Shaun Depra: The Curse

​                 The night was dark, as nights tend to be. A waning moon hid behind thick cloud banks, trying to pretend it wasn’t there so nobody would come looking for it to ask awkward questions like ‘Why do you keep moving across the sky every night?’, ‘Why are you always changing shape?’, or ‘Why are you hiding behind that thick cloud bank?’. Nor were the stars trying to shed any light on the goings on down at ground level. No-one and nothing really wanted to see that.
                Slick and viscous, a layer of a black ooze covered much of the cobblestone street outside a quiet bakery. Hatched through it were long, harsh streak marks from boots slipping and skidding to a halt. There were a few back-prints, too. A moment later, there were another two fresh trails as booted feet slid backwards through the slime. In them were legs, tensing and bracing against their motion but enjoying little friction and even less success. Lord Shaun Depra, patrician of the town, leaned into his shield and hunkered his head down as long, spindly insect legs forced him backwards. More legs lashed out spitefully at him, whipping past either side of his head or catching his shield with a dull thud.
                “You’re disgusting. You’re a bloated, gluttonous wreck of a man and no-one could look upon you without shame.” Rattled a wet, clicking voice between dozens of teeth and a pair of mandibles.
                Lord Depra held his silence and tried to ignore the words even as a part of his mind turned to how he should starve some weight off himself. He wasn’t saving the bakery for his own purposes; he knew he didn’t need it. But the rest of the town did. And even if they hadn’t really wanted it, the baker would certainly prefer for it to remain standing.
                The embattled lord finally gained a footing as his boots cleared the ooze trail, bringing his assisted slide to a halt but doing nothing to abate the flurry of insect legs. More and more of the sharpened feet found their target as the seconds passed, avoiding his guard and biting into his clothing and flesh. As monstrous as they were, the creatures that attacked the town always learned from experience and found new ways to hurt Shaun whenever he raised a defence. That was the nature of his curse; perpetual torment by horrors from the shadows, tailor made to quash any happiness he might feel.
                Finally relenting to the pressure and punishment Shaun lurched away to one side, allowing the monster’s vast maggot body to slam aground in a splash of its dark slime. The frankly excessive number of legs protruding from its bulging segmented form clattered across cobblestones in an effort to turn around, and Shaun lashed out wildly with his sword. A slow drip of seeping black ooze spilled from a gash on the maggot hide, accompanied by a resonant and sickeningly wet scream.
                “Shh!” Lord Depra shushed, which was a bit rich considering what he’d just done. Traditionally if someone wants quiet from somebody else, striking them in anger with a sword is a poor way of achieving it. Even if it didn’t hurt that much, it’s not exactly the kind of behaviour that’s conducive to cooperation.
                “You’ll never be able to hide your shame. It’s obvious just from looking at you, filth.” The monster hissed, jumping on the hypocrisy bandwagon. Regardless of the similar colouration between pot and kettle though, each word made Shaun’s wounds sting a little more. The beast was right, of course, much like those who had come before it, but Lord Depra had to at least try to hide the monster. No matter how much it hurt him, he couldn’t let it ruin the town or draw attention to itself. If it was seen, if these nightly attacks by toxic beasts became public knowledge, then the people would know him to be a failure. Then again, they probably already knew he was a failure if they’d lived here through the rest of his reign. But either way they didn’t need to see the details. He could try to keep at least some secrets precious and hidden away.
                 A piercing ‘Scree!’ emanated from the demon as it pitched a rock towards the bakery window.
                “No, no, no!” Shaun wheezed in panic, launching himself into the way with his shield in the hope of deflecting the projectile. Breaking glass windows was the opposite of being quiet, and the attempt confirmed Lord Depra’s suspicions that the beast had no intention of obeying the shushing instruction at all. Mercifully the stone ricocheted from Shaun’s shield and struck the ooze-covered ground, sliding away out of arm’s, or eldritch horror leg’s, reach.
                “You’ll wake everyone up! Stop it and just die!” Lord Depra growled, receiving a razor sharp leg tip into his hip for the trouble.
                “Everyone will wake up and find out anyway. Either to me or to the fact that you’re out of your depth. How could they not recognise that you’re the worst Lord this town has ever seen?”
                Disappointment, fear, and anger roiled beneath the surface of Shaun’s face. They were unsure of how to interact with one another or present their relative proportions, and the result wasn’t enjoyable. The monster wasn’t wrong; Shaun knew he was a disappointment in every sense of the word. But right then he didn’t want to be reminded of it, and his shame took second place behind the need to hide his secret struggles from his subjects. Lord Depra raised his weapon and lunged back into combat.

                Several harrowing minutes later, sword dripping with viscera, clothes torn and bloody, and excitement about bakeries significantly diminished, Lord Depra stood over the ragged mess of body parts which had previously been the maggot-like horror. Bearing a host of new wounds which would eventually become old scars, Shaun watched with little satisfaction as the assembled pieces of demon started to melt away and dissolve into the ground. Soon enough there would be nothing to see, no evidence that Lord Depra had been battling anything at all, except for the cuts, the bruises and the lack of sleep. That was all Shaun was ever left with. Every time he fought like this it took something away from him, stole a piece of him away, and the battles were getting more frequent. After living with this curse all his life, Lord Depra wondered how much of him was left to take; he was sure that by now he was more hole than whole, and holes were the only thing these demons refused to rob him of.
                Aching, sore and fatigued Lord Depra knew that he needed help, but that involved having to talk about his problems and relive the combats he’d fought since last time he’d asked for assistance. A familiar voice in the back of his mind told him that seeking aid was pointless. Shaun asked the voice for its reasoning, since the statement was certainly bold and flew in the face of what he felt to be a sensible course of action.  The voice told him, simply, to remember that he’d sought help in the past, but here he still stood over the body of a demon he’d just had to kill. If the help had been worth anything then the curse would have been lifted by now.
                While Shaun tried to construct a counter-argument for his own mind, he heard the bakery door creak open.
                “What was that?” the baker asked, dressed in his night clothes and not looking overjoyed to be awake in the middle of the night.
                “Wolves.” Lord Depra lied, turning to face him. “It’s nothing now, though. They’re gone. You’re safe.”
                The baker looked around quizzically.
                “I don’t see any wolf bodies.”
                “I’ve disposed of them.” Shaun told him.
                “That quickly?”
                Shaun couldn’t think of a convincing cover story.
                “Yes.” He settled on.
                “Right. Well, er, I’m eternally grateful my liege.” The baker said dutifully, even though he didn’t sound very sincere.
                “No problem.” Lord Depra said, regardless. He was desperate for the interaction to be over. “I’ll be on my patrol.”
                Shaun walked away before the baker could reply again, but he could have sworn he heard the baker muttering to himself, asking why the Lord of the castle was stalking around taking the night patrol instead of the town guard. Everyone was suspicious. His facades were cracking and falling away, but he kept up his smile in case anyone else was watching. In all reality seeing the Lord striding around at night alone with a beaming smile only made him look more sinister and suspicious.
                To the sound of his own dragged feet Shaun reflected on how grateful he was that the monsters dissipated in death.  It didn’t matter that no-one would believe him without tangible evidence, because he didn’t want anybody to know anyway. It just meant that he didn’t have to carry a broom around to sweep up behind himself. Quite aside from cleaning up after every battle being distinctly burdensome, a lord walking around with a mop and bucket screamed for a strong cup of tea, followed by a coup.
                Lord Depra wore his public-facing smile into a darkened alley and then allowed it to fall away, almost hearing it shatter on the ground once he knew he was alone. He knew the monster attacks had been getting worse. They’d been striking harder and farther out in recent months, and there was only so long that the townspeople would put up with the threat of rampaging horrors once they were discovered. Once or twice could be laughed off; it was a story to tell and everyone would remember where they were when the multi-tentacled pseudo-rhino tore through the market. But when those attacks were daily and the market ended up in ruins more often than it sold wares, there was a problem. That was just basic economics. When Shaun spent more time listening to his own thoughts telling him he was worthless than he spent leading the town there was a problem. That was just his life.
                Shaun forced himself to wearily trudge through the quiet pre-dawn streets, boots still blackened with ooze and dust, and feeling numb and blind to his surroundings. Everything passed by as part of the same blurred and faceless landscape while some subconscious part of his mind navigated him this way and that along roads, paths and alleyways to the one person he thought he could rely on in times like this.          
                At the centre of a broad street, flanked by the stores of wealthy merchants of exotic wares, stood the store of the wizard and apothecary, Halogyn.
                “All with maladies and ailments welcome. Come to be healed.” Said the sign suspended from a bracket on the wall, which was immediately contradicted by the dark, foreboding, and above all locked door. Blackened panels, iron-barred windows, and a heavy lock stood as a barrier to even the most able-bodied visitor, let alone the ailed. Hoping that none would recognise him as he stood there, despite the clear “Dragon of Depra” coat-of-arms on his freshly battered shield, Lord Depra lifted the iron handle of the novelty ‘pestle-and-mortar’ knocker and struck it hard three times. That was the kind of commanding knock that he’d been taught as a young noble. Unfortunately it was also taught to the other young nobles, young peasants, and anyone else who might, when visiting a house other than their own, like to be let in. That robbed it somewhat of its attention-grabbing and identifying powers.
                Once the echoes of his knock had faded to silence Shaun stood at the door, staring at its dark panels because there was little else to look at. Occasionally he glanced about himself to check that no-one was watching, but mostly he listened for the sounds of someone moving inside and he waited. When waiting grew tiresome Lord Depra turned to his staple of worrying instead; about whether his knock had been heard or not, about whether he was being watched, about whether he was being ignored or if knocking again would make the wizard angry about his impatience, or if not knocking again would make him seem feeble and foolish and meek, or if he had woken the wizard’s neighbours and made them angry instead, or all of those possibilities at once and more. So busy was he with this interminable worry that he was surprised when the door finally cracked open.
                “Is there an emergency? The shop is closed until eight o’clock.” Said a sleepy young voice, which most certainly wasn’t that of the haggard old wizard Halogyn. In the small gap Lord Depra could see a face he didn’t recognise to go along with it.
                “Young lady, I apologise for intruding at such an hour but I am in need of help from the wizard. Please let me in and tell him that Lord Depra seeks his assistance.” Shaun replied. He reasoned that the wizard must have taken an apprentice, but it wasn’t like crotchety old Halogyn to share his secrets. His puzzlement took a back seat when he reminded himself that a new person in town meant that he had one more soul to disappoint.
