HERESY HUNT – or The Wrath of the Dark Goddess

An Interactive Noir–Horror–Satire Adventure

Prologue – A Hellish Conversion

The rain fell in thin, icy strands, drawing grey lines across the asphalt.
Donald Zwingli pulled up the collar of the jacket he’d stolen from a charity bin — the zipper had died long ago, probably in a heroic battle against rust. In his coat pocket, the last coins of his personal downfall rattled miserably: just enough for a liter of cheap whiskey, two cans of “pea soup” containing every substance ever brewed in the chemical kitchens of despair except actual peas, and maybe a discounted loaf of yesterday’s bread.

Driven by addiction and hunger, he trudged toward the Shiddl Market.
In better times, it would never — absolutely never — have crossed his mind to enter that grimy bargain bunker, that garishly lit temple of losers where salvation was measured in discount percentages. So rumbled the thought through his alcohol-fogged mind as he stumbled along.

Not so long ago, Donald had been a man with a steady income, the kind who looked down with cold disdain upon those dragging themselves along the lower rungs of society. Stationed in a vast open-plan office inside one of those concrete mausoleums where dreams did not have to die — because none were ever born there — he spent his life suffocating under routine.
(And remember, friends: choose your profession carefully!)

Supervised by a superior whose manners and intellectual prowess matched those of a chronically irritated gorilla, Donald longed for something more than clerical servitude. He had a decent bank account, an inherited apartment, and, unfortunately, not enough talent for a better job — yet he always felt destined for something greater, almost… chosen.

Then came the video.

He had, to save money, searched YouTube for some low-budget adult entertainment — only to land, by accident and a dangerously attractive thumbnail, on a promotional clip by the “Fire Servants of God.” Normally he would’ve clicked away immediately, annoyance being his default setting, but the woman in the video ensnared him. She spoke with a voice like velvet wrapped around a razor blade — of purpose, of the value of the individual in God’s kingdom, of meaning in an otherwise meaningless life.

“You too are chosen! Be welcome in the Temple of the Lord at Fleet Street 666!”
Her voice was sweet and poisonous, and the little fish swallowed the bait.

So he went — to those who preached the opium of eternal salvation — and saw her again: the Prophetess, the Chosen of the Lord, a beautiful predator he mistook for a lamb.

“Who gives, lives in the light! Open your hearts — and your wallets!”
she cried in the temple of the dark goddess, her temple.

And Donald gave. At first a small donation. Then the tithe. Then almost everything.

And finally — finally — the Chosen One noticed him.

“Behold the Lamb of God! Praise the poverty of spirit!”, she declared with a benevolent smile.

The light grew within him, he thought. He felt cleansed, seen, needed.

The Prophetess forgot the poor lamb quickly. She preached purification through sacrifice. An old man, Antonius Pius, had given his last savings — to save his soul and avoid the Old Testament wrath of the Chosen One, which she delivered either with targeted blows from her golden crucifix or with vicious lashings of her tongue.

Donald had clapped at the time, tears in his eyes, believing he was witnessing a miracle.

When the pious Antonius was kicked out of the temple — literally — because he could no longer donate and now lived on the street, Donald finally understood: Salvation here existed only in the form of standing bank orders.

“Give, and you shall store up a treasure in heaven, more precious than gold,”, said the Prophetess, her voice honeyed, her eyes those of a hungry python.

He gave until he had nothing left. Until even his savings had ascended into God’s kingdom.
Then he kept giving. He took out loans — secretly. One evening, the dark lady of holy wrath preached about the lukewarm in faith.

“Who doubts has betrayed the Lord! Who gives less than the tithe serves the demon Mammon!”

Donald sweated, trembled, nodded, sold his apartment, and moved into a cheap dive. The shadow of revelation crept in slowly. He had nothing left — no money, no job, no faith. Only fear. When he finally realized that his divine goddess did not intend to save him, but milk him dry, he fled like a thief in the night.

He hid in his decrepit apartment in the equally decrepit high-rise — lovingly nicknamed Murder Tower — dodging the faithful who tried to drag him back to services. Eventually, the servants of God stopped coming. And Donald thought the matter was settled…as long as he kept his mouth shut.

He was wrong.

Episode 0 – Brother Tuck and the Wrath of the Street

Donald wandered into the Shiddl Market, lost in thought, when the pungent mixture of disinfectant and stale beer slapped him back into the present. He hurried through the grimy aisles, intent on securing his coveted elixir of life — his personal revelation in liquid form, the holy sacrament of a miserable existence.

The cashier eyed him with open contempt as he set his bottle of Old Stablefort on the counter — the store brand of discount whiskey rumored to be used by the mafia to dissolve inconvenient bodies, a brew so vile that even the worst moonshine looked like a noble spirit in comparison. He awkwardly added the “delicacies” mentioned in the prologue, hoping they might camouflage his true intentions.

Outside, in the late-afternoon rain, he tore the bottle open, took a swallow, and stared into a reflective puddle. A ragged, unkempt figure stared back — a man bearing little resemblance to the Donald Zwingli he once had been. Disillusioned, believing in nothing, yet still waiting for something — some system, some god, even some machine — to tell him what to do next.

In the end, only this foul-smelling, foul-tasting droplet of happiness remained to him — the only friend he had left, clutched the way he had once clung to a crucifix.

He lifted the bottle again, ready for a second swig, when the ground beneath his feet vibrated.
At first softly, then like a heartbeat made of steel.
A growing roar — deep, furious, mechanical. Donald turned.

A monster truck, black as a rusted sacrament, hurtled toward him with an engine scream like some grotesque chimera bursting from forgotten myth. The headlights — hungry eyes of a ravenous beast — flooded him with light, and two LED crosses seared themselves into his retinas. On the hood blazed the emblem of his former spiritual homeland: a burning crown of thorns above the words LORD’S ROADCREW.

Behind the wheel sat Brother Tuck — a bald mountain of a man with a sunburn-red neck, a Bible in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. He wore the black uniform of the Prophetess’s paladins, an oversized chain-cross around his neck, and a fanatical grimace that had survived many humiliating confessions.

In a flash — sobering as a bucket of ice water — Donald understood: They were not going to let him walk away. Had the Chosen One of the Lord not said it often enough? There was only one way to leave the Fire Servants of God: Either ascend to the realm of an imaginary creator —
or descend several floors below.

He didn’t know that the Prophetess was currently preaching, with increasing and almost hysterical fury, about the “Apostate,” the “Incarnation of Baphomet,” the “Temple Whore Jezebel,” urging her flock to pray for his death with all their righteous might.
But he drew the correct conclusion nonetheless: The Savior-spider had sent out her zealot-worker bees to finish what she considered righteous work. His exit from the faith would now be made… permanent.

