I didn’t think of it as suicide. Perhaps because I couldn’t exactly see myself as a monster. And yet I knew I was the monster and the point of the stories was that the monster died. My mind was muddied enough that there was no cognitive dissidence because the idea of self and the monster didn’t overlap, not when I thought of who I was. Not that I thought of who I was at all. It was just a confusing time, which was why the clear idea of killing a monster stood out from the foggy disjointed thoughts.

It was a thing I knew to be true and right for as long as I knew anything. Every companion, whether they lived or died, ended up killing the monster they were sent after. It was a truth that was, somehow, truer than my idea of self.

With a clarity I hadn’t had since I died, I set out to kill the monster, to kill myself.

I tried a bit of rope tied around a span of aqueduct that ran high over a street. I’m fairly certain the drop did break my neck, but it also broke the wooden channel that carried the water. I struck the ground and laid there, unable to move as water poured down upon me while the white-hot healing fires scalded my neck and head.

That’s when I learned that the sun could burn me. I may have been burned before, back in the swamps, but the memory didn’t cling to me.

I hadn’t been burned badly enough to fear the sun, I didn’t remember the pain. There was just an instinct to get beneath things when the sun began to rise and my mind hadn’t risen high enough above bestial thinking to question why those instincts told me to do that.

Broken and unable to move, the sun rose and the stupor came upon me. Memory faded and I should have woken up the next evening remembering nothing of the day.

Yet I have clear memories of agony as the sun rose far enough above the mountains to cast it’s light on me. My broken neck must have healed enough, because I was able to scramble with arms, and then shortly after with legs as well. Again the pain was on such another level I still don’t have words for it and the half formed memory, is still the most painful I have.

I woke in agony hungrier than I’d ever been, yet much weaker as well.

I hunted, ate, and hid. It took several nights, likely weeks before the white-hot fires of healing finally faded.

Once they were gone things returned to normal for a while. The memories of trying to kill myself were gone to me, at that time, as if they had never happened. All I had taken away from the experience was a terror for the sun.

When it began to rise I fled, often times in pure terror. Since I went to ground so early I often huddled in whatever shelter I’d found, terrorized that the sun would still get in.

It was in one of those moments when the first hunters arrived. Or possibly just men moving through the sewers and the hunters came soon after.

There were three and I was shot and then stabbed with a long pole. I woke the next evening tangled in a fishing net and laying among their bodies.

Judging the time between events, even looking back at the memories, is difficult. It wasn’t until the Paladin that my memory cleared.

The next hunter could have come the following night or five days later.

They set traps and used weapons. The first time they used fire, simple fire from alcohol or lamp oil, I went into a frenzy.

Fire was a horrid, horrid, thing. I ate and ate but the white-hot healing that swept over the burned areas did not relent. I vomited up the gory flesh, blood, and organs when my stomach was full yet I needed more blood for the power it held.

The next time the hunters came, they came again with fire, and I fled.

They drove me out of the city, though I couldn’t say what path we took.

I ran for a whole night and woke in a shallow hole in the ground covered with dirt. I must have dug it when the sun rose and the stupor took affect.

For a time, I went back to just existing. This time in a forest. The leaves were changing colors in some of the memories as the distance I could see through the tangled underbrush grew.

If I fed I’d come out of the bliss full and satisfied, only to see the remains of whatever animal I had killed.

Twice I’d killed men who had bows. They could have lived in the Slums from their attire, yet I did not think of them as hunters. Rather of men hunting me.

From time to time, I woke with injuries, bolts or arrows driven into me that I’d not pulled out, nor even felt in the throws of the bliss.

Sometime later I woke in a small camp, in a tangle of cloth that had once been a tent of some sort. There was a fire burned down to nothing around a metal cook pot still full of food with dead men in green and white uniforms scattered around. By studying what remained I figured I’d fed on two or three the night before, eating organs and chunks of flesh as I drank what blood I could.

The others were broken things, but whole. If I’d been injured while killing these men, I’d healed from it by the time I woke.

Standing among the camp of men, I realized again that I was the monster in the stories. I didn’t have thoughts yet, not really, not like a proper man, but perhaps like a child. I was still without emotions. I felt no guilt or shame at what I had done, what I was, or what I would continue to do.

I could however decide to move away from people.

I made that choice.

I spent the night running again, trying to put more distance between myself and other people. Perhaps I ran the wrong way, perhaps I followed some scent or memory back. I can’t be sure but I woke again within the city, in another small kitchen, surrounded by the small bodies of children.

I sat with the bodies until the dawn and the stupor pulled my consciousness away.

All I could think about was what Cook would think of me if he could see me now. There was no shame or pain but I knew there should be. There was an emptiness I knew should be full of guilt and hate.

Even after the changes the Paladin brought about, when I go back to revisit those memories, there are no emotions attached. I knew he would be displeased and disgusted but I personally did not feel disgusted at the time. I felt cold, and rested, and confused.

