A stream was crossed by three men in armor, with weapons and the torches they carried, from the darkness of the forest, as the first light of dawn seemed to make it darker still. They had such eyes that glimmered in countenance of conscious glaring of devious plots against the souls of humanity. The buzzing was inhuman and it was felt, not heard. It was known, this unknowable ancient horror that had taken this place.

Kaledane, a village like any other. A place of beauty. A place infected, infested, controlled by an evil. An insect-evil, an evil as old as all life.

Where morning light was once a beautiful mist of dreams and devotion, now it was only a veil. The morning star beside the light of life, through the clouds of dawn, a ball glowing dimly, weakly. The sun didn't know it was daytime. A dreamy sublight prevailed, like almost waking to find a insect staring evilly. This was no insect.

Torches flung at it, dropped, replaced with arrows on their bows in their hands. It easily dodged the torches that spun through the air. It hovered there, the silhouette of nightmares.

"Who doth dare, who doth dare my home?" it spoke to them, a voice like a human's voice, spoken from the mouth of a demon. A mockery.

Their names they spoke, as it bid them say who they dared to be as they entered.

"I am Aethelwyrd." one of the professional slayers gave a word to the pain he offered, hesitating not, as he fired an arrow into the shade of the winged thing.

"And this is from Mouldewulf." the second man also stung the creature with a whistling spike of pain, the steel-tip entering its thorax.

"A promise of death," Ghargan grunted "with love from Ghargan." as his handax sailed at an angle and took from it a twitching leg. It had five more, and wings and a pair of human arms protruding unnaturally from its massive body.

Light betrayed its frame, showing itself in all its awfulness. Their eyes were wide, never before seeing this particular kind of monster. Nothing they had fought before was like this. Nothing so unnatural had ever called a challenge to the Faith that held the realm together.

A wasp the size of a man, with red shiny carapace and white stripes. They saw it now, dripping its ichor, a black syrup. Its eyes bled this also, like thick wax-like tears, compound eyes that saw all at once. It spoke, now sounding angry.

"To harm a god, this it to make a noise and to come here and to find what must be worse than death." it said in an almost human sounding voice. But an almost human sounding voice used by such an insect-like monster. A creature born after the youngest human in this village, and still as old as sin. It was born again and again, a cloned copy of each of its people. A race shunned and in the shadows of Creation. A living horror.

It retreated saying just one word that must be its own name for itself:

"Meristhrex" buzzing and vanishing and bleeding, stuck with two arrows and a severed limb convulsing on the ground. Its ichor continued to spill from the air it trod, leaving a trail easy enough for them to follow. And follow they would, these were not ordinary men, but crazed slayers of monsters. Courage could falter, but their eyes were wild with a lust for the blood of demons. God's very own madmen.

To its strange speech, alien thoughts and will proclaimed without explanation, Aethelwyrd said his own darkening thoughts:

"To enter a place like this, a quiet place, a silent place, a place without the presence of the echoes of life. To enter a place like this is to know the meaning of fear. Here, in this place, a fate worse than death has grown. Death was only the beginning of the suffering of those that were here."

"Yes and now we shall go and discover what is the meaning of the horror it has promised." Mouldewulf sounded fairly excited as he readied another arrow. To die was to live, to die was to be Mouldewulf, and to live he always sought such a death.

Ghargan picked up his ax and carefully cleaned the toxic syrup from it, tempted to lick it, but instinctively knowing it was a venom. "For the love of death, in the name of Christ, Amen."

These three such men then with their armor and weapons and fervor began their entrance into the dead place. All around they saw what had become of the villagers that once lived in Kaledane. Not all villagers, though. Soon they found the ones that were less lucky.

Meristhrex had crucified the ones they saw first. Flies danced silently around them in small black halos. Doors barricaded against the intrusion of an evil siege were kicked in by the men who came to avenge. They found that something had come from below in the homes and eaten the rest. They were digested alive by the disgusting blobs, such cocoons that were transparent enough to see the bones inside of the cocoons, of women and children, none were spared.

"Another species burrowed up from below." Aethelwyrd noticed the small antmounds in each earthen floor. "Meristhrex must have summoned her people."

"You always know their ways, Aethelwyrd." Mouldewulf complained about the uncanny talent of his comrade.

"Yes but it is you they always like to bring their parley to." Aethelwyrd pointed out.

Then the three stood in the center of the village and stared at the festooned church. The cross still remained, but decorated in the white streams of silk they had strung all around.

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"Must be the nest." Ghargan was ready to go in and raise Hell on the holy ground.

"Wait." Aethelwyrd told him. "It is a trap."

"Where has our prey gone?" Mouldewulf looked away from the church in white, to the other shadowy places. They had lost the trail of the wasp. It had stopped bleeding, its ichor congealed like a black wax.

"Listen." Ghargan could hear it buzzing from somewhere nearby. It was watching them and they could all feel its eyes on them. Now it was hunting them, apparently.

"I hear nothing." Mouldewulf said and thought about his mother for a moment. It was an odd thought, in the midst of such atrocity.

"I feel something. Something like love and trust." Aethelwyrd looked worried and sounded worried.

"We are safe, even though it intends us harm. That is what it is trying to do." Ghargan wasn't impressed.

The buzzing intensified and so did the sensation of peacefulness, of love and other positive feelings, all mixed together like the notes of a song. A song with only one note, a note no human song would ever play, humming evilly and relentlessly. It was Meristhrex doing this, somehow, from somewhere nearby.

