Matt was a useful kid who had a lot of…friends in various places. Looking back on it, we should have noticed he had an incubus heritage. But Sara, his mother, was an old friend’s great-granddaughter and I babysat her once in a while when her parents had no other options. So, I took care of him when he volunteered to join the military.

                He got fired when his various…friends caused a scene and demanded that he pick one of them, which ended with one of the top brass getting involved. Someone died or something, I wasn’t listening since I was one foot out the door bound for retirement.

                When the shoe I borrowed hit him, he hit the deck like a ton of bricks in a bag that’d been liquified. He always was a flexible one.

                He’d also been a tough one, so he popped back up quickly. “General?” Matt’s eyes glazed over a bit. Before focusing on me with confusion. “General?? Where are we? And why is my throat sore?” He rubbed his throat as he looked around the ships covered by a slightly one-sided massacre

                Oh no, I hit him too hard. He didn’t have that many braincells to begin with, Sara was going to be so sad. Well, she already had grandchildren to put her hopes in. …I should probably let Lacie know to keep an eye on those.

                “General?” The boy named Xen that Blackie pointed out before dropped in front of me, but I ignored him. Most of the pirates had either surrendered or died at this point. I swished through the crowds and tossed the now unconscious meat shields out of the way. I gave poor Matt a quick check-up and soon Xen was basically the last one standing.

                “How many fingers am I holding up?” I held up a hand and waved it wildly in his face.

                “3 and a thumb?” He answered correctly. Since he knew my usual tricks, he was the real Matt. With his demon traits showing I had mostly been making a guess based on his familiar theatrics since he looked different from the kid I knew. “Xen? Why are you with the General?” Matt’s head swiveled to look at the other boy, likely a bad move since it caused him to start swaying. Yep, definitely a concussion.

                “…Writhing Death?” The confused Xen probed back.

                “How do you know my old stage name?!” Matt went red, it was a black history of his he’d tried to bury. Unsuccessfully since I made it his code name when he joined the intelligence corps.

                Now I was wishing I’d seen Matt’s eyes when he was monologuing, if there was brainwashing involved, it was basically impossible to trace once it had been broken. There were few that could manipulate a seduction type demon, even a half.

                “You were the one who- where’s Rotting Doom?” He suddenly straightened. I felt the same thing he must have.

                A wave of death washed over us, causing everyone to shiver. Even fewer things in the world could cause a ripple effect that was palpable like that. The cold, familiar energy seeped straight down to my heart.

                I tried to joke, “Why, was he a lich?”

                “…yes, I think he was.” Xen shuffled his feet, evaluating his chances of escape. They were zero, but the question was, was he smart enough to know that?

                I laughed, “Oh, you ******* **** ** * *** * * * * ** * *”

                Matt looked at me in horror, “General!”

                Tightening my grip on his shirt, I lifted him up to eye level. “Matt, you idiot. I don’t care if you’re a hybrid. I don’t care if all of you idiots are hybrids. If that was Babaris, I will kill you all in the most painful and excruciating ways I know how.”

                Matt trembled; his legs loosely dangled as he tried his best not to faint. “General, I-“

                “Thank you.” I smiled, setting him down gently. Xen was standing strictly at attention, his eyes desperately focused at the sky. “Stay here, help clean up.” I pointed at the mess they caused. “And pray to whatever you believe in.”

                If you were to ask me who I prayed to, I couldn’t answer. We were taught to pray to the Lord of Heaven. He is all knowing, benevolent, and we call him our Lord Absolute.

                Technically, I should call him Father.

                Not even my sister knew that. Bel didn’t inherit any of his traits, so mother never told her. Hell, she didn’t tell me. That bastard did.

                You will know suffering all your life, and it will make you all the kinder for it.

                I didn’t want to suffer. I didn’t want to lose. I fought every day, fighting and killing and tearing this damned world to shreds. Suffering did not make me kind. It made me angry, livid, seething with hatred for this fucking world.

                When my mother died at the hands of a demon I saved. When my sister died, tortured for years by a half-breed I refused to kill. When my brother-in-law and all of their children burned for supposed heresy when they refused to go to war after losing their wife and mother. When my children died one, by one, by one. When I watched the people and children I knew grow into families, until all that was left was history, and me. As all around me, the broken fell apart. As only the ones who were whole lived and died with homes.

                How was this supposed to make me kind? How was any of this my fate? And why, why, did it all feel like my fault?

                So, I don’t know who I prayed to as I rushed to him, pleading yet again that I was not too late.

                When I arrived, the doctor was ordering Rip around. An undead I assumed was Rotting Doom was tied to the floor. Babaris was on the operating table, his sword stuck in his chest.

                “We’ll need to be quick. Get all the gauze you can find…” Dr. Wrisly paused, “and my really big needle.”            

                “You can’t just pull it out.” The man with a sword sticking out of his chest corrected the doctor during his own operation. “It’s cursed, you need to cut everything around it to get it out.”

                “I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about demon biology, but you do need your heart to live right?!” Dr. Wrisly shouted at the patient, who looked back rather offended.

                “I’ve got three.”

                Now the doctor was offended, “As if how many you have changes the fact that you need the blood to stay in the body?!”

                Babaris, seeing the point that cutting a giant hole down the center of his chest, including an area where a lot of blood circulates, could be a bad idea for blood flow, conceded the point. Especially since the other two will continue to pump the blood out even if the other stops.

                Dr. Wrisly continued, “Not to mention, I don’t know if I have anything that can cut that kind of hole.”

                “How’s this one?”  Rip pull one out from behind a cabinet was the size of his torso, which was bigger than Babaris.

                “That’s not the point.”