For a moment, the surviving party members stood drenched in confusion as the stench of death and foul, raw monster flesh wafted their way. Then came an awful sobriety with the change of the wind’s direction. The three were clearly outmatched, as indicated by their minced companion, who had already begun to sink into shadow.

BEEADDLEDRUNG continued his primitive stare. Pennybard was quiet.

Erika shakily took in a breath and lowered her extinguished arrow. “That sword… to me, it looks-”

The swordsman scoffed, glaring at the other two humans. “So you surrender?” he said, a hint of hurt in his voice. “Conner is dead.” BEEADDLEDRUNG began a slow approach.

Kinjo shook himself out of bewilderment. “There’s no use in attacking, Ike. We don’t stand a chance… ” The mage had gone pale since he’d seen the monster’s info, his trap having utterly failed.

Step.

Ike stiffened his posture in an effort to become more imposing — something which might deter an animal or lesser monster, but here and now…

Step.

Erika struggled her gaze away from the monster and looked at the swordsman sympathetically. “Please, Ike. Just drop your sword. There might be a way to-”

Ike lunged forward with all his strength, poised to bisect BEEADDLEDRUNG.

Then there was the clamor of a desperate wrestle, the twisting of joints, and finally a pained yell. The swordsman was tossed aside, slid, and rolled along the parched soil, quenching it with blood. The beast took Ike’s sword and compared it to the hero’s sword for a moment before throwing it over his shoulder. Clang.

Step.

And already now it seemed that this fiend loomed over Erika. She could not look up anymore. Regret and fear tugged her attention toward the ground. She’d taken her party into the southern Badlands for the sake of some longshot, high-stakes bounty and it had gotten them killed. She wondered if this BEEADDLEDRUNG was even the intended target or a pawn of fate, some thing that had come wandering out of the old kingdom to deliver death. It… purred above her before speaking.

“Continue,” BEEADDLEDRUNG said plainly.

“...never seen a sword like that. I swear. I’m an archer, anyway… but Ike — he’s dead now — I doubt he’d have known either. To me, it looks foreign. I think you may be right that it belonged to someone famous. But word doesn’t travel like it used to. Would you know anything about that? What are you, anyways? Is this our punishment? I-”

“She’s rambling, master,” Pennybard hissed. “I think you should just cut her off.” It suddenly occurred to Erika that she was sweating profusely and had the performative smile of a hostage on her face. Her bow fell to the ground.

Cursed fey, Kinjo muttered spitefully. “She’s right,” he cut in, “it does look foreign. Only a specialist could tell you where it came from, I reckon.” Erika looked into Kinjo’s eyes and her expression wavered between hopeful and terrified. “Which… neither of us are.”

Step.

“But!” he added, and fell to his knees in surrender with his hands folded before him, “We know where you can find one. They're nearby. And we could take you to them.” He let out an exhausted sigh, his desperate proposal now laid out.

BEEADDLEDRUNG eyed the two for a while. He wondered which one would break first. The archer was already close it seemed, but the mage’s composure was clearly fragile. They both held on longer than his patience.

“Hmm. I doubt your specialist would like the sight of me very much,” BEEADDLEDRUNG said. His hastily regenerated form was obviously further from human than his usual. The garments which masked some of his figure had been destroyed, too. “No, even if you introduced me, it might play out uglier than this did. Am I right, Penny?”

Pennybard was delighted to help steer his master’s will. “So right, master,” he chimed. “I think your patience has rewarded you well with the information they’ve given, but they can be of no more use. It would be dangerous to leave them alive, or even to leave their remains out in the daylight. You should get rid of them.”

“Dangerous? Your cowardice is what keeps you in that cage, Pennybard,” BEEADDLEDRUNG mocked. “Leaving survivors is a courtesy of mine, and I think that today I am feeling generous. I will eat neither.” The imp frowned while the two humans sighed quietly in relief. Before they could feel too grateful, dark tendrils coiled around their ankles and dragged them forward.

Erika grasped quickly for her bow, aimed an arrow at the monster, and let fly as she slid. The flat edge of Finale, the hero’s sword, clanged hard against her temple and sent her into a deep sleep.

“Why lie about leaving us alive?” Kinjo asked weakly.

BEEADDLEDRUNG pulled the arrow tip from his thick skin, broke the shaft, and let the pieces flutter to the ground. It hadn’t drawn blood. “To give you hope. But I was not lying, exactly. The woman will live.” A black puddle began to form beneath the mage. He could see it gathering around his prone body and there was an icy chill surging through his back. Whispers and moans of lament rose out of the abyss. Then his consciousness began to sink slowly into that dark space and it felt like he was fainting.

