Uncontainable Fury

Jack turned and faced the wheel-barrow which the dead man had been pushing. It was worn down old thing covered with a large linen cloth that was heavily stained with blood and other detritus Jack didn't want to think about.

He grabbed one of the corners and pulled the cloth off with one simple tug, dreading what he might find beneath it but refusing to be intimidated by the possibility.

Sure enough, his suspicions had been on point.

The wheel-barrow was carrying the heavily mutilated body of a young girl, not more than twelve years old. She had once had dark hair, fair features, and a kind face. Her body was broken in the places a girl that age shouldn't have touched, and there were clear signs of torture and other forms of unthinkable abuse.

The body was dressed in extremely colourful, but torn, clothes as well as the remnants of cheaply manufactured make-up that had been placed by an expert hand that knew exactly what they were doing. In other words, this girl had been forced into prostitution.

It was Hannah.

The little lass he'd thought he'd saved two years ago during his first outing in the city of Groamburk.

Her father hadn't heeded Jack's threat and had sold her off nonetheless, resulting in her current lifeless state. All the signs pointed that she'd died at the hands of someone who'd purchased her unwilling services and the marauder had been instructed to dispose of the body secretly in order to preserve the integrity of the client and the girl's employers.

Judging by the way the dead man had carried himself while pushing the wheel-barrow, this wasn't the first time he'd done something similar. Jack turned and looked into the drain where Hannah's body was supposed to be dumped and saw that the opening led to a large hole which was filled with some type of corrosive liquid that would have completely eliminated any evidence of her demise.

Jack felt a fury rising up inside of him that he hadn't felt for a very long time. He was mad at the girl's killers, furious at her father, and disappointed with himself for not having kept an eye on her after he interfered in her life two years earlier.

He kicked the body of the dead marauder down the drain and watched as the corrosive substance decomposed the body in a matter of minutes. Whatever acid it was, its quality was superb. He noted the location of the drain to come back with a vial to extract some of the corrosive substance and study it in the near future.

Now, however, there was something he urgently needed to do.

Jack gently lifted Hannah's body and placed her into the linen cloth that had once covered her up. Then, he grabbed the crossbow, collected the three bolts, and put them alongside Hannah's body before grabbing the entire bundle and tossing it over his shoulder. Before setting off, he grabbed the marauder's knife, balanced it on his fingers and was pleased with it and so he put it within the layers of his clothes.

He looked up into the sky and noticed that it was just coming past noon, meaning there would still be lots of sunlight and people walking around Groamburk's streets as they went about their daily business.

It didn't matter. He would find a way to navigate the alleyways whilst remaining unseen and make it to her house, which Jack remembered was only a few streets further away from his current location.

Jack jumped up and used Azure Dragon Steps to burst forth with his strongest speed, covering up his tracks by dashing through the narrow labyrinthian alleys and using his spiritual sense to dodge anyone who would come into his path.

Like this, he landed in Hannah's courtyard a few minutes later without having been spotted. He probed around with his spirit sense but quickly detected that the house was completely empty.

Jack sighed and turned to look at the tree in the centre of the courtyard from where he had hung himself and played the part of a pixie spirit and promised to save her. The tree's branches had been cut down fairly recently.

He walked up towards it and laid Hannah's body besides it. Then he crouched down and used his hands dig up a hole at the foot of the tree. He only used the strength of his body, not an ounce of qi, because he felt it was his responsibility to bear the weight of each grain of dirt that would then cover Hannah's body.

The fact that he never came back was enough to label him as responsible for her fate. Not because he was the one to murder her, but because he hadn't been there to stop it from happening even though he took it upon himself to act.

Such is the way of things.

Jack knew that the world is full of suffering, hate, and despair. He couldn't save everyone, nor did he have any intention to. But by stepping up when he did, he'd sent a message of hope to the scared little girl that was crying and praying to ethereal voices that would never respond to her cries.

A message of hope that turned out to be another empty promise in her long road to suffering.

Jack kept digging and with each handful of dirt that he moved aside, the more his anger grew, the more he felt like he'd failed and lost something important. Soon, even his nails broke and blood and dirt ran across his fingertips, but he ignored the stinging sensation and kept digging until the Sun started to set.

