Location: Monthaven
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Autumn
Distance is like a drug. It allows a man to feel brave while sitting in a velvet chair a thousand miles away. Case in point – King Diked was lounging in his palace in Fubar, sipping wine with the lovely Monnik and boasting to her of his “vengeance” against Lnysy and Emcorae as if it was his doing and would go off without a hitch. What he didn’t understand was that, by sending Kaoz to do the job, there would inevitably be…consequences. Yet this is exactly what his conniving Royal Steward Ramssee had planned on.
As the rest of Monthaven suffered through the destruction left by the merciless Myz, the Finch Estate on the far side of town was a monument to the delusion that wealth provides as a shield against The Darkness. Merrill Finch had spent a lifetime accumulating the trappings of a “Royal” life—prized stallions from the south, fine linens from the coast, fertile farmlands, extensive forest, countless servants, and enough stone to withstand a tribal siege. But stone and status are meaningless when the evil at your door doesn’t care about your titles and isn’t stopped by your walls. So it was that the shadows of the Great Autumn Gale stretch toward the finest house in Monthaven, relishing the irony that Merrill’s greatest pride was about to become his grandest funeral pyre.
The Dread
Inside the Finch Estate, the world felt solid, permanent, and utterly insulated from the woes of the common man – much like any other day. The walls were constructed of thick, hand-hewn limestone, and the floors were a polished expanse of rare, dark-stained wood that gleamed like oil under the golden light of dozens of tallow candles, oil lamps, and the many fireplaces throughout the manor. Everywhere one looked, there was the glint of hammered copper, bronze statuary, and the smell of expensive frankincense—a merchant’s sanctuary that was a far contrast to the rest of the village on the other side of the Suskil River.
But tonight, the atmosphere of the house was beginning to fracture.
The Great Autumn Gale had kicked up again and was now hammering against the heavy shutters, the wood rattling in its iron brackets. Yet it wasn’t just the wind that was causing the unease—for a primal tension had begun to invade the estate, a weight in the air that made the lungs feel tight. In the lower servants’ quarters and the sprawling kitchens, a whispered commotion was growing.
A maid dropped a ceramic pitcher, her hands shaking as she pointed toward the valley below through the kitchen window. Outside the stable hands and farm laborers, who had rushed into the outbuildings to escape the horizontal rain, were now huddled by the estate’s inner courtyard gates. They spoke in hushed, terrified tones of the orange glow rising from the village and the strange, rhythmic vibration they felt beneath their feet—a sound that was too deliberate for the thunder.
Yet not everyone was ill at ease – in her bedchamber, Lynsy Finch sat perched on a cedar bench, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the corded silver of the locket Emcorae had given her. The maiden’s room was a sanctuary of soft silks and the scent of lavender oil. Her maid, Tiffania, was busy stoking the brazier, but the girl’s movements were uncharacteristically clumsy.
“The wind is angry tonight, Mistress,” Tiffania whispered, her eyes darting toward the barred shutters. She didn’t mention the way the water in the washbasin had begun to ripple in rhythmic, concentric circles, or the way the family’s hounds in the kennels had suddenly gone silent.
Lynsy merely sighed, her thoughts a countless leagues away in the boughs of Arbola. “It is just a storm, Tiff. My father says the stone of this house can stand for a century. Worry not, love, we are safe.” Yet even as she said it, Lynsy gripped the locket tighter, feeling a sudden, unexplained chill that the brazier’s coals couldn’t touch.
Down the hall, in a room cluttered with maps and ledgers, Dugan Finch sat hunched over a scroll, a single tallow candle casting long, dancing shadows behind him. He was drafting another letter to Fubar, his nib scratching irritably against the parchment, hoping that this time Diked would respond to his urging. He had heard the commotion in the kitchens earlier and had shouted for a servant to bring more wine, but no one had come.
“Incompetent fools,” Dugan muttered, rubbing his temples. He felt the vibration beneath his boots—a heavy, tectonic pulse—and simply assumed it was a mudslide on the lower terrace. His mind was too full of his own burgeoning importance to recognize the sound of a reckoning. He had sent his first letter to Diked a moon ago; in his mind, he was already a Lord in waiting. He didn’t realize that the “reward” for his betrayal was currently trampling the courtyard’s perimeter.
