Blackthorne walked toward the judge slowly. Each step seemed less a movement than an inevitability. He tried to run. He could not. Blackthorne, as though he teleported, move with the swiftness needed to be in front of him at every term. Each time, he would casually flick the man backwards.

After he had been tossed backwards like a sack of flour for the fifth time, the man shouted to the guards. “Why won’t you do something!”

The captain looked away then looked back at the judge. “I could try to arrest you for charges of corruption in high office?”

The judge glared hatefully at the guard captain. “No matter what this thing does to me, it will be known that you were derelict in your duty!”

The captain placed his hands to his mouth and shouted back. “I’ll have to resign in disgrace.”

Bushy white eyebrows rose skyward. His eyes moistened and then tears tracked down his cheek. “Cowards… Damned cowards, the lot of them.”

“I’ve seen differently,” replied Blackthorne softly.

Pale red eyes gazed impassively at the now trembling man. Bushy Brows, for he deserved no other name, took a step back. “Stay away.”

Blackthorne tilted his head to the side, his expression a touch vacant in appearance. His eyes held neither tension, nor seemingly any sense of interest. They were akin to dead things, the eyes of a doll or a those of a man who saw something in the distance that no one else might see.

He took a step toward the judge, and in so doing caused the man to shriek in panic. “Please! Don’t do this!” cried Bushy Brows.

Those words washed over Blackthorne like a wave. Along with the sensation of fear and revulsion that emanated from the man came knowledge. A tiny bit of fire returned to those pale red eyes. “How many?”

“Wha—” said the judge. “How many?”

Bushy Brows, already entirely uncertain about his life prospects, suddenly found himself at even more of a loss. Was this nightmare creature attempting to bribe him somehow? He did not want anything from this thing except for it to depart and never to return.

“I’ll do anything! Please, don’t do this!” cried the judge.

Blackthorne’s head tilted to the side slightly. “I should be laughing. Strange. I don’t feel like laughing.”

“Laughing?” asked the judge. He took another step back. A few more steps might get him far enough away to escape, or so he told himself.

“That’s the normal response to a joke, even a bad one. Right?” asked Blackthorne. He inclined his head back a little, his expression becoming almost thoughtful.

“The only joke here is this farce!” snapped the judge. “I tire of this! Kill me or let me go at once you wretched abomination!”

Instead of answering to the outcry spewed forth by the bearer of the world’s bushiest of eyebrows, Blackthorne lowered his head a little. “Please. Don’t do this.”

“You—” began the judge.

Blackthorne did not care to hear his words. He continued to speak over the judge’s voice. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Please, sir! I have a family! I did not steal from him!” said Blackthorne.

Blackthorne was briefly inundated by the memories that seemingly gushed from the judge’s mind like a busted fire hydrant. He stood there as though lost in reverie, but no. It was a nightmare filled with the desperate faces and crying voices of people who had met a cruel fate.

It was a fate that he knew well. It was the same fate that he had received as a child. Their voices echoed inside of his mind. Their cries. Their desperate screams.

Softly, he whispered. “I hear you.”

The judge said nothing, but he did take a few more steps away. Just a little more, he thought. If he had but a running start, he could escape!

Slowly, those baleful eyes turned to the judge once more. “How many…”

The judge refused to answer. Blackthorne’s body tensed. Suddenly, his eyes flared brightly, and his aura rushed outward.

Bushy Brows unleashed a high-pitched shriek and fell to the ground. He clawed at his face while Blackthorne stalked toward him with slow, deliberate, steps once more.

Once he was within arm’s reach, he relented. The judge clutched at his chest as though he experienced the initial stirrings of a heart attack.

“How many?” asked Blackthorne in a strangely familial tone. “Do you remember the number?”

He drew the judge back onto his feet. The man did not even attempt to flee now. Instead, he stood there shaking. Trembling.

Bushy Brows did not know what this hellish creature wanted him to say. He could only shake his head a little.

His tone was soft, almost gentle. Almost. “How many people stood before you in this court room and begged you to hear them?”

