“This is Undertown, huh?” Voltara asked as we stood upon a basalt outcropping, looking down at the ocean of colorful, lopsided favelas. “The place we’re planning to fix?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “This is it.”

“Smells pretty, um, bad,” she commented, inhaling with a wince.

“It gets worse,” I sighed, rubbing my blue-tinted hand. “Do you need a mask or…?”

“I’ll manage,” she shook her head.

We descended down the wet, ancient stairwell. Voltara walked by me. She stared at the favelas, colorful lanterns and downtrodden citizens of Undertown with curious eyes.

In about an hour of walking we had arrived at our destination.

I banged on the lopsided, decrepit looking wooden door that was reinforced with uneven, colorful planks.

“Just a moment… just a moment, I’ll be there,” a voice came from the dilapidated house.

The door swung open, revealing a disheveled, skinny, balding man. Brown eyes stared at me with a tired look. In an instant the man’s expression changed.

“Grogs! You came back! Oh, you came back!” Lic wrapped his calloused hands around me, hugging me tightly. The tension in the back of my head that I had been feeling for the past two weeks receded as I hugged him back.

“I was so worried. So very worried! People told me that they saw yous knocked out and taken by some upworlders!” Lic muttered as he continued to embrace me.

“Sorry I took so long to return,” I whispered. “I had… other things that needed to be resolved.”

“Come in, come in!” Lic waved a hand, letting go of me. He finally noticed my companion.

“You are… my daughter’s associate... your excellency?” The old cobbler examined Voltara, noticing the armacus on her hand.

“No need for titles - I am no highborn,” Voltara replied with a small bow. "I am your daughter's maid!"

“M-maid?” Lic blinked. “My daughter has a maid?”

“She’s not just any maid,” I smiled. “She’s my battle-maid!”

“I see,” the cobbler stared at me, looking more confused than ever. “Well… uhm… come in then!”

He opened the door wide for us. I entered the little favela and looked around. The living room wasn’t as messy as before but it was already beginning to return to its prior state that resembled a trash-filled jungle.

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Nothing had changed.

“Dad, are you collecting garbage again?” I asked.

“We's gotta make a living,” Lic rubbed his hands. “Nani can’t walk and…”

“No,” I said with a frown. “This is ridiculous and solves nothing. What you need is a radical change of scenery.”

“Ah, the face-stealing mageling is back,” Nandine commented coldly from the couch surrounded by random debris and trash. “Thought you left us for good.”

I turned to the corpulent woman. She wasn’t looking well - her face had more blue veins than before.

“You aren’t looking good… mom,” I said to her.

“Are you here to insult us, mageling?” Nandine hissed out.

“No,” I shook my head. “I’m here because I was missing you two.”

The woman on the moldy couch made an irritated face at me.

“I lost nearly all of myself to the Folding Seed. Even if I can barely remember you, I still care about you,” I told her.

“Pfff,” Nandine scoffed at my words. “Tell that to someone who believes your lies, upworlder!”

I sighed. “I tried to find... my grandparents, but Illatius is big and there’s no open database that I could...”

“Database?” Nandine’s green eyes squinted at me. “Where would my daughter learn such fancy words?”

“Oh so you think I’m your daughter?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m done talking to you,” Nandine shook her head. “Do whatever it is you came here to do and be gone.”

“No,” I said.

“No?” the ex-adventurer glared at me.

“Undertown, as it is now, is slowly killing you.” I said. "I don’t want you dead. I don’t want to have to worry about you forever.”

“Oh?” Nandine barked a laugh. “Really? Pray tell what is your plan then?”

"I want to take you away from here," I pointed my finger up.

“We can’t just leave Undertown, daughter,” Lic shook his head.

“You two are leaving,” I said. “This isn’t up to a discussion. Either you come willingly or I knock you both out and carry you in my bag. Pick one.”

Lic hiccuped.

“Look, mom’s addicted to topaz,” I said, waving a hand at Nandine. “She’s clearly getting worse. She won’t last long here. She needs the help of a high-level healer. You’re coming too. I want you to see the world above, want you to see what it’s like to not have to dig through garbage every day. I want you to know what it’s like… to be free.”

