Down the twisting path under the cover of night walks a man. Slung across his back is a black featureless rectangle, a foot taller than he was, it stood at 6 feet and nine inches. The man himself was a gloomy looking fellow with gray hair and dull steely blue eyes. His face was stuck looking as if he’d swallow something sour. His dress was a tieless black suit with matching dress shoes. Under his coat was the only variation in his clothing; a white dress shirt that was exposed by the unbuttoned state of his jacket.

The ground was notably muddy and looking at the sneering glare the man directed at his feet he’d noticed that fact by now. If one could read his mind, then they’d know he was lamenting that the road was unable to handle the passage of a car.

As he went onwards, he approached a three story tall mansion made of gray stone bricks. The building’s roof was colored black and it seemed a misfit for the stones they’d chosen. It certainly gave off an odd impression at night. The mansion grounds were illuminated by tall lamps dotting the yard. The gate matched the design scheme of the mansion and had two middle aged attendants who bowed down as the man passed.

The look of fear in their eyes was unmistakable and this wasn’t the first time they’d felt this kind of writhing terror tonight. Many others like the man had passed through these wretched gates. Still, they’d not been able to acclimate. The man himself gives them a slight smile as he glanced at their backs.

The gray haired man grabbed the locket hanging from his neck and squeezed as a single drop of blood dribbled down from its crack. The crimson drop glows dully as it falls and hits his muddy shoes. The dirt dries and flakes off leaving his footwear in pristine condition.

“Oi, Visai!” A man with firey red hair calls out in greeting. He speaks with an oddly accented lilt and envelops the gray haired fellow in a hug as he enters the building. “Long time no see as these westerners like to say! Ahahahaha!”

His hair was an abnormal shade of red that stood out even more when paired with his eyes that possessed all the color and luster of diligently polished gold. His dress was a white robe embroidered with silver trees and with dyed on blue birds resting upon their branches. The birds are disproportionately sized compared to the rest of the portrait giving it a sense of surrealism.

“Greetings teacher.” The gray haired man, Visai, did not reciprocate but still cracked the barest of smiles. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Hahaha, I’d say. How long’s it been?” The red haired man’s head snapped back as he let out a hardy laugh and kept his left hand on Visai’s shoulder. He clears his throat and spits. “Two, three decades? Ptui, it doesn’t matter. Now-”

“You fucker, what the hell do you think you’re doing to my floor?” A third voice joins our duo sounding almost casually despite the contents of his speech. “Where’s the respect, where’s the dignity, where’d your etiquette go? Have they rotten away alongside your last braincell?”

This man’s attire is a plain dark blue dress shirt embroidered with an eastern dragon made of gold thread. His eyes are a fierce amber and his hair a dark curly brown. His pants are black slacks and he’s wearing polished brown leather shoes. Hanging from his neck is an opaque white bottle attached to a golden chain.

“No, they unfortunately left behind in the same place you left your balls Aloysius.” The golden eyed man rolls his eyes and spits in disgust. “They’ve been missing since the day you decided to puss out like a bitch from our duel.”

“Hahaha, I’m going to castrate you mother fucker.” The man lets out a jolly laugh.

A wisp of purple smoke leaks from the bottle around his neck as it seems to expand into a ball a foot wide in diameter. The orb bursts into a kaleidoscope of butterflies; though they’re all black so calling them that is a misnomer.

Visai clasps a hand on his locket as he drops the package on his back to the floor with a heavy bang being created as it impacts the stone. The red haired man smiles in glee as his eyes seem to glow with his rising exuberance. He takes in a deep breath before exhaling in a motion akin to spitting. A mist of blood is shot forward and envelops the butterflies like a child with a net. They’re brought to the ground in a puddle of red and black. There are scarce few left after that but those that remain do not hesitate to launch themselves at the redhead; moving with speed akin to that of a bullet.

The grim faced man had already grabbed his package’s strap and swung it an instant before the butterflies had hurled themselves at them. The heavy case disperses the butterflies with a single swing before Visai jumps back, leaving his package behind to fall on the floor, as he tries to make distance from the fumes those butterflies had burst into.

“Cut it off you brats.” Another joins their conflict. “You’re causing a commotion and I ain’t got time for that.”

This newest arrival is a blonde haired, blue eyed man. His features are soft on the eyes and his dress is the most casual out of everyone assembled. He has some flexible gray sports pants and a soft black tee shirt. On his feet are a pair of cheap wooden sandals. His skin is on the paler side and reflects a life spent outside the harshness of the sun.

“Roland?” Aloysius looks surprised at hearing his voice. “You’re still alive?”

