Down we go. Simon thought.

He descended the levels of Hemmer until emerging in its enormous throne room. It was pitch black. The ceiling rose so high that he felt like treading in an abyss. A dark red carpet rolled up to a vacant throne. He crossed the room to escape it and found himself in even more halls.

Eventually, he stumbled into it. The door. Nobody had told him about it, but he could sense its purpose. He sensed the suffering beyond it. This door was far more rusted and fortified than anything else here. Simon doubted his senses. Maybe he was tired. It had its own spiritual signature. Bleak, negative energy radiated from it.

You’d think they’d make it less obvious.

He pressed his ear up against it and heard the ravenous mass noise of an animalistic horde. His eyes sharpened. Those… aren’t human.

There was no telling what awaited. He heard barking, chirping, shrieking, horses dying, and apes losing their shit. It was like someone set a barn on fire. With a tremble to his hand, Simon slid out each brace lock, sliding bar, and wooden plank securing the door shut.

Simon opened the door with an unbearable creak. The immediate stench of shit and death petrified him. He gagged, holding back vomit. His missions took him to the worst prisons, torture chambers, and cesspits in Ailmor. He’d gotten used to enduring this kind of miasma. Even so, nothing compared to this death under Hemmer. This was evil on another scale.

He went down the steps, heart racing, and checked his hands repeatedly to reconfirm his invisibility. This was his mission. His responsibility. Sasha’s life and the group’s preparation hinged on him. The more Simon risked now to know, the less unknown later.

He entered a wide chamber with tiled floors. The rampaging, wild sounds from before grew louder and more frantic. Now close, the violent rattling and shaking of metal cages became clear.

Three paths. Three steel, blood-stained doors. A single weak, flickering light hung from above. It buzzed. Surgical and mundane tools junked up the tables and floors. They hung from the walls too.

Blood sept from those walls. They inflated and shrunk ever-so-slightly like lungs. This place had a heartbeat. It breathed. With each breath, a gust of air flowed throughout the underworks. Simon felt drumming beneath his feet along with pulsing ki. It was all so absurd and otherworldly that he couldn’t accept it as reality.

Am I losing my mind? This place feels alive.

His cloak quivered.

The fresh corpse of an acolyte in a white cloak lay on an out-of-place dining room table. His chunks of vacant flesh and destroyed throat suggested mauling. So did his missing fingers and mangled forearms. Simon noted these details and concluded that the sounds on the other side of the nearest door were the cause.

He entered the room. What he found was an endlessly stretching, tall chamber filled with cages. Indescribable beasts were stuffed into each. Hundreds of them rattled rusting bars. Hundreds of failures. They ranged from infant-sized to as big as large animals. Some looked more insectoid, others mammalian, reptilian, or marine. Only one thing connected them: an aspect of humanity long lost.

For some, it was their eyes or ears. Others still walked on two legs or rambled in something like Ailmor’s common languages. No such creatures existed in this world. Not even the weirdest of the mythical and supernatural in the wilds compared. These were manmade tragedies corrupted by powers beyond. If they escape into nature, who knew the consequences?

Simon was overwhelmed by bleakness and a soreness in his throat. He mourned the people they once were.

Are… these homunculi too? Created by The Apparatus?

Simon backpedaled through the door to avoid looking any longer. He went in a different direction that took him through mazelike halls. One was lined with metal solitary confinement doors with people imprisoned on the other side. They reached their dry fingers through the tiny viewing slits. Raspy voices begged for water as a maddened man sang nonstop.

A pair of white-cloaked acolytes under the command of the clown, Mercutio, rolled a cart with a pot and bowls along. One complained with a voice lacking life, “It gets more disgusting down here every day. Would it kill them to hire someone to clean up a little? This miasma is going to give us a disease.”

“They tried in the past, but it returned the next day. This isn’t the kind of filth you can clean up. Endure it. The money’s good.”

“It’s like a nightmare. How did my life turn out like this? When will this be over? We’ll never be able to leave, will we?”

“Beats me. Shut up. You rookies are always up in your heads. The sooner you stop thinking, the easier it’ll be down here for you.”

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Simon stuck tight to the walls to avoid their path. He went on until entering a huge room with an arching ceiling. It was almost like a church. His mouth dropped agape as he stared at The Apparatus in a daze. It was half machine and half flesh. It fused into the walls, its gears and pipes intertwining with muscle tissue and veins.

This was the source of the drumming and breathing. The Apparatus was alive. Two dozen acolytes tended to it and its hanging sacrifices. They fed it more and more, and it grew more and more. The people dangling from the chains no longer made sounds or expressions. They’d given up on living.

One acolyte got too close to The Apparatus. A slimy arm dangling from the machine reached out with unexpected speed, grabbed him by the face, and melded into him. The other acolytes tried to save him, but it was too late. He’d already grown scales and wings. He frothed saliva and barked at them.

This new monster lunged at the closest guy trying to help. It ripped his throat out. The rest of the group executed it with a spear through the chest before it could get to them. They dragged it and its victim off to be disposed of until it seized alive. It ripped the ears from another acolyte before being put down for good.

