Once more, Verune looked up through the trees. The fallen sycamore had created a window in the verdant canopy. Seeing that the Sun was nearing its apex, he decided to set out for Pilgrim’s Watch.

Since ancient times, the hilltop had been a place for pilgrims to gather, that they might bask in the glory of the noonday Sun, anointing themselves with the Sun’s purifying light before they entered the holy city’s temples. Cascaton Park had been constructed on the land around the hill, beautifying Elpeck and glorifying the Second Trenton Empire by clearing away the slums and seedy mercantiles that, over the centuries, had come to encrust the feet of Pilgrim’s Watch.

Fortunately, then, as now, the path to Pilgrim’s Watch was clearly marked. Cordimer Olm, Cascaton’s architect—had chosen to pave the way with a path of flagstone. The path had survived the ravages of time. Moss grew in between the flagstones like mortar between bricks.

As soon as Verune set off down the path, he was hit by a wave of hunger that was unlike any he’d ever felt before. It staggered him, making him stumble forward. He grabbed a sickly pine to catch himself. The rough bark studding its trunk abraded his palm.

Saliva burbled in Verune’s mouth. His dead body felt numb—but that hardly mattered anymore.

Only food mattered. Food, and the hunger burning in his belly.

Verune looked around, desperate and confused. Up ahead, the flagstone path to Pilgrim’s Watch curved downward in a wide bend, cradling an artificial lake. The pathway split as it approached the lakeside. One branch turned away from the lake and passed beneath a grove of trees as it crested up the hillside. The other branch led to a bridge over the water, ending on a small island set within the lake.

The water was at odds with Verune’s memories. Instead of clear and lively, the lake was fetid and murky. Lost feathers littered the water’s glassy surface, strewn among the dead birds’ floating corpses. Whatever greenery had stood on the lake’s far side had been completely burnt away.

The sight made Verune gasp in horror—and doubly so. To his horror, he couldn’t take his attention away from the dead birds on the water. He barely noticed the absence of flies.

He licked his lips.

Bringing his fingers up to his mouth, Verune felt the saliva dripping out from between his lips. For some reason, his thoughts flitted back to the human corpses he’d seen elsewhere in the Park. The thoughts were intrusive and unwanted, and it was a struggle to shake them. As they plagued him, he found himself wanting to see one of the dead bodies again—and, perhaps more than that—and he couldn’t understand why.

And then it hit him. The smell. Deep. Rich. Mouthwatering.

Any thoughts of the dead fled his mind.

Verune fixated on the birds. On the largest one.

A swan.

His jaw went slack.

He wanted to eat it. The dead bird, floating in the filthy water with death and dirt and leaves and hair.

Verune knew he should have been shocked, but all he felt was the hunger, and the conviction that those dead birds would be the quickest way to a decent meal.

He approached the water’s edge. He walked slowly at first, then faster, and faster, intent on using a prayer. He hadn’t tried that one yet, but no longer had the patience to care.

“Faranen me, Halig Engel. Fultumen me faranen se mere. Ic bidden du, Halig Engel. Wyrcanen se mere lica se stan.”

Verune ran as he spoke. He had no difficulty with detailed meditations that accompanied Enille’s ancient prayer. It was as if the ritual had been seared into his mind, and—not only that—but… as he moved, time seemed to slow.

Verune did as the ancient texts recorded, conceptualizing disks beneath his feet—disks like the Sun, to lift him past the limits of mortal men, just as the Lass had done. The result was immediate: the ground had less of a presence beneath his feet, as if he walked on cushions, rather than the grass and mud that boarded the lake’s edge.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

His nerves screamed and burned as he moved. Acid boiled in his belly. Dizziness swept through his head.

But he didn’t stop.

He ran forward at full speed, aiming for the nearest bird-corpse—the swan. The sense of stepping on pillows continued without break as he stepped onto the water.

And he didn’t sink.

As Verune walked across the water, without stopping or thinking, he bent down and grabbed the swan by its slender neck and lifted it to his face and bit and chewed and swallowed.

Holy Angel…

The taste was beyond delicious. Beyond sweetness. Verune was in ecstasy as he stepped onto the island in the middle of the lake. He let go of the prayer, staggering as the invisible cushions disappeared from beneath his feet.

