The world had become a river of screaming.
It flowed around us, a torrent of panicked, green-skinned bodies, their faces masks of terror as they fled the loud-hot thing at their backs. They were no longer a tribe, no longer an army. They were just meat, running from the fire and into the waiting teeth of my new family, the Gutter-Guard. I watched from my safe place on Kale's back, my small hands clutching his harness, my face pressed against the clean-stone smell of his neck. He was the rock in the middle of the river, calm and unmoving, and I was the small, clinging moss that would not be washed away.
He moved through the chaos with a purpose that was terrifying and beautiful. He did not run. He walked. His every step was deliberate, a slow, inexorable advance towards the Sad-Hut, the place of quiet weeping. His new army, his ragged, desperate collection of Pale-Things, followed in his wake. They were a strange sight, their naked, bruised bodies a stark contrast to the grim, determined set of their faces. They held their new weapons—the crude axes and spears of their dead tormentors—with a clumsy, white-knuckled grip, but they held them nonetheless. They were no longer sheep. They were a pack of wolves, newly fanged and hungry for their first kill.
We stopped before the hut of the Pain-Artist. It was a small, squat building of mud and warped wood, and it seemed to absorb the firelight, radiating a palpable aura of misery. The air around it was cold, a pocket of dead, stagnant air in the swirling heat of the burning camp. From within, I could hear a faint, frantic sound, the scraping of something being dragged, the low, guttural curses of a creature that knows it is trapped.
Kale stopped, and I felt the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing, the calm in the heart of the storm. He turned his head slightly, and his cheek, smudged with soot and a smear of blood that was not his own, brushed against mine. My hand, small and clumsy, came up. I reached out and, with the corner of the ragged deer hide I used as a blanket, I gently wiped the blood from his face.
It was a small thing. A stupid thing. He was a warrior leading an army to war. He did not need a goblin-child to clean his face. But he did not pull away. He simply paused, his body going still for a single, timeless moment. I felt a deep, shuddering breath move through him, a sound that was not quite a sigh, not quite a sob. He turned his head and his eyes, the color of the sky before a storm, met mine. He gave me a small, sad, tired smile. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Then the moment was over. The warrior returned. He turned back to the hut, his face a mask of cold, hard purpose. He looked at his new, broken army.
"He is in there," Kale said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "He is alone. He is afraid. The pain you have suffered is a debt. The time has come to collect it." He looked at the Berserker, the big man whose body was a canvas of the artist's work. "You have the honor of knocking."
The Berserker's face, which had been a mask of numb shock, twisted into a snarl of pure, unadulterated hatred. He hefted the massive, spiked club, his knuckles white. He did not knock. He charged.
He hit the flimsy door with the force of a falling boulder. The wood exploded inward, torn from its leather hinges, and he stumbled into the darkness of the hut, his roar of vengeance a raw, animal sound. The rest of the survivors surged in after him, a wave of pale, vengeful ghosts, their clumsy weapons held ready.
Kale followed them in, his movements slow, deliberate. He was not a part of the charge. He was the conductor, stepping onto the podium as his orchestra of pain began to play. I clung to his back, my small body trembling, a silent observer to the horror that was about to unfold.
The inside of the hut was a nightmare. The air was thick with the smell of old blood, of fear, and of strange, sharp chemicals that made my eyes water. Tools, wicked and sharp, hung from the walls: hooks, saws, clamps, and things for which I had no name. In the center of the room, cowering behind a heavy wooden table, was the Pain-Artist.
He was small, even for a goblin, his body wiry and thin. He was not a warrior. He was a craftsman. His hands, I noticed, were long and slender, his fingers delicate, like a spider's legs. He looked at the charging Berserker, at the mob of his former victims, and his face, for a fraction of a second, showed a flicker of surprise. Then it settled into an expression of profound, professional contempt. He saw not an army, but a collection of his own broken art, now inexplicably moving on its own.
He was fast. Impossibly fast.
