The Exquisite Corpse in Maggots’ Keep

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For Amy.

For Kaci.

For my casket, you always let me lay my head down when I wish it,
give me comfort when it is needed most and encouraged me to do my
best, so thank you. You know who you are.

For my very own best beloved. You know who you are. The shine in
your eyes and toothy grins are all finer than any jewels or gold.

For my husband, for tolerating my fits of creativity and my

melancholic ponderings.

For my squiddos.

For all the lovely people I meet on my own travels.

For the people in my life who showed me what support for my creative
endeavors looks like. You gave me the confidence to finally reach
forward.

For Gabriel, for dragging me into this wonderful adventure.

 The Sandy Pug Co-Op Presents:

The Exquisite Corpse

in Maggots’ Keep
Created by
Gabriel Komisar

Illustrated by
JN Butler
You Wake Up In Your Coffin - Gabriel Komisar

Oh, you were so beautiful!

Oh, you were taken from us much too soon!

Oh, how the people wailed at your passing, how they fell to
their knees in the streets! You’d have delighted to see them,
clutching fistfuls of their hair and shrieking to an unrelenting
moon. How we gathered, best beloved, how we mourned.

We laid you in our finest mahogany coffin and we buried you

deep, deep beneath the village, in a cavern long and dark. For
your voyage we festooned you with jewelry around your
shoulders and between your ribs. In the hollows where the
iridescent jellies of your eyes once squelched we fixed the finest
jewels, their gaze reflecting any and all light with a kind of
unwavering, glimmering brightness. No flesh can hold you back
now, best beloved. You are bone and stone and precious metals.
Oh, you are magnificent
Oh, you are
exquisite

And now you are awake in the dark.

1
Not true darkness, not the void you always imagined, but a
softer, bluer black.

Even with no meat to sense, you have your senses. You feel the
wet chill of a place long forsaken by the sun. You smell
something beyond rot—new life. Fungi? You reach out your
bony digits and feel the wood of your coffin, now a new texture
entirely; the water and mold have made a meal of the fine
mahogany and velvet. You hear the trickling of a stream, a faint
buzzing, and things thicker than leaves wafting in the steady
breeze of the cavern’s frigid breaths. Your new body moves as
the old one did, jewels clinking as you test your fingers, feeling
out the rotting box you slept inside for so long.

You could leave now if you wanted, best beloved. You could
journey forward into the unknown. But a thought creeps on you,
like the hairs that once stood on the back of your neck- weren’t
these things meant for forever? Aren’t you supposed to stay?
You’ve never heard of a corpse walking out of their coffin before
and best beloved, a corpse is precisely what you are. You weren’t
the kind to leave your box in life, especially with all this velvet,
especially with all these jewels. It was made to your taste and
your comfort, and you were never the adventuring kind in life.
Why should this be any different?

To leave your coffin, turn the page.

To stay, turn to page 15.

3
You Leave Your Coffin - Gabriel Komisar

The mahogany lid opens with ease before sloughing off its
hinges entirely and plummeting into a dark crevasse. Your coffin
sits just on the precipice. Luck has always been your reluctant
companion. You move to your feet with such grace, best beloved.
You are a dancer in well-worn slippers. The chains around your
ribs and the bangles on your wrists sing in a twinkling chorus as
you extricate yourself from your coffin.

Your jeweled eyes gleam in the sunless light of this strange

sleeping chamber. You find yourself in a vast, bioluminescent
mushroom garden. Little streams of water trickle between the
massive morels curving upward towards a brighter clearing. In
the hollow where your nose once sat, the pungent aroma of the
fungi still finds purchase, the twin caverns of your skull where
ear cartilage once blossomed somehow relate to you a distant
chittering, a flapping of wings, and the sounds of a fire starting.
Unabated curiosity guides you to the top of the mushroom
garden where the steep incline levels out and tufts of strange
weed grow out of the mud. There, seated on some toadstools,
two beetles and a slug share a fire with a kettle on. It would be
the perfect place to tell a story if any of them were talking, but
all their stalks are fixed on you.

4
One of the beetles stands to his feet, his armor clanking as his
hand grips the hilt of his sword. The other drops a bowl of
something orange and pungent, scrambling for a crossbow by
his feet. It’s all so needlessly dramatic. They do not know you,
best beloved. They do not love you the way we do. But they
could.

The beetles chitter angrily. The one with the broadsword points
to you, then further up the hill to a broken wooden barrier.
Perhaps it was meant to seal this mushroom garden but
something burst through the makeshift wall, propelled enough
to carve a trench through the garden. You can see its trail
winding down, down… toward your coffin. Some time before it
corroded into sponge your coffin swung like a battering ram
into this garden and almost off the edge of the cliff.

You make this connection just as the other beetle finds his
footing and loads a bolt into his crossbow with a menacing
click.
Then, the slug raises his robed hand.
The sound that comes out of him is deep and calm.
If the property of snot could console the bereaved, tend to the
sick, and spiritually lead a village, best beloved, it would sound
not unlike this slug. Though you know not what he says.
The two armed beetles hiss at his deep warbles and burbles
before lowering their weapons and shuffling indignantly back to
their seats.

5
His stalks, which have never left you, blink one after the other.
He gives you what you can best approximate as a nod, before
patting the empty toadstool beside him and gesturing to the
kettle. You always were so popular, beloved. It is right and good
that moments after you arrive on the scene, people should offer
you tea. You remember liking tea.

But curiosity leads you out of your coffin and now it pulls you
tantalizingly toward the hole in the mushroom garden. Is there
time for tea when you have so many questions? Your very
existence, as undeniable and glorious as it is, remains a mystery.

Wouldn’t you like to know where you came from?

Does each step forward terrify you or does the bitter tang of
unknowing drive you forward?

Are you thirsty for tea, best beloved, or hungry for knowledge?

To have tea with the slug and other bugs, turn the page.

To exit through the hole your coffin made, turn to page 12.

6
You have tea with the Slug and the other Bugs-

Gabriel Komisar

With the prospect of sitting comes the painful admission that

you are the least possessed of buttocks of the bunch. What a
surprise and a delight, best beloved, that you should sit more
easily and gracefully on a toadstool than your hosts. The two
armored beetles rock uncomfortably in place while the slug tries
valiantly to keep atop the mushroom’s domed cushion even as he
slides. Meanwhile, you hold your place with the perfect balance
of a now deceased professional socialite. Your poise is
impeccable, your style a matter of record, and your decorum as
a guest is incontrovertible.

The slug makes an apologetic slurping noise as he hands you a

rough and weather-beaten clay mug. He pours the tea shakily,
his knuckles whitening on the handle. Poor old thing. You bow
your head slightly in gratitude before blowing on the mug. No
air leaves your lips and moreover you have no lips for air to
leave between.

You shake your head and give the tea a sniff. This slug has
brewed something truly potent, not anything like the teas
you’ve drunk before. It smells like the cave itself but stronger,
and now you are certain you have in your possession a fungal
tea.

7
The jewels in your sockets glimmer with new understanding.
This gastropod and his insect companions are embarking on an
extrasensory odyssey. It occurs to you that you’ve been deprived
of senses, extra or otherwise, for an indeterminate period, and
any chance for more is worth taking.

You tilt your head just so, and pour the cup’s contents onto your
skull, feeling it seep into the cracks as in a half-remembered
ritual for something else. You do not know what senses befall
the insensate, but moment by moment you are mapping out a
new language for feeling. The skin? A distraction. The organs? A
bad hobby; the worst sport imaginable. Now liberated, you glide
like an aerodynamic vessel in the pursuit of luxury. All of this is
to say that the tea feels magnificent as it washes over and into
you. You stretch backward on your toadstool, imagining the way
the locks of hair you used to have would waft in the breeze of
the cave. You are beauty itself.

The two beetles exchange a glance and a sound emanates from

the slug that is unmistakably laughter. You sheepishly sit back
up on your toadstool and place the cup delicately on the garden
floor. Did you expect applause, best beloved? Well, there’s no
accounting for taste.

The beetles lay down their arms, take their own cups, and serve
themselves from the kettle. They chitter to themselves and take
long sips. The slug places a reassuring foot on your shoulder,
gripping it slightly and then coming away with a soft shlorp.

9
The residue it leaves behind would ruin an outfit were you
wearing one. Where you may have shuddered and gasped in life
you merely turn and nod in deference to your sticky host. The
perfect guest will not be phased so easily.

Taking your nod as an invitation, the slug resumes warbling, but

louder this time. The beetles turn to listen in rapt attention,
their jet-black eyes glimmering in the firelight. You don’t know
if you can talk. You haven’t tried yet, but stranger things are
possible. Still, you know the language of your hosts is not your
own. Despite this, you’re certain the slug is telling the story. It’s
a sad one, you think, from the way each beetle in turn will
glance at the ground and then their pincers, quiet and
introspective.

