It was a day like any other in the western lands, and Aris felt strangely… good.
The last few days had been anything but restful. The foxes showed up often, trying to devour the small group of fennecs trailing behind him. But there were too many of them now, and something had been taken from the small predators — fear.
Once, the fennecs feared the foxes. Now, the only thing that made their fur stand on end was the two-legged predator who terrified everything wherever he went.
So, whenever a fox dared to challenge the great pack, it was torn apart and eaten to the bone.
It was an ironic sight for the fennecs. Such a thing had never been possible before — they had always hidden from the larger beasts or simply perished, remaining at the bottom of the food chain. But the order had been reversed since the arrival of that thing — the Mad Beast.
If the foxes were frightening, then there were no words for the abomination that tore through everything in its path. It was a hurricane of flesh, blackened by blood, sweeping across the western lands — a storm no beast had yet been able to stop.
And so, the fennecs no longer feared the foxes. In fact, they feared nothing at all.
At the head of the group, Aris — like a man possessed — was starting to grow bored. Day and night passed without him even noticing. The number of beasts he had killed was now far too great to remember. His enemies had become pitifully weak compared to him, and he was always, endlessly hungry.
But something had changed in him. Having become a true beast, he no longer hesitated to bite straight into their flesh.
It was an abominable sight. Anyone who saw it would have called the soldiers and fled in terror. But there was no one for miles — no witnesses, no one to stop him — so Aris could do as he pleased. And so, he bit into the beasts' flesh. Blood spurted, corpses twitched in their final convulsions, and time passed as the fallen king pressed deeper into the western lands.
Where was he going? No one knew. No one could know. He was probably lost, wandering in some random direction. Sometimes, after two days of walking, he would find the same rock he had marked with a deep scratch.
Each time, his reaction was the same: shock, fear, realization, indifference, acceptance — and then turning back toward what he thought was the right path.
The fennecs followed closely behind, but he didn't care.
The foxes were slowly beginning to join the group. At first, they were met with nothing but slaughter. Every fox that stepped near was killed without mercy.
But little by little, relying on their numbers and cunning, they slipped in. At first at the back, just watching. Then, among the group but still behind. And finally, side by side with the fennecs, sharing in the murderous frenzy — fighting even among themselves for the corpses Aris tossed them.
Now that Aris was used to eating raw flesh, he no longer needed to gorge himself as before — disgusting as it still was. So, he threw away more corpses than ever, sometimes whole ones.
The ecosystem of the western lands was changing completely. Aris had become something like a pack leader — a presence feared and obeyed by every beast. The strange group moved as a single creature, keeping their numbers balanced through the constant slaughter of each hunt. It was a sight to behold.
If he wished, Aris could probably lead an assault on a small village and wipe it out. His mere presence was enough to make towns tremble. The fennecs, small and sly as they were, had been culled until only the most cunning survived, making them the refined predators of the western lands.
Aris would never have believed this was possible before.
"I've probably gone mad…"
Yes, it was strange — almost frightening. And yet, the beasts didn't attack him, and he didn't attack them. So, in some way, everything was under control.
But the strangest thing Aris had experienced in the past days was his growing madness.
Now that he had grown used to it, and the foxes had become too weak to interest him, he was bored.
So bored, in fact, that reason was almost returning to him. He still wanted to rip apart his prey — but not with the same wild hunger as before. Now, he killed without manic laughter, without a demonic grin. No opponent could make his heart race.
It was dull.
The western lands had become less a frontier and more an endless despair. The scenery, almost unchanging, had become hypnotic and terrifying all at once. Aris simply stared straight ahead.
Whether it was the jagged rocks rising from the ground, the rain that fell almost every day, the droplets that turned into tiny stars on the ground, the water scattering into rivulets that never formed a lake, or the foxes and fennecs with their bright orange fur that stood out like warnings in this cursed land…
Everything was the same. And for some reason, Aris felt he had already reached the peak of madness — there was nowhere higher to climb. Instead, it was all descending.
He could think again. Form real sentences. Reflect. Act deliberately, rather than by pure instinct. He had even started weaving again — patching his bag, sewing sheaths for his knives.
Fox threads was pleasantly thicker and stronger, giving him more margin for error. It was satisfying to see his weaving improve, though he was still too unhinged to wonder why.
Soon, he made himself clothes and boots. The fox threads clung to his skin pleasantly. They were soft and flexible, letting him feel the ground beneath his feet. But the soles wore out quickly. Worse, he no longer had armor — only a tunic blackened by the blood of beasts.
The fennecs looked at him strangely whenever he sat to weave. It was a bizarre sight — the Mad Beast stitching together the black threads of their fallen kin to make himself a second skin.
But their shock soon turned to something else.
Admiration...
"He's unbelievably cruel…"
"He's not the mad beast — he's the cruel beast…"
"He uses our flesh to make his flesh…"
"He really is insane…"
Aris heard the fennecs' snickering behind him. He glanced at them with curiosity before grumbling under his breath.
"What's wrong with them now?"
And yet, something about it was strange. By all rights, Aris should have gone completely mad here.
No certainty of ever reaching a destination. No clean food. No human interaction. The same landscape repeating endlessly. A pack of starving fennecs dogging his steps…
Everything was in place to drive a normal man insane, and Aris was sure he had already reached that point.
But this was a different kind of madness.
If he had been mad before, it was pure bloodlust — a hunger for slaughter. He had never truly surrendered to despair, never longed for death.
It was as though that primal, bestial madness had kept him safe from a worse fate — the spectral madness that would have hollowed him out, left him a ghost, and driven him to suicide.
"I suppose that's a good thing…"
Though he knew it couldn't possibly end well...