I loaded up Cannibal Hymn to the latest save spot and looked out over the path ahead.

Area Discovered - The Convent of Shonto

Stretching out before me, atop the mountain fortress below, was an enormous stone cobbled courtyard, in the corners of which stood four stubby cylinder towers made of stacked black stones. These laid stone blocks interlocked with one another at slanted, uneven angles, their massive proportions nothing short of cyclopean. Behind the towers was a great cubic vault that looked as though it was chiseled and hollowed out from one great chunk of sandstone, including a gargantuan and impressively carved doorway that towered over the plaza.

Above the entire courtyard circled a slow but constant ring of vultures, their tattered black wings drifting in the blood red sky.

I returned my attention to the save tree and used the squash-skin lamp from my inventory.

A brief cienematic played in which the flayed man knelt to his knees and laid the little gourd candle down at the foot of the tree.

Then the screen flashed...

+Incoming Venator+

+Venator Seternis Appears+

"Waaaazzuuuuup!!!" shouted Jess over the voicechat as she blinked into existence next to me.

"Hey! So it lets you play with me even though you're at such a higher level?" I asked.

"Yeah! It's instanced so all my stats are scaled down to where you are." Jess explained.

"Oh cool!"

"Yeah, so you're actually really close to something cool! Want me to take you to the secret weapons?" She asked, her character shaking around in either direction as she fidgeted the movement stick back and forth with her thumb.

"Hell yeah!"

"First we have to get a key out of each one of these towers, and they're filled with assholes, so we gotta clear them out!" She declared.

Jess and I ran inside the first of the towers. The interior was hollow, save for a spiral staircase running up along its side to the roof.

In the empty center of the tower was an item...

+ Item Gained - Obsidian Core

Then, as I was distracted by the loot, out from above pounced two female warriors, their bodies wrapped in silky white flowing cloth, they brandished crescent knives of gleaming bronze and wore black hook-beaked masks.

The first of the vulture-girls leapt on my shoulder and sliced down hard for -455 damage.

Jess pierced both of them with her harpoon for three stabs of -222, -217, -227 damage.

"Ya got to be more cautious turning corners! Nyeeeah!" she whined.

Out of her inventory Jess produced an Uyuchu fruit, which she gave to me to restore my health.

Jess and I ran up around the spiral staircase to emerge at the top of the tower. The roof of the little spire was covered in lances, skewered with dead bodies and limbs, beside which stood erect chonta wands carved with figureheads of scowling buzzards and crows.

The kebab-skewered dead had, of course, attracted a vast flock of black and frayed-wing carrion-feeders, two of whom flew at us. Jess poked up at the scavengers to keep them at bay, as I lit an enormous copper brazier that sat atop the tower and scared the rest of them off with the flame.

+ Blood-Drops Gained - 235

Jess and I dropped down the stairs and ran to the second of the towers.

In the bottom center of the tower was an item...

+ Item Gained - Koka Leaf Bundle

After I picked up the item, I panned the camera up to look at the staircase curving up along the tower walls. Instead I saw the strangest thing...

Playing on the texture that comprised the, as if a film being projected on a screen, was a grainy live-video, apparently deeply compressed into a blurry mess of pixels.

What was visible, lit by flickering torchlight in darkness, as if in the bowels of some deep cavern, was a group of four figures standing two-by-two in two rows. The four of them wore black cloaks and hook-beaked black masks.

Out of their masks peered wide slit-pupiled, bloodshot yellow eyes, which gazed down at us unblinking and didn't appear to belong to humans at all.

The one on the top left held out the torch. The one on the bottom right held out a long pole, from the top of which hung a draped cloth standard. Its pinkish surface was covered in fine indented red lines. Stitchings.

But that's the thing... It wasn't rendered by the game... it looked... real. Nothing about it looked CGI...

Then the light of the quartet's torch sputtered

"What the fuck was that?" I snapped.

"...No idea. That wasn't in my game." Jess whispered.

"...You're fucking with me."

"No! No dude. There's a bunch of secrets still all over the game." she explained. "People find a ton of weird stuff."

Since there was no point hanging around after that, we climbed the steps up to the roof and lit the brazier at the top.

