Jost stood before the massive southern gates of the city, his eyes moving up continuously, looking for the top of the seemingly endless doors. Constructed of thick, heavy oak and reinforced with iron bars, their surface was alive with expertly carved scenes of everyday life. Some of it rotted away after many years of neglect, but what remained gave an impression of its former glory. From the top hung the remnants of great banners displaying a coat of arms that was now entirely impossible to identify.

It had been several years since he had last been to the city. Back then it had been full of people, full of voices. It had been full of life. Back then, it hadn't yet withered. It hadn't yet died. Several years he had been away, fighting battles for nobles he had never met, and all those years he had thought of her, of how he had left her here, alone, and now finally the end of the war, and his guilt, had brought him home.

One of the gate doors was slightly open, enough for him to get through and as he entered the city, he was overcome by the silence and emptiness surrounding him. Not even the wind could be felt and no creaking from the old wooden houses could be heard, and as he walked, the rattling and grinding of the metal plates of his armour seemed uncomfortably loud.

The street leading from the gate was broad, paved with rough stones, between which long pieces of grass had grown, pale and now withered. Along either side of it were trees that had been allowed to grow wild and their roots free to carve paths between the stones. Once in a while, a finely carved stone statue took the place of a tree, depicting one of the many trades practised in the city: carpenters, bakers and teachers, but they were no longer as he remembered them.

Where once they had been proud depictions of workers and scholars, their forms had now become twisted into agonising and unnatural shapes, as if the stone itself had come alive for but a second of chaotic agony, only to return to its cold, inanimate form. Every house he passed seemed crooked and bent, giant corpses of wood and stone looming over him as he passed them, and most of them had every window boarded up from the outside, doors nailed shut and with warnings scribbled on paper covering them. And although he couldn't read, he knew well what they said: quarantine. Confirming a horrible rumour he had tried to ignore: the Great Madness had rooted itself here as well. As it had everywhere else.

Memories came flooding back, of he and his brethren riding down the street, its sides lined with people cheering, throwing petals in front of their horses. Colourful pennants moving in the wind, polished armour reflecting the sun, the trees in full bloom, covered in purple flowers. It seemed as if the entire city had shown up to see them off. It had been a beautiful day, those many years ago. Too many years.

A low sobbing broke his happy remembrance. It should have been too low to notice, but in the oppressive silence of the empty city, it was nearly ear-shattering. It came from one of the houses, boarded up like the rest, but the door had come off its hinges and lay on the ground. As he came closer, he noticed numerous marks on what would have been the inside. Scratch marks.

The inside of the house was a mess, chairs and table thrown about, and broken glass and plates, mixed with pools of dried red, cracked under his feet as he walked across the floor, to a door opposite the entrance, from which the sobbing was coming. He carefully pushed it open, revealing a small bedroom as much in disarray as the rest of the house.

On the bed sat a slumped figure, a man, wearing nothing but his hemp drawers, his face buried in his hands. The sobbing stopped at the sound of the creaking door and the man looked up at the knight, his eyes red from tears.

"Have you come to kill me?" he asked with a quivering voice.

"No, of course not, I-"

"Why not?" there was almost a hint of disappointment in the man's voice.

He got up from the bed and Jost took a few steps back and only then noticed a long, thick scar running from just below the man's throat down past his navel.

"I'm sorry if I have disturbed you, I heard you from the street, it sounded-"

"It hurts. It hurts so bad," the man whimpered. "Please. I couldn't help it, it wasn't my fault!" Tears welled up in his eyes once more.

Barely had the first tear left his cheek before he jerked back at the hip, spine cracking and his torso split open all along the ragged scar, a blooming flower of flesh revealed his insides, pink and lined with teeth. His arms went limp, dangling behind him and he gave a pain-filled wail as tears streamed down his cheeks.

An impossibly long, pink tongue darted forward, several canines sprouting from its tip and seized Jost's left arm, instinctively raised in defence.

The grip was tight, the steel plate on his lower arm buckling under the pressure as the blistered, fleshy appendages pulled him towards the gaping maw at its base.

He swung his sword down from his shoulder, nearly severing the tongue and the man howled.

He swung again, now cutting all the way through.

He gripped halfway up the blade, stepped forward and thrust the tip into the exposed pink insides and toppled the man to the ground as black liquid seeped from the wound and the severed tongue.

Jost left his sword in the man as he lay on the floor, the monstrous mouth slowly closing around the blade as it gurgled black blood. Pulling out a knife, he sawed at the flesh still clinging tightly to his arm until it finally came free.

Pulling his sword out of the man, the maw in his stomach closed fully, leaving behind nothing but the scar and the man now looked just like any ordinary man might, blood running in a thin line from the side of his mouth. He looked up at Jost, eyes filled with tears.

"Please," he coughed "help me."

