Sasha and Primus followed Gundyr through Castle Hemmer’s giant halls now eerily empty. The soldiers of the Royal Guard who used to patrol them were occupied elsewhere.

  “Gundyr, right? Is your hand okay?” Primus asked.

  Gundyr just scoffed at him. This made Primus defensive. “You look in pain. I was just asking.”

  With a tremble to his arm up to the shoulder, Gundyr showed them it, making Sasha cringe. Only a stump was left. “It look okay?” He asked them. “I’m a moron. Got caught off guard.”

  Primus shrugged. “At least you can put a little hook there. You know, like the pirates? Or maybe an iron fist that doubles as a cannon.”

  “Stop talking. We’re close. His Highness’s Royal Compound is ahead. That woman of Isaac’s should be too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Life natured ki is rare. The healer is kept close. He lives in this compound under the same protection as our king.”

  Sasha spotted a familiar, green-tinted soul through the walls ahead. “That’s Isaac.”

  Turning the corner confirmed this. Isaac stood outside hyper-fortified double doors. Cautious, he pressed his ear against one as if suspecting danger on the other side. This entrance was unlike no other, constructed of metal like no other. Isaac noticed the group. His on-edge glare softened.

  “Move, coward,” Primus said. He stepped up and placed his palm upon the wood.

  The radiation of a negative energy source reached all their senses from the other side. It was like being surprised by the scent of a rotting corpse left in the sun. Some made space. Some gagged. Primus thought twice.

  Nausea overwhelmed Sasha. No matter how hard she focused, whatever waited beyond these doors couldn’t be seen. It was as if there were a barrier just like when Major failed to read Andre’s soul.

  “This can’t be His Highness’s signature. Something is different,” Gundyr said.

  “We are about to find out. Brace yourselves,” Major said.

  “Here we go,” Primus said. He projected gravitational energy from his palms into the door. Everyone except him stepped back as the sounds of the warping metal got louder and louder. With a wall-shaking, SCREE, the doors blasted open, collapsing inward. A cloud of vision-obscuring dust kicked up.

  They entered the compound, walking over the fallen great doors. They entered an absolute nightmare. The Royal Compound was painted with blood and flesh in its entirety. Sasha’s soul sensing ability was numbed. Everywhere she looked, opaque dark energy festered.

  The men that served in King Andre’s personal guard laid about, disfigured, with body parts organized in mounds. One dozen skulls picked clean were stacked in a perfect pyramid. Arms were connected by interlocking fingers to create a snake. Some were draped all the way up over the chandeliers by their own entrails dozens of feet up in the air, set in rigid poses after their deaths.

  No normal homunculus or monster could’ve ever managed to pull off such work. The violence lacked randomness. It had a morbid, artistic vision. A devil had rampaged through.

  Primus led the group, stunned to silence. “It’s… been a long time since I’ve seen something this bad,” he said.

  Isaac looked around, frantic. “Elise!” he called out.

  Similarly, Gundyr called out for his peers. “Your Highness? Ashley? What happened here?”

  “To hell with your king. Where would they keep Elise?” Isaac asked Gundyr.

  “This way. That’s where.”

  The group went through towering double doors and entered a grand square garden with a dome roof of glass. It had flowers and ferns of all sorts, and of all colors. A path of bile and gore cut through the center, ruining and flattening the flora under its weight.

  They went to the center of the blood trail and searched both directions, first seeing where it went, and then back to where it came from. Gundyr stared at Isaac blankly, holding his tongue as if there was something to say that he didn’t want to have to say. He looked away, falling into deeper thought.

  Then Gundyr put a finger up in the air. He pointed to an open chamber where the path originated from. Its door had been split in half. “Everyone… I fear there is no longer a healer. Whatever was in here, it’s gotten to them.”

  “Like hell it did,” Isaac said. He rushed that way with anxiety palpable in each step. The others followed close behind.

  Upon entering that bedroom chamber, they got awfully quiet. Gundyr had at least been half right. He knelt and picked up the shreds of a maroon cloak. One he recognized. The remnants of the life-natured healer were strewn about everywhere. With enough searching there, eventually, a part of his face was found.

  Gundyr cleared his throat, pale. “It looks like there will be no recovering for me after all. Your woman, though. Elise, was it?”

  “She isn’t here,” Isaac said.

  “We must look harder. Don’t lose hope yet,” Sasha interjected.

  Isaac nodded, his body stiff. “You never lose hope.”

