Something about the label still bothered the hell out of me. A belated thought snuck into my slowing mind. It was a bit late to worry about it, seeing as reality didn’t suddenly end earlier when I stuffed everything into the Schr?dinger’s Pouch, but generally speaking, putting extradimensional spaces in extradimensional spaces never turned out well no matter what ruleset you were playing in. If anyone would have something like a bag of holding in this world, it would’ve been one of the war mage brothers. Might want to be a little more cautious about things like that in the future.

  Thought began to drag, a clear indication my adrenaline rush was fading. I spared a glance out the window, down to the streets below, as I tugged the message book out of its hidey hole. I stopped inhaling mid-breath and squinted. Outside, the streets were absolutely clear of fog. My eyes rose, seeking the horizon and finding the last sputtering gasp of fog-eating light as it died out what appeared to be a bit more than a mile out.

  Gripping the stone wall, I leaned out of the broken window and scanned the world below. The entire city below sat open, exposed to the sun for the first time in decades. Grumbling to myself, I regretted my decision to leave my range finder behind. I normally didn’t guess distances from this height, all I could do now was guess. At least two miles away, forming an almost perfect circle, stood a nigh vertical wall of fog that seemed to hang frozen in the air. If it had been darker, more brown, and moving at speed, I would’ve thought it was an oncoming sandstorm. Well then.

  A quick tap near the spine of the book cleared the page.

  Dear penthouse forums, today I fucked a few thousand skeletons and it wasn’t even supposed to be that kind of party.

  My pen paused, still against the page, while I tried to figure out what I actually wanted to say. Jenna’s handwriting sprung into being.

  Right. And I recently made the acquaintance of a centaur. Turns out Catherine the Great might’ve been onto something when it came to horses.

  I sighed. Well, I’m not going to kink-shame, Tsarina. Or was it Empress? Fucked if I know. All I can tell you is that there were more of them than I could count. 0 stars, would not dine here again. On the plus side, Annesport is free of the fog. For now, anyway. Might be creeping back in, slowly.

  Jenna’s writing was fast and hurried. What?! You were serious?

  Uh, yeah? I quickly jotted down what had happened from our initial entry up until we made it to the pulpit. And that’s when it happened. Turns out lich heads are not resistant to shotgun slugs. Then the congregation decided to get in on things.

  A dot of ink appeared and slowly spread out. I guessed something had distracted her, so I stretched and yawned while I waited for her to resume writing.

  Sam, Fiachra wants precise descriptions for what you found. He seems a bit confused because “creatures like that do not exist.”

  Chuckling, my pen moved on its own. Yeah, that’s what Tomas said after he blew the artificial archlich’s head off.

  Artificial archlich? Aren’t all liches artificial?

  Jenna, Aoibheann gave me access to a skill that identifies things. I’m still figuring out how it works, but that was the label it gave me. Artificial archlich. And that creature was one of the brothers, one of the war mages. And… look, I don’t think telling Cailleach is a good idea, but the front pew was packed with House of Silence members. You know, the ones she says she and Aine had to kill a second time to escape.

  Although it was certainly just in my head, I could feel Jenna squinting at page and calling Fiachra over. Several seconds passed and when the text flowed once more, the handwriting was clean and even though the lettering came in the looping whorls of the Syr, I still understood. Are you absolutely sure?

  I spared a quick glance over at Tomas, who had leaned against the shotgun propped up between his legs, eyes closed. Serious as a heart attack. Look, I’ll give you the full description once we get out of here. I don’t know how long the fog will stay away, but those were certainly House members and Tomas definitely killed one of the brothers. I have his staff, robe, and whatnot. Didn’t stop to inventory it. We’re just now catching our breath.

  Understood. Before you go, how did you survive if there were thousands?

  I sucked air through my teeth with a pained look as I set pen to paper. Yeah, ‘bout that. We retreated to the stairs up to a bell tower.

  Ah, sensible. Limit their ability to get to you. Still, thousands?

  Fiachra had written his reply while I’d stopped to figure out how I worded things. So, I know you expected us to come back with those gems, the ones with all the magic—

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  What did you do?!

  Well, we were half way up the tower, Fiachra, and I knew fighting them wasn’t going to work.

  What. Did. You. Do?

  Not about to feel the least bit guilty about doing what was necessary, I shrugged to myself just a little bit. I smashed one against the wall because I wasn’t sure the fall was far enough to break it and then I tossed it down the stairwell.

  Instead of clean looping whorls, the ink jerked unevenly back and forth for a split second. The text that followed was as pristine as the rest, but the sudden lack of speed to the strokes struck me as resignation. And then what happened?

  I recounted the outward push I’d felt on my soul, the sudden light, the blazing white that ate at the fog. Oh, and I think the bottom floor or two worth of steps are simply just missing. Not sure, but that’s what it looks like from here.

