Chapter Nine - A Place Without Seasons

The Abyss was certainly more elaborate than Helmsman had expected. The parts of it he'd seen had been areas where the city had collapsed above them and revealed little more than semi-collapsed rooms and a few wretched undead.

The place that Talon had taken him resembled Shyster's Market in the Lower Barrens more than anyplace else. Droves of--well, Helmsman supposed he'd better call them "people"--milled about throughout the place. It had been a long walk here (Helmsman estimate about three miles, putting them somewhere beneath Malachi Village), but he and Talon had passed dozens of undead on the way. Everyone down here seemed to be corporeal, as Helmsman hadn't seen even a single Spectre anywhere in the Abyss.

He had seen Wights, for the first time at close range. Wights typically loathed sunlight, but Helmsman had encountered one or two of the warped creatures in his time, but had spotted more of them in the past few hours than in his sixty-two years as a living man.

No one was quite sure what made a Wight. They were corporeal undead like Revenants, but their physical features were horribly warped, making them walking grotesques. Some said that Wights were created by magic, others by raw emotion--neither theory had been ruled out or even decided as mutually exclusive to the other. Each one was unique and unmistakeably bizarre.

One thing Helmsman had noticed in his months as a Revenant was that darkness didn't affect him as much as it had. The occassional light shone in the Abyss--again, magical in nature--but there wasn't nearly enough illumination for him to be seeing as clearly as he had. He ruled that, much like the Strenght of Undeath, it was a side effect of being undead.

"Talon, what is this place?" asked Helmsman.

"This is the King's Court." said Talon, grinning. "This is where the King of the Abyss rules from."

"The Abyss has a King?"

"Oh, yes. He is, in fact, King Henry the Third, ancestor to the current Sardipan king, Henry the Twenty-Sixth."

"Henry the Third...but he would be over a thousand years old! Not even an expertly preserved corpse could last that long."

"You're right, it couldn't. But Henry is a Wight, and they don't follow the normal rules. In fact, follow me, and we might catch a glance of him; he's taking supplications today."

The wheels in Helmsman's mind slid into place. "You had this planned, didn't you? From the moment I walked into your office, you were hellbent on my meeting this King of yours, weren't you?"

"That is a distinct possibility." said Talon. "Now come on. He's over there, by those lights in the distance."

Helmsman surveyed the chamber--it was hundreds of feet across, with a vaulted ceiling covered with the decayed remains of an ancient fresco. Helmsman recognised a familiar symbol at the center of the fresco.

"Wait just a moment. Up on the ceiling, that's the seal of the Sardipan Royal Family, isn't it?"

"That's correct." said Talon, his grin widening.

"This is the original Grand Palais, isn't it? The one that the Diocletian* sent below ground?"

"Excellent guess, Savant. This is all that remains of the Grand Palais, the King being all that remains of the Sardipan Kings. That fool on the throne means nothing anymore."

"Yes, well, politics really isn't my area of expertise, but shouldn't nine centuries of erosion have reduced this place to rubble?"

"The Palais was built with runic magic from the North, making it resistant to any physical force--that's why Diocletian sunk it in the first place, instead of just destroying it. As long as the glyphs are kept intact, they keep the water out. And believe me, those glyphs have been watched constantly since the sun last shone on this place.

"Ah, here we are."

Helmsman looked forward, and saw that the light Talon had mentioned was not for the King, but rather from the King. A sphere of light that was perhaps three feet across maintained a lazy orbit above the King's head. The light sparkled across shining gold armor and decadent clothing. The emperor seemed more or less human except for the small sun above him and that his eyes were enormous, each nearly six inches across--his head distorted accordingly to accomodate them beneath his golden crown.

"Now," whispered Helmsman, "I'm not too up on my history, but was Henry III the one referred to as 'The Sun King?'"

"Most definitely." replied Talon. "Now listen, he seems to be making an announcement."

"My children," said the King, "a great darkness is approaching, I can feel it."

Talon sighed. "Nevermind, Savant. We'd best move on."

"What do you mean?" asked Helmsman, perplexed.

"He does this from time to time, belting out a prophecy so cryptic as to be useless. He'll finish that and then go back to his private chambers."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, it's nothing."



*Imperator Silus Diocletian, first of the true Imperators. Diocletian was formerly an aide to King Henry VI who eventually initiated a coup in 412 SR that deposed the King to a role of figurehead. Over the course of the battle, Diocletian's magewrights loosened the foundations of the Grand Palais, sinking it and most of King Henry VI's loved ones into the bed of the Magginoth, effectively destroying one Ulgotha's biggest landmarks. After Diocletian took power, he had new pavement laid over the Palais, sealing it off as "a relic of a time that has passed and shall never return. Let it remain buried with the decadence it signifies."

Eighth Interlude - Field Promotion

Though it was the second week of March, snow still fell on Geon.

Lieutenant-General Izikiel Brask sat at his desk in Rarc's commandeered palace, working by the light of a candle. He stopped writing when he heard footsteps behind him.

