Blood pumps. Heart pulses. Veins throb. Muscles cord and body flexes, remembering the old ways—the old habits of destruction.

  Peace and happiness… These are concepts afforded to me by dreams and fleeting moments. But they do not describe what I am. At the core of it, when you strip away all the relationships and love for the people I care for, there is only one man.

  And he’s still trapped at that tower.

  I let him loose now as I swing off of Umbrahorn’s back. The hammerhead reaches out with his fin to say something, yet, when I turn around to hear him, Umbrahorn’s eyes go wide. He shakes his head. Whatever he sees in my expression has injected fear into his eyes—though I do not mean it.

  It's just been a while since I’ve felt this battle-rush.

  When the shark bids me no words, I continue on, shoulders hunched, eyes roving the ashen village. Screams and wails perk at my ears.

  The darkness of the night is at its peak. The black soot of snowfall and ashfall make a crown upon my head as I rage forth into the brink once more.

  …

  I jump, rooftop to rooftop, skidding across their thatched wood planks with as much stealth as I can muster. A long time has passed since I’ve practiced this skill—back when I was first training with Sorina. I’m rusty. When I make the leap to a brick-tiled house, my foot slips on the ledge, cracking on some loose stone. It clatters to the ground below.

  There’s a screech.

  I mold myself to the roof’s slant, calm my breathing, and wait for the plagued to arrive. This one hobbles over with pounding stomps of its crab hands. A claw snaps out in the air, searching for the intruder. Oddly, an octopus arm with bloodied suckers also levies forth from the body—a mismatch of animals I rarely see in these creatures. They are usually uniform in the appendages they acquire. Maybe it's a mutant?

  It doesn’t matter.

  Because, when the plagued gets right next to my building, I dive down upon it, flower blade in hand.

  The main body—some poor elderly woman whose ears brim with worms—turns up to face me, exuding a high-pitched scream just as I bear down upon her, blade upraised, swinging to and fro in a fresh mist of crimson and black. The blood spatters upon me as her limbs go wild, knocking back and forth against the buildings.

  Her body convulses when I slash the blade across her neck. Yet, the plagued does not die. I have to stick the dagger into her torso and hold onto it for dear life as she desperately tries to shake me off.

  The octopus arm reaches up to swipe at me. I tug the blade out and jump off of the plagued just as the arm arcs down—she hits herself bloody, bludgeoning her body into another building. I fall to the ground and roll away.

  Blood streaks down her naked chest.

  But she turns back to me—uncaring of the pain—and focuses on my man-flesh.

  I spin the blade in my hand. This used to be a lot easier with lightning. I could merely flick Meteorfang and the lightning-wreathed chain would sever her corpse, burning away all the flesh.

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  I can make do with a replacement though. So, I quickly summon a line of Aether and loop that through the hilt of the small flower-blade. As soon as the azure line touches the blade, it begins to hum with energy. Before I can make sense of that, the creature strikes forth.

  I dodge and weave with movements of Eternal Spring, flowing around her while whipping the flower dagger. And with every spin of the small weapon, it leaks with illusions of flower petals. Nothing useful—just another set of colors to add to the blood. Orange petals when I rake it across her legs. Purple blossoms when I streak it along her ribs.

  This improvised weapon is not the same as Meteorfang. Certainly doesn’t have the same power. Yet, it does work.

  Slowly.

  Just as she fatigues enough for me to whip the blade at her head, I spot three more plagued charging from upstreet. One from my flank as well.

  Uttering a few curses, I lash the elderly plagued one last time—making sure to blind her—before I flank around her body and take to the roof again. The plagued all clamber up to me, mantis legs and frog thighs making quick work of the distance.

  I run. Roof to roof, I flee and flog them a few times before fleeing again as they catch up. It’s an arduous game of cat and mouse.

  By the time I kill two, five more take their place. And I’m running out of roofs to jump to—mostly cause all the others are too burnt or destroyed.

  When I jump back down to the streets, dodging the slash of a spider leg and the sting of a scorpion tail, I hear it.

  The wailing.

  The plagued seem to hear it too, for all of a sudden, they bow away, heads shaking in equal parts reverence and fear.

  From the upward slope of the main street, through the smoke, as the chimes of some stall tinkle in the wind—the real monster beckons forth.

  THUMP! The water shakes.

  THUMP! The plagued surrounding me all whine.

  THUMP! A nearby house on its last pillar now crumbles.

  This one is far different from any of the plagued I’ve ever seen.

  Hands. Many, many giant human hands spider forth from a mass of dense, clumped up worms—all rolling in black drip and darkness, their wiggling like squeals of joy. Those worms all extend from a slitted wound of the main body, surrounding it and lifting the specimen up for the world to exhibit.

  A crying baby.

  It looks so… human. Contrary to the other plagued, if you take the body away from its growths, then this one might look alive. The poor thing’s eyes are closed and tears stream out as the baby sucks on a thumb, its smooth chubby skin looking faintly orange in the dying fires around us. Then, the baby opens its eyes. Pure void blackness. No pupil, no iris, no sclera. Just an alien darkness that hounds my soul and makes all the other monsters cower in fear.

  Some of the plagued can’t take it anymore. They run away—and I notice that most of the fleers are adults.

  The children stay behind.

  I can only hope that they don’t go to Erot’s farm. And if they do—well, at least Sorina will only have to deal with them.

  And not whatever this is.

  Well, now would be a great time to have some sort of monumental realization about what Aether means so that I can ascend.

  But nothing comes. Instead, all I feel is the fatigue of battle, of sleepless nights, of tortured dreams.

  The slow-building fear of facing this new foe.

  And the reactive fury at the mere existence of that fear.

  With a sigh, I move forward, spinning the flower blade, preparing myself to murder this child.

  I suppose it's something I’ll have to get used to.