The relic hunters, battlemages, and remaining guards piled the last of the cackling trophy heads into the ornate fireplace. Disembodied dire-beast heads writhed about as they were chucked in, but stopped abruptly once the flames took hold.

  The remaining crew at the Battletower also chucked some limbs and spare bits of fungal growth that had yet to be set ablaze in the fighting. This included Gael’s dismembered body.

  A dire-deer trophy head cackled something manic as a surviving mage chucked it into the bonfire. It continued to cackle until the flames caught it, and it swiftly returned to its proper state of death. Calaf pondered the head until the fire melted it beyond recognition, stuffing spewing out and burning through broken stitches.

  Centuries-old trophies ought to have been far too decayed, desiccated, and stuffed to serve as a vessel for anything. There was no possible transmission vector. And yet the rot reanimated these all the same, and all at once! That first got Calaf thinking about the nature of the rot.

  It’s not spread just by bites or creatures slain by the rotting horde. Proximity affected the spread to some degree. But how did the rot get to such far-flung locales as Port Town and the hinterlands? How did it get into the Battletower? It had to be…

  Gael’s head opened its mouth in a cold, measured approximation of speech.

  One of the mages who’d taken part in the rooftop beacon job provided a spell that dulled the living’s hearing. Beforehand, Calaf kept arguing with the trophy heads. Now, the deceased Gael’s voice was muffled and unintelligible.

  Calaf tapped two fingers to his ear, cycling the spell off.

  “Your intuition is correct,” said the head.

  Every repurposed corpse spoke with the same voice: deep and guttural. Booming, but not monotone, with a certain authority devoid of charisma. Dire-rats transmitted the same baritone ‘voice’ as Gael’s head, here. As for who or what the voice represented, Calaf’s intuition had a hunch about that as well.

  “What do you want?” Calaf asked with a scowl.

  “… Here to aid you in your quest,” said Gael’s head.

  With an annoyed tsk, Calaf took the head by a blood-stained cloak and moved it towards the fire.

  “Timeless symphony,” said the head. “An ever-present chorus.”

  Undaunted, Calaf swung the head by its cloak. He aimed to throw it deep into the fire.

  “Surely you guessed the nature of the rot.”

  Then, when Calaf did not stop:

  “Yes, it is everywhere, ever-present,” the head said, then, at progressively lower octaves: “The fate of all things. A collection of centuries awaits in the hollows and sinkholes beneath your feet. In the dark corners of the world-plain.”

  Calaf brought the head to a stop. A subtle ringing noise filled his mind. He shook his own head back and forth, but it did not allay the symptoms.

  “All dead return to rot in time.” The head almost approximated Gael’s voice for a syllable. “Your clergy shelters the dead away in dry crypts. Arrests the rot.”

  “Good,” Calaf said. “If church funerary practices keep… whatever you are at bay, it’s for the best.”

  The head made a motion like it was shaking its jowls. “Hnnng. They do not remember why their dead are interned in the crypts, or where the tradition comes from.”

  “The crypts are to store the faithful for eventual resurrection,” Calaf began. His eyes darted about, something about the promised mass-resurrection spell and the rot’s own reanimated throngs didn’t sit well with the Squire.

  The head tried swinging under its own power. After a moment, Calaf guessed it was trying to draw attention to Calaf’s Brand.

  “You were close to the truth,” the voice said. “We implored you to delve further. Before the Arbiter caught up. The master of these shackles, a devious but dire stop-gap measure. Delayed, but did not stop the tide. And the whole world could not be shackled. Not by you, or it.”

  Enough of this. Calaf threw the head of his former party member into the flames. Despite aiming for the back of the fireplace, Gael landed atop the pile. Flames caught up quickly.

  “I…” the voice crackled as repurposed vocal cords burned.

  As the flames reached the top of Gael’s head, the whole fireplace went up in a conflagration up to the rooftop. Flames spread across the wall but did not catch on due to the tower’s many magical enhancements. The other mages on burn duty scrambled. Calaf held his hand out to protect against the heat.

  “I…” the many rot-addled corpses hastily assembled themselves into a gestalt entity, tendrils running between bits of wood and charcoal. “Not the conductor of the symphony. Merely a voice in the choir. Little time remains.”

  Was this the same entity that had been speaking mere moments before?

  What passed as its head pointed at Calaf. “There is little time before the flames consume this vessel.”

  “What are you?” Calaf asked, eyebrow raised.

  That ringing in his head grew louder still.

  “You know of me,” said the voice. “Your intuitions are correct. The rot is ever-present. Not a spell or miasma. Present everywhere. In you and your friends, though only in death will it manifest.”

  Calaf shuddered.

  “The gospel. Destroyed.” The creature growled as its flesh burned. “It must be reconstructed.”

  “How would you know this?” Calaf asked.

  “Hnnng. There are memories preserved in the symphony.”

  The fire shifted. The gestalt entity collapsed in on itself.

  “Little time. Do not ask, when you can experience it yourself.”

  The flames died down, their fuel used up. The voice from the rot died with it. But the ringing did not abate.