Jost stood for a moment, quietly, staring into the man's green eyes, the eyes of an ordinary man, when the sound of a tolling bell broke the silence and he turned his head towards the direction it had come from, and for a brief moment he forgot about the man on the floor, his true purpose now taking up his thoughts entirely.

"Please!" The man's trembling voice was louder now and brought Jost's attention back. "Please!"

Jost turned to the man again and placed the tip of his blade on his throat.

"Thank you." He whispered as he closed his eyes.

***

The street was small, a far cry from the broad boulevard he had walked only moments before. The stones underneath his feet were quickly replaced with brown-grey mud and the broad street with a tight maze of ramshackle houses that seemed to have no discernible pattern of construction, and as he walked he was unable to shake the feeling that the buildings themselves would swallow him whole if given the chance. Every house was boarded up as before and rats scuttling happily in and out.

He kept moving towards the continuous ringing of the bell, getting louder and louder until he came to a small opening, dominated by a small, poor-looking church of grey stone. The windows were painted over with black paint and a sign above the door read: "Blessed Are The One Reborn."

Jost spat, the sound of the bell seizing as he placed his hand on the door and hesitantly pushed it open, hinges and wood creaking as he did.

The inside of the church was lit by countless candles covering the floor and placed in cracks and alcoves of the walls and stone pillars. At the far end where he imagined there once had stood an altar, now sat a figure dressed in heavy red robes, cast in the pale, yellow glow of the candles.

Two other robed figures sat behind him on their knees, their eyes covered by a piece of grey cloth and their blackened lips cracked in smiles while delivering a constant drone of unintelligible mumbled prayers. Thick, black liquid dripped from their mouths, hissing as it hit the stone floor. In their thin, bony hands they held long poles with heavy censers gently swinging back and forth, leaving a trail of incense in the air.

As he approached, more figures came out of the shadows, slowly crawling in a clear act of prostration, each taking part in the mumbled prayers in eerie synchronicity.

The voice of the robed figure bounced between the stone walls and pillars, impossible to place, its tone fluidly changing, giving it an uncanny, androgynous quality.

"Welcome, stranger, to our most humble temple. Have you come to witness the rebirth?" "Spare me!" Jost barked as he moved with heavy steps towards the robed figure "Spare me your loathsome words of heresy, they have done enough harm as it is!"

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A strong, sickly sweet smell stung his nose as he came closer, and as he stopped in front of the figure, he noticed how the wax from the candles surrounding it had covered the edges of the red robes, making it impossible to see where the cloth ended and the candles began. "Harm? How much harm could be done to an already broken world? A world that belongs no longer to man, but to the rats and the crows, and the dark things that come from man. No, we seek to heal."

The other robed figures had now moved closer, surrounding him, and he could taste the sweetness of the incense in his mouth, and his head began to feel light.

"If the world is broken then it is you and your kind who broke it!" Josts fingers tightened their grip on the sword resting on his shoulder, his knuckles turning white as he took a step towards the figure. "You twist the minds of people, turning them away from the gods. You are an abomination."

The figure tilted its head to one side, the opening of the hood revealing no face or recognisable feature. "And yet here you are, amongst the people you loathe, looking for someone we suspect. Someone you left? Someone we embraced and took into our midst?" "She's not here, not anymore. She did come here of her own will, and I wish I could say she left the same way. Men, much like yourself, took her away from us." The voice of the figure sounded even more unnatural now, distorted, flowing and omnipresent as if it came from no particular place, and the droning sound of the mumbled prayers now seemed to come from inside Jost's own head.

"What...where is...she?" he fought hard to not slur his words.

The room grew darker and the flames of the candles grew brighter in the darkness. The robes of the figure seemed to move, as if of their own will, growing in length, snaking across the stone floor as if to grab his legs. He took a few steps back, stumbling, trying to ready his sword but his arms wouldn't hold its weight and the tip hit the floor with a metallic clang that echoed through the church, his fingers barely grasping the hilt.

"She's at the palace square, with the rest of them. Go look for her there."Jobst took a few more steps back, dragging the sword across the floor, his head spinning, vision blacking in and out. He turned around and fell, his armour-plated knees sinking into the mud outside the church.

He got to his feet, his legs threatening to give way under him, but soon found his strength and turned around to face the door, pressing against it, but it didn't move.

"Bastards!" He slammed his hand against the wood.

***

The square was vast, extending continuously around the massive spire in the centre of the city. There were no signs of the hundreds of colourful stands that had filled the place when he was last here. In their place stood countless square wooden posts, stuck into the ground and on every one of them hung the lifeless form of a person.

Each one of them naked, a sack over their head and their arms stretched uncomfortably above them, their bodies held tight against the pole with rope the fibres of which were filled with shards of broken glass, biting into their skin. Dried blood still covered the rope and streaks of it could be seen running down the length of the pole. A long piece of parchment covered the front of their body, reaching the ground, filled with prayers and incantations of cleansing, redemption and protection. He had heard of this before, even seen it being done once, but never like this. Never this many.

