After five days of suffering in his bedchambers, the man finally succumbed to a violent death. They found his body two days later, the corpse beginning to rot and dripping bodily fluids. The body wore silk clothing of a regal design that frayed at the edges were the man in distress had left it to disrepair. They—that is, a team of physicians—fixed the time of death between two and four o’clock in the afternoon. Not long after the examination, the body was placed into the family mausoleum to rest with his fathers. A few whisperers cried for the body to be quarantined out of the city, and even some of the former supporters of the owner of the body showed anxiety about the burial. Plague was not a trifling matter.

The physicians assured the good men and women of the city that no harm would come to them. And indeed, for a time, no harm came. Several dissenters had to be placed in the stocks for a day or so, just to teach them a less, but if anything, the city grew more vibrant with the passing of its ill king. The sun shone brighter, grain rose tall above every patch of land, and strangers passed through could not help but smile at the brightness and cheer of the city. The queen began receiving suitors not two months after the body was discovered. The city thrived under the sticky heat of summer.

By this time, the Festival of the Harvest had come. Jugglers, fire-eaters, gleemen, and the many other performers skittered through the screaming city, showing their talents to delighted audiences. Men and women alike dashed round the city in a frenzied fit of revelry. And the foods! Never was there such an assortment of breads, cheeses, fruits, spirits, and meats. One particularly clever vendor sought both to solve the city’s rat infestation and create a tasty treat by frying and skewering scores of the vermin. So successful was this vendor that he was forced to employ several lean alley cats just to keep up with demand. The sickly sweet smell of the vendor’s fryers hung in the night air over the great festival.

This celebration lasted for three days, during which the city went completely mad. After the festival ended, the people of the city quickly tore down the attractions and feasting tents of the fairgrounds and went home. And again, for a time, no harm came to the city. The blacksmith returned to his forge, the vendors returned to their stands, and the city prospered. The pastor had not returned to his pulpit, for he had taken ill shortly after the merriment ended, but that was to be suspected of old men. The city had not thought any different. Had anyone in the city paid more attention to this ailing man, he might have foreseen the terrible destruction that was to rain upon the city.

Ten days after the festival ended, twelve young girls fell ill. Their frantic parent called the physicians of the city, who could only prescribe rest and tender care. The next day, twenty-two women and seventeen boys and girls fell ill. What alarmed the physicians about these cases was not only the number in such a short time but also the similarity of the symptoms. Deeply puzzled, the physicians shut themselves away to try to find a cure for this strange affliction. Were anyone left to search the city after its end, he would have found one physician dead from poison and the rest from illness. In their last moments, these medicinal men noticed how similar the diseased were to the body of their former king.

The first people to perish from the outbreak died five days after the first twelve girls took ill. Others followed shortly after, and the dying writhed so painfully on their deathbeds that many took their lives before disease took it instead. The few healthy men and women left tried to quarantine themselves from the rest of the city, but failed. After a time, people stopped burying their dead and simply piled them onto massive funeral pyres. And in the end, they simply left the dead scattered in the streets, forgotten in the despair of a rotting city.

On the day the last man died, he watched the bodies of his family and friends fall apart, watched their skin and sinew slide from their unkempt corpses. He watched the falling houses that no one cared to save. And, in the sprawling carcass of the city, he watched the rats revel and feast amid the squalor of the dead.

Then he closed his eyes, and waited for the rats to come.