CONTROL

	The angels are at your back, the royals are at your neck, the people squabble in the streets. You see flames engulfing homes at the base of the mountain, smoke gushing into the yawning black sky as the snow piles on and on. The coldest and harshest winter has come, and absent the aid of the nobles, the people have grown restless. The blackened hands from beyond the veil tug at your soul, snared in their wiry webbed fingers and pulling at you from every direction. They urge you to action, to seize the fire and use it for yourself to burn it all down as you’d always wished to do.

	These thoughts consume your mind. Thoughts of the people, of the angels, of the royals; countless unseen hands ripping at your soul in every direction. Your head swims deliriously with these worries, locked in an inexorable struggle for your soul. Those black, thready tendrils of burning hatred wind about your heart as those black, wiry hands clutch about your mind, and you can barely think. The push and pull of riots unfold before you in the streets, the guards fighting and dying at the hands of their own class in search of the aid, acknowledgment and approval of an uncaring nobility, surely sparing no mind for the struggles going on below as long as their luxuries remain uninterrupted.

	This is a pivotal moment in time, and you are frozen, watching it unfold. Three different forces would ask your hand, though they hardly know it; you know that if you put your mind to it, you could end these riots and preserve your kingdom. You know that if you put your mind to it, you could see your kingdom become a graveyard. You know that if you put your mind to it, you could…

	Clarity strikes you like a train.

	One heavy inhale of the shockingly cold winter air, and you feel it all unravel inside of you. You find yourself back to reality, standing there gawking out your window and into the void. In the moment, you feel nothing but burning awareness; it’s as if your soul is finally catching fire, kindled by the heat and pressure of everything. You even take a second to look at your hands, flexing your slender fingers and watching them move to your command, reminding yourself of just how ‘here’ you are.

	You break free of the chaos within, your sudden burst of resolve and courage dredging from within an answer to all your troubles, and in the process, you find yourself… somewhere else, with an alien clarity of purpose.

	You stand, wet umbrella in hand, at the door to the throne room. As you heave those massive, carved and gilded doors out of the way, you see the guardship bow away from you as they always do wherever you go, as if you’d infect them with your mere presence. Across what feels like a sea of sickeningly gaudy red carpet and intricately carved and painted walls and pillars, you see him. His wrinkled body entombed in the finest of silks and the most beautiful of gems, he barely seems to regard you; but when he does, it is with narrowed eyes, the pile of cozy fabric slowly sitting up in his massive golden chair, scepter in hand.

	“Cyril,” he intones, his voice low and heavy. “What is it that you want?”

	You do not answer him. You just begin moving toward him, at first under the guise of merely getting closer to speak, and then with far greater speed. By the halfway point, you break into a full sprint; the guards watch you turn into a streak of black that passes the entire length of the room in less than a second, your stride broken as you throw yourself at the throne, hand pressed firmly into the handle of your umbrella-blade and its end struck directly through his heart.

	He looks at you, barely able to register your arrival at first. His shaking, decrepit hand reaches up, grasping the blade inside of him as if he can’t believe what you have done to him. Admittedly fearless, he sits up further, looking you dead in the eyes and snarling lowly.

	“I knew you could not resist the call of royal blood forever, Cyril,” he says. His voice is steady and solid as ever, the king’s and your own blue eyes locked intently and scornfully with each other as he bares his teeth in a disgusted, disappointed sneer. “I only wish I had not been so merciful.”

	“Perhaps I could have, if only I cared more for the man I would have to bleed to get it,” you say. Before he can respond, you rip the blade from his chest and with a swift and decisive motion send his head rolling across the floor, the already red carpet sullen with maroon as the guards stare at you in utter shock, uncertain in this moment whether to throw themselves at a dangerous monster for the honor of a dead man.

	You hunch over the throne, drinking deeply of the powerful blood. His vital red stains your face as your teeth reave through his skin, tearing into his chest and seeking his riven heart, where the finest blood is.

	Drenched in your kill, his viscera still caught against your fangs, you stand slowly, brandishing your blade at the guards.

	“You were wise to remain uninvolved in our dispute,” you say. “Your kin battle each other at the foot of this mountain for the glory and luxury of parasites. I know, somewhere inside of you, is a hunger for blood just as potent as mine. Return to your homes, to your families, and meditate on this hunger, and in due time I promise you that fulfillment.”

	There is silent acknowledgment between the guards; some do not seem so receptive to your ideas, but cherish nevertheless the opportunity to return to their homes that they were unsure if they would be afforded ever again. None seem keen to throw themselves on your blade in a desperate play for heroics, and so they filter out of the room, deeper into the palace’s reaches and away from you, to let you finish your well-earned feast.

	Your body trembles as you realize what you have finally done. The leering angels fill in every shadowed space in this room, their gaze disapproving and, somehow… worried. As the royal blood finally hits your stomach, as your deepest and most visceral hunger is slaked, you feel an inimitable power within yourself:

	Control.