King Iorweth Morgan was having a good morning—or a better one than usual, at least. His sleep had been surprisingly restful, his breakfast tastier than it had been in a while, and the weather seemed especially pleasant for the season. What’s more, his Queen looked especially radiant as she sat in the main garden, enjoying the warm sunshine. He wrote as such to her, and she laughed at the statement.

“You’re just in a good mood for once,” she told him. “Not that I am not happy to find you so. I have not seen you in such high spirits in many days.”

Iorweth had not expected such a response. Was it truly all in his head? He wondered to her just what could bring about such a change, if so.

“Isn’t it obvious, my dearest?” she asked with a wan smile. “You’re starting to feel hope.”

The observation shocked him—nay, distressed him. He’d told himself he couldn’t allow himself to feel such things. He was embarked on a perilous mission to reshape the fabric of his society in ways that would threaten its very existence. The difficulty of the endeavor was high and the price for failure even higher. Should things go wrong, violent civil war was the best foreseeable outcome. He and his co-conspirators had to exercise every precaution to remain discreet, for if word of what he had planned were to reach the wrong nobles—as in, almost any of them—then it would all be over.

Such caution slowed progress to a crawl... and yet, all that said, progress was being made. The plan was moving forward. If things continued as they were, he could envision a future where he succeeded and changed his nation’s very foundation. The possibility for such an outcome existed, and he could acknowledge its existence.

But, to hope? That was a step too far—not when he knew, deep down, that the witch would never honor her words. She was a duplicitous creature, not to be trusted... but even so, the promise of his voice was too great for him to pass up. Until he had it back, he would never feel whole again. That was why he had decided to disallow hope, for it would hurt too much when that hope betrayed him.

He looked around the garden, taking in the pleasant greenery and his loving wife. His latest caravan of thoughts had indeed put a damper on his outlook, showing Tangwen to have been correct, but when he looked at her and saw the happiness in her eyes, he found himself reconsidering his position. If it let him find small dollops of joy in his life again, perhaps he could allow himself a smidgen of hope after all.

“I love you,” he scribbled out.

“I love you, too,” she replied, planting a kiss on his cheek, “but don’t you have some governing to do? The morning grows old, my dear.”

He smiled, sitting down next to her. “They can wait a bit until I’m ready. I am the king, after all.”

Governance was never the high point of Iorweth’s day, but he didn’t hate it either. Still, with his new extra mission, the combined workload often threatened to overwhelm him. Luckily for him, today’s docket was relatively light, and even with their late start, there was still over an hour before dinner when they finished the last item.

The king’s mood proved infectious, and everybody in the room seemed in good cheer by this point. Everybody, that is, except Prime Minister Connor Seare. The man was never one to stray too far from his calm and controlled emotional center, but with years of familiarity with his top official under his belt, Iorweth could tell that something was bothering the man beneath that cold exterior.

He was not, it seemed, the only one in the room to notice.

“What’s got you so sour, Prime Minister?” one of the other ministers finally inquired. “I’ve been waiting for you to deliver some bad news ever since you walked in.”

Seare’s face tightened slightly and he frowned. “A possible matter has come up, yes, but details are still murky, so I had decided to wait until I had better information.”

All eyes turned to Iorweth, who decided it was better to hear it than not, even if the news threatened to foul his mood. He indicated such to his subordinate, who reluctantly nodded.

“The latest report from the northern expedition is late. The messenger did not arrive on time.”

It was like a chill swept through everybody in the room all at once, but nobody felt the cold dread quite like King Morgan.

The northern expedition had taken longer to organize and get underway than anybody had hoped. Still, it had eventually come together and the force had entered the mountains some days ago. Since then, they’d been receiving daily written reports from the task force commander. A messenger from the force would travel south with the report, which would then be transmitted by a Many stationed at the southern edge of the mountain range. Directly receiving the commander’s report via a Many would have been vastly superior, of course, but Manys did not travel well in the best scenarios. Taking Manys into the treacherous mountains with the expedition would have slowed the force’s movement to a crawl. Kutrad did not have time to wait years for the expedition to complete its mission, so the choice had been made to leave them behind.

The commander was a competent and loyal man, and the mission was a simple and clear one. Iorweth and the others knew they did not need continuous live reports by Many. Still, regular updates were important to proper management, so the simple messenger system had come into being.

“The time it takes for each messenger to make it to the southern edge grows each day the force moves north, does it not?” one of the ministers asked. “Wouldn’t that explain the delay?”

