Great pillars swirled above and below without regard for up or down. Her stomach bottomed out. Twisted versions of Cas’ tower spiralled around her. The city of Zabyalla arched over her in the distance, but with every building writhing like maggots in flesh. The mist undulated with prismatic lights, and within, stalked endless terrors with shining eyes. She felt miniscule.

On a wide, distant platform, Kyembe the Spirit Killer and the lord of nightmares continued their battle.

Mists filled with spittle and sparks. The immense horror struck with the speed of a lioness, but the Sengezian weaved through its limbs with skill and agility that seemed supernatural. His weapon sliced and burnt its shadowy flesh in great, drawing cuts. White flame consumed its body, growing with every blow it received.

Yet, while it flinched, it did not retreat.

Severed limbs regrew.

Burning flesh sloughed off.

Wounds closed.

It would not bleed.

Amused malice built around it.

It would not die.

Then Cas’ mocking laugh echoed through the nightmare world from all places at once.

“Unwashed wretches!” he roared. “You cannot kill my wonderful servant! You cannot slay terror itself! Cut it! Burn it! Do as you wish, but vermin can only perish before the lion’s claws!”

His taunt brought Wurhi’s mind to focus.

Cas was right.

Her companion was tiring while the demon pursued him with seemingly endless vitality. He had cut and burnt it enough to kill an elephant a hundred times over, yet it continued unabated. In return, all it would need would be a single lucky stroke to clip, gore or claw the slender warrior in twain.

Yet, what could she do? She was no mighty warrior or wizard! She had no magics or great cunning or-

Wait.

Wizard?

…Aparis!

Aparis had thought Cas had found some magic!

They were in the great market two mornings ago. Cas had passed through with his procession, and the princeling’s eyes were fixed on him.

No, it was not on him. It was on something else…

The sceptre! Cas had raised it before the demon attacked!

That was the key! The very thing that would undo the lock on this hellish trap!

She had to get it! But where lay the merchant prince?

His voice had come from everywhere. Wurhi’s eyes could only see this fog. Her skin felt its damp touch. Her nose…

She froze in realization.

Her nose smelled none of it.

No musk from the great cats. No dewy scent of mist.

Nothing.

The demon was here to kill humans! Its illusions must be focused only on their favoured senses, like how Kyembe’s illusion of the dog mimicked only its sound!

Humans relied on their eyes and ears; scent was the realm of the animal.

So, to find Cas, she needed her nose as sharp as an animal’s!

Wurhi the Rat clung to the rock tightly. A haze came over her mind.

Agony ripped through her body.

Her bones felt like they were breaking apart and coming back together.

A shriek of rising pitch burst from her lips.

Far away, though distance here had little meaning, Merchant Prince Cas watched the fight through a tunnel in the scintillating mist. Although that little wretch’s dagger had sliced his arm, the cut had been shallow and he’d wrapped a silk cloth around it to stem the bleeding. He took up a golden pitcher of wine, poured himself a rhyton, then toasted toward the battle.

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The dark-skinned warrior was being cornered by his lovely demon.

It would not be long now.

“To you, my nameless, valorous young lion,” he took a long sip of the smooth wine, savouring its flavour. “May your flesh fill my demon’s belly!”

Nightmares swam through the surrounding mist or hopped between the floating stones. They held no danger to him, though they were amusing in their own way. Some gave him glances as they passed, or even approached and studied him for a time until they recognized his sceptre’s light and backed away in deference.

How droll.

In particular, one was comedically leaping this way across the rocks, much like how a flat stone skipped across the River of Scales. It wasn’t very fearsome: a strange little imp with what looked like a rat’s tail swishing behind it.

Oh well, he supposed everyone had their own fears. Some mind must have conjured it.

Cas smiled as it approached.

“Hail to you!” he said mockingly as he took another sip of wine.

The merchant prince held up the dreaming sceptre so that it would know its master.

A giant rat’s jaws burst out from the mist.

Crnch!

Fangs dug into his forearm. Flesh tore. Bone snapped.

“Aaaaaaargh!” he wailed.

In his agony, he dropped his sceptre.

The creature deftly snatched it from the air and pulled away from Cas, clutching it with small, clawed hands. It was a hideous cross of human and enormous rat, with long, pointed snout and shaggy black fur. It twitched, the glowing violet sapphires reflected in its beady, animal eyes.

“No, brute!” Cas shrieked desperately, clutching his arm. “Give that back!”

The creature hunched, chittering at him in a high pitch. It seemed about to flee into the mist but then shuddered, violently shaking its head.

