The Bitter King

[Rayse Valentino]

Closed to Revenant.

Two giant, glowing red orbs cast down a blinding light down upon Rayse, their sharpness turning the rest of his surroundings into black mush. He stood in front of the crimson radiance, unable to breathe or even think. Pure fear washed over him, sapping his will and putting him into a catatonic state. He could hear his own heartbeat, beating louder and louder until suddenly it went quiet completely. In that moment of silence that seemed to last forever, everything turned to black.

The next thing he knew, his eyes opened. He was lying down on something hard, and the stone ceiling was illuminated only by candlelight. After sitting up, he noticed his surroundings: He was in a little room. What was he was lying on could only be described as a stone slab, and to his sides were long stone shelves attached to the walls with various tools and liquids in jars. A flickering candle stood on its waxy mount on one of the shelves, and around it he could make out the deeper details of the items: A jar of green liquid, surgical equipment such as scalpals, a needle next to a ball of thread, and... bones. Not just any bones, but bones that were kept together with metal cylinders bolted into the joints.

He felt groggy, the kind of sensation associated with a long night of binge drinking, but without the hangover. There was also a strange coldness in his chest. What did I do this time? Putting his feet on the ground, the feeling of the stone floor shocked him as he realized most of his clothes were gone. The only thing left on him was his pants, which were ripped along the sides and completely gone past his knees. His first thought was that he was mugged and then dumped here, but the surgical tools gave him some pause. Then there was the fact that this place smelled sort of like cigarette smoke. He actually wasn't sure of the precise nature of the odor, but it was much stronger than his cigarettes. Oddly enough, he didn't feel too concerned about his situation. There was a strange calmness inside of him, and while the nightmare gave him a bit of a shock, he couldn't really make a big deal out of it. Even if he was completely drunk out of his mind, there was no way a mugger could kill him. Ever since he merged with the element of fire, many who sought to end his life found it very difficult to inflict injury. In fact, they usually burned themselves just trying. Also, there was nothing on his person of too much value, or so he thought. He had so much money stored away from his illicit activities that no mugger could injure his financial solvency. This type of disinterest was not typical of him, although maybe it was since as of late he had been rather listless about his dangerous life. Nonetheless, his immediate concern was getting out of here. He stepped off the slab, cracked his neck, and looked around for the door.

The fuck? There was no door.

Now he was starting to show interest in his situation. While it was difficult to injure him, trapping him in some airtight prison was a good way to kill him through suffocation. He felt around for anything that resembled an exit with a heightened sense of urgency, not really able to see more than two feet in front of his face with the dim light of the candle. It had to be the worst candle ever too, because its light was a dim red that could barely be seen. While searching for the door, he kept thinking how much he wanted to leave, and as if listening to his request, one of the walls he was feeling suddenly started rising. Not all of it, but a small rectangular section wide enough for his body to pass through without much trouble. As the 'door' lifted up, more yellow-ish red light filled the room and as it hit his eyes, he had to squint from the brightness. Before he could look outside however, he saw himself.

His skin was grayish-black, his nails orange-red and his chest covered in stitches. The bangs that were falling over his eyes were completely white, and grabbing a handful of his hair and bringing it into sight revealed that the rest of it was the same. He backed up into the room, swallowing hard with his eyes darting back and forth across his hands. With the light in the room, he noticed that there was a mirror as well, and in the reflection he saw his milky white eyes. Even his pupils and irises were white. His skin was hard to the touch, some parts of it cracking to reveal his muscles.

Now panic was starting to set in. He knew better, or at least he thought he did. He suppressed the thought that emerged, doubting and denying and trying to calm himself with the assurance that his imagination was simply running wild. After all, at first glance he looked like a corpse.

[Rayse Valentino]

Rayse felt as though he was in the middle of a false awakening between dreams. He was a fairly meticulous man, and rationalizing came as naturally to him as breathing. Speaking of which, that was one good way to wake up: A little asphyxiation. With his eyes still adjusting to the light pouring into the room, he held his breath, chanting wake up wake up wake up in his head. After about thirty seconds, his head went blank as he realized that being unable to breathe did not inconvenience him in the least... just like a corpse.

Fuck!

Okay, time for more extreme measures. A good enough shock, like falling from a great height, was enough to wake anyone up. Since he wasn't exactly standing on a cliff, he went for the shock usually associated with sudden pain. He reached for one of the scalpels and wrapped his rotting right hand around it, planting his other hand on the stone slab with fingers outstretched. Without any hesitation, he slammed the scalpel into his hand, confident that he would be out scamming and corrupting the innocent populace of Salvar once more, but instead he dropped to his knees with a grunt, the scalpel still sticking out of his hand. Dark red blood, almost completely black, started seeping out of the wound. The pain was real.

He pulled the scalpel out, clasping his hands together and glaring at the wound with an unending supply of prejudice.

What happened to me?! Is this some sort of wizardry? Did I mess with a goddess-damned arch-mage while I was drunk? Some sort of asshole necromancer?

He couldn't believe that he could have such an experience, no matter how drunk he allegedly was. Maybe he was cursed? Not really dead, just... looking like it. After all, how many zombies had such vivid memories of their past? He wasn't really an expert on the undead, as there's not much to care about when they all burn the same, but he was fairly sure that zombies barely knew who they were, much less able to recount events in their past lives.

He looked up and saw outside his room, hearing the sound of shuffling and whispering. He crept up to the door and peeked around the corner, seeing the grand antechamber before him. He was in a massive circular room with a dome-shaped ceiling. In the middle of the antechamber the air was different, as it was shifting and stretching, winding and contracting. This sort of optical illusion Rayse recognized from his trip to the deserts of Fallien as the effects of heat. The center of this place contained a big pit that likely had something really hot in it. More importantly, several hooded figures in white robes walked in columns of two, side by side, toward the pit of heat. In the front of their formation two hooded figures were carrying someone by their shoulders. Despite the heat, they marched right up to the edge of the pit completely unfazed.

Rayse could hear them now, as they began chanting in unison, "On this day, the third solstice of Arkh'Girah, set in the Uli of the fifth, let it be known that Kirrak The Jubilant has become a Lost One in our realm. We are both deeply saddened to lose another one of our kind, yet deeply happy to offer him back into The Void. May The Writhing God bless our sacrifice of his body, and may his spirit return to the plane."

They recited various passages from what Rayse assumed to be scripture, but in a language he did not understand. At the end of it all, they tossed the body into the pit, which spawned a great whitish red fire a hundred feet into the air before returning back into the cauldron. The hooded procession then marched in formation toward what he assumed to be an exit, where they stood in front of a section of the wall that opened up for them in the same way it did for him. His eyes widened as he saw them remove their hoods before leaving, revealing their heads. Some of them were missing facial features, others various patches of hair, but they all had some evidence of rot. He had seen this before: They were undead. They weren't just some cult, but a cult of undead? He didn't understand. In his confusion yet with curiosity, he found the confidence to act in his own situation.

Still holding his bleeding hand, Rayse looked around and saw some old bandages that he applied to the wound in short order. The great antechamber appeared to be empty now, so he stepped out into the light. Wherever he was, he was sure that staying would not do him any good.

[Rayse Valentino]

As he stepped out onto the warm stone floor, the wall that marked the exit to the room he emerged from lowered and closed it back up. He could see along the edges of the part that was raised that it was marked with a dark paint, like a frame around the 'door' that allowed him to leave. There rectangular markings were all over the walls here, which told him that along the circular walls were hundreds of rooms such as his. He looked up at the dome-shaped ceiling, and the hole at its center from which the smoke from the pit escaped. There were intricate markings all along the ceiling with its bronzed color, but none of them looked legible. He took a few steps toward said pit of white fire, but it was clear that the temperature around him was going up exponentially the closer he crept. How those zombies managed to not get incinerated was beyond him. At that moment, while looking toward the pit, a memory flashed inside his mind.

--

"This is the place?"

--

He took a step back, and realized that the voice was his, but he did not know when or where. He tried to think about the memory, but it only caused him pain, so he refocused his efforts on escape. He looked away from the pit and at the section of the wall that was raised for the procession. It was clearly marked by a dark red paint, setting it aside from the black-painted sections that indicated rooms. Without hesitation, he walked toward that red paint and saw a part of the wall rise up before him, as if knowing what he wanted from it.

The hallway that entered his field of vision looked plain enough; gray, with bright red torches lining the walls. Adding to the rounded theme of the previous room, the walls, ceiling, and floor merged into a curve that made him feel like he was walking through a wind tunnel or a large pipe. Everything about this situation made him paranoid, mainly because this was too easy, like giving the prisoner the keys after locking him in. He was not trapped at all, and it looked like he could freely walk out of here at this rate. However, he wasn't one to look a gift furboar in the mouth. He walked through the hallway slowly, noting that the all of the stone around him had a familiar glean. Marble? It seemed to fit. Polished gray marble everywhere. He tried to think of Althanas locales that made extensive use of marble, but came up a bit short on that lead.

At the end of the short hallway was his first decision: Right or left? The hallways in either direction were slightly curved inward, which made him think they wrapped around the antechamber. He took a right and fished into his pockets instinctively, almost surprised to once again find nothing there. It was rather rare of him to go this long without a smoke, but it didn't bother him as much as it usually does. He tried to make a mental mapping of this place as he went, but after a few more intersections he concluded that this place was a labyrinth. A disturbingly empty labyrinth. That is, until he caught one of the white-robed undead entering a hole in the wall. This looked like the perfect opportunity to take out his frustrations on an unsuspecting victim.

He rushed for the closing wall and dashed into the room, startling the zombie inside. It was a small abode with a stone slab for a bed, a few miscellaneous items scattered above the shelves that were carved into the walls, and a few red torches for light. He grabbed the robed undead, pushed him up against the wall and pressed fingers into his neck with both hands. Its purple-red skin felt like old jerky left out in the sun too long, and the rest of its head was decorated by missing parts and open wounds.

Rayse didn't mince words, "Exit. Now."

The undead, still a bit flustered but perfectly able to reply despite his neck being constrained, "W-what the?! Who are you?!"

"Wrong answer." Rayse squeezed tighter, but the zombie's expression didn't change. The smell he previously thought was cigarette smoke assaulted his senses, but it was coming from his victim. This is... that thing used to preserve bodies... formaldehyde? It then occurred to him that denying a zombie air wasn't the most efficient interrogation tactic. "Tell me how to get out of here and I won't pop your head like a grape."

"A what?!" he replied, blinking and looking down at Rayse's hands. "Are you... Aren't you the Lost One that was brought in?" He sighed upon this realization, and calmly stated, "Let go of me. I would gladly escort you out."

Rayse didn't believe that for a second, but the zombie's sudden calm was a bit unnerving. He let go, if only because his hands were starting to feel gross holding onto that rotting neck. "Lost one?"

"You... I see. I understand what's happening now. You've recently awoken, yes? I will explain everything." He walked over to one of the stone shelves and pulled out a book, an action that Rayse questioningly let him do. "We only take in Lost Ones here, as in those that have lost their immortal souls and leave behind the shells they once called bodies. If you're here, that means..." His words trailed off, and he swallowed before flipping through the book and then returning it to the shelf.

Rayse could tell something was up, but he ignored it for now, "So, you got the wrong guy."

"Essentially, yes."

"And you'll let me go."

"Yes."

"Why do I have a hard time believing that?"

"It doesn't matter. After the commotion you've caused, you won't have much of a choice since there's a Servitor waiting outside."

Rayse looked back at the wall, which opened up to reveal a gigantic armored skeleton, towering at nine feet. At its side were several swords, maces, a whip, chains, and a machete. It was wearing a breastplate, its joints had plates as well, and on top of its bony head was a helmet with two horns sticking out of it at each side. Most disturbingly it didn't look like a single skeleton, but rather all of its limbs were smaller bones fused, stitched, and bolted together. Only its head looked like it was in one piece, but it had huge stitch marks across the skull. In its empty eye-sockets were two faint yellow lights. I guess they want to burn. Rayse held out his hand, palm upward, expecting something to happen, but there was nothing. Not even an ember. While he was perplexed by his lack of magic the Servitor's huge skeletal hand pushed Rayse down onto the marble floor and clasped down upon his head.

"Gah!" Rayse grabbed the bony hand in an attempt to pry it off his face, but it was fruitless.

He couldn't see, but above him he heard the zombie's voice, "I apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a hallowed ground upon which you walk. Since you have recently awoken, we will forgive your holy transgressions today, but I warn you never to come back. At least, not until it is your time."

He felt his body being raised up by his head, struggling the whole time as he was unceremoniously carried through the labyrinth blind. The next thing he knew, he was tossed outside, with massive stone doors closing behind him. When his eyes finally opened, he saw the ground, which was still marble but without any of its sheen. It was worn and dull. He looked around near the ground, pulling his body up as his eyes darted to and fro. Aside from the enormous circular building he was tossed out of, there was nothing in his immediate vicinity. He felt as though he was 'outside', but it was still dark... and misty. Only a faint red light gave him vision, which made it hard to believe he was really free. He couldn't see more than twenty feet away. The outline of a massive wall protruded from the circular building, but what caught his attention was when he finally looked up.

The sky. He could see all of it uninhibited, and he did not understand what he was viewing. A giant, swirling mass of black clouds with a red glow. It was infinitely far away, and yet he felt as though he could touch it. At its center was a whirlpool of red tendrils extending outward among the black clouds like the shape of a snail's shell. It looked like the center of a great storm, but completely quiet. He could only gawk at the sky in wonder.

[Rayse Valentino]

His view of the sky was only interrupted by the expanding view of the city as his eyes adjusted to the mist. More and more appeared in his peripheral vision, but he couldn't make out any of the finer details. Aside from the gigantic walls that marked the building he was recently ejected from that seemed to go on for miles, various living corpses were milling about the on the marble ground, walking with indifference to the world around them. He found himself in a small courtyard outside the building where he woke up, but beyond that his eyes couldn't pierce the mists shrouding the innumerable buildings that surrounded him. He felt like he was out in a foggy night armed with nothing but a flickering lantern. The bleak rust-red light cast over the city, though bright enough to see through, was still dull as an ancient sword. The heavy smell of smoke and burning oil assaulted his senses, and though the stench was thick enough to wade through, his eyes barely watered and somehow his lungs seemed used to the filthy air.

Looking at his hands again, he still couldn't believe that he had become undead. Who did this to him? How? Where? When? Why? He didn't know where to begin. He failed to even begin a train of thought, because he couldn't make sense of his last zombie encounter, as in, why the hell was he thrown out? Was there really some sort of mistake? What kind of mistake turns a man into a walking corpse?

He put his hands over his head to stop the beating of his emerging headache, when a short zombie asked him with a raspy voice, "See a lot of deaders goin' in, don't see a lot comin' out."

Rayse looked at the zombie, who wore a pair of baggy brownish-red trousers that were far too large for him. They were wrapped around his upper chest with many bandages. There was a gray shirt underneath, but it was tattered passed the shoulders. That was another problem he had- everything was some shade of red! Were his eyes broken? Maybe all zombies saw like this?

Rayse was too lost in his incomprehensible thoughts to reply, so the zombie continued, "Recently awoken, eh? I can tell the look. Since you're new blood, I can tell you what this place is all about. In return, you tell me everything about your plane of origin. Deal?" He cracked a grin, revealing several missing teeth among the surviving yellowed stumps. His gums were as blue as his face, save for the two wells of darkness serving as his eyes.

Plain of origin? Rayse thought, and then sighed. He was shooting pool with a broken cue as far as ideas went, so against his better judgement he decided to go along with it, "Fine. Where am I?"

"Hold on there lad!" the zombie answered. "This ain't the place for a proper discussion, y'see? Follow me." Without even waiting for an objection, he turned around and started walking down the courtyard.

As if his feet had a will of his own, Rayse followed. He couldn't believe he was listening to some rotting bag of meat, the kind he incinerated by the wagon-load during The Corpse War. The thought briefly reminded him that he wasn't able to do any sort of pyrotechnics, which sort of made sense considering he was... dead? He stopped that thought in place, and looked around for something to distract him. He didn't want to think that someone killed him. That his life came down crashing to its end and now he was in some sort of abysmal afterlife. The zombie lead him into the mist, and soon he found himself in a passage that was too big for an alley but too small for a street. The walls closed in around him, and the small streets had intersections like a labyrinth. Each twist and turn seemed random to him at best, with no particular rhyme or reason to them. He felt like he was at the bottom of a canyon during a dust storm, and he could only see so far before the mist covered the objects in the distance. The walking sacks of flesh that littered the courtyard outside the grand circular building were numerous along his trek, but soon they were walking the streets alone. The last thing he saw was a torso walking around the streets on its hands. Before he knew it, they had arrived at a tall blank-looking wall, the kind that usually kept the rabble out of Rathaxea Square in Knife's Edge.

Carved into its center were the words Solinal Delvers. He remembered that doors here were simply walls with marked sections, yet none of the walls he passed had such markings. The wall he was standing in front of didn't have the marking either, and yet part of it rose up the way he expected anyway. He could feel the atmosphere was different here than at the huge structure he woke up in, as there were a few loitering zombies who took particular attention to his presence. To see almost no undead for a while then suddenly find a swarm of them, even Rayse knew what part of town he was in, even if he didn't know which town it was. He recognized those looks, they were the kind of people whose job it was to watch what goes in. The marble ground was more cracked, and as he got closer to the entrance he realized that the building had more features than he previously thought, such as various stylistic ridges and a few windows on what he assumed were higher floors. Suddenly he felt like he was in Old Quarter in Knife's Edge, with its ancient ruins being made into hideouts, but this felt different. This felt like it started as a hideout and became a ruin.

As he walked inside, it only took a glance to realize what this place was: A pub. Zombies of all colors and fashions were sitting on the ground drinking from glasses and mugs. There wasn't a table or chair in sight, but that didn't stop the merry-making as they sat cross-legged or on their shins. While most were human, some had pointed tails, others had beaks, and pointy ears were fairly common. Next to the doorway stood a very fat zombie with thick arms, and legs, and neck He looked like he could barely stand up. Most of the undead wore some sort of rags, but some were in ripped robes and others wearing nothing but shorts. He couldn't tell whether the stench of rot or alcohol was more overpowering. The interior of the pub was unremarkable, but there were many colorful pictures carved on the walls, although they were all completely illegible to him. It was a bit brighter in here due to the mounted torches along the walls. He could see quick glances, just the tiniest of movements that showed that the patrons were aware of his presence. The zombie lead him to an empty spot on the floor and sat down, motioning for Rayse to come over, who obliged as he lowered himself. Rayse overheard many of the conversations that were going on.

"Think I'll get lucky tonight?"

"You heard about Kirrak? It's so rare to see a scab become a Lost One naturally."

"I wouldn't go out there today. They say a Lower City monster's on the loose. A lot of the regulars have gone into hiding, it's deserted out there."

The big-pants zombie tried to make Rayse more comfortable by ordering a few drinks, "Get me the usual and one for our new friend here. He's had quite the rough time!" Rayse couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. He rarely entered a precarious situation without at least assessing the situation, yet here he was. He would often scope out a town and gather as much information as he could before making his move, blending in with the inhabitants. He couldn't stomach the sensation of being out of his element. "So, friend, as with all new rotters I suppose you want some answers, eh?"

Answers would be nice, although Rayse was interested in something else first, "Got a smoke?"

The zombie cocked his head, "Huh?"

Rayse's eyes widened, "A smoke. You know, that thing where... zombies can smoke right?" While for some reason he didn't crave the cigarettes he usually had, there was something calming about having one in his mouth.

"He means one of those burners, right boss?" a nearby zombie asked.

Boss?

"Oh right," said the short zombie. "I think we have some of those too."

Rayse was given what looked like an old, dusty black cigar. Since he didn't breathe, he had some apprehension over how this would work. Nobody else in the pub had one. He was provided with one of the torches in the room and lit the cigar, taking a few puffs and relieved that nothing was out of the ordinary. He was still poisoning his lungs just like any other day.

The zombie cleared his throat and began speaking once it looked like Rayse was satisfied, "I'll explain as though you were a visitor from beyond, which you are, but bear with me as most of this is common sense to me. If you have any questions, just ask. Remember to tell me all about your plane afterward, alright?" Rayse nodded while taking another drag on the old cigar, and the zombie continued, "This is the what is called The Plane of Unlife. However, nobody calls it that around here, since all we know is this city. One thing you should learn is that names are very valuable, and to assign names to greatness is to belittle them, because we believe there are no words amazing enough to describe our city. For that reason, we call it the Nameless City.

In this city, there are three levels: The Upper City, The Middle City, and The Lower City. Think of it as three thick plates on top of each other, with the lower plates larger than the ones on top of them. The edges of these plates, as it were, are connected by massive walls, so tall that you can't see the top of them. The only way to move between them is through the tunnels that go through the walls, that involve a long staircase with hundreds of steps. We are in The Middle City, and the The Sanitarium is where you have awoken."

"What do you mean by awoken?"

"To put simply, when you come into this plane you are put into a dormant state. We call them sleepers. There is no telling when the sleeper will awaken, but generally the person will be left alone until that time."

Rayse had a hard time buying the idea that he was a sleeper, but he pressed on, "I was in something called The Sanitarium?"

"Yes. You have seen how large it is, but that doesn't even begin to describe its size. It is the largest building in the city by circumference, and the only building that exists in multiple levels of the city at once. Half of it is here in The Middle City, while the other half is in The Upper City. While the outer layers generally serve as a medical center to stitch up broken bodies, the inner sanctum, known as The Crematorium, is the domain of the Order Of The White Fire, who perform sacrifices to The Writhing God."

As he explained that the only sacrifices were Lost Ones, information which Rayse already knew, he thought about the possible reasons why he was there in the first place.

