Thomas stared, as the others crested the hill around him, their group coming to a clumpy stop in a line, clustering up as the sight came into view. The gate of Anchor lay in the distance, and there was what, for the briefest of moments, had seemed to be crowds streaming in and out, a vast pool of … entirely the wrong colors, entirely too few colors. It was mostly tans and reds. Flesh and blood. A vast sea of flesh and blood, with the occasional glint of metal, or dark cloth fluttering in the wind. Chatter died around him, as their party saw.

Then the wind shifted, and the oddly sweet scent, which Thomas had dismissed for the past hour as one of the odd magical smells permeating Anchor, came into focus. Someone threw up behind him. Several someones. He didn't turn to look; he registered the smell, but somewhere in the background of his mind. Instead, he began walking, mechanically, eyes focused on the body at the foot of the hill they now stood on. Naked, bloody.

He stopped only when he stood directly over the … he studied the anatomy, and found his opinion shifting several times. That was a penis, to be certain. But this wasn't a man, because the penis protruded from what should have been a thigh, directly underneath an ear. Where a face should have been, there was only a nose, oddly perfectly formed, and in almost exactly the right place. Otherwise it was a blank expanse of flesh. Dead eyes stared in every direction. A hand protruded where the genitalia should have been. His gaze took in the warped anatomy, and rose again, to the sea of dead.

“What the fuck is that?” Madelaine's voice broke into his mechanical reverie; he looked at her, off from her skeletons and several steps back, wide eyes staring. He turned back to the body, taking it again.

“Bandit. They grow from dog things.” Carnaath, spoke a voice in his mind. He ignored the voice of the goddess; that was new, and unwelcome. “The dog things come from trees.”

“Dog things? Trees? Listen, I fought bandits, that ain't no bandit.”

“You fought … ” Thomas hesitated, trying to remember whether the bodies she had been found with had actually been human or not. He thought maybe somebody had said that they were. He couldn't remember whether he had felt disturbed or not. Oh well. “You fought bad people. Bandit means something else here. It means this.” He gestured at the body.

“Oh.” She was quiet a moment more, and then a surge of … something, came from her. Thomas stepped back, looking away as a malformed skeleton began ripping itself free of the flesh, somehow without disturbing it, like the flesh was glued to the ground. He wiped blood from his face. More vomiting noises, which barely touched his conscious awareness.

They started moving towards the gate; there wasn't anywhere else to go, the field of bodies expanding out in every direction. There was no conversation, no chatter; even the children were silent, and he couldn't blame them. It was quiet but for the occasional squelch of a foot stepping in something.

His brain slowly started moving again. Flashes of memory, of conversations. That these things had been unusually … something. Thomas recalled conflicting information; they had grown more active, they had grown less active. There were more of them? But they weren't attacking anybody?

That … anybody who had chosen “bandit”, by choice or accident, was missing. That he had gotten lucky, that a group of bandits had just been wiped out when he appeared; that he maybe appeared in the prison that any survivors would have been kept in, if there was any point in capturing the horrific things. That those missing people could have appeared where these things were. A sudden and endless source of food, feeding a population explosion of horrors.

Somebody started talking behind him, an endless stream of expletives, in a feminine voice. He couldn't blame whoever it was, but it annoyed him. Just … not enough to do anything about it. They moved through the field of corpses, and he looked, as they passed a piece of green cloth, fluttering in the wind. A scarf wrapped around the neck of a woman, or part of one; something had been chewing on her face, and bone was visible, a flap of glistening muscle hanging limp from one cheek. The other half of her mouth hung open in a scream that would never end. He looked away again.

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The gate, as they neared, stood half open; more and more of the bodies were clothed. A line of wagons and carts lay overturned, forming a makeshift wall of sorts, before which the fleshy bodies were piled more densely. The space behind the little wagon had visible grass, stained red; he took in the pile of bloody bones behind it, stripped of most flesh.