As for Merrill Finch, the wealthy merchant remained the anchor of his home. He walked up the grand staircase of the manor with a silver tray in his hands, the ceramic cups of steaming cocoa rattling gently as he aimed for Lynsy’s room, hoping to cheer up his only daughter who’d been morose ever since Emcorae left to ask the elves for help. Yes, he’d seen the fires in the village through a gap in the shutters as he collected his treat from a maid so he could deliver it himself, but his mind—ever the businessman—Merrill refused to accept a world without a ledger of cause and effect.
“Poor souls,” Merrill whispered, a genuine pang of pity in his heart. “The lightning must have taken the roof. I shall have to send Dugan with some gold in the morning to help them rebuild.”
What Merrill didn’t see was the breach at the outer perimeter of his lands. He didn’t see the massive, iron-reinforced gates of his estate’s stone wall groan and buckle as a grey giant leaned his weight against them, snapping the bronze latch as if it were a twig. And he didn’t see the black-maned warhorse trample his prize-winning gardens, its hooves churning the manicured earth into a black slurry. As he reached the top of the staircase, he paused to adjust the linen napkin on his tray.
Behind him, in the foyer below, the house steward and three of the house guards stood together, heir faces pale in the flickering lamplight. They were looking at the front doors—massive slabs of oak reinforced with decorative iron bands. A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the house, broken only by the muffled roar of the gale. Then, above the wind, suddenly came a sound that made the fine hair on Merrill’s head stand up.
Thud.
It wasn’t a knock. It was the sound of something immense and solid coming into contact with the door. Merrill dropped the tray, the cups and such clattering to the floor, as he turned around.
The heavy iron bolts, forged to withstand a battering ram, began to shriek as they twisted in their sockets. Merrill’s breath caught in his throat as he looked down at his men; they were no longer the disciplined sentries of a wealthy merchant, but terrified men staring at the mouth of a tomb.
“Bar the door!” the House Steward, Haman, shrieked. His voice, usually a calm baritone used for directing dinner service, rose to a frantic, thin wail. “By the Son’s mercy, get the crossbeams in place!”
The lead guard, a seasoned man named Kael who had survived skirmishes in the southern boughs, fumbled with his spear. His knuckles were white. “The beam is already set, Haman! It’s… it’s bowing! Look at the wood!”
Thud.
The impact was so violent that a fine dust of ancient limestone shook loose from the ceiling, coating the guards in a ghostly shroud. The oak doors didn’t just rattle; they curved inward, the center of the wood grain weeping sap under the strain.
“Kael, move!” Merrill shouted from the landing, his voice trembling. “Get the others from the stables! Use the side passage!”
Just then the service door near the kitchens burst open with a crash, admitting a blast of freezing rain as a stable hand ran inside. He was covered in mud and horse blood, his eyes rolling in his head like a spooked colt.
“He’s in the stalls!” The boy shrieked, collapsing against a marble bust of Merrill’s grandfather. “The horses… he didn’t even use a blade! He tore the gates off the hinges and broke the stallions with his bare hands! The men are down, Master Finch! All of them!”
Before Merrill could process the horror, the heavy oak door leading to the terrace flew inward. Two farmhands stumbled in, dragging a third whose leg was twisted at an impossible angle.
“The perimeter is gone!” the taller one gasped, his breath coming in ragged sobs. “The stone gates… they didn’t just break, they exploded. And the forest—the northern boughs are catching flame!”
Suddenly, the manor felt small. From every entrance—the laundry chutes, the cellar stairs, the solarium—servants and laborers scrambled into the foyer, seeking the strength of the bigger walls. Their overlapping cries created a wall of sound that drowned out the thunder.
“I saw it through the orchard!” a maid wailed, clutching a copper kettle as a useless shield. “A gargoyle! A stone demon ten feet tall! It walked through the spiked fence like it was made of tall grass!”
“He’s killing the livestock!” another shouted. “The cattle are screaming bloody murder in the lower fields! It’s a massacre, Master! A massacre!”
