Auct still, 221 A.D. The preternatural darkness enveloped me as I fell, but not for long. As I crossed through the black threshold, I saw a strange and empty land, barren and cracked, the open dirt stretched endlessly in all directions beneath red skies.
No hills or mountains rose, no trees or vegetation grew, only miles upon miles of parched dirt and a single road of stone bricks that ran towards the horizon, towards the only shapes that broke the monotony of the waste, a black sun setting, and below it, the tower. I landed soundlessly upon the stone bricks and saw that I was not alone here. Many souls of the dead, translucent and green, shuffled along the road, each headed towards the impossibly far tower.
"Where am I? What is this?" I thought, but no answer echoed in my thoughts. Wherever I was, Amarax could not find me. A closer inspection of the stone bricks revealed them to be basalt. They were each finally cut and dressed and laid in precise alignment. This was an Ustilian road. Soon, a streak of sickly green descended from the skies and began to bob slowly around me. "You made it!" I said to the
shade. I withdrew the golden locket from my coat, this time opening it to reveal an engraving on the inside of the lid that read Accensus, Ustilian for enkindled." In the locket's base, there was a portrait that I recognized from the tomes of Ustilian history. It was the face of Lucian Armin, disgraced Grand Master of the Lucent Templar.
For his attempt to usurp the throne from the rightful emperor, he was executed along with his most faithful Templar and buried out of sight of El'Sabayoth on the day of the Black Sun. It was this very same day that the dead rose across the southern provinces and flowed as a putrid tide upon Ustilia. I had not originally associated the Armin's surname to Lucian, for there are no records of a Gwyneth Armin in
connection to him. This is not so surprising if she too were implicated in his crimes, for those that betray the teachings of El'Sabayoth are stripped from Ustilian record. What is unusual is that any record remains of Lucian at all. He too should have been erased, as per Ustilian law, yet not only were his crimes and execution recorded, but spread across the empire to the Northern Provinces. As for the locket itself, the
Lucent Templar were forbidden to wed. Was this another violation of his vows? As I contemplated this, the shade began to orbit the locket. Can you still find the one to whom this belongs? It made an echoing sigh and began to drift down the road, towards the tower. But as I started to follow, it quickly darted back and over my head. I turned to find it bobbing near the maw, which had fallen along the road behind me. Yes, of course. Good shade.
Whether by the fall or the nature of this place, or perhaps some last effort from Amarax, the maw was blessedly closed, and so I tucked it under one arm and set off down the road. At first, I tried walking alongside the dead, seeing if I could get any useful information out of them, but most of them would not acknowledge me, let alone speak to me. At some point, I shouted to them as a group. "Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?" "Shh," I heard from the crowd.
"Who said that?" "Shh!", I followed the sound to the translucent form of a man in a jester's cap. Its spectral bells clinked softly as he trudged along the endless road. "Why do you silence me, Jester?" "Well, on account of you were screaming. It's rude." "Well, why won't the others answer me?" "They don't talk to the dead." "But they are dead!" “Shhhhh!” The Jester held a spectral hand to my mouth, which passed through my face with no effect. "Telling the truth is especially rude."
"Ugh, Imbecile," I scoffed, stepping away from the jabbering ghost. "I may be a fool, sir, but I'm a polite fool, and you would be wise to be so foolish." I left the Jester behind and began my approach to the tower in earnest. With all my speed, I streaked as a blur down the stone brick road, and yet soon I realized that the tower drew no closer. I paused for a moment, looking behind me, and saw the Jester marching along with the others no further than he was for me when I began.
Again, I darted forward, summoning all my will towards the thin needle that rose from the horizon beneath the black sun. The land dissolved into a smear of red, and the dead streamed past me as rivers of translucent green, but the tower drew no closer. When I stopped and turned again, the Jester smiled just behind me, lifting his legs and swinging his arms wildly in a mockery of a military march.
"What is the meaning?" "Shh!", My fangs bared briefly as I clenched my teeth, and I began again, much more quietly. "Why can I not reach the tower?" "It's rude to enter the tower whole." "What?" "It's rude to enter the tower." "Yes, I heard you. What does it mean?" "Only the broken may enter the tower." "Shh!", "The broken." "Stop repeating yourself. It's not helpful." "Oh no. Being unhelpful is rudest of all."
