Nerd In The North: 3-4

III-4: Boy Who Killed

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The chapel loomed over the village like a stone god, all shadowed spires and damp cold. Its walls smelled of mildew and desperation, the kind of holy place that didn’t comfort so much as smother. The child, knees raw from kneeling, felt the ache in his legs deep in the bone. His lips moved in whispered prayer, words rolling off his tongue like stones. 

He barely understood them, but that didn’t matter. 

Obedience didn’t need understanding. 

It needed submission.

“Faith without discipline is ash in the wind,” the priest had told him. Father Yurek, old and brittle as dead branches. His breath had stunk of onions and penitence. “And discipline comes from pain.”

He didn’t flinch when the priest rapped his knuckles with the rod.

He’d stopped flinching after the third strike.

———————————————————

The days belonged to the fields. 

The dirt was cold and heavy, clinging to his fingers as he dug rows for the spring. His father’s shadow stretched long beside him, silent, solid, an anchor in the misery of their lives. Lukan’s hands were gnarled things, broken by years of pulling life from dead earth.

“God gives as much as he takes,” Lukan said once, his voice flat.

He wondered why God had taken more from them than anyone else.

The nights were colder. 

His mother, Ysabet, would light a candle, whispering prayers till the flame guttered out. Her face was hollow and drawn, hair of wheat dirty and wan, words sharp like a knife scraping bone.

“He watches, always,” she said. Her gaze burned into her son of seven years, demanding something he didn’t know how to give.

He prayed with her because it seemed to make her happy.

It didn’t make him happy.

———————————————————

The knights came with the next frost, their banners snapping in the wind like the wings of angels.  Except angels didn’t reek of sweat and horse shit, and angels didn’t leave muddy footprints in the snow as they marched into the village square.

He had never seen men like them—broad and scarred, their armor battered, their weapons stained with use. They didn’t look holy. 

They looked tired.

“A call to arms!” one of them bellowed, his voice crack of thunder. “A call to serve the light!”

The villagers gathered, clutching at their thin shawls and casting nervous glances at the knights. 

Father Yurek spoke, his voice trembling with reverence, and the young boy caught fragments—redemption, glory, sacrifice.

He didn’t need to hear the rest.

He stepped forward, his chest tight with something he didn’t yet have a name for.

His father tried to stop him. His mother didn’t.

“You’re too young,” Lukan said, his grip firm on his boy’s arm. “Eight summers.”

“He’s old enough to save his soul,” Ysabet countered, her voice hard as flint.

He yanked free of his father’s grip.

“God will make me strong,” he said. He didn’t believe it, but he said it anyway.

———————————————————

The monastery wasn’t warm, but it was cleaner than home. The first thing they did was cut his hair, shearing it down to the scalp. The second was to strip him of his clothes and his name.

“You are boy,” the trainer said, a man-shaped thing in dented plate. “You are boy until you are ready to be man.”

Boy didn’t argue.

The sword was heavy, the shield worse. He dropped them often, but always picked them back up.

The trainer didn’t yell.

Didn’t need to.

His silence weighed more than his words ever could as the blows came swiftly, each failure met with a lash of the rod across his shoulders or a boot to his ribs. “Through suffering, we find strength,” the trainer said.

Boy’s strength came slowly but it came.

The prayers were harder. They wanted him to mean them.

Faith isn’t just words, boy,” Father Yurek said when he came to oversee their progress. “Faith is your heart made steel.”

Boy whispered the words until his throat went raw.

———————————————————

The other boys broke faster than their blades. Some cried at night, soft, desperate sounds that scraped at the silence like claws. Others stared at the walls, their eyes hollow, their prayers little more than muttered gibberish.

Boy didn’t cry. He prayed, but not for himself. He prayed for his father, for his mother, for the villagers who wouldn’t remember his name.

He prayed for strength.

When the strength came, it wasn’t what he’d expected. It wasn’t clean or holy. It was sharp-edged and brittle, like the blade they’d forced into his hands. It was something that had to be used before it shattered.

At ten, boy could swing a sword as well as the older trainees. Better, sometimes as good as the men. His blows were steady, deliberate, each strike aimed to kill.

“Good,” the trainer said. “But God doesn’t need swords. He needs soldiers.”