"Who... brings the Lost Ones in?"

"Only members of the Order are allowed to bring Lost Ones into the inner sanctum."

"And what would happen to someone who brought in a Lost One that was really just a sleeper?"

"Hard to say... I've never heard of that happening before. Such a mistake would be punished severely I imagine."

"So the one who brought me in is still in The Sanitarium, being punished?"

"Hah! That one left shortly before you did. He probably escaped once he saw you were still alive. Don't know where he was headed."

Rayse stood up, "Escaped?"

"Calm down lad, why are you so worried about this fellow? Sit, drink and tell me about your plane, eh?"

"Sorry." Rayse had to leave. His reason for being here was getting away. "Unless you can tell me where he's going, I'm leaving."

The chatter in the pub eerily stopped. Everyone was looking at him now.

The short zombie took a drink, "You... should reconsider, lad. We had a deal."

"A deal?" Rayse took a drag on his makeshift cigarette, blowing the smoke out of his nose. "You wanted to trade information of equal value. If everything you know is common knowledge and everything I know is not, then I'm the one getting ripped off. You haven't told me a single thing that was worth a damn."

"Let me rephrase then..." the zombie stood up with a lowered head, his teeth stained in crimson. Then, he looked at Rayse with bright red eyes that were bleeding, "TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, OR I RIP OFF YOUR LIMBS!"

The next thing the zombie knew, he had a fist leaving an imprint on his face so hard that he went flying across the pub. The rest of the zombies got up, hissing and snarling, pulling out small objects from wherever they could; their clothes; cavities in their bodies, cavities from the bodies of nearby zombies. They had knives made out of sharpened bone. Rayse's teeth clamped down on the cigar, turning his head to look at the entrance. The doorway was open per his will, but the thick zombie was standing right in the middle of it, completely blocking the way. Fucking instincts! I mean, who wouldn't deck something fucked up like that?! He ran at the thick zombie, trying to shove him out of the way but not even making him budge. Then he tried laying his fist into its gut, but its bulk rejected the attack like rubber. Determined, he spun around and delivered his heel into the side of the zombie's head, but it had the consistency of a brick wall. He backed up with the cigar still in his mouth, smoke seeping from his lips.

The boss zombie got up, a creepy wide smile plastered across his face. He was small and thin, but unscathed by the attack. His arms would bend the wrong way, his head could turn completely upside-down, and his body looked like its very bones were just big muscles. His strange, stringy body crawled back toward where he sat, and he stared at Rayse while his arms, which were voluntarily dislocated, hung down to the ground. Blood was coming out of every opening on his head, but none of it was due to Rayse's punch. There wasn't even a mark on his face from where he was hit. Several zombies surrounded Rayse, including stepping in front of the thick sentry.

The ultra-flexible short zombie made his way back to Rayse, musing, "I rather love it when they squirm."

[Revenant]

He was going insane, that’s what all the shuffling corpse mongers said.

A refuse pile rustled nearby and William absentmindedly reached in and plucked the squealing, dried husk of a rat from it. Taking little notice of the creature’s struggles, he grudgingly placed the rabid thing between his teeth and bit down, ignoring the fetid, rotting flavor that came from the measly flesh. Decaying rat flesh was an unpleasant necessity for a ghoul in the Warrens who didn’t want to eat other ghouls or, worse, corpse-born meat. As crazy as it sounded, he once thought that eating diseased rat would be beyond him, and knew that eventually cannibalism would be commonplace for him as well. After all, creeping madness was the way of life for those who found themselves lost in the Nameless City.

Grunting, William wiped the rat’s foul fluids from his lips and tossed the creature out into the alley. The creature rolled to its feet, bared its fangs and hissed at William before scurrying back into the safety of the refuse. Warrens rats were hardy stock, he knew, and it would take more than a few errant bites to kill one of them. Death didn’t mean quite the same thing in the Plane of Unlife as it did back on Althanas.

Althanas. That was a place he hadn’t thought of in a long time. The daily struggle for existence in the Warrens tended to make such thoughts a luxury that he usually couldn’t afford. Today, however, was the day that Gor’Havah had finally shattered the grip of the Broken Thorn Paws by shattering the skull of Vreela Thorn Paw. Gor’Havah, the name was whispered with fear throughout The Undercities, only it wasn’t a name. It was a title that meant “Burning One” in a forgotten language, and it was what the citizens of the Nameless City had come to call William during the long years of his imprisonment.

Years wasn’t exactly the right word for his tenure in the Plane of Undeath though. William exhaled slowly, and leaned back, gazing deeply into the eye of the Red Maelstrom. There was no set pattern of day or night in the Nameless City, making it somewhat difficult to judge the passage of time accurately. Sure the corpses that ran The Crematorium had a scaling hour clock that the city used to measure time, but deep in the twisting maze of passageways that made up The Middle City’s Warrens, time was an unknown. As best as William could reckon, he had spent nearly a year tracking down the Broken Thorn Paw’s hideout, and another figuring his way into it so that he could send Vreela to the endless fire as a Lost One.

Vreela hadn’t been in the Nameless City for long, but he and all the thugs that had come with him learned the hard way what most people in The Undercities already knew. It took more than a fortress and a personal army to stop Gor’Havah.

“Burn it all,” he spat, rousing himself from his bed of junk. He’d done quite well for himself since waking to find himself here, but the time was catching up with him. The Bitter King’s gaze lingered longer and longer in his mind each time he slept, the light from those red orbs flensing the very substance of his soul. He needed to find a way out of the Plane of Undeath and now that Vreela had been made a Lost One he had his key.

Or rather, he would when the Void-Shapers paid him his fee.

“Is … is there a problem Gor’Havah,” a weasly, liver-spotted ghoul limped around the corner, dragging a shattered leg behind him.

“No Ceelah,” William growled, grabbing his warscythe from its perch. The simpering ghoul was one of Meredith’s underlings and though he hated the loathsome creature, the self-styled Ghoul Queen had insisted William bring him along.

“There shouldn’t be,” Ceelah stifled a raspy giggle, “The remnants of the Broken Thorn Paw should easily fall in line with the Ghoul Queen’s wishes without Vreela leading them astray.”

“The thought makes my shriveled heart want to beat again.”

Ceelah’s rictus locked cheeks turned down in the parody of a frown. “Come now, Gor’Havah. Every soldier for the Ghoul Queen is a soldier fighting for all of the Nameless City’s ghouls.”

“I do what’s necessary to keep Meredith happy so that she’ll keep the stiffs off my back Ceelah, nothing more.”

Ceelah hissed his raspy giggle again. “Something she’s more than happy to do as long as you remain useful.”

“As long as we understand each other then,” William grunted.

“Just make sure you remember it,” Ceelah snapped, his humor finally soured by William’s tone. The two ghouls stared at each other for a moment before Ceelah finally turned away, sneering. “You’re already taken up too much of my time,” he hissed as he slunk away, “I must relay the news of the Broken Paw Tribe to the Ghoul Queen with all haste.”

“I was beginning to think he would never leave,” a sibilant voice behind William whispered. “Any longer and I would have just left and considered our contract fulfilled.”

William turned to face the robed figure that had seemingly materialized out of the shadows behind him. “That would have been a mistake Vorlash. I’ve heard that even the Void-Shapers fear me.”

Vorlash chuckled, a dry sound like snakeskin being drawn over sand. “You overestimate yourself Gor’Havah. The Void-Shapers fear nothing, least of all a ghoul with a grudge.” The sleeves of Vorlash’s robe rustled as if the Void-shaper were clapping, though no sound emerged. “But then your willingness to overly extend your reach is why we came to you. That and your desire.”

“The desire,” William echoed, “That you promised to fulfill if I were to deal with Vreela for you.”

The hood bowed, “Indeed.”

William tapped his foot impatiently, “Well?”

“Well what Gor’Havah?”

“You know what,” William snapped peevishly. Dealing with the Void-Shapers was almost as bad as being forced to ferry around Meredith’s toadies and patience was not something he was well-known for.

“I only wish I were toying with you Gor’Havah, but the truth is that I cannot aid you until you ask for your boon.”

“Fine,” William sighed, pushing his anger down. Despite his earlier threats he knew that violence would get him nowhere with the Void-Shapers. “Give me a portal, any portal. I don’t care to where so long as it’s out of here.”

Vorlash’s hood cocked slightly at the request.

“No.”

“What?” William snapped forward, his eyes flaring wide, bathing the Void-Shaper in blood red light.

“Sadly, our order cannot create otherworldly objects, including portals. We can only twist the nether into objects for this plane.”

William raised his warscythe as if to strike out at Vorlash but stopped short, his eyes narrowing as an idea formed. “Then create a key and show me to the portal it opens.”

Vorlash’s hood shook slowly, as if expecting the request.

“No.”

William sighed, extremely tired of the mental cat-and-mouse game.

“No?”

“Portal keys are intrinsically tied to the otherworldliness of their portals…”

“And you can’t create otherworldly objects,” William finished. “Then tell me where I can find a key.”

Vorlash shook again with dry laughter.

“No.”

William actually hissed at the monk, who held his hands up defensively.

“Peace Gor’Havah. I would give you a location if I knew, but the Order doesn’t actually possess that information at this time.”

“Well do you know anyone who does?” William yelled, his voice carrying through the Warrens.

“Yes, actually.”

That brought William up short. “Oh. Really?”

“Indeed,” Vorlash answered. “You can find one fresh from the Dead Piles in The Middle City.”

“How fresh?”

“I have told you what I can,” Vorlash shrugged, “And now our bargain has been successfully concluded.”

“Successfully maybe,” William grunted, “But not very satisfactorily.”

“Why Gor’Havah, I didn’t think you were naive enough to expect that much from the Order.” Yet again William was buffeted by Vorlash’s dry, mocking laughter. With no further business to carry out between the two of them, the robed monk bowed deeply to William and stepped back, fading into the shadows from whence he came.

“Good riddance,” William spat into the darkness. Then, tapping the haft of his warscythe on his shoulder in thought, he muttered, “The Dead Piles, eh,” and made his own way out of the Broken Thorn Paw’s former hideout.

[Revenant]

The Middle City’s Warrens was a deadly and treacherous place. While there were certain routes through the shifting maze of masonry and refuse considered relatively stable, nothing in them lasted forever. Trying to map the Warrens was the epitome of madness, as hordes of burrowing rats and other, more sinister, creatures collapsed and carved new tunnels through the twisted mass on a daily basis, entire sections appeared, rotated, and disappeared with no rhyme or reason, or were just demolished by the constant internecine warfare between the gangs of ghouls, zombies, and the Warrens’ own native offspring. He’d once heard some Upper City scholar pose the theory that just as the three cities’ Dead Piles acted as a focus for bodies coming to the Plane, the Warrens acted as a focus for dead buildings. It was as good an explanation for the blasted place as any, he supposed.

Regardless of the reasoning behind the Warrens, it was one of the most dangerous places in the Nameless City, and certainly the most dangerous place in the Middle City. And since it was the only way for the non-elevated to get from the Middle City to the Lower City, it was also one of the most well-traveled. Couriers could demand exhorbant fees to make runs through the Warrens to deliver packages, and more than one mercenary group could be hired as escorts through the shifting maze if the price was right. More often than not, William knew, those groups left their clients as Lost Ones in some random alley with considerably lighter pockets.

But that wasn’t merely the way of life in the Warrens, it was an encouraged art. William could name the dozen or so gangs that currently claimed supremacy in the Warrens, though he’d seen many more rise and fall during his time here. Most of them owed allegiance in some form or other to either Meredith the Ghoul Queen or Deckard, the head zombie man of the Middle City. When those two weren’t driving the zombies and ghouls to kill each other, they were encouraging them to kill themselves. In theory it was to ensure that only the strongest remained to serve them, but William had a feeling it had more to do with their mutual fears that one day someone would come along and send them on a long overdue trip to the Crematorium.

Of course, William was a special circumstance. He’d pushed the line against both Meredith and Deckard more than once and yet had been allowed to continue existing. Part of that was because he had proven to be a ridiculously hard son of a bitch to kill, but mostly it was because he was a damned good killer in his own right. Still, after his last incident with one of Deckard’s favorite ‘associates’, William had almost used up the last of his good will. Meredith had only continued to extend her protection to him because he had offered to deliver the Broken Thorn Paw to her leaderless and mostly intact. Even so, he was treading on thin ice when it came to the Ghoul Queen’s favor. Just another reason why he needed to get a key and get out of this god’s forsaken place.

William stopped, hearing the scab before the would-be ambusher could even jump out to bar his path.

“What’s this?” the zombie laughed, reaching up to reaffix the side of his jaw that unhinged when he did so. “A lone rotter out to make his way in the world? You may think you’re a big baddass with that blade you’ve got but I’ve got Ole’ Sweetsie here,” the zombie waved the long, jagged knife he carried menacingly. “She and the three of me boys I got with me thinks that your fancy blade there’d be more comfortable with a bunch of scabs like us than with a sad, lonely rotter like you.”

Ignoring the threat, William looked casually around, easily spotting the scab’s three companions. One of them took a bit of finding though, and might just have a real future in the Warrens. Assuming he lived long enough, that is.

“Hey, rotter!” the lead zombie yelled, waving Ole’ Sweetsie again, “I’m talking to you.”

“Shit, I dunno Jacks,” one of the zombie’s companions piped up. “He don’t look like no easy mark.”

“You should listen to your friend,” William said nonchalantly. While it wouldn’t really take him much effort to make these fresh scabs Lost Ones, he really did have better things to do.

“Shut the fuck up rotter,” Jacks spat and took a step forward.

“Wait!” Another of his companions, the smart one, called out. “Ain’t he that Gor’Havah guy we were told about?”

“Gods’ shit,” another one suddenly cried out fearfully. “I think Yobo’s right.”

“No rutting way,” Jacks spat, though he didn’t sound quite as arrogant as he had before. “All that Gor’Havah shit was just spook talk.”

“I ain’t so sure man,” the last zombie called out. “Maybe we should just let him go.”

“Fuck that,” Jacks screamed. “Who’s going to take us seriously if we can’t even fucking deal with one lone rotter on our turf?”

“You really should listen to them,” William repeated, though in a decidedly less neutral tone. He was very quickly becoming annoyed with the situation.

“And I told you to Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Rotter!” Jacks brandished Ole’ Sweetsie once again, the steel back in his voice. “So what if you are this Gor’Havah guy, huh? That means I get to make a name for myself as the scab who Lost One’d Gor’Havah.”

“Better than you have tried scab.” William sighed inwardly, he could see where this was going and just wanted it to be over. His only hope was that Jacks’ friends retained their own common sense.

Jacks screamed an incoherent string of curses and hurled himself at William, Ole’ Sweetsie cutting the air in front of him savagely. Spurred on by their leader’s fearless charge, two of the other zombies followed suit. The obsidian edge of William’s warscythe flashed in the darkness as it caught Jacks in the temple, mid-stride, and parted his head neatly in half. Ole’ Sweetsie flew from his limp grasp to be lost amongst the refuse and he managed one surprised blink before collapsing in a heap at William’s feet. The other two zombies didn’t even have time to register Jack’s final death before the warscythe ushered them too into the ranks of the Lost Ones. Less than a handful of seconds after the attack had begun, it was over.

“Gods’ shit,” the last remaining zombie, Yobo, quaked fearfully at the sight of the massacre, dropping to his knees atop the rubble which he had hidden behind.

“Don’t worry … Yobo was it?” Yobo nodded vigorously. “Well Yobo, looks like you were the only smart one.” William paused to wipe the zombies’ ichor from the blade of his warscythe with the back of Jacks’ shirt. “I’d recommend finding some smarter scabs to throw your lot in with next time. Now get out of here.”

Yobo wasted no time in vanishing back into the shadows of the Warrens, while William resumed his path back into the Middle City.

By all the unnameable gods above, he needed to get out of this place.

[Revenant]

“Deckard,” William spat, “It’s always fucking Deckard.”

To say that William was pissed off would have been an incredible understatement. While he had no reason to doubt the truth of Vorlash’s information, he wasn’t exactly finding it useful either. The Void-Shapers generally avoided dealings with the Nameless City’s ghouls, but William had never heard of them outright lying to one. Lying was bad juju for information brokers. Still, the truth of Vorlash’s statement didn’t mean that the monk was anything other than a huge asshole.

All of the guards at the Dead Piles had sworn up and down that none of the corpses inside had awakened recently, which was something William was less inclined to believe. But even the protection that Meredith gave him wouldn’t amount to a pile of dust if he were to assault a member of the Order of the White Flame. He’d unhappily accepted the pronouncement and had left the Dead Piles with no other leads.

Which meant it was time to turn to Deckard.

While the Middle City’s head zombie and William had never exactly seen eye to eye, the two of them still managed to maintain a somewhat professional relationship. Which meant, of course, that Deckard hadn’t tried to kill William recently because it would have brought some bad mojo from Meredith’s ghouls down on his head. Knowing this, William had made it a priority to jab Deckard every chance he got. Yeah, he thought. This isn’t going to go well.

But that was when William saw Deckard entering Solinol Delvers with a bewildered rotter in tow. Ghouls, in general, weren’t exactly welcomed into Deckard’s pub with open arms unless they had something that the head zombie wanted. There had been something oddly familiar about that particular zombie however, and while William was sure that the guy was no one that he knew from the Plane of Undeath, he knew that he had met him somewhere before. It would have been much more convenient, he grumbled to himself, if everything on this thrice-damned Plane didn’t become undead.

“Hey,” William approached one of the not-so surreptitious guards that Deckard had stationed around the plaza.

The zombie eyed him warily. “What do you want Gor’Havah? Deckard ain’t exactly keen about you being around Delvers.”

“Yeah, I got that,” William said, then jerked a clawed thumb towards the pub. “Who’s the rotter with Deckard?”

“What’s it to you?”

William reached out and grabbed the zombie’s collar, pulling him menacingly close. “Cut the crap scab.”

To the zombie’s credit, he only quivered for a moment before steeling himself, “You don’t scare me, Gor’Havah. Right now there are six other scabs like me marking you.”

“And you think they’ll be able to save you if shit goes wrong?”

That took a little bit of wind out of the zombie’s sail. “I – I’m one of Deckard’s men rotter. Touching me means going to war with the zombies.”

"Maybe,” William shrugged, “Maybe not. Either way, you’re still a Lost One.” He tightened his grip, the ridges of his bone carapace cutting into the zombie’s dried flesh.

“Alright, alright,” the zombie finally relented, holding his hands up defensively. He rubbed his neck vigorously as soon as William released him, giving the ghoul a scathing glare.

“Well,” William hissed impatiently.

“He’s just some rotter that Deckard saw coming out of the Crematorium, that’s all. I swear.”

“Bullshit. Rotters aren’t allowed in the Crematorium.”

The zombie gave William a patronizing look, “Which is probably why Deckard wanted some time to speak with him, neh? That’s the only reason I can think of for Deckard to be wasting his time with some fresh rotter.”

“Fresh?” William’s interest piqued.

“Yeah,” the zombie shrugged. “One of the guys said he saw the rotter going in dead and coming out awakened.”

“Interesting,” William scratched his chin in thought.

“You done here Gor’Havah? Cause being seen with you ain’t really good for my image.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time,” William grunted, leaving the zombie to head for Solinol Delvers.

“There better not be a next time,” the zombie yelled after him. William returned the sentiment with a rude gesture. By the time he reached the pub things were already swinging. William cursed as he pushed the door panel up, hoping that Deckard’s goons hadn’t already torn the ghoul to pieces.

One of Deckard’s big goons, quite literally, had barricaded the entrance with his bulk. While it seemed to be a problem for the young ghoul inside the pub, it was far less of a problem for William. Though the Plane of Unlife had sapped the heat from him, the revenant retained all of the physical capabilities of his war form, even while ghoulified. All it took was one heavy shove to send the fat zombie slamming into the wall.

“Who the fuck …?” the zombie began, rounding on William, only to receive a club fisted punch which shattered his jaw and sent him reeling backwards into his cadaverous companions.

“Gor’Havah?” Deckard spat angrily. “What the fuck are you doing in the Delvers?”

“I came for this one,” William gestured towards Rayse with his warscythe.

“Fuck yourself rotter, he’s mine,” Deckard snarled, his eyes blazing with bleeding red light.

“Not unless you got two dozen more big boys stashed behind you he isn’t.”

“Keep talking shithead,” Deckard’s visage of rage twisted in a rictus grin. “You know you’ve been tossed to the curb right?” The zombies around Deckard joined their leader in a low chuckle. “Meredith’s not going to back you anymore. You’re persona non grata with both sides now Gor’Havah.”

William’s eyes narrowed. Deckard could have been bluffing, but it was very unlikely. He had been expecting this for some time, sure, but the exact timing wasn’t exactly the best. “Start running and don’t stop till I tell you,” he hissed to Rayse. Then, seeing that the other ghoul was about to say something, he added, “I said run. Don’t talk, run.”

Though he didn’t seem pleased by the command, Rayse nodded and did as he was instructed, and none too soon. The zombie crowd had started to edge forward, drawing strength from their numbers. William shot Deckard a savage grin and gave him a little wave, “Be seeing you around scab.” He turned and ran after Rayse, moving almost impossibly fast by the standards of the dead.

“You can count on it Gor’Havah,” Deckard screamed after him, his voice echoed by the wrathful roaring of his subjects. “You’re Lost Ones, you hear me? You’re both fucking Lost Ones.”

[Rayse Valentino]

What the fuck is wrong with me? That was all Rayse could could think as he dashed out of the pub, passing confused thugs who only turned to chase him once his alleged savior caught up with him. He wasn't always that stupidly cocky. That absurd little zombie known as Deckard definitely freaked him out, but he didn't know why. Did zombies have feelings? Could he still die? Was he not already in the afterlife? Why did he feel like he just ran out of a scam gone wrong in Knife's Edge?

