He had been not quite running through the halls of the palace for well over an hour now, and he was lost. It was vexing. Hoab was well and truly vexed.

He had two of his Lunar Helpers tailing along behind him. The smaller, newer ones, ones he had gleefully made from oddly reluctant volunteers he had come across while here at the palace.

He didn’t want to run, but was getting frustrated with the slow progress of finding his quarry in the expansive maze that was this giant, overtly grandiose seaside keep.

He broke briefly into a skipping trot before noticing the beasts that trailed him were also skipping. Like giant misshapen children with bleeding jaws and joints. It looked too silly, so he slowed his pace for the sake of decorum.

Hoab had left his great pounding force laced casting making the walls of the castle into a huge drum to frighten and confuse his prey. Hoab had wanted to drive the little rodent from his protections, so he could destroy the snotty little royal mess at his leisure. He had tied off his spell, ensuring a maximum of confusion and destruction. He had even made a few more “converts” to his cause, leaving most of them to graze peacefully upon whatever silage they may happen upon. And now… NOW… Hoab was trying to find this new king everyone was so excited about.

He had been told to make a mess. To make noise. To sow confusion and pain where he could, and then his Patroness, the faceless benefactor who spoke to him from Sent Shadows… the one with the nasal accent, would see to it that his lovely Iztha, his light in theInsanity of the Night, and his sanity would all be returned to him.

Something at the back of his mind told him that he couldn’t trust that voice in the darkness… his Patroness. But she had given him the Artifact, and instructions on how to use it. She had given him instructions on how he could best breach the palace walls, to attack this new king where he lived. Where he thought he was safest.

His thoughts went hazy, his crane-like steps faltering, as he thought of the young king here in Rhiada, but try as hard as he could, his mind only brought up an image of another young king, a king and a kingdom a continent away. A young king that wore gold. Layer after layer of gold. Both the metal and the costliest of gold fabrics. … there had been a war… Iztha had saved him… he had tried to save…her. The Church had decreed that the Boy King must capitulate to The One True Faith. The Mage Corps of Velpse had marched at the head of their army into… fire. They had walked into a conflict their own King and Church had not prepared them properly for.

There had been too many wizards. Too many mages from Hamuria had taken the field against them. Hoab hadn’t even known there were that many Talents on the continent, much less just in Hamuria. And their king, Velpse’s King, had told them all that they would win, that their God would help them end the demon worshiping idolaters of Hamuria… those simple, crude folk. Farmers and herders he had been told. And then the fire and lightning had come for Iztha and Hoab.

That… boy king… BOY KING…! Hoab thought, rage filling his mind, as all of his joints were painfully locked, his muscles suddenly all seized. Hoab’s vision darkened around the edges, and his breath wheezed painfully in his chest.

He didn’t remember anyone being this excited about a king when he had been younger. What simpletons fawned over such an inexperienced nob, solely based on said nob’s parentage? It was laughable.

His mind clouded and his ears rang again as the world pulsed and contracted around him, the stones of this ornate hall wavering in his sight. Whenever he tried to remember… something… everything got loud and blurry all at once. It made the world smell of overcooked pork, latrine pits, and the discharge of galvanic spells on a hot, dry day.

Hoabb didn’t understand it. But, he didn’t need to, either. What he needed was Iztha. For more than a scant hour whenever he could properly perform the ritual. Whenever he could get his dagger into a proper sacrifice.

He held a thumb over one nostril, and heaved, sending a splash of yellow-green filth from his nose to the floor near his red-booted feet.

“When did I get red boots?” He looked back at the closest lumbering monstrosity. It looked back at Hoab. No answers would be coming from that elongated and twisted maw, as its large, tear soaked eyes just stared at its shrill and gawky creator.

“WHY would I wear red boots?” He blinked, and turned back to the way he had been traipsing along. The hall he was in ended at a three way cross intersection.

“Left. Yes.” He let out a peal of laughter, his voice cracking and breaking into pain-wracked wheezes. the things following along behind him joining Hoab in his mad cackling.

Around the palace, in a crescendo of choking, cracked and croaking howls, twisted once human monsters raised their horrible voices in laughter with their master as he searched for his intended prey.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Another hour of wandering and random direction choices saw Hoab in much darker tunnels. His two creations had become three. And then two of his beasts had been lost again when they had encountered a completely unreasonable giant, blue-green monster. It wore what looked like a military uniform tailored perfectly to fit its massive size, and it held a cattle ax as though it was a common kitchen cleaver.