“Our expectations take into account the estimated added travel time,” Seare explained. “Still, as I said, there remains too much unknown to just assume that something happened. Perhaps the force traveled much further than expected. Perhaps the messenger encountered especially harsh weather, or became injured traversing the dangerous mountain passes. The main force has already traveled far enough that the reports are more than a day old as it is. I did not want to alarm anyone until we knew something was actually wrong.”

Iorweth’s gut twisted with anxiety, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself. His Prime Minister was right. This was a bad sign, but not proof of anything having happened to the expedition just yet.

“You are correct,” he wrote. “There is no reason to assume disaster just yet. I’m sure a messenger will come today.”

No messenger arrived to deliver a report that day. None appeared the next day, either, nor the day after that.

No matter how much he tried—or how much Tangwen attempted to soothe his nerves—Iorweth’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. It had been four days since the start of the expedition’s sudden and unexplained silence, and he’d barely slept a wink since. A fog of exhausted worry filled his mind to the point that sometimes he found it hard to think, but one thought—nay, one word—seemed ever-present.

Disaster.

He could feel it in his bones. His plan was ruined. His army was ruined. His nation was ruined. He was ruined.

Yes, he had almost no more information that he’d possessed several days ago, but that alone spoke volumes. One day of delay could be explained away. Two, even, could perhaps be understood in the right circumstances. Four days, however, was far too long of a gap to explain in any way other than disaster.

A messenger was to be dispatched from the expedition force every morning before the force moved north. Even given the lengthy travel time needed to make it back south through the hazardous terrain, at least one messenger would have arrived by now if things were going well. Given the delay in travel, something must have happened perhaps six or seven days ago, and he still had no idea what.

Unlike with most things, it wasn’t like he could just snap his fingers and get what he desired. Most of his best scouts had been on the expedition. The few still on hand had departed several days ago, but even at top speed, they would not arrive at the new Zrukhora until tomorrow. Then, they would still have to head into the mountains, assess the situation, and retread their steps back south. Iorweth would remain in the dark for a little while longer, and that assumed that these new scouts returned at all.

What had happened up there? Had anybody survived? Had they been attacked, or had they perhaps fallen to some horrible disease, like this ‘leprosy’ that had been rumored several years ago? Was the rest of his nation in danger from the same thing? He just didn’t know. Nobody in the palace did.

What they did know, however, was terrible enough. Barring some massive miscommunication or miracle, a great swath of his military was no more. The resources he needed to continue his plan would not be coming. That alone spelled disaster. More worrisome, perhaps, was how weakened his armed forces were without this hardened, veteran core. They’d lost troops not just in great quantity, but in great quality as well.

Eterium was an utterly battered nation, the blows struck by the Ubrans nearly enough to shatter it to pieces. Now, with what looked to be a potential civil war brewing and a desperate populace, certain elements of Eterium would start getting ideas if—no, when—they learned that their northern neighbor was suddenly much weaker. While those mercantile bastards had suffered the most of any nation from the invasion—other than Gustil, of course—they still had a massive advantage in raw population and remained dangerous. Things looked dire.

Meanwhile, all Iorweth could do was sit and wait, and it was eating him alive.

“Darling, please,” his beloved beseeched him. “You won’t help anything like this. You need rest.”

“It’s barely evening. How could I sleep?” he asked.

“You look like you’re about to fall over. If the light bothers you so much, take the yellow tonic.”

“The yellow tonic will leave me fuzzy-headed for more than a day,” he replied. “I would be useless should something occur tomorrow.”

“With all due respect, my love, you’re so worn down that you’re close to useless now. You cannot keep going like this, tying yourself into knots for days on end.”

Iorweth let out a sigh. “Perhaps you are right,” he allowed.

He slid open a side drawer in his bedside desk and pulled out an ornamental box containing a set of flasks. Each flask held a liquid of a different color, all various remedies concocted by his best royal alchemists. The yellow one was the most potent, and would act as both a powerful narcotic and sleep inducer. He’d only ever taken it once before, and its after effects had been unpleasant enough that he’d never tried it again. But perhaps—

A loud knocking on the outer doors to his quarters interrupted his thoughts before they could transform into actions. Normally, he would become quite angry with being bothered at this time in his private rooms, but these were no ordinary knocks. There was an urgency within them that told him what was happening before he even rushed to the door. Sure enough, when he pulled the large, heavy door open, he found Prime Minister Seare on the other side. The older man appeared winded, and before Iorweth could even ask, he spoke the words the king had been both longing and dreading to hear for days: “We’ve made contact.”