  They practically tore that chamber apart, from the queen-sized bed to the cabinets. Isaac and Primus smacked paintings from the walls, half-expecting to find hidden entrances behind each of them. Sasha walked past a dresser and did a double take. On it, there was a hastily written note stained by drying blood.

  She picked it up, reading aloud, “I was right. Something is wrong with him. His true nature was bound to come out. Everyone is screaming. I stay true to my physician’s oath until the end. I’ve hidden my patient behind the booksh—,” the note stopped.

  Her voice was heard by the room, loud and clear.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Gundyr got on edge. “This was done by the king?”

  “Booksh?” Primus asked.

  “Bookshelf,” Isaac responded. He turned to a massive bookshelf in the far corner of the room. With a growl, he dragged it down onto its face, revealing a hole cut into Castle Hemmer’s walls. Utter darkness lay ahead.

  Isaac motioned to Primus. “Give me a light, Abdul…” They stared at each other quietly. “Primus, I mean.”

  Primus obliged. A bright, purple flame sparked on his finger. He peered in. “It’s super cramped in here so just wait for me. Come save my ass if I start crying.”

  Isaac urged him in, pushing with his boot from behind.

  “I’m going. I’m going,” Primus said.

  They waited and waited. Occasionally, Primus banged his head on something. Metallic thumps and dings rang out. His voice echoed from within, “Hello there, Princess. Wakey wakey. There we go.”

  Isaac’s whole demeanor shifted as if immeasurable weight had fallen from his shoulders. He sighed out of relief. With time and many more metallic dings, Primus stumbled out of the darkness with Elise accompanying him. They had an arm around each other’s shoulders.

  Elise was alert but fatigued and lacking color. She wore a gown that the healer, Casius, changed her into, but she still had her cestus machina Ween with her. Completely healed scars ran up and down her arms and face. She looked like she’d seen hell.

  Before Elise could even say anything, Isaac came forward and embraced her. She lacked the strength to return her own. “I’m sorry, baby. For everything,” he said to her.

  “No, I’m sorry for worrying you. I really am,” she responded with tears welling up.

  “It’s all over now. We’re done here. No more fighting. No more quest. It’ll just be me and you living our lives out in peace from now on.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I do.”

  Sasha tried to hold back her own emotions. This was their moment. Not hers. Although she was sure she’d feel bitter about her mentor leaving, she couldn’t blame them. She turned away, wiping a stray tear away, determined to look stoic.

  When she looked back at them, Primus was crying too. The living sword third-wheeled his way into their hug, wrapping his arms around both. “I’m so happy we’re all together again.”

  Sasha and Gundyr gawked at him.

  “Read the room, you child,” he said.

  Sasha nodded twice, agreeing.

  Isaac raised his voice, helping Elise walk with an arm under her shoulder. “We’re out of here. I’m sorry, guys. I just can’t lose her.” He avoided looking Sasha in the eyes.

  “If you can leave,” Gundyr shot back. “We’re many, many floors above the ground floor, and something is still lurking around in here. Something far more powerful than anything we’ve seen. I knew something seemed off about him, His Highness. Ever since he entered The Apparatus.”

  “We’ll be gone before we can find out.”

  “I’m quite disappointed,” Major said to the surprise of everyone. “World’s Shiver continues, and you intend to leave when its source is so close? If it isn’t destroyed, then the consequences could ripple across this entire realm and beyond.”

  “That sounds like a you problem. I know what’s important to me now.”

  “Fine then. Leave.” Major eyed Sasha, who became cold. “But we won’t. We have a mission.”

  Tension grew between the group members. Isaac and Elise split from them, leaving the chamber. Sasha, Primus, and Gundyr remained. Sasha faced Gundyr. “What will you do now?”

  “I must learn the truth. I’ll stick with you for now.”

  “And you?” she asked Primus.

  “Abdul gave me one mission. To finish what he started.”

  “Alright then. Let’s go.”

  The three left the chamber too, joining the side of Isaac and Elise who’d frozen there in the garden. A glance forward made them understand why. The king, Andre, had arrived. He walked in a daze, with his fanged mouth and forked tongue hanging agape so widely that it struck everyone as morbidly bizarre.

  The giant of a man stopped, mumbling and looking around as if mad and blind. He dragged a mutilated corpse behind him vaguely reminiscent of his maid Ashley, with fists full of black hair. Her only distinguishing features remaining were her nose and maid’s dress. Everything else was beyond repair. Beyond identity.