As he walked through this forest of nightmarish displays, his heart sank when he discovered that the bodies belonged not only to grown men and women but also children of various ages; some so young that he couldn't imagine what they could have possibly done to deserve such a fate. He looked up at the covered faces of everybody he passed as he moved on towards the keep, and then something made him stop in front of one of them.

He wasn't sure exactly what it was, maybe it was her exceptionally lithe form, or the dark brown hair flowing down from under the hood, but there was something hauntingly familiar and recognisable there. And then the words of the robed figure in the church made their way into his mind, gnawing, burning: "She's at the square."

He moved closer, numerous fears running through his mind, hands trembling as he reached for the cloth covering her face, but something stayed his hand, a sound coming from behind. He turned, his hand now steady as it moved to grip the handle of his sword. A shadow caught his eye, Something was moving amongst the hanging bodies, low, prowling, metal scraping against the stones underneath. His eyes following it as it circled and he moved with it, slowly, constantly keeping his front towards it.

Then it emerged from between two of the posts and a cold sting ran up through his spine. It had the look of a knight, much like himself, covered head to toe in finely crafted, form-fitting steel armour, the entire surface of which was carefully acid-edged with intricate decorations. Not a single part of its body left exposed and under any other circumstance, he would have greatly admired the craftsmanship, were it not for the body that it covered.

Its general outline was more like that of a predator than human, walking on all fours, low to the ground with a crooked back, the legs bent into a shape more fitting for a canine with its torso elongated and thin. Much thinner than what would look natural on any human. Vapour seeped from the eye sockets and the grill of its helmet and every opening between the steel plates, leaving a faint, ethereal trail after it as it kept circling him.

"By the gods, what have they done to you?!"

There was no response from the creature, only the sound of heavy breathing filtered through steel, a sound that could easily be mistaken for a low growling as it kept circling him. It drew its sword, the design of which was not unlike the one Jost wielded, only its blade was broken, halving the length and leaving a ragged point at the end. And when it was pulled from the torn scabbard, the same vapours emanated from its length.

The two kept circling each other, the beastly knight still staying low to the ground, moving balanced and unhindered on only three limbs while holding the sword ready. And then it pounced.

Moving rapidly towards him with speed and grace.

Jost dodged the first swing, moving back just enough to avoid the tip.

He countered quickly, landing a blow on the thing's shoulder plate.

It hardly flinched and swung back at his midriff.

Jost moved his blade up to parry but met no resistance.

Everything seemed to pause for a moment.

He felt a cold, sharp pain arcing through his body, numbing almost, followed by the feeling of something warm, pooling and running down his body, down his leg. He stumbled back a few steps, reaching his hand up to his body and felt a long gash in his armour. It followed the path the broken blade had taken, cutting through the steel of his cuirass, through the thick padding and cloth underneath, and through his flesh. He looked down at his own sword, its blade now severed just a few centimetres from the hilt, a remnant of the vapours trailing off from it and dissipating.

The thing was upon him again.

Leaping, swinging its sword downward.

Jost moved to the side, barely missing the blade as it dug into the cobblestone.

He kicked out, tearing his wound more and hit the thing hard in the head, and with a metallic crack, It fell to the ground, motionless.

He moved to grab the sword out of its hand, a stinging coldness running up his arm as his fingers closed around the hilt, but he gave it none of his attention.

He placed his knee firmly on its back, grasped the sword with two hands, blade downwards, and thrust it between two plates on its neck.

It gave out an otherworldly cry, somewhere between a beasts and mans, and it fought to get up.

Placing a hand on either side of the guard, Jost howled along with it as he twisted the blade until he heard a snap and the thing lay still and quiet. He could see no blood from the wound, only more of the vapour, this time darker and thicker, flowing from up along the blade's edge and it felt cold against the naked skin of his face.

His heart slowly returned to its normal rhythm and the adrenaline started to fade, and as it did so, the numbness left him and the pain took over. A sharp, biting pain. He struggled to get to his feet, leaving the broken blade embedded in the dead thing's neck. He stumbled towards the body on the pole that he had been so close to unmask earlier, every step feeling heavier and his vision blurring. Blood ran from the open gash in his armour, leaving a red, dripping trail behind him.

He reached out for the hood covering her face again, and for a moment she seemed to move. Just a few more steps.

Then his legs gave out, he fell to his knees and the world went dark.

"I'm sorry" he whispered to the darkness.

"Don't be" it whispered back.

He could feel her hands on his cheeks, warm and soft. Just how he remembered them. And he felt nothing else at this moment, not the pain, not the blood flowing down his body, not the beat of his heart.

"I left you."

"But you came back for me, just as I knew you would. My brave, darling brother, it's time to rest, you're back where you belong, you're home."

The End