from his empty eye socket. Nightshades screamed around him, holding him in the air, coiling around his legs, wrapping around his shoulders. He banged his left arm, the steel mace, against his breastplate. The sound rang out even over the screeches.
"Ben," Lacrimosa whispered.
She saw him across from Dies Irae. Nightshades wrapped around him, holding him upright. Blood dripped from his mouth and leg, and his left eye was swelling, but he lived. He saw her. He tried to speak, but nightshade tendrils covered his mouth. Lacrimosa tried to reach out to him, then realized that nightshades wreathed her too. They pinned her arms to her sides, and held her an inch above the ground.
Dies Irae laughed above them, his wig of snakes hissing. "Here, in this arena, before this crowd, we shall judge the weredragons for their crimes against mankind."
Lacrimosa looked around her, and saw that they stood in the amphitheatre, the same place where Dies Irae had once unleashed beasts upon her. All around, upon the rows of seats, nightshades slithered and grunted and watched the trial. Lightning crackled between them.
"Benedictus," Lacrimosa said again, pleading, and tried to reach out to him. She couldn't free her arms from the nightshades that encased her. One nightshade licked her cheek with an icy, smoky tongue. She shivered.
Dies Irae slammed his mace against his breastplate again. "Silence in the court! Today we judge Benedictus and Lacrimosa, the Lord and Lady of Lizards." His voice was howling winds, raising his words' last syllables into screeches. Clouds thundered and crackled above him. The snakes on his head hissed.
"Dies Irae!" Lacrimosa called, finding her voice. "Cease this mockery of justice. You only mock yourself."
"Silence her!" he screeched, an electrical sound rising into a crackle.
The nightshades covered her mouth, and she shouted into them, but no sound escaped. Dies Irae cackled. He unrolled a scroll and read from it.
"Your crimes, Lizards! I shall read you your crimes. You are charged, verily, of burning alive the children of this city, and eating them, and roasting them, and biting into their innards to suck upon them." He laughed hysterically. Nightshade maggots filled his mouth. "How do you plead, Lizards?"
Benedictus managed to free his head from the nightshades cocooning him. "Dies Irae, you are no judge. Stop this show."
Dies Irae slammed his mace again. "Silence in my court! Silence, I say. Bring forth the children." His voice was a tornado, buzzing with electricity. His 'r's rolled like a rod dragged against cage bars. "Bring forth the victims."
The nightshades across the amphitheatre—there were thousands—squealed. Three swooped from the high tiers to the dusty arena. They carried burned, bloodied bodies in their smoky arms. They tossed the bodies at Dies Irae's feet.
Lacrimosa looked away too late. The image seared her. Three children, burned and twisted, black and red. Who had done this? Had Dies Irae murdered these children as mock evidence for his mock trial?
He was fully mad now, Lacrimosa realized. He knew not fantasy from reality. The nightshades had festered in his brain and broken it. Did he truly believe she and Benedictus had burned these children?
"I find you guilty!" Dies Irae cried. The nightshades lifted him higher. Lightning crackled around him, and the snakes on his head screamed.
"Dies Ira—" Benedictus began, but the howls of nightshades and the booming thunder overpowered his words.
Dies Irae floated upon the nightshades ten feet back, and approached a structure hidden beneath a black curtain. What horror lies there? Lacrimosa thought. What more could Dies Irae reveal to still shock her?
Dies Irae ripped off the curtain, and Lacrimosa wept.
It looked like a gallows heavy with bodies. But these bodies were not hanged. They were gutted, bled, and hung on meat hooks. Some bodies were but children. A makeshift butcher shop for humans.
"Behold!" Dies Irae cried. "The weredragons have prepared these bodies to feast upon them. They stole our women, our youths, our children. They butchered them. They planned to eat them. They dined upon them in their halls of scales and flame."
Lacrimosa lowered her head, shut her eyes, and wept. How could such horror exist? How could such evil fill a man? How could a human, for Dies Irae had been human once, sink into such insanity? She shivered. All she had ever wanted, ever fought for, was the song of harps, a life of peace, of leaves and earth and sunlight and stars. How had she come to here, this trial, this stench of blood and fire?
"Ben," she whispered. She would die here,