Steven Zivic (Oliver)

And I am nothing if not a gentleman.

Yes.

My body.

My soul.

All of it is yours.

To do with it as you please.

And the bearer of false tidings strode through the streets, casting scarcely a shadow within the blackened lanes, until at last he found himself encircled by a vast and dancing congregation.

Figures robed and hooded, beneath whose mortal skins the blackened souls of the damned throbbed with venomous malice.

The lateness of the hour lent them a dreadful figure beyond evil that afforded by their great multitude.

Yet the stranger from Sobica did nothing sing whisper.

And at once the mighty wind descended from the heavens, shrinking through the narrow streets and unfolding the opposite within its bitter and freezing sweep.

Like the candle flames snuffed between thick fingers, the souls have risen down to extinguish and scatter.

But they were not cast onto the four winds.

No, their ancient and poisoned souls were driven instead into the bodies of swine.

A passing herd became swollen with those dark and ageless spirits.

When the monsters realized what had been done to them, they screamed with hideous terror and fled headlong towards the sea.

years, the swine-trucked dad wandered the earth, perfecting new powers and plans.

The stranger, it was learned, had not counted the cost of his actions.

In time, the trick of taking and trapping souls became known to the swine, and they used it against those who had grown too wise.

For once they've been cast into swine, they are too heavy to be parted from the stinking loam of the earth, and so the wheels of the divine machine can be slowed, if not altogether halted.