The engine bellowed like a hungry grizzly spotting a lame elk. Donald blinked, adrenaline flooding every cell. The truck surged forward; water splashed; asphalt trembled. Tuck barreled straight toward him, the horn blaring — disharmonic, apocalyptic — like some grotesque end-times trumpet blast, or at least like the dying cry of that same unfortunate grizzly as it was being eaten alive.

Donald stumbled backward, whiskey dripping onto the asphalt. He saw the front bumper, saw his pathetic life flash before him — spreadsheets, prayers, loan contracts — and understood:
If he didn’t act now, he was a dead man.

What would the doomed man do?

• Flee back into the store. (read Episode 1)
• Our nimble hero sprints across the parking lot toward the overflowing dumpsters, hoping to hide. (Episode 2)
• Zwingli stands his ground to dodge at the last possible moment. (Episode 3)
• Ever cunning, Donald holds his position and appeals to Brother Tuck’s Christian charity — and to the mercy of God. (Episode 4)

Episode 1 – The Shiddl Massacre

The ground trembled — as if the Devil himself were enthusiastically pounding a titanic drum set beneath the Shiddl Market. Donald stumbled through the tangle of shopping carts, which squeaked away like panicked steel rats. He smelled sweat, plastic, cheap liquor — and that sweet, metallic vapor of fear.

Behind him, the engine roared again, ravenous.

The automatic doors slid shut with the sluggish judgment of a skeptical bouncer, still deciding whether this strange creature should’ve stayed outside after all.

Donald had just crossed the sensor archway when hell, encased in metal, arrived.
One impact. Then glass, steel, flesh, neon.

The monster truck crashed through the front of the discount store like a divine revelation made of scrap metal smashing into the ecstatic mind of an alcoholic priest mid-rapture.
The windows exploded in blinding light; the air filled with screams from people who instantly became the choir of the Ninth Circle.

Donald sailed through the air — a broken marionette in the wrong play — slammed into a shelf of canned pineapple, and collapsed to the floor.
He watched the truck plow through the aisles like a dark altar to some flesh-eating god.
Metal and blood melded into a delirious sermon.
Twenty bodies, perhaps more, lay scattered among the clearance racks.

Donald wanted to pray, but had no idea to whom.
So the only thing that came to mind was one of Shiddl’s idiotic slogans: “More for you — Shiddl pays off.”

Behind the windshield grinned Brother Tuck, skewered through the chest by his own steering wheel, smiling happily with the half-witted triumph of a man pestering poor Saint Peter for entry at heaven’s gates. One eye open. One eye half-closed. His hands clutched, with the last flicker of selfhood, a shredded Bible and his beloved can of Budweiser. A country song crackled on the radio, sugarcoating his departure, until at last silence descended — the same silence that wrapped around Donald, who in his final thought felt genuine joy that he no longer had to listen to that miserable twanging.

Meanwhile, during evening service at the Temple, the Prophetess offered her flock a special show. She stood before a burning cross, her voice jubilant, dripping with theatrical holiness:

“A true warrior of the Lord, his truck guided by the Holy Spirit itself!” she cried.
“Brother Tuck has returned home! He has taken the sinners with him — he has cleansed what was unclean! Destroyed the spawn of the Devil! Praise his name forever!”

The congregation erupted in ecstasy.

Game Over.
Data saved.
Simulation #002 ready — restart?

Episode 2 – The Road to Paradise Is Paved With Sinners

The rain had thickened into a curtain by the time Donald Zwingli bolted in panic. He didn’t think — he did what anyone would do when death, disguised as a monster truck, singled them out: he ran.

The sickly daylight of the dreary afternoon draped itself over the trash-strewn parking lot like a shabby funeral shroud. Wet puddles mirrored despair and fear in equal measure.

Donald heard the engine bellow behind him, the screech of tires, the dull echo of his own heartbeat. The truck was closing in. He sprinted between two rows of shopping carts, stumbled, dropped his bottle, heard it shatter behind him — Old Stablefort, a silent salute and the perfect symbol of the pitiful existence now officially broken.

Then came that sensation — as if the world itself were snapping out of its joints.

The impact was no scream, no dramatic bang, just a single, crushing sound — almost as unimpressive as the life it ended. Donald Zwingli, third of his name, became a red smear on grey concrete, another footnote in the chronicle of the forgotten, missed by no one.

When the police arrived, it was still raining. Two officers, wrapped in rain gear, wearing expressions seasoned with routine. They jotted something down, looked at the truck, looked at the cross on the hood, looked at the Bible on the dashboard — and then, as usual, looked away.

“An accident,” they said.
“A tragic incident,” they said.

Sergeant Howitzer — known as “The Tormentor” for reasons no lawyer would ever approve of — even clapped the grinning Brother Tuck on the shoulder with paternal cheer and offered him a sip from his beloved flask.

That evening, at the Temple, the Chosen One held a thanksgiving ceremony. The Prophetess, dressed in black, a white rose in her hand, stood before her flock with a voice thick from well-rehearsed tears.

“Brother Tuck is a tool of Heaven,” she proclaimed. “An angel of wrath, a warrior against darkness. The Lord Himself guided his holy truck to cast the son of Satan into eternal damnation!”

The crowd erupted. Some wept. Some fainted with joy.

Brother Tuck knelt, tears and motor oil smeared across his face, and was granted the special privilege of kissing his Mistress’s feet. The dark goddess blessed him with a smile rising from the deepest pits of her deranged psyche.

The police file vanished into some drawer. The case was closed before it even began. The Prophetess had friends — in offices, in churches, in beds — and no one wished to face the wrath of the Chosen.

At night, the holy pickup truck was parked proudly in front of the Community Temple.
The blood had been scrubbed off, the chrome bumper polished, and another St. Andrew’s cross added to mark a slain unbeliever. Brother Tuck slept contentedly in his vehicle, under his personal motto: “Who drives for the Lord parks in Paradise.”

Game Over #2.
Cause of death: Stupidity × Gravity.
New scenario available.

Episode 3 – The Great Leap Forward

Donald stood rooted to the spot, bottle in hand, and for a split second he thought absolutely nothing — which, as we all know, is a permanent mental state in a considerable portion of the population. No fear, no courage — just that cold, slicing vacuum that forms when the Reaper suddenly shows his face in broad daylight. Then came the truck.

Headlights like two maws of hell devouring the asphalt. Now he could see Tuck’s enraptured face clearly: swollen, sweat-slick, shrieking what must have been a God-pleasing hymn — a beacon of religious ecstasy personally delivering a grotesque apocalypse on four wheels.

No grand plan rose from his whiskey-fogged brain.
Only an instinct buried deep in the pits of evolution — the sort of instinct that probably wouldn’t have saved him or his equally gifted ancestors from a hungry Smilodon, but proved more than enough against the dimwitted Tuck.