“Yep, was just lounging around when Sen here told me about your little get together.” The man smirks a wicked smile. “I’m feeling a bit vindictive so I decided to end my vacation and join in on the fun.”

“Your highness.” The red haired man gives a bow while the other two men back up slightly. “It is good to see you again.”

“Senan, there aren’t too many of us around.” A frown flickers across his face for the barest fraction of a second. “It’s best you don’t get too into fighting each other until after we’ve finished dealing with these barbarians.”

“As you will my lord.”

“I got some mingling to do.” His voice is tinged in glee as he looks at the others. Surprisingly after their little spat the attention of everyone was on Roland. “Gotta make sure no one’s forgotten me yet.”

Without another word Senan walks away and leaves Aloysius standing there. His gray haired disciple soon follows. Aloysius mutters something to himself and heads off with forceful steps to another room. The pair go to the back and Senan beckons at a man dressed in a gray suit to come along. He seems to recognize them and gives nod to his conversation partner, a brown skinned woman covered in red tribal tattoos, as he says his goodbyes and joins them.

They make their way to the back porch; exchange pleasantries and greetings along the way. The man in the gray suit snaps his fingers and a bubble blows up from between his thumb and forefinger. It expands to envelop the three of them briefly before fading away.

“It’s safe to talk.” The man in a gray suit says seriously. “I’d still be leery about lip reading.”

“Thanks, Siam.” Senan smirks and claps him on the shoulder. “Now, what do you guys think of the plan?”

“It’s madness.” Without hesitation Visai, with his face wrinkled in disgust, states his opinion. “Even if we manage to pull it off, we’ll only draw everyone’s ire and then, after a short while, we’ll be butchered.”

“This isn’t likely to turn out well but there aren’t many options left at this point.” Siam weighs in frowning. He leans back against the wall and begin stroking his stubble. “After the stunt Amir pulled it’s going to be hard to get out of our present predicament. We either hide in obscurity or pull something drastic; I’d agree with Visai in that this is the stupidest course of action they could’ve possibly decided upon.”

“Ya, sounds about right.” Senan nods his head. “Warlords, madmen, and savages the lot of them. This is something that could only be dreamt up by people of a baser sort. Good at running and fighting as they may be but that’s all they’ve got going for them.”

“Oh, yeah Adelaide should be joining us Sen.” Siam mentions as he rubs the back of his hand against his mouth. “You planning on backstabbing them?”

“We’ll have to go for a drink right after we finish our raid.” Sen agrees before pausing to think. “As long as Roland is amenable to joining us.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Visai says. “Are we leaving Aloysius behind?”

“Dunno.” Senan shrugs. “Aloysius’ participation isn’t for me to say.”

Visai feels something chilling come from within the mansion as the fifth curse is used to cover their surroundings in an intangible barrier. Soon an invocation of the third curse is felt as well and weaved into the fabric of the recently established barrier. It seems they’ve set up a pretty potent defense against scrying.

“What do you think Aloysius is paying for this?” Siam asks with a frown.

None of those gathered have an answer for him and judging by his expression he hadn’t expected one in the first place. It seems now is the time to gather and start preparing. The trio separates and begin making their way towards the basement.

“Visai, you got those extra bodies ready?” Roland says as they head downstairs. “It’d be good for everyone to have some backups.”

“I wasn’t aware you’d be coming so I haven’t had the chance to create a homunculus for your use.” Visai says stiffly. “If need be, I can rush and have one ready for you within three days.”

“That’s fine, it doesn’t really matter.” Roland smiles warmly and gives him a pat on the back. “No one can kill me anyway.”

Visai enters the basement before setting the metal box he’d been carrying on his back down. Everyone, a little over ten since any regular mage would be killed by the amount of curse that would be produced from the rituals planned, is standing spaced out. Esme turns her gaze to Visai and he sighs. This is his cue to begin unpacking. The rectangular box opens to reveal a room of such spaciousness that you’d be able to fit objects ten times the box’s size inside. The interior of the room is lined with pink flesh. Lodged into the walls are a variety of organs, bodies, and unidentifiable flesh bags attached by thin blood vessels.

“Anyone willing to help?” Visai says with a frown. “Miss Aitken is quite unwilling to enter my mortuary so I’d like some helping bringing the bodies out.”

At my words a few guys come forward and join in pulling the bodies out from the walls. Each one is an identical copy of someone else in the room. They’re all naked too. We lie them on the ground side by side.

“Modred, you go first.” Esme says with an annoyed frown etched onto her face.

