When Roark opened his eyes again, he was standing knee deep in black ground fog, facing the ruins of the ancient citadel. He felt a brief moment of relief at having returned to a corporeal body, but that bubble popped when he realized it was the ungainly, disproportionate Changeling’s body rather than his own. Blue leathery skin, knobby knees, spidery limbs, claw tipped fingers.

Around his waist, the dirty loincloth waved softly along with the swirls and eddies of the fog. Having seen the other inhabitants of this plane decked out in armor and armed to the teeth, Roark would’ve given quite a lot for some sort of combat gear of his own. At least the pendant he’d stolen from the Tyrant King was still firmly in place around his neck.

Roark turned a slow circle, searching the derelict courtyard for any sign of sentient life. There in the shadows of the crumbling staircase, the feather-banded Changeling stood swaying and bobbing like a ship on the Great Sea. At regular intervals, the creature grunted to no one and pointed into the wisps of black fog.

Roark frowned. That hardly counted as sentient.

He dismissed the swaying Changeling from his mind and stole over to the pile of rubble which connected to the gap in the citadel’s wall. A few awkward moments of scrambling later, he heaved his potbelly over the side and dropped to the ground in the graveyard once more.

Rather than the catlike landing he had envisioned, something went wrong, and he landed in a tangle of disproportionate arms and legs. Roark croaked indignantly and picked himself up. This body was taking a lot of getting used to for what, so far, felt like an exceedingly small reward. If he hadn’t already realized that this was an entirely different world from his own, he would have wondered whether Marek had somehow imprisoned his mind in this clumsy body as a form of torture.

All around the tombstones and crypts, desiccated corpses tagged [Shambling Revenants] shuffled and groaned. Their travels seemed to have no particular destination in mind. They shuffled a few steps in one direction, then turned around and retraced their paths back to where they’d begun.

It didn’t bode well for finding an intelligent source to speak to.

Still, after a few minutes’ observation, he noted one Shambling Revenant that followed a slightly wider variety of patterns through the graves and crypts. Three, to be exact: First, around a cracked crypt to the far gate and back. Then to a dead tree near a wrought iron fence and back once more. And finally, a shuffling beeline toward the gaping door of a mausoleum. This Revenant had a cracked blackwood bow slung over his shoulder, a quiver full of black-fletched arrows, and the tattered remains of a very scraggly beard on what was left of his jaw.

He scanned the graveyard for any bands of “heroes” like the ones who had shot him down earlier. None in sight.

Roark trotted over to the bearded Revenant, trying to imbue the tiny Changeling body he was stuck in with some amount of his accustomed agility and at least a pinch of dignity. The effect was something like a two-legged gallop, though the pace was hardly fast enough to do the word justice.

The bearded Revenant had just begun its circuit of the dead tree when Roark caught up to it. He fell into step with its shuffling gate and attempted to get its attention.

“Can you understand me?” he croaked up at it.

The Shambling Revenant opened its mouth, waggling the strings of beard attached to what was left of its decaying throat as it prepared to speak.

Roark’s heart fluttered with excitement inside his bony bird-chest.

And then sank as the bearded Revenant let out a long, meaningless groan identical to the groans of the rest of the Revenants lumbering around the graveyard. The rotting creature continued its shuffle toward the dead tree. Worthless creature.

Roark sighed and left off following the creature.

“Can anything in this world understand me?” he muttered to no one. At least it was becoming more intuitive to speak. He was going to need a way to amuse himself as he slowly went insane surrounded by useless creatures with no concept of communication.

In a way, this wasn’t so different from the last twenty years of his life. When he wanted answers, he’d had to search them out alone. When he wanted to do something, he’d had to teach himself how. In all the meaningful ways, this was that. He had to figure out what in the hells this world was and find a way back to Korvo. And he would do it the way always had—on his own. He had made a promise to the Tyrant King that he meant to fulfill.

If the creatures here couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation, perhaps he could find his answers through other means. A world with tombstones was a world where at least some form of marking the dead took place, even if it didn’t stick, as evidenced by the Shambling Revenants walking the graveyard. Perhaps he could find a grave marker whose symbols or letters could still be read. That would be a start, in any case.

Roark crept through the dewy grass and began searching the closest tombstones for legible markings. Their pale surfaces were weather-pitted and rough, overgrown with lichen, and many were cracked in half, obviously carved from stone too soft to stand the centuries. Though the moon above was shrouded in a film of oily black cloud, Roark found his bulging Changeling eyes had no problem seeing clearly. Each tiny flat finger of lichen stood out in perfect contrast to the eroded stone from which it grew, but he couldn’t find any discernable pattern on the grave markers. To be certain he hadn’t missed anything, he ran his leathery blue fingers over the rough, pebbled surfaces, but couldn’t detect any design or writing carved into them.

He had nearly reached the end of one haphazard row when he spotted a dull gleam in the tall grass beside a crumbling mausoleum. He waited impatiently as a female Revenant shambled past—she wore scanty, tattered armor that left more vulnerable than it protected—then loped over to inspect the source of the gleam.

There by the corner of the mausoleum lay a rusty sword easily twice as long as his scrawny arm. The blade curved subtly along its back, and its cutting edge pitched inward toward the hilt and outward nearer the point. The smithing he’d studied in his handful of years at the academy perked up. Weighted correctly, a blade like that could chop with all the momentum of an ax while maintaining the maneuverability of a sword.

He picked it up, excited to test its construction.

