He blanked out, could he even call himself a man any more? A feverish mad dash through the woods brought him to his stately cottage, he could think there, plan. Sort thing out, or so he thought until he heard the giggling. He looked through a whale oil lamp lit window, there was his love, Edna. She was with Mayor Rhingold Cresswick...it was enraging, but perhaps he could understand. Celia must be protected and the Mayor would provide excellent protection from any witchcraft accusations...but where was Celia? He found the basement chained, but slipped in through a window finding his new body’s skeleton both flexible and collapsible. Inside was a gently sobbing Celia chained to a mattress and covered in flies, spiders, rats, centipedes and filth. Rage flickered in his heart, how could a dream be so cruel? Surely this must be a nightmare. He picked up Celia’s dairy and thumbed through it. You cannot read in dreams so he sought to prove the nightmare false to himself.

He failed on both counts, a chorus of Fey laughter erupted in his ears.

His daughter was the one living a true nightmare and it was laid bare to him in her words.

He was shocked by the incredible clarity his new eyes afforded him to read in darkness unaided by all light, he’d have marveled if the words had the not filled belly with agony. Schemers, plotters, the horrors went deeper than he ever knew! His dear Edna...was the Mayor’s half sister. She had not ever truly loved him. His family was an extremely wealthy one and news of his parents carriage accident had not gone unnoticed by the schemers! He had lived his life ever since unknowingly on her puppet strings! Fifteen years of marriage a lie! A daughter! Edna had cared for none of it, she and her incestuous brother were half way through their schemes. It was as impressive as it was nauseating, she was born out of wedlock and raised by a highborn vassal family of the mayors under their name, Edgwin.

The plan had been laid years in advance, marry him, produce a child and wait two years or less before she is of marriageable age to keep the time lines from being suspicious to kill him, marry the child to the Mayor’s son, Poison her slowly during a pregnancy to make it seem as if her death is due to miscarriage and thus as the sole beneficiaries the scoundrels are heir to all that his family had toiled countless generations for.

Only darling Celia, always an excellent judge of character had been suspicious, eavesdropped and found out the plan...she was to tell her father the night of his accusation. She wrote in her diary that she felt responsible for his death owing to the fact she figured she must have been discovered causing them to speed up the plan. The Fey laughed even harder as he'd discovered his new eyes could not even weep.

A side of his mind, primal and deep kicked on, he was not strong enough, he could not break the chains. He could not kill them. Instead his tongue shot from his mouth and gathered the various vermin that plagued his daughter. He squirmed back outside with his throat pouch full of mucus and wriggling vermin, his wet hand turned off the oil lamp eliciting a started silence from the giggling harlot and moaning mayor. After a pregnant silence followed by groans and the slurping sound that meant the withdrawal of one’s member from a lover the Mayor roused himself over to the whale oil light, unaware of the vengeful creature crawling on the ceiling above him. Edna peered to him across the room as the Mayor turned his gaze and the only light to meet her as he spoke.

“Damnedest thing, this was turned off, the wind can’t blow these o-”

A horrible inhuman visage had leaned straight into her personal space from the canopy over the bed and sprayed a rancid mixture of still living vermin and mucus directly into her seductive pout. Startled and scared beyond measure her bowels loosed in horror as she wet and fouled herself. The mayor for his part was not so easily incapacitated by fear as he ran for his sabre and dueling pistol. The creature threw it’s tongue out, successfully stealing the lamp but receiving a ghastly wound on it’s tongue from the Mayor’s sabre. The creature hung in the corner holding the lamp in one hand as blood poured down it’s face and it smiled through it’s ghastly blood stained teeth before speaking as the Mayor readied his pistol.

“Incestuous schemers, I know all your secrets! I will play with you until you are dead!”

Just before the Mayor could get a shot the creature it leapt at a perfect angle out the window, the Mayor was smart enough not to shoot and waste his only round. As the creature fled for the tree line the Mayor took aim at his back. Sensing imminent death it spiked the lantern into the ground creating a literal firewall. The Mayor was no slouch however, as the victor of 9 duels and took instant aim at where he estimated the creature to be.

A bullet of lead ripped through the creatures shoulder and embedded in it’s bone.

“Curse that goddamn thing, I hope the lead rots in it’s shoulder.” The Mayor relented and lowered his weapon realizing that it was still a very fatal wound.

“God damn that-that awful thing! May it choke on the bugs, god damn it spitting this shit and piss all over me!” ranted Edna as she ran for the wash basin and tried to save some of her pride.

“A pox on that beast, I hope it gets lost in the darkest pit and nothing can ever find it. It knows our secret.”

A happy Celia sat on the mattress woke by the ruckus, she didn’t quiet understand what had happened but folded her hands in prayer. “Bless that creature, I hope it can heal from anything that’s been done to it!”

These curses and blessing drifted through the woods past the ears of thoroughly entertained Fey to a certain Marl pit where a heavily injured creature fell into the brackish waters gravely injured physically and emotionally.

It screamed to the sky begging not to die as a frenzied woman’s voiced filled the drum-like protuberance of it’s ear.

“STUPID! You are stupid! We love it! We want you to keep playing, so listen you mud-brained dofus! Dofus, dofus, dofus! Look at your hand, your hand!” The bleeding creature looked at his hand as a tattoo like darkness filled it with words. It read as follows, each word he read disintegrating.

“Hello lowly inferior creature, we, The Fey Folk have taken pity on your existence which is both a joke and game to us. Like all good games there is a win and lose condition! Whoopie! Lose is simple, die! If you die the game is done! If your heart and head are destroyed the game is over, that would be sad! Sad, sad, sad! Don’t let that happen or you are stupider than you look, sound and act which would be an impressive feat in and of itself! Woof, you are ugly! Ugly, ugly, ugly! Winning is always simple, look at us, we win no matter what you do! Anyway, simply kill or terrorize every human in Anglia into leaving the forests alone! That’s why we picked a Marl pit to rebirth you in, damn stuff lets you all plant too much and too big! Anyway, you are blessed! Blessed, blessed, blessed! Cursed! Cursed, cursed, cursed! It's how you score points! Take a look, see the game, think of a mirror as you look at your hand!”

The creature thought of a mirror and it was as if a hole to a sunny and beautiful summer sky had opened in his hand, a white box floated within the skyscape, three black boxes floated there as well. A spider web and most particular of all was a parchment so simple it seemed. The creature thought of it and if flew from the space and into his opposing hand. The sky space disappeared as he unfurled the scroll. It read as follows:

Analytics of Gnarled Marl’s growing legend.

Name: Gnarled Marl

Meat: 0

Feats: 1000

Curses: 3

Blessings: 1

Human reputation: Apathetic, mixed, known to less than a handful

Fey reputation: Entertained, antagonistic

“Do you get it’s a game yet dummy?” The Fey intoned in his ear hatefully.