In the hidden chamber beneath Rocca Galeazzi, in the steady light of the magical lanterns, Vance began to flip through the first book that he had found. He was short on time, but he also knew that many more hours would be wasted if he didn’t understand his position in this world. He reached the section that was written in anthroform and started to read, “Noble Headbound, you now stand before the grave of Brynjar the Unbreakable, Hero of the Giants, Slayer of the Acolytes, Chosen of the Maiden. You have been guided here by spirits that will not rest, that can never rest, until the storm is silenced and the Lord of Lightning is vanquished. Your fate is now intertwined with theirs.”

Vance moved past the introduction and skimmed through the pages without losing track of their substance. The book was telling the story of Rocca Galeazzi, a history of ambition and treachery. In the distant past, long before Argilstead came into being, there was neither castle nor thunderstorm. “There was only the wasteland known as the Weeping Cage.” Here the souls of fallen adventurers surfaced as faces in the earth, and their tears and cries of despair repelled slayer and beast alike. No one hunted here. No one lived here. Even the caravans of the Fly Merchants avoided the area. “But Galvani, the most heartless of beasts, sought the Weeping Cage of his own accord.”

Galvani was obsessed with life and death, and the weeping was like music to his ears. “He sat atop the same rock for three thousand years and meditated like the wisest of sages.” No one understood his intentions. No one sensed his profound resentment toward the Maiden of Revival and the Witch of Decay. “While the other beasts were collecting heads and growing their strength, Galvani seemed like a stagnating fool, or a crazed recluse, or a misguided hermit.” But he was none of those. Eventually, he started to understand the sounds of the weeping souls, not as cries but as words. “They were telling him secrets that neither the Maiden nor the Witch had known.”

And Galvani gathered these abstruse secrets and ground them in the mills of his pensive mind. After many more years had passed, he had developed an art that was both necro- and electromancy. “It was unlike any other magic because it could not only raise the dead but also bind their lost souls back to their bodies; thus there was no limit as to how many undead he could raise and no constrictions as to which creatures he could revitalize.” Galvani called his arcane method the Anima Elettrica, and he vowed to use it to fulfill his ambitions. The tyranny of Revival and Decay was no more. The uncontested rule of Chaos was no more. With the powerful Anima Elettrica, Galvani aspired to end all hunts and to become god in the realm without god.

But the path to his goal was long and treacherous, and any misstep spelled instant doom. “Galvani realized that he was still weak and alone. No kingdom could exist without a powerful king and his fawning subjects, so he disguised himself as a jackal and set out on a quest to gain strength and numbers.” He visited hunting grounds and battlefields. He watched Headbound fight beasts, and whenever a battle was over, he would raise the fallen victim and ambush the weakened victimizer. “In such a way, Galvani defeated beast after beast and transfigured wisdom into Wisdom. In such a way, he created a loyal army of undead Headbound who depended on his Anima Elettrica for their existence.”

Having acquired strength and numbers, Galvani returned victorious to the Weeping Cage, and there he ordered his subjects, whom he called the Acolytes, to build the magnificent Rocca Galeazzi, on the exact same spot where he had meditated and where he had had his epiphany. The castle rose out of rock and stone. From its highest tower, Galvani looked down at the servile masses of Acolytes and announced himself as the new God-King of Middlerift. “Then he sent his messengers far and wide. He ordered the beasts of Middlerift to offer their heads to the new God-King, and the Headbound to surrender so that they could be raised into his kingdom.” Whoever refused would become a traitor or an enemy.

Needless to say, the prideful beasts ignored his absurd words, but many of the Headbound, afraid of Decay and incredulous about Revival, listened to his call and surrendered themselves. “These foolish Headbound, who sought the Lord of Lightning on their own, were rewarded with power and influence in his nascent kingdom.” From among them, a handful rose to prominence. There was Aldini, a gifted human warrior who was put in charge of the castle garrison; Sabrina, a shrewd human mage who became top advisor and castle alchemist; Gudmund, an ingenious giant who was appointed as master engineer; Mimi, a kindhearted dwarf who managed the servants; and Sleezar, a crafty lizasaurian who was employed as torturer.

These Headbound, however, were not opinionless slaves. Although Galvani wanted to create Order, the Anima Elettrica was an art rooted in Chaos. It raised creatures of all levels, but it didn’t coerce them into following orders. Unlike normal necromancy, it didn’t erase the will of the raised. They could chase their own goals; they could run away; they could turn against their king. “But a rebellion was out of the question, for if the master of the Anima Elettrica died, so did all the Acolytes that he had raised.” Galvani controlled his free-willed subjects not only through fear but also by making their lives contingent on his own. Rocca Galeazzi had many souls, many egos, but only one “life.”