“How will you take us?” Lic blinked. “Surely you can’t get armaci for both of us?”

“That would be an expensive option,” I pulled Endy out of her leather sheath. “But, I also have a knife that can cut anything. It’s made for breaking magical chains.”

“Y-you can cut my Debitor tattoo out?” Lic gasped.

I nodded.

“That's impossible! She’s a liar! Don’t trust her!” Nandine barked.

“Come here dad, let me break the chain that binds you to Undertown,” I said, offering Lic a hand.

The cobbler stared at me for a minute. Then another. Then he took an unsteady step forward.

“She’s a liar!” Nandine barked. “The Debitor’s tattoo is bound to your soul, you’ll die if you let this mageling tamper with it, you old coot!”

“Trust me, dad,” I whispered, looking into the man’s sorrow-filled, exhausted eyes. “Sempiternity has been listening to your prayers for freedom. She chose me as her Emissary, gave me the power to free everyone in Undertown. You will be the first person from here that I will liberate!”

The cobbler nodded and took another step forward. I stared at his tattoo, observing it in the Astral. It was physical, it was connected to his soul, but it was just a magical construct held together with crystalline ink embedded deep in his skin.

Lic pulled off his stained shirt and stared at me. He believed, maybe not in me, but he definitely believed in the power of Sempiternity with his entire heart. I slowly defined his tattoo as a single, binding concept, ignoring Nandine’s bothersome side-commentary.

I stepped forward and swung Endy against Lic’s chest, catching the edge of his skin, severing through it with the hexagon-textured blade.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The tattoo flickered in my vision, shimmering with a thousand colors, rippled and popped out of existence.

[+35 XP]

“Yesss!” I grinned. Then I frowned.

The experience had come from Lic’s soul. The damned crystal-ink hexagram had integrated, consumed a part of it to sustain itself.

“It’s gone… I don’t feel it anymore! My tattoo is gone, Nani!” Lic declared jubilantly, staring at his cleared chest.

“What?! No… it’s a trick… an illusion!” Nandine howled.

“Nani! I’m free!” Lic spread his hands wide. “I’m really free! We can leave Undertown, get your legs healed!”

“She was right about this,” the blue-tinted, bloated woman wailed, her face covered in a glistening sheen of sweat. “She told me that you would come and try to mess with us! I won’t fall for your tricks!”

“Huh?” I blinked at her.

Grogtilda’s mother reached into her raggedy, stained clothing and pulled out a small, magitek device. The thing glowed, shimmered in my Still-Walker sight.

The woman squeezed a trigger-like switch on the artifact with a resounding click.

“What is…?” I started to speak.

A brilliant magical flare burst forth from what I had too late realized was a magical grenade. My legs gave it under me as a fearsome ripple of power rushed forth from the weapon. I felt my soul tearing asunder as I fell, feeling blinding pain pulsing through my entire body.

I heard Voltara’s yell as she tried to rush towards me to shield me from the awful pulse.

The last thing I saw was Nandine’s horrified expression as her body melted away, her skin and muscles boiling off her bones. Her dying scream imprinted into my mind as I drowned in darkness.

. . .

I opened my eyes with a groan, the view in front of me blurry.

As I blinked and cleared dirt and gunk from my eyes, I saw something that looked like a dim, gloomy, windowless laboratory filled with vials, containers and magitek tools.

“Ah, you are finally awake,” a dry voice resounded from the side. I turned my eyes to where the voice was coming from.

A woman in a white lab coat was there. Silver-orange eyes with gemstone-shaped slits stared at me from behind thick eyeglasses. Her dark brown hair was very short, thin, and somewhat greasy-looking.

She smiled at me, but there was something wrong, off about the smile.

“Wurh?” I tried to speak.

My voice was incredibly weak. I discovered that I could barely make coherent words as if my tongue no longer belonged to me. I could not feel my mouth.

“It would be best if you did not talk,” the woman in the lab coat said. “Your jaw might come off. I might have packed a bit too much power into my device.”

