Page 14 of Crown of Flame

“I can read emotional states, just as you or anybody else can.”

For a moment, I almost believe him. But from all indicators, he hadn’t met my kind until only minutes ago. He couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of human body language. I don’t know if he even knows what a human is.

“And now you’re angry,” he observes.

That’s when I hear a wail that pierces through the wind’s roar and the falling snow. It sends terror through my soul in a way unlike anything I’ve ever felt, and I’ve felt a lot in the past several hours.

There are strange creatures out in the wilderness of Prazh, but that didn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard. It sounded almost human, but perverted and warped in a terrifying way.

“What was that?”

I look around me, desperately trying to find the source of the disturbance. All I see is the quickly falling snow that blows into my eyes and the trees that cover the landscape.

“If you don’t know, why would I?”

It cries out again. I turn behind me, where I think it originated.

Then I hear the same cry in the opposite direction.

Oh, gods. Whatever that is, there’s more than one of them.

“You swear that’s not you pulling a prank on me?”

This time, the cry is closer.

“I don’t know what a prank is-”

I feel the wind knocked out of me, as I’m suddenly knocked to the ground by something very large.

I collect my senses. A rancid smell fills my nostrils.

Inches from my face is another human’s face, but it’s apparently been stitched into the stomach of an ursain. The jaw opens up wider than any human’s normally could, fur surrounding the human skin.

I scream in horror as a strand of its drool falls into my eye.

Then the monster is lifted into the air.

I look up to see my rescuer, the strange extra-dimensional being, struggling. With his mind, he pacifies the monster. But I gather that his powers might be based on weight because I don’t think he can hold it forever.

Were these prisoners… human?

I look up and confirm a large hole in the wall of the tower, just as something rams into the fiery being, breaking his concentration. He’s sent flying across the frozen fields, leaving me with the transfigured ursain and –

“Oh, no.”

The other creature is seemingly several creatures stitched together. I see the hooves of an equu, the fur and torso of a worg, the head of a dripir, and worst of all, several human faces sewn into the monster’s body. One of them I immediately recognize.

I almost can’t find the words.

“What did they do to you, Ket?”

It’s dumb of me to expect an answer. The creature just lets out several high-pitched shrieks, which emit from all of its mouths.

The sheer volume of it causes the tower to crack slightly, and a piece of stone falls down from out of the fifth floor wall, nearly killing me.

It might be just the distraction I need to get away.

As I try to run through the snow, afraid for my life and filled with fury and dread, I wonder what gives them the right to do this.