His thoughts were inevitably cut off as his rescuer pulled ahead, turning corners into tiny streets with such ease he might as well have been running blind. If it wasn't for Deckard's transformation, Rayse would think this new figure in his life was more dangerous than anyone in the pub. After all, the man looked like he was half demon, half burned human. They were entering the thick of the Warrens, although Rayse couldn't see much beyond his rescuer's back due to the ever-present mist. All he could see were the figures of strange structures circling around him, snake-shaped buildings, towers that seemed to curve back down, pyramids and buildings that looked like different types of architectures were layered on top of each other. None of the structures had a pattern, and even the streets seemed to slope up, down, and curve at wild angles. This was more than a maze, it was like a surreal painting. There was not a single undead in sight after their escape, and while Rayse simply thought this was normal, he couldn't shake the feeling that the street-side shacks and makeshift hovels along their paths were recently occupied.

The cold ache in Rayse's chest was agitated as he ran, his right hand moving to cover the column of stitches down his chest. The pain was a constant reminder that this was no dream, that at any moment whatever was left of his existence could come crashing down to its ultimate end. He was half-tempted to dodge into a different street, to slip away from the other man and try to get his bearings on his own. However, there was something inexplicably familiar about him. He could not discern the source of the memory, but he knew that he was suffering from short-term amnesia. If this man managed to evoke this sort of reaction, then he was very likely tied to his missing history in some way, not to mention the short work he made of the bulky zombie in the doorway who Rayse couldn't even bruise.

It was difficult for Rayse to keep up, because the coldness in his chest was getting worse. It was like someone left an icicle in his body. The sensation of burning overwhelmed his senses, a cold burn that spread throughout his body. The extreme sensation poked him in every organ and turned his thoughts to mush. His savior had noticed Rayse's decrease in speed, how the contractor's run had become shaky wobbling, and after another minute of attempting to run farther, he stopped at a wall of a building. They were in a small street between a tower with roofs on each floor that extended out beyond the edges of the building, and an arch-shaped building. They were staring at the side of the arch, and the man moved toward a section of the wall, willing it to raise. As the wall raised, he motioned for Rayse to go in first, and then he followed, willing the door to lower behind him. The door in this case was completely unmarked, and Rayse started to wonder how many secret doors existed in a place like this.

The inside of the structure was a long stone hallway. It was dark, with the light of the outside completely blocked out by the closing door. However, there were slots along the wall that held torches, and the man simply reached into his pocket and sprinkled what looked like dust onto a torch and it immediately became lit. Rayse had to avert his eyes for a moment as the intensity of the lit torch overwhelmed him. The man then lead Rayse down the hall, and while they was walking, the chest pains had started to calm down. Some of the walls had markings on them, while others did not. Were they doors? Was this a series of rooms? The man confirmed Rayse's suspicions when a door opened up on their side, and they both walked in, closing it behind them. The room was completely empty, just a square box with rounded edges. It gave Rayse a nervous feeling, like this was the room he would die in.

"This will have to do until you can move freely," said the man who saved him, placing the torch into a slot in the room. Rayse finally got a good look at him, and while his appearance was still strangely familiar, it was ultimately still that of an undead. What's more, his features seemed more demonic than human.

"What do you want from me?" Rayse asked with a groan. His fingers caressed the stitches on his chest, his mind trying to push away the sharp tinges of pain.

"Your key."

"My what?"

The man said it again, "Your key. The one that gets us out of this rotting plane." He took a step forward, the grip on his scythe tighter with impatience.

"I... don't have anything like that. I don't remember." Unlike Deckard, this man was very specific in his desires. Unfortunately, there was no way Rayse could give him satisfaction.

The man's voice rose, "Bullshit! I know for a fact that you know the location of a key, so tell me where it and the door connected to it lie."

Rayse pressed his back against the wall, and noticed that the cigar was still in his mouth. Every few seconds a smoky mist would escape his lips. He was still breathing, even though there was no need to do so. He couldn't help but smile at the absurdity of his situation. Being in a small room with an impossibly strong man seemed far more terrifying than a large pub with a gang of drunk zombies. Yet, he couldn't muster the energy to feel the full extent of the fear. Something was sapping him of his strength. Ever since he awoke, his weakness has been compounding.

"I don't know what to tell you," Rayse said. "Unless you think I'm hiding them up my ass, I don't have any goddess-forsaken keys." Another groan escaped his lips as he clutched his chest.

While originally the man did not think much of it, now he was actively staring at the stitches. Generally, the undead here did not suffer from any irritations or pains. While wounds carried with them an initial shock, that faded away in time. Even an injury sustained during the confrontation with Deckard would not persist like this. It didn't seem like an act, either. When two of the stitches became loose, the man realized that they were fresh.

The man smiled, "It's there, isn't it? That's where you're hiding it."

"The fuck is wrong with y-" Rayse tried to say before he choked on his own spit. His lungs felt like they were being frozen from the inside. He looked down at the stitches and finally noticed their significance. Last he remembered, they weren't there. It took him this long because they were a relatively benign detail compared to his other physical changes. "You... wait a minute..." He eyed the scythe suspiciously.

The man raised the weapon. There was, after all, one reliable way to get what he wanted. Rayse put up a feeble resistance, throwing a punch that missed entirely, stumbling past the man. When he regained his footing, he turned around to try to make another attack but only saw the blade of the scythe rushing towards him. It all happened in a moment, with the weapon cutting through his stitches, causing him to scream out in agony as blood was spilled. After the attack, he dropped to his knees, watching the blood fall to the ground.

The torch flickered, and in his hazy state he heard the man speak again, "For the sake of not getting myself covered in your blood, I'm going to let you pull it out yourself."

To Rayse's surprise, the pain started to fade from the wound, leaving only the freezing sensation. He even forgot about how he stabbed through his hand, since he didn't even feel like it was hurt. He reached into the newly-opened chest cavity and felt around. It was right below his rib cage, and at first he felt some sort of cloth, but then a deep coldness like dry ice. He didn't pull back upon this feeling, instead he grit his teeth and grabbed the source of the cold, tearing it out of his chest with another scream. The freezing sensation was now in his hand, and he nearly threw it across the room as he dropped it. The object fell onto the ground between the men. The bottom half was covered by a bloody cloth and left no discernible sound upon the stone floor, but the top half made a clunking sound as it landed.

It was a small glass vial with a white liquid inside.

[Revenant]

“What the fuck?” Rayse murmured, slumping down onto a a pile of crumbling stone. Bewildered eyes darted from the blood stained vial to the gaping hole in his chest, then to William, and finally back to the vial.

Completely ignoring Rayse’s moment of horror, William hungrily leapt upon the container, a predator latching onto his prey. “Finally,” he hissed, sucking his breath through jagged teeth, “A key out of this wretched place.” Dull red light pulsed excitedly from the revenant’s cracked flesh as he swept upon his prize, giving his entire being the appearance of a battered, beating heart. But no sooner had his claws touched the vial than all his vigor fled and he pulled away from the vial with a yelp. “What in all the blighted planes?” he snarled, shaking his hand vigorously as if snake bitten.

“My thoughts exactly asshole. Now imagine having it inside your chest,” Rayse spat. William, finally seeing to remember the other ghoul’s presence, shot him an annoyed glance.

“Where did you get this?” William snapped.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ve been stuck in this nightmare for longer than I can remember, and I’ve never heard of anything that could make a corpse feel cold. It just doesn’t happen.”

“So grab a blanket.”

William frowned at Rayse’s snarky attitude. Fresh ones, in his opinion, were all the same; creatures who hadn’t quite figured out that all of the importance and clout that they had held in their original Plane meant nothing in their new home.

“Listen shithead,” William said slowly, trying to keep his temper in check. It just wouldn’t do for him to tear this fresh rotter’s head off before he got the answers he was looking for. “Things work differently in here. Cold, fire, frost, and heat, doesn’t mean shit in this place.”

That seemed to pique Rayse’s interest. “How so?”

William knelt down, examining the vial more closely. “As in, ‘nothing here produces heat or cold like this.’ You want to know why, you can ask one of the philosophical assholes that seem to fill this place like maggots.” He looked back at Rayse, “Assuming you survive long enough to meet one that is.”

Rayse rolled his eyes at the dramatics. “I can take care of myself.”

William nodded and returned to his examinations of the vial. “Then you might want to start by moving away from the Khuulite.”

“The what?” Rayse asked, looking around. He jumped from his perch as he saw the thick, rubbery black tentacle worming through the rubble towards him. It was slow but relentless in its pursuit, quivering as it neared Rayse’s pallid flesh.

“Don’t let it touch you,” William said. “It secretes ooze that dissolves dead flesh.” Nodding to himself, he wrapped the vial’s restraining cloth completely back around the glass tube and picked it up. He walked over to the rubble and slashed neatly through the tentacle with an idle chop of his blade.

“What the hell was that?”

“It’s something that wormed its way up from the Lower City over the years. Its main body has to be buried somewhere in the Warren’s shifting rubble but it has all these tentacles that it worms around looking for food.”

“I suppose we’re that food?”

“And the Khuulite is one of the least dangerous things around here.” William shrugged. “But that’s behind us now that I’ve got the key. All I need is for you to tell me where the door is.”

“I told you, I don’t know about any goddess-forsaken door. I don’t even remember how I got here, or how that fucking vial got in my chest.”

A growl escaped William’s lips but petered out to a resigned sigh. He remembered the memory loss that had plagued him when he had awakened as a fresh rotter in the Dead Piles and assumed that it was no different for Rayse. As frustrating as it was, it wasn’t the ghoul’s fault that he couldn’t remember. He gripped the vial tightly, knowing that against his desires he had to keep Rayse alive and close.

“This place is on the edges of the Warrens,” William said finally, “It won’t be long before Deckard’s scabs find it. That fat slab of rot at Solinol Delvers wasn’t the worst that he’s got at his disposal.” William gestured towards the door with his scythe. “If you want to walk out and try it on your own I won’t stop you, but I guarantee you’ll meet your final death by the end of the day with Deckard’s men out looking for you. The other option is to come with me to a safe house deeper in the Warrens.”

“What about this?” Rayse asked, gesturing to the hole in his chest.

A chuckle rolled across William’s charred frame. “That’s one of the perks of being a ghoul. Unlike the scabs, we heal injuries over time. They have to graft replacements on when they get too damaged.”

“What's a ghoul?”

"You're a ghoul, rotter. Anything living that gets pulled into this place becomes a ghoul. The dead stuff become zombies like Deckard and his gang. Unlike us, they retain no memory of their previous lives."

Rayse’s eyes maintained their stoic, defiant demeanor, but now there was a hint of hope flickering deep within. "So I'm not really dead?"

William shrugged, "Yes and no."

"Fat load of good you are."

"Look," William snapped peevishly, finally fed up with Rayse's sarcasm. "For the time being I'm going to buy your shit about not remembering what I need to know. Everything here is dead but the word on the street is that ghouls who manage to escape this place get to go back to being living, which is why I'm going to do something very stupid to see if I can get your memory back."

“As long as it involves me keeping all my limbs,” Rayse mumbled.

“It won’t matter once I’ve found the door out of here because then all this shit goes away.” William started out the door. “We’re done here. You can come with me to find the way out of here or you can stay to play with Deckard’s boys. I know which option I'd choose.”

He peered about cautiously as he stepped back out into the Warrens. Giving Rayse the illusion of choice in whether or not to follow him was risky, but if the ghoul thought he was doing what William wanted of his own free will then he was less likely to give William shit. This series of events was already becoming far too dangerous without adding babysitting duty on top of it.

[Rayse Valentino]

As William walked over to the lifting door, Rayse looked down and saw the cigar on the floor. It must've fallen out when the ghoul carved his body like a pumpkin. He reached down and picked it up, his eyes resting upon the still-lit end of it. He knew the choice wasn't real, but he had no alternative. It began to come into focus that the life he lead was a fleeting one, and now all that time spent was lost in the wind, however he still had that cockiness of hope. Maybe despite the pain, he still felt that he was dreaming. All this shit goes away... He made it sound so easy.

"Fine," he said, dropping the cigar. "As long as we get out of this shithole." They both stepped through the doorway, finding themselves back in the long hallway of the safe house. "What do I call you, anyway?"

"They call me Gor'Havah."

"I'm Vincent." Rayse was apprehensive about sharing his real name with Gor'Havah. The ghoul somehow knew where the vial was, but didn't seem to know anything about Rayse personally. As far as he cared, it should stay that way.

"By the way," Gor'Havah stopped. "You should have this." He handed Rayse a small, thick book. It couldn't have been more than three inches in length and six in height. "When I had memory loss I was told to keep a journal. It made my memories come back faster, maybe it'll do the same for you."

"You sure?"

"Go ahead. I haven't used it in a long time."

It was a dark purple book with metallic, circular bindings. Inside the metal rings, a pencil lay dormant. As they reached the exit, the door opened up to reveal the streets of the Warrens, light causing the two to squint since they had just spent their time in relative darkness. Gor'Havah put the torch back in its slot, made sure the vial was safely secured on his person, and the two went out into the light of the Red Maelstrom. The coast looked clear for now, but Gor'Havah made sure to keep his head turning. The small streets looked the same as before, empty and full of dusted bones, trash, and debris. Everything here reeked of death, and to Rayse it felt like one of the foulest homeless nests in Knife's Edge while simultaneously looking like it had been abandoned for years.

Fortunately, Gor'Havah was leading the two, so he couldn't see precisely what Rayse was doing with the journal. Rather than doing any sort of writing in it, Rayse was flipping through the many entries that were already written. His formidable savior was likely too concerned with escaping this nightmarish place than guarding the information within the journal, or perhaps he simply thought there was nothing in there that could be used against him. Rayse skimmed through the pages, stopping at a familiar name.



The Writhing God.

At first I thought it was something tied to the Order of the White Fire. A sacrificial god of the pit, a little folklore story that made the Red Maelstrom turn. Now I know it is something more, something that all dwellers of this plane fear and know. Even the most zealous skeptics believe in him. The story is known to all the beings of this realm...

Long ago, this plane was just a chaotic mass of nether energy. A pure force of death, destroying the life of anything that enters. Then, one day a God fell in via the use of a key and portal, or door as it's referred to here, but his life force was so strong that instead of it being twisted by the nether, it changed the plane entirely. The corpse-born believe him to be the first one of their kind, and that he created the Nameless City and the Red Maelstrom. He is known to live outside the furthest walls of the Lower City, his massive form taking up the space of the rest of the plane entirely, with endless bony limbs that are lost in the sea of mist. He claws at the walls of the city, but he is such a slow moving creature that it takes hundreds or thousands of years to see even a hint of movement from him.

He is more than just a god, he is the father of every undead on this plane. The reverence attributed to him is so great that blasphemy is a serious crime. I barely feel safe even writing about this. Legend has it that he was originally known as The Nameless God, but monks who sat atop the walls for centuries noticed the slow, terrifying writhing that occurs outside the walls.

The only way to see him is through a portal in the Upper City, but there are rumors that a portal in the Lower City exists as well. If such a being truly exists, maybe I'll go see him for myself.

[Revenant]

The rustling of the journal brought an amused huff to William’s lips, though the ghoul mercenary humorlessly shoved it back down before it could escape. The situation that he and Rayse were in wasn’t exactly the type that brooked much in the way of humor. Besides, while the plane's inherent magic allowed all intelligent creatures within it to communicate verbally, an effect that some higher-up wittily named the All-Tongue, such understanding did not translate to written form. He'd come across hundreds of languages during his time in the Nameless City, all equally as meaningless to him as Althanas' common scrawl was to those language's writers. William had no doubt that his fresh follower was currently baffled by his meaningless script, and he felt no remorse over the fact. After all, it did keep him quiet, which was something that William found to be priceless in this situation.

Strangely though, William thought as he scanned the depressed grey rubble outside his hiding spot, Rayse wasn’t the only one keeping quiet in the Warrens. On any given day there were a dozen factions warring for control of territory within the broken avenues and twisted passages that made up the Warrens. The various packs or tribes or whatever they called themselves could be found everywhere in the Warrens, whooping war cries and clashing crudely hammered blades with one another in an orgy of violence and territorial chest beating. Add on to that the fact that the Warrens itself was a chaotic mess countless stones grinding themselves to oblivion as the mass constantly compacted and shifted and silence was almost an unknown in the echoing venues.

Since the word had been passed that he’d been hunting their leader, William hadn’t thought anything strange about how the members of the Broken Thorn Paws had all pulled back into a defensive position within their lair. It was the only sensible thing for Vreela to have commanded from his minions, though it hadn’t done him any good in the end, but it was one of the few times that William remembered seeing a claimed area of the Warrens entirely abandoned. But now that he stopped to think about it, aside from the fresh meat who had no real sense of what was going on in the place, William couldn’t remember seeing anyone other than himself and his new companion prowling the Warrens’ passages.

A faint stirring at the edges of his vision told him that his assumption wasn’t quite correct. Something was amiss in the Warrens, that much William knew from the general atmosphere that was slowly trickling into the ghoul’s brain, but after what he’d done to Deckard the liches themselves couldn’t keep the zombie boss’s men from locking onto William’s scent and hunting him down. In fact, William noted as he bent and sifted the chalky dust beneath him through his fingers, someone had already passed by their hiding spot at least three times in the short duration while he was retrieving the key from Rayse. Trackers had a tendency to disappear or go mad while pursuing prey through the Warrens, so if Deckard was going to give any one of his minions the task of tracking William down, he wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best.

“Brellneriliscint,” William hissed, the name sliding from his withered lips like a curse.

“Eh?” Rayse asked, raising his head from the spidery scrawled pages.

“Brellnerilliscint is Deckard’s best tracker and he’s been by here recently,” William stood and wiped the dust from his hands. “More than once from the looks of it.”

“So we should probably be making tracks towards your real hideout then?” Rayse grumbled, snapping the journal shut and tucking it safely away in the lip of his ratty trousers. “Well?”

William shot him an annoyed look but nodded nonetheless for Rayse to follow him only to put a hand up as he cocked his head to the side, straining to pick up the sounds playing at the edges of his senses. “Damn all the hells,” he cursed, realizing that there was something just around the bend that had picked up on his and Rayse’s exit from the hideaway and was now on the move towards them. Wasting no more time, William turned and bolted further into the thick mist filling the Warrens, pausing only long enough to give his companion the signal to follow.

The two ghouls flight through the Warren’s mazelike passages frustrated William to no end. He knew that, alone, he could have easily evaded Brellnerilliscint and made it quickly back to his shelter. But the mists rolled thickly through the Warrens today and he knew that Rayse wouldn’t have adapted to them yet, fresh as he was. Unwilling to just bolt into the mist and leave Rayse stranded, William was forced to slow down, a constraint Brillnerilliscint wasn’t burdened by.

By the time the two of them had passed through the Streets of Cracked Angels, named for the tattered menagerie of stone celestials lining the hundred yards or so of this particular piece of the Warrens, William knew that they wouldn’t make it back to his haven before Deckard’s men caught up to them. The realization wasn’t pleasant, but there was little that William could do about it, burdened as he was with Rayse's presence. And so, instead of continuing on the path towards his haven, William ducked into one of the Warren’s innumerable side passages in the hopes that he could potentially lose Brellnerilliscint in the chaos lying just outside the Warrens’ more stable pathways. Unfortunately, luck didn’t cast its fickle eye upon William that day, and the particular passage that he chose petered out after only a few winding turns, further movement being the victim of the recent arrival of a fresh pile of shattered brick and crumbling mortar.

As if on cue, a rough voice hit the two ghouls, sounding like nothing more than thick charcoal rubbing against rough stone. “Nowhere left to run Gor’Havah?” the voice rasped. Rayse spun to face the voice’s massive owner, but William was less eager to do so, knowing exacty what he would find. Brellnerilliscint’s thick boar-like visage stared blankly at the two of them, an thick-tusked emotionless slate over which the ghouls’ eyes slid like oil. Maintaining a solid focus on the tracker’s bristly four-armed form was an effort, as if the mind didn’t want to register the creature’s existence. Apparently, if Brellnerilliscint was to be believed, it was a trait that all of his species possessed, a trait which had allowed them to become the dominant species on his originating plane of existence.

William gritted his teeth with a hiss and tightened his grip on the haft of his warscythe. This wasn’t going to be pleasant.

[Rayse Valentino]

The sound of the boarman's sneering was only second to the ragged wheeze employed by Rayse, barely able to keep up with Gor'Havah's speed. He could tell that his demonic associate was holding back, maintaining his speed so as not to lose the contractor. Rayse felt ashamed, rubbing his thumb along the tips of his fingers in a circular motion and remembering the speed he once possessed. The element of fire, fused to his being, was both a gift and a curse, but now it left a void within him. He was incomplete, and in this realm lost. He glanced behind him at the mountain of rubble, as if a giant had playfully crashed two buildings together just to see the result. Judging by Gor'Havah's reaction, he did not expect the destruction that blocked his path. There was no other way out, as the walls to their sides were tall and ominous. The Warrens had shifted yet again, acting as a living construct that espoused the chaotic Lower City that it bordered. Many felt that one day the whole of the Warrens would slip into the Lower City, leaving its residents to deal with the hordes of monsters lying just beyond the wall.

"I don't think they're paying you enough to hunt me, Brell." Gor'Havah spat.

With snarls between words, Brell tightened all four of his fists, causing creaking sounds of the hard material his gauntlets were made out of, "Maybe they're not. A better question is: Why risk war with the scabs over some fresher? How's about you just give that human to me and I'll say I never found you."