“You got me with that blue fire,” Kinjo heard BEEADDLEDRUNG’s voice, faint as if from a great distance away. The bogeyman’s yellow eyes looked like fiery stars from within the darkness. “That was well done. It stung. It ruined my favorite coat and my favorite skin. So I’m going to adopt yours.”

At this point Kinjo felt disconnected from the world above and that horrifying encounter. As he sank deeper, the ghostly noise got louder: Help me, my child is still out there! Were the dead pleading with him? He could offer no help. It hurts, it hurts! So much anguish in their voices. And now it seemed that uncountable pale faces like tragic masks lined an invisible cylinder in the abyss. A bearded face looked desperately at Kinjo. Kinjo, I can’t see anything! Where are the others? The mage tried to answer his friend, but he choked on the gelatinous air. Then something snapped, and the world above seemed to bounce out of sight, and a boisterous laughter filled the darkness as Kinjo saw his own body leaving him to die. Whether the laughter came from him, or BEEADDLEDRUNG, or something deep, deep below, he could not tell. But it took him.

A tough one, huh, Erika? Kinjo mused, and fell.

—

Pennybard was filled with curiosity and horror as, from the spot where his cage had been set, he watched BEEADDLEDRUNG twist and go limp. For a moment he hoped that his master had indeed perished, but then the bogeyman’s body started to spasm as his great bones dislocated and wound themselves into a heap. The shadows were hard at work incising the mage’s body and unfolding it all over so that BEEADDLEDRUNG could wear it. They dragged the swordsman’s body near and kept it in case filler-flesh was needed. It was. Once the skin was sufficiently prepared, the monster’s sallow bones and grey-blue organs exploded from his discarded body in a rush of vomit and entered their new vessel. His dirty blood singed its new blanket and a smoky cloud of purple reek rose out like a belch. Erika, still asleep, turned over and winced in unconscious disgust. A fresh pile of Ike’s inner flesh was laid and patted atop the vessel until the bubbling and occasional bursts of gas and fluid ceased, and then the shadows coiled, swooning, round it and did something which Pennybard thought must be salivating. The imp felt fire from his belly tickle his throat as the unholy mass throbbed, throbbed, and went silent.

A naked human arm thrust itself out of the pile and felt at the dark membrane which encased it. Then another arm came. The fumbling appendages poked for the ground and then gripped it and pulled hard.

BEEADDLEDRUNG burst from his cocoon. The change in his form was great enough to make Pennybard question his identity. What was once a monster was now a naked man, coughing feebly. The man crawled over to a crimson blood pool leftover from the battle, puked into it, and slowly stood. He looked down into the puddle with his back hunched unnaturally before muttering in a low voice. The shadows whispered back, and tufts of black hair began to squeeze themselves out from his skin until his scalp was fully adorned, his body more sparsely. With one last spasm, his spine slithered into its correct position and he stood twitching for a moment.

BEEADDLEDRUNG spoke: “Penny bard.” His cadence was off. “Pnnybrd.” He took some time to practice moving his new vocal chords before trying again. “Pennybard. Aha!”

The man turned. An exaggerated smile was on his face. “New skin, Pennybard! I feel fresh.” He danced about the area either as an expression of joy or in an attempt to grow more accustomed to his new motor functions. Before long his foot slid into a patch of afterbirth and he slipped. The imp heard a painful crack. BEEADDLEDRUNG said nothing at first.

Then, “repair,” he commanded, and the shadows tucked the broken bone back into his leg and kissed the wound shut. “What a fragile body. No wonder it’s so easy to toy with them.” Pennybard squinted at the man.

“Sire?” the imp asked with a tone of something like doubt.

“Yes. It is I, BEEADDLEDRUNG. I’ve adopted that human’s body and now it is mine, another item in my collection, just like-”

“Sire,” Pennybard interrupted. “Pardon my insolence, but could you please clothe yourself as soon as possible?”

BEEADDLEDRUNG tilted his head in confusion before nodding. “Ah, yes. The disguise is not complete without that.” He moved to where Kinjo’s removed outfit lay and started to pull the clothes onto his new body. They were tight, but not uncomfortably so, as they had been baggy on their previous wearer. Altogether there was a light, hooded cloak the color of pine needles, pieces of leather connected by straps which must have been a sort of armor along with worn brown boots, and some cozy woolen pants with cuffs just below BEEADDLEDRUNG’s knees. Of course, there were some undergarments as well, but it did not feel right to adopt these, either because they would deprive the bogeyman of a degree of freedom or because they’d been used. Pinned to one of the leather straps of the armor was some kind of badge with numerals stitched onto it.

