“I didn’t know Lancelot would fail this quickly,” he drawled, almost disappointed. “He’s already that slippery and secretive. Might be the only one subtle enough to go toe-to-toe with that loudmouthed bastard.”
Ahlgrath spasd in protest. “You—! Let go! I need to carry on the Lord’s plan!”
“To use the Outsiders to kill Caliburn Pendragon?” the man echoed, then scoffed so hard it could’ve flayed flesh. “Of course. Another beautifully cowardly idea from the church of worm-spined corruption.”
“You DARE—!”
“Ahlgrath,” the man said, looking down with sothing worse than hatred: disappointnt. “You do understand, don’t you? Lancelot needed the Outsiders because none of us were good enough to kill Caliburn Pendragon. Not even close.”
“That’s not true! If only the plans weren’t exposed! If only that fucking Saint had just stayed dead! If only—!”
“Ahlgrath,” the man interrupted coldly, “why are you bending over backwards to worship soone who experinted on you like a lab rat?”
Silence.
Ahlgrath twitched.
“W-What are you talking about—?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb now,” the man said, voice turning razor-sharp. “You, my gelatinous little friend, are one of his successful experints. That’s why you’re even alive. A twisted, stitched-up freak barely stable enough to slither.”
Ahlgrath recoiled. “That’s… that’s not—”
“Not his masterpiece, mind you,” the man added, voice laced with venomous amusent. “But a decent prototype. A ‘proof of concept’ with delusions of grandeur.”
He let the words hang like a noose.
And Ahlgrath? For the first ti, he didn’t speak.
He simply shook, a quivering pile of fear and mories, held like trash by soone who knew exactly what kind of trash he was.
Because deep down, he knew.
His beloved master hadn’t saved him.
He had made him.
“Oh, poor little sludge-soul,” the man cooed with venomous mockery, holding Ahlgrath up like a piece of roadkill that had dared to dream. “Who left you in that cozy, festering cave, hmm? Who dropped you off like a wet turd in a cradle of moss and darkness?”
He twisted his grip slightly, just enough to make Ahlgrath writhe.
“Who fed you, nurtured you—waited for your little sentience to awaken like it was so divine fucking gift? Who shaped you from a twitching mistake into a proper little monster with a taste for blood and a hunger for validation?”
Ahlgrath thought he’d just been born that way. That he’d crawled out of the womb of the abyss, snarling, fully ford in purpose.
But the man laughed. Low. Cruel.
“Have you seen what he did to the children of the Inkian King?” he asked, eyes sharp as glass. “You did. Have you ever wondered that you were just a baby too? Just a puddle of potential. Like them. Just raw material.”
“Liar…” Ahlgrath hissed, his form vibrating with denial.
“Liar?” the man echoed, raising a brow in theatrical disbelief. “No, my slimy friend. Lancelot was the liar. Lancelot the visionary. Lancelot the vivisectionist of souls. Lancelot the Goddamn Sculptor of Suffering. He was the one who carved you into this masterpiece of grotesque obedience.”
His voice turned sharp and smug.
“Those sweet little villages near your cave—weren’t they just trying to kill the monster he designed you to be? Can’t bla them, really. They saw you and thought, ‘Ah, a nightmare co to life. Best put it down before it eats the livestock—or the children.’”
“Shut up!” Ahlgrath shrieked, his gooey mass warping in wild, unstable fury. “SHUT UP!!”
But the man only smiled, rciless and amused.
“Oh, how elegantly he twisted you,” he said. “How sweetly he stoked your hatred for humanity. How gentle his little nudges—like a gardener pruning a diseased rose. And when he killed those villagers for you—when he bathed your trembling body in their blood, whispering that he was your savior… Did you ever stop to think?”
He leaned in, voice dropping into sothing intimate and venomous.
“Did you ever wonder if he planned that mont? If he didn’t save you, but staged the whole play? To show you that no one else would love you. That no one else could. Because he’d made you so fucking unlovable, they’d have to fear you.”
Ahlgrath twitched, silent, trembling with sothing dangerously close to realization.
After all—who would accept a creature like him?
