Chương 17: THE COLOR OF MADNESS

The believers were shouting in agony. Many of the walls of the church were destroyed. Everything else was barely left standing. The smell of blood and ash swelled as the rain failed to wash it away. It was all Ellie could do not to scream at the carnage. But instead, she let it all bring her to her knees, unable to force her eyes closed at the suffering of the townspeople.

"These are good people," she uttered.

"Why… why did this happen?" She could see the teenage girl trying to wake her father, the eyepatch no longer doing him any good. But this time it was T'balt who knocked her from her trance.

"Ellie. We need to find all the survivors and heal them." He offered her a hand and helped her to her feet. Her heart was shattered, but she knew she still had a job to do. It took them hours to gather everyone out of the pouring rain. Many were still shivering inside, tucked away and hiding in the basement. There were a few bodies spread through the halls of the church, but nowhere near as many as those on the outside. At least 40 people were no longer alive because of a rogue bandit attack.

Ellie worked diligently to heal the wounded, but she was the only one with healing loot, and she could only work so fast. The lines were long, and she was already exhausted from the fighting. She looked like she was about to collapse.

"I'm going to find Monan. He should have some more healing loot."

"T'balt…"

"It's fine," he said. She could see the look on his face. He was so angry with Monan for being nowhere to be found when the church needed him to be the prophet that he claimed to be. But T'balt held out the idea in his mind that something could've happened, and Monan was actually in trouble. He had to check. If anything, he needed to ask why these people had to die if he was so sure that this path was the best one. When he arrived upstairs, it was eerily silent and untouched by the fighting that had happened below.

Monan's door was closed. But he stopped remembering what had happened last time he entered this door. Chosa. What if he saw her again, just on the other side of this door, betraying him with Monan? He didn't know if he could handle it. If he would scream in his pain or go off the deep end, the black hole in his heart was still fresh and filled with Chosa's laughter. But there were more pressing matters. People were dying downstairs. Ellie desperately needed help.

These people needed the Redeemer as much as he hated to admit it. Even he needed someone to tell him what to do and how to help everyone because he was just as helpless as they were. He swallowed what little he had of his pride and opened the door, eyes closed.

"Monan. We were just attacked. Where were you?" There wasn't an answer for a moment. Then he had to open his eyes.

"Chosa…" In nothing but her underwear, Chosa was spread across the bed, eyes wide open but nothing inside them. Her mouth was open too. The blood pouring from the gash in her neck was dripping over her face, which was directly facing the door. T'balt was near the point of vomiting, but his brain didn't let him take his eyes off the horror in front of him. It was the same as a couple of lives ago when he held her in the woods, her body torn apart and her life drained from her soul. Did the bandits make it upstairs?

Was she caught off guard? But there was hardly any evidence of a struggle and not even a forced entry. Something in the bathroom began to stir, and a glass bottle rolled out into the bedroom.

"Oh shit." Monan was groggy, like he had just woken up from a long, drooling sleep.

"No one's cleaned that up yet."

"What are you saying?" T'balt asked in the fleeting sense of desperation.

"Sorry, bro. I'd blame the reflex loot, but she was damn annoying," he laughed. Stolen story; please report.

"You did this?..."

"Right…" He seemed more worried about his hangover than anything T'balt had to say.

"You mean, while everyone was down there dying… You were up here killing Chosa?" Monan seemed to roll his eyes.

"Man, you're a sensitive guy, huh? I don't even get why you're upset. I mean, the bitch cheated on you. Can you believe that?"

"Sensitive…"

"Well, love is a hard thing to get rid of, I hear. Ah, well, it's fine. You'll see her in the next life," Monan said, looking for a shirt to throw on.

"Yeah. You're right…" T'balt was a Redeemer. All this would just go away as soon as he went to sleep and woke again. He'd be back in his room, and none of this would've ever happened. The people downstairs would be alive. Chosa would've never cheated on him, and she'd still be breathing, too. All he had to do was… sleep. Monan immediately tackled him to the ground, disarming his combat knife from T'balt's hand as it was heading towards his own throat.

"Why are you stopping me!? Let go!" They tussled on the ground until Monan slipped his arm under T'balt's chin and squeezed his windpipe closed.

"What are you, a quitter? I'm not done playing prophet yet. So you're gonna have to stick it out a bit longer." The whole world started to fade as the consciousness was sucked from him. Monan was unrelenting in his squeeze, and the struggle was no longer in him. He could only look at Chosa as the grey took her pretty young features.

"I'm sorry." He tried to say, but his breath was taken from him. He woke hours later, unsure of where he was. But when he tried to move, he was pinned by chains around his legs and neck and handcuffs pinning him to a metal pipe. It seemed Monan would do anything to stop him from resetting, and that meant T'balt's immediate future would be spent as his prisoner. Time slipped by in the uncomfortable gray of T'balt's personal jail. It had been hours with no movement and not even a drink of water.

He was left with his own thoughts, which were becoming increasingly nihilistic. Everything was ruined, and the one power he had to make it all better was being held hostage. The room must've been the church's boiler room. He was linked to what looked like a water heater system. The way he was tied up, he couldn't move a muscle, which meant he couldn't activate his loot. So he was stuck waiting… For what.

Would Monan just keep him here for all eternity until he finished whatever game he was playing with the lives of these people? Would he kill more out of annoyance? Or would he just let T'balt waste away using his starvation as a time limit for the reset? The silence was agony. But worst of all, T'balt was still alive, and he hated that fact. So much so that he attempted to chew his own tongue just to choke on his own blood. Why not? If it were to save everyone, why not?

But his body wouldn't respond to that command or other attempts to damage himself.

"I guess I really am a coward…" The door to the room opened after some time, and his captor sauntered up to him.

"We really gotta stop doing this, T'balt. I mean, don't you hate being tied up like this?"

"You're a psychopath…" T'balt had some blood to spit and aimed it right at Monan's clean black boots. He didn't seem to mind. He knelt, offering T'balt a flask of wine he held. T'balt turned his head.

"I could see your point of view. I used to be that same way. But that was…" He whistled, trying to gather the thought.

"A millennia ago. Things were different back then. Now I just want to play the game. 30 days you robbed me of… You think I'm just gonna let you rob me of my fun because you lost a few pieces? See, you're that asshole who likes to flip the board as soon as he starts losing. Ruins the entire game night. Now everyone goes home pissed because T'balt is a sore loser that just lost his queen."

"You slept with her… and then you killed her…"

"You gotta learn to let things go."

"And it wasn't just her." T'balt felt his voice rising.

"All these people. They were attacked. And you just let them die. Too drunk to do anything about it. And they think you're some sort of saint. No… You're the devil himself." Monan sighed.

"Not the first time I've been called that. So no points for originality, T." He stood to walk away.

"Sometimes it's true. This time... well, we'll just have to see how it ends. But let me have my fun. Wait till I'm good and ready, and then I'll let you off yourself. Maybe I'll do you the favor of handling that for you. Then this will all be nothing but a memory. That's all it'll ever be, so don't take it too seriously." And that's how he left him.

"Don't take it too seriously." T'balt couldn't fathom the words. He wanted to bang his head against the wall. To prove Monan wrong. To show him what he should be taking seriously.

"The man is a devil," T'balt thought. The black smoke practically formed the devil's horns above his head as he mocked Chosa's death. T'balt was red with anger, but it could only ruminate inside him before subsiding with the sounds of water dripping from the pipes. No matter how angry he got, he was still stuck.