  Several long seconds passed before text flowed again. I begin to think your definition of caution and mine are fundamentally incompatible, Samuel. Instead of belaboring the point, I simply ask you do your best to survive and return to us as reasonably intact as your misadventures might allow. If you truly recovered a staff from one of my mentor’s brothers, its return is absolutely critical. I will ponder why the skill our Goddess gave you saw fit to include the artificial label. That cannot be coincidental.

  Probably not, Fiachra. I’ve got a lot of questions, but they’ll have to wait. We need to move out before the fog returns. Hopefully we’ll be in a better position by nightfall and I can take the time to go into detail.

  Stuffing the book back into the pouch, I spared another moment to study the river from this height. The Mississippi the Fuilteach was not. Its waters ran faster and remarkably clear compared to great muddy river back home, but the channel across the north side of Annesport stretched less than half the span found across from the Arch back home.

  I realized crossing where the remains of the two stone bridges had once stood was hopeless, even now despite the decades building silt and soil up around the stubs left from anchored supports. The gaps between shallows were simply too far and clearly quite deep. Still, hope didn’t dim. Seen from above at this time of day, sandbanks and shallows easily stood out and I quickly spotted three potential paths across far upstream. One in particular was made more promising than the others by the relative disturbance in the river surface.

  “Tomas, you good to go?” The bard made a non-committal grunt so I peeled myself away from the window and came down a few steps. “No, really. We good? Looks like the fog is starting to creep back in, so we need to beat feet if you can manage.”

  Slightly pale and still sweating like a whore in church, Tomas looked up. Just looking at the pained exhaustion on his face made me tired. “Uh, yeah, let’s get out of here then. Fuck walking back in that soup.”

  Thankfully, going back down was much easier in every way that counted. Or at least it was until we got close enough to verify that the stairs simply ended mid-step a bit over two stories up. One of the things that stuck in my head as we detoured around on a higher floor was the fact that the only thing left behind was the stone. Bone? Dust? Cabinets, candles, literally everything was gone and even the stone looked like it’d been given an acid bath with scrubbing bubbles.

  Emerging from the far stairwell, whose lower reaches turned out to be stone instead of wood, we discovered the entire ground floor had been kissed by whatever that light had been, scoured and scrubbed clean. I found myself remarkably thankful whoever built the place didn’t rely on wood for the first few floors. If they had, we certainly would have died in the ensuing collapse.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked while we traversed the now utterly vacant nave.

  Tomas flashed a particularly questioning look in my direction. “Sam, friend, up until fifteen minutes ago I would’ve told you skeletons couldn’t move on their own. Why would you expect I’d seen anything else here before?”

  “Point.”

  Once we stepped out onto the similarly vacant landing, I couldn’t help but look around at all the wooden buildings around us whose facades looked much worse for wear, like they’d been sanded by someone who couldn’t make up their mind what grit they needed beyond ‘big.’ As for the road itself, patches of dark dust and rust punctuated the open space periodically.

  I stood there for a moment contemplating what that might mean before clearing my throat. “We’re going to follow the river out. I saw a place we should be able to cross. Might cut a few days off our trip.”

  Tomas simply just shrugged and followed me without comment.

  The empty streets filled only with the quiet sound of the wind were creepy enough on their own, like walking through an empty airport, but the quays lining the river were even worse. Thanks to the fog, I’d already adjusted to the lack of expected sounds, but the absolute lack of green that stretched all the way to the slowly creeping fogbank in the distance tweaked something in my brain in ways nothing else did. Just dark, moist earth as far as the eye saw.

  Similarly, the stone quays were broken up periodically with empty dirt spaces that clearly should’ve been filled with short piers, but the cherry on top was the smell, or rather the lack of it. There was no weird fishy tang or pungent musk of plant rot to twist at the nose, just this smothering, omnipresent earthy weight atop everything.

  While we walked the river front I got the feeling we were being watched, but Tomas could see and hear much better than me, and he hadn’t made any indication he’d seen or heard anything. Beyond that, you could smell people for much further than most people would believe, especially in less sanitary conditions. As a result, I chalked up the feeling as simply just nerves. As amped up as either of us still were, if there’d been the least bit to support the idea, it wouldn’t have been just a feeling.

  The longer we walked, the more I gamed things out in my head and came to the realization that the cathedral was likely about as tall as the St. Louis Arch was back home, and you could see for miles from up there. As the twenty-minute mark passed without hitting the potential crossing I’d spotted, it occurred to me just how remarkably shit I was at eyeballing distances from an elevated position without a reference map to acclimate with. At that point, all I could say is that the crossing was well beyond the edge of the city in this direction.

  Just as I was beginning to wonder what was going on, if maybe extended exposure to the fog had actually messed with my head, the river’s sound subtly changed character. Less than a minute later we crested a small rise, and I smiled at the narrow extension of densely rippling water.

  “Huh. Yeah, looks like we can cross here, Sam,” Tomas noted a few seconds later. “Good eye.”