In the sonorous warblings of the slug you imagine the story of

someone fighting a losing battle. A hero ignoring every sign at
every turn and doing all that he can to divert a terrible destiny.
Three witches in a dark wood, a crow on the battlements, a king
wrapped in bloody sheets, stains that won’t come out, a mouth
of broken teeth, and an ocean of walking trees. In their wake, a
kingdom of soil-dwellers left homeless and terrified, refugees of
a barren forest left to wander for all time. Then there’s
something about revenge, cesarean sections, and a change in
leadership. But no solace for the bugs and the gastropods and all
those left in the wake of the marching woods, left to imagine a
home more distant than any sum of miles, as distant as time
itself.

10
When the story ends you turn to find both beetles have fallen
off of their toadstools and are rolling inconsolably on the
ground. You wonder if they heard the same story. The slug is off
his seat as well, drawing strange patterns with his foot in the
speckled soil. The tea has activated for all but you, it would
seem. Perhaps a few centuries marinating in this would awaken
something in you, but an evening by the fire will have to be its
own reward for now. The slug lets out a wail that sounds as if
the property of snot could sing an ode to fresh strawberries and
softer days ahead.

It is time to leave.

To stand, bow, and make your way toward the hole in the wall,
turn the page.

11
Exit through the Hole your Coffin Made- Gabriel
Komisar

You leave the pungent aroma of the garden behind, and find
yourself in a limestone cavern. A few lanterns are affixed to the
walls, glowing with the same bioluminescent light as the
mushrooms you climbed past on your way. They look like recent
alterations to a very old tunnel.

To your left the limestone walls curve away from view. It’s
anyone’s guess what’s down that way. But to your right the
tunnel goes on perfectly straight and in the distance you can see
the portal opening into something far larger than you’d expect
underground. Distant parapets, tall and long in a sunless skyline.
A city underground. It is utterly inconceivable that a coffin
came from either direction with such a destructive velocity as to
break through the wooden boards patched over this hole in the
limestone cavern. You find yourself especially confused when
you feel something drop onto your shoulder. You reach for it
blindly, your ringed fingers plucking one of us off your shoulder:
a maggot.

This is when you look up.

12
Oh best beloved,
We fell in love with you the moment we laid eyes on you.

We took everything you had to give us and we left behind a

work of art. You’re our masterpiece and how long we’ve had to
watch you, to keep you, to wait for you to awaken to us. All that
time, all that soft, quiet, hungry work, and still we couldn’t help
but worry. What would you think of us when we saw you?
Would you love us the way we love you? Would you think us
beautiful? Now you look up through eroded rock and splintered
reinforcements to find us looking right back, many stories up
but as close to you as we’ve been in a century.

You are so still in this moment, best beloved.

What are you thinking

about?

Did you miss us?

You could run if you wanted, best beloved.

You could leave us for the underground city or follow the

limestone tunnel as it curves and descends even deeper
underground, parts of the catacombs we’ve long since
abandoned.

13
Or you could wait for us to come and get you.
To return you to our palace where we’ll clothe you and seat you
with the others we made. You’ll be back where you belong, best
beloved. Surrounded by only the finest things that remain
underground when all the rot has been eaten away. All the
jewels and porcelain and precious metals; all the ruins of empire
so carefully collected. You’ll be back in our collection, my love.

We cannot lie to you, best beloved. Though you may avoid us,
there is no escape.

We’re in the walls and behind your eyes. We carved every inch of
these tunnels and we’ve seen all that’s gone on inside them.
Centuries of cities and strangers and frightful, ugly sights. We’d
spare you from it if we could, but then maybe you are the
adventuring kind after all.

Just remember, no matter where you go, you belong to us.

Whether you wait or whether you run, we will find you.

You’re in the Maggots’ Keep now. And that’s forever.

To flee to the underground city, turn to page 150.

To descend deeper into the catacombs, turn to page 180.

To let us take you home, turn to page 97.

14
Stay in Your Coffin- Cory Capron

“No, it shouldn’t be,” you declare to yourself aloud. “Best I stay

here, where I belong.”

It is with surprising ease that you speak, despite no longer

possessing a tongue. You ponder this a moment, perhaps a few
moments assembled into one longer, more meditative moment,
full of thought – as to be thoughtful! Then at last you decide
that it should be, if anything, only easier to speak without a
tongue.

“Nothing to get tied!”

You let out a dry, reedy cackle. Had you still lips they would
smile like the slick, waxing moon. Who needs the big old world
beyond when such entertainment can be found in the company
of one’s own cheeky cheek-less self!

You cackle once more in your spongy, rotten box, further

stirring the stagnant film on the water. Cool vapors rise, rank
with odors of fungi and mold, up into the spore-hazed air. Your
bones sing like pipes clanking against one another until the
laughter subsides.

Running jewel-laden fingers over marimba ribs, you listen

curiously to their tones. Have they no longer any marrow?
Might you now be all hollow like a bird? This thought brings
you pause. In stillness, you hear once more the baying winds
outside and a trickle of water creeping in.

15
“I would very much enjoy it, were I to fly like a bird.”

You stare at the patterns of molds growing inches from your

face, out through the velvet cushioning of the coffin lid. In the
blue-black darkness, as if by a light of your own making, you see
their yellows, their inky blacks – some a greyish blue or, what
you've decided to call, "limey grey." They form like the heads of
very, very tiny cauliflower, among filaments finer than webbing,
patterned to make such an unruly lace, spreading as if
periwinkle in an unkempt garden. How in lapse through your
fixation they become a bouquet of paper rockets! So glacial are
their explosions though, across this kind but starless little sky,
all blooming in non-photosynthetic hues. They are in both speed
and palette, completely unlike your flowers.

Oh, how you were once surrounded by kissing petals, strewn

about you at burial. Gone, like your flesh; only some brittle
stems remain. Missing their company, your precious eyes soar
across this private little welkin of tufted silk night, like two
black mirrors on a carny medium’s tablecloth, hunting for
semblances in formations, constellations in the damp decay, to
name, and tell stories out of.

Your mind drifts to ponderings of soup. How very much like a

soup bone you feel in the pulpy bed of your eternal resting
place. You think of your grandmother’s soup, hot and hearty,
with celery, parsnips, and wild mushrooms. You think of
soup-skin, forming on the surface of the cooling pot unstirred,
and how unlike skin of any kind you find the sensation of this –
such foul, fibrous porridge all about you! This viscous bilge

16
slurry that slowly rises over your priceless extremities. Time
moves ever towards entropy, seeing no tidal pattern in the
growing feed of water, steadily bleeding from cave into coffin,
pooling higher and higher. It shall be slow but inevitable, what
is to come next for you.

The water rises over your faceless face. Had you eyelids to close,
you might close them now, best beloved, perchance to dream of
flying.

You do not drown. You have no lungs to fill with water. You do
not die, because you are already dead. At least, you think that is
how it works. You remain full of thoughts. They swim inside
your empty skull. And so, everything goes on. It is all just
somewhat more unpleasant than before.

It might be years that have passed. It could be only minutes.

What’s time to the dead and buried? At any rate, as the
mahogany gradually takes on the many qualities of a soft brie
cheese, your presumed eternal home, and the surface it has long
laid upon,

shifts,

erodes,

then, does something else.

You feel a sensation not unlike FLYING, for it is flying’s older,

much crueler sibling. Caressing your limbs as a means of
introduction, you feel, as you now are, FALLING.

17
As is often the case with unexpected guests, it hangs around a
bit past its welcome.

The coffin does not so much break open upon impact, as

disperse itself over the surface, splatting as might a very rotten
fruit, were it too dropped from such a stunning height onto any
surface more substantial than a sigh. How you remain whole,
you are far too shocked to comprehend. Perhaps it is the luck of
the wretched. At any rate, as the disintegrating wood between
you and the water virtually melts away, you begin sinking down
into the cold abyss of what you must conclude is a significantly
large underground lake.

It occurs to you that now would be a great time to start

swimming, so as not to continue sinking down into the cold
abyss of said lake. Then again, that might constitute beginning
an adventure, and you distinctly recall setting your ways against
such things. Instead, perhaps you should just sink. It is not
exactly ideal. It will be colder, but you will get used to that too,
eventually.

To swim, turn the page.

To sink, turn to page 207.

18
To Swim- Cory Capron

Then again, perhaps you have done enough waiting for things to
happen to you.

You start kicking your legs and flapping your arms in protest.
At first, the sensation is agreeable. These labored motions
through the water help wash away the putrid sludge of
rehydrated desiccation and rancid microbial culture you had
miserably resolved to steep in before. Invigorating as this
newfound cleanliness proves, however, your limbs remain
fleshless, still laden with gems and metal, and thus are unable to
propel you upwards to the surface.

As a sort of phantom exhaustion begins to overtake your

nonexistent muscles, you see something emerge from the depths,
swimming towards you with astonishing speed. It appears
vaguely humanoid, but with a long flat tail to aid its propulsion,
and before you can take in any further detail, it snatches you
around the torso, carrying you up to the surface.

With a flailing splash, your head rises from the water. Still being
held over the shoulder of the submerged creature, it takes you
across the open lake at ever-alarming speed. Before any sense
can regain command, you are released in the waist-deep
shallows before a shore of smooth ovoid stones.

