by Sean T. Collins

The following story is intended for mature readers.

The hammer fell for the last time. Its bronze face drove the spike home deep, its head now flush with the wood. The craftsman stood back, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of the corded arm that held the hammer, and looked at what he’d built. Truth be told, on a project this unconventional he wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

After a moment he exhaled sharply and turned to the workbench, laying the hammer down. He picked up a plane and faced his construction once more. Nodding to himself, he stepped forward and gently scraped the plane against the wood, moving up and over the crest of its curved surface. He did this more out of habit than necessity: The object’s exterior was already smooth to the point of seamlessness, every joint and crevice fitted perfectly. But in all his years of renown his’ habits had yet to fail him, and he trusted them like friends. 

Daedalus walked to the rack near the wall of his workroom and took down the hide hanging from it. Being careful to keep it off the sawdust-covered floor, he slung it over the structure. It was always the structure, the object, the construction in his mind, and never what it so clearly looked like, never what it was intended to deceive its intended recipient into believing it was in truth. Never the cow.

The next little while he spent tacking the hide into place, light work he was in no particular hurry to finish. I’m covering up that beautiful smooth surface, he thought to himself. Shame. But the effort had not been wasted, he knew. Perfecting even such parts of the project as would never meet the eye was the key to craftsmanship. People sense the work even if they can’t see it, he’d told his nephew long ago. It shines through in what they can. His nephew—

“Is it finished?”

A woman’s voice shook Daedalus from his reverie. He realized he’d been resting his forehead against the rear of the object, eyes closed. He had been working very hard without respite, and he’d long found the afternoon sun to be a natural soporific, as many an unplanned nap at the drawing table could attest. Snapping to, he turned to look at the figure in the doorway — and immediately bowed his head. Pasiphaë, Queen of Crete, stood there, her gown yellow as the sun.

“My Queen!” Daedalus’ exclamation was apologetic. “I— ”

“Oh.” The Queen’s voice silenced his. “It is finished.” She was gazing, wide-eyed, at what he only now found himself thinking of, first and foremost, as the cow.

Pasiphaë approached the wooden animal. Extending a delicate hand the color of golden sand, she touched the cover of cowhide, her fingers gliding over the fine fur. She traced the features of its wooden head, its likeness to one of Minos’ own herd impeccable. From there she caressed the simulacrum’s neck, its flank, its haunches. “And it’s wonderful.”

The Queen turned to Daedalus, the jewels on her diadem gleaming in the golden sun. “How does it work?”

She is your client, he reminded himself. And with Athens closed to you, she is your Queen. 

“Ah.” He walked to creature’s right side, standing between it and the Queen. He reached down and lifted a panel of the hide he hadn’t tacked down. There, in a flank of otherwise unblemished wood, could be discerned the faint outline of a small, square door. “You pull up the flap,” he said, “and press here…” He pressed his fingers against a small panel next to the door, which opened with a click.

The Queen approached the entrance, stooping to gaze inside. “I see,” she said. She turned to look at Daedalus. “And…?”

“Of course,” he replied. He gestured toward the back of the cow, where he’d been dozing when she first came in. Now she could see what his body had obscured: a hole, in the lower rear of the body, between its sturdy hind legs. The hole’s edges were rounded smooth and upholstered in leather.

“Once inside, turn to face the front of the edifice and ease backwards. The opening is…” He froze momentarily. “…enough to accommodate,” he said at last.

Pasiphaë reached out a hand and traced the edge of the orifice with her jewel-encrusted fingers. Slowly they curled around the lip of the opening. Extending her arm, she inserted her hand in the hole, which swallowed her up to the elbow. While she was distracted, Daedalus dared a glance at her eyes. The gaze he found there was warm, and dark. He looked away.

“You’ve grown quiet,” the Queen said. She withdrew her hand from the hole. Try as he might, Daedalus could not cloak the dismay on his face — no, not even he who’d dissembled his way through meetings with countless clients who thought they knew better, until he showed them otherwise. “What’s wrong, Architect?” Her pretty brow lifted in concern. 

“I fear this whole business, my Queen,” he said honestly, scratching his beard without realizing he was doing so, an old tic. “I’ve feared since first the king refused the sacrifice. I fear it will go ill for all of us.”

Paisphaë put her hand on Daedalus’ bare shoulder. He tensed, despite himself. She was a beautiful woman. 

“Architect,” she said, “your crime is behind you.” 

And there it was. All it once, everything he now realized he’d been trying to forget by burying himself in this mad project came rushing back. Perdix was his nephew — just his nephew! — but his craft had already outmatched that of the great Daedalus. They had quarreled, well really he had attacked the lad, and there was a window, and…

He started to speak, but Pasiphaë shushed him. “Ah, ah. The goddess of that city saw fit to give young Perdix new life as a bird to spare him the fall, did she not? And with his flight so too departed your guilt. Take heart, sir. You are in Crete now, and you are free.”

He watched as she turned her eyes on the cow. There’s that look again. “As am I.”

Pasiphaë removed her diadem. “I am the daughter of the Sun, the white bull a gift of the Sea,” she said, setting it down on the crowded workbench. “How could our union go ill?”

Daedalus was in his own head, where his thoughts had grown dark. He busied himself by straightening the cowhide, which was already straight. “As you say, my Queen.”

“Now, let’s give this a try.”

“Let’s—?” Daedalus realized he’d only been half paying attention to the wife of King Minos and blinked, turning. Then he saw Pasiphaë, her gown a yellow pool around her tanned feet. Her hair flowed from her head, rippling down her bare body like the reflection of the sun in wavy water.

Before the craftsman could say anything, the Queen walked back to the door in the side of the wooden cow and began climbing inside as he watched. When she reached the halfway mark, her soft belly bisected by the portal, she shifted her weight for better access. Daedalus saw the muscles within her ass and thighs clench, moving the flesh of her lower body around them. As he stared, she stood on her toes and pushed upward, sliding inside with one final motion. 

“Does it close from the in—oh, there it is” she said. The door slid shut with another click. 

Suddenly chastened, Daedalus averted his gaze from the cow. You had no right. “You should find padding inside,” he said without facing it, his voice thick in his throat. “Reach into the head to—”

“Show me how it works,” came the muffled voice inside the cow.

“My Queen?” Daedalus was confused. “I’m sorry, but I’ve already shown you how it—” He heard the wooden beast creak as if it had been jostled and turned to see the source of the noise. 

There in the hole between the thing’s legs, he could see the Queen’s cunt. 

Show me how it works. 

When he realized what she wanted of him the fear he felt only grew…but so did another feeling, hungry and hot. He leaned his head against the cowhide and closed his eyes. But the apertures of his other senses widened accordingly. He heard the Queen — or rather he heard the Queen’s body, the Queen’s naked body — wrlggling inside the cow. He felt his cock stiffening against his clothes. And even amid the aromas of sawdust and cowhide, he smelled, faint and rich and slightly maddening, the scent of her arousal.

He began to undress. He tossed his robe onto the workbench, then his undergarment, the plain fabric of which obscured the Queen’s diadem entirely. Turning, his cock throbbing as it rose to full stiffness, he walked forward and touched the cow. The cow. Now I can say it. He made a full circuit of it, his hands making a study of all he’d built. He needed it to be real to him, as it would have to be for the sacred animal that was, in the end, his true client.

When his hands finished their tour, he found himself behind the cow once more. He was ready now. He licked his hand and stroked the shaft of his cock, wetting it. He positioned it at the opening in the cow, the opening in the Queen, and — hhhhh — slid inside. 

How hot she burned!

He knew right away he would not be long in climaxing. Not out of pleasure, though it was intense — forbidden and perverse and as keen and sharp as ever he’d known it. No, it was as if his body felt a sense of duty. He was demonstrating the efficacy of his creation, nothing more. If he allowed himself to savor this, how could he look himself in the mirror and adjudge himself an honest craftsman?

