Cable the Blood Mage paced across the slick and stained floor towards his master's chamber. At almost six hundred feet above the streets of London, the old observation floor of the Post Office tower would have once offered a fantastic view of the ancient city to telecommunications enthusiasts and other such anoraks. Now, there was nothing but mist. Nothing except the slow pulse of the maddening red lights being beamed from this beacon of the new world. Twice a minute, every minute, without fail, the lights slowly cycled from near darkness to an almost dazzling ruby.

Cable had grown accustomed to the sickening glare by now. In fact, he had grown used to far worse than the slow roll of a pulsing light. In the three years he had served his master, the old tower had transformed to accommodate physically impossible architecture. Arterial corridors and stairways had appeared where there had been none before. The rooms and offices below had been remodeled into vast chambers or vaulted atriums, the interior design replaced by something more pleasing to his lord's tastes.

Some walls had been replaced with thick slabs of striated musculature. Some internal walls had become thinly stretched skin. In some places, particularly as one neared the foundation, the feet-thick steel beams had become jagged spines of hardened keratin fibers. At one time, Cable would have considered such a metamorphosis a horrific fantasy dreamt up by a most disturbed individual. However, now, as he was coated by a fine mist of gore sprayed from the building's integrated sprinkler system, he considered the Blood Tower of London to be his home.

"What do you want, Fleshcrawler?" asked one of the creatures standing guard at their master's chamber. Its voice was loathsome and ragged.

"Begone, Sprite. I have business which does not concern you."

"Sprite? Stupid Fleshcrawler, did you forget? The name is Vorgu. I am no sprite."

Indeed it was. Through Cable's dabbling in the metaphysics of biomancy, he had come to understand that names were not important to Sprites. To call a Sprite by the classification given to it by the encyclopedic bestiary accessible through the MetaTEC was good enough. This was because a Sprite was driven by the most basic of instincts: hunt, kill, devour.

There were, of course, exceptions to that rule, such as the heralds, but they were too rare to be of any note. Cable's experience, no matter how high a level or seemingly complex a Sprite might be by design, revealed it to be a basic creature with no use for names. As such, Vorgu was not a Sprite exactly. It was hard for Cable to describe what Vorgu was, essentially. In Cable's best approximation, Vorgu and his ilk should be considered fragments of hyperreality. They were part exploration in taxidermy, using whatever happened to be found and brought back to the tower. They were also part of the Charnel God's design, as the Weaver of Carnage had chosen to bless these corpses with essence from the other side. But they were also part something else—an ancient aspect of will that Cable's master had discovered and brought back from his exploration of the city's catacombs. It was through this mongrelization that Vorgu had come to be, standing before Cable with his impossibly gargantuan rat-like face staring down at him.

"Call yourself Vorgu, or whatever name you wish. But to me, you are just Creature Number Seventy-Six. Now move, before I unmake you."

Vorgu stood, unmoving as the red light slowly dimmed. It stared at Cable with its twin orbs of unlight for eyes. The Fleshcrawler felt the charnel instinct of Vorgu's essence claw at the periphery of his consciousness. Frenzy and wrath pressed against the Magus as the base Sprite intelligence surged within the creature. The room cycled to darkness, and Vorgu lunged.

"Piss off," Cable commanded, activating a spell of his own design. Vorgu exploded in a shower of gory chunks, the Sprite within roaring in outrage as it was sent roaring back to the aether.

"Grotty, wretched thing," he grumbled to no one in particular, trusting that the tower’s denizens would understand the consequences of upsetting the Fleshcrawler.

Entering the chamber, Cable took a moment to behold Lothorr, master of the Blood Tower. He bowed before the Charnel Homunculus who sat upon his iron throne.

"What do you want, Blood Mage?" growled Lothorr, his voice an avalanche of carnage waiting to be unleashed.

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Raising his head, Cable could barely meet the blazing gaze of unlight cast forth from Lothorr's simian features.

"I bring you news, master. News of matters most pressing."

"If I cared about your human concerns, I would ask." Lothorr bristled with irritation, sending ripples of agitation across his powerful upper body. Even seated upon a raised Deus, Lothorr towered over Cable. His apelike upper body was nearly as long as Cable was tall. Despite the disproportionately short goat legs, there were several inches of cloven hoof that added to Lothorr's height when standing. Lothorr was unarmored, save for a spread of thick crocodilian scales descending from the nape of his neck and across his broad shoulders. The crocodilian aspect continued with a thick tail of hardened muscle, which Cable doubted he could lift at dead weight. Upon his tiny head sat a crown of horns, a glorious display of jagged antlers that twisted and writhed into a thicket of pain.