Mercutio called from nearby, “You missed its core, fools. Be more diligent.”

His cloaked grunts obliged as they limped away, beaten up. They complained and muttered obscenities under their breaths.

Simon hurried to the shadows when new voices came into earshot. Ashley pushed King Andre in. They stopped halfway across the room, overcome by dread and disgust.

She uttered, “Oh… My…”

The King’s health had plummeted. He'd become lethargic and forgetful ever since the third stroke. His natural end was near. How long would it be now? Days? Weeks? More than anything else, he needed this experiment to work out for him. He needed power. He needed to live. If he failed, each death and sacrifice that led up to this point would have been for nothing.

Andre struggled to speak. “What in Yellen have you done, Mercutio? What is this?”

Mercutio stood next to The Apparatus, his ear against its flesh. “Progress, Your Highness. I’ve made progress far beyond our predecessors.”

King Andre could not stand. He only possessed the strength to talk up to the clown with a curled-up face. “No! You’ve surely gone astray at some point! Those before us had much purer results! Their homunculi were beautiful!”

Mercutio waved his hand to the horror before them. “Is this not beauty? It’s speaking to me from beyond, King. I understand The Apparatus more than any of them ever hoped to. I know the truth. I know that you relate to such a pursuit.”

This riled up King Andre. A similar madness glinted in his eyes. “Then what is the truth!?”

The clown caressed the machine’s flesh. It purred. The ground underneath them vibrated. “The Apparatus is a gate. A means to commune with those of power in Yellen. It has connected us to a being of almighty power at a deep level where no light reaches. Our sacrifices have been deepening our relationship with it. We've unknowingly signed a contract in blood.”

“A... contract? What would such a being even want from us?”

Mercutio looked contemplative. “I do not know yet. We must go further to find out. It’s been whispering about ultimate boons beyond our imagination.”

Andre’s wavering focus was drawn in. Unblinking with bloodshot eyes, he asked, “A healthy body wouldn’t be too much to ask for, right? One to save me from my death?”

Mercutio showed a greedy, wry grin. “Dream higher, Your Highness. You could become the god of a new world.”

The book machina, Soothsayer, rested on the king’s lap. With a nervous voice, it warned, “The beings sealed within Yellen’s depths are there for a reason. They cannot be trusted. I’m confident what lies on the other side of The Apparatus isn’t a god. It’s a devil.”

Ashley looked unsure. She sided with Soothsayer. “Your Highness, you’ve always been careful to place your trust… sometimes to a fault.” She shook her head with palpable anxiety. “But it wouldn’t be like you to accept something… so uncertain. Are you that desperate?”

Andre was dead honest. “I am, and I have no other choices. Every egg of mine was put into this basket. It's floated off. Where will it take me? I don’t know, but I must move forward. I must conquer my fate.” He faced Mercutio and asked, “Say, does this being from The Abyss have a name?”

Mercutio nodded. Two flies crawled across his gold-painted forehead. “Black Sabbath.”

That name silenced the room. It got quiet. They exchanged cold glares.

Simon took a step back, rattled by shivers. I’ve heard that name before. Where?

He’d seen enough. The others had to know. Simon snuck from the chamber, careful to remain quiet and not splash blood. While ascending steps back to Castle Hemmer’s halls, it hit him. Fireside folk stories.

A fellow owl told them while they traveled across the continent to fulfill contracts. That man was long executed, but sometimes Simon thought about his tales. They still made his heart accelerate in the dark. Black Sabbath was a fabled smiling figure in black. It stole infants and livestock. People claimed to witness its distant shadow at the scenes of murders, arsons, and miscarriages.

That devil made me do it. became a common excuse among those convicted of violent crimes. When questioned further, they all gave the same two words and nothing more. Black Sabbath. Such a thing was never believed though. It was labeled widespread superstition.

But if Black Sabbath was real and sealed in Yellen, how did people witness it in Ailmor? Did its influence grow powerful enough to reach beyond worlds? It may have been using The Apparatus to accumulate power. There were too many implications.

Frantic thoughts jumbled up Simon’s mind. He made his way to the nearest exit until feeling eyes on the back of his head. He halted, staring back at a nearby window rigidly. The hairs on his forearms straightened. Noticed? While invisible?

A black, humanoid figure obscured by darkness phased through the window. Its face came first, and then its jagged claws. This thing plummeted to the carpet with a low growl and rose. Simon assumed the worst. Black Sabbath echoed in his head.

The figure stepped into candlelight and Simon’s eyes widened in bewilderment. The truth may have been even worse. This castle was about to be flipped on its head. Someone gazed at him through a burnt and desecrated owl’s mask. They had an exoskeleton armor of vascular iron; Devil’s metal.

Simon took some steps back, holding his breath as its posture straightened with horrible twitching and cracks of bone. The owl’s mask split and dissolved into the armor to reveal a crooked nose and face riddled with burn and laceration scars.

The invader spoke with a voice lacking color. “Why fear? Owl’s blood binds our souls.”

Simon dispelled his invisibility, resting his hand on his knife. His power was useless against someone who knew him so well. He asked, “Jericho? I thought you were dead.”

“With this curse? You amuse me.”