Jess and I lunged down the stairs and ran to the third of the towers

In the bottom center of the tower was an item...

+ Item Gained - Spondylus Shell

It had no item use description...

The lore description read: These shells are sacred offerings to the cult of the ocean goddess, Ni, whose worship has persisted for untold thousands of years through the indigenous Quingnam fisherpeople before Muchik settlers had migrated to the coast. In the Quingnam religion's complex mythological cosmology, these shells are believed to belong to the petrified children of one of the earliest and grandest of the great races that preceded mankind in the womb of Ni.

"So what am I supposed to do with this?"

"Ooo, plenty of things you can do with it later! Just take it for now!

We came to the top of the tower. There was the same assortment of magic wands and impaled corpses, but no birds seemed to bustle around the carnage.

Suddenly a blood-curdling screech piereced the crimson sky.

Jess' character stood stoic and I watched as she slowly ran the palm of her hand down the length of the harpoon and its barb.

Down from above dove the strong talons of a great scaly foot which sunk deep into my scalp for -198. Hovering over me in the air was a woman wearing a black gown, a red hook-beaked mask, and flapping the black feathered wings of a vulture. In her hands she held a long metal staff which terminated in a wide bronze crescent blade, like some kind of exotic halberd.

She swung the crescent blade down on my skull for -590 HP

My heart sunk as my health bar dwindled across the screen.

Jess leapt up in the air, raising her harpoon mid-bound, both firsts gripped on the handle, and driving the shaft down into the vulture-woman's chest. At Jess' thrust, the vulture woman was consumed from the inside by a blaze that rippled out from the gash in her chest like a stone cast into a lake of fire. The carrion woman screamed in fear and agony as the fire burned through her sockets and melted her wings to cinders.

"I still fucking hate those things." Jess said. "The only good part is watching them burn."

"Well that was fucking metal." I said.

Jess lit the big brazier on the top of the tower with a poke of her fire-ant dusted harpoon, as if roasting marshmallows.

I tore off a strip of llama jerky to patch myself up.

Blood-Drops Gained - 325

Jess and I ran to the final tower.

In the center of the tower's staircase sat a warrior like the ones I had seen in the orchard, this time patched in armor painted in bands of black and white, Her head was wrapped in a headscarf which covered her brow and mouth in a bar of white, leaving exposed only her hollow eye-sockets, the skin around which was painted a deep charcoal black.

At our approach, she rose to her knees and drew up the silver stone-tipped spear she held in her hand, along with the tall black-and-white banded shield with a painting of a sneering beady-eyed raccoon rubbing its digits together that she carried on her other arm.

I drew forward to strike, but there was no getting through that hefty shield, which the raccoon knight pressed forward. I struck once again to no avail, and in my futility she took the offensive and managed to pierce my shoulder with a determined jab of her lance for -333. She continued to bear down on me, pushing me to back-step further down the stairs with the mass of his shield, as if preparing to lunge at me any moment.

Jess wasted no time swooshing past me on the steps and plunging her harpoon straight into the Raccoon-Knight's spine, dealing a grizzly -522 damage. After that she wasted no time, impaling straight through the center of the raccoon's brow for -611 and leaving the empty pieces of armor to start to roll down the stairs towards me below.

"How the hell are you so good at this?" I asked.

"Hahaha, dude, this is nothing!" Jess laughed. "Wait till you get to the PVP. You'll grow eyes in the back of your head!"

+ Item Gained - Chert-Tipped Spear

LVL - 1 SPEAR WEIGHT - 3.5 DURABILITY - 30 PHS-ATK - 80 +100 MAG ATK - 0 FIR ATK - 0 LIG ATK - 0 STR-BON - D DEX-BON - C INT-BON - NA FAI-BON - NA PHS-DEF - 40 MAG-DEF - 10 FIR-DEF - 30 LIG-DEF - 30

The lore description read: "A primeval weapon brought by the Muchik people after fleeing the cloud forest. Chert stone spears are relatively sharp and effective, but somewhat fragile."

