Bartholomew sat in a small cave near the path, resting. Agatha sat outside to discourage visits from Frederik’s soldiers, who went out of their way to mutter threats and curses whenever he came within earshot. They didn’t just hate revenants, and most of their more moderately minded fellows had remained behind to support Hasan in his delaying tactic.

Neither Frederik nor their revenant guide was anywhere to be seen, probably staying out of sight of the soldiers much like he was doing.

Doing his best to relax, the trogg focused on the soulstone he cupped in his clawed hands. The crystal didn’t earn its name from the way that liches perverted it with their own soul—quite the opposite. He tried to feel the pure essence it emitted, to sense as it strengthened his spirit and became a part of his soul.

He couldn’t, of course. Unlike revenants, the living couldn’t sense or manipulate any essence that wasn’t their own.

For a few minutes, there was nothing but his own breathing, the draft drawing air through the caverns, and the constant, steady light streaming down from the rocky ceiling.

If he persevered long enough, centuries more, at least, he would ascend to join his elders. For millennia, since the death of Amoa, the Forebearers spent their unfathomable power circulating air and shoring up their rocky, crystal-lit skies while the two gods who remained to them held back the influence of the Betrayers. Together, they were all that made the Deep Paths livable for his people—and everything else that wasn’t welcome on the surface.

It wasn’t enough. For most, the retreat wasn’t even noticeable, but Bartholomew had lived centuries and watched as one cavern after another went dark. It had been decades since anyone had heard from the Midnight Shores across the sea. What had happened to the people there? Were there survivors hiding on the surface? Had they fled to other caverns, unable to communicate across the dead regions?

Someone needed to act, but the elders they had were already doing all they could. They had been for as long as anyone could remember. His people needed more help, new elders, but that was a path with no shortcuts and one that relied on luck as much as time.

Regardless, Bartholomew was not the type of man who would sit on his hands and watch as his world crumbled down around him. His people looked down on revenants, the restless dead borrowing power from whatever they could find to mend their broken, profane souls. Bartholomew wasn’t so sure. What if, in their arrogance, they had been ignoring a solution to their long suffering—one that haunted their caverns all along?

Maybe. Just as long as his entire group of test subjects, his research assistant, and the only non-hostile human government he’d interacted with in centuries weren’t wiped out by a lich in the next few days. Frustration boiled in his stomach.

Bartholomew rose. He couldn’t help Hasan and Frederik fight a lich, but he wasn’t going to sit idly by, either.

“Agatha, please let Frederik know that I won’t be joining you in Duskhaven. I can’t be any use to anyone up there, but I might be able to arrange some contingencies here. I know Hasan already sent word to the Forge, but I doubt that he’ll get much of a response. His village’s remoteness is the only reason he agreed to work with us in the first place.”

Agatha met his eyes with a steady gaze, then simply nodded and handed him his walking stick, which she’d been holding for him.

“Where will you go?”

He smiled at her. “I’m going home.”

Straightening his jacket, he stepped off of the path onto a game trail that meandered off into the brush. He knew it well. It led to tunnels, stairs, and paths unknown to humans, ghouls, and revenants, meandering ever downward toward the Heavenly Chasm and the Council of Elders. Nobody there supported his ambitions or his research, but they couldn’t possibly ignore news of a lich.

Could they?

–--------

Charlie crept through the trees, in uniform with a rifle slung over his shoulder and soldiers all around him. They moved quickly and in a coordinated manner, professional and competent. It felt like old times.

Em and the forward scouts left markings on the trees to guide them, but they would catch up soon. He could smell cooking fires and heard people talking in the distance, their voices echoing off of the nearby cavern wall.

They would slip through the perimeter and wait for their moment. While they couldn’t defeat the enemy in a fight, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t buy time for Frederik. They didn’t need to win, they just needed to piss off the lich enough to focus on them instead of his larger goals.

It wasn’t the first time, Charlie reflected, that he would endanger his life to buy a strategic advantage for his country—uh, former country. At least none of the soldiers here belonged to the Scions.

Well. Almost none of them.

