{It cuts with a reverence that I cannot feel.}

{Dolls find themselves wondering how they reached the lowest depths and felt the highest highs.}

{The artist refuses to rely on fact to convey the horror of the flames and the lengths to which the panic drives the war machine.}

{I roamed, seeking relief, seeking a purpose.}

{The matron tends the fields.}

{Venders outside the temple. They are outcasts and make good prey.}

{What are we that the altars never stay clean?}

{What are we that the executioner’s howls bring such joy?}

{I didn’t stop. I saw deep but I didn’t stop.}

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

{Are all of creation’s children destined to end up like us?}

{Every day the need gets a little sharper.}

{The need can only be kept at bay for so long.}

{I saw a victim in the rubble. She lay there in misery.}

{The old temple was raised. Now a factory sits on that sacred place. And for that slight there was another war.}

{On a moonless night I found true pleasure for the first time.}

{Splendor in the forbidden garden, the place where only the long-annihilated royalty were allowed to walk.}

{Savor every meal as if it will be your last.}

{The sword is my people’s birthright. With it, we staved off the hunters and the armies of monsters. But by taking up the sword and its successors we became our own kind of monster.}

{I was born and raised in the place where things are grafted to flesh.}

{Things lurk in the halls of the Thalanx.}

{I walked the old industrial road in search of the cure. There are fires there that have burned for eons.}

{There is only one cure for the need.}

{When there were no more places left to flee, when machines couldn’t kill enough, they looked to the heavens.}

{Sometimes you sink the blade in so deep the prey becomes a part of you.}

{Tabernacles on the plains. Nomads gathered around campfires.}

{The need has always been with me.}