Damn this world and all its creators.

"Noooo…!" the monarch screeched as I pushed my foot down harder onto the back of its neck, pinning it to the ground.

I'd already broken its back, and who knows what else, so it didn't have much control over its body. Yet even as broken as it was, the lizard still tried to claw its way out from under my heel. Four mighty claws, each with talons as long as my forearm, were twitching and digging into the soft earth beneath it. But that was really all it was doing, since it couldn't move its limbs more than a few inches at a time thanks to all the broken bones.

The lizard let loose a hiss as one of its own talons cut into its face. I watched a spurt of dark blood drench the grass around its head, spraying so far it hit a nearby fence post about a dozen feet away. The thing must have clipped a rather thick artery.

It was pissed.

But so was I.

"Who made you?" I asked as I kept pressure on its neck, keeping it pinned to the ground.

"Nooo!" the monarch shouted some more.

Was that all it knew? Since finding it, and attacking it, that's all it's said. Even when I was breaking its back it hadn't said anything else.

"Where's your parent?" I asked, speaking a little louder as I pushed ever so slightly down with more strength.

"No!" it screamed defiantly, its back legs kicking a little harder than before. I noted the way they dug into the ground and kicked upward, trying to drag itself free from under my foot. The legs were moving with more strength and surety.

It was healing already.

Taking a deep breath, I bit back a bunch of curses and growls… and glanced away from the monarch. I looked the opposite direction from the trail of blood it had just spewed, and over at the nearby farmstead. A quaint little house with a nice little garden all around it. The small one story house looked worn down, and you could tell with just a glance that this place was old, but well loved. The house was surrounded by green grass and flowers. There were crops growing not far from the house, surrounded by makeshift fences, and there was an area of culled trees past them. You could tell that this place had been lived in for years, maybe even generations.

And its inhabitants were all strewn all over the place. In hundreds of pieces.

The sight of the carnage made the world go dark for a moment as I bent my neck and cracked it. As I did, I felt the ground shift beneath me… and the monarch released another scream of pain as I pushed its head and neck even farther into the grass and dirt. I heard bones that had been trying to heal break again.

"No!" it screamed as its tail thrashed just once. I knew it had likely tried to just hit me with it, but it didn't have control over its tail anymore. That had been why I had originally broken its back, as to stop it from trying to whack me with that spiky thing. Well, that and my rage at seeing a monarch eating a bunch of people.

"Stop screaming and answer me…!" I growled down at the lizard, doing everything I could to keep it alive.

I was mere moments from just… ending it. It was a miracle I was holding my strength back enough as it was. At any moment I'd just… push down a little harder, and it'd be over. Even if its heart wasn't directly under my foot, near the base of its skull, the attack would have killed it.

This monarch, though far bigger than Pinchie, was just as young. Just as weak. Outside of its size, and the sharpness of its claws, teeth, and the spikes on its tail… it was in the end just a giant lizard. At least it had a normal color scheme, unlike Pinchie's rainbow of colors. This green lizard looked almost normal, other than its mighty size. It was likely some kind of monitor lizard, but I was much too angry to try and put a proper name to its subspecies.

"Answer!" I shouted at it.

"No!" the monarch shouted into the dirt, spurting out blood as it did between its sharp teeth.

Maybe that really was all it knew. That single word.

I'd given it plenty of chances. It knew it had no chance against me. I've put it through agonizing pain… yet still all it did was thrash and scream that single word.

I recognized a simple beast when I saw one. It was a monarch, and thus capable of sentience, but nothing more than the most basic of thoughts. It acted purely on instinct, and thus spoke only on instinct. It likely didn't even comprehend I was asking it questions. It only knew I was an enemy, and that I was hurting it.

Taking a small breath, I glanced around again… hated what I saw, and looked back down to the squirming monarch.

"Last chance. If you tell me what I want to know, I'll spare you," I offered.

For a tiny moment I expected it to say something, since it didn't just outright scream at me… but instead it just kept thrashing around, trying to free itself.

"Well!?" I shouted as I put a tiny bit more pressure upon it.

I got only a hiss in return. Not even a hiss in response, just a hiss from the extra pain it was now feeling thanks to my squishing its head.

"Fine."

A blink of an eye later the whole lizard went still. Although it had already been mostly lying on the ground, it still made a loud thump as it fully relaxed and stopped moving… as I crushed its head and neck under my foot.

I kept an eye on the creature as its brains and gunk splattered around my foot, and noted that not even a single talon twitched as it died.