                “Lord Depra!” the young woman said, startled. “I didn’t recognise you in the dark my liege, the apologies are all mine to give.” She continued, to the music of bolts being withdrawn hurriedly and latches unfastening. The dark door swung inwards to reveal the familiar interior of the apothecary’s store; racks of bottles with labels unreadable by anyone but the wizard lined the walls, but they were dimly lit and their colours were undiscernible. The counter was bare even of the wizard’s leger, instead serving only as a barrier between the shop and the staircase. Lord Depra had seen the shop in this state many times over the years, but never with a young woman of perhaps her early twenties holding the door with one hand and a lantern with the other. She was a strange addition to the shop, the only thing in sight which wasn’t of dubious origin or distinctly musty. Halogyn always called it an ‘arcane mystique’, but Lord Depra had identified it instead as ‘needing to dust the shop once in a while’. The continued presence of the wizard’s arcane mystique must have said something about his commitment to it, or about the presumed apprentice sharing the wizard’s opinions on housework.
                The girl’s face was gentle, but she’d pulled it into a frown of some kind of professional curiosity and anxiety as she watched Lord Depra enter the shop. He looked at her expectantly.
                “Oh!” she said, coming back to her senses and hurriedly closing the door behind Shaun. “I’ll get Halogyn right away, sir.” Her full length robe swamped her as she made for the stairs, the pale purple fabric in dire need of taking up, taking in, and every other kind of taking to make it actually fit. It was as if she held some vain hope that at her age of adulthood there was still a chance that she might grow into it.
                As the apprentice disappeared with an urgent beat of footfalls Lord Depra pulled a stool around from the counter and sat himself down, immediately collapsing his head into his hands and his elbows onto his thighs. He’d been in this shop, in this very seat, so many times for help in nights past when the demons and the monsters were coming thick and fast and he’d felt like there was no way he could handle it alone. The wizard did all he could, treated Shaun’s wounds and gave him advice from some place of voyeuristic wisdom, but Lord Depra’s visits had never been able to cease. The wizard Halogyn always treated his symptoms but couldn’t cure the root of the problem. None of the coloured tinctures and salves staring at Shaun from the shelves had helped to stem the tide of beasts or made Shaun feel any more able to deal with them, but even so he kept coming back. Even futile efforts felt better than doing nothing, sometimes.
                Where one drumbeat of footsteps had played and disappeared up the stairs, two now started up again above Lord Depra’s head; the gentle, quick steps of the apprentice girl and the slow, heavy, and uneven gait of Halogyn. He was possibly the only person Lord Depra knew who could convey disgruntled irritation via the sound of his footsteps alone.
                With his practiced timing Lord Depra lifted his head from his hands and sat up straight in time to look like a noble when the apprentice and Halogyn emerged into the shop. Looking barely awake and grumpy about it, the wizard stomped down the staircase behind his light-footed and eager apprentice. She took herself to one side of the stairs once reaching the bottom, and Halogyn sat himself on a swivelling chair kept behind the counter to make himself look more aloof and important when in company. This was a vitally important part of his image in the circumstances, since Halogyn was wearing a one-piece pyjama garment that somewhat undermined his imposing presence. His beard was tucked neatly into the collar for safe keeping.
                “Lord Depra.” Halogyn said wearily, looking along his large, hooked nose at Shaun. “I see I once again have the pleasure of a visit as far outside of my office hours as it is possible to be. Monsters? Your unbreakable curse?”
                “Uh… I… yes, Halogyn. Sorry. These are the times when the demons attack and I need your help.” Shaun explained guiltily.
                “Yet your troubles persist at all times, even without the monsters being around, as you have told me many times before.” Halogyn sniped.
                “Yes, they do!” Shaun defended. “But the monsters are getting worse now, and everything is getting harder to fight and hide. The curse has grown stronger again.”
                Halogyn sighed and closed his eyes.
                “Fine. I can salve your wounds again, Lord, but please remember that I am not such a fool that I cannot tell a blade-cut from a claw-swipe. If you have woken me up with some false story to cover what you’ve done to yourself again…”
                Blood rushed to Shaun’s face, angered and embarrassed by Halogyn’s tone, and for revealing secrets from the corners of Shaun’s mind in front of the apprentice girl. Maybe the wizard was compensating for his pyjamas still.
                “They are from claws and legs this time.” Shaun said, equally to Halogyn and the floor. “I need to break the curse and stop the demons coming for good. I can’t keep this fight up. The dark thoughts and the demons are both growing stronger.”
                “Then let the town guard do their job and help you.” Halogyn said for what he felt to be the hundredth time. It was barely the thirtieth in reality, but he’d just woken up so his counting and numerical estimation wasn’t up to its usual standards.
                “They can’t help. They can’t know about it.” Lord Depra told the wizard, panicking at the prospect. “No-one can know. The monsters say such terrible things that no-one can be allowed to hear.”
                “So you need to fight them all yourself then, that’s it? And you want me to make you stronger so it’s easier? That kind of potion takes time to brew and doesn’t last forever.”
                “No. Well, yes, but I don’t want to keep fighting. I want the monsters to stop coming and I want to be able to think straight.”
                “Then organise a hunt, destroy the nest, and get some sleep.” The wizard ordered with a frown.
                “It’s not that easy. I’m in so much pain all the time now. I feel like I want to curl up and hide under the bedsheets all day so that no-one ever has to see me.”
                “Where does it hurt? Tell me where it hurts and how it hurts and I will heal you.”
                “It’s not a physical pain it’s… it’s like my head wants me to suffer.” Shaun said. With a dutiful but frustrated bedside manner Halogyn took the sides of Lord Depra’s face in his hands and started to examine his head. “I feel like I’m destined to fail and like something terrible is always about to happen.” The lord continued as Halogyn checked glands, felt his pulse, and poked at various places around the cranium. “I know you’ve told me to snap out of it and just stop thinking those things but it’s not that easy.”
                “Well it would be if you ever tried!” Halogyn snapped, letting go of Shaun’s head and standing up. The exposed stub of his beard jiggled as he moved. “Your head is absolutely fine and I have had just about enough of this nonsense. We have absolved, exorcised and cleansed you of every kind of curse known to man. We have treated you with every medicine ever formulated. Either give me a problem to solve and actually take my advice or stop asking me for help because right now you are wasting my time. You must be the healthiest repeat patient I have ever had to deal with, self-inflicted wounds not-withstanding, and as far as I’m concerned you just need to cheer up, get over yourself, and let the town guard do the fighting while you do the ruling. The rest of us don’t spend our lives complaining that something might go wrong, we just get on with it because that’s life. Now unless you have any actual maladies for me to see I am very much going back to bed. Goodnight, liege.” He ranted, before twirling around and stomping his way back upstairs to his chamber.
                Lord Depra watched him go in stunned, betrayed silence, his mouth hanging open. If this was a new form of treatment then Lord Depra, despite trying to be intrigued, was struggling to see how it was going to help. Feeling somewhat awkward, Shaun started to slowly stand up and take his leave when the apprentice spoke from her seat on the bottom stair.
                “I think I can help. Or I know how to, at least.” She said, audibly nervous. It didn’t sound like apprenticeships with Halogyn left much scope for innovation in working practices.
                Shaun stopped and looked towards her. It seemed that she had risen for emphasis whilst speaking, but it was a little wasted when Lord Depra had been looking anywhere but at her in his shame. He tried to maintain his air of control, as befitting a Lord, but every muscle in his chest was tense and tight as he anticipated the judgement and shaming from Halogyn’s dressing down to continue from his apprentice.
                “I’ll hear anything out.” Shaun said, standing and waiting expectantly.
                “You will?” The girl said with surprise. “Alright, well, yes, erm…” she stammered, crossing to the counter and Halogyn’s grand chair. “ I think I’ve read about problems like yours. More than that I think I saw them, years ago when I was just a girl in my home town.”
                “Which is where?” Lord Depra asked, deflecting the focus reflexively away from his problems despite the screaming urge and conscious intention in his head to have those problems solved.
                “A small city state called Byaspol, far from here. My name is Aceina, liege.” She said, distractedly. “But the point is that I have watched you in my time here. I have seen how you fight in the darkness, seen the masks you were to hide in plain sight; the smile, the yawn, the dignified stoicism. You need to look for it, but you can tell it’s not real when you’ve seen it before.” Aceina told him, maintaining an unshakable eye contact that Shaun could only glance at momentarily. He realised too late that looking away so much was exactly the sort of thing that proved her right.
                “And you saw it defeated?” he asked apprehensively. He’d dreamed of a cure to his curse for years, but even as the flash of hope ignited in him it was dulled by a creeping dread that anything Aceina said would, of course, prove as futile as Halogyn’s efforts. Nothing ever worked for him, because he was weak and foolish and didn’t deserve to be freed from his torment.
                “Yes I believe so.” Aceina said, furrowing her brow and looking deeply into Shaun’s face, almost reading his thoughts. “I can’t promise that it will work, but I can promise that I’ll try to help you as best I can. Halogyn might have given up because he can’t comprehend your curse, but I won’t.”
                Her words tried to lift Lord Depra from the malaise bog which had started to suck him in. He wanted to rise with it, he always did, but there was something like a fishing hook in his heart that held him down, telling him he had to stay low. It was like this every time, like hope and happiness were a conscious choice he could make if only the braying demon in his head would let him.
                “Alright.” He said simply to convey this to his healer. “If you think we can try.”
                “We can fight this. I am willing to stay with you, or at least stay here for you, at every step my liege.” Aceina said, seeing the turmoil beneath his expression. “It will be hard, but it is possible.” She persisted. It was enough to pierce the veil of shadow this time. Shaun cracked a nervous smile, feeling like a child in Aceina’s care and a battle-weary veteran ready to keel over at the same time.
                “So where do we start? Is there an incantation or a ritual? A potion?” Lord Depra asked, remembering the various methods that Halogyn had applied over the years. The words of the demon from the bakery echoed around his mind when he thought of drinking a potion. Maybe it be a potion that also kept him slim.
                “Er, no. I’m afraid not.”
                “So you can’t you just wave a wand or something to make it go away?” Lord Depra surmised.
                “It doesn’t work quite like that, my Lord.”
                The bog started to suck at Shaun’s chest again.
                “The attacks are getting worse and they’re happening more often. In times and places I can’t hide.  Covering this up is getting so hard, and it’s exhausting to go through every day. I just want to curl up and...”
                “… and let them win? You owe it to yourself to keep fighting. But it’s time to stop fighting out here. You have to address the source of the problem. At your castle.”
                Lord Depra’s eyes widened in animal panic. There were some secrets he hadn’t even shared with Halogyn, but Aceina seemed to know.
