. He tried to scream in terror, but his voice caught in his throat. He moved to drive his knife into his own belly, but his elongated meat hooks were no longer able to hold the tool. He wailed silently for his lost humanity.

Time slid by, dragging him along with it. A trickle of blood, drained from the recently fallen, dripped into the stream, spoiling its crystal clear purity. He finally rose from the whispering brook, unable to look upon his visage again. The stain of red swirled in the eddies, only to be drawn further downstream. Rainier’s eyes followed the course until it wound through a distant village. He stared at the distant homes, gentle smoke rose from chimneys, the day’s labor of good folk well underway. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the settlement.

Shuffling started from his periphery. The dead of both sides rose again, their bodies taking on the shape of the demons they had slain. The band had grown significantly. They looked reverently to their new master. Power flowed through him as he had never felt before. His body moved of its own accord to his horror. Thoughts and ideas that weren’t his flashed before his mind, each more terrible than the last. He bent over and speared the blood-smeared letter with a claw and brought it up to hollow eyes to inspect. Fear mixed with contempt for both the writer and the recipient, he wasn’t sure where his emotions ended, and these alien feelings began. A low chuckle echoed from his chest.

Rainier led the imps on their march to the village with purpose. He needed to return this letter to its rightful owner.