Book Four – Interlude – Part Seven – The Captain’s Elegy

“Captain Fisher…" Nicholas's voice echoed around the room. It is a surprise to see you here. I had heard you had this week off of work, so I wanted to believe you would have spent them with your family. Oh? Are you here to present the location of that slave? Or perhaps wanting to proclaim your forgiveness for allowing the weak to fester back into this sinful city?”

“You’re not once to mince any words, are you?” Fisher approached the pair, though only the bishop had a confident smile plastered across his wrinkled lips. His left hand held the scepter that was supposed to mean the world to him, yet the book he valued hadn’t made an appearance at all. Klee, like always, was just standing there.

“Mince words? Perish the thought. It wouldn’t do well to be anything less than truthful while in this holy place of worship.”

“Less than truthful?” Fisher repeated that as a question. He kept approaching the two men until he was about ten steps away.

“Why are you here, captain? For you to show up in your armor and weapons could only suggest something imperative has happened. Do you need my advice on something?” Nicholas said. He finally lowered his hands, his scepter resting parallel to the floor.

“That’s classified. Could I see you in your office?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot do that. I cannot leave service after it has begun for a childish reason. If you do have something to say, speak your mind. For the only people here are you, Klee, myself, and all of the corpses you see behind you.”

Corpses… CORPSES?!?!!

“What did you say?!” exclaimed Fisher as he felt his stomach churn and crumble.

“You heard me, captain. The only ones in this room are you, Klee, myself, and the walking dead you see behind you.” Nicholas sure did have a confident smile, much like one would have when watching a child receive a much-wanted gift.

“Don’t fuck with me!” Fisher ran to the nearest person—a Singi— and kneeled down. He grabbed their shoulders and lightly rocked them back and forth. The prayer coming from their slightly pursed mouth did not show any signs of stopping. His cheeks were as cold as ice. “Hey! Sir?! Sir?!” The panic flowed from his lips, and it was further decayed into a rusty uneasiness when laughter came from the scepter-wielding bishop.

“Captain, do not waste your energy on trying to converse with the dead.”

Fisher snarled, drew his sword, and pointed it right towards the villainous man of faith. If he any doubt—even a tiny sliver that Nicholas was innocent—it had just been washed away with his disgusting chuckle. “Tell me why you’ve been trying to kill me! I know it’s you that sent the assassins after me!”

“Oh? Is that not why you are here? Instead of staying home with your family, you spend time coming here. For what reason could you have that isn’t wanting to kill me?”

“You’re right. I did come here to kill you. But before I slit your wrinkled throat, I demand an explanation! What did you mean by corpses?!”

“It is quite simple to explain, really,” said Nicholas, who started to walk forward. He only stopped because Klee raised a massive hand and planted it against his chest. “The story I told you about my past is as factual as any man can be. You see, the God who blessed me has the passive skill called Supporter. Should you not be aware of it, I have the ability to enchant the very words I speak with positive effects. Should someone wish to jump just a little higher, I could say ‘you can do it this time,’ and the person’s wish will come true. Just for a moment, though.

“Supporter is sensitive in how it works. And after much testing, I believe a better name for it is Urge. Because that is what I do. I can Urge someone to lean a certain way or think a particular thought, but it only happens for a fraction of a second. It is the same with Urging someone to become a better cook. Yes, it will work... But just for the first few moments or until the person is satisfied. That’s the limit, you see. Self-satisfaction. Even with weak wills, my Urges are only active for a few seconds. In all actuality, it is quite a pathetic ability.

“Due to a stroke of luck, I had the very excellent opportunity to meet Klee. If you would take it from here, friend.”

Klee opened his large mouth, and a husky, mountainous voice rumbled out. “I am trained in the forbidden art of Necromancy by my master. Though it is sealed, fragments of its power are all around us, just waiting to be harnessed. No matter how many years I worked to harness my technique, I could only bring back the empty shell of a corpse. The mind remained far out of my reach. So much so I was considered a failure and banished until I had acquired more strength.”