19
Your rescuer emerges next to you, a full head’s height over your
own, even hunched as it stands. More akin to a catfish or
salamander, being propped up on two legs does not appear to
come natural for them, yet they seem to do so for your regard.
The water slides silently down off their skin, smooth and
shining, like a dolphin or seal, all fabulous muscle beneath, with
a wide face and large reptilian eyes that now look you over with
a troubled fascination equal to your own.

“Thank you, for saving me,” you tell the amphibious hunk of
creature, but it only continues to look you over, as one might a
music box or windup toy.

“I am…”

“Living bones,” the creature answers for you. Its voice seems to
sound on the inhale, likely making it difficult to speak more
than a few words at a time. After what feels to be another
unbearably long pause, its eyes come to meet yours, adding,
“from magic stones?”

In all the conscious hours adding into days, to years inside your
mahogany keep, you had managed to think very little on the
true cause of your reanimation. For all your memories of
grandmother’s soup and other arbitrary pleasantries, you recall
nothing of the events leading to your demise. You were buried
like royalty, clearly, but cannot speak of a title to warrant the
honor. Only by magic could you exist as you are, yes, but the
workings of the craft?

20
Muscular Fish
“I do not know,” you confess.“From due consequence,” it says,
cocking its head and slowly extending long, sharp claws from
wide, webbed fingers, “has Giilsh saved... a lich?”

You do not recognize this word, “lich,” but it sounds dangerous.

The creature, Gilish, has only shown you kindness thus far, but
now you feel as if the wrong answer could result in those shiny,
fabulous muscles snapping your soggy, brittle bones to splinters.
Your grandmother once told you, when a dangerous looking fellow
asks you if you are also dangerous, it is usually best to say that you
are. Then again, what would she know? She was never one for
adventures either, and best beloved, it would appear that an
adventure is definitely what you are now having!

To pretend you know what a lich is and say yes, turn the page.

To tell the truth, turn to page 71.

22
To Pretend you Know what a Lich is and say yes -
Aoife Crow

You don’t know much of anything about this lizard person, and
decide that running with it is the best course of action. You tell
Gilish that of course you know what a lich is. Why, in fact,
you’ve seen dozens in your time! Perhaps more. Yes, and also of
different sizes and inclinations! Why once you even saw a Grand
Lich, which is like a lich only more so. You never had anything
to fear, however, for you are indeed a lich to be feared. Yes, you
boast, you are great, and terrible, and fearsome, and other
impressive things besides.

It is possible, oh most dearly beloved, that you oversold it.

The creature spends a few moments turning the speech you gave
over like an unexpected object found in their evening meal.
They lean around you one way and then the other, eyes swiveling
impressively in their sockets to get a more thorough
examination. At last they lean back on their haunches and give a
noncommittal grunt.

“Mmm. I see.”

Their words are dropped carefully, one at a time like delicate

fruit plucked from an unfamiliar tree.

23
“Well, you’d best go and visit the other lich, then. She’s down
the western tunnels a way. It’s a right, then a half-left, then two
rights, a double clockwise right, and another left. …or was it
another right…well at any rate follow the smell of salt. Past the
salt cavern, and up the river stairs. She knows more about that
sort of thing than I do.”

Were you still possessed of the sorts of soft squishy parts that
would facilitate a nervous swallow, you might do so now. It
would appear, oh dear heart, oh graceful and wonderful and
clearly beloved, that you have bitten off more than your
jawbone (which we have so lovingly etched by our
ministrations), can handle.

You thank Gilish for the most helpful information, although

your front of confidence wavers a little. Gilish narrows his eyes
at you, seemingly picking up on this. “Are you...quite sure you
can find the way? I can assist you, if needs be. The way-tunnels
between here and there are a bit troublesome. If you’re not
familiar with them.”

On the one hand, facing a real actual lich sounds like it could be
terrifying, and maybe even a bit embarrassing given your earlier
braggadocio. However, dearest, you are starting to get the
notion that fear, too, is something largely governed by soft
squishy bits that you no longer possess. You are most likely still
feeling it out of habit more than necessity.

24
On the other hand, the proper path contains a lich, while
getting lost in the tunnels could contain...well, anything at all.
Looming unknowns can present a far more existential threat,
which isn’t quite as readily dismissed as fears of what this lich
might be like.

To accept the offer, making your visit with the lich certain,
turn the page.

To refuse the offer and hope to avoid the lich, turn to page 33.

25
Accept the offer, making your visit with the lich
certain - Aoife Crow

You tell Gilish that although you are indeed mighty and
formidable, perhaps some company would not go amiss on the
journey. After all, it would not do to keep the lich waiting. It is
quite possible that being an immortal creature, waiting is
something they’re quite good at! But either way, making your
way straight there seems as though it would be more polite.

Yes, beloved, you still have some work to do on the nervous

rambling front. Some habits are harder to break than others it
would seem, squishy bits or no.

Gilish grunts again, grabs their gear, and ponderously rises to

their feet. It’s not that their movements are slow, especially,
more that compared to a human or human-shaped corpse their
assorted parts have further to move. There’s a clear strength to
their wiry, cantilevered limbs. You begin to suspect that there’s a
reason Gilish is not particularly concerned about being next
door to a lich. They trudge past you, down the closest tunnel.

“This way. It shouldn’t take all that long. It’s just a bit...ah...”
Their mouth scrunches up as they search for the right word.
They huffed, settling on “...tricky.”

26
At first, the route seems fairly straightforward. Gilish reaches a
fork, pauses for only a moment, and then continues down the
newly chosen tunnel. At the second fork, however, they pause.

“Here. Like this.” They take two steps solidly down one path, do
a sort of shuffling pirouette, then go back down to the fork and
start up the other path. “Step. As I step. Move as I move. How
we go is as important as which way we go.”

This of course, is always true beloved. It’s just possibly more

literally true here than usual.

You walk towards the first branch and, albeit a bit stiffly,
replicate the little dance-like ritual as Gilish had done. They
swing their upper body around and give you another
swivel-eyed looking over before nodding and heading down the
path again.

“It’s the Winding Ways, you see. They are not far from here.
There’s something not quite right about them. And they...”
Gilish’s head slowly twists around to a startling degree to look
at you while still continuing down the path. “...leak.”

The journey continues on that way for a while. Sometimes a fork

will require dancing a small jig, another will require a backflip
or briefly wearing a blindfold, which Gilish thankfully supplies.
At one intersection, Gilish turns right, takes a couple of steps,
and then shuffles sideways into the tunnel wall.

27
They instantly vanish. After a moment their voice sounds,
distant and tinny, through the wall they just disappeared into.

“Come on, just as I did!”

You pause a moment, and then hazard a question about how,

exactly, you’re supposed to vanish into the wall.

“Just walk at that bit of wall, and it happens on its own.

Sideways, though. As I said. Move as I move.”

You take a couple of halting steps down the path, and look at
the wall before walking into it. Your dearest and most lovingly
etched skull promptly bounces off of the rocky surface.

“Sideways, honorable lich! Sideways!” Gilish’s voice, perhaps a

bit tired, echoes through the tunnels to you.

You back up and turn, and take a couple of furtive glances

towards the wall before shuffling sideways into it.

The world spins, reels, and turns inside-out. Sights near and far
flood your eyes all at once, angles become impossible and
straight lines curve back on themselves. Linearity breaks down,
your ribs encompass the world and your knees collapse into
your skull.

28
Accept the Offer
You

See

NOTHING.

You

SEE

All.

You see a new tunnel ahead of you, and Gilish waiting patiently.

“Ah. Yes. Took you a bit oddly did it? You get used to it.
Eventually. Well…either you do, or you lose your sense of space
and time. But I’m sure a fine lich like you will be alright.” They
twist their mouth into what they probably think is an
approximation of a human reassuring smile.

You take a moment to collect your frayed sense of reality before

nodding to Gilish and letting them know you’re ready to
continue. You reach up and touch your head where it collided
with the rock wall. It’s another old habit as you no longer have
frail flesh there to swell and bruise, but your finger bones come
away with a white powder on them.

30
You reach up to touch the spot again, concerned that possibly
your skull was hit harder than you realize, but it appears to be
fully intact. Gilish seems to notice your consternation and lifts
their head until it’s facing backwards at you. Their eyes swivel
around until they fix on your fingertips.

“Salt. Yes, just some salt. Not, perhaps, the best for slugs, but
harmless to us. We are close.”

You look up and see that the walls become whiter here than they
were previously. There’s the sound of flowing water ahead, and
the air is filled with a smell like the sea but subtly different,
somehow more sterile. Gilish stops where the tunnel ends and
empties into a much larger cavern beyond.

“And here we are. I had best head back. The way back is even
trickier, and I must return before too long. There are others
waiting for me. Best of fortunes on your journey, honorable lich.
I trust that your meeting with the other lich will be...fruitful.”
They clap a large, surprisingly heavy, scaly hand on your
shoulder and make another attempt at a human smile which, in
full fairness, they manage a bit better this time. They wave and
head off back the way they came.