                “I thought so.” She said, reading his face without trying. “There are things in there that you need to deal with, Shaun.”
                “What do you mean? It’s just a castle full of normal castle things.” He said.
                “Maybe it was once, but it’s full of monsters now and they’re causing trouble everywhere else.”
                “It’s always been full of monsters. I mean, I had to grow up in there and I made it out alright. That’s just what castles are like, isn’t it?”
                The girl held his eyes, looking desperately for lies and exaggeration. She came up empty-handed.
                “I’m afraid not, Lord. I think the demons you’re facing out here are coming from your castle. They’re escaping and affecting things out here. You need to fix what’s in there.”
                “But… I don’t know how.”
                “You just slay them like you slay the ones out here.” Aceina told him gently. “They might look a bit different but you can do it.”
                “I… I’ve tried to contain them. To shut them in. I could board it up completely and trap them forever. There’s no need to go back in…” Lord Depra said, eyes flitting from side to side as he tried to think of an alternative to Aceina’s plan.
                “That’s not a permanent solution, and it seems to have run its course. I’ll help you however I can, but it’s not going to get better unless we address the problem. Whatever boxes you put those demons in need to be opened up one by one and emptied, otherwise they’re just going to keep spilling over.” Aceina said. She held Shaun’s gaze with a persistence that he wanted to be angry at, but there was too much genuine concern behind her eyes.
                “Will you come with me?” he asked.
                “I can’t go with you physically, Shaun. I think you know that. But I can cast a spell to look through your eyes and sit with you in your mind. We can explore the darkness of the castle together so you don’t have to be alone, and I can try to help you through whatever it is you’re facing. You will have my support. We’ll beat it together.”
                Lord Depra tensed. He’d claimed to be willing to try anything but letting someone else see inside his head and watch the evil through his eyes was more terrifying than any of the horrors he’d fought. She’d know him. She’d know even more of his secrets and the sick workings of his tainted head.
                “I know it’s scary, but I can’t help if I don’t know how you see the problems.” She persisted. It was almost exactly what Halogyn had just said, but it tasted different somehow this time.
                “Alright.” Shaun said with reluctance and fear. “I’ll let you in.”
                “That’s all I ask.” Aceina said with a smile. “Go and get some rest. We’ll try in the morning. Light this taper when you are ready to begin. And in the meantime if it all feels like it’s getting too much then just breathe. Count to ten and breathe, alright?”
                From a box underneath the counter, Aceina handed Shaun a thin wooden stick, soaked with something intensely aromatic. He took it unsurely and stood to take his leave.
                “I will do. Thank you. Until tomorrow.” He said. With a nod she dismissed him, and he made his way out.
 
                Grand and imposing the castle loomed above the town, a foreboding monolith of dark grey stone that seeped poison into places that no-one saw. To the townsfolk it was an innocent collection of stone, albeit one that stood as a symbol of the control and protection of their lord. Only Lord Depra truly understood the darkness it held, although Aceina soon would. Whether she’d still be so willing to help him after that point remained to be seen. If he’d known there’d would be guests on his grand return visit then he would have made sure to clean the floors before retreating.
                Lord Depra, supposedly the proud sovereign of the castle, ignored the main gates. Instead he crept along the inside line of the moat, along a worn and beaten path through grass and reeds. Rustling the stems against his legs, Shaun balanced himself against the castle’s stonework and crept towards the rusty-hinged door of the servants’ entrance. It had been so long since Lord Depra had employed any servants that it had no business being called a servants’ entrance really. It was his door, the only door he could manage to use these days, but calling it by its old name helped him cling to the notion that the whole castle still belonged to him rather than the foulness inside.
                There has been a full walkway to serve the entrance once. When staff had worked the castle and moved supplies or themselves regularly they could have travelled along a broad stone path. Since the castle had fallen though, the path had crumbled into the moat which wasn’t good news for either of those features of the castle.
                Standing in front of the door, Shaun grasped the handle for stability as he pushed an old iron key into the lock. It clunked in all the normal ways, and swung outwards to unveil the small quarter of Lord Depra’s castle that he could still call his own. It was the only safe place from the corruption and spite of the demonic powers which had been cursed upon him. Bare, cold and barely a hovel though it may have been, it gave Shaun enough shelter to keep living. He clambered in, locked the door shut behind himself and crawled still dressed onto the rough bedding he had managed to assemble. Above him was a whole castle that was his in name but denied to him by whatever evil assailed him. It was the only way he could remember it now, and it was almost a terrifying prospect to claim it back as his own; how did it all work, how should it look, what was it all for and who would he be when he wasn’t a constantly exhausted human battleground? He didn’t know anymore, but he hoped someone had written a book on the subject.
 
                In the morning light Shaun stood at the main castle gates, closed and locked for years now. Two storeys high and using all of that size to judge him, they held the line not against an opposing army anymore but against Lord Depra’s shame. If Shaun ever managed to retake the castle and those doors kept up that behaviour, he would definitely be having them replaced.
                From his pocket Shaun took the taper that Aceina had given him, and he lit it with a flint and steel. Thin wisps of light grey smoke drifted lazily up from the end and swirled into his nostrils with notes of a soothing lavender. He waited for something to happen, unsure of exactly what but confident that he know what it was when it finally unfolded. His confidence was well founded.
                At the back of his mind he felt a gentle pressure, like a cushion being pushed into the back of his brain. Roots of mental force started to probe into his thoughts, wrapping around this and that, and taking a hold.
                “Can you hear me, Lord?” Aceina’s voice said from nowhere.
                With a start Shaun looked around himself out of reflex, before remembering exactly what she had been planning. That was answer enough for her.
                “I imagine this must feel strange, but I am here to help you. Are you ready?”
                “I think that question should come before you appear in my head, really.” Lord Depra observed.
                “You lit the taper, what can I say?”
                Shaun had no answer to that.
                “We’re going to need to go to your chambers, or what should be your chambers, Lord Depra. I think that’s where we’ll find whatever it is we’re going to find.” She informed him.
                “The Lord’s Tower?”
                “If you say so. It’s your castle and I don’t know the layout.”
                “Then how do you know it’ll be up there?” Shaun challenged, contriving himself a way to stall for a few more seconds.
                “I just think that’s how this curse works.” She said evasively. “We should proceed.”
                Using the key he’d left forgotten under his bed for so long, he unlocked the gate and braced himself. This was the path to healing, so Aceina said. He owed it to the town to protect it from his sickness, no matter how much it hurt. Although she’d have put it differently, Shaun was sure that was what she was after; making sure he stopped hurting people with his own inadequacy.
                “That’s not what I mean at all, I can promise you.” She corrected him. Shaun cursed inwardly, forgetting that she was in there too now. She let that one slide.
                With a creaking groan the old hinges felt their first motion in many winters. Shaun had to dig his feet in and pull back hard with his whole body to coax them into motion, and only made gradual progress. When the gap was just wide enough for his body to pass through he stopped pulling, hid his key away, and entered his castle for the first time in longer than he cared to remember. Despite not being raised in barn, he left the door open as an insurance policy; he might have to run away yet.
                Despite the years of just barely scraping an existence and existing in his own sleepless, cursed bubble, Shaun was fairly sure that he would remember a great fire. They were huge, bright, hot, and led to vast clouds of smoke as well as boundless excitement from the townsfolk. Even a small fire in slightly the wrong place got everyone worked up and talking about it for months. He didn’t remember one in the castle though, and living there would have given him every opportunity to notice it if one was going on. It was a shock, then when he saw the entrance hall of the castle. Every pillar, every wall, every vaulted ceiling and much of the floor were scorched and black. Charcoaled furniture and ashen remains littered it, the wreckage of something which had once been beautiful.
                Shaun tried to remember what it had been like when he’d run from the castle the last time, but the memories were vague and hazy as if someone had tried to hide or erase them. He just remembered noise and carnage and panic. He supposed that a great fire would cause all of those things, but it didn’t fit right. This was more like the ground had been scorched after his retreat so that nothing could chase him, or so that he’d never want to come back in.
                He shuddered as some instinct brought back the feelings of the memories that he couldn’t reach. Without events to tie them to, he was left with just unaccountable dread and a barely contained urge to panic and run.
                “Aceina says you need to do this, Shaun.” He reminded himself.
                “I don’t just say it. I believe it.” She added. He wasn’t picking up on the new mental arrangement quickly.
                Shaun left a trail of boot-prints in the ash on the ground, smearing greys and blacks to mark his triumphant return. A return to what though, he asked himself. To the wreckage of what he abandoned? Venomous shame spread through the front of his chest and across to his shoulders, leaving a bloodless burning sensation in its wake.
                “The point is that you’ve come back. Hold on to that and let go of the rest.” Aceina advised.
                Doing all he could to ignore the bile he spat at himself, but only because Aceina said he must and she was checking up on everything he thought, Lord Depra tried to remember how to get to the Lord’s tower. He looked about the hall for its various passages and hallways, and saw yet more carnage. The corridor to the kitchens was completely collapsed, a pile of scorched stonework blocking the full height of the passage where the walls had crumbled in. With slow steps Lord Depra paced over and tried to find a gap in the rubble to peer through, but there was nothing. As he was about to turn away, he noticed a hastily scrawled note on one of the stones, partially buried by the dust of years.
                “Don’t go in here. Forget it.” Read the rushed text. Despite the messy and hasty hand it was unmistakably his own writing from many years earlier. Open-mouthed he stared at the note. It must have been years since he wrote this, when he was a teen, but there was no recollection of why. At the very least it seemed that he took his own advice, recalling nothing except for the vague sensation of embarrassment and wishing he could die.
                “This isn’t a wise course of action for now, my liege.” Advised Aceina, softly. “It’s like this for a reason.”
                Shaun was all too happy to agree. He backed away slowly before the half-remembered feelings could grow any stronger. Whatever was in there, it was best left alone until his task here was done.
                Further along the wall was the passage to the east wing. The doorway gaped open and clear, but so did the floor. A dark and seemingly bottomless expanse stretched along the passage, where the floor had fallen away through to the basement and possibly farther beyond that. Only jagged fragments of the previous stone bricks remained, sticking out of the walls like broken teeth. There was another note pinned to the wall just inside the door.
                “Scary, stay out!” it said, in Shaun’s childhood hand. The smell of muddy decay blew down from the far end of the passage, and Lord Depra wanted no more to do with it.
                “How much of your past are you hiding away from yourself?” Aceina asked. Shaun didn’t very much appreciate the question.
                “I don’t know. As much as I have to. I need to get through the days somehow.” He told her.