"They always try to compromise before I kill them," Gor'Havah responded. "Vreela wanted me to join him before I crushed his skull. You would think that would send a message about negotiating with me."

"Have it your way!" Brell grunted. "I will enjoy this." Brell was considered a traitor to ghoul-kind, often working for the corpse-born to hunt other ghouls. The tracker was not alone, as he was accompanied by two more who wanted to challenge the duo.

Gor'Havah recognized one of them, "Looks like I was wrong about you being the smart one."

It was Yobo, the zombie who tried to mug him earlier in the cycle. Despite what happened to his allies, he had a confident grin plastered on his face. Looks like he took Gor'Havah's advice. The other one Rayse recognized from the pub, it was a humanoid that looked like a bird. It had long and thin arms and legs with three sharp talons at the end of them. Two holes were on the center of its face where a nose would be, and instead of a mouth it had a six inch long sharp beak like a hummingbird. Its gray skin looked even rougher than Gor'Havah's, a sort of rubbery texture that used to be covered in feathers. It had a puffy upper body, but its lower body was only a few inches thick and looked barely connected to its pelvis. Its beady eyes were glaring squarely at the contractor.

"Let's have some bloody fun then," Brell announced, and charged Gor'Havah.

Gor’Havah was fast, inhumanly so, but the speed mattered little when he couldn’t focus on his porcine foe. The blade of his warscythe whistled as it kissed the air in front of him but thanks to Brell’s inherent “gift” that was all it did. Ducking down to one side, Brell slid up under the scythe’s vicious arc and slammed the full brunt of his weighted fists into Gor’Havah’s chest. Unlike Gor’Havah, the tracker preferred his fights as close and dirty as he could get them, taking a certain savage pleasure in the crackle of pulped flesh and shattered bone beneath his fists. And he’d certainly had the opportunity to indulge under Deckard’s rule, as the thick scars on the pitted iron plates he’d had bolted into his hands. Those plates had sent too many of the Nameless City’s denizens to the ranks of the Lost, ghoul and zombie alike.

“Hnn,” Gor’Havah grunted as he felt the give in his ribs caused by Brell’s punch. It hurt like hell but wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him since his arrival. And it certainly wasn’t enough to stop him, especially considering that though Brell’s nature made it difficult to maintain focus on him, there was nothing difficult about maintaining focus on the blow that he had just taken.

“I told you,” he snapped as he caught Brell’s arm in the crook of his thick bone carapace that covered most of his arms, “You’re not getting paid nearly enough.” Gor’Havah slammed his head into Brell’s snout, taking the tracker by surprise since it wasn’t every day that the tusked creature found people trying to slam into its face. Using the moment of surprise to his advantage, Gor’Havah brought the haft of his weapon around to crash into the tracker, taking the heavy creature fully off his feet and depositing him onto the shattered pile of stone covering the passage’s floor.

Roared like a savage, Gor’Havah whipped the warscythe back around, twirling the blade to bring it back in line with Brell’s recumbent form. Before he could finish the deed however, Brell gave his own bestial cry, grabbed a hunk of broken masonry the size of a man, whipped it out to meet the warscythe’s blade. Powered by Gor’Havah’s might, the shimmering blade sank deep into the rough stone, forcing itself too deep to pull back out without better leverage. Brell rolled to the side, still holding the entrapping stone, and tore the weapon from Gor’Havah’s grasp.

“Die rotter,” Brell screamed, punching a hoofed foot into Gor’Havah’s gut with enough force to tear a hole in the ghoul. Again Gor’Havah grunted, one clawed hand grabbing instinctively for the hole that Brell had torn. Such a wound would have been fatal back in the real world, but here it was merely an annoyance. But though the wound it had caused was only an annoyance, the blow drove Gor’Havah back into the wall opposite Brell with enough force to shatter the moldering brick and mortar substance around him.

Rayse could do nothing but watch, but without weapons or abilities, and with his vision hampered by the mist, his pool of potential contributions was dry. Once again he thought of escape, but the two creatures Brell was with ensured that this avenue was closed to him.

Without warning, the bird-looking creature charged at him with talons outstretched, its feet barely touching the ground as it ran. Rayse tried and failed to pull away, but one of the beast's talons pierced his shoulder. Rayse reeled from the pain, and so he could do nothing to prevent its other be-taloned arm from whipping around to similarly penetrate his opposite shoulder. His arms twitched uncontrollably, the feeling being sapped as pain coursed through his body. Even if he could regenerate his wounds as a ghoul, nothing could numb the pain of his flesh being torn asunder. He fixed the birdman with a vengeful glare, trying to regain control of his arms or, at least, the strength in his legs, but it was no use.

Using its razor sharp beak, the birdman stabbed into Rayse's neck like a knife through Concordian pie, causing him to violently expel spit from his mouth. Even though he did not need air, Rayse was still used to the involuntary nature of breathing, and the blood that filled his throat flowed out of his mouth in bursts, causing him to choke. The zombie pulled its beak out and retracted its talons, leaving Rayse to fall to the ground. A memory forced its way around his mind, giving him a headache that he tried to suppress mentally. However, the familiar glint of the headache gave him pause, and even in his addled state he remembered it was the same feeling as in the Crematorium. Biting down on his tongue, he let the memory subsume him.

--

"Why can't you just take this to one of your bosses?"

"You know how they are, Rayse. They'll just take what I have and send me off, or even if they do help I won't see a single crown out of it."

"Sorry Pierce, you came to the wrong guy. I'm not interested in your fairy tale."

Pierce thought he would say that, so he held out a small dodecahedron and started manipulating its sides, causing a click and a whirr from the object. He looked at Rayse, eager to see his reaction, but the contractor was just growing tired of the little man. He was about to tell him to leave when his vision became wavy, seeing Pierce's form wobble through the air. In fact, the whole room was shifting back and forth. Rayse opened his mouth to speak but couldn't speak, his voice blocked by a painful choking sensation. His mind immediately pieced together what was happening: He was drowning. Somehow he was now underwater, and breathing in pure water. He fell to the ground clutching his throat, tears forming in his eyes from the lack of oxygen. As soon as the feeling had started however, it ended abruptly, returning his vision to normal. Pierce was still holding the object. Rayse pulled himself up, noticing that nothing in the room was wet. The water... was an illusion?

Pierce nervously broke the silence, "This is one of the weakest artifacts he gave us, and he says there are a lot more where that came from. I figured I would give you this one... I know you can appreciate its information-gathering potential."

Rayse stood up with rage in his eyes, ready to wring Pierce's neck. He couldn't stay mad, fortunately for the little man, as he knew that it was the only way for Rayse to understand what he was dealing with.

He couldn't deny that he was interested in hearing more.

--

Rayse opened his eyes, feeling the blood drain from his throat as his ghoulish regeneration kicked in. He had thrown up most of the blood that was generated, and all that was left was the sore feeling in his neck and shoulders. The birdman hovered above him, but there was an expression of worry in his eyes. Not of Rayse or Gor'Havah, but something else. It was then that the contractor noticed the rumbling in the ground, the shaking of the dust and rocks. Every few seconds there was be a distant crashing down, but it was growing louder and louder. He looked at the wall to his side, the feeling returning in his arms while the birdman was distracted, and he quickly pulled himself up and launched one of his legs into the zombie's stomach, sending its thin frame tumbling down the road.

It was then that the crashing halted even the fight between Brell and Gor'Havah, but before they could react the entire wall burst out towards them, showering them in chunks of stone. From the dust that followed came two giant crab-like claws that were as large as Rayse himself, moving almost faster than he could see and snapping through one of Brell's arms. The rest of its bulbous body followed, and Rayse's mouth hung agape as its massive body rested on long, spidery legs. It had several sets of eyes on the side of its head, but the entire head opened up to reveal a circular set of long teeth. It drooled profusely, and its legs made deep holes in the ground from each step it took. Cuts and scrapes littered its fat body, marking it as a creature that lived a long life of war and torment. The first to run was Yobo, but he didn't make it far before the monster's claw chopped him into upper and lower zombie halves.

This was the reason the streets were empty, why the thugs of the Warrens hid in fear. This was a being that had come from the Lower City.

[Revenant]

Reacting almost without thought, William snatched up the haft of his fallen weapon with both hands, blade still embedded in the massive piece of stone, and heaved with all the force that his demonically enhanced physique could muster. The stone, which had been larger than the unfortunate Yobo, shot off the ground as if William’s weapon were the arms of a catapult and into the thickly crusted carapace surrounding what William took to be one of the creature’s eyes. While the Plane of Unlife mostly saw fit to snatch humanoid creatures into its embrace, there were the occasional others that found their way into the Dead Piles. While the Order of the White Flame had made a vow to protect the well-being of the sleepers in the Dead Piles, the things that were obviously far too destructive, bestial, or alien were hauled into the Lower City and left there to awaken and carry out their monstrous existence there until they were put down or passed into the ranks of the Lost on their own.

But though they were bestial, most of the creatures dropped into the Lower City were intelligent, some wickedly so, and many assaulted the walls of the Middle City on an almost constant basis. It was one of the reasons that the Order maintained a veritable army of Servitors along the border between the two tiers. Even so, creatures still slipped through the cracks on occasion, eluding their titanic hunters. Some, like the Khuulite, kept a low profile. Others, William thought as he watched the pillar on the end of his scythe collide with the creature, weren’t so subtle.

The stone shattered like an explosion against the side of the creature’s head, freeing the blade of William’s scythe but only rocking the creature back an inch before drawing its attention whipping around at the offender. The creature backed slightly as it sighted William, but only to angle its segmented body to get a better lunge. Thick rolls of diseased putrescence curled out of the makeshift hole the thing had burrowed through the Warrens, spiny cilia uncurling along its length. The bird zombie shrieked in horror as the cilia caught a hold of him and passed cleanly through his body like adamantine wires, neatly dissecting him into a hundred pieces. On the ground, Rayse could only watch in amazement as they passed just over him, thankful perhaps for the first time that he’d been knocked down in a fight until one of the creature’s piercing legs slid into the uneven pavement beside his head as easily as a flame blade slides through butter. Knowing that to remain where he was would be suicide, Rayse rolled the only way he could, back into the tunnel the creature had just emerged from.

William tensed as the creature slid its bulk fully from the tunnel, noting Rayse’s narrow escape. Behind him, Brell’s panicked shrieks threatened to drown out the rest of the chaos in the Warrens until the creature’s circular maw gaped wide and let out a piercing wail that shook the stones around them. Fast as a sand viper, the worm creature shot at the creature that had dared to strike it, but William was faster. Taking a cue from his companion, William dove lengthwise on the floor, holding his scythe’s length closely against him, and rolled for his life under the arcing creature. And though he couldn’t see it, William had no doubt as to Brell’s fate as the creature slammed into the pile of rubble, bunched up like wet rubber, and then pushed through the tumbled stones, continuing its burrowing flight.

Jumping to his feet, William hook off after Rayse, who had come to the same conclusion as the elder ghoul and was running as fast as he could away from the where the Lower City creature was thrashing about. It didn't take long for William to catch up to Rayse with his enhanced speed, but even then both ghouls maintained their sprint through the tunnel that the creature had bored out of the rubble. It wasn't until the two of them passed the clanking patrol of Servitors tasked with chasing the creature down that they finally gathered their wits about them and slowed to a halt.

“What in all the hells was that thing?” Rayse panted, his body reflexively going through the motions of breathing despite the lack of a need to. William watched him stoically, remembering well how long it had taken for him to grow used to his undead state.

“Why should I know?” William snapped back, the elder ghoul being only slightly peevish after the close call that they had just skimmed out of.

“Aren't you supposed to be the expert?” Rayse's own temper flared to life and he pelted back as William with hostile sarcasm.

William grunted, waving a hand towards Rayse's gut. "You should probably deal with that."

Rayse followed his movements only to see that half of the birdman's piecemeal skull had dug into his side during his escape, including most of the creature's dagger-like beak. How he hadn't noticed it was beyond him, but he supposed that a dangerous enough situation could mask almost anything. A single tug was enough to tear the beak free, but just as he was about to toss the remains aside Rayse paused and looked at the beak. It was wickedly sharp, that much he could attest to, and he himself didn't have a weapon yet. Wielding the bisected skull of a fallen enemy was gruesome, but it wasn't the worst thing he had ever done. Shrugging, Rayse tucked the beak blade into his belt.

"Looks like there's a way out over here," William said, indicating a crack in the tunnel's wall where the grim red tinge of the outside light had managed to ooze through into the tunnel. "Give me a hand." The two ghouls silently went to work on the weakened area, each retreating into their personal thoughts as they hammered against the compacted stones. Slowly, the cracks widened into a hole that they worked on until they could each fit through.

“This is Three Mark’s territory,” William said, taking in his surroundings as they hoisted themselves out of the wreckage. “It's not far now,” he continued, dusting the rubble off of himself. "We shouldn't have anymore trouble from the locals from here. Especially since Deckard just lost his best tracker,” William finished with a sneer before leading Rayse off into the Warrens.

[Revenant]

“We’re here,” William grunted, eyeing Rayse as he waved to a pile of collapsed brick and crumbling masonry. The various other factions in the Warrens seemed to be keeping their heads down to avoid the Lower City creature rampaging around, as he had expected, and the two of them had finished their journey without further incident. Frankly William was glad, as dragging Rayse around behind him was becoming entirely too tiresome. There were at least half a dozen times now where the revenant wished he could have just left Rayse to his fate, but if the key Rayse held was truly his means for escape from this hellish otherworldy prison then he was willing to endure everything that Rayse dragged him through.

First though, he needed to find the portal that the key was linked to.

William watched his companion for any sign of protest but it appeared as if the younger ghoul was deeply lost in thought. Shrugging, he turned his attention back to the entrance of his hideout. While the entrance didn’t look any different from the hundreds of other crumbling areas of the Warrens, the illusion was most definitely by design. Unless you were coming at it from the right direction, the stooping entrance blended almost perfectly with the environment. Even then, the need to nearly crawl into the hole made it seem more like some desiccated creature’s bolt hole than a place where the feared Gor’Havah lived.

“Follow me,” William said, dropping almost onto his belly as he slithered into the hole with practiced ease. Once inside conditions were vastly improved, though William had never managed to rid his abode of the musty smell of wet plaster. It had taken him quite a while to find a stable enough portion of the Warrens to build his home in, and even longer to hollow his chosen spot out to form comfortable quarters while maintaining the location’s secret at the same time. He knew that there were more than a few factions in the Middle City who would pay handsomely for the location of his home and thus secrecy had been his upmost priority.

“So how do you plan on getting my memories back?” Rayse asked after worming his way into the hideout. William noted the way that Rayse looked around, taking in the details of his home like a true professional. He’d already come a long way from the vacant rotter that William had picked up hours ago and it was apparent that once he got his feet under him he would do well in the Middle City. That was assuming, of course, the ghoul learned to not be too trusting.

The back of Rayse’s skull made a wet crackling sound as William’s bony fist slammed into it, dropping the ghoul’s body in a limp heap at William’s feet. William nudged the corpse-form with a foot before moving over him, satisfied that Rayse would be incapacitated for a while. On a living being the wound would have been almost inevitably fatal but things worked differently in the Plane of Unlife. As he was a ghoul, Rayse’s body would heal the wound in time, but by then William’s secretive business would be finished.

William swept over Rayse’s prone form and into the darkness at the back of his abode. Setting aside his scythe he went quickly to work. His first act was to check the ornate onyx brazier which had been erected in one dust-choked corner. Though it was small, a faint glow of life still emanated from deep within the chalky coals within and William grinned. If there was still life in the brazier then it meant that his link to Vorlash hadn’t yet fully closed. Slowly, with a tenderness that was almost unheard of from him, William coaxed the spark back to life, grooming it as a gardener would his prized flowerbed. Then, once life had surged back into the coals within, William picked up a handful of glassy crystals from the bad just under the brazier and threw it onto the flames.

A thick cloud of smoke billowed almost instantly from the brazier, flowing unnaturally up the walls around it as if the tendrils were feeling the area around it. Seemingly satisfied, the sentient cloud pulled back in on itself and coalesced into a shadowy yet familiar shape.

“Why Gor’Havah, I hadn’t expected to see you again so soon,” Vorlash’s featureless face leered from the smoke, his voice no less pleasant across the intervening distance.

“And yet the gateway is still open?” William sneered, gesturing to the smoldering brazier.

“You didn’t expect me to just let you take your key and leave without saying goodbye now did you?” Vorlash’s raspy laugh rolled over William like desert sand. “You did get your key didn’t you? The delightful chaos you’ve caused down there would seem to indicate so.”

William plucked the bundle from one of the pouches on his belt and unwrapped it tenderly, careful to keep the vial from touching him. Seeing it caused Vorlash to start, but then a twisted smile cut across the Void Shaper’s face and a thin, raspy tongue curled out over his pearly teeth.

“Ah, I see,” Vorlash chuckled. “Then why have you not yet taken your prize and fled from our lovely home?”

William rebound the vial and put it back in its place. “Because I need another boon from you.”

A bored expression replaced the mirth on Vorlash’s face. “Oh Gor’Havah, and what would you trade for such a favor? You’ve already done the work that the Void Shapers and we have nothing further that we require.”

“Not true.” It was William’s turn to grin. “I can offer you my servitude.”

“You would make the bargain of flesh?” Vorlash pursed his lips in surprise.

“I would,” William nodded, his face deadly serious. “Three days is the standard bargain, is it not?”

“And yet should you gain what you seek then you would across the Planes and out of your bargain,” Vorlash noted, one hand forming from the smoke to wave at the vial in William’s belt.

“And yet should I fail then I’d be bound to your service forever,” William shrugged. “True it’s probably more of a gamble than your used to but think of the reward.”

“I think, Gor’Havah,” Vorlash hissed, his face once more contorting into an inhuman grin, “that you are too independent to be a good servant. Should we win our bargain we would wipe your mind of that troublesome personality. You would lose everything that you are forever.”

The pillar of smoke reached towards William, Vorlash’s face flowing until it was barely an inch from the ghoul’s. “We have an even gamble,” Vorlash whispered, the words snaking out to caress William. “Shall we make the bargain of flesh?”

William’s grin twisted into a thoughtful grimace. Vorlash’s deal was much more dangerous for him. Given enough time Rayse would regain his memories, assuming the ghoul survived, but there was no telling how long it would take the ghoul to remember the portal’s location and he had already burned his bridges in the Middle City to get this far.

“Deal,” he finally nodded.

Vorlash pulled back, the smoke of his face twisting in delight. “The bargain has been made,” he laughed, “you may ask your boon.”

William pointed across the dark room at Rayse’s prone form. “I want you to sift through his memories and give me the location of the portal that he knows.”

“No,” Vorlash hissed, clearly enjoying himself.

William nodded. He had suspected that the request was beyond Vorlash’s abilities but figured it was worth a shot. “Then restore his memories to him and be done with it.”

“No,” Vorlash giggled, a sound which slid up William’s spine like a jagged razor.

“You can’t do anything with his memories?” William snarled angrily. “Every ghoul that lives long enough gets their memories back. You can shape a ghoul’s flesh, and you can blank a mind like you wish to do to me. Surely you can do something to restore memories.”

“Oh yes,” Vorlash nodded, “I can do something to restore memories, but I cannot restore memories.”

Snarling, William picked up a wayward brick and hurled it at the smoky Void Shaper. Vorlash’s form parted easily around the brick, reforming just behind it. “What in all the hells that exist does that mean?” William roared.

“Caution, Go’Havah,” Vorlash formed an arm again to wave a finger at William, his tongue clicking a tsking sound. “To explain the difference to you would be considered a fulfillment of your boon.”

William’s eyes formed daggers at the Void Shaper but he visibly calmed. “Very well, for my boon I ask that you do what you can to restore his memories.”

“Gladly,” Vorlash’s grin split his head. The Void Shaper’s form wavered in the smoke as he pulled his concentration from the brazier for a time. “Ghouls can most easily get their memories back by finding the relics that they brought through with them, as was the case with you and your scythe,” Vorlash explained as his form solidified once more in the smoke. “By finding what was taken from him, this ghoul can most likely get his memory back.”

“Most likely?” William snarled.

“Of course, Gor’Havah,” Vorlash shrugged. “There is no certainty in such things. But the best way to assist your young ghoul to get his memories back would be to retrieve his possessions from the one who took them, Oslo the apostate. You can find him in the the Fortress of the Black-Bones.”

The words hit William like a hammer, much to Vorlash’s enjoyment. The Fortress of the Black-Bones was at the edge of the third city down in the Lower City itself and the Black-Bones weren't exactly the type that William usually consorted with. Getting Rayse’s possessions from either place was unlikely to be a pleasant experience, especially with the time constraints of the flesh bargain weighing upon him.

“I trust that we’re done here, Gor’Havah?” Vorlash asked, mockingly.

William waved him off, already lost in his own thoughts.

“Then I will see you in three days time,” Vorlash laughed, the smoke dissipating along with his form.

[Rayse Valentino]

He was walking along a path he couldn't see, the eternal darkness being kept away only barely by the flame glowing in the palm of his hand. He did not know his destination, but he knew it had to be a better place than here. There was a quiet desperation to his march, a loneliness that he kept inside so as not to panic. He felt like he had been here for hours, not making any progress and nothing to keep him company but the dimming flame.

Then, the flame was blown out by a strong gust, plummeting him into the black recesses of his mind. The silence of black did not last long, as the massive glowing crimson orbs appeared once more before him. The light shaved away his being, and he felt like his soul was separated from his body by the glare. He shielded his eyes, but nothing could stop the blinding light from burning his retinas. As he moved his hand away, he could see that the orbs were eyes inside of a massive skull. The skull had many individual strands of white hair hanging loosely from the scalp, and Rayse was paralyzed with fear. He thought this would be the end of him, that his journey had come to an end and he would be devoured. He imagined a never-ending torment that awaited him, and each second felt like hours. This nightmare was different from the one before. It was more pronounced, and the giant skull... talked.

