The sky burned as the boy was dragged out, limp and unresisting, into the outside. Roiling red clouds flaked across the sky as large undead bats fluttered, their wings long rotted off, staying airborne by some fell, ancient magic. Men were heaved out of houses and beheaded by the tall black-clad demons. It was an image underserving of even hell.

The boy heard a hoarse scream of a young girl coming from behind a house, accompanied by the pleasured groans of an older man. The screams abruptly ceased, devolving into hopeless sobs that oozed with abject despair.

“It won’t go deeper.”

“Cut her wider open then.”

The wails began anew as the boy heard a sound. A fleshy, cutting sound. A bloody sound. “Stop! I’m begging you! Please! It hurts! It hurts! Mother! Help me! Make him stop! Make the bad man stop! Stop!”

“Shut up, you noisy bitch. I did your mother before you, remember?” A slap cracked through the air, silencing the protests but not the screams. Every second felt like an aeon in this image of Armageddon.

A thousand eternities later, the screams ceased. “This one’s done. Smells like rotting blood.” Only then did they boy realise that his captor was tugging at him. Bowing his head, he continued to walk on.

The boy was loaded into a wooden wagon drawn by a storage amalgamation of horse and centipede. There were already around twenty others in there, all of them women, some clothed, some naked and covered in dirty blankets. Like sheep, he thought. Lambs to the slaughter. The image made him laugh for some terrible, unknown reason, and he hated himself for doing so. The floor was rough and covered in a forest — no, a blanket — of splinters. “Sit down.”

The boy sat down.

“Raid’s over, time for grub. This one is precious though. Leave him, but you — Kell — you can have the others.” At this word, the man behind him snarled and moved forward in a blur of speed, sinking his knife. into the neck of the nearest woman. Screams quickly bled into gasps and deep, red, rich jugular blood arced out into the air, a gory fountain. Just like the beer fountain at the festival last year. The boy shuddered and quickly pushed the thought out of his head. Hurriedly, as if afraid the fountain would stop, the monster snapped up his visor, revealing lifeless eyes in a parched face, and gulped at the stream of vitae. He quickly moved on to the next, and the next, and the next. “Good pickings, everyone.”

As all the women died, gasping and clutching vainly onto their blankets, twitching, the boy did not move. Not even when blood spattered onto his face and got in his eyes. Not even as a jerking woman came to a stop in front of his feet. All he did was stare forward with his dead eyes, looking but no longer seeing. Stared forward as the wagon began to move. Stared forward as it stopped and he was jerked to his feet an eternity later. Stared forward as he was pushed and prodded into a tall black building, tall obsidian spires arcing towards the sky, as if wanting to take it and devour it whole. Stared forward as he walked into the yawning doors, gaping like the maw of some unspeakable, ancient horror.

And the sky continued to burn.