“He’s over here!” A voice relays to the others and the clanking sounds of hurried footsteps soon break the silent atmosphere.

Lightly panting, a figure races to the noise to find the owner to be a man wearing light mail armor, his face smeared with blood.

The man tries to raise his longsword but a clawed hand reaches his throat first, ripping it with a gout of blood.

Gurgling, the man collapses on the floor dead.

The figure holds the chunk of flesh in its clawed hands, before chucking it away and racing down the street once more out of fear.

Within seconds, more similarly dressed men appear at the scene, all smeared with blood and begin charging after the figure.

'It' flees by climbing the wall of a house and smashes through a window.

Inside are a family of four, who get small cuts from the glass that flew their way.

A single tear escapes from the figures crimson eyes before the claws take action, eviscerating the family within seconds.

Intestines burst out, hanging from the rafters. Eyes squished between two clawed fingers, are dropped in the soup the family were eating.

Blood colours the once brown wooden room and innards decorate the chairs the family once sat on.

Each scrap of being the figure rips away with his claws, passes over his mouth before it chucks it away in apparent disgust.

A loud crash sound comes from the door and seven men spill out, swords raised to kill.

The figure leaps out an unbroken window and climbs to the roof, sinking its claws into the clay walls to provide hold.

Reaching the roof, the figure is attacked by three men and their sword dig deep into its flesh.

No sound comes from the figure, but a hungry growl as it charges through the swords and murders the three with three clawed swipes.

Mutilating their corpses with the sword still hanging in, it raises one man’s liver to its mouth and opens, baring its sharp teeth to the thing.

The head, shaking violently, moves slowly towards the liver, slowly fitting part of it within the mouth.

Shouts come from a nearby roof causes the figure to move the liver out of its mouth and chuck it away, spitting as it jumped to another roof.

Jumping from roof to roof, the pursuit soon falls behind and the figure, covered in blood and tears, jumps down into an alley.

The alley is filled with two men beating the other; all three covered in the beaten one’s blood.

The sounds of beating and taunting soon stop and are replaced with a ripping and sobbing sound.

…

“DAMMIT GAROND, I TOLD YOUR MEN NOT TO TRY DEAL WITH HIM TILL THEY’RE SEVEN TO ONE!” Chief inspector Maricius jabs his subordinate both verbally and physically

“Sorry sir, but there was no more time to surround the building as ‘It’ tried to escape” Garond bows slightly, hiding his embarrassed flush.

Maricius sighs and stops jabbing Garond in the chest with his index finger.

“There was nothing more we could do...For now, let’s focus on reparations for the dead and how to catch this bloody thing”

He waves Garond off, and the man hurriedly relays orders to his out of breath men.

“Sir, one of the men gave us a new piece of information we could use” A younger voice fills the room full of battle-hardened men

Maricius turns round to see junior inspector Horath clasping his hands in thought

“What is it?” he too clasps his hand in thought

“According to one of the men, ‘It’ tried to eat a liver before it saw us and ran away”

A mostly useless piece information, however I may still find some use for it

“I see, but how do you think that would help our investigation?” he gives a question to his junior thinking of a response himself

“Well I believe we could use liver as bait to bring ‘It’ towards us” his junior concludes after a short think.

“We could, however we already are using that tactic” Maricius points to the men, who have fresh pig’s blood smeared on their faces and vests.

This deflates Horath somewhat and clasps his hands once more in thought.

Maricius places a hand on Horath’s shoulder turning the boy towards the open door, which a man is guarding.

“Before you try think, how about we gather some more evidence?” He gestures towards the door.

Both move past the guard and enter the room where four people once ate dinner: Intestines hang off the rafters like decorations, along with bones littering the floor.

A child’s head lay at the foot of the table, while the mother’s seemed to have entered the fireplace.

Hearing Horath gulp audibly to keep the vomit back, he moves inside for a better inspection.

Treading lightly through the scene, he sees innards missing from the remains that are still on the chair, as well as the crushed eyes floating in the soup.

A good ten minutes later, he finished inspecting the place and calls for Horath’s attention.

“So, what clues did you find?” He once again questions his junior

“Like all other murders, it is akin to a dog digging through sand. The body being the sand of course”

“Yes, that much is obvious, but what else do we know?” Maricius prompts his junior in hopes that he will answer correctly.

“Um…all their livers’ are intact”

“Which means?”

“‘It’ wasn’t hungry?”

“No, we already know that it tried to eat a liver, so why didn’t it eat any of these?” Maricius sighs slightly at his junior’s incompetence

“Well, maybe it was something in the liver that it could smell?”

