My intrusive thoughts had won. I was going to eat the Rat Queen if I could catch her.

“Nothing personal, Your Majesty.”

My arm was buried damned near up to my shoulder in the floor drain which served double-duty as my toilet and her royal palace. I was starving and out of my mind.

The cult of snake-men holding me prisoner hadn’t fed or watered me for days. My dungeon cell smelled like dirt and desperate sweat. I crawled on my belly, frantic as a scalded goblin while scouring every nook and cranny for anything edible. A hunk of misplaced, moldy bread. Or some moss. Or whatever.

The Rat Queen squeaked but her voice was coming from everywhere. Little chittering rat giggles going off inside my head. My mouth watered and I tore apart my straw-stuffed mattress searching for her. Praying I’d find a nest full of dumpling-sized rat babies, at least. Immediately afterward, I reeled with shame. But then, the realization struck that she was probably going to be hiding out over there in the drain. Of course! That was the logical spot for her to make her den. Right there in that dark hole where I would sometimes shoot my pee. And as I soon found myself groping around with my entire arm inside the drain, my cheek right up close to the scummy dungeon floor, I could feel the last drops of my sanity oozing from my ear and dribbling down into the darkness, too. My eyes became crossed and I began to cackle and drool.

But then something caught my attention. Drew me back from the brink.

An object was wedged way down at the very limit of my reach. What was stuck down there? I could just barely jostle it with the tips of my fingers.

The discovery snapped me out of my frenzy and suddenly my hunger vanished, replaced by a new purpose. It must have taken hours, but I grunted and pried and pulled until as last I dislodged the thing that was trapped down there. Careful not to let it slip into the abyss, I lifted it out and weighed it in my fist. It was an un-skinned length of human arm bone—elbow-to-shoulder, if I had to guess—fossilized under decades of calcified piss and probably even some shit. Was he a former prisoner, maybe? One who lost his mind and died of starvation after his arm became stuck in the piss-drain?

I should have been rattled by how close I’d just come to suffering the same undignified fate. But my mind swam in calm waters. I should have been disgusted by the putrid segment of bone. But I’ll never forget how a smile crept across my face, instead. Felt so alien. Like someone else’s smile on someone else’s face.

I had an idea.

Over the next few days, when the situation would get loud out there in the Naga dungeon—when the snake-men were busy dissecting one of the other prisoners—I’d grind my crap-lacquered bone at an angle against the stone floor, synching the action up with the tortured screams so my reptilian jailers wouldn’t hear me working. The foul lacquer made the bone unnaturally strong.

And the screams were frequent, so it quickly became a wicked bone-shank.

When they finally came for me, the cell next-door was freshly-occupied by this cocky young monk who had asked me to call him Frog. He’d been my neighbor for only a few hours and I was already exhausted. He said, “these mutant, motherless, Naga—so jealous of Frog’s power—but they’ll never be worthy.”

“Why’s that?” I sat on the floor with my back against our shared wall, conserving what remained of my strength. The masonry felt crude and lumpy and clammy with slime; exactly the way you’d expect a wall to feel in a dungeon built by snake-men.

“Well, you’ve seen them, right? They’re freaks.” He scoffed and paused a beat, inviting me to imagine the Naga in my mind’s eye. “Half-man, half-viper – they’re creatures. Primitives, too unevolved to ever understand the complexities of Exorcism.” He hooted with laughter. “It’s like if you or I wanted to learn how to dislocate our jaw so we could gobble up our still-living suppers in a single, slow-motion swallow. We couldn’t. We ain’t equipped. Because—and this is the key, my friend—we ain’t subhuman snake-folk.”

“And yet, here we sit, prisoners in their dungeon. Cunning mongrels.”

Frog ignored my quip, concluding, “to the savage Naga, the only way to remove a demon is to cut it out with a knife.”

“So I’ve heard, Frog. So I have heard.”

And the Gods knew – I had heard plenty. For ten days and ten nights I sat trapped in my cell, listening while young people shrieked in the Naga torture chambers until their voices broke. Until their squishy insides spilled all the way out. And I kept right on hearing their screams and their splattering long after they ceased, too. I reckoned their blood would stick in my ears for the rest of my days.

From what I could decipher through those choking screams, the Naga were trying their damnedest to coax demons out of their human prisoners. A sort of alternative to classical Exorcism. To what end? No thanks, I wouldn’t attempt to speculate toward the motivations of snake-men – drive yourself insane walking that path. But whatever their goal, their methods were never going to exorcise a demon and furthermore they were truly bizarre.