And it was potentially an eternal life. As long as Galvani was in power, as long as the God-King was on the throne, his subjects had no fear of death. If they lost their lives in a ferocious battle, they could still be raised and brought back to the immortal kingdom. “They no longer cowered before Decay. They no longer yearned for the mortal world. They fought like suicides and competed for the favors that the Lord of Lightning offered them.” Suddenly, the prideful beasts, who had mocked and ignored Galvani, found themselves cornered like rats. They were overwhelmed by swarms of reckless Acolytes, who killed them and offered their head collections to the Lord of Lightning.

The balance of power was shifting in Middlerift. The once clear dichotomy between Revival and Decay turned blurry. Class Ascensions started becoming more difficult to complete. Meanwhile, the Lord of Lightning and the Anima Elettrica became known as La Terza Scelta, or the Third Choice. “Jubilant and emboldened by his success, Galvani began to plan cities and to pave roads out of Rocca Galeazzi. Left unchallenged for too long, wisdom becomes arrogance. And it was arrogance that blinded him from reality and misguided him toward such early expansion. Every king has his nemeses; every kingdom its enemies. While Galvani was busy laying cornerstones and raising pillars, Revival and Decay were joining forces in resistance and opposition.”

***

Vance paused at this point in the book and began to think about everything that he had read so far. For the first time, the scale and grandeur of Rocca Galeazzi made sense. This place was, in a strange way, a fusion of Argilstead and the Witch’s Lands. The history book had stated that Galvani resented Revival and Decay, but it seemed that his ambitions mimicked, or even combined, the conflicting goals of both. Perhaps the hatred and resentment originated from this very similarity: sometimes it is our own reflection in the mirror that we despise the most. Or perhaps the Lord of Lightning was different after all, for reasons that were unstated or unknown.

Regardless, the Galvanic quest for godhood was quite enough to start a major conflict. Vance had no doubts in this regard, but he still needed to find a link between these ancient clashes and the present. If Revival and Decay had joined forces against Rocca Galeazzi, how did Galvani survive? And if he did survive against all odds, why was he allowed to live for millennia? It seemed unwise to leave such a world-size threat unaddressed for so long, especially since the Anima Elettrica entered into the equation. Another question seemed even more confounding: was it Galvani who took possession of Vance’s head? The likely answer was yes, but yes alone couldn’t clear the confusion. After all, why would the Lord of Lightning care so much about one human head? What exactly was he planning to do with it?

There were no clear answers thus far, so Vance decided to flip the page and seek more information. He traced the anthroform letters with his finger and read on, “The Two Sisters, the Two Brides of Our Lord Thurvik, met at the Final Horizon and forged an unbeatable alliance. The Witch of Decay then summoned an undead army led by both cunning and violent Necronettes. Likewise, the Maiden of Revival called upon the strongest Headbound and made Brynjar the Unbreakable their leader. The forces of Revival and Decay marched together through the Weeping Cage. The sound of their synchronous footsteps deafened the cries of the adventurer souls. And when they arrived at Rocca Galeazzi, there were as many of them as to surround the grand castle from all sides.”

The Siege of Rocca Galeazzi began. Aldini, Guardian of the Walls, and his garrison repelled one offensive after the other. As advisor and castle alchemist, Sabrina concocted defensive plans and horrible explosive potions. Gudmund, the master engineer, fired his Godsling Catapult from the highest tower. Mimi the dwarf recovered the bodies of fallen defenders. And Sleezar the lizasaurian interrogated and tortured all captured enemies. “The defenders wanted to stall as much as possible. After all, the attacking Headbound, whom the Maiden of Revival had amassed, were still bound by their Flames of Revival, and they could not stay in Middlerift forever. When their time was up, the alliance would collapse, and the forces of Decay would be left vulnerable.”

So did Galvani plot and plan—waiting for Revival to retreat so that he could destroy Decay. But reality didn’t grant his wicked wishes. His loyal subjects, the raised Acolytes, were numerous but awfully weak. When they fought against the solitary Middlerift Beasts, they could overwhelm them with numbers. But against the combined army of Revival and Decay, they didn’t have the same advantage. “Soon breaches were being reported in the walls. Soon the fighting started in the bailey.” And although Aldini and his garrison were able to repel the enemy and repair the damages, Galvani became more and more impatient and more and more paranoid. Just as his wisdom had turned into arrogance, his arrogance had turned into panic and fear.

The Lord of Lightning began to look for ways to strengthen his weak subjects before it was too late. “There was only one method—an ingenious but hard-hearted operation.” Seeing his young kingdom on the verge of collapse, Galvani began to modify the bodies of the Acolytes. Without guilt or compunction, he robbed his subjects of their identity and transplanted beast organs into their bodies. He turned them into various chimeras and then bestowed upon them the heads that he had been collecting: he turned them into beasts against their own will and shared with them his powers. “They had to fight the siege forces as beasts and to live their eternity afterward as beasts.”