The Queen moaned within, grunted, sounding muffled and animal from inside the cow’s hide-covered carapace. His arms wrapped around the cow, stretching forward. He clung to it — to her. He bent his head to it one more time and covered it with desperate, delicate kisses. 

The sensation of her cunt spasming around his shaft shook him loose. He looked down and saw her jeweled fingers sticking through the opening in the cow, rubbing her swollen clitoris amid a cloud of golden hair as she brought herself off. It was too much for him at last, then. Paisphaë, the cow, the job, all of it, too much.

“My Queen,” he gasped as her own cries faded. “I’m there…”

“Not in me!” came the muffled command from inside. “Spill it on the floor.”

Had he been able to think clearly Daedalus could have foretold this outcome, which instead took him by surprise. No matter. It was all too far along now. The machine would serve its function.

“Ahhh…” He pulled himself out of her and began stroking furiously, his hand sliding up his cunt-slick foreskin up and down. Swooning, he leaned hard to his left, his shoulder bracing him against the cow as he turned to face the workbench. “Ahhh!” His climax overtook him then. He forced his eyes open, the muscles of their lids wavering, and watched his own semen gush out of his pulsating cock to the sawdust-strewn floor. 

As it ended, he leaned back and slid down, his ass colliding with the floor as he leaned back against the beast’s legs. His semen lay in a puddle between his knees.

He felt the cow shake from within, heard the click and whoosh of the door unlocking and sliding open. In seconds, the Queen was by his side, naked and sweaty as he was. 

“Oh, good,” she said, looking down beteween Daedalus’ splayed legs. She stuck out one finger and swirled it through his spunk, drawing patterns in the sawdust. “It works.”

Without another word she stood. He looked up and saw her smear her cummy finger against the cowhide, then turn to the workbench. Tossing his clothes to the floor, she retrieved her diadem. It sat there in her hands for a moment, then another.

She looked back at Daedalus. “I love him, you know. I do. I can’t expect anyone else to understand what I myself cannot, but I love him.”

Pasiphaë put the crown back on her head began to dress. “And so I thank you, Architect, for what you have done for me today.” He knew what she meant, and what she didn’t.

She was already leaving. “Have it brought to the pens,” she said. It was a command, not a request.

Daedalus was still sitting naked against the leg of the cow. “Yes, my Queen,” he said. 

After a minute, maybe two, he stood, wiped the sawdust from his ass, and began cleaning up.

—

The servants scampered out of the pens, leaving the wooden cow behind. In the shadows stirred a massive shape the color of sea foam in the light beyond. The bull approached the cow slowly, warily even, the tips of its ivory horns parallel to the earth below, but already its excitement was evident. 

The white bull of Poseidon reared up and mounted the cow. From his window, Daedalus watched its engorged cock stop, thwarted, then push forward and disappear within the hide-covered container he’d built.

Daughter of Helios, by Aphrodite accursed, I beg of you, he thought. Gods of Olympus, architects of existence, I pray of you. Please, turn not my invention to evil. But even as he thought this, his cock was hard.

He ran his hand through his hair, higher up his forehead with each passing year, and turned from the window. The drawing board awaited, and with it the designs he’d been working on since he’d finished the cow. The Queen had inspired it, in more ways than the obvious.

He was just pressing his reed pen to paper when he heard small footsteps approaching. “Papa!” His son appeared in the doorway of his study, grinning ear to ear, as if privy to a wonderful secret he would soon share.

Daedalus felt the yoke of care that bound him begin to fall away. He put down his pen, arresting his study of his nephew in flight — not as the mere bird into which Athena had transformed him, no, but as the man himself, full grown and yet wingéd still, soaring nigh unto the Sun. 

“Yes, Icarus,” he said, returning the boy’s smile. He stood and abandoned his work, for now. “I’m right here.”

“Sure as you’re born, sire, beggin’ your pardon, sire.” The furrier added the last part hastily, afraid he’d gotten too familiar with one of the royal blood. The prince could only shake his head. Life would be much easier if we could cut through the He wished there were some way he could spare the peasantry this awkwardness. Or himself, for that matter.

“My pardon you can have — for a fee,” he said, smiling reassuringly. The man looked confused. “All I require is a description of the beast.”

“O’course, sire. It were frightful large—”

“Compared to an elk…?”

“An elk I reckon it could swallow whole and take hardly no notice, sire,” the furrier said. He was more animated now, less afraid. This was a brush with greatness, after all. “That’s if meat’s its diet, which I couldn’t say, sire. But it were scaly and wrinkly like, and frightful large.”

“Yes, so you said.”

“Reminded me of a tortoise out its shell it did,” the man continued. “It had them kind of legs like, bowed, squat. But they was spikes on its back instead of a shell, if it please you, sire.”

He turned to Brorr and tilted his head; the bald old huntmaster nodded reassuringly. 

“It does,” he replied to the furrier at last, turning back to face him. Ruddy-faced and full-bearded, he looked the picture of health to Prince Rahbo. Perhaps the corrosive effects of proximity to the survivors of the White Battle were overstated. What a surprise. “And you’re sure you can direct us to the beast?”

“Sure as you’re born, sire, beggin’ your pardon, sire,” the man said again, before realizing he was repeating himself. He bowed in apology. “Beggin’ your pardon, sire,” he said. 

“Again, it’s not…” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, which he’d unsheathed from his glove before conversing with the peasant. People liked to be able to see your hands when convincing themselves to trust you, he’d found. It let them tell themselves you weren’t hiding anything. “Friend — may I call you friend?”

“Why, of cou—”

“Friend, we are glad of your counsel, and your guidance. Long leagues are we from the capital, where even now my father awaits news of our victory in this hunt of one of the Foul One’s spawn.”

“A good man, your father, sire — I mean the King — I mean His Majesty, your kingly father, sire, beggin’ your—”

“And your father,” Prince Rahbo said, knowing how this sort of thing went. “Did he by chance serve the King’s father, my royal grandsire, in the Third War?”

“The Final War he called it, sire!” The furrier seemed proud, as though it had been his accomplishment. “The last overthrow of the Foul One’s servants in the capital, the cleansing of his strongholds and laboratories, the routing of his soldiers and monsters, the renunciation of his perversion and blackest science, AN END TO EVIL!.” This was all repeated with the unmistakable cadence of a child’s memorized catechism. All that was left was to add— “Sire.” Ah, there it is.

“Aye, that it was,” Prince Rahbo said absently. He was fiddling with the locket around his neck. “Brorr, get the directions from this man, and make sure he’s outfitted for the trip. I’ll be back in my tent.”

“The trip, sire?” It had taken the furrier a second to realize with Prince Rahbo had said.

“You said you’d lead us to the beast, did you not?”

“I — sire, I—”

“Leave a couple of guards behind with his family just in case,” Prince Rahbo said, heading through the door of the furrier’s small timber home. 

“In case of what, sire? Are they in danger?”

“If you steer us true they’re in no danger at all,” Prince Rahbo said as he left. He’d gotten the locket open. By the time he reached the flaps of his yellow tent, emblazoned by the historic sun emblem of the Kings of Lihann, he’d inhaled three pinches of the light blue powder inside. 

He caught Aleen’s expression from across the tent, where she lay wrapped in furs of gold and red. He looked right back at her and had a fourth sniff.

“Don’t you start with me,” he said before she could begin. You don’t know what it’s like dealing with these people.” He took off his heavy cloak and tossed it on a chair. “The shit I have to do just to get through the day.”

If he’d hoped this would defuse things with Aleen he realized his mistake soon enough. “The shit you have to do just to get through the day?” She was seated fully upright on the bed, her mane of curly black hair hovering around her like a cloud, furs clutched about her chest. If she’s not letting me see anything I’m in real trouble, goddammit. “Okay, fine, let’s start with the fact hat I wouldn’t know what you do all day — you never take me anywhere!”

Prince Rahbo rubbed the bridge of his nose again. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m here — in a tent I can’t leave — not even to relieve myself, Rahbo.”

The prince smiled. “You’re welcome to visit the latrines.”

“Shut up.” Aleen wasn’t amused.

