As the day crawled on and the landscape with it, BEEADDLEDRUNG’s state of mind shifted. He had much time to think. If the “repofores” that the strange intruder mentioned earlier were sent to find him, it seemed impossible that they’d identify him as the beast who partook in a meal of human flesh out in the desert, which meant he could avoid open hostility. Then again, the voice called him “prisoner,” something he was appalled to think might apply to himself. Although the previous owner of his new skin may have been some kind of prisoner, the fact that the humans he’d encountered had been wandering out in the wild contradicted that.

Pennybard’s the most prisoner-like, in his cage there! he realized, and for the rest of the hike he suspected his pet, the apparent true target of those demands, of having played dumb when the voice called out. But whether that message was for Pennybard or What’s-Its-Face, BEEADDLEDRUNG began to feel something like envy — he felt like his own notoriety had been encroached upon. According to those humans, nobody even knew his name anymore. The woman will now, at least, he comforted himself, but he felt a quiet angst from his shrunken shadow. As daylight trickled away into dusk over the softening terrain, which was becoming fuller of life and reminded him of the past, BEEADDLEDRUNG’s thoughtful jaunt reached its conclusion. Skidding to a clumsy stop on his new used human boots, he shook Pennybard awake and pointed ahead at a large wooden mass.

Tucked between some high hills with sheer faces was a settlement, a city, busy and loud even so near sunset. Upon the easternmost hill was a tower, the only sight here familiar to BEEADDLEDRUNG. Back when he had wandered out this way and eventually come upon the village where the hero met him, he’d found an outpost, a Tower of Watch, and lurked nearby a few times to snatch a snack. It was easy pickings since the location was remote and, back then, undermanned. Although he often wondered if he was strong enough to eat the whole royal army, individual soldiers never stood much of a chance against the monster, even when he chose not to use spells or shadows for the fun of it. The area now looked like it might indeed contain all the king’s soldiers. The old Tower did remain, but it had been bolstered with high battlemented walls of large hewn stones surrounding its base, and there appeared to be a swarm of smaller towers encircling it now.

The strangest addition was what seemed like a large fire lit in a chamber at the top under a conical roof, fueled by something which burned bright as the sun. From the fire was sent a stream of light that reached far past the edge of the city and rolled slowly around. It was like a limb stretched out of the heavens to feel the shape of the earth. As it wound its way towards BEEADDLEDRUNG, he scowled and goosebumps stiffened his hair. He felt that if it hit him, the light would expose the monstrous skeleton beneath his skin and the voice would find him and talk in his head forever. He would have to navigate out of its path.

“It’s no wonder we’ve seen no trees, my lord,” Pennybard creaked, his voice still sleepy. “It appears that they’ve all been cut down and hauled here.” Even at this hour, men could be seen carrying twisted old tree trunks into the city gates in file.

The city itself, which even snaked up along the hills before connecting to the tower complex at their summit, was like a leafless forest. Walls framed with many overturned logs and broad planks entrapped countless wooden buildings, some seemingly piled atop each other. There could be seen a whole canopy of roofs shingled with green clay, dotted with stout chimneys that spat out smoke. It looked to the imp like a fortress, except that the gate and the walls and the windows of buildings within bore firm root-like bars, dead and gnarled and grey. This place was an enormous cage.

“Prisoners,” BEEADDLEDRUNG said, gesturing towards the bustle along the walls. Not only were there workers, but also parties returning to the gates from different directions. Some were being dragged in. One party, heavily armed and armored, hustled out of the gate to some mission.

“Luna’s silence,” BEEADLEDRUNG whispered. Asking for favors left a bad taste in his mouth, but that was the way of spells.

No response.

“You must be more polite, master,” Pennybard said. “We’re nearing Luna’s hours.”

The bogeyman sighed. “O beautiful Luna, may I please have the power of silence immediately?” Still no response, maybe even less of one.

“Damned moon.”

Pennybard stifled a laugh at his captor’s failure. “This is the result of prolonged neglect, master. It’s been too long since you asked favors of Luna or offered any blood — and that is her favorite offering…”

BEEADDLEDRUNG snarled. “The shadows only ever want what I want, that’s why I like them better. But if she wants blood, here is blood,” he declared, and bent off a fragile finger in anger. Dark blood streamed from the human appendage and onto the scrubby weeds in the dirt. “Silence. Stupid moon.”

There was a sound like a glass throat inhaling, and then a shroud of eerie quiet was placed over BEEADDLEDRUNG’s person, along with a hint of contempt. This amused Pennybard. The bogeyman was eager to put his shadow back to work and have his finger repaired, but its presence had receded even more. He let out an annoyed grunt and pocketed the finger-stump to stop it from bleeding too much before proceeding.