It was hard to write while walking as fast as possible down the halls—his father had always drilled into him that a proper ruler did not run, for running lacked the dignity of a monarch—but Iorweth made do as he, the minister, and an anxious Tangwen just behind made their way to the side of the palace where the Manys lived.

“A messenger returned from the mountains,” the prime minister explained as they went. “I believe it is the messenger who delivered the final report before all went silent, but I am not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I did not speak to him myself. I was told they were ‘getting him ready’, and judged the best use of that time would be to get you.”

His mouth paused for a moment while his legs continued to move.

“Your Highness, what of your voice?”

Iorweth understood the question immediately. The nature of his lost voice was not well-known beyond the palace and the higher-ups within. To hide it, Iorweth had stopped giving public speeches and instead spoke through proclamations that would be read out by criers. He didn’t even need to be present for the proclamation, which he had to admit was a nice silver lining.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied.

“Are you sure? You could stay out of view and allow me to speak for you.”

“This is too important,” he told his subordinate.

“As you wish,” Seare conceded.

The Manys were kept in a basement facility under the palace’s central hub, where the throne room and most of the offices of the main administrators were located. Once the three of them arrived, they proceeded down a guarded stairwell. There, a Many handler met them and guided them to the proper chamber.

Walking in, Iorweth immediately knew something wasn’t right. What he had expected—or at least hoped for—was to find one of his proud soldiers standing at attention, ready to report. What he saw instead was two large soldiers, their expressions an even mix of annoyance and worry, with their hand clamped onto a third middle man’s shoulders.

It quickly became clear from the middle man’s struggles that they were not helping him stand as much as they were keeping him from running off somewhere. His rugged woodsman’s outfit was scuffed all over, and he was covered in mud and dirt. The way he kept muttering to himself did not help matters, either.

“Report,” the prime minister commanded as soon as they were all present.

“Sir! We captured this man trying to flee the mountains, sir!” one of the soldiers said.

“And you say you recognize him?”

The soldier stiffened. “Yes, sir. He was the last messenger to return to the expedition before the messages stopped coming, sir. He just... wasn’t like this when he left.”

“What is his name?”

“Kerrick, I believe, sir.”

“Messenger Kerrick!” Seare barked. “You stand in the presence of your king!”

The man flinched at the use of his name and looked up, seeming to realize for the first time they were there—in projection form, anyway. A scowl crossed his face. “N-no, can’t... can’t be here...” he muttered, twisting frantically, but his struggles proved useless against his captors’ strong grips.

“Messenger Kerrick!”

The man ignored him.

“By the stars, man, get a hold of yourself!” Seare roared. It fell on deaf ears. The man wasn’t listening, or more likely, he wasn’t entirely there.

“Hold on, I recognize this man. He lived a few villages from my practice a while back,” the queen said. “My love, if I may?”

Iorweth nodded.

His beloved stepped forward and squatted down to better get in the messenger’s line of sight—when his head would stay still, at least. “Kerrick? Kerrick, how is Ashlyn?” she asked in a soft voice.

The second name seemed to catch the man’s attention.

“Did you make sure to change the bandages and wash them every night? Did you apply the nightwort paste as I instructed?”

The messenger’s eyes focused on the queen, and an inkling of recognition showed in his gaze.

“H-healer Tangwen? W-what are you—”

“That’s a long story, but we have more pressing matters right now. Please, we need your help. What happened to the expedition? What did you find up there? Will you tell us?”

Kerrick’s focus returned to something distant that only he could see, his gaze turning hollow as the blood drained from his face. For a long moment, it seemed as if he’d become lost again, but then suddenly, he spoke.

“Dead. All dead,” he lamented, his voice so quiet that Iorweth had to strain his ears to pick it up. “Fire. Ice. Craters. Corpses... so many...”

A violent hiss escaped Iorweth’s lips.

“Death was there,” the man whispered. “I ran. Death comes, healer Tangwen. Death comes. I must go.” He tried to twist free again, his voice becoming louder and more agitated. “I must go! Death comes!”

“I think we’ve gotten just about as much as we can out of him for now,” Seare advised him.

Iorweth couldn’t help but reluctantly agree. “Keep him locked up for now, in case he comes back to his senses later,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, send a team north to survey the area where this happened.”

“My Lord, I must argue against such an order?”

“All this does is confirm what we feared!” Iorweth scrawled. “We learned practically nothing new!”

“The mountains are deadly enough on their own for those without experience, and we don’t have anybody left. If you send inexperienced soldiers north, even if they survive the trip up and back, it will take them tens of days without a guide to show them the way!”

“We have a guide. He’s right there.”