I knew there was something wrong with how I was thinking. I didn’t know what it was but I knew that I should feel something sitting with the bodies of children I’d not only killed but partially eaten.

When I fully woke, if you could call the stupor falling away waking, I was resolved to kill myself.

I couldn’t say what route I took to get out of the city. I remembered passing people on the street who fled from me. I’d stumbled into their work as they piled bodies into carts. I must have been in Midtown as no one went out after dark in the Slums. No anymore. Not with the body count I’d left.

I remembered walking through an open gate in the outer wall and pausing there in the transition. The massive stone gate hanging over me. I don’t think I was giving it time to crush me, but then again I wasn’t planning much.

Something attacked me in the darkness outside the city. One of the shambling undead things. I reacted quickly and violently. I ripped some of the thing’s teeth away when I jerked my arm back. Then I knocked it’s jaw off with a back handed swing.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I followed its unsteady body down and made short work of it’s head with balled up fists. I tried to eat it, but didn’t even bother to chew the first mouthful of flesh. Whatever I needed in the blood was missing.

The taste of tar and char and filth faded as I pushed back up to my feet. It was still there but I was no longer focused on it.

The ground was dry and undisturbed and had that a sort of unused smell you get when you open a room you don’t often go into.

I inhaled lungfuls of it.

Not to enjoy the open air but in an attempt to smell something else.

I didn’t so much begin walking, as I sort of leaned forward and let my legs keep me upright.

I might have been looking for prey, or wandered in a mostly straight path, either way, I ended up at the Fairy House.

Everyone knew where the Fairy House was. I’d gone to see it personally, to press my hands against the magic that kept it separated from our world. Tangible proof that at least some of Cook’s stories were real.

At the time I was just tall enough to see over the stone wall that encircled the recessed garden on the back side of the huge boulder.

The garden was lower than ground level, yet was never flooded. I had pressed my face and hands to the invisible barrier and finally understood what Cook meant when he said it was spongy but hard. It had a bit of give to it, but it only gave so much.

I could look down into the Fairy Garden and see all manner of mysterious plants. Trees bearing many different fruits sometimes on the same branches, and flowering bushes never seen anywhere else.

I tried the door of course, everyone did, but the handle didn’t exist for us. It was simply not there. The barrier extended around the huge stone boulder as it did around the garden space so that we could not even touch the door or stone.

When I’d come the Fairy House the first time the rolling hills outside the castle walls were planted with all manner of grain. It was the one area around the city that was not heavily forested. Cook said it gave archers a line of sight on advancing armies.

When I’d come to see the Fairy House the fields had been full of crops. Now they were barren, wet, and in many places, unplowed.

If crops were planted in the plowed fields they had failed to sprout in the wet weather. The weeds however had thrived, and grew thick. To the east of the Fairy House the land rolled in an almost flat plain until it angled down into the swamplands that became the river.

The huge boulder turned cabin was as out of place in the flood plain as a Druid Stone Ring. The massive house-size rock had not come from here and no one knew how it had arrived.

Windows and a door were carved out of the rock, and inside, rumor said, was a house made of scented woods and soft light.

Everyone knew what the place was, a trap of sorts, a Fairy deal gone wrong.

It was an exchange of sorts for someone with power. They gave up some of that power to the house and it gave them a comfortable life.

Clerics, Paladins, and High Priests came here to die. They could leave of course, but rarely did once they arrived.

Moria sponsored the house now, if she still existed. Moria was the Maiden and the Hag, the Mother and the Sister. She was stern yet soft. She was a healer, yet everyone said her priests and paladins had failed to stop the plague. That their magics had little affect on the sickness.

When I was working for the hospital I heard rumor that her temple was full of the dead. Not as an insult, but as a final resting place. The faithful having no place else to go sat down and died in such numbers that no one bothered to clear them away for it would be an endless task.

Paladin Flin lived in the stone cabin now, or had, last I heard. Everyone knew his mind was going, or gone. That he was little more than a doddering old man.

Likely as not though he could still kill monsters. What was the purpose of a paladin after all if not to kill monsters.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I would not be able to knock on the door, on account of the barrier, until I’d already done so.

I knocked again just to be sure and then placed my hand on the wood. It felt warm and inviting.

A moment later the door opened and a very tall man was squinting out at me.

“My god,” he said quickly as he covered his nose and mouth with a hand, “Were you attacked?”

A moment later as he looked me over he removed the hand from his face to reveal a bushy pure white mustache and a long frown.

“Come in,” he said easily, “Moria’s blessing be upon you.”

There was a pressure that pressed in on me as I entered. Perhaps it was Moria’s blessing, though I’d never once felt anything associated with magic or prayer.

Or perhaps it was the magic of the house itself.

The pressure felt eerily similar to when I dove for snails with the other Alchemists in the harbor. The deeper you swam the more pressure the weight of the water exerted on you and the harder it compressed your lungs.

I took a few deep breaths, making sure, even with the pressure, that I could.

