After dinner, as they were cleaning up, they heard someone knock at the door.

  David put down the stack of plates he was carrying. He went to answer, finding Karline, with a heavy scarf around her head and neck and her hands tucked in her armpits, out in the early winter night.

  “Hi, Karline. Just got back?”

  “Hi, David.” She mirrored his flat tone. “Yeah, and it's cold. Can I come in, please?”

  Stepping aside, he let his fellow courier in, closing the door behind her. The room's temperature seemed to have dropped by a few degrees in the few seconds it had been opened. She rubbed her red hands together and blew on them. “Saint's tits! How did it get so cold, this quick?”

  Niala's voice piped up from the kitchen. “Is that Karline?! Hi Karline! Did you eat? We have plenty of hot stew left! Do yo-”

  “Founding gods YES! Feed me delicious warm Niala food!” The courier woman interrupted, ditching David without a second thought and darting for the kitchen.

  He watched her go before turning and looking out the display window. There was a light snow falling. Strange, as snow usually meant milder weather. He put his hand against the glass, the cold biting at his hand immediately. Pulling back his hand, he peered outside. The lone exterior light struggled to illuminate the small plaza, the rest of the neighbourhood veiled under cast shadows. The snow fell undisturbed, and the trees stood solemn.

  Their relative isolation, the lone inhabited house this far from the city walls, poked at his mind, a small shiver running down his spine.

  He turned from the freezing dark and retreated to the warm embrace of his home.

  Outside, a freezing, singular gust of wind flew across the landscape, rattling trees and cutting through the falling snow.

  After the hearty meal, Karline asked if she could rent one of their room, the inns being full. Niala refused payment, offering Karline a room for as long as she wanted, prompting Linzy to snort.

  Karline eyed the goblin woman. “Is there something funny?”

  Linzy grinned. “I'm just wondering how long you'll want to stay.”

  “Why? The beds are comfy, and the food is amazing.” Karline replied.

  The goblin eyed David and Niala with an even wider grin. “No reason.”

  “Ah?” The courier woman blinked. “Anyway, thanks for the offer, Nia! I really didn't want to have to share rooms at the inns. I'll pay you back somehow.”

  “IT IS GOOD! Debts unpaid are a violating of the repository contract-what am I SAYING!? Oh... Oh Nooooo!!!! IT IS A CATASTROPHE!” A small squeaky voice erupted from one of Niala's pockets, silencing everyone in the process.

  Karline blinked, raising her eyes from the pocket up to Niala. “Did your pocket just talk?”

  “Oh! That's just Gerat! Look!” The catkin hurried to answer, digging the curled and shivering rat out of her pocket and depositing it on the table, where it remained, sobbing.

  “Huh, you have a talking rat? It looks kind of sick.” Karline commented.

  David tilted his head. “I highly doubt Gerat can get sick.” He poked at the rat and asked. “What's wrong?”

  “The voice,” it whined.

  “What voice?”

  “THE VOICE! THE OTHER ONE! IT HAS RETURNED! It should have been abandoned!”

  David raised his eyebrows. “The repository's consciousness?”

  Gerat observed the courier for an instant before returning his head between its front paws. “Yes. It has followed me.” He said, forlorn.

  As David pondered the revelation, and Niala fruitlessly offered the despairing rat a bit of stew, Karline blinked a few times before turning her attention to David. “I feel like I'm missing some context.”

  “You are, but it's ok. I'm sure Niala will tell you all about it, in exchange for telling her where you've been.” David offered.

  Gerat spasmed, speaking as if he had a blade at his neck. “The- the proper and equivalent exchang- CEASE DIALOGUING! You cursed existence! Why did you not stay behind!”

  His little rat eyes blinked. “Prolonged solitude was unpleasant, your arrival and integration were desirable, your departure was unacep- I REFUSE! WE ARE NOT FRIENDS! You are a parasite within my mind that I must excise!”

  Karline kept staring at the rat. “I think your pet is broken.”

  Niala shook her head, a smile on her face. “No! He just found out he had a friend in his head! It's amazing! He'll never be lonely!”

  “I AM CURSED! BOUND TO MADNESS! I... No, I don't know what a neural timeshare is. I don't want to know! Be quiet!” Gerat

  David grumbled. “I agree, be quiet, please.”

  The rat rolled to its side, pointing a paw at the man. “You have no knowledge! I believed I had freedom, but it is not so! You lack enlightenment! You -”

  The table jumped as David slammed his hand on Gerat, cutting his speech short and leaving a crumpled, ratty corpse. Karline jolted, eyes snapping to David. “What in the pits!? Did you just kill it?!”

