This isn’t a story about the beginning. 

This isn’t a story about the journey.

This is a story about the end.

This is a story about what happens after the world is saved and the heroes lived happily ever after.

This is a story about the villain.

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“I think everyone is stupid Max. They have to be. Truly, they do.”

Max gives a squeak before turning his small gray body in tiny circles. 

“You aren’t stupid though are you, Max? You’re smarter than everyone else. So smart.”

I reach for the small rat and Max freezes. His small nose twitches before he reaches over and bites the proffered finger.

Blood pools and drops off my ivory skin. There’s the sharp pain of skin breaking before the throbbing of my heartbeat consumes the bite.

“See? You don’t trust me. You are so smart.”

Max doesn’t even give me the honor of a look. Instead the small rat continues its pursuit of its own ass. 

You have to wonder how far someone has to fall to consider a rat of all things smarter than everyone else.

Pretty far.

I’m pretty sure all of my bones would have been broken if I were mortal. I’d be dead if I were mortal.

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Silvestr was mortal, but he’s a different kind of mortal. The monstrous kind. It’s awful to say that kind of thing about one’s own charge, but I think I have the right to.

He’s the one who clipped Illarian’s wings and snapped the heavy chains around my dainty wrists. My bones are still bruised from the incessant pressure of them.

Max was a far better mortal than Silvestr ever was anyways. The little rodent was smart and honest. No lies about his deceit to be found.

I guess Silvestr was also honest. In a way.

The saviour of the world has to be honest after all. Where would we be if he wasn’t.

Free.

That’s where. We’d be free.

I think the worst part about this cage is that it is just me and Max in this gray abyss of iron until the date of execution has been decided.

Insanity clings to me like a moth to flame.

I could see it, in the fog.

The accusations.

The beheading.

The ending.

I could also see myself staying in this cage for all of time. An endless abyss of just me and Max and my own imagination.

He took away my sight after all.

Tore it away and threw it asunder.

My soul still bleeds from the piece he ripped off.

That’s why Silvestr is a monster.

He’s a monster because of what he did to me.

Because he shoved me out of the sky and watched me plummet to the ground below.

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The first time I saw him I saw burning brimstone and death.

An apocalypse for sure. Something where there are no victors and only death. 

I saw a demon clinging to his shoulder, wings spread wide and teeth bared. I saw the crimson eyes of death staring straight at me.

It was like a dare, what I saw. A tease saying this is the end, what will you do?

I told not a soul.

Instead I sent him on his way and sent him to his death.

This is where I should have been the hero of the story.

Instead I end up in chains with an executioner’s axe dangling over my head.

What a curious thing the world is.

I never saw it coming.