Chapter Two

To my surprise, I awoke hours later.

The first creeping rays of sunshine on the horizon were, in truth, the first signs that I was alive at all. In the dark of night, lying flat on the earth, it had been impossible to tell how many times I had drifted in and out of consciousness, whether I was awake, asleep, or dead.

Pain should have been what let me know the difference, I knew, and its absence was among the largest of my immediate concerns. My knowledge of medicine was extremely limited, but I had experience enough to know that the worst injuries were the ones that you should feel, but didn’t. I’d lost considerable blood, and I was in shock.

"R-reshume... Jhob." I murmured through broken teeth. The words barely registered as language, but they didn't need to. The Will of the World would recognize my intent in any tongue, at any volume, no matter how ruined my face was. "Schow Sht-shtuatus."

Instantly my mind's eye was flooded with detailed information in the form of numerous 'windows,' each detailing some aspect of my being. I ignored most of them, pushing one after another out of mind until only a single focus remained.

HP 3/100 (-0.00005/Sec)

Condition: Severely Wounded - All HP recovery suspended. Movement restricted.

Condition: Minor Blood Loss - HP -0.00005/Sec.

Math was never really my strong suit, let alone when my whole body ached, and my head felt as though I were being held underwater, but the calculation was simple enough. Less than a day, assuming I didn't strain myself and open the wounds any further.

If I wanted to live, I had to act.

I focused my attention on the sun, using it as a beacon for my actions. So long as the sun glowed in the distance, I was awake, and I was alive. Every time it seemed to dim, or to falter, I redoubled my attention, staring into the morning rays as they crested distant hillsides.

As seconds passed into minutes, I realized I could move. My limbs were numb, as though I'd spent the night laying on them, but they were still functional. It took considerable effort, but eventually, my right arm shifted, inch by inch, until at last it lay in front of me, fingertips curled into the dirt. I did the same with the left, then slowly but surely, began to drag myself.

It was exhausting work. In my youth, I'd prided myself on a fit, trim body, and even into parenthood my work on the farm had kept me in able shape. Yet in all that time I had never been so spent as I was after barely managing a foot.

Why bother? Just lie down and die. Part of me insisted. A walk that would have taken me seconds in my prime dragged on into minutes, then minutes into hours. The sun had fully risen before I had made it even halfway, and with each passing moment, my body grew weaker and weaker. To make it all the way before my wounds took my HP to zero would be nothing short of a miracle.

Only hatred kept my body in motion.

Every time my body cried out, every time the wound in my chest sucked for the same air I desperately needed, my conscious mind cried out. Vengeance. To make it all the way would be a miracle, but the fact that I lived at all, unconscious, burned and bleeding, was a miracle in and of itself, was it not?

I was alive for one reason, and I would not be denied by something as simple as a few dozen feet.

Through the dirt I crawled, my fingertips rough and torn as I inched closer and closer to my daughter. Or rather, to her remains.

She hadn’t moved since I’d awoken, hadn’t so much as twitched. Mercifully, the carrion had not shown any interest in the hours I had been awake. I was certain that I did not have the strength to shoo them off, just as I was that I would lose all will to live the moment I saw some filthy bird begin to peck at my child.

It wasn’t her I was crawling towards, however. Just her hand. Just her ring.

Despite what the Assessors might have assumed, I'd long been a worshiper of the Goddess in Red, Eien. Her works, her many aspects, and faces were too numerous for a well-traveled man to ignore as superstition, and despite the acts of her servants, I called on her in my mind as the distance closed.

Not the face of the Farmer, or the Knowledge-keeper, or the Wayfarer who I had spoken to at various points in my life. I spoke to the Assassin, the Executioner, the Thief. Any aspect of violence, of cruelty or malice, the Aspects that had no temples in polite society. The aspects that might look at my quest and smile at the chaos my intentions could bring to the world.

If I had to pray to the Monster itself for the strength to reach that ring, then so be it.

After what felt like an eternity, my fingers closed around the small trinket on my daughter’s hand. She felt so tiny beneath my touch, and for just a moment I could no longer fight the tears that had bitten at my eyes for hours.

