He could wait no longer. Someone had already broke out into song. If one of them pulled a lute Dimrat would have charged headlong screaming, of that he was certain. The head crept from the hole and faded low. It was a cluttered camp. They hadn’t even bothered to set up perimeter defences, which added to Dimrat’s pile of growing irritations. But such overwhelming ignorance worked in his favour.

Five defilers amidst the smoky gloom - partially obscured by their plundered hoard - while the sweet aroma of fatty flesh popped and crackled over a fire.

[Through your curse, a lvl 4 prisoner has been slain]

[Association experience awarded]

[You leveled up!]

He circled them through the dewy flora and fauna, while a juggernaut of a man visibly radiated heat by the fire. The man sat cross-legged and alone against the wheel of a cart; hairy and butt-naked, except for a menacing barbute that covered his bearded face and head, and muffled an impressive snore - where the rest of his armour had been stacked gorish beside him underneath a monstrous sticky zweihander; far too broad for a human, both him and sword.

[“Slorn”]

[Asleep][Grouped][Hidden accolades]

‘Only a name?’ thought the head.

Two encumbered bookworms - way across the fire - huddled together and prayed under dark billowing hoods with a bewitched fever. Together they caressed an ominous dark rod with slender bejeweled fingers. Sinister forces more suited to the Fallen flowed through them into the rod, when it pulsed a tranquil tone that trembled their hands with ecstasy, before the process started all over again.

[“Lerisa” & “Lial”]

[Grouped][Hidden accolades]

Attop the cart a haggard packman lay sprawled with his feet over the fire - socks singed and smoky - chugging swill in bitter bliss from a toe-hole in his boot that he held over his face.

[“Broden”]

[Grouped][Hidden accolades]

Beside him an aged and squireless knight sat on his own helmet - adrift and stern - lost to the fire.

[“Arelorn”]

[Group Leader][Hidden accolades]

Dimrat slithered upon the perfect ambush spot. He watched them from behind a ruined wall, through a gap in the brickwork. From there he could see them all. He’d suffered his own patience to the brink of torture, to a state where cursed energy weeped from his eye sockets. He could wait no more. His eyes glowered red, when the naked one stopped snoring.

A flash of light, a gust of wind, and a chip in the right-side of his skull. A knife had graced him through his spyhole and lodged itself into the wall behind.

‘Ha! How’s that you revolting pisshead? I finally won one!’ The voice came from the camp.

Dimrat froze. His eyes moved towards the knife, then widened.

[Curse-Eating Exo-Steel Whitewidow(VI)] lvl: ???

[Dead]

It was his hunter.

‘....that unkillable fiend?! Dead in one hit?!’

The giant hunter slumped twitchy beside him, a dazzling spear straight through its head.

‘No chance’, came a hoarser voice, ‘ain’t no shitty knight out-pottin me. I’ll get to the bottom of this’

His eyes shot forward. The Knight Arelorn stood and grinned victorious over the flames, while the sloshed packman stumbled over to investigate.

‘What have I done!’ Dimrat’s mind spun into overdrive. He didn’t even see that knife let alone react to it. The only conceivable thing that could match such speeds was Vellom. He stood no chance. It wasn’t ignorance, it was confidence. They didn’t need parameter defences. They were strong beyond anything he could have imagined. And if they caught him loitering…

The stench of alcohol. It was the packman. He pulled the knight’s spear from the Whitewidow’s carcass, then squatted low above Dimrat to collect his knife. Then he whispered...

‘Well, well. What do we...have...’ the man held his breath and raised his eyebrows with surprise.

‘I’ve been found!’

The man smirked. ‘Ain’t you somethin?’

Dimrat feigned death.

‘Well?’ said Arelorn, ‘Did this “pompous fat fuck knight” finally beat the freebooter at his own game?’

Broden studied Dimrat with sunken eyes above a big crooked nose. He jutted his jaw and rolled his tongue around behind his bottom lip. He snatched the knife, then grabbed Dimrat with a thumb and fingers through the eyes.

‘Nope’ he said, then spun with a gaunt grin of rotten teeth. ‘I definitely hit what I was looking for!’

Dimrat didn’t have a clue what was going on. Broden belched by the fire and placed Dimrat down on a box beside him, then conspicuously faced the skull towards the others. Dimrat’s eyes darted about the scene.

The knight gloated by the fire and ripped at meat with his teeth. The big one - Slorn - had stopped snoring. He remained as still and quiet as the rock, only now he gazed at Dimrat through the dark slat of his helm...

