FBSRA Shorts

Saint, Sinner, Judge

FBSRA Shorts: Saint, Sinner, Judge.

09 / 23 / 2023, 10:37 PM

Tonight was the night.

The cold winter air numbed Lydia's skin while she stood before the building that held her target. She pulled the heavy coat that weighed her down a little tighter around herself, but it didn't do much against the biting cold. The large church building looked more inviting than it ever had at that moment, but she knew she had to be cautious. She hoped that she wouldn't be in any real danger, but...he was unpredictable.

It had been three years by then. Three years since the violent murder of her brother, three years since she had given up on everything, three years since she'd made the biggest mistake of her life. She wasn't proud of the things that she'd done during that low point in her life. She'd stolen from people who hardly had anything to steal, beaten people who were already bloodied, and helped ruin entire communities with the contraband she'd peddled. But, two years ago, everything had changed.

He was like...well, a monster. Lydia remembered hearing brief stories about him from her "coworkers," back when she had been involved with the wrong kind of people. The Saint, they called him; a violent murderer that sought out the lowest of the low, and man, he was good. Stories of his "work" had been circulating through the city for at least five years, so much so that most people had at least heard about him, even if they were totally clean. Lydia thought it'd be hard for a single person to maintain such a reputation for that long without being caught or killed, even if they were an Omenbearer, but some theorists suggested that there may have been a successor to the original. There was so much they still didn't know.

That night though, she had known true horror. Even thinking about it made her nauseous. The thick smell of blood, and rot, because he didn't just kill his victims. Sure, he used weapons like any other guy, but she had seen firsthand that he hardly needed them. That hand, black as midnight...she remembered how her stomach had twisted into knots while she watched him grasp his victim by the throat, their skin rotting under his touch. It had been a slow, painful death. One that was likely deserved, but horrible nonetheless.

But he'd spared her. She had looked up into those terrible eyes, dark as the void, and he had spared her. She still couldn't figure out why he had done it, but she did know one thing: that monster had saved her. The look in his dark eyes had shaken her so much that she left that part of her life behind her entirely, ignorant to the dangers of her situation because she couldn't face him again. Not like that, anyway. She just...couldn't.

Things were different now. She'd spent as much time as she reasonably could searching for him since that day. He was like an enigma, though. Even the police hadn't been capable of sniffing him out after such a long reign of terror, and Lydia was certain it wasn't for lack of trying, because she knew that most of the cops in this hell of a city had been bought out by the same people The Saint had been targeting. Stories of him being immortal and capable of recovering from any wound spread like wildfire, but no sign of even a speck of blood coming from The Saint had ever been collected. That, and the fact that most people who saw him rarely lived to talk about it, meant that he was a ghost.

She'd done it though. He was here. A church, of all places. He was called "The Saint" after all, but still, Lydia thought it was a little obvious. There had been several murders around this area though, most involving the protection of individuals from the church who had been assaulted, which made her think her target may have had an interest in them. She'd been attending for a handful of months now, and she was certain she knew who he was.

Lydia had spent so long searching for him, it was almost hard to believe that any of this was real. Even as she climbed the steps toward the entrance to the building and pushed her way inside, it was hard to wrap her head around it. She had found him. Still, she couldn't help but be afraid as she entered the large auditorium and looked down the long lines of pews, all the way up to the stage that held a lone podium. This man, or thing, or whatever he was, had gone five years without being found. Five years of violent murders and not a single person could figure out who he was. Lydia was sure she couldn't have been the first though, so...what about the others? Had he gotten rid of them to keep himself safe?