I would destroy those responsible. All of them.

The ring itself was meaningless, a bauble I had purchased at a market a year and a half earlier. Its stone was cheap, a small, chipped amethyst, but for my purposes, it would be enough. It had to be enough, or all my effort had been for naught.

It had been too long since I’d used my Mark. I'd only drawn upon it once in the thirteen years since Terynia had been born, and even infrequently at best before that, but I knew nothing had changed. The mark was a part of me, one that felt like a natural extension, that felt no different than an arm or an eye. It was like opening a fist that I had been holding clenched for years.

I’d been nine when the complicated sigil had manifested just above my right eyebrow, the first in my lineage going back six generations, or so I’d learned later.

No one knew what caused the appearance of Devil-Marks. There were theories, of course, some with considerable evidence. Proximity to fiendholms was a reasonable theory, given the quantity of the Devil-Marked who had their origins near the Grand Dungeon and other similar locations. Others claimed it was debauched lineage, that congress with a foul creature could taint a bloodline for millennia. Heretics claimed the marks as a sign of the Goddesses' true favor, while others had theories more ridiculous still.

Whatever the speculation and stigma, there were still some known facts.

Devil-Marks appeared on children no younger than seven and no older than fourteen. They could manifest anywhere on the applicant’s body, which had led the majority of civilized nations to submit to the of annual inspection of the Assessors, to try and clear the Marked within their midst. The fact that marks could appear on any race, any nationality had also led to more genocide and cruelty than I cared to think about.

The variety of marks was heavily debated in scholarly circles, but it was generally estimated that there were somewhere around seven-hundred distinct marks, with some being vastly more common than others. Terynia’s Healer mark, for example, was among the most common of known Devil-Marks, mine, on the other hand, was so rare that I had originally assumed it was actually unique.

Different marks were named for the power they bestowed upon their owner. A flame mark granted the user total control over flame within their line of sight and allowed them to create fires of their own, along with a myriad of other related effects. Tery’s healer mark, on the other hand, had given her incredible control over healing. Even with my considerable wounds and her relative inexperience, my daughter would have been able to heal me back, good as new, within the space of a few seconds at most.

Mine was the Soul mark. The ability to control and manipulate souls.

The marks had their drawbacks as well, not the least of which was public perception. They were called Devil-Marks for a reason, after all.

A mark user was incapable of learning or even utilizing any form of magic outside of the abilities granted by their mark. Divine power drawn from Eien was beyond our grasp, and so too was the more esoteric magic of those who drew upon natural mana. Even their magic items defied us. A wizard-forged sword would burn my hand if I touched it, while a wand might explode or backfire.

Perhaps most crucial of all, however, were the mental effects of the mark.

As the old Knight had suggested, living to the ripe old age of thirty-five with a Devil-Mark was rare, and to do so while remaining in hiding was unheard of. Even excluding children purged the moment they manifested, our life expectancy was abnormally low because, well, we tended to be evil.

While rumors had floated for centuries about Devil-Marked individuals who had done some great and noble acts, those appeared to be just that, rumors. The sad truth was that, of my kind who lived long enough to truly grasp our powers, every notable example was a figure of fear, terror, and death. Even Devil-Marked individuals with seemingly innocuous powers had used them for personal gain, for conquest and anguish. The ability to heal even the most crippling wounds could be a tremendous boon to the world, but an army led by a Devil-Marked who could regenerate their wounds during battle? That could be a scourge to the world itself.

In my childhood, I'd thought it gossip. So what if Devil-Marked had a poor reputation, I was myself. Yet the more I touched the power of the mark, the more I felt the Pull. I’d become crueler, insensitive, violent. A Devil-Marked who used his power was drawn to evil like a moth to a flame, and while some few of our kind succeeded enough to hold a kingdom for a time, in the end, we all burned.