‘Just eat the arse’ said Arelorn with a gob full, while Lorisa and Lial joined him by the fire to pick at a frazzled beast on a spit. ‘Unless you want the shits’

The dark priestesses lowered their baggy hoods. A black rod floated and hummed above them. One rolled her eyes while the other shook her head, but together they spoke in chorus as one voice. ‘I’m not eating its arse, thanks. Think there’s still some bread, or I’ll wait. Festival banquet’s just around the corner’

Dimrat couldn’t calm down. ‘Did these little harlets just say festival?! No! Impossible! The enemy, a festival, in my lady’s sanctuary?!’ Dimrat couldn’t. He just couldn’t. If he believed those words, right then and there, he would have detonated, cursed limiter be damned. Broden chuckled under his breath beside him.

[Through your curse, a lvl 7 prisoner has been slain]

[Association experience awarded]

Then something landed on Dimrat’s skull. It was a blood wax candle with a wick that sparked to life on its own. A dozen or so more floated by and landed around the camp where they ignited.

Then an unfamiliar voice echoed from behind him ‘I took the bread, sorry. But I have some apples’

Several apples hovered above him towards the priestesses, who caught them out the air and waved thanks, before two perfumed cloaks wafted by his head to nestle in around the fire.

One was a graceful ranger who practically flowed through the clutter - bow and quiver, blades either side - who lobbed a dagger high and said ‘my spot’ before it struck a box lid moments before the other stranger sat down - quite the opposite of the ranger - a witch who barged her way through to clanks and thuds then stood above the the dagger that twanged.

She tutted and raised her hand - palm-up - when the dagger flew out of the box and tinked off somewhere amongst the rocks away from the camp. She plomped down and crossed her arms.

[“Izy the Witch”]

[Grouped][Hidden accolades]

[“Jux”]

[Grouped][Hidden accolades]

Broden said ‘forty five minutes late? We’re surrounded by monsters you two can still screw? The witch made a fist over her mouth to clear her throat to the jingle of earrings, while the ranger spun to face him with a half-hearted gesture of surprise, then quickly dropped the act. ‘You can still drink, can’t you?’

Broden scratched the scruff of his chin. ‘If I can still piss, aye. Unlike you and your swollen pecker. You’re like a dog with two dicks. It’s gonna bite you in the arse one day’

‘You were right’ interjected the witch, ‘the upper warrens are teeming!’

Arelorn nodded. ‘They’re off limits for a reason. Teeming, but definitely worth it’

‘Oh?’ said the ranger, who’d already returned from the bush with his dagger in hand and sat down beside the fire. ‘So you actually found something?’

Arelorn looked at them both smug, then pulled a sheet off something beside him.

It was a skeletal arm that protruded from the fanged mouth of a large demonic skull. The arm reached up, and in its clawed hand was a smaller skull, one that began to pour with a purple mist from its mouth.

[Fallen Voidspace Cauldron]: Lures spirits lost in battle into its void with dark temptations. Dark temptations become nightmares of family and loved ones tortured until captured souls deteriorate into fuel for the Fallen.

Converts the souls of the dead into a HP+MP soup for Fallen faction members. Soup’s bitter, do not sip.

Summons Fallen Champion at 5600/5600 souls, regardless of territory restrictions.

Current pot: 0/5600

Uncommon artefact

Lerisa and Lial gasped then spoke in chorus. ‘That’s horrendous!’ They leaned against each other, hands clasped together while their fingers knitted tighter. ‘How can an artefact so cruel only be uncommon...’

Arelorn said, ‘that’s how it was for the Fallen!’

The witch whistled an impressed note and crossed a leg over. ‘Never thought I’d lay eyes upon a bonafide Fallen artefact.’

Jux’s leather glove creaked around the blade of his dagger. ‘All those bedtime stories suddenly feel real…’ Then he shuddered. ‘Imagine coming face to face with a Fallen today’

Broden weezed into guttered laughter.

Confused expressions and a couple of raised eyebrows swivelled towards the packman.

He said nothing. Slorn remained as quiet and watchful as ever. Dimrat couldn’t escape the pressure of that one’s hidden gaze.

Broden lowered the shoe from his mouth, then said, ‘you should have heard his fat arse fart in excitement stuck up from the bonepile rummaging it free’

Izy puffed a crease up one side of her cheek while a teddy bear snoozed a bubble on her shoulder. ‘A scrounging knight’s tale?’

[Izy the Witch’s familiar]: Cursed Strangething

Arelorn seemed infatuated by the artefact, his intensity wild and wondrous. ‘Now to smuggle it back to Chale’

‘Can’t’ said Broden.