31
The darkness envelops them, leaving you alone. You look back
and forth between the dark tunnels behind and the giant cavern
ahead. It’s on the edge of hearing, but you think you hear the
sound of anguished wailing drift on the moving air from the
cavern. This does not seem to bode well. You hesitate, and
consider your options.

You could, having saved face, return to the tunnels and try to
find another way out. Although having come out this far
already, why back out now? It’s even possible this other lich has
answers to some of the questions that have been gnawing at
your mind since you awoke.

To meet the lich, and take whatever fate may come, turn to
page 45.

To take your chances with the tunnels alone, turn to page 59.

32
Refuse the offer, possibly avoiding the lich in the
process but potentially facing far more uncertain
dangers - Lydia Brunk

Simply by willing it, the trepidation drops from your bones like
a dressing gown slipping sinuously from your shoulders. You
assure Gilish that you have no need of a companion, and stride
confidently out of the water into the darkened space beyond.
The squelching sounds of your feet in the mud detract
somewhat from the drama of the moment.

Oh, beloved, headstrong as you are, you had not considered fully
the depth of the darkness in the tunnels ahead. There was some
source of light on Gilish’s shore, but that is receding quickly.
You can barely see your own skeletal feet moving through the
muddy, mossy sludge at the bottom of this rocky tunnel. It is a
deeply unpleasant thing to see and feel, and yet an even more
unpleasant thing not to see. Still, you cannot turn back now.
You have made your choice and must see it through.

Soon you are moving through complete darkness. Besides your

own forward motion, the only thing you can hear is the weak
trickle of water; the only thing you can feel a sickening
sensation of depth, the pressure of the earth above you. You
stumble once, twice - the third time you fall, rattling your skull
and narrowly avoiding cracking a metacarpal clean in half.

33
Precious thing, you understand that your only choice now is to
crawl forward on your hands and knees. As you delicately,
gingerly lower yourself to the floor, one of your baubles slips
from about your waist and is lost in the muck. It was an emerald
pendant, masterfully crafted and lovingly draped about you as
you were laid to rest. You decide that though it only minimally
subtracts from your beauty, and is not worth hunting for. You
muddle on.

The feeling of your brittle kneecaps and finger bones clacking

against the stone of the tunnel’s floor as you move clumsily
along judders its way through your whole body. Something
echoes across your memory, the padding of flesh against the
softness of earth. A much more pleasant thing than this.

Time is so slippery in this state, but you continue in this way for
some length until your skull is again scraped, this time by the
tunnel’s ceiling. You extend your arms and realize that it has
narrowed to the point where you will need to continue on your
belly. Poor thing!

You lie there for a moment, the mud sucking at your ribs. The
tunnel is too narrow, now, to turn around, and appears to be
narrowing even further. The hollow dread is much more
persistent than the fear you had earlier.

Perhaps it is time to surrender to the natural way of things yet

again. (After all, you’re the one who made the choice to stay in
your coffin until it rotted away beneath you.) You’ve done it

34
before, it should come easily to you. And make no mistake,
beloved, we are the natural way of things. All this time, we have
been with you, and yours now is the duty to be with us.

You cannot see us yet, here in the darkness, but stretch out your
hand above and you could touch us, our writhing sea. Isn’t it
time, beloved? You have strayed, but all paths lead back to us.

Will you surrender to our love and to our wisdom, or will you
keep moving forward?

To let the maggots take you home, turn to page 97.

To keep moving forward, turn the page.

35
Keep Moving Forward - Lydia Brunk

Well, beloved! Somewhere within you, or somewhere within the

universe, a switch has been flipped - a butterfly has flapped its
wings. Perhaps it is the same thing that made you swim rather
than sink? Or perhaps you already know where that road leads?

However it has happened, you have rejected our offer. You

believe, it seems, that you can chart your own path. Grimly, you
push yourself up to your elbows and keep moving.

Instead of narrowing further, the tunnel soon begins to slope

upward and to widen slightly. With the upward slope, the
muddy bottom dries off and is replaced by bare stone, then a
light coating of sand. Although you are still crawling, you begin
to perceive somewhere ahead of you a faint lightening.

As you had expected, the tunnel ends in a sort of chamber.

What you had not expected is that the tunnel would emerge
halfway up the cavern wall. Your legs dangle over the edge as you
survey what is before you: whitewashed walls of limestone,
riddled with similar holes to yours, curve down to a perfectly
flat floor, set along the edges with glass lanterns giving off a
white-green, chillingly impersonal light. Criss-crossing
geometrically at the center like spokes of a wheel are three
canals of dazzlingly blue water, disappearing into tunnels of
their own.

36
The only way down is straight down. That strange sort of
fearlessness has come back to you.

After a chaotic series of moments, you are below. The water is

moving swiftly, and close up you notice that each of the canals
has a tile pattern inlaid at its edges. You have landed closest to
the canal patterned with ornate blue-and-white butterflies. A
few more feet away lies a canal decorated with plain black
houseflies. Beyond these, the third canal’s tiles are too far away
to make out clearly, but you can see that they depict something
in a lurid orange and green.

Human bones do not typically float in water, but your options

are limited.

To climb into the canal with the blue-and-white butterflies,

turn the page.

To climb into the canal with the black houseflies, turn to page
39.

To climb into the canal with the indistinct orange and green
tiles, turn to page 40.

37
Climb into the canal with the blue-and-white
butterflies - Lydia Brunk

You rise to make your way to the nearest canal, but you can now
see that it is decorated with plain black houseflies. You turn
back to the other canal that borders your triangle of land, which
is decorated with blue-and-white butterflies. You make your
way over, keeping your eyes fixed on the decor. As you kneel at
the edge of the canal to lower yourself in, your gaze flicks to the
skeletal foot you place in the water. Realizing what you have
done, you glance back to the decor, which is houseflies again.
You turn to climb back out, but your leg has entered the water.
The current is unexpectedly strong, and it pulls you under.

You sink under the surface. Turn to page 41.

38
Climb into the canal with the black houseflies - Lydia
Brunk

You slide into the water of the canal, which is gentle and warm.
Despite your suppositions about human bones, this water is
incredibly salty, and you bob along like a cork out into the
tunnel. Expecting darkness, you are surprised to find that the
tunnel is lined with luminescent stones. The current becomes
rougher, and you dip below the surface briefly.

You sink under the surface. Turn to page 41.

39
Climb into the canal with the distinct orange and
green tiles - Lydia Brunk

With the design of the chamber, you will need to cross over one
of the two other canals to reach the orange and green one.
Although the blue-and-white butterflies are slightly closer, you
turn and make your way to the black houseflies. The surface of
the water is churning like rapids, and the spray drifts up into a
gentle mist. The distance shouldn’t be too far to leap, but as you
push off from the ground, you slip on the wet tile. The roiling
water swallows you.

You sink under the surface. Turn the page.

40
Under the Surface - Lydia Brunk

Your head breaks the water again, but tumbling like a stone,
soon you are underwater once more. You no longer have lungs to
breathe, nor eyes to close, so this change of state affects you less
than it would a still-living [Link] are not perturbed. You are
simply beautiful, beloved, bedecked in glittering jewels that
sparkle in the comforting blue-purple glow of the luminescent
stones that light your way. In life and in death, you were
caressed, coveted, cosseted, wrapped in the luxurious warmth of
all that glitters. Beauty, luxury, status, you must remember, o
winsome one, are at their core passivity: the pallor of a face kept
shaded from the sun lest it take on the suggestion of having
labored.

This water washing over you, carrying you along, is simply in

service to you. A million disembodied hands, caging you in gold,
taking you home to us. The walls of this passage pass by you.
There are shores, perhaps, as you rush by, but they are not for
you. You have tried to chart your own path, but that is not for
you. Yours is to lay back and let us bring you where you are to
be.

To let go, and come with us, turn to page 43.

To make a break for the shore, turn to page 44.

To spot something at the bottom of the river and dive down to

it, turn to page 286.

41
Under the surface
Let go, and come with us - Lydia Brunk, Joe Young,
VVV

We have always been with you, even now. You feel the wriggling
of a first maggot coming up alongside you in the water. We will
bring you to us, best beloved. We will carry you with us, back to
our home, out of this terrible place. Time is so long, and even to
us there has been such a long period of waiting. We slither into
the gaps around your festoonings, through your flesh and among
the bones. You feel us vibrate within you, making you whole in a
way you didn’t know you were empty. It makes so much sense
now, doesn’t it? You can see why we had to take things away
from you. We had to mint you anew, shiny and empty, so that
you could be made whole. So that you could make us whole.

Where you arrive is the place we call the Oubliette. It lies far
above most of the Keep, but is forgotten to most in this
subterranean realm. The top of the shaft lies in darkness, and
when we deposit you there we are loath to leave you. There are
treasured things, beauteous things, wonderful things in the dark
here. There is much to do, best beloved, many things. But we
have so much time now, now that you are here. With us. What is
to be done first?