Just a desperate sideways leap. Donald hurled himself out of the kill zone at the last possible moment. The monster truck shot past, so close the air blast spun him around. He hit the ground, rolled, heard metal scream, glass burst, people shout. Then — an explosion of light and noise. The truck slammed into the glass front of the Shiddl Market. A repulsive cacophony of horror, straight out of the ninth circle of hell — and then silence. Fluorescent tubes flickered as if applauding the show. The stench of gasoline, spoiled food, blood, and cheap hope clung to the air. The newly minted track-and-field star lay on the asphalt, coughing, his heart a pneumatic hammer.
Donald lifted his head. Where the market had been moments before, a ruin of steel and smoke now stood. He knew: few could have survived the rampage. Certainly not Brother Tuck. And not anyone who’d been near the entrance. He dragged himself up, staggered, lurched across the parking lot. His knees felt like pudding, but some ancient survival reflex kept him moving — away from the bizarre crusade he had just sidestepped. Behind him, sirens wailed like a pack of starving jackals.

A short while later, the Chosen One of the Lord put on a religious spectacle of epic proportions. Her hair, theatrically disheveled — like the serpents of Gorgo Medusa on a bad day — her eyes full of unholy frenzy and tears nourished by a hidden onion she always kept ready, she addressed her bloodthirsty flock: “Our beloved Brother Tuck,” she cried, as though God’s own rage had taken possession of her, “has gone home into the Lord’s embrace! He gave his life to purify us! A martyr, struck down by a devil in human form. This tool of Satan — the changeling Donald Zwingli — was not satisfied with slaughtering the holy man like a beast; in his malice he butchered twenty-two innocents! Is there no one who will destroy this spawn of hell?”

The crowd wept, vowed cruel vengeance. Some fell to their knees, begging their God to cleanse the earth of the demon.

And the “devil in human form”? He had no phone, no money, and was desperately trying to figure out how to escape the growing madness.

So, here are Donald’s options:

• Run home to the Murder Tower and hide (Episode 5)
• Go to the police (Episode 6)
• Go straight to the press (Episode 7)
• Try to flee the city (Episode 8)

Episode 4 – The Lord’s Hammer

The wind smelled of oil and ozone when Donald Zwingli heard the approaching thunder.
Like the dark shadow of a trivial comedic death, the monster truck grew across the asphalt.

Zwingli knew he had no chance — and did what idiots and saints have in common: he trusted.
Whether he trusted the religious idiocy of the pious Brother Tuck or simply dumb luck, he couldn’t have said.

Donald reached for his unwashed neck. The small wooden cross the Prophetess had once handed him — with a condescending smile, after a more-than-generous donation — still hung there, a sad relic from a time when he believed an imaginary god actually answered prayers.

He raised it high, fingers trembling, eyes stinging from the rain.

“Jesus loves you, brother!” he shouted over the engine’s roar — but the engine was louder than any idiotic religious slogan. Brother Tuck saw the cross, saw the man, and something in his brain — a volatile cocktail of beer, Bible, and fanatical rage — snapped entirely.

“The heretic mocks the Lord! Satan himself defiles the sign of Christ!”

In holy wrath, the motorized servant of God slammed the gas pedal. The truck lunged forward. Tuck’s face twisted into a mask of infinite hatred. Donald stood there, arms spread, the cross raised above his head. For one brief, fleeting moment, he truly believed something would protect him.

For the last time in his life, he was wrong.

Then came the metal. No scream, no dramatic cry — just the sound of flesh tearing and bone shattering. Silence followed… and then the deafening crash of the truck plowing into the Shiddl Market. Neon, glass, flames.Bodies flying. Shelves collapsing. The sky stayed silent, and an indifferent God yawned lazily in His heavenly palace.

Donald Zwingli, third of his name, was no more — entered into the chronicle of fools as a worthy candidate for the Darwin Award. Brother Tuck ascended into the realm of his God — or several floors below — but certainly without 99 virgins, given his unfortunate denominational choice. The other thirty victims — remember, the Pickup of the Lord had been additionally accelerated — ended up wherever such collateral souls tend to go.

Later, the Prophetess stood triumphantly on the great gold-trimmed stage of the Temple, tears of joy in her eyes, golden backlighting making her glow like a celestial influencer.

“Brother Tuck,” she proclaimed, dripping with saccharine sanctimony, “was the Hammer of the Lord! He crushed Satan as one crushes a serpent! His sacrifice is great — his reward eternal!”

The crowd rejoiced — like the heavenly choirs presumably do when praising their boss.

Game Over #4.
Cause of death: religious idiocy.
Moral: Heaven does not love volunteers.

Episode 5 – The Maiden of Simpleminded Grace

The rain had eased, yet a transcendent haze of lost hope still clung over Gelsum.
Donald Zwingli ran, gasping, consumed by panic so fierce it strangled reason itself. His shoes slipped over the slick, grime-smeared paving stones. Between the usual cityscape of overflowing dumpsters and broken streetlights loomed a special kind of high-rise — his beloved home: a grey coffin with rotting fixtures vaguely resembling mailboxes. The building’s concrete walls jutted like the teeth of a ravenous monster waiting for prey.

Donald paused, fighting for breath. Just a few more meters. The rusty door. The urine-scented elevator. Maybe a night of safety — and enough glue fumes to forget problems that threatened his life span.

A shadow detached itself from the entrance. Then a second. From behind the dumpsters, a round, greedily grinning face appeared, lit by wicked delight, and a voice yelled: “There he is! The servant of Satan has returned!”

Donald turned — too late. Two figures in black raincoats, wearing red-and-white armbands marked with a black cross, lunged at him, reciting scripture with the drunken enthusiasm of inebriated battle-chanters.

“For the wages of sin is death! Purge the vermin from the vineyard of the Lord!”

A blow struck his temple. Another hit his ribs. He collapsed to his knees, tasting blood and concrete. More people closed in — five, six, maybe ten, men and women alike, faces twisted with zealotry. One held up a tattered pocket Bible like a dagger; another filmed the scene on his phone.

“Show us how you writhe, demon!”

Donald screamed, begged, but the winds of ignorance made his tormentors deaf.
Hands grabbed him, yanked him upright.

“Hold him, brothers! The justice of the Lord requires a tool!”

Then Sister Lucretia stepped forward — a round woman with a childlike face and a smile straight out of Sunday-school paintings. Her handbag was large, dusty pink, embroidered with an angel. She rummaged in it, as though searching for her prayer book — the contents of which she would never have understood anyway. Instead, she produced a kitchen knife. The blade was dull, but long.

Lucretia raised it, hesitated — then struck. Once. And again. Blood splattered onto her hand, across her face. Her expression remained blank. Donald collapsed; his life drained away between a reeking dumpster and religious fanaticism. And the inquisitorial mob howled in holy ecstasy.

“Blessed be the hand of the righteous! The son of the Devil has fallen!”

