Zeke stumbled toward the village, the weight of his struggles heavy on his shoulders. It would only take a simple pulse of divine energy to get him back to full strength, but he would need to keep it going if he wanted to continue to reap the benefits. So, he kept a tight hold on his core, clamping down and giving the divine energy no way to escape.

  And because of that, he experienced a brief respite from the pain that had accompanied him for so long. The echoes remained, tormenting him with the memory of the agony he’d endured, but they were nothing compared to the real thing.

  Or so he kept telling himself.

  Perhaps the only real effect was to comfort himself from the wild thoughts plaguing his mind and telling him in no uncertain terms that his future only held more of the same. Contemplating an eternity of such agony was a torture of a different sort, though it was no less effective than being burned by divine flames.

  He tripped, catching himself on a ragged fence post. Barely managing to hold himself upright, Zeke took a moment to study the tiny village before him. It was composed of only a dozen or so buildings, most of which were crudely built, with thatched roofs and poorly assembled chimneys. Many of the stones used to build those smokestacks were uneven and covered in grime.

  The streets were muddy from a recent rain Zeke hadn’t experienced, and the sky was predictably overcast. The entire place looked like someone had been tasked with building the most depressing place in existence, and the few people he saw stuck to that theme. Dirty and wearing little more than rags, they were each clearly malnourished and sickly pale.

  But at least their mouths weren’t sewn shut.

  That was a comfort, if a small one.

  Zeke pushed away from the fence and, with some effort, straightened himself to his full height. He pushed forward rigidly, each step measured and every movement limited. Anything else, and he’d have likely tipped over into the mud.

  “Have you no shame?” exclaimed a painfully thin woman.

  “W-what?”

  She sneered at him, then turned away, a yoke bearing twin buckets of water on her shoulders. It looked far too heavy for such a thin woman.

  Before Zeke could think of what was going on, something hit him in the chest. He staggered back and nearly fell into the thick mud. He was on the verge of embracing his divinity when he saw what had hit him.

  It was a bundle of cloth.

  “Put that on, you damned pervert. There are womenfolk present.”

  Only then did Zeke realize that he’d been walking around naked. In the forest – or truly, since coming to Hell in the first place – his clothes had taken a beating. More than once, they’d been ripped to pieces only to return unbidden. He barely even noticed it among all the other oddities that came with his descent. But between, he’d become very comfortable with his own nudity, and to the point where he scarcely even noticed it.

  Now, he definitely noticed it, and for the first time in recent memory, he felt a distinct sense of shame.

  Was that from the situation? Or was it the circle affecting his mind?

  Zeke wasn’t certain, but he still couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the cloth, which turned out to be entirely formless, and wrapped it around his waste like a towel. It barely fit, but it was enough to keep himself decent.

  Not that it seemed to matter to the village’s residents. More of them had come out from their homes, and they didn’t look happy to see him. They all glared at him, muttering under their breath as he took another few steps.

  “You keep moving,” growled the man who’d thrown the cloth at him. “We don’t take kindly to your sort around here.”

  “What sort?” asked Zeke.

  “You know what you are.”

  “I genuinely don’t,” Zeke argued. But it didn’t matter. The man gave him one last glare, then stormed away, kicking up mud along the way. For his part, Zeke had no idea what he was meant to do, so he intended to just keep going, as the man suggested. However, with every step, his body felt heavier, and he soon found that he could scarcely continue standing.

  He staggered into one of the alleys, then plopped down to the ground. Thankfully, he managed to turn his head, but when he hit, mud and water splashed all around him. He couldn’t move. He could barely think. So, he just lay there with time passing until, at last, his eyes fell shut.

  He slept, but he did not dream. Every now and again, his eyes fluttered open to reveal various scenes he did not understand. People gathered around him. Screaming. Pain that continued to mount until his eyes snapped open and he beheld the scene all around him.

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  Bodies.

  Hundreds of them. All naked and bloody. Some had been ripped to pieces. Others had been violated in other ways. Zeke tried to move, but he quickly discovered that he couldn’t, on account of the fact that he had been crucified.

  Once again naked, he hung from a cross, his arms and legs nailed to the rough boards with what looked like rusty railroad spikes. He was reminded of the dwarven prince he’d found in a very similar situation.

  Looking down, Zeke saw that his body was just as emaciated as those of the villagers. It was like he hadn’t eaten in months. A crow landed on his outstretched arm and tore a hunk of flesh from his bicep. He screamed at it, but he couldn’t even move a muscle, much less scare it off.

  The thing ripped another bit of flesh from his arm.

  That’s when Zeke started to panic. He’d rarely encountered situations that truly frightened him, but the idea of being crucified and left to die was definitely enough to elicit terror.

  Zeke screamed himself hoarse, but nothing seemed to help. If anything, his pleas attracted more scavenging birds. Soon enough, he was being torn to pieces by the carrion eaters.

