I open my eyes, and the Lady of Pain is there-not just watching, but stalking the Hunter up the teeming street, with the clamor of forge hammers ringing in my ears and the stink of hot slag scorching my nostrils. She is tall and serene, a statuesque beauty of classic features, with sulfurous eyes and a cold, callous air. A halo of many-styled blades surrounds her head, some notched and pitted, others silver and gleaming, but all keen-edged and tainted with blood. The hem of her brocaded gown sweeps along the grimy cobblestones, but never soils.

My gray-swaddled denizens bustle by, blissfully unaware that she – no, I – that I walk among them. Only if my feet break touch with the ground will they notice me, and I am careful to keep my shoes on the street. Better for them to see the Lady of Pain when they have offended me, when they feel the fear eating their.bellies and hear the death gods calling their names.

Whenever my denizens brush against me, tiny white welts rise on their skin. Before my eyes, these blisters swell into thumb-shaped pods. They begin to grow more slowly, then sprout dozens of hooked spines. As the crowd mills about, the barbs catch hold of anything they touch, and the husks pass to fresh carriers. They continue to enlarge and soon latch onto someone new, then someone else after that, and it is not long before a sea of bulging pods is spreading steadily outward around me.

My denizens continue to bustle about their business. They cannot see the pods, nor feel the extra weight, nor even smell the fetid reek that clings to their bodies. Only I perceive the husks, slowly swelling and turning emerald and gold and ruby and jet; only I see them oozing yellow ichor and starting to throb like hearts.

Thus are the four Pains spread through the multiverse- agony, anguish, misery, and despair-to ripen and burst and bring low the mighty and the meek alike. From whence they come, I do not remember. It may be that I create them myself, or that they rise from some hidden place deeper and blacker than the bottom layer of the Abyss, where smoke hangs thick as rock and death is the sweetest memory. I can only say there is a void in my chest where I once had a heart, and from this emptiness springs all the suffering in the multiverse.