Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 1: The River Red, Part 4

I felt groggy, felt addle-brained. I reached into my robes and I pulled out my cellphone, staring at it. Looks like I cracked the screen during all of this; maybe I cracked it when I fell back. I don't know. Either way, I looked at the time; it's been about twenty minutes. I better get up and try to find the Seal before the others come and take the glory.

I pushed myself up and found my muscles aching all over. I looked down at my wrist and hand, finding that I had returned to normal size and density. The ampoule must have worn off; it was all temporary, least I want to become a big musclebound freak. Ah well, the biggest threat was dealt with. Where was she anyways?

I found the priestess hugging herself to the box altar. She'd died sitting there, her head laid on the rough wooden surface. I put my cellphone back and I walked to her, picking my staff and morning star up along the way. There, I reached for her shoulder. As I did so, her body fell fully, drained, desiccated by the cursed wound I had made. Even in the way she died, she was still such a beautiful creature. Beautiful—for a hag.

I won, that's all that mattered. She laid dead at my feet, as many before her. Something, though, felt odd this time. I felt something weird inside of me, something I've never really felt before. It was like an itch in the back of my skull, some tingling, some weight chained around my neck. My fingers twitched and smacked on both my staff and the handle of my morning star. I felt anxious.

What was is that caused her to hug the altar so tightly in death? I turned my head to the altar, which was really some wooden box that'd been covered up by a blanket. The damn thing had breathing holes in it. Is—is this the Seal? Did this dummy really hide the Seal in plain sight and think no one would notice?

Truth be told I probably would have missed it, but I won't let the history books know that. For now, let's open it.

I propped my staff to the side, and I laid my hand on top of the box, stroking it. The word 'RECONSIDER' was whittled into it. Reconsider what? Reconsider being the world's ruler? What fool would give up when he'd came so far? I spent so many resources, so many hours, for this, I was too far on the path. I wedged my fingers into the box and the lid, gave it a jerk, throwing the top to the side. I raised my morning star, preparing myself to give a crushing blow to whatever was inside and then—and then—

I stopped. I paused and I held still.

There was a little girl in the box. She was some fair-haired child no more than seven or eight years old, all coiled up and asleep. I was—I was going to kill a little child? Oh She, something is wrong with me. I'm doubting myself. I even dropped my morning star behind me, which clanked and woke the little girl up.

"Is he gone?" she asked in a yawn, stretching and finding herself not welcomed by the high priestess but, rather, my confused expression. Something struck deep in my chest, something I had never felt before. That feeling was shame, and there was also guilt mixed in there. Oh no. "Who are you, mister?"

I did not know how to answer her. Instead, I looked around, all over. This was some divine joke, wasn't it? Some test? No. No, no. I remember now. I gave an evil eye to the one who has cursed me so to feel these things. This unfamiliar feeling that struck me in a flood of recollections hit my chest like a thrown brick or a bullet from a .357 magnum; the damn witch, she did it. She made me feel guilty. She made me feel bad. She gave me my feelings back.

Oh, sweet Darkness...

I felt a tug on my robes sleeve suddenly. Maybe I'd been peering at that bled out corpse for a little too long. It was that little girl, the Seal, she was sitting up and looking at me curiously.

"Mister," she said, "are you one of Geraldine's knights?"

Geraldine was the leader of Sanctuary, a city-state close to my lands, near the werebears and their sleepy hovels. She was also the daughter of Leo Valormane, the man's skull I used as a focus for my staff now. Geraldine and the people of Sanctuary were good people; that's why I had tortured them so.