As the Berserker's club came down, aimed to turn the table and the goblin behind it into splinters, the Pain-Artist was no longer there. He moved with a scuttling, sideways motion, a blur of greasy leather and malicious intent. The club slammed into the table, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The Berserker, his momentum carrying him forward, stumbled into the wreckage.
The Pain-Artist was already on him. He held no large weapon, only a small, curved blade, no bigger than my hand. He darted in under the Berserker's clumsy guard and, with a surgeon's precision, drew the blade across the back of the big man's knee. It was not a deep cut, but it was perfect. It severed the tendon.
The Berserker roared, a sound of pure agony, as his leg gave way beneath him. He crashed to the floor, his massive club falling from his nerveless grasp.
The other survivors, who had been a wave of pure, righteous fury, faltered. Their charge dissolved into a hesitant, confused shuffle. They had expected a simple, brutal execution. They had not expected the rabbit to have teeth of sharpened steel.
The Pain-Artist giggled, a high, thin sound like glass breaking. It was a sound of pure, joyful cruelty. He danced back, his eyes glittering in the dim light, his small, curved blade held ready. He was in his element. This was his workshop. This was his art form.
"You are broken things," he hissed, his voice a sibilant whisper that cut through the silence. "You think meat-bags can fight me? I am the one who unmade you. I know every crack in your pathetic souls. I know how to make you scream my name."
He moved again, a blur of motion aimed at the old woman, the Queen with the axe. She was slow, her movements stiff with age, but her eyes burned with a cold, hard fire. She brought her axe around in a wide, clumsy arc. The Pain-Artist simply ducked under it, and as he came up, his blade flashed, opening a long, shallow cut on her arm. She gasped, stumbling back, her grip on the axe faltering.
He was toying with them. He was not trying to kill them. Not yet. He was a connoisseur of suffering, and he was savoring the moment. He moved among them like a phantom, his blade a whisper of pain. A cut here, a jab there. He was a sheepdog, herding his flock of terrified, broken sheep.
"Kale," a voice whispered in my ear. It was Corvus, the raven, his mental voice a dry, cynical rasp. He had been a silent observer until now. "Your army is failing, Speaker. Their rage is a blunt instrument. He is a scalpel. This is not a battle they can win."
He was right. The survivors were falling apart. Their courage, a fragile thing built on a foundation of Kale's words, was shattering against the rocks of their own trauma. They saw not a goblin, but their torturer, and their bodies remembered the lessons he had taught them. They remembered the pain. They remembered the helplessness.
Kale's voice cut through the rising tide of their panic. It was not a shout. It was a calm, clear, analytical statement.
"His left leg," he said, his voice a point of absolute certainty in the chaos. "He favors his left leg. He puts no weight on it when he dodges. The Mason. Break it."
The Mason, the old man with the hammer, had been cowering near the back of the hut. But at Kale's words, his head snapped up. He looked at the Pain-Artist, at the way the goblin danced and weaved, and he saw it. A subtle, almost imperceptible limp, a hesitation in his movement. The Mason's eyes, which had been dull with despair, now held the sharp, appraising gaze of a craftsman who has just identified a flaw in the stone.
He moved, not with the charge of a warrior, but with the deliberate, plodding gait of a laborer. He raised his heavy iron hammer. The Pain-Artist saw him coming and sneered, darting in to deliver another shallow, tormenting cut. But the Mason did not flinch. He ignored the blade that opened a fresh wound on his cheek. His eyes were fixed on his target. He swung the hammer, not at the goblin's body, but at the floor in front of him.
The heavy iron head slammed into the packed earth, the impact a dull, solid thud. The Pain-Artist, his evasive maneuver predicated on the floor being solid, suddenly found his footing gone. He stumbled, his bad leg giving way, and for a fraction of a second, he was off-balance.
It was the only opening they needed.
The Berserker, who had been struggling to rise, let out a roar of pure, animal fury. He lunged from the floor, not as a warrior, but as a beast, grabbing the Pain-Artist's leg in his massive hands. The goblin shrieked, a sound of genuine surprise and pain, as the Berserker's grip tightened like an iron vise.
