The Priest and The Outlaw walked together to the west along the rough desert path. Their walk had gone on for about a day and a half, The Outlaw counted, while The Priest was looking out for places to rest.

“How’re you not sweating?” Asked The Outlaw.

The Priest was silent.

“Gonna be rude? If you’re not going to talk, why am I even traveling with you?”

The Priest eyed The Outlaw with suspicion in his eyes. “You’re the one who chose to come with me for no reason.”

“The thing is, I do have my reasons.”

“They are—?”

“Why would I tell a goody-two-shoes like you a thing?” The Outlaw provoked The Priest.

“You know, joining the church gave my life a bit of order. At least now, I’m killing for something good.”

“Why think about the good and bad? Why not just think of yourself? I’m telling you, your face used to smile a hell of a lot more when you were still ‘without order’, or whatever a man of your sheer caliber would say.”

The Priest gave no response. The Outlaw kept up with The Priest despite his stride being longer, and his physicality making his twenty-five mile long trek—what would have already exhausted any ordinary man—nearly effortless.

As they came to a small hill of sand and earth in the road that stretched on so wide it’d be simpler to just climb it, they did just that, and over it they spotted a sun-struck cubic building with open windows and a dead garden outside. The Outlaw broke out into a sprint towards the building while The Priest walked. In a few minutes, both had made their way to it.

The Outlaw was already gone. The Priest peeked his head through the open door into the faint darkness and could see nothing. A sharp pain struck him just south of his chest. The Priest fell back, just barely catching himself from totally crumbling onto the ground. He took his rifle in both hands, aimed, and crouched, now five meters from the door. He felt warm liquid begin to pool over his stomach. Some slid down while some began to stick to his shirt, staining it. He stayed poised. He waited not another ten seconds before firing his rifle at the frame of the door. Normally, he’d have avoided wasting a shot like that, but he was sure of the deadshot ammunition’s ability to pierce the door frame and hit whatever was hiding in the house. His assumption was correct. The Priest could hear the sound of a body collapsing even when focused.

Moving in closer, The Priest held the spot where he was sure he’d been stabbed, all for a short moment as he resumed raising his rifle. He shoved the door open with a kick and quickly turned to the right.

Before The Priest could shoot, blink, even breathe, The Priest’s gun had been swatted to the floor. A knife was shoved into his gut. He grabbed the hand which held the knife, wrestled with it, and slowly pulled it out of his gut with all the force he could muster. Pain shot through The Priest’s body. It was no deterrent. Pain was The Priest’s fuel. He struck at the wrist of his assaulter, fully taking the knife from them. He lunged into darkness. The pitch black of the house’s interior hid whatever figure had attacked him.

He felt flesh on flesh, cloth on cloth, as he and the attacker both fell to the ground. He ruthlessly stabbed them in what he thought was their side, staring straight at what he knew was their face. A pair of yellow eyes, beautiful, and nearly luminescent, stared back at him with choked vigor.

The Priest’s eyes began to water as the realization of who the attacker was hit him. They were she, The Outlaw. They were chaos, a long lost love The Priest lusted for but could not have. As he held back the tears in his eyes, one stab turned to two, turned to ten, turned to twenty, turned to thirty. He never counted when things came to this. After having killed her so many times, the act was as mundane as it was abhorrent to him.

She was a ghost of primordial happiness The Priest had left behind long ago. Now, he could barely stand to look her in the eyes, much less talk to her. The Priest fell into a coma of violence. He committed all manner of assault until he felt weak. Even as he weakened, he persisted on. He knew this had to be done. So, he embraced this blood rage. All until he fell to the ground with an increasingly worsening perception of everything. There was no more sound, only calm. But, even the calm was blurred. The faint light that came from the other side of the house down the hall was blurred.

The Priest, with his remaining strength, pushed through his affliction. He could feel the yellow sign swell. It burned his back. He breathed a sigh of relief and heartache. His stomach went into knots. He wasn’t sure if it was his stab wound delivering death pains through his body or his guilt weighing on him. The Priest was sure he’d purged this feeling long ago, so he was sure that death had to be closing in instead.

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Dizziness took The Priest’s balance. He slid off his maroon overcoat after taking the Klein 76 out of it. He stumbled down the only hall of the house, which was still rather distant by virtue of the main room The Priest walked into being surprisingly large, almost too huge to be in the small building he saw from the outside. The walk through the hall felt instant. The Priest’s vision darkened and blurred multiple times from his wounds and the yellow sign’s pulsing heat breaking his adrenaline-fuelled concentration. Now, at the end of the hall, he opened the door to the left. It was a bedroom. He shut it and opened the door to the right. It contained a tub and a wooden cabinet to its side with a mirror placed on top.

The Priest entered the bathroom, leaving the door open. He rummaged through the three layers of the wooden drawer, finding a metal flask and several folded pairs of black pants and cotton t-shirts. He shut the drawyers, reopening one of them to take the small black bow inside, making careful not to stain its delicate cloth with his blood-crusted fingers.

Setting everything down on the ground, The Priest sat on the edge of the tub since leaning or bending over shocked him with pain so intense no stoicism could contain the urge to cry out for relief. He turned the silver nozzle at the end of the tub. Water immediately rushed out. The Priest turned the nozzle all the way clockwise, making the water as hot as was possible. From the inside of the building and the plumbing, The Priest knew for sure he had to be close to Domal.

