When Vance regained consciousness—the tormenting nightmare forgotten, the guillotine rusting in the back of his mind, the patriarchal demon quelled at last—when he recovered control over himself and reconnected with reality, he realized that he had become a headless body with a dark flame burning at the top of his neck. It’s gone. My head … It’s completely gone. He had no eyes, but he could see; no ears, but he could hear. And his limbs obeyed his commands and moved with as much freedom as when his severed head was still attached.

I was decapitated, but I’m not dead … I’m not dead? He reached this tentative conclusion, but he remained confused and disconcerted. How am I still alive? My heart is beating, but air isn’t going into my lungs ... Am I an undead now? And where the fuck did my head go? He couldn’t remember what had happened at the shrine of Thurvik, and it was a perplexing mystery, to say the least, where the fiendish Honeydew Flies had taken his head. Then, as he raised his body from the wet ground, although he already had enough on his plate, he realized that there was another reason for worry: he was no longer in Blackmoss Forest.

Ascension Alert You have arrived at Middlerift. Class Effect Deactivated: Condemned The Curse of Thurvik has been removed from your Banes. Class Effect Activated: Headbound

While you are inside Middlerift, your highest two stats are doubled.

Intelligence 262 → 524 Duplicity 201 → 402

Vance calmed himself down and looked above him. A cold mist lingered in the air and hid much of the world, but through windows of thinned white, he could see the overarching sky. It was dusky and somber—subdued hues of red, orange, yellow, and black intermingling with great finesse. There were neither stars nor moons, but there were five celestial spheres that appeared at different distances from the ground. He thought of them as planets, but only because he didn’t know what else to call them. Then he turned his attention to his more immediate surroundings, which were much more relevant and important than the bizarre features of the sky.

He was standing on the muddy shore of what seemed to be a lake of blood. Bone-like plants and fingernail-like fungi were growing around his shoes, and some seemed to have broken under his weight while he was still unconscious, revealing spongy marrow and discharging pus-like fluids. He felt completely disgusted, wiped the repulsive discharges off his clothes, and washed his hands with a health potion—not considering it wasted, because he no longer had a mouth to drink it. After he felt slightly cleaner, he took a few steps away from the lake, and a dense growth of spiny trees appeared around him—a forest of gray bipinnate leaves and blue bulbous fruits.

How did I end up in this place?

As he took another step, he suddenly had a vision of the past. His headless body fell from the sky into the lake. It drifted on the blood and washed up on the shore, where it lay as still as a corpse.

Is this how I arrived here? Just a body?

He paused pensively and tried to remember anything about his missing head. Through pictures that surfaced in his mind, he saw it rolling on the ground near the shrine of Thurvik. A Honeydew Fly picked it up and flew into the night sky. But where did it go? He saw the lights of Cromsville and passed between the towers of its cathedral. But then there was pure darkness, and he again found himself on the ground in Blackmoss Forest.

His memories were so disorderly and discontinuous that they could’ve been the product of multiple egos. Perhaps if he had had time, he would’ve been able to sort them. But at that moment, he heard a sussurant sound. It echoed loud, forcing him to give up on his recollections and to focus on the present again. Equip Spectre. With undisguised panic, he searched the misty forest for any possible threat. He expected to witness the rise of a grotesque monstrosity—a stomach-turning mass of distorted flesh, bone, or chitin—but he instead spotted three brown monkeys dangling from the branches of a nearby tree.

“Look, Shem, he’s finally awake.”

“And he’s got an evil-looking weapon.”

“Must’ve lost his head when he saw us!”

The three monkeys laughed, whooped, and chattered.

“Maybe we should sing him a lullaby to calm him down.”

“Nah, he’s a big boy, Ham.”

“Yeah, just give him time, and he’ll get his head together!”

They cackled and snorted.

“But what will we do if he attacks us?”

“He won’t, Japheth.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Can’t you see he’s got a good head on his shoulders?”

They chortled and clapped with their feet.

“Here he comes! Here he comes!”

“Mommy, I’m scared!”

“He’ll knock my head off!”