To see the rest of the collection, turn to page 101.

To ask of your past, turn to page 100.

If this feels wrong, turn to page 260.

43
Make a break for the shore - Lydia Brunk

In one smooth move, you throw yourself out of the water and
onto the rocks at the edge of this underground river. You clatter
a bit, unpleasantly, as you roll to a halt.

Above you rise the spires of a patchwork city built into the
cavern’s walls. The river that you tossed yourself out of seems to
be a major artery - the buildings come quite close to its banks,
and a few meters away you see what appear to be oversized
centipedes launching skiffs into its center.

You look down to find that a rapidly-growing fungus of some

kind has enmeshed itself in the bones of your foot, and you have
to shake it quite vigorously to dislodge it. An uncomfortably
slimy sensation remains.

Having definitely avoided the path laid out behind you, the
world is yours. Specifically, the narrow alleyway ahead is yours,
so to start with, you make your way towards the odd-looking
building that faces it.

To flee to the underground city, turn to page 150.

44
Meet the lich, and take whatever fate may come -
Aoife Crow

Your curiosity wins out over the potential threat, and you take a
moment to collect yourself before heading into the cavern
ahead. You wonder, without words, if it’s possible to die again.

Allow us to assure you, oh dearest, oh agonizingly beloved, it is

possible. There are more types of death than stars in the
long-forgotten sky. Why, here you are, dead but another kind of
alive.

And that’s not even the worst thing that can end a journey.

Oh, but don’t let us dissuade you, o dear poppet, oh shining

jewel-eyed dear! We think we have a good idea of what lies in
store for you. It may be terrible, dear heart, dear precious heart,
but it may also be very sublime indeed.

We will hope, beloved, for the best.

The cavern is filled with a massive lake, the distant shore of

which you have to focus to see clearly. There’s even a bit of shift
and move to it, very gentle waves lapping onto the near shore.
The bottom of it is white, covered in crystalline structures that
twist up through the water and breach the surface here and
there. On one of the outcroppings a few meters offshore, you see
what once was a bird, or some sort of creature like one, who

45
once had made the very ill-advised decision to drink there. It
expired sitting on the salt rocks, and over years its bones
became encased and fossilized in that same salt.

Another wail drifts to you as the circulations of air through the

cavern shift. You can hear more of it now, and its tones are rich,
and complex. It’s almost like a song. Every high and low, every
gasp for air and halting, choked-off noise between the longer
wails forms a tapestry of an ancient and inconsolable grief. You
can almost feel the exact shape of the tragedy bounce around in
your skull. Had you still the ability, you would cry. You do not,
however. Your sockets will remain dry eternally. Deep within,
though, you know that is the only thing stopping you.

Still, you have made up your mind, and begin to follow the
shore. In the distance, around the far side of the lake, you can
see the source of the sounds of rushing water. There’s a long
salt-encrusted stairway, flowing with water that empties into
the lake.

Beloved, do you know what a lich really is? We’ve been meaning
to talk to you about that. Oh, there’s different kinds, but we
mean the irreducible, the trait they all share. A lich is someone
who has pinned their soul fiercely to the land of the living. Their
soul is latched on so firmly, so terribly, that the pull of death can
only tug at their feet as a shifting of the tide closest the shore.
They cling desperately to life through terrible rituals,
half-ripping off their soul and stuffing it somewhere they deem
safe enough. They can stride into the closest parts of the land

46
beyond, there to bargain with things great and terrible. Some do
so purely by accident. Some, however, have a desire to remain, a
pining for something or someone here that is stronger past any
force the world can muster. Those liches defy death, they look
the other side in the eyes and say, “what can you bring unto me,
what can you muster, that would be stronger than my bonds to
that which I love? What could you ever put before my gaze, that
could tug my soul stronger than this?”

Sometimes, just sometimes, that which lies beyond has no

sufficient answer. The question, then, hangs in the air, eternally,
keeping that lich steadfast in this existence. We heard the sound
of that question long ago and we believe, oh dearest, we hear it
now.

You reach the stairs at last. Despite flowing with water, the lack
of any moss and the rough texture of the salt crystals give your
feet easy purchase. The sounds grow steadily clearer and more
distinct. The wailing has texture and grit and bite. It etches into
the space behind your eye-gems until you can see the story with
perfect clarity. One was loved, the cries say, and one was lost.
The one lost was so loved and the pain that their absence left so
great, that only the greatest of mourners would do. Everyone
knew that only she, most heart-rent, would be suitable for the
task. And so she sat, sealed away for time endless, mourning the
lost.

47
It rattles you down to something far deeper than your bones, oh
beloved. You are getting used to the fact that fear is now a
choice. You steel yourself and finish your climb to the top of the
stairs.

The stairs stop at a large doorway, its doors hanging open and
having slowly left behind their hinges to now rest upon the rock
beside the door and meld to it with salt. The room beyond is
large, though nowhere near the size of the cavern behind. It has
a domed ceiling and walls lined with books. The shelves higher
up are mostly intact, but the volumes below are encrusted with
salt and a thick The floor itself has a shallow pool of the same
salt water that flows onto the stair to make its way down below.

In the center of the pool stands the source of the wailing. A

woman, flesh long since fossilized into living stone. Her
mourning garb flows about her in peaks and waterfalls of cloth,
half-stone itself. Her tears, still flowing, have formed deep
channels into her face that run down her neck, beneath her
robes to the floor below. As you crest the top of the stairs, dark,
gimlet eyes rest on you.

For the first time in ages untold, the cavern and the reading
room fall silent. The silence hangs and settles over the room and
the two of you like a blanket. Your gem-eyes and hers rest on
each other for a long while. The air currents whip through the
room and back out again, as if the world itself is taking a breath.
She blinks and, glacially, her stone features move into one

48
expression after another, each painful and impossible to
interpret save that pure emotion drives them.

“It’s...you. Of course it’s you. Of course it is.” She walks, her

footsteps stone against stone, over to you. “After so long. After
all has fallen to quiet and peace. It could only be you.” She
smiles a smile that contains more sadness and more joy than
perhaps have ever been contained in one expression at the same
time. “You. Oh best beloved. For you I could never stop
mourning.”

She reaches an arm out, slowly, looking at it as if taking effort to

remember how. “I know it has been long. Your memories are
probably distant echoes, and the world we lived in has long
since faded away. But there is a new world down here. It is
changed, and alien. But there is so much to learn, and so much
to discover. I know it, I have felt the change, even though I
haven’t yet seen it. If you would...” She tilts her head toward her
outstretched hand.

“I would see it together. Side by side. This strange new below.”

49
Meet the lich, and take whatever fate may come
You feel the echoes, distant shapes of memories. Like the vase
that becomes two faces that becomes a vase again, you can feel
the shape of the absent memories by what they are not. You feel
something in those shapes that tells you she is sincere, and that
she would not harm you. And yet...can you really be sure?
Everything is so different. It seems that down here there is deep
and terrible magic soaked into the very walls at every other
turn. Whom can you trust? And what risks are worth the
risk?There is another exit from the room that could spell escape,
if escape is what you desire.

“There is one other way we could go…” She gestures with her
other hand. “I could show you what came past. If you can’t find
it in yourself to go forward, after so long, I would understand.
You could be filled with what was.”

To take the Mourner’s one hand, and face the future together,
turn to page 209.

To take the other hand, and cling to what was, turn the page.

To run off into the places beyond alone, turn to page 273.

51
Take the other hand, and cling to what was - Joe
Young

In the breath you consider your choices, the cavern hangs in

absolute silence, the rivulets of tears gone quiet. You
contemplate the outstretched limb, long calcified by the
Mourner’s own tears, and reach up your own, the light rattle of
the precious metal chains that hang there echoing dimly off the
dome. Tentatively, you push your osseous hand into hers.

And you are overwhelmed by the devouring fire of the sun. It

purifies as it blazes, tearing away at your eyes, melting your
flesh, liquifying your adornments of electrum and gold into
rivers of molten metal. It boils away the ichor running through
your circulatory system, the marrow of your bones vaporizing
and expanding in a shattering wave. As your body is wracked
with trauma, you taste oblivion and smoke.

As your vision returns to you, you find yourself standing atop a

wall overlooking a sea of sparkling crimson, waves lapping far
below on chunks of marble that tumbled down the cliffside
during an age undreamed of. High above you, a golden orb of
light beats down, making the water shine like a field of
carnelian. A ship, thin and made of pale wood, with sails
sticking out in a cone from its deck, glides over the sanguine sea,
the low call of a seabird echoing across the bay as it swoops low
into the water, catching a fish. Your body feels different now,
graceful and unencumbered, and the cool, salty ocean breeze
feels like a caress against your warm flesh.