"Worthless creations," I mumbled as I shifted my foot, pushing it deeper into the mushy earth, and felt the hard orb beneath it. Scraping my foot backward, revealing dark dirt that was soaked in blood… I saw the slightly glowing orb within the dirt and gunk, half sunk.

Bending down, I picked the heart out of the gore. It was a smaller one, maybe even smaller than Pinchie's had been, and instead of being green in color was some kind of mix of purple and black.

It was a weak heart. Weaker even than the small heart Renn had just recently absorbed.

"No denying it now, is there?" I grumbled as I stared at the thing.

It made no sense, for a god to be making such… incomplete monarchs. Ones so weak and useless. But there was no denying that was what was happening.

Taking a deep breath, I sighed as I stepped back a bit from the corpse of the monarch. It took a few more steps than I had thought it would to get away from the gore, and I went to scrape some of the lizard's skull off my boot on a nearby patch of grass. I took care to make my foot and leg look as… presentable as possible. It was a little difficult, since basically my whole right leg under my knee was now stained with blood and gore, but I still tried my best.

Usually I'd not care much for such a thing. I'd just wait until I could bathe, or get a new set of clothes… but I had a reason to be as presentable as possible.

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Taking another deep breath, I slid the lizard's heart into a pocket and headed for the house nearby. I tried not to look too deeply at the carnage all around the house, but it was hard. There were even pieces of the people who had lived here up on the walls and roof of the building, as if they'd been exploded from inside out. It was hard to tell thanks to how gruesome the scene was, but it looked as if there were at least half a dozen people strewn all over the place.

That monarch had not eaten cleanly. At all. Almost as if it'd not been eating in the first place, and had just killed to kill. And it hadn't thought of eating until after the deed was done, which was why I had found it gnawing on one of the pieces, and as such had not approached it as I had Pinchie. I had attacked it before saying a word, which might have ruined any chance I had at conversing with it… but I didn't care. Not anymore.

Stepping into the house, I hesitated a moment at the door. It had been propped open by a fallen chair and because of that I had expected the house to be just as gruesome as the outside. To imply the monarch had broken in and chased the people within out as they tried to run away. Instead though… I found a perfectly clean, and tidy, home.

Other than the fallen chair blocking the front door, which I gently moved out of the way and placed down upright, the house looked fine. No blood. No carnage. No chaos.

It was a stark difference than the world beyond the wooden walls, to the point it almost felt unnatural… as if not real at all… but I knew better than to think such a thing. The very air stunk of death, and not just that of the monarch's.

Glancing around, I carefully strode deeper into the home… searching for the one I had heard earlier.

I couldn't hear them at the moment… which worried me. Had they ran off or something? Maybe slipping out the back door or a back window…? I'd not fault them, at all, but…

Then I heard it. A sniffle. Tiny, quiet and alone.

Walking down a short hallway, I ended up at the last door. It wasn't closed all the way, just barely shut, so I was able to softly push it open. It creaked a bit on its hinges, and came to a stop about half way since it rubbed up against a floorboard. One that was just slightly uplifted from age and wear.

Inside the room was a bedroom. One that looked like any you'd find in such a homestead. There were only a few shelves and drawers, two medium sized beds, and something of a curtain was hung up in the center of the room. I could tell by the little hooks in the walls that one could wrap the curtain around one of the beds, as to grant a little more privacy. A typical bedroom for a family too big for their home. Odds are it was the children's bedroom, and one child was significantly older than the others… judging by the small stuffed animals on one bed, and the books and trinkets on the desk near the other.

I heard a tiny noise, not so much a sniff but a whine. One too high-pitched and small to come from an older child. Unsurprisingly… it came from under the bed that didn't have the stuffed animals upon it.

Stepping into the room, I made sure not to do so too quietly. I allowed my footsteps to be heard, and made sure to make even more noises as I kneeled down next to the bed they were hiding under. I huffed a little, on purpose, as if exhausted or hurt… even though I wasn't.

Waiting a small moment next to the bed, I listened to the one hiding beneath it. From what I could feel, and hear, it was likely a small child. Though were they alone…? I had thought I had heard two heartbeats upon entering the room…

"Don't hurt me…" a tiny voice whispered.

My jaw clenched as I knelt further down, and lifted up a bit of the blankets that had hidden the bottom of the bed… and found a young girl, holding a cat.

Ah. Two heartbeats indeed. The cat's eyes were as wide as hers, though surprisingly the cat's heart was beating thrice as fast as the girl's.

"I won't hurt you. My name is Vim… Are you okay?" I asked the young girl. She looked to be about ten years old, but it was hard to tell since she was curled up on her belly. I wonder how the cat was being so calm, even though its heart was thumping so harshly. She was holding it rather closely, almost squeezing it, yet the animal didn't look like it was even thinking of escaping.

