+We descended.

  Above was the city beneath the city. And below? Somethin' much older.

  The stairs were narrow and steep. The warmth of the forge above fadin' with every step. Every breath was moist, tinged with the taste of mildew and the sea. It was almost like we'd gone from one world to another. More than that, the darkness seemed to have a mind of it's own.

  I'd given the magic torch to Shorty, as her eyes weren't quite as keen as mine. I could see the rich mana here clear as day, but for her, it was all smoky gloom. I tried to ignore the shapes and spirits, the ever present jellies and ghosts, but they were so thick in this layer of Agusuts' Hope as to be nearly blinding.

  "You know about all this?" I asked as we left the evenly cut stone behind, the narrow stair becoming rough and jagged.

  "About what?"

  "About, all of it. This whole underworld."

  "Oh, yeah. This, all this, was built upon an Ascended island that fell," she explained as we took step after endless step, "that's why it grows green around here, why there's a harbor. One of the floating islands above fell, and the whole city was built up over it."

  I grunted, not surprised in the least. Made practical sense, even if I thought building on graves was a bad idea.

  "Did it fall before, or after the Empire came?" I asked, tearing through a cobweb with the barrel of one of my drawn pistols. I expected trouble here and had already loaded the Scaras' shot into each six-shooter. Them, plus Shorty's dragonfire enchantments should've been enough for whatever lay in the dark. If not?

  Well, then we'd just have to adapt.

  "Way before. Way before I was even born," I often forgot, thanks to her size and general demeanor, but Shorty was nearly half a decade my senior. Not countin' years lost to time magic bullshit anyway. She'd been cast from the Ascended islands near the start of Imperial colonization, about thirty years ago.

  "Well," I said, "what happened to it?"

  Shorty paused, "Uh, what do you mean?"

  "I mean, you said it fell, but why? Far as I know, no great Cataclysms or Calamities occurred then."

  The last great mess happened when the Empire pushed North and the Raven-Feather Pact re-activated the Fence back in Karinwoad. That mess had resulted in the Broken Coast and the No-Man's Land between North and South. All of it nearly four centuries ago.

  "Ah, it's hard to say," she replied, her voice echoing in the damp and narrow, "the Ascended Islands are powered by Great Mana Stones. Reservoirs of power fed by all the people that live and die on their surface. The leading theory, from both Outcast thinkers and the University, is that the Stone here ran out. Maybe due to a lack of population. An illness or famine. Something that caused a sudden decline. Or, well, I guess something could've damaged the Stone, cracked it or drained it."

  "Huh," I muttered, "guess there's a cost for bein' so high and mighty."

  As much as my first glimpse of the Ascended's floatin' islands, and the verdant jungles below had been impressive, I couldn't help but scorn the divide. Only the 'pure' or whatever, were allowed to live in those fleshy Edens above the sands. All the rest, like Shorty... Like Lottie, were cast down to the world beneath.

  Felt so much like the stratification of my own homeland, just a little more honest.

  I was quiet for a bit. Just the sound of boots on stone.

  Then I paused.

  "Let's keep quiet. I'm not sure I understand irony, but I feel like I just invited it down on us."

  And silence ruled in the dark.

  We stalked the narrow stone walled corridor before us. Eventually the mossy ridden expanse of moist stone terminated in a low door. The wood was crumbling, and the handle fell to rust as I turned and pulled. On the other side was a long canal, flanked on either side by overgrown walkways, the water within filled with a thick, algae sludge. It reminded me of the swamps just south of my village, conjured images of 'diles and gators swimming through the murk. Of bufos, the massive ambush predators whose hides were prized for armor and who's tongue sacks contained the finest poison a body could ever swallow.

  Of the suckin' mud that dragged you down to the rich peat rot beneath.

  Nostalgia and dread, two things I rarely felt, welled up inside. And as we traversed the narrow walkways, I felt the presence of somethin' watchin' us. Somethin' hungry.

  Nothing stirred in the shadows, nor leapt from the vaulted eaves of the ancient waterway. A few insects buzzed from papery hives dug into the crumbling walls, and the still, lichen choked water rippled with movement, but nothing attacked us as we moved.

  Still, the weight of the watchful eye bore down. A weight I swore I almost knew.

  Eyes like ice and ghost fire, sweet perfume and the heat of the sun...

  I cleared my throat and slowed.

  "You good Roche? This humidity is crazy. Nice on my scales but you're looking kind of," she turned the torch toward me, careful not to shine me blind, "piqued."