This drastic measure put an end to the wall breaches and improved the castle defenses, but it also gave rise to internal dissent. “Most of the Acolytes could not accept their new existence as chimeras. They came to see Galvani for who he was—a tyrant, a dictator, a false god.” But what could they do when their lives depended on the Anima Elettrica? How could they rebel when their fate was to live and die with their master? “Everyone was haunted by these questions, but none more than Sabrina. For three dusks, she abandoned her duties as advisor and castle alchemist. She sat in her secluded room with a body still unaltered, still a graceful human, and she thought of what must be done.”

In the end, she sneaked out of Rocca Galeazzi and met with the Two Sisters to sign a secret accord. She promised them a way into the castle, through a ritual duct hidden under the surface of the moat. And in return, the Two Sisters promised her a way to save the Acolytes from destruction after their master was gone. “It was outright treason—a bold treachery that the vain Lord of Lightning did not expect.” But Sabrina wasn’t an unerring mastermind. On her way back into the castle, she was spotted by Aldini, whose vigilance was unrivaled and whose loyalty to Galvani was unchanged. It was her one and only mistake, but it set everything in motion.

On the next day, while poor Sabrina was letting in the enemy through the underwater duct, while the main forces of Revival and Decay were waiting for the castle gates to open from inside, Aldini the Loyal caught everyone off guard. Appearing in the catacombs with his crossbow and cleaver, he felled the infiltrators and captured Sabrina before she could escape. Then he brought her before Galvani, and the Lord of Lightning was livid. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy was gone. Galvani began to operate on her body. He gave her a head unlike any other. Then he sawed her body in half and turned her into an aquatic beast. “He ordered Aldini to throw her in the moat, and Gudmund to send her legs by catapult as a gift to the Two Sisters.”

A punishment so cruel should’ve eliminated all dissent, but it was in fact the final spark that lit an internal conflagration. The weak-willed Acolytes heard rumors of the accord that Sabrina had signed, and after they had witnessed her harrowing fate, they couldn’t bow to Galvani anymore. “There were screams; there was infighting; there were desperate flights.” The gates of the castle suddenly opened on their own, and the forces of Revival and Decay were invited in. Led by Brynjar the Unbreakable, the besiegers charged into Rocca Galeazzi. They stormed the halls and rooms of the castle, killing loyalists and defectors alike. The accord was dishonored. The Acolytes were annihilated. “And Galvani, the wise, the arrogant, the paranoid, found himself cornered in his own throne room.”

***

Vance paused again and started to mull over the last few paragraphs that he had read. The history book stated that the Acolytes, the followers of Galvani, had been annihilated, but hadn’t Vance fought against Aldini the Loyal? Hadn’t he been targeted by Gudmund’s Godsling Catapult? Didn’t he encounter the unrecognizable remnants of Sabrina the Drowned? And didn’t he hide while Sleezar the Torturer crawled through the catacombs? The Acolytes were back to their miserable lives. It seemed that they also had their various duties and that they acted with a significant degree of autonomy, so there was a high chance that they had been raised by the Anima Elettrica.

But they don’t seem to be the powerful beasts they had been in the past. Vance began to string things together. And this means that they didn’t have time to collect new heads … They were raised from the dirt only recently. He tapped on the open book as he continued to ruminate. This castle had been dead for millennia until something happened … something that reactivated the Anima Elettrica. By now, the answer was clear. It’s my head. Galvani survived the ancient battle. He has my head, and it’s giving him the power to use the Anima Elettrica again. The big picture began to clear up after it had been hazy and pixelated. But why did the Honeydew Flies deliver my head to him? Why are they helping him pursue his old ambitions when he’s the enemy of Revival and Decay?

It seemed that there was one last contradiction that could not be resolved. For a few minutes, Vance struggled to think of a reason, but then two seemingly irrelevant words popped up in his mind—Rust Lake. These two words were like a key that fit perfectly into a difficult lock. Suddenly, his mind began to form new associations between ideas that had been so far disconnected. The flies didn’t deliver my head to Galvani. They were forced to drop it here. He took out the letter that Eleanor had written him and began to check the map on its back. The paper was soggy; the ink was faded and washed away; but some of the location labels were still readable. Himilco Magus told me about the Blood Pilgrimage. The Honeydew Flies carried me and journeyed throughout Middlerift.