Her accent seemed vaguely... Germanic?

“Whfo ru?” I asked.

“My old name is Doctor Joseph Grimshaw Engel, but zhe locals know me as Baroness Georgia,” the woman replied with the same malicious-looking, lopsided smile. “Back in Nuremberg I worked at the Radium Crystallization Laboratory until an unfortunate incident ended my career. I did not expect to wake up in zis strange, new world… and yet... I am here. Centuries ago, Saint Eunisii pulled me from zhe Still Forest and shoved me into zhe body of a newborn chimera, raised me and taught me many marvelous things, made me her research assistant. In zis regard you and I are undoubtedly similar, yes?”

I nodded wearily.

“You were quite clever in destroying our Master’s domain,” Joseph said. “Quite clever indeed, but alas such cleverness can only take you so far. To put it frankly, from this point on, your freedom has reached its inevitable end.”

“My frensh will findsh me,” I ground out.

“Zhey will not,” the male doctor inhabiting the body of a female Basq Baroness shook his head. “What zhey will find are numerous… pieces of your chimera body tied to magitek explosive devices.”

“You…” I gasped.

“I am Eunisii’s insurance,” the doctor shrugged. “I will make sure zhat whatever foolish plans you and your associates have concocted against our Goddess will not come to fruition.”

“I…” I growled.

“Will do nothing,” Joseph shook his head. “Nothing at all. Your soul waz fractured by my bomb. It no longer supports zhe System. I carved hexagramz into your flesh zhat will make sure zhat you cannot simply leave your current body as a phantom. I divided your chimera body into one hundred lovely, somewhat even pieces."

He lifted what looked like a cube... made from flesh and bones. I gawked in horror at what had remained of Juni's body.

"I understand zhat killing your soul would be a waste of time because of your Inarian artifact, so I shall keep you alive and incapacitated in zis laboratory, for the rest of eternity as my personal… specimen.”

I helplessly stared at the monster wearing a human body that paced back and forth in front of me.

“I have made you into what iz known by zhe idiot locals as a ghoul - a phantom sealed in dead flesh. Zhe lovely chemical concoction in your veins, zhe hexagrams and magitek crystals injected into your organs will keep your flesh from decaying away, but I’m afraid zhat your days as a human are quite over.”

I shuddered as I realized the reason why I could not feel much of my body.

“Our Goddess was very disappointed in your performance,” Joseph said. “She visited me in my dreams and told me to... take care of you. Zhe Inarian gate zhat she and I worked on for centuries was destroyed zhanks to your foolish actions. Zhere is another one in Undertown, but it will take decades to clear zhe human filth infesting it and another century or two to build a Domain around it. I have already begun a search for another wielder for zhe Inarian knife. If I do not find a soul that’s compatible with it, you will come in handy. Until zhen, you shall serve as zhe centerpiece of my lab.”

“N-noo,” I choked out. “Activatish sche gactsh wi…”

I felt that the bottom of my jaw snapped off.

“Whopzie daizy,” the doctor giggled. “I did warn you not to talk. Eh, I’ll fix it later if I feel like listening to your jibber-jabberz. For now, I have things to do… bombs to build, bothersome people to put out of zheir misery.”

I hatefully glared at the doctor as he returned to his vile work. As he worked on building more magitek grenades binding them to my chimera bones, Joseph whistled a tune, a European song I recognized from Earth.

"Alouette, gentille alouette," the doctor whistled. "Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai la tête..."

He, like me, was an ancient shadow, an imprint brought back to life and bound by Eunice into absolute obedience.

I struggled to move, to get free, but it was all in vain. I could only stare at the scene in front of me in abject horror as seconds, minutes and hours went by.

The once-German doctor finished his ghastly work and departed, leaving me alone to my thoughts.

. . .

Time.

Time is a monstrous thing when you cannot move, cannot speak, cannot sleep… cannot die.

I do not know how long it was that I hung on a wall in Joseph’s laboratory, but it felt like decades.

Time crawled by, on and on and on.