They all looked at him.

‘Some cursed plague’s hit Chale hard. No one in or out. Even those famous maestros snuffed it’

The priestesses stopped their munching and sat up. ‘Cantano?!’

‘Aye, that band ‘o’ bards’

‘What crap luck!’ they said, ‘I only chose Edinnor’s festival because they did!’ One of them bit a thumbnail while the other sighed. ‘Knew I shoulda gone to Fangorn forest’s festival’’

‘A feast without music?’ said Izy, ‘how gray. So. What now?’

The packman placed a bottle down beside Dimrat. ‘Fangorn’

They glared at him with duly concern; except the priestesses, who silently high fived each other under their layers.

‘We brought the mirror in case this happened’

Arelorn nodded. ‘Aye, it was always a contingency plan. We’re still on course...so long as we don’t get caught, and, well...’

They all stirred uncomfortably.

Dimrat glowered from under his eye sockets while the insults piled high. These squishbags went from trespassers, to arrogant thrill seekers, to bard lovers, to smugglers, to something worse than everything else combined. Plunderers. They stole Fallen property.

Beyond his unsuspecting captors and over the course of their conversation, more and more lights twinkled to life near and far. He was under the shelter of some cove that formed a series of towering natural archways - some parts porous and spongy and overhung with fossil clams and other ancient seashells; now home to smaller lifeforms engaged in their own hierarchical struggles, and in other parts bored smooth by ancient underground waterways.

Tunnels high above the ceiling that once rushed with water, now only whistled with wind. Perhaps the great abyss drank it all.

The grandest of all the archways stood closest and was a window into another cavern. Unlike the empty calcified abyss he came from, this cavern revealed much more. It was hard to say if the waterworld came before or after, but almost every rocky outcrop and fissure, every risen plate of earth and daunting wall, climbed with faint-lit windows and walkways. It was the fossil husk of a long lost city - perhaps lost Edinnor - now a necropolis overrun with intruders.

Far away in the center of the cavern, a great rock strut connected the ground to the ceiling, spiraled by wooden steps and breezy with kites and long scarfs that all changed direction on the wind. A melodic chime carried across the cavern, and it seemed to be from that pillar.

‘...when the festival really gets going, that’s when we’ll move. We’ll use the cover of fireworks. Don’t wander off…’

‘...Jax’ said Arelorn. Jax turned from Izy’s ear hiding a smirk. The pair of them straightened up and glanced back. Then Arelorn continued. ‘Don’t disappear you two. Stay close to the cart...and load it up with food while you’re there! Fangorn’s hard work’

Izy said, ‘Is it not a tad risky without the bards? A lightshow is hardly a distraction’

Broden chuckled. ‘Oh there’ll be a distraction alright’

‘Well’, said Jux, ‘now that everyone’s on the same page…shall we head off in pairs?’

‘Aye’, said Broden, ‘same as usual. Me and Arelorn, Slorn and the girls, and you two sluts. But settle first. Sleep if you can. There’s no resting once we hit the forest’

[through your curse, a lvl 14 jailer has been slain]

[Association experience awarded]

It was a bitter cold bonfire. He hadn’t dared sneak away while they slept. He’d watched distant fires fade, watched lights move through windows and tunnels into places unknown. More humans and their adventuring - perhaps just as dangerous as this group - that all seemed to flow towards the same location.

The group had departed over the hours in their pairs, and only Broden and Arelorn remained somewhere behind Dimrat. The wax candle on his head had become nothing but a wispy wick in a hard puddle of wax. He had too much to think about. How powerful humans had become. How they plundered Fallen tombs. How they supposedly celebrated somewhere in the depths. How he managed to hold his breath that long.

‘Glad you didn’t tell em’

‘Good grief, no’ said Arelorn. ‘Could you imagine?’

The echoes of cartwheels tumbled away over the course of five minutes, when after what felt like an eternity, Dimrat began to shake into gritted teeth. He took in a bottomless breath, then screamed loud enough to stir the ecosystem and halt some of the closer firelights. So loud was his rage that a giant shell echoed free from the ceiling and plummeted into the ground behind him.

‘I will kill those bastards, I swear it. I...’

His ego couldn’t handle the humiliation. ‘I… How many transformations would I even need?!’ Then he noticed they’d left a box behind. The one he sat on. He made a mental note to add ‘litterbugs’ to the list, then floated and slapped his chops together to shake off the candlewax. The head spun, then his eyes widened.

The packman’s knife remained stuck in the trunk lid, and it had been used to scrape a message.

"A...k i n d n e s s...f o r...a...c o i n ?"