It was late in the evening, and summertime. Mosquitoes skated through the air. Ouacan hated how the little daggers always snuck indoors, seemingly immune to all arcane deterrents. He remembered hearing about a high level mage in the capital who had engineered a spell to eliminate the bugs, but way out in the marshes where his small town was, they were clearly still thriving. He watched one land on his arm with unbecoming grace before slapping it, releasing a small blood splatter. Maybe the local sage would learn some anti-mosquito spells during one of her next semesters in the capital. Maybe by next summertime.

Ouacan tossed the book he'd been holding against a wall, which it hit with a muffled clunk. While he wanted to study, he couldn’t get his thoughts straight. Oftentimes he thought it useless, anyway. Reading, that is. If any historical sons of tanners had moved to the capital and become skilled in the arcane arts as he wished to, he'd read of none. Though he had yet to take on a class himself, it seemed certain that his would be tanner, too, like his father's. The title of the book glared at him from its spine: On the Origin of Spells.

According to the book, or what he'd read of it, spells and even classes were first derived from monsters. When humans learned of monsters’ ability to amass strength, to level and to evolve, they found a way to mimic it. Assuming a class, even a mundane one like tanner, was technically like becoming a monster in some sense. What kind of class resembled a mosquito? Could mosquitoes evolve? Ouacan imagined a large needle-nosed creature skulking around in search of blood. The image disgusted him.

“Hey Oua!” a familiar voice called out from behind the boy’s bedroom window. “You still wanna check out that carriage?”

It was the voice of his friend, Maia. The daughter of a seamstress, she was always dressed well, and she had a particularly chipper tone of voice which obscured her mood. Ouacan was never sure whether he was annoyed by these features or liked them. In any case, the two were around the same age, and all children in town who were close in age tended to spend a lot of time with one another.

Yesterday, a guard had discovered a wrecked carriage outside of town. He refrained from examining it as to avoid a possible ambush, but apparently a group of guards was supposed to be dispatched at some point to perform a proper search. It hadn’t happened yet. This was all according to Fenel, however — the son of a man who, while employed as a guardsman, was recognized as Gildabrud’s “town drunk.” Ouacan did not trust Fenel.

“Hmmm… how far away was it? I’m already getting eaten alive inside, can’t imagine how itchy I’d be in the morning if we spent too long out there.”

Maia giggled. “You really are scared!”

When rumor of the carriage was first brought up among the kids, Ouacan quickly spoke against visiting it. If the guards were reluctant to, then it was probably dangerous. Of course, he was quickly derided for his alleged cowardice, which he had a sort of reputation for. Maia’s comment made his eye twitch.

Oucan propped open the window and poked out of it in one clumsy motion before staring down at Maia. “I am not scared, stupid. I’m careful,” he responded.

“Suit yourself,” Maia said, still smiling. “We’re meeting at the usual spot soon. Don’t regret not coming.” With that, she turned and darted through the bushes in a hyperbolic display of stealth. Perhaps all the youth in Gildabrud would take the assassin class, Ouacan thought. They were so accustomed to sneaking around at night that it might be a viable option.

While he didn’t want to go, he wasn’t going to keep reading that book. He could go to sleep like he was supposed to, but he had too much on his mind. It hurt a little bit to think that even Maia saw him as a coward. What’s wrong with being scared if it keeps you alive, he thought? Plenty of things besides mosquitoes lurked outside the town’s walls, and although the kids weren’t little anymore, they were without class abilities or spells. They were basically defenseless.

As he imagined the danger, Ouacan also thought of the capital. All the soldiers and students of magic there had encountered and overcome countless dangers; even the shopkeepers and couriers had. The place was only so great because its inhabitants were the strongest adventurers and most skilled artisans, those with high levels in their classes. If he ever wanted to become like them, he’d have to get more used to danger. Otherwise it was certain that he’d remain in Gildabrud his whole life.

The kids had been waiting on the roof of the barracks for some time, a place they could access rather easily thanks to Fenel’s spare key, “for emergencies only.” The skinny boy looked at Maia and then down towards the center of town as he scratched at his shaggy brown hair. “A no-show again, huh?” he spoke, half-teasingly, half-concerned.

A burly kid with crooked teeth chimed in, “he’s going to miss out. I bet the carriage is full of loot.”

“Wait, look!” Maia said and pointed towards the edge of the roof, where some fingers strained to hold on. The four children crowded around to look down at Ouacan, who struggled to pull himself up. “A little h-help?” he mustered. Their arms twisted toward him and lifted him onto the roof.

