The sky is like a thick black curtain. There is no moon. There are no stars. There is only the smooth fabric. Yet somehow, impossible light is emitted from an unseen source, illuminating the whole world while at the same time keeping it pitch black.

The ground is marshy. My feet were sucked underneath it a while ago. It's perversely warm down there, like my feet are buried inside someone's chest. It's also infested with life. Hundreds of little creatures shift and crawl past my ankles, some are soft, slimy, fibrous, hard, jagged, sharp, agonizing. Something bites me, I try to jerk away and sink another inch below.

In front of me there's carnage. Hundreds lie dead, twisted and pulled apart like beetles. A man to my left hand had a pike put through him. It was shoved down his throat and the head was buried in the mud. A man and a woman died embracing each other, it might be a touching image if he wasn't holding the sword that's going through her guts and if she didn't have her teeth locked around his throat. A naked figure, covered with marks of violence, lies face down in the mud, their head is almost completely submerged.

The only survivors appear to be myself and saprophytes. Numerous fat, bulbous, iridescent insects crawl all over the slaughter like one singular, buzzing, shifting blanket. Centipedes make nests and lay eggs within the numerous warm skulls, after consuming the eyes of course. A singular rat tries to skulk away with a whole hand but it is quickly swarmed by the other, smaller scavengers. They ignore the hand and target the rodent. It screams and screams as hundreds of tiny mouths, needles and mandibles tear it to pieces. Not even a bloodstain remains when they are finished.

The hideousness is beautiful. The undeniable perverseness of the scene, the hundreds of defiled dead, the blood soaked carrion eaters and churned up mud feels like looking upon divinity. The buzzing, droning, screaming orchestra is a prayer worthy of no man, king, emperor or god. The chattering, clicking, churning mess before me is one singular entity, compared to them I am the pest, ready to be crushed underneath its greatness and consumed. I'm knee deep in mud now. The thought of sinking below and letting the sweet, bloody, beautiful warmth forcing its way past my clenched teeth, pushing down my screaming throat and filling my lungs is… unbearable. There's an obvious terror. A great terror that urges me to fight, yell, crawl out of this blood-logged dirt but there's also a longing. Something within me longs to join those beneath, to be one with the mud and death.

The drowned figure in front of me twitches or maybe it's just a trick of my mind. A centipede crawls into a stab wound in the small of his back, I have a similar wound myself.

I'm thigh deep now. I reach down and dip my fingers in it. My waist sinks beneath the filth, then my chest, shoulders, neck, lips, nose.

I awake gasping for air, shuddering and soaked in cold sweat. I try to crawl out of bed but as soon as I rise to both feet I collapse and crack my skull on the corner of my bedside table. There's much bleeding but the pain is wrong, like I'm feeling it through something. It's like touching something while wearing a thick pair of gloves. The weakness though, that feels exactly as it should. My bones threaten to snap under my weight as I unsteadily haul myself up. I stumble towards the balcony hoping that fresh air might alleviate my condition. It tastes sickeningly sweet, the cold is like razor blades being forced down my lungs. The sun is only beginning its ascent. The sickly orange light shows all the world's ugliness. The people lay crammed atop one another in squat little apartments and factories. The smoke I'd pumped into the sky, the sewage into the streets. I smile at the sight briefly, then double over and vomit a thick pinkish mess.

I sit alone in the private chambers. It's a room located behind the throne, intended for advisors to discuss matters. I sit at the head of the table trying to collect my thoughts before the others arrive. There's a stain on the floor to my left. A dull brownish blot upon an otherwise pristine purple carpet. Someone tried to scrub it away but they only smeared it around. The edges are faint, almost invisible but the centre is a thick undefeated mark. A swirling void that can never truly be removed. A tumour on a limb too precious to cut away. A taint on an otherwise perfect world of purple.

Orson enters, breaking the trance this imperfection had me in.

"Good morning my king," he says hollowly, clearly still a bit unsettled by the events of the previous night.