Later, in the Temple of the Fellowship, the Prophetess stood on stage, surrounded by seas of candlelight. Lucretia knelt before her, the bloodstained knife resting on a velvet cushion. The Chosen One smiled gently and placed her hand on the woman’s head.

“Sister Lucretia, simple soul of the Light,” she said, her voice dripping with poorly concealed condescension, “you have done what men did not dare. You are the holy Maiden of Simpleminded Grace, tool of divine mercy. For blessed are the poor in spirit, for they are pleasing to God’s appointed shepherds on Earth. Your name shall shine for all eternity.”

The crowd rejoiced as if witnessing the coronation of a saint.

Game Over #5.
Cause of death: Faith of others.
Moral: The road to Hell is well organized.

Episode 6 – To Protect and to Serve

The rain had stopped, but the city still glistened wet and smelled like a rotting fish.
Donald Zwingli crossed the street, heart heavy, hands empty. Before him loomed the Gelsum Police Station — grey façade, yellow light behind barred windows.
Finally, he thought, a door behind which madness ends. Inside, the air smelled of cold coffee and paper dust. A police officer sat behind the front desk, feet propped up, thumbing lazily through a porn magazine.

“Yeah?” he asked without looking up.

Donald drew a deep breath.

“I need to give a statement. There’s been… an attack. At the Shiddl Market. The Sect of the Fire Servants of God. I know who’s behind it.”

The officer finally lifted his head with something resembling interest. A tired smirk, then a chuckle.

“Oh, that story. Well, this ought to be entertaining.”

He let Donald speak — ten, fifteen minutes straight. About the Prophetess. Brother Tuck. The rabid believers. With every sentence, the chuckling grew louder. Soon three colleagues had gathered, leaning in the doorway, clutching their stomachs in laughter.

“That’s a fantastic story you’re telling us!” one said, tears of amusement on his cheeks. “I heard the whole thing was done by a real devil in human form.”

Laughter rolled through the room like a sardonically breaking tsunami. Donald couldn’t believe it — this had to be a nightmare. Voice shaking, he made one last desperate attempt to escape the night terror.

“I want to speak to the station chief!”

Silence. Smirks were exchanged, then the door to the back office swung open. A scent of heavy perfume and authority flowed into the room. The woman who entered wore a uniform — and the smile of a cat who knows the bird can no longer fly.

Donald froze. He knew her. He had seen her regularly at the Prophetess’s side — at sermons, rituals, always standing in the front row.

“Well, well,” said the police chief, eyeing him mockingly. “The famous heretic himself. We’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

Then she grinned, crooked and cold.

“You know, accidents happen in our line of work. Every now and then, some annoying lunatic or treacherous rat gets accidentally shot.”

A young officer laughed, drew his gun with theatrical nonchalance, and pointed it loosely in Donald’s direction.

“You mean an accident like this, Chief?”

“No,” the specialist for such accidents said calmly, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Not yet. He should suffer a while longer. I’ve spoken with the Lady and presented her with my plans for him. The Chosen One was delighted. Let him run for now. We’ll deal with him later, once everything is prepared.”

Her eyes flashed — not with humor, but with anticipation for the horrors she intended.

Donald said nothing more, and the precinct fell into thoughtful silence — everyone knew the chief’s “plans” were infamous for a certain… perversity.

Zwingli was escorted out by a broad-shouldered officer who dismissed him with the insightful farewell:

“Get lost, dead man.”

The door shut behind him like the lid of a cheap coffin, screeching with a revolting metallic whine. Outside, he inhaled the cold air as though it was the last thing left to him. His knees trembled. He was free — and alive. For now.

What should he do?

Here are Donald’s options:

• Run home to the Murder Tower (Episode 5)
• Go to the press as a last hope (Episode 9)
• Try to flee the city (Episode 8)

Episode 7 – Children of God

The smoke over the Shiddl Market had barely begun to fade when Donald Zwingli stumbled through the side streets of Gelsum. He was alive — by chance, a glitch in the system, perhaps grace from a higher power, or simply cosmic accident. Behind him, sirens wailed like the underworld chorus of the damned.

Going to the police wasn’t an option. In Gelsum, law enforcement enjoyed a certain… well-earned reputation. They might arrest him on the spot as the scapegoat perpetrator — case closed in record time — or, for a generous donation to underprivileged officers, hand him back to his former religious community. So only the press remained. Maybe someone would listen.
Not to uncover the truth — of course not — but to make money from a juicy headline. Even Gelsum’s corrupt police and judiciary would have to react to that. Or so he believed in his naïve little heart. Thus Donald trudged forward, filled with a sort of depressive optimism, toward the city center — toward the office of the Sun Express Inquisitor, the last surviving newspaper in town: trashy, sensationalist, but at least… not silent.

What our hero did not consider: The direct route took him past Saint Judas Academy, the pride project of the Prophetess’s father — a blindingly white elite school built to shape the next generation of “true believers.” The students were currently “meditating” in the Christian-social stone garden — ora et labora — smashing rocks with little hammers, with an excellent view of the street.

Donald pulled his hood deeper, quickened his pace. He felt the stares — needles in his back.
Then a child’s voice pierced the air:

“There! There he is — the Devil!”

It belonged to eleven-year-old Tom, top of his class, Sunday school prodigy, model boy.
He grabbed a stone, weighed it, and hurled it. It missed Donald but shattered the pawn shop window across the street. The sound made him flinch — and stop. A mistake.

The other children were already on their feet, each holding a stone. Tom screamed with holy fervor: “The demon! He wants to cast spells on us! Strike him down!”

Donald raised his hands to pacify them — they were only children.

“I don’t want to—”

The first stone hit his shoulder. The second struck his forehead. Then came the hailstorm — righteous fury, infantile hysteria, grey morality. They shouted Bible verses, laughed, shrieked.
Donald staggered, searched for cover, but the children swarmed him from all sides.
He ran, fell, crawled — the world dissolved into a whirlwind of stones and prayer.

A final throw — Tom himself — struck Donald at the temple.
Donald fell. Silence. Only the clatter of stones rolling across the pavement remained, and the rustle of teachers’ uniforms as they enthusiastically congratulated their young protégés.

Later, the Prophetess stood beneath the temple’s floodlights, glowing in manufactured holiness. Tears glistened on her cheeks — the hidden onion at work — like baptismal water.

“Our little ones,” she intoned with perfectly staged emotion, “have completed the work of the Lord. They recognized the Devil and rendered judgment. Blessed be especially young Tom, the instrument of divine purity and innocence!”

Tom stood beside her, hands folded, a small, solemn messiah of deranged intolerance.

“You,” whispered the dark goddess, “will henceforth lead the Jehovah Youth.”

The crowd rejoiced.
The stone that had felled Donald rested in a glass shrine, labeled:

“Relic of the True Faith.”