Boy nodded. He didn’t know what he was anymore, but he knew what he wasn’t: weak.

The first time he sparred with another boy, he didn’t pull his blows. He knocked the other boy to the ground, his sword cracking against the boy’s arm with a sound like splitting wood.

The trainer smiled.

“Faith,” he said, “is in the breaking.”

———————————————————

Boy was twelve when he killed his first man.

The sword was too big for him. The leather-wrapped hilt bit into his palm, awkward and unwieldy. He’d dragged it through the mud behind the others, its weight a constant reminder that it didn’t belong in his hands. The village ahead was a ruin of ash and rot, the stench rolling over them like a sickness.

He gagged once, but only once.

The men muttered prayers through clenched teeth, their breaths hanging like ghosts in the frost-bitten air. They didn’t look at him.

Didn’t need to.

He lagged behind, his boots slipping in the half-frozen sludge. “Keep up.” The captain’s voice was a low growl, cutting through the brittle silence.

Boy nodded. He clenched his jaw tight and trudged forward, the sword banging against his leg.

He saw the man—or the thing that looked like a man—before the others did. It shambled out, head cocked unnaturally, rags clinging to its skeletal frame. For a moment, it just stood there, swaying like a broken marionette.

Then it moved.

The creature leapt, claws glinting in the weak winter light, and tackled the rearmost knight to the ground. The sound of metal on bone—tearing, cracking—snapped through the air like a whip.

Boy froze, the sword dangling limp in his hand.

“Strike, boy!” The captain’s shout was thunder, shaking the marrow in his bones.

The creature turned, its head jerking toward him like it was being dragged on strings. Its eyes weren’t human. Milky white, too wide, staring straight through him. Its mouth twisted into a grin full of blackened teeth.

Boy’s breath hitched. His chest locked up. It wasn’t human. Couldn’t be.

Could it?

The captain shoved him forward, hard enough that his knees nearly buckled. “Do it!”

His arms moved before his mind caught up. The sword came up, heavy and clumsy, and he swung with all the strength his wiry frame could muster. The blade bit deep into the creature’s chest with a wet crunch, and for a second, it hung there, lodged in flesh and bone.

The thing twitched. Its mouth worked soundlessly, blood bubbling from its lips, its body jerking like a fish stranded on a riverbank.

The captain’s grin faltered, only just slightly, as he looked at the blood still clinging to the boy’s sword. “Good,” he muttered, his voice quieter than before.

Boy stumbled back, his arms numb, the sword still clutched in his trembling hands.

“That’s the way,” the captain said, clapping him on the shoulder. His voice was distant, muffled, as if coming from underwater. “That’s the way.”

Boy stared down at the body. The blood spread slowly, seeping into the frozen ground, steam rising where it met the cold.

He vomited.

———————————————————

“It wasn’t a man,” they told him later by the fire, a woolen blanket draped over his shaking shoulders. “Not anymore. It was corrupted, lost to the dark. You did well. You showed mercy.”

Mercy. He turned the word over in his mind, trying to find its shape, its weight. All he felt was the resistance of the blade as it tore through muscle, the warmth of the blood on his hands.

He whispered the words they gave him in his prayers that night, kneeling on the cold stone floor. His voice cracked, the verses spilling out in uneven gasps. He begged for forgiveness, though he didn’t know what for.

His hands trembled, even clasped tightly together.

The training should have ground it out of the boy.

The fear, the doubt, the softness.

Every swing of the sword had stripped another layer away, every bruise and blister shaping him into something harder. Boy had learned to strike without hesitation, to meet the cries of the fallen with silence, to bury every doubt under layers of discipline and prayer.

“Strength is in faith,” they told him.

He repeated it to himself, over and over, until the words stopped meaning anything and became truth.

But sometimes, in the dark, the doubts crept back. When the others were asleep, their snores low and uneven, he stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the gasping thing in the village, its blood steaming on the frozen ground.

He prayed harder on those nights. Pressed his forehead to the stone until it ached, his whispers frantic, pleading.

“Lord, guide me. Make me your sword.”

He had to believe.

He had to.

———————————————————

The boy’s body failed before his faith did. The demon’s roar filled the narrow tunnel, a sound that felt alive, coiling around Boy’s ears, burrowing deep into his mind. The others stumbled back, their faces pale in the flickering torchlight. One dropped his sword, the clang echoing against the stone walls.

