“Of significant note is that man and beast are not alone in their inability to comprehend the Mad Moon’s light. When faced with its image, mirrors will shatter and water will boil rather than reflect the sanguine red.”

-Nico Voticel, "Of Moon and Earth: Lesser Effects and Interactions of the Mad Moon"

Gaspard removed his blade from the spine of a misshapen wretch. He smiled with satisfaction as the emaciated beast fell motionless. Until recently, it had been chasing after him on spindly limbs, crawling at unsettling speeds on arms and legs that were little more than bone. Now those narrow limbs were motionless, and Gaspard had time to breath.

The broken remnants of what had once been a circus stage served as his seat. The benches were broken and scattered, perhaps used as bludgeons by the riotous crowd whose corpses now littered the courtyard. Gaspard was glad he now had better tools at his disposal than half a sword or a wooden bench. The farmer’s armory had been fruitful -he now had a blade hanging from each hip, one to wield and one to act as backup. He’d acquired a suit of armor as well, though unlike the farmer’s bunker of solid and cumbersome metal, Gaspard had drawn the line at chainmail and leather. None of the Moon-spawned beasts would be wielding weapons heavy enough to warrant plate.

Gaspard adjusted the mail shirt he wore and looked up at the palatial estate sprawling out before him. He had helped manage the funds for the construction of this estate once, long ago. He had never been invited to visit. Now, he came of his own accord, to settle affairs with the estate’s master. To confirm her death, or put down the monster she had become. There was also the chance she yet lived, and retained her sanity -if that were to be the case, Gaspard was uncertain what he would do. There was only one way to find out.

He flicked his blade to cast off the tainted blood of the crawling creature and walked up to the door. Gaspard cast open the ornately carved entryway doors and looked into the lobby of the estate. It bore the familiar blood-stained trappings of the Lunar Carnival. A few shattered masks littered the floor. This particular estate had hosted a masquerade ball, it seemed. Curiously, though there were many masks, there were no bodies, only trails of blood, as if the corpses had been dragged out of place.

All bloody roads led down the hall. Gaspard readied his blade and kept his back to the wall as he followed the red trails. Only a few steps in he glanced around a corner and saw a head that appeared to have been torn, not severed, from its body and thrown down the hall. Gaspard tightened his grip on the leather hilt of his sword. A prudent measure, as only a moment later the sound of tearing flesh from down the hall shook him enough to nearly drop it.

The rending of flesh and bone echoed through the halls only briefly, and Gaspard continued on. After the ripping came a low mumbling, barely recognizable as words. No part of Gaspard mistook those barely audible ramblings for those of another survivor. With every step the shape of the words became clearer, though their meaning remained ominous and difficult to comprehend.

“Red,” the wavering voice crooned. “I must have red.”

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There was another sound of tearing, quieter this time, and then a brief interlude of silence. Gaspard’s hand trembled as there came another burst of noise, this time the sound of shattering wood and tearing fabric. Then the voice came again.

“Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” It chanted. “I must have red! True red!”

As Gaspard came close to a doorway that seemed to be the source of the voice, he had to back away from the walls. Each side of the hallway was lined with portraits of men and women in noble garb, some of them standing aside bowls of fruits and others sitting in front of beautiful landscapes. It confirmed for Gaspard that he was in the right place. She had always loved to paint. Gaspard took his final steps towards the door, found a wall which was free of paintings and pressed his back to the surface nearest the door, gathering the courage to turn. He wrapped both hands around the hilt of his sword, took a breath, and dared to peer around the doorframe.

The small, circular solarium was filled with wilted plants and torn shreds of human flesh. There was a small staircase descending into the room, though the stairs were now half-submerged in a pool of coagulated blood. The crowd of corpses that had once sprawled through every room of the house had been dragged here, one by one, to be piled in corners and slowly torn to pieces to serve the whims of the mad hostess. Their blood pooled at the floor, filling the room with the sickly smell of iron and decay. Discarded masquerade masks floated idly in the bloody pool, bobbing along with the ripples caused by the movement of the only figure in the room.

The hostess herself stood at the center of the room, eyeing the detritus of a canvas she had torn to shreds only moments ago. Similarly ruined canvases littered the ground around her misshapen form, and she turned away from all of them in disgust to fetch a clean slate on which to paint. The painter half-stumbled on only one leg, the other having turned into a long, snake-like tendril that writhed through the blood behind her. Her arms were long and gaunt, with each finger of her pale hands nearly doubled in length, and unnaturally jointed by extra knuckles. Gaspard could not, as yet, see her face, tangled as it was in the thick, blood-matted locks of her hair.

“Red,” the painter mumbled. “Must have red.”

Gaspard took his first cautious step into the room, carefully lowering his foot into the bloody pool to avoid causing a noisy splash. The masks floating in the blood drifted in the wake of his movement as he crept closer to the beast. Heedless to Gaspard’s approach, it reached over to the pile of corpses and tore off a chunk of flesh. It found a loose scrap of canvas and dragged the bloody fragment across it’s surface in a circle.

“Bright, beautiful red,” the painter moaned. “I must see it again, my perfect red moon, my red, red, red, red moon.”

Ripples of blood lapped around the painter’s misshapen legs as Gaspard approached, but she did not react. She was singularly fixated on her bloody recreation of the Mad Moon. She held out the red circle in front of her and tore the scrap of fabric in half, letting out a shrill cry of frustration. As she reached out for a fresh canvas, Gaspard raised his blade.

In a single thrust, Gaspard drove his blade into the painter’s back. She didn’t even flinch as the sword pierced her heart and broke through the other side of her chest. Propelled by the force of the blow, a stream of blood ran along the blade’s edge and flew forward, splashing a single dot of sanguine red onto the canvas.

The painter looked at the lone red dot and let out a soft sigh before collapsing forward. The single crimson speck was lost forever as the canvas fell into the bloody pool below.

Gaspard waded out of the room and stopped in the hallway to appreciate the portraits. For all her faults, she had been an excellent painter. While all were exquisitely painted, some of the people pictured here were strangers, and some of them were familiar. Some of them were on the list. Gaspard cleaned his blade and carried on.