He was awash with blood.

Every step was taken as though through a thick swamp of half-coagulated blood, every blink brought fresh rivulets of red into his eyes, every breath gave him a mouthful of viscous, coppery liquid.

In his left hand was a knife, or a sword, or perhaps just his fist, or a myriad of other weapons that had been used to kill and maim.

Ahead was the unwary victim, or the deserving monster, or the heroic saviour - each soon to be brought low by base murder.

He lashed out with knife/fist/a burst of golden light. His blade/bludgeon/explosion caught the innocent/murderous/heroic foe unawares and sent them to the floor, leaving him to tower over their prone form.

He raised his weapon, eyes blazing with glee, and brought it downward, over and over, sending spray after spray of blood into his eyes until his entire vision was consumed with claret. He brought his right hand up to wipe it away, and found himself holding a cleaver over the exposed neck of a struggling animal/human/spirit, feeling the frantic pulse beneath his palm but knowing the beast/fool/weakling could not escape.

The cleaver came down, and lifeblood spilt over his hands, the flesh beneath his grip parting and growing slack.

He brought the cleaver up to his face and found that it had transformed into the headsman’s axe, and with a salute to a jeering, bloodthirsty crown, he brought the blade down on the neck of a man wrongly accused.

Sadistic glee soaked into every fiber of his being, his own heartbeat the victorious cheer of the audience, of every spirit of savagery and ferocity and violence, singing in harmonious tune to the slaughter.

His legs collapsed into blood and he fell backwards into the pool, viscous red pouring into his ears, up his nose, down his throat and filling every cavity of his body, suffusing him in blood, in the essence of butchery.

The red drained away, clearing, and he was four years old again, sitting atop his family’s caravan.

Dad was lazing in the driver’s seat, idly letting the couple of donkeys pulling them set the pace forward. Mama was sitting just to his right, luxuriating in the afternoon sun.

Behind them, half a dozen more caravans followed in a single-file line, each one housing a different family. Ahead strode the mercenary they had hired for protection, a man clad in an ancient-looking set of combination robes and armour, wielding a circular shield and short sword.

He hadn’t been necessary so far, but it was largely the show of power they were worried about.

They were close to their next stop, they knew - a secluded city that they hoped to bring new trade routes to, maybe open up a new avenue of permanent profit.

“Halt,” a voice echoed from above, and his family collectively raised their eyes towards the sun, squinting their eyes against the harsh light. “State your business.”

“We are merchants, sir,” Dad said, a light sort of camaraderie in his voice as he rose to his feet and gave a bow and a flourish. “We have documentation of goods that we hope to bring-!”

A strange sort of whooshing hiss seared through his vision, and the front of the caravan cratered inward with a crash. The donkeys bucked and shrieked, and Mama screamed.

“What are you doing?” A voice came from the sun - curious, he realized, but not surprised.

Dad was staring downward, eyes wide, at the seared hollow emblazoned onto his chest.

“Just get rid of them, alright?” the first voice responded in irritation.

“Cowards!” the mercenary roared. “Come down and-!”

A crystal sword flashed downward, and the man’s helmet clattered to the ground.

The voice descended further. Mama’s scream cut off in his peripheral vision. Flames engulfed the front of the caravan. The last thing he saw, before he dropped in through the roof of the caravan and into the welcoming arms of the darkness, was the crystal wings of his family’s killers spread wide.

And then he gasped and awakened, and Lairas realized that he was alive again.

Harsh, ragged breaths tore themselves from his throat, rattling around a throat scraped raw. His body felt tense, wound tight from adrenaline, and he found his fists were clenching and unclenching rapidly.

He was also lying face down on the ground, he realized suddenly.

“What… what in all the heavens,” he panted out, levering himself into a kneeling position, “was that?”

“I have to admit, you surprised me there fleshy,” Slaughter sighed. “I didn’t expect you to plunge headfirst into my conceptual centre. It temporarily knocked me out of control of your limbs while you scanned every inch of my core. It was… intimate.”

The spirit said the last word with a bizarre shudder that thrummed through the red haze laden about Lairas - which was much fainter than it had been before, Lairas noticed. Perfect.

“So… I did it?” Lairas staggered to his feet, pushing off against one tree to catch his footing. “I gambled… and won?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Slaughter chuckled, and a wispy probe of red haze waggled side-to-side in front of his face. Lairas swept a hand through it and leant forwards, elbows on his knees. “Not quite- you never bet against a spirit.”