The Tower’s beam was enormous considering how far away it was, but moved slowly. It wasn’t very difficult for BEEADDLEDRUNG to close in on the city gates without being noticed. He crouched as low as his human legs could bend, kept within dense patches of brush (these were still pretty meager) and stalked over to the furthest portion of the wall from the gate. Then, after waiting for an opening, he skulked along the wall right up to the colossal prison’s front door. A grinding sound could be heard as the outer gate was shut, its dead roots digging deep into the ground. The inner gate was still open, and an anticipatory silence hung in the air.

“Halt! Show yourself,” a voice rang out. This was no mental intruder — it came from a lone armored figure up on a platform above the gate. If there were others, they were out of sight from BEEADDLEDRUNG’s position against the wall, and didn’t speak.

“Seen!?” said a shocked BEEADDLEDRUNG. His heart sank, and he felt more exposed than he could recall ever feeling. Once a furtive king, his many idle years had reduced him to a fumbling oaf, the kind caught in the middle of the night with a snack hanging halfway out of his mouth. He shriveled so much in posture that he nearly became part of the wall.

Pennybard’s beady eyes peered intently through the bars of his cage. “No sire, not seen. If anything, heard, but that couldn’t be. Look!”

Amidst the chill evening breeze there swelled the sound of labored breathing, which grew more intense until, as it reached its peak, a yell resounded. Black birds with deep, woody caws scattered from their perches on the battlements as arrows zipped by them. They found their marks in the limbs of a man lying in the dirt some distance from the gates. He appeared to have been hiding crouched between some bushes, and made an effort to escape the arrows by diving out of the way. A pathetic gurgling noise passed out of his throat as he attempted to crawl away in spite of his wounds, but the outer gate was raised and two large men in thorny black armor rushed out. They held wooden staves with leaden clubs at their end, and used these to beat the man. He looked small and thin, could even have passed for a corpse if his clothes weren’t so clean — and if, as was surprising to BEEADDLEDRUNG and Pennybard, he did not yell and stab ferociously at the guards’ shins with an unveiled shiv. The weapon dinged uselessly against the armor until one of the guards kicked the man in the jaw, which ended his fit. The guards and their captive returned through the gates, which stayed open behind them.

“Bahahaha! He made a good go of it, boys!” the figure atop the gate platform said, eliciting some collective laughter from behind. “Looked li’ a fuckin’ caterpillar, that one!” said another. “‘elp me! ‘elp me!” This mockery ignited even more laughter. Caught in a strange wave of relief, BEEADDLEDRUNG laughed along. “What is a caterpillar, Pennybard?”

“Shush, you…” Pennybard held his tongue, “Er, pardon me, master. It may close again. Now’s our chance!” He gestured at the gate with a dart-like finger. “Enter like those other prisoners did: act like you’re returning from some business. And do not acknowledge what just happened!”

“I am no prisoner,” BEEADDLEDRUNG grumbled as he kicked off the wall and moved for the gates. As he got close, he could see that there were two more guards within the entrance in regular metal armor holding tall spears. Through their helmets could be seen puckered faces — they may have been squinting in suspicion, holding in laughter, or both.

“In, then. In you go,” said one of the guards, who tilted his spear towards the inner gate. The fragile silence from before had returned, and the guards up on the battlements glared down at BEEADDLEDRUNG. Meanwhile, two more prisoners exhaustedly hurried past from behind.

Casting off Luna’s silence with a shattering sound, BEEADDLEDRUNG looked up at the guards who’d been joking and saluted. Pennybard cringed. “Well done,” the bogeyman said in a tone of voice he’d call “chipper.” He pointed a thumb over his cloaked shoulder at the sparse trail of blood leftover from the altercation. “He hardly got out the door!”

The frontmost guard looked puzzled and angry, and spat a globule of phlegm down from the wall. “Who the hell are you?” he said.

Before BEEADDLEDRUNG could repeat the name declaration he’d made that same morning, a gate guard commanded him again: “You deaf? Get‘nside,” and moved to prod him with his spear.

“We were planning on going in anyway, right master?” Pennybard whispered, cooling BEEADDLEDRUNG’s temper somewhat.

I’ll raze the whole thing from inside, thought the monster from within his pleasant shell. “Sorry,” he strained to say. “Long journey.” With that, he shuffled his tense body inside, and a bell tolled a loud, low note into the deepening night. The gates shut behind him, and he entered the City of Bounties.

