“No! I mean… I…” Tuk stammered.

  “Because that’s… Hilarious!” and the man boomed with a throaty, wheezy laughter.

  “Fuck’s sake, Jarl…” Tuk breathed. “My heart nearly stopped, man!”

  Around them, Nar heard the sound of spreading laughter, and when he searched for its origin, he found people of several different races, who all displayed the same strange characteristics as the morsvar in front of him.

  “You thought you’d get a laugh out of your friends,” Jarl said, wheezing. “But I flipped the script on yah!”

  “Yeah… Yeah… Whatever,” Tuk said, his cheeks darkening as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Just stop laughing and introduce yourself!”

  “Alright, alright!” Jarl said, and turned to the other three stupefied apprentices. “Name’s Jarl. Welcome to the gun decks, home of the Undeadz!”

  Nar stared at him, still too stunned to speak. And the man had placed such a heavy Z at the end of the word undeads, that he was pretty sure he had actually, and indeed, said undeadz.

  “Home of the what?” Mul asked, ever the bluntness amongst them.

  “The Undeadz!” the man repeated, grinning. “Us! The undead!”

  And having said that, he pointed at himself and in general at the crew members busy around them.

  “Yoh!”

  “Wassup!”

  “Welcome to the best deck on the ship!”

  Nar nodded politely at everyone around him.

  Now what in the Pile is an undead? He thought. He knew what a dead person was. And a living one, so what in the Pile was an undead?

  “Follow me!” Jarl said, beckoning them. “I’ll explain it all! Just watch out where you step!”

  The four of them followed after the undead morsvar, and Nar finally took in their surroundings. They were in a corridor of some kind, and while on their left side the wall curved gently inwards, on the other side, the wall looked straight as it usually did.

  They had to be careful not to step over agglomerates of yellow and red wires, all tightly bound and wound up in neat thick bundles that ran from massive sockets on the right-hand wall, across the corridor, and down some kind of ladders on the sloping wall.

  The right wall was also filled with a confusion of several objects besides the big sockets, and these ranged from shelves, to a blackboard with several white hurried sentences, diagrams, numbers and tables. There were also ladders leading up into what looked like alcoves of some kind, and Nar was sure he could hear the sound of snoring coming from up there, alongside the sound of laughter, music, and several other blaring and exploding sounds.

  The whole place was a lot darker than the corridors of the Scimitar usually were, and that was despite the presence of many flashing lights and screens in a kaleidoscope of color that looked like utter chaos to Nar’s untrained eyes.

  “We bunk up here,” Jarl said, noticing Nar staring. “We like it dark and RGBy. You know, gamer style! The others don’t have our sense of fashion, you know? So, the gun decks are also our living quarters.”

  Nar nodded slowly. He had no idea what the man had just said, other than that the Undeadz lived there, in the so-called gun decks.

  “Anywayz, let’s start from scratch, yeah?” the man asked, stopping in front of one of the ladders going down. “First off all, I’m an undead. Together, we are all the Undeadz.”

  “And the Undeadz Rulez!” Tuk said, raising his hands in a strange gesture, his thumbs, index and pinky fingers stretched, while the other two fingers curled downwards.

  “Yeah!” Jarl said, repeating the gesture. “But I’m trying to impart some knowledge here, man!”

  Tuk laughed. “Sorry! Sorry!”

  “Can’t be mad at the Rulez, man, don’t worry!” Jarl said, slapping Tuk’s back loudly and making the ring tosser grimace and cough. “So, we’re undead. That means we’re not alive, but we’re not dead either, you know? We’re kind of in between.”

  “How the fuck does that happen?” Mul asked, openly aghast.

  “You get infected, man,” Jarl said, his tone dropping. “Some monsters out there, they’ve got nasty aether in them, you know. Of death, and rot, and shit like that. You get cursed by them, or bit by some cursed beast, and if you don’t get cleansed up fast enough… Zoom! You die, but you don’t!”

