Chapter 20 - The Shattering of Sanctuary
The crickets were chirruping and the wind whistling, but the human factor of the evening was strangely silent. Ashley sat on the grass that was growing ever damper with dew, his knees drawn up against his chest. The back garden of their... no, his house, was shrouded in darkness; not just that of the absence of light, but that of the absence of a heart as well. He sighed, trying desperately to fight back the tears, but failing. He'd been out here since the previous night when they arrived.
He rose to his feet stiffly, twinges of pain flaring in his knees as they straightened out for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. Ashley turned around to face the house once more, almost gagging at the sight of blood dried onto the inside of the windows. Shaking his head, trying to ignore the nausea building up in the pit of his stomach, he walked to the back door. Reaching out with a hand to twist the handle, he noticed the blood that stained it. Gripping the handle, flakes of dried blood fell from his skin, but he ignored it, opening the door and stepping inside; stepping on a stray limb. His eyes trailed up the arm, to a body with no head. The pale white dress it wore was stained red, the image of purity gone, only to be replaced by death and corruption. He was standing on Tia's arm...
Hands... I need to clean my hands...
Dumbly, he walked to the sink, and started pumping the lever, water gushing forth from the tap. Reaching out with both hands, he cupped them to capture water before bringing it to his face, letting it try and wake him from his requiem. Shaking his head, he started to rub his hands together, the dried blood quickly turning the water red as it peeled away from his skin.
Finally satisfied the blood was gone, Ashley turned to survey the kitchen once more. Tia's body lay by the door where she had nearly got it open and escaped into the outside world before her head had been separated from her shoulders, it now lying a few feet away, staring up at him, her eyes recriminating. "You should have been here... you should have stopped them..." She had been dead when he came in.
Pinned to the doorframe was a man dressed all in black, a scimitar sticking through his chest into the wall behind him. This was the man who had killed his wife; a black mask covered his face, hiding his eyes from the world. In what remained of the front room, smashed chairs and bloodstains, not to mention the corpses, marked the scene of a fight. Three dead men and one child...
Ashley dropped to his knees, next to Marco's corpse. The knife was still in his chest, the mortal wound having clotted a long time ago. One hand held the child's body to his, the other cupping Marco's head as Ashley cried. His body shook in agony, tears streaming down his face, dashing themselves upon the blood-sodden corpse he held in his arms. He could hear him laughing as he ran around in the back garden, the sheer joy and happiness of being young so evident in his voice; the wide grin plastered across his face... all gone. Never again...
"It's your fault, you know, Ashley?" came her voice from behind him.
"Do you think I honestly don't realise that? If I'd been here a few minutes earlier..."
The voice gave a heavy sigh, followed by a brief pause. "That's not what I meant, and deep inside, you know it to be true."
"You're saying that I caused this; that my wife and child's deaths happened because of something I did?"
"No, not what you did Riskbreaker Riot..."
And there was that word again, Riskbreaker. He wasn't a Riskbreaker; he knew that he was just a footman in the army. But still...
"Ashley, you know the truth even if you are afraid to admit it to yourself."
Gently laying his sons body to the floor, Ashley rose to his feet, his head bowed. "What the hell are you babbling on about ghost..."
"Hell? No. Purgatory, yes." She walked around Ashley, skirting Marco's corpse to stand the other side of it, across from Ashley. "This is your purgation. This... ruin," she said, as she gestured with her hand, the walls fading away to be replaced with rubble. "This is not your home. No one has lived here in seven years, not since you burned it down in a fit of rage. That fire spread out to the neighbouring homes along this street... do you know how many people died in that fire Ashley? How many couples were split asunder because of that; how many children were burnt alive because of your rash actions? You didn't even care..."
The tears wouldn't stop running down his face. "Please, just leave me alone..."
"Don't you want to know who did this, Riskbreaker Riot? Don't you want to know who killed your wife and child?" She gestured to the black-clad man, pinned to the doorframe behind him. "Don't you want to know who tore your life apart? Remove his mask Riskbreaker, and see the truth for yourself..."
He didn't really care for they were all dead, but nevertheless, his limbs took him towards that foul offenders corpse, in stiff, jerky movements. His hand reached out, achingly slowly, to take a grip of the black mask that covered most of its face. He paused, unsure of whether he really wanted to do this; what end would it accomplish? They were all dead already...
Closing his eyes, he pulled the mask away. When he opened them again, he was staring at his own face. The corpses eyes opened, revealing pale green irises, laughter dancing inside the pupils, as it spoke. "The bitch and the brat are both dead. You're free my brother..."
With a cry of rage, Ashley seized the handle of the scimitar that jutted from his doppelgangers corpse and heaved upwards, twisting his body away to give extra momentum into the movement, the blade crashing upwards through the ribcage and smashing the skull into pieces. Ashley fell down to one knee, panting hard as he tried to block it all from his brain. "This can't be happening, it can't be real..."
He rose to his feet once more, his chest heaving.
"There's still three others Ashley; don't you want to know who they are?" She still stood on the other side of Marco's corpse, her head cocked to one side as her blond hair splayed itself over one shoulder.
Silently he moved, going down on one knee by the first corpse. As he reached for the mask with one hand, still holding the scimitar in his other, he already knew whose face would be behind it. His. Removing the mask, he went to the next corpse, repeating the process, and then the third. His face stared up at him each time, malicious grins upon their faces as they mocked him for failing. And then... they stood up.
"NO!"
As the first one lumbered towards him, Ashley swung the curved blade lopping its head off. As it fumbled around, waving its hands through where its head had once been, the second one came up behind Ashley. Spinning around and dropping to one knee, he sliced its leg off, causing it to topple onto the floor. The third one was virtually upon him, as Ashley rose to his feet, the scimitar flashing in the firelight as it rose to slice the corpse in half, a diagonal slash across the body sending the upper torso flying across the room.