“Possibly, however the liver is not important. Could you tell me what is?” once again the prompt comes, desperately trying to wring the correct information out of the junior

“Um….”

And this one is supposed to be my successor huh?

“The fact that ‘It’ has not eaten a single time it has killed. Nor has it drunk their blood as their arteries remain mostly intact and looking around the room, we can see that there is a large amount of blood.

Thus we can assume that ‘It’ is not killing for food. Well we could assume that till the information you gave me came around. Your information told us that actually ‘It’ is hungry.

However using that new assumption, why is it that ‘It’ didn’t eat anything before?

Well one theory would be the fact that its killing behaviour is in fact to search for something specific, such as a correct liver to eat. Or it may be the fact that it is not trying to eat” Maricius thinks out-loud for the benefit of his junior

“But sir, I thought you said we could assume that ‘It’ is killing to eat?” Horath exclaims in confusion

“Yes, hence why the theory that it is not trying to eat may hold more truth than the other theory” He moves towards the corpse of the father, his stomach opened up, and completely emptied in a wide arc around him. “If I put myself in its shoes, then I can say that when I’m ripping this man apart, if I am just throwing things away like a dog does with sand when digging, then the spread of carnage should be in an arc from my sides to behind.

However, looking at the arc, it is the other way, thus we can assume that it stopped at every piece before willingly throwing it away rather than unconsciously chucking it.

Using that assumption, we can say that it is both trying to eat and stopping itself from eating.

We don’t know what it is, as the only description we were able to get was red eyes, clawed hands and a grayish skin with a human appearance. So therefore it may be one of two things; A newly born undead, or a cursed human of some sort”

“But how does that help us with the investigation” Horath naively answers

“Well you see, if it is a newly born undead, we must quickly capture it and kill it. However if it is a cursed human, it will have a sense of honor or a need for help. Thus we could lure it with the rumor of help to be free from the curse and work from there”

“But how will we know which it is?” once again the naïve words flow out his junior’s mouth

Sighing, Maricius stops himself from shaking his head at the naivety

“Well if we look at the fact that the only priest to leave the cathedral in this past month was killed, and much more so in the middle of the street, we see it is different from all the past murders which were in mostly deserted alleyways.

Thus we can assume that ‘It’ met the priest and tried to get help. Though it seems as though the priest probably did something to make ‘It’ attack him. So we can conclude that it’s highly likely ‘It’ is a cursed human” Maricius concludes with a stroke of his light beard.

Horath spends a few minutes in silence letting the information sink in

“So, all we need to do is tell the city that we can lift curses?”

“In a way; we have the Cathedral cooperate and tell everyone that they can be relieved of curses for free today”

“But there is little reason to justify such a thing; that’d look suspicious wouldn’t it?”

“Not really, for it is the day of the ceremony” he tries his best not to roll his eyes at his uninformed junior.

Not waiting for a response, Maricius strolls out the room, giving an order to clean the room up to the guard as he leaves.

Leaving the house, Maricius has a slight grin.

Time to see whether I am right or just out of my mind

…

“Sir, pacing down these alleyways aren’t going to help you find ‘It’” the Lieutenant stalks after his superior, his words falling on deaf ears.

It had been half a day since they had discovered the dead body of Brother Danfey, and it has been half a day of walking through the many alleyways in the Ring of Coin passing by shady dealers and urchins without a care.

Cannith only had eyes for one thing: ‘It’.

He was oblivious to the fact that ‘It’ had just lost the pursuit of the search party in the Ring of Craft and so he kept stomping through the alleyways in search of a crimson-eyed monster.

Those who had discovered the victim told of a monster with blood red eyes and sharp claws disappearing from the scene, and now he looks for such a thing in the alleyways.

And so he storms through looking for just that.

His lieutenant however, does have a better scope on things and spots the many shady dealers, taking mental note of their locations for later arrests, as well as the numerous urchins and the homeless that somehow make it past the Ring of Blood.

A few stay in his mind; a child with a badly hidden knife, a toothless old beggar with overly bulky arms for one so old, and in particular one man that resides alone in the alley they just walked into.

This man, face covered by a mass of black hair, is huddled, shivering uncontrollably by a broken barrel in a white shirt and ripped brown shorts.

Immediately the lieutenant knows why no one else is in this alley: The man exudes a presence that even makes a drop of sweat roll down the back of his neck. Such an aura is typical of one who has killed often and one who is very strong.

Cannith however, doesn’t seem to notice, or doesn’t seem to care as the lieutenant spots his face quickly turn towards the man before looking away uninterested.

