Madness, for all its comfort, insanity was something Lucca would have preferred to the torture he had been treated to by the Queen and her servants. Yes, he was presented with lavish meals that sated his hunger and yes, he was treated a rank above the other servants… Even then, to Queen Loreia he was nothing but a bag for her to torture for her amusement.

The initial months had been the kindest, a simple cutting of his skin and flogging of his back with a cat-o-nine-tails tipped with iron beads to amplify the agony she could grant him. There was a point to the cutting, not simply just the tip of the dagger but also in her motions. She would scrawl words and symbols across his flesh, cutting it and scaring it into markers of her ownership.

It was only ever skin deep, never passing into his muscles and nerves, at least, in the beginning it hadn’t. Back then she was content with leaving him a bloody and lifeless wretch left for the healers to repair before continuing the coming morning.

She was always the cruellest after returning from her political meetings with the neighbouring countries. Every time she’d come to his room—one laced with contraptions and torture instruments—and would ‘play’ with her pliers and hammers.

Lucca considered it a miracle he could even still grow nails after how many she’d plucked…

The servants, the butlers, the guards, and messengers, none of them ever uttered a word against her. Some he swore were smiling as they watched blood spurt from his arteries, others he knew were fearful they would become her new pets or would be fed to the beasts she kept to become their meal or the womb for the monstrous abominations she so loved watching squirm and struggle with life.

Sometimes… no, those sick games, they were by far the worst. They churned Lucca’s stomach every time he thought about them… the things he’d done to save himself from ‘her.’

Everything in this world, this Marga was sick. Damn the world outside the castle walls where Lucca could never tread. The people, all of them. This monster, this demon of a queen was no better than the demon kings from novels who enjoyed genocide and slaughter. So what she was human?

It is exactly that part of her that made her a demon.

Lucca puffed heavily as he crossed his room from one end to the other. A limp taken his heavily deformed leg and scabs across every inch. Some old, some new, some scarred over leaving most of his body lumpy with risen skin. Even his hair, that previous black lustre was still there but now ever patchy from the scalding water she poured over him. The heat from then and the breaths of charring water had left his throat a mess. Not even the healers could fix it, any of it.

He lumbered to his dresser, pulled it open with three twisted fingers and dug out the cleanest tunic he could and pulled it on. A task made challenging by the constant trembling his body was now belied towards.

A stench filled the room, one of death and decay filled with the iron of blood and the milk of pus. They could clean most of the wounds, but they could never remove the smell, the rot that some of her games left inside him.

As he peeled away from his dresser, he trekked on his sandals and felt a knocking against his heel. Lucca turned his singular eye down and felt a small, sallow smile lift across his cheeks at the little abomination tugging at his pants.

“Mawgh, Mawgh-” it cried.

Lucca leaned down, hissing as his spine creaked and lifted the beast from the ground.

It was one of the queens sick creations. A minute, infantile abhorrence of smooth skin flaps and thick white and black patches of tiger-striped fur. One hand upon a stumpy limb and three paws—a mockery of cat and human-like proportions—with many lumps and misgrown horns across all its body.

“Hello Mawghli,” he mumbled with a hoarse and painful voice and poked the little ones bulging belly. “How are you?” the creature nuzzled into his arms like a kitten and threw its voice out.

“Mawgh!” her hand shot out as her beady eyes flickered with sparkles.

“I’m sorry Mawghli. Her Majesty wants me to be the main attraction at dinner tonight. So I can’t stay with you.” It didn’t hurt as much anymore. The torture that is. Before the queen took pleasure in his screams, now she only enjoyed the act as he spoke or whined no more.

“Mawgh!” she echoed, sensing what he meant as her ‘face’ contorted sadly. She was deaf, born such not three years prior. Lucca gently pried her fingers from his tunic and limped to his bed where he set her down and patted her head softly, right between the tiger ear and the large bulbous lump of fur that took the place of her other ear.

“I’ll be back tonight Mawghli…”

Oh, how he wished this night would kill him once and for all.

***

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a butler just beneath the queen bellowed to the crowd, his voice amplified by the magnificent contraptions those other world heroes brought with them. The crowd turned silent, and head spun towards the butler, many diverting to look with awe up to the queen who sat above them all. “We will now begin the nights' show!”

The butler snapped his fingers, a call to the cage masters hidden in the walls surrounding the arena of sodden soil. The first gate to open was that of the left, it creaked and ground, scratching noises across the stadium as a large, white-furred, black striped tiger stepped into the ring. Two large, curling horns protruded from its skull with its tail thrown about sending its pheromones aloft.

