Duulys Ambar clicked his tongue in distaste as he looked down at the inert form of Mimic. The fool was hollowed out, all of his annoying qualities quashed and sucked out of him. Even his perennially neat uniform was stained and sliced. “This is exactly why you were always a worthless mongrel of a servent. Just like everyone else, you betrayed me in the end.”

He raised his hand, the heavy paw of a silver lion imposing itself across the limb. The force of his image was powerful enough that the air trembled at his presence. Yet Duulys hesitated to shred this familiar figure. Clicking his tongue, he lowered the stroke of death; it was too much of a mercy to end his life like this. Instead, he raised his voice, intending to arrange a more insidious end. “Oy, fat piece of shit. Show yourself, I can tell you’ve been sniffing around for a while.”

There was a low chuckle and then a figure appeared on the opposite side of the platform. An old, frail man with greying hair looked over at Duulys. The only article of clothing he wore was a loincloth that had clearly been worn for far too long. His bones showed through his thin skin and his stomach very clearly bulged, either with being overstuffed or from suffering a long period of starvation.

But his eyes spun and glittered with an inner beauty, bright and distant as a cosmic nebula. Those eyes gave the faintest hint of the monster that had climbed over the crystal scorpion and set himself up a small wonderland on the thirty-ninth floor. A dry tongue flicked out to lick his lips. “Is somethin’ the matter, Mr. Ambar?”

Duulys gestured imperiously to Mimic. “I’ll leave this body to you. Feel free to deal with it… in your normal manner. I’m told that to be so killed is quite unpleasant.”

“Of course, of course,” The man waved a hand, showing a smile on his face but keeping his mouth closed. Not a single ripple of need showed across his musculature. “All in due time.”

Perhaps Duulys would have moved passed this ring, eager to catch up to the troublesome foursome, without trying to challenge the master of the thirty-ninth ring. After all, he was definitely a dangerous foe. But the lack of respect and the strangeness of the response made him pause; this hungry bastard never waited to eat his meal.

Something else was afoot here. And after the last few weeks, Duulys hated unexpected variables.

“You…” Duulys narrowed his eyes. As he examined the man, he realized there was something unfathomable about him now. All of the desperation had vanished. Duulys’s lips twisted in irritation, to note a difference in the face of a subordinate that he had known for quite a long time. An ugly suspicion bloomed in his heart. “What the hell happened to you? Have you also defected to the Ghosthound’s side?”

Finally, the hungry man couldn’t hide his glee any longer. His lips cracked open, showing a mouth devoid of teeth. The rumors about the hungry man said he had even eaten his own teeth, such was his appetite. “Defection…? Nah, nothing so serious as that. Just recently this rather pathetic child returned a very interesting piece to me. Something profound… finally, after all this time, I feel the possibility of ascending to the Pinnacle.”

That stopped Duulys short. “What? Bah, don’t play with me, you hungry shit. Some thing like you, reaching the Pinnacle? You don’t even have your own image, you just eat other images. It’s impossible.”

The hungry man chuckled. “I thought so as well, but apparently not. So long as you keep walking… sometimes you encounter an unexpected Path.”

Duulys’s expression darkened. He raised his hand and cracked his knuckles. He felt torn between lashing out at this sudden attitude change and pursuing the ne’er-do-wells moving toward his house. In the end, the thought of bare feet upon the gorgeous marble floors of his entrance hall won out. “Tsk, you are lucky I have bigger fish to fry. Ascend to the Pinnacle, daydream about whatever fantasy you want. Just get the hell out of might sight.”

The hungry man’s smile widened as he pushed himself up to his feet. Standing, his bulging belly was even more grotesque. The skin stretched across the organ, barely able to support its sagging weight. Yet rather than moving out of the way, the hungry man waddled his way forward to stand opposite Duulys.

Silver flames danced at the corner of Duulys’s eyes. Despite the fact that this ring was not his own, the air began to hum in fear of the image that prowled within his body. “...what the hell is this?”

“Repayment, to the oblivious boy,” The hungry man cooed. His gorgeous eyes continued to glitter as he lowered a hand and patted his stomach. “I haven’t felt this full in years, after digesting what he gave me. For that, I owe the child a favor. I don’t mind delaying you a bit. Besides, if I’m going to soon step toward the Pinnacle, I should at least dance with a worthy foe. And you… are no Elhume.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Duulys began to shake with fury, his dreadlocks bouncing off his muscular shoulders. “I must have briefly taken leave of my senses. Because if I heard you correctly, you have a death wish.”

“Keh, this was worth it just for that look on your face.” The hungry man slapped his knee. “But this possibility he gave me… its just that valuable. Do you know my bad habit? Slipping fractions of myself into different worlds in the new Cohorts? It so happens that a manifestation of me went to that child’s world. More than that, it was inherited by Randidly Ghosthound’s father.