"Resist it or we will become like it wants us. These people were under its power, afraid and unable to do more than make themselves prisoners. They succumbed to this vile willpower." Aethelwyrd knew and said.

But the buzzing continued and one by one they each dropped their weapons to the ground and began to walk away from each other.

Aethelwyrd was its first victim. That same day it erected a cross for him, its myrmidons with human parts, a bit of a man, but mostly just enormous and very strong ants, they helped. Then it caught him and covered his mouth with one of its hands. It had gotten more and more efficient and powerful as it annihilated the people that had lived here. It had matured and now knew its craft well.

Aethelwyrd tried to scream for help, but it held him and stung him. Paralyzed by its injection he had not the ability to withstand it as it nailed him to the cross. He saw it had removed the arrows they had shot it with and its wounds were scabs of molten ichor, now dried to dark spots on its red body with white stripes.

The warrior Aethelwyrd felt the pain of its hammerings as it used manmade tools and nails to fasten him by his wrists to the cross. Then it left him there to die in agony, wishing for death. Making a wish to die, so that his suffering would end. This was a fate worse than death, worse than just getting killed.

"Come down off that cross. Come down, little one." the thing in red spoke, its voice conveying something like twisted sardonic mirth. The cruelty was so primal that it was like it had inherited a loathing and passion for destroying humans. This was not so, it actually loved mankind very much, and its cruelty was experimental, servicing its master's curiosity. It wanted the soul of mankind, to be first in Creation as they were.

Aethelwyrd moaned and a breeze then came and some of the fogs of the dying place of reason lifted.

Ghargan loved his ax more than anything, despite the fact that his primary attack was to throw it. It was Ghargan's ax and it made him happier than anything. It even said so on his book of life. Let us all stare at where it is writ upon Ghargan's book of life that he loves that ax and it is like a mother, or better yet, a wife. It literally describes that he chose to take note of this and didn't go very far before he retrieved that ax, seeking the source of the buzzing.

Meanwhile Mouldewulf had sought the source of the buzzing, that forgotten source. He wandered into the shadows, but was not the first to be caught by Meristhrex. He wandered until nightfall and as if mesmerized, hypnotized, under a spell of the buzzing. It was his mother's voice singing a lullaby and he could clearly hear it. Nobody but he could hear this siren song. They each felt compelled to seek their greatest love or joy or hopes, whatever that part of their mind affected by the buzzing of Meristhrex was touched. A memory of love so dear, of whatever would bring them the most joy or happiness to find.

This is why Ghargan's idea of his ax was important, because he just coincidentally loved his ax. It became relevant now as he rearmed himself and was ready again for battle, for he also loved to use his ax, of course, and not from his book of life, but simple logic. So the breeze of Aethelwyrd's dying breath came with a bit of reason, after all.

But although Ghargan had his weapon and was ready to fight, three of the ant-men came for him. He did kill one by throwing his ax to its head. The other two charged him very fast and he tore the ax free of the creature's dead skull and used it like a normal handax. This was enough to behead a second of the deadly enemies. But the last one, with its scissoring sword-like mandibles did manage to do the same to him. Then it replaced the head of its companion with the man's head, for whatever reason such a creature would do such a thing. It dragged the other dead ant away, as well.

A wandering nun of nightfall was saying that Meristhrex was raised by an evil cultist, a season ago. The buzzing was away, underground and beyond a distance. It was a sound, after-all.

"Then there is something here, that can kill it?" Mouldewulf asked her.

"You could." she told him.

"I shall do so, but how did you come above and find me?"

"I put wax in my ears. There is some down here in the cellar."

"And do you happen to know where it hides, in the daytime?"

"Very cleverly upon the top of the church."

"Then you are right. I could kill it. I will do so when it is alone atop the church, with wax in my ears and a bow in my hands" Mouldewulf swore.

He went out just before the next morning could shine and could not find his bow.

Not until two ants came out of nowhere and shot arrows at him, using human arms and hands that grew from them.

Mouldewulf exclaimed in agony and his blood shot out of him as he tore the arrows free from the shallow wounds. He rushed at the ant-men and stabbed the two arrows into the first one. It used its swift insect legs to carry itself away.

The second ant-man shot another arrow, this time through one of Mouldewulf's hands. Out of nowhere another ran up and tackled him to the ground. He was surrounded!

They swarmed on him and pinned him. He noted that the two sentries had used the bows they had dropped, he and Aethelwulf.

Meristhrex came hovering.

"Tonight is a special night. My younger siblings will all hatch tonight. They fed well." Meristhrex spoke more.

"What are you?" Mouldewulf realized it was giving him parley. He went for the monologue and got it:

"Ancient gods that envy your ungrateful attitude in your role as first in Creation. I serve those gods, I am Meristhrex and I am the first born here and now, although we come again with each age of man, sooner or later. I was raised by a greedy man that believed my promises when I was but a gemstone. Then I grew into what I am now, as he fed me and taught me. Now I am before you, am I not a god?"

"You are not a god."

"Then die." Meristhrex cursed. It produced the hand ax in its human hand that grew from its side and chopped off one of Mouldewulf's arms, the one with the arrow through his hand, leaving only his left one. He bled and fell unconscious after a long and agonized scream of pain and horror.

The impaled arm flopped around like a dying thing and then stopped.

They took it with them and left him there for dead.

And then the sun began to rise.