“Tonight, we present you with a female grand white Volgrun from the eastern reaches of Savearne. Famed for their ferocious roars and ruthless prowess in battle, the white Volgrun has earned its place as one of the most feared beasts in all the lands.” He glanced across the crowd, inspected their expressions of awe as many of them had never seen such a beast before.

“Some of the more astutely eyed of you may notice the way she’s moving, prowling around the perimeter and her tail swaying so vigorously. This is a sign of this Volgrun being in rut.” Mutters filled the arena, ears curious about why they’d want to see a Volgrun breeding, but few, they knew the reason for that. The hype man beamed brighter and looked up to Queen Loreia and back to the crowd.

“In case you are unknowing to this, the Volgrun is famed for its violent breeding rituals. In Savearne stories are abound of entire forests falling to pieces overnight as two Volgrun, one male, the other female, battle each other. Should the female deem victorious, she will move on in search of a new partner. But should the male deem victory… well, I needn’t explain that.” The butler focused on a crowd of people, easily in their three dozen with a blend to their skin colour and ages, though not one was younger than their forties.

They were the heroes of Antvaria and the continents surrounding Antvaria. Men and women of the highest magnitude with powers that could only exist in a world not that of Marga. They had arrived night twenty-five years ago, fought tooth and nail until finally the threat of all the world, the Galvare had been slain with not one left alive.

Since then, they had become something of a peacekeeping brigade. Travelling the world ensuring no creatures such as the Galvare ever came into being. And tonight… tonight they were here within Antvaria. And the queen certainly couldn’t leave them with a dull stay.

“Through the use of various enhancement, this Volgrun has been locked in a nigh permanent state of heat. Thus, making her particularly ornery and violent. To that degree, let us bring in her challenger.”

Snapping his fingers once more, the gate opposite the Volgrun creaked open and its stride halted. Its body lowered closer to the ground as its horns bolted with streaks of electricity and its lips curled back presenting its rows of large, jagged teeth as well as a thick, rumbling growl that sent shivers down many of the spectators.

Stepping into the arena slowly and with a limp was what could only be considered a well-dressed abhorrence of a man. So heavily scared that any form of face he may have had disappeared. His nose crushed and severed leaving only two-slit holes, a single dark eye that stared emptily at the people up on the stands with his other eye a void of nothing but scarred flesh.

Gasps resounded all across the stadium with only those close enough able to even hear the distant click of his steel-tipped boots and the clanking of the sword on his hip hitting the steel knee guards he wore.

This… this was Lucca.

“Coming in now is one of the Queen’s most treasured pets! A heretic of darkness she has graciously named Miki Sisinnius.” More shocked guffaws echoed throughout.

“A heretic?” one mumbled.

“Impossible, we killed them all.” A hero called irately, his hand nervously reaching to the blade at his hip.

“Now now, I hear your worries. But this is nothing like the heretics so famed throughout the continent. This one was discovered early in its downfall and was able to be purified by the red priests. For all intents and purposes, this heretic is a normal human like you or I with no power to its name.”

The noises calmed but the trepidation never faded.

The butler eyed the heroes, their expressions were a blend of disgust, hate, even horror at the creature before them.

As the beast stilled just outside its shutting gate, its head turned up and its solemn eye trailed over the people. Whoever it passed by stilled, their breath hitching, just expecting it to send a vile heretical tendril to rip them to pieces but never once did. Halfway through the crowd, the beast's attention was drawn by the low growling of the Volgrun and upon seeing the tiger-like creature, its mouth hung open. “It’s you…” it muttered. Lucca remembered it well. Mawghli’s mother.

In the Volgrun’s eyes, a spark of familiarity rose, but its growling halted not for a second.

The abominable heretic parted its sunken eye and returned it to the crowd. Continuing its initial scan of the crowd, hesitating for only a second atop the Queen where a slight flicker of hate and fear came to grow. When it parted from her, it quickly froze and jerked its head around, latching onto a pale-blond haired woman. Her hair greying at the roots and wrinkles though far from pronounced were starting to appear atop her matured cheeks.

To Lucca… she was a face he’d been forcing himself to remember for decades. It was a face he would never forget, though aged it had become, by many, many a year.

The girl… no, the woman, she stared down at him. A hand over her mouth as disgust and horror flared in her expression. She didn’t recognize him, didn’t even suspect it to be him. But he knew her, that… that’s enough right?