“Sorry! Sorry. But I mean, you know how it works. Consorts,” he said, being extremely generous with that word, “don’t attend meetings or join sorties. I’m pushing it having you here now as it is.” He poured himself a goblet of wine from a nearby decanter and drained it. “Plus,” he said, swallowing. “Plus my son is here, and I don’t wanna have to get into—”

“Your son is three, Rahbo,” Aleen said, incredulous. “Tell him I’m Queen of the Faeries. And leave him with his mother next time, for fuck’s sake.”

“A boy’s place is with his father,” the prince shot back with surprising vehemence. “I’ll not have him raised behind his mother’s skirts as I was.” 

Aleen smirked. “He’ll stay behind her skirts if you want what’s beneath mine.”

Prince Rahbo paused, then smiled back slowly. “Oh, I think I’m entitled to what’s beneath those skirts.” “

“Is that a fact. On account of your incredible performance these two nights last?”

“It’s true, the drink and the powder did interfere with — well, it’s of no matter. I think you’ll recall my tongue faced no such impediment.”

Aleen shrugged. “I’ll not deny it. I may still deny you, though.”

The prince had shucked off his mail. “Is that wise,” he said, approaching the bed, “eeing as I’m the reason you’re sleeping in a tent bigger than your family’s old hovel?”

Aleen sighed, shaking out her curls. In the process she let the furs fall to her lap. “You’ve got me there,” she said, and smiled wider.

“I’ve got you here alright,” said the prince, undressing.

—

The hunting party got underway an hour later than Brorr had planned, and it made the huntmaster uncomfortable. Not angry — if the prince wished to pursue other interests until such time as he felt prepared in body and spirit, that was his princely prerogative — but on edge. 

The burden-beasts had never been the deadliest or most fearsome creatures in the Foul One’s legions. Left to themselves they roamed the far northern jungles where the foliage was dense enough to hide even genuine behemoths like these. Pressed into the Foul One’s service by one of his Great Spells of Control, they were warped into indefatigable servants, carrying orcs, trolls, even ogres to the front lines. Their massive horns and spikes were no joke, and like all creatures of the Wild North they triggered the Sickness among humans sufficiently exposed, but they had no will to battle of their own, not even after facing the Foul One’s cruel tutelage.

That said, they were ferocious creatures at bay, and the same qualities that made them among the hardiest survivors of the craggy, wooded Southern wilderness surrounding the site of the White Battle two generations past made them among the most dangerous. They were solitary creatures, impervious to most attacks, and too stupid to stay hidden when raiding human settlements if food became scarce. Orcs, by contrast, knew their geese were cooked. They hid, eking out a meager existence from homes within the Great Trunks — or had done, until Father had them burned out for good and all. The Kingdom faced its highest death toll from orcs since the White Battle that year, but such was the price of victory.

“I have my concerns, my prince,” the huntsman said, his huge eyebrows twitching. The hair missing from his head seemed to have migrated to directly above his eyes, the prince thought. 

“Well then,” said Prince Rahbo, bending to kiss Aleen’s pale bare ass. His naked consort lay flat on her stomach, asleep, snoring softly, and the touch of the prince’s lips did not wake her. “Share them.”

“Burden-beasts are known to be at their most restless near dusk,” Brorr said. “It’s when the Foul One trained them to expect feedings.”

“Not this one,” the prince said, sliding out of bed and into the robe hanging off a nearby seat. “You heard the furrier — its horns haven’t curled into ram shape yet. This isn’t one of the beasts that rode into battle against Grandfather, it’s…” He stopped, realizing something, and smiled. “Why, it’s a grandson, just like me!”

Brorr smiled politely. (The prince noticed this, but he appreciated good manners.) “Even so, my prince, the mark of the Foul One runs deep, into the very life-essence of the creatures he corrupts. Think ye not of how often we see the young drakes burning fields instead of soaring off to their mountain eyries, as they’d done before his dark work was done to them?”

The huntmaster wasn’t wrong. (He rarely was, the infuriating man.) Prince Rahbo knew the dragon thing had really upset people back then; even his father would swear and cuss when the topic came up, to a degree that seemed to the prince almost involuntary.

Control yourself, he’d always thought at his father. It was a long time ago. And you’re welcome to end dragon-riding in your armies anytime you like, you hypocrite.

“Alright, alright,” the prince conceded. “We’ll get moving.” He glanced back at Aleen. They fought sometimes, but he planned to make her a gift of the creature’s skull after it was all over. Traffic in relics of the Foul One was illegal in the Kingdom of course, but if you knew the right trader and greased the right palms you’d be set for life. He didn’t know how much longer this thing with her would last,  but he didn’t want to be mean when it was over. Besides, he’d long found that a happy mistress was a quiet mistress. 

“I’m all done here anyway,” he said, grabbing his robe before following Brorr deeper into the tent complex to the armorer.

—

They marched along the forest road for half a day, Brorr leading the way, the furrier by his side. Prince Rahbo road in the back of the train, near the weapon-wagon, which required his close supervision. Messengers ran back and forth along the line if the prince and the huntmaster needed to communicate. The road his grandsire cut through the forest ran so straight it was said the keen-eyed could stand in the center at one end and see straight through to the other. 

Like most things about Grandfather, this was peasant horseshit, too good to be true. He’d taken the road often enough to know it bent fifteen degrees to the southwest midway through to avoid the Brownie King’s domain. Not even the Foul One’s leftovers would tread where the mad faery warlord and his army of maneaters made their home.

Either way they had not yet reached that point when a messenger, breathless, ran up to Prince Rahbo’s destrier. They’d found a bear carcass in a shallow bend of the river they were soon to cross. Brorr said it had been gored, and the edge of the wounds was burned a dark green.

So it’s to be easy, then, he thought, sighing over all the time he’d wasted conversing with the furrier in his hovel. I could have had my face between Aleen’s legs. I’ll miss that; she tastes like something I’d order twice. 

“Tell Brorr he’s to signal me the moment the beast is in range,” Prince Rahbo said.

“Aye, sire.” The messenger ran back whence he’d come. After a few minutes, the line began to move again. 

—

“But sire, I—”

“I’m sorry,” Prince Rahbo said to the furrier. “Did I give the impression this is a negotiation?”

The prince took another pinch of blue powder from his locket and snorted it. He’d catch hell if his father got wind of this, but he’d thrown enough money and girls around court that his father hardly got wind of anything anymore. The old man was still formidable, of course, but…

“Negotiation?” the furrier repeated inanely. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know about all that. It’s me family, sire. Without me I don’t know what would become of them.”

“Nothing will become of them!” The prince had to stop himself from wincing at the sound of his own voice, his statement sounding more angry than reassuring. “You’ll be fine. You see this weapon-wagon, right?” He slapped his gloved hand against the wooden cart. “You’ve got nothing to fear against some burden-beast whose horns haven’t even curved yet.”

“You’re right, sire, begging your pardon, s—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you have my pardon! Never has there existed a man with more of my fucking pardon than you, man. Now what I need you to do,” Prince Rahbo said, reaching for his sword. “Is to get your fucking ass out into that water,” he continued, drawing it. “And bring that fucking burden-beast out from the cave behind the fucking falls.”

“Sire…my family…”

“The family surrounded by my guards?” Prince Rahbo said, eyes twinkling. “The family we know are alive right now? That family? Because if you want I can send someone to ask the guards how they’re doing.” He put his hand on the furrier’s shoulder. “Would you like me to send someone to talk to the guards about your family?”

The man’s face went white. “No need, sire, no need! I’ll go! I’ll go!”

“Good!” Prince Rahbo clapped the man on the back. “Good. Bring us that burden-beast, my good man, and you and your family will have every reason to be glad of it.”

The furrier nodded low and scampered back up the line without a word. 

The prince signaled to the men who worked the weapon-wagon. The Sun of Lihann shone white against their black uniforms — Prince Rahbo’s own style. He knew that even now there were those in his father’s court, some even of his own generation, who objected to the absence of yellow in his vexillography. 

