"If you fall beneath the Mad Moon's light, pray you fall together, for man should face his end alongside his fellow man.

If you wake, pray that you wake alone, for what wakes with you will not be your fellow man."

-Father Michael, in his final sermon

After a few deep breaths, Gaspard realized how heavily the scent of blood hung in the air. Every breath carried a taste of bitter iron. Clutching his half-sword in a trembling hand, Gaspard stepped past the body of the fused beast he had slain and made for the center of the banquet hall. There was something he needed to check on.

Still draped over the seat of honor at the table was the bloody viscera of the wealthy landowner who had been their host. It was not out of place amid the crimson gore that now choked the hall, and no doubt the entire world, but this sanguine stain upon the festivities had a significant difference. This brutality had been done before the moon had rose, as the guests had risen up against their host of their own free will, tearing him limb from limb.

Gaspard checked his hands. The red that stained his palms no doubt came from many different sources, but the bulk of it was the hosts. He looked at the dismembered corpse and felt no regret. The host had confessed to a crime that could not be forgiven -and he had implicated others.

In a moment, Gaspard found a purpose in the bloody mess the world had become. The host had surely paid for his crimes -the stains of blood upon Gaspard’s hands testified to that. But his co-conspirators were scattered about the city. The painter, the merchant, the preacher, the astrologer, the philosopher, and the king.

Gaspard looked at the corpse he had torn apart with his own two hands, and knew that his work was unfinished.

The incomplete labor beckoned, and Gaspard headed for the door. He paused a few steps away from the banquet halls entrance and looked at the grandiose double doors from a distance. There were corpses piled up against it, the bloody remains of those who had crawled atop one another to be closer to the exit. There were bloody trails in the door where their fingers had clawed at it desperately. Gaspard withheld his pity. Under the Mad Moon's light, it was more likely that these poor souls had been seeking new victims, not an escape.

After appraising the pile of corpses and their claws against the door, Gaspard decided he was better off seeking a different exit. Given the failure of the dead to escape, someone had likely barred the door from the other side. He stepped back from the pile, pausing cautiously as a single arm slipped out of place. He froze, expecting another risen corpse, but no such beast arose. Just a blood-slick corpse slipping out of its precarious position. Gaspard loosened his grip on the half-sword and paced around the outer wall of the ballroom. The walls were just as blood-soaked as everything else, and it was difficult to make out where a door might be.

Gaspard's memories of the festivities were blurred, but he recalled food being brought in from somewhere. Cheap, easily prepared food, as no one had been too interested in cooking as the apocalypse approached, but food nonetheless. Gaspard ran a hand along the wall, peeling away a layer of partially dried blood as he traveled. He took a few steps past the other half of his sword, still stuck in the wall, and felt a ridge. He stuck his fingertips against the wall and felt a seam, then examined the rest of the wall more closely. Sure enough, buried beneath a layer of gore, there were the hinges of a door. Closer inspection revealed the hole where a doorknob had been broken off. Gaspard took hold and pulled, and the door cracked open, shedding flakes of dried blood as the crusted layer broke free.

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The kitchen proved no more pleasant than the ballroom. The dead choked this room as well -and choked themselves. Driven to ravenous gluttony by the Mad Moon, the corpses in the kitchen had throats bulging with more food than they could possibly swallow, as they had gorged themselves to the point of choking. Gaspard couldn't decide whether that was a more pleasant way to pass than the orgy of violence that had apparently occurred in the ballroom.

Stepping past the ravenous dead, Gaspard took a look at a large basin. Hoping that it would be water to finally wash this blood from his hands, he was disappointed to find a severed head bobbing face-down in the wooden basin. Gaspard sighed and moved on.

Moving around to the far wall, Gaspard found himself looking up a staircase. Up was as good a direction to go as any. He headed up the stairs, and cringed as the first step creaked under his foot. Noise attracted attention. He silently prayed that there was nothing around to hear and took a light step up. The next stair creaked as well, and he took another step, another creak, another step, another creak -and a slurp.

Gaspard swung around, half-sword held high, to face the empty staircase behind him. He turned back to face up once again, and still saw nothing. Carefully, slowly, he looked back at the bottom of the stairs once again. He could still see the basin from this vantage point. There was no longer a head floating in it.

The stairs creaked wildly as Gaspard stormed to the top of the stairwell. At the top, he pressed himself into a corner and gripped his half-sword with both hands, holding it towards some unseen threat that never materialized. After a few minutes of holding his ground, Gaspard realized that nothing was leaping from the shadows -yet. He paced with his back to the wall and the sword held out. There was a bright light coming from around the corner. It could only mean daylight. Gaspard edged towards the window. He muttered a curse as he saw it was thick, frosted glass. He wasn't sure what floor he was on. He could hardly recall where in the city he was, much less if he had been in a basement or on the tenth floor. He knew one quick way to find out. He slammed the hand holding the sword back and hit the pommel against the window. He heard a crack, but the glass did not completely shatter. He slammed his hand back again, and heard another crack, and the muffled sound of something heavy and wet dragging against stone.

Gaspard turned and grabbed the half-sword in both hands, and slammed the pommel into the glass with all his might. The thick glass broke entirely. He used the sword to push away the broken edges of the glass and stuck his head out, and thanked whatever higher power was listening. He was on the second floor. It would've been a manageable jump under the worst circumstances, but thanks to the Mad Moon, there was a pile of bodies outside the window to break his fall. Gaspard wasted no time in lunging out.

Gaspard fell down and tried to ignore the squishing and crunching that accompanied his landing. His goal of self-distraction was made easier by a slight stinging pain in his arm. He'd cut himself on the glass as he fell. As he crawled off the pile of bodies, Gaspard rolled his bloodstained sleeve away from the wound. He had not survived the Mad Moon to be laid low by infection.

A single drop of fresh blood fell from his arm and mingled with the coagulated blood on the street. Gaspard looked up and down the corpse-lined streets, at the tattered banners hanging from every building. There were shattered stages, broken stalls, all the remnants of the city's final celebration. Once he had finished observing the graveyard of sanity, Gaspard looked back up at the window he had jumped from. There, in the broken window, a long black tongue dripping with thick saliva was licking his blood from the shards of glass.

Gaspard glanced up at a nearby street lantern, and wondered if there was enough oil left in it to burn down a manor.

There was.