The old woman, the Queen, was there an instant later. Her face was a mask of cold, ancient rage. She raised her axe high over her head and brought it down with all the strength of her wiry frame. She did not aim for the goblin's head or chest. She aimed for the trapped leg.
The axe fell. The sound was not the wet crunch of flesh. It was the sharp, clean, undeniable CRACK of bone.
The Pain-Artist's shriek was a sound that transcended pain. It was the sound of a master craftsman whose favorite tool has just been irrevocably broken. He collapsed to the floor, his leg bent at an impossible, sickening angle, the bone a white, sharp shard protruding from the skin.
The spell was broken. He was no longer a phantom, a dancing master of agony. He was just a small, crippled goblin, writhing in the dirt.
The survivors, who had been a collection of terrified individuals, now became a single entity. A mob. A wave of pure, concentrated vengeance. They fell upon him.
It was not a battle. It was a butchering. The Mason's hammer rose and fell, a brutal, percussive rhythm of breaking bones. The Weaver's spear jabbed again and again, a frantic, sewing-machine motion of piercing flesh. They were not warriors. They were a force of pure, cathartic rage, repaying every moment of their suffering with a storm of clumsy, brutal violence.
I buried my face in Kale's back, unable to watch. The sounds were enough. The wet, tearing sounds. The dull, thudding impacts. The high, thin, gurgling screams of the Pain-Artist as he was systematically, joyfully unmade by his own broken art.
Kale stood still through it all, a silent, unmoving pillar in the heart of the storm. He did not participate. He did not need to. He had wound the clockwork of their vengeance and set it loose. His work was done.
The screaming stopped. The sounds of the beating subsided, replaced by the ragged, gasping breaths of the survivors. They stood over the thing on the floor, their chests heaving, their bodies slick with sweat and blood. The thing was no longer a goblin. It was a pile of broken meat, a ruined canvas of flesh and bone.
The Berserker, his face a mask of bloody, triumphant tears, turned to Kale. He raised his fist, a gesture of victory, of gratitude. "It is done," he gasped.
"No," Kale said, his voice quiet, but carrying a chilling finality that cut through the haze of their rage. "Not yet."
He stepped forward, moving through the exhausted, blood-spattered survivors. They parted for him, their fury spent, leaving them empty and shaking. He walked to the ruined thing on the floor and looked down at it. The Pain-Artist was still alive. Barely. A single, hate-filled eye fluttered open, fixing on Kale. A low, wet gurgle, a curse or a plea, escaped its ruined throat.
Kale knelt beside it. He did not draw his sword. He reached out with his good hand and gently, almost tenderly, placed it on the goblin's shattered skull.
"You built your world on pain," Kale whispered, his voice a soft, conversational thing that was more terrifying than any shout. "You believed it was the ultimate power. The ultimate truth. You were wrong."
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a final, intimate secret. "There is a greater power. A deeper truth. It is the power to unmake. The power to erase. Let me show you."
A faint, blue light, the light of pure, focused mana, began to glow around Kale's hand. It was not the warm, golden light of Samuel's faith. It was a cold, clean, analytical light. The light of a scholar about to conduct his final, brutal experiment.
The Pain-Artist's eye widened in a final, profound understanding. It saw not a warrior, not a victim, but a power it could not comprehend. It saw a god of a different, more terrible sort.
The blue light flared, and the goblin's body simply… dissolved. It did not burn. It did not explode. It just came apart, its flesh and bone unraveling into a cloud of shimmering, blue-white dust motes that hung in the air for a moment before fading into nothingness.
Where the Pain-Artist had been, there was now only a dark, bloody stain on the floor.
Kale rose to his feet, his hand still glowing with a faint, residual light. He looked at the stunned, terrified faces of the survivors, at the empty space where their tormentor had been.
"Now," he said, his voice a quiet, simple finality. "It is done."