But the strength of Lihann had never been of gaiety and gold. The Kingdom’s power lay within the white bone and black resolve of its people. If these were also the colors of the Foul One, what of it? Where was it written that a former Chief Wizard of the Kingdom, whatever his faults, must needs be wrong about all things?

“Roll it forward,” Prince Rahbo commanded the men. “Carefully, now.” He nudged his horse forward, keeping pace with the weapon-wagon as the horse that drew it carefully made its way down the increasingly overgrown road. As they passed one particularly hoary tree, the white-on-black sheet covering the wagon’s cargo snagged on a low-hanging branch, revealing a massive metal tube, its mouth broad enough to fit a human head.

—

“I needn’t have worried about the noise.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I needn’t have worried about the noise’!”

“Aye, it is!” Brorr said, nodding vigorously. It was clear he hadn’t heard a word Prince Rahbo had said. It was nearly impossible to be heard over the roar of the falls, which splashed into the rocks that jutted out of the pool below like teeth before the water continued its flow. The falls created a curtain of water in front of the entrance to the cave behind them, creating a bone-rattling boom with its echo. The half-eaten carcasses another bear and two forest lions lay snagged on the jagged stones; their waterlogged fur made their mangled bodies look sad in the gathering dusk.

From where he stood in the treeline with Brorr, Prince Rahbo turned away. He’d never liked seeing things like that. These were beautiful creatures, their lives cut short due to Father’s failure. He felt a despair well up inside him he hadn’t felt since he led the attack on the Farmer’s March to the capital, the Year of the Bad Wheat. Father’s weakness had forced the prince’s hand then, too. Much as they hated each other, neither Grandfather nor the Foul One would have allowed things to get that far. The Foul One especially would—

“My Prince!” Brorr was shaking him.

Prince Rahbo turned to look at the huntmaster square in the face, staring right at his lips, fat and pink as nightcrawlers. Maybe he could understand what he was saying better this way.

“The oracular statue the scouts found said the beast returned to its cave at daybreak and hasn’t left!” The man’s bald head was beet red with the strain of shouting to be heard. 

“Then we must draw it out while the light shines still. Send the furrier.”

Brorr half-nodded, half-shrugged. “We could always send the furrier,” he shouted.

Prince Rahbo pinched his nose again. “Good idea.”

Brorr turned to his squire who ran down the supply line. Several long minutes later he returned with the furrier, who looked harried and disheveled.

“Begging your pardon, sire, I do apologize sincerely for my tardiness. The call of nature…” He trailed off, embarrassed to shout about taking a shit in the woods.

“Never you mind all that, friend,” Prince Rahbo said. “Now’s your chance to help us rid the King—”

“Beg pardon, sire?”

“—dom of —” He stopped, restarted. “I said, ’Now’s your chance to help us rid the Kingdom of this—”

“I’m sure I don’t rightly know how big the Kingdom is, sire. Frightful big, I expect, sire“

The prince took a deep breath, his eyes widening as far as they’d go. “It’s fucking huge, dipshit.”

“Beg pardon, sire?”

“I said, ‘Go down there and lure the burden-beast out.’”

This the furrier heard loud and clear, judging from the way all the color left his ruddy bearded cheeks. The prince took some satisfaction in that. It was the color people went when they realized they were going to do something not because they wanted to, but because Prince Rahbo wanted them to. He referred to it as the whore’s blush in his mind, though in his memoir he hadn’t yet settled on a name for it.

“Sire, please—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” said the prince, pushing the furrier off the side of the road nearest the falls. With his other hand he pointed back at the weapon-wagon, at the metal tube with Prince Rahbo’s monchromatic coat of arms draped over it. “You will not end in the beast’s belly, this I promise. With this weapon the work of my grandsire will, at last, come to an end. It begins here, friend. It begins with your bravery.”

The furrier grabbed his own beard and tugged. “What?” A pause. “Sire?”

Prince Rahbo grabbed he man by the fur lining of his coat and pulled his face in close, speaking directly into his ear. “Get the fuck down into that pool and start splashing. We’ll kill the fucking thing before it can touch you, this I swear on my grandsire’s tomb.”

Still the man did not budge.

The prince brought him in even closer. “We could fetch your family if you’d like their support, of course.”

That did it. Without another word the furrier turned and scampered down the sloping surface of dark brown soil, green moss, and knotted tree roots. In under a minute he was thigh-deep near the banks of the pool. He turned, looking back at the prince for approval. 

Prince Rahbo turned to his huntmaster, who shook his head no. 

The prince turned back to the distant furrier and waved him forward with his gloved right hand, dangling at the wrist, whisking at the air to motion him on.

The furrier was waist-deep now. His head tossed this way and that, now at the prince, now at the falls and the cave behind it. 

Looking back at the furrier, the prince raised his arms in the air and waved them frantically. The furrier took a moment, then three, before turning back to face the falls, waving and splashing.

They felt it move before they saw it, and with the falls they never heard it. But the massive, trunk-like bowed legs of the burden-beast were moving, up towards the entrance of the cave. 

A forked tongue emerged from he darkness, luridly pink, flicking at the spray that filled the air in the space between the cave and the cascade. 

Slowly into the light emerged a serpentine head the size of a haywain. Its horns, which protruded from the crest of its head, had just begun to curl. Its eyes shone black in the twilight. 

The furrier turned and ran. 

On its great legs the burden-beast, a young adult now, emerged from the cave. Its horned, fanged head connected almost directly to its body, its circular shape giving the impression of a tortoise out of ifs shell. Rows of bristling spikes guarded its massive back instead; this creature had never known riders, but time was the servants of the Foul One strapped themselves to those spikes and marched these monsters to war. How hardy they’d proven, while in the Kingdom only the oldest of the old still lived to remember their maker’s defeat. How noble they were in exile.

“FIRE,” Prince Rahbo yelled.

A whirr, like the stirrings of a great wheel, could be heard even over the din of the falls. The tube, now fully unsheathed, glowed purple for two seconds, three, before a sound like a thunderclap split the air and a burning white globule burst forth from its mouth. 

Prince Rahbo watched as the white fireball sped through the air, embedding itself into the flank of the burden-beast with a sizzling thunk. The creature bellowed in pain, then stopped, froze, suddenly motionless. Beams of red light, then orange, then yellow, then on through the spectrum shot out of its torso from where the white fireball had embedded itself. Each ray punched through guts and bone and muscle and flesh and scales and spikes on its way out.

The burden-beast opened its mouth to roar again. Then its head flew off.

The severed skull was several times larger and faster than the furrier when it collided with him, killing him instantly. The rest of the body exploded in a shower of black blood and viscera that burned every living thing it touched. Prince Rahbo sighed with relief. Out of range, he thought. The tests had not been conclusive about that.

—

The men were moving by torchlight now. Some were tending to the beast’s head, which they’d found fifty yards from the edge of the pool, The furrier’s head and spine remained wrapped around the horn that had hit him when the explosion decapitated the creture; the rest of the man was missing. 

Prince Rahbo stood by Brorr, watching the men clean and dress he head for transport. He couldn’t use the royal tanner, that would raise suspicion even about a Prince of Lihann. But he knew someone; knowing people was his real role in this Kingdom, and knowing how to convince them of the inevitable. That someone could transfer the preserved head to Aleen, at which point someone else he knew would take it abroad and sell it for a small fortune. White War enthusiasts were always eager preservationists of history.

But there were other, more frustrating matters to attend to first. “I’ll have to say something to the widow,” the prince said. (At a conversational volume; the trees were dense enough here to block most of the noise from the falls, though the beast’s horned head had shattered a dozen of them like twigs before it landed.)

Brorr continued looking at the giant head. “Will you?” he asked quietly. Beneath his bristly brows his eyes were twin secrets.

Prince Rahbo pinched the bridge of his nose again. Rule is an ugly business. He signaled to the nearest messenger, who came running. “Go back to the furrier’s cabin,” the prince said. “We left guards there.”

