The church bells were ringing all at once, overlapping and blending together in a chaotic cacophony. This was no gentle call to mass, but the frenzied cry of a city on the brink of death; Chivalton sang its own elegy. To those near the city walls, a separate choir joined the piercing tintinnabulation; the deep rumbling of collapsing stone, the clash of metal on metal, the screams of the wounded and the dying. Chivalton was mortally wounded, and the blood it spilt was its people. The great walls were being torn down, their defenders put to the sword. Barricades were raised in the street, overrun, and built anew further in, each one just as doomed as the last. It wasn’t long before the elegy lessened; one of the churches had fallen, along with the people sheltering inside. 

“We failed.”

“No, we were just too late. Half a year to stop a Glooming already in progress?”

“Still. We tried, and all we could do was to delay the inevitable.”

A man and a woman stood on a blue-shingled roof by the wall, gazing down upon the battle raging in the streets. Footmen with kite shields and chainmail stood shoulder to shoulder, while hastily levied peasant mobs fought and died with rickety polearms and farming tools. These poor souls faced an army of blotched chitin and bruised flesh, of brackish blood and tentacle growths. Some monsters were almost humanoid, their bodies insectile, while others were anything but; the man and the woman saw a creature like a swollen ox, armoured in thick, pock-marked chitin, and another that seemed like the body of a sickly human on four scythed legs, its right arm ending in a clawed hand and its left replaced entirely by lashing, coiling tentacles. The defenders cheered whenever they repulsed a wave of the monsters, but another assault was inevitably about to begin.

“Should we help them?” the man asked. He wore a sharp military uniform of blue and gold under a fluted cuirass, a beret on his head. He was thin, almost gangly, with black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a short beard. A sabre hung from his left hip, a pistol was sheathed on the right.

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“Do whatever you want. This world is already lost to Urrath; just don’t be late when the call comes,” the woman shrugged. She had warmly tanned skin and wild, blonde hair. Her dress was that of a dancer; flowing red silks and revealing cuts, decorated with golden coins and chains and sky-blue gems. She carried no weapons, but seemed just as unafraid as her companion.

“I will not be overly late,” the man shook his head. He drew his weapons and leapt from the roof, landing on top of the barricade below. His arrival was greeted with cheers from the defenders, but they didn’t have long to celebrate before another attack began, heralded by the sharp bark of the man’s pistol.

The woman sighed, and looked out across the city. How much of it had already fallen? A fifth, maybe. She could feel the wards set in the now-ruined city wall weakening, allowing the umbral corruption to seep in. Yes, even if this particular siege was somehow to be won, Chivalton was already lost. Wherever the Abyss reached, corruption and malady was soon to follow.

“We must act sooner,” the woman muttered to herself. “If this world is lost, so be it; next time we must arrive before the Gloom starts to spread.”

As if summoned by her words, another appeared next to her in a flurry of mist.

The newcomer was tall, lithe, clad in an almost organic suit of brass armour and a deep hood with a veil of amber beads.

“The circle is approaching completion. It will not be long now,” they said, their voice androgynous and melodic.

“I know,” the woman replied. “I thought you didn’t want to watch the battle?”

“We did not,” the newcomer agreed, faint distaste colouring their voice. “But we have found our next mission.”

“Oh?” the woman asked, glancing over at the newcomer. These news had perked her up, pulled her from her reverie. “What do we know?”

“A small world, rhomboid, floating in the Astral Sea. Rather thin. The Abyss has only just reached out a tentacle for it.”

“Hah,” the woman said. “So she finally agrees with me.”

A soft chime rang out, unheard by footmen and monsters but not by the watchers. The woman turned to look at the newcomer, but saw nothing but fleeting mists drifting through the air. Down below the man was already starting to pull out, telling the defenders he was needed elsewhere. Crossing her arms, the woman sighed.

“Right. Ever on we go.”