Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Once Upon a Time 1.0

Once upon a time...

There was a man of simple means, a man in his 30's with the world at his feet - and yet, all he wanted to do was spend his time with his wife and make the best loaf of bread in the world. He would sift the grain, remove the shells from it and grind it fine with his own two hands, believing it made a better product in the end. He was a true hard worker whose greatest joys were his wife's smile and a good ol' crusty loaf.

He had saved his wife from an awful situation, before they first got together. His wife's smile had been a rare thing, back then. Her mother and father had kept her in a cage-like existence of abuse, but they had found each other through his simple shop where he sold his products, because even abusers needed food to live. And they had fallen in love in the little moments between purchases when she would hang around a little too long. They had found salvation in each other's eyes.

Her parents, the demons who had dared to lay hands on such a kind soul, had been his first kills - his first and only back then. Frustrated with how well-connected they were and how difficult it would be to stop them through the proper channels, he ended them himself.

That night, with their blood still under his fingernails, he asked her to marry him. 

She said yes, thrilled to have been released from their terrible shackles. She held no love for them any longer; with each drop of blood they drew from her, a little seeped out, and her tank was far past empty. 

On their wedding night, it became clear to them how many of their guests knew of his crime, so they ran that same night, still in their dress and suit. They ran to a small village near a snowy mountain, as far as their wallets could take them. But as long as there was wheat there, which there was, they would be able to earn Coin again. And so they did.

One day, as they were beginning to get settled into their new life, just as the man was beginning to truly experience what his wife looked like without the joy being beaten out of her, someone knocked on the door.

The man knew the knock was trouble as soon as it happened. Something about it shook his very bones as well as the door that was being knocked on. He opened the door and the knocker demanded that he give him all his accumulated coin, or he would tell the town who he was, and who he had killed. The man of simple means, the bread maker, knew that the one at his door knew where he lived now. This wouldn't be the last time he would be stripped of his coin.

So he killed him as well. There was no other way to respond to such a threat.

Then, life returned to normal for a while. Until, one day, he returned home from an errand to find his very own wife on the floor - dead. His entire world, gone. The one he had killed for, never able to utter another word about how much she appreciated what he did for her and how much she loved him. Gone. His world was shattered.

He spent months trying to find the one who had done it, following lead after lead to no avail. Eventually, the bread maker grew desperate. He was not a godly man, but he had tried everything else. So he set up a shrine. He knew that Gods were the ones who responded to shrines, so he built one and prayed to any divine ear that would listen.

Please, please. He wanted to find the one who killed his wife - or, better yet, he wanted his family back. His dear wife, and the daughter they had been trying for.

And someone responded. A deep, dark voice from beneath the earth rumbled upward that they could provide the man with something, but it wouldn't be exactly what he wanted.

Shocked that someone, something had even responded to his plea, he said yes. Anything. He would do anything to get some sliver of his life back, to have something to live for that wasn't just his work.

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So the God beneath the earth blessed him; he would no longer be pursued for the murder of his wife's parents, and he would be given a tiny daughter to care for, to love, who would remind him of his wife.

But there was a catch, the God said in its gravelly tone. The child must never know where it came from, of its true father the God, and it must be kept from ever committing a murder. And it would want to murder.

The man accepted the deal. He would no longer have his wife, but he would have their daughter, and that meant the world to him. So what if it wanted to murder? He was certainly not one to judge. And as for the father thing, he would raise her as his very own, so she would never know anything else.

Good, the demon under the ground replied. But there was one last catch - the man would have to serve the God as well, as one of his followers.

Again, the man responded that he just wanted his family back. He would do anything.

And the next day, the man found a basement beneath his home. An entirely new floor that had been built where there was none before, and it had a metal slab within it. The slab went deep, deep down into the earth, and upon it... was a tiny, black-haired girl, all swaddled in a blankie.

That day, he became a father. The black-haired baby was an awful little devil child who sharpened every stick she came across to a point and used it to stab her toys. But oh, was she ever obedient for a slice of bread and a good story.

Eventually, he came to know her as his mostly-obedient child who was prone to violence and anger. When she got to be school-aged, he would get complaints from the school about how difficult she was to control, how much she would glare at the other kids and teachers. But with diligence, compassion training and many, many slices of bread, she grew to be a functional, calculating, compassionate girl... who also still really wanted to murder people, sometimes.

Something about the practice of drawing blood pleased her. She was drawn to it, somehow.

Just as he was beginning to get a handle on his little girl, the God spoke to him again. It turned out the God who had responded to him in his time of need was the God of Murder, The Fallen, Chaos, and many other things - and he needed him for the very thing he was trying to keep his little child from doing.

Killing people.

And so began the game. No, baby, daddy wasn't out killing the local fisherman, he was just getting some fish. Look, you see all these fish? You don't get these from killing a man. And then, when his child was safe in bed, he would tug the body down his stairs in a sack and sacrifice it. Again and again this happened, until one day...

The little girl, not so little anymore, heard the voice too.

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