“But not your friend,” Morgan said.
“This is why I need your help,” Murtok said. “Because Constian… he and I did this job together. Maintaining the right population of ghouls and gaunts. For a very long time. I don’t know what changed him.”
“Maybe he’s gone a bit mad himself,” Cordelia said.
Murtok looked at her with his cigarette-ember eyes and nodded slowly.
“I worry that perhaps you are right,” he said.
“In which case, we may need to put him down as well,” Cordelia said.
Murtok shrugged. It was a simple gesture, but Cordelia saw an infinite weight in him as he did it, acknowledging that yes, killing his friend may be the only way.
“What about Urfang?” Jack asked. “He didn’t seem… well, he didn’t seem altogether sane, but neither did he seem completely mad.”
Murtok grimaced.
“Urfang isn’t as old as Constian. Constian found and groomed him,” Murtok said. “He’s always been like that. And Constian molded him into the tool he needed. An enforcer, a bodyguard, a spokesman. And…”
“And?” Cordelia said.
“And someone to help him with me if I ever turned on them,” Murtok said.
“You don’t seem like someone who is easily defeated,” Jack said.
“I’m not without my skills,” Murtok said, resuming their journey. The others followed. “But Constian and Urfang together are more than I can handle, and clearly, a creature like me does not easily find allies.”
“We wouldn’t be helping you if our friends hadn’t been taken,” Cordelia said. “Convenient.”
Murtok shook his head.
“A fortunate coincidence for me, but not one I wished for,” he said.
Eriko, silent until now, chimed in.
“We need to free the people in that building,” she said.
“Our friends first,” Cordelia said.
“There are children in that building, Cordie,” Eriko said.
“And our friends, Eriko, are about to be eaten alive,” Cordelia said. “I know it’s cold, but I don’t really give a shit about saving anyone else until Tamsin and Tobias are safe.”
“Not now,” Morgan hissed. “The two of you. Stop it.”
As they hiked, the town became visible in the distance, the taller buildings rising above the treetops along the trail. Murtok stopped again.
“There are tunnels they use beneath the town. They use the well in the town center to come and go,” he said.
“So, we go there,” Cordelia said.
“One at a time, down a well,” Jack said. “Sounds like we’d be feeding ourselves to them.”
Murtok pointed a clawed finger at Jack in approval.
“There’s another way in. They don’t know about it,” he said. “The feral ones are stupid and lazy. They don’t plan. And they won’t be watching the other entrance because there’s no immediate benefit to it.”
“Tell me the other entrance isn’t some sort of sewerage runoff,” Morgan said.
“The opposite,” Murtok said. “Follow me. No talking, now—the feral ghouls are unintelligent, but they’re perceptive as dogs.”
He took them along the outskirts of the town, staying out of sight in the dense wooded area that surrounded the village. Cordelia resisted the urge to curse as she stumbled and tripped her way along. Morgan was less clumsy but noisier, his armor making a racket that sounded as if it could wake the dead.
Eventually, Murtok led them down a decline in the landscape, a steep, rocky hill. Jack and Silence all but danced their way down. Cordelia tried not to hate him for it. After all, it wasn’t his fault he picked the character class that could be more graceful in this game world than he ever was in the real one.
Eventually, they came to the mouth of a lightless cave. A body of water—more than a stream, less than a river, thigh-deep and fast-moving, ran into the cave.
“The water supply for the town,” Jack said.
“Exactly,” Murtok said. “This will lead us into the underground tunnels.”
“I hate this plan,” Cordelia said.
Jack put out a hand as if to reassure her. Cordelia ignored it.
“How far in do we have to walk? Does the water get any deeper?” he asked.
“Not far,” Murtok said. “I used this tunnel to come and go when Constian and his minions first came to this town. It never goes deeper than waist-deep. Tread carefully and we’ll be inside soon.”
Jack and Silence exchanged one of their weird, wordless looks that always made Cordelia incredibly uncomfortable.
“Patrol the perimeter of the town, Silence,” Jack said. “Stay safe. Only fight if they catch you. We’ll be back soon.”
The wolf looked at the river with an almost human expression of relief. He doesn’t want to doggy-paddle down this stream any more than I do, Cordelia realized, suddenly having more empathy with the wolf than she’d ever had since arriving here. Silence darted off into the woods, away from the town.
“Did your dog just abandon you?” Cordelia asked.
“He’ll be back. Better than trying to piggy-back a wolf down two hundred feet of waist-deep water,” Jack said. “Now let’s go save our friends.”
“Who are hopefully not already ghoul food,” Cordelia said. She put one booted foot into the water and wrinkled her nose at the temperature. She sighed. “I’ll go first, I guess.”
Chapter 13: A story of hunger
The problem, Tobias thought as he listened to Constian unfurl his tale, is that he should be the one to tell this, not me.
The ghoul lord had a hypnotic voice, one that rose and fell with the story. The creature knew pacing, too, and the ebb and flow of story, how to weave history with anecdote, to make poetry from fact.
