Cold paranoia and self loathing woke Ahsan throughout the night. The floor wasn’t kind to him either, despite that he chose to sleep there. Over and over, Nirah’s words played in his mind.
He would have been a fool to expect Nirah to react differently to such a story. Monsters were just that: monsters. Beasts to slay and hang as trophies. Scourges of the earth, a plague to stamp out. Entire city garrisons and semi-annual hunts were dedicated to chasing down leads of suspected monsters, be they yiridim, mushmahu, or some other abomination. The other monsters were lesser threats, but not precisely docile, either.
The lugiri, giant scorpions that once hunted man for prey, had long since gone extinct. The durahzu, wild goats with lupine teeth and curving horns roamed the far Zagros mountains
