Dullaklua's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Dullaklua wanted one thing buried in Reaper's Bog: a crown of old bone that would make him king of every nightmare. He was a monster half-wolf, half-devil, tall as a barn door, with teeth like broken knives and a staff topped by a skull. Yet even he could not cross the marsh tonight. A guardian stood over the crown's grave, and it was worse than him. He watched from his door. Behind him, his theatre glowed with cruel holiday lights, bells and skulls hung on green swags, a warm mask over a cold place of judgment. He had frightened thousands of children here. But fear was not the same as rule. The crown would give him rule. In the marsh crouched a giant black hound with three heads. Each head had eyes of a different color, red, green, and blue. The beast paced the mud where the bone crown lay sunk. Every time Dullaklua stepped closer, all three heads snapped toward him and snarled. He could not fight past three throats at once. He went back inside and looked into his dark orb. The bone-wrapped crystal showed the hound clearly. It also showed a flower growing at the marsh edge, a pale lily with red seeping from its bloom like a fresh wound. Dullaklua remembered the old tale. Abyssal beasts feared that bleeding flower. It carried the scent of their own death. He returned to the bog. The lily grew where black water met mud. He cut the stem with one claw. Red sap ran down his knuckles. The hound heard him and charged, three heads roaring in three tones. Dullaklua did not run. He raised the lily high. The blood-red seep dripped onto the mud between them. All three heads jerked back. The red eye rolled white. The green eye watered. The blue eye shut. The hound whined, a sound no beast that size should make, and it backed away from the sunken grave. Dullaklua walked past it into the mud. He drove his skull-staff down and pried up the crown. The bone was black with bog rot but whole. He lifted it and felt its old cold power crawl up his arm. But the hound did not flee. It circled behind him, low and quiet now, and lay down across the only firm path out. It was not guarding the crown anymore. It was guarding him. The lily wilted in his fist, its red seep already drying. Once the scent was gone, three sets of teeth would rise between Dullaklua and dry land. He held the crown he had come for. He also stood trapped in the marsh with a beast that would not leave. To become king of nightmares, he first had to master the thing that had cornered him.