Justice: Part 3

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Jorgo stared at his reflection in the blade. He looked so different than he remembered. An awkward and sickly childhood had filled his memories with pale skin and sunken eyes, with matted hair and a weak back. Now, he felt stronger. Taller. More of a man than he’d ever been before.

The eyes that stared back at him were clean and bright, full of joy and focus. He grinned at the idea that this was the man his foes would be seeing, standing proud next to his family.

“They approach, love,” Karna’s voice broke through his dreaming. “We must be ready.”

“I’m ready,” he laughed, sheathing the curving sword at his side and turning to pluck his girl from off her feet, swinging her around in the air. “Let them come! There is nothing to fear from a bunch of rotten old lepers.”

Karna’s laugh mingled with his as she pressed her lips against his throat. “You are so brave and strong, my love, I hope you are right.”

“Of course I am,” Jorgo set her down but refused to release her arms. “Do you remember how I was before you met me? My lungs were weak and my body was feeble. Slow. I lumbered about like a misshapen statue. These monks are the same; I remember the stories about them from my grandfather. They’ve got guns and poison gas and they’ll try to infect us, but the Twin Blossom protects us, yes?”

“Yes,” Karna’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, of course they do. We will dance and spin through the Thousand Hands like a river around rocks, moving through their clumsy bodies and cutting them down like wheat.”

“Then let them come,” Jorgo kissed his love so forcefully that he tasted blood. She gasped with delight when they finally broke. “I am not the boy I was, and I’ll not let them push me around again.”

It took only a few minutes before the sounds of the approaching Thousand Hands met their ears. They were many in number, Jorgo knew, and there were only a few monks in the Monastery; five at most. The Followers of the Twin Blossom numbered in the twenties or thirties, more than enough to handle the five or six monks, no matter how physically blessed they might be.

A few minutes more, and Jorgo’s mouth dropped. He could see through the trees the approaching monks…there were more than five or six. At least ten…no, twenty monks strode through the forest, several carrying guns. Some wore ancient helmets and battle armor, while others flexed sharp claws and massive fists.

For a brief moment, Jorgo blasphemed with his fear. Then he remembered that the Twin Blossom had blessed both him and his fellows, and even with guns the monks would find themselves hard pressed. Even numbers merely meant they would be less likely to flee. Jorgo grinned at the thought.

Behind him, one of his fellows began to play a light hymn on her harp. His heart swelled with purpose.

All at once, the monks stopped their advance. They stood still and silent for a moment, and then one stepped forward, his hands held high. “We of the Thousand Hands enjoin you of the Twin Blossom to leave this place at once. By the Pact of Peace signed by the representatives of both the Thousand Hands and the Colony of New Holden, no faiths adhering to the Gods of Havoc are permitted. If you do not depart from the Colony at once, your forms will be considered forfeit to be embraced by the Thousand Hands.”

They laughed. Jorgo joined in, pointing at the knobby monk. He even moved like a puppet, a slave to some other being’s mind. One of his fellows called out: “We have every right to be here. You’re the trespassers, get out of out colony!”

The monk turned to face the shouter. “We came at the request of your ancestors. At their bidding, we freed them from the Tyrant of New Holden. Since then, we have taken several of your people into our order, at their request. We now make the same offer to you; you may join us if you seek the divine, but the gods of Havoc may not stay. If you wish to worship them, you must leave the Colony.”

“Leave our home?” Jorgo shouted, holding his hands wide, speaking to both the monks and his fellows. “Why should we leave when we have done nothing wrong? Our bodies, our souls, our minds are our own. Difficult for you monks to understand, I am sure!”

“We understand more than you think,” the monk’s head shivered. “We understand the Fecund Apostate, who gave up their divinity to become physical sores and pustules and so hopes to live forever as an unending plague. We know the Collector of Souls and Drinker of Blood, who eternally sits at their bone table devouring sacrifices claimed by honorable combat, desperately hoping to live another day. Too, the Seeker of Twenty Billion Eyes, who cares for nothing except knowledge and whose ten million pens write incomprehensible secrets long since forgotten.”

The envoy paused and leveled a steely gaze at the gathering. “So too do we know the Twin Blossoms of Autumn, forever fighting with themselves between joy and pain, suffering and delight. Never satisfied, unable to hope.”

“You know nothing!” Jorgo shouted, drawing his sword and brandishing it towards the monk. “We have found happiness, some of us for the first time in our lives! We can move freely, speak freely, find joy freely! You and your numb flesh cannot hope to understand how passionately we will fight to keep our feet on the path of perfection!”

The cracked lips smiled. “I have heard this before; the Blossoms seek perfection through joy, is this not true? Yet there is no joy when flaws shine like glistening sores. There is no perfection when pleasure can be found in mediocrity. Joy requires satisfaction, while perfection is fueled by dissatisfaction. The God of Lust and Passion is forever fighting itself, keeping its path to true divinity ever out of reach.”

“And true divinity is being corrupted by a parasite?” Karna spat on the ground, drawing her own two thin swords. “Being eaten and your body turned into a monster, your soul a slave? Can you understand the beauty in the unique and the joy of experience? Or are you nothing more than a jackal who has soothed their passionless soul with a lie that your scavenging and parasitic need to propagate is somehow holy?

The monks drew closer, their guns shifting in their hands, while the first continued to speak. “If each moment is pure and whole, as you say, then you cannot hope for better. If pain is pleasure, you cannot wish its end; you must drift like a seed-puff on the wind, unable or unwilling to improve. Yet if you truly seek perfection, than there is no single moment that is free from critique. You must focus on the flaws rather than delight in what you have.”

“We delight in everything!” Jorgo shouted. “We have been given joy and are grateful for the blessing!” Karna was shouting too, her own answer to the Monks stoic words. The other fellows were shouting as well, waving their own guns and swords.

Jorgo could feel the wave cresting, the surging passion in each of their bodies was driving them forward. The air was thick with the heady smell of sweat. Unbidden, pushed forward by the zeal of faith, Jorgo took a single step.

A whirring snap echoed through the air. Something spun past Jorgo’s head. Behind him, he heard the crack of tree bark breaking in half. He ducked, far too late for it to have made any difference, and whipped out his hand. The small throwing blade leapt from his hand, lightly bouncing off of a monk’s crusted head.

The air split with a horrifying roar. The trees were shoved aside as a great fleshy monstrosity bore down on them, thick limbs and sharp blades slicing through the air.

Jorgo cried out in mad delight. He should have been afraid, he knew, but somehow his fear could not break through his beating heart. He leapt forward, swinging his sword like a madman.

Something thick hit him in the side, and then he was dancing in the air. He whirled about as the world spun beneath him, the wind hitting his face like a lover’s caress. A tree ran into his leg, and the ground reached up to catch him. The blossoming pain in his leg reached his chest, then his arms, then his whole body. He laughed at the feeling of fire burning in his veins, the light filling his vision, the massive mound of flesh hurtling through the air towards him.

In the ecstasy of faith, he kept his eyes open as death reached towards him…

…And was halted by a flash of steel.

The monster’s roar was answered by a hissing scream. Over his head, Jorgo watched as a massive snake-like shape slipped and slid around the fleshy monstrosity. The pain left his body as he struggled to pull himself up, to watch the unearthly beauty battle the horrible monk, to see the blades and hammers fly through the air.

His last thought before darkness took him was how much their movements were like a dance.