"Tell me..." bellowed the skull. Its deep voice felt like jagged icicles in Rayse's ears.

Rayse meekly replied, "Tell you... what?"

"Tell me..." repeated the skull. "Name... True name..."

"True name? I- I don't know..."

A screech echoed in the air, causing Rayse to cover his ears in pain. As he did so, he looked down and saw that the black ground was starting to swallow him whole. He was already down to his knees. He tried to pull his legs out, but the effect was like quicksand, only hastening his descent. He continued to drop into the ground, unable to feel or see below the ripple, clawing at anything he could get a grip on, until his head was thrown under.

Rayse opened his eyes suddenly, finding himself lying on his side in Gor'Havah's hideout. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and wiped the drool off his mouth, feeling a distinct repeating thump in the back of his head. That fucker decked me! He immediately inspected his person, trying to see if anything was awry, but it didn't seem like Gor'Havah did anything to him. The elder ghoul was in sight, bending over to sort through a bin filled with various trinkets. The sight of his back was familiar, especially the patterns formed by the scars.

"Hey W-, er, Gor'Havah!" He stood up, pulling the birdman's beak from his belt and brandishing it like a knife. "I'm done playing your games. Why did you knock me out? How did you know the key was in my chest?"

Gor'Havah continued sifting through the trinkets, picking out a pair of goggles with red-tinted lenses and throwing them off to the side, "Void-Shaper told me."

"What?"

"They're the seers of this plane. Twist the nether into answers for your questions. I knocked you out because I had a meeting with an image of one and they don't like eavesdroppers."

"You goddess-damned..." Rayse started, but he couldn't feel the the dishonesty in Gor'Havah's voice. He had accepted more incredulous things than this. What's more, something about all this didn't add up. "So this Void-Shaper knew about the key? Then where's the door?"

Gor'Havah put away the bin and pulled up a large grinding stone, placing the blade of his scythe onto the stone, "He doesn't know. You can't twist the nether into keys and portals, so there's no telling where a door is until you actually find one."

"But he knew that a key was in my memories?"

Gor'Havah paused, now thinking that these weren't your average fresher questions, "...Yes."

"That doesn't sound very far from knowing what the key was and which portal it's connected to."

A memory started to surface in the back of Rayse's mind, reaching across his dormant memories pushing itself to the surface of his consciousness. The contractor grit his teeth and allowed the memory to overwhelm him.

--

"It could be anything. A knife, a candlestick, and not necessarily physical objects either. It could be a chant, a chant repeated three times, an emotion, a thought..."

--

Gor'Havah took the momentary lull in Rayse's rant to defend himself, "I asked where to find a key and he didn't know. Void-Shapers can't lie to people."

Pressing his free hand against his forehead, Rayse pushed back the sudden headache, "What if it can't be found? What if it could only be known?" A dreadful silence filled the small hideout. He put away the birdman's beak.

Gor'Havah broke the tension, "Look, we have the blasted key. And until you remember something worth giving a fuck about, you haven't earned the right to bitch." Rayse didn't respond, as he actually had very little idea about what he just said. "The best way to get your memories back is through your possessions. We're heading down to the Lower City, where the priest who dragged you into the Crematorium fled." Rayse couldn't disagree with this course of action, since he needed to ask the priest why he put the vial in his chest.

Rayse blinked, "Lower City? You mean the place with all the monsters? The fuck is he doing down there?"

"Don't know, don't care, but we need to get there soon because he's knee-deep in Black-Bone territory. To sum them up, they're crazy cannibalistic skeletons with a hate for all things fleshy."

"That's great. Got any more good news?"

"We're leaving. Take these." Gor'Havah threw the pair of goggles to Rayse, who caught it with confusion. "In the Lower City, the mist is so thick you won't see your hands in front of your face. These will let you see."

"I'm more concerned about the monsters."

"The Black-Bones are fairly close to the walls, we shouldn't run into any problems until then, hopefully."

"Hopefully?"

Gor'Havah ignored him and made his way to the exit. He only had three days to do this, and Rayse's words weighed heavily on his mind. He may be in Vorlash's trap, but he had no choice but to press on at this point. He hid his resentment and bitterness in the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand, as he had done since becoming the revenant.

[Rayse Valentino]

Before they left, Rayse tried to improve the absurd situation of his clothing or lack thereof. Gor'Havah had a few collected scraps of clothing, including various footwear he tried out, so Rayse found a pair of grey boots that fit him. His torn jeans were replaced with cloth trousers that had the color completely faded out of them. They were far too large for him, so he had to roll up the ends and tie wrap them up with torn scraps of cloth. There were no shirts that fit him, so the alternative was going without or wearing dirty old robes. Instead, he opted to rip up the robes and tie it to one of Gor'Havah's spare traveling bags, using the cloth as a shoulder strap. Before they left for good, Rayse had to ask if there were any smokes around, and unfortunately Gor'Havah replied in the negative.

After making sure no one would see him leave, Gor'Havah motioned for Rayse to crawl out, and they found the Warrens a much different place. The eerie quietness was replaced with distant yelling, shuffling of creatures underfoot, and the air was thick with the stale blood of the undead. Gor'Havah figured that the Servitors subdued the Lower City monster, and the news caused the Warrens to resume its bloodthirsty nature.

"After a Lower City monster attack, everyone is caught out of position," Gor'Havah explained. "The gangs will be vying for territory. The good news is that means Deckard has bigger problems than us, the bad news is we have bigger problems than Deckard."

Rayse feigned a look of understanding, but his true face held a blank expression. The experienced tone of Gor'Havah's words bothered him, how all this seemed so common to the demonic ghoul. When Gor'Havah started moving out of the area, Rayse took the journal out of his bag and began flipping through it to get to know who he was working with.



Why leave?

That was the question I used to ask myself. When I was flung into this plane, my demonic form became affixed to me as if it was who I was all along. My true nature was revealed, and with it came power and finally, the means with which to accomplish the goals I had before. Sure, there are friends and enemies alike who I would have liked to see defeated for the last time, but here true strength is respected. The way I wanted to act back home is not only the norm here, but encouraged. I can look beyond the disgusting way in which I must survive, the unpleasant odors and the ugly residents of the plane, if not for my lust of challenging myself. Even the fated foray into the Lower City with a few other ghouls that had most of us die to the beguiler, or whatever it was called, made me feel at the height of my awareness, forcing me to strive even harder for strength and survival.

The answer is simple: The nightmares. Each time I sleep I am reminded that I do not belong, that I am an unwelcome stranger to this land. I never thought a simple bad dream would get to me, but these go beyond your average nocturnal hallucinations. They feed on something within me, the bestial nature that I thought I discarded back home, and they get worse and worse. It's gotten to the point where I close my eyes for a few minutes and when I open them, I have gone through an entire cycle of torment. No matter how hard I suppress it, the fear strikes at my subconscious and assaults me during my waking hours. I have been forced to remove myself from the equation, to step outside my shell and assume a form of unfeeling monotony, or else risk slipping into insanity. Every now and then I lash out, but the control I felt when I first entered the plane has been sundered.

It's as if I'm still a slave to that damn rod. I can't live my life being controlled by others, so I have to leave by any means necessary. I don't even care about going home anymore, just anywhere but here.


The nightmares... Rayse could remember bits and pieces from the dreams he had so far, but he couldn't remember if they were as bad as Gor'Havah described. He felt like he was getting a better grasp of Gor'Havah through his writing, but only as a man who felt little and whose actions were purposeful. On one hand, it meant that the elder ghoul likely did what he said he would do, but it also made his intentions beyond the obvious completely unreadable. At least it allowed the contractor to take his words at face value.

They moved at a brisk pace through the dim alleyways and thin streets, scaring away various critters that always managed to jump into some crevice before Rayse could get a good look at them. Some of them appeared to be the size of his fist, others were much larger. He knocked over a large rock along his path once that revealed a Khuulite tentacle that slunk back into the shadows as soon as the light hit it. This place truly earned the reputation of being the graveyard of buildings, with many of the streets being formed merely because they were between junkyards of ruined houses stacked on top of each other. Some of the buildings at their sides had some rhyme and reason to them, as if they were meant to look like they were cobbled together from many designs. More than once Rayse's pace slowed when he looked up at the sky, that swirling mass of red and black. It occurred to him that it looked no different from when he emerged from The Sanitarium.

Rayse looked ahead and asked, "It's been getting dark for a while now, is it going to be night soon?"

With his back still turned to the younger ghoul, Gor'Havah replied, "It will never be night. We are in a state of neverfall, where night never falls and day never rises."

"Then how do you even tell what time it is?"

"There are observable cycles to the Red Maelstrom. That is how time is measured here. A full rotation of the swirling mass in the center takes around five days."

It wasn't long until the thugs of the Warrens started accosting them, using the temporary chaos to instigate terror and robbery. Gor'Havah mostly dispatched them with ease, and with his new weapon even Rayse helped fend them off. The problem was that it was hard to tell whether or not they were ghouls. For now, he figured they were not because they were weak, but that wasn't enough for him. How could he know before having to fight them? As they turned a corner, Gor'Havah stopped as he saw a man leaning against a pillar in the middle of the road. He wore a long coat with no shirt, and a pair of short swords hung at each side of his belt. His short hair ended in spikes on his grey head, and his eyes had black pupils with white rings around them. Unlike the other adversaries they encountered since leaving the hideout, this time there was reason for pause.

Rayse couldn't see why this was necessary, "Do you know him?"

"No," came a reply in a hushed tone.

"Uh, right," Rayse mumbled. He doesn't know him, but he's being cautious? Does he... does he know that it's a ghoul? But how?

The man looked at Gor'Havah with a cheerful grin, "Nice scythe. You must be Gor'Havah. And what's that behind you, a new ghoul?"

Rayse quickly added, "How did you--"

"It's written all over your face, fresher," the man interrupted. "Now, what would the high and mighty Gor'Havah want with you?"

"This is Vreela's old territory," said Gor'Havah, pulling out his scythe. "I take it you're a member of his gang."

"Former member, thanks to you," said the man. "Since The Ghoul Queen has decided to be the only ghoul organization in the Warrens, the rest of us have no choice but to join her or be independent. Me? I'd rather be on my own than another one of her lap dogs."

Rayse kept staring at him, trying to figure out how Gor'Havah knew he was a ghoul. Was there something about his appearance? It couldn't be, he didn't really look any different from the zombies they fought along the way. His skin looked hard and rotten like everyone else, so what was it? Maybe it wasn't how he looked. The man stopped leaning and took a few steady steps toward Gor'Havah, his fingers twitching with anticipation. Rayse watched every step, saw the look in his eyes, and remembered the look he received from the birdman. Unlike that time, he felt that there was something behind those eyes. The emptiness wasn't there. Also, the man's movement wasn't as rigid, his gait having a style of his own. It was then that Rayse realized the difference, it was memories. The corpse-born had no memories of their previous lives. Everything they learned was in the Nameless City. A person with memories had a familiarity in their eyes, where they scanned their minds for any evidence that they had seen something before. They walked with a style that implied a subconscious history of learning how to walk. They grew into that body. Every little action showed evidence, and it finally became apparent to Rayse.

"So is it vengeance you want?" Gor'Havah grunted. "I don't have time for this."

The man was surprised, "You don't? I thought you were here to finish the job." He cracked his neck, backing up into the pillar and leaning upon it once more. "Then leave me to my freedom."

"This is freedom?" Rayse wondered. It looked like a dump to him.

"Of course it is, compared to the chaos of the Lower City and the order of the Upper. Up there, you live a regimented life and never do anything that wasn't preordained. Not a lick of free will, despite the paradise everyone claims it to be. Here, I can do whatever I want. I have control. You know, I like you fresher. I'm Sa'eed, remember that and if you live long enough maybe I won't kill you on sight."

Rayse didn't appreciate the arrogance, but escape mattered more than him than the words of someone doomed to spend the rest of his life here.

[Revenant]

A cloud of moodiness hung over William’s head, shadowing his every movement with increasing darkness. His attitude had been steadily sinking since breaking contact with Vorlash, but it took meeting Sa’eed to properly put things into reference.

”Fools,” he mentally spat, taking some minor satisfaction in lashing out to send an errant brick skittering down the path in front of him. Now that the Lower City Beast had been captured, the squabbling hordes would descend on Vreela’s freshly opened territory like plague rats, working their way into through all of the vile, unseen cracks that the Warrens could hold. Sa’eed had done well to claim a chunk of his old boss’ territory for his own, but holding it would be an entirely different matter.

“Chain themselves and call it freedom,” he growled, his voice low and rumbling.

“Hmn?” Rayse asked, not catching William’s words.

“It’s this place,” William gestured, waving his arm at the grey dingy stone squatting around them like broken, withered monoliths. “It grabs you and pulls you under, like being stuck in a tar pit. You spend so much time fighting for scraps and clawing for the most meager survival that it becomes your world.”

William paused, slinking up against a building with a gesture for Rayse to do the same. They hunkered against the building, unbreathing, still, and silent. Ahead of them, only a dozen or so paces away, a pack of zombies spilled into the tunnel. The scabs were numerous, both better armed and armored than William and Rayse, and they moved on careful alert. Cold, unfeeling eyes scanned everything in the tunnel with a critical gaze, searching for any sign of hostility or resistance. Seeing none, the moved swiftly on their way.

“See the scabs I can understand,” William spoke up after the last zombie had moved out of sight, continuing as if nothing had happened in the interim. “They’re dead where they came from and got nothing left for them but this hellhole.”

“Who were those guys?” Rayse interrupted, nodding at the path the zombies had taken when he and William passed it by.

“Huh? Who?” William looked back, blinking in confusion. “Oh,” he caught Rayse’s meaning. “That was one of Deckard’s heavier war parties. Out on the prowl in the Beast’s aftermath, I’d wager.”

“Are we in danger?” Rayse asked, looking a little more concerned.

“In the Warrens? Always. From them? Hell yes.” William shrugged as if it were no big deal. “But it looks to me like they’re heading out to claim a bit of open territory rather than searching for us. We should be safe enough as long as they don’t loop back and we keep moving our cold asses forward.”

“I thought ghouls were stronger than zombies, even in numbers,” Rayse said. “We’ve taken out plenty of them already since leaving your place.”

“You’re right as a general rule,” William stopped and turned to face Rayse to add weight to his words. “But think of that thing that we saw earlier, and now think of people like you and me who live in worlds where those things are plentiful.”

Rayse’s eyes lit up.

“There’s always someone bigger and badder than you down here,” William finished, then started walking again. Silence once more reigned between the two ghouls as they dutifully marched through the moldering streets. The rustling sound of flipping paper reached William as Rayse turned his attentions once more to the journal that William had given him. It brought a grim levity to William’s cold, unfeeling heart to hear the sound, since the journal itself was useless unless the rotter could somehow read Althanian common. Still, the man’s questioning nature and unwillingness to leave any stone unturned reminded William of his own actions upon waking in the Dead Piles. Despite himself, the revenant found that he was becoming a bit fond of the man who called himself Vincent.

[Revenant]

“So this fortress is in the Lower City, right?” Rayse asked after enough time had passed in contemplative silence. William grunted an affirmative, his eyes never ceasing their loping scan of the surrounding ruins. Rayse too was observant, keeping a close watch on the side corridors and broken edges that the duo passed for signs of trouble. Unsure of exactly what to be threatened by in this foreign place, he just assumed it was safer to keep a watch out for everything so as not to be caught unaware.

“So tell me about this Lower City place,” Rayse continued, figuring correctly that William would be somewhat unforward with his information. “The Warrens here is in pretty close competition to be the worst place I've ever been stuck in but I’m guessing that the Lower City and its giant blade slugs make this seem almost cozy in comparison.”

That brought a chuckle to the stoic ghoul’s sour visage. “More than you know,” he began. “I suppose it’s not too much worse than the Warrens if you stay in the inner ring. I’ve only been down there a handful of times myself, mostly heading down when I was on better terms with Meredith. But the further you go from the tower the worse it gets.”

William paused his roving to look back at Rayse to add weight to his words. “Exponentially worse, rotter. From what I’ve heard the mist gets so thick at the border to the second ring that even those goggles are useless. And I ain’t never even heard a braggart claim to have seen the third ring.”

“So what are these rings?” Rayse asked. “Territory markings or something?”

“Something like that, I suppose,” William shrugged. “Long, long time before I got here there were four cities, and even longer before that there were five. Perhaps there were six even before that, or seven. Who knows? Point is, you've see what the Warrens here is like. It’s not just the border between the Lower and Middle Cities physically, it’s also the metaphorical border or some nonsense bullshit. Enough time goes by, enough expansion by this chaos, and the Lower City expands, swallowing whatever’s above it.”

“Like a slow feeding snake,” Rayse said and William nodded. “So no one has ever been to the third ring then?” William nodded again.

“Interesting,” Rayse murmured to himself, his thoughts turning to prison walls.

“Anyways,” William said, gesturing for Rayse to direct his attention forward, “We’re almost to the tunnel that’ll take us to the Lower City. Keep your mouth shut, your eyes open, and be ready to follow my lead. Got it?” Rather than respond, Rayse nodded to signal his understanding, his hand already on the makeshift beak weapon tucked into his belt.

Creeping up slowly upon the tunnel entrance, William peered sideways from a pile of broken rubble, his eyes searching less for what waited to guard the entrance to the tunnel and more for what lurked in the shadows, just out of plain sight. As with every tunnel leading to the Lower City, a quartet of Servitors stood rigid guard around the entrance. As imposing as the massive figures were, they held little concern for William unless he had somehow managed to acquire the stigma of Lower City creature since his last run-in with them. An army of ghouls and zombies could slaughter each other in front of the Servitors and you wouldn't see the slightest movement from the guardians. But even bring the tiniest, most harmless creature up from below and you’d be a Lost One before you could register what was happening.

Not surprisingly, the Servitors weren't the creatures guarding this particular tunnel. Owning control of a tunnel from the Warrens was a pretty big mark of distinction since they were so few and far between and this was one of the few that William knew of that belonged to the lovely Ghoul Queen. Meredith, he reminded himself, wasn't exactly on the friendliest terms with him anymore, but as far as he knew she hadn't sworn to his death as Deckard had. He expected trouble from the four ghoul guards who were lounging surprisingly lazily around the tunnel since it wouldn't be any fun to allow Rayse and him to pass through unmolested after all. William scanned the dim rubble a second time but couldn't see if there were any others lurking around.

“Looks like a trap,” Rayse murmured after taking a scan of the surroundings on him own. William grunted an affirmation and the two looked at each other for a second before William shrugged slightly and stepped out into the open.

“Look alive boys, we got us some fresh meat,” the lead ghoul called as soon as William and Rayse made their appearance. A trio of whistling catcalls answered in reply as the ghouls languidly made their way to their feet. The entire scene struck William as oddly lenient, and the Revenant expected to feel the sharp bite of a blade in his back at any moment.

“We’re not looking for any trouble,” William called out, stopping a respectful distance away. The air before him whistled as he brought his scythe up and slapped it to rest on his shoulder. Though he felt as nervous as a youth on his first hunt he braced himself rigidly, showing nothing to the ghouls but the very paradigm of self-confident composure. A quick glance from the corner of his eye told him that Rayse had done the exact same thing.

And another mark for the quick learner, William mentally nodded his approval.

“Shame you ain’t looking for trouble,” the head ghoul chuckled his reply. “We could use some excitement out here. None of the ruckus that’s been going around made it out our way and we've been lonesome since the rest of our boys scurried off to stake a claim for the mistress.”

“Rest of your group?” William cocked a disbelieving eyebrow that the ghoul would so freely give up the information that there were no reinforcements. Either he was being played hard by these tunnel wardens or these four had something up their sleeves.

Noting the look, the head ghoul chuckled again and pulled a fleshy pouch from his a strap on his belt. “Please keep thinkin’ what you be thinkin’ over there; that you two’s trouble four us four poor little ghouls. As I said, we could use the excitement. Wouldn't be every day that I’d get to put an end to the great Gor’Havah, now would it? Mistress might even take me off this shit hole assignment.” William eyed the pouch in the ghoul’s hand with alternating interest and unease. It was a soft, bulbous thing that appeared to shift and writhe beneath the ghoul’s fingers. A quick scan showed him at least two others like that in possession of the other wardens, which could very much mean trouble.

“Bile pouch?” he asked as nonchalantly as he could master. The lead ghoul nodded with a stupid, vicious grin. “Well then,” William shrugged, never taking his eyes from the pulsing object. “It appears that you've got the upper hand here. What’s Meredith’s toll for using this tunnel?”

If the bile pouch had made him wary of the situation, the answer made him downright skittish.

“No trouble then,” the ghoul sighed, tucking the pouch back into his belt. “Oh well, I suppose there goes our last chance for fun. Ain't no toll for you today Gor'Havah. The Mistress had a feeling you’d be coming and told us that she’s awaiting you and your guest with open arms.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” William said, his composure breaking as he sought once again to search for any sign of others around them.

“On me honor,” the lead ghoul tittered, answered by a backup chorus from the others as they all resumed their positions. Seeing that Rayse and William weren't moving the ghouls burst out laughing. “Off with you then,” the lead ghoul gestured grandly towards the tunnel.

Unsure if he and Rayse were about to be assassinated, but knowing that they had little in the way of other options, William motioned for Rayse to follow and made his way towards the tunnel. Three feet from the entrance, much too far in to have any chance of retreat, one of the wardens leapt suddenly from his lounging position and landed next to the pair with a shriek. Rayse and William both jumped at the movement, wheeling and bringing their weapons up only to be greeted by laughter and a placating gesture from the offending ghoul.

