Weeks ago He stood upon a hill gazing at the view sprawled like a great glittering monster before him. He gazed upon a bloated behemoth, a beast of such magnitude that he could not, from where he stood, see its end. The city's twinkling lightscape only roughly defined the monster's amorphous shape. It stretched, slow, and reached, indolent, to the horizon, North and South, East and West, hungry to devour eternity.

RhyDin. It was the name of the beast, the ravenous creature that would and could and did consume everything. Past, present and future congealed in its bowels. It was there, inside that leviathan, that he was compelled to go, called by a siren's song to an inevitable fate. It was in there that he belonged, he knew that now, and so he fed himself to the monster.

Fewer weeks ago It'd been a few days since he'd left the shelter. No one really said goodbye to him except the staff. They wished him all the best and assured him they'd always be there if he fell on hard luck or just needed a friend. Some tenants watched him go, their faces unsmiling, a mixture of imperious (he wasn't part of them) and resentful (he didn't deserve to get out so easy, so quick). Dingo Don gave him a big hug, but Dingo Don hugged everyone for any reason.

Despite everything the shelter had provided for him, he couldn't say he'd miss it in the slightest. He said thanks and see ya, then went to his new apartment without a glance back.

The apartment itself wasn't really new. In fact, it was pretty old and a little disgusting. The bathroom faucet leaked incessantly. The ceiling had a leak, which made itself known everytime someone in the apartment above him took a long shower. The windows sat crooked in their frames, and they leaked too. On windy days he could feel a draft seep through them.

There was no carpet in any of the rooms, though it seemed like someone had made an effort to class up the joint by throwing down linoleum that looked like hardwood but it was a flimsy fa?ade. If it hadn't been cracked and peeling in some corners, if they'd made the effort to align the patterns, it might've been convincing. There were no light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The bathroom had fluorescent lighting that flickered like it was caught in a seizure, buzzing buzzing buzzing. It cast a sickly green hue that distorted the prettiest of things into an ugly reflection — a reflection caught in the mirrors of a narrow medicine cabinet attached to the wall by a nail and a prayer.

These were only a few of the apartment's charming qualities. Home sweet home. Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn't just be better to take a chance on the streets. Or maybe go out into the woodlands, find somewhere nice and build there. Sometimes he wondered if he stayed in this sh*thole because a part of him thought he deserved it. Like it was some kind of punishment. He told himself he preferred it, that he belonged here. True, it was no manor. It was no castle. The amenities were scarce and unpredictable. The streets were dangerous and his neighbors were shady. But it was his. It was something he did for himself.

For now, it was home.

It was true that he'd been suffering a run of strange dreams, dreams about forges and anvils and hammers. Dreams about steam and sparks, soot and sweat. Iron. Steel. He lived another memory in his dreams, a memory not his own.

Sometimes he dreamt about a desert. It was not anywhere he recognized though how could he know it' It was just sand, endless sand. Now and again he glimpsed something in the distance but he could never get close.

These dreams, though, soured into nightmares....

Ribbon Dreams

It was Malachai.

Dair had been there for days already. Maybe weeks. The time felt endless and there was no relief from the torture except those times he could not endure it another moment and he would close his eyes to die at last.

And then he would wake up and it would start anew.

This time Malachai cut ribbons of flesh from him with a meticulous care, being certain that each was the same length and width and space apart between them. Dair must have passed out but not perished, because when he roused to the pain Malachai greeted him with delight. "Oh excellent! You're awake. I thought you were going to miss all of the fun."

Dair, though weak, tried moving. His hands and feet met with iron resistance. Heavy chain rattled.

"Oh, dear heart, you should know by now that I don't play fair," Malachai chastised him sweetly.

Dair ignored him and made the mistake of looking down his body. Even in the candlelight glow it was a horrendous vision. He thought he looked like some gruesome zebra. The pale of his skin alternated with the deep, oozing red-black of exposed muscle.

His stomach clenched and heaved. Tears seeped from his eyes. His eyes. Both of them. So that he could fully appreciate Malachai's perverse artistry.

Of everything else, he noticed his genitals and the sight struck him as absurd. Pathetic. He was certain he had not uttered a word but it mattered not. Malachai knew. Suddenly the man's slender hand was upon him, grabbing him most intimately. "Don't worry, my dear," he purred, "I'll get to this soon enough." And he twisted cruelly. Dair couldn't contain the sob that swelled inside him.

Malachai was suddenly above him, his aristocratic countenance dripping with false concern. Dair could feel the wash off his breath. "There now, my love. There now. Hush, or I'll tear out your tongue, and I would so hate to lose such a clever little tongue as yours. Ah, but maybe...maybe someone else would like to have it?" The man's expressive face lit into a manic smile. "I could send it to them, and they too could have a little piece of you forever. Wouldn't that be grand, my sweet boy' Yes, how grand, how generous of me! And your heart. You have one, don't you? You were ever so mean to me, I sometimes think you never cared at all. Let us see if it is thumping in there, shall we?"

Malachai was not careful with his knife as he hacked and slaughtered away precious tissue. By the time he cut down to bone he was saturated in blood. He smiled through it. Smiled as he gripped exposed ribs with his bare hands and pulled and pushed until they snapped.

Dair wanted so badly to die. He tried. The blood loss, the extreme trauma, he should've been dead long ago. But not this time. He was somehow breathing very fast and very hard. Pressure built and built inside him. Hot. He was so hot.

"Oh," Malachai whispered, and then there was fire, a blaze, an inferno, and it consumed everything. Dair jerked awake, drenched in panic and sweat.

Ribbon Dreams

It was Vadriel.

And he was angry.

Dair's head snapped aside when the large man landed a heavy punch against his jaw, literally jarring teeth loose. He collapsed to hands and knees. Dazed, he wiped the back of a wrist against his mouth. Blood. He spat.

"You gave up on me!" Vadriel thundered. It was a terrible thing. Vadriel was a beast of a man, larger even than Dair. He could not remember seeing the sophisticated, reserved Englishman so furious.

Dair tried to collect himself. A foot swung into his abdomen, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He fell to his side in fetal position. His vision blurred, watered.

"How could you?!"

He didn't know how long the on-slaught had been going. Long enough to give him bruises everywhere. He couldn't move without feeling pain.

"You gave up on me!"

"No," Dair wheezed. He tried, again, to get to his feet, but it was so hard. So hard. His gaze skimmed past Vadriel and he saw, to his surprise, others there, hidden in shadow, barely discernible.

"You're pathetic," Vadriel sneered at him with such hatred that it made Dair ache in new places. Places the man's fists could not touch him.

"Help," Dair pleaded with the strangers gazing on. Oh, but they were not strangers. They were quite familiar. Koyan and Nicci and even Nina leered down at him, their contempt plain.

Vadriel struck him again. Again. Again and again, until Dair was white hot with the pain. So very hot.

The dream ended as the others before. Flame and death, fire and suffering. Dair woke, panting, and then he put his face into his hands and sat alone in the darkness until the sky began to lighten.