Nicholas raised a hand and took over. “After much experimentation, an empty shell was just what I needed. The mind is a powerful tool. Any outside and external ‘suggestions,’ especially if they are as weak as mine, do not have a fair chance to stay within the target. But an undamaged corpse with no mind to tamper with my Urges? It was a gift straight from the Heavens Above. I will proclaim it was a major loss when Lieutenant Arnold was dreadfully reported dead. He was my favorite puppet. That is why, Captain Fisher, I do not understand why someone like yourself would free that sinful slave. You slaughtered hundreds of Demi-Humans without a tinge of regret at some point in your life, so maybe you can be my next puppet?”

“… You knew…of my past…” Fisher clutched his armored chest and went down on one knee. It felt like someone was dragging needles across his brain’s fissures.

“That I did. While I don’t approve of your needless mass slaughter, your impeccable skill with a blade is just what I need. Can’t you see? Killing these filthy sinners, bringing back their shells, and implanting them with my holy Urges is the best way to obtain the high-quality prayers the Heavens Above requires. Just think, Fisher! You, I, and Klee? Together, we can achieve my dream of putting our faith at the forefront of everyone’s mind!” Nicholas threw his hands up, kneeled down, then stood up and clasped his hands in a sign of prayer.

“My…past…? So… Arnold was dead this whole time? Servi didn’t kill him? Who…” Fisher dropped his blade and felt so incredibly weak in the stomach.

“Yes. Arnold was killed by Klee. Servi? I have not heard of that name… It isn’t important. With Arnold’s death, I implanted the Urge for him to remain the same, yet added a specific command that brought him running to me. Ahh… He was such as effective killing machine… Do you recall the curtains down below? The ones on the stage on the first-floor worshipping room? Well, behind them is a room packed to the brim of worshipping shells. Their sustained prayers are what causes the Gods and Goddesses to greet each blessed day with a smile.”

“THE CHILDREN?! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHILDREN THAT WORKED HERE?!” Fisher screamed.

“I’m sure you already know the answer. They were filthy orphans who had decided to give up at an early age. As a consequence of the reanimation process, my wonderful congregation is locked in time. The only issue is the smell of decaying organs… Unfortunately, I have not found a way to get past that. Fisher, to put it bluntly, everyone you saw the day you and I had that meeting? You were staring at corpses. Jeri and Sea? I figured I needed an inside source in the guard— a few extra pairs of eyes to assure the church’s holy rules were being followed. It really was a shame the two experienced something so catastrophic that it circumvented my Urges and made them stronger… Well, not so much a shame as it is much-welcomed knowledge of how powerful my Urges can be.”

“I… I haven’t felt this pissed off in years… Nicholas… You will die…” Unrestrained anger flowed through the captain, yet his eerily calm voice suggested he was as tranquil as a springtime flower dazing in the fluffy sun.

“Try it if you can. I know the Gods approve of my behavior because why else would they grant me this skill? If I wasn’t meant to do this, then Klee wouldn’t have entered my life. Besides, the Forbidden Skills were intended to be used by the Gods. Why else would they have been made? But should you want to take your sword against a bastion of the Heavens Above, then you should know something…”

Nicholas raised his scepter and took a deep breath. “MY FLOCK! IT IS TIME TO BREAK OUT OF YOUR PRAYERS AND DEFEAT THE HEATHEN KNOWN AS FISHER JIN!!! I URGE YOU TO WORK TOGETHER TO BRING ME HIS LIFELESS CORPSE!!!”

A malicious Fisher turned around, coming face to face with hundreds of citizens he had sworn to protect. Their beady, lifeless eyes stared ahead. All at once, they locked on to the captain.

Nicholas gave an extra Urge, citing that anyone with weapons and Dimensional Storage should start arming their fellow worshipers. Fisher retreated, keeping his distance as he back-stepped around the room. His rather calm face stared at a silent mob full of people who couldn’t kill a monster rat without breaking out into a cold sweat. Some of the Koena and Kobolds could definitely fight, but the majority of them probably hadn’t even held a weapon in their hands.