"High guard," I respond. "Have a seat."

He sits and quietly stares at the table. This fear annoys me more than it pleases.

"You fought in battles did you not?" I inquire.

"One or two," he states plainly. "I didn't care much to remember their names or-"

"Neither do I care for them now. However what I'm interested in is the things you saw."

"Nothing interesting my king. I dug latrines, pitched tents, did as I was told, nothing more-"

"You watched men kill men en masse."

"I did."

"And the ways in which they were killed weren't the most humane were they?"

"They were not."

"So tell me why do you appear so unnerved by a few dozen men killed last night?"

He hesitates.

"I promoted you because I liked how freely you spoke," I yawn. "You won't ever be punished for telling me the truth."

"You unnerve me," he admits quietly. "When you sat there soaked in blood surrounded by dead men talking to us as if it was as normal as a calm dinner. When you slaughtered fifty men almost fucking smiling. Now, sitting there like this is a conversation about the weather."

Good

"Well it is a rather lovely day isn't it?" I chuckle. "Not a cloud in the sky…If you remember nothing else about me Orson remember this, love me and I in turn will love you. You will have nothing to fear from me unless you give yourself reason. Try to abuse my love though, and the gods will weep over what I'll do to you."

"I thought love was supposed to be unconditional."

"Everything in this world is conditional."

Lady Irene joins us, shortly followed by Yen. I smile widely at both of them, Irene tries to reciprocate but it comes out more as a twisted grimace than a smile, Yen just stares at the floor. We wait a further half hour for Serah and the musicians. They don't arrive and we proceed without them. Orson suggests changes to the law that would lessen corruption among the city watch and royal guard. Irene argues against the costs of these changes and suggests legalising poppy houses and farms to bring more profit to the kingdom. Orson argues that will lower productivity and cripple us in the long term. They're both very eager to please, presumably afraid of what displeasure might bring

Good. If they will never truly love us, let fear inspire their loyalty.

Serah and the musicians never show up.

I storm through the halls or I try to at least. My legs feel weak and flimsy, my anger manifested into a splitting headache. Servants look away from me and stay as far away as they realistically can. The two royal guards tower behind me, they're silent but I can feel their judgement drilling into the back of my head. The whisperings haven't quietened.

Bitches. Useless fucking bitches. Skin them living.

Put them in the dungeons, we can still have fun with them.

The oil lamps hurt my eyes. Make the world blindingly white and onto that whiteness images of blood soaked decadence are painted. I stop and lean against a wall before suddenly doubling over and vomiting for the second time today. It feels like forcing scorching tar out of me as bile scorches the walls of my throat. The taste is infinitely worse. The colour is dark red, almost black.

"Are you well my king?" One guard asks as I wipe my mouth with a handkerchief.

"Fine," I groan, standing up straight. "I had too much wine last night. Have someone clean this up."

Something shifts within my sick. Upon further inspection it appears to be some sort of creature crawling through it. I scrape it up with a knife and bring the beast up to my eyes for closer inspection. A centipede, a large centipede, a bit longer than my hand, maybe a quarter inch thick and dripping with red vomit. Its blade-like mandibles click incessantly as it tries to wrap itself around the blade. Beast must have been in an unfortunate position when my guts shifted.

"And tell them there appears to be an infestation somewhere," I add, flicking the ugly thing away.

Normally I'd have knocked on her door, maintained the illusion of calmness and civility. However I am not calm. Instead I kick Serah's door down, breaking the lock and cracking a large section of the frame. The room reeks of poppy smoke. There's bloodstains on the carpet.

"Wait here," I command before entering the chamber and shutting the broken door behind me.

The room is painfully grandiose. Serah has decorated the walls with half a dozen pictures of herself. She keeps two impressive glass urns filled with shards of crystallized poppy sap. A dozen drawings of dissections and organs lay scattered across her floor. Blood stains the carpet in odd patterns, like someone crudely tried to paint something with it before it dried.