The blade dropped from his loose fingers. "This can't be happening, it can't be real..."
"Ashley, look about you. Are you saying that what you see does not exist, just because you don't want it to?"
His back flared in pain, a pattern of fire dancing across his flesh, forcing him to his hands and knees. Drool ran from his lips as his whole body shook, convulsions wracking his stomach as he started to dry-heave.
"Pain is the gateway to truth Ashley; see through the pain and find the truth on the other side."
They came for him; one cleaved in half from the stomach upward, one without a head, one with no legs and one with just the one. They clustered around him, beating upon him with their fists, trying to knock him to the floor, but he was rigid now; unmoving. Slowly he started to crawl towards Marco's corpse, their persistent blows doing almost nothing to hinder him. As he reached out one hand to touch the young boys corpse, his body finally gave in to his assailants, strength deserting his other arm, making him collapse onto the floor. Curling himself up, he took a deep breath...
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Straightening from the waist upwards, Ashley arched his back, his arms thrown out either side of his body. He squeezed his eyes shut in agony, so much so that his inner vision turned white.
The pain faded away, leaving nothingness in its place...
He opened his eyes and they were all gone. No corpses trying to kill him, no wife and child's eyes recriminating, no furniture or walls... just her, still watching him with that inquisitive look upon her face, her head now cocked to the other side.
"What is going on, ghost?"
"Samantha. My name is Samantha. And I already told you, this is your purgation."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"I'm not doing anything, except trying to help you through this. You're the one who put yourself here. You're the one doing all of this..."
"Why are you... helping me then?"
"Our souls are linked; you cannot escape me like I can't escape you, not since I died for you. Not since Leá Monde..."
"Leá... Monde?"
"He pushed me from the rooftop. I fell all the way from the crested peak of Leá Monde's cathedral, to be dashed upon the ground. My body died that day, three weeks ago, but my soul... that has been captured by the dark magick of the Iocus brotherhood, captured and then bonded to you. I died for your ascension, for you to become the..." The look in her eyes was one that was almost pure disgust, yet there was a faint tinge of pity in it. "...to become the man you are now. If you don't figure out what to do now, then my death will have been for naught; our purposes shall be unfulfilled."
"And what is my purpose Samantha?"
"Let me tell you a story Riskbreaker Riot, the story behind why you are here today.
"Centuries ago, Armageddon began. Lucifer and his horde attacked God and his pantheon of angels; a fierce battle was wrought out on the ephemeral plains and in the end, all that was left was God and Lucifer. The two entered into the final battle to decide the fate of the human world and Lucifer was defeated and killed. However, God sustained a mortal injury, and in his dying throes, he passed on his power to a newborn human. That human was Jesus Christ.
"Thirty years later, Jesus Christ died on the cross in Golgotha. A Roman centurion plunged a spear into his side and the power was passed onto him. That centurion was named Longinus and he carried the curse for over three hundred years before he finally tired of immortal life. He passed on his gift to a young woman, a dancer. Her name was Müllenkamp.
"Realising the power that she had been given, and the enormity of the situation, she used her powers for good. Within time, she had built up a following; a cult if you will. And then she had a vision and gave a prophecy. This power would ultimately lead to the death of the human race for it would fall into the wrong hands eventually, but that one person would come and they would know how to end the power. Müllenkamp was at a loss for she knew not how to undo the power. Realising that if she didn't know, she had to find someone else who did, she passed on her gift.
"Since then, the gift has been transferred countless times while the Müllenkamp cult died out. Eventually, one Sydney Losstarot received the power and inherited the ability to hear the dead. Müllenkamp spoke to him of the prophecy and Sydney knew what he had to do. He also knew that he was not the one, but that the knowledge of the power he controlled was not limited to only him. Others would come after the power to use for themselves and that this must surely be the time in which the chosen one would come.
"The chosen one did come. His name was Ashley Riot.
"You are the one who will save humanity, but unless you awake from this delusion, you will only doom the world. Wake up Ashley and face your destiny..."
"I don't believe you..."
"You think God isn't dead? You think God would let this happen? The only divine power left in this world is inside of you; you are God now. You did this. Not that it's real, it's all inside of your head. You killed an innocent child and now you're here, trying to run away from that truth, but part of you won't let you do that. It's trying to make you realise you have nothing left to cling to here by killing your wife and child in front of you once more.
"You have to wake up Ashley, don't let our deaths have been in vain. Only you can save us..."
Ashley slowly got to his feet, his limbs hanging limply by his side as if they had lead weights attached to them. "I killed... an innocent child?"
"Yes, you killed Joshua Bardorba, the young child you rescued from Leá Monde with the help of Callo Merlose."
"Callo... Leá Monde..."
Images flashed inside Ashley's mind, bringing white-hot searing pain to him, but he just stood there, taking it all. He saw the wyrm fall through the roof of Duke Bardorba's manor; he saw the golem come to life; he saw Sydney Losstarot lying on the floor, bleeding; he saw the look of horror on Callo Merlose's face when he told her that he would kill her; he saw himself plunge a knife into Duke Bardorba's chest; he saw Joshua Bardorba lying on the ground, the Sin Blade jutting forth from his back...
The images and the pain stopped simultaneously, leaving Ashley standing in a ruined house. Samantha was nowhere to be seen, but a noise could be heard from outside. A figure of a portly man stepped in through what had once been the door.
"What the hell's going on here?" he asked Ashley after spotting him just standing there.
"Nothing yet, but it's about to begin..."
