The hallway of Lowya’s Temple provided little space for the two. Appo held his hand out, feeling nothing but smooth limestone. Isbibarra’s torch helped, but only a little.

“I could get him now,” Appo thought. “He’s close. If I could only get in his way-”

Before Appo could move further, Isbibarra clutched his robe and pulled him back, gesturing with more strength than Appo expected. “What is on your mind, healer?”

“What do you mean?” Appo deflected.

“You are nervous. But not like before… Whatever you are trying to do, it will not work.”

“Son of a bitch,” Appo thought.

“Why would I not be nervous?” Appo said, trying to redirect the conversation. “I don’t even know where we are. Why should I believe you even if you told me?”

“I may not tell the entire truth, healer. But I do not lie.” Appo repressed a laugh, allowing Isbibarra to continue. “I received your necklace from this Temple. I uncovered this treasure. And I fled Zabukama like I told you. You will see soon enough.”

“You went through all this effort, all this killing and sneaking and kidnapping. For what? Buried treasure?”

Isbibarra laughed. “I hope when you see it, you will begin to understand.”

Appo ignored him, focusing his attention on the Shadeonite language and murals along the walls. With protection from the elements within the Temple, he could see how pristine they were. Murals full of fantastical creatures and figures with elongated fingers covered the entire walls and ceiling. Bright primary colors assisted the torch in illuminating the hallway. Appo followed them as they passed through another corridor, and then another, descending ever so slightly into the ground.

After a few more twists and turns, the corridor opened into a darkened room. Isbibarra’s torch could do only so much here. Isbibarra approached a stone outcropping that rose a meter out from the entrance. He handed the torch to Appo, keeping his knife firmly at his backside.

“Place it there,” Isbibarra said, gesturing to the outcropping. “It helped Mikal, I believe it will help you as well.” Appo did so, smelling a hint of spirit as he lowered the torch. As he did, the outcropping burst into flames. The flame followed a rectangular pattern, growing outward right and left about four meters until spreading forward, illuminating the entire room.

Under the gentle flame of the outcropping, Appo finally made out the contents of the corridor. Chests full of gemstones and jewels and diamonds filled every space within the room, each glittering as the flame spread past them. Vases and jars crowded the sides of the room. Gold coins littered the floor, as if hastily spilled by generations of looters. How so much treasure could be in one place utterly baffled Appo.

As the flaming outcropping rounded back into a rectangular formation, Appo’s attention fell to the centerpiece of it all: a large sarcophagus, its many lids discarded to the side.

The buried treasure made sense now: they were in a tomb.

Isbibarra nudged Appo, handing him a large sac. “Fill it,” Isbibarra said, his voice now barely a whisper. “Gemstones and diamonds, preferably. Do it fast.”

Appo approached a jar of emeralds and stuffed them into his bag, keeping his eye trained on Isbibarra. Isbibarra crossed the room, handpicking several platinum jewels. It felt wrong to be looting what was obviously a burial site, but Appo’s focus was elsewhere. He searched for another passageway, some way to escape. But if Isbibarra had memorized the entire pathway, could he have known of alternate routes as well?

As Appo maneuvered his way through the crowded treasure, his eyes wandered back to the sarcophagus. The casket in the center of the tomb consisted of three layers, its outer coffin adorned with gold. Appo placed his bag of treasure down as he approached, noticing each layer of the sarcophagus to be progressively more golden. With this much gold, Appo figured the coffin alone could disrupt the entire economy of Ash. And this was only one room!

The thoughts of wealth suddenly fell far from Appo’s mind when he noticed what lay within the innermost layer of the sarcophagus: scratch marks. Thousands of them criss-crossed over each other. Someone had been buried alive and had lived long enough to almost tear through one of the coffin lids.

But the coffin itself was empty.

Appo turned away, focusing back on Isbibarra. Or specifically, how little attention he was paying. Isbibarra wandered along fast, almost frantically.

“Where could it be?” Isbibarra whispered to himself. “It has to be here somewhere…”

At that moment, a scraping noise echoed at the entrance of the tomb. Both Isbibarra and Appo turned their heads. Isbibarra froze immediately at the noise.