Esme is an unnaturally attractive woman. Older immortals usually become skilled in using the first curse to alter their appearance. At some point it becomes necessary else their form would degrade into something unsightly. It’s, surprisingly, more troublesome to maintain your appearance than it is to gain immortality. The latter just requires a couple of one-off rituals while the former is a constant struggle.

I’ve gone off topic. Esme’s eyes are an emerald green, her hair a nice shade of light brown, and her skin is without blemish with a tone on the paler side. Her features are perfectly symmetrical, and her proportions are golden. Visai found it disgustingly vain.

Modred on the other hand has a slight tan indicating hours spent under the sun. His body is covered in muscles and stands at nearly six and a half feet. An imposing man if you’d ever seen one. His hair is black, and his eyes are a brown so dark that they could be mistaken as sharing the color of his hair. He’s wearing a leather jacket and leather pants with brown mud-stained boots. Replicating his body had been quite an undertaking on Visai’s part.

As Modred approaches; Esme pulls a white spectral thread, similar in texture to yarn, out of him. She attaches it to his lifeless duplicate and the thread fades. All the necessary enchantments had already been built into the body during and all it had needed was that finishing step. One by one she repeats the process with each of us.

“What a pain this is going to be.” A freckled faced brown hair haired man complains. “You sure no one knows where this is Aloysius? I’m going to be pissed if someone manages to track down our back up bodies and I wake up to a hail of bullets to the face.”

The man is dressed in a ragged blue hoody and well worn jeans. Upon his feet are a pair of dirty white tennis shoes. His right ear has a small ivory sphere hanging from it on a small silver chain. His right hand has two rings. One is a plain beaten up band of gold and marred in dirt while the other is silver with an emerald being the centerpiece and the rest of the ring being studded in diamond.

“Not unless someone followed one of you.” Aloysius says as he stretches. “These grounds were purchased years ago so it would be a bit odd for them to find anything funny now. I’d been rather discrete in purchasing it.”

“Can we get on with it?” A tattooed woman says. “The less time I have to spend with you heathens the better.”

She’s dressed in a white dress that exposes much of her skin. There are a variety of markings and sigils tattooed onto the woman’s epidermis. They interlock and flow together to form a singular changing pattern that’s painted across the entirety of her body. From her wrist is a silver bracelet with short, an inch or two, silver chains hanging off it and dangling small black beads at their ends.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Senan twirls his hand. “Getting on it.”

He brings his palm to his mouth and bites a chunk out of it. The blood evaporates throughout the room and dyes the walls. Senan chews the flesh a couple times before swallowing.

A man whose left arm hangs limp is the who to step up next. The bandages burn and the arm spasms as it wiggles and muscles bulge. The palm has two toothless mouths side by side, his pointer finger has another small mouth, the back of his hand has an eye growing out of a large bump on it; whenever it closes it looks somewhat like a large red blister. His fingers wiggle around independently of each other and writhe in ways impossible for any creature in possession of bones. The entire limb seems to be breathing as it has begun expanding and contracting after its release.

One of the palm’s mouths makes a gagging sound as it vomits up black fluid that soon congeals with the blood dyeing the walls. Soon a multitude of other such odd phenomena join in and defile the basement they’re occupying. A variety of glowing lights are produced, and a black ichor is left behind as a byproduct of their magic. The latter is swallow and regurgitated into the wall by one of the arm’s mouths.

Soon the blood dye begins growing flesh and the walls become covered in pulsating black blood veins. They soon grew to the point that you wouldn’t be able to see the stone behind it. The only color possessed by the walls is the luminescence of purple coming from blood being transported within the black vessels. The bodies are returned to their original places, the only object not yet covered in flesh, inside Visai’s box.

“We should get out of here.” Aloysius observes in disgust.

“No shit.” An auburn haired brown eyed girl says. She’s dressed in a blue suit and her features, while pretty, look much closer to average compared to the other girls within this room. “This place is as cursed as one those old timey Sugi tombs.”

“We needed somewhere to store it all.” Visai frowns. “This way it’ll take them a few weeks at least to notice; if we’re lucky it’s possible it could even last half a year. Provided they aren’t looking took hard.”

“Doesn’t make it any more pleasant to look at.”

They make their way to the large doorway. Aloysius flicks a glass bead behind them as they exit and the stone making up the path melts. The box is left behind within that pulsating mash of cancerous flesh.

“Hopefully the abomination doesn’t tunnel under the ocean again.” Siam looks over his shoulder as he mentions it.

“Yeah, that’d be a problem.” Visai frowns at the thought and worries for his mortuary. “I kinda need that.”