  A quill. Calaf required ink and paper. He could write using the Interface, but this compulsion persisted. To the confused looks from the mages in charge of the burn pile, Calaf stumbled off. The rot had some kind of mental component to it. Magic separate from the Brand.

  Though he walked through the Battletower halls, in his mind, he was elsewhere. Somewhere near the desert. Ancient memories overlapped in his mind.

  He returned to the library. Jelena and the others were there.

  “Quill. Need a quill.” Calaf mimed a writing motion with his left hand.

  Without a word, Zilara handed one to him.

  Calaf pulled up a bit of parchment and, noticing there was a boring logistical document on it, turned it around. He rapidly began scribbling on the paper.

  “What are you doing?” Jelena asked, her voice betraying her concern.

  Rather than respond, Calaf rapidly scribbled out the remains of the now-destroyed Gospel of Aldia based on memories that were not his.

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  Gospel of Aldia at the highland desert (cont)

  The old heroes made camp at an oasis in the high desert. Little cover was there from the flying patrols of devilry.

  Many more had joined the four heroes in their quest. Not just Shackled, but common layfolk. They listened to Mia’s instructions on the nature of the brand-slaves’ affliction. Though those shackled by the demons were the lowest and most forsaken among the people of the land, the peasants and lowland farmers of all sorts did choose to follow in the heroes’ footsteps. After many a century of demonic overlordship all had cousins or neighbors taken to the shackle. Many a human slave lord had been killed by their own Shackled in what was a rapidly growing rebellion against the Demon King and its mortal collaborator lords both.

  No demons harried the group since entering the wooded river delta. Large enough was the following that a great camp had cropped up, growing ever larger with each night.

  It was Roland’s crusade. To get north. Northern highlands were the domain of the Demon King – but also the marches and forts of outlander knights come to beat back the forces of devilry. He had mastered his Shackle up to level thirty-five, second only to Aldia, whose skillful career as a for-hire monster slayer left him with a buffer of experience and the skills to acquire much more XP than the rest of the party.

  Even now, brave Roland did train unshackled peasants in the art of spearcraft. Though shackled, his knowledge of unaugmented martial arts remained. He worked up a sweat in training, washing it off with oasis water.

  “Good sir,” Cleric Mia said. “How much longer until we reach your home marches?”

  Long had the pair spoken on life outside the spire. Roland opened up about his fears. Even outland knights thought little of the Shackled. There would be limits to how far up the ranks of knighthood he could rise now that he was bound to operate through Interface. But with an entire army of commoner crusaders at his back, perhaps he could still win some glory and position.

  “Just past this desert,” said the knight. “We’ll reach the Autumnlands, and Fort Duran. A highland plateau awaits, where most of the population has been resettled under the Demon King.”

  Mia nodded understandably. She’d heard of the capital plateau, though only through her grandmother and only in hushed murmurs as the elderly cleric had talked in her sleep, many years ago. Roland and various fellow travelers around camp told her many more stories of freeborn living and working under the open sky.

  “We’ll rendezvous with Lord Duran at the fort,” Roland said. “Any reinforcements will be welcome. But if we can raise the capital in rebellion…”

  “Hmm?” Mia tilted her head, waiting for her knight to continue.

  “… most human there are freeborn yet. The demon garrison keeps order, but surely cannot shackle them all.”

  He spoke as if this victory were already assured.

  With the capital liberated, there would still be five-dozen leagues of rough and inhospitable fumaroles between the free knights of the realm and the Demon King itself. Land fit for a demon but hellish for mortal man, it would be constant combat to the lord’s throne. And once there, the king itself would need to be slain. How would one slay a mountain?

  This would have to be worked out by the marcher lords who would plan the attack. Roland and Mia’s impromptu rebellion needed to reach the front lines before they could be of use.

  “I… do look forward to our continued travels,” Mia said with a smile.

  The sun grew low on the western horizon. A group of unshackled children rushed by, playing with toy swords as they did every evening.

  “It is time for me to retire,” Mia said, motioning for her tent.

  Roland would spend another long evening through to midnight planning their march with Aldia. Roughly half the Battlemages left their tower of learning to join the crusade. Their honed skills as legendary slayers of monsters proved valuable—for what was a demon if not just a particularly cruel monster? Their knowledge of the surrounding lands, too, proved most helpful. They would be the backbone of any organized fight until the commoners could be properly trained and the shackled leveled. Despite this alliance, Roland and Aldia would oft bicker at this hour.

  “I can’t help but feel that to defeat this Demon King, we must first understand it,” Aldia said.

  “Demons are fiends incarnate,” Roland said. “They live for evil.”

  “Individual demons are but extensions of the lord’s will. Mere appendages devoid of emotion and thoughts,” Aldia said. “This is common knowledge at the Battletower. Perhaps if you were granted a learned man’s education…”

  “They are most certainly capable of wrath,” Roland said.

  Over by the wine cart, Gustavo gave a grunt of agreement.

  “Mayhaps. But the Demon King has some reason, however alien, for what it does. Discerning this may yet be essential to overcoming the beast.”

  Mia did not hear any further details from the argument, for she retired to her tent.