In the center of the foyer, the House Steward Haman tried to maintain order, but his hands were shaking so violently he could barely hold his staff of office. The guards—Kael and his men—were being jostled by the frantic crowd. The air in the manor, once smelling of expensive frankincense, was now thick with the acrid stench of smoke, wet wool, and fresh blood.
Then, the cacophony died. It didn’t fade; it was severed by a sound that silenced every human throat in the room.
THUD.
The front door—the grand, iron-banded entrance to the Finch legacy—vibrated with a heavy, rhythmic blow. The servants fell back, a collective gasp echoing off the high ceiling. The “Something Evil” was no longer a story being told by a mud-stained stable hand. It was at the threshold.
“What’s out there?” one of the younger guards cried out, his eyes wide as he backed away from the entrance. “Can it really be a monster?”
“Don’t be a fool, boy,” Kael barked, though his own courage was visibly leaking. He adjusted his grip on the bronze-tipped spear. “Nothing short of an wooly can get inside that door. Stand your ground!”
“It’s not an animal,” Haman whispered, falling to his knees as a long, jagged crack splintered the left door from top to bottom. A draft of freezing rain and the acrid scent of the burning village outside whistled through the gap. “Can’t you feel it? It’s cold… a cold that doesn’t come from the rain.”
Merrill clutched the banister, the polished wood feeling suddenly slick under his sweating palms. “Who goes there?” he managed to roar, trying to find the authority of a man who had negotiated with kings. “Identify yourself! You are trespassing on the lands of a Peer of Orkney!”
There was no verbal reply. Only a low, guttural vibration that seemed to rumble from the very earth beneath the foyer.
SMASH!
The decorative iron bands snapped with a sound like a crossbow firing. One of the heavy bolts flew across the room, embedding itself in the plaster wall inches from a guard’s head. The massive crossbeam—six inches of solid heartwood—cracked with a sound like a thunderclap.
“Back! Get back to the stairs!” Kael commanded, realizing the spear in his hand was little more than a toothpick.
“Mannah protect us,” Haman moaned, covering his eyes.
The silence that followed was worse than the pounding. For five agonizing heartbeats, the pressure stopped. Then, the heavy oak doors didn’t just open; they were pulverized inward, the hinges shrieking as they were torn from the masonry.
The dust of the pulverized oak doors settled like a grey shroud over the foyer. In the sudden, yawning hole where the entrance had been, a monster stood motionless. The rain lashed against his dusky grey skin, and the purple lightning of the storm strobed behind him, casting a shadow that stretched all the way to the top of the grand staircase. Standing in the wreckage of the foyer, framed by the swirling leaves and rain of the Autumn gale, Kaoz looked larger here than he had in the village, his grey skin glistening with rain, his shoulders nearly touching the doorframes. He held a heavy, blood-stained blade in one hand and the limp, terrified form of a gate-guard in the other. He tossed the guard aside like a sack of grain. And then he waited.
The Massacre in the Hall
Kael and the other guards and armed servants lowered their weapons, shocked at the sight of the Myz. For a moment, the silence was absolute, save for the crackling of the distant fires and the heavy, wet breathing of the terrified everone huddled in the shadows of the room.
Kaoz took a step forward, his heavy boots crunching on the splintered remains of the Finch legacy. His black-void eyes fixed on Merrill upon the stairs, the man paralyzed in fear.
“King Diked… want Lynsy,” the Myz rumbled. The voice was a grinding of millstones, a sound so devoid of human inflection that several maids cried out in terror.
Merrill’s throat was dry, but the merchant’s instinct kicked in—a desperate, frantic reflex. He descended two steps, his hands outstretched. “Listen to me! I am a man of means! Whatever Diked is paying you, I will triple it! Ten thousand gold sovereigns! Gems from the southern mines! Just… just leave us. Tell him she was lost in the storm!”
Kaoz tilted his head, his razor-teeth glinting. He didn’t answer. He simply began to walk toward the stairs.
“Twenty thousand!” Merrill shrieked, his voice cracking, as he backed up the stairs. “I have a vault in the cellar! You can take it all! Just name your price!”