Immediately, his vision was filled with ethereal writing.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Rusty Falcata

One-Handed Damage: 9 - 15

Durability: 25 of 30

Level Requirement: 1

Blade Class Weapon - Medium Attack Speed

╠═╦╬╧╪

Very strange. He could feel the weight of the sword in his hand, but he couldn’t see the weapon. No, now some sort of semi-translucent book hung in the air before him, commanding his field of vision to the exclusion of almost all else. True, on the peripheries of sight he caught a sliver of the graveyard—dewy grass here, crumbling mausoleum there, and a bit of leathery blue Changeling wrist—but mostly it was the book. There were several ribbons running along the top of the tome, each one elegantly labeled with a bit of flowing script: Inventory, Maps, Quests, Skills, Spells, Character, Party, Followers, WikiLore, Chat.

He squinted, studying the blank pages before him. Yes, definitely a grimoire he decided, and it seemed as though this falcata was now bound to it in some way. Roark desperately wished that he could reach out and turn the pages, but there didn’t seem to be regular pages to turn. So instead, he read through the words on each of the ribbons again, this time more slowly. He quickly realized that each word burned with a faint golden light as he focused on it. He slowed himself down and began again. He glared at the ribbon marked Inventory and a new page opened before him.

His breath seemed to falter inside his chest. Incredible. On the left-hand page of the grimoire there was an image of a Changeling. But not any Changeling. Of himself, he instinctively knew. And not merely a painting, but a perfect, floating simulacrum, slowly rotating in a circle. This vision of himself wore a dirty loincloth and gripped the curved sword in one dirt-caked hand. He was a hideous creature, really. To the right was a strange grid of boxes, most of them open, though a few filled with items: Threadbare Loincloth. Rusty Falcata. World Stone Pendant.

As Roark skimmed each item, a slowly rotating image appeared along with various details about the item. The loincloth was self-explanatory, and the falcata’s description was a repeat of what he’d already seen. But the World Stone … The image rotating slowly before him was the amber pendant he’d taken from the Tyrant King, its intricate silver setting gleaming as if under a bright light, yet its silver chain hanging empty.

Fascinated, Roark devoured the description like a starving man presented with a feast.

╠═╦╬╧╪

World Stone Pendant

Durability: Indestructible

Level Restriction: 1

Property: Soul Forge - Imbue the undead with life and will.

Current World Stone Authority: Greater Vassal 0 / 1

Property: ???

Property: ???

Property: ???

Property: ???

Property: ???

The World Stone can bend, shape, and distort reality, allowing the bearer the power of Creation and Life itself …

╠═╦╬╧╪

Vassal, as in serf or thrall. Maybe the rumors of the Tyrant King’s necrotic army hadn’t been baseless after all. Maybe that was how the bastard had amassed such a huge fighting force in so little time without tipping off the Council of Ancients, by raising the dead to fight for him.

Dismissing this thought, Roark navigated to the next page.

Maps

Maps of an area can be purchased from Cartographers or learned with the Cartography Skill.

Useless. He tried the next.

Quests

You currently have no active quests.

The Skills and Spells pages were equally empty. Roark focused on the ribbon marked Character, opening the page.

Roark felt like a child staring at a slate full of letters for the first time. The words and numbers slipped through his mind, neat, orderly, and completely meaningless.

The ring of steel filled the air, cutting through his attempt to puzzle out the page’s meaning. Instinctively, Roark slammed the book shut with a thought and searched out the source of the sound.

On the far side of the graveyard, a new band of warriors was attacking. A pale elf with dual swords chopped a Shambling Revenant in half while a burly rog—female by the shape of her armor—hacked into another of the walking corpses. Outside the stone retaining fence, a human archer looked on, picking off Revenants from afar.

Roark watched in disbelief as the Revenants scattered throughout the rest of the graveyard continued to trace their familiar paths around the tombstones and crypts as if nothing were amiss. Buffoons. Did they not realize that if they all turned on their attackers, the fight would be over in moments? Apparently not, since even the Revenants closest to the fighting appeared oblivious to the crash of battle just yards away.

“You’re under attack!” Roark croaked to the female Revenant as she passed. “At the gate, enemies!” He jabbed a clawed finger toward the entry.

She groaned and shambled on without even drawing her sword.

Roark ran to the bearded Revenant.

“Look!” He grabbed the Revenant’s arm and yanked him around to face the battle. “Your yardmates are being mowed down like wheat. But if you all launch a counterattack at the same time, you’ll overwhelm these invaders easily. To arms, man! To arms!”

An arrow thudded into the bearded Revenant’s skull. The Revenant looked from side to side, the shaft of the arrow waving back and forth with the motion, as if he couldn’t tell where it had come from.

“They’re right there!” Roark shouted, stabbing the rusty falcata at the rampaging fighters. “Are you blind, mate?!”

The rog and elf had pushed deeper into the graveyard and the archer followed them inside, but the attack was poorly coordinated, suicidal given the number of undead opponents. If the Shambling Revenants weren’t such morons, these invaders would be dead already.

Roark tested the weight of the falcata in his hand, fingers itching for the familiar lightness of his pen knife. Maybe with his magic and time to prepare, he could take these armor-clad heroes. But caught unaware with nothing but a rusty sword more than half his size? No, this battle was lost.

Roark turned and sprinted as fast as his tiny Changeling legs would carry him back to the breech in the wall. He scrambled to the top, casting a glance back over his shoulder before climbing down the opposite side into the ruined citadel.

The warriors were closing in.