Mercenaries’ Tale – 4.19 The Morality of Vengeance
The corridor was quiet save for the muffled squeals and grunts from behind the steel doors and a distinct shuffling sound emanating from a nearby corridor. The Mercs became silent as they strained to listen to the latter sound, quickly determining that it was coming towards them.
“Oh hell…” Doug muttered as he eased himself up. Silently, he pressed himself against the wall and crept towards the junction, steeling himself once there.
Kate quickly tested her limbs to see if they were back under her power, then clambered to her own feet, pistol drawn.
The shuffling came closer.
Uneven, raspy breathing filled the air.
Doug closed his eyes and concentrated.
A low shadow was cast along the floor as the crawling figure drew within inches of the threshold.
Doug pounced.
The figure had barely placed a hand inside the Mercenaries’ corridor when they found themselves being roughly grabbed by Doug and thrown into the nearest wall where they were promptly pinned.
What was left of Abaddon stared up into Doug’s eyes with startled fury. They began to glow as recognition washed over him.
“You!” both men spat with equal levels of disdain and malice. Abaddon began to say something else but found a fist ramming into his skull made completing the word difficult. Doug had let go of him and was now laying into him like a punching bag, swearing loudly with each impact.
“You fucking fucked face arsehole! The fuck aren’t you fucking dead ALREADY?!” the last word echoed down the corridor as Doug screamed it into Abaddon’s face. The mage could only let out a low whine in answer as he slid down the wall, leaving a bloody trail in his wake.
Doug didn’t register the sound of approaching footsteps as he glowered at the mortally injured mage until Kate gently eased him aside and knelt down in front of the man that had burned down her childhood home.
There was a pause as she examined the damage Gratin had inflicted on the man. The missing skin and hair and the clothes melded to his flesh. Even the missing limb was examined by those sweeping green orbs before she settled back on what was left of his face.
After determining he was no longer a threat due to how what little magic he had left was clearly being spent to keep himself alive, a heavy sigh escaped her lips as she holstered one of her pistols.
“I’m not usually much of a talker but for you I feel like I need to,” she stared him in the eyes.
“About five or six years ago now, a friend of mine managed to get his hands on the man he blamed for the death of his own father; a weasel of a man who had thought it a good idea to embezzle money from a support fund meant for war veterans. It led to many people dying impoverished, my friends’ father included.”
“He took this man, this killer by proxy, to a disused service station in the middle of nowhere and tortured him for hours. There was barely anything left by the time I got there. I had to pull my friend away and talk him down or else he would have continued to torture the accountant long after he expired.”
“As we drove away from the scene, my friend turned to me and asked what I would do when I found myself in the same position. What would I do with the man that burned my family? That question used to keep me up at night…” she closed her eyes, steeled herself and glared down at the dying man.
“The Accountant was just trying to scrape together enough money to send his daughter to university and set her up for a good life. He went to jail for twenty years, paid his dues. He didn’t deserve what my friend did to him. You on the other hand… well you’re a deranged animal. Either something happened to you to twist you into this or you were broken from birth. I don’t much care. You murdered my family, left me homeless, allowed me to fall into the thrall of people that wanted me to crave revenge so they could use it as leverage to control me as they moulded me into their own personal assassin. You nearly killed my closest friends and tried to torture me for your own sick pleasure. Tell me, Abaddon, why shouldn’t I pay you back in kind?” the mage grimaced at her, wheezing heavily.
“You’re not… the type…weak…pathetic…” Kate found herself laughing.
“You’re right, I’m not the type but not because I’m weak. Revenge is a fool’s game. It doesn’t fix anything. It won’t bring my family back or erase the last sixteen years. I have the strength of character to realise that…” she raised her pistol so it was pressed against his forehead.
“But there is a difference between slaughtering someone for a sick thrill and putting down an unrepentant monster that will never stop hurting people…” if Abaddon was scared, he hid it well. He started to laugh, which morphed into a hacking cough, blood dribbling out of his mouth.
“Is that…what this is? Nobly killing…a monster and…not a matter of…vengeance?”
“I can admit that I’d be a lot happier knowing you were dead but this isn’t about my feelings. How many are dead because of you? How many have become collateral damage while you’ve been working like with the cruise ship? How many more would die by your hand if I left you be?”
“Hahaha…you’re no hero…hypocrite…” the mage was only amused by this situation. He knew he was dying. The chances of someone coming by with the medical know-how to save him and the interest to do so was astronomically small. At this point he was just waiting for her to shoot him and get it over with.
“I’m not concerned with your opinion of me. Who was with you the night you burned down my home?”
“Piss…off…”
“I had a feeling you’d say something like that…” she pulled the trigger, the shot echoing down the ruined corridor as Abaddon’s skull emptied itself across the wall behind him, the psychotic mage going limp. Kate stared down at his body blankly, her face expressionless.