52
Take The Other Hand
Then comes the true caress, as the Mourner’s hand separates
from your own, touching your cheek and turning your eyes from
the water to meet hers, twin orbs of smooth amber set into a
smiling face. She, like you, is whole, like you were when you
were here, best beloved, oh so long ago. You swim through the
memories like an eel, the high parapet blending seamlessly into
a narrow street lined with shop stalls, brightly colored birds
flying between the second story windows of basalt storefronts,
some searching for their next meal, others bearing the
witchworked talismans of the Council of Diviners, dowsing for
spies from across the ocean.

A table of worked metal with wicker chairs rushes out of the

clamoring city streets, catching you and the Mourner as it spins
off through alleys and thoroughfares, a stout clay pot of thick,
syrupy tea on the table pours into mismatched mugs of carved
wood in a spiral rising up from its spout like a dust devil. You
feel hours pass as you whirl through the city, conversations and
debates and promises flowing into the empty space in the air
between the two of you as rapidly as the tea flows into the
seemingly bottomless mugs.

Before you know it, you’re flung from your seats, through doors
and down an aisle, into the audience of an odd ballet, the
circular stage raised a few feet and positioned in the middle of a
crowd of standing onlookers, silent as they watch. On the stage,
the smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes hanging low in the air,

54
mannequins of red glass pirouette to the sound of knives being
drawn across ice.

As the music reaches a crescendo, a figure in the red and gold

motley of the Harlequin Union steps from the crowd onto the
stage, their face obscured by a featureless alabaster mask. In
their hand, they carry a large mallet, made of wood long worn
smooth by use. They stalk around the outside of the stage, a
ghost as the haze of smoke grows thicker and more aromatic.
When the hammer collides with the leg of the first glass
ballerina, it's almost a relief, and the tinkling of its constituent
parts bouncing off of the sleek surface of the dais creates a
counter-melody with the knife-music of the dance.

The hammer rises and falls again and again in the coming
minutes, one shard of glass flying from the stage and scratching
the side of your cheek, the warmth of blood trickling down your
skin making your hair stand on end. Before long, the hunting
harlequin looms behind the final construct of shimmering glass,
then walks in its wake, the steps around it as it attempts to
lurch through the final movement of its performance with one
of its legs shattered. An Arcane Glazier frowns from his seated
position, hunched atop a crate of esoteric sands at the edge of
the crowd, unable to intervene yet unable to look away. Finally,
the mallet comes down upon its head, and the music ends to
applause and cheers, this skirmish in the wars of the Diversion
District ended.

55
Your eyes meet the amber orbs of the Mourner again, and she
smiles at you, wiping the beads of blood from your face she
leans in. The various factions of the Pleasure Wars begin
bickering amongst each other. Without notice of the scene
around you, she whispers into your ear over the roar of the
crowd.

“There are many things in this Remembering I could show you,

my sweet, things you have long forgotten about our time
together. I do so wish I could show you everything, but each of
these reminiscences drains my power yet more. I’m afraid that,
should we go further, I may be unable to leave with you once we
return to our present forms,” she frowns, her eyebrows knitting
into a look of sorrow and regret so deep that, for the briefest of
moments, you can hear the trickling of her tears echoing off the
vaulted ceiling of her chamber.

If you must see the further splendors of your old life, turn the
page.

To wake from this beautiful dream, turn to page 227.

56
You must see the further splendors of your old life - Joe
Young

The Mourner sighs at your request, yet you can see in her face
that she knew a mere glimpse at the city that bore you so long
ago could not satiate your desires. As she turns away, the
entirety of the ballet rotates around her as if on a hinge,
carrying the two of you through more streets into a crowded
square. A scaffold of iron beams, long rusted, stands in the
center of the square, the face of a clock set into each of its four
sides. The hands of the clocks are all set at different times,
quivering like bowstrings. Your eyes are the only ones that seem
to notice.

Below the tower, a cohort of dirty youths are grouped in a loose

clump around a pair of lesser nobility, the dueling dilettante's
wrists tied together between them, a long, thin knife in their
other hands as they circle each other. A lunge meets parry,
followed by riposte, and crimson sprays in flecks on the
flagstones. One of the dirty youths rushes forward to the fight
and, for a moment, you think they are going to intervene.
Instead, they kneel down near the duo, and dip a thin
hog-bristle brush into the spilt blood, collecting it up before
jogging back to the rusting scaffold.

57
Now that you know what to look for, you can see all of the
youths carry similar brushes. It is as the youth adds a streak of
the fresh blood to the tower’s side that you recontextualize the
iron structure. It is not rusting, it is stained with hundreds of
similar brush-strokes, thousands maybe, a portrait of a doomed
society painted with the claret of those wealthy enough to
afford medical care, painted by those who aren’t. This is not, you
sense, a kind place, no kinder for its beauty. This monument,
this tower, is a lightning-rod of malignant energy. You feel, deep
within you, a coursing rumble of something that could be fear as
easily as awe.

Then you realize that the rumble isn’t coming from within you.
It comes from beneath you.
You turn to the Mourner, and find her appearance changed.
Sections of her flesh are petrified, her eyes as dark as unlit
candles, howling sockets that threaten to swallow you. She grabs
your hand, squeezing it tightly enough that you can feel each of
the twenty-seven bones underneath the warm flesh for the first
time since entering the Remembering.

“We must go now, best beloved,” she commands, as forcefully as

you’ve ever heard her. “What happens next is not for you to see.
I cannot show you this. You mustn't see.”

If it’s time to go, turn to page 230.

If you can feel it, rising from the earth, and must stay to watch,
regardless of the consequences, turn to page 228.

58
Take your chances with the tunnels alone - Alvhild
Sagadatter

Leaving behind Gilish and the Western Tunnels, you have

chosen to make your own way. The hunk of fish-flesh seemed
pleasant enough, but can you truly rely on anyone else in this
world?

Perhaps they wished to suckle on your marrow, and not in a

pleasant way?

So you wander into the deeps, among smoothened stones worn

by wind and water. With little cracks and holes here and there,
where you can swear that you see things moving. Perhaps it is
us. We are always watching, after all.

The passages are confusing and ever-curving. Never quite to an

extent that you cannot navigate, but at times the edges of your
toe and finger-bones need to dig into stone and dirt, breaking
furrows in the undisturbed soil. There is silence, and you find
your mind wandering to memories of lungs and breath. That
would interject against the clacking of bone and stone, the rasp
of limbs against dirt.

59
In the darkness, you begin to see things that are not there,
mirages against the field of your vision. Tunnels are interloping
and opening, dilating and closing like eyelids or other, less
wholesome things, fleshy or not, that you do not possess and
would not want to. It’s enough to make a shiver go down one’s
spine, beloved. In the absence of anything else, the senses begin
to fill in the blanks out of boredom.

Perhaps you should tell your senses to be less bored and focus on
what is, beloved. Then you would notice where you are.

And here you are, most precious. Through uncertainty and

challenge you have…. triumphed? Or at the very least, you have
taken a step into something – somewhere – terrible and
awe-inspiring.

You find yourself on the edge of a dizzying vista, as before you

there are steps and staircases, walls and floors and ceilings in
finely formed and carefully crafted stone, fitted elegantly against
each other. They are pristine, my precious. Pristine, and to a
certain extent, interchangeable. You see, one corpse’s floor is
another corpse’s ceiling and a third corpse’s wall where they
banged their head on a too-low entry point. Perhaps they even
discarded their skull. They are not so clever as you, my
sweetling.

60
Were you educated in the classics, you would perhaps recognise
parts of this as so-called hyperbolic geometry, with constant
negative curvatures and the way that these spiraling, arching
architectures continually collide and shift, with painstaking
slowness – tectonic scales, really – to create ever new vistas of
wonder and longing.

Surely, this - this magic, transformative, transgressive space

must have some of the answers you seek?

To turn your back on the eldritch and unknowable fears that

you might face, turn the page.

To leap headlong into the sinister symmetries and afflicted

architecture to find the answers to the depths of the Maggot’s
Keep, turn to page 65.

To lose yourself in the depths and ages of chaotic construction,

lairing like the lich you claimed to be, turn to page 235.

61
Turn your back on the eldritch and unknowable fears
that you might face - Lexi Antoku

What if, a small and arguably wise voice within you says, you
simply Did Not go into the freaky room? What if this space
where parallel lines meet and flat surfaces twist and bloom like
blossoming flowers, where every meeting of corners is an
impossible fractal… what if this room is no good for anyone?

What if you just leave?

It’s not as if anything is stopping you, beloved. Your skull, unlike

many of those in here, remains soundly attached to you. It holds
bits that are quite capable of making decisions for you, and
right now it’s saying that it is time to go. As mystifying and
enticing as this is, the rational, thoughtful part of you says it is
time to depart.

Reluctantly, agonizingly slowly, you tear yourself away from the

infinite expanse, inch by bloody-minded inch. A pressure in
your head that you hadn’t known was there fades as the
gleaming gems in your eye sockets finally refuse those dreamlike
sights.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

After all, it’s not as if all of that will be going anywhere. If you
come to regret your decision, you can always come back.

62
But with every footfall, you become more sure: turning away was
the right choice. You won’t be coming back. You’ve avoided
something terrible, the pull of an awful gravity that would have
consumed you. Much better to seek answers elsewhere. Let
others embrace that wretched abyss if they please!