“Just kidding,” the rotter laughed, waving them off. “Sorry, honestly I am. Cross my heart and hope to be lost.”

“Seems we got at least a little fun,” the lead ghoul called out in reply eliciting another chorus of mocking laughter which followed William and Rayse as they scurried into the tunnel at top speed.

“What the fuck was that thing and why did you go all stiff when you saw it?” Rayse asked after the last of the mocking laughter had faded from earshot. “Well, stiffer than normal.”

William ignored the joke, keeping his attention focused on the dull red slope fading into the mist beneath them. “Bile pouch. Some sort of slime and maggots excreted by a Lower City beast that someone has chained up somewhere. Not sure what the pouches themselves are made of, but they hide the Lower City presence from the Sentinels as long as they’re bound up tight. Toss one onto someone with enough force to pop it though, and the Sentinels go all berserk trying to destroy the Lower City taint on you. They’re not usually very discriminating about it either.”

“So it’s a good thing that the one on that asshole ghoul’s belt somehow managed to find its way into my hand then?” Rayse asked with mock innocence, holding up the bile pouch which he had lifted off their tormentor.

William paused, literally brought up short by the sight of the pouch. A genuine smile stole across his face for the first time since the two had met and he gave a single barking laugh.

“If we weren't getting out of this hellhole I’d say you have a bright future here rotter.”

[Rayse Valentino]

Gor'Havah was right.

The first thing that Rayse saw in the light was nothing. An opaque redness that made him experience for the first time what it was like to be blind. He knew his vision was getting worse as he was going down the tunnel, but he never expected this. Bringing his bag around, he felt around for the goggles within and pulled them out, placing them over his eyes delicately. The effect was instantaneous; the mist was completely gone, replaced by an environment devoid of all color. The contrast between his new location and the Warrens was staggering. No longer was he surrounded by mountains of rubble, giant buildings stitched together by the crushing force of the nether. Instead, he felt like he was in the town center of a mountain village, with stone houses gathered around the main street protruding from the tunnel. None of the houses were larger than a single story, but often they were mere frameworks of buildings; stone shells of what used to be homes. The tops of these buildings were completely missing, likely torn off by Lower City beasts in pursuit of prey. While the Warrens were full of unlife, with critters and zombies never letting the dust fully settle, this town looked like it had been abandoned a long time ago. The ground below was cracked beyond repair, its consistency no longer solid but sandy. He felt like he was standing on one of the salt flats of Northern Salvar.

In front of him, he saw Gor'Havah's standing at the ready, the elder ghoul's muscles tensed for some unseen threat that Rayse had not noticed yet. Gor'Havah was gray as well, a sight that made Rayse guess at the properties of the goggles. They remove the entire spectrum of red from my vision... He looked up and his theory seemed to hold strong, as the Red Maelstrom was now the Gray Maelstrom. A loud thumping sound brought his vision back down, with Gor'Havah assuming a fighting stance with his scythe drawn. Rayse scrambled to get his beak-dagger out, although he doubted he would be much help if whatever this was got Gor'Havah this antsy. From behind one of the stone houses, two large arms came crashing down onto the ground, the fists leaving imprints. For a moment, Rayse thought he was encountering a snow gorilla from Salvar, until the rest of the creature appeared in his view. It was much larger than any gorilla Rayse had ever heard of, but its face was distinctly human-like. It looked like a male, wearing a huge pair of pants and a shirt that looked like two large pieces of cloth stitched together at the center. The contractor remembered that he was now in the Lower City, the place that none of the creatures in the Warrens would ever fight over, and he was tempted to go back into the tunnel, but the thought perished when he saw Gor'Havah lower his scythe.

"Stomphowler," he said to Rayse. "One of Meredith's."

"So, not a monster?" asked Rayse.

"No."

"Didn't expect you to come back down here, Gor'Havah," the stomphowler said in a voice so eloquent and classy that Rayse thought the goggles were distorting his vision. "Are you bringing this new one to mother?"

"Didn't expect you to be alive, Zid'artha," Gor'Havah replied. "Would of thought you'd get yourself eaten by now."

"No such luck, I'm afraid," Zid sniffed. "We've heard of your actions up above. I'm afraid you're no longer a member in mother's court. You are still free to seek an audience, but if you go back up to the Middle City she offers you no protection from scabs and ghouls alike."

"That's fine. I'm not heading there. Let's go." He motioned to Rayse, and then began walking away from the stomphowler.

Rayse was still a bit taken back, but managed to move one foot in front of the other to follow the elder ghoul. It didn't take long to reach the edge of the ruined town, and beyond its structures Rayse learned what it meant to be in the Lower City. Rolling dunes of gray, the ground below giving way completely to sand, and deafening silence. He was in a desert. The massive wall was to his right, its height incalculable.

Gor'Havah looked back and saw that Rayse was still on edge, so he assured him, "Contrary to popular belief, there aren't a whole lot of Lower City beasts down here, and doubly so if ghouls like Zid'artha are lingering about."

"Why aren't there more people here, then?"

"It's a long story, but the short version is that it's still more dangerous than the Warrens. You might get a Lower City beast once every few cycles up there, but down here you see them more frequently. There's also nowhere to hide from them, as you can see."

Rayse scratched his head, putting the beak-dagger away and following him out of town.

[Rayse Valentino]

Rayse took a deep breath, once again wishing he had a smoke. He kicked up sand as he walked, seeing no end to the invisible path that they took toward the Black-Bones. Nothing could be seen in three directions except for more of the desert-like climate, with the last direction leading up to the massive wall of the Middle City that could be seen no matter how far away they were from it. Despite the low possibility of being jumped by a Lower City monster, for the first time Rayse felt as though he had some time to think. His life had taken a lot of twists and turns, especially today, but was it really the most dangerous thing he had done? He had to address the elephant in the room, namely the fact that he came here intentionally. If the Void-Shaper was right about him knowing the way out, then no doubt he came here with a plan.

Why? What could possibly be worth being nearly incinerated, frozen to death, and then attacked by the kinds of things he saw today? Magical artifacts? No way, even he wasn't that insane. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Being all philosophical about it wasn't going to get him out of here any faster either. Since he had this moment of relative peace, he had to get something off his chest before they found Oslo, but in a way that didn't arouse suspicion.

"How long do you think I was a sleeper for?"

"Not long," Gor'Havah replied. "Void-Shaper told me you were fresh."

"Do they usually find Lost Ones in the Dead Piles?"

"There aren't any. Only sleepers there. I didn't expect any Order members to comb through your belongings though, that's against their religion."

"Yeah, that and bringing me to the Crematorium."

Gor'Havah stopped in his tracks, turning around to face Rayse, "What?"

"Void-Shaper didn't tell you?"

"No."

"That's where I woke up, near that big fire pit. I wandered around, they kicked me out, and Deckard found me." Gor'Havah was silent. He didn't expect Oslo to be this much of a traitor. While the thought disturbed him, Rayse asked, "So how long were you a sleeper?"

"...Don't know."

"And, uh, how long have you been hanging around for?"

"It's hard to tell time around here, but at least a couple of years."

Years?! Rayse put his hand up to his mouth in thought. He couldn't believe it, was he wrong about Gor'Havah? It if was anyone else right now, he would be convinced that this was a lie. Two years of searching for a way out of here... it felt unreal. Until now, the gravity of his situation never occurred to him. Where the hell was he?

"Let's go," said Gor'Havah. "The last thing I want is to be eaten because we got a bit chatty."

[Rayse Valentino]

It didn't take long before the scenery of the gray desert was replaced with jagged structures sticking out of the ground. They found themselves in a forgotten city, buried by the sands of time with only the upper spires visible above ground. The ground was harder now, the dust a mere sheath for the buildings that sought to escape their fate. With a quick glance, Rayse noticed that he couldn't see the end of the ruins, and that they were going deeper into them.

"The Black-Bones," Gor'Havah started. "Live at the center of all this, the tallest point of the forgotten city. We'll have to be more alert from this point on."

The similarities to The Warrens were growing as they traversed through the ruins. Maybe this was The Warrens of the Third City, the locus point for buildings that found themselves in this plane. There was no wind, no animals, just an unnerving quietness to accompany them. Rayse wondered how Gor'Havah planned to sneak into this fortress, but there was no reason to doubt the elder ghoul now.

It was when Gor'Havah suddenly stopped and looked at the sky did Rayse wish they had the stillness back. The contractor followed the elder ghoul's gaze and saw something floating very far away. It looked tiny from his perspective, and he had to squint to make sense of it. The most he could tell was that its shape was spherical, and that its front was merely... a face. Was it a floating head? Rayse almost didn't take it seriously until he walked up to Gor'Havah and saw his expression.

Gor'Havah kicked the ground and nearly flew into one of the spires, using it as cover. "Damn it, just our luck to run into a beholder. We need to hide, now!" Rayse followed suit, about to take out his beak dagger when he noticed that the elder ghoul was not even attempting to wield his scythe. It seems fighting it was futile even for him. The contractor looked around for something to hide under, after all the thing had not spotted them yet. It'll go away if they remain unseen, right? Gor'Havah moved into action, motioning for Rayse to follow him as he headed toward what looked like a stone plateau that stuck out of the ground a few feet. He knelt down and started digging until the ground gave way in front of him, flowing into what looked like a window. He slid into the hole without hesitation, and Rayse followed right after.

It was pitch black in there, with the exception of the small ray of light coming from the hole. As Rayse looked back, he saw Gor'Havah finally wield his scythe, and a shocked expression filled the contractor's face, because he knew what the elder ghoul was about to do. Before he could do anything to stop him, Gor'Havah caused the ceiling to cave in and close up their entrance, submersing them in darkness. Even after burying them alive, Rayse still felt apprehensive, as if talking could still incite the monster. Their vision was restored after a few moments as Gor'Havah produced a small stick and cracked it in two, causing it to grow a light along the length of the halves. He gave one of the pieces to Rayse. After calming down a bit, the younger ghoul figured that the elder one wasn't suicidal, and that there was another way out.

"All these buildings are connected," he said, putting his scythe away. "We'll go in from below."

Rayse nodded. So this was your plan the whole time?

The elder ghoul lead the way, heading down a spiral staircase in the corner of the room that lead to the catacombs below. The ordeal made Rayse realize that the Black-Bones lived above ground, in plain sight to monsters like the one they escaped from. If they got discovered, it would mean the end of them.

[Rayse Valentino]

Even with the glowing sticks, it was hard to make out anything than the cracked ground they walked on. Even with the calming fumes of phosphorous coming from their light sources, a pervading sense of claustrophobia grew in Rayse's heart. He woke up in a tomb, and this could be his next one. Gor'Havah was not as nervous as he navigated these tunnels as if they were tattooed on his arms. Maybe he was here once before, or maybe some event in his stay here necessitated learning how to get in here. Rayse could do nothing but trust him, at this point he wasn't even questioning his methods anymore.

Gor'Havah put a hand out in front of him, stopping the trailing contractor. He heard something long before Rayse did, but soon the growing sound of hissing and clacking caught up to them. At the edge of the light, several dark spikes shot out from the darkness. Behind them was a thin figure, its head swaying back and forth and yellow-red dots shined from its eye sockets. It continued to walk towards them without a care, the rest of its skeletal form revealed. Covered in spikes like a hedgehog that extended nearly a foot from its body, the skeleton was entirely black, with chains of teeth and small bones wrapped around its body. At its side was a scimitar, but instead of a handle it had a small skull that looked like it was from an animal Rayse had never seen before.

The elder ghoul sprung into action, grabbing hold of his scythe with both hands and holding it in front of him menacingly. Despite the skeleton's lanky appearance and calm demeanor, Gor'Havah was not taking any chances. Its jaw was hanging open and a low whistle escaped it, following by a deep exhale. Air was just passing through, it didn't appear as though the skeleton could talk. Gor'Havah charged it, swinging his scythe in a wide arc, but the Black-Bone finally reacted, bending its body back so far that its head was touching the ground, and reaching for the scimitar. The elder ghoul retracted his blade and swung downwards, but the Black-Bone had collapsed its body, then somehow reshuffled its bones to propel itself forward, a rapidly-reforming skeleton with a blade aimed at Gor'Havah's head.

Rayse could only watch while shaking the beak dagger in front of him, unable to comprehend this otherworldly battle. As soon as he was thinking of maybe helping however, the battle was over. Gor'Havah had evaded the blade and then spun around to cut the skeleton in two with his scythe. In a normal battle, that would be the end of it, but Gor'Havah made sure to slam his scythe down on the bones a dozen times until they were completely crushed, especially the head.

"Thorough, aren't you?" Rayse cracked.

Gor'Havah put away his scythe, "Leave its head, and it'll bite you to death. Leave an arm and get strangled. The problem isn't one or two of them, it's when there's an entire swarm."

After a few more twists and turns, they finally arrived at another spiral staircase leading up to the surface. Gor'Havah didn't need to tell Rayse to be quiet from this point on, and he had a suspicion that Oslo was being held near the blood pools. As they ascended the staircase, they found themselves in a large room with tall openings along the walls. It reminded Rayse of a church. Walking carefully, they snuck from building to building, noticing that this area was devoid of any Black-Bones.

I thought this place was supposed to be infested with them...

They soon arrived at a building near the blood pools, which Rayse could somewhat see out one of the windows. It was a large, fountain and it was filled with a black fluid. More interestingly, there was something bulbous and covered in fur chained to it, and he could see it slowly moving. Every time it did, it squirted out more of the dark water into the fountain. He almost fell behind when he noticed Gor'Havah standing in front of a stone wall with markings on it similar to the ones Rayse saw in the Crematorium. Gor'Havah put his hand on the wall and willed it to open, revealing a dark, small room with a robed zombie in the corner. Gor'Havah motioned for Rayse to come in, and then the wall closed in behind him, giving them light only from their glowing sticks. The zombie was shuddering and completely covered in what Rayse assumed was the liquid he saw earlier. He was wearing the same robes he saw from the Order, but obviously they weren't white anymore. The room smelled faintly of flesh, but more importantly the stench that Oslo gave off was intoxicating. Rayse nearly gagged and held his nose, staying as far away as he could.

Gor'Havah took out his scythe and pointed it at the zombie, whispering, "Get up."

The zombie stayed in his fetal position, muttering, "nononono."

"I'm not a rotting Black-Bone, so stand up already."

The zombie realized that the voice he head was real, and he lifted his head to see the two, "Ghouls? Then... then... The Ghoul Queen has come to save me?!"

"Keep it down!" said Gor'Havah. "They don't know we're here. And no, we're not here to save you, you just happen to have something that belongs to us."

"W-What?" Oslo stood up, the black water dripping from his face. Rayse couldn't tell much about his appearance due to the black covering him like a coat of slime, but he looked bald with blue eyes and no nose. "Something that belongs to you? I-I d, don't know what you're talking about..." That's when he noticed Rayse. "You!"

"I said can it!" Gor'Havah hit Oslo in the head with the back of his scythe. "Return his belongings to him."

"Quite a negotiator, aren't you?" said Rayse, raising a brow. "You'd think saving his life would be enough of an incentive."

"I don't trust these priests," Gor'Havah snapped. "They're almost as conniving as the Void-Shapers."

"Not me!" Oslo protested. He tried wiping the black liquid from his person, but it was futile. It was sticking to his flesh, making him look as though it belonged to him all along. "I'm different. I'm the one that resisted them, the one who helped The Ghoul Queen!"

"I don't care what you did, just return what you took and we'll be on our way."

"Wait," said Rayse. "I want to know why he did what he did. Maybe he knows about the vial. The key."

Oslo perked up. "Vial? Key? Y-you have it with you? Then maybe all is not lost after all!" Rayse tapped his foot impatiently. "Oh, yes, well, a long time ago I was quite the devout follower. I truly believe in our teachings, even now, that this is our last life and our souls return to The Writing God. We were doing holy work, but, there was a rumor I heard- that- that living ghouls were being thrown into the Pit as punishment from the Liches up above."

"Liches?"

"Ah, yes, they're- liches are sort of the administrators of this world."

"Get to the point," snapped Gor'Havah.

"Sorry, sorry. Anyway, one day I snuck into the Crematorium and I saw this awful practice happening for myself. Watching a ghoul scream in agony before the fires washed over the body, it was quite the sacrilege, and yet I saw the higher apostles doing the deed. I still think we're doing the right thing, but we were being used as tools by the liches. I couldn't sit back and do nothing. As if hearing my prayers, The Ghoul Queen provided me with a solution, and that was the vial. I don't know how she got it, but the plan was simple- I was to bring in a 'Lost One' and put the vial into its chest. The body was supposed to be thrown in, and the vial would squelch the flames of the Pit."

"You were going to burn me alive?" Rayse asked.

"It w, was a necessary sacrifice to end the blasphemous ritual. Honestly, I didn't believe that something so small could put out the flames, but it was all I could do. I never expected you to wake up and actually leave the Crematorium... as a traitor, I tried to flee back down to The Ghoul Queen but I was captured by the Black-Bones on my way there."

"Oh well," Rayse sighed.

"You're not mad?" Oslo asked.

"I've seen a lot of shit today, I don't have the time to be angry at something I'd expect back at home. Give me back my things and we'll call it even."

"I'm... sorry." Oslo looked down. "Most of your belongings were handed off to the ghouls. She has them." Gor'Havah punched the wall. "B-but I did manage to get something! I wanted to remember your sacrifice, so I kept this..." He reached into his robes and pulled out Rayse's necklace and the pendant attached to it. Surprisingly, it was completely devoid of any foul liquid. "The rest of it is likely at The City of Ghouls." Oslo dropped the necklace into Rayse's hands, who stared at it quietly.

"Great," said Gor'Havah disappointingly. "It's time to go. Come on, Vincent." The elder ghoul willed the door open again and motioned for Rayse to follow.

"Wait!" pleaded Oslo. "What about me?"

"Who said anything about you?"

Oslo's mouth hung agape, "Y-you're leaving me here?! B, but they'll... you know what they'll do to me, don't you? They'll chew off everything that isn't a bone, gnawing and crunching for days until I'm nothing but a skeleton like them! You know why they don't talk? Skeletons are perfectly capable of nether-supported speech, these ones have just gone insane!"

"Not my problem," said Gor'Havah. "Your stench will attract every single Black-Bone in the Lower City."

Rayse understood the elder ghoul's point of view. Putting aside the revelation that skeletons can still smell, Oslo would just slow them down. He looked at the necklace, almost forgetting it still existed. For so long, he safeguarded it as the only real possession he truly had. The priest made sure it wasn't tainted by the dark blood.

"Let's take him with us," Rayse suggested. "He could be lying about what he told us. Plus, he hasn't said anything about the key."

"That's because he doesn't know it's a key," Gor'Havah shot back. "Which gives me even more reason to kill him." The three stood there, a bitter glare between the two ghouls. "Damn it, we don't have time for this." He looked at the apostate. "If you don't keep up, you're lost."

Rayse nodded and began to follow Gor'Havah back the way they came.

"You think that beguiler is gone by now?" Rayse asked.

Gor'Havah looked back, confused, "What did you just say?" Before Rayse could answer, they noticed several shadows just beyond the doorway. Gor'Havah looked toward another exit, but saw more Black-Bones inching closer. There was only one exit now, out into the courtyard with the blood pool.

[Rayse Valentino]

"Move!" Gor'Havah barked, charging into the corridor they had entered from, his scythe held threateningly before him to try and ward off the Black-Bones.
But if the ebony creatures felt any fear, they didn't show it. Two darted forward at the trio as they made to exit the room, and Gor'Havah deftly took their heads off with one swing. The creatures pulled themselves back together and stayed in ranks with the rest, hounding the group as they tried to find a way past them.

But it was hopeless. The Black-Bones were too many. The ghoul stopped in his tracks, backing up as more of the creatures made themselves known down the passages and corridors. There was only one path free of the things. The one leading out to the Blood Pools.

Cursing to himself, the elder ghoul waved Rayse and Oslo back, keeping his muscle-bound frame between them and the nearest skeletons edging in on them. He knew he was a fool for allowing the priest to come with them but it was too late to worry over it now. He lashed out with his scythe one more time, smashing one of the closest Black-Bones square in the face, pulverizing its skull before he turned on his heel and sprinted after the other two undead, going the only way they could. He knew they were being herded like cattle, but they were sorely lacking in options.

They emerged in the open square, other buildings ringing the open space around the blood soaked edifice at the center. Rayse had his beak-dagger in one fist, but even he knew it would do little good against the Black-Bones spilling out of the other entrances to surround them, like a pack of feral beasts. They made no sounds other than the rattling of the tooth-and-bone-strewn chains wrapping their limbs. Oslo, still dripping foul, oily fluids, emerged behind him and opened his mouth to shout something.

But whatever it was, he never had the chance to say it.

As Gor'Havah skidded to halt at the doorway, he barely had a chance to register the towering monstrosity that slid from the shadows and lunged at the zombie priest. There was a flash of movement followed by a meaty crunch, and Oslo sailed through the air in a crumpled heap. The zombie landed in the blood pool with the sound of a brick landing in porridge, sending out a spray of inky drops to patter down on the worn stones of the courtyard. There was a moment of stunned silence from the two ghouls as the grisly rain fell.

Then the shrieking started.

It lasted only a few harrowing moments, but in a handful of seconds the screaming zombie dissolved into the thick gore in the fountain. There was nothing left. Not even a scrap of robe floating on the surface of the blood. Even Gor'Havah paused at that, blinking slowly. But the huge black shape turned to him, and instantly had all of his attention. The ghoul stepped softly, despite his size, keeping his scythe in front of him at the ready. He stopped next to Rayse as they both stared at what was obviously the Black-Bone leader.

