The Baptism of Blood

Blue eyes that once had held life open to a storm, a thunderstorm. A rain to wash away the blood perhaps. Or was it truly any different from the rivers of blood he lies in. Blonde hair tainted crimson pushes into his eyelids, forcing him to clear his vision.

He wasn't in the building anymore, he was in a ditch, bodies all around him. An empty stomach forces bile to rush to his throat, he lets it. In comes in forms of exhales, each time he took another breath more and more bile floods from his mouth and into the soil.

But there was something off, all the bodies were burnt, melted, made into perversions of the human body. A complete and utter desecration of human life and yet

And yet he is fine, he has no burns, no welts, no holes where there used to be eyes. There is only blood, blood under his feet, blood coating every single pore in his skin.

None of it his.

In the midst of heaving and coughing up only acid, he notices that his armour on his left hand is gone. From the shoulder guard to the wrist, gone. Burnt from what it seemed like. The elven alchemy would burn away metal and then flesh. So then, he questions, why is there still a hand where there should be a stump like all the other bodies of people he used to know.

Faces of people that had been washed away, by rain or by the alchemy, only God knew. Or perhaps he didn't, no God would've liked to be associated with something like this.

Not Elven nor human. He thinks of a vow midst his stomach twisting itself till it tears open.

He vows that not one death will go unaccounted for. Every single person, every single one would get vengeance.

He wonders if it was better to have died today among them and join in the rivers of blood or if it's better he's still alive to deliver retribution.

Sadness twists and turns in his mind and along the journey to tears it turns to hatred.

Blinding hatred

And he sees release.

Salvation.

A lifeline thrown to him with which he would end another.

An elven solider walks

Towards him

Towards the ditch where the corpses of the people who once dreamt with him remained.

He hasn't a sword, or a clue how.

But his hatred will guide him.

He climbs, crawls more like it, out of it, in clear view of the solider.

Throwing all caution to hell he crawls directly in view of him. Staring at him with bottomless blue pits he called eyes. He draws his sword while Lute readies his fists.

A mocking grin rests on the elf's face.

"Not even a sword to defend yourself?" he asked, to no replies, instead he was rushed at with a bloodcurdling scream, before he could even use his sword it fell on the ground useless.

In the time he spent mocking, anguish and despair festered and bubbled over into all-consuming hate.

A fist rises and slams against elven skin.

Again

And again

And again

A process that felt like clockwork to him, blood spills, from his fists and then the elf. Blood begins to pour but the rain washes it off, or at least it did before the holes began opening in the elf's face.

Completely helpless, completely defenseless. A target handmade by God for him to deliver divine justice.

The bloodcurdling screams that came choked out of his mouth did nothing to deter him. The crunch of bones breaking didn't either.

Infact, it made him all the gladder. He felt

Elated.

And when finally, the blood began to pool in the dent he had created with his fist, did he stop. Only when he had to actively pull his fists out of flesh and muscle and sinew, only when he stopped being able to differentiate was, he done.

And that's when he finally noticed the blinding light of God.

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