Before Ouacan stood Maia and Fenel as well as two others: the larger one, Don, and a quiet one named Jonfrey. These four were his closest friends, and in the moment that they lifted him up he felt that they really did have a special connection. The feeling quickly went away as Fenel began to speak.

“Well, look who it is!” Fenel said a bit too loud, which earned him a shush from Maia. “Didn’t think you had it in you, buddy,” he continued in a whisper.

Ouacan took a deep breath. “Me neither, I guess.”

“The longer we’re out, the more likely we are to be caught,” warned Jonfrey, who looked irritated. He started to hoist himself onto the large wall next to the barracks and motioned for the others to do the same. Ouacan shrugged before following suit.

The jump down from the wall always stung the legs a bit, but the numbness that followed complemented a nimble run well. The kids moved swiftly in single file and kept to the shadows until they were far out of view of the guard towers.

“Apparently it’s a ways down the road, right around the ridge.” Fenel pointed out into the darkness at the curving path, which could barely be distinguished from the rest of the moonlit sprawl ahead. The group started trotting slowly now while keeping to their marching order. Don stood at the front because, well, he was biggest. Maia was, to her distaste, kept in the middle, “for her protection.”

From the back, Ouacan observed the stillness of the night. He felt surprisingly calm. It seemed as if there were no other living creatures for miles around. Strangely, Fenel was shaking a bit. As soon as he noticed, Ouacan saw this as a perfect opportunity for payback.

“You know… ” he started in a mysterious tone, “they say a particular type of monster loves to prowl around on nights like these…” In his mind, this was a weak attempt to be scary, but Fenel turned to look at him, followed by the others. They all looked slightly worried.

“Shut the hell up,” Fenel laughed, visibly on edge.

“No, no, I’m not kidding. I read about it in a book.” The others at least thought of Ouacan as booksmart, so this would give his story some credibility. “What is it?” Don asked. Ouacan gestured forward and the group continued walking as he resumed:

“I’ve read that it goes by many names. Most sources aren’t sure that it even exists. All that's known is that it stalks children who leave their villages when it's dark out... and then the children go missing.”

“Bullshit-” Fenel started, still facing forward.

“Like little Laon went missing?” Maia cut in, her voice wavering. She was referring to another girl the kids played with when they were young who was no longer present in Gildabrud. Ouacan smiled creepily.

“Exactly,” he continued. “When I asked the sage about Laon, she told me it was the work of this very monster. She said it waits in the shadows, watching its victims for hours before…

Zwoosh!”

Everyone jumped and halted again just before the ridge.

Jonfrey weakly asked, “What else did the Sage say?”

“She said it was a one-of-a-kind monster, the last of its breed in all the land, and that it had a name like a person.”

“Which was…?” Fenel was more impatient than scared at this point.

“Um, erm…” Ouacan hadn’t thought this far ahead. A frightening name could really sell the story, but what made a name frightening? Before he could properly formulate something, a word tumbled out of his mouth almost unconsciously —

“BEE-ADDLE-DRUNG.”

And a gentle wind rustled through the nearby trees.

Zwoosh-

“Hahahaha! Lame!” Fenel said, breaking the tension and eliciting hushed laughter from the rest of the group. “You almost had me there, Oua.”

Ouacan was a little disappointed in himself for ruining the climax, but on top of that he was unsure of where that name came from. It seemed predestined to roll off his tongue, silly though it was. Had he read it somewhere? Maybe he really had heard a story like the one he described.

“Hey guys, look," Don said, and stopped after turning around the ridge. He pointed towards the apparent wreckage of the carriage. The vehicle had been toppled onto its side, with its underbelly now facing the direction the kids approached from. Its wheels looked to be in decent shape, and in fact there wasn’t any kind of damage visible befitting of a toppled carriage. It was as if it had just been flipped over. Stranger still, a warm light ballooned from behind the carriage. A fire.

“An adventurer?” Maia asked excitedly. She looked toward Ouacan for an answer. How should I know? “Hmm… ” he replied, distracted by the anomaly.

“Only one way to find out,” Fenel said. He hurried to the front and advanced as sneakily as he could, using the brush on the outskirts of the ridge to his advantage. The others did the same. Ouacan felt uneasy.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that an adventurer would camp so close to town?” he questioned, not really expecting an answer.

Maia rolled her eyes. “Adventurers do plenty of things stranger than that.”

She had a point, but this seemed like… bait. Ouacan indeed hadn’t read much about high level monsters, nor had the sage told him about them, but his mother and father often warned him about bandits. There existed people who made a living, even leveled up by luring unsuspecting travelers into situations like this before stripping them of their belongings at knife-point and sending them away… or worse.