It took a moment for Appo to register what exactly he was looking at. After seeing the screamers and the Krazeek, abnormal humanoids were something Appo had become accustomed to. He quickly realized that this was neither of them. A figure stood in the room’s entranceway, tall and emaciated even for a screamer. It had black, leathery skin that surrounded bone and little else. The figure’s face was smoothed over, lacking a nose, eyes, or even a mouth. As it lumbered into the room on stiff limbs, it scraped against the limestone walls with fingers twice the length of its already enlarged hands.

The figure stood so still that Appo wondered briefly whether it had always been there. But then it moved again, shifting its interlocked limbs with an uncanny speed. It placed both hands over the fire, leaving them there. If the flames bothered it, it did not show.

Several things became apparent at the moment; the first was that this being had to have come out of the sarcophagus; second was how the figure’s skin and long appendages reminded Appo of the beings he encountered in the cells of Ash; finally was that Isbibarra knew how to react to the open sarcophagus.

This was a screamer. Possibly even where the plague originated from.

Appo crouched in the center of the room, watching as the thin figure stood over the flames. He observed Isbibarra place down his sac of emeralds and reach for his longbow. The act of pulling back his drawstring created a slight creak, and the thin figure swiveled its head towards him. Before the figure could respond, Isbibarra launched his arrow toward the sarcophagus, sending its flying bird shrieking in the middle of the tomb toward Appo.

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The thin figure scrambled over the fire towards the sarcophagus. Its limbs flailed wildly, locked in some joints and hyper-extended in others. It crawled along like a spider with damaged legs. Appo froze in place only a few meters from the sarcophagus as the creature slashed its claws against the gold plates in a frenzy.

Then the figure stopped. Completely still. Listening.

Appo held his eyes open. The figure’s wide palms covered the edge of the sarcophagus, sticking its pin-like head within. Behind the figure, Appo watched Isbibarra gently trot towards the exit, his way out unimpeded.

“I was wrong,” Appo thought, grimly. “This is why he wanted me here: to distract whatever in Gods’ name this thing is.”

As Isbibarra turned back up the corridor, he slowly turned his head to his side. Not two meters away from the door was Appo’s sac, half filled with emeralds and jewels. He nudged towards it, keeping one ear directed towards the figure. He crouched with trepidation, picking up the sac and holding it out against his body before turning back to the corridor.

When Isbibarra stepped through the doorway, Appo noticed a shimmering green light reflecting through the bottom of Isbibarra’s sack. It was an emerald, clearly visible through a hole in the bottom.

Then two emeralds pushed out, clanging like marbles as they fell to the ground. In the tomb’s silence, the crash was as loud as an elephant’s roar.

The gaunt figure bent its head over its back, twisting around before crawling back over the flames towards Isbibarra. Isbibarra scrambled, immediately dropping his emerald sack and releasing an arrow at the figure. The arrow lodged itself into its shoulder but did little to stop it. Isbibarra screamed as he reached back to pull out another arrow.

Appo turned away, hearing scratching and clawing, not sure if the creature was attacking Isbibarra or scraping its claws against the ground. Appo would not wait to find out, though. He needed to get out of the tomb.

“ To your right! ”

A soft voice echoed within Appo’s head. It sounded foreign as if someone were speaking directly inside of him. Appo turned as the voice suggested and found a small square passageway behind a litany of vases.

Appo slunk his way between the vases, crouching down. The light of the room did little to illuminate everything with clarity, and it was impossible to see down the passageway at all. But then, for a moment, Appo saw it: the faint outline of a young girl in a plain dress. Then he saw long, outstretched hands, their fingers stretching to infinity. Then there was nothing, before nothing gave way to an L-shaped light at the end of the tunnel.

Appo had little time to comprehend it all. Whatever he had just seen was far less horrifying than whatever had come out of the sarcophagus.

Appo pressed into the passageway, becoming enshrouded in darkness. He crouched forward, feeling its top squeeze against his back. He began moving slowly, trying to keep as quiet as possible until he heard a lump behind him. Appo scrambled forward, falling to his knees as the passageway unexpectedly narrowed. A scrambling body was making his way towards him and there was little he could do but keep pressing forward toward the light.

Only a few meters away, Isbibarra tackled Appo from behind. Appo pushed Isbibarra back, coming face-to-face with him. He was missing his headband and his gray hair had become stained in blood, coming from a massive gash that cut deep through Isbibarra’s remaining eye. As Isbibarra fumbled his hands over Appo, Appo noticed his hand was now missing several fingers. Appo felt the gush of warm blood spill over his body as Isbibarra lay limp on top of him.