“Sire, you cannot be serious! Just look at—what?”

Both Iorweth and his advisor paused their nascent argument in surprise as the projection from the Many darkened dramatically and without warning. To King Morgan’s eyes, it was as if somebody had come through and hung thick curtains across the windows, blocking out nearly all the light of the sun... except the men on the other end were not indoors.

A low rumble traveled through the projection, and something inside Iorweth clenched almost instinctively. His breath caught, and his heart began to pound as adrenaline began to pour into his bloodstream. Looking around, he found that the others in the room were reacting in the same strange way.

The men on the other end, however, looked far worse off. The lot of them had gone white as chalk as they stared upwards at something with wide, terrified eyes.

“No!” Kerrick cried out. “Death is here!”

The others released him and turned to run, but he didn’t move. He just held his arms up protectively over his face and let out a terrified shriek.

“AAAAAAHHH—!”

The projection vanished, the scream cut off, and the room plunged into darkness. Stunned silence was all that remained—that, and the soft rustle of the Many slowly toppling over. Even in the gloom, it was clear from their motionless, open-eyed body that they had left the mortal world to join their ancestors.

Iorweth felt like he was barely holding himself together at his point. It took everything he had to not give in to the frustration and mounting panic and just scream his head off. Everything was getting worse and worse by the moment.

Tangwen wasn’t faring any better. She trembled by his side, biting her knuckles, her gaze locked on the Many’s unmoving form.

Seare, on the other hand, largely maintained his aura of cold competence, even though Iorweth knew that there was no way he could feel so calm and collected after what had just happened. The tightness around his eyes betrayed him, but still to his credit, he was the first to move and speak. “We have to warn Zrukhora,” he gasped.

The words sparked a flash of clarity, and Iorweth realized that there was no reason the situation couldn’t still get far, far worse. Iorweth yanked the thick stone door open and the three of them sprinted from the chamber. Outside in the hallway, they grabbed the Many handler stationed there to retrieve the Many once they were done.

“Get every Zrukhora Many in action right away, as quickly as you can!” Seare barked at them. The handler rushed off to comply, leaving them to stand there impotently.

After a moment, Tangwen cleared her throat, seemingly having recovered her faculties. “Do we have time to wait for them to bring the Manys here?”

Iorweth let out a hiss. She was right, they should have gone with the handler! Every spare moment might matter in this crisis. He rushed towards where the handler had gone, but they’d already escaped their view. Though he had no knowledge of the layout of the Many Home’s back rooms, he pressed onward regardless, the others hot on his heels.

It didn’t take long to find the right place, thanks to a sudden cry of alarm. When Iorweth arrived, he froze, his blood going from hot to ice cold in an instant. The Many Home organized the Manys in groups by where their connected Many was stationed, meaning all the Zrukhora Manys were housed in the same large room. All of them were present in the chamber... or at least, their corpses were.

His breath caught in his throat. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His palms grew clammy.

It was happening again.

Iorweth had seen a sight like this once before just a few years ago, when his third-largest city had been wiped entirely off the map. Now, he was witnessing a repeat of that tragedy, and despite all that he had done since, nothing had changed. He could only stand and watch everything fall apart. What was he supposed to even do? What could he even do?

The cry had attracted a group of other handlers wondering why somebody had screamed. Seeing the devastation, they tried to push into the room, but the Prime Minister blocked them, commanding, “Go wake the other Manys, now! As fast as possible!”

The handlers stared back in puzzlement and disbelief. “...which Manys?” one asked.

“ALL OF THEM!” Seare roared. “MOVE!”

The handlers shot off like arrows, but Iorweth, on the other hand, felt rooted to the floor, pinned down in the shadow of a past disaster. Things were too chaotic and frenetic for him to accomplish anything with a pen and paper. Though he might be king, nobody had the mind to stop and wait for his command right now.

He felt as weak as a child, still standing on the side watching his father tackle the crises of leadership. Instead of taking charge, he was forced to rely on Prime Minister Seare, one of the remnants of his father’s regime, to carry the burden for him. On one hand, he was glad for the man’s presence. On the other, it rankled Iorweth that he would need another man to do his job, leaving him to hold his distraught wife against his chest as she tried her best not to cry.

The witch. This was all her fault. Surely, even the attacks on his homeland were her actions, somehow. If—no, when—he made it through this, he would find a way to seize his revenge on her.

“Your Highness!” a Many handler called to him from the doorway. “Minister Seare needs you right away!”

Iorweth hadn’t even realized the minister had left, but nevertheless followed the handler to another nearby room. There, he found Seare and the image of another familiar and friendly face.