"There's no window on that wall, so I'm quite at a loss as to how you got in." he said, without looking up. "But I'm assuming that, since you managed it, you could have approached without letting me hear you, and so it is by design that I am still alive."

"You Sardipans." said a voice like black velvet, "You've got no flare for the dramatic."

As the intruder stepped around to the front of the desk, Brask saw that he had flare for something, at least. The man's costume was bright red with black highlights, and he had thick dreadlocks hanging down his back.

"Apparently not. Now, why have you come here?" asked Brask. Brask had started as a lieutenant in the field, and had enough brushes with death that he no longer feared it.

"General Brask, you are the second-in-command here in Geon, correct?"

"Yes."

"And you are, in fact, the fourth-highest in rank in all of the Sardipan military, yes?"

"Yes."

"I am here to inform you," the man withdrew a jar from his coat and placed it on the table. "That you are now the third."

With that, the man retreated into the shadows, and was gone.

Brask picked up the jar. It was filled with water, tinged slightly red from the pair of eyes floating in it. Brask calmly stood and went to the door, where he called over the guards outside his office.

"Sergeant, check in on Field Marshall Holland's quarters. And his office. Report to me as soon as you find him."

"Yes, sir. Shall I deliver a message, sir?"

"No. Just find him."

The message that Ishmael Shinnik had sent him couldn't have been any clearer.

Chapter Eight - Surface Level

Social class in Ulgotha was denoted in a literal sense--one's placement along the River Leshrac. Though Ulgotha stood at the intersection between the Leshrac and Magginoth, the banks of the Magginoth were primarily occupied by commerce and government, with very little residential areas to speak of. The Leshrac, however, teemed with life. The upper class neighborhoods were furthest upstream, where the water was fresh in its long descent from the Worldspawn Mountains in the east. Centuries ago, Ulgotha had been divided into the Upper Barrens, Malachi Village, and the Lower Barrens, but by this time a number of small towns had been enveloped by the city's sprawl, forging the city into nine boroughs, most of which were named for their original villages.

The very last borough was the Gray Knell, so named because of what the River Leshrac looked like after passing through the industrial districts upstream. The Gray Knell's most famous neighborhood was Spectre's Barrow.

Savant Viggo Helmsman stepped off the carriage and gave Troy Powell the signal to move along. The stagehand drove away without hesitation--even during the daytime, Spectre's Barrow was nowhere a living man wanted to be. The Savant set his shoulders and strolled down Crypt Street to the main office of the Sardipan Alliance of Extended Humanity.

The secretary behind the main desk would have been attractive if not for the line of heavy stitches running the left side of her face. In his line of work, Helmsman was injured frequently, but had found discovered that his biomancers could heal dead flesh just as accurately as living, albeit a bit more slowly. The Savant decided to keep his native curiousity at bay and not ask about the stitches.

"Can I help you?" asked the ghoulish secretary.

"Yes, I'm Savant Helmsman. I have an appointment with Mister Talon."

"I'll go and get him for you, Savant." The secretary went through a door behind her.

Helmsman took stock of the office. It was nice enough, not even the slightest bit reminiscent of a tomb. He noticed that the large front window had a heavy leather curtain tied up above it--he'd heard that some Wights were photosensitive. The other strange thing was that there were no lamps in the place--instead, magical lights were embedded in the ceiling. Using magic when there was a mundane alternative was a very un-Sardipan thing to do.

"Savant, please come in." said a male voice. Helmsman looked up to see Talon beckoning him into his office.

After Helmsman had been seated, Talon asked the Savant what his purpose was today.

"Ever since I became a Revenant, I've been doing research on the undead in general." said Helmsman. "By my own assessment, I'm a Taxim. The thing is, I personally killed the man who took my life, and the man who ordered him to do it, yet here I stand."

Talon steepled his fingers. "Savant, I'm well acquainted with Taxims, and frankly, you don't fit the description. While it's true that you came back to life after being murdered, you lack many of the other characteristics of a Taxim. First, Taxims must return to their graves during the day. Your presence hear illustrates that you are not bound by such a stricture. Next, you show the capacity for rational thought. Taxims think only of revenge--it is the purpose of their resistance. Last, you have, as you noted, obtained your vengeance, and it has not altered your state.

"It would seem that a fate has befallen you that plagues many of us. We know that we have died, we know that we have returned, but we do not know why."

"I came here for answers, not mysticism. Where do I find out what's going to happen to me?"

Talon answered without hesitation. "I would suggest the Abyss."

"The Abyss? It's full of horrors of freaks!" said Helmsman. "There's no way I'm going into that death trap."

"I really think you should. Most of the denizens are completely amiable towards other undead, and even if you can't find the answers you're looking for, you'll certainly learn a lot about what it means to be a Revenant."

"That's not what I'm looking for."

"It's the best option I can give you. In fact, I'll accompany you, if you like; my agenda is clear for the rest of the day. As you can imagine, we don't get too much traffic through here."

Helmsman turned the idea over in his mind.

"Dammit, what choice do I have?"