The apartment door slammed with a satisfying crack. Fred smiled to himself and began a bouncy walk toward the elevators.

“What is all that noise?!” The voice belonged to Mr. Jacinto, a grouchy older gnome that lived two doors down from Damien.

“Sorry Mr. J,” Fred said. He lifted a hand to wave and Mr. J’s face contorted with disgust. It was easy to forget that everyone could see him. All of him. He quickly buried his hands under his arms. “It’s nothing Mr. J just spilled some—"

Mr. J grumbled a few curses in Gnomish before closing his door.

“Smooth, Fred. Real smooth,” he muttered to himself as he turned toward the elevators.

He approached and tapped the button for down. While waiting he realized how convenient it was to just be able to fly through the walls. He placed his hand on the elevator door and felt the cold of the metal. He could be inconvenienced by the elevator if it meant he got to be solid again. Alive again. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. He stepped in and hit the button for the lobby. Before the doors could close, he put his arm out in front of himself. Fred smiled as the doors clamped slightly on his arm and then opened back up.

The elevator hit the lobby, and as the doors slid open Fred was immediately greeted by the sight of a dead woman.

“Gods!” Fred exclaimed as he stumbled back into the elevator. The spectral woman giggled to herself. Fred righted himself and moved out of the elevator as the woman floated through the lobby. Fred shook his fist at her, “I told you to move on somewhere else Florence! This place is haunted enough without you!”

“Oh, don’t be so serious Fre’Davish,” Florence responded, “It is all in good fun.” The Elvish woman was a regular in the building. Fred could tell by the long flowing gown she wore that she had passed sometime in the Fourth Era when the style was common. Her neck was cut straight across, blood dribbled out of the wound and had stained the front of her gown.

He looked from the lifeless woman to the concierge sitting stunned behind the desk. Fred cleared his throat and straightened his jacket. “Morning,” he said tipping an imaginary hat at the young human.

He made his way out of the lobby and into the streets of Windcrest. The city was quiet in the early morning. Most of the living would still be asleep. Fred unfortunately had the pleasure of walking through crowds of Wanderers. The country of Fenwrath had an incredibly violent history and its capital, Windcrest, was no exception. Fred pulled his jacket tighter around himself to fight the early Fall chill. It would be another week or two before the first snow came. If he could have predicted that he would end up bound to a necromancer in a northern city, he would have died in something warmer.

Fred dodged a flock of particularly grotesque looking orcs. One of which had a three-pronged claw hook stabbed through her neck. The orcish woman groaned and her head rolled in Fred’s direction.

“Gross. No.” Fred shooed her away and continued winding through the crowd.

The sun was rising by the time Fred made his way down a series of stairs toward an underground club known as The Coffin. The club was located in the religious ward on the southern side of Windcrest. This was one of the oldest parts of the city dating back nearly a thousand years to the end of the Cataclysm in the Third Era. Every religion was represented in some way, even the Dark Ones. The largest of the temples in this ward were dedicated to Celeste and Rune, the Prime Light Deities.

The door at the base of the stairs was crafted from heavy wrought iron and covered in salt. Fred watched as several runes carved into the door flared a vibrant blue green. He stepped closer and banged on the door. The door was hot to the touch and his hand sizzled as he pulled it back. He watched as the salt ate away at the side of his hand. It didn’t hurt too badly, and the skin would come back eventually.

A slide in the door opened and a pair of massive pale grey eyes ringed in the purple that signified Barasc’s influence stared out at him through the gap.

“Security is getting pretty crazy in this place, eh?” Fred said holding up his sizzling hand.

The creature on the other side of the door grunted and Fred heard several latches shifting. As the door opened, he was immediately accosted by the scent of decay. The creature on the other side of the door was a massive ogre. The ogre’s skin looked as though it were sloughing off in sections. Fred could make out several long cuts across the ogre’s chest and back as he walked past. Those wounds would have been fatal, but they no longer leaked blood.

Stretching in front of him was a long hallway that led downward farther underground into darkness. Fred moved down the long tunnel for a few minutes before it leveled out and opened into an extensive subway system. Floating lanterns hovered high overhead near the top of the tunnel system casting an orange, white light over everything. Several of the subway trains had been moved to block the tunnels on either side of the huge cavern. Walkways crisscrossed the tracks all over the place leading farther into the room. A lot of these tunnels exist beneath the city, most of them abandoned over safety concerns with the Void Rock used to propel the trains. Magically launching 61 tons of steel through a series of tunnels turned into a bad idea very quickly. Over time the trains became safer, but the early models were left abandoned. This made it easy for those who did not want to be spotted to move through the city without issue. Or in this case if you had a whole bunch of undead that did not want to face the Fallen One’s verdict.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The Coffin was a place where the living challenged could go share a drink and information. Wandering vampires could rest their heads here during the daylight hours. Wraiths and revenants could relax and discuss who next would face their judgement. The Coffin catered to each and every one of their special appetites. It was located in the center of the subway tunnel with a series of shanty shacks built in a semi-circle. Most of the shacks had open faces with people attempting to sell wears “acquired” from above ground.