Game Over #7.
Cause of death: the next generation.
Comment: Faith needs no enemy — it breeds its own.

Episode 8 – The Divine Breath

The wind sweeping across Gelsum’s bus terminal smelled of diesel, cold grease, and abandoned hopes. Donald Zwingli ran across the cracked asphalt. His breath came in ragged bursts, his thoughts scattered — out, just out of this city, anywhere. Any bus would do. Even one straight to Hell would be better than here.

The terminal consisted of little more than a half-dozen covered bays from which long-distance buses departed at irregular, almost mythical intervals. Broken windowpanes. A half-faded slogan from better days: “Gelsum — Gateway to the World.”

Donald gave a short, dry, almost insane laugh. He couldn’t help thinking of Dante’s Divine Comedy: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Fittingly, he noticed the infernal smell next — damp, moldy, sharp — like a wet dog, only more aggressive. Then the growling. Four shadows between parked buses, breathing heavily, leashes pulled taut.

Sheriff Nottingham emerged from a half-rotten bus shelter where he had apparently been lying in wait. His belly strained against the uniform shirt, on which a crookedly stitched patch read: Fire Servants of God — Security Division. Beside him, the three pit bulls — Robin, Hood, and Marian. Hood even wore a tiny grey mini-uniform, complete with Confederate and Clan insignia.

“Lick mah damn toes,” the sheriff grunted, scratching his rear. “Well ain’t that somethin’? Dat heretic himself. Where ya think you’re goin’, boy?”

Donald stopped, panting.

“I… I just want to get out of this city.”

“Nah, nah, that ain’t happenin’,” Nottingham said, grinning with a look that hovered between stupidity and primal malice. “But da Boss Lady got other plans.”

The linguistic genius prepared to add more pearls of vulgar philosophy, but the dogs were faster. They smelled fear, the twitch of a fleeing man; besides, the clever animals were — as rumor (and simple observation) suggested — far more intelligent than their handler.

A collective growl. Then snapping leashes. Robin leapt first, hit Donald square in the chest, dragged him to the ground. Hood and Marian followed, silent, efficient, practiced. Rain mixed with blood. Donald screamed, then gurgled, then fell silent.

Nottingham blinked, confused. As usual, he failed to mentally process the situation in real time. After a moment, the monument of monotheistic ignorance broke into a pleased smile, as though the Almighty Himself had granted him — despite so much stupidity — a revelation.

“Hot damn, da heretic’s busted fer Jesus. Da Boss Lady’s gonna bless mah ass!”

He spat enthusiastically into an oily puddle and called his dogs, who — full and content — trotted back, yelping happily like Cerberus after a midnight snack. Then he whistled Dixie, but so badly that Robert E. Lee would probably have killed him in a fit of rage had he been alive.

Later, at the Temple, celebration was in full swing. The Prophetess sat upon her throne, a rose in one hand and a heavily perfumed handkerchief in the other. Sheriff Nottingham knelt before her, his dogs obediently at his feet. A pungent, oppressive odor filled the hall; several kneeling believers subtly crawled away from the biological danger zone.

“Rise, my brave sheriff,” said the Chosen of Jehovah, holding the handkerchief to her nose — her voice saturated with tearful devotion, though unable to conceal a hint of disgust. “Your breath may be earthly, but your deed was divine. You and your loyal beasts — avenging archangels — sent to destroy the son of the Antichrist.”

The crowd roared with joy as Nottingham grinned, comprehending her words only acoustically, as always.
Robin, Hood, and Marian barked in perfect rhythm with the hallelujahs.

Game Over #8.
Cause of death: Canidae zealotry.
Comment: Heaven has many tools — some only need a bone.

Episode 9 – The Inquirer

Donald Zwingli staggered through the shabby, shadow-soaked alleys of Gelsum — a wet silhouette drifting through a distorted caricature of a city that smelled of hopelessness, garbage, and contempt.
The police station lay behind him — along with the last pathetic remnants of his belief that justice might still exist somewhere in this corrupt theatre of absurdity.

One option remained: the press. Perhaps someone would print his story, because it reeked of blood, madness, and high circulation numbers — and as the Romans sagely noted: pecunia non olet.

On his way there, our whistleblower noticed strange things: Passersby stared at him with obscene directness, smirking, whispering. None of them attacked him, but in their eyes lay the icy certainty of people who know the man they are watching has the life expectancy of a fruit fly. A man flipped his lighter open, threw Donald a mocking look, then burst out laughing.

Near a bus stop, he saw Granny Theresa — the so-called angel of the weary and burdened.
Donald knew her as the community’s loving matron, famous for her cookies and for shepherding the “simple-minded blessed” to the Temple. Now she looked at him with gaps in her teeth and a twisted grimace that could have frightened Lucifer himself.

“You will burn, heretic,” she hissed.
Then she turned away and fed pigeons with poisoned communion crumbs. The “heretic” shuddered but said nothing. He walked on — until at last he reached his goal.

The Sun Express Inquirer — a paper rich in pictures but poor in enlightenment — was easy to find: a grey façade, garish neon lettering, and absurd headlines plastered across the windows.

“Sex Scandal: Aliens and the Mayor!”
“The Shiddl Massacre — An Illuminati Conspiracy?”

Donald took a deep breath. He knew perfectly well that he was about to enter a temple of sleazy, fabricated journalism. But “Shiddl Massacre”? That could mean hope — or at least exposure. With determination, he stepped into this cathedral of journalistic disgrace.

Inside, the Daily Inquirer resembled a flea market of grotesquely cheap sensationalism — which, of course, it was. Posters of UFOs. Politicians smiling with red, demonic eyes. A stuffed alien behind the reception desk.

A secretary — young, elegant, with a cunning smile — listened to his breathless plea with surprising friendliness.

“How interesting! You’ll want to speak with Mr. Rektalarius, our editor for the really hot stuff. Poor bastard had bad luck with those fake secret diaries of Genghis Khan — some shady guy named Codfish sold them to him. Daddy put him on the chopping block for that one. Our former golden boy desperately needs a killer story to catapult him back into the writer’s Olympus!”

“Yes. I… I need to tell it. It’s big. Really big.”

“Excellent! Follow me.”

Her steps were soft, graceful — like a cat hunting something helpless. Donald only noticed her smirk once she opened the door and guided him into the office of a man whose tailored suit looked like an act of blasphemy in this city.

Mr. Claudius Rektalarius, editor of the Inquirer, barely glanced up from his screen — deliberately ignoring both secretary and guest. Finally, after the secretary slipped away giggling, the proud journalist deigned to examine his visitor. His gaze swept Donald’s torn clothes, lingered on the shoes, then one eyebrow lifted.

“You are…?”

“Donald Zwingli. I know what’s happening in Gelsum. The Prophetess, the Fire Servants — the Shiddl attack…”

At first, Claudius grinned with bored contempt — but as Donald continued, the expression on his face mutated into something else: panic.
Hybris drained out of him; color left his cheeks. His hands trembled.