The Priest took his shirt—once white, now stained with a red so deep in thick it’d be foolish to not think it had always been red—and set it in the corner, almost forgetting that it had ever existed the moment he placed it there. The Priest was exactly that—a man who forgot everything once it did not matter. Only The Sorcerer and his Babneux 33 stayed on his mind, the latter because he praised the weapon for its reliability, the former because his existence threatened man’s Heaven. Never had he known a man so evil, and so personally, a man who was his own blood no less, who had the will to burn the magnum opus of creation.

Slowly, The Priest entered the now full tub. The water displaced, covering him in a sensation that, for a few seconds, was a boiling discomfort, only now being a warm embrace.

This was love, The Priest thought. The warm embrace of the water, the gentle caress of it as it soothed his mind and cleaned the blood and any dirt or grime from his wound—this was what every person strived for, he thought. To have someone who could do all of this for them and make them feel this special way was something The Priest never admitted he wanted, but knew he could not ignore. The desire and lust in him built and built. It was like a mountain of sin that The Priest could barely contain in himself. The sulfurous, hot mountain of sin ceased to boil as the rage and fury of The Priest subsided. All that remained was pure sorrow. Yet, not a single tear was shed by him. He cried the first few dozen times he had been forced to kill she. Now, it was just a burning memory. He would forget about killing she. He would forget about The Outlaw, if only for a little while. Thoughts of happiness would drift in and out of his mind throughout his hunt for The Sorcerer. However, he knew that such thoughts had no place on the trail of blood he walked. There could be no happiness, he thought. There was only the war of existing.

The Priest decided he’d soaked long enough. The waters had gone cold, and they were no longer clear, being muddled with his blood. The Priest slowly got onto his knees, then raised one leg, then the other, all to avoid the pain from before returning like the knife that stabbed him. He let the water drip from his body. A few streaks of blood still oozed from the two wounds on his lower torso, but they were no longer gushing like before. The Priest got out of the tub, took the flask on the ground, opened it, and sniffed it. As he predicted, it was moonshine, likely from the prohibition twenty years ago when whoever used to live there began to brew out of the hovel in the deserts contested by Briam & Zett’yrii. The priest poured the alcohol onto his wounds. A flame of pain began to spread on his lower torso. He gritted his teeth, but the pain kept on coming. After several seconds, when the last drips of alcohol were emptied from the flask, the wounds felt numb and cold, as if he didn’t just emerge from the hottest, most comforting bath he’d had in a long time.

“O lord. . . Forgive me. . . And you. . .” The Priest muttered as he closed his eyes. It was a pitiful attempt at a true prayer. The Priest knew better than to pray when his mind was in such disarray, but he thought that maybe, just maybe, if he prayed hard enough, Wistraff might come down from the Heavens as the virtue The Priest so desired. But, what then? The Priest knew not what he sought, what he wanted. He only knew he wanted. And, the feeling drove a hole through him. It made him hollow, made him feel empty, and worthless. The Priest prayed not for respite, but for acknowledgement. He was Wistraff’s earthly servant, a man who fought for humanity’s own Heaven, he thought. Perhaps those titles and duties could give a man worth no more than the ground they trampled on a meaning and a will. “Forgive me, Gra–”

The Priest went totally silent. He could feel something shift in the building’s main room. It felt not alive, but not quite dead. The Priest reached for the pile of things he left on the washroom floor, retrieving his Klein 76. He checked it just to make sure it was loaded, and ten shots awaiting the twitch of a finger to move each waited in the chamber.

Then, he heard it; the sound of a car driving up. The distraction, The Priest’s half-a-second lapse in concentration, allowed whatever shifted in the main room to rush down through the hall. They moved like a berserker, wildly flailing their bloodied body’s arms around as they attempted to maneuver down the hall. But, The Priest fired twice, then thrice upon their body. The deadshot wrecked their chest. She, The Outlaw, was still moving. Her body, gored and torn with the knife The Priest had turned against her, refused to end its march. The Priest emptied four, five, six, seven shots at once. He went to pull the trigger of the gun, but he failed to realize there were no bullets left. This was the second lapse—the death sign. The Outlaw moved in, grabbed The Priest by the neck, and began to choke him.

Through their mangled flesh, The Outlaw attempted to recite the only name they knew themselves capable of speaking: “Kir–. . .” Their grip loosened as The Priest beat them in the head with the pistol’s handle. The Outlaw threw The Priest to the ground. “I. . .” They gathered themselves for a moment. “I know now what we are,” said The Outlaw. The brief peacetime ended. The Priest desperately reached for the nearest weapon—the Babneux 33. The Outlaw lunged for The Priest, pinning his arm to the ground.

The Outlaw pounded on The Priest’s chest as if to take his heart out. Strength was of no concern to The Priest. He knew he could throw her off of himself. Yet, he refused. The Priest was ready to die. As the feeling of peace and tranquility washed over him, his flesh feeling more hot and tender by the second with every slam, his vision blackened. Even the loud bang of a Klein 76 firing failed to awaken him.