As he stared at the absurdity of it, Hoab wondered why some people did such weird things with their pets. The beast had spoken, quite articulately for a big, tusked forrest ape of a thing, and had even challenged Hoab’s right to be in the palace; as though Hoab needed the permission of some ungodly subhuman thing that was probably some mincing royal moron’s pet.

For its insolence, Hoab had whipped his free hand up and forward to cast his deadliest spell in his repertoire on the thing.

Nothing had happened. He didn’t even feel the stirring of his Talent in his mind and chest as he reached for it. He shoved his Will into the recesses of his essential core, and waited.

Nothing.

Hoab had stood there in the darkened corridor, pointing as hard as he could at the approaching thing, wondering if he had made choices in his life that had led him to this odd place, and if he might pinpoint those choices, and the nature of their failings. He had noticed that the hulking thing had smelled like fresh baked bread, and wondered what his owners fed the fearsome looking thing.

…he’s certainly well fed… and Hoab did notice the smell of the most delectable foods was all around him in the air.

Hoab raised his dagger, and flourished it at the approaching critter, and invoked the spell again.

Again. Nothing. Though a headache had begun to pound behind his right eye.

He then yelled for his beautiful creations to set upon the approaching brute. Then stepped aside with as much grace as his tall, narrow, rickety frame would allow as the three creatures conjured from flimsy humans by the ritual use of the Artifact he had been gifted loped toward the rude beast.

With his back against the stone wall, legs casually kicked out to let his lanky frame lean, Hoab watched the tusked ape-thing as it tore into his own pets. The stone and forest colored brute removed the swinging arm of his largest creature no sooner than it had reached for him.

The pale, twisted talon tipped arm rolled wetly to the wall, twitching as the four beasts all entered into the melee.

Hoab walked along the darkened hallway, his one remaining creature lumbering awkwardly along beside him. …why don’t its legs match… Hoab had wondered in passing as they walked. He didn’t remember what had happened between the long, twisted arm rolling to the wall where he had been leaning and now. He was certain, however, that the tusked-ape had been driven off, if not defeated outright.

And then there was a great pulling he felt through his entire being. Something he had never experienced before. The Lunar Creatures, once created, he could send his awareness to each one as they rampaged through the night. He had been able to concentrate his awareness through each one, individually, or to generally cast his mind over them as a mass. Seeing their world through the senses of an individual, or to gather impressions from them as a whole.

But now, the large group he had left to torment the staff and guards of the castle were all tearing at one another rather than at the guards and soldiers. While there were several roaming the castle in singles and pairs, this group represented the bulk of his efforts. They, roughly thirty of the creatures, were no longer grazing on the raw material of the staff and guests of the castle, and they were instead madly attacking one another.

Upon their creation, Hoab felt tethered to each and every one, but in the same way the skin on the back of his skull was tethered to him. In as much as he knew it was there, but had to concentrate to know what was happening with it at any given moment. But now, something had abruptly changed. He could feel their anger and rage filling his link to them through the aether. Hoab’s steps faltered, making him stumble into the frame of an ornate door, his eyes becoming unfocused as he let his mind drift to individuals in the group.

And what he saw was carnage and confusion. Pulling his mind into the cavernous workings of one of the beasts, he saw an utterly unique battle. Through the dying eyes of the creature he had placed his consciousness into, he could see the great hall was filled with a fight amongst a group of utterly rabid men. In fact, it was a war of… gray men. And not an army of men who all happened to be gray, it was an raging mob of thirty or more examples of ONE specific man, tearing themselves to pieces.

Hoab let out a cackle as he watched one example of the king’s mysterious and notorious counselor jump onto the back of… a taller version of the king’s counselor, and tear at the gray skin of the man’s exposed neck with his teeth.

Turning the head he inhabited to the left slightly, he saw two copies of the king’s counselor single out another of their number, and tear at him as if their hands had claws. And while their hands didn’t look like they sported talons of any sort, blood flowed freely from exposed wounds in that third counselor.

It was a kaleidoscope of gray skinned and gray haired madness.

Movement above him caught his attention, and Hoab watched as yet another well dressed gray man dove onto the beast his mind had been occupying. He let out another bark of laughter as his body was wracked with pain in the instant before the beast must have died, casting his conscious mind back into his own body.

He had no idea what this was, not how it connected to anything he had been told to do by his benefactors this evening, but he lay on the flagstones laughing at the absurdity of what he had seen for some time before his attention was drawn to the creature closest to him let out a high pitched warbling howl of pain and frustration.

Opening his own eyes once again, Hoab’s wish had been answered.

The brat had finally arrived.

This would be fun!