“What should I say to them, sire?”

“You won’t need to say anything,” Prince Rahbo said. With his brows furrowed in confusion, the messenger nodded and sped off.

An ugly business, rule. But what could he do? He couldn’t have word of the weapon getting out beyond his loyalists. People would wonder what book of witchcraft contained the instructions for its creation. People would wonder where the prince might aim it. People might prepare against it.

We can’t have that, Prince Rahbo thought. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we can’t have that.

He would succeed now, he knew. The destruction of the burden-beast was proof of that. A monster bred for generations to be nigh indestructible by man or nature, shattered like a thrown glass, blown apart by magic even the Foul One himself had not yet mastered when Grandfather drove a sword through his face. But he’d kept the great wizard’s spellbooks, every one. For decades now they’d been kept in a vault deep beneath Castle Lihann, where only members of the royal family could access them. To keep them safe, Grandfather had told him just before he died.

Oh, they were safe alright, Grandfather. For year after year we kept our most dangerous weapons safe by not using them. How many good men had died putting down the Farmers’ Rebellions? How many loyal soldiers of Lihann went to the gallows after the Pinewood Conference, all for the offense of demanding a seat at the table? Men died on that day, and this the Council of Regents called a crime. But men die — that’s what men do. If the day came sooner for some than for others…

Well. Let the Farmers take up their pitchforks again. Let another Yellow gather a crowd to hear her calumnies against me. Let the Eastlanders keep swarming the Sun Gate, spreading their filth in the capital. Let the Council of Regents meet to discuss what is to be done with me, and let them invite Father. 

This was not the only weapon he’d had made. Even now they were hidden throughout the city, manned by his most loyal soldiers, aimed squarely at all the Kingdom’s problems. The moment they forced him to forego his policy of peace and act, which they came closer to doing with each passing day, the White Sun would rain fire on everyone who befouled the land of Lihann. Then the work of putting the Kingdom to right could truly begin. The men were eager for that day, maybe more than he was himself.

Prince Rahbo walked over to the massive head, pressing one gloved hand against its forehead, above the point directly between its huge black eyes, which shone dumbly as they reflected the torchlight by which the men worked.

“My prince, I wouldn’t—”

“Your grandsire probably fought my grandsire,” Prince Rahbo said to the severed head quietly.. “When we ended evil.” 

He took his hand off the horn, wiped his glove against his tunic, and turned to the men. “Work all night if you have to,” he said, and turned back to find his horse through the torchlit gloom, taking a sniff from his locket as he walked and taking care to avoid the water befouled by the beast’s blood, which by now would have spread far downstream. He wanted the head back at the tents for his mistress and his son to wake up to; he’d be transported, and she’d be so busy cooing over its market value that he could probably get away from her and home to peace and quiet for a week. There would soon be so much work to do.

a short story by Sean T. Collins

“It’s trivially easy.” Vayanna was standing near the rocks at the edge of the glade, deposited by some long-ago stream. She pawed at the ground impatiently with one hoof. “That was the whole point of all of this.”

Sitting on the grass in the twilight, Barnod looked at the enormous gemstone in his hands. The Red Prism they called it, the wizards who’d warred over it for years. Barnod was first blooded in one of those wars, striking down a Thedan while in the service of the Wizard of the Wastes. Even as the blade sank into the man’s skull, Barnod saw in his eyes that the man no more wanted to be there than did Barnod himself. But orders come, and men march.

He set the gem, which was half again as broad as his fist, down on the grass beside him. He and the Prism were surrounded by an intricate pattern of shapes and runes, rendered in white around the center of the glade. Vayanna herself had done it, carefully following the steps outlined in the spellbook Barnod had stolen along with the Prism herself. Over and over she would dip her horn in the bucket of paint Barnod had carried with him into the Bluewood, then lower her head toward the ground. Barnod would take it in both hands and guide it, gently, as they painted out the spell together.

Finally he looked up at Vayanna. The unicorn was a mottled purple and brown against the blue foliage of the forest and the grey of the rocks. She looked at him expectantly, through eyes violet and sad. That was not the state of Vayanna, though. She was happy, always happy. Like all beasts of her kind, she was joy incarnate. Barnod loved her for it.

He took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right,” he said finally, the statement a deliberate exorcism of his own doubt. “You’re right,” he repeated. “The Red Prism will take care of it. I just— ”

“So what if you’re not a wizard?” Vayanna walked closer to her lover, careful not to tread on the markings they’d made. “Have I ever cared about that in the slightest?”

Barnod brushed his hands over his bloody cloak and stood. “No…”

Vayanna shook her head, her dark purple mane a luminous, lively black in the moonlight. “No, not ever,” she confirmed. “I don’t love an apprentice wizard, I don’t love some dropout from the Crucible, I love you.” She lowered her muzzle onto his shoulder. ”I love Barnod.” He could feel her jaw move as she spoke. 

Barnod tilted his head to the side to rest it against her, raising his left arm to wrap around her head in an embrace. “I love you,” he said. “More than…well, more than I ever thought it was possible to love a—” He stopped short.

“A person,” Vayanna said, lifting her head to look him in the eyes with one of her own. “That’s all I am, Barnod — a person.”

“Of course you are!” His voice was suddenly vehement, so terrified was he of offending her. Whatever their other differences, the Horned Ones were a thinking race just as humans were. “You are the greatest person I’ve ever known, Vayanna Ayalawaya of the Ivory Horn.”

It was true. When Barnod had deserted the Waste Wizard’s army, it was Vayanna who’d found him, dying of infection and exposure at the Bluewood’s edge. With her power she’d nursed him back to health; with her tenderness she brought him back to life. 

Quickly they found they had much and more in common. They shared a love for birds and their study; Vayanna would call one species after another to alight on her horn or her back, where Barnod could observe everything from the tiniest hummingbird to the mightiest hawk at a closeness even the gods were not afforded. They both drew deep delight from the music of the Kelekeri, whose harps were praised above all of Elf-kind, and for good reason. They both fell in love with the Bluewood, for under its eaves they fell in love with each other.

Barnod couldn’t remember whose idea it was to use the Red Prism. That was funny; it seemed like the sort of thing he ought to remember. But that’s often how it was with he and Vayanna: Their thoughts blended together, so that it was hard to tell one’s ideas from the other. 

The Prism, it was said, refracted all light to a gruesome shade of crimson, an indication of its uncanny nature. Its origin was a matter of dispute. Some wizards said it was dropped into the world by Shon, the Lord of Time, as a means of transformation and redemption. Others insisted it was thrust up from the underworld by Loshon the Unchanging, who intended it to tempt the followers of Shon into defying their fate. No one seemed to know for sure during the wars, but everyone had a buddy whose buddy had a brother whose commanding officer had said…whatever. It didn’t matter, not anymore.

The thing was that Barnod didn’t fear the change itself. Neither did Vayanna — to a fault, almost. What Barnod feared was his own capabilities, or lack thereof. He’d barely started at the Crucible when the wars began, and like most students he was immediately drafted, in hopes that the aggregate of their abilities would be enough to turn the tide.

That hope was not misplaced, as it turned out. The Wizard of the Wastes’ control over the crucible gave his army the edge, and when the final battle took place on Nickel Plain, students stood on the front line against the Spiral Wizard. Barnod had not been among them, which was the reason he was still alive. But the acolytes’ sacrifice enabled the Wizard of the Wastes to claim the Red Prism as his own, once and for all. The Spiral Wizard retreated into his vortex, and the matter was settled.

But not for Barnod. The Waste Wizard’s victory was catastrophic for him, as he would now be a wanted man for his desertion among the victorious side and an outcast for his initial participation in the slaughter among the losers. All he wanted to do was slink away and raise a family on a farm somewhere; he didn’t know the first thing about farming, but the sound of it was irresistibly romantic.

One of the few things that the grunts on both sides of the battle agreed upon was that the Red Prism could refract life as well as light. A person who gazed into its depths could emerge from the experience a different person entirely — the person they were meant to be, perhaps, or the person they most wanted to be. 