The inside of the Fairy House looked like an expensive home in the Slums. Simple but functional. Wood furniture and wood floors covered in worn woven rugs, and wooden furniture covered in old pillows.

The light was soft and as I searched I found the stories to be true, I could see no lamp or candle and yet the rooms were lit with a weak flat light that gave no shadow.

He had backed away from me but was still visible even in the other room. The whole floor was visible.

All the walls were half walls and the doorways held no doors. Unless he knelt behind a wall I’d be able to see him anywhere on this floor.

He said something as he fussed with a bucket of water and a kettle.

“What?” I asked pain blooming in my throat at the production of the word.

I wondered how long it had been since I had spoken.

I looked down at myself for the first time in a long time as he hung the kettle over the fire.

While the rooms were lit with soft sourceless light the fire was a bit unreal in the same way. It should be brighter, but it wasn’t.

“Come over here lad, let’s get you cleaned up.”

With his words came the realization that this was the first time I had considered my appearance or hygiene after my death.

I had literally never given it a thought.

I was absolutely filthy. My clothes were little more than rags covered in- I couldn’t say, but I could imagine. Blood and gore and dirt, swamp water and sewer filth, I had to smell absolutely horrid.

When I stepped forward I wondered if I had just been shitting in my pants. I couldn’t remember wiping or even squatting for that matter.

How long since I’d bathed? How long since I’d-

I was missing finger nails on multiple fingers and teeth, though-

I checked again, my tongue moving over the gaps in my mouth and then paused at the hole on the roof of my mouth.

I was missing teeth, but different teeth than I’d been missing before the plague. As a boy just before Master Juun accepted me I’d lost one to excruciating tooth pain, but that one was back, while I was missing two others.

Yet if I pushed my tongue into the gaps I could feel something hard there, like a tooth was just beginning to emerge.

The one that was there that shouldn’t be wasn’t long enough. It was also sharper. It should have been a flat chewing tooth as it was near the back, but it was sharper, shaped more like the teeth up front.

Paladin Flinn was dressed in simple clothing you’d find in any second hand store in the Slums. Clean, unstained, but simple wide weaves, what some might call threadbare.

“Drink this?” he said handing me a wooden mug.

It wasn’t hot tea like I’d been expecting, but some sort of ice cold fruit juice that seemed to slake my thirst with a single swallow.

“Are you injured?” he asked as his hands gently probed over my body touching wrists and elbows and shoulders, possibly looking for places that hurt.

“I’m uh,” I said trailing off. Now that I was here, I was having a hard time going through with it.

“I’m a-” Again I paused. The tall man had stopped touching me and was now waiting patiently.

I looked around again. Rough wood, simple quick growing pine from the smell. Nothing fancy, nothing carved or worked with gold or silver.

“I killed children,” I said. Then I met the man’s gaze.

“And ate them,” I added.

He blinked at me.

“I tired killing myself.”

Still he said nothing.

“It didn’t take.”

“It didn’t take?” he asked.

“I heal,” I said raising my hand as if to show him but then staring at the filth. I was disgusting.

When he reached out again he took my filthy hand turned it palm up and held it with his thumb in the center of my palm and his fingers on the back of my hand.

“Cold,” he said with a slow nod, “too cold, and too slow of a heartbeat.”

“You still look alive,” he said with a smile, “but-” he let it hang.

I didn’t feel anything, but I knew I should. He was saying I wasn’t alive. That was important. That was something I should have feelings about. Yet I did not.

He remained silent, and I wondered if he was waiting for me to say something.

“You did not seek this?” he asked.

“Of course not,” he said answering his own question quickly as he studied me.

“Of course not,” he said again, “who would?”

He nodded to himself and with a long sigh said, “Would you like a meal first? A hot bath? Tea?”

My mouth watered at the idea of cooked and spiced food. I’d been eating the semi-solid bits of what came out of the insides of things. Mostly I ate the larger muscles and the organs that contained the most blood. Organs I didn’t have names for, but could identify by feel or scent.

I was thankful that the memories were dull and foggy, and doubly thankful that while under the effects of the bliss, things like taste didn’t register at all.

“I think,” I said before pausing.

I didn’t want to eat, I just wanted to put dying off.

I shook my head.

He nodded gravely.

“Do you know what you are?” he asked calmly.

“A monster?” It came out more question than statement.

“Do you know what kind?”

I shook my head.

“Undead of some sort. Ghoul perhaps or some sort of highly functional zombie?”

He sounded like he was asking me but I didn’t know anything.

Before I could tell him as much he shook his head.

“It won’t matter, but this a curiosity. I’ve never had the monsters come to me before. Wait here.”

I drank again from the mug and swallowed the cold fruit juice. It was somehow both refreshing and spicy at the same time.

He walked into the kitchen area and took the stairs up to the next floor.

I heard him shuffling things around and muttering to himself.

I tried to pop my ears by pinching my nose and blowing.

While it worked under water it did nothing to alleviate the pressure here.