It was the face in the crystalline reflection. It had beaten him to his landing spot. A great white eight-legged creature lowered itself on its thread from underneath the Mistmaiden caps. It had crushed a skull in the fog with one of its spiked legs where it shimmered with millions of spiny follicles.

It was battle-scarred beyond the reasonable expectations of even the hardiest natural instincts to survive; weathered by war with scars and broken arrows. Some manner of rusted chain wrapped and bound it tight around the thorax - which had clearly mutated its growth and restricted the range of movement in its legs - even some of its eyeballs were slashed like hot-cross buns. It was a gruesome patchwork existence which mired an otherwise pristine camouflage that swept like frosted grass.

It all prickled into hackles, and with a muscular spasm it launched its follicles like darts that twanged against Dimrat's head before he could even blink. It did nothing. For he was but a head.

An arrow shaft stuck out from one of its eyes, that betrayed the minute directional changes that it studied him with. Its head twitched from left to right, then it clacked its mandibles an inch from his nose.

[Curse-Eating Exo-Steel Whitewidow(VI)] lvl: ???

Dimrat spat one of its follicles back into its face. ‘Curse eater? I see’

Dozens of asymmetrical sanguine eyes an inch from his face reflected the head’s quivering psychotic grin.

‘How kind of you’

Dimrat’s eyes surged.

[Cursed Eyes]

The mist behind the head pressure-blasted clear an area that revealed clawed hands that reached high from the clay swamp below - hands that still held firm and resolute to polearmed war banners of undistinguishable regiments and the hafts of broken weapons - but the spider shifted on the spot like a white mirage - a rotten mound behind it received the cursed eye attack and kicked up a fountain of bones while Mushtrees shook above - then it phased back in unharmed.

His grin dipped. He had enough MP for one more shot. It tapped him on the skull with an inquisitive fuzzy appendage. Then a shadow fell upon them.

‘Impressive. But I wasn’t aiming for you’

The oversized cap of a mushtree plummeted into the Whitewidow in a shroud of airborne particles, then Dimrat bolted.

He could not resist a boast ‘Consider yourself fortunate, buffoon! I am in a hurry!’

Mist poured like waterfalls down the tops of mushtrees that loomed overhead, where a large mass of tentacles floated unaware.

[Glutinous Deathstench Tentulip(III)] lvl: 30

It alerted him to something. Attop the mushtree caps, dark shapes matched his pace beside him with an alarming grace. He raised an eyebrow towards them, until the figures lept from on high ahead of him to bar his path, where they waited.

[Soulsoaked Skullily Scout(III)] lvl: 23

'You mutts again?!'

Dimrat snarled and spun one-eighty - he moved at a backward glide towards the Skullies while his eyes darted between the shadows in search of a different pursuer, when he spotted it. The Whitewidow gave chase upside-down underneath the mushtree caps. He spun towards the front again - the Skullilies took a wide low stance, mouths agape and roiled with spirit energy. He banked to his left - he had nowhere else to go - down a narrow path sloped up on either side by bonepiles.

The shadows of Skullilies danced between the mushtrees from over the banks on either side - they gave chase out of sight - when his path had once again been blocked. Skullilies watched him from one side of a fork in the road. Something felt off. He swerved towards the open path with furrowed brows, and the sense that he played into their hands slowed him down.

‘...I am..being lured?’

But there was no time to hesitate. The skittery clacking of the Whitewidow grated his ears. When the floor vanished. Below him was a massive vertical tunnel of leathery bones, and he hovered over the center of it.

‘A trap?!’

Then the Whitewidow parted through the veil of mist and crashed into him.

Dimrat Yelped and bit at it, and together they plummeted. He bashed from the sides a good five or six times before a soft sandy ground caught him amidst a rain of bones. His one eye above the sand rolled around in its socket. Then right before him, a Skullily paw five times as big as the others crushed a skull that looked just like him. His eye traced it to the source.

[Soul-Devouring Skullily Denmaker(VI)] lvl: ???

[Undead][Spawner]

A giant Skullilly flower overflowed with spiritual power. It was a pit of skulls, in which Dimrat disappeared. Skullilies swarmed the Denmaker, and poured in from on high, where the Whitewidow descended on its string. Skullilies ran up and down the walls to lunge at the Whitewidow, but everything that entered its airspace got blasted by silk and pinned to the walls.

‘What...is going on?’

Dimrat gurned.

‘No!’ he thought, ‘how have I not realised until now?!’

The Denmaker’s lustrous bulb opened to reveal an imposing grizzly skull underneath that gushed with ghostly bile, then lit up with a charged blast. The Whitewidow toyed with them almost disinterested.

Not a single thing in the den had spotted him. There were several small head-sized openings in the bonewall from which more Skullilies scrambled into the den.