Vance kicked the tree. Shem and Ham were able to escape in the last second, but Japheth felt the brunt of the shock and fell, head first, to the boggy ground. The unlucky monkey rolled twice and came to a stop at Vance’s feet. With its chin in the mud, it looked up and smiled nervously. Its eyes moved right and left, searching for someone or something. When it didn’t find its mysterious quaesitum, it sat up, scratched its butt, and said, “How did you find your First Death? Exhilarating? Tantalizing? Painful? Or all three combined? Ha ha!”

“First Death?” Vance pointed his spectral dagger at the monkey.

“Your head was snapped off.” Japheth snapped its fingers. “And it’s your first time, right?” It cackled loudly. “So we call it the First Death.”

“How original.”

“Very original! Ha ha!” Japheth clapped and wheezed. “The flies make it as painful as possible, but it hurts so bad you end up forgetting. Same as you do with a bad dream. Sweep it under the rug! Ha ha haaa! But I bet they made you cry. Oh, they magnify your tiniest fears … distort your clearest memories … make you cry blood right into that lake. The real question is: did they break you, or did you fight back till the end? I need to know!”

“The throes of death, huh?” Vance said, moving the spectral dagger closer to the monkey. “Why don’t we try to remember together?”

“Ha ha! You’re a riot! I like you! Let’s do it!”

Japheth sprang up, grabbed Vance’s hand, and pulled the dagger toward its chest. The weapon stabbed its heart, and it fell dead on the ground. What the hell?! Vance backed a few steps and stared at the monkey’s corpse in shock. It seemed that an abrupt end had come to his meaningless interaction with this idiotic monster, but only a few seconds later, the supine corpse began to twitch. The mud surged and coated it with a thick layer. Then, absorbing this mud, it stood up as if nothing had happened.

“That refreshed my memory,” Japheth said. “Now it’s your turn!”

Vance backed another step.

“Just kidding!” Japheth burst into laughter. “Chill out! Don’t take my words so seriously! I’m just a monkey!”

At that moment, the trees susurrated again, and Ham and Shem brachiated among the boughs and branches. They appeared from inside the mist, jumped down acrobatically, and stood next to their brother—the happiest by far.

“I won the bet, you apes!” Japheth snorted. “I got myself killed! Ha ha!”

“You cheated,” Ham said. “I saw you grab his hand!”

“And his dick!” Shem added, sarcastically.

“I did not!” Japheth shouted. “You’re seeing things ’cause of the mist!”

“You cheating chimpanzee!”

“You ogrish orangutan!”

“Come at me! You green-eyed gibbons!”

The three monkeys started fighting. They scratched each other. Butts were bitten. Hair was pulled. Eyes were poked. It was difficult to watch them with a straight face, but Vance didn’t laugh. He was already thrown off by everything that had happened, and the protohuman brawl was only confusing him more. There was no reason for conflict and nothing to be achieved, but the apish fight continued nonetheless. It seemed as if it would last forever, and depending on perspective, indeed, it may have. After a few minutes, however, the monkeys froze mid-fighting and stood straight with a sudden change in demeanor.

“We need to settle this dispute like civilized monkeys,” Ham said, spitting a piece of flesh torn off a butt. “Justice only acknowledges evidence. Produce the evidence to support your claims!”

“Yes!” Japheth cried out. “Produce the evidence! Show and tell!”

“Exhibit A!” Shem searched through the mud and pulled out a tablet with a hand imprinted on it. “This is the hand in question! Was it touched or not? Did Japheth pull it toward him or not? Is it murder or suicide? We need answers!”

By now, however, Vance had chosen to ignore the three monkeys, and he was already heading into the forest surrounding the lake. He almost made it out of their sight—but only almost. Like madmen, they chased after him and stood in his way. Wherever he turned, they were already there to obstruct him, and they shaped the mud into inane evidence for their trial—a replica of the spectral dagger, a fleshy copy of Vance’s hand, and a painting of Japheth’s crime (similar to The Creation of Adam, if otherworldly comparisons were allowed).

“What do you want from me?” Vance finally said.

“Nothing,” Ham answered. “We’re doing this for free.”

“What?”

“We’re helping you loosen up. We’re keeping you entertained.”

“I’ve had enough of this shit.”

“Of this shit in particular?” Shem picked up monkey feces from the ground.

Vance turned away and continued walking into the forest.