  He scratched absentmindedly at one of his peeling scales, revealing the dozen or so very thin, gooey strings that still kept the scale attached to his arm.

  “At first, you're a freak! You attack anything on sight because you’re just a crazy body! The curse punches your soul out of your body!” the undead explained. “But the priests, the ones that mess around with the death aethers, they bring you back. They grab your soul from the Big Man, and they put you back in your body.”

  “The Big Man?” Nar asked.

  “Your soul?” Jul whispered, her green-blue eyes going wide under her bright green hair, which gained tints of all sorts of colors from the Undeadz light show.

  “The Big Man, or The Gray One, to use the “proper” name, is one of the 24 Radiants,” Jarl told them. “He ferries the souls of the dead to the Final Tribunal, where the Holy Crystal judges the dead, you know?”

  “And then what happens?” Nar whispered, unable to hold back the question.

  The bombastic, careless revelation from professor T’Nash about the Everlasting Bliss and the Abyss, had been all the rage amongst the apprentices for a few days, spreading across even the parties who had not been present in that specific lecture. The demands of their training and the den had forced them to concentrate on more immediate concerns, but for Nar, and most likely everyone else, it had lingered like a half-forgotten splinter just below the skin. Not painful or big enough to warrant doing anything about it, but not exactly fading into forgetfulness either… And considering the nature of their elite training, Nar still wasn’t sure if he should be doing something in preparation for what came after death, should the worse come to pass.

  But Jarl shut his mouth abruptly, looking from one apprentice to the other, taking in their hungry, and even desperate stares, and frowned.

  “Apprentices don’t usually worry about these kinds of things…” he said. “Not so early, anyways.”

  Tuk cleared his throat. “Professor T’Nash said something about the Everlasting Bliss and the Abyss…”

  “Is that the rock one?” Jarl asked him. “I think she’s new this year…”

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  Tuk nodded.

  “I see… She’z one of those, then.”

  “What do you mean?” Mul asked.

  “Yeah, Jarl, what do you mean?” a passing undead asked him.

  “Make sure you explain it proper!” another one shouted, poking her head from an alcove. “This is important stuff!”

  “Ah! Shut up!” Jarl retorted. “Ugh! Why do I have to deal with this?”

  He scratched the back of his neck, his claws dragging loudly against his pale, limp spikes as he considered the quiet, but expectant apprentices before him.

  “Okay, okay! Look, its complicated, alright?” he said. “We don’t actually know what happens when you die. Nobody does!”

  “What?” Nar asked. “But the professor…”

  “That’s just what she believes!” Jarl said, with a dismissing wave. “We believe in the Final Tribunal and the Big Man’z Eternal RGB Rave!”

  “Yeah, baby!” someone shouted from one of the alcoves.

  “Pump it up for eternity! Party, booze and gaming forever!”

  “Quiet!” Jarl snapped. He didn’t seem to be having a great time when suddenly faced with the grave duty of enlightening them about such an existential matter. “Your professor seems to believe in the Eternal Bliss and the Abyssal Damnation, and you guys sort of usually do too, right? Minus the Abyss part, cause you don’t know about it. You have the other thing… What’s that called? The Eternal Dark?”

  “Yes…” Tuk said, nodding slowly. “So, you’re saying people go to different places after they die?”

  “What? No! Of course not! I mean, I don’t know!” he said, growing more exasperated, and the laughter ringing down from the rows of alcoves didn’t help, and more and more undeadz kept poking their heads out to enjoy Jarl’s fumbling.

  “You’re making a mess, Jarl!” one of them shouted.

  Jarl passed a tired hand over his face.

  “Look, kids, we don’t know what happens when we die,” he said, his tone serious but calmer. “It's part of the whole faith thing, you know. You got to believe. You gotta earn what comes after. And the Radiants encourage everyone to believe whatever they want.”