But the negotiation was severed by a scream of pure panic as one of the younger guards, a farm boy no older than twelve whose mind had finally snapped under the pressure of the Myz’s malice, lunged from the flank, his pitchfork leveled at the gap between Kaoz’s burlap tunic and his cowhide pants. “Die, you monster!”
The strike was true, but it was useless. Kaoz didn’t even turn his head. He caught the shaft of the makeshift weapon under his arm, trapping it against his iron-hard ribs. With a casual, brutal twist, he snapped the wood. In the same fluid motion, his massive hand shot out and gripped the poor boy by the face. There was a sickening pop as Kaoz slammed the boy’s head against the limestone pillar of the foyer. The farm hand slumped to the floor, silent and unmoving.
“Kill him! Kill him now!” Kael roared, he and the others charging to surround the monster in a desperate, suicidal pincer.
Kael and the guards lunged with their spears, while several of the braver servants—armed with heavy wood-axes and scythes—charged in to protect their master. It was a sea of desperate men throwing themselves against a wall of slate.
Kaoz met the charge with a fluid, terrifying grace that belied his bulk. He spun the broadsword in a horizontal arc, the steel singing a low, lethal note. The first guard’s spear was severed as if it were made of straw; the follow-through of the blade caught the man across the chest, cleaving through bone with horrific ease.
Kael lunged again, aiming for the Myz’s throat, but Kaoz stepped into the strike. He parried the bronze tip with the flat of his blade and, in one continuous motion, drove his sword downward. The heavy iron point bit deep into the marble floor, pinning a farmhand’s foot to the stone before Kaoz kicked the man aside like a broken toy.
The servants scattered like leaves in a gale, their screams echoing off the high limestone ceiling as they scrambled for the side exits. Kaoz waded through the remaining defenders, his sword a blur of dark metal. He didn’t just fight; he dismantled them. A backhanded swing sent the last guard’s helmet—and the head inside it—smashing into a bronze statue of Mannah.
Kael, the last man standing, swung his spear in a wild suicidal arc. Kaoz caught the weapon with his bare left hand, the metal bruising his grey skin but failing to stop him. He bared his razor-teeth in a mirthless snarl and drove the pommel of his sword into Kael’s face, dropping the captain of the guard into the wreckage of a cedar side-table.
“Lynsy!” Merrill screamed, finally abandoning his talk of gold as he realized his small army had been erased in heartbeats. He turned and sprinted up the remaining stairs, his aging legs fueled by a sudden, sharp burst of fatherly adrenaline. “Lynsy, lock the door! Tiffania, help her!”
He reached the upper landing just as Kaoz set a blood-slicked boot on the bottom step. The Myz didn’t chase; he began a slow, rhythmic ascent, his weight causing the thick mahogany steps to groan and splinter. Each footfall was a heartbeat, a countdown to the end of a legacy.
Merrill scrambled to the heavy double doors of his daughter’s bedchamber, his fingers fumbling with the bronze latch as he threw himself inside, slamming the wood shut behind him just as the giant reached the top of the stairs.
The Abduction
The mahogany doors of Lynsy’s bedchamber groaned under the first blow. Inside, Merrill, Lynsy, and Tiffania stood in paralyzed terror amidst the scent of lavender oil and paralyzed terror. Merril’s back was against the wood of the door, his feet sliding on the polished floor, while Tiffania stood beside him, her knuckles white as she gripped a heavy, three-branched bronze candelabra.
Lynsy was a ghost in her own room, her white silk nightgown shimmering in the low light, her hand clutching the silver locket Emcorae had given her as if it were a talisman against death.
CRACK.
The center panel of the door splintered and a massive, slate-colored hand reached through the jagged hole, the impact throwing Merrill backward. The old man hit the cedar chest at the foot of the bed with a sickening thud, the air leaving his lungs in a ragged wheeze.
Kaoz stepped into the room. He didn’t look at the silk tapestries or the gold-inlaid furniture. His void-black eyes locked onto Lynsy.