                Across the hall was the passage that led to the various royal chambers, the corridors to the reception rooms and the orangery, and the path to the gardens. The path to the gardens was rendered impassable by fallen beams and a collapsed ceiling with its own scrap of parchment. Shaun felt no desire to read it. The royal chambers were barred from Shaun by a makeshift barricade of broken and charred furniture, with another note pinched between two cracked chairs reading “Everyone will hate me for this”. Panic started to burn in Shaun’s stomach as he realised that there might be no way to reach his destination and break the curse without breaking through. He shook and stared at the furniture barricade, terrified of what he had seen fit to block away in times past and the prospect of having to unearth it again.
                “Stay calm, Shaun.” Aceina told him. “Is there another way through? We don’t have to take the most direct route there; we can take whichever path is the least painful.”
                Lord Depra thought for a moment, between flashes of panic. There was another way through from the reception rooms. They led through to one of the smaller spiral staircases up to the first floor. From there he would be able to find a path back to the royal chambers and the Lord’s tower. Shaun crossed to the passage to the reception rooms and saw that it was still clear. All was not lost, and he didn’t need to face whatever horror lurked behind his bastion.
                “Sounds good.” His passenger agreed.
                Staring at the path ahead, Shaun drew his sword and his shield for courage and stepped into the hallway. Whatever blaze had ravaged the entrance hall had left this corridor relatively untouched. After only a few paces the scorching and ashes started to grow thinner, until bare stone floor was once again visible. Rugs with gaudy floral patterns dotted the floor here with the presumed intention of improving the look of the castle, but they definitely looked better in decay than they had done before. When his boots left a series of fading grey prints of ash upon them they were better still, by virtue of more patterning being hidden from innocent eyes.
                To one side exterior windows looked out over the moat, but they had become murky and were so blanketed in the thick dust of ages and neglect that only a dim light could penetrate. It was enough, though, to illuminate the opposite wall, lined with tapestries and portraits which celebrated the deeds of Lord Depra’s family and ancestors. Shaun had never been one for celebrating an event with laborious weaving, personally, but it was apparently a sign of status that his forebears had bought into.
                Shaun cast his eyes over the wall-hangings as he made slow, cautious progress down the passage. He saw likenesses of his ancestors raising the castle from nothing but a barren field as a sign of hope and safety. He saw grand coronations and celebrations in the street immortalised for posterity, just like the ones nobody had thrown for him. He saw the oil-painted visage of his parents looking down at him, or maybe down on him for letting his castle and himself fall into such shameful disrepair. And he saw his family tree, broadening to the middle and then thinning down again, until he saw his mother and father’s union with a single black smudge underneath; the non-event erased as if it should never have existed.
                “That’s not true, Shaun. You exist for a reason.” Aceina said. Shaun wasn’t convinced.
                Beyond the edge of the family tree was a doorway which led to the west solar. The corridor going beyond was impassably collapsed like much of the entrance hall, sealing the orangery and any of its fruity treasures away from Lord Depra. Scratched into the wall with a sharp piece of debris were two words: “Beware Anx”.
                “What’s that?” Aceina asked.
                “Anx is… er… was what I called one of the voices in my head years ago.” Shaun told her. “The one that hurt the most.”
                “But you managed to get rid of it?” she asked hopefully.
                “It… uh, it never went away, no. But I didn’t like it having a name. It started to seem like more of a person than I was.”
                The door to the solar was closed. Its tarnished brass handle hung slightly away from the door itself amid a skirt of splintered wood.
                “It might be in there.” Shaun said with a tremble.
                “Is that where we have to go?” Aceina asked. Shaun nodded, and hoped that she would be able to pick up on it. “Then I’m right here with you.”
                Gingerly, despite his naturally dark hair, Shaun pushed one hand against the door and felt it swing easily open. Dimly illuminated by the dirty glass roof, the solar was thick with the dust of neglect. The wide rectangular rug which covered most of the floor was faded from years in the sun, the lounging chairs and chaise lounges were pushed to the edges of the room, and the small side tables were upturned. Facing Shaun from the opposite side of the room was another doorway, which would lead him towards the spiral staircase. It wasn’t until he stepped in fully and closed the door behind him, though, that he noticed the walls.
                All around him, in thick black writing that dripped down the walls, there were patches of writing. At all angles and various sizes words were splashed onto bare stone, across portraits and sconces, and smeared over furniture.
                “Coward”, “Failure” and “Disappointment” glared at Shaun from his right. Across from them “You took a legacy and left it to rot” accused him angrily, alongside “Real men don’t panic when they have to deal with people”.  Shaun’s heart started to pound in his chest as panic rose. Every instinct screamed at him to run and hide, but he couldn’t look away.
                “You’re not a coward or a failure, Shaun. They’re only words. They can’t hurt you if you don’t let them.” Aceina told him. Or was it an accusation? Was she chastising him for being so weak?
                “Lords don’t cry in the dark and hide from their duty” leered from across a tapestry, “You tried to rule, and you failed, and everyone knows” mocked him as it dripped across a mirror, and “Who could ever love you?” questioned him from a corner. It was as if someone had taken the whispers from the back of his head and pasted them up for everyone to see. But the voices didn’t stay as whispers when they saw themselves; they joined in with the words, chanting hate at him with every phrase he read. He knew himself to be worthless. He knew himself to be a mistake. Faintly he thought he heard Aceina trying to say something, but it was lost in the flood of cruelty.
                Lord Depra couldn’t bear to see another word and his gaze fell shamefully to the floor as if ignoring the words could stop them being true. In the weak light that fell through the glass ceiling he noticed strange shadows cast on the floor, as if there was something obstructing it. Slowly, Lord Depra looked up and saw “The unfortunate truth of Shaun Depra, the false lord” written freshly in dripping black ooze across the glass, and a twisting, snapping collection of thin, black, sinewy limbs arranged into a rough humanoid creeping away across the ceiling. A tall, angular head stared down at Lord Depra with deep-set pits where the eyes should have been.
                “Shaun Depra comes slithering back in at long last. You’re not welcome here. You’re not welcome anywhere.” Drawled a thin, gravelly voice. It dropped to the floor in front of the far doorway and rose to its full height, towering above Shaun with its mouth twisted into a mocking smile. Muscle and bone were laid out in ways around its dark grey body that didn’t make a lot of sense to Shaun, some limbs almost plaited together with cords of flesh and others simply long and sharp.
                “This is my castle, and I’m taking it back.” Shaun managed, holding his sword forwards. In the back of his mind he could hear the voices screaming at him. He couldn’t take the castle back even if it was given to him. He was humiliating himself by even trying.
                “Ha!” the demon laughed “It’s not yours anymore. Why even try when you know you’ll fail? You’re scared to read the pathetic little notes you left for yourself, how could you possibly hope to face what’s here?”
                “I…”
                “You what? Take one step and you’ll trip. You’ll fall on your sword and that will bring an end to the sorry tale of the false lord. It would do everyone a favour, if you did. A small mercy to have you despatch yourself and bleed to death alone on the ground.” The Anx demon sneered, before breaking into a grin that shone with jagged onyx teeth.
                Shaun shook. The Anx demon was right. He’d stumble or slip and it would take him easily with a claw through the throat.
                “All your life you’ve been a disappointment. The other young nobles have gone on to be great rulers. Their kingdoms flourish and their people are happy and safe. What have you achieved? A triumphant crumbling under pressure? Bravely crying yourself to sleep in a dirty hovel because you couldn’t cope with anyone laying eyes upon you?” It sniped, tiling its head slowly to one side and then the other as it spoke.
                “Just breathe, like Aceina said. They’re only words.” Shaun told himself as he struggled just to stay standing. His sword arm fell to his side and the chorus laughed at how weak he’d become.
                “They’re true, though.” The demon whispered.
                “Shut up, you.”
                “I don’t need to speak. You know that. I don’t need to say anything at all.” The demon’s lips weren’t moving but words kept coming. “You’re already done. You’ve failed. How could you ever hope to do this even with the help of a deluded girl who has already tricked you? There’s a limit to the burden even the strongest person can carry, and who’d want to carry you all the way to the end of your pathetic life, you waste?”
                It wasn’t the demon’s voice anymore. It was Lord Depra’s own, just like normal. The background hum of his own conscious mind was growing still louder but now he was joining in.
                “I can’t do this. Something will go wrong and it’ll hurt even more than it does now. People like me don’t get to be happy. They get to struggle on and hope that no-one sees.’ Shaun thought. Lord Depra started to lift his sword in defiance but his strength failed him under the smirk of the Anx demon. Slowly the room started to stretch out, taking the door away from him and sending the ceiling high up into indistinct darkness, but it didn’t take the demon away. Instead the monster grew larger, blotting out the dirty light from the glass ceiling and consuming Shaun’s vision. In desperation Shaun tried to lunge forward but his shaking legs wouldn’t listen to him and he tripped to his knees. Like hornets bursting from a nest the Anx demon erupted in hideous laughter, swarming around Shaun’s head with a hundred mocking stings.
                A familiar sickness swirled in Shaun’s stomach as he fell into panic. Desperation to flee and find safety coruscated along his veins and tears started to well in the corners of his eyes. Looking down at the ground Lord Depra scrabbled his way backwards, sword and shield still gripped tight as the Anx demon’s laughter went on unabated.
                “Crawl away like the pathetic insect you are.” Shaun’s voice echoed. But this time it wasn’t just in his head; the words escaped his own lips and fell into the room. Without looking up at it, Shaun could feel the Anx demon’s mouth curl into a sick parody of a smile again.
                “That’s right.” The demon whispered. “You should listen. Run away, boy.”
                Hanging his head low, Shaun’s scrabbled up to his feet and stumbled towards the door. He’d been beaten already. He could go back to Aceina but what would she do except laugh at him, or decide that Haolgyn was right to abandon him? If the lord couldn’t help himself then why should anyone else bother?
                “Aceina?” Shaun said, hoping beyond hope that she would say she was there for him, but there was no response. Only the hail of self-disgust and hateful voices.
                He reached the doorway and lifted an arm towards the handle, forgetting that his shield was in the way. With a dull thud that sent a jolt of discomfort through his healing wounds, his arm came to a stop, and he paused.
                “That was silly.” He muttered of himself, and let out an involuntary chuckle. That laugh didn’t hurt. In fact, outside of his mind, nothing hurt. Aceina’s wrapping of his wounds had worked well. And this time he had no injury to take back and show her. All the Anx demon had thrown at him was words, just like she’d said.