Before his death, his entire unit had been part of the Scions of the Celestial Bulwark—an organization devoted to turning back the vengeful tide of the Damned that ever threatened the lighted lands of the living. Their mission, as it turned out, was just as overstated as their pretentious name.

When he woke up in a crypt after giving his life to the cause, Charlie couldn’t believe it. For days, he had begged the crypt guards to let him go, to let him speak with a priest, and finally to kill him and end it. They refused, telling him to suffer the punishment he deserved in the darkness below. Eventually, finally, he had given up and made the long trek down the stairway.

How surprised he had been to find brightly lit caverns teeming with plants, animals, and even people. The monsters were there, too, but compared to the tales he’d been told, they had seemed so… mundane. Still, when the slavers took him, he didn’t resist. He’d thought that, perhaps, if he was lucky, he would die before he was turned into a demonic ghoul. Instead, he’d been rescued, joined a community, and made new friends. Despite his gruesome ability, he hadn’t become a ghoul and neither had the others. They were the same as before, for the most part. At first, he thought that the Scions just didn’t understand. The truth was obvious, when you went down into the Deep Paths and saw it in person.

After meeting Geoffrey and the other Scions who had already been stationed in the village for weeks, he realized that they didn’t want to understand. They feared and hated him, even before they saw the type of power he wielded. They thought he and the others were demons hiding their true nature—their evil intent. Most importantly, they couldn’t accept a world where the undead weren’t a monolithic horde of damned souls bent on the devastation of humanity and all that lived on the surface. A world where revenants were still mostly the same people they had been before, and where becoming a ghoul was more a sick accident than divine punishment. A world that wasn’t about them or the cosmic war the priests preached to them.

Charlie reached under his shirt and gripped the seven-pointed star emblem that hung around his own neck. The leather cord that it hung from disintegrated at the touch of his essence. Surreptitiously, he dropped it to the ground, and then stepped on it once for good measure.

As they stepped around an especially large bush, the man in front of him, Joran, stiffened. They were standing directly in front of a sentry, the wight clearly just as stunned as they were. The scouts should have already disabled any resistance along their marked path. What was he doing here?

The wight opened his mouth to shout, but no sound escaped. His eyes bulged and he strained, but nothing happened. Joran stepped forward and rammed his fist into the wight’s stomach. He doubled over, now able to gasp in pain, but crumpled as the soldier followed up and struck him in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.

Em stepped out of the bushes behind the downed sentry, eyes wide. She must have used her wind essence to stop the sentry’s breath, just as she had a few days before.

“Sorry, I almost missed that one.” She whispered to them.

Moving quietly, they followed her for another tense few minutes, until they reached the edge of a clearing.

They were on a gentle slope, slightly above the camp, giving them a clear view. Compared to what the soldier was used to, it was small and disorganized. Fires were scattered in a rough semicircle around a dark opening in the cavern wall—the entrance to the stairway. Next to it, Charlie could see the prisoners. The figures listlessly huddled in a large, crudely assembled cage. A few wights stood guard while another reached through the bars to feed on one of the captives’ essence.

At a glance, Charlie couldn’t tell where the lich might be, but the more easily identifiable horrors were concerning enough on their own. By their description, he expected were-creatures to look much like any beast-type revenant, but he was surprised.

They each borrowed features of multiple different animals and, despite that, none of them seemed rabid or uncontrollably violent, as one would expect from traditional ghouls. Instead, they had a predatory air about them, in the way they moved and interacted with each other.

One hulking creature towered over the rest, nearly 10 feet tall. It stood on long lupine legs that ended in disproportionately large claws. Its torso was shaped like that of a man, but was covered in segmented chitinous armor, like an insect. His left arm was shaped like that of a gigantic praying mantis, while his right was almost human, chitin armor transitioning to gray fur at the elbow. Only his head retained some humanity, though his face was elongated to accommodate a mouthful of fangs.

It looked disturbing. Charlie shuddered, and waited. They would need to wait until Hasan and the other revenants arrived before they could make their move. Then, they would have only minutes before the enemy was on them. If everything went as planned, they should be able to escape with minimal casualties. Otherwise… well, he’d survived dying once already. What was once more?