Fred made his way to the main bar near the center past a small group of ghosts still faded and ethereal looming in one of the abandoned subway cars. A man hunched at a table nearby had what looked like a delicious cocktail of deep crimson.

“Fred! Wasn’t expectin you anytime soon! I didn’t think your master would take the chains off,” the voice belonged to one of the bartenders, Samiel, leaning against the bar. He worked the day shift. In life he had been a portly dark-skinned human from Sandstone, a city in eastern Fenwrath. Following his death and resurrection he was a portly dark-skinned ghoul. His skin sagged around the face and his black irises were wringed in the vibrant purple. During drinks one lonesome night Fred asked Samiel how he came to be a member of the less-than-living. He had responded with a solemn expression, “Got in some debt with the wrong person and served my time.” Fred had let the matter drop after that.

“Always good to see you, Sam! I didn’t think you could still talk with all that rot in your brain,” Fred smirked.

“Bah!” Sam shifted down behind the bar and pulled out a short black bottle. Inside sloshed a chestnut brown colored liquid that pulsed a light blue. As Samiel uncorked the bottle a heavy mist rose from the opening. He took out a small glass and filled it to the brim with deft precision, then placed it in front of where Fred was standing.

“What the hell is this?” Fred said. He picked up the glass and watched as the mist floated up and over the rim. As it touched his fingers a chill ran down his spine. The mist dissipated before hitting the bar top.

“It’s my own special blend. Go on! Try it!”

Fred threw back the shot in one fluid movement. The burn he felt was immediate as the liquid hit the back of his throat. He began to cough violently.

After about a minute of coughing Fred recovered, “Gods Sam! What the hell is that stuff?”

“Pocketed some essence off a Necro passing through last week. Mixed it with a barrel of 160 proof Seven Brothers whiskey. It’s got some kick, don’t it?!” Sam beamed.

Fred coughed again. Essence? A Necro? There was no way this would be that easy, he thought. “Who was the Necro? Someone we know?”

“Nah can’t say I seen her here before. Pretty little thing though. Light hair. Dark eyes. Lacey dress. You know the type. Fell in love with death or seen a bit too much of it,” Sam replied. He poured another shot of the essence mixed whiskey and slid it over to Fred.

Fred lifted the shot to the floating lights and watched as the essence-mixed whiskey swirled together. A light-haired necromancer traveling around selling essence in the underground. That shouldn’t be too hard to find, Fred thought. Maybe Damien knows her. He tapped the glass on the bar top and held it up to Sam before shooting it back. The liquid landed on his tongue and this time he tried to savor it.

He immediately hacked sending the liquid spraying across the bar. The vampire nearby snapped his head toward Fred its eyes had gone solid black, and its mouth had contorted into a thick maw of blood covered fangs. He gave the vampire an apologetic wave of his hand.

“Maybe it could use a little work,” Sam said as he grabbed a towel from behind the bar.

“Sorry,” Fred rubbed his sleeve across the bar top, wiping away some of the whiskey, “I am actually looking for someone messing with around with Essence. May be involved with a couple of murders that happened tonight.”

“You think this woman might be the one?”

“We don’t know yet, but it would be nice to talk to her. Did she leave a card or something?”

Sam stopped cleaning and narrowed his eyes across the bar to Fred.

“We?” he said, tossing the rag on the bar and grabbing a bottle of Seven Brothers vodka from beneath the bar. He poured another shot for Fred. “Seems like quite the arrangement you got. Last time I checked it was just you down here snoopin for leads. Doin all the work.”

“I know how you feel about it, Sam. I’m not here for a lecture,” Fred said as he picked up the shot and Sam went back to cleaning the bar. Something hit Fred in the back and caused him to stumble into the bar and spill the drink in his hand.

“HEY! Take that shit somewhere else!” Sam yelled. Fred turned around to see three ghosts floating behind him. All three were human. Each looked to be the product of a violent death. The two in the back looked like they could be related. Both wide noses and heavy burns across their faces. Most of their hair and clothes were burned away. Fred could smell smoke in the air. The one that had slammed into his back seemed to be their leader. He was a muscular looking man with blood running down his face and over his right eye from what looked like a heavy split in his skull. He wore thick leathers missing one of the pauldrons. It looked as if it had been torn away in a fight.

“See. I told you Marina. He’s a solid one,” the man glared at Fred and did not hide his hatred. A slow smile crossed his face.

“So strange,” the burned woman, Marina, hissed with a gravelly voice. She reached forward as if to touch Fred and he backed away. Her hand was severely burned.

“I would ask that you not touch me,” Fred replied.

“Oh, this one is serious. Let’s show him. Let’s show him how serious we can be,” the other man said.

“No. No. Slow down you two. You are supposed to savor the fear remember? It would be rude of us not to introduce ourselves before having our fun. Show him what I taught you,” the leader said. The other two swooped up to Fred with blazing speed, each of them grabbing him by an arm and holding him back against the bar.

“I’m Marina.”

“I’m Roland.”

The leader drifted up to eye level with Fred. Wrapping his hand around Fred’s neck he said, “And I am Tereus.”