"And with that, the Jester turned and sprinted away down the stone road, vanishing into the marching rows of the dead as one of them. I sighed and turned to face the tower once more." "Only the broken." I looked at the shade bobbing nearby. "Rude to reach it whole." I looked my own hand, felt the power of the blood coursing through it. "No. Not that." The realization of what I had to do crept upon me with the dread weight of the blood thirst, but I knew not how to do
it. No wound upon me could draw my cursed blood from its vessel, as it would shift within me to avoid and close the opening. The only answer I had was time, and so I walked. Forward, without distance, through the spectral forms of the dead I marched. I know not how much time passed this way. Sometimes I saw a glimpse of the Jester walking among the others, his eyeless hollows narrowed by the widest grin
beneath them. Some hours or days or weeks later my steps began to grow heavier, and as they did, the black sun sank lower to the horizon, and the tower beneath it began to grow. The thirst seeped into me, scorching every particle of my being as parched as the cracked lands around me. In its ravenous thirst my blood turned upon itself, devoured itself, diminishing within.
My steps faltered. I felt the stone bricks rise up to meet me as they would have in life, even hearing my footfalls upon them while the black sun sank ever lower and the tower drew ever closer. And when the thirst had seized me like strangling vines of molten glass, when each step took all of my focus and the weight of the closed maw tilted me as if I would topple, only then did I reach the tower. It was wrought of the same basalt
stones of the road. No, it was an extension of the road itself, rising out of it so that the stones at its base warped impossibly to become part of the path below. It was a great grey pillar, now entirely enveloped by the massive black sun behind it. Stripped of most of my blood, burning with thirst, I followed the sickly green light of the shade to the opening at the base of the tower.
There was no gate, no covering, no door of any sort, just an opening barely wide enough to fit by turning sideways. Behind me, an Ustilian road stretched away into an infinite red desert. From the base of the tower, it seemed as if the dead stood along the road, unmoving, but I knew from their point of view they were all marching forward. The shade drifted closer to the opening in the tower. "How is it that you can enter, little
shade? Are you broken?" I asked, my words dragging through my ragged mouth like glass. The shade gave no answer, but an echoing sigh and drifted inside. I approached the narrow opening and turned my body to squeeze inside. One might have thought it a mere crack in the stone, if not for its symmetry and its jam, but I suppose a barely traversable door was the least strange part of this wretched place. Once inside the tower, I found myself in The Great Hall of a Lucent Temple. At least, that is
what it had been made to resemble. But I doubt very much that the spirit of El' Sabayoth dwelt there, though his symbol hung in carven wood upon the wall. A fireplace crackled with green flames, necrotic flames, casting dancing shadows across the hall, across the long wooden tables that ran its length. Simple benches served as seats, and upon them sat the spectral forms of Lucent Templar clad in their elegant interlocking armor.
Their faces were hidden in their steeple-like helmets, which bowed in silent prayer, so that the spires of each met above the center of the table. And at the head of the table, a dais was raised beneath a single ornate chair, barely visible beneath a drapery of fabric that descended from the ceiling to conceal it. Ahead of me, one of the lost crawled on all fours towards the shrouded chair at the head of the great table, where a soft and beautiful voice arose. "Come to me, weary traveler.
Come to me, broken soul. The world has been unkind, but you are welcome here." The lost soul could barely pull itself along the ground, but the sound of the voice uplifted its head, and it crawled with renewed vigor. "That's right, my poorsweet pilgrim. Come and lay your head to rest." Then, just as the soul nears the base of the chair, a tangle of fleshy chords burst forth from behind the drapery. The same that had pulled me down into the dark that led to this world.
The chords ensnared the spectral figure, coiling it in their grasp. I heard the lost soul wail in torment as it was seized and pulled behind the curtain. Its cries rose in terror and pain, and then were drowned out by sopping, wet gurgles. The shade and I stayed exactly where we were. For a time there was silence, and then the lovely voice rose once again. "I taste another in my temple. Come to me." It whispered across the room in my direction. "I think I'll stay here for a moment. Thank you."