“We should turn back.” His voice did not reach the others in time.

“-the hell?” Don stared out at the suspected camp from the brush, stupefied. He spied three figures — two slumped against the interior of the carriage, another laid flat across the dead grass. They were guardsmen.

“Papa!” Fenel shouted as his confident posture collapsed into worry. He ran toward the men with no regard for stealth, gasping for air as his heart began to race. Jonfrey squinted for a moment before letting out an uncharacteristically loud gasp from the bushes. Maia was motionless. Ouacan’s heart sank.

Seen more clearly, it appeared that there were actually four figures by the carriage. Two, slumped against the vehicle, were dripping crimson from deep pierce wounds on their chests. It looked as if they had been pinned there like job requests on the community bulletin. The one on the ground was face-down and looked gnarled, half… -eaten? Mosquitoes buzzed around the blood that pooled beneath him as if it were the stagnant pool of water they had spawned from.

The fire, it appeared, was not kept alight with lumber. Another body, assumedly also a guard, acted as its fuel. Ouacan choked on the smoky air.

One of the slumped guards slowly looked up at Fenel. It was not his father. “Run, boy…” The man’s final words were but a whimper.

Then, a gravelly voice rose from a low hum. It came from the shadows.

“A human toy to lure out the guards, and the guards to lure out… well, I presumed something stronger than guards. I did not expect children.

Splendid.”

The monster slowly emerged from the amorphous shadow of the carriage as if it were a deep inkblot, gelatinous as a bog. He — or it — was hairy as an animal, but had the cunning expression of a human criminal. But it wasn’t a bandit. It was-

“B-beeaddledrung…” Fenel muttered, sinking weakly to his knees.

“Hm?” the monster raised a fluffy brow while holding a hand to his ear in a mocking fashion. “BEEADDLEDRUNG?” He did his best to make it sound powerful. “So they’ve given me a name. Very good.”

The beast sunk his claws into the two children by the carriage quickly, almost mercifully. Tendrils sprouted from his shadow and wavered like wheatgrass as they made their way toward the brush, toward Maia and Jonfrey. Ouacan was frozen. What could he do? This was a nightmare, a sick imitation of the story he made up. There was no way for him to escape — he couldn’t cast a spell unless he had a class, and a magic-wielding class at that. Could he somehow take on a class in this moment? He thought of the mosquito-man he had pictured earlier. He saw BEEADDLEDRUNG.

The boy blinked. The monster had turned to look at him. He didn't feel the others by his side anymore, only the leering eyes of this creature boring into him. Did the monster already eat his friends, and the guards, playfully, slowly? Is that what happened? He wasn’t going to think about it. He kept blinking and hoped for it to go away.

The monster moved toward him and then stopped abruptly. This would have startled Ouacan if his mind wasn’t pushed to the point of vacancy.

“Don’t worry. I like to leave one. To spread the word.

Take care.”

Spread the word? Leave one? Take care?

Ouacan blinked again and the bodies were gone. Not a trace of blood remained, and the fire had disappeared, leaving a cloud of mosquitoes in its place. They buzzed in confusion, their expected blood bounty suddenly gone. He could have felt validated for wanting to stay home, but he just felt empty and afraid. Dinner fell out of his stomach in a rush of bile and landed in the tall grass before him. Then maybe he screamed. He didn't know. He was too shocked to hear anything but the gentle zwoosh of the night air as his mind worked to generate a belated escape plan.

——

BEEADDLEDRUNG spun the keyring around his finger and listened to the faint jingle it made. He watched as the keys crossed one another and collided. Only a few of the keys were potentially useful to him, and even then, he didn't use them often. Collecting them just seemed like an obvious hobby to take up — humans really liked to carry keys, apparently, and he had a habit of acquiring the contents of humans’ inventories. At first, he’d save every key he found, but after the ring became so overloaded that it was no longer fun to spin around, he had to get rid of some. Now only the most visually intriguing ones remained. As well as, of course, that one: the one he found the same night he found a name. It was a long time ago, somewhere on the other side of the kingdom.

The creature stared at a painting on the wall in reminiscence. It was originally a portrait of a young human girl, but BEEADDLEDRUNG thought it looked contemptuous, so he punched the face in. The battered wall, exposed through the hole in the canvas, struck him as truly profound. He felt he'd surely improved the artwork.

The human face was admittedly something of a mystery to him. He could hardly tell one human from the next, although certain categorizations were easy for him to make. The small ones, weak and whiny, were children. They were the hardest to get to but the easiest to break. The elder ones were similar, but they were often too smart, not worth the effort. Adults were more variable, and could sometimes put up a fight. Sometimes.