It easily cleared nine feet, its skeletal frame swollen to grotesque proportions and armored in spikes like daggers. Every bone bore at least one of the hideous weapons, even rising from its leering skull like a crown of thorns. The Black-Bone Servitor put down one heavy foot toward the pair of ghouls, sending faint tremors through the courtyard, hissing malevolently through razor-keen fangs. Its eyes shone like balefire as it glared sheer bloody-minded hatred at them.

"Don't try to run, don't move from this spot. There's only one way they're letting us walk away from this," Gor'Havah said quietly to Rayse, who was unable to tear his gaze away from the goliath before him. But the elder ghoul didn't see the same gut-wrenching fear he knew Rayse must feel, that he felt himself; he nodded in respect, almost imperceptibly.

Gor'Havah turned and pointed at the Servitor, his face set with something like grim resignation.

"You," he called out, his gravelly voice ringing out over the courtyard. "Fight me."

"What?" Rayse blurted out. "Are you crazy? Look at that damn thing!" he snapped.

"Shut up."

Swinging his scythe in a few arcs to loosen up his shoulders, he prepared for what was inevitably going to be an unpleasant experience. But all he had to do was remember the deal with the Void-Shapers, and he knew he didn't have a choice. He couldn't afford to fuck this up.

"The only thing they respect," he growled, looking over the assembled skeletal horde, "is strength. We want to walk away from here, we don't have a choice. Understand?" He turned back to the Servitor, the giant cocking its head as it regarded the puny creature before it. "Fight me," he shouted again, "if you think you can beat me!"

The Servitor opened its black jaws wide in a silent roar at the insult. Rayse bumped into Gor'Havah as he walked closer to the bone-golem, muttering under his breath so only the other ghoul could hear. "Don't make me step in for you."

Gor'Havah almost allowed himself a smile.

"If I win, you let us walk away from here," he said, turning back to the Black-Bone crowd again before adding as an afterthought, "alive!"

The leader hunched over more, and Gor'Havah knew if the thing could drool, it would be doing so right now. But it bobbed its head to show it understood, before raising a finger like an ebony claw to the blood pools where Oslo had less than a few minutes ago melted.

Its meaning was clear; if Gor'Havah lost, he and the other ghoul would join the addled priest in his fate.

Setting his jaw, he nodded slowly. Then without warning, leapt to the attack.

The Servitor readied itself, bringing down its long arm upon Gor'Havah's form. The elder ghoul narrowly avoided the attack, letting the gigantic fist slam into the cold stone, kicking up a torrent of dust. Gor'Havah maneuvered around to the back of the Servitor and jammed the blade of his scythe into one of the bones in the back of the knee. Using the scythe as a lever, he twisted the base and tried to pry off one of the bones, managing to loosen one of the joints and causing the skeleton to drop down onto one knee. Pulling the scythe out, he jumped back just in time to avoid the sweeping fist that threatened to disembowel him.

Unfortunately, Servitors were not so easily bested. The bone was only one of many, bolted together from many powerful beasts that fall into the plane. The Servitor merely stood back up, the bones in its leg readjusting to make up for the loose joint. It charged at Gor'Havah this time, its arms now moving much faster than before, and the ghoul barely avoided the brunt of the flying fists, one of them grazing his shoulder right before he went into a roll. Even with such light contact, it was enough to crack the bones in his right arm and rip the muscles in his shoulder. He could still hold the scythe, but the pain was excruciating.

Gor'Havah was now on the defensive, unable to find an opening throughout the Servitor's endless onslaught. Each time he took a hit, his eyes nearly rolled back into his head and his stomach threatened to come out of his mouth. The Servitor was just toying with him, tenderizing the ghoul's flesh before the big feast. Gor'Havah had only one avenue of attack left, but the risk was great. He put all his strength into stepping into the Servitor's attack, managing to sneak inside its swinging range, and jumped up to its head, shoving the blade of the scythe through its eye sockets. He twisted the scythe and kicked off the plates in the skeleton's chest, managing to twirl the Servitor's head completely around and pop it off like a cork to a champagne bottle.

The Servitor's retaliation was fierce, managing to catch Gor'Havah as he landed and delivering a back hand across the ghoul's entire body. The scythe-wielding warrior's frame nearly collapsed, his ghoulish endurance the only thing that kept him together. His body flew across the courtyard, hitting the ground and rolling to a stop. The headless Servitor had no problem seeing without eyes, no problem hissing without a mouth, but still it reached down and collected its severed head, planting it back on its neck. It clicked back into place, and the Black-Bones stomped the ground with their bony feet, heralding the defeat of the ghoul.

Gor'Havah couldn't move, his entire body aching from the wounds. He could feel that the bones in his arms and chest were twisted and broken. Dark blood slowly seeped out from his injuries, and his scythe lay just a few feet away. If only he could reach it, to imagine it cutting through that decaying Servitor. The ground shook with each step of the Servitor as it marched closer to turn him into an abstract painting.

"Enough!" yelled Rayse. "You're in the wrong fight. I am the strongest of our group." The Servitor stopped. It glared at Rayse, the lights in its eyes growing brighter. "If you're done with your warmup, your real opponent is right here." Rayse pointed a thumb at himself and grinned. His other hand was in his pants pocket.

Gor'Havah lifted his head painfully, his hazy vision catching sight of the confident contractor. He had been with him long enough to know that in terms of combat ability, they didn't even compare. Did he finally go insane?

The Servitor however appeared receptive. It turned away from Gor'Havah and faced Rayse, scanning the ghoul for any indication that he was telling the truth. The only thing it could tell was that Rayse thought he could win, which was markedly different from his previous opponent.

Gritting his teeth, Rayse broke into a sprint, pulling something out of his pocket that made Gor'Havah's eyes widen. It was the cloth that held the vial! When did he- when he bumped into me? Each step Rayse took left a mark in the ground, his body flowing through the accursed fortress like water. With the cloth in his left hand, he put his right on top of it and felt around for the vial's cap. His foot hit the ground again, kicking up the centuries-old dust that likely constituted the previous victims of the Black-Bones. The Servitor lifted its arms and went to take a step forward, wanting to squash flat this little insect. Rayse pressed down on the cloth and twisted it, feeling the cap slide off. With one motion, he lifted the cloth and jutted the vial forward, not letting go but allowing the liquid within splash outwards toward the Servitor. He immediately put the cloth back on with the cap to close it up.

Seconds felt like hours. A luminescence unheard of filled the area, the white glow of the liquid as it swam through the air, leaving an intricate trail of frost. Rayse's eyes followed the trail, the newfound coldness in the air chilling him to the bone. The vial's contents continued toward the Servitor, spreading and completely engulfing it.

The moment it hit the giant skeleton, the sound of a thousand icicles hitting the ground echoed throughout the Lower City. The deafening sound blew out the eardrums of the ghouls, sending Rayse to his knees in pain. Straining his eyes, he looked up and saw a glacier of ice where the Servitor once stood. Its form could still be made out inside of it, frozen in time.

[Rayse Valentino]

"Argh!" Rayse groaned as he held his bleeding ears, unable to dull the constant ringing noise.

The world shook around him and he felt like throwing up, and not just from the pain. When he watched the battle between Gor'Havah and the servitor, he finally felt the impending sensation of death. Fear nearly locked up his body, and only by putting all that aside and acting on instinct could he do what he did. He got up, lowering his hands, one of which still held the cloth-wrapped vial. His entire body shook, and while he had no heartbeat, he felt a strong, fearful thumping from his body. He was good at hiding his feelings when he needed to, but nothing could have prepared him for that.

His hearing was starting to come back, likely a result of his ghoulish regeneration, and the first thing he heard was the elder ghoul cursing him out, "You used the damn key!" Rayse looked over to Gor'Havah, who was now standing and using his scythe to support him.

Rayse broke out of his daze when he realized the indignation, "S-Shut up! I had no choice! How do you know it's the liquid and not the vial, anyway?" There was no way of knowing what the liquid would do, but Rayse decided to believe Oslo's story. It was the first thing he truly believed since getting here. He opened up the cloth and to his surprise, the vial was full again. "It refilled itself..."

"Tch," Gor'Havah spat, limping over to Rayse. "Looks like we're lucky."

"I wouldn't call this lucky." They were still surrounded by the black-bones, and Rayse couldn't tell if they were in shock, angry, or indifferent. Skulls all had the same expression.

"They're not jumping us, so maybe they think you're their leader now."

Rayse raised a brow, "Well then, that gives us quite an edge, doesn't it?"

"If you let them chew off all your flesh first."

" ...Let's get out of here."

Rayse took a few cautious steps forward into the crowd, and they started moving away from him, as if according to his wishes. He was not sure how long they had before the ice melted, if it melted, but he was not about to test his luck. The contractor caught a glance at the bubbling blood pools before they left the clearing, and not a single piece of Oslo came back up. It only took twenty minutes to reach the edge of the city, and by then Gor'Havah had recovered enough to walk without support. Rayse had eyes in the back of his head the entire time, but it appeared that no black-bones followed them. Before them lay the expanse of the Lower City, the endless gray sand dunes. At least that terrible stench was gone from their senses.

"I suppose we're going to see this Ghoul Queen then?" Rayse asked.

"Did that thing he gave you jar any memories?"

"No, I've had this for a long time. Maybe I need to see something more recent."

Gor'Havah slammed the butt of his scythe into the sand, "Damn it." He looked around, and Rayse could tell that thoughts were swirling in his head. Gor'Havah was a blunt man, but he kept his opinions to himself. Despite coming out of this place alive, he didn't relish the thought of going to the city of ghouls.

[Rayse Valentino]

Rayse struggled to stay on his feet, his legs shaking and his head spinning. A numbness spread throughout his body, starting long before they got to this point. Ghouls did not need to breathe, and yet he coughed through his dry throat. They did not need to sweat, yet his pores ached for relief. Gor'Havah's gaze only made him feel worse, those indifferent eyes that masked his frustration, and deeper yet the boiling rage he held for this place. It was the final leg of their journey, and Rayse's body decided to give out right before the end.

It took them a few hours to reach this city after escaping from the black-bones. At the halfway point, their relatively level terrain turned into an incline, continually growing in steepness until they reached their destination. The last hundred meters were entirely upward, using carved holes to scale the wall. And that's where they were, on top of the wall that used to separate the third ring from the forth; The edge of the known civilization in The Nameless City. Beyond it was a cliff of incalculable height, looking out into the endless mists below. The city itself looked barren, more like a stony campsite than anything. Aside from a few marked structures, most of the ghouls lingered about in makeshift hovels assembled from dirt or dug out from the wall itself. Dry clay cracked beneath his shoes, and the air carried a coppery scent, like tarnished metal. What little architecture remained was massive, climbing into the sky in derelict towers and incomprehensible symbols scattered across them. When Rayse first climbed up, he kept his hand on the bile pouch, but one disapproving look from Gor'Havah made him realize that the ghouls who lived here likely didn't care if servitors hated them.

The ghouls paid them little mind when they crossed the city toward The Ghoul Queen's sanctuary. More than anything however, Rayse noticed that they were mostly the same breed of creature that they saw when they entered the Lower City: Stomphowlers. By the time they reached the doors of the sanctuary, the contractor's body was ready to collapse. For some reason, he felt at ease here, as if the doors lead to a warm bed and a cold drink. His body took the signal to mean that it could rest as well, so the moment they walked in he fell face first into the marble floor. The goggles fall off his face and slid across the ground.

"Get up," said Gor'Havah. His patience had run out. He picked Rayse up by the shoulder and lifted him up to his feet.

Rayse opened his mouth to respond, and at first no words came out, as if even his strength to speak was completely drained, but he managed to stammer out, "W, we've been at this... f-forever..." They walked, ran, fought, escaped, and even Rayse couldn't handle it anymore.

In a past life, Gor'Havah would have made a quip about his broken ribs stabbing into his organs with each step, but he was a hollow shell now. He didn't even know if he would regain himself if he left this place, but he had no choice. He bet everything on this, on him.

"Just a little more."

They took steps together, Rayse noticing that the design of this building was similar to the Sanitarium. Instead of sharp angles, the floor smoothly curved upwards toward the walls. They were walking down a long, wide hall, and at their sides were rows of stone benches. The ceiling looked like it had no end, but along the walls were stained glass windows that amplified the Red Maelstrom into red rays of light. At the end of the hall the ground was elevated. This place... it's like a cathedral...

As they got closer, they noticed someone standing in the shadows on the upper ground. The figure was slightly hunched over, and before they could reach it, The Ghoul Queen herself exposed herself to the light. Her stark white hair parted halfway down her head in long, straight locks that touched the floor. Her dark blue skin had a reddish tint to it, and Rayse realized that he was actually seeing color now, in fact he couldn't notice the mist at all. Was it because they were so high up?

The Ghoul Queen raised her hand, curling her long fingers with equally long nails. Her eyes were pure white, her face sagging to the point where her jaw was partially open at all times. If she wasn't moving, Rayse would have been convinced that she was a statue.

"Returned you have, Burning One," she spoke in a raspy, whisper-y voice.

Gor'Havah dragged Rayse up to the the elevated ground, pulling them both up to face her, "You have been expecting us, Meredith." He laid Rayse down on the ground to let him recover. "None of the ghouls outside stopped us from coming in."

Meredith nodded slowly, "An interesting TALE you have woven for us, and a FRESHER you have brought. Why not just the vial?"

Gor'Havah felt a twitch behind his eye, and words flowed out of his mouth without his consent, "I seek escape from this blasted plane, and he's my carriage out of here. The priest told me you had the rest of his belongings."

"Indeed I HAVE, Burning One. Behind me is your boon, the hope that you seek. A fair trade for the VIAL." Gor'Havah suddenly remembered that Rayse had the vial now, but when he looked down at the contractor he noticed that Rayse was already up, his hands on his knees and coughing.

Rayse reached into his pocket and pulled out the cloth that housed the vial, "This thing?!" He nearly smashed it on the ground, but his anger subsided as quickly as it came. Meredith was the one pulling all the strings up to this point, even their coming back here was part of her plan after he woke up. "This isn't a one-to-one agreement. I want something as well."

"All GHOULS are welcome, songs sung and dances danced, a fresher comes with Burning One for I. A fresher TALKS, but does it know what it wants?"

"A portal. There's one down here that leads to the outer wall, and if anyone knows where it is, it's you."

Gor'Havah's eyes widened, "You... !"

Meredith cackled, "It seeks a portal, yes, a portal to HIM. No escape it shall find. Still wants?"

Rayse put the cloth on the ground, "Where is it?"

"Stop," Gor'Havah demanded. "This is stupid. Just regain your memories and tell me where the door. Your belongings are right here." There was a small box behind Meredith, and Gor'Havah started walking toward it.

"Even if I do, we certainly don't have the key." Gor'Havah picked up the box, placing it under his arm and moving back toward Rayse, seemingly oblivious of his words. "Where do you think she got the vial? Dropped out of the sky? Dug out of the ground? It was made, and chances are it was made by those Void-Shaper people."

"Then you'll remember some other key! Here!" Gor'Havah shoved the box into Rayse's hands. He couldn't deny Rayse's words, and the fact remained that anything made by a Void-Shaper could not be a key.

Meredith reached out, her long, skinny arms stretching to reach the cloth. She picked it up with her nails, bringing it back to herself and cradling it like a child.

Rayse sighed and opened the box, looking inside for anything familiar. There was, at long last, a pack of smokes in there, but no matches. He also found some business cards, a few bank notes, but generally nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except for a pair of brown fur gloves with a symbol of a wing woven into the back of each one. "Huh..."

"Anything?" Gor'Havah asked impatiently.

Rayse wanted to tell him no, but he felt a twitch behind his eye and said, "I don't recognize these gloves. They must be recent... something's wrong." Rayse put the box down and held his head.

Gor'Havah's demeanor changed, a darkness growing under his eyes, "So, who are you really, then?"

"What?" Rayse nearly tripped over himself stepping back. "I'm... ugh... Rayse... damn it! What the fuck is going on?! Why did I say that?"

"Haven't you guessed yet? You can only tell the truth in these halls. Rayse, eh? I've heard that somewhere before."

The younger ghoul grit his teeth, "And what tipped me off?"

"You knew of the portal down here, and when you called the beast we evaded a beguiler. That was a common mistake I made. I remember now, we met before."

"Do you, William?" Rayse grinned. "Looks like I made the right call when sparing you. I hope you're not feeling particularly vengeful today." William Arcus was the elder ghoul's name. He was once a mercenary who was hired to assassinate Rayse, but the contractor caught him and let him go, but not after a rather torturous beating.

"Two years ago, maybe. At this point I have no desires other than to get out of here."

"Wait, I could've known those things anyway. How did you... ?"

"You could read the journal. Apparently nobody told you about that."

"The All-Tongue," Meredith interjected. "Where all TONGUES of different planes coalesce. We speak and hear, we UNDERSTAND."

Rayse blinked, "So we have the ability to understand all languages, and we also speak all languages? Let me guess, this doesn't translate to the written form, so that's how you knew I was from Althanas. Where the hell is this place? Where am I?"

"The HALLS of TRUTH."

"T-The halls..." Rayse started to say, but a twisting in his mind stopped his speech. He felt a memory come to the foreground, but it was too short, too brief to truly realize. There was one thing he knew, however. "The Halls... Sanctuary... Fleeting. Is there a Halls of Fleeting somewhere?"

"Halls of Fleeting Remnants, it asks for?"

"No," said William. "No it doesn't. You can't mean that."

"I think that's our place, it's the only thing that comes to mind when I think of the door."

"It can't be! That's located in one of the central towers of The Upper City! We're at the opposite damn end of The Nameless City!" William pressed his hands against his forehead, driving his nails into his skull. "Damn it damn it damn it!"

Rayse looked down at the box and the gloves within them, "With a door comes a key. When I think of it, all that comes to mind is what Sa'eed said: Freedom. I think that thought is the key. It doesn't seem right, but if that ghoul is right about The Upper City being devoid of any free will then, well, it's a good place for a portal to hide."

"Motherfucker! I'll never get there in time! We have to go, now!"

"Hold on, are you saying I have to go all the back through this shit? Forget it."

"Fine, have it your way! Rot here forever for all I care!" Grabbing the bile pouch from Rayse like a starving dog, William jumped down from the elevated ground and ran out of the sanctuary. "That damn Void-Shaper knew, he knew it the whole time! He knew I would never make it out of here! If I ever find that piece of shit, I'll rip his guts out from his mouth!"

Rayse was left standing there with Meredith, who silently observed the proceedings.

He turned back toward her and asked, "So, about that portal..."

[Rayse Valentino]

It would be one thing if it was darkness, if his lack of sight was simply a matter of light, but he was awash in a sea of rusty red. It wasn't just mist down here, but floating dust as well, and he could feel it floating around his eyes, ears, a dirty taste covering his lips. He had to consciously keep himself from attempting to breathe, lest the chalky substance invade his body completely. He felt around in the mist, mentally cursing the conditions given to him for coming here. He was told to find the wall on his left, and when his palms touched a rough, jagged surface, he sighed in relief.

Meredith did not want to show him the portal unless he promised to go in without the goggles. Rayse thought that it would be impossible to climb in that case, but she assured him that the climb was a simple staircase and nothing else.

So there he was, at the edge of The Nameless City, standing next to the tallest wall and the lowest point. Just judging from the walk up to the ghoul city, he guessed that this trip would be at least three times as long, so he took The Ghoul Queen's offer to replenish his stamina with an infusion of nether energy, which was in the form of lower city beast meat. It wasn't the worst thing he ever ate, but somehow raw meat didn't exactly do it for him. With his hand on the wall, he started walking forward until his foot hit the first step, and upon taking another step his other foot smacked into the next.

This is it...

He would finally be out of this sorry excuse for purgatory. He felt around the start of the staircase and realized that there was no railing or anything. One wrong step and he could fall off the entire thing. He had to start off slow, keeping his balance and moving step by step. The mist around him swirled with every step, the still air disturbed and forming his own little Red Maelstrom around him. It was as if this world was watching him try to leave.

[Rayse Valentino]

It was much faster to get back to The Middle City without Rayse. William practically flew through the air, skipping through The Warrens like a pebble on a pond. He avoided the usual hot spots, passing through alleys so mangled that back home people would have thought a tornado passed through. It didn't take long until he reached the Listrome Bazaar, a neutral ground run by the bastard liches from The Upper City and secured by the Order and their Servitors. It allowed William to relax, as no one who caused trouble there lasted long enough to do so again. Despite his relative safety, he still maintained a lingering feeling of uneasiness, a healthy sensation for anyone who stayed long enough in The Nameless City.

The dim grey dust of the Warrens gave way to edges of the return of normalcy, the abstract architecture replaced with coarse patchwork tents hanging lifelessly in the still, stifling air. Unlike the typical bazaar, no crowds clamored for viciously haggled wares and there were no bright colors or fancy spices lining the pockets of Listrome’s shoppers. The few traders to be found conducted their discussions with downcast eyes and furtive whispers. The liches in this place had not earned enough coin or prestige to set up shop in The Upper City but still maintained a sense of superiority over the meager lives of Middle City folk, especially the corpse-born.

William stepped in front of a nondescript tent, glancing about his surroundings for anything out of the ordinary before approaching the featureless figure within.

“Welcome, Gor’Havah,” the lich hissed, his emotions less than readable with nothing but a blank slate to read from. “What do you need from us today?” Liches were strange creatures, their frail forms covered in lavish purple-red robes, and around their neck they wore a small, golden, egg-shaped container for what little of their soul that remained. The rest of it was in The Upper City, suspended in the tallest spires in a grand collective of souls. The liches were not individuals, but rather a single monolithic entity with many branches. Its head was just a ball of skin, no eyes, mouth, nose, ears, or anything else. When it spoke, William heard the voices of many, even though it had no mouth to speak from.