                Shaun slammed his shield against the doorframe. This wasn’t the course of action that Aceina would want him to take. Would she be disappointed? Ashamed? Shaun asked himself why he should care what she thought at all.
                “Because she’s trying to help me. And she thinks I can do this.” He muttered to himself. “And why do I care about what this demon thinks? It’s not me. It hates me. Do I hate me?” he pondered the question.
                “I should.” His voice said.
                “No I shouldn’t.” Shaun replied, turning to look the Anx demon in the eye. “You don’t need to move your mouth to speak, but using someone else’s voice doesn’t make your words true. I’m trying to do better. And I’m trying to fix me. I deserve a chance to at least try. I deserve a life that I don’t to have fight through just to keep existing. I deserve not to have to fight my own head to get that far.” He growled.
                The angular, twisted Anx demon leered at Lord Depra with a smirk. As Shaun took a step forwards it cackled in mockery again.
                “You think that lying to yourself will help? You think that being lied to by some child playing at being a wizard’s pet will help? She’s using you like all the rest. She wants you to die up here so that you’ll finally be out of the way. And who can blame her? Face it, filth; you don’t matter. She’s abandoned you.” the demon spat.
                “It’s not true.” Shaun fought back, scrunching his eyes up as if blindness would strengthen his will. “It’s you that’s lying. You’ve been lying all along. I don’t have to listen to you.”
                “No, you don’t have to listen to me; just listen to yourself instead. You hate yourself almost as much as everyone else hates you, you worthless freak. They all laugh at you trying to play the hero and trying to be a real boy. No-one wants you.” The Anx demon spat.
                “No!” Lord Depra screamed “You’ve made me lie to myself all my life, made me think I wasn’t good enough.” He barked, snapping his eyes open and looking directly into the demon’s face again. “Well I am good enough. I’ve made it this far and I like myself!”
                “Are you trying to convince me or you of that? Because either way you’ve failed.” The Anx demon jabbed, shortly before the tip of Shaun’s sword blurred through the air and slammed into its open mouth, piercing through the back of its neck on the other side and pinning it to the door.
                “Hah.” It gurgled, as green-black sludge oozed from its mouth. “Y-” it tried to continue, but Lord Depra yanked the blade free and cut the words before they could escape.
                The demon crumpled into a heap on the floor, slowly leaking unpleasant substances onto the carpet. Shaun hoped it wouldn’t leave a stain, and then realised that he’d thought about something other than his own impending failure. The torrent of internal bile was starting to fade, the cacophony in his head dying down.
                Lord Depra drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. In the absence of a hail of self-abuse it was much easier than usual.
                “Shaun? Shaun?” Came Aceina’s voice, gradually fading into audibility as the other actors in his head fell into silence.
                “I can hear you.” Shaun said.
                “I was shouting for you. But it got noisy in there.” She explained. “I would never abandon you.”
                “Thank you.” Lord Depra replied simply. “I think I’d like to get out of this room though.”
                The Anx demon had been guarding a pull-door, which was problematic when the monster’s body was leaning against it in a pile of ruined limbs. The act of exiting therefore involved a lot of wet thuds as the felled demon was repeatedly whacked with the door itself. With every bang it pushed the corpse a little further into the room, bunching up the carpet ahead of the body as it went and leaving an ugly smear behind it. It was probably not doing the hinges any favours, but that was a problem the carpenter could solve. Lord Depra had mounted secret nocturnal defences of his workshop enough times to earn that favour, whether the carpenter realised it or not. Aceina didn’t think it would be productive to advise Shaun to move the body; he needed to do this on his own.
                Once the corpse had been hopped out of the way sufficiently to let Shaun leave he pressed on, along a short stretch of dim passageway. Doors to either side were barred or closed, and Lord Depra had no intention of testing to see if they were locked. Everything here was corrupted and vile, and he didn’t think his heart could take any more punishment than it had already planned for. The handles also looked both dirty and suspiciously wet, which was a combination of states that Shaun didn’t want to transfer to his hands without a wash basin on emergency standby.
                At the end of the passage was a spiral staircase leading upwards to further living quarters and downwards to the cellars. From the darkness below a muddy smell of decay wafted up, the same one that Shaun had smelled in the entrance hall. Whatever was lurking down there could be dealt with later. Much later. Possibly by someone else and with fire if at all possible. The mere thought of someone else seeing the horrors in the castle gave Shaun a sudden jolt of dread, but he pushed it away. No-one had to see anything. But that meant he would have to deal with it himself, continuing the torturous journey through his personalised hell. The dread came back, sandwiching him between two intolerable courses of action that he couldn’t bear to see realised. There was no escaping; whatever he decided to do it would be agony.
                “Shaun. Air. Lungs.” Aceina’s echoing voice reminded him. “That’s not a problem for today.”
                With slow, deliberate inhalations Shaun reconstructed his composure and started to climb the helix of steps. Soon the inhalations became heavier of their own accord as Lord Depra ascended the steep staircase, heaving his weight and that of his armaments. He took step after step, feeling each one on his thighs, without an end emerging into sight. He didn’t remember the stairs being this tall or taking this long to climb; the first floor wasn’t an infinity away. But Shaun gradually became aware of quiet grinding noise that started to grow louder the longer he climbed. It was hard to place at first, like a millstone turning, but as the volume increased so did the sensation. The whole staircase was scraping against the walls and rotating backwards as he tried to move forwards, carrying him back from whence he came with each step. Stone dust and chipped mortar bounced across the steps as the staircase wore away in defiance of Shaun’s attempt to ascend.
                Betrayed frustration clawed at the edges of Lord Depra’s mind. Everything was against him. Everything and everyone tried to stop him and hold him back, making life harder and harder in any way they could. Even the blasted stairs! This was his whole life, pushing forwards against a current that tried to drag him back to nowhere.
                “Stay calm, Shaun. Don’t panic. Just keep going.” Aceina reassured him, but the same section of wall bobbed up and down, forward and back next to Shaun’s head as he took step after step that made no progress.
                “It’s pointless, Shaun. We’ll get you.” Breathed a low threat from the decaying darkness below. It was barely audible, carried up on the fetid air, but it spoke straight into Shaun’s mind. He broke into a run and finally made some headway against the backward conveyor of stone. Heavy breaths turned to exhausted panting, sweat lined the inside of his clothing, his heart thumped angrily, and his legs felt weak, but the edge of a door finally crept into view. It was so close, nearly in grasping distance, and the stairs couldn’t allow that.
                With a judder the stonework started to sink away beneath him faster, accelerating in a spray of stone dust and grinding sounds until Shaun was barely able to hold himself in place. Desperation and adrenaline took over as fatigue started to grow, and Shaun held an arm out longingly towards the edge of the door. It was just beyond reach, dancing mere inches away from his fingertips but never coming closer.
                Shaun sized up the gap. It wasn’t far. If he didn’t try to get to the door now then he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it up this far again. With a pained grunt he leapt with all the might he could muster, propelling himself towards the door. He crashed through it with a flying shoulder and slammed his chest painfully onto the floor as it gave way, bouncing against the wall on its hinges. What little air Lord Depra had left in his body was forcibly expelled by the impact, and he sucked for breath that refused to fill his lungs. His legs kicked in free air, hanging over the precipice while he drowned out of water. Fear bubbled up behind his eyes and flowed icily into the rest of his body, carrying the horror that this might be it; his death. He was going to choke on the floor of a castle that used to be his after winning the only real victory of his life against the Anx demon mere moments before. If that was the result of Aceina’s suggestion on how to cure the curse, then it wasn’t panning out in quite the way Shaun had been expecting.
                After what felt like an eternity of mortal terror, battling for air, Shaun’s chest managed to expand and the cool dusty taste of the castle washed back into his mouth like a dam had just been ruptured. His lungs stung from the influx after being purged, his ribs were bruised, his head was convulsing with the pressure of blood rushing to his brain, and he was sure that his temples were about to burst as he swallowed breath after greedy breath back into himself, but he was alive.
                “Are you alright, my liege?” Aceina asked gently, her voice soothing against the throbbing pains in his brain.
                “Yes. I think so.” He replied. When enough strength had returned to his body Shaun dragged his legs over to solid ground and clambered up to his feet. Risking a look back, he peered into the staircase and saw a normal, perfectly intact and static set of stone stairs. No huge chasms, no moving parts, and no collapse. Just an innocent, inert lump of stone.
                “They’re out to get me. Luring me in to knock me down.” Shaun said out loud to no-one.
                “Not everyone, Shaun. I’m with you. These demons are trying to trick you, but you made it through.” Aceina said. He tried not to respond, but she could feel him brush the words off in his head.
                The stairs had deposited him at the end of the east wing on the first floor. To either side of him, extending along the length of the wing were the prayer rooms and lesser bedrooms, and at the other end of this hallway he knew the staircase to the Lord’s tower waited. It wasn’t far, he told himself and Aceina, but the passage was in ruins. Ahead, Shaun could see where the ceiling had caved in; broken stonework lay on and around great wooden beams which had snapped and splintered. They slanted across the corridor at steep angles like strands of a thick spider’s web. Shaun was starting to wonder whether the castle had just been poorly built, given how quickly it had collapsed without constant attention.
                To Lord Depra’s right was a wooden door to the prayer room, which rattled angrily at him when it felt his gaze. He shuddered and did not consider that way to be a viable option. Instead he stepped slowly and cautiously towards the collapse. Gravelly fragments of broken stone crunched and skittered under his boots as he crept towards the wreckage, tinkling across the stones and disappearing beneath larger chunks of rubble. There were no hastily written notes or warnings here, just the remains of what had once been a corridor. The beam in front of him was still attached to the ceiling where it met the wall, with a wide split showing the cause of its final surrender to the weight it had carried. Its splintered end was pushed hard against the floor, which in turn was cracking and crumbling beneath the new strain.
                “That doesn’t look very secure, Shaun.” Aceina warned. “This might not be the best path to take at the moment.”
                “It’s either this or the rattling door.” He answered, without offering her the choice. Instead he leant down and threaded himself under the fallen beam, picking his way over a loose collection of fractured stones and found himself teetering at the edge of a cavity where, as far as he remembered, a floor used to be. It seemed that this was a part of the collapse which had sealed away the passage below. There was no way to move further along the first floor without falling down onto the rubble and whatever it was that Shaun had wanted to block away down there.
                “I… don’t know where to go from here.” He said, still not considering the rattling door to be an option.