Duke Larek Addison was in most ways Iorweth’s greatest ally. He and his family had always held a close relationship with the king’s line, and Duke Addison was by and large the most loyal and least problematic noble that Iorweth dealt with. Living to the southwest in the city of Yirith, the second-largest city in Kutrad, he held great influence over the entire region. Many would say that he essentially ruled the whole area through his political capital alone, even though he was in no way officially appointed to govern it.

The Duke, an elderly man of wisdom and character, did not greet Iorweth with his usually smile and pleasantries. No, in fact, he looked half-dead! Blood dripped from a nasty gash on the side of his head, and his left arm hung limply at his side. Red stains covered his front, and Iorweth thought he saw bits of flesh clinging to the overcoat the Duke always wore when it got cold at night.

He stood in a poorly lit room made up entirely of stone. Iorweth had never seen the likes of the place in his many stays in the Duke’s Yirith estate, but he knew the general construction. This was likely a small room somewhere underground, perhaps a basement.

A mixture of desperation and relief crossed Duke Addison’s face the moment he spotted Iorweth. He reached out toward the king with his good hand, as if trying to reach through the image, while shouting, “Sire! Run! Flee now, while you can!”

A massive boom erupted somewhere nearby, shaking the image and nearly knocking the old man off his feet.

“We cannot stop them! They’re far too strong!” he continued. “You—” His voice faltered and he began to cough heavily. Blood spurted from his lips, spattering the nondescript brown stone floor.

Iorweth scribbled out a plea for the old man to run himself, but Seare spoke first.

“Who is it?!” he asked urgently. “Who dares attack us?!”

“We don’t know!” the Duke told them. “I’ve never seen things so huge! They came from the sky without a moment’s warning and set the city alight before we even knew what happened! Everything is gone now, sire! It is too late for us! You must escape before they come for you, too!”

Another boom shook the image, this one either closer or more powerful than the last. Iorweth scratched out another pressing question, but Tangwen already knew what he wanted and spoke without looking. “How do you know they’re coming for us?”

The old man swallowed. “They said so.”

It would prove to be his final words. With a mighty, ear-rending crash, the entire room seemed to erupt, stone shrapnel ripping his frail body to shreds. The Many fared little better, but the image persisted just long enough for Iorweth to get a glimpse of several massive pearlescent sickles embedded deep into the floor. Then the image vanished, and the Manys’ lives with it.

Nobody made a sound for what felt like an eternity. All three of them were in shock, unable to process all that was happening to them and their world. Iorweth felt empty of body and mind, as if some higher being had reached down and scooped out his innards. None of this felt real. It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t.

In the end, Seare’s voice, more brittle and shaken than Iorweth had ever heard it, broke the silence.

“Is this the end?” he asked himself, or them, or perhaps fate itself. “Of our home? Of everything?”

“No!” came his Queen’s unexpectedly ardent answer. In her eyes he found the determination and fire that had been one of the biggest reasons he’d fallen in love with her. Like the rest of them, she’d been overwhelmed by the onslaught of tragedy, but now, somehow, she stood tall once more. “Kutrad is not the land, Kutrad is us! As long as we survive, the flame shall forever burn! Let us do as the Duke bade us and run. He gave his life to give us a chance to escape—we must not waste it!”

“Run?” Seare replied in disbelief. “Where could we run to? The Eterians? Or should we hide in the woods like common bandits?”

“Yes! As long as we still breathe, we have the chance to find a solution. We will only truly lose if we die or give up, and I have no intention of doing either any time soon!”

“There is an escape tunnel in the tower that leads to the forest beyond the city,” Iorweth wrote.

“Perfect!” his wife chirped.

“But who do we bring?” Seare wondered.

“What do you mean? Everybody!” Tangwen exclaimed.

“Everybody in the castle? The city?”

“As many people as we can!”

“Are you daft?!” the prime minister snapped. “If we must run, we need to be able to move quickly and below notice!”

“Then what do you propose?!” she shot back. “Do you want to be the one to mark people for death?! Are you going to tell the people just outside this door that you’re leaving them to die?!”

“Sacrifices need to be made in a crisis! That’s just how the world works!”

Tangwen opened her mouth to fire back, but before she could voice her outrage, something else cut into their conversation. They all went still as a deep sonorous rumble from somewhere off in the distance sent minute tremors running through the palace’s solid stone structure. The rumble continued unabated for many heartbeats, growing in pitch and intensity until Iorweth’s conscious mind could finally recognize it for what the remnants of his primitive animal mind had identified from the start. It was a roar, the bellow of something so immense and powerful and dangerous that the ancient part of him was screaming endlessly in his ear to run, to abandon all that he had and flee as fast as he could, for only then might he stand a chance of living beyond the moment.

