Humanity

Gloria led Hagan towards the kitchen and into a small room behind it. It was a mostly plain room, there was a flannel cloth covering a table with two chairs. Behind it was a window that let in the bright morning sunlight, basking the table in its glory.

Gloria sat in one of the chairs and gestured for Hagan to sit across from her.

"So, what's up?"

Hagan stared at his hands and clasped them together.

"To tell the truth, I feel like I'm losing myself. I've grown numb to killing people and sometimes… I crave it. It's like I can feel my humanity being stripped from me day by day and there's nothing I can do to stop it."

Gloria nodded her head and a slight smile appeared on her face, and Hagan continued talking.

"Do you know… how many people I've killed? In just the last four months? It- it feels… like I'm barely human anymore. And if I go back to where I'm from, I'm worried I'll never be the same. Nothing will be the same."

Gloria reached out and put her hand on top of Hagan's.

"Do you want to stay here, or do you want to go back? And if you do go back, how bad can it be?"

"I- I want to go back, and when I do, I honestly don't know what will happen. I've been through so much in the past year almost, I'm like a husk of my former self, or a completely different person. The first day I got here, I was bathed in a demons blood, then I found a village and was locked up underground and tortured. I was eventually taken and thrown on the streets outside the capital. Marquis Raaz found me there and took me in, only to have me go through gruesome training that was no different from torture. After two months, I was forced to kill other people. Then I was finally freed after my sanity was in tatters just to be forced to kill more and more people. If I refused, I was hunted down and brought back and tortured. So, I killed. I killed and killed and killed and killed. 187 people, killed by my hands and only remembered as a mere number."

Gloria retracted her hand long ago and slightly paled, shaken by what the young man across from her had admitted. It was simply insane. To be tortured, released, abandoned, tortured more, then forced to kill over and over again. Gloria was slowly standing up and trembling.

"I… I'm sorry, Hagan. But I can't let you stay here. If that's the kind of person you are, I don't want trouble following you here. I'm sorry, but you need to leave."

Hagan was stunned by her reaction, he had just poured his heart onto the table only for her to tell him to leave!?

'Should I… kill her too? No. No, that'd be wrong.'

Behind Hagan, only visible to him, two apparitions stood behind him.

"Hey, Promised! Just kill her! Come on, what's the big deal, you admitted to killing nearly two hundred people and you think she's just going to let you go? Of course not!"

The apparition snickered and lowered its head slightly.

"Kill her."

The one beside it was shivering, afraid of the tyrannical being beside it, and too afraid to speak up.

Hagan turned his head and glared at the being.

'Maybe… maybe I should. I mean, she knows my real name, how many people I've killed, and most likely won't hesitate to rat me out.'

The light in the room surged, moving towards Hagan's hand. Before Gloria could process what happened, she was no more.

"188."