Lairas frowned. He couldn’t hear the laughing children any more, he realized.

“What did you do?” He staggered closer to the clearing, raising a hand to push under a handful of branches.

“Well I lost control of the limbs,” Slaughter began, and Lairas could hear the self-satisfied smirk in its voice. “But I could still get to the voicebox. So… I started screaming, as loud as I could. Now, you’re in a far weaker state, if there are any Barrow Hunters in earshot then they’ll be making a beeline here, and whoever was staying in that outpost is long gone.”

Lairas gaped for a moment, a feeling of equal parts despair and fury welling up inside him- then he gritted his teeth and forged onward, breaking through the treeline and into the clearing proper, the raised wooden profile of the outpost coming into full view.

It was a broad, squat affair, with porch running around the outside and an abandoned stable round the back. The wooden roof was a faded yellow colour.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to get captured,” Lairas hissed out as he broke into a jog towards the door. “Then you’ll lose all your chances for ‘fun.’ Shouldn’t we be trying to work together.”

“Mm, a compelling point,” Slaughter pondered, voice bemused. “However, I’d rather set the tone for our relationship such that you are discouraged from preventing me from doing what I want.” It paused. “And I really wanted to kill whoever was in that outpost.”

Lairas cursed under his breath, and broke open the door into the broad, open space of the outpost lounge. A bar dominated one corner, a fireplace the far wall, and a parallel set of benches angled outward from it.

Lairas jumped the counter of the bar and felt under the inner shelves for where he’d stored his lockbox.

It was gone.

“Fuck!” he cursed again. “The food’s gone.”

“Oh no, that’s tragic!” Slaughter exclaimed, voice seeming genuinely distraught.

He leapt the counter again and headed over to the bench, flipping over and tearing open a cushion. Inside, he found the rolled up set of maps and the compass. There was also a single, covered piece of hardtack, all stuffed into a loose knapsack.

He shrugged into the shoddily-sown sack - his own creation - and jogged out of the house, looking left and right.

“Looks like those unwelcome visitors took advantage of your hospitality,” Slaughter practically purred into his ear. “But can you risk going after them? Do you even know which way they went? How close are those Hunters?”

Lairas stood paralysed for a moment, fighting a grimace that was forcing its way onto his face. Finally, he broke from his stance and turned to the road extending outward through the trees to the northwest - the first path on the road to Scant.

Slaughter practically shrieked with glee. Lairas fell silent and kept up his jog.

“Tell me,” the spirit said. “Did you enjoy gazing into the perfect encapsulation of violent death?”

Trees crowded the path at first, but Lairas knew he just needed to break outward onto Trader’s Road and he could start following the path.

“You must have seen some fascinating things,” Slaughter mused, its red haze billowing. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been bonded to a fleshy before.”

“You don’t remember?” Lairas couldn’t stop himself from scoffing.

“Slaughter has an extensive history, mortal,” Slaughter responded, voice now icy. “When the first amoeba ate its brother, I was there. When the first wolf tore the throat from the first deer, I was there. When the first human dashed his child’s brains against stone, I was there. Do not presume to understand anything of Slaughter.”

Lairas fell silent once more, his mind dwelling on the visions he had seen, the things he had felt. For a moment, he had thought…

It didn’t matter. A reminder of why he was doing this, if anything.

The visualisation had helped dilute Slaughter, dislodged its hold on Lairas’ own conceptual centre and spread it out through Lairas’ selfhood, where his core could retain greater control. As Slaughter attempted to reconstitute, remnants of its selfhood would become entangled in Lairas’, changing them both.

Empowering him.

The more he performed such exercises, the easier it would be to bring Slaughter to heel - though now that the spirit was prepared for him to call its bluff, the next visualisation would be more difficult. He would have to prepare for a battle on more even ground, Lairas attempting to dilute Slaughter’s selfhood whilst the spirit fought to disrupt his core.

Fortunately, Lairas would have to be the one to initiate this.

“... Am the sadistic glint in the eye of the butcher who knows that one day he will move on to human targets.” Slaughter had continued in the midst of Lairas’ musings. “I am the brutal, primal truth buried in the heart of every man, woman, and child - I am the dreaded knowledge that anyone and everyone is capable of committing the most savage of sins, should the need arise.”

“I’m sorry,” Lairas murmured as he settled into a comfortable, long-strided walk. “I was just thinking of a very funny joke. Were you saying something?”

Slaughter said nothing. The beginnings of a smile quirked at the corners of Lairas’ lips.