His thoughts, as they often had lately, drifted toward a particular human man, the one who hurt him.

Angrily, BEEADDLEDRUNG paced down the hall to the heavy door made of lead or iron or something enchanted. He pulled on it with mighty force, much more than necessary. Down the stairs he stomped, down to the inner sanctum, where he had found an impressive stockpile of minerals and magic tomes when he first adopted the property. They had since been relocated, and in their place stood the beast’s most important possessions.

One of them, a nasty little imp called Pennybard, scrawled away furiously at a vellum page three times his size. He muttered something profane as he scritched and scratched with his jagged fingers which stained the surface of the page with peculiar runes.

“Penny!”

The creature jumped at the sound of BEEADDLEDRUNG’s voice. His leathery wings fluttered nervously and his sour face contorted to form something resembling a smile.

“How is the thirty-first edition of my biografeed coming along?”

The imp’s eye twitched. “I-it’s biography sire.” It was probably a mistake to correct the oaf, but it was hard to resist. “I’m… making progress. I think that you might be pleased with this edition.” He hoped that he would be.

BEEADDLEDRUNG ran a blue tongue across his teeth. “I’ll have a peak, then.”

At this, Pennybard squeaked. “Why, of course.” He was, as ever, in no position to protest. He prepared for anguish and flapped his way under the book’s cover before giving it a shove. The book closed with a flop. Onward to edition thirty-two, Pennybard thought somberly.

The monster picked it up as gingerly as he could with his monstrous hands, which were best suited for strangling and decidedly not for this sort of thing. As he had observed humans do on occasion, he licked the tip of a finger and tried to turn a page with it. A thick globule of saliva splattered onto the table of contents. It slowly burnt through the page with an acidic hiss. Pennybard yelped.

“Oops,” BEEADDLEDRUNG said, and simulated an apologetic smile.

He took greater care in turning the next pages, pinching the corners lightly between his claws and tugging them aside. A few ripped before he got the hang of it, but this didn't detract from his reading.

BEEADDLEDRUNG was not adept at sounding out words. If he were, he’d be reading aloud, a great excuse to hear his own voice. Language was still a relatively fresh commodity to him. For two thirds of his existence, it was a concept beyond his understanding. Nowadays, he could at least grasp the general meaning of the symbols. As he scanned the pages, he thought of his origins.

The monster spawned as a mere bugge, a puny thing not unlike a goblin. As a bugge, his scrawny limbs could hardly carry his ambition. Although he now only remembered that time in vague impressions and colors, he knew that he'd felt weak — hopeless and helpless beyond measure. He was almost always starving, and although he had a tribe, his brothers only ever proved to be obstacles on his path toward food. Together they would stalk the crags and search for carrion or wait for weak travelers to pass by. Individually, the bugges were quite fragile, but as a ravenous collective they could make quick work of their prey. In his dissatisfaction, BEEADDLEDRUNG must have first asserted his strength in a squabble for larger portions. He must have begun leading his tribe then and slowly leveled up until he could eat a whole human by himself. He must have evolved sometime in his thirties.

With evolution came enlightenment. Memories of his time as a bugbear were far clearer, although they still lacked a sense of purposefulness or perspective. One of the first things he did was devour his tribe. It sounded a bit brutish now, but he was a brute then, and it was the best way he could think of to prevent being overthrown. Evidently, it'd worked. Around that time, he left the crags to seek out larger prey. Many formidable creatures became his food. On occasion he’d cooperate with other monsters, but he always felt more full when he hunted alone.

His greatest epiphany, the thing that eventually led him to his third evolution, was the sensation of flavor. Somewhere around level fifty, he noticed that some things tasted better than others. Hunting, which was once about merely filling his belly till he was bloated and sleepy, took on a new dimension. What prey satisfied him the most? The obvious considerations occurred to him first, such as texture and taste. How easily did the entrails slide down his throat? Were the bones hard to chew? Soon, though, it became clear that the quality of the meal had something to do with the way it moved, the way it acted.

Humans had the best flavor. Once BEEADDLEDRUNG determined this, it seemed like it had been clear since his days on the crags.

There were different kinds, of course, but the most abundant and satisfying flavor was that of fear. When he dismantled a human and they didn’t want to be dismantled, that was flavorful.

By the time the monster started to select prey based on this knowledge, to hunt meticulously and carefully, he had evolved to become a bogeyman. No doubt the rumors which began to surround him had helped. With his newfound sentience, he mastered the shadows along with the art of the hunt. He awakened a new bottomless hunger… one he had yet to sate. As he stared through a page, BEEADDLEDRUNG thought of the name he'd earned, the name he'd told that hero to remember him by. Tears showered the book and singed its surface, filling the air with vapor.