  I shook my head and looked around, the mana of the air roiling and churning.

  The weight was gone.

  I hadn't seen, only knew it for its absence, but some part of the shadows had fled. Whatever beast it was hautin' Uptown, it was surely of the foulest sort. I knew little of magical theory, but I could damn sure sense the reek of Entropy, and godsdamned mind magic.

  The pricklin' of broken memory and forgotten thoughts rankled as my feet followed a trail that wasn't there, some part of me chasin' that vanished feeling.

  "Hold up," Shorty said, grabbing my coat with a clawed hand, "you see that?" she asked flicking the torch to the edge of the canal, to where the clinging moss met the aged stone. Something pale and bloated reflected white in the torch shine, a shape that made me grimace as the smell hit.

  "Ah, I guess we found the first victim," Shorty said with a sigh. The body was floating in the water, still mostly whole, but that would change as the flies that burrowed and bit grew their young in the corpse. It was a man, or used to be. Now it was a mass of swollen meat and skin, with a great, ragged hole where his neck might've been. His clothes were in tattered, belly bulging through, streaked with red and brown. Amidst all the carnage I could still make out one detail that made my blood run cold.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I stepped close and covered my face with a handkerchief as I picked the shiny star from what was left of a fancy uniform.

  "Uptown guard," I said, palming the trinket, "probably deserved it."

  Shorty grimace, her sharp teeth glinting in the magical light, "Don't be like that. He probably had a wife and kids."

  I flicked the hunk of bronze at the Outcast girl. She got it with a clawed hand, then squinted as she inspected.

  "Then why don't you go tell them how brave their jackboot daddy was?" I turned my back on her, Arcane Eye flickering through the murk, "I'm here to kill a monster, not mourn an unlucky asshole."

  She didn't respond. She only followed me into the dark.

  Eventually the canal came to a wide archway, and through it was terrible wonder.

  Ahead opened an expanse, not of the hewn stone and right angles that made up the waterway, but of pale yellow, organic and alien. Thick bands of the strange bone-like material supported the space like ribs, their surface cracked and marred by the softly glowing mana crystals that erupted from them. They pulsed with a cold light, illuminating the riot of red and white flora that grew in a tangle below.

  It pulsed. All of it, like the beating of a heart.

  It was the garden in the Vault all over again, 'cept the false sun had been replaced by a dozen jagged moons, the unnatural forest exchanged for the biomantic nightmare that lay before me. If this was what grew in the Ascended islands that floated so far above, then I was glad I'd not yet been to visit.

  I was sure that any who were cast from such places, they were lucky to escape.

  "What the fuck..." Shorty muttered.

  "Yep."

  "How, how is this possible? This is an entire ecosystem, and it's, it's," she looked at me, "it's not supposed to be like this. There's been surveys down here Roche, nothing was growing. Not even two years ago. I know. I took the measurements, I wrote the reports for the University. There's no way, no way, this should be here. It's not possible..."

  I shrugged and felt for a cigar, my nerves worn by the dark and the endless, oppressive presence of this place. It was a fetid kind of life, so completely detached from whatever I knew of nature that it felt like a blasphemy to my eyes, and nose.

  "Is it..." I bit down on the cigarillo and struck a match on my thin stubble, "Is it biomancy?"

  Shorty scoffed, "It's what happens when biomacy gets forgotten. I'd bet all these... growths were once cultured organs, like, machines I guess. I don't remember much of my time before leaving the sky." She admitted with a wistful look, "I'd guess that something down here has been reactivated, and the dormant technology is running wild."

  I puffed.

  "We need to find this beast for the Scaras and then report to the University right after Roche. Tell the Guild too. Hell, maybe tell everyone," she gestured broadly, "this is not good. It must be either shut off, or carefully contained."

  As I looked on I noticed the hints of artifice to it all, some ghost of intent that had once guided the growth of this place. Boils amongst the pulsing stalks of blood covered grass seemed to have openings that faced the barest path between them. Patches of protruding teeth or bone in long rows might've been fences or even walls, before the decay had taken hold.

  "Did people live in this, once?" I asked ashin' my smoke, unable to tolerate the taste of it in the air. It made a hissin' sputter as it hit the mossy ground.

  "Yeah, maybe. This was probably a cenote. Pits where the people who tend the Ascended islands dwell. Think of it a bit like the docks in Augustus' Hope, just replace leviathan oil and boilers with blood and guts."

