The room was not quite dark. In these places, the night was never entirely dark. Not like at home, where night held its rule for all hours of the night, only unwillingly banished once the sun took her throne. Down here, the moons seemed so much brighter, and the stars were so many. 

 

The night air was cold. It streamed gently through the window, alongside the little wisps of moonlight. As Simel stood by the window, he put one hand to his heart and the other to his mind and gave a short prayer to his devotion, the God of Curiosity.

 

He prayed for strength.

 

He prayed for mercy.

 

And most of all, he prayed for guidance.

 

And with that, he was ready. As ready as he would ever be. He had wanted to wear his uniform or to bring his satchel, but he couldn’t risk making any noise on the way down. That beast could hear a mouse sneak. The arch-judge would recognise him anyhow. If he did this right, they could have the beast restrained and in cuffs before it ever realised Simel had left. 

 

It would have to work. There was no other choice.

 

Steeling his heart, Simel turned away from the window, and towards the open doorway, into the darkness of the thick hallway outside. He moved softly, walking barefoot on the yellowstone floors. Without hurrying, he arrived at the doorway. The hallway was darker than the outside. It was almost pitch black. The colour reminded him only of the sea of tar and its dark waves. The way the pitch would cling to you like the damned souls of those in the underworld. 

 

Simel didn’t dare try to swallow down the lump in his throat. What if the creature heard him? That thing could hear the beating of hearts. He wished he’d kept his ring of cover. Though, with the way the creature had changed, he doubted it’d be of any help.

 

Gritting his teeth, Simel stepped out into the hallway. Never before had he listened with such intensity.

 

The whistle of the wind. The creaking of a neighbour’s door. The howling of a yipdog. 

 

Not a sound from the creature. 

 

He knew it did not sleep. Never had he seen it sleep, not even when they first met. It seemed unbound by such simple goblic needs. It didn’t need to eat, it didn’t need to drink, and it didn’t need to sleep. Yet, it still ate flesh, and it still drank blood. But in terms of sleeping, the closest it approached such basic needs was meditation.

 

It did that often. It sat still—as still as a propped-up corpse—and it held its eyes shut, and then it would not move for hours at a time. Simel was certain it could sit unmoving for days if it so desired. At night, although it did not sleep, it would often meditate. Simel knew this. He had been keeping watch. He knew that the thing would spend its nights in a room, just off to the side, sitting as still as a corpse. Meditating. 

 

He was banking on this. With the creature in dead meditation, Simel would be able to effortlessly tip-toe down the stairs, slipping out of the door with ease and into the night. And that would be it. Then, it would all be done and over with. He would no longer feel any need to rule Acheron. They could find some other king for all he cared. He just wanted this all to be over with.

 

But as he moved through the hallway, as silent as a chapel spider, he was struck by a scent he hadn’t felt that morning. 

 

A faint odour, like that of rotting meat. 

 

He hadn’t noticed it before, not in his bed, not earlier that day, but now that he noticed it, it was all he could think of. Rotting meat. Decaying flesh. Death. Slowly, he turned towards a little door across from the bedroom—the only room in the small house that seemed to have a lock on it. 

 

He knew he shouldn’t have. He should’ve just run for it, leaving everything and everyone else behind to finally bring this creature to justice. To finally put it on trial for all the pain it caused. To be fairly judged, and not simply escape through the coward’s repentance. 

 

But the smell… It lured him. It crawled in through his nose and up into his brain, where it begged and pleaded not for mercy, but for recognition. 

 

His feet moved without conscious thought, bringing him to the door. 

 

It was worse now. Meat, festering. An irritating sting of bile in his eye. Decomposition. Smells that reminded him of the creature, of its eating habits, of what it made and what it did. 

 

Of the tapestry in the bedroom. 

 

His hand fell on the knob, but as expected, it was locked. 

 

Breathing shallowly, he turned around once more, his eyes moving down the hallway, passing by the stairs leading down and to freedom, and instead finding themselves at the open doorway to the room he knew the creature was in. 

 

He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. It was idiotic. It was a fool’s mission. He knew already. He didn’t need to confirm it. 

 

But he had to be certain.

 

He moved like a golem, one foot in front of the next, soft flesh on harsh yellowstone, closer, closer, towards the room, passing by the stairwell and moving further beyond, over to the open doorway. Slowly, he moved to look inside.

 

In the light of the moons, sitting atop a table, was the creature. It sat with its legs crossed, eyes closed, face as motionless and blank as a frozen corpse out for display. But Simel wasn’t looking at that. He saw something better. On a small nightstand, barely in arm’s reach of the creature, clearly visible in the light of the moons, was a tiny brass key. It glinted alluringly in the light. The way it was placed reminded Simel of a spider trap, with the bait ready and the trap just beside it, waiting for someone to take it.

 

Only a fool would head into such a trap headfirst and willing.

 

For the first time in his life, Simel fully considered himself more of a fool than an intellectual.

 

He crept inside. His eyes were in a constant state of movement, hopping from the beast to the key as though either of them could at any point leap up and strike him. Nevertheless, he held his composure with a steady hand. He slid through the room like a shadow, exhibiting a deftness unbecoming of a scholar. Every single sense he had was on full alert. 

 

He was close now. The brass key was in reach, and so was the creature. Slowly, with trembling hands, Simel reached out, his hand hovering just above the key, shaking only slightly, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead, and as he let his hands fall, his fingers touching the cold metal of the brass key, one hooking around its smooth eye… 

 

His fingers slipped.

 

Cling.

 

There was a sharp inhale. Simel froze. His eyes jerked to look at the creature. Its eyes remained closed. But it knew. He could tell. Its nose wrinkled. Its nostrils flared. And then, it took a deep, long, calculated breath through its nose. Sni—iff. A bead of Simel’s sweat rolled down his cheek and dropped to the floor. His body was shock still. He was as motionless as the air around him. He didn’t breathe. His heart didn’t beat. He was nothing.