“Kate-”

“Katie dear!” Lucca’s voice halted, replaced with another man's as a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man pushed through the crowd carrying in his hands two topped up cups of wine. Passing one to Katelyn, he leaned in and met her cheek with his lips before gazing down to the arena below. “Holy fuck. The hell happened to him?” The man… he watched as the Volgrun strode across the arena and began to circle the beast.

Lucca’s mind jolted to a halt, ‘Did… did he just kiss Katelyn? No, no, that’s not right.’ Katelyn, she’s… Katie’s his, she was his girlfriend. Not Connor Farley’s. She was his, she wouldn’t cheat on him… would she?

Lucca’s body shivered and jerked, soon he collapsed to his knees with his arms limp and hanging at his side as he stared with a tearful eye at Katelyn. ‘She wouldn’t do that… she wouldn’t… shewouldntshewouldntshewouldnt’ Lucca clutched his face with his mangled hands, his nails digging into his scalp tearing open scars and scabs yet to fully heal as well as chunks of what little hair remained atop his scalp. He didn’t care, not about the hype man as he further described him and the evil gods, he supposedly believed in. A lie buried in a lie. Zushakon… they were the kindest being to him that he’d ever met in the past fifty years.

The Volgrun’s steps halted, bloody red eyes widening and growl lessening as it could just sense a dangerous power beginning to radiate from within Lucca’s body.

“Mine…mineminemineminemineminemineminemine…” as he chanted insanely, his body suddenly jerked. The hole in his head, the socket where his other eye once laid before the queen added it to her collection, bubbled with the substance of truest nights. He could feel it, that little bead hidden in the folds of his brain. Its roots slowly trekked from its hull, snaked through his veins but didn’t dare to harm him. It awoke to the breaking of his mind and feasted upon his insanity.

The Volgrun knew the powers danger, it was dull unlike its cousins, but it knew any attempt it made at escape or slaying the monster would only be met with its death. In it, the Volgrun harboured wisdom, more so than what a human may think of a creature its shape. But still, it was wise enough to know that whatever monster Lucca was to become, it would be no kinder to her than it would be to its species.

Ignoring its instincts telling it to fight or even flee, it stepped closer, drawing nearer until the fur across its body began screaming for it to flee and fell to its belly. Its head lowered and eyes shut as if pleading for Lucca to take mercy upon it in this and future lives.

The bead of darkness grew, tangling just millimetres within his brain and began to germinate. The bubbling turned to a tar-like ooze that began to trickle down Lucca’s cheek like bloody tears.

“What is going on?” sensing something wrong, Loreia spoke to her trusted butler and sipped her glass of wine.

“Hatehatehatehatehatehate….” The rage that course through him, his anger at the demon of a god, at Loreia, at life for what it’s done to him, at Connor for stealing Katelyn and at Katelyn for abandoning him to live a life while he festered and rotted for eight long years as the queen's torture sack…

And then, as if all that hate didn’t matter, Lucca sighed out. “Ahhh…” the bubbling of his eye halted and the ooze congealed as the roots of the seed were forced back into its hull by a thin shield. The shield clogged the leaking roots and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk in on itself until it created a new shell, a new shield against its maddening aura.

Something snapped inside Lucca the moment the shell was formed. He threw his head back and in silence a tower of coiling mist shot into the heavens. The moment it touched a cloud they turned black and blotted out the sun. Fear ran throughout the stadium, people already scurrying to safety… they wouldn’t make it before tar-rain trickled from the heavens.

A single drop landed atop a raven watching with mocking eyes the events unfolding below it and seconds later its body bloated, feathers fell away, its skin cracked, and teeth and tongues filled the cracks. The tongues squirmed from its cracks and they squirmed like serpents. One of the tongues gripped another raven by its fleeing talon and ripped it into the maw before clamping down, crushing through its bones, and sputtering blood through the rips in its skin.

As another drop fell, it collided with the eye of a man staring up into the heavens, he recoiled and fell to his knees, screaming as his head grew and bulged. The eye that had once been there popped from the socket and squirmed on a tendril of bloody red flesh and wrapped around the passing leg of another man.

As he fell, the man screamed, pleading, and clawing for someone to save him but none could save him before the bloated abomination drew him into the gaping maw awaiting him. When it bit down, his head and were splattered across the floor, eyes hollow and filled with fear.

The heroes immediately were thrown into action, most rushed off to the sides, avoiding the thin trickles of the corrupting rain as they drew their respective weapons and went to battle slaying the abominations around them.

