A pack of lemurs stared down at him from the crumbling tile of a rooftop. They were small and fragile and had only peace-hands. Still, they recognized family. They came to the rooftops edge and peered down to call at him in confusion.

He made a call back, the sound for predator mixed with his own name.

Now he was the dangerous thing. The thing that crawled into the night. He felt pity for them, small and fragile things subject to the whims of predators, but also a kind of nostalgia. It had only been days since he was like them but the abrupt remaking of his mind left a divide that felt like years.

They chittered, and scattered away.

“Rude.” His companion declared. Her name was Imani. “Family of yours? Family can be that way.”

He made a squeaking sound, one that signified a tick in your fur.

The city was broad and dangerous. That was what this great cavern full of broken dens was. A city. The goddess’ wisdom seemed to slip into his mind unbidden, so that he would look at something, maybe a thing he had seen many times, and suddenly know its name.

A city. A place that had been full of life.

In the distance was a vast temple shaped like a pyramid cut into terraces, like the steps a giant might take on the way to the sky. The peak was metal and covered by green rust, with hints of silver between the veins of thick, flaking corrosion.

Lines of salt and crudely carved wooden bells went from doorway to doorway, cutting off the edges of the road from the houses, from the alleys between. No wind here to make them speak.

And yet in the distance there were dull-tongued chimes.

Once or twice they came close enough for him to see them. They were dull, dead things. Black shiny material crawled from their skin and left their limbs warped beneath it. When they moved the glass scraped the walls.

They were sad. Intensely sad. The husk of a thing that should have been alive.

“Don’t mind them. The wards should keep them back, and they’re just-” Imani’s stone lips made a frown. “Well there are undead that eat you, and there are undead that have forgotten how to die.”

He watched as the thing scraped its way back into the tunnel. Undead. It was one kind of sorrow to see things die; this seemed worse. Being twisted into something hollow and made to walk on after everything within was gone. He would rather take the bloody, desperate fight, the pain and heat of a losing battle. A hundred times over he would take that without envying the cold undead.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

They passed over bridges with no water, and empty squares made for many people. He pointed at a fallen statue, its face split, and yipped a question. She laughed.

“No, no, that’s not one of my sisters. Just a piece of stone.”

Ahead something shifted. The bells rang, and the twine snapped. Imani’s face went cold and she turned towards the fading ring.

A thing made of many body’s was pushing out of the shadows. It had the prowling shape of a great cat, but it was made of dark glass, and bodies were twisted up inside. Some of them were close enough to the surface for their arms and hands to push free, or their faces to make a shape in the glass that covered them, a mask of shadow that poured into their opens mouth and drowned them.

It made a sound, a hissing, and turned towards them. Its head was a mask like a demon, a long muzzle full of teeth and arched, small eyes in a row along the skull.

“Run.” Imani said, and they ran.

The ruined city flashed by, the grinding smash of the beasts paws chasing them long after they turned and twisted, following the road of bells, the safe passage between empty houses. It had huge strides and surprising speed but they were ahead-

Until a serpent demon made of the same glass, the same twisting, captured bodies, burst through ahead of them. It turned, pale green smoke escaping its mouth.

Imani froze, but the lemur had already cut through the bells. They rang as they fell and she opened her mouth, shut it, and followed him into the dark of the alley.

These streets were not so quiet. There was worse than the sadness of an empty place; there were empty people, bleeding glass from their wounds as they staggered. Collecting into masses as they collided and fused together in bonds of glass.

There were places were entwined limbs covered the earth, the bodies still twitching where they pushed free.

Imani and the lemur vaulted over the dead, taking whichever turns, whichever streets would lead them towards the distant temple. He could see the snake-demon above the rooftops, its head swaying, searching. The cat-demon was a crashing presence behind them, glimpsed for a moment as a flash of reflected light on black skin as it moved between houses.

One last turn. The temple ahead, a huge entrance of arched pillars and carved statues spilling down the street in a wide flight of marble stairs.

Nothing was that easy.

The undead stood in his way. Glass expanded from their eyes in frozen splashes, extending spiny fingers up in crowns and masks. Their mouths were pushed open by twisting spikes.

They stumbled towards him. He chittered to Imani as he stepped forward, the most-used word in the lemur tongue. Run.

“Are you-”

He turned and screeched it again. She paused, and nodded.

She went left, along the side where there were not so many. He went right, into the heart of the horde, drawing them towards him with the warmth of his blood and the pride of his war-call.