I am still haunted by that night.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see my home burning in bright crimson flame.

I wake up late at night to my sister’s pained shrieks.

The sweetest aromas only smell of burning flesh and carnage now.

With each break I take, I taste the choking, black smog that surrounded me.

The shining sun just reminds me that I must hide my grey, scarred body under layers of well-worn steel.

Worst of all, I remember them. Their rotted, curving teeth. Their long, bulbous noses. Their jutting horns. Their scanty, barbaric garb. Their twisted, disturbed laughter. And their eyes. The empty yellow eyes…

I will only be sated when they all pay the price with their blood upon the ground.

I stood over the torn body of another one of them. Thick red pools and flows through the cracked tile. Not far away, the creature’s severed head laid, its face contorted into a crooked smile. How I longed to see true fear in their voided eyes before ending them.

I slay them one after other. Soon they learn to fear me. They flee for their lives at my sight. They plead and bargain for their lives. It all falls on deaf ears. I deal only in death.

It had been a long time coming, but now, I felt I could truly call myself the slayer of monsters.