Katelyn threw up her hands and summoned forth a wide shield dangling over them and the surrounding civilians blocking the rain from touching them.

“Connor!” Katelyn shouted and the man was already throwing himself from the bleachers, tearing from his hip a blade shining in holy light.

The Volgrun sensing Connors rapid approach rose from its prostrating position and face him. Body already lowered into a lunge, it threw itself into the air a drop of tar touched its head, and its maw grew twice the size, its teeth thicker, longer, more jagged. It feared the hero, but it feared Lucca more.

“You are not my issue!” Connors body shifted and in the blink of an eye, he had ducked and swept his blade, it cut through flesh and bone, severing the Volgrun’s head from its body and left its corpse to fester behind him as he continued his assault and ploughed his blade through Lucca’s sternum and severed the heretic's heart in two.

No sooner did the abyssal pillar coming from Lucca’s eye weakened as cold black blood oozed from around the blade.

“Ahhh…” Lucca groaned, his head falling as his singular eye lazily fell onto Connor’s brown ones. “My mind… it’s so clear.” He mumbled, “Is this sanity? I don’t think I’ve been sane for a long time now.” Even before his death in the plane crash, he didn’t feel so clean of mind.

There was no pain from the sword, even though he knew he should be dead he wasn’t. His heart shouldn’t beat, though it did. He shouldn’t sense, shouldn’t feel, shouldn’t anything, and yet… he did.

He lifted his broken right hand and as he did, from the stumps of his thumb ring finger grew new bones and on those bones muscles, veins, and flesh until two pristine fingers undamaged by years of torture were born. He brought the limb and dropped it onto Connors and the moment he did, Conner was sent reeling backwards. Boils and black warts already rising and popping all across the limb.

“Graaahhh!” Connor cried out, staring in horror as he watched and felt his fingers break and twist apart, tearing the flesh between each of them and in the slits formed grotesque amalgams of teeth and tongues that cackled and gnawed.

“Sorry mate!” another man, one unfamiliar to Lucca with a thick, if not weakened Australian accent rushed towards Connor and brought his blade down. Severing Connors own arm before the corruption could move any farther. The limb fell to the earth, bleeding and writing like a snake, screeching as it shrivelled and died.

Connor screamed agony spilt out across his body as he held his newly formed stump just trying to staunch the flow of blood. A well-dressed, eastern woman with vibrant raid hair rushed to his side and quickly summoned a glimmering magical light atop the stump. The man who’d severed the limb turned his focus unto Lucca and poised himself ready to attack and tossed short looks to the other heroes surrounding the heretical beast.

In the distance, beneath the clearing sky hidden coolly beneath a thin roof was the queen. By her side, her butler was groaning as his body contorted and bubbled with corruption. She eyed him for a second, huffed and from the side of her table pulled out the construction of one of the hero. She pointed one end of the lump of metal and wood towards the butlers head and without hesitation, pulled the trigger. Flame’s rippled from the tip, launching for a bullet of steal the shattered the rising abomination skull and killed it outright.

Loreia winced from the pain the recoil left her with and marvelled at the contraption with a large, devilish smile. “So, this is a gun, is it?” her focus turned down to Lucca and with a sigh, she said, “ah Miki… Pity, I wanted to kill you myself.”

A gust of Abyssian airs surrounded Lucca, lifted him from the ground and brought him to his feet before dispersing. The scars that crossed his body squirmed like many worms and twisted, digging deeper into his body and slowly began clearing his skin and returned his hair, “How long has it been now… fifty… no… sixty… no… fifty-eight years?” he gripped the silver wrapped handle of the blade and ripped it from his chest sending out a violent spurt of his ichor across the ground. The wound itself not healing as a holy shimmered across the wound stopping any healing that may have been.

Lucca ignored it but could quickly feel his body going numb, the death he was yearning for was coming.

He glanced over the mangled, shrivelled corpse of the Volgrun and smiled, “thank you.” He whispered, tendril's of darkness rose from the soil around it, burrowed into its mummified flesh and devoured it into the earth. Lucca could feel a shadow the moment it did, like she was now inside him, nestled in his very soul.

Sputtering a mouth full of blood, Lucca once more fell to his knees and with the last of his strength forced his eyes to Katelyn. She had moved from defending the people from the falling flames to ridding the world of those touched by corruption. Seemingly sensing his gaze, she turned to him, noticed his smile and the weak words he mouthed before falling to his second death.

“Ka…tie…”

“Lucca?”