When he finished, Jack grabbed Hannah's body and placed her gently at the depth of her grave. He made sure that she lay down peacefully, as if she were sleeping. Then he covered her up with dirt, a small handful at a time so as to not disturb her eternal slumber.

As he finished patting the ground after having buried Hannah, he noticed a small handkerchief from the corner of his eye which was poking awkwardly form under one of the roots of the tree.

He pulled it out and saw that it was an old piece of silk hand-crafted into a gorgeous square handkerchief with floral patterns on two of its sides and a poorly added heart on one of its corners; the silk was worn and there was a hole in it that had been patched by a clumsy hand. It smelled of dirt with a hint of herbal essences, obviously from having been kept at the root of the tree for a very long time.

Jack deduced that this was a gift Hannah had inherited from her deceased mother, judging by the agedness of the handkerchief as well as the signs of it having been tenderly maintained despite the inexperience of the hands tending for it.

He looked at it for a few minutes, almost picturing Hannah hiding it under the tree minutes before she was taken to a dark place she'd never escape from.

Jack sighed and pocketed it by his chest. He wouldn't let this pass.

--

Hector arrived just after sundown whilst smelling strongly like alcohol.

He stopped for a moment just as he closed the entrance door behind him, a feeling that something was wrong birthing in his gut. However, he attributed it to having had too much to drink and clicked his tongue as he tossed his shirt to a corner of the room and readied himself to head to bed.

Suddenly, he froze.

There was someone sitting by the kitchen table, quietly and patiently waiting in the darkness.

Hector dashed to the side and struggled to light a candle for a few instants but eventually managed to succeed with some effort and turned to face the intruder. What he saw made him laugh.

The intruder was just a boy, no older than ten years old, sitting with one leg folded over the other and staring at him with unblinking eyes and a sombre expression on his face.

"Are you lost, kid?" Chuckled Hector and then he spat on the floor. "Scram for me before I give you a beating so bad that your whore of a mother will feel it in her bones."

Jack tensed up from hearing this beast insult his mother. It was only adding to the list of reasons why Jack should kill him.

"Didn't you hear me?" Hector shouted when he saw Jack wasn't moving. He took a few steps closer and raised his arm ready to slap Jack out of the chair. "I told you to…"

Hector stopped in his tracks. He hadn't noticed before because of his drunkenness and the darkness, but now that he'd moved closer he saw Jack's eyes clearly: an icy blue that pierced his heart to the very depths. His mind cleared, the drunkenness leaving him in an instant. He screamed and jumped back, tripping on some unseen object and falling heavily on his back.

"It's- It's you!" He raised his finger to point at Jack as his entire arm trembled. "You monster!"

Jack tapped his fingers against the table and wondered whether he really needed to have painstakingly placed a sound-proofing and a concealment array before Hector made it to the house. In truth, he'd expected some level of resistance from this scum of the earth. However, reality proved that Jack was wrong because Hector was too afraid to even stand up and face him properly.

A coward will be a coward right to the very end.

"As I do what I'm about to do," Jack rose to his feet slowly and started walking towards Hector. "I want you to remember that I tried to talk. I tried to reason with you. I tried to reach out to you to make you understand the role and responsibility that you had on your shoulders as a father."

Jack stopped right in front of Hector and sighed to himself, earnestly regretting that the matter had gotten to this point. Then, he slowly pulled out the marauder's knife he'd pocketed earlier and flashed it menacingly at the still cowering creature that was Hannah's father.

"But I think you understand that perfectly, and I believe that you just don't care. I don't know whether there was anything I could have done to make you change your ways…" Jack sighed again. "I suppose it doesn't really matter any more. You're a monster. That seems to be the part that you're determined to play. And I will play mine: the man who punishes monsters."

"What- What are you going to do?"

"What I promised."

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" Cried Hector. "What was I supposed to do?! You left me here without anything! There were debtors and bad people and collectors and the guys I owed money to threatening to kill me! What was I supposed to do?!" He begged as tears and snot streamed down his face.

"Be a father."

It turned out that Jack's sound-proofing array was a well-placed and sensible approach; Hector's screams would have echoed all over Groamburk if he hadn't placed it.