'An escape?!'

He rolled and bounced along the ground towards the hole and threw himself inside. Another Skullily inside scurried right past him when his grin returned.

‘Of course! I am but a skull! Why would they see me as anything else?!’ He rolled and rolled and rolled while cackling like a maniac at dreadful volumes, then popped out the other side wild-eyed into a tumble down a steep slope of bones.

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He levitated off the ground from the mist rattling his teeth together in amusement.

‘What fools! I--’

Then he swallowed his amusement. Dimrat was a head, lost in a head of heads. He was a tragic existence. Oftentimes he wasn’t sure if it was all just a nightmare that imprisoned him, like a cage of sleep from which he searched for the exit. At the best of times, he could only hope to remain sane long enough to feign a sensible conversation. But right then, right there, perhaps for the first time since he’d awoken, something grounded him in reality.

His eyes climbed solemn and left his jaw behind.

Before him, shrouded in incorruptible loneliness - a noble solitude - a crooked and sunken statue protruded from a dense knee-high mist. It was a decloaked maiden with a handbell clasped to her chest, and a thunderous gaze that captured him spellbound.

‘My.. lady?’

He couldn’t avert his eyes. The judgment of the statue held him in contempt yet he knew not why. Feelings of sentiment bubbled to the surface to confuse him further. Guilt sickened him. His own guilt.

‘No, wait...who?’

He turned inwards, lost in thought.

‘Why do you judge me? Who are you?!’

‘No, who...am I?’

‘Please, I… I am innocent! I think. I hope. Am I innocent?’

Then a femur echoed its way down the slope then clanked into view. His eyes fell on it with widening awe. He turned towards the hill of bones, then scaled its great height with his eyes.

‘It’s a...burial ground?’ Then he caught his breath. ‘A Fallen burial ground’

The Misty mushtrees high above the cliff poured down the wall with an obscuring mist. He had fallen quite far.

The head spun towards the statue and stared with deepening intensity. It was a turning point in his saga that may not have passed if he hadn’t merely looked up right there and then. A crack forked across the dam in his mind. A memory. As vague as it was. The statue watched over the dead. It watched over the Fallen.

‘A lost monarch?!’

He had not dreamt to fall upon light here in this place. A monarch. a revivable being feverish to the cause. A beacon of hope to rally on, and one necessary to claim territory and grow in numbers.

‘System! Who is the monarch before me!’

[System]: [Lost Edinnor]

[Unholy] monarch undiscovered. Name unavailable

Attempted summons: 2,171

Times summoned: 0

Monarch rating: -B

‘...Unholy?’

The head snapped ‘give me her name you insufferable turnkey! Her name!’

[system]: Fallen monarch undiscovered. Name unavailable

‘How must I summon her?!’

[System]: undiscovered monarch

Summoning procedure:

The silence of the bells

The ferrymaiden’s hymn

Bones to embers

Flesh to kin

‘That...makes no sense whatsoever! Do not wax poetic! I must know! Please! I implore you!’

The system did not respond.

He bowed in crippling reverence. ‘My lady’ then shook his head. ‘Even more than forgetting myself, I fear I have forgotten you! If I had arms I would embrace you. Yet I don’t even know your name! Is this my punishment?!’ He looked up at her again, then floated to the statue's face. And there he remained, lost in her presence.

The statue was the focal piece of a grim portrait. Beyond the canvas lay a battle-scarred and arrow-peppered dungeon ruin - under the gloom of Glowfly swarms - littered with ancient fallen knights.

Down the long open corridor, unbeknownst to Dimrat, there in the shadows, a large, oval stone face had emerged from the wall. It watched him mourn. It watched him in silence.

He moved up to perch on top of the dungeon rubble and floated breathless.

‘How is this possible…’

Perhaps it was once a place of worship. Maybe a temple. The ruins had been preserved and elevated above another world that should have existed, but it did not. He was on a gigantic platform. It was an ageless calcified flat mushroom cap - broad and daunting enough to be mistaken as sturdy earth, complete with its very own little ecosystem - an unknown distance down the side of a cavernous rock face that he’d just escaped from. All would be forgiven for believing it was the end of the world. For nothing should exist there. Not anymore.

The same flatcaps that sprouted out and spread off for as far as the eye could see, off into the great unknown distance around the faraway canyon walls - all of varying heights and widths. It was a vast open crevasse into which everything flowed into nothing. Like a gargantuan chunk of earth ripped out and willed away. He first imagined it as another realm edge. But the system did not recognise it. Then he noticed traces of things that once were, like his lady's statue, and other strange stonework caught by the flatcapps.

'Unholy...' the word didn't fit right into his head. It felt cold.

