The pain was never ending, and he knew he could make it stop if he just got off the altar. It continued. It continued, and it continued, and it continued. He couldn’t breathe through it, couldn’t focus, couldn’t feel anything but the agony.

If he got off the altar, he died.

He knew that.

If he got off the altar, he died.

He gasped in agony, twitched, and shuddered. He had long since screamed out his lungs. At some point, his nose had started bleeding, and hadn’t stopped. Holy couldn’t manage so much as a whimper now, and the blood was flowing down his face. He was sure it was coming out of his eyes and ears. They felt wet. He shuddered, the pain wracking through him. It felt like every nerve had been dipped in boiling oil from a deep fryer. He had no idea how to function through it.

He was scared. If this pain continued, his heart may stop. At some point, he had pissed himself. He had no idea how many days he had been sitting here like this, how much longer it would continue.

“I want to live,” he whispered with a cracked voice, and there was a hum above him.

“Then, live, little lamb,” the voice said, and he arched up and shuddered. His arm twitched, flinging back and hitting the edge of the platform hard, and the pain, impossibly, dialed up to an eleven. If he had music or something, he thought he might be able to bear it, but it was silent except for his harsh pants and audible shivers. It was getting colder and colder, and his breath was frosting in the air before him.

“Why--- why are you doing this to me?” he asked through wet tears, and then he shuddered again.

“Because you are chosen,” the voice said, and he didn’t know what that meant. “If you are to be my champion, my executioner, then you must be forged in fire.”

My… executioner…? What did that mea---

Fresh pain rolled over him, and he let out a ragged scream, arching off the altar and rolling onto his side. Blood smeared across the altar, and he inhaled painfully.

Ever since he was a child, he wondered what the hand of God felt like. He wondered, he dreamt, he prayed that he could touch His hand, and that little girl had been left alone. That little girl used to pray to God to kill her, because she didn’t want to die sinfully. He had first shown his first signs of suicidal ideations when he was ten years old, and that had continued on for a decade now.

This felt like the hand of God. Cruel, uncaring, touching a mortal’s soul without thought or care to the damage it could do.

He had always been afraid of what happened when everything ended. He didn’t know if he believed in a soul, but it sure felt like he had a soul right now. If anything, the atheist method of thought scared him more than anything else. The idea that when you died, you just ceased to exist. He would rather be reincarnated. But, in his mind, there were only two real options: Hell or nothing.

He was still afraid of Hell.

He had too little faith to die, and too much fear to live.

It was a ridiculous place to be in.

His breath rasped as he tried to get air into his lungs, and he shuddered again, curling into the fetal position.

His over-long nails scrabbled on the surface of the altar, snagging on the grooves of the carvings he didn’t understand, and he prayed this would all be over soon.

….

Antoni Freedman stared out at the expanse of the desert through the window of the plane. A hidden dungeon, in Phoenix, of all the places. Well, technically, it was Scottsdale. It was supposed to be D-rank, but there were C-rank monsters inside, and when the team ran, they left behind some little D-rank that triggered the hidden dungeon when she was abandoned.

It was stupid. It was colossally stupid, and he was annoyed about the whole situation. Arizona didn’t even have good food. He was going to have a hell of a time here, and of course it was S-rank. It would level half of the fastest growing city in the United States within hours, and they would have to deal with the entire situation. It was worse than a hurricane. He was fucking pissed as shit, and he didn’t want to be here, but when Brett Waymon asked you to do something, you did it. You didn’t whine and bitch about it.

Maybe the Grindr scene here was good, he thought as he stared at the lines of cars clogging up the freeway as people tried to get out of the metropolitan area. He opened his chat and checked it, and almost immediately got a tap, and then a message. Wow. Even in the face of outright destruction, gay men were still trying to get some. Interesting.

He braced his chin in his hand and scrolled through the available profiles. Jesus Christ, was everyone down low out here? That was a lot of faceless, body-less profiles. He at least had his shirtless torso posted.

A sigh escaped his lips, and he resumed staring out the window. Why was he even bothering? He didn’t actually want to get laid out here. Besides, the stamina of down low men was absolute fucking shit. He practically needed another S-rank to keep up with him. It looked like a sea of tops, anyways, with a smattering of twinks and femboys, so he would probably just go to a gay bar and pick up someone there rather than compete on Grindr for the attention of those few bottoms that were probably getting thrown around left and right by mediocre tops that knew how to talk themselves up as being hardcore.

He let the messages pour in for a bit, and then he turned his phone to airplane mode as the pleasant voice of the flight attendant asked everyone to turn off their phones and fasten their seatbelts for landing.

The plane started to descend, and he breathed out as he patiently waited for it to land. He was tired, and was probably just going to pass out at the hotel before he sent his people to go get some food. There was probably some restaurant open in the entire… valley? Was that what the locals called it? Yeah, it was the valley. Easier than calling it the Phoenix metropolitan area. Apparently, people were celebrating Scottsdale getting wrecked on social media. It was apparently a higher tax bracket in that particular city.

He rapped his nails on the armrest, and the plane eventually landed. He was in first class, so he would get off first, and so he got up and got down his carry on. He didn’t intend to stay here for the clean up. The virtually empty first class filtered out, and he headed out into the long hallway that led to the terminal. He had only brought his carryon, not intending to stay here long, and it was probably for the best that way.

It was a shame they couldn’t reclaim the body, he thought to himself. That girl… hadn’t she only been twenty? The news reports were reporting her as a girl, but the photos attached… Either she had a hormone disorder, or she was intersex, or she was a trans man. The effects of testosterone were obvious. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, beyond wondering what name she was going to be buried under. He had never rolled in the bed with a trans man. It was a pity he couldn’t save her and give her a pity fuck.