  “Whatever they want?” Mul said. “What the fuck is with that?”

  “I know it sounds weird to you, but it's the Way of the Many Faiths,” Jarl said, and once more did the sign of the Undead Rulez from earlier. “You believe in something and then you find out when you die!”

  “That’s insane…” Nar whispered. “What if you’re wrong?”

  Jarl shrugged. “You find out. Don’t worry too much about it, okay. You’re still too young to worry about this stuff!”

  “But it’s dangerous to be a delver…” Jul pipped in, her tone uncertain. “Isn’t it?”

  “She’s right, Jarl,” someone said.

  Their tone was cautious now, rather than joking, and Nar had a feeling that things had taken a turn into the serious. Though giving the nature of the topic, was that not expected? And where they not expected to want to know and understand what awaited them beyond death, especially with such a dangerous life before them?

  Jarl sighed.

  “Look. Some say that you get what you believe in,” he explained, his tone slow and purposeful. “You are judged by the terms you set for yourself, and whether you remained true to them or not. Your professor T’Nash would be judged very differently than someone who believes in the Great Freedom, like most of the scum in Minus do. But even that, we don’t know. You’ll eventually find something to believe in, and then stick to it. Or not. Maybe you’ll find something you think is better, or, like a lot of ex-Climbers do, you can just stick to the whole Eternal Dark and forgiveness of the BNs. But I think a lot of your kind also really like Helenorea as well…”

  He glanced at the silent crowd that had gathered around them.

  “As for us, the Undeadz, we call the Gray One the Big Man. He’s our Protector, and his spirits of death are the ones we Undeadz bond with. And we all hope to one day join him in the Endless Party…”

  “Praise the Big Man!” another undead said, bumping his fist to his chest.

  “Praise the Big Man!” Jarl shouted, bumping his chest in the same way, a gesture that spread all around them.

  “Did that help?” Jarl asked, wincing. “I know it's an important thing to talk about… I just didn’t want to be the one to talk about it! I’m not smart with words, like your professors.”

  “Not at all, man. Thank you,” Tuk said, his voice raspy. “That was cool. No one’s told us anything.”

  Nar nodded at Tuk’s words.

  “Ah, they should have, and I’ll have a chat with the captain. That wasn't nice, what that professor did. There's supposed to be a lecture about this,” Jarl said, frowning. “Anyways, I need a big drink after that... Any other questions on the topic of life and death? Maybe you want to know the meaning of life too?”

  A few chuckles made the rounds around them, and Nar found himself joining in. It felt like Jarl had told them as much as he could, given the nature of the topic, and maybe it was time for them to give the man a break, and go figure out the rest by themselves. Or make Kur go do it, as he was supposed to have, had he not been drowning in electives.

  In any case, Jarl gave Nar some much needed relief that he didn’t even know that he needed. It was good to know that maybe, just maybe, if he died as a blasphemous BN, that he wasn’t destined to be tortured for eternity by some evil god out on the edges beyond the Labyrinth.

  He sighed and shook his head, happy to change the subject.

  “So… You’re an aethermancer, then?” he asked Jarl instead. “You said you are bonded to a spirit?”

  “Yes, I am!” Jarl said, and the relief in his voice was so unmissable that everyone burst into laughter, and finally, the crowd began to disperse.

  “If the Big Man doesn't think it's your time yet, He’ll keep your soul around until one of his priests can put it back in your body. Course, sometimes they just put you in any body, you know? Can be hard to haul your corpse back to the Nexus, especially if you go down in a dungeon filled with ravenous undead! Uh, the monster kind, not the sapient kind.”

  “Wait, what?” Mul asked. “What about the body’s family?”

  Jarl grimaced. “Yeah, things can get awkward if you run into somebody's wife or something… There's a lot of people in the Nexus, and it almost never happens, but sometimes, somehow, it just actually happens.”

  “And if the Big Man thinks it is your time?” Mul asked. “Then what?”