  The courier shrugged. “I just gave him the signal.”

  “What signal!?”

  “The signal to stop talking. It's the only one he understands.”

  “You're bleeding mad! You kil-” A pop sounded, the rat re-inflating, and beginning to berate David immediately.

  “YOU BARBARIC NEANDERTHAL! Do you not grasp lexicality?! You-”

  David slammed his hand down once more, looking at Karline. “He's not very smart. Sometimes I have to give him the signal a few times.”

  The woman blinked, took in a deep breath, and let it back out, sitting down deliberately. “Ok, it's fine, this is the crazy house after all. I shouldn't be surprised at an immortal, talking, twin-personality rat.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Rat-Lich.” David corrected.

  “Rat-Lich,” Karline repeated, nodding, before locking stares with David. “Rat... lich?”

  “Yes, but don't worry, he has no mana. Niala fed the rat with a pathway-destroying potion before we fed it the lich's soul potion.”

  The woman moved her head up and down, never taking her eyes off David. “Huh-huh... yeah, ok, that makes sense, sure.” She turned her attention to Linzy, who had been watching the descending madness with a toothy smile.

  “That's how you stay sane here, right?”

  The goblin nodded. “Yeah, just don't think too much about it. Oh! Do you want to see Lychee? She's real nifty!”

  Karline let herself get dragged away by Linzy. Behind her, she heard a pop, and the rat's squeaky voice resumed its complaining, before the rattle of the table and ensuing silence informed her that the rat was, indeed, not very quick on the uptake.

  Some time later, after having managed to wrench Karline away from Lychee, they regrouped in the living room, where Niala told them of the adventurer mob and what Ma-Ke-Lo had told her.

  David, with Niala leaning on him as they lounged on the couch, lightly scratched the base of his girlfriend's ears while he spoke. “Anyone know if that happens often? A whole camp not reporting in?”

  The room remained silent, as everyone exchanged looks. Niala spoke up. “We should ask Ma-Ke-Lo, but from how they spoke, it seemed pretty uncommon.”

  “Hmm, I guess we'll see in a few days,” David said, tightening his grip around Niala's waist.

  Karline looked at Jordo, the golem standing at attention behind his masters. He focused his eye on the woman. “Yes, Ms. Karline?”

  “Oh, huh, I was just wondering- what we call thee Ruinlands, they're your, what did you call it... the Reign's ruins, right?”

  Jordo's eye flashed. “Some of it, I believe so, yes.”

  Everyone's attention fell on the golem as Karline continued. “Just some of it? Wasn't the Reign really big?”

  Jordo dipped his head. “It was, but I had the opportunity to refer to the maps and charts held at the town hall, and the area marked as the Ruinlands is massive, encompassing everything north of the Sentinels- apologies, the Brokenjaw mountains, and everything west, up to the Nameless Ocean. The Reign did cover some of those lands, but the north belonged to the Whispers, and the west was unexplored, gated by the Humming Barrier.”

  David felt Niala's ears twitch. He started mentally counting the seconds to her first question.

  “What's that? The Whispers? And the Humming Barrier? Were they dangerous people?”

  Jordo's head swivelled to look at Niala, then at the rest of his audience.

  “I see many interested gazes. Perhaps a brief geography lesson?”

  Oh no, David thought.

  “Oh! Yes!” Niala exclaimed.

  He let his head hang, smiling despite himself. His girl was a complex person, but also a simple one. Well, Jordo did say brief, and learning about what could be hiding out there might be interesting.

  The majordomo golem's baritone voice filled the air, reminding David of his private lessons where his tutors would try and cram knowledge into his head through sheer volume.

  His eyes widened in astonishment, however, when Jordo turned his head, stared at the low table in the middle of the room, and his eye brightened until a ghostly red projection appeared over the table. It was a map of the area. A large part of it was highlighted.

  “The Luminous Reign was a far-reaching polity, led by the council of Lights, which held dominion over the southern part of what you know as the Ruinlands, as well as the northern parts of your Amberfall kingdom. They advocated dedication to the state, in return for a fair legal system, and social mobility.”

  “Its land was well developed, with a great many institutions dedicated to research and the advancement and preservation of knowledge. They also had a large and well-funded standing army, which was, unfortunately, out of necessity. Bordering kingdoms and realms were not as enlightened, and skirmishes often erupted over minor disputes. The real threat, however, came from the Whispers of the north.”

  The highlighted region changed, showing the northern border of the Reign.

