A Monster We Never Truly See

I have seen the look of awe and wonder, ambition and terror for all of my seemingly immortal life, from the lowest peasants to the highest kings and queens, cast in my direction like some fishing line with no bait. Here, it was no different. Every pair of eyes were fixed upon me, from the lords of a region whose name has changed over the course of history into one I do not recall. The only ones that do not covet me are those of my master, strolling before me as we make our way to the throne and the new king sat upon it. And there behind him, is another of my kind.

Yes, you could say those stood guard by the lords surrounding the throne are too. But to us their impressions are so insignificant that it is pointless to even attempt comparing them to mine. Figures hiding behind cloaks, some hunched over, some glinting blades between their sweeping garments, ready to strike upon those their masters deem lesser, or flaunt their lethality with those they see as equals. Nothing like what lurked behind the king’s throne, its razor sharp talons resting casually upon its carved wood peak. Those eyes it locked with mine were a deep violet that shimmered in the light of the braziers, and those thick shadows that poured from it and across the floor coiled around the closest lords, making them appear larger.

“Good evening, King Raymon,” announced my master in his confident cadence.

The King let fall the fist under his chin. His reply was cold. “You are correct, Lord Ren, it is indeed evening.”

My master stopped not twenty paces from the throne and my clawed feet thudded to a halt just behind his. The torrent of liquid shadow that flowed from me had left a river behind us, almost flooding the vast hall. Now it pooled and started to lap at the boots of the closest lords. My kind shifted uncomfortably.

“Your warm welcome hints to me that you already know the reason behind my visit to this…” My master gave the worn stone and fraying banners of the hall a quick glance. He filled his lungs with air and I shared in his taste of its decay and neglect, “…this fine castle.”

“Spare me your insults, Lord Ren. Present your terms so that I may consider them properly and end these whispered rumours I have needed to contend with.”

My master produced a mock bow and I continued to eye down the one behind the king. Soon, I knew, our powers would be put to the test.

“Give me your lands over the Imirish River and the mountains to the north, King Raymon, and I will not unleash what I have at my disposal,” my master gave a flick of the head over his shoulder.

The shiver that went through the others required no movement from me, as I let some of the disguise enshrouding my form fall away.

“Your terms are unrealistic, Lord Ren. I advise you to reconsider. Sharing them would surely benefit us both adequately.”

I already knew bargaining was futile. My master’s thoughts were my thoughts; his actions my actions. It had been the same for every master who had come to possess me and my illustrious power. Always had it changed their minds, exaggerated their lust, their ambition and their blindness to those not on the same level as me. Never had that changed and I assumed the future would hold no difference.

“King Raymon, it is you who insult me. Your inability to notice the power I bring with me today befits that of one inadequate to be king.”

“You are but a young, foolish boy, alone against the might of an entire kingdom. You cannot hope to win, even with what you control. Make yours sacrifice part of itself to better mine and I will give you the lands you seek.”

“What arrogance!” blazed my master. I was saturated with his rage and a light like that of molten rock began to glow within the darkness surrounding me. There within it all, his pride over obtaining such an asset as myself stoked the fires vivaciously. “Do you not see what stands before you?! How dare you even offer such a request! To sacrifice a specimen such as this! It shall be war upon us and you will rue the day you ever overlooked Lord Ren of the Southern Empire!”

My master turned on his heel, the rich cloak of crimson clasped over his shoulders billowing in a wide arc, and stormed from the cold hall and its even colder audience. The final look I gave the one brooding behind that throne made its eyes narrow in hatred and shadows clash hard with mine, only to have its expression flash in shock when its power splintered against my own. I left through the double oak doors with a smirk that mirrored my master’s.