  “Then off you go… Tribunal.”

  “Wow…” Tuk said. “That’s wild.”

  “And if you’re not cleansed in time, you really can’t, you know…” Nar asked.

  “Nope. Your body is dead, dead. It’s your soul that is not ready to move on yet. So, once you go undead, you can never go back,” he explained. “Only forward, you know.”

  “Tribunal…” Mul muttered.

  “Hmm. Wait, I mean…” Jarl said, getting a little uncomfortable as the conversation skirted the whole afterlife affair again. “There is something…”

  “A Drop of Life?” Tuk asked, wincing.

  “Oh, you heard?”

  “Vaguely…” Tuk said, lowering his voice.

  “What’s that?” Mul asked, his tone similarly lowering.

  “A very, very, very expensive thing,” Jarl said, his eyes staring into the nothing at his feet.

  Tuk reached over discreetly and nudged Mul, but the brawler had already realized that they were treading on something sensitive, and kept his mouth shut. Jarl shook himself, returning back to the present and grinned at the four, quiet kids in front of him.

  “Ah, don’t worry about it! It ain’t bad, you know? Being undead, I mean. We get to live a century or two more! And sure I mizz the food, but aether’s pretty damn tasty, and you’re fucking resistent to it too!”

  Mul blinked at him. “Did you just say that you eat aether?”

  “Yup! All kinds! Eh, except death aether of all things,” he said, shaking his head. “And aether elements related to death. Rot aether I get, but, old aether? Decay? That shit should be right up our alley… But no. We can’t eat the stuff. It's deadly, get it?”

  He burst out laughing and Tuk joined him without skipping a beat.

  That was a joke? Nar wondered, looking between the two of them.

  “Anywayz, there's loads more I can tell you about. The Enclaves… The Frenzy! And that one is not fully true by the way, and it hasn't happened in thousands of years!” Jarl said, suddenly panicking. “Buuuuut… How about we go see the guns instead?”

  “Yeah!” Tuk shouted, bumping his fist into the air. “Let’s do this!”

  Nar shook his head inwardly. Tuk fit right in with the Undeadz of the gun decks, didn’t he?

  “Are you still testing them?” Tuk asked.

  “Agh! You just missed it!” Jarl said. “Engineering shot us down.”

  “Booo!” Tuk said.

  “Right? Fucking tightwads and their fucking aetherbanks…”

  He raised his arms and shook his hands above his head.

  “Nooooo! You’re using too much! There's a schedule for a reason, other people need… Blah, blah, blah!” he said. “You can’t rush a lady like this, man! We were just starting to get somewhere on those swivel calibrations, and now we’re going to have to start from scratch again tomorrow!”

  “I mean, the Old Man said you need to be careful with the aether load across the ship…” Tuk said, hesitatingly.

  “Bah! There won’t be a ship if those guns don’t work!” Jarl said, scowling and Tuk. “And for that, you’re staying up here!”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’ve been down there already,” Jarl said. “We don’t all fit. The lengos can squeeze into the gun with me, and you two are going to need to hug each other to look inside.”

  Nar glanced at Jul, and she gave him a discreet nod.

  “Whatever…” Tuk said. “I’ll just chill with the others. Holler up when you’re done!”

  And having said so, he climbed up to one of the alcoves, eliciting a loud cheer.

  “Tuk! Wazzup man!” someone shouted from inside. “You down in the dumps from all that stuff?”

  “Yooooh!” Tuk replied. “That was wild. I didn’t…”

  This is where he’s learning all of those weird words, Nar realized, shaking his head.

  “Come on down!” Jarl said, already halfway down one of the ladders. “The lengos first. What's your name?”

  “Mul,” the brawler said. “And that’s Jul and Nar.”

  “A’ight! I’ll try to remember, but no promises! You ex-Climbers and your three letter names… Come on, let's see if we can all squeeze in!” Jarl said, continuing downwards.