Pennybard was still surprised by the success of that horrific experiment. BEEADDLEDRUNG now looked very similar to the man whose skin he had taken, but was some inches taller and had the bulk of a martial fighter. His skin only bore the slight discoloration that a mild sickness might bring, as did the whites of his eyes. His irises were flecked with bronze in contrast to the man's original plain brown, probably the most unnatural deviation, but they could be excused as a high-born trait. Black hair fell from his head like tendrils to meet an unkempt beard.

The bogeyman plucked his keyring off the chain wrapped around his bestial corpse and attached it to a strap on his waist, then hauled that huge sword up from the ground and strapped it to his back. He eyed his old self with pity. “When is the last time you did any tailoring, Penny? The shadows are tired,” BEEADDLEDRUNG said. The dark presence around him had lessened significantly since that awful surgery, and now it was hidden.

“Will you let me out for a little? I am as good a tailor as ever,” Pennybard asked eagerly, winding his little arm around at the shoulder as if to loosen it up. He wanted to dash around in the air and look along the horizon, barren though the land was. His wings were sore from disuse.

BEEADDLEDRUNG took the cage in one hand and unlocked it with the other, leaving the door to creak open. “Go ahead and fly. I need you to make me something nice out of that old skin,” he said. “Just clean it up so I can wear it like a coat.” The imp nodded and flew free, and as soon as he thought time to escape while the shadows sleep, BEEADDLEDRUNG added: “But do not fly away from me. Do not forget your pledge.” Pennybard shuddered, sputtered, and almost crashed. He felt tethered to BEEADDLEDRUNG.

—

It was not even midday by the time BEEADDLEDRUNG had scoured the supplies leftover by the fallen party and prepared to resume his journey. Pennybard was nearly done sewing his master’s moult into a thick cloak. It looked like the pelt of a mythic beast quilted with patches and strips of fine fabric. When the imp crawled underneath it to finalize some interior stitching, he felt a chill as of a dense forest’s shade from the sun. BEEADDLEDRUNG, who was somewhat upset to have found no keys among the luggage or choice meat leftover from his shapeshifting, was delighted to see the cloak his pet had designed for him. Pennybard thought that his master must have been the happiest he had ever seen him. He was rewarded for his handicraft with a heaping helping of fire and smoke, Ignis’ savory ambrosia, which he feasted on till his little muscles inflated and his belly grew fat. When it was time for him to return to his cage, he had to squeeze in. He was too satisfied with his meal to feel uncomfortable, though. He had been starved for so long within that old mansion.

BEEADDLEDRUNG thought about something one of those men had said, about bugbears being extinct — it was a word he didn’t know, but it sounded to him like extinguish, so he reasoned that it meant dead. If this was his own doing, the result of his territorial phase long ago, he couldn’t remember. He thought that perhaps the hero had killed them all as an act of indirect vengeance, and that he was saving the bogeyman for last.

“We are heading that way, Penny: towards the greener lands, and as quick as these legs will carry us. I am eager to get on with dying.”

Refreshed by the morning’s skirmish with a renewed sense of dominance, BEEADDLEDRUNG sprung into a jog towards his destination.

[ALERT! PRISONER: YOUR PARTY IS OVERDUE FOR A STATUS UPDATE. PROMPTLY REPORT YOUR STATUS. A REPO FORCE WILL BE DEPLOYED ERE NIGHTFALL PENDING YOUR COMPLIANCE.]

The voice rattled within BEEADDLEDRUNG’s skull and sent him into a feverish panic. What devilry!? he cursed and shot Pennybard an accusatory look.

“Master?” the imp asked nervously, perking up from his snooze.

“Something is talking in my head. It’s my head and they’re talking. How stupid,” the bogeyman complained. “We will have to hurry. I think they have sent for help, somehow.” He turned his eyes wrathfully to the archer. She was still unconscious, but tossing uneasily in the dirt. The existence of the voice threatened BEEADDLEDRUNG (his mind had never been invaded) such that he didn’t kill the woman now, thinking that might escalate things.

Fear of the voice only fueled him as sped towards the edge of the Badlands, where the earth became livelier and the air less dry. His sprint kicked up a long dust cloud and shook Pennybard’s cage violently. The imp and his master’s good moods were both ended and replaced with a lingering unease. Status update? BEEADDLEDRUNG thought, I’m coming to eat you sorry lot, that’s what. Voice in my head! I will have no voices but mine.