What does that matter, so long as the world burns with me? I thought, a short wave of revulsion accompanying the thought. The worst part of the mark was how it twisted you inside. I often wondered how many active Devil-Marked would even recognize themselves in the end, just as I wondered how much of that thought was myself, and how much my magic thinking for me.

Of course, my mark was among the worst when it came to the pull. A Healer like Tery might have resisted the pull for years as the contradictory nature of the power helped to ground her against its invitation. My power, on the other hand, required me to embrace the Pull from the first moment. To manipulate souls, I needed them. And to obtain souls, I needed death or monsters.

Usually, anyways.

To my own disgust, during the crawl I’d briefly considered using Terynia’s essence to fuel my magic. Fortunately, it had taken so long for me to wake, and then to crawl to her, that it was never going to be a real option. A soul might stick around as long as six, perhaps seven hours if it were particularly tethered to some horrific event, but I’d never seen one linger as long as the ten I’d estimated it had been since her death.

Less fortunately, that meant I had to resort to my default plan, one that was as unpleasant as it was possibly suicidal.

Whenever a Devil-Mark manifested, it, for lack of a better term, leaked knowledge. For roughly a week, the mark would burn as it developed on its user’s skin, and during that time, it fed them information on how it could be used. There was still trial and error, but it appeared, to me at least, that the marks wanted to be used, and were more than happy to give us just enough rope to hang ourselves with.

In my case, the mark had told me early on that I needed three key ingredients to utilize my power. I needed time, a vessel, and obviously, souls.

The first I had more than enough of, at least in the short term. The stronger and more durable I wanted the end result of my manipulation to be, the longer it would take. This sort of work would take minutes, rather than hours. Hopefully, I could avoid dying before then.

Hopefully.

The second was equally as simple. A vessel could be an item, a creature, or with significant preparation and expense, a person, but just like the creation of a traditional magical item, it had its limits. The energy of a soul would not properly adhere to a stick, or to horse droppings, or a kitchen fork. Whether it just had too high of standards, or if there were some sort of magical theory behind it, I had no idea. All I knew was that for my magic to imbue an item with its power, the item had to be of a certain quality and craftsmanship above and beyond banal tools or debris.

Fortunately, Terynia’s ring would suffice.

The third was where I ran into a problem. I didn’t have the strength to swat flies out of the air, and even if I did, their souls were utterly worthless as far as my mark was concerned. An animal needed to be at least the size of a bird for it to be even remotely useful for my ability, and even then I’d need several for the task at hand.

Generally speaking, the larger, or more powerful the creature killed, the stronger the soul. A squirrel produced a soul of minute power, a dog slightly more, a human even better. A trained fighter might be worth several hundred birds, an archmage several orders of magnitude beyond that, though utilizing anything of that power was far beyond the current ability of my mark.

It also doesn’t help in the now. I thought grimly. Unless a hapless peasant happened to have tripped and killed themselves within a few hundred feet of me, within the last hour, I only had one source to provide the power for what I was about to attempt.

Me.

My own soul was far and away the most valuable I could ever draw upon. Even a tiny fragment was worth hundreds of common folk. Using it was also among the most dangerous ways to use my ability.

Even in my prime, so much as caressing my own soul with my power was enough to make me nauseous, to send sharp pains through the entirety of my body. To clip a significant portion of it would undoubtedly send me into shock on a good day. Doing it when it was already a wonder that I was alive, that stood a very good chance of killing me.

What other choice do I have? I thought grimly, turning the ring over in my hand.

The most basic use of my soul mark was its ability to imbue items with power. By attaching the energy of mortal souls to a non-living vessel, I could create magical items, ones that could even be used by the Devil-Marked. By attaching that same energy to a living vessel, such as an animal or monster, I could drastically alter all manner of characteristics, from simple physical traits like strength or height, to magical talents and abilities.

Like all Devil-Marks, there were limits to what I could do, particularly as someone who had spent so long concealing and restraining my mark. Though the Will of the World treated them differently than a Job derived Skill, a Devil Mark was still very similar in its progression. The more it was used, the stronger it became. A Flame mark used by a beginner could set a room ablaze with ease. That same mark, honed to an edge over a few years of use, could set half a battlefield afire with the same casual effort.

