He had only wanted a shortcut home.
Just a simple alley through the slums of Lowbridge, past the crooked brick and rusted fences.
He hadn't meant to see it.
Whatever it was.
The thing had stood over a heap of bodies. half-wrapped in shadow, its limbs wrong, stretching in directions that mocked nature.
It turned.
And its face.
No.
No, not a face. At least not anymore.
A scream tore itself out of the man's throat and didn't stop. He ran until morning came and his legs collapsed beneath him, until blood soaked his ears and something inside began to twist.
What was once a man, now isn't.
Then silence, a peaceful moment.
....
It began with a scream.
Not the sharp, startled, horrified kind. but a deep, throttled howl. One that boiled from a shredded human throat no longer shaped for words. The sound shook the windows of the city and sent every dog howling in reply.
People ran.
A constable. a young man with hopes of promotion. saw it first. What he initially thought was a man with a strange coat turned into a living nightmare as the thing turned. Its skin sloughed in long wet strips like melted wax, exposing pulsing organs underneath, while dozens of eyes spiraled along its skull like barnacles.
The constable tried to shout, but the monster simply reached out, and his torso. spine and all. was pulled clean through the mouth that had split across its chest.
More screaming.
More running.
More... dying.
Within just minutes, bodies lined the streets. One man was slammed so hard against a wall that he became part of it. his limbs twitching from within the brick, fused like wet clay. Another poor soul was dragged screaming under a street grate, but nothing would ever fit under there before.
The creature grew with each death.
Not just taller or broader. but weirder. Tendrils formed from its back, long and translucent, like the veins of some enormous insect. One woman, frozen in horror. stared too long into the thing's gaze. Her skin turned pale, her breath reversed into her lungs, and she fell backward, stiff and dead just like that.
It was no longer a person.
It was becoming something else. An object of pure nightmare.
Moments later,
The Crown's Covenant deployed in waves.
First came the Purifier. uniformed officers etched with sigils of warding. They formed a perimeter and fired blessed rounds. The bullets entered the beast with wet slaps but came out smoking and crushed.
Then the Mages arrived. four of them, faces veiled, hands gripping sacred relics. One tried to trap the creature in a ring of fire.
The beast screamed louder.
A second mouth grew on its side and breathed out acid. The fire hissed, then inverted. The mage screamed as his body melted into a puddle.
Another tried to freeze it with hexed frost drawn from his own blood. It froze part of the creature's limb. but the arm broke free and grew back, this time with a couple more of fingers.
"Contain it!" roared one of the officers.
The beast hissed back. no lips moved, but everyone heard it. The voice came from inside the mounds of flesh.
A dozen purifier died screaming, melting as they shot blindly into the tendrils that rose around the thing. One officer's legs twisted backwards before he fell and kept walking on all fours like a spider, mouth stretched wide.
Then came the Inquisitor.
She descended from above on a silver-thread line. Black coat snapping behind her, wide-brimmed hat marked with the Crown's crest. She wore no mask. only a solemn expression and eyes that had seen worse.
Inquisitor Eileen.
She landed soundlessly atop a broken streetlamp, looking down at the horror.
The creature snarled at her.
Eileen drew her blade.
It wasn't steel. it was obsidian etched with runes. As she leapt, she slashed once. too fast for the beast's hundred eyes. and a tendril fell, twitching, from the beast's side.
The beast bellowed in pain, and five more limbs sprouted in its place.
They fought across rooftops. The creature struck with force enough to shatter chimneys, but Eileen twisted through its strikes, slashing, chanting, driving wards into its flesh.
Blood that wasn't blood spilled.
It burned.
It steamed.
It tried to crawl away.
But still, the Inquisitor pressed forward.
The creature struck her once. sent her through a wall. She staggered up, coat shredded, blood dripping from a wound that smoked.
"I saw it," the thing rasped. "I saw him, I saw it, I SAW IT!!!"
Eileen froze. "Who?"
"I SAW THE TRUTH. I SAW THE CURATOR!."
Eileen's grip tightened on her blade.
"I SAW THROUGH THE MASK!
I SHOULD NEVER HAVE LOOKED."
The creature lunged one final time. but Eileen was ready, light bursting from the blade. She struck downward. and the sword entered the beast's mouth and kept going.
A burst of light. And a shriek came out of the smoke.
Then silence.
What was left of the creature smoldered in a crater of cracked cobblestones.
The Covenant agents stared in exhausted silence.
"What was that thing?" one finally asked.
Eileen stared at the corpse. then at the horizon.
"I don't know," she said. "But something made it."
Meanwhile, at Dorian's Curiosities...
Dorian sat at his desk, sipping tea and frowning at a newspaper.
"Monster Slain in City Rampage," he read aloud. "Several Dozen Dead. Crown's Covenant Claims Victory." He blinked. "Well that's certainly dramatic."
He sipped again and turned the page.
"Eyewitnesses report creature was once human. Huh. Poor sod. Probably got kidnapped by one sonuvabitch, probably a disgusting bastard too."
(That's mean)
The kettle whistled behind him. He didn't notice the words etched faintly on the newspaper's margin. visible only in candlelight.
It watches still.
He reached for a biscuit.
A cupboard in the corner rattled softly.
"Damn rats," Dorian mumbled, biting into a crumbly scone. "I really need to hire an exterminator."
Outside, the city burned incense for the dead.
Inside, Dorian wondered if he should start selling holy and protective charms.