It was a mysterious missing world suspended lofty above an abyss, and also, underneath a world above. He looked up, and it was as if the world had turned upside down. The roofspace teemed with activity. White pillars of water shimmered from on high through clusters of long-stemmed mushrooms that sprouted from the ceiling way up above, where creatures dwelled of all shapes and sizes.

Immense jelly-like creatures - as big as the flatcap land masses - suspended like balloons in their own gaseous innards, that cast rich lustrous light and shade over the outerwalls.

‘This is no mere bugs nest’

Then the noise of battle simmered down. He spun to face the Skullily den. The Whitewidow and the Denmaker were both tier six. He stood no chance against either of them. Whatever seemingly implausible deus ex machina had brought him this far could surely carry him no further. Whichever fiend won would come for him next.

He took one last look at the back of the statue, then wasted no more time on idle distractions. He would return. He was sure of that. He had found something hidden at the bottom of the world that begged a question in his mind. One that could herald change. And it all came down to a simple riddle.

After a quiet introspective prowl around the outermost region - over and under the mushroom dales - he finally shimmied his way through the funnel-web opening of a cave-in, then squeezed out the other side muddy. It was a narrow spiral starcase - that perhaps once connected to that massive empty space - utterly entangled with roots and brittle cobwebs. It led up. He bobbed and weaved his way through it all for quite some time - up and up he spiraled - until he came across a thin beam of light. At the top of the steps was another cave-in. He peaked the hole but saw nothing. Something cast light from the other side.

The earth was loose, and it didn't take long to widen the hole. He pushed his way through and out the other side...

[You’ve reached your destination]

Dimrat lingered in the air, a bridal corpse with a gown of cobwebs that traipsed along the floor behind him. Perhaps the better part of him still kneeled back before the statue. For now his spirit lingered somewhere much deeper. The dim glow in his skull slunk to examine his whereabouts.

It was another den of sorts. Small but cozy. Water spattered in through the roof and trickled through the skeletal remains of an armoured warrior propped against the wall and overgrown with fungal caps. Its allegiance and story left forever untold. The bones were impressive. Intimidating even. Thick and spiked like a tyrant.

[Witherwort]: A necrotic fungus that grows on [Warped Bone], [Diseased Bone], [Arthritic Bone]

Quality: exquisite

Quantity: x36

[Arthritic Bone]: A particularly miserable existence before the end.

Quality: average

Quantity: x12

‘Now what, system? Shall I inhale them?’

[Ingredients added to recipecraft list]

The Witherwort twinkled away along with several gnarled bones, then the skeleton crumpled into itself.

[Recipecraft]: combine [Witherwort] with [Arthritic Bone Meal]?

‘Yes. To everything. Stop pestering me and hurry up’

[Recipecraft]:

1x [Arthritic Bone] became 3x [Arthritic Bone Meal]

Combined 1x [Witherwort] with 1x [Arthritic Bone Meal]

Crafted [Bone Tea] x3

Used x1 [Bone Tea]

Dimrat smirked up one side of his cheek. The tea materialised on top of his head. He clacked away pleased with himself while it wobbled and jangled in a crude teacup then spilled down his head and saturated him.

[+97mp gained]

His eyes surged red again.

[Tutorial challenge complete]: craft [Bone Tea] 9/10

‘That’s nearly all of them. Far more hassle than I anticipated. Now for the final challenge…’

[Tutorial challenge]: Hunt monsters marked on the minimap.

‘So close to tier one! Finally, a foot on the ladder! My ascension awaits!’

Then blasphemous voices and laughter pricked his ear like a bee sting.

‘...no’

A shadow cast against the wall from behind that compelled him to turn...

‘Even here, at the bottom of the world’

...and there from a funnel-web hole opposite the side he entered from, came the flicker of torchlight.

‘In this sacred place, my lady’s sanctity, where my brethren sleep eternal’

The head’s face wrinkled insane with evil.

‘Squishbags?!’

He lodged an eye into the hole like a crazed inmate slavering for scraps through iron bars.

Men-things flung sacks from bulging shoulders while fairer ones - draped in books and tinkling with potion bottles - sauntered behind under the glow of bright staffs. He could not have hoped for a better situation. A supply of MP replenishment and an arrow slat to range them from.

‘No, not here’ came a voice. ‘Something off about it’

Another man glistened with sweat and grumbled-over to recollect the packs, then muttered ‘prick’ under his breath.

Then they all moved out of sight to the right.

Dimrat nearly passed out with bloodlust. He bore witness to their crime of trespassing upon hallowed land. Such sin. Now he would be their judge, jury, and with righteous indignation he would be their executioner. They would dare defile a Fallen tomb. Then they would become the dust that covered it.