  "No offense, but I think your cousins might be a bit crazy," I muttered, takin' a tentative step forward, "only he could twist life like this. Almost make the Anasisi seem sane."

  Shorty scoffed at the mention of the ancient enemy of her ancestors. "We both know the Anasisi are worse, Roche. At least the biomancers of old had a purpose. The Serpent folk were only ever looking to enslave the rest of us. Or to destroy whatever escapes their grasp."

  I grunted and stepped beyond the archway.

  The smell here was a thousand times worse than in the canal. The rot and growth were a low hum, a drone that assaulted the sense on all fronts. My Arcane Eye ached from the overstimulation, even as my guts roiled and cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.

  I didn't want to touch a godsdamned thing in this place. At this point I was a little less sure that the Scaras and their work was even worth such a task. If somethin' was choosin' to hide here, to persist in this place for any amount of time?

  Well, it might just be best left to it. A few dead guards were a reasonable price to pay to live this festering wound forgotten by men and gods.

  As we walked the twisting trail, I kept a close eye on the boilin' growth all around. Shorty's torch was almost unnecessary, the yellow light sickly beneath the crystal blue.

  I tried to rely on what I knew of woodcraft, tried to look for disturbed earth, tracks in the muck, the marks of claws on trees or bone, but there was little that I could discern. Everything was a mess of slime and sludge, a maze of organic matter, and a lot of other things... All of the things moved.

  Even the fuckin' dirt.

  Thankfully, Shorty seemed to have a better grasp on the place.

  "There," she said, directing her light to one of the blisters I had assumed were buildings, "that port has been forced open."

  I stared for a second at said 'port'. A tight ring of wrinkled muscle was set into the structure, and I had to admit that it was indeed peeled back. Or, open?

  If I were just a little less polite to myself, I might've said it was a butt hole. One that had seen some shit.

  "Those sphincters are supposed to be self sealing. Even if whatever power is active here is minimal, that door should be closed."

  I grimaced.

  Sphincter.

  Why had I guessed right?

  "You the uh, door, I'll go in?"

  Shorty gave me a sour look, like she'd just bitten into a rotten apple, "No, Roche. Why would anyone go in?" she asked as she searched through the pouches at her hip until she withdrew a device I remembered fondly.

  "Fire snake?" I asked as she hefted the little arcane ball of fiery death.

  "Oh yeah. Best thing to come out of the Vault if you ask me. If hunting doesn't end up suiting me, I'll start selling these babies to thugs in the docks. Make a mint." She boasted with a white-toothed grin.

  And she probably would make a mint, and then be hung for sellin' bombs to every thug and cutthroat on the coast. I'd just have to buy her out before it came to that, I guess.

  She handed over the explosive and we moved toward the structure carefully. The moment I put my mind to stealth, something magical happened. Where once two sets of steps were audible over the gentle buzz of the grove, now there was nothing. The light around us faded a touch as I felt a tiny portion of my vitality be drawn down and into my fancy new boots.

  Shorty spared a silent, considerin' glance to the Nightmoth skins on my feet. There was a little envy there, in her wide yellow eyes.

  I held up a closed fist and waved her a few steps back as I crossed the last few dozen feet to the damaged building. The moment I got within spittin' distance of the ugly little boil, I felt that sensation of bein' watched once again.

  It was strong here, almost unbearably so.

  But it was familiar, almost comfortable. The mix of uncanny and enthralling made my blood sing, and the hair on my neck rose. I pressed up against the mucus covered wall just beside the visibly torn sphincter door. I could see claw marks on it now, the same wide gouges that decorated that dead guard, or near as I could tell. Comparing a spooky magic flesh door with a bloated corpse was an imprecise science.

  My hands were unsteady as I picked a match from my coat and went to light the fuse.

  Strange. The tendrils that made up my limbs never shook when I was in the midst of a fight. That was usually the only time I could rely upon my mutation's aid, but right now, with no imminent threat?

  It was like I'd been drinkin' for a month straight and just decided to go dry.

  Pft.

  I struck the match.

  Lit the fuse, and as I leaned over to toss it in, peerin' into the void beyond the sphincter door, I froze.

  There, in the dark, I saw something that made my mind reel.

  Two luminous eyes and a main of messy braids. A pretty face distorted by monstrosity, but nonetheless as beautiful as it had been in my misty memories.

  "Songbird?"

  Fear.

  Longing.

  Loss.

  Boom!