“Wait! Wait!” Japheth said, chasing after him. “You can’t leave now!”

“Watch me.”

“Oh, but we’ll get a spanking if you do!”

Vance pretended that he hadn’t heard anything.

“You opened your Mental Eye in Rust Lake,” Japheth continued, desperate to catch up to him. “It’s not often that a Headbound awakens here.”

“It hasn’t happened since Cassiel,” Shem added, from afar.

“And Cassiel nearly died on that day,” Ham concluded, dangling from a tree.

Vance continued to ignore the three monkeys. He was hoping to lose them by remaining silent, but his unresponsiveness only invited a cacophony of voices:

“This area is safe.”

“But it isn’t as big as you think.”

“And the lands around it are nastier than our three monkey asses combined!”

“Once you leave, you can’t return to safety.”

“You’ll be hunted down before you find your misplaced head! The hunter will be hunted! Oh, yes, ironic but very real!”

“Even as a Headbound, you can still die!”

“You’re not like us! You’re a mere mortal! Ha ha!”

“You won’t make it back to your world.”

“Uba uba a-a-a!”

“Mneh! Mneeeeeh! Mneeeeeeeeeeh!”

“Uga! Uga! Haaa!”

“Enough!” Vance shouted, finally stopping in place. “Enough screaming and yapping! How long am I supposed to stay the fuck here?”

“Until the mist clears,” the three monkeys said in creepy unison. “When it does, you’ll have a chance to make it out of here in one piece.”

“Or two!” Shem added, laughing annoyingly.

***

In the two hours that he spent waiting, Vance learned a few things about his new surroundings. Rust Lake was one of several havens in Middlerift—places where the Headbound awakened after their journey from the mortal world. And from the existence of such havens, which prevented the creatures of this realm from preying on the unconscious Headbound, Vance inferred that the rest of Middlerift was as dangerous as the battle ring of an ancient colosseum. He expected to be the target of unprovoked hostility, and he prepared himself accordingly.

As for the three monkeys, despite their unpredictable behavior, despite their vulgarity and irrationality, they claimed to be the guardians of Rust Lake. How or why they were chosen for this duty was beyond comprehension. But as Vance played with them a little game to pass time—as he stabbed them and watched them pretend to lose their frustrating immortality—he was able to ask them a few questions and learned that they had been “hired to repay their debt to their mistress.” More than that they did not reveal, and most of his other questions, related or unrelated to this topic, were either mocked or ignored.

The mist eventually cleared, and the games came to an end, with the proud Japheth achieving the highest number of meaningless deaths. The monkeys told Vance to follow the path that “winds like a pubic hair,” and they assured him that he would miss their jokes when he reached its shadeless end. Guided by their instructions, he traversed the forest, avoided unsightly fungi, and arrived at the described end. But he didn’t feel any particular longing for petty simian comedy. He crossed a transparent barrier, and Rust Lake disappeared behind him like a mirage to give way for a desert.

Gray dunes extended to the horizon, and cold gusts formed sandy vortices, which spun twice or thrice before they subsided. Although Vance was relieved to leave the monkey-infested haven, he didn’t know where to start or where to go, whether to search for the Middlerift Beast that he had to slay or the head that he had to reattach to his neck. In the end, he decided to seek guidance from Thurvik, who could easily resolve the dilemma, so he closed his Mental Eye and cleared his mind. In the deep calm of his concentration, he discovered a trail of bloody footprints and chose to follow them wherever they may lead.

His feet sank into the sand as he ascended the dunes, and they slid, like rocks tumbling down a precipice, as he descended. It was exhausting to walk in such an environment with his type of shoes, which were soon filled with pebbles and sand, and he imagined that he would find ugly bruises when he took them off. He trekked and advanced through the desert, relocating the persistent foot pain to the background of his mind. He made progress, which was visible in the long trail he left behind, but every step filled him with anxiety, because even now he couldn’t see a destination in these unmarked expanses.

I don’t think I need to worry about hunger or thirst, but what if the guidance of Thurvik is wrong? How can I know that I’m going in the right direction? He reached the top of a dune and scouted the area. The monkeys gave me some general info about Rust Lake, but they refused to answer any of my important questions. Is this some sort of test? Wasn’t I supposed to slay a beast and go back home?

