Book 3: Chapter 12

I would burn him to the ground. Hot, burning hatred. Death. Destruction, Rage. I shiver from the cold.

“Huh?”

The fire burning in me suddenly disappears as if it was a lie. I'm not hot at all. I'm ice cold. This isn’t some kind of metaphor for something I did. The coolness is from some kind of external factor. An icy dread crept over my body, dampening my fiery spirit in nonexistence. It smothers me completely, causing me to do nothing but shiver. It feels like death itself has gripped my heart in its icy embrace, its fingers tendrilling around my very soul.

I feel fear. Not anger. Not hatred. Not resentment. Bone-chilling, murderous, deathly, fear. I'm confused. So are a lot of people in the room of that inn. They are looking around in confusion at this cold icy feeling that overwhelmed the room. That’s when my eyes finally began to focus on the epicenter of this maelstrom.

“A-Ariel?” I mutter.

Her face is covered in shadows. I can’t read any expression in it. Her eyes can’t be pierced from the blackness. The guy who had grabbed her butt seems a little less wary compared to many of the others in the room. Instead, he tries to laugh it off, using his size to comfort himself.

“Hahaha… as I was saying, why don’t we-“

“Whhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the fuck… do you… think… you’re doing?” The voice came from Ariel’s lips, but she sounds nothing like a princess.

Rather, she sounds like a Yakuza, some muscled punk ready to beat down a store clerk in a shitty web novel.

“Hey, don’t talk like that, bitch?”

“Bitch!” An eye pierces through the shadows, just one eye, staring at the big man with a glare of pure hatred. “Yes… hero’s bitch! You’d touch… this body… that belongs to hero’s hand only!”

“Hah? You’re hardly in a position to talk!” He gestures to other guys all around her. “Come on, let’s teach this bitch a lesson. We’ll give her “hero” what’s left of her in the morning!”

A surprisingly large amount of men seem bored as they all start surrounding Ariel. However, I don’t make my move. I felt the thing they couldn’t feel.

“Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.” Ariel throws back her head and laughs, her eyes completely unfocused as if she doesn’t have any bearings on reality at all.

“She’s- she’s already lost it!” One man mutters.

“Fine…” Ariel’s laughter ceases all of a sudden and she looks down at nothing in particular.

“F-fine?” The man asks cautiously, bringing a knife up cautiously as if he is afraid to pull it on her.

“You… may touch me,” Ariel responds dryly as I shake. “You just have to do one thing for me first.”

“Eh… then what’s that?”

“Die…” the words come out as a deathly whisper, and then Ariel leaps forward.

“Scary! Scary!” I cut off the vision instantly. “It’s too scary!”

The thing I saw… that coldness, that death… I'm not afraid for Ariel. I am a little afraid of Ariel. Screams started to fill the night, not giving me any respite. No, I did not leave the audio on. I could hear them from here, over a half of kilometer away. The screams and cries sometimes sounded human, other times sounded like the noises of a pig being slaughtered.

As they broke through the night, I begin to walk towards the inn. I can’t stop myself. She is… Ariel… right? Screams…. Cries… the inn is finally in view. The door bursts open and I jump in surprise, my nerves taught. A man fell out, landing on the ground.

“Oh, Gods! Save me! Save me, Gods, Save me!” He screams, trying to crawl away.

His body suddenly is dragged back into the door, his fingers desperately clawing at the ground as it gives way to the force. The door slams shut behind them. A second later, blood splattered out from the bottom crack of the door. More screams. Blood hits the window, although that was all I can see in the apparent darkness.

The death rattles finally seem to end, and once again the night is eerily quiet. There, the inn stood, no indication of anything but a little red in the edges where red shouldn’t be. I walk up to the door, forcing every ounce of willpower I have left to open it.

As light spreads across the room, I could see the forms of what once were bodies. The walls, floor, and ceiling are painted red. Guts, intestine, blood… it is everywhere. There was only one spot free from blood, a single circle in the middle of the room. A woman stood in the circle; whose back was to me. There was not a single drop of blood on her clothing, but in her hand was the severed head of the bartender.

I accidentally trigger the doorbell, alerting her to my presence. Her head turns, a single eye meeting mine.

“You saw…”