Twenty days remained until the next shipment of slaves. I had twenty days to come up with a decent plan that wouldn't involve praying from mercy from the slavers or killing ourselves. I had twenty days to keep morale up to the point that I didn't have to worry about the forty five new troops killing me and seizing my island. It was my island.

I had a weird feeling almost constantly. Someone was calling my name to the wind faintly, seeking to draw me to somewhere away from my troops.

I couldn't let that happen.

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"Ivan." I was resting in my room when I heard another voice add to it. I jerked awake and looked around. Cold stone walls and a faintly burning torch decorated it. A simple map of the island sat beside my bed.

I shot out of my bed and walked over to the door. I opened it.

"Ivan. Boss is awake." It was Floyd, and a Floyd who looked unusually somber.

I shut my eyes and waited a few seconds before opening them again. Floyd wasn't there anymore. I must have imagined him. I shut the door.

"Are you coming? She wants to see you." And Floyd was back at my door.

I opened it and rubbed my eyes. He was there again. In the flesh. "Uh.. sure. I'll be there with you."

Floyd looked at me, worry in his eyes. "Are you alright sir?"

I nodded. "As fine as I can be."

He looked unsure. "I understand that seeing Skinner die like that was hard..." "He looks sick."

I tensed up. I killed him myself. "I might as well have killed him myself."

He looked down. "Sorry for bringing it up. Do you know the way to the infirmary?"

Calling the dusty cellar an infirmary was a joke. Referring to it as the place we put the diamond dog most of us thought would never wake up and where we threw what few bandage rolls we could find would be better.

I tried not to point out how wrong he was. "Yes."

He walked away from me and I silently fumed. They thought I was useless! They thought I was helpless and feeble!

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The medical cellar was about as dusty as I remembered it being; clouds of it wafted up when I stepped in. I carefully shut the door behind me and held my breath until the dust precipitated back down to the ground.

And then something hit me over the head and I collapsed to the ground in a heap.

And then... I was elsewhere.

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I was flat on my back and half way submerged in an odd fluid. I cracked open my eyes and then promptly shut them again after a few seconds. My senses felt like they were overloading.

"Ohhhhhh? IVAN! It's been ever so LOOOOOOOOONG since we've seen each other." I knew that voice.

I shivered and opened my eyes again. I slowly got up from the liquid and realized that it was blood. I was soaked in blood.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim room and I noted that the walls seemed to slowly breath and vibrate with every beat of the drum I could faintly hear in the background.

It was an eerie effect, especially when I discovered that it was mimicking the pounding of my heart.

"Who's there?" I took a step away from where I heard the voice. The walls vibrated again and sped up. And in the distance there was the whine of high powered machinery, the hiss of steam and the clank of metal hitting metal.

"You KNOW ME." The voice came from directly behind me and I took off away from . My hooves kicked up splashed of blood from the almost river that flooded the bottom part of the tunnels.

The red splash was everywhere and I slid to a stop at the end of the tunnel.

"What's the matter, Ivan? SCAAAAAAAAARED?"

That was exactly what was wrong, but I had nowhere to go. "No. Why would I be scared?" I scuffed the wall behind me with a hoof when unexpectedly the entire wall caved in and let me through.

"It's useless to try and run." The whisper came from next to my ears.

The new tunnel I was in was ringed with spider webs and little bits of rotten gore that make my eyes water and my nose run. My head felt funny almost as if someone was in it. "I will get away." I mumbled, more for myself than as an example of my resistance to the being.

"No. YOU haven't moved a single step since you've gotten here." It spoke in a sibilant whisper. I sank into the ground up to my head. The gore clung to me like a tight straight jacket and let me see straight ahead.

And then abruptly, I knew where I had heard the voice before.

It was the police officer.

"Not just any officer." The voice spoke into my ear. "I am known as He-who-walks-in-malice." There was a foot step to my side that I couldn't see and the tell tale splash of the gore.

"Rolls off the tongue." I admitted to him. And then it felt like a minor atomic bomb went off in my head and everything tingled faintly, like I was about to be struck with lightning.

My body spasmed as it seemed that that was the case, and a loud roar enveloped my form.

And then my vision faded back to normal, my mind scrambled and fearful.

"But please, call me MALICE." I had the oddest mental picture of a spider in dress shoes tapping against stone. Only, the spider looked like a man and had a cane and a top hat. A rather... stylish top hat.

I preferred fedoras.