In the hands of a wizard, the Red Prism’s power was nearly limitless. In the hands of an apprentice like Barnod it was primarily a large red gem, but by all accounts it would still be enough to transform a unicorn into a human even in untrained hands. It could turn Vayanna into the woman of his dreams, and hers as well.

They had tried doing it the way they were. They really had. After sucking her horn for a while, he’d put himself inside her and spend. It was good for Barnod, great even, and it was frightfully romantic for them both. But he wanted, he needed, Vayanna to feel as good as he did when they did it, and so did she. 

They loved the idea the second they came up with it. They thrilled to it, held it between them, threw it up in the air to watch it flutter around them like a swarm of butterflies. Love like this, need like this, did not come around for people like Barnod often. He knew that unicorns experienced love differently from humans — it had something to do with their immortality — but in the moonlight in the blue forest, looking into Vayanna’s eyes, he knew she loved him as much as she’d ever loved anyone or anything else. All either of them wanted was for him to look into eyes that matched the size and shape of his own. 

Vayanna had brought him to the Waste Wizard’s fortress herself, cloaking them both under a shield of inviolability using the power of her horn. With the Vintner’s Blade in his hand — he’d stolen it from the corpse of an enemy soldier he only later realized was King Strobba of the Valleylands — Barnod and his mount and lover slew their way through a phalanx of guards, stealing the Red Prism and the spellbook that had been claimed with it. It was over before the guards knew what hit them, and the Wizard, who’d been in his cups since his victory, was too drunk to notice anything was wrong.

They rode hard for half a week until they reached the eaves of the Bluewood. Only then did they feel safe from the Waste Wizard’s forces. Even now they would be combing the no-man’s-lands for the bloody-handed thieves who’d stolen his rightfully gained spoils of war, looking for a man with a mighty blade and a steed with a deadly horn.

It wouldn’t matter. By the time the hunters reached the Bluewood, Barnod and Vayanna would be long gone. His sword was driven into a dead tree nearby, from which he had no intention of retrieving it; his hornéd steed would soon be neither, but rather a beautiful woman with violet eyes who in no way would match the evidence of an animal attack. 

For all the danger of the plan, Vayanna had been happy to go along. She could find the happiness in anything. It was one of he reasons Barnod loved her so much to begin with. God, how he dreamed of holding his woman in his arms — how he longed for it, how he hungered for it. His love for Vayanna was a staruburst inside of him, an exploding sun. He needed her to have a body capable of receiving the imprint of his love for her, using his own body as an instrument. He wanted to walk with her, really walk with her, arm in arm, hand in hand. He wanted to sleep in a bed with her, curling up behind her, telling this immortal woman she was a little girl he’d take care of for as long as he lived.

He hadn’t meant to do it, but by pronouncing her full name and title, he had initiated the ritual.

“Now, baby?” Vayanna said trepidatiously, hoof in the air.

“Now, baby,” Barnod confirmed.

She stepped into the circuit of spells. Immediately they blazed forth in heatless crimson fire.

Barnod picked up the Red Prism and stood. He and his lover approached one another as the red flames flickered, until they were face to face. Barnod lowered his forehead to Vayanna’s snout, left hand wrapped around to stroke her main, right hand carrying the Prism.

“I love you with all my whole heart,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said. “Do it, please.”

Barnod nodded. Holding the prism to her horn, he closed his eyes and repeated the phrase he’d studied half a hundred times in the moldering spellbook: 

“Let the heart have its way.”

A wave of red light coursed down the length of Vayanna’s horn and through her head and body. Then another, then another, then another, syncing to the beat of her heart. 

“Vayanna, are you—”

A fearsome whinny told him all he needed to know. Take care to stay within the circuit, Barnod stepped away from the unicorn, who by now appeared to be throbbing with an infernal red glow that got brighter and brighter with each pulse. A sudden spray of droplets against his face made him realize the red light was turning liquid, spraying now from Vayanna’s body with each burst of illumination. The unicorn shook her head from side to side and staggered.

Then the light grew so steady and bright Barnod had to shield his eyes. He didn’t see the explosion coming until it was already hitting him, soaking him from head to toe in thick red fluid that was luminescent in the dark. The spray of red in the air made the Bluewood behind look purple in the gloaming. 

The ground was as saturated as his hair and clothes when next Barnod looked up. There, standing before him, was Vayanna, a unicorn no longer. But her purple hair, her skin of coffee and lavender, and the white horn that lay glowing red at her feet left no doubt: This was the woman he loved.

Then he looked in her eyes, and he knew something had gone wrong. They were remote, staring off into the distance, gathering tears. Her lips quivered. With what appeared to be genuine physical force, she wrenched her head to look at Barnod, and sobbed so hard it was as though she were vomiting.

Barnod rushed to her, throwing his cloak around her nakedness, taking her hands in his. “Vayanna,” he said, “Vayanna, Vayanna my love, what’s wrong?”

He looked into her eyes and saw horror looking back at him. Speech was a struggle for her, he saw, perhaps due to the unfamiliar musculature of her jaw. Nevertheless, with some effort, she spoke to him. “Is,” she said. “This. What it’s. Always. Like? For you?”

“Like what?” Barnod asked, not understanding. “Is what always like—”

“Love,” she said, through teeth she restrained from chattering long enough to get the wordout. 

“Yes!” he shouted, eyes brightening. “Yes, love is always like this, it’s always there, it never dies.”

Vayanna’s face crumpled. Tears streamed from her eyes. “Mortals die,” she said. “Love should die.” 

Her legs gave out, and Barnod caught her, easing her to the ground, where he held her in his arms. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Forever, that’s what we wanted, remember?”

With what seemed like physical pain she lifted her beautiful face to look into his. The tears were flowing freely now, in rivulets that marked the borders of her human form’s strong nose. “Forever is too long.”

Barnod’s heart was pounding. Something was very wrong here. “Vayanna” — it pained him to say this, but he loved her too much not to — “we can change you back at any time. The Prism has that power.”

“Can it undo what I have done to my own heart?” she wailed with sudden vehemence. “Now I see! Now I see that love is a curse for those of mortal form,” she finished for him. She was shaking now. 

Barnod was starting to panic. “But — but you’re still immortal, the spellbook said that you’d still be immortal!”

“Immortal, yes,” she said bitterly. “In my bones, in my sinews, in the hair of my mane, yes, yes, immortal, yes. But my mind has taken a shape that can never be restored.” 

She looked up at him, and there was such pity in her eyes it made him ashamed. “How do you live like this, o man? How can you survive love, knowing all the while that it yokes you forever to the heart of a corpse?”

She had the horn in her hands already, somehow. Before Barnod knew what was happening she plunged it into her chest. Deeper and deeper it sank without emerging from the other side.

Barnod had her hands in his now, he was pulling back, he was fighting her every inch, but it was no use. Still glowing a dull and angry red, the horn vanished into the bare spot between Vayanna’s breasts.

She opened her mouth, let out an equine scream that sent a flock of bluecrows soaring into the air above the canopy, and died in Barnod’s arms. 

He spent all that night and into the next morning preparing her grave, digging till his fingers were bloody and his body wavering with exhaustion. Finally he lowered her into he hole, kissing her on he forehead where her horn once grew. The horn itself he placed in her hands.

He buried her then, one handful of soil after another. As the sun shone down he finished, fingers dirty and bloody, gore-stained tunic soaked now with sweat, body trembling with exhaustion. At last he collapsed and fell asleep on the grave he’d made her. In the distance he heard, faintly, a Thedan horn. As the last few tears left clear paths through the dirt coating his face, he slept with the woman he loved.

They burned the horses at dawn. Word had traveled fast in the city, and by the midnight break everyone knew what was coming. Wagons rolled out of the mines, the oil barrels glinting in the moonlight, headed for the Temple of Pain. With no recent skirmishes to speak of it wasn’t going to be a matter of prisoners, and even internally there was an unspoken but pervasive sense that too few people had been brought in for the question to fill the arena’s basin. Eventually someone—it could have been Bowd; it usually was for this sort of thing—recalled overhearing a troll who complained about lugging cages around for the expeditionaries. Something about a great herd, too. Animals, then, wild animals. They hated the animals. They hated anything that grew wild.