After all, beloved, you have an eternity ahead of you. Why

squander it there?

Turn the page to find a better place to while away an eternity.

63
Find a Better Place to While Away an Eternity -
Gabriel Komisar

You’ve been restless since you woke in your coffin, beloved.

Traipsing about our keep as though you owned the place. We see
that hunger in you, and while we’d prefer to keep you to
ourselves, we know we’ll have you in time. A feeling creeps into
you, wandering beauty. A feeling of loneliness.

You wish to be among people again. You wish to see bustling

crowds and cozy little shops. Deep within this cavern you find
yourself hungry for civilization. It has been so very long. You
follow that yearning through the caverns, feeling your way from
darkness to light.

After a length of time only we can say, but dare not divulge, a
panic rises in you. The darkness seems to breathe and stretch,
but never cease. When you are just beginning to believe there is
no way out, suddenly you see it in the distance: a pinprick of
light.

What jewelry remains on your person jangles with delight as

you run, beloved. And as you do the crack of light becomes a
crevasse, brighter and brighter. With just a little more running
you finally escape the darkness of the caverns and

you flee to the underground city. Turn to page 150.

64
Leap headlong into the sinister symmetries and
afflicted architecture to find the answers to the depths
of Maggots’ Keep - Alvhild Sagadatter

You are far underground, beloved. Here, this deep in our

domain, you need not fear such pedestrian concepts as causality
or physics. If you ever did. You are a most exquisite corpse, after
all, and we do not doubt you have always been a creature of
refined and rare tastes. Such as your grandmother’s soup?
Simply extraordinary.

You seek answers, beloved, and perhaps you will find them. For
example, the very first thing you learn is that you can change
your personal center of gravity with a thought, which leads to a
very undignified fall up off the staircase you were ascending,
only to crash into the side wall of a roof-less corridor that leads
between two aqueducts, one ferrying what looks to be water,
possibly either filling the lake you came from, or draining it. The
water itself seems to change the direction of its flow between
the times you look at it.

There are rules here, beloved. You must simply learn them. For
instance, this spiraling staircase, it goes up and down endlessly,
and the doors and windows show you other places, other pieces
of the keep. You could leap out that window and land in the
courtyard! You could enter this swirling spot from elsewhere if
you stepped through that door. The possibilities are, if not
endless, close enough to have a mathematical function

65
approaching it. If only you were a scholar of such arts. Or at
least, if only you remembered being so.

No, learned math will not aid you here, best beloved. We believe
in your pluck, your spirit, your indomitable will. Sitting down
and rubbing at the gems in your sockets with the bone of your
palm is surely just a sign of your concentration, not frustration
with the endlessly winding paths that criss-cross one another.
Not fear, in your non-existent heart, as stone clatters and cracks
and creaks ever so close to you, and a new feat of automated and
aimless architecture springs up, rendering your progress moot.
You are trapped in shadow, precious, between hexagonal
cathedral pillars that rise up, feeling the vibrations of grinding
as two rooms open their passages and one cheekily inserts a
corridor into the other, spewing furniture and decorations into
its innards in a most vulgar display of construction. It is quite
alright; even when you are caught within it, you always recover,
do you not? You will rise to this challenge, sweetling.

You are incapable of crying. There are no tears to wipe. The

sorrow and loneliness and despair in your chest cavity will do
you no good.

Your gilded bones are not simple furniture, best beloved. Do not
let the rooms bully you so. Do not let them violate the sanctity
of your form, break you apart. Turn you into part of them. You
can overcome. We overcame. And now we are here. Ever
present, always part of them and forever apart from them.

66
Labyrinth
We believe in you, sweetling; keep moving through these
wretched halls, these ever-changing mirages, this glorious
tumble of differing decor. Imagine the knowledge it would take
to create such a thing, to bring together all these separate
elements from so many cultures, so many builders, and simply
mash it together like a child playing with mud.

That would be a most powerful child, precious one. Imagine

what you could do with such powers.

Precious?

Beloved?

Best beloved, why have you not moved?

To give up, turn to page 232.

To master the mysteries of the arcane architecture, turn to page

240.

Turn the page to leap out a window, exit a door, anything to get
away!

68
Leap Out A Window! Anything to Get Away! -
Alvhild Sagadatter

We can only imagine the toils and stresses you have been
working under, best beloved. A lack of memory is a terrible
thing, and you have been having a long, strange day - or night.
And defenestration can solve many a problem in life, precious.
But we do not know if it can solve this.

After all, your fingers found purchase in a wooden frame; we

think you even chipped it. And now you are falling, falling,
falling. Floating through space itself. Is it not a grand vista, best
beloved? The way the starlit sky is not just above you, but below
you and around you. The way you get to see the radiant purples
and blues and yellows-into-whites of nebulae and distant places.
The way you can feel nothing, as you drop, as you fall, as you
float through this endless nether.

Let us tell you a secret, sweetling. Each star you see is another
window. Another opportunity.

Just let us know where you wish to go, and we will guide you
once more.

To choose a blue star, turn to page 180.

To choose a red star, turn to page 97.

To choose a yellow star, turn to page 150.

69
Leap out a Window!
Tell the Truth - JR Zambrano

You know, beloved, that the truth will set you free. Even before
your voice sings out the words "in all honesty–" you can feel the
first flutterings of freedom rustling in the emptiness between
your ribs.

"I do not know."

Your words are an avalanche of doubt. An epoch of unknowing

lends the weight of eons to your voice.

Smooth muscles shift, ripple. Gilish waits, reverently in the

silence, large reptilian eyes blinking in the dark. After a moment
a pink, pointed tongue darts between glinting teeth.

"Not a lich, then. A lich would know," intones Gilish. Something

about the tenor of their voice has changed.

There's a hungry quality to it. Should you be afraid, best

beloved? Perhaps–but fear is a thought outside of your reach. A
memory, a melody echoing on a long-distant wind. Since fear
seems out of reach, there's no point dwelling on it.

You shrug your shoulders forward, a resolute gesture that belies

a confidence befitting your new majesty. Your bones were made
for this.

71
Gilish leads you in stride after confident stride down the
smooth stones, your combined footsteps composing a rhythmic
march. The steady tak tak tak of your feet accompanied by the
slick, hop-squish of Gilish's loping gait. Such music, beloved.
Were you always so skilled?

"Gilish offers hospitality. A bite and a night." Oh, those teeth are
sharp, beloved. Perfectly made for gnawing bones.A cool, blue
light flickers in the darkness. You can make out the luminescent
blossom of an algal bloom, plucked from the waters and draped
on either side of a humble looking cottage. Gilish's well-worn
tracks come and go from this place. Even now the creature
relaxes.

Inside, the cottage is surprisingly homey, if damp. A wooden

placard hangs above the door, proclaiming HOAM SWET
HOHM. The decor is scavenged from ruins of different ages.
Solemn, silent stone faces stare out from the workings of Gilish's
furniture. The arm of a statue to a forgotten emperor makes for
a shapely settee. The seal of an oubliette, a table that would be
downright sepulchral, if not for the hand-knit covering.

What Gilish lacks in skill at knitting, they make up for in

enthusiasm The coziness of Gilish's abode overwrites the
forgotten eons repurposed here.

"Do these bones eat?" asks Gilish, removing gleaming fish from
the pouch they carry.

72
"I…did once, I think" you say. Relying on the truth again, are we,
beloved? You are so honest and so forthright. Grandmother
would be pleased, would she not? And look how your adventure
is going thus far! You've made a friend, haven't you? Gilish
smiles. In time, dinner is served. It's fish. With a bit of damp
moss sprinkled on it for garnish. In all your days you have never
seen a creature look as proud as Gilish.

Gilish takes a seat at the ornate table (once the doorway to a

grand library, you realize) and noisily devours their meal in a
matter of [Link] dig in and try not to think about whether
or not you're intended to eat. The sensation is…not altogether
unpleasant. The scales tumble against teeth and down the inside
of your spine.

"The bones don't know what they are or if they eat–well, Gilish
knows how to help. Tomorrow Gilish can take you to the
Oracles. They will tell you who you were, and perhaps who you
will become."

Answers seem to lie within reach, beloved. But you also have a
chance–a chance to decide for yourself who you are. Will you
follow the creature to this Oracle? Or will you, given the choice,
say no, and leave the past a mystery, instead reinventing yourself
entirely from the present?

To go to the oracle, turn to page 94.

To reinvent yourself, turn the page.

73
Reinvent Yourself - JR Zambrano

"Actually, Gil–" your voice surprises us all, beloved. Such

confidence!

One of Gilish's bright round eyes turns towards you.

"Gil?"

A smile creeps across their face, unveiling toothsome fangs. Or

is it fangsome teeth? You're not sure, but either way, it works.

"Do you mind if I call you Gil?"

"Mind?" Gilish's eyes flutter. "No one ever calls us anything! Why
should we mind?"