He?

He had only interacted with one trans woman in his life, and never interacted with another trans person to his knowledge. He had no idea what the rules were there, had never paid all that much attention.

“Antoni!” someone called as he stepped outside, and the cameras immediately began to flash. “You’re the first S-rank to arrive from the East Coast! Do you have any comments on how you’re going to handle the dungeon break?”

“There’s no real way to handle an S-rank dungeon break,” Antoni replied as he slid on his sunglasses, because it was shiny out here. “You just blow up as much shit as you can and move on.”

“Do you have any comments on the rumors that it was a trans man left behind by his team?” a reporter asked, and Antoni lifted his eyebrows.

“I don’t comment on rumors. The parents are asserting it was a girl, so it was a girl,” he said, and pushed past the reporter.

“So, you’re a transphobe?”

“I don’t have enough information to confirm or deny, and I’m not going to waste my time looking into a little dead D-rank,” he said as he continued to walk.

“Antoni!” someone called, and he ducked into the waiting car from the local Hunter Association HQ. The official closed the door and circled around to climb in behind him, and they pulled out. His fingers rapped on his thigh as he stared outside, and the official cleared his throat.

“Thanks for being the first to show up.  The dungeon is due to open in a day,” he said, and Antoni hummed.

“Great,” he drawled. He took the first flight he could out, and it was a narrow thing. His team was coming on the next flight, and he would have to arrange for a bus to pick them up. He hoped this wouldn’t be a problem. It wouldn’t be a huge loss if they lost Phoenix, but the mining… Losing those freeways would definitely impact copper prices, and then everything would go up.

Ah, whatever. He wouldn’t be all that affected by it. Even so, he would still put in his best effort.

Unbidden, his thoughts trailed to that kid… He shouldn’t call her a kid. She was only six years younger than him. Even so, it was bothering him, so he unlocked his phone, switched it off airplane mode, and opened up HunterWatch. What was her username again? HolyWar, that was it. He typed it into the search bar, and pulled up a video.

“Hey, guys, HolyWar here again,” came a very male voice as the GoPro footage swept over a literal bloodbath. “I bet you’re wondering how we got here. Let’s go back by a few hours, yeah? This was a long dungeon, so this footage will be heavily edited with only the best fighting reels.”

Antoni settled back and watched the footage. In his bio, he had his pronouns. He/him, so that solved that mystery. His parents were probably transphobic or something. Ah, Antoni was going to be ripped apart in the media for saying that. Whatever.

He braced his chin in his hand. For a D-rank, he was pretty good. Fast, quick on his feet, and more importantly, always seemed to know when something was coming. He was able to anticipate moves before they hit him, which pointed to him being a natural combatant. That was good. He had a pretty steady online presence, with uploads coming about once a month, and exclusive Patreon streams. He had a YouTube on the side where he streamed himself playing video games, which was… cool, or whatever, but why would a hunter even bother with video games? The dungeons were better. Whatever. Diversifying his income or something, probably.

It was a shame. He was only twenty, and had only been doing this two years. He didn’t deserve to get abandoned by his team in a dungeon like that. As the youngest, they should have made sure he got out first.

A sigh escaped his lips, and he locked his phone and stared out the window.

“Miserable place, isn’t it?” he asked the official, who nervously cleared his throat.

“It’s not so bad,” he said, and Antoni raised an eyebrow.

“Really,” he drawled, and the official coughed.

“In the meantime, I need to get your signature on a few items,” he said, and held out his clipboard. Antoni took it and scanned over the words on the paper there, and squinted.

“That’s not a good division of mana stones,” he said, and handed the clipboard back. “I want to renegotiate.”

“Ah… Right,” the official muttered. “I’ll discuss it with the branch head.”

“Mmm. Or I will,” Antoni said. “I know there’s no real keeping track of who kills what, but that’s just not good enough for me.”

“Understood, sir,” the official said and took the pen back. “I’ll check in with Andreas. He’ll get back to you with a better proposal.”

“We have a day before that egg cracks, so he’d better figure it out quick,” Antoni said dryly, and the official dipped his head.

“We’ll find something that works for all parties,” he promised.

Gah. Antoni couldn’t wait to get out of this shithole. Seriously, who needed so many freeways?

“He was a good hunter,” the official muttered, and Antoni lifted an eyebrow.

“What?” he asked, and the official startled.

“Holy,” he said, and right, that was his chosen name.

“You knew him?” Antoni asked, and the official nodded.

“He… he was going to get his top surgery done in the next few weeks. I think it was three weeks away,” he said, and Antoni frowned. Top surgery…? Oh, right, when transmascs got their tits chopped off.

“Oh,” Antoni said, flat, because he honestly couldn’t give less of a fuck about some little upstart D-ranker that made most of his money off whoring himself out for views.

“He was so happy,” the official muttered and looked out the window. “He was just a kid…”

Just a kid, huh? Well, he was old enough to be an idiot and take his life into his own hands. If he was old enough to vote, he was old enough to die, as far as Antoni was concerned.

“I don’t know how you could consider a D-rank a good hunter,” Antoni said, dry, and the official flushed.

“Rank doesn’t mean someone’s a bad hunter. If he was S-rank, he would have been among the best,” he said, and Antoni lifted his eyebrows.

“But, he wasn’t---” he said, and cut himself off, because… What if he re-awakened? It was rare enough, but possible.

Even if he did re-awaken, he couldn’t survive in a S-ranked dungeon for four days as a solo hunter. So, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, and Antoni braced his chin in his hand as he stared out the window.

Shame. He was cute, too. Those puppy dog brown eyes could do a lot to a man. Antoni had always liked brown eyes.

Ah, he would find someone else to fuck.