 

The beast sniffed again, brief, sharp inhales through its nose, like a hound smelling for prey. Sniff sniff sniff. Sni—iff. 

 

And then…

 

Its body relaxed once more, back hunching and face falling back into dead apathy. 

 

He had been spared.

 

Plucking the key from its place, Simel quickly stepped out of the room, suppressing his need to breathe until he was beyond the stairwell and back by the locked door. But when he then drew in a deep breath, he found it putrid and disgusting. The rot was there. He had no time to hesitate. The door loomed before him, almost as tall as the creature. Earlier that evening, the creature spoke to him in some attempt to convince him not to suspect anything.

 

“I think something crawled into one of the walls and died,” it had said. “Some little animal or whatever.”

 

Simel hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. 

 

His hands were gripping the brass key so hard his knuckles whitened. Hoping the beating of his heart wasn’t as loud as it felt, he moved closer. The brass key fit snugly inside the keyhole, giving the tiniest sounds as it settled in. As he turned it, each little click and clack felt like the slamming of massive instruments. Every little sound felt louder than a full war orchestra. He turned it as slowly as he possibly could, but the sounds could not be suppressed. Not fully.

 

Finally, with the tiniest little click, the door unlocked. Simel pulled it open. 

 

A waft of horrid, putrid rotten-meat stench hit him before anything else. Ruptured bowels. Half-necrotic organs. Liquified tissue. Death and decay. Worse than any sewer or butcher's back alley. There, inside, lay four bloated figures, flayed, dismembered, disassembled, skinned, half-eaten, pulled apart at the seams, ripped into pieces, the only untouched pieces being the staring, lifeless heads, all sitting in a neat row, ears drooping and eye holes filled with squirming, crawling maggots. Mother, father, son, daughter. Blackened, rotting flesh. Bloated, distended abdomens. A smell more putrid than a morgue. Bite marks on the mother, the father fully skinned, the daughter curled up in a ball, the son almost fully eaten. 

 

Simel buckled over and released what little he had been able to force down during the day. The stench stung in his eyes and burned down his throat and even in the darkness of the hallway and the room he could see the four of them with perfect clarity in all of their rancid tragedy. 

 

All he could see was them.

 

All he could smell was them.

 

All he could taste was them.

 

All he could feel was the cold stone beneath his hands and feet.

 

All he could hear was the sound of his own throat retching, trying to force more up, trying to break his own promise again.

 

In the empty silence, he heard the soft padding of footsteps.

 

“Simel?” a voice said. The beast that speaks. “Simel, what are you doing up this late? You’ll catch a cold! You need to get some rest, so—”

 

The voice stopped. Its owner saw. Its owner knew. 

 

“Um, well, uh…” The voice was worse than the stench. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

 

He was on his hands and knees but at that moment it didn’t matter as Simel threw himself to his feet, flying past the outstretched hand of the creature, ignoring its cries of, “Wait, Simel, I can explain!” and “It’s really not that bad, I promise!” to willingly toss himself down the stairs, not caring as his battered and busted ankle gave out, leading him to tumble all the way down to fall into a heap on the floor, a heap that for some reason startled the creature, as it said nothing and did not pursue long enough for Simel to pull himself back to his aching, burning feet, unlocking the door and casting himself into the cold night air.

 

His throat burned. Their putrid stench clung to his nose. His feet felt like they were simultaneously freezing and burning all at once. As he ran down the barren street he left bloody footprints. 

 

He had to get help. He had to find someone. Anyone.

 

Someone to save him, to bring justice, to—anything.

 

Down an alley, he caught sight of someone. A group of five guards, each bearing the city crest. Hope reared in his heart like a forgotten love and he bounded down the alley, panting and gasping for air. The five turned towards him as one, suspicion and concern painting their faces in equal measure. 

 

“Is everything alright?” one of them asked. 

 

“Do you need help?”

 

“Are you being chased?”

 

Putting his hands on his knees, Simel let the relief of finally finding help wash over him, allowing him to take just a single breath. He had been running for so long. Pursued by death itself, he could allow himself to breathe for once, could he not?

 

Once he’d gathered his scattered composure, he straightened back out, allowed himself to regain the countenance of a ruler, opened his mouth to speak, and watched as a long-limbed pale creature dropped down from above, right atop one of the guard’s heads and shoulders. The guard had only barely time to register the intruder’s presence, stumble once as the weight of it settled, and then it was already over. With a single stroke of its one arm, the creature pulled the tongue of the guard clean from his open mouth, as easily as one plucks the petals from a flower. 

 

Only when the severed tongue hit the ground did the other guards recognise what was happening, but by that point, it might as well have been over already. 

 

One arm, two legs and a pair of jaws was all it needed. 

 

It was a flurry of death and blood, slices of flesh dancing through the air as it effortlessly dodged, parried or took the guards’ panicked strikes head-on. In the light of the moons, it almost seemed like a southern dancer, the way it leapt and threaded on the moonbeams in the air. Graceful. 

 

It was not cruel in the way that dragons were, with their hatred and their pride. This was a different sort entirely. 

 

When all of the guards lay dead at its feet, and all that showed on its face was a vague touch of disinterest, Simel understood exactly what this cruelty was.

 

Mere apathy.

 

And against such cruelty, a simple city would never be enough. A single army could never do away with it. Simel had been naive to think it could be defeated so easily. No, as he watched the creature stand tall and gangly and glimmering with red in the moonlight, Simel understood that the only way to defeat such cruelty was with the cruelty of the arrogant.

 

The Empire was his only choice.