“Oh, did I not mention that I can mentally send out my Urges to those under my command? That was a welcome evolution of my passive skill. In case you were wondering, Fisher, that is how I instructed Jeri and Sea to die!” Nicholas shouted. Fisher wasn’t in any position to listen, but he drew his blade and took a stance. Then the mob became as still as ghosts—acting as an immobile sea preventing Fisher from rushing to his target as Nicholas continued to speak. “Should you want to kill me, you will have to kill those you have sworn to protect.”

With another mental command, a young child—probably at just the right age to learn about girls and love—pulled a dagger and approached the waiting Fisher. “No! Don’t!! My body! I—I can’t control it!” cried the child. His brown eyes leaked salty water, his arms trembling, quivering in manufactured fear.

“Don’t involve children…” Fisher growled. The boy continued to step ever closer, his loud crying now on the verge of pandemonium. From behind, a massive, rotting Kobold managed to sneak around the captain and wrapped his rancid furry arms across his chest, disarming the captain. Fisher struggled, slamming his head back against the beast's chest. When that didn’t work, he kicked his legs out, bashing against the Kobold’s knees to break pungent scales. A sharp crack later, the big lad tumbled to his back, crying and shouting he didn’t deserve the pain.

Fisher rolled to his dropped blade and grabbed it, but not before feeling the touch of a dagger scrape across his abdomen. The armor he wore faithfully protected him from any danger, signifying its protection with a blistering screech. That was when he realized something. The crowd of enemies had intentionally led the captain back to the long corridor. He stood on the threshold, and the Kobold that grabbed him had come from there.

For the briefest moment, he looked down the hallway and realized another horde of soulless ‘shells’ were heading right for him.  The flesh was falling off their very skin, evident that they had been dead for months. Maggots festered and crawled from skulls to feet. It was like staring at the personification of a walking plague.

…

His mind was blank, focusing exclusively on what he should do. He wanted his body to make the correct decision without involving his brain. Without speaking, Fisher quickly opened his Dimensional Storage and pulled out the staff he had used to put Servi to sleep all those weeks ago. He held it towards the hallway. A ravenous grassy-colored mist spewed forth from the shrunken head. It filled the corridor, but the horde of moving bodies refused to drop!

That was because the dead did not need to sleep. They didn’t require any nourishment, either. Especially the kind that Klee could bring back, which was just the shell that housed the mind and spirit.

“Don’t you understand?! All of this could have been avoided had you not acted a fool!!! Just give up the location of the slave!! If you do, I'll even kill your family and bring them back! You won't have to be without them!” Nicholas shouted.

His unsettling words brought Fisher's mind back from its sabbatical. “I cannot give up their location! It isn’t right for them to be forced to re-experience the life of a slave!”

“Don’t give me that shit, Fisher! As someone who once held the very idea of justice within your heart, you should know what I’m feeling! I will bring justice to the Gods!”

“The life I once led was a falsified ideal of justice that never should have existed! So many lives were stolen for no reason!!!” Fisher dodged back, avoiding another swipe by the child. From behind came a Koena with a sword. Even if her stance was horrifyingly amateurish, the deadly sharp blade glimmered with bloodthirsty resolve.

“THE NEEDS OF THE MANY MATTERS MORE THAN THE DESIRE FOR SOME PITIABLE SLAVE TO LIVE A LIFE IT DOESN’T DESERVE!”

“…” Again, Fisher remained quiet and listened to Nicholas send another Urge. This one was for everyone to attack, not stopping until he a pathetic mush of blood and organs.

Without having any choice, Fisher had no choice but to go on the offensive. His mind remained as calm as the ever still water located inside a temple’s lake. Even as the smallest leaf dropped on top, its surface remained frozen in time of beauty.

He bared his teeth and dodged to the left to avoid an amateurish thrust. He was met with a stone club, which whacked him in the side. The attacker was a Kobold—a tall one—and Fisher went flying into a group of mindless drones. He crashed into them, knocking them all to the ground.

“STOP IT! Don’t hurt us!!”

“Captain Fisher, don’t leave us here!”

“I CAN’T STOP MY ARMS!!!!!”