The young girl sniffed and nodded her head. The cat's ears flickered, reminding me of Renn, thanks to her movement… but still it didn't try to escape her clutches.

I gave her a gentle smile, and pushed the bedding farther over the bed, so it'd stop trying to fall back down and block my view. I didn't want to startle the poor girl, or the cat she held. "You hid real fast, didn't you?" I asked her.

She blinked a few times and then nodded. "I… I heard the screams so… so I…" she stammered a little, and the cat meowed as she shifted. She must have squeezed it a little tighter.

Screams of her family, or the monarch as I killed it, I wonder?

"What's your cat's name? Mine's named Renn," I asked.

The girl gave me a weird look, as if I was the one curled up under a bed and half a moment from having a panic attack and not her. "R-renn…? That's a weird name for a cat. She's Beetles."

"Beetles…? Likes to eat beetles does she?" I asked.

She nodded quickly.

"Well nothing wrong with that. I don't mind a beetle every now and then myself," I said.

The young girl's face quickly scrunched up in disgust.

Smiling at the girl's obvious disgust, I gestured lightly at her. "What's your name?"

"Mistle."

"Mistle…? As in mistletoe? Or the bird?" I asked.

The girl's face of disgust contorted into confusion. "I… I don't know?"

Right.

Switching tactics, I tilted my head and gestured for her to crawl out from under the bed. "Why not come out…? Everything is okay now," I said.

"Is… is the monster gone…?" she asked worriedly as she looked past me, to the door not far from me.

I nodded. "It is. It's dead."

She frowned in a way that told me she didn't believe it… yet she still started crawling my way. As she did she let the cat go, and although it too crawled out of the bed… it didn't run off or hide. It quickly went to licking its own paw near my feet, completely unbothered by me or the girl who joined it.

"Your cat is very brave," I said as I stayed kneeling, even as the girl stood up next to me.

She was probably a tad older than I had thought her. Early teens or maybe even in the middle of it. Maybe this had been her bed, and not the one with the stuffed animals as I'd assumed.

She was just scrawny, and shaken. Scared. Shocked. It made her look far younger than she was.

Couldn't blame her for such a thing, though. Even if she had hid the whole time… she had heard it all. I didn't need to imagine to know the kind of screams she had borne witness to. I knew them well. Too well.

"Beetle is brave," she whispered as she stared at the door to the room, as if unable to take her eyes off it. She either expected the monster to walk into the room at any moment… or knew what she'd find just outside it.

"Then let's be just as brave, shall we?" I said as I slowly stood.

Mistle finally looked away from the door and up at me, and she grabbed at her dainty dress she wore. It was likely something one wore to bed… had the monarch attacked in the morning, before they all were up and ready…?

If so that meant she'd been hiding under the bed for hours. Nearly half the day, at least.

Poor, poor girl…

Reaching out, I offered my hand. "It's okay. I'm here," I said gently to her.

Her little lips quivered a bit, and she glanced again to the door. "The monster…" she whispered.

"It is dead. I killed it."

She looked back up at me, her eyes full of hope. "Really…?"

I nodded. "I'll show you. But before we do… how about we gather up some clothes, Mistle?" I suggested.

She sniffed. "Clothes…?" she asked.

"Do you have any relatives that live nearby, Mistle? Family?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard her question.

Mistle tilted her head a little. "I do… Mommy's sister lives with the rest, in town," she said, answering me even though she couldn't comprehend we were talking about this here and now.

Glad to hear it, I nodded. "The town near the river?" I asked. I had been rounding it not too long ago, before I had sensed the monarch and came here. It wasn't far at all, just a few miles away. I didn't know the village's name, but I'd passed by and through it often enough during my circuits around the Society.

She nodded as the cat started to stretch. It clawed a little at the rough wooden floorboards as it did, without a care in the world.

"Then let's go to them, shall we…? Why don't you help me gather up some clothes and stuff for you, okay?" I said.

"Why…?" Mistle asked as she took my outstretched hand, finally.

"The monster is dead… but it's blood might draw other monsters here. You know how bugs and animals come when you cook something? It's the same thing," I said carefully.

"Oh… that's not good…!" Mistle said worriedly as she gripped my hand tighter.

"No, it's not, is it?" I said as we quickly, though gently, gathered up a couple bags of clothes and items for the girl. Strangely I didn't even have to pick up the cat as to bring it with us; Beetles had followed us dutifully even as I carried Mistle out of the house, leaving from the back door, and left her home behind… and all the carnage alongside it.

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