I watched curling, branching patterns of golden light flare across my fingers and wrist in response to the flexing of my divine numen. They faded as a flame sputtered to life from nothing, flickering placidly above my outstretched forefinger. I held the fire to the tightly rolled bundle of shredded cannabis flower poised between my lips, and breathed in deeply. Smoke scorched my throat and filled my lungs, but more importantly slowed the racing of my thoughts. I looked upon an alley between a rundown apartment building and an abandoned storefront. It was only dimly lit by a flickering streetlight, its eerie violet glow intermittently revealing a scene of carnage. Two plebs lay scattered in pieces against a chainlink fence. Hard to tell much about them; only one corpse still had part of its head and that part wasn't its face.

Greater magic was necessary to reveal the truth of the scene before me. Lines of power lit up all across my arms and chest, golden light shining through the bleached cotton of my tunic as the soul of the universe bent according to my whim. Reaching into the realm of pure thought, I summoned the wisps of consciousness still clinging to the bodies before me. A ghostly shape stepped past me, its eyes burning white as two more figures appeared in the alley. One was desperately seeking to climb the fence; a dark skinned young woman with her hair shaved down to stubble wearing a blue tracksuit. Her bloodied hands clutched at the links of the fence as she tried to pull herself up.

Her companion stood between the fence and the beast, his mouth twisted into a snarl and his hands wrapped tightly around a metal pipe. He was perhaps twenty, dark of hair, pale, and muscular. I admired the man's bravery as the bestial figure approached. It was the largest, but also the least defined. It appeared as little more than a hulking shadow, formless at the edges.

The beast lunged at the young man, who spun around with the pipe raised like a club. Yet even as he smashed the beast across its hazy muzzle, the creature's claws tore into his chest cavity. I heard the faint, ghostly crack of ribs breaking as he fell back against the fence and slumped to the ground. His translucent essence poured from great rends in his illusory flesh, overlaying the very real mass of coagulating blood and gravel that surrounded the man's corpse.

The shadow opened a wide maw. Its long yellow teeth appeared clear and present despite the incorporeality of the rest of its form. Those teeth ripped the man's face off, and took a good portion of his skull with it. With a wave of my hand the woman climbing the fence, the beast, and the man it feasted on all vanished; I didn't need to see the rest. Only the reality of the gore remained. Whatever creature had preyed upon these people, it was anathema to the divine will of the principium primum.

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