"You are weary from a long road. I can grant you respite." "No trouble at all, really." A guttural hiss of anger shot out of the curtain, the likes of which no woman could ever make, and then she spoke again. "You cannot linger there forever. You will come to me eventually." "I do not wish to linger. I seek the soulof Gweneth Armin." "The soul? It seems that proper introductions are in order." With that said, the curtain around the chair drew back, revealing the
abomination within. Bloated and bulbous, its corpulent flesh spilled over the chairs that supported its tremendous weight. Its skin was mottled brown and blue, with a pooling of dead blood just beneath its surface. There was no symmetry to it, only mouldering folds of flab that oozed with the reek of pus and bile. It was almost larval in its shape, and so too did its many-fold shudder like the throbbing of a larval thing.
Wiry tufts of black fiber sprouted from a tube-like opening at the top of the creature, and as I looked on in horror, the tube began to wrinkle downward, retracting in a squelching shudder, revealing these fibers to be hair. Unbound by its fleshy sheath, the stringy black mop of hair fell about a horrid face, if it can even be called that. Its forehead was bisected by a groove that eventually forked in two, so that the creature's face was divided into three segments.
Stretched across each upper segment was a slit where eyes must have once lain. Perhaps they still did, so they would have been utterly blinded by the overgrowth of flesh. I saw no mouth or nose upon the monster. Then came the soft jingling of spectral bells, preceding the arrival of an all-too-familiar soul from behind the larval beast's great chair. The spirits of the jester came marching, swinging his
arms and legs like a madman as he did. He cleared his throat theatrically, tapping a fist against his chest, then through a deep breath. "Introducing her most esteemed ladyship, as beauteous as she is wise, as virtuous as she is kind, desired by thousands but requiting none. Her majesty, Queen Gwyneth Armin the First.” At this all the Templar lifted their heads for a moment and echoed, "Hail!" together, then bowed them once more in prayer. I gazed in speechless astonishment at the creature.
This was the soul of Gwyneth Armin? Why was she not translucent and green like other souls? Why was she this thing? As I gawked, the grooves upon her head began to widen, a viscous film stretching between them as they did. With a hissing gurgle from within her folds, the viscous film popped, and I could see into the pulpy depths of her head, where curved teeth lay in rings like a lamprey. Then a raspy, sloshing voice regurgitated from the split-open head.
"And who is this obstinate intruder?" The jester leapt upon the table and marched down its length in his absurd swinging gate, before somersaulting off and landing before me. "Now comes the son of an undead fisherman, thrice-a-dozen rejected applicant to the Thacean legions, presiding Grand Inquisitor over the fall of Thacea, most deadly employer of his unfortunate servants, and very irresponsible with his left hand… Alaric the Damned.”
My face shifted from bewilderment to outrage as the jester spoke, so I lacked the strength to protest beneath the crushing weight of the bloodthirst. I focused instead as best I could on my objective. "He is a worm!" The monstrosity spat. "Of course, your judiciousness." "What should we do with this worm?" Queen Armin leaned forward in her seat, a slow, toppling motion that seemed as if
she would spill onto the floor. Her open head tilted this way and that, perhaps trying to align one of her eyes with the stretched slits that covered them. "I will hear this worm's purpose. Why has he come here?" “Her Majesty asketh, and the worm answereth.” The jester turned to me expectantly. My memory of courtly Ustilian etiquette was hazy on my best days, so I began with a bow and hoped for the best. Given that Clean Armin was so far from me, I raised my voice as best I could.
"Greetings, your Majesty!" The reaction was immediate. She shuddered as if struck and began to writhe in wrath. "How dare you address me directly, worm!" “He does not know, Your Leniency! He knows only to wriggle and dig and sup upon the dirt!” The jester's tone was both terrified and ingratiating, and he undulated as he spoke, sliding to the ground in imitation of a worm. Her massive head turned to watch the jester, and her writhing subsided.
"Very well. Let us welcome our guest as befits his kind. Ah, at once most gracious of hosts." The jester sprung up from the floor and dashed out of the room. I took a moment to consider my predicament. I knew that I needed to trap this creature in the maw, but how I could manage such a thing was another matter entirely. Weakened as I was, I could not simply rush her, and with so little blood my telekinesis was inert. Furthermore, I had
no idea what all she was capable of. She seemed largely immobile, but there was no telling what foul capacity she held in secret. So what did I know, then? I knew that if she was in the Veil of Vestiges, then she was one of the Lost. She did not accept that she was dead. I knew that this tower was some kind of reflection of her in the Veil, so far more elaborate and tangible than the shapes in the mist that other
souls had manifested. This was a world unto itself, so she was more powerful than other souls somehow, more forceful of will, so convinced of her reality that her reflection in the veil concealed the truth entirely. The truth, telling the truth, was especially rude. The jester had tried to warn me. What else had he said? Something about being helpful. It was rude to be unhelpful. Just then, the jester returned with a covered platter of bronze. "A meal fit for a worm."
