The Murder of the Peryton

The dagger glinted in the moonlight as the fat man yanked it from his dirty boot. He spat on the blade and wiped it on his jacket, just as he always did. He breathed in sharply, just as was always the case. He raised his weapon above his head and then something occurred which never had before. The fat man hesitated, and lowered the dagger back down to his side.

"What did you say it was called again?" The fat man asked.

"A Peryton," replied The Lady. "The very last of them all."

"And just one more time, just so I'm sure, why do I have to kill it?"

There was a short pause in which the fat man used to desperately think of a way of getting himself out of something he really didn't want to do. When The Lady replied to his question she spoke sternly.

"Because you are eternally in my debt and this is the method I have chosen for my repayment."

The fat man swallowed hard, contemplated every bad deed he had committed in his life and pointlessly wondered whether he would still be in the situation he was in if he had never committed them. The Lady continued.

"If you murder a Peryton you will take its place, you will have the job of deciding who goes up and who goes down.More to the point, I will be able to control life itself."

"But you said it was the last one, if when you kill it you take its place, how is there only one left?"

The Lady smiled; wickedly.

"They disappear. It is said that the Peryton will cease to exist when Lucifer falls, when there is no longer need to decide."

Try as he might, the fat man knew there was no way out of it. He spat, he wiped, he lunged. He lodged his dagger deep into the Peryton's neck, and its piercing scream exploded into the night.

A flash of white light made it impossible to see anything at all, and the echo of the Peryton's scream made it impossible to hear. So the Lady, rooted to the spot, deaf and blind, anxiously awaited the return of her senses.

She waited, and waited, and waited. They were never given back.

A lifetime passes.

The Lady is close to death, she knows it and she doesn't mind. Life has plagued her and she hopes death with plague her less. She is deaf and she is blind but as death hits her she sees it, and she hears it.

The Peryton. It screams, and then shortly afterwards, it speaks.

"I cannot die for I do not live. Physicality is but an illusion. I am darkness, so is he. So will you be."

Prior to her sentence, to spend eternity in the world of the condemned. She is granted one last minute in the world of the living. And with it she sees the Peryton in all its glory. It extends its wings, screams its piercing war cry, and ascends into the night.