"The Devil You Know" By Forever Jake

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Cascio knelt in the dust of the stone floor, the distant, domed ceiling looking down at him like some guardian angel. The main temple chamber was bare but for a few scattered corpses – the victims of their own vice. The council members no longer walked the world, spreading the lies and hate of their master, and the church – both the ivy-choked structure and the aging institution it symbolized – was once again pure.

The other heroes, singing songs of relief and victory, had already traveled on through the gate, but the young paladin knelt still, forgotten by his peers, his hands cradling a thin body as though it belonged to an infant. His comrades, barbarian and necromancer, did not understand – could not understand – the consequence of what they had done… what he had done. For them, the evil vanquished was nameless, anonymous, as foreign as the jungle-choked land in which they fought.

For Cascio, the battle had been much more personal.

He cradled now the body of his fallen foe, as something he had not felt in years fought its way to his face – grief. Tears streamed down his cheeks, ripping down onto the broken visage of the still, silent Mephisto, Lord of Hatred.

But this was not Mephisto's form, not his features. It was not his body Cascio had hacked and mangled, and not his eyes which had stared back at him through it all, bright, defiant… hateful.

The spirit of the great demon was gone, and left was the shattered shell that had been Sankekur, the Que-Hagan, the very living leader of the Church. Mephisto had wielded the priest like a weapon, and at long last the weapon had broken in the demon's hands. Cascio had fought Mephisto, but it had been Sankekur he had killed.

The fallen priest had been his teacher, once, before the dark events in the western lands had called the inexperienced pupil from his mentor. Cascio had left home to battle evil, but evil had come instead to his home. The paladin had returned, altered by his quests, but he had found his Que-Hagan altered as well. The wise and benevolent priest had all but vanished, replaced by the very embodiment of evil. Mephisto had settled himself in Sankekur's mind and broken him from within; by the time Cascio and his companions had arrived, the transformation from holy man to harrower was complete.

Cascio had faced many a cunning and cruel enemy along his journey, but never had he faced a friend. The battle with Sankekur – Mephisto – had been a difficult one; in the end, however, the paladin had done what was needed. His sword had ended two lives, one he viewed with hate, and one with love. He knelt, now, in the dusty void of the temple floor, asking the great domed ceiling, the heavens, and the scores above whether the trade had been a balanced one.

"Where the actions of Hell often seem straightforwardly bent on destruction, the motives of Heaven are unfathomable," the sage, Deckard Cain, had told him. Was Sankekur's death part of the Great Plan? Was the holiest man in the world truly an obstacle to the victory of Heaven in this war? He didn't know.

Unable to move, to even wipe the tears and blood from his face, Cascio held the lifeless body of Sankekur and cried into the emptiness of the temple, his curses of Heaven and Hell alike shattering the solemnity of the place.