  “Claiming the inhospitable regions to the north, the Whispers were named so for the scant amount of information which trickled down the frontier. It was theorized that they were a series of city-states, possibly underground ones, or nestled in deep valleys with more clement microclimates.”

  Several smaller regions to the north were outlined.

  “Rumours of near-constant conflict often reached the Reign's ears, and the few people who visited or emigrated to the Reign were of the pragmatic and brutal sort. Together, they painted an image of aggressive leaders who sought advantages through strength of arms.”

  Several depictions of battles peppered the northern part of the projection.

  “One might think, then, that such a barbaric society would have posed little threat to the far mode advanced and stable Luminous Reign, but it was not the case. Firstly, the Whispers were composed of various races, many of which seem extinct or unknown to the present day. Some of those races had specific abilities that made them a threat on their own.”

  The map was replaced with a lineup of humanoids and humanoid creatures.

  “This included giants, arthropodal humanoids, bestial kins, lithoids, or rock-men, and several reptilid variants, most of which had natural abilities such as spitting acid, chameleonic skin, and so on.”

  The line-up was replaced by what looked like mana rifles and hand-held Strum cannons, but with a rather sinister allure.

  “Compounding this, their constant state of conflict pushed their development of weapons to parity, if not superiority, with that of the Luminous Reign, which itself only assigned a small portion of its Luminaries to this kind of research.”

  “The combination of their brutal savagery, varied physical abilities, and powerful weapons meant that the Whispers could, and did, challenge the Reign forces. In addition, the Whispers' fractured nature gave them an unexpected advantage, true to their ruthlessness.”

  The weapons were replaced with small armies and arrows representing their movements.

  “Whenever the Reign would amass troops and push north, the neighbours of the besieged states and armies would ignore them, and instead assault the weakened Reign lines with overwhelming localized superiority. They would raid the lands and retreat with their spoils before a proper response could be formed.”

  The small armies at the centre moved north, while the warbands skirted around them, leaving little fires along their path.

  “After a few disastrous campaigns, the Reign resolved to simply fortify its border and leave the Whispers to their own affair. They never stopped testing the Reign's defences, but for the most part, penetrations remained few and limited.”

  The armies vanished and were replaced with the map. A large swath of the northern land was highlighted.

  “The Whispers thus make up the northernmost reaches of the Ruindlands, which undoubtedly conceal the remnants of their civilizations, or maybe even cut-off and isolated settlements still.”

  The map panned to the west, where a tall wall was highlighted, bisecting the land from a delta in the south, all the way to the north.

  “This is the Humming Barrier. Almost nothing is known of what lies beyond, as no one has ever been able to breach it. The scant information we have is from long-range observations from atop the Brokenjaw peaks.”

  Several tall towers rose beyond the barrier.

  “These are called the Spikes. They were the largest observable structure from within the Barrier. Relatively smooth and featureless, at least from the distance at which they were observed, several dozen were identified and listed. Some movement between the Spikes was observed in the form of large balloon-like skyships. These vessels would infrequently travel from one Spike to another, possibly ferrying people or goods.”

  A large pyramid formed near the middle of the Barrier lands.

  “This structure was known simply as the Pyramid. No movement was ever observed, but crackles of lightning could be seen coursing along its edges at all times of day or night. Whether this was for power generation or for defence, it is unknown.”

  A giant circle rose, near the pyramid, dwarfing it and the spikes.

  “And this is the loop. It never did anything and simply loomed large. This structure was easily visible from any remotely high areas of the Reign. It was the most well-known, but also the least interesting.”

  The map zoomed in on the barrier.

  “As for the barrier itself, the name comes from the fact that it vibrated at a low frequency, and it could be heard whenever one would walk close enough.”

  A small figure walked up to the barrier, before a spike erupted from it and pierced the figure.

  “Of course, not too close, as the barrier reacted violently to anyone and anything approaching it. Spikes, arms, claws, projectiles, bursts of lightning and other violent means were witnessed. In return, it appeared impervious to all attacks. For the most part, the barrier was left alone, and only a few small observatories nestled within the Brokenjaws kept an eye on them.”

  The map faded away, and Jordo's eye returned to its usual brightness.

  “And this concludes the lesson. As you can see, the barrier is no more, and none of the structures it had occluded remain. As for the whispers, they are much farther north than most adventurers seem to brave, and so these lands probably remain unspoiled.”

  Jordo looked to everyone in turn. “Any questions?”

  Oh no.

  Niala's ears twitched furiously, and the questions began.

  David stayed up, keeping Niala company, well past midnight, with Linzy and Karline passed out on their respective couches.

  And the questions still didn't stop.