Bushy Brows flinched and looked away. He said nothing.

“Voices. Men. Women. …Children,” said Blackthorne. “Each of them cried out to you.”

“These innocent voices, for you certainly knew them to be innocent, called to you. They begged you. Pleaded.” Blackthorne eyed the man in a gentle way, as though he were sharing wisdom with a younger sibling. “They sought justice from the only man with the power to grant it, but your ears were deafened by the sound of tinkling coins promised to you if their trial went a certain way.”

The judge’s trembling intensified, though this time it seemed to hold anger in it. His head snapped around. His face morphed into a tight mask of disgust and rage. “So, what? I did it! Is that what you want to hear?”

Pushed beyond the limits of sanity, the judge screamed out. “Damn you! I did take that money. No one cared about that useless trash. Society was better off with them serving as slaves of the Davrin family!”

“Are you satisfied, monster? I admitted it!” Bushy Brows screamed in his face.

His desperate fear had turned to an even more desperate rage. Spittle flecked his words as he shouted once more into the face of the hell spawn who haunted him. “You’re nothing but a demon straight out of the pit!”

“Demon?” asked Blackthorne quietly. Strangely, a hint of a smile came to his lips. It granted him the appearance of a man beset by a bout of nostalgia. “No. Demons torment because they can do so, or so I am led to believe.”

“What do you intend? Why come here and do this, if not to torment me to death?” snarled the judge.

Blackthorne looked him in the eyes, his own eyes filled with an indescribable sadness. “I’ve come to help you.”

“No! Stay back you beast,” cried the judge. He tried to take a step back but could not make his legs obey. They seemed rooted to the floor by the powerful nature of his fear. “I do not want your help!”

Blackthorne’s eyes widened as though he had heard a shocking thing. His left eyebrow quirked upward as though he questioned what he had heard.

“Oh?” he asked in a curious tone. He leaned his head slightly to the side and looked into the eyes of the judge with a gentle expression. “You do not wish for me to help you?”

“I’ve seen what kind of help you offer, demon!” cried the judge. “I want none of it!”

“I… see,” said Blackthorne. He seemed genuinely saddened to hear such words.

“You are certain of this?” he asked the judge.

“Yes!” cried Bushy Brows.

In a fit of haughtiness, he derided his tormentor. “You are nothing more than a dreamer. You’re a visitor to this world, yet you think yourself fit to judge the people who live in it!”

“I am not the one who judges,” replied Blackthorne. “When I helped Dallen, he judged himself. Dallen found himself lacking.”

“What nonsense! Who would want such help!” snapped the judge. “I certainly don’t!”

Bushy Brows poked a bony finger toward him. “Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a demon aren’t you!”

“No.” replied Blackthorne quietly. “I have already told you, that is not who I am.”

“Then who are you!” screeched the judge.

A loud thunderclap echoed through the room as pale white hands moved faster than most eyes could follow. As though he were slapping a mosquito, Blackthorne’s hands clapped together. Blood splattered across his face, though he showed no hint of emotion. The judge’s head instantly caved in due to the incredible forces applied. The top of his skull spurted open and sent some of its contents flying upward. Bones, blood, brain matter and other bits of gore fell downward then splattered obscenely against the floor.

Blackthorne continued to gaze down impassively at the ruined head between his hands. His fingers gripped the meat of the man’s head and slowly twisted. His thumbs crushed the man’s brow ridge and casually tore the world’s bushiest eyebrows from their ancient place of rest.

He lightly pulled his hands aside, tearing the remainder of the man’s head apart in the process. The mostly headless corpse fell to the ground with a muted thud. The only part of his head left atop his neck was his lower jawbone.

Pale red eyes looked down at the mass of gore lying on the floor before their owner. He released the bits of bone and brain that he still head clenched in his hands. Bushy white eyebrow flapped through the air atop their carpet of skin then hit the court room floor with a sickening splat.

Briefly, his pale red eyes blazed to life once more. Though, the impassive expression on his face did not change. “I’m Blackthorne.”