It is infuriating. It grates on its nerves. There is an urgent need to be filled, and it insists on staying on the opposite side of what may as well be an infinite chasm.

Khuldral seethes as it watches the most foul human as he persists in keeping a murderer’s watch upon the flowing barrier.

And in that period that stretches horrendously long, it studies the target. It feels out his very soul. It seeks to know all that has earned this man his graduation from a forgivable mere sinner to a monster worthy of eternal damnation.

Khuldral smells it in the wind. It tastes the air and the stink of it is bitter on the tongue. Khuldral breathes deeply of the cold forest air.

And it learns of the dark things that dwell in the hearts of men.

Not only this man, for he is not the only one within range. No, there are several individuals about whom Khuldral can sense.

None compare to this man.

Lurking in his heart is a willingness to give up his family to the grave. There is an urge to see himself as omnipotent, to be above all others, to press them beneath his hand in subjugation.

And underneath all of that, behind his willful desire to ignore and dismiss the needs of others for the selfish wants of himself, there lies something quiet and still. Behind all that he has done and all that he plots yet to do is a bleak coldness of heart.

He cannot see himself as worthy of adoration unless he stands above others who are unworthy. And he desires, more than anything, adoration.

This unworthy man, however, will receive none of that where Khuldral must bring him.

The great and horrible hound from beneath seeks to make of him a customer for justice, as he will pay a great price.

Khuldral lurks, and it watches, and it waits.

And after some time, it sees the impatient sinner stand, look around, and finish crossing the river.

This infuriates the enormous beast. Its tail thrashes with anger, and blade-sharp claws rend the earth. It paces the riverbank, drooling thick ropes of black saliva upon the ground.

The creature places one massive paw into the shallow rock-lined stream. The running water repulses it. It drains the strength from the pads of its toes. Khuldral jerks the paw away as though burned. The river washes away the stains of its presence from the land as it washes clean the print left behind.

Khuldral whines and birds scatter from the trees. It licks its paw as it sulks. The enormous creature resumes pacing the bank of the river.

There is only a narrow break in the overhead trees where the river rends their root beds in twain. And through that break is where Khuldral spots her.

The witch flies upon her mortar and pestle, sailing through the air with grim darkness as her trail through the sky. Soot spills behind her and scatters upon the treetops. It spills into the river where it floats harmlessly downstream, a faint trace of her dire passing.

Khuldral ducks swiftly underneath the cover of the trees. It curses their seasonal lack of foliage. It holds itself precisely still. Dead things have more motion in them than this fell hound as it attempts to pass without notice.

The witch, however, is not one to be fooled by stillness.

She calls out over the tops of the trees and speaks with words not heard for thousands of years. She speaks in the tongue of devils and of angels and of that which is neither and older than both. She speaks in the language of Creation and all that hear they compel it to answer if they hear it and comprehend it or not.

And they compel the creature to answer. They compel it to stand forth and be seen by that hag who rides upon the strange wings of the night.

Khuldral walks on shaky legs to the riverbank, where it cannot cross. It snarls hostility at the woman in the sky.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“There you are, you nasty little thing,” the witch cackles in a high-pitched squeal. “I knew you were hiding out here. You just couldn’t help yourself from letting out a howl, now could you?”

Khuldral growls. The sound, lower than the movement of mountains, draws ripples in the water that have nothing to do with how it moves to follow the course of gravity. Trees tremble at the noise, and loose stones clatter against the ground.

The witch is unimpressed.

Her flying mortar lands upon the bridge, as if to taunt the older monster with her ability to defy the running water below.

A terrible wound bleeds darkly from her thigh. Khuldral can smell the blood and the poison in it. It can taste a death in the air, but it is not hers.

“If you act too soon,” the witch informs the monster, “all your work will be undone. The repentant will find forgiveness. The unrepentant will encounter mercy. Your haste will make you obsolete.”

She pulls a broken arrow through the flesh of her thigh. Khuldral recognizes it as having the stink of his intended target upon it.

It sniffs long and hard. The wind of its breath pulls at her gray hair and the trees bend toward the creature as it peels the information from its senses. The man is close, so close, it determines with its inhaled breath. And he is afraid.

Khuldral takes a step backward, retreating from the wicked witch into the unwelcoming forest.

“Wait,” she cautions it, “wait and you will have what you require. Act in haste and you will only be destroyed. Nightteeth, hold your strike. Show prudence.”

Khuldral tilts its head and lets out single low bark. Its voice cannot form words, but it can ask questions. Why is the witch offering this advice? Why is she providing sagacity for a monster in her demesne?

“I am offended,” the witch responds. “I am deeply offended.”

The hound of Hell gives her another long, drawn out sniff.

It smells the witch, and she terrifies it. She smells of death, of sugar, of things better left unsaid. She smells like bread baked with the ground up bones of one’s enemies. She smells of breadcrumbs left on a trail. And she smells of mushrooms, growing in the rot and decay of a healthy wood.

What she does not smell like is human sin. She stinks of prophecy. She positively reeks of destiny.

And she smells like blood and poison. She smells like a dying woman.

She does not, however, appear stricken by the arrow that has found her leg. She does not limp. She does not favor it.

Any other person. Any other human at all. Most other living creatures would have been destroyed by this poison. The poison tip of the horrible arrow seeps darkly into her skin. Her injury weeps foul smelling pus that runs down her leg.

But she is not dying. Another breath and Khuldral knows she is not going to. She cannot. She has spit in the eye of death itself and given herself over to immortality. She is not a person, Khuldral realizes, but a thing unto herself. She is of the woods and not of the woods. She is human, but not human. She is simply the ogre witch, and none can thwart her will.

She is like a spider in the web that is this wood, everything that touches it touches her lines of power and control. She is a threat to all who trod upon this ground. She is a fungus, where life is dirt and she grows in it.

Khuldral growls lower, and he cowers in her presence.

The mortar spills its content upon the bridge as she lifts off again, cackling at his fear. Crushed bone, soot, and ash scatter in her wake.

When she laughs, Khuldral can see that she has sharp, yellow teeth. She tilts her head back and her wild hair flies about her face.

And then she vanishes, borne upon winds that lift her impossible mortar and pestle into the sky and take her away into the deeper darkness of the woods.

And Khuldral cowers still. Its ears pin back against its head in panic. Its long tail tucks beneath its legs. Its belly presses into the dirt with the desire to vanish, to escape, to be anywhere but right here where the horrifying witch who knows what destiny might look like can sense it.

It does not understand her warning. It understands nothing, save the need to complete its given task. Nothing can delay a swift judgment. Nothing can stay the grip of its jaws upon the throat of one who deserves to be dragged into the fiery depths below.

The fell creature cannot cross the river. It cannot pursue that which it must hunt. It cannot. It cannot.

The repentant will find forgiveness.

The unrepentant will encounter mercy.

What is mercy? What is forgiveness? It does not understand. It only knows how to perform its singular task.

The woods grow quiet as Khuldral sulks, still frustrated at its impotence.

And it is in this silence that Khuldral finally hears the approach of a person once more.

The slight woman steals through the forest on the opposite side of the river. Burrs catch in her dark hair, and thorns have pricked her exposed skin. Khuldral smells her and it remembers her. It recognizes the taint upon her.

If it cannot achieve the goal that roused it from ancient slumber, then it will take the next best option. That one deserves to be trapped in the jaws of justice for her many crimes as well.

Just because they are not as vile as those of the one that follows does not mean they are undeserving of punishment.

But.

He follows. And Khuldral can smell that he is very near now.