At that exact moment, as the word beast crossed his mind, he heard a gush of monstrous throating. There was a harsh bestial neigh behind him, and when he turned around in alarm, he saw a black three-headed horse racing toward him. It had a wild mane of silver snakes and hooves of green glass. And each of its heads looked different from the other. The first had six horns along its long nasal bridge. The second had teeth that curved out of its lips like claws. And the third had eyes that resembled two will-o’-the-wisps—floating within a ghostly cloud without physical connection to the rest of the head.

Finally. Vance smiled inly. I guess this is the Middlerift Beast I was told about. It galloped toward him, and his heart raced at almost the same speed. This won’t be easy at all. There were many factors to consider in such a fight, especially because his enemy was faster and freer on the sandy terrain. And it didn’t help that he had already been detected. But I can do it. Equip Spectre. He started to put together a battle plan to guide his next moves. A rough outline was soon complete, but as he worked out its details, suddenly, the silhouette of a rider appeared on the beast’s back and threw his thoughts into complete disarray.

Shit. It’s not a beast. It’s a mount.

He waited for it to gallop closer so that he could see the rider better. After a few seconds, the once characterless silhouette developed three-dimensional features. She was a Headbound, an Adventurer Slayer like him. She wore heavy armor that curved along her body, carried a black spear in her right hand, and had a bow and quiver on her back.

All dressed-up for battle, huh?

Immediately, Vance remembered what the annoying monkeys had told him, namely that he would be hunted down as soon as he left the safety of Rust Lake. And he identified this female rider with the fated and foreshadowed hunter. His spectral dagger waited for her to be within stabbing distance, and his muscles throbbed and twitched as if they were craving enemy blood. I’ll dodge and stab the mount. He watched his enemy’s black spear, waiting for the lunge, wary of a surprise swing. But the rider didn’t attack and galloped past him as if she hadn’t noticed him at all.

He looked behind him after she passed, and she looked behind her. The first sign of mutual recognition came: she began to decelerate. Then she pulled hard on the mane, and her mount turned its three heads around and galloped toward Vance again. Perhaps she had miscalculated the distance between them on her first charge; perhaps she had been testing his defenses and reactions, probing them with a clever feint. Either way, her second charge seemed more serious than the first. She raised her spear and rotated it above her with both hands.

She’s using a Skill. Vance braced himself.

There was no telling what attack would follow, and there wasn't enough time to preview its range or quirks. The glass hooves battered the sand; the snaky mane hissed; the three heads neighed deafeningly. But as the spear descended into its attack motion, on the verge of the decisive moment, a different noise came from behind Vance. It was a mixture of the soft whisper of trickling sand and the jarring crepitation of moving bones. It sent shivers down his spine, and an ominous shadow overhung him.

“Out of my way!” the rider shouted.

Vance jumped out of her way, and with his body lying prone on the ground, he witnessed the unforeseeable. A two-meter-long fin had emerged from the gray sand, and a purple-eyed skeleton was clinging to it with one hand and brandishing a cross-hilted saber with the other. But it wasn’t this skeleton that the rider confronted with her Skill. No sooner had she gotten close than the osseous enemy pulled the fin back, signaling for an undead shark to surface from underneath the sand.

A mouth opened that could swallow a human with one bite, and tens of rows of sharpened teeth led through it into a gastric graveyard. The hideous shark, commanded by the skeleton, pounced on the rider and her three-headed mount. But she thrust her spear forward, after its last rotation in the air, and sunk it into the gaping mouth before the deadly crunch. The spear blossomed like a rose. From its shaft, new spearheads emerged like the petals of a flower, and each inflicted a grisly wound—piercing flesh and shattering teeth.

The elegant spear Skill was called Warmaiden’s Rose. It had enough power to cripple the undead shark, but it didn’t deal the damage needed to kill it. As the purple-eyed skeleton waved its sword in futile anger, the rider galloped toward Vance, who was now on his feet again. She stopped next to him and said, “Hop on behind me! We don’t have much time!”

