Dr. Naesle.

Blood dripped off the knife as I stepped into the dark bedroom.

On the bed, the divine prophet Magnus was propped on one elbow, looking sleepily toward the door.

All sure, he said. I only took a moment to revel in the fact that I was here.

It was the culmination of so much work. The man who lay on the mass of bed in the richly adorned

bedroom was the personification of all that was wrong in the world.

I looked at him and saw what had been taken from me and from others like me.

And although I wasn't excited to kill him, I did feel a thrill of determination as I rushed

through the lavish bedroom. By the time Magnus realized the danger he was in,

I was already bearing down on him. He scrambled away on the bed, screaming off for help.

I jumped after him, bringing the knife down. He jerked away at the last moment,

and the knife cut a gash in his thigh. He screamed again, and I knew I wouldn't be making it out

of here alive. Not now, not with all the noise he was making. It didn't matter. As long as I

could end his life, it didn't matter what happened to me. He fell off the other side of the bed,

and I jumped down on top of him, straddling his hips. I drove the knife into a stomach as he

screamed and fought. He tried to choke me, so I sliced his arms open until he withdrew them.

The screams of hundreds of people, screams for my childhood,

sounded in my head. As if those dying people were in the room with me,

the smell of burning wood and searing flesh came back, mixing with the pungent metallic smell

of Magnus' blood. I stabbed him in the chest and the throat and the face. I stabbed him a dozen

times before he stopped moving, and then a dozen more before someone hit me in the head,

and then pulled me off of the divine prophet. Someone wrenched the knife out of my hands,

...