 It was in the cold hours of the bleeding dawn that the night awoke from his untimely murder. Beneath a copper sky there came the lonely croon of a morning dove, calling softly from the darkness of the autumn trees. Its cry was barely audible over the sound of the river easing by, the air reeked of iron rot and burnt flesh. He tasted blood and felt sand grind between his teeth. His head pounded feverishly and a lance of pain like white fire throbbed where his eyes should have been. Summoning what strength he could muster, the night reached with the ruins of his left hand, a two-fingered mass of shattered bone and sheared flesh, and weakly dragged his broken body out of the water. His legs towed uselessly behind him, numb with biting cold. He reached with his right hand, found the rough bark of a root, and pulled himself up until he felt his unmoving feet drag up the riverbank. Lifting a face that looked more a cadaver than man, he struggled to make out anything in the foggy haze that had become his new world. With his remaining hand he tried to find his eyes, but there lay only a hole where the left should be. The right was crusted, nearly shut beneath a thick layer of earth and blood. What remained of his mind was a shattered pain of fragmented memories, half thoughts, and muddled emotions. There was a wrenching, squeezing ache around his chest and throat. But he couldn't remember why. Digging his palms into the earth, he tried to push himself up and away, but his knees wouldn't respond, wouldn't move. He couldn't support his crippling weight. He sagged back down, wheezed, coughed, and spat up hot blood. He felt gnats, picking about his gnarled matted hair, but couldn't find the strength to bat them away. Slowly, he noticed a throbbing in his right calf muscle, a pain that grew more and more painful the longer he lay there. He opened his mouth to cry out, but only a strangled croak came from his throat. His body fidgeted and shivered, a fever boiled in his head and the sickly taste of bile rose from his throat. No tears shed down his monstrous face, for his sight was gone and only a dead thing remained. He pushed himself onto his side with an effort and toppled onto his back, sprawled out like a corpse left to spoil. The night moved his lips absently in the shape of words, but his scattered conscience couldn't articulate what it was he was trying to say. He lay there for what might have been minutes or hours, moving his lips, voice huskily whispering until he could make himself understand. The night, the dragon, the king. And there it was, like a lightning bolt of vivid electric clarity. The shattered bits of his waking mind stitched themselves crudely back into a hole. Scattered thoughts fell together in a timeline of events, memories, and emotions gradually becoming stronger. He remembered the fire now, the killing, the betrayal. He knew now more than anything an old withering hate, the night, the dragon, the king. He heard as much as felt something of a growl rise in his throat, tasted blood and spit as it roiled on his tongue. His face transformed into an ugly grimace, his teeth grinding from left to right. The pain he felt strengthened in his newfound clarity, and in it he found a fury powerful enough to spark some scrap of life in his tired aching bones. The night, the dragon, the king. Jabbing his elbow into the dirt, the dead man rolled onto the blue frosted grass. He choked down vomit and growled again, one hand forward, fingers raking at the frigid earth. Pull! Half hand forward, fingers clawing at grit and sand. Pull! Both hands forward, fingernails biting into dirt and rock. Pull! Night, the dragon, the king. He found his sword by a glint caught from the corner of his ravaged vision, moved his body and grasped wildly for the hilt. The blade was broken, a deep curve like a crater cutting through one side of the dirty steel. The hilt was damaged, flattened where his missing fingers had once been. He supposed they'd be lying around there somewhere. The night, the dragon, the king. One hand in front of the other, he yanked his broken body across the riverbank, heading for the smoke that rose from two great piles of ash and ruin on the water side. He spat and snarled and fought with all the will he had left. He dug his knees into the dirt and dragged his miserable carcass from the earth. He felt in his belly a weight like a stone that threatened to drag him down to the muck. He felt it in his chest, a yawning chasm where his heart should have been. He felt from the blood in his veins to the marrow in his bones a fiery malice that consumed his being and screamed like a caged wolf for bloody revenge. The night, the dragon, the king. The night, the dragon, the king. The night, the dragon, the king. Of the chorus echoing in the smoldering cavern of his mind, he seethed, kill, kill, kill them all. Slowly, the night began to crawl.