Vance looked at the crippled shark, which was starting to wiggle in the sand, encouraged by friendly pokes from the skeleton’s saber. Why didn’t she just kill it with a second attack? He was about to ask, but then he noticed in the distance several other fins of the same sharkskin variety. As they approached from afar, they grew taller, and the skeleton riders who clung on to them began to appear from inside the sand. There were twenty sand sharks and twenty skeletons. And Vance reached the simple conclusion that two Headbound couldn’t fight this crowd on their own.

Banish Spectre. He grabbed the rider’s hand and jumped behind her on the back of her mount. The two galloped away, and the undead followed in pursuit.

“Eleanor. Your name?”

“Vance.”

“What are you doing in the Witch’s land without a mount?”

“It’s my first Class Ascension.”

“You mean your First Death?”

“Yes.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you wake up?”

“Rust Lake.”

“But no one wakes up there.”

“I did.”

Some of the pursuing skeletons raised bone bows and started firing bone arrows, which resembled miniscule tridents—the weapons of a dwarfed and desiccated god of the sea.

“Hold on tight!” Eleanor said. Then she steered her mount right and left, drawing curved lines to avoid the drizzle of enemy projectiles. “They can’t keep shooting forever. They’ll give up soon.”

But the arrows kept coming. Vance equipped his steel dagger and started to snipe those that got too close. With well-timed slashes and precise cuts, he intercepted them before they could deal damage, and it was only thanks to him that the mount wasn’t lost with a tragic tumble.

“Take over,” Eleanor said, after she had had enough of the enemy fire.

“Take over what?”

“Grab the mane, and keep us going in a straight line.”

“Mane? You mean the snakes?”

“Yes, the snakes. Hurry!”

Vance sheathed his steel dagger, extended his arms along Eleanor’s armored waist, and grabbed the snakes wriggling out of the mount’s neck. They hissed but didn’t bite.

“That’s it. Keep it steady.”

While Vance steered the mount, Eleanor put her black spear inside one of the snakes’ mouths, which closed on it and held it in a horizontal position. Then she equipped her bow, a wood-steel hybrid with a silky string, and pulled an arrow out of her quiver. Turning around, she pushed her breastplate against Vance’s chest, entrenched her left arm on his right shoulder blade (to hold the bow upright), and pulled back the bowstring parallel to his left shoulder. It was a very uncomfortable maneuver, but the situation called for it. She aimed for the closest skeleton and fired an arrow in haste, knocking it off the back of the shark that it was riding.

“Keep it steady.”

She grabbed another arrow and drew her bow. She had more time now, and it seemed that she was activating one of her Skills—Markswoman’s Blaze. Upon release, the arrow burst into smokeless flames and traveled with a fiery spin. It flew above the dunes and struck an enemy skeleton right in the sternum, which shattered into scorched shards and crumbled along with the rest of the bones.

The other skeletons fired back at Eleanor for instantaneous revenge, but their arrows hit the shallow hoof marks in the sand; Vance was leading the mount up an acclivitous dune, and the wind made it hard to hit an upper target, especially while it was still ascending at a fast pace.

“How long do I have to stay like this?” Vance said, as the breastplate chafed his chest and as he struggled to control the beastly mount. “I can’t even see or tell what’s happening.”

Eleanor fired another arrow and said, “I shot down three of them.”

“Not a single miss?”

“Not with targets this big,” she quipped, before she fired another arrow.

“And are they still firing back at us?”

“Yes … No, wait … They’re lowering their bows.”

Simultaneously with this reversed answer, the skeletons put away their bows and embraced the shark fins, which began a gradual descent and ultimately disappeared underground. The lines in the sand came to dotted ends, and the pursuing undead, who had been so determined to catch their prey, vanished without a trace. It seemed like a welcome development. Eleanor turned to face the front again. She put her bow on her back and reclaimed her spear from the snakes. Then she took back control of the mount.

“Did they give up?” Vance said, looking behind him at the empty desert.

“On firing arrows,” Eleanor said. “Skull Jaws are much faster underground. They’re planning to surface in front of us and cut off our way out of the desert.”

“We’ll fight?”

“No, we’ll lose. Our best chance right now is to cross Dunaliathan.”

At that moment, the two reached the uppermost ridge of the dune that they had been climbing, and as their mount began the sharp descent, it appeared to Vance as if the terrain ahead was moving—creeping, crawling, slithering as if it had come to life.