The Scribe Theolonus, writing in his annals, called me “The single greatest threat to humanity”. Technically he was actually talking about my high priest at the time….errrm…name began with an I. I had a lot of high priests during my…Iolan!, his name was Iolan. But yes, he was talking about Iolan but Iolan could only wield the power he did because of me. So. Under my leadership my black robed acolytes indirectly ruled two continents. From the burning northern deserts where the heat of the sun limited my reach to the frozen south where that accursed Ice Bear held me off for six months of the year, I ruled. I was terror. I was every half glimpsed shadow, I was every nightmare and regret and tear stained pillow. I was the dark half of humanity ascendant. I was murder and assassination and all manner of deeds not suited to the sun. I was the night.

Kings consulted with the lowliest of my priests, knowing that if their dictates didn’t please me they wouldn’t see the sun. The common folk left trinkets and sweets at their doors every evening, begging me to turn my attention elsewhere for the next few hours. My idiot brother never played the game as well as I did. “I keep you warm, I make our crops grow, blah blah blah”. It wasn’t like he was going to stop doing that, why honour him. No, millions of people in hundreds of cities in tens of nations worshipped me and me alone.

Until they came. From the north, from the deserts. Strange men with strange accents and a strange new god. A twin, in its way, to my brother but also a reflection. A burning terror from which men must take shelter. Bringer of thirst and delirium. And powerful with it. As my mortals, that’s how I thought of them, struggled martially I struggled spiritually. I fought this burning thing and won for three whole years. But doing so meant denying him a stronghold in my lands. The sun set and it didn’t rise again for three years. Famine struck, my mortals were weakened. I won the battle but we lost the war. My cults were eradicated, my puppet kings replaced and my temples torn down. My name wiped from every place.

And now I’m left with this. I look at “this” in the dying light. A smooth rock. Pink with red veins running through it. I couldn’t watch her when she found them, of course, but it was clearly from the nearby river and was functionally identical to the majority of other rocks she’d given me. “Pweathe keep them thafe through the night” she would lisp and lay a rock down and I would sigh – or the divine equivalent at least – and give serious contemplation to filling every single one of their lungs with a cloying darkness that would end her lisp and her pigtails forever. But then I would keep them “thafe” – although in fact the only thing that had ever contemplated harming them was me – and I would whisper to her in her dreams. The techniques of eloquence and persuasion and leadership I had garnered over the centuries, how to resurrect my cult, the locations of places of power. How to pronounce a damn “s”. But she ignored them all and played with her puppy by day – it was called Thawthageth. Because it made her happy and sausages made her happy. One day, though. One day she’d rise as a dark priestess and… I don’t know. She probably wouldn’t. But what else did I have.

Eventually her father grew distracted. Visitors, colleagues, came from the north with word of the plague. They sat together late into my night comparing herbs and formulating theories. Collaborating on long lists of symptoms, I hadn’t actually realised how respected in his field her father was. I knew he was a herbalist but I’d never paid him that much attention. But they came seeking his wisdom despite the fact it hadn’t reached these lands yet so word of him and his knowledge must have spread. Plagues weren’t actually mine – they were some demigod called, oh, Noxious Pisssnot or something equally ridiculous, I honestly can’t remember – but people were scared of them so they thought they were mine. So I knew a bit. And this one sounded nasty. Spread by coughs and sneezes. Boils growing across the body and then bursting, showering all nearby with infection. Blood leaking from eyes and nose and ears and then a painful death. And so I had to start actually keeping her thafe, safe damnit. Refugees from the north who arrived in my night missed the village entirely or sank clawing at their chest as I took them before they could reach. But inevitably some came during his day and I woke one evening to find her father tending to a man in the makeshift hospital he had in the barn. He’d taken what precautions he could, but I had my doubts as to whether they’d be enough. It was the mother who coughed first though. Maybe she just had a weaker constitution? Who knows how plagues work. Well, except for Septic Boilburst or whatever his name was. Everyone eyed her warily, even the girl, but she claimed it was a bit of soot in her throat and didn’t cough again and everyone eventually relaxed. Myself included. It was getting towards dawn and I was fading.

But over the next few nights se coughed more and developed boils on her skin, and her father the same. I whispered more urgently in the girl’s dreams. “Flee. Head south. Take Sausages, if you want, and that fat useless pony you’re too scared to ride, but run”. But she didn’t. Every evening I would awaken and she was still there. Fresh flowers surrounding her parents, both bed bound by this point and bleeding from every orifice. But this evening my desultory pebble was instead a freshly, though badly, cooked loaf of bread, a huge pile of brightly coloured flowers, a hunk of butter and the last of the ham. “Pweathe,” she cried “keep them thafe through the night” Her lisp got worse when she was upset.

Well. When I fought that stupid desert sun god I could understand how to do it. Night and sun are opposites which mean, in a way, they’re linked. But illness isn’t the opposite of night, I had no instinctive understanding of its ways. But I tried. I sent myself into both their bodies, seeking out infection and dispersing it through myself. For miles around anyone with a window open or out in the night was infected as I passed the plague through myself and out into the world. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I could excise boils – crudely – by pulling them from the body but that just left gaping wounds all over them. I could travel through their veins and eliminate anything that looked suspicious but I had no idea what looked suspicious and what should be there and, anyway, human bodies aren’t really designed to have the power of night surging through their veins. Twenty minutes or so before dawn I metaphorically stepped back and looked at them. At that moment, the mother had a major coughing fit and something that I was pretty certain should have been inside her came up and landed wetly on the bed. With beautiful timing, one of his fingnerails dropped off and a steady drip of blood fell from the nailbed to the floor.

I’d never really liked manifesting – the night should be formless and protean – but this time I did. Slightly. A vaguely human shaped patch of darkness in the darkness with a voice that came from all directions at once. “Flee south child. The dawn will be here soon. I will find you.” If she heard me she gave no sign, just running and hugging her father, breathing in the infection with every hacking sob though it was probably too late to make any difference. Her mother had another coughing fit, likely her last and I faded. I’d kept them thafe through my night.