WAR: WIIGF 27 (Patreon)

"He died."

The two words might as well have been eggs cracked on asphalt for how quickly they dropped between the both of them. That… Ken’s eyes went wide, breath locking tight in his chest as he stared back at the father. That’s it?

His mouth turned down in a frown. That can’t be it. Whole tragic backstory just to end on a brick wall? Dude gets saved, goes to Church to learn how to kill monsters, and then just catches a stray and dies? Is this supposed to teach me a lesson? Ken opened his mouth to ask a simple question — the obvious question — direct and simple, but Keane didn’t let him.

"Three years after he arrived at the Vatican.” The priest continued, voice flat as his hands clasped themselves tight behind his back again. "The boy died and left nothing but a man. Only for the man to die too. For a time, at least."

"Wha—” Hold up, hold up. Ken’s mouth fell open at Father Keane’s sudden shift from literal to metaphor, confused at more than just that. The man died too? What?

"There was no boy or man to be found in him. Not after his learning was complete." Keane didn't even pause for the interruption, Irish vowels lilting with an ice to them that forced the hair on the back of Ken's neck to prickle. "A sword of the Most High he was meant to be and that sword he became. No mercy found in his heart, no forgiveness to spare in his soul, knowing nothing but the task set before him as his service.”The sound of knuckles cracking was sudden and loud, Ken blinking back at Keane’s still-clasped hands. “To slay all that which would prey on God’s chosen and every creature blasphemous enough to defame His authority."

Both continued their walking pace, soles crunching loose gravel as they veered off past the overpacked clinic, Mellville Park’s cracked and weed-choked concrete far behind. Brutalist blocks gave way to older brownstones in a jagged row like teeth against the skyline, most of them empty, gutted, burned-out, and boarded-up along the street. The sky above them was darkening a shade of dirty orange to tint the purple of the already-present smog haze; sun dipping fast and dragging the temperature down with it.

This place… Ken whipped his head around as Keane went silent again, confused where they were walking and not at all sure if it was… 

Well, he wanted to say safe, but this was the Blud and asking for anything close to that was kind of just asking to be suckered for it. He would know, honestly.

More than anything, ‘safe or not’, this neighborhood looked exactly like the kind of place you wanted to go to disappear. Or get disappeared. 

"But one day," Keane slowed his pace, something soft creeping back into his tone to fight the flat chill. "After a decade of only slaughter to guide his hand, the man felt a true change in his heart. He prayed for more and the Lord blessed him with a new path. He had no regrets as he had done his duty, accomplished all that could be expected of him. Besides..." 

A smile touched the corners of the priest's mouth, something tired behind his glasses. "To serve more than a decade as an Executor is a rare thing.”

Ten years. Ken's mind did math as he stared at Keane. Ten years of hunting things that wanted to eat you. That sounded like all sorts of hell, especially when it sounded like it was all that guy could do. I know suicide’s a sin, but he had to have thought about it… 

Ken tilted his head. Right?

“The sword accepted a new role, that of a shepherd.” Keane’s tone drifted into a murmur as the man came to a stop, raising his head toward the brownstone they stood in front of. “A proper minister of the sacraments.”Bright green eyes slid from Keane and fixed themselves on the wreck of a building; boarded-up windows layered with splintered plywood while the brick of the outside crumbled away like some of his mom’s gingerbread left out too long. “...Let me guess, this minister of the sacraments…” The teenager turned back to Keane, sure of his words as he formed them carefully. “He picked a place where he could still… I dunno, do some good, right? Put his old skills to work, if he felt like it?”Keane’s eyes stayed fixed on the rotting wood of the door, but it didn’t stop him from answering Ken anyway. “A place where the last priest had met a rather unfortunate end at the hands of the enemies of man.”

Ken blinked. “Bludhaven, huh.”It wasn’t a question.

“Where else?” A tired smile slid back on the minister’s face. “Bludhaven could only be his choice.”

Then… One eye twitched. Then why tell the whole story in third person?

Behind them, the sun finally sank all the way past the edge of the horizon, the last of the weak orange light going with it. True Bludhaven night fell over the city, a dark sky hanging high above their heads. 