I had pieced together that when the time came, the snake-men would show us a mirror and then ask what we saw. If you gave the wrong answer—or maybe the right one—the Naga would shatter the mirror and force you to eat the jagged shards. And then they’d slam you on an altar to cut you open and retrieve the broken glass through the hole in your abdomen. Like a fortune-teller reading tea leaves, I guess.

“So wait.” Frog sounded uneasy. “You’re saying they have a mirror that eats people?”

“No, Frog. Mirrors can’t eat people. Listen up. What I’m saying is: the Naga are forcing us to eat broken mirrors down here.”

Despite their snake-brained expectations, this was never going to produce a demon. This mirror-eating ritual would simply kill both the host and their demonic inhabitant, every time. Only an exorcist had the power to extract a demon from its host and force it to take on a physical form, but the Naga would never accept that, because the Naga were incapable of ever becoming exorcists themselves. Only humans could become exorcists; because only humans could obtain classes; because only humans were inhabited by demons.

“Anyway, where’re you from?” Frog asked. I reminded myself that he wasn’t being nosy and he didn’t mean anything by it, he was just making small-talk while we waited for our turns upon the Naga altar.

“Kwa’tar Village.”

“No kidding? ‘Crater’ Village?” He laughed sort of nervously. “Don’t suppose you knew Josie Kira?”

“Jo was my twin sister.”

He was quiet, processing what he’d just heard.

“Then that makes you Reisuke Kira.”

“Call me Rei.”

He was quiet again; longer this time.

“So, look. I’m sorry to ask, but it was all anyone in my sect could talk about for months – you know, at least among those of us who have not sworn vows of silence. Can you tell me – is it true? Was Josie Kira really inhabited by a Beast Rank demon of Wrath?”

“Yeah, from what I can tell, it was probably true.”

“And that’s what wrecked Kwa’tar Village, then? The demon was too powerful and overwhelmed the exorcist?”

“By all indications, yep.”

“Wow, then it must still be loose out there, someplace. The first Beast Rank Wrath in recorded history, roaming free.” He sounded almost wistful, like he was daydreaming of the hulking Wrath demon, stomping around out there in the world, leaving craters in its wake, just living its best life. When I didn’t say anything else, he added: “My master says it’s a sign of the end times.”

“Could be.”

“Ha, yeah. You know, Rei, you’re something of a celebrity. Well, except for the part where everyone thinks you’re dead and whatnot, what with the crater originating at your family’s deed. How’d you survive, anyway? Had the Naga already caught you?”

“I was alone on a hunt when the exorcist arrived.”

“In the wilds. The mountains, I assume. And when you returned home—”

“I found everyone and everything I had ever known had been incinerated, Frog. I walked the paths around town and saw my classmates melted to the floors of their huts. I saw our livestock in the fields, turned to piles of boiling fat and ash, still smoldering days after the catastrophe. And yes, at my family’s deed—my home—I found nothing but a smooth, glass-bottomed crater from which all the destruction radiated outward, and a message from the demon himself, written in blood runes on the bottom of the scorched depression.”

“What…. what did it say?”

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“It said, ‘Run for your life, Reisuke Kira.’ So that’s what I did.”

I couldn’t say precisely why I was being so forthcoming with this Frog. Maybe it was because we were both going to die soon and our trauma was bonding us. Or maybe I was oversharing with this stranger simply because he was the first human I’d had the opportunity to talk with in ages.

Because after I read the demon’s message on the bottom of the crater, I went out into the wilds and I stayed there alone for more than a year. I made an entire side of the mountain lousy with booby-traps; spiked pits and trip-wires and complicated systems to alert me as early as possible to the presence of intruders. During the days, I hunted and gathered and then each night I slept in a hammock under the stars or in a cave during the wet or snowy months. Every waking moment was occupied with some task. I overwhelmed myself with work so I wouldn’t have time to think. So I wouldn’t have time to cry.

And I was never entirely sure who I was hiding from out there. Was it the demon who had annihilated everyone I love? Or was it the exorcist I feared might come along and release a Beast Rank demon from inside me, too?

“One morning as I was making the rounds, collecting bunnies from my snares, a Naga hunting party caught me flat-footed – and here I am.”