  Eventually, when all his strength fled and he was little more than a skeleton, he once again passed out. Then, some indeterminate time later, he jerked awake only to find his body restored and the crows having returned. That’s when they resumed the slow and agonizing process of picking him apart, one beak-full at a time.

  Zeke screamed again, but it did as little good as the first time. And he ended up getting reduced to little more than a skeleton before, again, passing out. Sometime later, he awoke to the same scenario and resumed the cycle.

  After that, he scarcely marked the passage of time. There was a unique pain to being eaten alive. It wasn’t more difficult to endure than being burned or any of the other punishments inflicted upon him. However, it was definitely different. Each cycle followed a unique pattern, too. One time, the crows began with his legs. The next, they pecked out his eyes.

  So, he never knew what sort of pain to expect.

  And then, suddenly, after hundreds of cycles, he opened his eyes to find that something had changed. He still hung from that same cross, but there were no bodies surrounding him. There were no crows, either.

  Just a single man standing before him, his arms clasped behind his back as he looked up at Zeke’s ravaged body. In some ways, he was entirely unremarkable. Certainly, his features weren’t memorable. He wore a black suit which lacked a tie, a high, white collar that Zeke thought looked a bit like it might belong to a priest, and a wide-brimmed hat.

  Pointedly, it was not a cowboy hat. Instead, it reminded him of a bowler, but with a wider profile. However, Zeke didn’t have time to focus on the man’s attire before the newcomer spoke.

  “Admit your sins, and your suffering shall end,” he said. “You are a murderer and worse. You deserve to suffer a thousand agonizing deaths for what you have done.”

  “I’ve done nothing,” Zeke croaked.

  “You slaughtered this village. Do you not remember? It matters not. Your memory is insufficient. Your guilt is certain, but our laws require a confession,” the man stated. “Give me what I need, and your pain can end.”

  “No,” Zeke said. “I’ve killed a lot of people. Thousands. Millions have died due to my actions. But I didn’t kill the people who lived here.”

  “Is that your final statement?”

  “It is.”

  “Then I name you liar and pronounce your fate. You shall suffer until such time as you are ready to admit your guilt,” the man said dispassionately. “The scales of justice must be balanced.”

  “Justice? You don’t care about justice. You just want someone to blame. You’re nothing but a pawn in someone else’s game, and you don’t even know it!” Zeke shouted. “You can –”

  Just then, a crow swooped in and clawed his face. It thrust its beak into his mouth and ripped out his tongue.

  “You need not speak unless you are ready to admit your guilt,” the man said.

  After that, a hundred more crows landed upon him, and the cycle continued. Beneath the pain, something tickled at the back of Zeke’s mind, but amidst the torture, he couldn’t focus on rational thought. In the end, he died just like he had a hundred times before, only to repeat the process the moment his body reset.

  Most people would claim that a person could adapt to just about anything. That was humanity’s true superpower, after all.

  It was bullshit.

  The person who said that had never been ripped apart by crows, forced to die a thousand times without fail.

  For the first time since his descent began, Zeke considered simply giving in. If he admitted to killing those people, he could end it. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that he hadn’t done it didn’t really matter. Was he truly expected to suffer for all eternity so he could accomplish a quest whose end he wasn’t even certain about?

  But in the end, Zeke couldn’t let himself do that.

  The man offered the same deal dozens of times, but Zeke refused to give in. Not because he made a conscious choice. At some point, he stopped thinking rationally. Instead, his every instinct rebelled at the notion of letting his enemy win.

  So even as he endured one death after another, Zeke’s resentment and fury built. At first, it was little more than a spark, but it soon became something far more prolific. The latest accuser – for that was what he was, despite the lack of sewn-together lips – laughed at his building anger, telling him it was useless.

  That was only fuel for the fire.

  And then, something else ignited. Divine energy burst forth, surging through his body. Until that very moment, he’d forgotten all about it. But now that it had wrapped itself around him, he could remember everything.

  One of the crows tore at him, but his divine flesh exploded in its mouth. The thing fell, headless, to the ground.

  The accuser screamed, wordlessly at first, and then more articulately, “You dare?!”

  Zeke didn’t listen.

  He wasn’t interested in whatever useless accusations the man intended to hurl in his direction. Instead, he pulsed [Hand of Divinity], then ripped his right arm free of the cross. The half-dozen spikes tore through his flesh, which reformed only a moment later. Then, he pulled the other arm free, and to similar effect.

  Soon enough, his legs were freed as well. He fell to the ground face-first. When he rose a few seconds later, he found the accuser staring at him like he’d just insulted his mother.

  Zeke picked himself up, saying, “You really thought I’d just hang up there and take it?”

  “You deserve that and more, heretic!”

  Zeke rolled his shoulders. “Yeah. Probably.”

  Then, he took a step forward, ready to make the man pay for every bit of pain he’d inflicted upon him.