Three cries rang out, followed by heartfelt sentences of anguish. Their weapons just bounced off Fisher's armor, which saved his life yet again.

How ironic that a present from Arnold ended up saving Fisher's life so many times. Especially when he was doing something that went against what Arnold believed.

A dull throbbing radiated from his side. Something was probably broken, and he might have had a case of internal bleeding. The pain was numbed, thumping with the intensity of a single drop of water from a leaky faucet.

“I’m…sorry for failing you…” whispered the captain. He rolled off the bodies, scampering away like a fearful cat. Once again, he had obtained some distance.

Fisher knew he had to fight back. Even if the majority couldn’t hurt him, there were at least three hundred foes all hobbling towards him. Some were rushing as if in a mad dash. Then they suddenly stopped as if their batteries had run out. It was all a sick ploy by Nicholas, who had definitely shown off a sadistic slice of his personality.

The captain reached inside his Dimensional Storage and retrieved a greatsword while dodging thrown knives and weak arrows. With a handle long enough that it required two hands, the blade lightly pulsed with the ferocious element of lightning. Sharp yellow sparks danced off of the crossguard. With both hands, he held it up to the sky. The Skill Energy he sent barreling through it caused tiny snaps of thunder to fill the large room.

That was met with a hundred different horrifying cries from the corpses standing in front. The part of Fisher that had matured against the world’s cruel gavel of experience knew there was no choice but to carve a bloody path out of the walking dead in front of him.

The corpses of children stumbling around with a dagger bigger than their hands… Their cries for their mothers and fathers… Fisher knew their personalities were just created from Nicholas’s Urges. He had said so at much. If that was the case, then the weaponized mob barreling towards him and his charging blade had already perished. Their souls had been swiftly escorted to whatever lay beyond the mortal realm.

Why couldn’t he swing the blade? Why was Fisher unable to bring his hand down and launch a horizontal wave of lightning across the room?

The children… That was his weakness… He had lived a regretful existence as a murderer of Demi-Human children. And right now? Even if they were lifeless ghouls living a false reality, they still held the shape of the children he used to slaughter. And it wasn’t just the Demi-Human children. It was the little girls shuffling around in pretty pink dresses. With just a single glancing glimpse, he thought of his daughters… They were right at home tucked into bed, and here was their father...

If Fisher was going to do something, he had to do it quickly. The closest enemy was approaching, and she would be there soon with a wooden pickaxe in her elvish hands. Like all the others, a constant pleading was streamed endlessly from her wailing mouth.

They all said the same thing.

“Don’t kill me.”

“Save me.”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“I cannot perish here.”

“Captain Fisher!!!”

“Don’t do it...

With no more time left to spare, Fisher eliminated the flow of Skill Energy.

He gritted his teeth.

He held his breath.

He closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

Finally... He swung his overcharged great sword. Its blade gleamed the brightest yellow, leaving behind an arc of pure, crackling lightning. The moment his blade completed its swing, the thunderous lightning launched forward. Within a quarter of a second, the mass begging had been replaced by a choir of pained echoes. The smell of electrified meat filled the room, the sound of the dead thumping to the ground eclipsing the remaining weeps of terror.

That one swing took out 89 enemies. Their very skin started to sizzle, popping like a nasty balloon and releasing the coagulated blood inside their dead veins. Without a shell, it didn’t matter how many Urges Nicholas wanted to send out.

Fisher dashed forward without a sound, his face one of stone and stoicism. The little corpses just lifelessly sat there, becoming one with the awful, gross, bubbling blood that hadn’t vaporized.

“NO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE THAT!!!!” From behind came more choruses of cries, who had seen what Fisher had done. He still had some distance to go before he reached Nicholas and Klee. The distraught captain sent more energy through his enchanted blade. Even with it, he couldn’t have won against Sakdu. At best, he could have killed a few hundred before their overwhelming might captured and decapitated him.

His only saving grace was that the enemies—the opponents he had to fight were untrained and weak. After a few seconds, he spun around and sliced another arc through the air. The forth-coming wave of lightning destroyed, massacring the approaching mob. As soon as it left his blade, he started charging another projectile.

