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medieval doors from my path and investigated the growing
conflagration unfurling before me. There were only vague
shapes, pent in so much smoke and fire, fleeing and fighting,
but mostly just dying.
The thing rapidly shrinking the mercenary army appeared
to be a monstrous undead child, dressed in powder blues and
bright pinks and holding a giant lollipop—the sweetness
I’d smelled earlier, no doubt. I believed the urban legends
referred to the thing as the Missing Child—an elemental of
murdered children. Regardless of the high pedigree of the
interloper and my innate desire to seek it out, I would have
the triplets as my first contest of the evening.
I descended the cracked stone stairs, revealing myself to
the fleeing mercenaries, allowing them to see that certain
death now surrounded them. I was curious to see who they
would find more frightening—myself or the Missing Child.
I felt quite insulted when the dying masses risked my fury
by flooding past me, seeking the exit at my back. I resolved
to meet the undead child whether he was on my list or not.
Yet I spied the Prince of Smoke—one version of him, at
least—wrapped in thick darkness, standing high above the
slaughter, grinning. He looked down from the ramparts of
his fake castle, scoffing at both me and the murder-elemental.
The Missing Child made for the thin man and I stepped
in front of the creature, signaling that on this day, we were
going off-list. The thin men were mine. The shambling
thing’s dead eyes fell upon me, and I could sense he mistook
me for easy prey.
I felt the cold hands of the undead creature close upon
my arms as the thing thought to tear me into pieces as one
might a piece of paper. I was growing quite tired of my most
recent opponents attempting to rid me of my limbs. My arms
had just shrugged off the coils of heavy iron, they had lifted
monstrous cannibals into the hollows of the underworld,
and they were routinely called upon to heft the incalculable

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