Oh… Ken knew well enough how this worked. In minutes, vampires would be kicking out of their coffins or whatever they used to hide from any inch of sunlight and, in a part of town as fucked-up as this, he knew they’d be packed tight somewhere around here.

Keane didn’t seem to care about that one bit, the man simply walking forward up the steps and swung open the rotting front door of the brownstone. Hinges shrieked loud and slow, rust giving away with protest as the pitch-black depths of the house stared back at them.

Oh, that looks safe.

Ken looked back over his shoulder, eyes on his six out of pure instinct. By the time he turned his head back around, the priest had already stepped forward to stop dead in the entryway, right over the threshold to the house. Keane?

The father brought his hands together over his chest in prayer, silver crucifix pulled free from his neck and clasped tight between both right and left. 

As the priest prayed in silence, a sound slithered out from the dark guts of the brownstone, a familiar hissing Ken knew by heart at this point.

“Keane…”The minister of St Jude didn’t seem to hear him even as his hands came unclapsed, crucifix still clutched in his right hand. Without a word, the man raised his fist and drove it down into the rotting wood of the doorway.

What the h-! Ken’s eyes went wide as the wood splintered, a spiderweb of cracks spreading outward as Keane stood up again and the teenager saw what he left there; the silver cross. It remained standing, perfectly upright from where the priest had struck it into the ground.

"Ubi sto, templum Eius surgit!” Keane’s hands clapped together again, this time with force as he chanted aloud. “Sit lex Eius finis, et lux Eius porta…” Even though Ken didn’t understand a word, the priest’s voice still rang loud and with authority as he spoke in hard Latin, each word sharp, strong, and aggressive like a hammer driving down a nail. “...per quam nulla umbra transeat."

The air warped as he finished and, in front of Ken’s eyes, a wave of gold surged out from the base of the embedded crucifix; the thing humming from where it stood. The light spread quickly and without stopping, spreading off into the darkness past where Ken had any hope of making out.

Even from where he stood, just outside the house, he could feel the warmth of it — strong and heavy, inside and out like the smell of wine. What kind of spell i-

His lagging thoughts didn’t even have the time to fully form as hissed screams from deep inside interrupted Ken, the high thin sounds ear-shredding and followed up by a wet sizzle that hit his ears like raw meat in a too-hot pan.

“Keane!”A hand went up, a sign of patience turned his way. “Just watch, Kenneth.”

Footsteps thundered, the sound of something scrambling their way growing louder and louder as Ken’s heart beat faster the longer he stood there under the flickering streetlight.

Barely five seconds after Keane raised his hand, three figures rushed out of the dark; mouths open and screeching for blood. Red eyes flared to life, chakra coiling tight and unspooling through his veins as the world became bright, saturated and stark with contrast.

He saw their faces, pale skin smoking from something.

Their eyes were obvious, a glowing red iris stained with a black ring surrounded by eye ‘whites’ the same color as a charcoal painting. “Squires!”Ken screamed the word, hands snapping up to form the signs for a jutsu. He knew Squires well enough, studying the Manual night after night on top of what Luigi had told him. ‘At least twenty years old and almost twenty times as strong as a regular guy. 

That was… that was something that could flip a car over.

Hell, that was death.

One of them, faster than the other two, tore off the stairs in a blur of ragged motion — claws extended before Ken was even through with the second sign, ready to tear out the nearest throat. The priest didn’t even move.

Not backward, at least.

“In nomine Patris…” Keane stepped into the lunge, right fist already swinging out in a brutal uppercut, compact and clean. His knuckles — hell, his whole hand — was wrapped in that exact same golden light that had just gone through the whole brownstone. “Redactus est in cinerem.”

A glowing fist met the chest of the smoking Squire dead-center.

For a split second, all Ken heard was a wet firework going off inside a tin can. Then all he saw was ashes flooding the air as the vampire simply expired.

Kinetic force and holy light too much for it, the thing split into a cloud of fine gray ash raining heavily down onto priest and boy both, coating the entryway.

The other two Squires froze on the stairs at the sudden sight, angered hisses dying in their throats as the ash settled over them too.“Squires?” Keane’s fist lowered to his side, golden light still burning around it like a set of holy knuckle-dusters. "No, Kenneth. Not right now."