                “There’s another door to your right, there.” Aceina said. Shaun looked and saw the door to the heir’s summer chambers. It was facing directly into the abyss with a few chunks of stone overhanging the drop, but with careful footwork he’d be able to reach it. The heir’s summer chamber, he recalled, connected to the lady-in-waiting’s bedroom, which in turn could offer a way back through to the Lord’s tower. Placing his faith in broken outcrops from the destroyed floor, Shaun took delicate steps towards the summer chamber door, grasping at the beam for balance whenever he could and rocking precariously on poorly balanced chunks of ceiling whenever he couldn’t. A few near-misses later, with a newfound respect for how high the ceilings of his castle really were, Shaun leaned over to the door and pushed the handle down. With a gentle click it swung open and offered Lord Depra another taste of solid ground.
                All too glad not be leaning across a floor maw Shaun stepped across to the summer chamber and felt the door swing close behind him. The room had been his in childhood as the heir to the castle, and much of his youth had been spent within these walls for better or worse. But where the colours had been bright and vibrant then, they were dulled now. Every aspect of the room was tinged blue-grey, like it was illuminated through a window on a rainy day.
                “It’s dark for a summer chamber.” Aceina observed.
                “This isn’t how I remember it.” Shaun muttered before she could draw too many conclusions, looking around at the drab, lifeless quality of the room. Everything was there, but it had been sapped somehow. His four-poster bed, pushed against the wall to face the windows, was bare of its covers and sagging in the middle. The wardrobe was open and empty, one door hanging away on its last buckled hinge. Worst of all was the scattered furniture and upturned trinkets spilled across the floor; he had always kept this room immaculately tidy, as far as he remembered it.
                A shadow moved suddenly under the bed.
                “Who’s there? Or what? Come out.” Lord Depra commanded, sword drawn. Snivelling sounds emanated from underneath the bed.
                “Please don’t hurt me!” pleaded a child’s voice.
                Shaun’s eyes widened and his heart dropped as a boy, no older than ten, crawled out into the room. He was dressed as a noble but his familiar clothes were faded and torn.
                “Have you been trapped in here this whole time? With those demons? Oh gods!” Shaun cried, dropping to his knees to help the child.
                “I live here.” The boy said. Shaun stifled a scream when he looked into his own face from decades before.
                “It’s not you.” Aceina warned him gently, but despite being inside his head at the time, Shaun seemed not to hear her.
                “Oh god, I’m so sorry!” he apologised, hands shaking as he tried to brush the dust from the child’s clothes.
                “The monsters are still there, aren’t they? They’re always tormenting us. There are more now than there used to be, I can hear them.” Shaun’s younger self said, looking into Lord Depra’s eyes with the weight of a childhood lost.
                “I’m dealing with them. I promise they’ll be gone soon.” Shaun tried but the child shook his head violently and clapped his hands to his ears.
                “You’re still sad and scared like you used to be. They’re still hurting us. I thought we’d be better by now but you’re still sick. Why aren’t we better yet?!” The doppelganger wailed.
                “Shaun, don’t listen to it. It’s not you. It’s not real.” Aceina said.
                “I am better. I mean, I’m getting better. But… I wasn’t always this sad, was I? I don’t remember always being this way, but I don’t know when it happened… I remember being a happy child!”
                “I’m not happy. I’ve never been happy. This is how everything has always been.” As the child spoke the room sagged and rotted. The bed thinned and became stained, the floorboards curled up and splintered. Bookshelves melted and toys faded away.
                “You have been, I mean, I was… oh god… maybe you’re right.”
                “Shaun, stop it. Don’t listen. Remember was it really was, not what the sickness wants you to remember.” She told him.
                “I’ve always been so sad. You were meant to fix us!” the child wept.
                “Ignore it Shaun.” Aceina said more forcefully. “Remember it properly. What made you happy here?”
                “I don’t know. I…”
                “Try, Shaun. Don’t let it take your memories away from you.”
                Lord Depra closed his eyes and remembered being there, many years before. It was sunny outside and he planned to enjoy the gardens later in the day. It was early morning, though, so he stayed in the bedroom until his maids came to collect him for breakfast. He passed the time reading a book his father gave to him.
                “Father would be so ashamed of us now. He’d get so angry that we’re so weak.” The child said, and Lord Depra’s memory started to bend into images of his disappointed father. The father who gave everything for him and would see it wasted by a weak, pathetic-
                “Shaun! No! The memory.” Aceina shouted, snapping Lord Depra back. He remembered the warm light illuminating the pages. It was a story about the founding of the kingdom and-
                “The kingdom we’ve led to ruin. I’ll never be the lord that father is, will I? You’ve spoiled it for us! Just like father told us every time he could.” Young Shaun interrupted.
                “Ignore it Shaun. Just remember.”
                -and it was so exciting to feel like a part of that history, like he’d be a continuation of that lineage and that story. He’d told his father all about it at breakfast.
                “Father always hated talking to us. It was a waste of his time and he told us all the time.” The child said, but Shaun could see his memory more clearly now. His father had said how proud it made him to hear Shaun read the history and comprehend the scale of its implications.
                He was proud.
                Sunlight burst in through the window pane. It burned away the grey-blue and bled colour back into the room. Like mist the broken furniture and the stains evaporated away and left the ageing décor of the room in place. Silently, in a puff of black smoke, the child disappeared and Shaun was left kneeling on the floor alone.
                “I was happy, back then,” Shaun said, weakly.
                “You will be again, Shaun. I believe it.” Aceina told him. “But we need to keep going further.”
                Shaun nodded and stood up from the bedside. He took one last look at his sanctum of childhood happiness and opened the door to the maid-in waiting’s room. Immediately he was hit by a wall of stale air, billowing out of a room filled to spilling point with blackness. It wasn’t simply dark, but a thick, deep black preclusion of any light. It seemed entirely impenetrable. Light from the summer chambers was smothered by the dark that seeped from the doorway. Rather than a glow illuminating the inside of the room, the void instead drained the light away from the summer chamber. Looking down at the puddle of shadow masking the floor, Shaun couldn’t help feeling that something was amiss. With one foot Lord Depra probed at the dark. It disappeared inside and moved through the shadow as if it were tepid treacle, dragging against him. He stared at it distrustfully while his foot started to re-emerge, the darkness sticking to his boot and stretching out to keep covering it.
                “I don’t think I want to go in there.” Shaun said, rubbing at his face with both hands. Pushing through the Anx demon had been exhausting and draining for reasons he could barely comprehend, the staircase had been a literal nightmare come true, and he’d just felt his happiest memories being corrupted. The prospect of going through something like that again was less than appealing. So much less, in fact, that he would have gone so far as to say it was decidedly unappealing.
                “Regardless, it’s the only way we’ll make progress, Shaun. You need to go in.” Aceina told him apologetically.
                “The maid-in-waiting used to comfort me when mother and father were away.” Shaun explained, buying time. “She wasn’t my nanny, but she spent a lot of time with me. I’d always go to her if I hurt myself or got sad about anything and she was around. I’d curl up in her arms and she’d hold me.”
                “She sounds nice.” Aceina placated. “But we have to keep moving.”
                “But it’s so dark in there. It’s not a normal darkness, Aceina. There’s something wrong with it.”
                “I understand Shaun, honestly. But there’s no other way to get to the Lord’s tower and cure you. We have to face this darkness.
                Lord Depra knew she was right. Stalling for time had been a childish thing to do, but given that he’d been in his childhood bedroom it felt a little more justifiable. For want of any other preparations to make, Shaun held his breath and stepped into the seeping darkness.
                If Lord Depra had been forced to describe what it felt like to walk into a cushion made of slowed-down time, he wouldn’t have known what to say. It would, however, have been a lot like stepping into the darkness of the lady-in-waiting’s room. Every motion he made, forward, back, or otherwise, was laboured. It didn’t matter how hard he pushed into it, his body moved with the same lethargic drift. Lifting his feet was a struggle against gravity, the air, and everything else. Worse than the moving stairs and worse than the nights without sleep spent fighting rabid demons, Shaun found himself exhausted. Every drop of energy was sapped from his muscles. He just wanted to fall to the ground and sleep forever.
                “Don’t stop Shaun. It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you’re moving forwards.” Aceina told him.
                “I’m trying. It’s just so hard to make myself.” He replied, the words taking everything he had to spill out of his mouth. “I feel like I just need to collapse and sleep.” Shaun’s eyelids grew heavy and started to waver. The sounds of his decelerated footsteps were quiet and distant. The response from his limbs was delayed
                “Stay awake, my liege. You can do this.”
                “Oh what harm could a little rest do.” Said a soft voice in the dark.
                “Just a little rest…” Shaun mumbled, dragging his legs across the floor.
                “You’re not strong enough right now. You’re so tired. Just lie down here with me and wait until you’re up to it.” The soft voice cooed.
                “Don’t listen to it, Shaun. You have to keep moving. Facing this later won’t make it any easier.”
                “But just a break… how could that not help? I’ll rest and feel better soon. Then I’ll be able to fight the sickness better.” Shaun reasoned.
                “You’re right. There’s so much fighting ahead. You need to be strong to face it. You’re feel too exhausted.” A soft form revealed itself to Shaun, standing ahead of him. It was a different shade of darkness, its edges visible as faint reflections. “It’s dark and dangerous in this castle. You should just stay here with me before you walk into something that can’t be defeated.” It said, unfurling like a blanket and wrapping itself around Shaun’s body. “You’ll be safest this way. Nothing can get you.” A pulling came from all over Shaun’s body; his legs felt suddenly so weary, his arms ached and burned from carrying his sword and shield, and his head pounded and pleaded for sleep. Slipping around his body the blanket of blackness was warm. It let him collapse onto the floor and just lie there without the stress and terror of trying to go further.
                “Don’t give in. Keep going. Don’t stop now.” Aceina told him. “You have to stand up and press onwards and get better”
                The tacky, clingy blanket held him in place. It was so much easier not to move. So much less painful not to try than it was to try and fail. He rolled onto his side and sank into the floor. Everything inside and out of his head became fuzzy and muffled. He closed his eyes.
                Shaun lay motionless. He didn’t know how long he’d been there. His senses all felt dull, his eyelids fought against him when he tried to open them, and he was so tired. Tired of doing nothing. Tired from doing nothing. He wished he could stand up and push onwards, and that he would make something of himself other than a disappointment and a waste. Instead, while any number of monsters from his castle could have escaped and been terrorising his people, he was simply lying lazily in the dark and hiding from his responsibilities.
                “You said I’d be safe here.” Shaun complained to the darkness, feeling the familiar venom gain volume in his head. “You said it wouldn’t hurt.”
                “Your sloth is your own. You’re worthless and idle, rotting here while your town burns and cries for your help. Is what you call being a Lord? Do you feel like a hero now? Bravely hiding from the fight because it’s all too hard?” The soft voice said.
