They Called Me FIVE

LANCE

Two down. Three more to go. Is what the Childes would have been thinking by now. We're at disadvantage here. Alpha Beast and Seven were too tired to keep the branches killing one Childe after the other. 

The three of us, Sam, Magnus and I look at each other. The cabinet creak and rattled in all corners, talons are gnashing the wood until it breaks apart. I was too shocked to move. Sam is too. But Magnus adapted the situation quickly and secure the hold of Seven on his back. 

With his crosswords, he cut off the heads of ugly black goblins aka Childe in the neck. They burst into dust around him. I didn't waste time. I grab Alpha Beast and tried to straddle him in my back. 

Strangely enough, he transform into his parrot form. Making it easier to behead hideous creatures. One I jab in the ribs, then I twist my body and scored two heads in a row. Sam is staring at me and at Magnus, wild eyed and disgusted. 

I pick up another branch. My black veins appeared. I don't know if it means my blessing is back. But I got to try. I imagine the branch I held turn into a weapon. As sharp as sword, as swift as spear, or can kill in a few meters shot like a gun. 

I close my eyes. A ripple inside my stomach tug, the shadows I've long to feel resurface. It spreads into my arms then at the branch at my hand. Like an extension of myself  I crack my eyelids open. 

The shadow absorb the brownness of the branch. Beside me, the creature growl and lunge at me with its sharp talons. It came close. Too close it scratch my cheek. I grab its hand before it get my eyes. His ugly runt face with crook black sharpen teeth grin at me. 

His breath swept in my nose I almost gagged. I kept my grip firm. The creature didn't try to ran away. I arc the branch and strike its face. What happened next scared the beans out of me.

The Childe rolled back its eyes. I watch my shadow crawl in his skin like a virus. Or pathogens. It attack its heart and the Childe froze, its face stiffen under my branch. I didn't impale its head unlike the other two earlier. 

It was a touch. And it burst into a million speck of dust in seconds. I withdrew my branch and tested my suspicion. Five Childes are coming. I pick up another branch and batted each in the stomach, wings, and legs. Within milliseconds, they turn into ashes. 

I grin. Awesome. 

With this, its okay if I don't get to use my black waves. I won't get exhausted with this. I can kill whoever I touch. Unlike the wave that kills everyone, people who I revered as my friends exempted, the rest wipe out. 

I jumped beside Magnus and move like an octopus. Batting each Childe with my two branches. It was quicker, my blood is rushing in my veins. My muscles are roaring into action.

For seventy days, all I did is push up and training, this time I get to use all the toughness I build up to work. I know I'm laughing like a bat sh*t crazy homeless dude. Cackling each time my shadows pierced the heart of each Childe, killing them instantly. 

Beside me, Magnus step back. I don't know what kind of reaction is he wearing now. I'm not too keen to know either. Dozens of them are pouring out in every walls and corners of the basement. 

My other branch snap after I hit the twentieth Childe I murdered. I looked around me. The slithering branches Seven conjured disappeared. I need weapon. The last branch snap in half. 

"Lance!" Magnus called out. I turned around. He tossed his crosswords towards me.  I catch it. The weight is perfectly balanced in my hands. Light, sharp and swift. This is more ideal than the branches I used earlier.

"Get us out of here." And he winks. He removed Seven from his back and swing her in his shoulders like a sack. Sam too. I didn't realize Sam is out of action. Again.

I find the position funny. Under Magnus's shirtless top and intimidating height, both of them are like naughty children he's forced to look after. I fumbled for my jacket, noticed the lump and sigh in relief. 

Alpha beast is still with me. I patted him close. The numbers of Childe doubled within a few seconds. 

"Lead me the way!" I shouted over my shoulder. Magnus behind me laughed. I work double time. Forcing my legs and hands to speed up until my body became a blurry piece of human fan in the middle of sand storm. 

Magnus kept giving me direction where to advance. He stayed close to me. His, along with the others presence console me. Without my knowledge, my actions became ferocious and gruesome. 

One by one I rip the Childes apart as if they're just curtains I have fun slicing and tearing with. My legs kept running faster, my hands moving at a speed unseen in naked eye. I didn't know I was capable of this. 

The thoughts running in my mind are always the same. 

The souls. 

Saving Sam felt good. I want to rescue each one stuck behind those gates. Especially the champion who never cease to try climbing the barbed wires. It must have been painful.

Stuck in there unjustly, not remembering what's the gravest thing you've done. Yet forced to be burned alive each seconds. 

You were wrong, shadow servant. What behind those gates isn't abyss. It's hell itself.

I kept cursing and treated my shadows like a bad dangerous dog that needs control. Maybe it wasn't 'control' it needs. Maybe its 'understanding'.  For days of trying to figure out how it works, I forget the most important thing. 

The 'important' thing every superhero has. 'Compatibility'. With him, as the person and the 'gift' bestowed upon him. In this case, me. I was chosen for a reason. Not to kill anyone mindlessly.

Not to mainly focus on taking revenge or any of those sorts. I was chosen to protect. To save those 'people' that weren't exactly living. 'Death is not the end' they say. 

For me, it's the beginning. 

My shadow and I were the same thing. Both existing on that side of the coin, where everything is dark cold and eerie. Just like in that other world of the dead. But we don't want anyone to stay in the same side as we are. 

We want everyone to stay in happy blissful side. That even after death, they each receive the rewards they deserved. Criminals punished to oblivion. Just like this Childe and Blood hogs, they deserved punishment. 

For hurting Sam. For torturing little children. For preying on them, for forcing them to watch while their parents got killed in front of them, for slowly driving them to insanity. I won't let that slide. 

Me and my shadow of death comes into an agreement. We will only kill those who don't deserve to be alive in this world. Criminals like the Faeries, I will get them all. If their heads are weigh down by their sins, they shall pay it with their lives.

Death is the answer. Death is the jury, the prosecutor and the judge. 

And I am death.

My mind shut off as the action intensifies. I tear through their flesh, pounding in a skull here, twisting guts there. I whirl through their flying legions, slicing and cutting skin after skin as I go.

Was the Blood hog that tortured Sam and make him a complete mess earlier here with them? Did I manage to slice its belly apart? Tear its neck until the windpipe tore off? 

I dearly hope not. These Childes that kept coming. I know these are somehow precious to her. And I will enjoy every second I get to pound them to dust. Not one of them deserves mercy.

Their victims does. 

Sam deserves mercy, it was hell for him. Watching his father get killed, the 'chic' his father trusted to turn out to be a bloody monster. She messes with his mind, made him his own servant, a little butterfly to her spider trap.

And after she's done playing with him she'll kill him.

I drive Magnus crossword to three Childe's neck. My arms straddling their head as it collapses. One in particular, the middle one, has ghastly green musk blood spraying my clothes, blending the air covered in dust and bitter ashes. 

I can taste the sick rotten corpse in my tongue. 

That was their blood. And its as disgusting as their existence. 

I can't deny the pleasure I feel. My adrenaline rush has never been so uptight and alive more than now. Or maybe it was just me – feeling too high after my own Childe massacre.

The head in my hand glimmered and turn into a face of a woman. The features are the same as what Sam told me.

"This is the 'chic' that killed Sam's dad."