A thing made of rot and regret. A sentient sar of corruption and filth. A creature whose very existence scread mistake.
The man’s eyes glead with derision.
“Those poor, poor villagers,” he said, voice dripping with false pity. “They tried, didn’t they? Tried to spare you from a life of being his pet, his puppet, his failed little Frankenstein. And what did they get for it? Butchered. Massacred. All because they looked at the monster and saw what he was, not what he wished to be.”
He let the silence stretch.
“And you? You saw slaughter and called it salvation.”
“SHUT UP—!!!”
Ahlgrath’s corrupted mass convulsed, warping like a blister about to burst. “Just because you—you—YOU…! Just because Master spared you doesn’t an you’re special!”
The man laughed—short, sharp, and utterly unimpressed.
“This bitch,” he snorted. “Oh, this bitch. So what?” He leaned in like a jackal admiring the twitch of a dying animal. “Between and you, a walking miscarriage with opinions, a jellied ss of failed magic and at that killed his own mother just to be born—which one of us wins this little damned contest, huh?”
Ahlgrath quivered. No words ca.
The man grinned. Slow. Ugly. Unforgiving.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “None of us are better.”
Then his voice dropped into a whisper that struck harder than any scream:
“We are the fucking sa, you little shit.”
Silence blood in the wake of the words, heavy with rot and old blood. Not comfort. Not camaraderie.
Just the shared, rancid knowledge that they were both creations—reborn and built. Sculpted by the sa cruel hands. Two symptoms of the sa godless disease.
“So,” the man drawled. “Just fucking give up already. Don’t worry. Now that you’re here, I promise—I won’t let you suffer anymore.”
Ahlgrath twitched, a ripple of dread sloshing through his slimy form. “W-what are you going to—”
The man tilted his head with a grin that didn’t belong on anything human. “Looking at you now… you’re just too pathetic. So at the very least, be a good little al, yeah?”
“What—?!” Ahlgrath barely scread before the world snapped to black. No ceremony, no resistance. Just a wet, sucking plunge as his gelatinous body collided with the slick heat of a throat—and began the slow, horrifying slide toward digestion.
No-no-no-no-no!
He panicked, thrashing with blind fury, his form ballooning, expanding wildly—trying to wedge himself in the man’s airway, choking him out with raw terror. He conjured teeth from bile, claws from bone, shrieked through the esophagus like a devil being baptized in sewage. “AAAAAAHGHGABHGHH!”
But the throat tightened like a vice, relentless. Peristalsis pulsed, dragging him deeper, deeper, deeper, drowning him in cursed stomach acid like he was just another scrap of at in this bastard’s gut.
“FUCKING SON OF A BITCH! YOU BASTAAAAAARD!” His scream bubbled, muffled and boiling, as the acid chamber gurgled a welco.
No prayer. No rcy. Just digestion.
The man chuckled, wiping the last of the gooey scream from his lip.
“That was… fucking disgusting.”
Not that it was a surprise. Ahlgrath always had the flavor profile of a wet scab marinated in self-pity. But hey—can’t bla the little turd for tasting like shit.
He flopped into a battered chair, spine cracking as he leaned back with the air of a walking dead on break. The stench of bile and resentnt lingered in his breath, but he barely noticed. He was too busy reflecting on the filth that was his own goddamn existence.
And then—he started humming.
Softly. Sweetly. Like a lullaby echoing from the mouth of a corpse.
“Logres’ burning, Logres’ burning, fetch the engine, fetch the engine, fire, fire…”
“Fire, fire…”
“Pour on water, pour on water…”
“Burn is burning, Burn is burning… Burn the surging, burn the surging, fire, fire… fire, fire…”
His face shifted—lted, almost—at the mory.
The giggle of a baby boy. A chubby little bastard with stars in his eyes and violence in his blood, grasping his finger like he wasn’t the walking ruin he’d grown into. That brat’s laughter, echoing through a small, dreamy nursery. A miniature god of war being rocked to the tune of arson.
“That little brat…” he muttered, fingers digging into his temples. And just like that, the rot wept from his eyes—tears black and thick, like grief gone septic.
He didn’t sob. He leaked.
Not pain. Not regret.
Just rot.
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