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horde became even faintly aware of the death moving within
their ranks.
As I killed under cover of storm cloud, I could only make
out the slightest details of my adversaries. When an arc of
blinding light poured into the bloodied spaces around me,
my eyes deferred to my ears for instruction. And when the
crashing thunder robbed my ears of the world, I moved by
the silence —beneath the thunder, between the night, from
within the shadows that danced and frolicked to the music
of the storm. The collective confidence granted them by
the force of their numbers diminished by the second, and
I could detect more than a few scrambling feet making for
escape. The devils were certainly powerful enough, yet they
were new to the world of stable things and could not fathom
the strategies of a solid opponent, much less one who was
unafraid. They came at me with claws, fangs, tentacles,
and hooves, and I conducted each to my sisters’ reddening
smiles. One nightmare—likely an older iteration— proved
wiser than the rest, waiting for my fury to abate. When the
last of the creatures had been slaughtered or driven off, and I
had returned my sisters to their sleep, it struck.
The creature secured itself to my back with flashing
talons—organic hooks with searing, chitinous barbs. It tried
to tear me in two with a passion rivaled only by my sisters’
bottomless depravity. As I struggled to rid myself of the
creature, it hissed sulfurous words into my ear, its breath the
carcass of a dream. “What wonderful teeth and claws your
kind’s dreams have given me. Am I not a splendid thing,
ripping the flesh from your bones? I swear to cherish your
screams for as long as I care to remember them.”
The creature was an undeniably exceptional member of
its kind, deserving of my compliments. “You are indeed
splendid, creature. But I’m afraid I have no screams for you
today. Perhaps my sister’s laughter will suffice.” Already in
hand, she shined a jagged grin into the creature’s cavernous
mouth. I could feel my enemy’s teeth scrape my knuckles as
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