Occult Eye had been a mistake.

Rotgoriel had thought it would help him find the third seal faster. But the whole city was blazing now, roiling with currents of twisted mystical energy, and bubbling like a cauldron about to boil. It was a mess, and he probably would have been better off following the rough map that Cutter had given Rich.

He found it, in the end, outpacing the hordes of soldiers that spilled into the streets, staying ahead of the icy spiders that crawled and leaped from buildings as he sped by.

He found the well.

A vast pit in the heart of the city, the depths faded to blackness earlier than they should. He was a dragon, and darkness was nothing to him, but this stuff was something more than mere shadow.

To his Occult Eye, it was breathing. Waiting. Caught beneath a lacing weave of runes that layered atop one another so tightly that every character was incomprehensible, the lines that defined them blending into every other symbol that lay etched upon the stones around the lip of the well.

Something gleamed in the bottom. Something that wasn't light, not quite. A reflection? Perhaps...

And Rotgoriel realized that he had folded his wings and was diving straight toward the well.

No!

WILL+1

It was less of a swerve and more of a crash, but Rotgoriel ended up on the ground next to the lip of the well, and he was grateful that he had managed even that.

He knew, he knew somehow that going into the well right now would be the last thing he'd ever do. That going in there would mean never coming out.

“Horrific, is it not?” A voice rang through the air, and Rotgoriel scrambled to his feet, whirled around... stopping when his weary mind recognized the voice.

“Aunarox. You are supposed to be helping the village,” he said. “Unless you wish to betray me as well?”

“What? No. That is not my goal here, Rotgoriel,” the blue djinn said, from her perch on a nearby statue. “Look there.”

Catching himself, he maneuvered so he could see where she was pointing without looking away from her.

Invictus stood frozen in place, his staff pointing toward the hole. The glow of his searing blue eyes melted snow, blended with the yellow runes shining down from above to cast him in a sickly green light. He did not move, and his name flickered like a guttering candle above his head. The symbol of a skull flashed above him when the name flickered out, and it didn't take much thought to realize what had happened.

“Something was wrong with him,” Rotgoriel murmured.

“His player is dead,” Aunarox said. “I have seen it before.”

That gave him pause. “When?”

“Long ago. Before I was sealed away in your mountain. Your people are fond of that, sealing away problems they cannot solve. Letting time and tide render us inconsequential.”

Rotgoriel kept his gaze on her. “Your tone is friendly. But your words give me pause. And you are not helping defend the village, as I asked. Why are you here, Aunarox?”

“Because I want to go home,” she said simply.

“I understood that death is all it takes, that you return to Dev, when you die.”

“Dev is not our home,” she said, and the sadness in her voice made his wings furl, before he caught himself. “Dev is not our home,” she whispered again. “It is simply our well.”

He turned to look at the hole in the city, the hole in the world.

“No, not like that. This is a wound the old ones you oppose tore open. It was an attempt to escape. But they had built their well, soul by soul, and either fell into it or were sealed away behind stone and dragon magic. Or behind copper masks. This wound is an attempt to get back to their home. But they were too alien, I think. Too alien by far, too strange and too slow. The dragons sealed this before they could use it.”

“If not like that, then what?” Rotgoriel asked. Urgency pushed at him, and he could see spiders glinting in the moonlight, blocks away, as they moved in to strike, but her words caught him, teased at his mind. The dragon he'd used to be wouldn't have cared, too busy and too focused on his goal. But he had drunk deep of his brother's memories, gained something of his curiosity, his imagination. Even though the need for action pulled on him he delayed, not just because Rich would want to know but because here at last were answers, solid, useful answers. He was deep into the unknown and playing it by ear, and any information he could use was worth learning.

INT+1

“What is the well?” he asked.

“Our well is Dev. It is the hell that we built ourselves. We all built our own wells, all the other players who are snared by this... game.” Her eyes glinted in the moonlight, as she looked over. “Your time runs short. Do what you must, and I shall do what I must. And then we shall see if I can be of further help to you, effendi. Without the mirror I do not know if my aid shall be sufficient, but I am willing to try.”

“Twice I have been betrayed tonight,” Rotgoriel rumbled. “I wonder if you shall make the third. Things come in threes, I recall you said that once.”

“I am your ally still, effendi. Even if I have been less effective than I hoped. Go to death once more, and I shall honor your sacrifice with what aid I can give.”

Rotgoriel stared at the well that wasn't a well. Then down at the symbols that danced and flared along the lip.

In the end, there was no choice.

Rotgoriel gathered his courage, reached up, and ripped his throat open.

The blood spilled down, spattering and pattering, falling on the wounds with a hissing shriek as he collapsed onto the frozen black ground.

Colors danced in front of his face, as the world went dark around him... darkness broken by words, that he managed to read just before he faded entirely.

You are now a level 16 Cultist!

CHA+3

INT+3

LUCK+3

The second he hit death chat he spent his tokens... and paused, staring at Konol.

The star field behind him had a hole in it. A small hole, that pulsed with a sickly yellow light. A familiar sickly yellow light.

The well opens to... this! Wait, what happens if I go through from this side?

Rotgoriel tried to move toward it, thought he made some progress, but the scale was vast, and the breach was far, far from him.

Konol's head whipped around, straining against the chains, blood dripping down his scales as he stared at Rotgoriel.

“You must not... nnnn.... must...” his voice fell back into familiar tones, familiar words. “Choose your place of rebirth.”

But when Konol displayed the list of destinations, there was a new one at the top.

It read, simply, “The Reopened Scar.”

Rotgoriel chose it, and for a second, for just a bit, he thought Konol nodded in approval.

And then he was back at the well, watching his own corpse dissolve from where it lay on the street, leaving only a great red pond of blood behind, swirling into and down the breach. Air roared past, and he braced himself as it tugged him toward the breach, toward the field of stars that now shimmered and danced at the bottom of the shaft.

Towards the vast, chained bulk of Konol, visible beyond.

He lost himself for a minute, staring.

What would happen, he wondered, if Konol died?

Why else would the ancient evils that ruled this city have built a hole in the world that went straight to him?

No wonder the dragons of old had sealed this place away... though dragons had no gods, according to every dragon and minion he spoke to. This was a new kind of blasphemy indeed! Or a very, very old one.

Harsh words broke his concentration.

Agnezsharron: They are mustering for another push. With more big elephants this time!

An icy crackling made him look up, in time to see a glasslike spider fling itself from a nearby building wall, straight at him. With contemptuous ease he batted it into the hole, and it shrieked as it fell away.

But the moonlight shone full on more, surging toward him like a translucent wave, scampering through streets and along walls with arachnid fury and a single-minded goal.

LivingDeadGrrl: Shit, they're serious. And we have non-cultists here, so we can't do the chant unless they go...

Geebo: If we leave then where? They are circling us!

“Aunarox,” Rotgoriel spoke, turning his head back to the djinn—

—and staring at a statue. A gray stone statue of a familiar-looking djinn, her blue marble face caught in an expression of surprise, one hand reaching to her side.

To where Cole stood, a blade buried in her now petrified form.

His grin was wide and white in the moonlight, his clothes were black, and even over the roar of the wind, even over the pressure of the unnatural rift in reality, Rotgoriel could still feel wrongness pouring off of him.

A familiar wrongness. One that he could finally put his claw on, one that he had seen before, three years ago in a dark cave. One that he'd almost made a very, very bad deal with.

“Hello boss,” Cole whispered, somehow audible over the rushing air. “Let's talk, you and I. I've got an offer and this time I don't think you can refuse...”