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Shield

LVL 1 SHIELD WEIGHT - 2.5 DURABILITY - 40 PHS ATK - 40 MAG ATK - 0 FIR ATK - 0 LIG ATK - 0 STR-BON - D DEX-BON - NA INT-BON - NA FAI-BON - NA PHS-DEF - 80 MAG-DEF - 35 FIR-DEF - 60 LIG-DEF - 60

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Headscarf

LVL 1 PHYS-PROT: 14 STRK-PROT: 13 SLSH-PROT: 16 THRS-PROT: 14 MAG-PROT: 8 FIR-PROT: 9 LIG-PROT: 5 POIS-RES: 8 TOX-RES: 9 BLD-RES: 6 CUR-RES: 0

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Cloak

LVL 1 PHYS-PROT: 37 STRK-PROT: 35 SLSH-PROT: 43 THRS-PROT: 36 MAG-PROT: 22 FIR-PROT: 25 LIG-PROT: 13 POIS-RES: 20 TOX-RES: 23 BLD-RES: 16 CUR-RES: 0

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Bangles

LVL 1 PHYS-PROT: 26.5 STRK-PROT: 25.2 SLSH-PROT: 33.8 THRS-PROT: 12 MAG-PROT: 7 FIR-PROT: 8 LIG-PROT: 4 POIS-RES: 6 TOX-RES: 8 BLD-RES: 5 CUR-RES: 0

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Skirt

LVL 1 PHYS-PROT: 11 STRK-PROT: 11 SLSH-PROT: 13 THRS-PROT: 11 MAG-PROT: 7 FIR-PROT: 7 LIG-PROT: 4 POIS-RES: 6 TOX-RES: 7 BLD-RES: 7 CUR-RES: 0

+ Gained Item - Raccoon Boots

LVL 1 PHYS-PROT: 11 STRK-PROT: 10 SLSH-PROT: 13 THRS-PROT: 11 MAG-PROT: 6 FIR-PROT: 7 LIG-PROT: 4 POIS-RES: 6 TOX-RES: 7 BLD-RES: 7 CUR-RES: 0

The lore description read: "A modest set of brass and leather venator's armor. Passed down by the Majapaico family of the Saltonte estate in Hatanga, whose heraldry is the Banded Raccoon. It must have been a great shame for the Raccoons of Saltonte to lose such a precious heirloom."

"What's the deal with these guys anyway?" I asked Jess. "I already saw two of them before in the last area."

"They're knights. Well, they were. Now they're just enchanted armor the boss left out to guard the place, 'cause they're in the land of the dead."

"This is the land of the dead?"

"Well, a part of it. Yeah. You can come back here and go to different parts of it later, but this place is seperate. The whole coast opens up once you finalize your character and leave here."

"So is there some reason all these Aesop's Fable motherfuckers are dressed as animals, or is this just some fetish?"

"Nah, it's heraldry! The animals represent particular noble families in the game's world. Ya know, like, 'The Red Fox', 'The Green Iguana', 'The Blue Chinchilla'. You can actually go to their estates and interact with them out in the world later. They'll reward you if you bring them back their armor."

"'Blue Chinchilla'?"

"Yeah, there's lots of them. You can get your own unique one and have it recognized by the college." Seternis held up her shield. "I'm the Green Moth, as you can see."

"The college?" I asked.

"The College of Predators." Jess explained. "It's basically the leaderboards for PVP in the game, but it also handles all the noble houses and politics."

"Ugh. Politics."

"Hahaha, yeah, you have no idea!"

"So were all the bird ladies we just killed part of the college?"

"Nah, they aren't venators. They're nuns who worship the god, Shonto."

"Shonto?"

"Yoooouuu'll seeee..."

+ Blood-Drops Gained - 210

At the top of the tower, standing alone in the roof's center, was an item...

+ Item Gained - Vulture Chonta Staff

The item description read - "+1 DEX; Increases bleed damage."

The lore read - "A rod carved of sacred wood from the Great Sea of Trees past the Thunder Lands. These staves are used in ritual by Yunka shamans and spirits as energetic lightning rods. Bearing the figure of the vulture, the icon of the god of fate, Shonto, this staff sharpens the talons and invites one to swoop down and seize their fill."

We lit the last of the braziers, and the great gate at the front of the stone vault cracked open with a heavy groan, as if moved by some giant's devised mechanism.