—

Just within the gates stood a crowd of tents and people. Flickering torches cast the area in a jittery orange hue, and moving bodies threw stretched shadows all around. The tents were strangely colorful and tastefully erected, albeit haphazardly, and something about the prisoners was uncharacteristically unreserved. It may have been their harsh, lively voices, or their unique styles of dress, or the diverse tasks they were performing. In fact, BEEADDLEDRUNG considered momentarily that he had stepped out of a prison rather than into one. A city of specialists, it looks like, he thought. But almost everyone had on a numbered badge, and those tall guards in black were about, pacing around and glancing at each person. One came so suddenly from a crevasse between passersby that it seemed they had just appeared next to BEEADDLEDRUNG, and stared through the shade of its mask at his adopted badge.

“Number 13,” came the guard’s cold voice. “You’re on the repossession list for suspected desertion… Where is the rest of your party?”

It took a moment for BEEADDLEDRUNG to register that he was being spoken to, especially because it seemed the guard was looking through him. He felt, too, that what he had heard was like a different language — this wasn’t the kind of direct conversation, usually with scared and hasty humans, that he was used to.

He turned to face the guard. “Hmm?”

The guard stood silent for a moment, looked to and fro, and then grabbed BEEADDLEDRUNG by the wrist. Before he could react, the bogeyman had been yanked through the crowd into an alleyway further inside the city. Only as he was removed from the tent-filled space did he note a confusing dissonance in the sounds of its inhabitants. There were the muffled screams of wounded prisoners being treated, the grim laughter of folk keenly aware of their captivity but nonetheless cheerful, and yells of disputing patrons and peddlers. A sour defiance hung on them all, but now that ambience was muted. Two figures scoffed and filed out of the alleyway flicking embers onto brick-paved ground.

The guard removed its helmet — it was a woman with black hair cut short, her muddy eyes flashing concern. She looked BEEADDLEDRUNG up and down, and the worry in her face increased as she observed his big cloak and sword and saw Pennybard at his waist.

“Kinjo… what’s all this?” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Where are Ike and Conner?” Her voice turned grave. “Where’s Erika?”

BEEADDLEDRUNG felt a sort of pressure alien to him that made him chuckle. The guard backed away a bit at this. Not like I’m going to eat her, the bogeyman thought, although now he considered it. He thought about how he should respond.

“They’re gone,” he stated, completely stoic.

The guard’s face filled with emotion and she examined BEEADDLEDRUNG’s person again. He looked tall against the sliver of black sky outside the alley and his face was stony. The creature he held caged seemed panicked and stupid, pressed against the bars. The guard sighed, lunged forward,

and embraced BEEADDLEDRUNG.

“You look really rattled,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry, Kinjo. I’m glad you made it back.” After pulling away, she looked downcast and a fury entered her eyes. “The Keepers and their fucking suicide bounties. What false hope…” Her arms hung limply and tears glazed her eyes as she began to process the loss of her friends.

Being squeezed made the monster want to squirm, but for some reason he endured it. It seemed that he’d avoided suspicion for now, but he had no idea how to respond, and so looked down at Pennybard.

Pennybard, annoyed at his inability to speak in this situation, rolled his little eyes and began to mime advice to his master. He pointed at his horned noggin and then made an X with his arms.

Ah, okay, BEEADDLEDRUNG thought. He looked at the guard again. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his head. “I am very stupid. Could you explain all of this to me?”

She looked puzzled. Pennybard coughed up some smoke to get his master’s attention and vigorously shook his head. This time he contorted his face into an expression of hyperbolic confusion, clutching his chin and squinting around.

“Ah, I mean…” BEEADDLEDRUNG revised, “I can’t remember anything. I do not know what happened.” A squeaky sigh of relief came from Pennybard. The guard looked doubtful for a moment, but then grabbed BEEADDLEDRUNG by the wrist again.

“You’re clearly shaken up,” she said, her face turned away. “Let’s get you some food and drink… we can figure things out in the morning.”

The bogeyman thought of flaky, moist, crummy, bland human food with disgust. He had no desire to dine on moldy bread or to drink frothy bitter water, and he had no desire to be dragged around by some woman, but the newness of it all roused a strange curiosity in him, and his shadow dragged limply behind. Even his hunt for a specialist he temporarily put aside as he felt himself become immersed in fresh excitement. It was as if his youth had been restored and he was a new bogeyman on a slow-paced, undercover mission for a fine meal. He salivated as the pair exited the alley and went deeper into the city.