In the case of my mark, the magnitude of changes that I could render was always limited by my Soul Reserve, as well as the overall ranking of my Devil Mark. The more souls I consumed, the more I had to work with in my reserve, while the stronger my Mark became, the easier and more efficient I would be at utilizing those souls

My reserve was empty, as it had been for years, the last of it long since leeched away over time. However, even a tiny fraction of my soul would be enough to fill it to overflowing several times over. The waste rankled the conservative part of my mind, but at least the conservative part of me would still be around to complain when it was all over.

Assuming I survive.

I slowly turned the ring over in my hand once more. I’d spent too long pondering the pros and cons already, especially when it was less a gamble and more of a last chance. If it failed, I’d die next to Terynia with a little less of my soul. If I did nothing, I’d die next to Terynia with my whole of what remained of my soul. That tiny fragment wasn’t worth giving up on my only chance.

I closed my eyes and cupped the ring with both hands, doing my best to close it away from all outside influences, even light. Under better circumstances, I would have a laboratory; I'd have diagrams and preparation. I'd not attempted an on the fly manipulation since I’d been a child, and I’d never attempted a manipulation of this magnitude while mostly dead, while using part of my soul as the fuel.

What could go wrong?

Normally, I would have to bleed myself to call upon my own soul, but I suppose I could thank the Assessors for saving me that discomfort. Instead, I focused my attention on the mark on my forehead, the twisted thing that ran from just above my right eye, to a few inches into what had been my hairline.

I could feel the mark, and I knew that for the first time in years, it was visible. For the better part of a decade, I had taken pains to conceal it. Cosmetics, headwear, absurdly long hair, all of these had conspired to keep the mark hidden from the outside world. I'd tried so long that I'd even hidden it from myself at times, to the point that I'd almost forgotten who, and what I was.

It burned at me now, the first real sensation of pain I'd experienced for what had felt like millennia. The darkness of it was flaring, glowing with a deep violet light that washed over my clenched hands. There was no hiding the usage of a Devil-Mark. If covered, the mark either wouldn't work, or it would burn through whatever obstruction was between it and the outside world as if the mark itself were some dilettante that demanded admiration for its fine work.

I ignored the glow and searched inwards, forcing my eyes tighter still against the intense light.

Finding a living soul was no easy task. Manipulating them, almost impossible. For whatever reason, the souls of the dead were malleable and pliant under my power, but the living's were another matter entirely. Just to see them, I had to draw them out through pain, through blood or through magic. To manipulate any but my own was a tremendously difficult task with my powers as weak as they were, for the souls of the living were all too happy to lash out against my ministrations.

I could do it, but taking a live soul, as I’d hoped to do to Gerard, would almost certainly have killed me in the process.

Come to me. I demanded of myself and was both gratified and horrified to feel my spirit rise so quickly to the call. Apparently, I was close enough to death that my soul already had its bags packed and was just raring to go.

That was reassuring.

A shiver of agony washed over me as the mark touched at my immortal essence. I had long become accustomed to the idea that the Devil-Mark was a part of me, but my spirit was revolted by it all the same. It knew the sensation, and it recoiled from the touch of unholy magic.

Twice more I had to summon up my spirit, touching it with my mark over and over, forcing it to grow accustomed to the sensation. It would not do to have my soul ‘flinch’ when I made the cut. I’d damaged it enough as a child, true, but I could do without one more gaping rend all the same.

I was also stalling, I knew. Of all the pain inflicted upon me the previous evening, nothing could even begin to compare to the agony I would have to inflict upon myself.

On three. I thought grimly, focusing inward on the visualization of my own soul. It was already missing an ear, a finger, two toes. For once, however, the real me looked worse than the damage I’d done to myself. A small blessing, that.

Concentrating, I formed the power of my Devil-Mark into the visualization. It appeared to me as the sigil itself, pulsing with angry violet light. It was as ungainly as it was powerful, and I set about compressing it, using my will to draw the mark down into a usable form, a knife of vibrating purple energy, just barely constrained by my conscious mind.

