Daemon-Axes Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
The battle-axe swung through the air. The blade sliced through
flesh. The body fell one way, the head the other. The splatter of blood went
everywhere. His muscles were flexed, his hands clenched tight. The killing
never got any easier. The man looked to the left and to the right at his fellow
brood. There were bodies and severed heads and bloody battles raging every
direction. None of them seemed to have any trouble with the killings. It was
his moral quandary and his alone. He wasn’t sure he was opposed to killing, but
he thought he might be more opposed to these particular killings. He wasn’t
sure. He had never sat and questioned them. They were just and righteous. No
one questioned them.
The brood was a roving band of holy marauders. They carried the
Daemon-Axes. They absorbed the blood and hate of their enemies and were
sharpened with the life-forces of the decapitated. They removed the heads of
the unholy and damned. It was a crusade to cleanse the land. There was no
question of its righteousness or purpose.
Still, when he had to look at a severed head, or the bloody stump
it left behind, he had to wonder just how anyone could be completely certain of
their quest.
The Council of Seven had been certain. They had been charged by
the spirits to enact this war. The spirits were Wrath, they were Judgment, they
were Fate. They looked and saw the terror that infected the land and gave
divine inspiration to the Seven.
It was the role of the brood to bring light to the land. They brought
swift justice to those that deserved it, at the edge of a very sharp blade. No
one questioned the virtue of their crusade. No one questioned the Seven. No one
turned their backs on their brood. He
was not going to be the first. He kept his doubts to himself. Still he had his
own doubts. But that didn’t stop him from swinging his axe.
Those they killed were evil. They deserved this death. He told
himself all these things so that he wouldn’t feel as though he was killing men.
He was bringing light to the land, one dismembered head at a time.
He told himself these things and tried to ignore the dark sickness
that grew within his stomach and in his heart. He hid the cravings that were
born within his soul. He knew that to embrace them would be to become that
which he currently hunted. Perhaps it was the sorcerer’s spell, a trick or a
curse. He ignored it. He buried it. He could never tell his brothers about it.
He would be killed if he put in into words.
Still, he wondered if they hadn’t all been changed in the process.
When he looked at their faces, he no longer saw men, but beasts.
They sucked out the life from the flesh and became monstrosities. Their souls
drank up the death as something dies inside them. They became a roving band of
destruction.
Blood called for more blood. Violence beget more violence. The
axes called for more, drove them, and spurred them on. Their hearts had a taste
of the blood and they wanted more.
They spread across the land, but they were no longer crusaders of
the just or holy, they became the harbingers of death, the Daemon-Axes their
tool for destruction.
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