I.
The Antler King was a terrible creature, pulled straight from the wicked deep of the forest, and it hunted with vicious intensity.
Where it stood, grass wilted. Where it prowled, shadows festered.
It sharpened its teeth on whetstones and polished its hooves in spilt blood.
The weight of its inverted antler crown was monstrous, and the sharp tips often pierced its own skull and sent blood running from its eyes. But it had grown used to the pain.
Nothing pleased the Antler King more than when its prey ran and it could give chase. It liked to feel their fast-beating hearts under delicate rib bones before it snapped their bodies in two. When the prey cried prettily, the Antler King carved off their faces with a knife made of its own horns.
Few ventured into the forest for fear of this monstrous creature. But when it hungered, it crawled out of the rotten places between roots and mossy hollows and came for them anyway.
In the end, the villagers struck a bargain with the Antler King.
They offered it a tithe of one mortal every month if it remained in the wicked deep and left them alone.
The Antler King agreed. Finally, there was peace between village and forest—aside from the twelve who were tithed and died weeping each year. But all agreed it was for the best.
No one dared ask why the Antler King stole faces, and it never told.
The monster often sat by a frog-lily pond and placed the skinned faces over its own to see what it would look like if it could be human.