Serah herself sits upon a cushion in the room's center with her back turned to me, a pipe decorated with golden patterns lies comfortably in her left hand. The musicians sit around her in a semicircle, scribbling furiously onto little tablets, oblivious to my presence.

"Serah!" I bark.

She turns around to face me, blood is streaming down her nose, her eyes and stains her teeth. "Oh, Harold. I didn't hear you enter. Would you care-"

"What did you do?" I snap racing over to her to inspect the damage.

"Your girls performed a little show for me in the music room," she replies dreamily. "They're quite good. I can see why you wanted them-"

"Did you not see the dining room last night! Did you not see what their last performance did?"

"I was curious," she shrugs with a giggle. "It was painful at first, all the blood and the episode that proceeded." She chuckles. "I flopped about like a fish dragged out of water… But after that there was-"

"I've felt it," I cut across her.

"Then how could you dare to deny me this ecstasy? What did I do-"

"Because it is mine!" I snap. "We are the one who deserves it, not you!"

"No one could ever hope to even control a feeling such as this cousin," Serah chides. "Come sit with me, the girls are drawing my portrait, they could do the two of us."

"What fucking good are my occultists and my advisor if they're too busy holding little fucking music recitals and drawing portraits to even show up for paltry meetings?" I spit.

"Well I was going to screw them after the painting was done," Serah replies grinning. "You could join us. I'm very sure we're all very good for that-"

I grab Serah by the throat. She doesn't resist, not even when I begin to squeeze. She doesn't even stop grinning. I recall dancing around in pools of criminals' blood after Katherine played her violin for me. I'm doubtful a fist clenched around my throat would make me stop then. Part of me wants to crush her windpipe right now, another wants to take her offer. I bring my face close to hers, she reeks of poppy.

I release her throat and she begins to gasp for air. Bruises are already beginning to form on her throat.

"You!" I say to the musicians: "Leave here. Spend your time however you please just not here."

They all rise quietly and shuffle away, shutting the door quietly behind them. I throw my handkerchief at Serah, it lands rather ungracefully on her shoulder.

"Clean yourself, then you're going to accompany me to the infirmary."

"I don't need the physician-"

"Good, you're not going to see him. I'm going to see the beloved Captain Holder, you're going to do your fucking job and advise me."

The servants leave Holder as soon as I enter. Serah stumbles in behind me, like she's half dead. Holder doesn't look much better than he did minutes after I pulverised him. His eyes are open, blood red and I'm doubtful he can see properly but they're open. His face is black and pulpy. I can't help but think back to Philip the carpenter. He should thank his gods that he didn't meet me later in life. Had I the intellect in my juvenile years to find a use for him I could have had him suffer for years. Have him ensure no one mentions father again.

"How are you good Captain?" I inquire

He groans in response.

"I trust you remember the arrangement we made?"

"Yeth," he manages to form with a lacerated tongue. "I fell down some thairs."

"What elth?" I mock.

"You can kill my family," he adds bitterly.

"Perfect," I say with a grin. "However I'm unsure if I made this arrangement in a sound state of mind so I've brought my advisor to see if I should rearrange." I turn to Serah. "Holder here has sworn to me that he'll spy on the church for us. However, I now feel that he wasn't much good in the first place and now he's… like this. What's your opinion? Is he good enough or should I arrange for his disposal?"

"It doesn't matter," Serah shrugs. I scowl.

"Listen to me now, glorified whore!" I command. "The only reason you still exist is because you're a smart bitch. The only reason we haven't fucking buried you is because you might prove to be useful. So do not-"

"He's as you said, like this," she cuts across me. "We can send him back, if he isn't useful he'll drain money through care and feeding. If he confesses this arrangement it can be dismissed as the ramblings of a man whose skull was stamped on so hard he slept for days."

I grin.

"Good. You may thank her Holder, she just ensured you live as long a life as possible."