“You… you tell me this, you bastard?” he hissed.
“Lucretia — that damn little witch! God, if she weren’t the boss’s daughter, I’d have buried her career years ago! Get out!”

He leapt up, grabbed the unwelcome whistleblower, and personally escorted him toward the lobby — to deposit him back with the secretary.

“My dear Lucretia, I told you no lunatics allowed! Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. Kindly escort this subject out of our sacred halls of virtue journalism — and tell your esteemed father that this creep slipped in unnoticed!”

While Rektalarius fled with the dignity of a beaten dog, Lucretia couldn’t suppress a bright, delighted laugh — which ended abruptly when she looked into Donald’s confused, horrified face.

“Our top suck-up is nervous, huh?” said the chief’s daughter, her voice tinged with actual sympathy.
“Do you know why? Because the Prophetess’s father is Senator Cethegus Moloch. You’ve heard of the great Moloch, surely? The master puppeteer — the man who allegedly keeps a dead president in every pocket of his suit. And trust me: he’s more powerful than God and nastier than Lucifer. He'll probably have that slimy Caudius liquidated just for talking to you. Maybe I can watch!”

Donald stared at her like a condemned man staring at the electric chair.

“Oh God… and aren’t you afraid?”

Lucretia smiled with malicious elegance.

“Don’t you worry about me. Uncle Cethegus knows me — he actually likes me. And he’d never harm his own niece. But you should go. Before someone else notices you’re still alive.”

Outside, the light was blinding. The wind carried the stench of the city — rain, gasoline, decay. Donald laughed, ragged and broken, clutching his chest where the wooden cross had pressed into his skin. It felt like the stigma of his inevitable demise.

So, what options does our “heretic” have left?

• Run home to the Murder Tower and hide (Episode 5)
• Look for a hiding place somewhere in the city (Episode 10)
• Try to flee the city (Episode 8)

Episode 10 – The Bonfire of Joy

Gelsum had become the stage set of a nightmare, and Donald Zwingli stumbled through it, desperately searching for some hole in which he might crawl and vanish. Everywhere he felt eyes — not imagined ones, real ones. Yet the pursuers he noticed kept their distance, watching, waiting, letting the merciless streets devour him with mockery.

Eventually he ran like hunted prey, genuinely believing he had shaken them off — though they still shadowed him unnoticed, preparing for the grand finale. Out of breath, he stopped at a crossing and stared down a dark alley.

A refuge? A hole where he could at least be forgotten? An abandoned building with enough darkness for one final breath?

The answer arrived as blinding blue light, activated by diligent spies for the decisive strike.
Tires screeched. Doors slammed. A voice roared: “Police! Hands up!”

Uniforms. Helmets. Rifles. A dozen men, maybe more. They treated him like a terrorist, like the worst kind of criminal. Donald dropped to his knees, raised his hands.

“Please… don’t resist!” he cried — but his plea drowned in laughter.

One officer grinned wide.

“Too bad, huh? We can’t shoot you — but you’ll probably wish we had.”

The rest laughed even harder. They shoved him forward, kicked him, mocked him, and Donald fell silent in confusion. He had expected they would shoot him immediately.
More likely, he imagined, they would bring him to the station to “deal with him” at leisure — and eventually shoot him “while attempting to escape.” This was what the prisoner of Gelsum expected — Gelsum, which made Azkaban look like a wellness retreat.

But he was wrong.

The convoy did not head toward the police station. Instead, the cars turned off into the industrial wasteland, where factory ruins stood like empty skulls — monuments to a long-dead age. By the time darkness devoured the day, they reached the grounds of the Mines of Moria, driving through the rusted, flung-open gates.

Behind the torn chain-link fence stretched a wide courtyard lined with torches. The plaza was flooded with a sea of people. Hundreds, perhaps thousands — men, women, children, all dressed in black, all holding candles. In the center stood an enormous pyre, constructed of old pallets, tires, and Bibles. And before it stood the dark goddess — the Prophetess.

She seemed taller than he remembered — or perhaps fear magnified her. Her skin-tight garment radiated a perverse sort of holiness, her eyes glowed like merciless lava. The Chosen One raised her arm slowly, and the buzzing of the crowd died away; only the crackling of torches remained.

The police shoved Donald forward, giggling. A murmur spread through the masses, then cheers, then pseudo-religious chants — a discordant choir of the damned.

“Cleanse the flesh, cleanse the soul!”
“The heretic burns, Heaven laughs!”

Donald stumbled, fell to his knees; the ground was cold, muddy. Hands gripped him, dragged him upright again. He looked into the faces of the crowd — many he recognized: former neighbors, coworkers, the baker, the pawn shop owner — all smiling with rapture at the upcoming bonfire.

The anointed one of the Lord approached slowly, savoring every step. Tears of joy streamed down her face, gleaming like holy oil. She looked at him with flawlessly performed compassion — almost tender, like the New Testament father welcoming the prodigal son.

“Oh, you misguided lackey of Satan,” she said with feigned sorrow, “you have caused great confusion. But the Lord forgives — through purifying fire.”

Her expression shifted into a cheerful basilisk smile.

“Bring forth now the son of the Antichrist.”

The rather unimpressive son of the Devil fought, kicked, screamed, but the hands gripping his arms were too many. They dragged him through the mud to the pyre, which smelled faintly of gasoline.

And now he understood the merciless core of truth: The bonfire was not built just for him. It was a message — for all who had ever doubted. A monument to obedience and total submission.

The Prophetess nodded to her holy executioners.

Things look grim for our “hero.” His remaining options:

• Beg for mercy to soften the Prophetess (Episode 11)
• Let the ‘man’ within awaken and stay silent, hoping to impress her (Episode 12)
• Attempt to justify himself and appeal to her reason (Episode 13)

Episode 11 – Autodafé

Gasoline and incense blended into a scent that resembled a grotesque mass —
half cathedral, half slaughterhouse. Donald Zwingli knelt in the mud, hands bound, face pale with terror. He trembled, breath fractured and frantic. He knew speaking was likely pointless — but fear, that ancient naked creature living in the chest of every doomed man, forced his mouth open anyway.

“Please… I beg you… I’m no heretic, no devil! I’m nothing — a worm, a nobody!”

His voice cracked.

“Please… Anointed of Jehovah… mercy, just mercy!”

The Prophetess regarded the supplicant with eyes sparkling from joy. Her entire body radiated the certainty of a woman whose fiery spectacle was unfolding exactly as she had dreamed.

“Oh, misguided heretic,” she cooed with Oscar-worthy, syrupy regret, “you had your chance.
But you denied the Lord. You sowed what is now being harvested. Every claim to mercy you squandered in your pitiful apostasy!”

