Inktober Day 1 - Ring

It is said that in many places, treaties and promises are sealed with rings, which have no end. The Ring of Marriage is the most common type of this symbol; so perhaps it was some woefully betrayed lover who first performed this ritual.

The Symbol of the violate treaty must be placed in fresh ash, the wronged one must then spit within the band, and speak the incantation.
The Hate of Traitors will then emerge.

Slowly, painfully, with an awful crunching, it will pull itself out through the ring and into the world, questing hands first.

It has four arms, two legs, and long worm-like head which carries its lone eye at one end, a terrible blazing ring of baleful light. It wears a shaggy, half-rotten cape of mourning-clothes, which hang around it in rags.

In its two lower hands, it carries wicked knives, which it usual hides by its waist, within the folds of its robes. Out ahead of it, one hand carries a long metal rod, thin like an axe-handle. In its final hand, held up accusingly, by a chord it carries the flat, broad metal ring, wide enough to fit a person through.

As it hunts its prey, the rod is drawn endlessly around the inside of the ring; a low, resonant, droning hum, curiously pure and ever-constant. It is quiet to begin with, but as the Hate draws closer to tis prey, it grows louder and louder.

Once its prey are found, those who hear the riging will die.

Innocents will merely fall shrieking and clutching their ears, to be slain by knives hooking into their sweet and tender veins.

Those who have aided the breaking of the oath will instead bleed from the ears, mouth, and eyes, frozen in place by the savage sound. Their brains are to be dashed out with the rod.

For the Oath-Breaker themselves, thhe worst fate is reserved. The wracking tone of the ring will split their skin, tear their muscles, burst their eyes. As they are shredded by the song, it will suddenly stop, and the Hate will place the ring over their heads, and by pushing with the rod held against their neck, the Oath-Breaker's head will be sheared from their ragged body.

Their is little hope of besting or escaping the Hate of Traitors. It cannot be out-run forever, it is tireless and relentless in its pursuit. Hiding will fool it for a time, but the ringing cannot be escaped, and eventually its tone will force you to reveal yourself. It can only be fought while the ringing hum is ceased, which it will only willingly do to destroy one of its helpless targets.

Even should it somehow be butchered utterly into thin rags and shreds, its remains will slough away, and a new Hate will begin to pull itself out from the treaty-ring.
The only ways to permanently stop the Hate are to honestly fulfil the terms of the old contract, which banishes the Hate, or to destroy the band the Hate crawled from; the Hate always carries the band with it, clutched in a secret fifth hand, tucked deep within its robes, out of sight.

The last aspect of note for the Hate of Traitors, is its curious, but tender, affection for children.
Those unaffected by puberty cannot hear the drone of the ring, and will never draw the Hate's ire or wrath.
Infants can even cause the Hate to pause its droning and questing, as it spends perhaps a minute or two silently crooning over the baby.

Why it does this, can only be speculated upon.