“Same story here,” Frog explained. “I was alone in the hills, meditating in my favorite spot, and next thing I knew I woke up here with this lump on my head. Seems the Naga make a practice of abducting humans they deem young enough to still be inhabited by our demons. I guess we should be flattered – they’re basically saying we don’t look a day over level zero.” He laughed again, but without so much humor this time.

Frog shared that he was a new member of the esteemed Crane Sect, whose compound was perched high above the clouds atop Mount Poloi. He was learning tricks and techniques from level fifty masters. His inhabitant had been a demon of Gluttony, which meant that following Frog’s exorcism he was given the choice between becoming a paladin or a monk – the classes associated with Gluttony’s opposing virtue: Temperance.

“I went with monk,” he explained, “because who doesn’t like punching stuff? What about you? What class did you choose?”

“I’m still inhabited.”

“Oh, man.” I cringed at the sudden pity in his voice. “I’m real sorry, Reisuke. You seem like a mature enough—”

“No worries.”

“Sure, sure. Listen, when the time comes—well if the Naga come for me first, anyway—I’ll give ‘em a real proper whoopin’ and we’ll escape together. I’ll take you with me, you have my word.” He laughed. “Imagine! Thinking they’ve disarmed a Crane Monk simply by removing his weapons – they won’t know what hit them!” I heard his fist strike his palm five or six times in rapid succession. “My fists. They will be the things hitting them. A lot.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

And part of me really did appreciate his offer to help me escape, but as I carefully tested the sharpness of my bone shank for the ten-thousandth time, I didn’t feel much like returning the gesture. Right then, I didn’t care to commit myself to anyone’s rescue but my own. Frog could go on believing I was helpless.

Suddenly there was a tinkling noise in the corridor outside our cells. I heard Frog gasp from shock and a little chuckle puffed out of me – but the truth was: I had been taken by surprise, too. You could never hear the Naga coming until they were right up on you because they didn’t announce themselves with footsteps. Silent as they slithered, it stands to reason they’d have made excellent assassins.

I jumped up and hurried to take a position closer to the heavy, iron door of my cell, clenching my shank in my right fist. I thought I was ready to viciously gut the first snake-man to wriggle himself inside – but it turned out I might barf first from nerves. Was I kidding myself? Could I actually go through with this?

I pressed my eye to the crack where my door met the wall on its hinged-side. I could hear Frog doing the same in his cell, trying to catch a glimpse of our captors. There was only a sliver of space for me to spy through, but I saw the Nagas straight ahead:

There were two of them, only a stone’s throw down the hall – and they both had arms. They didn’t always have arms. Oftentimes, the Naga were simply giant snake-beasts with profane, semi-humanoid faces. But these two were more evolved. They had shoulders and arms and they slithered upright. They wore clothes and they carried equipment.

That which I assumed to be the leader had on a long, royal purple robe with gold trim. His back-half—his tail or whatever—snaked out from the bottom hem and slithered along behind him. Was he some sort of scholar, maybe? Or possibly a snake-priest? His scales were dark as the ocean on a moonless night—it was the first time I’d ever seen a Naga who was completely black—and his facial features appeared nearly human, like a bust carved from onyx – aside from the cobra-like hood which I at first mistook as a facet of his robe.

And, of course, his flat snout with the nostrils set wide apart.

And, well, the forked tongue flitting out from between his scaly lips at horrifyingly random intervals as if it had a mind of its own. But other than that stuff, his face looked fairly human.

In his scaly clutches he held a rectangular hand-mirror and a keyring. The keyring was the source of the tinkling sound.

His partner was clearly the muscle. His scales were gray and tinged with blue and his face was much more monstrous, with a wide, angular jaw and fangs jutting up from his ludicrous underbite. His shoulders were broad and the brute was nearly busting out of his chainmail tunic, wielding a short spear in his right hand and a torch in the other. He hung back a few slithers and held his torch high so the snake-priest could sort through his keys.

Other than me and Frog, I didn’t think there were any other prisoners being kept in this wing of the dungeon. I hadn’t heard anyone else crying nearby since my earliest days. That meant the Naga were here for one of us, and it was probably me – because they’d only dumped Frog into his cell within the past few hours. Meanwhile, by my count I’d been locked away for ten days and nights, a round number which it seemed reasonable to assume may have been significant to the timing of their mirror ritual.