He and the others fled out into the hallway to find chaos. The normally placid Manys were now anything but, flailing about on their own as their normally levelheaded minders abandoned their charges and fled in every direction. Iorweth was no better, leaping over one of the Manys without a second thought as he sprinted down the hallway and up the nearest stairway.

Back up on the first floor at last, Iorweth threw open the doors and emerged from the stairwell into the north wing’s foyer. He spotted a small crowd of people across the room huddled outside an open pair of double doors that led to the northern gardens. They were all looking at something off in the distance. Knowing the nature of that which they saw but unable to help himself, he crossed the chamber to witness for himself.

There, gliding above the western edge of Xoginia, he spotted a seemingly impossible being. An enormous creature hung in the air, a mass of pale orange scales glinting in the evening sunlight suspended by gigantic wings that could cover a dozen homes in shadow. At the front, a long, thick neck arched up and out ahead of the body, ending in a large head with an equally gaping maw that spewed a trail of smoke behind it. An even longer tail jutted out the other side, a jagged set of spikes jutting out along the top.

The reductive part of Iorweth’s mind likened the sight to that of a wildly overgrown winged lizard, the sort that could be found anywhere in Kutrad sunning themselves on rocks or flitting through the air in short bursts to snatch flying insects for a quick meal, except this one was all muscle and anger. He had trouble understanding the creature’s very existence. Sure, leviathans existed, but nothing on land could ever be so large as this! And for it to soar through the air like it did, it shouldn’t be possible! How could something so loud and terrible have existed for so long without anybody knowing?

A shadow fell over Iorweth and the others, prompting him to look up to the sky above them. It was only then that he saw a second monster, much the same as the first except even larger... and plummeting towards them from straight above.

Everybody scattered, Iorweth grabbing his wife by the arm and sprinting across the foyer in the direction of the tower where his escape tunnel waited for him. Never before had his palace felt so large, his refuge so far away.

With a crash that would put thunder to shame, the mighty beast slammed into the palace behind them, crushing the stone beneath its obscene mass. The resulting shockwave sent the king and his queen tumbling across the floor like dry leaves lost in the breeze. Glass from a nearby window shattered from the force, spraying sharp shards across the floor.

Coughing from some accidentally inhaled stone dust, he risked a glance behind him as he pushed himself to his feet. A deep blue behemoth stood amidst the wreckage, its bulk so gargantuan that it stood taller than the multi-story structure it had just crushed like a pile of twigs. It reared back its massive head filled with teeth larger than any man and let out a series of low rumbles that shook the palace like an earthquake. A single eye, larger than his entire body, turned to stare directly at him and only him, the gaze of a predator sighting their prey. Within the darkness of that slitted pupil, he saw an intelligence, malevolent and cruel, that chilled him to his core. He was nothing to this creature, a speck of insignificance worth little more than a moment of amusement.

“Protect the king!”

“Slay the beast!”

“Attack!”

A swarm of palace guards rushed the giant lizard, swarming from all directions to the tune of a dozen different shouted orders and rallying cries. These were the troops chosen to guard his home and his life, some of the very best and most powerful warriors his nation had to offer. Iorweth didn’t feel much hope of anybody stopping this rampaging marauder, but if anybody had even the slimmest of hopes, it would be them.

A man stepped between him and the beast, battle axe held ready—Vice Captain Murghan, second in command of the guard. “Fall back, sire! We’ll handle this!” he cried with much more outward confidence than he must have felt inside.

Iorweth didn’t need to be told twice. He turned and ran, chasing after Tangwen, who’d had the good sense to just get up and flee instead of glancing at their impending doom.

Unfortunately, that doom had other ideas. To his utter horror, it ignored the dozens of high-class soldiers heading its way, turned towards him, and took a step forward through the building. Iorweth redoubled his efforts to the sounds of stone, metal, and glass being slowly reduced to rubble behind him by little more than sheer mass and strength. Through room after room, through hallway after hallway they ran, always chased by the noise of destruction and death.

Every so often, he would risk a glance behind, and each time he would see the same thing: a monstrous scaled head not fifty paces away, seemingly keeping pace with him as he fled through the palace. Each time he checked, more rivulets of strangely colorful, shining blood dripped from an ever-growing amount of small cuts and gashes—‘small’ relative to the size of the beast, at least— on its head and upper torso. But one thing that remained constant was how both of its eyes were locked on him now, and he didn’t know if he was losing it or if there really was a mischievous glint in them. Then, once he returned his gaze to his destination, the beast would exhale and Iorweth would find himself awash in steaming air and an acrid stench with a hint of sulfur. It made him want to cough and gag, but he knew that to do so would spell the end of him, and so he pressed on through the pain.