As daybreak approached Vik was holding her right hand in her left, like she always did by the end of the worknight. Carving the spiral sigil into the wooden shields was once something she dreaded, and after that something she took a perverse sort of pride in; now it was just drudgery, numbing to the mind and brutal to her hand. Her leg hurt, too, a powerful ache that traveled from her right foot up through her calf and thigh until it nestled in a knot below her ass. Attending the burning would give her a chance to walk off the pain before the daybreak cease, she thought as she tidied up her workspace. Even sitting on the stone rows allowed her to shift her weight off her right side. It was something to look forward to at least.

She fell in line with the other humans in the street, their faces flickering in the torchlight as they streamed toward the Temple. Orcs were out in force, baying and guffawing. They knew what they were in for. Vik saw a sizeable group of trolls, too, scaly knuckles dragging against the dirt road. 

But it was the presence of ogres that frightened Vik the most. Ogres, bruise-yellow and black-eyed, towering into the sky. For ogres to interrupt their ceaseless searching—this was a surprise. They didn’t usually turn up for a burning, not unless called by the Higher Ups. That meant there’d be Higher Ups in attendance, Vik realized, and more than just the Vortex Wizard at that. Her nerves spasmed.

Her group were nearing the building now, a massive circle of black stone rising high above the ground, higher than any other building in the city. Fire glimmered in each of its windows, through which the hum of the already assembled crowd could be heard. The flaming spiral above the gates hurt her eyes if she looked at it, so she looked down. The dirt beneath her feet was the same color as her dress.

There was much of the usual shoving and pushing and roaring as the queue became a crush at the bottleneck. Vik let herself be pushed this way and that. Everyone was going to the same place. Why fight it. 

Minutes later, as the sky began to lighten above, she was seated in a row distant from the center. She looked around and saw no one she knew well. That was fine, maybe even good. They didn’t want you getting close to people, not even your workmates, though they couldn’t stamp it out entirely. The Servants’ vicious camaraderie proved too much of an example for the humans not to emulate. Some Wizards, Vik had heard, even took this as a point of pride. The Vortex Wizard was not one of them.

Vik looked down across the basin. There he was, short and bald and small in his armor. His face was an unreadable mask, rendered illegible by the spiral tattoo that matched the engravings on every steel plate. With a shock, Vik saw he was not seated in the central throne. He was not alone in the Master’s Box this time. The Blue Wizard, whose skin and hair matched the azure hue of his robe, he was there. Vik recognized the Wizard of Knives, the Water Wizard in his tank—awkwardly crammed into the box; someone would pay for that—and the Ash Wizard.

But the tall, thin figure in the black robe, with his long hair and full beard and gnarled, peeling hands—he was new to her, to this place, but he could only be the Wizard of the Wastes. For him to be here, so far from the blasted lands, was a surprise. No wonder the ogres had come, Vik thought. He knows their names.

A portcullis at the opposite side of the Temple rose, and suddenly the arena was full of the sounds of horses. They were panicked, terrified. Vik watched as troll handlers, their muscled arms glinting green in the torchlight, beat the animals forward. If one bit or kicked, they were bit and kicked back. One troll got fed up, grabbed a horse’s leg, and snapped it in two. The bones hung together by muscle and sinew. He picked the horse up and threw it forward. It landed in the basin, where the oil waited, its fumes giving Vik a headache. Even as the rest of the horses were forced inward Vik watched the one the troll had tossed as it screamed and struggled. Not long, though: Once it got tired it couldn’t keep its nose above the level of the oil, and it drowned. Lucky.

One of the wizards was speaking. The Vortex Wizard; it was his Temple. Probably he was welcoming his honored guests. Vik clapped when everyone clapped and that was good enough. His whispering voice, amplified by magic, proclaimed this a great day, the day when the last of the free herds of the darklands would be put down. The smoke from the burning would blot out the hateful sun as the flames made mock of its cursed illumination, and all would know what the People of the Spiral had done to honor the Sorcerer. 

Death to the Bastard Sun, roared the Servants. Death to the Wild Green, responded the humans.

A huge troll, its body resinous with burned tissue, strode to the box and handed a torch to the Wizard of the Wastes, the highest of them. With a nod to his host he tossed it down into the basin. It bounced off a horse’s head and into the oil.

The conflagration was immediate and the result unbearable. The horses screamed like men, eyes rolling, mouths frothing in agony. Their manes and tails went up like candles. Those that could still move trampled the fallen further into the flames before going up themselves. The smell was vile and also enormously appetizing. Vik’s stomach leaped and it took all she had not to vomit. Others were not as lucky, and there were orcs pointing at them, and the trolls were bellowing, and the ogres gazed in silence.

She looked away, back at the basin, back at the last of the great herds as it died. She looked to the sky, reddened now from the rising sun, darkened now by the smoke of the burning. She looked at all the Servants, the orcs and trolls and werewolves and the vampires behind their shaded glass. She looked at the Master’s Box, at the Vortex Wizard and the Blue Wizard and the Wizard of Knives and the Water Wizard and the Wizard of the Wastes. She looked at all of these telepaths and conjurers, these necromancers and elementals. She even, for as long as she dared, looked at the ogres.

She looked at them, and she hated them, and as the burning died down and the chants ended and she shuffled her way down the row and down the stairs and out the gate and through the streets and into her cell to wait out the day alone with the stink of death on her, she wondered why they had not killed her yet. Their hammers rose; their hammers fell; they would fall on her someday, she knew, but when they did they would crush her body but not her hatred. Her hatred would live on because she knew she was not alone, she could not be alone, it was impossible. Her hatred would leave her battered body and take root in another’s. She would be like a demon, a demon who yearns for life not death, for laughter not screams and not chants and not tears. Incorporeal and eternal she would one day look through other eyes and see the sun.

—originally published March 13 2020, revised Feb 8 2025

a short story by Sean T. Collins, 1/4/25

How it started. Can’t say I remember much of what happened after, but how it started? Yeah, I can tell you that. It was me, Kyle, Bryan, Eustace, Jenny, Eleanor, Tom of course, and it was cold. We were in the Green Dog, which was our regular then, and we were a couple drinks in, all of us. Bryan was smoking his pipe, it was new, he was showing it off like. Eustace had such a thing for Eleanor and all of us knew it but her. Kyle and me, we were talking about that year’s Games. Kenny, he owned the place, he had the fire going strong as he could, but we were still all bundled up. Jenny tied her hair back so she could lean in toward the candle on the table, even. It was cold. 

I think it was Jenny who noticed first because I saw her turn white as a sheet while the rest of us were still having a laugh. There was a lull in the noise and then we heard the sound of footfalls, and they were heavy like, and you could hear the scrape against the wood floor.Then I realize it had gotten so cold because the door had opened — like I said, we’d been drinking, things weren’t coming to me quickly — and I turn to look.

He was man height — peasant, not aristo, I mean, but still taller than all of us. He had on a scratched grey chest plate and dark leather armor, which you could see was ripped and stained black in a bunch of places. Ears like a bat and skin the color of, you know, an old bruise, that purple-yellow flesh tone. Big red eyes the size of a human’s mouth. Teeth the size of human fingers that stuck out even with his mouth shut. He had these big bony feet with hard yellow toenails that scraped against the ground when he walked, just these big grippers slapping the floor. When there’s an orc in your regular, you notice these things. Makes an impression like. 

Tom, he didn’t say much on a night out usually. He stands up and he says, and I mean loud, “What do you want?” 

So that kills whatever conversation was left in the place. 

The orc doesn’t even look in Tom’s direction, just sits down at the bar. Then he goes, and I’m not gonna do the voice so you’re gonna have to imagine it, he goes: “I’m here to test the hospitality of the halflings, renowned in story and song.” 