“I need to know how to get through The Warrens to The Upper City,” William replied, keeping his eyes respectfully on the counter. The Warrens constantly shifted and changed, and even in under a day William's knowledge of its architecture may be outdated. “And a small catapult. I’m willing to part with two Dust Pills for it. Is this acceptable?” Dust Pills were weapons. When swallowed, a corpse would freeze up for an hour, its body violently rejecting the nether that sustained it.

“Of course,” the lich rasped out a chuckle, rolling his leathery palm over to accept the tablets that William grudgingly produced from beneath his waistband. The pills hit the lich’s palm, which vanished so quickly that it was almost as if it had never been there. Almost as quickly the lich’s hand reappeared, bearing a leathery scroll which left no doubt on what it was made out of. It felt discomfortingly moist and supple under William’s rough touch but William paid it no mind and it too disappeared quickly enough. The catapult was only about three feet in length, and it stood behind William as if it was there all along. He departed without another word, the Red Maelstrom clicking through another cycle of its never-ending swirl.

He was running out of time, but if he was going to go out, at least the residents here would know him in all his miserable glory.

[Rayse Valentino]

You've... got to... be... kidding me...

Rayse stopped, his body resting on the stops, audible groans escaping his lips. If he was his old self, the strain on his muscles could be relieved by rapid breath and sweating, but in this form all he had was pain. Rather than regulate, his muscles simply destroyed and remade itself anew. It forced him to stop every couple hours, just so his ghoulish regeneration would return him to a state when he could move without agony. His pace was slow, but he never expected to still be submerged in the mist. He got back up, leaning against the wall and looking up for any sign that the swirling dusts would let up.

A smoke, a gamble, a picture, a word, he wanted anything to distract him, to take him away from here to put this ordeal into the back of his mind. He cursed and started moving again, climbing this never-ending staircase. His body was not ready yet, and his eyes felt heavy.

After a few minutes of walking however, he felt his foot slip. One of the steps was completely missing, and the sickening sensation of losing his balance overwhelmed him. Panic set in, a feeling of dread that he was about to fall to his last death. He crashed into the staircase on his side, feeling his body roll off the edge. With a scream he went over, but managed to grab onto the ledge. The pain from his arms was indescribable, turning everything in his upper body numb and ever fiber of his being told him to hold on. With a heave, he pulled himself back up to the staircase, lying on the stairs and everything twisting around him.

I can't go on... every time I rest I get weaker. Every stop drains what little life I have. I can't see through the mist yet, which means I'm not even at the elevation of The Middle City...

He thought of all the people he wanted to kill when he got back, everyone who ever wronged or failed him.

Pierce is first, that slimy rat bastard. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be in this mess. Then Hedges for fucking up that shipment. Silvaska can also go rot in...

Isn't that where he was? Hell? Where every sorry piece of shit who lead a miserable, evil life went. At least the corpse-born didn't know how good they had it when they were alive. He picked himself up and forced his body up the staircase again, a slower pace than before after that fall. It didn't take long until the strain on his body drained the last of his reserves, his neck drooping and his eyelids closing.

He fell face first into the stairs, unconscious.

[Rayse Valentino]

The wall to the Upper City held the same uniformity of the rest. It rose up sharply, its intimidating height casting a shadow down on much of The Middle City. Those near the wall lived in darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of the exalted people that lived in paradise. Although it was still part of The Warrens, its architecture growing towards the tunnel to The Upper City. The servitors assigned to guard the entrance swung massive weapons to destroy any creeping buildings that grew like weeds around the tunnel, making the field of dirt in front of it the largest open area in The Warrens.

Besides the two guarding servitors, several undead gathered around the tunnel, keeping a healthy distance of a few dozen meters away from the entrance. Made up of many bipedal species from around the planes, the undead walked around, keeping their eyes open for any intruders.

"How long must we wait?" asked a dog-like undead. "Gor'Havah is taking his sweet time. Was the information wrong after all?"

"Liches do not lie," a beaked individual replied. "We know that he's going to come here, and as per Deckard's orders we'll be ready to make him lost once and for all." They waited, each seeking the prize for putting an end to the legend of Gor'Havah.

A corpse-born with spider-like eyes noticed something falling from the sky and remarked, "What is that?" The rest of them looked, and within moments a circular object fell and burst like a water balloon on impact. The undead were covered with dark, sticky liquid, each of them immediately retching from the odor.

It was only when a servitor grabbed one of them and separated them into two pieces with its grip that they realized what the liquid was. Panic spread throughout their ranks, some trying to get the bile pouch fluids off of them while others ran for their lives. The servitors were merciless, ripping apart the corpse-born one by one and chasing them down.

In the confusion, a figure ran through the chaos and slipped into the tunnel. William's climb was a feat few had attempted in The Nameless City. He could have likely found the way to The Upper City without the use of a lich, but he needed Deckard to know where he was going, as the scab likely had a tap on every lich in The Middle City. That was why William never trusted anything that came from the so-called paradise. The catapult was just large enough to launch the bile pouch as well.

In his desperate climb, he kept thinking of the key over and over again. Freedom, freedom, freedom. For two years he struggled here, and all he had to do was make it to the door. He was confident in his speed, his will, and his luck. As he ran, he looked up and saw a bright, shining light at the end of the tunnel. It was not a clear sight, for in the way there was a shadow. It had long, flowing robes, its figure almost as wide as the tunnel itself. As William neared, he took out his scythe and prepared to cut down anything that was in his way. Even if his body was so strained that it stopped moving, he would still go on. He believed that nothing would stop him.

The figure in his way had a featureless head like the rest of the liches, but there were runes inscribed on the fetid flesh. Golden rings floated around its neck and arms, and it exhumed a pressure that made everything shake. William didn't care, he pulled back the scythe and prepared for a strike.

The grand lich put out its hand with its long, bony fingers as if to tell him to stop, and that's all it took. The last thing William remembered was his face being engulfed by the lich's palm, the rest of its form encircling him, its robes devouring him.

The fate of any rotter foolish enough to invade The Upper City.

[Rayse Valentino]

Rayse couldn't tell how long he was walking. Hours, days, weeks? Time blurred in his mind, his body moving on its own to complete each step. He thought he would climb forever, the wall's top never becoming visible, the mist never clearing up. As he thought this, the next step felt soft. He looked down and saw a color he did not think existed anymore: Green. Blades of grass grew around his feet, and he looked up to see trees still in the heyday of summer. The mist was gone, and the sky was a crisp blue color, greeting him like a long lost friend.

He dropped to his knees, unable to believe what was going on. Was he underground the whole time? No no, don't question it. This was his victory, not another time for questions and analysis. He walked through the trees, crushing branches under him and the smell of sap reinvigorating his senses. He was awash with calmness, the trees giving way to a massive lake. He walked up to the lake, bending down and getting ready to duck his head under the water, when he noticed his reflection.

He was still a ghoul.

"Fuck!" he screamed, backing up from the lake and falling backwards. The sky cracked and the scene before him faded away, leaving only a familiar darkness.

In the darkness, two lights appeared on him, both of them similar in origin and circular.

Wait, I know this...

A gigantic skull appeared from the void, its head covered only by a few strands of loose white hairs. The red beams centered on Rayse, nearly blinding him.

"Give it back... My True Name..." it demanded.

"You..." Rayse said. He stood up and grit his teeth. "I've had this dream before."

A great wind pushed Rayse, nearly blowing him away with its intensity.

"Give it back..." it repeated.

Rayse felt something grab him from below, a hand with only three fingers on each ankle. More deformed hands clasped his foot and pushed him forward, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground. He raised his upper body with his hands, looking back and trying to kick the hands off, but to no avail.

"You think I have it?! Your damn name... don't you see? It's gone already. You're the same as the damned corpse-born." The black floor around him changed, and in its place was a plane of pure flesh. Eyes and mouths covered the floor, gesticulating and squirming wildly. "To them you're The Writhing God, the first of their kind, but to us... to us ghouls who have memories before this last life, we know something you don't. That's why you haunt our nightmares, your jealously tormenting us. That's why to ghouls, you are The Bitter King."

Blobs of flesh grew from the ground, growing over Rayse's body and pushing him down. He was now gripping some sort of monster face, and if his strength faded the rest of him would be absorbed into this abominable mess of flesh.

"-It back..." the skull's voice trailed off, and the lights started to grow dimmer as it got further away.

"Wait!" Rayse demanded. "D-Don't go! Stop! Let me out of here!" More blobs of flesh covered his body, and then he couldn't hold out any longer, his face being smashed into the mess of flesh.

[Rayse Valentino]

"Agh!" Rayse yelled out, flipping over on his side. Pure red filled his vision, and he felt the stairs under his body. A dream...? He got up, shaking his head and feeling for the wall on his left side.

He remembered vividly what happened, the details still sending shivers down his spine. This world sought to make him part of it, but he refused to give in. He brushed himself off and continued the climb, feeling an overwhelming sense of dread from the nightmare.

It took hours to shake off his skittishness, but soon he could see more clearly in the mist. At first it was just his hands a few inches from his face, but soon he could make out the wall, the stairs, and the edge of the ledge. Going further, his vision was no different than when he had the goggles on, and out into The Nameless City he could see only an ocean of mist. He looked up and was almost glad to see the Red Maelstrom, its center like a great eye that watched him. Soon enough he saw what looked like the top of the wall, the end of the staircase.

Yet, he could not feel any joy. He looked back at his progress, the staircase that grew into the mist, inviting him to come back in.

How... How could I possibly have second thoughts now?! I'm almost there, I just need to put in foot in front of the other a few more times, and... !

He fell to his knees, unable to suppress the dread he harbored for so long.

I've been lying to myself, saying over and over again in my mind... ever since they first used the word 'plane'. I knew, deep down I knew that I was in another world, but I still came here. I still climbed this stupid fucking staircase instead of going with William. That was my best chance! If I made it to the portal with him, that would've been the end of this! And yet... and yet... !

His body shivered, but a ghoul could shed no tears. He was now the furthest from his freedom, the absolute edge of this world's explorable setting. All that awaited him now...

Rayse got up slowly and started climbing again, his eyelids halfway closed. There was nothing more he could do but reach the end.

The top of the wall was similar to the city of ghouls in its smoothness, but there was nothing here except a flat plateau in all directions. He pulled the gloves out of his pockets, the ones with angel wings stitched onto them. One of the few things he remembered was the purpose of these gloves. When worn, they caused actual wings to sprout from the wearer's shoulders, allowing flight. Even if he didn't get his powers back from stepping off the wall, the wings would carry him.

"Hmm?" he said, looking beyond the edge of the wall. It was a couple hundred meters across, but he could see something significantly different beyond it. As he got closer, he noticed the familiar sea of mist, but there was something more slightly beneath the surface. Everywhere he looked, strange white vines were twisting through the mist, as if there was a jungle on the other side.

He was halfway to the edge now, and each step felt more taxing than the last. It was not the strain on his body that gave him pause, but the nauseating sense of recognition and familiarity, the words at the tip of his tongue, the thoughts just barely out of his mind's reach. He pushed through this sickening feeling, moving straight to the edge and putting the gloves on. As he looked down on his gloves, he saw something beyond them. His body froze, and in that moment he became a statue.

Below him was... a skull. A skull so large that it completely filled his field of vision, despite it looking like it was halfway down the wall. The rest of its body followed, its bony arms gripping the wall, puncturing the stone. Several hours passed in each moment, Rayse's eyes meeting with the empty sockets of the skull.

And then, an indescribable sense of dread overtook him. A shock that didn't let up, a horror that persisted. The fear compounded, getting worse and worse, growing beyond the limits of what he thought fear was. The air grew heavy around him, and he could see The Bitter King's form grow into the mist, its bones twisting and turning to form the 'white vines' that Rayse thought he saw earlier. It was as if the rest of this plane was composed entirely of this being.

The familiar sensation assaulted his memories. I... I've felt this before... right before...

--

"This is the place?"

Rayse stepped into the crater, noting the smoothness of the rock beneath him. Just beyond the crater, all the usual signs of life were evident; Trees, grass, moss, and bushes. It was as if a mountain-sized giant scooped up the land before him. He wasn't sure how much he bought the story of an entire town disappearing thousands of years ago, but there was definitely something unnatural about this crater. He took another drag off his cigarette, blowing the smoke into the wind.

"My ancestors lived here for generations," said a man next to Rayse. "And then one day they were gone, their fates tied to the new plane they were in." The man wore a simple brown tunic, and sported large white angel wings.

Rayse had been told about this phenomenon of keys and portals, and while he was no stranger to teleportation via magic or science, he wasn't sure about the idea that it could happen without any outside stimulus, that there simply existed portals in the world, waiting for someone to bring the right key to them.

"Why now?" Rayse asked. "You said this happened thousands of years ago."

The reason for this winged man's visit was because his town in the other plane was under attack by its native inhabitants, and apparently this was a recent event. It was explained that it took this long to even find a portal that brought the winged man from there to here, but there was still a missing element to the story.

"The reason... is right here before you." The winged man glanced over to his wings. "The native inhabitants are all winged beings, but we were not. However, recently we began to adapt, and this development threatens our overlords."

"And if I help you, I'll get more artifacts like the one Pierce showed me?"

"Correct. In our realm, they are merely traded and passed down amongst our people. I imagine they would be worth a lot on your world."

Smoke escaped Rayse's lips as he took another drag and walked further into the crater. He certainly wasn't adverse to a little thrill.

"You never figured out what the key was, which is why you need me to go to this intermediate plane which has a known portal to yours?"

"Correct," replied the winged man, who stayed near the edge of the crater. "This spot is a planar host so to speak, so it is home to a lot of different portals, which is why it's also the location for the entry to the intermediate plane."

All I have to do is beat up a bunch of winged freaks and then I'll get artifacts that rival the ones the Thaynes left behind, eh?

Rayse took the spent cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it. He was done thinking about this.

"Sorry, but I'm going to have to decline. I'm nobody's hero."

"That's too bad," said the winged man, which made Rayse look up because the voice came from far above him. The winged man was floating in the sky, his wings flapping to keep him airborne. "I never needed your consent in the first place."

"What?!" Rayse yelled, before realizing what was going on. "W-Wait!"

It was too late. The winged man knew the key, and Rayse was standing right on the portal.



--

The last vestige of hope turned to despair, the idea that he came here with a plan, that if he simply restored his memories then he would be saved.

All that was left was the cold glare of The Bitter King.

[Rayse Valentino]

End of Part 1.

Okay, I think this is finally complete.

Requested Spoils:
Ability - The All-Tongue: Rayse's speech now sounds like the listener's native tongue and accent, which means he now speaks all languages. Also, he now hears all speech in his native language, which means he now understands all languages. He can't turn this off. This doesn't apply to anything written down.

Revenant can have this ability too.

[Otto]

Plot: 26/30


Storytelling: 8/10
Superb, by a few counts. Some notable aspects are that a) you were both able to take high-level characters and come up with a great scenario to test and challenge them, b) you used other sections of the rubric to maximise the quality of your storytelling (namely setting and pacing), c) you set things up, like mention of the beast from the lower city which had made its way up, and made sure they paid off, and d) you spun it out bit by bit, always giving something away - but never too much - and there was always something relevant going on. You didn't waste words.

So how might you improve it? Well, there were a few things which detracted from the score. The mugging scene in post six was a little B-movie-esque. As was the boss fight with the black-bone servitor - not the actual fight itself, which was very well done, but the use of that old premise of challenging the chieftain for leadership. Considering how you had built up the Black Bones as mindless, crazed beasts, it just didn't quite click. Finally, it seemed like you were running out of steam towards the end, as though you, the writers, just wanted to get it finished with. But I'll admit that certainly changed in the final couple of posts - fantastic cliffhanger there.


Setting: 10/10
Perhaps one of the best uses of setting I've ever read here on Althanas. It defined everything about the story - character impressions, history, politics and intrigue, story events, possibilities. And it was all so well imagined, and vividly described. I really don't know what you could do to improve this.


Pacing: 8/10
I briefly mentioned how you reeled out the story bit by bit, giving the reader enough to satisfy them while always setting up more things to explore. Pacing was a huge part of this, and you both used it fantastically to this effect.

I'll just repeat what I also said about the last few posts: up towards the end, they seemed to lack the same care and attention to detail as the earlier ones. I know the characters themselves were in a hurry, but it seemed more like it was the writers who were in a rush.


Character: 25/30


Communication: 8/10
Revenant portrayed the grizzled survivor wonderfully, Rayse, the acclimating rookie just as well. Revenant seemed moulded by his experiences, possessed of a healthy dose of distrust and selfishness, but without overdoing it, and made their pairing quite credible. The expressions and inflections of the characters were also crucial in constructing setting.

The worst problem you had was simply grammatical; because of the fairly frequent spelling mistake or misplaced bit of punctuation, a fair bit of dialogue was marred by the constant nagging of these details. Apart from that and a dash of cheesy dialogue in the mugging scene, this section was solid.



Action: 9/10
This ties in with communication in that the characters' stances, movement, posture, and so on, really helped set up a scene (such as whenever Revenant suddenly pauses - what's he seen? Is it dangerous? The reader can guess as much, but keeping it hidden from them to begin with passes on that sensation of unseen danger). And the combat was certainly credible: there's Rayse, bereft of his powers and overwhelmed by Deckard's men, and while Revenant is demonstrably more capable in a straight-up fight, even he is outmatched by many of the plane's denizens.


Persona: 8/10
You provide a good look into the heads of individual characters through the methods mentioned in communication and action, certainly, but also through narrative aspects. I particularly liked how, for all the exposition throughout the thread, there's a strong sense that it's all occurring inside Rayse/Revenant's head (it's based on their perceptions), and that we're in there with them. Furthermore, you really build up the persona of the factions, such as those of the Order of the White Fire and the simple autonomy of the servitors, the blood-thirst and bitter back-and-forth between street gangs, and the way the Black Bones have been so profoundly stripped of their humanity, as they have their flesh. If you had just expanded on the Ghoul Queen a bit more (who had been so built up since the beginning of the thread, but whose appearance at the end was almost underwhelming given the hype), and perhaps the liches, and this would have been a 9.


Prose: 23/30


Mechanics: 7/10
Certainly your weakest area. Rayse, you were mostly fine here. Some recurring mistakes/issues included clumsy repetition (the word 'annoyance' in post 12, 'memory' in 15, 'here' in 22), and word choice ("yellowish-red" to describe a colour - what's wrong with orange? - as well as "The bleak rust-red light cast over the city, though bright enough to see through", when you see by the light, not through it, and a few incorrect participles). Other errors were infrequent or obvious enough to suggest that you simply let some mistakes slip through, and some revision and editing would be enough to weed them out.

Revenant, perhaps the biggest issue for you regards that little pest, the common comma. I was guaranteed at least one missing comma from each post, usually more. They are required (usually) to mark conjunctions, parantheses, concluding and introductory elements, and a few more obscure conventions. It's a bit nitpicky, but it really does break flow and jar the reader out of immersion a little bit. Otherwise, do as I suggested to Rayse and review your posts for typos and poorly-constructed sentences, and you'll be golden.


Clarity: 8/10
Bonus points for having such an intricate plot, with so many questions arising even as they are answered, but without being overwhelming and letting the reader just go with the flow. Points were mainly deducted for poorly constructed (or nonsensical) sentences. These seemed to crop up a little more often in your posts, Revenant. Examples include:
Post 6, where a sentence might be improved to read like: "While certain there were routes through the shifting maze of masonry and refuse, routes that were considered relatively stable, nothing in the labyrinth lasted forever", as the former arrangement suggested that the masonry and refuse themselves might be what was ‘considered stable’.
Post 13, with "freeing the blade of William’s scythe but only rocking the creature back an inch before drawing its attention whipping around at the offender" - should probably separate the clauses out. Also, "Thick rolls of diseased putrescence curled out of the makeshift hole the thing had burrowed through the Warrens, spiny cilia uncurling along its length" - this means that the cilia are part of the hole that it burrowed - not the beast itself. Is that right?

Also, Rayse - I had considerable trouble with your choice of phrase, "So you got the wrong guy." This heavily implies that the priests had intended to carry a specific person other than Rayse into the inner sanctum (and that Rayse knew that), not that they had, by accident, picked up a ghoul instead of a Lost One. As there was nothing to suggest that Rayse 'knew' this (I'm referring to my first impression), I re-read it and the preceeding story a few times before I suspected a different meaning. A bit subjective, I know, but there you go.



Technique: 8/10
There's that red glow of the maelstrom, a constant reminder of the Writhing God's crimson gaze. And the way that city life outside the Order is as decayed as its constituents, which mirrors the sense of impending doom as the walls are slowly reclaimed. And the constant stream of strange species and even buildings unites all things in death. Rayse's flash backs, too, were streamlined into the posts smoothly with the use of certain triggers. And your language, and the resulting story, was certainly coloured by a decent grasp of metaphor and simile. But you did write "shattered like an explosion", so there's that.


Wildcard: 9/10
I was seriously impressed with how much life you guys were able to breathe into this story, and how well everything functioned together to work as a whole.


Total: 83/100



Rayse Valentino receives 5360 experience and 550 gold.

Revenant receives 2200 experience and 225 gold.

This thread will be nominated for a Judge's Choice. As the requested spoils are an ability, this will probably need a character update to be submitted for the RoG staff to approve.

[Lye]

Current EXP & GP Added!

Pending additional for possible Judge's Choice Award.

[Lye]

Judges Choice has been awarded!

Congratulations!

((Sorry for the late promotion to the JC Archive))