                Shaun tried to muster the will to stand but the blanket wrapped tighter and pulled him back down. Tears started to well in his eyes.
                “Fell for it again you idiot, Shaun. Why do you keep doing this to yourself!” he shouted at himself. “They’re words. They’re only ever words, not the truth and they’re only ever there to hurt you, you moron.”
                His hands drifted up to his face, palms covering his eyes and fingers digging into his scalp.
                Aceina’s quiet voice at the back of Shaun’s mind whispered to him.
                “Breathe. Count to ten.”
                A ridiculous part of Shaun, his anger and his frustration, didn’t want to listen. It didn’t want to feel any better. It wanted to cling to the anger and sadness and the feeling of being worthless and hated. The blanket grew thicker and heavier.
                “Just breathe.” She repeated. “It’s not you that wants this, it’s the demon. The sickness wants you not to fight it. Just breathe.”
                Shaun drew in a shaking, quivering breath. It left in fits and starts as he fought the urge to start sobbing.
                “Good. Keep going Shaun. You beat the Anx demon. This is no different. They’re only words. You can get up and you can go on. You’re in control.”
                Shaun kept breathing slowly, eyes shut tight even though the room had no light anyway. It had been so long since he’d believed he was capable of anything but failure that it was hard to trust her advice. What if it was just another trick? These demons could use the voices of others against him, and they loved to build up his hopes just to make it more painful when they were crushed again.
                As the air entered and left his body, one breath after another, he started to feel a tepid calm seep downwards along his body. Rage melted like snow in the sunlight and left a damp patch of regret beneath free space. The blanket started to loosen.
                “That’s good. Stand up Shaun.” Aceina told him. “On three. One, two, three.” She counted and Shaun rocked forwards, pushing onto his feet in time with her words. He rose shakily into the blackness, feeling the blanket wrapped around him still. It wanted to resist his motion and keep him lying down.
                “It’s all too much effort. You can’t get any more hurt than you already are if you stay here. You won’t cope with any more agony.” It told him.
                “Pain is temporary. You’ll come out the other side if you face this.” Aceina’s voice whispered. “But if you don’t then it’ll keep hurting you.”
                Shaun kept his eyes closed. There was still a lump in his throat that he couldn’t quite manage to swallow, so he let it be. He could feel the floor below him, and smell the stale, musty air. His senses were gradually coming back, not so much sharpening as pulling free from a tar pit. With every nerve that started to tingle back into life the blanket binding him loosened and thinned out.
                “You need me. You need the comfort of being numb. Everything out there hurts.” It whispered into his ear.
                “Just because it’s not painful, doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.” Aceina said. Shaun found the admission bittersweet as he took a step through the room. Still the thick, swamp of blackness hauled against him, resisting every motion, but Lord Depra leaned into it and pressed on. His burning muscles were a sign that he was still alive, and every inch he fought for and won was an inch of progress.
                “How long will this last? An hour? A minute? You’ll be back down soon. And I’ll be here to catch you. Sink into me now and save yourself the heartache.” The blanket said, brushing itself around his throat.
                “You’re not real. You’re not me. I want to get better.” Shaun seethed as he pushed on, panting with the exertion. He tried to claw forwards with his fingers but the thick darkness offered no purchase. “The door must be here soon. I’ll escape you.”
                “There’s no such thing as an escape from me, Shaun. Just an intermission before the long slumber.”
                Shaun’s fingers found a handle. He grasped it tightly heaved his body towards the doorway. Using both hands he pushed and leaned his full weight on the handle, forcing it downwards with a grinding of rusted metal on rusted metal. This door had not been opened in some time, it seemed.
                “Closed is how I like it, Shaun. Keep it that way. It’s too scary and painful through there for the likes of you.” The demon in the darkness whispered.
                “Then I’ll be scared and hurt. But I’m scared and hurt anyway, and I at least want to have a chance of not feeling like that one day.” Shaun replied. With a crunch the handle finally gave, and the door creaked open suddenly. Lord Depra fell forwards as his support gave way, and found himself awash with the cold, white light of day as he crashed face-down onto the stones.
                From behind came the sound of searing and burning. A whispered scream pierced through it all as if it came from Shaun’s own mind, shrieking for a moment before it was completely gone. Turning over onto his back, Shaun looked into the room and saw a whole different kind of nothing. It was just an empty room, with black inky shadows burning away and retreating into the corners like ice thawing at ten times the speed.
                Lord Depra’s limbs felt suddenly lighter. He still wore all the same wounds, and he was still in dire need of a good night’s sleep, but he felt like a human again. Enough to keep going. He peeled himself off the floor and brushed the dirt from his clothes.
                “You’re doing so well, lord. Keep going.” Aceina said.
                Outside the lady-in-waiting’s chamber was the entrance to the Lord’s tower. Another spiral staircase led upwards and finally culminated in the Lord’s chamber, where the heart of Shaun’s sickness lurked. Although it led to the master bedroom, the staircase was plain stone like every other ascent in the castle, with narrow windows facing out and letting light in. Shaun entered with trepidation, given his last experience with stairs, but there was a thankful lack of motion to the stones beneath him. Step by step he rose, and beat by beat his heart pounded faster as he grew closer to the core of the problem. The air, already cold, gained a whole new chill as he climbed and it bit at his cheeks while it carried down the now familiar acrid stench of the demons’ black ooze.
                “There’s definitely something up there.” Shaun said to Aceina as if she didn’t already know.
                “Then you had best be ready for it. Deep breaths. Stay calm. Count the stairs if that helps.” She said.
                Shaun tried for a few steps, but quickly lost count in his distraction. His mind raced with the various possibilities of what he might find and how it might defeat him. He could find himself strung up by a gallows, bled dry on the floor, drowned in the viscous ooze, or worst of all sent back down without any cure at all.
                “Don’t think like that! You’re so close to being cured, Lord. This is no time to give in to the darkness.” Aceina said. Right on cue the doorway loomed into view. The door was long gone, and only ruined shards of wood remained on the bent, buckled stubs of hinges but it was still the doorway. Beyond, the room had been stripped bare of the Lord’s fixtures. No bed or dresser were to be seen, and even the wreckage had been either ground to nothing or cast from the broken window frames. All of them had been ruptured by some huge force and were crumbling away as rubble piled up in dusty heaps of shattered stone and powdered mortar.
                Tarnished, dull chains hung from the ceiling. They curved in heavy, lazy arcs towards one another as Lord Depra's eyes followed them down, and were joined by others which reached inwards from the walls. They were anchored between damp, almost slimy rounded blocks and stone bricks with rusted brackets and decaying bolts. Every now and then one of them would rattle softly, spilling a small cascade of rust and flaking metal to the floor.
                As fascinating as the geometry and engineering of hanging chains was as an academic pursuit, however, it didn’t keep Lord Depra’s attention. That honour went to what the chains were holding.
                A long snout like that of a dog crossed with a crocodile lay flat on the stone floor of the chamber. As it drew laboured breaths in and out the nostrils flared and the lips parted, revealing two rows of sharp, bloody teeth that tessellated together in closure. Two oval lumps protruded from the skull above the base of the snout, resting closed, and behind them were torn, ragged ears that lay limp against the skull. The first manacle, dangled from the ceiling, was around its neck. The chain was just too short to allow it to rest on the floor, instead holding the beast up slightly and digging into its scaled flesh.
                By chains attached to vast metal rings the size of Shaun’s head, the flesh of the beast’s back was pulled upward and held painfully taut. Scabbed flesh stood as testimony to where the rings had torn themselves free in previous anchoring points and been brutally reattached elsewhere.
                Each of the monsters four legs was manacled to a wall or to the ceiling. They jutted in reptilian fashion from the sides of its torso, pulsed in the terrible rhythm of its heart and splayed weakly across the stones in their inability to hold its weight up any longer. At the rear was a thick tail. It was nearly as long as the rest of the body again, starting thicker than Shaun’s shoulders and tapering down to the width of his leg. It was complete with a horned ball at the end. Half way up it was secured to the ground by a heavy metal bracket.
                All along the monster’s body were sores and open wounds, be they from the manacles and shackles, or weapon and claw marks from assailants unseen. Each of them bled and wept the familiar black, sticky ooze. It flowed slowly across the inky flesh of the shackled demon, through narrow channels between its scales, and dripped onto the stone floor. Like canals of vitriol the regular grid of stones directed the river of ooze to a single dark pool by the back wall.
                “It looks like it’s in a lot of pain.” Aceina observed with distracted curiosity, which Shaun didn’t really find terribly helpful.
                “It’s not the only one.” He reminded her.
                Sword drawn and shield raised Lord Depra crept into the chamber, feeling every breath of cold air washing into his lungs with the stench of the ooze. Everything was dim, still, and quiet except for the slow trickle of black from the beast. Whatever it was, and whether it was being milked or farmed or exploited, it was the source of the oozing black corruption. The closer Shaun grew, though, the deeper and more terrible the demon’s wounds seemed to be. It was a tortured wretch as much as a fearsome beast, living an existence of pain. Shaun knew exactly how it felt.
                “I must have caused this.” Shaun thought to himself. “I locked it up with cruelty and malice.  I locked everything up here, and I’ve tortured it. I deserve to hurt. I did this. It’s all my fault.”
                The ooze bubbled and ran towards the centre of the puddle. Slowly a rounded shape started to form and rise.
                “I couldn’t fix myself and now it’s hurting everybody else. I’ve been so selfish to make it everyone’s problem instead of just my own.”
                “It’s not selfish. You didn’t know that locking everything away would lead to… to this.” Aceina said, conspicuously not saying that it hadn’t been his actions that did this to the demon. Shaun knew that he was right. This was his sickness and his castle, and they were bringing pain all around. What kind of Lord would do that to his people? What kind of man would do that to anyone at all? The clouds rolled in over his head and his heart. His thoughts coalesced and bled from him, and the shape in the dark ooze grew larger. Thin insect limbs and bulbous body parts started to haul themselves upwards as if rising out of the floor. Distended strands and columns of the ooze stretched out and hung from a newly formed, twisted jaw that hung limply open.
                “There’s blood on your hands.” The horror hissed as it writhed its way upwards. “The suffering is all your fault.” Despite how inherently ridiculous a torso rising from the ground was, Shaun finally recognised what was happening and charged the newly birthed demon. Partially submerged though it was, it still managed to lash out at Lord Depra, piercing his shoulder with a spear-like leg as Shaun’s sword cleaved its head in two.
