The creature squealed in terror, its tiny flanks heaving in and out erratically as it struggled to catch its breath, fur distinctly more rust coloured than was normal for a squirrel. Through its tiny, beady eyes, it glimpsed the face of its torturer, twisted into a grotesque mask of enjoyment as it played with the small rodent. The wolf grinned hideously, enjoying itself greatly, feeling drunk with the power of the hunter. It had its large paws splayed around the thing, essentially trapping it in a ring of terror from which it could not escape – and here the worst part – for its hind legs dragged uselessly behind it in the snow. The blue-black behemoth had broken its back, leaving it completely at his mercy or, more accurately, lack thereof. Used to scurrying swiftly out of danger, the pain and horror of its new disability rendered the squirrel incapacitated. All it could really accomplish was swinging its head to follow the snake-like motions of its captor's jaws, not even dodging the reddened saliva that dripped to the ground around it like so much rain. Every few moments, the warrior lunged forward to grip it between his teeth, tearing a new wound into its frail hide, or cracking yet another rib so that blood poured afresh from its ears, mouth, skin and nose. The poor creature began a keening wail, crying for something to end its agony. Kneph gazed down at it, suddenly bored. Heedless of its pleading cries, he rose to his paws and moved off aways to sit beside a mangrove tree, leaving the squirrel to drown in a pool of its own blood.

Perhaps I am mistaken to call him Kneph, for Kneph he was no longer. The mute wolf had been overcome by his personal demons that morning, his daily outlook transformed into a malleable clay that the ghostly mind-warpers fractured as easily as a glass swan swiped carelessly from the mantle. They squabbled with one another for control of his conciousness, making him changeable and stormy. The only gift that ever seemed to come from these encounters was the refreshed use of his voice, although it was never considered to be a gift by Kneph when he came to and realised what the Others had spoken using his larynx. He would have shivered at the thought, had he been present to think it. Instead he was not, instead it was the ghouls, haunting him even in the shrouded mists of Iromar, where he thought he had finally found safety.

“Stop fidgeting, you're with us now, you're safe. Let us control, let us lead! We can show you a better way to live!”

This muttered in his voice, to himself as he sat, probably looking as though he had just escaped an asylum, “Listen to that wailing Nox, is the death song not beautiful? Ah but to hear it pour from the mouth of a broken soul, what a gift, what a joy!”

They were sick, dangerous and sick. Kneph shivered deep inside himself, horrified at what his jaws were saying but powerless to stop himself. The voice of Nox was weedy and thin and terrifying, rivalled in distaste only by the harsh, discordant throb of the other wraith that stirred within, Drudge. Kneph's own voice was rich and handsome, or at least it had been once, long ago, when he still could power his vocal chords. Now he was but a shadow of his former self, standing beneath a tree in a landscape full of stinking bogs, the roar of alligators his nightly lullaby and the song of demons his daily chorus.

It was a slow and rancid torture, as bad even as the torture that had been meted out to the unfortunate squirrel.But, unlike the squirrel's own lot, this one was different. This one was endless.