It took the annihilation of three cities, four towns, ten villages, and fifty thousand apparitions of my kind to draw the king out into one final battle against us. By that time I had only expended but a droplet of myself to fuel the phantom soldiers that shook the ground with their invasion. Now the two of us stood upon the crest of a pine forest bedecked with snow, waiting for my masters third opponent. But for me this was one on a list too long to count. The monotony of it plagued me little, fuelled as I constantly was by the aspirations of my new masters, yet there was an emptiness inside me I could not quite explain. Some hole where the potential to do something other than destroy gaped wide and silent. What potential that was, I had never had the master to find out. Maybe there was no other use for the vast power I had been born with. Maybe one with such an unsurmountable well of it had gone past the level of ever being able to have a master who considered what other use there was. For who would behold my magnificence and think otherwise? They would have to be mad… or… would they be…

“The false king approaches,” announced my master, wrenching me from my thoughts.

I turned my attention towards the slope which ran away from us to the north. Upon it stalked the one who had lurked behind that throne. Beyond it and up another bank, sat the king beneath a pavilion of shivering fabric. My master was similarly positioned, with his boots resting casually upon a footstool and wrapped tightly in a rich fur coat I had summoned to fight away the cold. Such fragile things these beings were without our kind.

“Make it quick. This campaign has already drawn on long enough.”

I inclined my head and strode out to meet my opponent, revelling in my master’s anticipation of how I was about to obliterate this new enemy.

The both of us stopped a hundred paces from one another, talon deep in snow the bite of which we could not feel. The murmuring wind was the only thing that disturbed the pristine landscape around us, for our kind did not converse. Once our masters have given our orders, we may be swayed by no other.

The king’s pawn made the first move. It gathered its power together and swelled to the size of several hundred castles, the shadows melding away to be replaced with silver scales that glittered in the moonlight. I acted in kind, matching his size with scales of the darkest obsidian. The battle began with a blow to my shield that had the gods tremble.

We fought for hours. Our blows caused the mountains to quiver, fires we conjured set snow to steam and the forests to an inferno that rose up into the heavens, our talons left gouges in the earth like freshly ploughed fields, and thousands of our phantoms battled in the spaces we waltzed around as we exchanged swings from monolithic weapons. But in the end, my adversary learned what all those before it had come to learn: that I was too strong.

Dawn was approaching when I cast down my enemy in the slush of mud and snow our combat had created. I was impressed. We had both sacrificed huge portions of our forms to fuel our attacks. For me, however, the sacrifice was only a scrape upon the oceans of reserves I still had left. Yet this one had come closest to draining them. I felt my masters respect rippling down from the hill behind me.

And suddenly pain lanced itself through my chest. I snapped to the hill. My master was stood with a spear of something glistening and black thrust through his own chest, protruding from a figure behind him and hidden in the shadows of the forest. Wings melded into the dawn from my back and a boom from their immense lengths had me catapulted across the churned battlefield and by my masters side within heartbeats. With one look into the shadows, a bolt of steel skewered the assassin. With the next look at my master, I had him cradled in my huge arms and whisked away into the rising sun, only to have an order from him force me to the forest floor again with a crash that sent snow exploding out from under my taloned feet.

I checked for more enemies. Ghostly moonlight sliced down into the clearing I had disturbed and made the snow shine and the forest swell with darkness, but there was no one. No one except for a small boy, staring horror struck at me and frozen in place with lumps of the snow I had launched still dripping from the many scarfs and wool layers he wore to protect himself from the cold I could not feel.

There was a gurgle from my arms. I snapped to my master and beheld his life leaking from him into the snow, tainting that pure whiteness with a red that quickly turned black. He was staring at the boy and pressing both hands to the gaping wound. There was nothing I could do, no healing power did I possess, for I was a creature of destruction, bread by centuries of masters to only wield weapons of conquest and corruption. Not once had a master of mine shown that sort of ambition when faced with the possibilities my immense power gave. Always had this wave of regret flooded from them then when they looked up into my nightmarish face, understanding at last that I lived on and they did not. Countless times had I shared this feeling and yet all I could think, as my master turned back to the boy after another splutter, was who my power would pass to next.

How unsympathetic we were to these frail beings who commanded us.

“I… cannot… I…” My master grimaced and clenched his wound. “Take it,” he spat. “B…b-boy. Take it… please!”

Desperation radiated from the soon to be corpse I held. The boy, who I now saw to be holding a bundle of logs, did not move an inch.