Vance estimated the location of Rocca Galeazzi on the damaged map. It’s far from Argilstead and Stonethorn Cave, but it’s relatively close to the Witch’s Lands, where Rust Lake is located. The proximity gave more credibility to the theory that he was forming. Yes … This might be what happened. He felt more confident in his conjectures. The Honeydew Flies were passing somewhere near Rocca Galeazzi, as part of the Blood Pilgrimage, when they were attacked by Galvani and forced to drop my head. The flies that survived the attack continued to carry my body through the raging thunderstorms, out of the Weeping Cage, and into the Witch’s Lands. He traced a straight line on the map with his finger. They were trying to reach the closest haven, and they were able to drop me into Rust Lake before Galvani could harm my body. Yes … This is it … This is why I woke up where no one ever wakes up!

It was strange how a book so old could solve a mystery of the present, but all the evidence so far seemed to support Vance’s new theory. While he was going through the Pilgrim’s Dream, while he was being haunted by the disturbing images of his father and the court and the guillotine, the Honeydew Flies were engaged in a fierce parallel battle against the Lord of Lightning. They were the only reason that he didn’t die while he was still unconscious—the only reason that Galvani failed to eliminate his body in the most underhanded way. And they’re still following me now … Why? Do they want to see me kill Galvani? Do they want me to take revenge for them?

He wasn’t confident of this last point, but since the Honeydew Flies hadn’t attacked him so far, and since Himilco Magus told him that flies were generally harmless, he chose to believe for now that they were here to watch him slay Galvani. Fate, my ass. If I’m right about this, it was Galvani who forced me to go through all this shit. He’s the reason my Blood Pilgrimage got interrupted, the reason I got labeled a filthy Necronette. If he hadn’t attacked me while I was unconscious, I wouldn’t have found myself at a disadvantage in this world. I wouldn’t have lost my feet. The realizations gave birth to bitterness and vengefulness. If the flies want revenge, I’ll serve them Galvani’s head. O cowardly Lord of Lightning, you will pay for this. It wasn’t about the Class Ascension anymore; it was about everything that had happened since Vance set foot in Middlerift.

With his malice sharpened and whetted, he returned to the history book, skimmed fast through the description of the final fight, and searched for clues about Galvani’s whereabouts. He reached the relevant part and read with an insufferable thirst for beast blood, “With his fearsome Bone Flail, Brynjar the Unbreakable dispossessed Galvani of his thunderous staff. The Lord of Lightning reached for his fallen weapon, but he was pummeled and hammered and forced to retreat. In a corner he stood—surrounded by Brynjar and his loyal followers who bore the bear-marked shields. It was the end of an era, but not the end of Galvani or the Anima Elettrica.”

Vance flipped the page and continued, “In the last moment, Galvani used his powers in an unforeseen way. He vaporized his own beastly body and became a force of nature.” A force of nature? “There was an ear-piercing explosion—raw electro-magic, crashes of thunder, webs of lightning. Brynjar the Unbreakable shielded the world from the destructive blast and turned into dust, while Galvani retreated to the skies and became an untouchable thunderstorm. The Lord of Lightning turned into clouds and mist that traveled with the wind. But he promised that he would return one day to Rocca Galeazzi, when the time was right, when he found a suitable head that could store the secrets of the Anima Elettrica and lend him enough power to revive his subjects.”

This is where my head fits in. Vance flipped the page and reached the last part of the book. He read, “Noble Headbound, you might be the continuation of our history. You are no chosen one, but your arrival has been long awaited. The Lord of Lightning has descended from the sky to claim your head. It is a chance to defeat him once and for all. Assemble his nefarious staff, which we have divided and stored away in Rocca Galeazzi; then seek him in his throne room. After you defeat him in battle, when he is cornered and about to escape to the sky, use his own weapon against him: point the staff at the mist and absorb him inside. When he is trapped in this eternal prison, our history will surely reach a befitting conclusion, and the souls that wander will finally find peace.”

So … That’s what the Staff of Galvani is for. Vance closed the history book and looked at the lightning rod that he was carrying. The Hidden Objective existed for a reason. I already have the first piece of the staff. For a moment, he felt a strange sense of satisfaction: Middlerift was finally starting to make sense, and he was arriving at the truth bit by bit, through his own efforts and his own inferences. Information gathered this way was a thousand times more reliable than anything the likes of Eleanor could tell him. It’s good that I finally understand what’s going on with my Class Ascension. He smiled inly and put the history book aside. But this understanding alone is not enough. I still have much to do.

He looked at the small table before him. In the light of the magical lantern, he saw the second book that was left by the grave of Brynjar the Unbreakable. It’d better not be another history volume. He flipped the pages of this second book, and to his pleasant surprise, he discovered that its contents had a more practical flavor. There were detailed maps of Rocca Galeazzi, illustrations and descriptions of the Acolytes, and instructions on how to find the remaining two pieces of the Staff of Galvani. I guess whoever built this burial chamber actually gave a thought about what to stash away. Vance studied the maps. It’s a bit of a labyrinth, but the Tombs of Solario were worse. It’s time to reassemble the staff and see which powers it can actually offer me.