I don’t know if I can do this justice, Tobias thought. He told the ghoul patriarch so.
“You’ll have to do your best, bard,” Constian said. “No mortal men would hear it from my mouth, and you know it.”
“This is the worst rendition of Cyrano ever,” Tobias said.
Constian ignored him, as the beings in this game world so often did when they had no point of reference for an anachronism. He gestured at Tobias.
“Come now, minstrel. Tell me my own story. Spin my tale for me,” he said.
“I’ll try,” Tobias said. “Just hoping I can do well enough that you won’t eat me.”
And he began.
* * *
The seasons of Revery are unfair.
They follow a logical course, as in any world. Spring follows winter, autumn follows summer. But the seasons are unpredictable in their ferocity. It feels at times as if the gods themselves determine the cruelty of winter or the brutality of summer on a whim, to make for a better narrative, to put the mortals they allegedly watch over through some sort of dramatic challenge.
There are Great Winters when people starve, or freeze to death, and Hellish Summers when rivers run dry and crops wither, when livestock collapse in the heat. There are Relentless Springs, when those same rivers overflow, when whole villages are swept away by massive storms. And there are Hungry Autumns, when the chill comes too soon, when the harvests do not last, when the earth itself seems determined to cull the weak.
This not every year, of course, and that is part of the challenge. No almanac predicts the next Relentless Spring. No seers can see the next Hungry Autumn. There is no calendar to predict the next Great Winter, no divination to see a Hellish Summer on the horizon.
And so, we prepare, as best we can. But that’s no way to live, and no amount of preparation can ever be enough. A generation might go by between one such season. No one alive, not among the shorter-lived races, of course, remember the last starvation or flood. They are caught unprepared.
Once upon a time, in a village not unlike this one, a Great Winter came.
We thought we were prepared. But the snow piled up to shoulder height. We could not protect the livestock, and so we butche
red what we could, salted and cured their bodies, and hoped it would be enough to make it through until spring, and that when spring came we could find new livestock. That was a funny bit of optimism, of course, but we did not remember the last Great Winter. We assumed we would survive and worried about how we would rebuild. Not surviving, that was never a consideration.
At least not until the meat ran out. And the grains. It was too cold for rot, but the winter seemed to never end. Rats got into the grain, and we ate them too, because we had to. We had to melt ice in our mouths for water. Grown men froze to death crossing town to check on their neighbors.
We were hungry, and we were alone, miles upon miles from the nearest village, and we knew our neighbors would have nothing to spare, as we had none for them. The distance, in a way, was a blessing—we did not have to tell strangers we had no help to offer.
When the meat was gone, when our grain stores were gone, when the rats were gone… we prayed. We prayed before then, of course, asking the gods and goddesses to watch over us, but when the food ran out, those prayers became more direct. We beseeched them. We begged. End this winter. Send aid. Anything. Help us.
And we received no answer.
Some among us did what would, in less desperate times, have been unthinkable. They prayed to the darker gods. The ones who demanded souls as currency. And we offered our souls. We offered ourselves so that our families would survive. Some of us offered our families so that we might survive, though no one really talked about that.
Unlike the gods of light, the gods of darkness answered.
They laughed.
Your answer is before you, a voice from the darkness said. Which dark god spoke is lost in time. I’m sure he walks Revery still. Evil never fades. It simply hides.
Your answer is right in front of you. You know what to do.
When this voice spoke from the shadows, those of us who supplicated ourselves to the dark gods were in a place few wanted to spend time, where our dead were stacked like cordwood, because the ground was too frozen to bury them. It was so undignified, I remember. You’d sometimes catch a familiar face in the pile, someone you’d known your entire life, a friend or an uncle or some village elder who taught you how to shoe a horse or something memorable and simple like that. It was too cold for their bodies to rot. They were, for all purposes, meat.
The answer was right in front of us.
You might judge us. You weren’t there, so I cannot blame you. I look back on the choices we made, and I feel shame sometimes. But that shame fades when I remember the anger. Have you ever seen a starving child? There is no crueler sight in this world or the next. There is nothing you won’t do to save a starving child. You’ll give your life. You’ll sell your soul.
You’ll eat your dead.
And that is how our village survived the Great Winter, a thousand years ago. Those piles of corpses fed us for the rest of that endless freeze. We stayed strong. We lived. And eventually, the cold lifted. The sky turned from gray to blue. Life returned to Revery. The world’s undeserved punishment was over.
But ours was just beginning.
The gods who ignored us, the good and just gods, saw what we had done. Perhaps they saw all along. Perhaps this was part of some grand plan. I believe, in my darkest moments, that we were chosen for this. Because this is a world that needs monsters, and monsters are best when they deserve their fate. You can pluck a monster out of thin air, but when they are punished for a grotesque misdeed, doesn’t that make for a greater villain, a darker nightmare, a better monster?