Everyone starts Tom looks real angry. Jenny’s scared as hell, you can see. Eustace is just staring into his drink. 

The orc sighs like. “I am unarmed and I wear no sigil,” he says, real tired like. “Would you turn a poor traveler away?”

Kenny behind the bar, his bald head is gleaming with sweat now, and it’s cold like I said. He looks over to Tom who I can see give him this little head-nod back. 

It took him like three tries but finally Kenny gets out “What’ll it be.” 

“Ale,” the orc says. “Keep it coming. Cut me off after a few if it makes you feel safer, I don’t care.” And Kenny pours him an ale just like that. The orc takes this big long sip and lets out this ahhhh sound only it’s more of a hiss when he does it. Like I said, I can’t do the voice.

I’m watching this so close that I don’t even notice Tom get up. Next thing I know he’s sitting down next to the orc at the bar. Now normally if he does this people know what’s coming, but this orc, he’s new, what does he know.

“Hey friend,” he goes. Tom’s tall, four feet, and he’s all muscle. He’s not scared of this guy. “Hey friend. You a veteran?”

“Aye,” says the orc and takes another drink. 

“I’m a veteran too,” Tom says. Kenny starts to say something and Tom just shoots him a look and he shuts up again. “What campaign, brother?” 

“Azh Khabad was my last one,” the orc says. He’s just staring into his drink, like Jenny.

“Yeah, that was a lot of people’s last one,” Tom goes. “Especially on your side.” The orc just grunts and drinks again. “Where’s your sword and sigil at, brother?”

“Lost ’em,” he says. “In the last campaign.”

“Gotcha,” Tom goes. Then he kind of tilts his head and looks right at the orc and says in this weird loud voice, “Threw them down in the retreat, this one did.”

The orc lets out another one of those hiss-sigh sounds again, puts down his beer. “Yes, I threw them down,” he says. “They would avail me no more.” Finally he turns and looks at Tom, those red eyes, you know. And he says “Why do you stare? Have you never seen a soldier weary from war?”

“I’ve seen plenty, brother.”

We’re all exchanging nervous looks now, and Eustace is whispering something in Eleanor’s ear. Eleanor reaches out and grabs Jenny’s wrist and Jenny jumps and her beer falls over but Tom and the orc don’t notice.

“You’ve killed people,” Tom says. Eleanor squeezes Jenny’s wrist tighter and tilts her head towards the door. I look around and see a lot of folks looking in that direction.

“Probably I have,” the orc says. He’s turned back to his beer already. “But what soldier hasn’t?”

Tom’s drinking an ale of his own now, I didn’t even see him order it or Kenny give it to him. It’s like it materialized in his hand. “Totally fair,” he says, “totally fair. I know I have.” 

He pauses and takes a drink. Eleanor is dragging Jenny toward the door, fast, that’s the last I saw of them that night.

Tom puts his mug down. “But you served an evil cause, brother,” he says, staring right at the orc.

“Probably I did,” the guy says. He takes his own drink, then he moves his head real slow to look back at Tom. “But what soldier hasn’t?”

So Tom, man, he does not like that. He slams the mug down and yells “Those who follow the One True King!” After that you don’t hear a sound in that room except people heading for the exit.

The orc doesn’t miss a beat. “My Lord said he was the One True King. And where I come from, when he speaks, you don’t argue.”

Tom’s just getting madder now, you can see the flush creeping into his face. His fists are all balled up like. “So you were forced into war, is that it?” he asks the guy. “You were forced to fight? You were forced to kill?” All that kind of shit. 

The orc says “No. No, I wanted war. I wanted to fight. I wanted to kill. And when the time came I enjoyed it. But that time is over now. I’m tired.” He starts looking around the room as he talks now. “And I will harm no one so long as I am within these walls, as long as no one tries to harm me first.”

Now Tom, he only gets madder now for some reason. “Oh I’ve tried to harm you already, brother,” he says. “Your armor — you’re a Wolfrunner, yeah?”

And he goes, “Yeah.”

“So you were there,” Tom says. “You were there on the Plain of Sellema when the Paladins of Frodost brought the Early Dawn.” Me and Kyle and Bryan and Eustace had heard this one before and we all kind of looked at each other like. 

The orc goes “I remember the Plain of Sellema, yes.”

Tom’s, well, he’s not the smiling type the way he used to be but you can hear it in his tone of voice now and then and you could hear it now. “So, the vampire knights burning in their thousands, the trolls turned to stone that we used to build a monument to our glorious dead. You remember that, brother?”

The orc’s getting quiet. “Yes.”

“You remember the Werewolf Legion? One second they were rampaging through our front lines and the next they’re just a bunch of naked men on a battlefield. You remember how that ended? Remember them falling to the Silver Axes of Nar-Gurru?”

He doesn’t wait for a response this time. “You know who was in the Paladins of Frodost? Can you guess, brother? I’ll bet you can guess. Go ahead, take your time.”

Another hiss-sigh. He turns and looks Tom right in the eyes again. “You?”

“That’s right!” Tom is crowing now like. Me and the boys are up on our feet, real quiet. “I was one of the halfling paladins who slaughtered your Dark Armies, brother. It wasn’t personal, it was just that all those vampires and werewolves and trolls needed to go.” He gets up in the orc’s face. “Sometimes people just need to go, would you agree, brother?”

“Like the people of Sellema?” he says back. “That was not our doing.”

Tom’s says, “They made their choice. You don’t get to volunteer to be one of the Black Sword’s slaves. That’s just not an option for people to take, unfortunately.” 

Bryan whispers to me “He’s drunk” and I’m realizing suddenly he’s right. 

The orc finishes his drink and goes “What’s done is done, I suppose.”

“Almost,” says Tom.

He must have gone for his gem at that point, it was hard to see from my angle, but the next thing I know his arm is on the floor. His whole arm! The orc just bit it right off at the shoulder. Tom, he passes out, and his face lands right in the palm of his own hand, I swear on the Great Tomb of Atar.

There’s blood everywhere now, and I mean everywhere. A candle on the wall sputters and goes out from the spray, that level of blood. Kenny drops behind the bar and that’s the last I see of him. Most everyone in the bar is making a run for it. But me and Eustace and Kyle and Bryan, well, we just kind of collectively decide we’ve gotta do something about this. We’re pissed about Tom and we’re all drunk. 

And it’s the weirdest thing. The orc, he looks at us coming, Tom’s blood is all drooling and dripping from his mouth. And he goes “Hello, friends. Is any among you a veteran?”

We’re embarrassed like. Only the Wielders could serve in the High King’s army, and only Tom was a Wielder. On the other hand look where it had gotten him. 

So when no one says anything, the orc just says “That’s good. Very good indeed.” 

What were we supposed to do? 

I go first and I bring my mug down hard on his bruise-colored head. The black blood stings on your skin, I didn’t anticipate that even though I knew it was the case, you learn this stuff. Kyle goes in swinging, Bryan too. Eustace I think is backing out but then I see he’s reaching behind the bar for the club Kenny was afraid to use. He grabs it and swings hard, right into the orc’s face, which just explodes. Like I didn’t know you could do that to a living thing’s face and have it still be alive afterwards.  

It took a long time. Like I said, I don’t really remember much.

Anyway they erected a statue to Tom at the Old Bridge, and the orc they fed to Kenny’s pigs, on account of it was his place that got busted up and this was his getback. But all Kenny did was serve the orc a drink so I don’t feel bad his pigs got sick and died after that. Serves him right like. 

The deputies cleared us of course, since orcs aren’t people and you can only murder people, something like that. Bryan has been fine since except for his marriage. I haven’t talked to Kyle in a bit. Eustace did something that Eleanor isn’t speaking to him anymore, don’t know what that’s about. Jenny’s fine, and me and her have been going together since harvest, and we have a new regular. Anyway it’s funny you asked about this, because I just had the craziest dream where the orc says — well, that’s not important. I don’t think about it that much anymore is the main thing. That war ended a long time ago now.