A tall figure in blackened steel armor lurched just ahead of me, leaning against his otherworldly spear for support. He was rough, he looked like an addict or something.

“You’re the cat.” He said, a sharp and cold voice pushing past the confines of his helmet in a muffled breath.

“Is it obvious?” I retorted flatly, my left ear twitching.

“The demon spoke of you.” He jabbed at the dirt with that strange stick of his. “Your name?”

“Maharra.” I said, trying to suppress my distaste for him from creeping into my voice. I can be quite expressive, I’ve heard.

“Acrisius Rosicae.” His words seemed to drip from his helmet. “How did you commune with the demon.”

I blinked. “With my mouth.”

“Funny.” He hissed. “How.”

“It-” I stumbled over my words for a second. “It- It just came to me, I guess? It walked up to me and talked to me? Fuck, you’re weird!”

He chuckled softly behind his helmet, pivoting against the weight of his spear to amble onwards and away from me. He expected me to follow, I guess. He was far taller than me and walked like he was late for a group prayer or something. My legs could barely keep up.

“Okay. Works for me.” He said, untimely. The pause was uncomfortable. “We’re supposed to cooperate towards a shared goal, of sorts.”

I shook my head, centering myself. “Yes, that’s the idea of I sort of gleaned from all this nonsense.” It was difficult to keep pace with this freak as we moved, he crept along in such long strides despite the clear weight of his armor. He moved like he was a prisoner to the world around him. It was interesting in a kind of morbidly curious way, but it truly unsettled me! I had hardly even taken attention to the world around me; everything was passing me by.

I saw flakes of snow streaking past my gaze and cascading against the dark armor of my peculiar escort, his heavy feet laboring on through the dense snow already packed against the cold earth. This was nothing like Sivakh, the warm sands of my mother field. I was in a strange and unfamiliar place with an even stranger freak leading me towards something I’ve yet to be told of. Why was I even here, again?

It’s cold. I could feel my bare feet being swallowed every step I took; my linen pants were wicking whatever melted from the heat of my body. At least it smelled nice out.

“You’re dressed severely poorly for the weather, Maharra.”

That voice crept me out. I took a second to respond, swallowing a shiver that was idly ravaging my frame so I could speak. “Yes.” I said, annoyed.

“We’ll be to the killing fields soon enough.”

I felt like I should respond but I really didn’t have anything to add. I love a good murder but I’m not so candid about it. Where are the killing fields anyways?

We continued through the absolutely miserable winter storm for what felt like another few hours, the agonizing monotony of barely withheld frostbite torturing us until that damn specter of a man grasped at my wrist and dragged me down into a fucking ditch. I crumpled up onto the floor as my vision began to spiral. There was a loud commotion around me, screaming and shouting and the sort. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing either. It reeked of death down here, a pungent mixture of rotting dead and lingering gunpowder. I felt my stomach twisting in on itself, bile gathering in my gut as I struggled against the obscene filth of the ditch I was unwittingly pulled into by this stranger.

I heard a series of shouts in some gross dialect I had no grasp of. I panicked and struggled hard to swallow down the growing sickness of my overstimulation. I felt my nerves buzz, my vision clearing as my mind burned with clarity.

“Enough!” I shouted, slamming my hands against the woodworks beneath me to bring myself ahead. I felt time ripple and break, the very tendrils of reality creeping forth to meet these people. The human corpse that was leading me around was particularly stricken by this as he went stiff and fell to the floor, the mangled knight he had just dispatched scattering ahead of him as such occurred.

The various men pursuing me hopelessly pushed on, their steps growing slower and slower as they drew ever closer. I set my gaze on one of them, her own fiery eyes staring back at me. I saw a faint orange glow flicker in my periphery, the sudden recognition sending lightning through my spine as my mind flooded with euphoria.

Magic.

The flicker in their hand snuffed out to naught as they threw their arm ahead, an arcanically deprived fist meeting a grinning face to little retort. Time was an ample cushion, as always.

Fire crept from the edges of my eyes as I met their motions in kind, my own fist meeting the crest of their cheekbone and sending wisps of spritely fire bursting from her frame. She screamed out, staggering backwards as time finally collapsed to its stable flow, fidgeting and groaning as muffled pops whistled from inside her destabilizing frame. She twitched and surged, limbs ripping themselves off as the internal explosions grew louder. I couldn’t help myself, my efforts to suppress an emotional response were fleeting.

A sly grin, a soft chuckle. I had no choice but to indulge.

Acrisius, the Corpse-Man, was back on his wretched feet again, fishing up his spear to go back to whatever he brought us here for

His fingers crept around the hilt, his body surging limply as power seemed to come back to him. He moved in one gross, fixed motion with his spear at his side. The head of that ghastly pike met the angled plate of the knight-adversary like a bodkin to bare butt. the weight of his armored frame crashing into his foe as he ripped the spear back and discarded it. He repeatedly began to thrash at the soldier, pulling off bits of their armor as they begged and screamed for remorse. He seemed to realize himself, pulling the mangled remains up and smashing them back against the floor using the leverage to throw himself onto his ass.

He was jabbering to himself as he fiddled with a satchel at his waist, his plated fingers withdrawing a glass pipe which was filled with multicolored stones. His eyes shot over at me.

“We’re in a battle!”

“Exactly! A flame, at your leisure.”

I groaned, snapping my finger and igniting the bottom of his pipe for him to drag back. I saw a glow burn bright beneath his warhelm, a sense of magic alike my own pouring from his sockets and past the visor slits as he pushed himself up from the floor. His entire posture changed, and he didn’t even seem to regard me for the miracle of flame I provided.

He was gone in a moment, before I even finished that last thought he had already been swallowed by the relentless storm bearing down around us. Faint screams spilled from the depths of the trenchworks as he worked the art he clearly had come to perfect.

Curiosity, fittingly, got the best of me. Meow.

I was fast on the trail of the murderer in black, the streaks of blood that traced the woodwork of this ditch led to greater and greater evidence of growing victimizations. He was humbling me, a bit. I had for a while taken myself to be unhinged, I think we all take that thought sometimes, right? You find yourself fantasizing about hurting someone, but you never truly do it. But then you have him.

He was artists whose quill was tipped with steel, his ink was wrought in blood. He was a director whose orchestra was led by the countless victims of his nonsensical crusade, a quest to bloody the dirt because… He was seemingly just told to do so, really. He was a good dog. How fitting.

The sun, beautiful as it is, burning in strange ways. It casts odd shadows and calls peculiar names. The Demon, as the corpse-man Acrisius spoke of, came as Sun-Bearer to me. Mayhaps a liar, mayhaps an earnest flare from the fire eternal? I’ve my doubts, meow. But I’ve a curiosity that overcomes all that stands before it, mighty against the Apocalypse, Asahhrah Sahirram. Perhaps Acrisius Rosicae and his Demon will provide the changing of ways that I have always thought, a ripple in the stagnant ponds of time. They were growing rancid with inaction, but the corpse casts waves with each step. They’re churning filth, but I don’t particularly mind.

And, judging by their past reaction to that little crinkle I made in the flow of things, I’ve an easy tool to use against them should they prove too wild to be tamed through wit alone. I pray we make beautiful art together; I wish to help him move past fingerpainting at the very least.