I didn’t wait for three. ‘Knife’ in hand, I took to rending my own soul.

There was a certain sense of satisfaction in the unspeakable agony. I had utterly failed my daughter, and though there were men who deserved fates far worse than mine, I was no angel. It seemed only fitting that losing my Tery should cost me a part of my soul, in truth as much as metaphor.

Satisfaction or no, I screamed.

The pain was beyond pain. A thousand swords cut into me, a million bees stung, while salt was poured across every open wound. My heart pounded, and my head swam, the visualization becoming an indistinct mess, barely held together as I forced my Devil-Mark on through its task.

Your soul has been damaged. Damaged. Da-Your soul has been-

I laughed in spite of the horror an agony of it all. Even the Will couldn't quite describe how terrible what I was doing truly was.

If I had been standing my knees would have buckled. As it was, I cried my horror into the dirt, my whole body writhing. At least one of my wounds re-opened to spill some of what little remained of my blood, the HP loss expanding tenfold in an instant. I couldn't keep this up, I knew, but if I faltered, that would be the end of me. There would be no second chances even if I had enough energy left in my physical body to make an attempt.

And then it was over. The pain subsided like a candle being snuffed out, the final glowing embers a dull throb that I knew would linger for only a few minutes before they too would vanish. I’d done it.

My Devil-Mark pulsed with new power as it consumed the small fragment I offered it. It felt good, warm. My body was broken, but the energy of the mark was vibrant and alive, a wave of vigor and excitement rolling through the whole of my being.

It was the Pull, I knew. Using one’s Devil-Mark felt good in a way that few things compared to in life. The first bite of a favorite meal, the kiss of a new lover, the delight of falling into bed after a long day’s work.

Your daughter’s first steps.

Anger welled within me and the power surged alongside it, as the tiny bit of my soul was finally consumed. It rarely took more than a few seconds for my mark to devour what it was offered, and once it did, the soul was converted into a form of Devil-Mark energy akin to, but distinctly different from, the natural mana found throughout the world.

Between my clenched fingers, the ring began to shudder. After a moment the weight of it left my numb hands entirely, floating amidst the twisting mass of dark energy that roiled within my grasp.

For a moment, I tried to contain it, but I was out of practice. The dark energy surged to twice its original width in a heartbeat, a ball of swirling power with the ring at the center, still seeking to expand.

That wouldn’t do.

I opened my eyes at last, focusing all of my attention on the ring in the center of that inky darkness. The magic pulsed again and the sphere expanded once more as I struggled against it, but at last, with some effort it began to shrink, retreating back towards the ring.

I'd used far more energy than I needed, more than the ring itself could hope to hold. I let the excess bleed through my fingers, and I pressed my cupped hands back towards the ring. Little by little the sphere shrunk until at last I was able to hold the whole of it between my hands. From there I let my eyes slip closed again and concentrated on pressing the corrupted soul-stuff through imperceptible gaps in the jewel itself.

Little by little the energy entered the ring, its function determined by its arrangement within the precious stone, as well as small fluctuations in the mana itself.

Before long the pressure between my hands began to wane. Counter-intuitively, the process became easier the more energy the ring absorbed, as like attempted to pool alongside like. After only a few more seconds, the energy settled and I felt the pressure of the fragile ring drop down into one of my shaking hands.

I’d done it.

My whole body shook with exertion as I used my elbows to prop myself up in the dirt, and it took three attempts to get the ring onto the pinkie of my left hand, the only finger it even remotely fit. I’d have to cut it off when I was done, but that didn’t matter, the magic would ruin the jewel anyway.

With the ring firmly passed the knuckle I slumped down into the dirt, drew a slow breath, and concentrated. Normally, with an item like this, I’d have given it an activation phrase to further reduce the cost, but the damage to my face had made that impossible. Instead, I willed the ring to action, the pathetic jewel embedded in its band glowing with an unnatural light as I thought of a single word.

Healing.