Through the palace they ran, out of the east wing, across the bridge, and all the way to the tower, their pursuer right behind the entire time. Only once they were on the other side of fifteen paces of solid rock—a barrier many times thicker than any of the palace walls, and one that they might give them a moment of protection—did he allow himself to feel a modicum of relief. They were almost free. The hidden tunnel was just over there, on the other side of the tower. They could make it.

BOOM!

After the disaster with the witch, wherein the witch had somehow shattered the tower’s solid and sturdy reinforced wood door and riddled his body with wooden shrapnel, Iorweth had demanded the replacement door be so strong and thick that nobody would ever be able to break it. That was how the new door had come to be, thick as a man was wide. But, in the end, it still had to be something Iorweth could open on his own, and stone and metal were just too heavy. Though it had been constructed of the strongest hardwood that money could buy, wood was still just wood.

A single claw was all it took. So large that it couldn’t fit half of it through the door frame, the oversized nail crashed through the wooden obstruction almost like it wasn’t there, exploding it into lethally sharp shards that rocketed all over the tower interior faster than Iorweth and Tangwen could ever react.

Iorweth grunted as the blunt end of a large wooden chunk hit him in the back of his left shoulder hard enough to knock him off his feet. He felt his shoulder blade crack, a spike of pain shooting through his shoulder, but he could still manage. He’d been lucky.

Tangwen, however, fared far worse. She let out a cry as a long piece of hardwood pierced deep into the back of her thigh, running all the way through so that when it stopped a hand’s width of wood poked out the other side. She collapsed, screaming in agony.

BOOM! CRACK!

Something struck the tower hard enough to shake it like a sapling in a winter storm. Iorweth stared, aghast, as a thick horizontal crack formed near the top of the doorway’s arch, running a many paces both to the left and right of it.

The claw seemed to almost flex as it pushed against the top of the door frame. The crack began to grow, slowly succumbing to the beast’s impossible power. As it grew and widened, a second claw shoved its way into the newly created gap, then a third.

It took Iorweth until the third claw showed itself to regain himself and shake off the mind-numbing shock and awe from the sight. He pushed himself up by his good arm and ran to his whimpering wife to help her up. The shard in her leg was too large to deal with in the moment. It would have to stay in.

Tangwen needed no encouragement; she knew how dire their situation was. She hobbled to her feet, clutching his arm and shoulder for support. Together they made one last bid for their lives, trying not to trip on the debris-littered floor as the crack grew ever-larger.

They were too late, the evening light signaling the end. Still steps away from the entrance to the hidden escape tunnel, they looked up to see the beast peering down at them from its self-created entrance. With one final flex, the last of the stone on the opposite end broke and the crack completed its circumference of the tower. The upper half of the tower, a seemingly immovable mass of crushing stone, tipped up and over like a felled tree. Landing out of Iorweth’s sight, it shook the world with a massive crunch of stone on earth.

The beast let out a series of low rumbles as it reached down towards him with its powerful forearm. An equally large hand enveloped his vision, scooping up him and all the surrounding stone and squeezing the rough rock tightly against his body. He struggled, but found himself barely able to breathe under the pressure, let alone move.

The beast lifted him and his stone wrapping up into the air. Only then could he spot his dear Tangwen wriggling in the creature’s other hand. She screamed and Iorweth redoubled his efforts to no avail.

“Forward, warriors! The King must be saved, even if it costs us our lives!”

The world lurched as the beast spun around, swinging Iorweth around along with it. Without its bulk blocking his view, he was able to see in its entirety the state of devastation that had been visited upon his home. Of what was once a grand and palatial place with four separate wings, only the north wing still stood largely unmarred. The rest was little more than piles of debris and the occasional free-standing wall.

Bodies were strewn about and around the debris. The unlucky ones had been crushed to death by falling stone or rampaging lizard. The lucky ones were merely knocked out, many of them having barely made it out before losing consciousness—or at least, so he hoped.

Some people, however, still moved. At the fore stood a small group of battered soldiers, the last resistance still standing against the giant invader. Vice Captain Murghan, the source of that shout, stood defiantly in the center of the group, weary but somehow not out of the fight.