“Even if it is the slightest sliver of my image, a mundane human, fresh to the System, will inevitably be driven mad by the hunger they inherit from me.” The hungry man licked his lips. “Observing… is relatively satisfying. For a while, this Ezekiel succumbed as well. Murdering and consuming, growing fat and strong on the efforts of others… yet. Yet somehow, after encountering his son and seeing the success that he had earned, this Ezekiel tried to change! To resist my mandate!”

“Are you truly boasting that some worm overcame your image?” Duulys hissed with bulging eyes. The Silver Lion stalked closer on silent paws.

The hungry man waved a hand. “No, well. His efforts to resist mostly failed. He would be alright for a couple of days, or he would try sticking to only eating monsters, or he would suck away energy without killing… he tried a variety of methods. But always, he would be tested by negative emotions. A single bad day would send him on a spiral that would have him skulking into Danger Zones, devouring whole isolated villages and weeping amongst their corpses. He could barely live with himself. But the last time- the last time, he succeeded. He had gone months without eating. He resisted the constant hunger.”

Duulys couldn’t figure out what the hungry man was saying, so he ignored him. The silver lion with which he had won his fame condensed around his body. “I don’t care about your pathetic life. Move now, cretin, or die.”

“Obviously, he would have given in eventually,” The man giggled and caressed his stomach one more time. His eyes spun, faster and faster. “But he didn’t need to last forever, just until his body gave out. Just until one of his Stats decreased to zero and his body collapsed. He died, fighting against my mandate. And in death, he found victory.”

Duulys raised an arm wreathed in silver fire. “You are a fool.”

“A fool I may be, but I am Beelzebub,” That toothless mouth stretched wide. “Now, I’ll show you how powerful hunger is, combined with insight into a temporal element.”

*****

“Oh wow,” Pullas breathed at the end of their three-hour journey. Her eyes glittered and she pressed her hands against her flushed cheeks. Clearly, it had been even more breathtaking than she had expected. “I hadn’t even realized I was missing this from my life… but no one should die without seeing this place.”

Above them, they drifted toward a tall cliff made of immaculately sculpted ivory clouds. The sky had darkened as they had risen, so a tapestry of white stars created a backdrop. And in the foreground, the tall turrets and ramparts of the silver castle of Duulys Ambar rose, its gleaming streamers and impressive pillars a marvel of beauty and engineering.

Xershi folded his arms. “What the hell can a castle do against a powerful image? This is just puffery.”

“Buffoonery,” Fiona agreed in a gloomy voice. But the acidic edge revealed that she was probably similarly impressed by the display, no matter how angry she was at the maker.

Randidly raised a hand and cracked his neck. In the end, he was quite disappointed with himself; he had only been able to raise the Hierarchy of Burden to Level 78. Those last few steps meant that increasingly complex spatial pressures attempted to fold the fabric of his being. Perhaps he could recognize a pattern, or create an internal support system to keep himself from folding, but that would take time.

His three hours were up, they had arrived.

“Everyone, keep your guard up,” Fiona looked around at them all. Her eyes were bright and vicious, and so, so tired. “Duulys is too much of a diva to launch a sneak attack, but that doesn’t mean he won’t let us walk into a disadvantageous situation. We should be on high alert.”

“Oh definitely,” Pullas squeaked, visibly struggling to tear her eyes away from the gleaming surface of the nearby castle.

“We need to-” Fiona began, but her words stumbled to a halt as the vessel bumped up against the ground. The group stepped off, following the dazed Fiona. “Huh, that’s odd.”

“Something wrong?” Randidly asked.

Fiona gestured at the impressive oak gates before them. “The gates… are closed. That means he’s not here, but out roaming the Sonara. Duulys hates when anyone goes into his castle without his permission. He’s surprisingly fastidious.”

“Well then,” Xershi raised an arm and flexed a bicep. “All the more reason we should bust our way through and make a mess of the place. I’ll just break-”

“Oh, there is no need for that. I’d be surprised if Duulys changed the spare key-” Fiona walked sideways, off the gleaming path that led to the large wooden gates. The area was lined with majestic cherry blossom trees, the pale petals of their flowers drifting down around and settling into a soft covering on the ground. Fiona found a spot between two trees and shifted her body minutely. Then she stamped a foot.

An Engraving shimmered to life, spreading out from the location on the ground she had hit. Lines of complex characters swam back and forth across the ground until they reached the high gate. After a shiver of energy went through the threshold, the doors swung open.

“I always told him it was a dumb idea,” Fiona commented. Her expression sagged further, weighed down by the truth that she was now here, moving toward a confrontation, and her husband was not there to receive her ire. She reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “But… Duulys believed that everything should be interesting. Even doors. He used to be… different.”

“Different or not,” Xershi swaggered forward. “Let’s check out if he has anything worth smashing.”