It squeezed its eyes shut.

When they opened, human intelligence lurked in them.

With another chitter, the rat took up the dreaming sceptre in both clawed hands and raised it high over its head.

Cas’ eyes went wide.

“No! Don’t!” he shrieked.

Bang!

The sceptre’s head smashed into the stones.

Boom! Crnck!

A tremendous impact and the roar of jewels cracking rippled through the nightmare world.

Shrieking followed.

The demon reeled back.

Its form boiled and wavered like a mirage. Black, foul ichor poured from its many wounds and new flesh no longer replaced what had burnt.

Kyembe the Spirit Killer did not let such an opportunity pass.

With a roar, he charged, the flaming sword-staff thrusting forward.

Shrluuuck!

The blade drove into its core, and hellfire exploded from every wound.

Simultaneously, the rat-thing raised the sceptre once more.

Bang!

The sapphires shattered, their violet light forever flickering out. With a scream that mirrored the demon’s, the sceptre shuddered in the creature’s claws like a stricken beast.

Then it crumbled away like sand.

The hellfire redoubled in strength in the demon’s flesh, and its entire body lit up like an oil-soaked carpet. For one brilliant moment, its hideous form shone like a burning star in the dark and its shrieks could not be heard over the roar of flame that ate it. For years, it had been the greatest predator in Zabyalla.

Now, its flesh fed another.

With the sound of a collapsing building, the lord of nightmares crashed to the stones as no more than a cremating corpse.

A shockwave burst from its body, driving its foul touch from the room and every dreaming soul in Zabyalla.

For a brief instant, thousands of voices seemed to cry out in tearful elation.

Then, they too faded into the night.

Yet for one, the nightmare was only beginning.

Cas of Zabyalla screamed as moonlight filled his chamber. Before him crouched a monster chittering at him and glaring with beady orbs. Approaching him was a lean, dark man with pointed ears and ferocious eyes as crimson as blood, bearing a sword-staff that burned with white fire.

Upon the blade sizzled scant remains of Cas’ only protector.

“N-no wait! Please!” the merchant prince wept in panic, clutching his agonized forearm. “Don’t kill me! I’ll give you whatever you want! Gold! Platinum! Jewels! Slaves!” with his unwounded hand he scooped up a handful of coins and gems. “Please! I’ll give you anything!”

Bone popped and flesh shuddered.

He watched in horror as the chittering beast-thing writhed and contorted in agony. The skeleton broke, shortened and reset. Flesh rippled as fur sank beneath the skin, and claws shortened even as the snout and tail did. The animal cries became more and more human until they were the pained screams of a woman.

Finally, it ended.

Rather than a rat-thing standing before him, it was the thief, Wurhi the Rat.

“Y-y-M-monster!” Cas cried, scrambling back into his throne.

“Maybe,” Wurhi admitted, her green eyes piercing his. She looked down and picked up an ornamental golden dagger, turning it over in her hands. “But much less than you, Cas of Zabyalla.”

“And we have already slain one monster tonight,” Kyembe’s white flame reflected on his crimson eyes. “Let us complete the set.”

He reached forward and grabbed Cas’ long curly hair in an iron grip.

“No! You can’t! Guards! Guards! Azar!” Cas wept, trying to pull away.

Shnk.

Wurhi sank the golden dagger into his stomach.

“A-aaaaaargh!” he screamed.

She ripped it down and out.

In a spray of red, Cas was eviscerated before his own horrified eyes. “Aaaargh! Aaaargh!” he tried desperately to hold his guts in, retching blood even as Kyembe pulled him from his seat and dragged him toward the balcony.

“No!” he wailed, realizing what the Sengezian had in mind. “You can’t do this! You can’t!”

He was still weakly pleading when Kyembe flung him from the balcony.

The man who would be merchant king shrieked and desperately clawed at nothing.

The world spun.

The night air howled around him.

His dimming eyes glimpsed a flash of water.

Then he slammed into his own bathing pool.

Crunch!

The water’s surface broke his body.

Crunch!

The stone beneath broke it again.

There would be no more heads for Cas’ pikes.

Far above, Wurhi and Kyembe gazed down at the body floating amongst spreading red in the water.

“So ends Cas of Zabyalla,” Kyembe pronounced.

“May maggots feast on his soul,” Wurhi spit after him, watching it land with a little plop on his body.

The Sengezian’s eyebrows rose. “Good aim,” he mused, clapping her on the shoulder. “Now let us take our plunder before the guards break down the door!”