  King Andre broke from the daze, letting out a prolonged cry of agony, and showing a face akin to a child running from a monster. “Why? Kill me. Please. Kill me,” he said.

  Andre noticed them. He lunged forward, cutting their distance in half with a single flashing step. Everyone flinched as Primus and Gundyr braced for combat. Then the king’s body froze with muscles trembling and straining. It was as if he was trying to restrain himself. His panicked eyes met Sasha’s. “You, girl. It is good that you came. End this nightmare before it is too late. I cannot control it any longer.”

  “Did you know this would happen?” Sasha asked.

  “No. It all started small. Simple moments where I did not feel like myself. I swept the anxiety under the rug because this form felt too good. I didn’t want to go back. That meant death. Then I woke up feasting on the corpse of my beloved. It was too late. I’ve become a vessel for something beyond. I couldn’t bite my tongue if I wanted to and, even then, it would grow back.”

  Gundyr took a step forward, horrified. “You… ate Ashley?”

  “…”

  “Gods…”

  The pieces came together for Sasha. “Is this why you gave up Lovecraft then?”

  “That’s right. I granted Lovecraft to you as a fallback… in case my nerves turned out to be right and there was no one powerful enough to stop me. Sasha… You are my contingency plan.”

  Andre stumbled, reaching out into the air for mercy. Terror across his face, he choked with guttural choking and wheezing noises. Ten jagged, obsidian fingers emerged from his gullet, gripped the edges of his mouth, and began to rip his skull apart from within. He wept through the entire torture until he didn’t, falling silent with extinguished eyes.

  The creature within didn’t stop there. It ripped further and further, all the way down to the waist, like a moth impatient to escape its cocoon. Andre’s empty body and pained face fell to the ground in non-symmetrical halves. New life, or perhaps death, manifested. A jagged being of pure darkness stared Sasha down, smiling ear to ear.

  “Black Sabbath…” Major said.

  Reality flickered before them. In one moment, they stood in Castle Hemmer. In the next, all had been transported to rolling fields of bloodred grass in Yellen, with the realm’s ash grey skies and seven crescent moons looming over them. Isaac was overwhelmed with dread. “This one is far too real. Are we trapped?”

  “This doesn’t appear to be an illusion,” Major said. “Black Sabbath has been reborn into our world through a mortal vessel. His presence is now bending the realms as we know them. Are we in The Overworld or Yellen? I’m not so sure.”

  Black Sabbath strolled up to the top of the hill next to them. It spoke down to them all as if they were ants. When it spoke, nothing but ear-grating enigmatic noise came from its mouth. A gentleman’s voice with a surprising lull to it emerged from within their own minds.

  “I’ve watched all you mortals live beautiful lives for eons from The Deep, enduring terror and torture the entire time. Can you imagine how it feels to wait in darkness alone for that long, with nothing but your mind? Can you imagine how it feels for everyone around you to be insane?”

  Isaac stood in front of Elise, who took a knee from exhaustion. The others huddled together with weapons drawn, ready, as Black Sabbath went on. “You would be envious of the living too. You would be furious about being punished in such a way. Especially… if you were innocent.”

  What?!

  “I-Innocent?” Sasha responded.

  Black Sabbath was delighted. “That’s right. Innocent. I was accused without evidence. The false god in your hand should know. After all, it was my accuser. That day, the wrong person was sentenced.”

  Sasha looked at Major, astounded. “You didn’t, did you?”

  This riled Major up. “Of course not. That monster is evil incarnate. Manipulating your mind is what it does!” it proclaimed with a raw voice.

  “Right, I guess so. I’m sorry for doubting you.”

  Black Sabbath pointed at them. “I hate humans. Every one of you, your predecessors, and your descendants. I shall dismember you. You will watch all mortal life be violated and tortured to death from hooks, beginning with those you love. We shall become equals in suffering.”

  Sasha glared at the thing, covering herself in an armor of blue, wispy ki. “I don’t know what I want more. To kill you or send you back to The Deep for another eternity.”

  Keyed in by Sasha, the rest of the group readied up. Gundyr planted his halberd, looking stressed with a sweaty forehead. Primus amped himself up, causing a blaze of purple flames to flare up. Isaac guarded Elise closely with his daggers drawn.

  Black Sabbath’s smile widened with a forked tongue hanging out. It reached its hand, manifesting a longsword of flesh and brimstone. “Struggle.”