“You … you … you…” Isbibarra stammered.

Isbibarra reached for Appo’s left arm, his fingerless hand clawing over Appo’s gauntlet. Appo swung his forearm into the wall and the gauntlet’s blade extended, slashing through Isbibarra’s bicep tendon. Isbibarra moaned as his right arm fell to the side, completely unusable. Appo then kicked Isbibarra away and crawled closer to the light.

As Isbibarra reached forward with his still-working hand, Appo saw two decomposed clawed fingers wrapped around his neck. Isbibarra was then dragged back into the darkness, leaving only a thick pool of blood where his body once lay.

Appo sat at the end of the passageway, collecting his breath. Now in complete silence, Appo gingerly turned back to the L-shaped hole, now just a meter away. He crawled up the light, feeling a sandstone block in front of him. At first, he tried pushing it forward, but its was far too heavy for him. Appo lacked the strength to push it away with one hand.

“ Push it aside, stupid! ”

There was that voice again. He hadn’t imagined it. It almost sounded like a young girl.

“Tomi?” Appo asked in his head, desperate to make sense of what was happening to him. The voice responded by blowing a raspberry and laughing.

“ Pull it, pull it, pull iiiit aside! ”

The voice was a girl for sure, but she sounded much younger than Tomi. She had to have been no older than ten. Appo did as the voice commanded, grabbing the block from the edge and pulling it back. Although heavy, the block gave slightly. After a few more heaves and tugs, the block gave away enough space for Appo to climb through. The light was bright, almost too bright. It could not have possibly been morning already. Appo had been in the tomb not even an hour.

Still, Appo climbed through. He looked down at his robe: Isbibarra’s blood had splattered all over it. Appo did not know how Isbibarra could have even reached him if he had lost so much. Without thinking, he wiped his hands down his tunic, trying to wipe off the dust and grime from it, only to smear the blood across his waist.

Then Appo looked up, taking in the outside surroundings. The fog had completely vanished. He could see the tops of the pyramids with ease, appreciating now how massive they were in all their glory. The sun had set, but only just beyond the edge of the pyramid skyline.

“Hiya friend!” It was the girl’s voice again, only this time it had not come from inside Appo’s head.

Two layers of blocks above Appo stood a golden-haired child, smiling from ear to ear. She wore a plain white dress, simple but elegant. Although she wore no footwear, her feet were completely clean. The girl leaned against the pyramid, folding her arms over her chest. It would have been an almost playful sight if Isbibarra had not just been dragged to his doom right in front of him.

“Uh… hi,” was all Appo could stutter. A child lounging off the side of a pyramid made little sense here. He wondered whether the creature had actually gotten to him and he was just imagining everything in his last gasps of life.

The child held her arms out, raising an eyebrow. “Wait, do you not recognize me?” She spoke jubilantly as if struggling to repress laughter at every second.

“I, uh… am I supposed to?”

The child giggled before stepping off her ridge. She fell slowly through the air as if sinking through water before gingerly landing on her toes. She would have been tall for her age, but still barely rose above Appo’s waist. “Huh, weird. Most people I meet seem to remember me. You’re not even crying!”

“I don’t- Who even are you?”

The child dramatically rolled her eyes before skipping to Appo. She raised her hand and placed it on his chest.

“This should help,” the child said as she flicked his pendant. The pendant echoed like a church bell, vibrating through his entire chest out to his arms and legs. In an instant, Appo felt years’ worth of memories roll through his mind.

He saw screamers, dead and alive and turning and autopsied.

He saw lepers, both the ones he assisted the day before and the lepers he ignored back when he was a student in Puvaan.

He recalled every plague he had ever treated overlapped within his eyes, boils and buboes and papules expanding and receding thousands of times.

He saw every surgery he had performed, all of their sutures coming together on the same skin before tightening.

He was on his knees in a dark room, back in Jyväsk, with his hands on an open book. He was alone, performing his consecration. No one else wanted to watch him, not even his closest friends and family.

It was a second that lasted an eternity.

And then Appo was back. Back with this strange girl in Zabukama. But now he had clarity.

“You’re… the Goddess of Pestilence.”

“Nice to meet ya!” Lowya said, giggling.