Oblivion's Stairway

The blessed fog of ignorance grew thinner each night, and flashes of light representing days flew by. Then, at once, the veil was lifted, and he saw the beast.

Its shadow swallowed the stars in a forgotten age before the god Messiah must have banished him. Extending from his right hand was a heretical weapon that screamed its hatred for all things living with rip and tear spoken in the thousand tongues of man. Red was its color, spilling an ocean of that most essential humor. Seraphs fell from the heavens, speared on emerald and black chains, pulling them down from the black void between the stars. The blade that hated everything tore them apart as surely as it cut them in passing. Their blessed skulls were pulled free of their bodies and added to the pile below the Anti-Messiah's feet.

More of the fog receded, and he saw the bones of endless victims used to build a fortress. Their souls were used like mortar holding the abomination together. Holy artifacts of the saint of the guillotine hung from their necks, glittering like the stars themselves trapped beneath the demon's shadow. The sun rose, and he saw the kingdom of Jord in flames.

Then the flames froze, and he watched the sun move backward. He knew that decades had returned to him, and the creature had become an infant. The forsaken creator hadn't won yet. The Inquisitor Veritas Clades could save the world.

He awoke and stared at the leeches shriveled and dying as they drank the bad blood from his veins. His old, shriveled body was weak physically, but in faith, he was unmatched. As a Gnostic league grandmaster, there were techniques he possessed to turn faith into potent bodily aid for his mission from the church. He had the power to call upon the emperor's authority to raise a force of 10,000 men at any time. Through his dreams, when the sinful physical prison was at its weakest, he could call upon aid from the spiritual.

Veritas checked the time with a quick one-syllable spell. He had only managed an hour of rest. The visions were growing more urgent.

For the last 100 days, his dreams had been prophetic. In less than 200 years, if he didn't act, the Kingdom of Jord would be doomed. But he had a plan.

To overt disaster, he must be ruthless.

All he had to do was kill every child in the kingdom of the proper age. It was monstrous the things the demon forced him to do to save the land. But what was a single generation against the apocalypse?

He would have to hire mercenaries from Jord's enemy. The Abelites hated the Jordites, and they firmly believed that killing them was a good thing. Even children weren't off the altar to the heathen Demiurge worshipers. Veritas would use that hate to do good. He would drown the great evil in a holy baptism before he spoke his first lies.

…

Day 1 Soma Gaol 

The world was a bit of a mess. John had made it out of one prison into a strange one. The good news was that he escaped hell and found himself in a new body. But the bad news was he was an infant. Someone chucked him in a ditch shortly after his birth, and he was busy finding a way to survive.

Fortunately, he had his spirit sense.

Unfortunately, his body was that of an infant. Without his mother's milk, he would miss out on valuable antibodies, and death was also in the cards. He could catch a sickness and die again at any time.

He snapped out of his daze and went into emergency mode. Sin energy wasn't plentiful outside of hell, but the powers he gained hadn't left him. He searched with all his envy and spirit sense for anything with what he needed.

He found a mother wolf with his spirit sense. John engaged his rashly formed plan he called Plan Cuckoo.

Four chains emerged from his shadow, lifting him from the cold ditch into the equally cold and unforgiving winter wind. Thinking better of it, he used a fifth chain to support his head. He was cold, far too cold, and the cloth he was swaddled in was wet wool and full of holes.

John started moving before the cold that swept through him with pain became warm enough for him to settle down and let it kill him.

Bodies filled the ditch covered with a light powdering of snow, moving and warm with the crawl of maggots eating away at rotting flesh. Many were infants like him. He raced over them even when they reached out with their little hands. John ran as he heard their cries fill the winter wind.

It seemed he had escaped one hell and entered another.

Feelings, when mixed with grace, could fuel his techniques. His envy fueled the Chains of Want. If he felt satisfied and happy, they would be weak and brittle. Being cold when others are warm fed envy well enough.

There were rules to the powers of a sinner. His spiritual sense was strictly a soul thing. Every being that gains a new body after death gains a spiritual sense. Most don't hone the sense to a fine edge. It was the key to his success in hell. With it, he could detect other sinners and know their powers. Getting back to the rules, the ordinary sinner could gain power from one of the primal sins.

The well-known primal sins were Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Wrath, Greed, and Lust. There were supposed to be two more Ambition and Fraud, but he could only hold the primal source of 7 before his body would have fallen apart. Once someone became a demon, they were remade by the sources at hand, so he wouldn't have been able to go after the others meaningfully.

Sinners were limited to 1 ability until they became a demon, and their abilities doubled. John managed to slay a sin avatar and absorb its source. That allowed him to gain 3 powers. If he allowed himself to become a demon, he would have gained 3 more powers from his sins.

After giving up his sources, his spark of grace became the source of his powers.