  Sleep did not come easily to the holy priestess. She required a tent to sleep, with its fabric ceiling forming a makeshift cavern for her. The others slept out under the stars more often than not.

  A campfire crackled well into the night.

  “Oh, should have just stayed in Port,” Gustavo said, quite drunk. “Plenty of supplies. Shackled or not, could have gotten a ship out of this godsforsaken place.”

  Despite the din, sleep did overcome Mia eventually. Sleep cut short by a shout from the tent flap.

  “—get up. Everyone, before it takes you too!”

  That voice. It was Aldia’s. The wizened Battlemage soon thrust his head into the tent.

  “Up! Cleric, out here now.”

  Mia scrambled out of her cot and into the night.

  A wide and overlarge reddish-tinted moon appeared overhead. What hour it was, Mia could not guess.

  Battlemages and a few shackled warriors wandered, trying to talk sense into their fellows. All around, camp followers stood in stupefied silence or wandered off to the north and east. Quiet were the sounds of the desert, replaced with a low, tuneless wail.

  “Mia. Do you have a cleansing spell?” Aldia asked.

  The cleric nodded. She cast a simple area of effect cleanse she’d learned at the Battletower. But it had no effect.

  The wailing shifted, beckoning. The hundreds of unshackled who had been following the heroes since the deep woods all wandered off as if summoned. Though walking in sleep, they all moved with a swift and direct purpose, easily outpacing the still-lucid among the group.

  “After them!” came an authoritative cry from Roland.

  Some lower-level Shackled had been claimed by the song. No unshackled remained free, however, and Roland’s much-diminished party was left stumbling through the sands in the wake of their abducted comrades.

  Roland and Mia were there, all healing and cleansing spells still useless. Aldia and the Battlemage corps, voluntarily shackled, were likewise unaffected. Gustavo stumbled along at the back of the pack. They reached a large dune over a natural sandy valley in the deep desert, off any trail.

  Five towering Piper Demons stood with their lanky arms to the moon. At level 70 they were too strong to dare face down in open combat. Something approaching a mouth hung open as they cried to the sky. Hundreds of humans gathered in the valley, drawn in from the crusaders’ camp and many free and unshackled settlements far beyond. They organized themselves in neat rows, puppets to the song.

  A great level eighty demon sat on a throne cleaved from rock. While only the size of a human, it was level eighty and among the most frightening of the Demon King’s vassals. A Templar Demon. Its skin was a hard carapace of grey bone and its skull a natural helmet accentuated by twin horns. It held an obsidian sword aloft and, using it as a spell catalyst:

  Below, the many hundreds of freeborn who had joined Roland in rebellion against devilry were swiftly and without fanfare mass-branded with the mark of the Demon King. All that training was for naught as they were assigned level 1, now bound to the Interface and its dictates forevermore. They’d joined to fight against hordes of demons that ruled the land, inspired by the story that even a Shackled could rise up against the devils. But now they were all marked, bound in shackles the same as Roland and his companions.

  Mia looked in horror, hand over her mouth, as the Piper Demons continued their inhuman song. The newly-Branded victims filed into waiting cages, still in a trance. They would awaken, likely already in the employ of a human slave master further north, to discover their new status as Brand-slaves and the shackles upon their flesh.

  All members of the party despaired as they watched. Roland’s rebellion had been broken without a fight. The many freeborn he’d gathered as reinforcements to the outland knights had sleepwalked into demonic slavery. For the Shackle was a brand, and branding bound its victims forever to the limitations and rigid structure of the Demon King’s unhallowed and most unholy Interface.

  (Calaf’s fervid cursive grew faint as he ran out of ink)

  “Calaf. Hey, Calaf.” Jelena grabbed his hand, steadying it. “You’ve been writing all this out for hours.”

  The Squire blinked twice. He pulled his hand away from Jelena’s with a start.

  “It’s a…” He looked to his left arm, where the forklike Brannd sat embedded into his flesh. “This whole time. It’s a…”

  Zilara peeked under his shoulder to read the text.

  “Hmm? Wait, what now?” She grabbed the parchment from the table.

  A thousand thoughts flooded Calaf’s mind. Why had the voice from the rot wanted to share this with him? What purpose did the Brand-magic’s ‘quarantine spell’ signifier serve?

  “The Brand. The Holy Menu. Centerpieces of church life.” Calaf was stuttering. He backtracked. “How did it come to be considered holy?”

  For the Brand bound its victims and their bloodlines forever. A symbol of demonic slavery.

  The signs had been there earlier in the heretical testaments. The spire—the Southern Shackled Asylum—it wasn’t a jail for Branded. The Branding was part of the punishment. So ingrained was the Brand in Calaf’s life that he hardly questioned its utility.

  Calaf scratched at his left arm involuntarily. He looked to the Priestesses’ twinbrands in Zilara’s silver eyes, which went wide as she read further down the page. Then she looked at Jelena’s eyepatch. She’d had the right idea of it all along. Still…

  The mark on the target’s soul remains.

  He kept scratching at the three-pronged mark on his left arm. The skin began to bleed, but the Brand endured.