Doug took in the scene. Abaddon was very much dead; at this point there wasn’t much left of him to go on living even without the bullet ripping apart the back of his skull. It was a relief really. There wasn’t a word strong enough for how Doug felt about the deranged mage. Monster was apt but felt fanciful. Bastard was underwhelming due to Doug’s own frequent use of the word to describe himself. Cunt felt like an insult to anyone with a vagina.
In the end, the lack of descriptor paled in importance to the lasting impact of the vile mage’s legacy. He had needed to be put down, Doug only disappointed that he hadn’t been able to do the deed himself.
And yet Blaise appeared to have shut down.
She remained on her knees, staying stock still as she stared at the body of her family’s killer. Her breathing was shallow, Doug momentarily worried that she had ceased all together. He wanted to make a witty comment to break the tension but this didn’t feel like the time. It felt like Blaise needed more from him right now.
Of course he kept having to remind himself that “Blaise” was the mask: a cover constructed to keep the outside world at a distance. This was Kate in front of him right now: a lost girl looking for something stable to hold on to and call her own…
Doug cautiously stepped forward and knelt next to her, his human hand tentatively coming to rest on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
“You alright Love…?” concern filled his voice, Doug trying his best to be supportive.
He wasn’t expecting that to become so literal, Kate surprising him by launching herself at him, burying her face in his chest as she embraced him, her entire body becoming racked by sobs as sixteen years worth of repressed trauma poured out of her. She could barely breathe from just how hard she was crying, the pain filled wails echoing around the empty corridor around them. Both her eyes and nose were streaming, everything escaping in one long heart wrenching act, Kate having little control over herself.
Doug was in shock at first. The last thing he was expecting was for Blaise to break down like this. She was a rock. A figure of stability. She buried everything negative down deep in a pit. Only now that pit was overflowing, all the revelations that had come into the light having displaced most of what had been residing down there. Now it was all bubbling violently to the surface. Now Kate needed a rock. An anchor.
If that’s what she needed from him then Doug would oblige.
His arm slipped down to embrace her, holding her tight as all that pent up turmoil vented into the world. He held her steady, cooing words of encouragement into her ear. Minutes passed, the wails of distress slowly subsiding until she was finally still again, being softly cradled by her friend.
“S-sorry…”she murmured into his chest, his t-shirt now soaked in tears and snot. Doug didn’t seem too concerned with the state of his clothes.
“Hey,” he moved to gently cup her chin and lift her face so that he could look her in the eye, “never apologise for needing a good cry. The important thing is do you feel better for it?”
“I…I don’t know…” she felt lighter if anything, like a weight had been lifted or pressure had been released. She found herself chuckling out of embarrassment as she wiped her eyes with a sleeve.
“Gods, I’m such a mess…” Doug took in her blotchy cheeks, her bloodshot eyes, her torn, bloody and singed clothes and flashed her one of his brightest smiles that he kept aside for such occasions.
“You look like a million Kronz to me, Love!” Kate stared at him incredulously for a second before breaking down into laughter, tears still wetting her cheeks. She felt light headed and exhausted, like she could collapse at any moment but she held on if only because this was the last place on Lusinia anyone would want to nap in.
“I’m starting to think that you have no idea what a million Kronz is supposed to look like!” she told him between breaths. Doug shrugged in response.
“Well I am almost always on the verge of being flat-broke!” he joined in the laughter, the two still clinging to each other.
As the laughter subsided, Kate flashed him a look that he found hard to read if only because it had been so long since someone had directed anything like it at him, let alone Blaise. It was soft, a wry smile tugging on her lips as her eyes swept over every one of his features as if committing them to memory. She reached up to stroke is face, removing some of the dried blood that had collected there.
The sound of movement brought Doug back to the moment, the soldier adjusting his gaze to check for signs that something was about to come around the corner.
“…We should probably get out of here, Love. Some of those ghouls might still be about…” he returned his gaze to her. Had she been leaning in? And was that disappointment in her eyes? Or was he just imagining it?
He wasn’t about to find out, Kate shakily getting to her feet and checking her pistol’s ammo clip.
“Yeah…right…we should keep moving…”she glanced at the corpse of Abaddon one final time, a thought bubbling up to the surface.
“…If he’s here then where’s Gratin?” she asked, fear beginning to permeate her voice. Doug followed her gaze, then turned to look at where Abaddon had arrived from. There was a fire door a little further down the corridor, the entryway still open from where Abaddon had forced his way in.
Post by Sam | February 18, 2023 at 12:01 am | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment
Tags: Abaddon, Blaise, Doug McCracken, Forest Canyon, Genetix, magic and mages, Polaris, the Mercs