UP THE STAIRS I raced. I remembered enough to know they weren’t cluttered with debris, that as long as I stepped confidently, and kept my hand on the wall, I wouldn’t stumble. The climb was easier with a torch, but I didn’t let that dig too deeply at me. I suspected, even, that I knew where my torch was. It was a problem for later, though.

At the head of the stairs, I paused with my hand braced on the wall. “Vicar!” I hissed. My voice slithered down the dark corridor and chased into the shadows.

No response.

“Dasoclese!” A little louder this time, a little more hopeful. “It’s me!” But again, no answer came. I took a breath and darted across the hall, trying to recall where the stones lay. I called his name again, and then my foot came down on a sharp, heavy stone. I let out a cry of pain and fell painfully. The silver tear rolled off into the dark.

I scrabbled after it on hands and knees, growling in frustration. The vicar had been so talkative, and now he left me in the silence and the dark? Damn him, I thought. If I’d come back to life, or whatever this was, surely he had too, so why was he playing with me?

My hand closed on something round and firm. I picked it up and held it close to my chest, inspecting it by the guttering wound-light. A skull. Falor, I remember, who had faded into stone. The silver tear had come to a stop beside it, and I snatched it up quickly. The damn thing was too slippery, but I feared to use it. To waste it.

With a heavy sigh, I realized where I was. If Falor’s skull was lying there on the ground… I stood, and ran my fingers against the wall. I reached up into the dark, beyond the glow of my injury, feeling my way blindly for that which I feared to find. And there it was.

He was dead. The vicar was dead. Not reborn like me, a soul yet lingering in decrepit flesh. He was like Falor now. Gone: nothing more than a stone projection jutting from the wall, though grotesquely lifelike. I hung my head, biting back anger and fear.

“I had questions, damn you,” I said to no one.

The silence echoed, and seemed to center on me. I felt it like an accusation. I had done this. I had killed him, but he hadn’t come back. Why?

And I knew, though I couldn’t admit it to myself. Not then. I feared the answer too much. So I cursed him, and left him there in the dark, where his songs would never be heard again.

I made my way down the corridor more carefully this time, retracing steps dimly remembered. I wanted my torch back, if I could find it. And the sword.

On the whole, up seemed better than down. I knew very little, but cold instinct told me up was better than down. Perhaps it would lead to… something. To others, who had that same instinct. To water, perhaps, to slake the awful thirst. But mostly I wanted my torch.

At the foot of the great, throat-like stairs, I paused. I could hear the scraping sound again. I listened carefully. More than anything, it sounded like a sword being dragged back and forth across the stone. Mindlessly. Pointlessly. Those two creatures were up there. But they didn’t know I was down here. Not yet.

They were dangerous. Deadly. And I was unarmed and weak. What might happen if I died again? How many more, before I too faded to lifeless stone?

But I was holding the answer. I looked at the silver tear again. The silvery surface was dull. I was just a shadow, lit by the slim orange light of my wound. Who knew what lay within the sphere? According to the vicar, if I were to crack it open, and drink the fluid inside, I would remember something about myself.

What did I know? My last, fading memories were of dead men littering a nameless beach. Of iron swords scattered in bloody sands. I knew I had been a warrior. A fighter. A killer. That was the person I had to bring back to life, to those fighting skills.

I knelt by the foot of the stair, setting Falon’s skull aside, and held the silver tear up. This was my chance. I drove my thumbs into the surface, which hardened against the sudden pressure, as if it were resisting me. I pushed harder, until a crack began to form along the surface, and suddenly it split in two. White fluid that glowed faintly gushed over my hands. I held them up and let the silver tear drain into my mouth. It was bitter, and so cold my tongue went numb, and my skull began to ache. I’d felt that before, once, on a brutal march north. Melting snow in your mouth for water, freezing your nose and face half to death.

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I remembered. The weight of a hilt in my hand. The balance of the blade against my wrist, and the hacking, visceral feeling of bringing it down into vulnerable flesh. The flash of white eyes as victims fell before me, and hot blood flecked across my face. Terror, anger, betrayal. All of this came back in a rush so intense I gasped and clutched my skull, trying to keep it contained.

Through the confusion and din, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Even as the effects were fading, one of the shamblers came lumbering at me. It hauled its iron sword up, but this time, I knew what to do. I barreled forward, getting under that blade, and driving my elbow deep into its throat, putting all my weight behind the blow. It choked and dropped the sword, staggering backward.