She leaned forward slightly, her voice warm, almost tender in its sadism:

“Do not beg for my mercy — beg for Heaven’s, for your rotten soul.”

Donald sobbed in despair, though his cries were drowned out by cheers and clapping. Children were lifted onto shoulders so they could watch more clearly how the “son of the Devil” would finally pay.

“Judge him!” the Chosen of the Lord commanded with Old Testament severity.
Her words echoed through the night like the very command that once obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah. Two police officers seized Donald. He kicked, cried, screamed — but his feet slipped in the mud. Finally they tied him to the stake, a neatly bundled sacrificial lamb prepared to suffer a cruel fate in the name of a merciless god. The dark goddess raised her arms.

“Tonight,” she proclaimed solemnly, “the light of the Lord will shine over Gelsum! Faith is pure — and fire is its instrument!”

Then she turned, fully satisfied with herself and the staging.

“Bring forth the enforcer of divine will!”

From the shadows stepped the police chief — uniform gleaming in dark splendor, face stern.
In her hand she held a torch whose flame burned brighter than purgatory. The Prophetess nodded approvingly.

“A divine idea, your suggestion, sister in service — the autodafé is truly the most beautiful of all gifts.”

The chief smiled thinly, proud, and advanced toward the pyre. Donald screamed, pulled at the ropes until blood slicked his wrists. The torch lowered; gasoline fumes shimmered; the first flames licked the wood. For Donald — unlike the ecstatic crowd — the celebration was nearly over.

Two options remain:

• Well, if he’s going out anyway, he might as well curse that sect witch one last time (Episode 14)
• Repent earnestly and enter the Realm of the Last-Day Unholy (Episode 15)

Episode 12 – The Great Silence

The air was razor-sharp with silence, as if even the wind had stopped breathing.
Donald Zwingli knelt before the Prophetess, the dark goddess, surrounded by torches, chants, and a people who sought salvation in someone else’s fiery death. He knew that every word, every plea, would only feed her victory. So he remained silent.

His breath shallow, his hands trembling — but he spoke not a single syllable. No begging.
No whimpering. Just silence.

The Prophetess leaned forward. At first she smiled — that false, maternal smile her followers adored. Then she understood. And her angelic mask twisted into a snarl revealing her true self. Rage flickered in her eyes — boundless, volcanic fury. How dare this nothing of a man defy her? Did this pathetic sacrificial lamb truly intend to ruin her grand performance?

“You spawn of Satan dare to remain silent?”

Her voice sliced the stillness like the scream of a banshee.

“You who mocked the saints? You who abandoned the light to dwell in the shadows?”

Donald simply smirked at her — wordless, contemptuous. What did he have left to lose? He was a dead man either way.

It drove the Chosen One of the Lord into an unholy frenzy.

“Speak, heretic!” she shrieked, her voice cracking in near-desperation. “Confess! Beg! Crawl!”

Donald did none of those. Instead, he spat — deliberately — in the Prophetess’s direction.

Neither she nor the surrounding crowd could comprehend the sheer blasphemy, and for a heartbeat the entire world fell into unnatural silence.

The dark goddess trembled, stretched her arms toward the heavens, and then her voice surged into a thunderous sermon — a storm surge of hatred and damnation rolling over the courtyard.

“Hear me, people of the Light!” she bellowed, voice warped by madness. “Satan stands before you and mocks the Lord and His daughter! He defiles Christ! He mocks you! His heart is stone, his soul is ash! So he shall now be destroyed forever, so that no demon shall whisper his name again!”

The crowd roared. A howl from the pit of hell itself — a tidal wave of vengeance and bloodlust. There was no stopping them. Like a pack of starving wolves, they hurled themselves at the condemned man.

“Cease! I command it! The fire must purify him!”
The Prophetess tried desperately to halt the inevitable — but no one listened anymore.

At last they retreated, leaving the “heretic” mangled and broken, before slinking back into the ranks of the children of the God of Darkness. The Anointed One realized she now stood on dangerously thin ice: a crack in her authority. A stain on her performance. A challenge.

But she reacted instantly — she was Moloch’s daughter, after all.

“Rejoice, holy people!” she cried. “You have judged Satan, and at the command of your Prophetess, daughter of the Lord, you have eradicated evil! Great shall be your reward in the heavenly realm!”

Children screamed in joy, adults laughed, fists shot toward the sky.
The Prophetess had her flock back in the pen — but deep inside, she knew: In the end, her victim had triumphed over her.

Game Over #12.
Subject Zwingli = a swift death.
Prophetess = lost the game.

Episode 13 – The Beatitude of the Simple-Minded

The courtyard of the old factory had become a grotesque carnival of faith. A thousand torches flickered like dying souls in the realm of some forgotten underworld god. Candlelight danced across ecstatic faces, and in the center stood the evening’s altar piece: the pyre on which the sacrifice would be performed.

Donald Zwingli knelt before it, hands bound, desperately grasping for words that might save what had long been lost.

“I have not sinned,” he stammered. “I only wanted to understand. I am no enemy — no tool of evil. You must believe me — I meant no harm! I am still a servant of the Lord, and Christ is my redeemer!”

The Anointed of the Lord, illuminated by the flickering torchlight, tilted her head to the side with reluctant annoyance. A thin, joyless smile crossed her lips. She had hoped this worthless little man — her hand-picked scapegoat — would beg for mercy. But very well. The show had to go on, more or less convincingly.

“He does not stop,” she proclaimed with Old Testament fury, “this son of lies, this servant of Satan’s tongue! Boldly he mocks our Savior, who was slain by his kind for the salvation of us all!”

Her voice swelled — a theatrical thunder, a crescendo of deranged fanaticism.

“Blasphemy! Every sound he utters is poison! Gag him before the Antichrist, who speaks through him, drags us all into ruin!”

Two police officers stepped forward eagerly — rough hands, iron grip. Donald tried to speak — perhaps another useless justification, perhaps a final curse — but a greasy, grimy cloth was shoved into his mouth. His words suffocated between cloth and fear as the unholy storm of the mob raged around him. The Prophetess spread her arms theatrically, as if summoning fire and brimstone.

“So now execute the divine judgment: The son of the Devil shall be purified by flame!”

Then she turned to the crowd with perfectly staged humility.

“But tonight,” she said with a dark smile, “the hand of Heaven shall act through the innocence of the simple-minded. Sister Lucretia, destroy the spawn of Satan!”

She cast a slightly irritated glance at the police chief beside her, who stood holding a burning torch. The chief understood instantly: Had she not assured the Prophetess that this “weakling” Zwingli would beg pathetically for mercy, providing wonderful spectacle? Now the uniformed nemesis realized her once-promised honorable role as executioner was denied — punishment for her miscalculation. With stiff dignity she handed the fiery heretic-disposal instrument to Sister Lucretia, who nervously stepped forward from among the believers.