The beast arched its long neck upward, inhaling deeply, before whipping its head forward, mouth open wide. From that maw erupted a cone of ashen death, a torrent of white-hot cinder wreathed in thunder and lightning that reduced all it touched to dust and despair. Nature’s wrath made manifest, it swept across the last living defenders and on to the palace itself.

Within moments, everything was gone—all of it extinguished in a handful of heartbeats. Hundreds of lives incinerated into nothing more than sizzling soot. Hundreds of years of history reduced to puddles of molten slag. All of it with only a single breath.

Only now, as he surveyed the glowing remains through eyes filled with tears, did the terrible reality finally sink in. This monster could have destroyed them all in a single moment at any time—it simply hadn’t wanted to. It had chased Iorweth and Tangwen through the palace, crushing the building and the people in it beneath its incredible weight along the way, just for its own amusement.

The beast let out more short, low rumbles. Finally Iorweth understood the noises for what they were. It was laughing.

And then, it spoke, its words hammering into his mind like a sledge.

“FOOLISH CRAWLERS, DESPERATELY SCRATCHING AT TAVRETH’S HIDE”, it chortled. “CRAWLERS UNIMPORTANT, NOT LIKE IMPORTANT CRAWLER.”

It lifted its hands up to its face, leveling its gaze upon him.

“CRAWLERS DIE TO PROTECT IMPORTANT CRAWLER. IMPORTANT CRAWLER SPECIAL TO CRAWLERS. TAVRETH KNOW. TAVRETH SEE BEFORE, LONG AGO. TAVRETH NEVER FORGET WHAT SPECIAL CRAWLERS TOOK FROM TAVRETH. NOW, TAVRETH TAKE FROM SPECIAL CRAWLER.”

It brought its other hand inward, holding Tangwen up between them. His beloved still struggled, refusing to give up no matter how dire things were.

“Iorweth, help! Help, Iorweth!” she cried out.

The beast, this ‘Tavreth’, chuckled. “NOISY CRAWLER IMPORTANT TO SPECIAL CRAWLER, YES? WHAT SHOULD TAVRETH DO?”

“Please, Iorweth, do something! Save me!”

Iorweth fought with all his might, to no avail. Unable to budge even a hair’s width, he had never felt so feeble. His strength as a man was worth less than nothing. His strength as a king had already proven itself worthless. He might as well have been a limp blade of grass for all the difference it would make.

“SHOULD TAVRETH PEEL CRAWLER APART, LET SPECIAL CRAWLER WATCH? SHOULD TAVRETH IGNITE CRAWLER SLOWLY? SPECIAL CRAWLER, TELL TAVRETH! TELL TAVRETH HOW CRAWLER DIES!”

He couldn’t stop trembling, despite being squeezed so hard he could barely breathe. He felt like he was losing his mind. How had it come to this? What had he done to deserve any of this?

The beast shook him violently. “SPEAK, CRAWLER! CHOOSE! TAVRETH DEMANDS ANSWER!”

He wanted to speak, desperately so. There was ever so much that he wanted—no, needed—to say. And yet, in his darkest hour, he could not. No matter how hard he tried, the witch’s grip on his voice remained. Maybe his body remembered the agony he’d heaped upon himself the last time he’d broken through the witch’s curse, or maybe her grip on him had gotten stronger since then. In the end, it mattered not. His throat remained deathly silent.

“Iorweth, I love you,” Tangwen sobbed. “Now and forever, I love you.”

A bellowing roar echoed across the landscape from across the city. “TAVRETH! LEAVE CLAIM OF DARAVITH AT ONCE!”

Tavreth turned its gaze towards the other beast momentarily, and let out an annoyed grunt. “CRAWLER TOO SLOW. TAVRETH HUNGRY, ANYWAY.”

The beast opened its many-fanged mouth and tossed her lightly into the air like Iorweth would toss a grape. Tangwen shrieked as she plummeted mouth-ward. Her scream cut off with a sickening squelch as the monster clamped down with its terrible blade-like teeth, leaving the sound permanently echoing in Iorweth’s mind. Just like that, she was gone.

First his voice, then his people, then his home, and finally his love. Everything but his life had been taken from him now, and barring a miracle, not even that would remain much longer. He could do nothing. He was nothing. All that remained were tears.

The creature pulled him closer, inspecting him closely.

“NO WORDS, CRAWLER? NO BEGGING? NO PLEAS? NO CURSES?”

Tavreth let out a rumbling snort of dissatisfaction.

“TAVRETH WASTED TIME COMING HERE. CRAWLER WEAK. PATHETIC. BORING.”

It clenched its fingers.