I brought Falon’s skull down on it once, twice, splashing a little light across the stairs. I did not recall seizing the stone skull up, but there it was, evidence of the warrior’s instinct I had awakened.

My hands were shaking slightly. The gnawing hunger, the isolation, was a little less now, though I was nearly shuddering with cold. My muscles felt wrong; weak. As if they had remembered some measure of their former power, and longed now for that lost strength. A meager thread of light lifted from the dead thing, flowing back toward me. That brought a little warmth.

No time to think, though. The next one was coming at me, muttering its string of inanity, thundering down the stairs. Its black sword came across in a sudden slash, as if it were trying to take my head off. I ducked, but it caught me on the back, eliciting a yelp of pain. I stumbled over my own feet, confidence bleeding away.

But I fell on the first creature’s sword. I rolled, and brought it up, right as the shambler fell upon me. Its own momentum brought it crashing down on the tip of my sword, driving up through its ribs. It jerked in my hand as the tip bounced off a backbone.

“Glannis bathed by the river and I watched,” it muttered. The words were blurry, for its lips were drawn back over its teeth in a perpetual, insane grin. Shrunken, shriveled with decay. “I fed her dog power of the elain flower and it got sick and she brought it to me and she paid for the cure with honey flesh.”

“Shut up!” I snarled, and kicked the lunatic aside. He tripped over the other, and staggered down. I flailed with my sword, but missed. I was on my feet before it, though.

“The fox bought the hens!” it shrieked, clawing at me. I danced back, letting instinct guide me. “The hens ate the chicks! The sun died and the seas starved!”

I brought my sword down like an ax, cleaving the skull in two. The raving stopped, and the shambler went limp. As I wrenched the blade free, the last of its light slithered up the blade. I felt the warmth of that energy.

The light of it caught my eye. Something about the arrow wound in my chest had changed. Lines of light now spread above it, almost like an intricately-drawn flower pedal above the wound. A single one, though. Light emanated from within, just as from the wound itself. Had the Silver-Tear done that?

I had no answers but the silence of the dark halls. The dead things lay at my feet, unmoving. The iron sword in my hand was unfamiliar, the crossguard strange and square. But it was something. I wiped it on one of their shirts, and then, with a start, realized they had shirts. Tunics, actually, that fell to the knees.

I stripped the other of its tunic, and pulled it over my head. It fit, though it was threadbare. Little more than a prisoner’s garment, I thought. But it was something. Some symbol of humanity I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing.

Light seeped through the fabric over my left breast, leeching from the wound and the petal. That might give me away, eventually, but it wasn’t a problem yet. And, I thought as I knelt beside the other corpse and stripped the tunic off, it was definitely brighter than it had been. My instincts had been right. I was absorbing something from these creatures when they died. Something that brought warmth and strength, as minor as it was.

The second tunic I turned into a sling. I felt around until I found Falon’s skull, and put that in the sling. That left just the torch.

Before I left, I bowed my head before the two dead men. “This place may have made us brothers in death,” I said, “but I hope you’ve found your way to the quiet darkness beyond.” It was as close to a prayer as I could make it. And it was enough. It had to be. Who else would say a prayer for their souls, here in the bowels of Hell?

My torch was where I’d left it, further up the staircase. It was cold and dark, though. I picked it up with a sigh, wondering how I was going to light it again. I reached to feel for any kind of lingering heat at the head, and to my surprise, an arc of light leaped from my fingers to the torch!

I gasped, feeling the energy flow from me to it. The torch sprang to life—but I felt a little colder. I glanced at the wound in my chest. It seemed duller now. That wasn’t good.

But I had light. And by that light, I could see the top of the stairs. Only ten strides away. Beyond it, a dark opening, yawning like a mouth into some greater space beyond.

I’d need to be more careful. There were rules here, and strangeness I could not anticipate. I cursed myself for being half a damn fool. Perhaps, if I’d listened, the vicar might have warned me of this. But he was gone, and whatever he knew faded to stone with him. I’d have to figure it out on my own, damn it.

So, up. Up was the way to go. Closer to the gods, I thought. Closer to the stars, if I could even see them from this awful, crushing place.

And perhaps, closer a little toward revenge.