The gods were furious. They were disgusted. And they looked upon what remained of our village and said that if we want to be eaters of the dead, then eaters of the dead we shall be, for all of eternity. And they cursed us, every man, woman, and child who survived that winter. We became mindless things, carrion eaters. We were bedtime stories to scare children. We were pests to adventurers. Undead vermin, stupid and vicious when cornered, but cowardly and blind with hunger.
We have been hungry for a thousand years.
And eventually, some of us regained our minds and our memories. Suicide became common for those who could not live with what they’d done, or could not face what they’d become. But those among us who could face what they’d done, they became shepherds of the damned. We watch over our mindless kin. And most of all, we make sure they’re fed.
We tell you this story not because we seek your pity. We know what we are, now, and we know there is no way back from damnation.
But know this, mortal men and women of Revery. Never forget the cruelty of the gods. For some day, they might cast those cruel eyes upon you.
* * *
The gaunt lord stared at Tobias for a long moment after he’d finished. The bard felt a bead of sweat run down his spine. He was uncomfortably aware of the ghouls all around him, awaiting their patriarch’s orders.
“If you don’t like it, I could set it to music,” Tobias said.
The slightest smile graced Constian’s toothy mouth.
“That won’t be necessary, storyteller,” the ghoul lord said. “I think you heard me well.”
“I have one question, if I might,” Tobias said. Constian gestured for him to go on. “What was your role in all of this? Were you the mayor? An elder?”
The patriarch shook his head.
“I was the village doctor,” he said. “And I did not believe in the gods. But I was in the room when that dark god spoke. And it was my surgeon’s hand that made the first cut.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I have made peace with my sins, storyteller,” Constian said. “But I might live another thousand years and never forget the face of the man who was our first meal. The mind and heart are capable of incredible dichotomies.”
“I understand,” Tobias said. “What happens now?”
Before he could answer, Urfang stormed into the chamber, a long spear in hand.
“My lord,” he said. “Murtok was spotted outside of town.”
Hot anger flashed across Constian’s face, replaced instantly by a profound weariness. His shoulders slumped.
“I apologize, bard. You’ll have to stay a bit longer,” he said. “But you’ve sung yourself out of becoming supper. Urfang, put our guest back in his cell. Gently.”
“But—” was all Tobias could get out before being dragged away from the chamber. And his shock was rapidly replaced by a growing worry about what would happen when they got back to his cell and found Tamsin gone.
Chapter 14: One at a time isn’t an option
Morgan watched from an alcove in the underground tunnels as one of the ghouls sniffed the air maybe thirty feet in front of him. It didn’t seem to see him, which was good, but he also hadn’t realized ghouls tracked by scent. Please let these tunnels stink badly enough to cover up the smell of my armor, Morgan thought. I knew he had spells that would take care of the creature easily enough, but apparently, all his undead-destroying magic was extremely flashy, and none of them wanted to bring the whole pack of ghouls down on top of them, not in these enclosed spaces.
From just out of sight, Morgan heard a hiss and snap as Jack released an arrow. The ghoul looked up, alerted to their presence by the sound, but before it could make a move, Morgan saw Jack’s arrow flare, bursting into flames, and pass through ghoul’s head, leaving the now truly deceased monster’s head smoking, what little hair it had left on its scalp catching fire.
“Holy shit,” Cordelia said beside him. “Can I multiclass into ranger and mug Jack for his bow? I want one.”
Jack emerged from the shadows, Eriko behind him, still looking sullen. Murtok crept past them all, peering into the darkness for more ghouls.
“Well that worked,” Jack said.
“It’s inefficient, though,” Morgan said. “Sniping at them is fine for now, but it’s slow going. And we’re screwed if we run into a bunch of them.”
“We need to get moving,” Cordelia said. “For all we know they’re alrea
dy having Tobias for dinner.”
Jack nodded to her and, together with Murtok, took the lead, guiding them deeper into the tunnels, stepping over the twitching body of the ghoul. The ranger put an arrow through the eye of another ghoul a hundred paces into the tunnel, but then the cavern opened into a larger area, and Cordelia let out a whispered string of curses so vile Murtok looked back at her with an expression somewhere between horror and admiration.
“One at a time is not an option,” Morgan said, taking stock of what the larger chamber contained.
The chamber was below them, down perhaps a dozen stone stairs. It was a hub of some kind, branching off on all four sides, with multiple doors in each direction. And it was teeming with ghouls.
“How many do you…” Morgan started to say, but Cordelia cut him off.
“Fifty-seven,” she said.
“Holy hell,” Jack said.
“I forgot that was your superpower,” Morgan said.
“Counting audience members in community theater had to come in handy someday,” Cordelia said. “Not that I thought it’d come in handy like this.”
“Assuming I make a headshot every time, I can take out maybe a dozen of them pretty quickly,” Jack said. He nodded at Murtok. “I assume you’re good with that thing.”
“Hundreds of years of practice, so I ought to be,” the ghoul said.
“So that only leaves us with thirty-something ghouls to fight when they come crashing down on us,” Cordelia said. “Not a problem.”
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