IV
Over the course of your travels, Vlana has impressed you with her skill with a blade, and you assume that your best chance of survival is at her side. You draw your own, shorter sword and stand back-to-back as the ghouls surround you. The one who previously spoke barks something else in Ghulese, and Vlana shouts back at him a choice insult about his parentage. Then, in one quick motion, she steps forward and severs his bony head from his shoulders.
It is an odd sight, to watch the ghoul’s head come off. Because the muscles and tendons that connect the bone are invisible, it is like watching the sword part air, and then the skull seems to simply decide that it no longer has any interest in the body, and rolls away. The blood of the ghouls must be as transparent as their flesh, for there is no visible spray. The body simply stumbles, and then falls to the ground.
“They can be killed!” Vlana shouts, and then the battle is joined.
You fight as swiftly and as fiercely as you know how, your sword arm improved by Vlana’s schooling over the recent days. But you are nothing compared to her. She carves through the ghouls like a shark through minnows. Heartseeker flashes, and bony limbs and skulls leap free of their bondage and scatter across the ground.
Unfortunately, you haven’t the leisure to sit back and admire Vlana’s handiwork. Two ghouls approach you at the same time, wielding wickedly hooked blades. You parry each one, but they force you backward, until you feel a column against your back. With nothing else left to do, you duck, and the ghoul’s black blade bites into the column above your head, while you stick your sword into the invisible guts of your other opponent, snatching up his weapon even as it slips from bony fingers. The metal tingles under your grasp, but still you use it to slice the throat of your other foe, and you feel a spray of cold blood strike your face, though you cannot see it.
Panting, you turn back to Vlana, and you see only a street strewn with the dead, though it is difficult indeed to tell a dead ghoul from a live one, except by the places where they’ve been hacked to pieces. Casting about, you spot Vlana, lying where she has fallen, pierced through and through with various ghoulish weapons. You walk over to her body, but she is already gone. There is nothing left for you but to heft Heartseeker and continue on through Ghulende to the throne of the Yellow King.
The throne isn’t difficult to find. It stands at the far end of the city, alone on a raised platform next to a vast black chasm that splits open the earth. You encounter no other ghoulish interference, and when you reach the throne, you have no doubt at all that you’ve arrived at the right place.
The Yellow King himself looks at home among the ghouls who make up his court. He appears as a plague corpse, wrapped head to foot in winding sheets, with a crown of candles upon his brow. In his left hand he holds a scepter, topped with an object that can only be the Shining Trapezohedron. The gem is nearly black in color, striated with bands of red, and as you gaze at it, the world seems to tilt beneath you for a moment before you pull your eyes away.
With Heartseeker in your hand, you feel braver than you otherwise might, and you advance on the Yellow King with your shoulders back, your head high. It is difficult to make out any expression on the corpse-gaunt face, but it seems to you that he smiles as you approach.
He doesn’t speak, but simply holds out the scepter, offering you the stone. You sense a trap, but you have little fear of this gaunt creature after those you have just faced, and Vlana’s sword in your hand steels you. You reach out and take the stone from the scepter, and even as you do, the Yellow King seems to wither further, his bones turning to dust, his flesh crumpling inward, until only the winding sheet is left, and then even it blows away into the chasm.
You have attained your goal, and the Shining Trapezohedron is now in your grasp, but even as you touch it, you feel seized by a compulsion at once to gaze into it and to cast it into the abyss.
V
You’ll need Samanda to retrieve the stone, and as you interpose yourself between her and the crab, she nods to you and slips to the side, making her way down the boulevard and toward the center of the aquatic city. The claw that was meant for her you block with your sword, but there are other crabs rising up all around. Without thinking, you open your mouth to call out for her help, and the ocean rushes in. You snap your jaws closed, tasting the brine of deep sea water.
At the other end of the street, Samanda’s ankle is caught in the grip of a gigantic crab. Desperately, you swing your blade at the claws that surround you, but they are too many. As you fight for your life, you see the magic pebble slip out of Samanda’s mouth and drift away through the water, you see her body go limp as she floats instead of falling, the water once more granted its power over her.
As the crabs close around you, you wonder if drowning would perhaps be a more pleasant end than the one that you face, but unfortunately for you, you aren’t given the choice.
VI
When Ivrian isn’t looking, you break off a piece of the fungus and pop it into your mouth. The moment you do so, you wonder why you waited so long. It is the most exquisite flavor you have ever tasted.
By the time Ivrian realizes what you’ve done and comes to stop you, you hardly notice that she is even there. You try to explain to her, around mouthfuls of fungus, that you have never before known happiness. You hold the fungus out to her, and she strikes it away, and you’re only distantly surprised to see part of your hand break off with it. Ivrian is surprised though, or disgusted, or maybe terrified. You find it hard to tell what her expressions mean anymore, but she flees. Still, you are untroubled. You know that she won’t get far. You are the Plateau now, the fungal beds that spread across its entire length and breadth, and those like you won’t ever let her reach the Yellow King.
You lie back in contentment, as you feel the hyphae begin to grow through you. It will be a long time now before the pain begins, and longer still before it ever stops.
VII
Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, you hope that you can make your way to the throne of the Yellow King while the ghouls are busy digesting Vlana. As she rushes into battle, you turn and dart between two verdigris-colored skeletons and into a dark alleyway.
The alley you have chosen for your escape leans perilously, and once you’re inside it, you find that it is plagued with sudden switchbacks, so that in no time at all you’ve lost your way. The fog causes the sounds of clashing steel to echo and re-echo, sounding at every moment like they are just around the next bend, or over the next wall.
As the sounds of conflict fade, you take a few tentative steps forward, and peer out from a ruined archway. Before you, the fog discloses a grisly scene. Several ghouls lie strewn about the street, looking no different in death than they did in life, but the vast majority of the throng are gathered in the center of the road, tearing pieces from Vlana’s fallen body.