There were things in the air, and he wasn't sure if they were visible outside his spirit sight. He ignored them as he zoomed into a forest off the road. The wind died down, but he was in no way safe. John was starting to feel warm, and his thoughts were growing fuzzy.

A powerful wind swept through the trees, finally ripping his swaddling off. A large male wolf appeared, full of gluttony in his spiritual sense. His chain lashed out, catching it around the leg before he lifted it in the air.

John had no use for it.

He tossed it and launched himself into the burrow it was guarding. The wolf cried in pain but didn't hear any breaks in his spirit sense. It was probably ok. The mother wolf in the den tried to move before John's chain wrapped around its snout.

John launched himself and started drinking warm milk.

…

Town of Brackenmere

Province of Greyharbor, Kingdom of Jord

17th Day of January, Year 1247 MC

To the Esteemed Count Aldric of House Valtor, Warden of the Eastern Marches,

My Lord Count Aldric,

I write to you with a heart shattered by grief and hands trembling with rage. Brackenmere, a humble town under your noble protection, has suffered an atrocity so vile it stains the very soul of our kingdom. Three nights passed, and mercenaries bearing the sigil of the Kingdom of Abel descended upon us under the shroud of a moonless sky like wolves. Their leader, the blood-soaked fanatic, Inquisitor Veritas Clades, proclaimed his mission in the town square with zealot fervor: "The rot of Jord ends with its youngest."

What followed was a slaughter no chronicler could commit to parchment without weeping. The invaders tore babes from their mothers' arms—every child born within the last hundred days—and dragged them to the River Bryn. They drowned those innocent souls in the icy waters, laughing as they held them beneath the current. Those who resisted were cut down without mercy. The cobblestones of Brackenmere's streets are still slick with the blood of midwives, fathers, and elders who fought to shield the helpless.

Clades' men left no child alive. They pinned notices to the doors of the bereaved, scrawled in ash and bile: "Abel purges the taint of Jord. Let this be a lesson." The town is now a chorus of wails. Fields go untended. Smithies stand cold. Even the river seems to choke on its currents, carrying the echoes of tiny cries.

We are but a small garrison here, my lord. Our guards were overwhelmed, and our walls proved feeble against Abel's seasoned sellswords. In the name of every oath sworn to Jord's crown, I beg you: Send reinforcements at once. If Clades' cruelty is unchecked, he will surely turn his blade toward other villages under your banner. We require soldiers to garrison our ruins, healers to tend the broken, and justice for the butchered.

I implore you to petition the royal court as well. Let King Theodric know that Abel's Inquisitors have breached our borders not to conquer but to exterminate. This is no mere raid—an act of war against Jord's future.

I remain your loyal servant, though my spirit is ash,

Mayor Edric Thorne

Brackenmere, Jord

 "You accuse me of treason—I who stand above you all as a grand master of the Gnostic League. You do not know what I've seen. You would start a war in your hubris and destroy the peace between Abel and Jord. With the power invested to me by the Inquisition, Mayor Edric Thorne, I sentence you to death for heresy against the church." The inquisitor thrust his hand out, and a whip of light cut the man's head from his shoulders, freeing his soul from his sinful prison.

Blood didn't spill from the stump. His holy whip had cauterized the wound. He could hear the mayor's manse being ransacked all around him. Discipline was lost after the job he assigned them had finished. The major wouldn't have died if he had listened instead of sending a runner with the letter to warn Count Aldric of the Inquisition business.

In a way, he was jealous of Edric. The man hadn't seen what the inquisitor had and died for his beliefs. God, not the creator pretender who fashioned the imperfect world, would accept the man and explain why he had to die. The apocalypse was upon them, and he continued to dream. Sleep was coming less and less, forcing him to absorb more grace to keep his sinful, wrinkled flesh moving.

Colonel Barak dressed in the fine clothes of Mayor Thorne. "Get the men together. This town was a failure. I have fasted and weakened this body's hold enough to hear the word of god. We strike Hearthmarch."

"The watches will see us coming a mile away."

"You will need to exchange the Abel crest with the dragon of the Inquisition. Going from town to town is too slow, and we must deliver a true strike at the enemy. We will burn the fields of Hearthmarch and cause a great famine."

To be sure, they would pass through the towns while winter was upon them and slay any male child within the age that the beast might have been born.

He possessed 5,000 mercenaries to complete his holy task, and he could call upon another 10,000 from Jord Levies.

Barak smiled, clearly thankful for this great honor. "I will tell inform the men to form up. We've followed your orders, all the horses, but the ones we're taking have been put to the sword. We'll break the dams, flood all the roads except the one we're taking, and leave a rear guard to deal with anyone who tries to leave to warn the rest of Jord."

Others would not understand his holy mission. He was glad to use the heathen's hatred to save the very country he wanted to destroy.

Chapter 2 is up on my Patreon for $1. My user name is Ultimatedaywriter. I'll add more chapters soon.