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I took one last look at my sister Cassandra and ran through the portal, feeling a sense of elation and hope I hadn’t felt since before my family's murder. We came through in the front yard of the keep, and I came face to face with Trinket before falling on the ground face first, I guess several days without sleep, very little food, and fighting for your life multiple times will take its toll. The warm grass of the courtyard was more comfortable than a pillowtop mattress as I sank into sleep.
My eyes opened back in the underground chamber containing the Ziggeraut below Whitestone, the pepperbox in my hand as it always had been. I shook my head and looked around, had the defeat of the Briarwood’s been some sort of waking dream?
Turning I saw the Briarwoods’, or what was left of them at my feet. Sylas was little more than a pile of ashes and Delilah was dead a single bullet hole steaming from her forehead. Shadows crept around their bodies and mine. I spun the chamber of the pepperbox seeing their names magically vanish from the List.
“No, this isn’t how it happened. I spared Delilah, I don’t want vengeance anymore.” I practically begged the open air. This was exactly how my nightmares began, helpless to yet another tragedy, the details exaggerated to allow for the maximal amount of sadness.
“Put the weapon down darling.” Vex’s voice drew me away from the grizzly sight, I looked into her eyes and saw a hint of fear that vanished as she looked at me with piercing eyes. “They’re dead, you’ve completed the list. You can put the weapon down.”
I tried to release the pepperbox, drop kit it across the ziggurat and be free of it forever but it felt glued to my hand, preventing it from opening. A familiar feeling swirled around me as I found myself saying, “But the list isn’t complete.” My arm moved of its own accord in front of them and slowly twisted the barrel, Dr. Anna Ripley, Cassandra De Rolo, Vex’halia, Pike, Grog, Scanlan, it kept spinning as the names changed, promising the death of everyone I cared about. “I’ve promised my life to vengeance, that won’t ever change.”
“A good impression but you’re not Percy.” Vax walked to the side of his sister and looked at me. “Give him up Orthax.”
Scalan strummed something on his lute and began to sing until a shot rang out and the gnome fell over. My arm was once again outraised and a felt my other hand reaching out with the mask, preparing to put it on my face again, confining me within my own body so that demon could murder.
“No, I won’t, I don’t belong to you anymore!” Pulling through it I pushed the mask away sending it flying across the room.
“Fight him Percy!” Pike shouted, the divine light radiating from her astral body borderline agonizing to look at, causing my eyes to ache and shift. “We can help, I can help. Let the Everlight push away the demon.”
I staggered back feeling the glare of Pike’s light as searing pain, the shadows threatening to swallow me pushed into my shadow trying to creep forward to enshroud me completely. “Pike do it, please.”
She clutched her holy symbol and divine light rained upon me, like a judgment from above. It stopped an agonizing amount of moments later as my body twitched and spasmed on the ground. Like a flash, I was up and Pike’s form had faded away as the connection broken. Arm outspread facing the rest of my group, my family. “I am the righteous hand of vengeance, I am the devil that you forgot.”
One by one they were shot dead, Vex and Vax side by side on the ground, Keyleth outstretched pleading and Grog his face consumed in barbarian rage frozen in eternity by death. Their names vanished from the pepperbox and I stepped forward, Dr. Anna Ripley and Cassandra the only two left.
Cassandra had fled in the confusion, Dr.Ripley had made her exit when we approached the ziggurat so my feet began to move in the direction she’d fled. It took everything I had to stop, staring at the bodies of my friends.
“This didn’t happen, these aren’t my memories and you’re not here anymore. Leave me be.” I flung the pepperbox across the ziggurat stairs and watched it shatter on the ground, before melting away.
“Oh but Percy, I’m not in the weapon.” A shadow I’d only seen from the corner of my vision, in mirrors and dreams formed in front of me. “I’m in you, your heart, your mind, your soul. Destroying the list will only delay the completion of our deal. I will always return, vengeance is not so quickly healed by friendship and a pep talk. Seek out Ripley, and you’ll find me there, in the shadow of every gun you make, my influence, my power will be there.”
“Our pact was formed without words and therefore I get to define its contents, it is broken. You can return from whatever level of hell you were formed.” I began to walk away as the shadows followed.
“How cute, but remember, your soul was once mine and it will belong to me after you die, so enjoy your time. But this, this is who and what you will be, however hard you struggle against it.” The shadows all but cackled as it drifted around me, before throwing me forward down the stairs of the ziggurat, my consciousness fading out.
Opening my eyes to the starry night, it seemed the courtyard was our sleeping quarters for the night. I kept my breathing under control as I looked out at the softly breathing bodies of my friends, even Pike who must have returned from the temple while I was sleeping. I slipped away silently grabbing my new project from the bag, there were modifications that needed to be made to ensure this never happened again.