“D-d-don’t… you want…” My master had to stop once more as the pain doubled. There was poison at work here in his wound. “Please… boy… you must take this.” A shaking hand heaved itself up to point at me and the boy’s eyes grew wider in fear. “Please… on a dying man’s promise… promise me to take this and not let it be lost or…” His breathing was fading and the arm slapped back across the blood soaked chest, “…or let the wrong person find it.”

At last the boy found some courage, placing a foot in front of the other, and I felt one final command force me to take a few steps back. It was enough. The logs were dropped in hast and the boy was at my master’s side in seconds.

“What can I do. I can run for help. Tell me what you need!” he blubbered.

“Your name… kid… quickly,” replied my master weakly.

The boy hesitated, confused.

A sudden burst of energy had my master grab the boy by the scruff of his wool jumper. “Quickly!”

“Fred Imbereth,” exclaimed the boy.

My master let go, sighing. “I… Lord Renly of the Southern Empire, do bestow this power unto Fred Imbereth upon…” His eyes drooped and he said the last words in what was barely a whisper, “…upon my death.”

And then his soul left us both for that other place I knew nought of.

The forest grew silent and I looked upon this boy. Slowly my power ebbed towards him and I felt a small ray of his fear trickling into the great expanses of my consciousness. He was not the youngest master I had ever had, but he was the first I had ever received in such circumstances.

Suddenly I shuddered.

“Now this is interesting,” I felt myself conveying aloud. “Never before have I had one who wishes to deny me. Not ever.”

The boy looked upon me with an expression I had also never in my endless life seen aimed at me. It was a look of… sadness, mixed with a small measure of joy and disgust? I was so unnerved by the look I knew not how to describe it.

“I… I would not know what to do with you. This is too much for one person to have,” revealed the boy.

It was like a thorn had, at last, slid its way out of a place long forgotten. That hole I always thought existed, shone out and was a hole no longer, but a part of me that consumed the darkness which had plagued my being for millennia. My next words came unbidden from my mouth, as if spoken by another, “If you do not want me, then you, Fred Imbereth, are the perfect person to have me.”

“I’ve told you, there is not a use other than giving most of you away that I can think of. But a fraction of this will keep me happy for many lifetimes.”

For a boy, he was the wisest master I had ever had the pleasure of meeting. “Then give most of me away. But do so correctly and justly.” I had never used such words. I was changing, and not just in the mind; my shadows were leaving me, talons were dissolving into dark dust, the smoulder of glowing red power faded from my innards like frost at the first caress of spring, my scaled armour ran down me as if turned to honey. Soon I was standing in the snow, several feet shorter – the same height as my new master – flexing smooth fingers of soft hide, with an entire coat of beige fur covering me from head to paw.

The boy smiled at me then, with a kindness I had never known, and I padded after him as he led me back to his home to change the world.

Fred Imbereth was the longest master I ever kept. For decades we strived to give the bottomless pools of power I had accumulated over centuries of war to those he deemed in need. I accomplished feats I never thought possible. I built things. Farms and homes and lives and smiles and joy that lasted longer than those which had kept my previous masters’ greed at bay.

Fred was an old man when finally he stood beside me on the crest of a hill overlooking lands made rich with his compassion. The setting sun was bathing us both in a deep orange and the air smelt of the fermented fruit the heavily burdened trees had provided us this summer.

“I think it is time, my friend, for me to take you up on that offer I refused all those years ago,” he said in his aged cadence. “I can live to the end of my days in peace and comfort with what power you have left.” He then turned to me. “And then it will be time for you to go on. I hope this fleeting life of mine has taught you what you can accomplish.”

I looked once again at Fred Imbereth and for the first time in my life, I felt sad.

When my dear friend left me for the place I knew nought of, I passed to his children, helping my own kind raise them and care for them until they were old. After a time, I was given over to aid others in their ambitions in life. Some commanded me to go back to my old ways and filled me with thoughts of conquest.

On and on, from master to master, building and destroying, killing and corrupting, for as long as these beings found a use for my kind. Because, after all, I was only money.

But I never forgot the one who had taught me how to heal.