"Feed our guest! Feed him!" The jester pranced to the end of the table near me and set the dish down, gesturing to an empty slab of bench. I moved to sit down, but as the bench creaked under my weight, the queen's head snapped towards me. "Worms do not sit at the table." "This is most expert, Wormlore, Your Luminance." He then placed the covered dish on the
floor. I sank to my knees, meeting his eyeless gaze with what I hoped was an expression of collusion, but the jester's face was merely an unguessable smile. Setting down the maw, I stretched out onto my stomach with my head near the dish. The bronze cover was removed to reveal a mound of dirt, red and dry as the vase that surrounded the tower. "I can put an end to this," I whispered from the floor. "What did the worm say?"
The queen spotted. "He said that he's never seen such a feast in all his life, and that you are a most generous queen." "Then he shall eat his fill." The jester waved his hand elaborately before the dish. I reached forward and jostled the bronze dish a bit, watching as the enormous queen perked up at the sound. "Does the worm enjoy his meal?" "Tell her that I do, but I wish that I could sit closer to her."
"He says that the taste of his meal is lessened, for he cannot gaze upon your beauty from where he lies." The queen snorted and then paused in contemplation. "Very well. He may lie before me." With pain and effort, I dragged my starving body upright and reached for the maw, only to startle at the shriek that followed. "No!Worms do not stand and walk as men!” With a grimace, I lowered myself to my belly once more, and with agonizing effort shoved the maw along the floor
ahead of me as I crawled. I don't know for how long I struggled this way, but the damned jester marched alongside me, matching my pace and singing the entire way. He sang a tale of a lowly worm who crawled up from the ground in hopes of seeing the beautiful queen, and whenever I paused from sheer exhaustion, he would march in place and break into a refrain about how I kept forgetting my quest on
account of my rudimentary brain. The final lyrics of the song brought my miserable crawling to an end, as he sang. "At last the lowly worm arrived, but wary in his zeal, to wriggle even one more inch would make of him her meal." I slumped over the maw there, some feet away from the base of the great chair. As a mortal, I would have been panting and heaving and soaked with sweat. My bones would have ached and my muscles burned. As a vampire, my flesh was as cold and
still as a grave. Yet the bloodthirst blazed like a hundred red-hot needles driving into my consciousness. "Bring him his meal!" the queen demanded, and the soft clinking of the jester's bells drew away for a time before swiftly returning. The bronze dish was placed before me once more. "There you have your meal, now eat." She loomed above me, a mass of fetid lard
and vicious scorn. A tower within the tower doubled over her many flabs, tilting her fractured face back and forth in a vain attempt to lay eyes upon me. Again, I jostled the bronze dish about the ground. "I don't hear chewing!" she gurgled, and thick spittle slosh from the pulpy innards of her toothy gullet. I began to smack my mouth loudly. “These are the smacks of an empty mouth! Does this worm dare deceive me!?” Her many folds began to tremble with barely restrained rage.
"Oh no, most observant one! This is how a worm eats! It tastes the air first, so that it may find its meal!" the jester quickly interceded, and the trembling faded. If I'd not been starved, I might have failed my mission then, for the sheer pleasure of beating the horrid queen into a pile of viscera. But I was powerless, for this was the price of admission to her domain. "Ah, there it is!" I said, reaching forward and grabbing a fistful of dirt before cramming it into my mouth and
smacking loudly. It coated my teeth and tongue and throat in a film of arid powder, making my thirst all the more maddening. "I hear no enjoyment!" the queen declared. "Mmmm," I hummed in my best imitation of delight, given the circumstances. "That's better! Now, what is worm's purpose?" Coughing up the red dirt, I turned and very intentionally addressed the jester. "I've come to serve the queen of the tower!" "My queen, the worm wishes to be part of your court."
"I already have a fool at court!" "Perhaps he could be of some other service." "I shall serve as victuals." The segments of the queen's head began to stretch further apart, widening the opening between them. “Wait! I-I bring a gift!” I made sure that my shout was towards the jester. "My queen, the worm says--" “I heard what he said. Yield to me my gift, then. We shall see if you are more than meat.”