He tripped, while his gaze was there; his hand plunged into a body as he tried to catch himself. No pain, he rarely felt pain anymore, but it felt like his wrist should have hurt, and his ankle too; Thomas turned, to look at what he had tripped over. A rubbery stick stuck out of the bloody mud. He took it in, looked around again. “Norris.”

The man looked his way, then followed his gaze, to the rubbery stick protruding from the ground at Thomas' feet. Then looked up into Thomas' eyes again. There wasn't fear there – there wasn't room for fear. Norris just looked exhausted.

“Okay. Keep moving, everyone. We're moving. We're moving NOW.” The air stirred; Thomas quickly disassembled a small hole in the wall, and Arias preceded the others in; her hand gestured for others to follow a moment later, and then Allison, and then Evan, and then the four children. The others filtered through; Thomas stood next to Norris, who was the center of an increasing breeze.

And then there were flickering, ghostly flames, erupting across the bodies, spreading, growing – Norris did not pause to wait, but was through the wall of bodies and wagons. Thomas watched, only long enough to see that the ghostly flames ate through the flesh, the bones, the leather – the saplings. It did not leave scorch marks, only reduced what it consumed. And then he followed Norris, struggling to squeeze himself through the smaller hole.

Thomas looked around, as he got through, and blinked in surprise – his companions stood in a semicircle, children at the rear, near him. Men and women, in mismatched gear, had weapons raised around them; Norris was talking to somebody who had stepped forward, and it took Thomas several seconds to recognize Zatirias. He felt almost weak with relief, at the familiar face – until he saw the strain on it, and his eyes drifted around. There were … too few people, behind the adventurers confronting them. And the smoke – and it was smoke, not magical mist – smelled sweetly of cooking meat, and foully, of burning hair. Thomas swallowed, when he processed that bit of information. He approached.

“... so yes, we're evacuating. The Black Wardens have arrived.” Zatirias' voice was tight.

“How much time? It will take a week for the farthest reaches to get here; two, for somebody to get out there to sound the alarm in the first place.” Norris just sounded tired.

“A week and a half. Messengers have already departed, four days past.” Four days? How long had they been in that cave? How had things turned to shit so quickly? Thomas looked between the two, then back at the wall, through the hole they had pulled open at the bodies, now half-consumed by the ghostly flames.

“That's short timing. They're just venu, we've been dealing with them since this plane was -”

“No, Norris. The high reaches are already gone; there is a blood forest where Grimhaven stood.” A chill went through Thomas' flesh; he didn't know what exactly a 'blood forest' was, but he could only think of the trees, birthing the carnaathi, the flesh-dogs. “We haven't gotten a report from the lowlands since you departed; yours was the last word we have gotten from Piketown.”

Norris hesitated, looking around at the adventurers behind Zatirias, who were slowly, hesitantly, putting their weapons away. His gaze returned to Zatirias. “Have we seen any korlet?”

“No. But it's only a matter of time. This plane has fallen.” Thomas hesitated. Piketown. Grimhaven. He looked to his companions. Norris. Arias. Allison. Nathan. Evan. Amanda. John. Madelaine. And four haunted children.

He turned, and climbed back through the hole in the carts. He could feel the flames, but they did not touch him. He looked up, at the smoke of burning flesh, joining the magical mist pouring over the city walls. And started walking.

He was halfway across the field when he heard a curse, and turned, seeing Madelaine, carried across the flames by two skeletons, who were moving in a shambling jog; he started back, and in three immense steps powered by a brief surge of size, lifted her to his shoulder, away from the flames. He was another two steps back across the field when the first skeleton's leg gave, and it tumbled down.

“Hey Thomas.” Not meatwall? Or whatever it was she had been calling him?

“Madelaine. You should go back. This won't be safe.”

“This place isn't safe, not ever. I want to make sure Elijah makes it.” He nodded, adding Rockfall to his route, and, mentally going over his poor understanding of the geography, started walking once more, shifting to his largest size; he was about twenty feet tall, and barely felt Madelaine on his shoulder. She inhaled sharply, as they sped up.