The Fiend is the dark made flesh, the Devil himself.
I heard a noise from the shadows in the far corner of the room: a thump followed immediately by a sizzling, hissing sound. It was repeated twice more.
Suddenly I could smell burning. Wood smoke. The floorboards. And then I saw that although time had stopped and everything within the room seemed to be frozen into immobility, one thing was moving. And what else could move but the Fiend himself?
I couldn’t see him yet—he was invisible—but I could see his footprints advancing toward me. Each time one of his unseen feet made contact with the floorboards, it burned the shape of a cloven hoof into the wood, which glowed red before darkening with a spluttering hiss. Would he make himself visible? The thought was terrifying. I’d been told by Grimalkin that to inspire awe and force obeisance he’d appeared in his true majestic shape to the covens at Halloween. According to the Spook, some people believed his true form was so terrible that anyone who saw it would instantly drop dead. Was that just a scary bedtime tale or was it real? Would he do that to me now?
(For the full story, read The Last Apprentice: Wrath of the Bloodeye)