Rain arrived at the Cathedral, his heart pounding in utter riot within his rib cage.
He halted his steps as he got close to the gothic sensation of a building, his muscles quivering and twitching in return.
There was no shortage of guarantee of his survival against the Archbishop, the problem he was having stemmed from what he might see as soon as he walked into the building.
Rain squeezed his hands, tightening them so hard that if only his fingernails were left untrimmed they would have dug into his skin and carved their presence into his flesh.
He took in a deep breath and exhaled.
What was the point of giving in to nervousness now?
When he took the first step out of the Cathedral back then he had long settled his mind on the possibility of such, there was no point in letting that stopping him from advancing now. Alice would not have wanted her death to be a shackle on him; she’d sacrificed herself for his and Sean’s survival, he should not let that go to waste.
Rain went up the stairs of the Cathedral, and walked into its open doors.
It only took a second, as soon as his steps carried him into a ravaged nave, for his pulse to elevate and a pounding that seemed to muffle out every sound around him to storm his ears.
No matter how many times he’d told himself that he was ready, nothing could have prepared him for what appeared before his eyes.
Alice stood motionless, frozen, in complete, haunting defiance with the flames that engulfed her body. She was blackened beyond belief, and from her body the acrid stench of death and burnt flesh filled the air. Her hands tightly gripped her sword, refusing to let it go even though she was crumbling; and as though the sword itself was in denial of its master’s death, it fought back the flames from coiling onto its body as its blue luster glowed faintly but angrily in the heat.
Rain’s vision clouded; though, even with his ability to see and think clearly being impaired, as the firelight flickered around Alice, one thing became certain to him. She was a beacon, and the perfect example of a mother.
Finally noticing her resilience even in death brought him back to his senses; and even though his anger did not simmer into inexistence, his vision was no longer in its tunnel-like state.
Rain looked away from Alice and the Archbishop came into view.
The devil of a man was seated on the stairs of the sanctuary, his eyes dull and heavy, and his breathing a labored and uneven mess. But most of all, he looked like he had seen a ghost.
Rain instantly deduced why the man looked so out of it. After all, his left forearm was no longer a part of his body.
“You… Why are you here?” Archbishop Jude asked with a shaken voice, his black cassock dyed here and there with the stain of blood. He held a cusp of flame over where his left arm now stopped, using it as a means to stop the blood that was gushing out of his arm.
The more Rain looked at the man, the more he wanted to make his death slow and painful.
“Why do you think?” Rain said, his voice carrying as little enthusiasm as possible.
Archbishop Jude frowned. “Impossible,” he said, suddenly more shaken. “What did you do?”
Rain had not come here to engage the man in a battle of words, so he gave no further reply.
He looked at Alice one more time, and that single glance of his contributed to shoving out what was left of his hesitance from his mind and heart, prompting him to immediately move on with his plan.
At that moment a message arrived from the Plexus. But as it had been the first time something similar had appeared before him, it was covered in a different hue from the purple and blue significant to the Plexus. The message before his eyes was of a blood red shade.
[Does Side Character Rain Leclair Wish to undo the Seal on his Mark?]...
Rain gave no vocal reply, the anger in his heart did that for him.
[The Seal on the Mark of Caduceus has been undone]...
A familiar sensation caressed his body in that instant. The wound on his right shoulder vanished as his muscles and flesh writhed, reaching for each other in a rather uncanny manner. His skin turned pale. The blonde of his hair, which had stretched out until they fell below his shoulders, became a lost dream as it transformed into a blood red color. His nails turned into claws, fangs grew from his teeth, and the circles of his pupils became vertical slits as everything before his eyes became a pulsing mishmash of red.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
[Side Character Rain Leclair has become the Shadow of Asklepios]...
Rain looked down at his hands as a surge of power whooshed into his body, and at the same time, an unsettling sense of guilt.
Maybe he should have used this power right from the start, Rain bit into himself. Maybe he should have. If he had, perhaps Alice would have still been alive now.
He closed his eyes and sighed. That was impossible. It was for the same reason that he had kept the kids and J from coming back to the Cathedral with him that he had restricted from using this power all this while.
