2020-04-01 22:30:18 ¶ ●

## Chapter 8

I’ve Seen Too Much

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857010/chapters/52693567

“And what is this supposed to be?”

The rat monster groveling at the foot of a shoddily built but towering “throne” (it was far from royal, constructed from rotted wood, crumbled stone, fraying rope, and a faded, plaid armchair) flinched, shuffling on its knees. Before it, beside a rather intimidating pile of everything from whole carcasses to severed limbs to steaming offal, was a single, still twitching hand, one finger missing and previously furred skin shredded in spots. It looked filthy, as though it had been found in a gutter.

“It… master, it was all I could find…”

The being astride the pauper’s throne, legs thrown casually over one of the arms and pieced together armor shining dully in the light of a distant, roaring bonfire, only curled his lip further at the monster prostrated on the ground before him, sharpened teeth bared and unblinking, yellowed, bloodshot eyes glaring viciously, without pity.

“Somehow I doubt that. Your brothers and sisters did far better… and this is the third time this month you “haven’t been able to find any better”. Are you trying to starve us all? Do you want our haven to collapse? Do you want to have to fight off the lizard’s pets by yourself?” he queried bitingly, one iron and spike toed boot bouncing in the air, and the rat monster spluttered, bowing closer to the ground and shaking on his hands and knees.

“No majesty, no! I-I… I will try harder, I’ll do whatever it takes-” he squealed furtively, the vestiges of what was once a tail whipping back and forth behind him, gathering dust, blood, and scraps of trash in its wake, but the king, upon his throne, turned his face away and waved an errant, uncaring hand through the air, afterwards inspecting its claws with an air of near boredom.

At his motion, the darkness at the edges of the firelight boiled, eager howls, screeches, and growls filling the ransacked courtyard. Gaunt, ravenous monsters shambled into the firelight with voracious hunger in their step and murder in their shining eyes and foaming mouths, every beast present focused entirely on the now sobbing rat.

“Oh I know you will. You’ll never let me down again,” the lounging monarch drawled, picking at a bit of flesh stuck beneath one of his claws (the comically small crown balanced between two flea bitten, ragged ears wobbled dangerously, reflecting light from the fire in a way that suggested it was made from laminated paper), and at his word the horde of ravening neophytes leaped upon the defenseless monster, his screams immediately drowned out beneath the snarling of the starving fiends and the tearing of limbs ripping from sockets and meat from bones.

Shadows danced across the boarded-up windows, cracked plaster, and tall barricades surrounding the court of the king, witnessing the nightmare of demonic rite taking place before the unmoving throne and the seemingly uncaring cat monster on it, his tail twitching back and forth excitedly the only evidence he was aware of what was happening at all.

A wide, shining pool of blood, bluish and tinged with swirls of black, spread slowly across the filthy flagstones as the disappointment of a monster was disemboweled and stripped of every scrap of flesh possible, growing wider with each ragged, pain-filled gasp that remained on the nearly dead monster’s fleshless lips, and a slime monster, one of the rat’s eyeballs floating amidst its mass, scooped some up in an obviously plastic chalice, squelching its way through the mass of gorging beasts to present its prize to the idle lord lounging in his chair.

He took it without even looking, swirling the thick, clotting liquid in a grotesque emulation of grandeur with a twist of his wrist, and sipped from it slowly, as though lost in thought, and blind to the massacre at the foot of his throne. He didn’t need to see it, after all. He’d seen far worse, done far worse, since the outbreak. He wasn’t the jelly-spined lowlife he once had been.

He was Burgerpants no more, a mockery and a peon no longer. He had ended his tormentors himself, with the outbreak of the Hunger, established his kingdom in the warzone that was New Home, and gathered his willing subjects to him with both care and cunning.

He was the Eye, master and majesty, never going hungry and never suffering a whit.

It was good to be king.

2020-04-15 20:30:44 ¶ ●

##

ACT > Pet > Greater Dog

Your screams ring through the snow laden forest for several hours while the beast devours you, coloring the snow in his clearing red with your blood. He keeps the hand, though, and rubs his head against the stiffening palm as he rolls about in the saturated snow with it, tongue hanging from his gore stained maw happily.