I clasped the maw tightly under one arm and began to stand, praying silently for it to open as I did. "I did not bid you rise!" A whip-like cord of visceral flesh lashed out of the queen's gaping maw and struck me across the back, knocking me to the floor. "The fool shall bring it to me!" The jester held out a spectral hand and my thoughts whirled. "Well?" The queen leaned forward, the segments of her face opening ever wider.
Suddenly I remembered the locket. I withdrew it from my coat and handed it to the jester. "Gold for queen, Armin! Jewelry for the queen!" A groan of surprised pleasure rumbled in the depths of the queen. "Oh, gold is my favorite! Bring it to me! I would touch it!" The jester brought her the locket, and many cords of visceral flesh, dark and dripping, emerged from her mouth to seize
it. She ran her cords over the locket with musing groans, opened it, felt the engraving on the inside of the lid, and fell utterly still. "Where did you find this?" "I found this--" "You stole it! " Her many cords began to reach for me. "No, no, I found it on a thief! I killed him! I came to bring it back! I swear it!" "How did you know where it belonged to?" The cords draped over me, coating me in a
film of bile. "I recognize Lucian's portrait!" "Don't you speak that traitor's name!" "I knew the face of the man who sought to usurp the throne!" "He told no one of me! Forbidden." "But he did, my queen!" "You will speak only to the fool!" "Surely Lucian could not keep secrets,
such beauty! He had to speak of it!" I said, with my head pointed at the jester, who began to slowly clap until the queen's head jerked in his direction, and his claps fumbled into open-handed paths up and down his body, as if he were searching for something lost on his person. Slowly the many cords retracted from me.
"Hmm, He spoke of me though it would damn him if the temple should learn he broke his vows?” "Even so, for such was the radiance of Queen Armin that not even the threat of excommunication could stay Lucian's tongue." "Mmmmmm!" She chortled, jerking about in erratic glee. "And when I heard of a beautiful queen in a Lucian Temple, I knew it had to be Queen Armin, the very same to which the locket belonged!" Her many cords retracted, and her face pieced itself
back together. For a moment, she said nothing. "We shall throw you into the Gold? "We shall throw you into the Gold? That will reveal the truth!" At once, a pair of Lucian Templars stood from their silent prayer and seized me. I barely managed to clasp them all to my chest before they lifted me from the floor and began marching me towards an open hall.
Behind me, several other Templars moved to the queen and knelt, taking hold of the many horizontal poles at the base of her chair and lifting it onto their shoulders. The jester set out ahead of me, leading our procession in his ridiculous march, and the queen was born behind. As we moved through the tower, up winding stairs and the chambers between, I saw many places and peoples, as if I walked through Ustilja as it stood over two hundred years ago. In one room, I saw an
infirmary. Upon its stone columns was a carven image of angels, thing and things far less terrifying than their actual counterparts. Beneath them lay the spectral image of the man whose face was kept in the golden locket, Lucian Armin, Grand Master of the Lucian Temple. The soul of a lay sister stood over him, tending to a wound on his chest, and from this wound spread winding veins of black, the likes of which I saw upon the burning one when he was struck by the fetid prince.
"Phantoms in my temple!" the queen shrieked, the Templar carrying me paused, and I was able to turn my head enough to see the queen's face open like a flower. The many cords came whipping forth, snatching up the apparitions and dragging them into the fleshy chasm of her mouth. When the infirmary lay silent, we moved on, up another set of winding stairs, and I saw a forested river where two spectral figures stood close, their heads bowed together in furted conversation. Lucian and the lay sister.
Unbound by her coif, a sheen of black hair fell upon her eyeless face, and Lucian placed a golden locket around her neck. She was the one to whom it belonged, Gwyneth Armin. “Lies! Hideous lies!” the queen bellowed, and the spectral pair was devoured where they stood. Again we ascended, and the lovers sat together on the stone benches of a loosened temple, their heads bowed as if in prayer. "You could rule, Lucian. We could rule." "I would rather serve both Ustilia and my emperor."
"The gold didn't name him. It named you. Why do the priests say nothing?" "They value their lives." "You would be a better leader." "I'll hear no more of this." "I don't have to be your secret. I could be your queen." "Enough!" The templer stood and left. The lay sister ran after him, but she dared not be seen pursuing him outside the temple. She watched him march away down a long road of basalt bricks.
