In a world of knights and monsters divided by the south and north poles of magnets, there was a noble knight whose name rang to every rim of the land, honored for his decorum throughout his life. Amnon of Amouros—they chanted his name so gallantly.

Yet he kept one secret hidden from the public eye, that he befriended the monsters he once captured and ordered to be killed by his sworn lord.

Enigmatic was a creature of hell, he called himself, and people swallowed it. He feasted on the malice and malevolence within him, bringing death and fall to folks who crossed his path. The people credited him for it.

“Amnon of Amouros, you’ve held me captive for many years. What’s your intention for me? Why not just kill me?” Eventually, the monster bit his corrupt tongue, so thirsty for a sip of Amnon’s blood and tears.

Amnon’s face remained stoic, watching Enigma’s repressed intent to avenge the misbehavior of locking him like a weakling. Amnon sat on a lounge chair in the corner of the room, which reeked of the smell of foul blood.

“Who did you kill today?” Enigma’s voice kept pestering him with questions.

“It’s not who I killed, but who I saved,” Amnon answered one of his questions at last, elusively.

“What’s wrong with you knights and your obsession with saving someone? I can never relate to it.” The swirling breeze delivered the concealed monstrous thoughts into the distance.

Amnon’s lips curled upward with the disclosure of the speech. That was exactly eight thousand days he had been waiting for this monster to spill his inner question.

So he spoke, “If you ever tried to save someone, then maybe you could resonate with the idea,” he trailed off, leading the monster to his vision.

One of Amnon’s ambitions was to steer the monsters so they would harbor the light. Enigma was one of the monsters he captured and locked away until it began asking questions that Amnon deemed courteous enough.

Then he would free it and see if it would attack him or cordially strip away its title of monster. Up until recently, there hadn’t been a monster that passed his test. All of them were killed on sight when the lock was opened.

But maybe this one would pass.

“I’ve been thinking, who’s the monster in this situation?” Enigma gave him scrutinizing retorts that were enough to overtake him.

“How’s that again?”

Enigma’s tail swung aimlessly while his one big foot handled his see-through body, spouting big chunks of vomit. His quad tetra eyes crooked forward, creating a deformed illusion of fishing hooks. His long tongue stuck out like a railway on the ground.

“All your riddles of saving and killing, or your twisted words of darkness and light, rebirth—all of that is absurd. What’s your opinion of monsters now, I ask? If you think I’m incapable of distinguishing what is good or bad, you’re simply a fool of a knight.”

No one could have deciphered Amnon’s thoughts at this moment.

“Everything is dubious. If I need to kill someone from your kind or my kind, whom you label as monsters, so I can live, I won’t hesitate. That’s the natural thing to do. You humans act so mighty about the values you hold to define yourselves and others, so you can put worth on everyone. That’s demented. You’re not black and white either. You imprison me and shove your words into my mouth about the values you think are right or wrong, without trying to ask me. Do you even hear yourself?”

With a flick of his tail, the block of prison that held him broke apart. He let out a screeching sound that could tear the mightiest knight limb from limb. “If you want to save anything, you should teach your kind about the aesthetics and mixtures you meet in life instead of following the guidelines of what is worthy and what is not. You are a monster, too.”

With that, the Enigmatic creature swished its wings, crushing everything near it with enraged air, hurling Amnon’s body before leaving with displeased wings.

Would there ever be a happily ever after? A truce for all and not for one?

In his final moments, Amnon discovered the midway ending of the bitter knight’s story.

No prison could hold a monster. The monster chose to be captured by his mind and to be free.