“Hold the line!” Boy bellowed, his voice cracking, his chest heaving.

No one moved.

So he raised his shield, battered and splintered but still standing, and slammed it against the ground. The sound rang out, sharp and clear, cutting through the chaos. Light pulsed from the edges of the shield, faint at first, then growing stronger, a halo of gold that enveloped him. “Bulwark of faith!” he shouted, his words a challenge, a prayer, a promise.

The demon turned its burning eyes on him. It was massive, a shifting mass of shadow and bone, its claws gleaming like blackened steel. It lunged, faster than anything that size should be.

The blow came down hard, claws raking against his shield with a deafening crash. The impact rattled his bones, sent his knees buckling, but he held firm.

“You’ll not have them,” he growled, gritting his teeth, his arms trembling under the weight of the attack. He braced his legs, boots scraping on blood-slick stone. Another strike. Another deafening crack as claws met the battered shield. His legs buckled, the weight of exhaustion pressing on his shoulders, heavier than the battered remnants of his armor. But he held firm. His blade was nicked and slick with ichor, but his grip didn’t falter. Not yet.

Blood slicked his forehead, dripping into his eyes, blinding him in streaks of red. The world blurred—the jagged walls of the dungeon, the crumbling stone beneath his feet, the flickering light of the dying torches. All of it faded, replaced by the creature.

The demon filled the tunnel, a hulking mass of shadows and bone and wrongness. Its maw gaped wide, teeth like jagged tombstones. Its eyes burned with something ancient and hateful, something older than the prayers on his lips.

“Lord,” he whispered, the word breaking against his cracked lips.

The others had fallen back. Cowards. No—he couldn’t think that. They weren’t cowards. They were human, too human for the thing in front of them.

But the boy was something else now.

His mind went back to the first man he killed. 

Or maybe it was the tent, or the fiftieth. 

The faces blurred together, their eyes wide and accusing, their mouths open in silent screams. He whispered a prayer, the words tumbling out in a frantic rush, barely coherent.

His boots slid on the blood-slick stone as he lunged forward. His knees screamed, his muscles threatening to give, but he forced himself upright. He thought of the altar back home, the feel of stone beneath his palms, the cold that crept into his bones as he prayed.

“Faith without discipline is ash in the wind,” Father Yurek had said.

This was discipline.

The next blow caught him across the chest, sent him sprawling backward. The breath left him in a rush, pain blooming across his ribs.

He rolled to his feet, teeth bared, blood in his mouth. His shield was gone, shattered in the dirt. He still had his sword. That would have to be enough.

“Light guides me,” he growled, steadying his grip, the blade heavy in his trembling hands.

The demon lunged, faster than something so large should move. Its claws came for his throat.

Boy ducked, twisted, felt the air scream past his ear. He brought the pommel of his sword up with a desperate swing, slamming it into the creature’s jaw.

“The blind shall falter,” he hissed.

Light flashed at the impact, searing and pure, and the demon staggered. Its limbs flailed, claws scraping against the walls as it shrieked.

He didn’t give it time to recover.

“Justice does not wait!” He drove his blade into its side, his weight behind the thrust, tar spraying hot and vile against his face. The creature howled, twisting, its massive bulk slamming him into the wall.

His vision blurred. The stone was cold against his back, the air knocked from his lungs, but he pushed himself upright.

The demon reared back, its form shifting, twisting, impossibly wrong.

Boy raised his sword.

“You’ll not escape his light!” he screamed as he charged, his boots slipping on the wet stone, his body screaming in protest. The blade plunged into the demon’s torso, the force of the impact driving him forward.

His sword trailed light as it carved through the demon’s chest.”For the faithful!” he roared, wrenching the blade free with a spray of tar.

The demon struck again, monstrous unholy claws catching him across the shoulder. Pain flared white-hot, and he dropped to one knee.

He clenched his jaw, his vision swimming. “Rise, fool,” he growled at himself, his breath ragged. “Faith is a blade unbroken.”

He stood, barely, his legs shaking, his grip on the sword unsteady as the demon lunged, its maw wide, its claws raised to end him.