"Nobody likes the top hat. Should I at least stick with the monocle?"

"Yes. You look like a british spider mass murderer."

"Great! Just what I was going for. The point of the matter is that you haven't DIED yet. And I want you to die." The mental spider clicked to of his legs together and my vision went black until he appeared in front of me.

"What?"

"Here we are, deeper into your mind. It's been so much fun messing with your mind, Ivan." He buried the tip of the cane into the walls of the stone room we were in.

"We are in m-my head?" I stuttered slightly, suddenly aware of the fact that imagining spiders with tophats holding you hostage in your head was a very very very BAD sign.

He held up a red stop sign. "But, let's STOP this tangent. The point of the matter is that I picked up the wrong person as my little piece on the game board."

I, for some reason, felt highly insulted. "Game?"

"Oh. You are SOOOO clueless, Ivan. It's all one big game, you see."

"I don't see. I also have no idea who you are." I shrugged and the cave stopped eating me and released me on level with Malice.

"I'm an old zebra god. Of revenge. It was said that those who walked my path had SPECIAL powers and were... blessed. They were. Sorta. If I liked them, I took their souls and sucked most of it out and put a bit of my essence into them to guide them along their path. I did that to you."

I WAS SOULESS? "Wait. What?"

"Except I had to leave the most of your soul intact. I really wanted someone with more cunning and killing instinct. Why else do you think I was impersonating a police officer? I wanted a criminal, not some kid who managed to kill some other kid by a bad throw of the dice."

I felt like I had just critically fumbled. "So... where does this leave us?"

He chuckled insanely. "With me inside of your head and with the ability to drive you insane whenever the hell I feel like it."

That was pretty bad. "What... That is a pretty big bargaining chip. What do you want me to do?"

"Oh Ivan. After the last great war between the celestial sisters, I found myself with an interesting problem. The zebras themselves SWOOOOOOOOOORE off vengeance and revenge and BLAMED me for their punishment and failure in the war. I was blotted off of their worshipping! I retreated here and barely kept myself alive."

"Until...?"

"About Twenty years or so ago, the zebra population here got enslaved by those nasty little mongrels. Such a shame, but the captured zebras hearts and souls literally burned with rage and revenge! I couldn't help but suck up some of their excess soul... age." He looked around, the whipped out a vanilla milkshake and set it beside me. A massive straw extended from the drink and placed the drinking utensil at my lips.

I looked at him and blinked. "What. The. Fuck."

"Go on, drink it! It's delicious! You might say that spending a few centuries without worshippers, or even a being that acknowledged your existence could drive anybody, even A GOD completely nuts. Now, what I want from you..." He trailed off. "Drink it already!"

I hesitantly sucked on the straw and to my shock, the stuff in the glass was actually a vanilla milkshake. I smiled lightly and began to suck it down as fast as I could.

"That's sort of what a good soul tastes like. Except, you know, where there's icecream in that glass I'm basically destroying freewill and turning the person into an almost incarnation of vengeance. Both are tasty though." He licked his spidery lips with a long tongue.

"Oh. So what do you want me to do?" I was a bit distracted by the milkshake.

"I want you to find a group of idiots nobody would miss and then kill them, bathe in their blood and rip their souls free so that I may marinate them in suffering and then deep fry them."

"And... how do you expect me to do this?" I wondered, the milkshake finished.

"I expect you to be a shadow of MALICE! Except I won't be controlling you and your only real power is that you'll get to react faster and go a bit faster. It's kinda like a drug, but with more side effects."

"And if I say no?" I was tempted to.

"I suck out your soul like an oyster and then control you manually until the day you die! Doesn't that sound awesome?"

I shook my head. "I'll accept?" I cringed, hoping I made the right choice.

"Of course you made the right choice, silly! Otherwise I was going to suck out your soul and use you as a meat puppet."

I tried to ignore the thought that I was tripping on drugs. "Side effects..."

"Well, you won't be able to hear my voice that well once you wake up. And killing you? That's going to be a bit harder as well. There's also a teeny tiny chance that you'll GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO insane anyway." He snickered at something.

"What's so funny?"

"Spider 'van, Spider 'van, steals souls and fails again."

I clutched my hooves against my ears. "Shut up please?"

"It's shut up, PLZ!" He corrected cheerily. "Now wake up! You have an entire life ahead of you!"

And then he stabbed through my body with one of his ridiculously animated arms.

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