Nobody came to rescue me and if I had to make a guess... all of my friends were dead thanks to Eunice’s seven monsters that I had failed to stop.

I struggled in my bindings, but could not break free, could not even feel my body below my neck. I tried to sleep, but could not. I tried to bring the dream of Chernobyl to my mind, tried to speak to my mental companions, but they weren’t there anymore. Whatever Joseph’s bomb had done had catastrophically damaged my soul, ripped all magic away from me.

No matter how many thousands upon thousands of times I tried to reach for the infinite mirrors within me… to activate them, to send myself back, I could not.

For the first few months Joseph occasionally spoke to me about his grisly work, but as time went on he treated me more and more as a simple part of his lab’s background, not even sparing me a momentary glance.

Time grinds at, erases all.

I began to forget the faces of my friends, almost forgot who I was anymore, nearly succumbed to madness from my inability to move, to speak, to act.

Far too often, I closed my eyes, imagining a different future, a different path for myself, weaving distant, happy places with my half-functioning imagination. It was the only thing that kept me sane over the years.

As time went on, my thoughts became slow and foggy. I wondered if this was part of being a ghoul or perhaps the effects of time wearing my undead neurons away.

I had seen nobody else in the Lab, except for the doctor. His visits were rare and became rarer as time went on.

One day he came into the Lab, whistling the ominous song once more.

“Good news, love!” he said, suddenly looking up at me. “Tomorrow we launch an all out-offensive on Novazem!”

I slowly focused my eyes at the thin woman, happy to be acknowledged, but also hating the bastard with my entire, fractured soul.

“Oh, did I forget to tell you?” The doctor rubbed his feminine chin. “I finally developed a bomb zhat bypasses zhe Zirconia-Astral limit which stops nuclear reactions from occurring. It will allow us to turn zhe cities of our enemies into eternally-smouldering craters. Big-bada-boom!"

Joseph clapped his hands, looking nervous and excited at the same time.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Why are we so focused on vaporizing zhe people Novazem?” He guessed what I was thinking. “Because zey are a threat to our Goddess’ eternal reign, just like you and your human associates once were. You, see zhe Novazem Necromages developed crystal engines that feed on Vows. Our beautiful, Andross-spanning Empire is marvelously organized zhanks to zhe Vows. Zhe Novazem nitwits see us as fuel for zheir warships. Zey must be taught a valuable lesson, must be put in zheir place!”

I squinted hatefully at the ancient, abominable ghost.

“Wish me luck,” he said. “When I return, I might finally have time to figure out zhat it is zhat makes the Inarian blade so compatible with your soul!”

The heinous doctor left.

I closed my eyes, daydreaming of Lomb, dreaming of my lost Sunshine Archipelago, dreaming of death, dreaming that my damned infinite mirror would shatter and free me from this unending torment.

A rumbling, echoing boom woke me up from my daydreams. Crystals and glass containers fell from the shelves as dust and bricks rained from the ceiling. A large, black crack spread across the wall with a groan.

I listened in. Nothing else happened. I waited for several hours for someone to come but when nothing else changed, I closed my eyes, returning to my dreams.

Days, weeks, months, years crawled by.

Nobody came to the lab and dust and gross, black mildew slowly grew over everything. The magical power held within the crystal lanterns began to run out, flickering and then completely bathing me in murky darkness.

I closed my eyes, returning to my daydreams of Lomb.

A voice called my name. I knew it… remembered it. It sounded like… Agatha? No, surely it couldn't be… Agatha died long ago, died because I stupidly presumed myself safe.

I opened my eyes and saw a tall figure walking towards me through the gloom, a shimmering gemstone glowing on her chest.

As she came closer to me, I saw her face in much clearer detail. Her cracked, pale skin was rotting, peeling away like old wallpaper revealing black flesh beneath. She was wearing stained, burned rags and her once perfect silver hair was in a state of absolute disarray, unkempt and covered in mud.

“There you are,” Baroness Amadea said as she stepped closer to me, her unnaturally glowing, yellow-silver eyes staring at me. “Took me bloody forever to find you!”