A sensation of floating above the world had begun, as though Henry had progressed from something in it to something from beyond. The walls of the garden world were weak here and he could feel himself close to a world below or perhaps more accurately outside the present one. It felt like snow was just beneath his feet whose toes floated some few inches above the sands. It must have been a glacier covered in a thin layer of desert blown about by the winds of time.

He slowly floated toward Amanda, easily able to sense her presence and soon found himself looking at a few stragglers who had learned of her position. He watched as a small boy ran in the distance a mile or so away and rage began to boil over. Suddenly he appeared behind the child and stuck his hand through the boy’s lower torso, donutting him and allowing the child to fall almost the entire way to the ground before picking him up and returning to the dome that was supposed to prevent this exact scenario.

David lofted the child by the donut-hole toward the seven adults that remained on the inside of the light-red and semi-transparent wall that blocked their escape. The body landed outside the border with a dull thud, and a small pool of blood began to form beneath it. His green shirt and brown pants were now stained in a mix of blood and the sand kicked up by his fall.

David did not acknowledge the rising terror and the several who had fallen, hands clasped to faces, voices raised in screams and pleas for mercy without certainty that all the rest inside had already perished.

He demanded an explanation from Amanda, “Why did you let him escape?”

“That’s a child, he doesn’t deserve to die and it wouldn’t even be beneficial to consume him with how underdeveloped he is… or was.”

“And yet he would come to oppose us later. You must understand that children grow up, yes? We will live a long time and creating enemies now might cause problems later.”

David raised his hand to his chin and thought momentarily before he continued.

“How many did you let escape?”

“I don’t know, I didn't count,” she said quietly, but David’s worries quickly changed.

“Who will others think carried out this attack? Will there be retaliation?”

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He found confidence in Amanda’s answer,

“No one. It could be rogue soldiers, it could be the Triumvirate. This region was conquered a while ago and so the money dried up, but the people here made their living outside the law. Some were prostitutes, some were criminals, some were just unable to cope with the strict rule of law established inside the Triumvirate.”

“Then none will be missed?” David interrupted.

“You could say that.”

“Good, good. Who will the children grow to hate?”

“I can’t say,” Amanda replied.

The answer was satisfactory. If this place was outside the law it would not be missed. If those inside it had alternatives they wouldn’t be here, and since the wars to establish new borders in the aftermath of the Great Scourge have moved on only the most unable to leave would remain here. If he erased the remaining adult witnesses the details of what happened here would fade as time passed. The children would grow up and hate… war? It seemed reasonably likely that this incident would be taken as either an opportunistic harvesting of magical essence or as the cleaning-up of a state in a region near its territory. Either way, retaliation in the near future seemed unlikely, and retaliation in the long term depended on if those aware of this incident were able to find out the actual perpetrators. Given the new man’s unknown nature this seemed unlikely. A much more plausible outcome would be that they grew to hate one of the two regional powers or war as a general concept.

With the completion of this thought process David was satisfied. He slowly floated downward from the elevated position he had taken in his anger, and his anger slowly faded in turn. The feet of this new god did not dirty themselves on the earth, but he did touch the dead boy with his toe and the boy vanished.

Then, he turned toward the remaining casualties, the nameless who would soon find themselves forgotten to history. However they would be remembered, his name would not be spoken. His appearance was far too generic to be known, and Amanda was surely no more distinctive. Even if she was, it would be easy to connect the dots to the Triumvirate. All that needed to be done now was to clean the final few pages of this story and ensure the erasure of their names from history.

For their insolence he would punish them. Resistance was fine, collapsing in panic was fine. Running, however, was an affront to his power. Did these people think they could escape? If they did then they surely thought lightly of a god.

David pushed a finger into the carotid artery of a man some twenty-five years of age. He reached up to stem the flow of blood, but David cut off his hands. He collapsed face-first into the sand.

A small boy some six years of age had started to run. David once again placed a fist through the boy’s stomach. He would not be mocked.

Next were the two women clutching each other and wearing nothing but undergarments. He cut them in half with one swift motion of the hand.

By this point David had grown bored and decided to stop playing with his food. The bodies vanished as he touched them. No memories of this massacre remained.