The image of Lucian escapes the fate that evaded the lay sister this time, entangled and consumed without so much as a word in protest. It was as if these images didn't even recognize what was happening to them. They saw only what
they once were, what once happened. After that, a series of winding corridors revealed a number of chambers in which the image of Gwyneth Armin consorted with other figures, Ustilian noblemen of various standing, but all of the philanderers were devoured as our procession arrived. Another room higher, the spectral forms of the Praetorian guard stormed a Lucian Temple. The souls of Templar rushed to intercept them, but they stood down when the Praetorians presented an imperial decree.
Several servants were taken prisoner, among them the lay sister, and in the room above I saw as these souls were tortured by the Emperor's men, with burning brands and thumbscrews stretched upon racks and broken over wheels. They were asked only a single question, "Where is he?" It was the lay sister who told them, and when she did, the queen howled in guttural fury.
The suffering was brought to an end as both the tortured and their oppressors were pulled into the all-consuming hole in the queen's face. We emerged then at the top of the tower, where a great brazier lay in imitation of the kind that would burn with the gold in a Lucian Temple. Upon this brazier stood several Lucian Templar, each fully armored except for their helms, each bound to a wooden stake. Lucian was among them, his face battered
and bloody. Above them, above the tower, above us all, the black sun loomed like a sea of darkness. One might have thought we stood under a starless night sky, except for the thinnest ring of red that clung to the perimeter of the lightless sun. "On the day of the black sun, El’Sabayoth was blinded from his people. We must kindle the Gold anew!" the queen commanded. "Of course, your majesty, we must kindle the Gold anew." The jester said, but there was no mirth
in his voice this time. He reached for the brazier, placing a shimmering hand against it, and it was set ablaze, not with the light ofEl'Sabayoth, with flames of green necrotic fires. “I trusted you,” Lucian said to the queen, and then he was consumed. "The gold is kindled, the light of El'Sabayoth shines in the temple once more. It shall tell us the truth. Now, worm, step into the All-Fire, and we shall see what it makes of you."
The souls of the Templar released me, and I remembered the words of Amarax as I stepped forward. The dead are immune to necrotic energies. The jade pyre engulfed me, stirring what little remained of my blood, and deep in my thoughts I heard a whispering. It was faint at first, indiscernible, many voices, and then, in an awestruck moment of realization, I heard a voice whisper by name. And I knew the one who had uttered it. It seeped into me through the perversion of the gold, a boundless
presence, an eternal thing. It always had been, it always would be, and my blood recognized it, for it was part of the power that moved me. A crackle of jade shot through my hands, and the maw became impossibly heavy. "He does not burn my queen. Perhaps the gold has found him worthy." "The gold lies!" The queen spat, and her many chords came lashing toward me. With the last of my strength, I heaved the maw between myself and the oncoming
whips. They struck against its face, and then the queen paused in stunned silence. She began to frantically pull against the maw, but it was unmoved. The ripples ran up her chords from where they touched the maw, all the way up to her ruined face and down her great mass of flab. She wailed in anguish and gurgling disbelief. Even as the maw began to pull her in, I suspect she did not accept the reality of
it. Soon the entire mass of her form spiraled into the maw as so many streams of flesh, echoing with her final outrage. But it didn't end there. When she had gone, the tower itself began to distort. The jade fires around me were pulled in too, and then the brazier upon which I stood, and even the bricks of the tower top began to disassemble themselves, leaping as streaks of gray into the maw. The souls of the Lucent Templar were consumed next, and the jester. I remember
him making no attempt to escape. He only smiled unguessably beneath eyeless hollows before he was swept away. Before long I was falling, and the tower was unmade as I fell, and all the world to which it belonged, the red waste, the stone brick road, the black sun, they all came swirling into the infinite depth of the strange face stone to which I clung. I was falling through night skies then,
plummeting toward a sea of mist. But before I could pierce the veil, the mighty Atanite burst up from beneath with a forlorn wail, and I fell upon its deck. Immediately the deck began to shimmer and distort where it touched the maw. But with a snap of his skeletal fingers, Amarax said, "No," and the maw was sealed. I lay on my back, watching the light of dead stars fading from my sight. The arc glitch drew near to me, and my mouth strained to form words. I managed only
two before the dark took me. Blood, blood. Alaric the Damned