“No!” Tiffania shrieked as she swung the heavy candelabra with every ounce of her strength, the bronze catching Kaoz across the temple. It was a blow that would have killed a mortal man, but the Myz’s head merely snapped to the side.
Kaoz slowly turned his gaze to the maid servant. A low, guttural growl vibrated in his chest. He reached out, his hand closing around the candelabra and the girl’s wrists simultaneously. With a terrifying show of strength, he crushed the bronze into a twisted wreck and tossed it aside. He seized Tiffania by the throat, hoisting her off the ground.
“Leave her!” Merrill gasped, struggling to his feet. He lunged for the Myz’s legs, a final, desperate act of a father who had lost everything else.
Kaoz didn’t even look down. He drove a heavy, cowhide-clad boot into Merrill’s chest. The merchant patriarch was launched across the room, his body crashing through the delicate privacy screen before slamming into the wall. Merrill slumped to the floor, his ribs shattered, his vision beginning to tunnel into blackness.
“Father!” Lynsy screamed, but Kaoz was already moving. He dropped the gasping Tiffania onto the bed and reached for Lynsy. He tucked her under one massive arm as if she were a roll of carpet, then seized Tiffania by her hair.
“Diked’s Prize,” Kaoz rumbled, his voice a grinding stone.
As Kaoz dragged the struggling women from the room and back toward the grand landing, a door at the end of the hall flew open. Dugan Finch stepped out, his face a mask of sweating, frantic hope. He saw the Myz, recognized him as the king’s servant, and for a moment, his eyes lit up.
“You! You’re here!” Dugan cried, smoothing his silk tunic as if he were preparing for a royal audience. “Remember me? I’m Dugan! I’m the one who sent the messenger! Tell Diked I’m ready to go. My things are packed—take me to Fubar!”
Kaoz tightened his grip on the captives he was carrying, nearly suffocating them as he turned around. He looked at the pudgy young man—this soft, trembling creature who had sold his own sister for a dream of silk. The Myz’s razor-teeth glinted in the flickering light of the hallway lamps.
“Diked… not want traitor,” Kaoz hissed.
“What? No, I—I am his ally! I gave him everything!” Dugan’s voice rose to a panicked shriek as Kaoz took a step toward him. “I am a Lord! I am—”
Kaoz dropped the nearly unconscious servant Tiffania and reached out with his free hand to grip Dugan by the front of his expensive tunic. With a single, explosive heave, he hurled the surprised man over the mahogany banister. Dugan didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the marble floor of the foyer below, his neck snapping instantly upon impact. The traitor lay dead amongst the wreckage of the front doors he had helped to open.
After picking up near dead Tiffania and subduing the still-screaming Lysny, Kaoz reached the bottom of the stairs. He stepped over Dugan’s twisted corpse without a second glance. Then, moving to the grand hearth, where a fire still burned low, with a slow, macabre deliberation, he kicked a pile of burning logs onto the heavy velvet rugs and the dry tapestries, setting fire to the manor, before he exited the house.
At the top of the stairs, Merrill Finch had dragged himself toward the landing, his fingers clawing at the mahogany floor. Through the smoke and the haze of his own pain, he saw the giant mount his charcoal warhorse in the courtyard, the screaming forms of Lynsy and Tiffania tied across the saddles, before the monster rode away.
“Lynsy…” Merrill whispered, but the sound was swallowed by the growing roar of the fire quickly rising around him.
The grandest house in Monthaven was soon to become a chimney of hell. The heat began to blister the paint on the ceiling, and the smell of expensive frankincense was replaced by the acrid stench of burning cedar and silk. Merrill lay near the edge of the stairs, looking down into the foyer. He saw the red pool of his son’s blood and the orange wall of flame rising to meet him.
He had wanted a legacy. He had wanted a crown. Instead he got only horror.
The Legendary Devastation of Monthaven was complete. As the Myz rode north into the breaking storm, the merchant’s estate burned like a pyre, visible for leagues—a warning to any who dared to love what a King claimed as his own.
And just like that, the ledger was closed. Merrill died in the heat of his own ambition, and Dugan learned that the price of treason is paid in a currency you cannot spend.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 