Three travelers arrived in a town on the mountain steppes
to find mass pyres smoking in empty
streets.
Only a ponderous crone would come out to speak to them.
She said, “This famine is our true king’s
will.”
The swordsman of the three gripped his blade and stepped forth boldly,
wanting to slice into this king’s
neck.
The crone cackled as if seeing the picture in his mind directly.
“No, our king is no villain in need
of slaying.”
She gestured to a bone-thin woman
trembling with her children in a crooked door nearby.
“They suffer hunger willingly,
to avoid the creature who feasts upon only the well-fed,” she
explained.
The crone stroked the swordsman’s arm,
judging him to be the meatiest of the three.
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