                This was it. Their nest, their hive, their spawning pool. Not only was Shaun standing right in it, but he had fed it. He looked down at the sea of slime, being slowly re-filled by the festering wounds on the shackled beast. All the demon’s he’d been battling rose from the darkness that Shaun’s sick mind fed to bloating point, and fled the Lord’s tower to wreak havoc on the town below.
                Shaun saw the shackled demon oozing faster and birthing more evil. It had to be stopped. He hated it as much as he hated himself. It had made his life hell, sitting up here and poisoning him for years. He wanted to tear it out and butcher it.
                “Calm down, Shaun.” Aceina tried, but the rage was rising.
                “That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t lived with this… monster torturing you all your life.”
                “It’s not like the others, Shaun. It’s not taunting you or trying to make you hurt yourself.” She told him urgently. A realisation was forming in her mind.
                “It will though. I need to kill it before that happens.”
                “I don’t think that’s going to work. I’m sorry Shaun but I don’t think this is a normal curse. I think that whatever this is… I think it’s a part of you.” Aceina said, the words dropping like lead weights and crashing into Shaun’s brain. As a medical practice, dropping weights onto someone’s brain is risky at best.
                “There is no way that I’m doing all this to myself!” Shaun raged. “It’s a curse!”
                “Every wound it has is feeding them; attacking it won’t make you feel any better. Listen to me and calm down” Aceina pleaded, but Shaun couldn’t be reached.
                “I’m willing to try.” Lord Depra said. He raised his blade high up and slashed hard at the beast’s neck. White hot pain filled Shaun’s mind, searing like a hot iron dragged across his brain. He felt blood running down his own neck, hot and sticky as it soaked his shirt, and saw a new stream of black ooze poured from the monster. It awoke with a bestial wail, as was understandable for something which had just received a bladed wakeup.
                “Argh!” Shaun growled in hysterical rage. The ooze swirled and boiled on the ground, festering into a new form.
                “Shaun! Calm down. Stay in control.” Aceina tried, but Lord Depra was on the attack again. A pair of gashes opened up, one on the demon’s leg and one to match on Shaun’s wrist. He winced and flinched, biting his lip and trying not to cry. Across from him the boiling intensified.
                “Will you just stop it!” Aceina screamed. “You can’t hurt yourself into getting better.”
                Shaun stumbled backwards, clutching at his wounds. The shackled demon looked at him with animal fear and anger, snapping its jaws and straining against the chains.
                “I HATE YOU.” Bubbled a voice from the puddle. “I WANT TO KILL YOU. YOU DESERVE TO DIE YOU STUPID, WORTHLESS STAIN.”
                Emerging from the black pool was a horned, barrel-chested, multi-limbed abomination. Red and black of flesh, it breathed jets of smoke from a bull’s nose that glowed like hot coals.
                “I can’t kill this one. It’ll kill me to try.” Shaun said with a thousand yard stare. “I’m going to be in pain like this forever.”
                “You aren’t, Shaun. There’s another way.”
                “YOU DESERVE TO DIE” the horror boomed, its voice all ash, bile and hate.
                Shaun dropped his sword to the stones with a clatter of steel. Aceina had shown him the truth. The root of his sickness was here, embedded in the castle and a part of him. As long as he was alive, he would hurt.
                “It doesn’t need to be killed Shaun. Hating it won’t change anything. It’s only hurting you because it’s in pain.”
                “YOU MUST DIE.”
                “It’s always going to be in pain, look at it. Look at me. Anything that’s a part of me is destined to suffer.” Shaun said emptily.
                “DIE.” The abomination repeated, slumping towards Shaun with claws splayed and arms tense.
                “Shaun, you’re in danger! You have to defend yourself.”
                “What’s the point?” He asked. The question blindsided Aceina. “I’ll hurt forever. It’s easier this way.”
                “No you won’t!” she shouted.
                “YOU DESERVE TO DIE.” The horror said with a voice like an abattoir’s smoke-choked furnace. Its vocabulary didn’t seem terribly broad but its arms certainly were, and the claws that ended them had only the worst intentions. It grew closer to Shaun, who made no attempt to back away.
                “I won’t just stand by and let you die, Shaun. I promised to help you. Now defend yourself!”
                There was nothing but numb acceptance from Lord Depra, now in the shadow of the new abomination. He had no fight left in him if this was to be his life forever. The horror lifted a terrible claw up high and swung it down like a terrible, bladed hammer.
                A metallic ringing echoed through the room as razor claws were turned away by Shaun’s shield. Lord Depra stared at his own arm in confusion.
                “I won’t let you do this to yourself. I won’t let you do it to me.” Aceina’s voice bellowed, surging through his mind and echoing from his skull.
                Another hard swipe bounced from Shaun’s shield as his arm jerked involuntarily to intercept the abomination. He tried to pull it back, as much to see if he could as anything else, but it something much stronger was holding it in place.
                “Let me worry about looking after you this time, Shaun. I don’t think you’re in a position to do it, right now.” Aceina said, her voice trembling almost imperceptibly with the exertion of taking control. She could feel him worrying about her. “The spell isn’t meant for this, but I think I can keep it up for a short while. I didn’t take you on lightly as a patient, my liege. I knew it would take a lot from both of us.” She reassured him.
                Shaun stood frozen as his arm darted this way and that, catching vicious blows from the hate horror. It snarled and foamed, almost barking at him in feral desire to kill, but Aceina was determined to keep him safe.
                “It’ll be easier for both of us if you let me die here.” Shaun told her. “You don’t have to hurt and neither do I.”
                “If you think I’m scared of a little bit of strain” Aceina started, pausing to jam the shield between the horror’s jaws as it tried to bite Shaun “then you’re wrong. You’re going to feel better, and I’m going to make it happen.”
                Like a useless marionette Lord Depra stood dumb and frozen while his left arm did the work of a whole body. Each harsh movement it made, each impact it absorbed and each slash it turned away was accompanied by a grunt of exertion from Aceina, but she refused to let go of her hold on Shaun. She refused to let go of Shaun himself. He wondered if he should be letting go of himself so easily.
                “I want to help.” Lord Depra said weakly.
                “Then put that sword to use on something that’s not yourself.” She replied through the mental equivalent of gritted teeth.
                Lord Depra looked up at the terrible visage of the monster. It was so focused on raining hatred and violence down that it couldn’t see the gaps in its own defence. Shaun gripped the handle of his sword and thrust it upwards into the torso of the monster through knots of twisted muscle and plates of bone. This demon didn’t bleed. There was no trickle of black ooze, just acrid smoke and a guttural grunt, before it crumpled to the floor.
                “That... I thought it would take more to…”
                “Sometimes it only takes a little bit of perspective and effort, Shaun.” Aceina said, panting. “But it has to come at the right time. Even a little bit was beyond you a moment ago.”
                They stood in silence, watching the hate demon dissolve into the floor while Aceina got her breath back. Shaun looked over at the shackled demon, weeping black ooze.
                “But… is this it? Do I just have to live with this nightmare lurking up here and spitting out terrors at me?” he asked with innocent, child-like fear.
                “Look at it, Shaun. It’s a part of you. You can’t hate it out of existence, and no-one has ever been able to approach their sickness and just cut it away. It’s always going to be here but you can see right now why it’s hurting you like this. It’s in pain, so you’re in pain.”
                Shaun stepped carefully over to the monster. It regarded him with narrow yellow eyes and flared nostrils.
                “I can’t forgive it. I can’t just be happy that it’s here and make peace.” Shaun complained.
                “I don’t expect you to. No-one wants to welcome that in. But you do have to accept that it’s here and make allowance for it. The more you torture this part of yourself and try to keep it locked away the more it’s going to make you hurt in response.”
                Shaun snatched his blade into the air and hacked down hard. The chain holding the demon’s neck up shattered under the force of the blow, and with a heavy thud the monster’s throat dropped to the stone floor.
                A slow gurgling moan vibrated up to the monster’s mouth as Shaun moved along and broke the chain’s holding its ringed back. He broke the chains over one of its legs and received a sudden claw-strike to his hip which sent him over backwards.
                “Doesn’t hurt it to hurt me, I see.” Shaun grumbled through gritted teeth, feeling his broken skin start to bleed.
                “That’s just the way it is, my liege.” Aceina replied.
                More carefully avoiding the demon’s limbs, Shaun broke the rest of the shackles and freed the tail last. In an instant it was swinging the deadly mace at head-height. Shaun ducked out of the way and it slammed into the wall, embedded for a moment before tearing free again in a spray of shattered masonry. Lord Depra leapt back and braced himself for another strike, but nothing came. The monster, still seeping with ooze, looked at Shaun for a long, lingering moment, and then seemed to deflate. Its bulbous torso shrank down, its limbs didn’t pulse so horribly, and it relaxed its tail. Instead of attacking it scurried backwards into a corner and simply licked its wounds.
 
                Shaun sat in the corner of the Lord’s tower and watched the beast for a long while. The wounds it cleaned eventually stopped seeping with black ooze and the puddle started to dry without spawning any further abominations. Everything was still quiet and dim. The dust stayed in place and the air remained cool. It all just felt empty.
                “What now?” Shaun asked finally. He could feel that Aceina was still there, silently looking through his eyes.
                “I think you’ve got a castle to repair and a life to rebuild.” She said. “At least you can walk around in here now and start fixing it up.”
                “That’s going to take a long time.”
                Aceina shrugged telepathically.
                “I told you we couldn’t just wave a magic wand. There’s no easy way out of this.”
                “And what if it all starts again?”
                “It’s a ‘when’, not an ‘if’, Lord. It lives here just like you do, Shaun, and it’s going to make you both hurt from time to time. You can’t live in fear of it though. Just do your best and try to manage it. And remember that I’ll be here for you. I’ll help whenever that happens.”
                Lord Depra covered his face with his hands for a moment, peering through gaps in his fingers. But behind the mask of his hands he risked a small, nervous smile. The only voices in his head since he’d freed the monster were his and Aceina’s, and they were both working with him. He could think clearly without a fog of lethargy and self-hatred. It was peculiar. If everyone else had it like this all the time then he was surprised they needed a lord to tell them what to do at all.
                “Thank you, Aceina.” Shaun said, meaning it more sincerely than he’d meant a thing in his life.
                “You’re welcome, Lord. I’ll deliver my bill personally tomorrow.”
                “What?”
                “It’ll be good to see the castle in person. And there are still a lot of places to clear out. Someone needs to be there for you while you do that.”
                “Yeah… I suppose so.” Shaun accepted. It was going to be a long and painful road. And though it didn’t sound like he’d ever be cured, at least he’d be better.