“Sire!? Does it please?” Pennybard interrupted. He leaned forward with his little black eyes stretched as wide as they’d go.

“It’s beautiful…” BEEADDLEDRUNG responded, his tears still undoing the book. Losing interest, he grasped the biography in his hand and tossed it over his shoulder at Pennybard. It tackled the imp to the floor with a painful crunch.

“My life is beautiful, is what I mean. The biografeed could use some work.”

With this, the monster moved further into the room, driven by some incalculable emotion. Pennybard twitched beneath the book for a moment before prying himself out. His limbs were tangled.

“Have you ever thought about how my story could end, Penny?” BEEADDLEDRUNG asked, confident that the creature was still alive.

Many times, the imp thought. “Such a grandiose finale is beyond the limits of my imagination.” It’d be best to avoid being mangled further.

“It is inconceivable indeed.” The monster arrived near another precious item, a large sword with a thick, angular blade. It took some effort to pick up, but BEEADDLEDRUNG dangled it from its hilt, which he held between two fingers. He admired an inscription on the guard of the sword, which was in a script he could not read. He imagined that it spelt finale. He thought that would be a fitting name for the sword.

BEEADDLEDRUNG shifted the weapon in his hand so that his grip was closed around the hilt, and he pointed it towards the far wall of the room. As he traced the perimeter with the blade, he noticed how small the room really was. It could hardly hold all the unread love letters, all the wedding bands, all the locks of hair and teeth and bones and other assorted mementoes that lay about. It could hardly even hold puny Pennybard. BEEADDLEDRUNG felt that he should hunch over.

“How long have I been here?” he asked. Pennybard was meant to respond, but BEEADDLEDRUNG was also asking himself this question for the first time. It was unusual for him to remain in the same place for too long, as prey was always moving. If it wasn’t, then it likely wasn't worthy prey.

Ever since he accepted that pledge, though, BEEADDLEDRUNG had remained in the village. He’d barely ventured outside of that deceased lord’s estate on the hill, where he was now. If he were to leave, how would the warrior find him again? Perhaps he underestimated the warrior, but — no, that wasn’t it. He simply knew that if the battle were to be finished, it would be here. If his story were to end-

“It has been, by my estimation, some fifty cycles since you settled here,” Pennybard replied. This was likely an understatement; it had been a very long time since he was last calibrated to tell the time.

The number stung. Fifty cycles spent pacing around these halls, waiting for something. It was good to know that the fear he held in his belly had sustained him for so long, at least. Fifty cycles. BEEADDLEDRUNG tied the hilt of the sword to his belt. It scraped the ground like a knife against a dinner plate as he walked toward the stairs.

“Hmm…

I think I have had enough. I will go and look for him.”

Him!? Pennybard could not believe that his master would refer to a human this way. He was always talking about them like they were tools, mere objects to be used or discarded by the beast. He treated the imp more or less the same way, but this was made less offensive by the fact that he showed humans, those vainglorious creatures, the same disrespect. At least, he had.

The small cage at BEEADDLEDRUNG’s waist creaked open as he pulled away a key, clipping the ring to his belt again. “Get in,” he commanded.

“W-where are we going, sire?” the imp asked nervously. He expected to be ferried to some new hell.

“I am going… to die.”

BEEADDLEDRUNG stalked up the stairs, and the hero’s sword was worn slightly duller as it scraped against each step. Pennybard grumbled and puzzled over his master’s statement. Was he ill?

The hall was chilly with roaming spirits. They parted upon the approach of the lumbering beast. In the foyer, which was now a charred ruin, some embers still sizzled as they suckled at the last reserves of the mana the Ignis artifact had released into the atmosphere so many cycles ago. Heavy claws fell over the embers and snuffed them out at last as BEEADDLEDRUNG walked through what was once the entrance.

Even after the village was bereft of its inhabitants, it still carried a certain liveliness in the greenery which embraced it and the rich soil which it sat upon. Although the people had gone, the trees remained to weep for them as the breeze rattled their leaves.

Fifty cycles later, the area was a barren hollow. The buildings had all rotted or shattered and the trees were dead and petrified. The earth was a dull and dusty grey, and the wind pooled in swirly wisps in places, carrying clouds of dirt. One of the only distinctive features that remained on the land was a scar, the crater BEEADDLEDRUNG’s desperate attack had made. It looked glassy in the light of dawn.

The sky reddened as the sun ascended from behind the hills and bathed the earth in ethereal blood. Morning.

“I am going to die.”