The Witch Hunt Begins

Pierre, sensing the prolonged absence of Genesis, rallied the concerned crowd to seek him out.

Armed with antique weapons as a precaution, they ventured through the halls to reach the basement.

When they finally found Genesis, Pierre wished to whatever pitiless god was laughing at them all that they'd simply left well enough alone.

"Oh Jesus...oh Christ, no..." The words seemed to scrape themselves raw from his throat before he could stop them.

The others crowded in behind, those brandished fireplace pokers and rusted swords drooping forgotten as the full enormity of the sacrilege awaiting them sank its hooked talons deep.

There hung Genesis - no, what remained of their would-be spiritual shepherd - skewered through like a spit-roasted boar on that bastardized crucifix of antique steel.

Even in the guttering candlelight, Pierre could all too easily make out the sightless slump of his broken body, that once-commanding presence now pitifully crumpled at obscene angles.

Someone retched behind him, the vulgar sound of vomit splattering the floor. Then another voice, raw from horror:

"Dear Lord, merciful Jesus...what have they done?"

Pierre remained transfixed on the atrocity pinned to that masonry wall.

On Genesis's ravaged face, lips crudely sliced into a macabre, ear-to-ear slice of demented glee.

Above that gruesome mutilation, both empty sockets seemed to stare balefully back in mute accusation.

A tremor rocked Pierre from jaw to kneecaps, and he suddenly lurched forward, unable to tear his gaze away from the fresh new hell unfolding before them.

Clenched fists swung down at his sides to help offset the rolling waves of nausea battering his battered soul.

Pierre's cry of anguish pierced the silence, for in the shadows, the true malevolence revealed itself. Hosea, hands stained with the priest's blood, fled from the basement like a phantom quickly disappearing in the shadows with a taunting laugh.

"Not...they," he rasped, voice thick with loathing and unspeakable revulsion. "Her. Only one Her could've done something so sickeningly blasphemous..."

With numb, leaden footsteps, Pierre advanced further into the shadowed crypt until he could make out the despoiled earth mounds nearby.

Those unmarked graves Genesis had so carefully prepared, utterly violated and strewn about like a petulant child's abandoned playthings.

Anger swelled within him, banked embers abruptly stoked into searing rage.

Without conscious thought, Pierre snatched up a discarded shovel and began sifting through the upended soil with frantic, growling intensity. All around him, the others followed suit at his muffled urging, digging with bare hands when no tools were at hand.

They didn't have to search long.

First Amos, or what was left of the enigmatic shadowalker, tumbled forth in a tangle of desiccated limbs.

A man unknown to them, but he meant good, only this time, he was collateral damage.

By the ashen gray cast to his sunken features and shrunken eye sockets, the poor wretch had clearly met an unpleasant end before being dumped into this profane resting place like so much unwanted waste.

Pierre took a long moment to gently lay out Amos's shattered form with what meager dignity he could offer.

Even in death, that hawklike profile maintained a certain severe nobility frozen in place, a dignity that would not be denied.

As Pierre straightened, his trembling fingers smoothed those dead eyes closed over the final time, silently thanking whatever shred of soul still lingered for showing him that brief sample of grace in this blasted charnel pit.

On the other hand, Jezebel, and Ezequiel's caskets were empty, their bodies unfound.

Pierre, meanwhile, drifted numbly towards the far wall opposite Genesis's grisly crucifix, boots thudding through brackish runnels of sludge and offal.

At first, the letters scrawled there in what he instinctively knew was Genesis's blood seemed like blurred phantasms, taunting smears given hallucinatory form by some demonic deceiver. Pierre blinked rapidly, squeezing his eyes tightly shut for a few seconds against the threat of fresh tears before cautiously allowing his vision to refocus.

And there it was - that fresh riddle, the latest deranged flourish from the mind of the true monster haunting them all, laid out with meticulous, vicious precision for their hollow amusement.

Puppets, riddle me this.

"I am the beginning, the end, and all in between,

In every whispering breeze and the unseen.

I shape the mountains and the restless sea,

Yet in the quiet, you'll find the essence of me.

I'm the spark in every soul, the eternal flame,

In the sacred hymns of praise and the unsaid name.

Neither bound by time nor confined to space,

I'm the source of life, the all-encompassing grace.

Who am I, the unseen architect of cosmic art,

Known to every spirit, the essence at its heart?"

Pierre felt consciousness steadily slipping away from him like water through cupped palms. This malignant entity - this soulless butcher who'd supped on Genesis's very essence, who'd spat in the unspeakable face of their most sacred covenant - had managed to pierce the very veil and issue its challenge from the outer void itself.

He was only dimly aware of hands gripping his arms to keep him upright, muffled voices buzzing in his ears like trapped hornets.

Then, with a harsh rattling intake, Pierre snapped violently back to grim lucidity, entire body thrumming with an intensity not felt since his long-buried frontline memories.

"There!" His voice boomed with scorched-earth finality, and Pierre whirled to fix each of the stunned onlookers with an uncompromising stare that brooked no dissent.

"The answer Genesis knew was coming from the start, finally unfurled in all its blasphemous glory. This abomination - the Joker as you defilers have named it - has dared to profane not only Genesis's blessed faith, but our very creator themselves!"

Something seemed to snap behind Pierre's eyes in that moment, a switch flipped into bloody implacability. His next utterance landed with all the weight of that fell revelation.

"You saw it with your own two eyes - Genesis, disgraced and butchered before the Almighty's cruel amusement.

So let me make one thing crystal clear to you poor, blighted souls still clinging to some vain hope of salvation."

With slow, predatory menace, Pierre locked his sights on each of them in turn as he spoke, the rumbling timbre of his gravestone rasp reducing more than one to visible trembles.

"From here on, there's only one recourse left open to any of us wishing to escape this demon-spawned hell with even a tattered shred of grace intact." One booted heel ground into the soupy ichor coating the floor as Pierre leaned down, bracing his knuckles against the treacherous footing.

"We hunt this evil down by whatever merciless means remain to us and exterminate it without hesitation or remorse.

No more running, no more cowering behind Genesis's defiled robes." His face twisted into a snarl that would've made even a rabid junkyard cur skitter back in terror.

"Only the relentless pursuit of a justice so brutal even Satan himself will flinch at its severity when enacted upon the bitch who wrought this sacrilege."

One by one, Pierre skewered them all with an incinerating glare.

"Genesis is gone. Our shepherd lies slaughtered, his only remaining role to serve as our solemn benchmark for the unholy vengeance each of you must now embrace wholeheartedly."

With a sudden, violent surge of motion, Pierre snatched up a rusted iron mace from the floor, talons flexing around the gnarled heft in a spasm of bloodlust made flesh.

"So I ask you one last time - who here has the wrath in their rotten souls to lay claim to their rightful places among the ranks of the avenging angels?"

His roar reverberated off every stone surface surrounding them, a defiant challenge issued from the very depths of mankind's most primal spirit.

"Who will help me drag that twisted whore Hosea literally screaming back to face divine judgment at any cost?"

The tomb remained shrouded in silence for several agonized heartbeats as everyone absorbed the weight of Pierre's oath.

Then, a creak of rust and sinew - the erstwhile meek shuffling off their tattered lambskins to reveal the solemn, implacable wolves lurking just beneath.

Pierre held his ground as each of them claimed their instruments of justice.

The witch hunt has begun, and they will burn her at the stake for her heresy.

May Genesis rest in peace and may she rest in eternal fire...