The people fighting Fisher against their will kept up the waterworks. Before long, though, Nicholas sent another Urge.

“Is this how you killed those children in the village near the mountain? Were you off doing that while you let Arnold rape to his content? Or what about when he ripped the baby from the Singi’s womb? And you stood off to the side sharpening your sword?” Such horrible words came from a girl no older than six right before her little body caught fire from the electricity. No eruption of pain flowed from her lips, which only spoke the truth.

“What about the three Koena? You just stood by and killed their father while Arnold ripped their scales off to make a necklace.” An elderly Elf said that. Her face was full of small, fragile wrinkles that meant she only had a few years left in her long, long life. Like the little girl, her aging body caught flame and melted her skin, but her mouth spat out truths.

“How is it? Do you enjoy sending those you need to protect to the afterlife? Even if they are already dead, it certainly can’t be easy on your plangent conscience.” Fisher had tried to kill Nicholas with his lightning sword, but Klee pulled an enchanted shield from his Dimensional Storage—one that was as dark as the night sky and held the face of a vicious dog— and blocked every attempt.

Fisher remained silent for the time being and focused on sculpting a path forward. By now, he had exhausted over sixty percent of his Skill Energy, and it was physically showing. The sword took longer to charge, but that was fine since he had just finished carving out a path. He stepped across the dead, squishing hands and arms and heads that managed to avoid his lightning arcs.

Those who remained alive groaned with pain, but of course, they weren’t feeling the agony at all. It was just another ploy by Nicholas and his Urges to torment the captain. When Fisher finished charging his current blade, he turned around and sent sprawling electric beams across the bloody scene. Anyone still hobbling towards him fell victim, their shells finally getting the rest they were so denied.

The villainous bishop kept a perfect smile, then greeted Fisher with open arms and a job well done. “Congratulations, Fisher. You’ve certainly lived up to your former title. But let me tell you this… You did not have to do that. Yes, they may be dead, but with just one Urge, I could give them back their original consciousness. How do you think Arnold stayed the same?  But I cannot see you’re not into that because of the awfully intense glare you’re giving me. Well, what about this for a test of your character. You killed them all for the life of a miserable slave, but what about your family?”

“You keep my family out of your goddamn mouth…” growled Fisher. He was absolutely caked in crimson. Red stains flowed down his helmet, onto his face, and continued down his chest. His armor, once black as sin, now had scarlet highlights. A few stubborn bits of blood became stuck in the harsh scratch marks that covered the ‘justice’ on his breastplate.

It was like he was hell incarnate. Wielding a massive blade with the power of lightning, leaving behind a score of the dead in his vengeful path of assassination…

He was a reaper of the truest sense.

“It all happened the day after the meeting in which you brought up your ridiculous plan to free the slaves owned by your subordinates. Klee here paid a visit to your family whilst they were out shopping. I’ve always wanted you to be on my side, so when you came to me of your own volition to speak about Jeri and Sea, I was dearly hoping to bring you aboard. Alas, I have seen I have failed to do that. However, you now have a dilemma. You mercilessly trampled over a crowd of Canary’s citizens for the sake of a single slave. Will you do it again if your family is on the line? While the curse of resurrection cannot be removed, I can certainly cast away the Urges I have given your family.”

Fisher was frozen to a standstill. The shield-wielding Klee stood just to the right of Nicholas. His large eyes kept a sharp glare upon the deadly lightning sword but lowered his shield with the energy vanished from the terrible blade.

“That’s…a lie… It’s a lie… It has to be a lie… Marissa…isn’t dead… Meri… Mari… My angels…” The names of his beloved pathetically spurted off his lips at a volume barely above a whisper.

“Hmm… But it is the truth. Haven’t you noticed your family was very eager to please you? Your daughters have been wanting to follow in your footsteps. You did take a sword from the armory, correct? A pair of wooden swords, to be exact. Then you were nursing a wound to your hand with a fatherly smile atop your lips because you were proud of their progress. Oh, and let’s not forget your wife… Even a blind beggar could see how she hung off your very arm when you and your family sauntered around this unholy festival.”