There was no way he could have convinced Alice to let him fight the Archbishop and the Nun alone. She would have never agreed. So what if he had used it with her present and she was the one who Asklepios sought as an offering after it all?
What if he’d had to kill Alice himself?
“You! What in the world are you?!” Archbishop Jude screamed, the sound of shots firing following swiftly after.
Rain looked up, snapped away from his thoughts.
It seemed like the world had come to a standstill, but the bullets that had been fired were still moving towards him, only with a lot less speed than they were usually meant to.
Like the wind, he shifted out of the way and the bullets embedded themselves in the Cathedral’s pews.
Archbishop Jude gritted his teeth at his failure to settle things in an instant. “Damn it!”
He threw the AK47 away and conjured a crude similarity with his flames. But before he could fire any of its shots, Rain blurred into view before him and put out the flames he had conjured with a single swipe of his hand.
Archbishop Jude’s face turned ashen; he opened his mouth in preparation to say something, but his words were drowned out by his own screams as Rain ripped out his other forearm from his elbow.
The Archbishop fell to the floor, tears of blood streaming out of his eyes as he stared at what was left of his arms.
At first, the only sounds out of his lips were croaks, but when he seemed to realize the inevitability of his death and the various gruesome ways it was bound to happen, he began to mutter in quick succession, “The Devil! The Devil! The Devil!”
Rain did not mind that the one who actually shared the most likeness to that being between both of them was calling him the Devil, and of course he did not try to refute it.
If anything, he was glad. This way, as the Archbishop drew his last breath—even in death—he would remember him as the horrific entity who had shown him the greatest terror earth had had to offer.
Rain grabbed a hold of the man’s head, forcing the distant gaze wrought from dilated pupils he now possessed to stare up at him as his lips shuddered in unrelenting mutters.
There was a sense of calmness even at the sight, and Rain knew very well that this wasn’t because of the anger he possessed.
No. Since he’d taken this form, he had not been angry for even a moment. What he was doing now wasn’t out of revenge or spite, it all just felt natural, as though this was who he truly was.
Maybe he really was the Devil.
The intense pounding of Archbishop Jude’s heart stole their way into Rain’s ears, and he took a moment to glance at the standout shade of red in the man’s chest area.
A certain urge to dig his claws into it and rip out the heart hiding there embraced his body, but he’d already made up his mind on how to end the man’s life.
Rain reined in his desires, and with a gaze as gentle as the ocean, wrenched Archbishop’s Jude head back, the sickening crunch of bone echoing as the man’s neck twisted barbarically and its muscles shredded to produce a morbid arc of blood.
Archbishop Jude’s lifeless body plopped to the floor, and over it stood Rain, his face painted gruesomely with blood, while in his hand, like a trophy, the head he had torn free still in embrace with the spine connected to it in a grotesque chain of vertebrae, dripping with crimson.
Despite completing what he had come to do, emptiness was all that was left within Rain. His emotions were nowhere to be found.
He threw the head to the floor and walked up to Alice. There, he stood for a moment, watching the flame around her slowly trickle out, revealing her charred being.
Rain closed his eyes, heaved out a long, low breath, and completely put out the fire. Then he relieved her hands from the burden of still gripping her sword, taking it for himself, as he fell to his knees and placed it across his thighs.
The tears did not come—no; he didn’t want them to.
He was to protect the kids now, make sure they got to the GEF, every single one of them. That mantle was now his, and, like Alice, he was not allowed to show even a single moment of weakness. That was unbecoming of the person at the forefront.
Alice’s sword shimmered, its blue luster now relaxing as though relieved that Rain was the one who had taken it.
“Sleep tight, Alice Hall.”
Rain reverted back to his human form, picked up the sword, sheathed it, and left the Cathedral.
…
[The Mark of Caduceus has fulfilled its purpose]...
[Asklepios seeks an offering in return]...
[Offering has been decided]…
[A portion of Side Character Rain Leclair’s lifespan has been taken]...
###
END OF VOLUME 1: THE CHARIOT