“He…lp” The groaning, exhausted and parched voice of the man permeates through the air, making him seem oddly vulnerable.

Cannith however, stops in front of the man and looks at him with a piercing gaze.

The man groans once more, raises his head and looks at Cannith with clouded blue eyes.

Soundlessly, Cannith turns and walks away, quickly followed by the lieutenant, who looks back at the man once more with slight fear in his eyes.

Unbeknownst to the two of them, the man Cannith just ignored was the one he was looking for.

…

Ankorr, shivered uncontrollably as the memories of those children’s faces seep into his mind, accusing him, crying at him, silently screaming in terror at him.

His clothes were free of the memories due to the system cleaning them, however his mind was not.

He couldn’t stop himself, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t stop his hands tearing at their throats, squishing their eyes, ripping out their guts. All he could do was shed a tear or two before 'It' took over.

He couldn’t help himself as he saw the blood, that intoxicating thing that smelled deliciously sweet and caused…something in him to be unleashed. Something hungry, something voracious that desired nothing but to suckle the blood off their exposed arteries.

At least on that, he was able to retain some form of sanity, some primitive desire to not give this hungering desire to be fulfilled.

Though he trembles at that thought, as the memory of his pointed teeth dragging themselves across liver, ready to dig into that juicy morsel, seeps into his brain.

Sickened, he tries to vomit, but no such action happens as such a disgusting thought is but trivial to his mind.

Over this month, he has killed dozens of people in the most horrible way possible and the memories are not innately disgusting to him. To him such memories have a sweet taste to them, which he despises to the utmost.

So his body does not react to such disgusting memories and situations in a humane way and thus even though he has been through so much, the vomit does not come. The only thing that comes is the nightmares, the horror of watching his body massacre people without his own will and the desire. The desire to kill and drench himself with the innards of those he kills and feast on their flesh lavishing the pink meats with blood.

All he can do to show his humanity is tremble in fear of himself, and ask strangers for help, whether it is death through release or a cure, even he does not know.

He had tried speaking to a priest a bit before dawn, but the man told him he was demon spawn and tripped when trying to flee causing him to scrape his legs.

Then, ‘It’ had taken over and all he could do was watch in disgust and bliss as the priest was dismembered before him.

He despises himself for letting such a thing happen.

He has little power over his body, and when ‘It’ leaves him, all strength seems to drain from him, as if it were never there.

Even trembling takes such strength that blissful unconsciousness treads at the recess of his mind.

He had not eaten for almost two months, but he did not die as he would have expected. All he felt was an intense hunger that was temporarily drowned by the large amounts of water he took.

However, he had run out of water a month ago, when his body was so weak that he could barely move it, much less go to the fountain and refill his canteen.

He should have died, should have felt the cold stone on his face as life left him. But someone found him, gave him water, which he repaid with his claws.

The wave of hunger, of desire, was tremendous when he smelled that mans blood. However there had been water to dissuade ‘It’ from drinking its bloody fill.

He should have died there but something in him had snapped. 'It' had truly awoken. Any blood that was spilled awoke it and made it crave for the delicious crimson liquid.

'It' had strength, fueled by hunger and he could only combat it with the strength he gained from fear of losing his last vestiges of humanity.

'It' killed over and over again and this strength, used to keep his last vestiges of humanity dwindles.

But somehow, every time he killed, someone had been there, someone had screamed bringing him back to his senses and to run, not from them but from himself.

This doesn’t give hope to him though, as he knows that it might be next time or the one after when he finally gives in, when his teeth finally sink into the juicy flesh of another.

His strength has faded and the desire to eat has grown. ‘It’ complains more and has more of a hold on him, so much so that there are memories missing from when he kills, only the beginning and the end does he remember.

A human should be dead from not eating within a month. He has not eaten in two. All he knows is that he isn’t human anymore, he can’t be: He lost his humanity when he killed that first man, and this past month he knows he has degenerated into something inhuman, something monstrous.

While he trembles at himself in the lonely alleyway, a soft sound of bare feet on cobbled stone permeates the air.

“He…lp” Ankorr’s voice comes reflexively as it is his last human desire, need even, to get help; to stop ‘It’ from killing anyone else.

The footsteps stop in front of him and a familiarly gentle sounding voice assails his ears.

“I can help you, but tell me, what do you need?”

Raising his head, he sees a man dressed in the beginner white shirt and brown trousers.

“Wa…te…r”

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Author's Corner:

Thank you all for reading. Hooow did you like it?

Also thank you anonymous reviewer! many bloody kisses from Ankorr!!