Sinking to his knees, he opened his eyes and ate. The burning in his nerves faded more and more with each bite. The sweet, succulent fowl’s feathers, bones, and skin seemed to melt in his mouth.

It took until the swan was halfway gone before Verune’s hunger had diminished enough that he could stop and think and see what he was doing.

And then he screamed.

Black ooze covered his hands and mouth, dusted in impossibly fine green powder, like sugar on chocolate. The half-eaten swan on the grass in front of him was vile beyond words—a twisted still-life, if he ever saw one. The Ooze-drizzled fungus had taken the place of the bird’s innards. Most of the down feathers had molted off, revealing skin moldy and rotten.

Verune crawled back with a scream.

The swan was not alone in its death. It was an aggregate death; a rat-king without rats. Smaller creatures accompanied it—birds, fish, flies—fused to the swan’s body. The dead vermin grew out from it in unnatural tendrils, trailing along the ground like flotsam on the beach—like seaweeds, or stranded man-o-wars.

Sweet ichor dripped from Verune’s lips, staining the hummingbird robe’s pelligrina. Flipping onto his hand and knees, he clambered across the grass and rose onto his knees, smearing the ooze onto the grass and then rapidly flashing the Bondsign over his chest. As looked up at the sunlight, he saw through the break in the copse where the flagstone path crested up the side of Pilgrim’s Watch.

He now knew where the birdsong had gone.

The bodies were everywhere.

The trees were sick, and their moldering branches were plastered all over by bark made of flesh. Corpses of squirrels and songbirds fused with the wood, sewn onto the branches by the fungus’ handiwork. The trees were hardly even trees anymore. The fungus was replacing their leaves and branches, even remaking them altogether.

A flock of clouds passed overhead, briefly obscuring the Sun. In the shade, the fungal bulbs on the mutant canopy glowed a soft, eerie green.

Slowly, the Lassedite turned around, coming to face the half-eaten swan on the grass. Pressing his palms together, Verune closed his eyes and started to pray, only to stop himself.

Wait…

The power.

The Angel’s miracles.

He felt them.

Now that the hunger had left his living corpse of a body in peace, Verune realized the energies within him were stronger than they had been before. He felt like a locomotive, its engine filled with fresh water and coal.

Fuel for the fire.

Hesitantly at first, but then with resolve, Verune crept across the grass, back to the corpse of the swan. He shuddered as he grabbed the bird, holding it by its rotting skin. Then, lifting it to his mouth, he took another bite.

He moaned. “Oh God…”

It was every bit as delicious as before.

Again, his arm itched; again, he heard the whispers in the silence. But this time, they were louder. They weren’t words, but they made him think of words.

Swallowing, he panted and gasped, chest heaving. He looked up just as the Sun came out from behind the clouds.

It’s a sign…

He dropped the dead swan and raised his hands to the sky.

“I understand. I understand!”

It was just as he’d always told Orrin: in every thing, there was a story. Meaning and purpose undergirded every fiber of creation. The Sunbasked denied this, as did atheists and pagans. For too many, Marvel Jenkins’ clever sophistries about the origins of species provided an easy escape; pervert the Elder Voices into mere literalism, so as to countervail the whole of scripture. How many lost souls had been fooled into thinking the Godhead’s artistry had been dethroned? Verune couldn’t imagine the ugliness of a purposeless world.

But he didn’t need to.

The whispering grew ever-so-slightly louder.

Because he knew better.

Only a fool would deny nature her allegories. And, were it not for the Angel’s grave, Verune would have been almost as foolish. Through the hunger and the swan, the Angel had shown him the path he was to take. It was right there, as clear as the dark stains.

He was wasting time. He had to take the fight to the corruption. Evil existed so that it might be sussed out and destroyed.

“The Angel has blessed me with divine power,” Verune muttered. Slowly, the Lassedite rose to his feet. “I am like the Beast Itself.” He stared at his black-streaked hand. “Evil will meet its end in my jaws.”

Eat the evil; destroy the evil; send it back to Hell.

Verune intoned those words like a prayer.

“Eat the evil. Destroy the evil. Send it back to Hell.”

Flying machines roared like giant gnats as sirens echoed in the distance.

I know what I have to do.

“Eat the evil. Destroy the evil. Send it back to Hell.”