My feet hit the city street in motion as I stepped through the veil. One moment, I was standing inside the crumbling remains of the pits, and the next, I was moved through the invisible shroud like before. I didn’t have a specific target to bring me to this area of the city; I just had a general idea where I wanted to go. It was surprisingly easy.

  As I stood there on the sidewalk, I had many thoughts. The first thing I noticed was that the winter wonderland that had once taken over the city was practically over. There were a few remnant piles of lingering ice where a plow truck had shoved all the discarded snow, but for the most part, the streets were clear. Still cold, but clear.

  The moon sat high in the sky, illuminating the city in a white light. It felt like something more, like something was shining a light on the things happening beneath the city, and what was about to happen above. The light was there to illuminate the world, while a shadow was born to terrorize. That shadow was me.

  I sent out pulses of my combined senses rapidly, one after the other, creating a continuous loop of information as I searched for shards of Hunger’s power. In almost no time at all, I felt the first return. That same resonance that I felt when any other elder came into my range… I felt it now. It was the same with Alex.

  After fighting the elders down below, I knew this one was the gore-creature thing. A vague outline of his appearance formed in my mind's eye as I instinctively turned and was already moving in his direction. Even though it was nighttime, I knew people were still on the streets as I could sense their vague forms in the return of my pulse as well. So I knew I would have to be careful and remain aware of human presence as I engaged the monster.

  Then I felt something coming. I couldn’t explain how I knew, but it was a small hint. It was the sensation just before Death sent a vision. And then, without any more warning, everything went black, and Death showed me something.

  The world-shaking voice thundered through my mind, “Ushumgal-Etemmu!”

  The images filled the blackness of my mind and took over everything. It was just like the other times, like I was standing there when these things happened as an unseen observer. Other times, it was like I was inside the body of my newest target, and an unwilling passenger in the heinous acts they were performing.

  There was a man covered in blood… a butcher in the guise of a man. It was his trade by day, and his moniker by night. Though butcher wasn’t exactly the word. There was a language I didn’t know, but the meaning of it was ingrained in my mind all the same.

  He was roaming between mud huts and wooden structures, skulking in the shadows of a much older, forgotten civilization. The blood soaked his skin so completely that he looked like he could have been born this way. I didn’t see how he had acquired such a sinful coating up to this point, but I had an innate knowledge that it was not anything nice.

  His face was familiar yet different. He looked younger, not in a physical sense, but in a sense that he was not as experienced, and mentally changed by the things he had done. The first time I had seen this face, it was the strongest of the three elders of Hunger. The Persian-looking man, formed from the amalgamation of goo, slop, bones, teeth, and gore that had flooded through the pits, had ultimately decapitated me. This was him.

  I saw him raid villages without cause, leading a group of murderers equipped with pitchforks, spears, and torches, as some kind of vile captain through different locations at different times… only to kill his own murderous followers when the first slaughter was through.

  He wielded crude, dual blades that closely resembled butcher knives, but they were wider, thicker metal that almost made them look like a hybrid between an ancient butcher knife and a cleaver. He swung them with wild abandon, a murderous fervor overtaking him in a way that almost seemed like he was gaining strength and power as the murderous onslaught continued.

  He pillaged and burned ships for sport in a massive marina of a distant land as he quenched his need for slaughter, and the consumption of meat… human meat. He took trophies from the men he slew and consumed. As the entire harbor burned, teeth were strung into necklaces, and other bones were carved into charms that he adorned on his person.

  Then the vision shifted, and I got a strange sense that it was an earlier period, like I was seeing something before he became the monstrous animal that he was. Now, I was also inside of him, living as he did through his own eyes.

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  I remembered standing in ancient Mesopotamia, hunting down a monstrosity that had been killing villagers without relenting. It was a ravenous, almost animal-like creature that had once terrorized the small settlements of the area, plucking kids from their beds and peace from their homes.

  The images rushed, but the information flowed smoothly into my mind. I hunted the monster with men from my village. They all died, and I was the only survivor standing over the bloody and dismembered body of something that used to be human. The monstrous man who had robbed the village children of their lives and their flesh lay dead at my feet. It’s blood enveloped me, and I felt it whispering to me. In a sharp moment of realization, even though I knew the creature was dead, I got this strange urge to reach down and devour as much of this creature as I could, eating meat from a tainted creature.