I pleaded with my palm to stop making sweat on the handle of my shank while I watched the Naga select his key. Finally, he landed upon the one he was after and the pair of snake-men slithered in tandem to the door of my cell. This was it. A low rumble began to rise in my ears; the sound of my blood pumping harder. The robed Naga inserted the key and turned the lock. I held my breath and cocked my arm back, ready to thrust my shank into his soft belly as soon as he pushed his way inside. But in the last moment before he opened the door, the snake-priest hissed:

“Ssstand back and show usss your handsss.”

For a monster, his Common Speech wasn’t bad at all. I slid back half a step and tried to find some way to conceal my shank but it was no use. Did they already know about it? Was that why he wanted to see my hands? Time was up and I had no choice but to try and fight – right then.

Something came over me. I decided to make the first move, rushing forward and then jerking the door hard in toward myself, flinging it wide open. I saw the snake-priest’s weird face frozen in shock, his hand empty where a moment earlier it had been turning the key in the lock. His tongue flicked out—some sort of nervous reptile reflex—and whip-cracked so close to my eye that I could feel it flick my lashes. And then without even thinking—my own reptilian reflex—I thrust my homemade murder-spike at his gut with all the murderous fury I could muster.

Everything was happening too fast but also too slow, like a bad dream. It was the first time I’d ever tried to stab anyone and it was nothing like I could have predicted. The shank’s momentum just stopped suddenly, unable to penetrate the snake-priest’s scales, so I swiveled my hips and shoulders to get more force behind the thrust. And then it was like the dam burst. Glass broke and the shank slid forward sickly and the next thing I knew my entire forearm was bathed in lukewarm reptile blood. The shank hadn’t got caught up on his scales – it had been the mirror. I had accidentally managed to stab the mirror, and only after my second effort did it shatter, allowing me to gut the priest.

And as the shards from the mirror tinkled onto the floor at my feet, I caught a glimpse of the System. For a fraction of a second it was as though I was no longer inhabited by my demon. I saw the three bars representing my health and my armor value and my attack rating. The perimeter of my field of vision was clogged with notifications begging to be opened and my mind did so without even thinking:

WARNING!

Ongoing debuff Starving has now reached Six Stacks

I blinked it away and as I drew the shank out of the priest’s gut, I was suddenly able to view its information in detail:

Toxic Bone Shank

Weapon Type: Piercing, Rare, Crafted, Demon-Touched

Damage: 3-8(2x crit)

Range: Melee

Effect: Chance upon successful attack to inflict Fecal Infection

Special Quality: One Untapped Shard of Demonic Power

Description: Armed and dangerous.

And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the System simply vanished. It had only been a preview of what my life would be like with my demon exorcised. And for all the talk between Frog and I about the Naga being primitive and incapable of understanding Exorcism – their mirrors clearly had some sort of demonic magic empowering them. Somehow that mirror had at least momentarily affected my bond with my demon.

But before I could contemplate any of it any further, the second Naga struck me in the head with the butt of his torch and before I could even react to the blow or the cinders singing my face and neck – I felt his short spear plunge into my left shoulder. The pain was impossible. I’d been in a handful of fistfights growing up – but none of my formative childhood violence had prepared me for this. I meant to scream but the blow had stolen the air from my lungs and I could only manage to wheeze pitifully as I scrambled backward into my dark cell.

The Naga followed, slithering smoothly in pursuit. His passing torchlight revealed the priest lying on the floor, twitching and bleeding out from the single stroke of my shank, surrounded by the bloody mirror shards. Something about seeing him that way brought the situation fully home – this was a life-and-death struggle.

Someplace, I heard a newborn child squealing. It seemed so out of place and awful. Everything began to occur in extra slow-motion, everything began to feel extra surreal, as though the veil between this world and the next was beginning to slip. The Naga suddenly seemed very tall, leveraging himself up more on the end of his tail, rising until the back of his broad shoulders nearly touched the ceiling. He readied his spear-arm to skewer me from the top-down and he let the torch fall from his off-hand. The flame whooshed and then hit the floor and extinguished.

Then there was only darkness. I realized that the priest had needed light from the torch in order to find the correct key, but the Naga as a species never required light to locate their prey. The brute could smell my blood with a simple flick of his tongue. And standing there blind in the pitch-black with this monster looming over me I all-at-once realized: there was no newborn child squealing.

Never had been.

It was me. All along, I’d been making this terrified, high-pitched wheezing noise since the moment the Naga’s spear plunged into my shoulder.

Quit being such a piss-baby coward, I thought. You’re going to let yourself die like this?