The Prophetess placed a hand on Lucretia’s head.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” she declared, “for they are pleasing to the heavenly powers!”

The crowd rejoiced, shouting holy scripture that fit the situation not at all. Lucretia held the torch like her favorite toy, examining it with a mixture of piety and childlike confusion. She looked around, bewildered — clearly unsure what she was supposed to do.

A growing impatience crept across the Prophetess’s face.

“Lucretia, you wilted flower in the garden of divine ignorance — ignite the pyre already!”

Somewhere in the crowd a throaty laugh erupted, but quickly died as the simple-minded executioner finally grasped her duty and set to work.

The first attempt was timid; the flame sputtered and died. On the second attempt she dropped the torch entirely, bending awkwardly to retrieve it. A ripple of suppressed amusement ran through the believers, and even the Prophetess had to summon immense willpower not to burst into laughter at the slapstick spectacle. But, mercifully — whether by a vengeful god or something dwelling several floors below — the flame finally took.
For friends: three is a holy number, and you’ll never guess on which try.

A sigh rose from the multitude — relief and anticipation intertwined. The wood caught.
The gasoline remnants ignited. A warm, sickly-sweet smoke curled upward. Donald arched his back, but the ropes held fast; the gag muffled his screams into muted groans. The fire embraced him, drawing him into its ghastly danse macabre.

The Prophetess lifted her arms as if she herself were about to ascend into heaven.

“Behold, Lord!” she cried ecstatically. “Your justice is carried out by the humility of the pure-in-spirit!”

The crowd roared. Sister Lucretia beamed — as if she had just opened the gates of paradise and was being led inside by an awkwardly embarrassed Jesus.

The dark goddess turned to her audience, raised her hands high, and the hymns of the believers swelled like the flames themselves.

Game Over #13.

Episode 14 – The Sacred Fire Child

The fire had found its voice. It hissed, crackled, sang — a choir of wood, smoke, and pain.
Donald Zwingli, hands bound, flames licking at his body, lifted his head one last time.

He saw the Prophetess: her face triumphantly transfigured, her lips curved into a prayerful smile. He knew it was over — and if this was his curtain call, he’d be damned if he exited like a meek lamb.

“Cursed be you, false saint!” he rasped. “You serve no God — only the Devil, who will devour your soul!”

A gasp rippled through the crowd. Children clapped their hands over their ears; adults spat curses. The Anointed One did not flinch. Only a slight, amused twitch in her eyes — she had rehearsed a scene like this, made preparations. She spread her arms, her face gilded by the fire’s glow.

“You have heard it!” she cried. “Even now the Devil speaks through him! But the Lord will banish him — through the Sign of Light!”

A police officer stepped forward, bearing a golden cross, jeweled and ostentatiously large — more scepter than symbol. She seized it, then turned back to the crowd with theatrical urgency; after all, the son of Satan must not burn to ash before she finished her show.

“Begone, demons!” she thundered. “Begone, powers of darkness! The light of God burns in this fire, and no curse shall dim the faith!”

The crowd answered in rhythmic ecstasy: “Begone! Begone!”

Then she pivoted gracefully toward her audience — time to set up the evening’s grand finale.

“But today, my children,” she proclaimed, “innocence itself shall judge evil. For only pure hands can drive out the Devil’s shadow. Let the little one come to me!”

From behind her stepped young Tom — eleven years old, draped in a white ceremonial robe, curls neatly combed, his face an unsettling mask of solemnity. In his hands he carried a small metal bucket. The Prophetess placed a tender hand on his shoulder.

“Behold, people of God,” she said softly, “how the Devil’s power will be broken by holy water. Pour it out, little angel — God’s own essence over the heretic!”

Tom nodded, obedient as an altar boy. He marched — steady, purposeful — toward the pyre and poured the ‘holy water’, which carried an unmistakably sharp gasoline tang, over the still-cursing Donald.

The pyre did not ignite. It detonated. A flare of blinding light erupted — and Donald Zwingli became nothing but radiance.

The Prophetess closed her eyes, satisfaction washing over her like a private rapture — a sensation suspiciously close to a religious orgasm. After a moment she regained her composure, lifted the jeweled cross, and blessed the flames.

The crowd sang and rejoiced. And as the final tatters of smoke drifted toward the heavens,
a pious hell-choir launched into the Te Deum.
Off-key. Loud. Exultant.

Game Over #14.

Episode 15 – The Birth of the Inquisitor

The flames had nearly devoured him — but not entirely. Not yet. Donald Zwingli was a charred silhouette inside the inferno, a shape made entirely of pain and sound. Wood cracked, gasoline smoldered — and somewhere between hissing and screaming,something in him broke. Maybe his will. Maybe his mind. Maybe whatever fragile piece of humanity he had still managed to cling to. Then, with the last spasms of a dying instinct, came the words that were meant to save him:

“I… repent, O Almighty…!”

The crowd roared — but instantly fell silent when the Anointed One lifted her right arm like a guillotine.

“Silence, children of God! You heard him! The heretic confesses! The fire has purified him! Extinguish the flames. Untie him.”

A murmur. Then frantic movement. Water splashed, poles clattered, ropes loosened. Donald collapsed forward into the mud, steaming, trembling, half-dead.

The dark Goddess stepped toward him, her robes immaculate, her face glowing from an inner light — the radiance of absolute power. For what greater sign of divinity exists than the unchallenged right to choose life or death on a whim?

She leaned over him, speaking in a voice that might once have raised Lazarus from the grave.

“Do you see now, Donald? God is great. He forgives even the most wretched sinner… if that sinner repents.”

Donald lifted his head. Tears and soot mixed into black rivulets down his cheeks. He nodded frantically, again and again, crawling to her on his knees. He kissed the hem of her garment — then her feet.

She placed a hand upon his head.

“Rise, my son. Born from the fire, blessed by the Lord Himself. You are no longer a heretic — but a weapon.”

Donald looked up at her, and in his eyes there was no fear anymore — only the reflective emptiness of a shattered mind.

“I serve, my Lady,” he whispered.

The Prophetess straightened, her silhouette framed by the smoldering pyre, a revelation of pure, unrestrained dominion.

“Brothers! Sisters!” she proclaimed. “Behold! The Lord has turned a sinner into an Inquisitor!
From this day forth let Donald Zwingli be the hammer that smites the unbelievers!”

The crowd detonated into endless jubilation — tears, hymns, ecstatic laughter. Some fell to their knees. Others threw flowers.

The Prophetess smiled, her eyes shimmering with delight at her masterpiece — her creation — her proof that she could debase or exalt with equal ease.

And the loyal Inquisitor stood beside her now, upright, silent, a merciless tool in the service of the dark goddess.

THE END
© 2025 Q.A.Juyub alias Aldhar Ibn Beju

 

 

 

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