  The visions shifted again, and I was outside of his body, watching him as he became the very thing that he had once hunted down with the strongest and most heroic of his village. He came back as a hero, buried the dead, and burned the remnant gore of the monster. Everyone praised him, trusted him, and lifted him up within their small agricultural society. But all the while, the itch continued. As the villagers trusted him, he had slowly begun plotting how to get more meat… meat from them… the ones who owed him their lives.

  Time moved forward in the blink of an eye, generations passing, all of the villagers dying except for one. The man who would become an elder. His look changed over time, but he always returned to his original appearance from time to time. He learned to shift his shape as he consumed more, taking on the facade of another he had previously claimed. I watched as I witnessed him first learn how to shift form and become someone else, tricking others into trusting someone they thought they knew, only to be deceived and devoured by a serpent.

  I stood within his body again, seeing what he saw, hearing the story being told to him by a woman. She held many scrolls and parchments, records of something she was obviously enraptured with. I felt a smugness inside of myself, or at least the memory of what this elder had felt. She spoke fluidly, in another language that was different from the original language of his first village. Just as before, its meaning was almost translated into my brain. The understanding instantly given to me through the vision Death had sent me. It was like she spoke my language, or I knew hers.

  “Among the forgotten gods of ancient Mesopotamia, there was said to be one spirit that the scribes dared not name in full… the Great Serpent of the Dead.” She rolled out a lengthy scroll that held the image of a snake of monstrous and grotesque proportions.

  The skill and detail spoke of the commitment to this drawing, given the time and tools available to these people. It looked like it was drawn to be able to see inside of its great belly… where corpses, both big and small, were eaten and consumed. They were positioned in a way within the great serpent that made it seem like these consumed people were a part of him now.

  This woman continued, “In its true form, the Serpent is a horrific fusion of human, beast, and carrion. Its body is long and twisting, slick with a dark, oily sheen that reeks of rot and iron. Across its torso, faces of the devoured push through the surface like bubbles in tar… mouths opening and closing in silent hunger. His victims…” the unnamed woman stopped there for a second, obviously affected. She was remembering something… a past encounter, maybe? A loss of a family member, perhaps.

  The smug pride swelled in my mind as the elder's reaction filled me. He knew he had taken from her. A loved one… no, many of her bloodline had fallen to his gluttony. He was pleased.

  “Unlike a snake, however, it has powerful arms. Its arms are butcher’s tools, sinew stretched over bone, ending in cleaver-like claws. And its head… when it chooses to have one, bears a crown of teeth, as if every jaw it ever consumed became part of its own. A demonic smile that promises to rip you to pieces… slowly.”

  I barely saw the memory of what happened next, but the promise in the teeth that the woman spoke about… was kept… very swiftly. For all the studying and record keeping that I could feel implied through the vision, she was consumed by the very monster she had chased after, like ghost stories around the campfire.

  More time passed, and I heard whispers of something in my possessed ears. A familiar voice reaching out, calling to the butcher with promises of more flesh, more gore to consume. It promised to quench its hunger in ways he never could on his own.

  I saw the man descending deep into ancient caverns and darkness. It took many, many years to find what he searched for… what the voice promised. In a dark space, a black hole in the ground, a crimson shard of power gleamed and lit up the darkness. It was buried in the corpse of something desiccated and old. Much older than the butcher. However, it was dead, and he was not. The shard rushed into his body, and the relic of Hunger took hold. The Elder was born anew.

  The murder and consumption bled together, and an endless stream of images. The Elder moved through time as a plague, affecting many different civilizations. He was so old, history itself was the backdrop to his hunger. The length of this vision also gave more weight to just how old this thing was compared to previous visions.

  The very last thing I saw in the vision before my mind was returned to the world was of the Persian-looking man setting foot on the city streets of St. Louis and breathing in fresh air for the first time in probably over a century.

  Both my eyes cut back open. As soon as I exhaled, I sent out a pulse of my Primeval senses. My body already started moving, running, and leaping up the side of a building as the resonant hum pinged in my mind. I already had his direction; now I was just closing the distance.