"Forgive me, master. I know you are not to be disturbed. However, the Runelord is en route to London."

Lothorr shot across the chamber as a blur, moving too fast for something of his size. He tore free from the tangle of semi-organic cabling and iron plugs embedded into his body. The master of the Blood Tower plucked the Magus off the floor as easily as a child snatching away a toy. Even if Cable had wanted to stop Lothorr, the monster was too quick for him to utter a spell.

Cable was brought close to Lothorr's furious face. The rank smell of uncooked meat emanated from the fanged maw. Despite his desperate attempt to look away, Cable's gaze met his master's, and he balked as waves of fury threatened to consume him.

"Look at what you have done, Magus. Your banal concerns have interrupted my work," Lothorr's voice was a mockery of calm consideration.

Cable yelped in pain as the fist clamped around his throat and clavicle, promising deep delight in crushing the life out of him. "The Runelord seeks to undo your work!" he managed to gasp.

Lothorr’s grip loosened slightly.

"I have communed in secret with him using the power of the internet. He has revealed his plan to me. He seeks to unseat you and take your work for himself."

"And what does a human want with my work? This tower broadcasts my will to my army as they fight in a war against my aetherial cousins for control over the tunnels under this city."

Cable seized the opportunity to regain his master's favor.

"Because he seeks to turn the tower into a weapon against the Carnage Weaver."

At the mention of his patron deity, the Master of the Blood Tower let his pet Magus drop to the floor. "You like?" he growled, though Cable could sense the uncertainty in Lothorr’s voice.

"No, it is true," Cable lied smoothly. "Cypher is smart, but not half as clever as he believes. He is convinced that all us Magus are on the same side, so he divulges all his plans within our encrypted chat server."

The encrypted server had been designed by Preston Hashimoto, months before his disappearance. It had attracted some of the most ardent followers of his work, especially his esoteric writings. It was no surprise that Hashimoto had infused the coding with enough runic script to not only keep the server hidden from sprites within the aether but to cause them intense physical pain to view it in the real world. Cypher planned on leveraging this obfuscation to his advantage.

"I can't deduce how Cypher plans on using the tower to harm the aether, as his specialisms are different from mine. All I know is that he is coming and must be stopped."

The Master of the Blood Tower stood for a moment and scratched behind the root of an antler. Cable thought it was a remarkably simian gesture.

"I cannot recall the army," said Lothorr, his voice tinged with frustration. "They are too busy pressing eastward against Abyssal warbands and holding the Western tunnels against my pitiful Conceited cousins..." His voice trailed off as he became lost in contemplation.

Now was Cable’s moment. He took a deep breath and spoke carefully. "Master, if I may," he said, daring to risk Lothorr's ire. Given permission to continue, he pressed on. "I know their proposed route. If we send a strike force from those garrisoned here, we can time the attack just after Cypher and his men encounter the southern anomaly. I don’t doubt that the Runelord will find a way through the anomaly, but he will be tired and need rest. That would be the perfect time to strike."

Lothorr chuckled, the sound more akin to the tearing of sinew than a laugh. At one time, the noise would have turned Cable’s stomach, but now he had grown accustomed to it.

"You’ve been contemplating this little scheme of yours for a while now, human. I can tell. I suspect you also have a reward in mind for performing well in this task?”

Cable’s excitement bubbled to the surface. In the years he had labored for the master of the Blood Tower, constructing an army from scraps of meat and decaying carcasses, he had never been asked what he wanted in return.

“Indeed, master,” he said, licking his lips in anticipation. “All I request is to be introduced to a Charnal herald and to learn the true name of our patron, the Carnage Weaver.”

Lothorr’s face cracked into a wicked, sinister grin.

“You seek apotheosis? Very well, Cable, the Skinwalker. Eliminate this threat to the Blood Tower, kill your own kind, and I shall summon a herald to judge your worthiness. Now leave me; I have more pressing matters to attend to.”

With that, Cable bowed low, uttered the most plaintive prayers of gratitude, and backed out of his master’s chamber. He left with a sense of purpose, eager to set his plan into motion.