“No further!” he twisted, his blade flashing upward, catching the creature under the jaw. The steel scraped bone, severed something vital.

But it wasn’t enough.

It kept coming.

His body was failing, his vision narrowing to a pinprick, but he couldn’t stop. 

Not yet.

“Lord, grant me strength,” he whispered, the words barely audible, trembling.

The demon loomed over him, its massive form blotting out the torchlight, its shadow swallowing him whole. In a rampage, it’s claws raked through the air, and he ducked, slower each time

“Faith,” he muttered, his breath ragged.

His sword came up, shaking, the hilt digging into his palm. The swing was slow, the arc uneven, but it hit. The blade bit into the demon’s flank, and black blood sprayed, warm and thick, coating his arms. The creature roared, a sound that wasn’t sound, that crawled into his ears and burrowed into his skull.

He staggered but didn’t fall.

Another step forward. His legs felt like lead, every movement a battle of its own.

“For the Lord,” he rasped, his voice raw, broken.

The demon turned, faster than anything that size had any right to. Its claws came again, raking across his chest. The force sent him stumbling back, his armor groaning under the impact.

He didn’t scream. The breath left him in a sharp, choked sound, but he stayed upright.

The sword was still in his hand.

He held it up, the blade catching the faint light from the torches. It trembled, the weight of it too much for his arms, but he didn’t lower it.

He saw his father’s face then, lined and hard, staring at him across the fields. He saw his mother, her hands folded in prayer, her lips moving silently. He saw the faces of the other boys, their fear, their broken faith.

He saw the chapel, the stone altar, the cold that seeped into his knees as he prayed for strength.

The demon lunged.

“SMITE!” The word tore from the boy’s throat, not a scream but something lower, deeper, raw and feral.

No. Not the boy. Not anymore.

He remembered his name now.

Grigori Veder.

The name meant nothing, less than nothing. He was a blade, a vessel, a hollow thing filled with light and rage and purpose.

The sword came down, trailing a streak of golden light. It carved through the demon’s chest, through bone and shadow and sinew, sinking deep. The light burst, searing and pure, flooding the tunnel in a blaze that swallowed everything.

The creature howled, its body convulsing, its form unraveling into a mass of black smoke and bone. The walls groaned, the ceiling cracked, and the ground beneath them gave way.

The last thing Grigori saw was the light.

———————————————————

When they dug him out, there wasn’t much left. His body was broken, twisted under the weight of the rubble. But his hands still clutched the hilt of his shattered sword, his knuckles white.

His face was still. Serene. Smiling.

“Through suffering,” the priest of his team whispered, the man kneeling in the rubble and voice trembling with awe, “he found faith.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Greg adjusted his fine blue tunic, the motion steady until the room lurched.

He stumbled, his breath catching as a sharp pain stabbed through his skull. His palm flew to his forehead, pressing hard against the now dull throbbing. Memories surged, vivid and impossibly real as an entire life hit him like a brick wall.

A gasp tore from his throat, ragged and involuntary. “God-fuck!” 

The words came out low, almost spat, and they didn’t feel right on his tongue. Like part of him was offended at himself?

His breaths came fast and shallow, his chest heaving as he blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the room around him. Grigori? Me? Who the hell even is that?

Greg’s knees wobbled for a moment, his fingers curling into fists at his sides as if to anchor himself. There was something disturbingly whole about these memories, not like the fragmented flashes of Greta, the battle nun he vaguely remembered dying as, or the barely remembered life as Genji, the weird ninja elf kid…

No, this felt fuller, sharper, an entire life crammed into his head like a too-small box.

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the disorientation to settle, the dull ache in his skull receding ever so slightly.

A voice broke through the haze, grounding him in the present. ‘M’lord?’ Gwenna stood in the doorway, her red hair tangled and her dress still covered with blood.

Greg frowned despite himself.

The sight of her like that—it didn’t sit right. she looked too calm for someone splattered with blood, like she’d scrubbed the emotion off her face as easily as he usually had to.

“Ye alright, m’lord?” her voice was careful, measured, but her eyes flicked over him, searching for something.

Greg hesitated, the question hanging in the air longer than it should. “I’m fine, Gwenna,” he lied, his voice steady enough to pass for truth. the words tasted sour, his mind still spinning from the flood of memories. I died. Again. What the actual hell is wrong with my lives?

He clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding together as he tried to wrestle the spiraling thoughts into submission. One time is bad luck. Twice is coincidence. Still though…. ominous.

His eyes narrowed, a flicker of irritation breaking through the confusion until he felt the world go distant and his soul spun, strength filling him again. When he came back again, blinking, he glanced back at Gwenna, catching the way her hands fidgeted at her sides despite her otherwise composed demeanor.

“Really,” he added, forcing a smile onto his face. It felt strained at first, but the edges softened as he caught her uncertain expression. The girl looked like she wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not, her gaze darting between his face and the scarf he was still adjusting absently.

Gwenna didn’t respond immediately, her brow furrowing like she wanted to argue but didn’t quite know how. Instead, she nodded slowly, her expression relaxing just enough to let a faint smile flicker across her face.

Greg let out a small breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, his shoulders loosening as the weight of her scrutiny lifted. alright. Still, though…

Dying at fifteen was starting to feel like a pattern, one he wasn’t particularly fond of. He couldn’t stop the dark thought that flickered through his mind: that better not be some kind of omen.

His smile grew more real as he pushed that weirdness to the back of his mind. Tucking his weirwood necklace under his shirt, the blond clicked his tongue.

He turned his gaze back on Gwenna, her expression caught somewhere between a smile and something harder to pin down. She hadn’t moved from where she stood, still in that blood-smeared dress, holding herself like she wasn’t fifteen minutes removed from the second-worst day of her life. “And you know you don’t have to call me m’lord, you know?”

Gwenna’s smile grew as well. “I know.”

Greg raised an eyebrow. “…alrighty, then.” His gaze dropped down to something he just noticed in the girl’s hands.

A sword, sheathed and clean despite everything else about her being the opposite. His own smile slipped away, replaced by something heavier.

“You know how to swing a sword?” he asked, nodding toward it.

Gwenna glanced down at her hands, her grip tightening slightly around the hilt. “I… know yer goin’ after them Bolton bastards. After yer sword,” she said, her voice careful, deliberate, not even responding to Greg’s joke. “But ye can’t fight wi’out a blade, can ye? So, I took this off one o’ the dead. Proper shame fer it to sit rottin’, an’ they’ll not have need for it in th’ hells.” She added the last part with a hesitant smile, her accent broadening slightly as the words tumbled out.

Greg’s mouth twitched slightly, unsure if he wanted to smile or frown.

She took in a sharp breath. “Yer sword’s magic and rare, but we couldn’t leave ye defenseless, m’lord. Wouldn’t be right.”

My sword, Greg thought, his fists clenching at the memory. it wasn’t just a weapon. it was his, a part of him in a way he couldn’t explain without sounding straight-up insane. Yeah, I think my sword kinda talks to me, like not with words, but I get the gist. And now those Bolton bastards had it, probably parading it around like a trophy.

Losing it felt like losing a part of him and it stung.

Apparently, the villagers had been unable to move it from where it was lodged in the ground, in all their attempts to bring it inside during the seven days — seven fucking days, what the fuck, man? — he had been unconscious. The strongest men in town had taken turns, each one barely managing to budge it before giving up.

It would’ve been funny—like some sword-in-the-stone bullshit—if it wasn’t his sword. 

If it wasn’t right now.

Losing it wasn’t just an insult. 

It was a challenge, and Greg wasn’t one to back down.

His jaw tightened, the tension running from his teeth to his fists. He shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice low but firm.

Gwenna’s brow furrowed, her mouth opening slightly like she wanted to protest, but Greg wasn’t paying attention anymore. 

His eyes had dropped to his hand, fingers curling into a fist as something hot and bright surged through his chest. “Won’t need one.”

He raised his hand, the glow catching his knuckles as it spread, faint and golden and nothing like the magic he usually relied on. This wasn’t healing. 

It was something else.

The single word rang in his head; clear, unbidden and undeniable.

SMITE!

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

10k Words – 100 GP

Roll: Magically Gifted [Final Fantasy XI] {Source} (100): You may not be much physically but mentally and magically you are gifted, this talent shows itself as a slightly larger than normal pool of magic to draw upon allowing you to cast longer and better than others of the same class as yourself.

Grimoire Points: 550