"Only, you look like a Gil." Once the words start flowing, they
don't stop. You're feeling more and more sure of yourself with
each passing moment. You continue, bold as you please. "It's just
that, we stand here on a precipitous moment. What can an
Oracle promise? Certainty? Cold hard facts? The binding hand
of fate?"

Gil's mouth moves silently, trying to catch up to your words.

They nod.

You slip a bony arm around them, gesturing expansively.

74
"But this right here–you and I, this is fate! Can you feel it? The
portentousness of it all?"

Gil reaches out with a clawed hand, unsure of what to feel.

"No one ever calls you anything, and yet here I am, telling you
you look like a Gil."

The creature nods, steadily "Gil has a nice ring to it–"

"What I'm saying is, we can decide who we are. From this point
forward. Nobody else has those answers, just us!" Your voice
reverberates in the dark cave. A torrent shaken loose by those
dark waters.

You feel something at the edge of your consciousness release. A

metaphorical weight slips from around your bony shoulders.

Gil is caught up in the moment too. "Bones are saying…we could

be anything?"

"From humble fishmongers to Arch Plenipotentates of the

Azure Citadel," you reply. Honestly, beloved, this confidence is
worrying. If you could be anyone, who will you be?

"Where do we begin?" burbles Gil, wringing webbed hands in

excitement.

75
You settle onto the divan, and eye the surroundings. Yes, a new
beginning needs a proper welcome, beloved.

Your eyes settle on two different objects:

A cozy tea set with mismatched goblets, to raise a glass to your

new life.

A magnifying glass that casts a glint on a smudged fingerprint

beneath it.

To have some tea for your cozy new life, turn to page 218.

To investigate your mysterious new life, turn the page.

76
Investigate a Mystery - JR Zambrano

Something about the magnifying glass beckons you, Beloved.

The feel of its handle in your bony grasp is comforting. Once
your gaze travels through the lens, it is transformed. You no
longer see just a smudge underneath.

Instead you see a fingerprint. An ashen whorl that teases the

inner workings of your skull. The first thing that shakes loose is
a simple fact:

Gilish's webbed hands could not possibly have left this mark.
They're too smooth. And moist.

"Gil, old chum, there's been a crime," you say, with the leaden
certainty of eons.

Gilish makes a watery warble of alarm. "A crime? But this is

Gilish's sanctum–no one comes down here."

"That's what we're meant to think. But look at this." Your words
fall like a crumbling empire. You can feel it, beloved. A
thrumming in the air. Outside, the corpse-roads wind
northward; an ancient spire looms. Beneath its gaze, the remains
of fallen empires, each built atop the last. Time marches ever
onward. In the distance, a dark river cuts deeper than eyes can
see.

77
"Look at what?" Gil's damp breathing fills the silence as they
squish closer to your side.

You hold up a bony finger. Something's off. What is it you

notice, Beloved?

To listen to the strange howling, turn the page.

To point to the spilt wax on the floor, turn to page 81.

78
Listen to the Strange Howling - JR Zambrano

On the banks of Gilish's lake, the debris of ages collects. In the

ruins of a small church that once served a forlorn village, draped
with funereal cloth from two centuries prior, a corpse (that's
you, beloved) and a water-dweller hold stock still, listening to
the wind whistle through an unseen gap in the outer wall.

An old passage, long forgotten–but you hear it, beloved.

"That wind. It's coming from somewhere," you say.

Gilish raises a webbed hand to protest, but the steady whistle

betrays the ancient passage. Your careful steps lead you to the
crack in the cottage wall.

"It's coming from in here." And you heave, with exertion you
didn't know you were capable of. The stone slides open,
revealing a dark passage beyond. Over three thousand years,
these stones watched the footfalls of fearful monks hiding from
persecution become the eager, racing footsteps of young novices,
escaping the clutches of an easy life to commit as many sins as
possible before the evening chants called them home.

"Gilish is disturbed that this was in their house," says Gil,

wringing their hands.

79
"This is where they came in–but before we go down the road, is
everything okay Gil?"

Gilish burbles towards a closet and pulls out a cozy looking blue
cardigan. It is two sizes too big. From inside the pockets, Gil
fishes out an old block of wood that has been haphazardly
hacked into the vague shape of a duck. "Gil's prized possessions
are still here."

"Then what could your visitor have been doing?" you reply.

The two of you walk down the ancient tunnel, accompanied by

the steady dripping of moisture, slowly depositing the refuse of
millennia.

To follow your feet, turn to page 83.

80
Point to the Spilt Wax on the Floor - JR Zambrano

Gilish's place wears the comforts of home over the ruin of eons.
But even Gil's homemade improvements have a certain slapdash
orderliness to them. It's not a perfect system, but everything has
its inexpertly hand-knit place. And you, beloved, can't help but
spot the small dot of burgundy wax. A little imperfection that
speaks volumes.

Gilish does not keep flames down here. And no corpse wax
holds that color–it's the telltale drippings of tallow, of fire and
purpose brought from the surface.

"Someone's been down here from somewhere…up above," you

say, giving voice to the dawning conclusion.

"Gilish's house? But why would–" Gilish goes pale. Well. Paler.
They rush towards a closet and fish out an old blue cardigan,
easily two sizes too big. From inside their pockets, they produce
a block of wood.

If you squint at it, it could almost be duck-like.

Gilish looks relieved. "They didn't take it."

"They must have been here for a reason." And the thought rattles
around inside your head. What would draw a person to a place
like this? Is Gilish's home hiding something? You search the

81
room, and configurations fall into place. There the tea set rests
carefully on its tray and beside it–an empty, dustless ring.

"What was here," you ask, pointing at the spot where something
once sat.

"Oh that? Gilish's jewel casket. Just full of shiny, tasteless

baubles. Gil liked the way they looked. Good mouthfeel." Gil
smiles, fangful and joyous. "Plenty more where those came
from."

"Yes that's the thing, Gil. Think of it–what kind of person would
enter into a stranger's home, rifle through their things, ignore
what is clearly the most valuable treasure to instead take some
random, worthless junk?" You sling an arm around Gil, pulling
them close.

The two of you speak in unison.

"Adventurers."

You reply, "We'd better find this one before they slink back to
their party and more come knocking."

The two of you head outside.

To follow your feet, turn the page.

82
Follow Your Feet - JR Zambrano

You follow your feet wherever they decide to lead you. After all,
they've brought you this far. You think back to the coffin you
awoke in. It seems such a distant memory now.

In the dark, the rhythmic trod of your feet beats out a new
purpose for your life. Cases. Mysteries. Furtive races through
secret passages. Clues. Yes, this is your identity now. You turn
towards Gilish, a purposeless corpse no longer.

You. Are. A. Detective.

And the game is afoot. And your foot, in particular, seems to be

in pursuit. Ancient instincts forged in the neutron heat of the
Universe's crucible flare into being. All matter was coalesced
together without form or thought and then something
happened. And life has been about figuring out whodunit. And
what the "it" is that who is supposed to have dun.

With Gilish burbling wetly at your side, there's no mystery you

can't solve. You feel this with the leaden weight of a heavy
sarcophagus. As sure as the under-roads lead through ruin, you
and Gil were meant to stride them.

Your feet beat a steady rhythm. But it is Gil who breaks the
silence.

83
"Um. Where are we going?" Their voice is tentative. After all
there's no telling who might be hearing, now.

"We're on the case," you reply.

"What case?" says Gil.

"The Case of the Missing Gems." You turn back towards Gilish
with a grin (the only expression you were born to make.) "Our
first adventure, I'm sure."

"Gil has never had an adventure before," they say, thoughtfully.

The seductive appeal of the word creeps, like venom, through
their bloodstream. Their pulses quicken, their eyes widen, their
sacs ooze a brilliantly damp sheen through their rubbery skin.
"What do we do?"

You stop. You're not sure, beloved. You've been so sure of

everything else. But as you wander the Low Roads, you find the
clues eluding you.

"Well…" You search for the words. "Erm, typically we would

reveal stories about our past and hope that something was
relevant to the matter at hand."

"Tricky for bones with no name and no past," says Gil.

"What about your past, Gil?"

84
Follow your Feet
Smart thinking, beloved. Perhaps you'll find your answer in this
beautifully insightful creature who saved you from the depths.
After all, your paths crossed for a reason.

"Gil's past? Oh very beautiful, bones. One time, we found a fish.

Then we ate it." Gil nods.

"But where did you learn to knit? How did you come to live in
the under roads," you press, as the two of you round a corner.

"Gil needed a hobby, and all the landlords here were dead,"
replies Gilish succinctly. "So the only parasites around here were
tasty."

Before you can laugh at Gilish's very good joke you spot a clue.
A single set of footprints in the muck.

"It worked! There it is, look Gil–" you point to the footprints.
"You know what this means, don't you?"

"Whoever made these footprints is having tough times and

being carried by Gleggeugorath the First Scale?"

You turn and look at Gilish.

"Maybe. Or maybe it means that whoever we're after came this

way."

86
Your detective instincts, honed to an atomic edge, catch the
scent of smoke wafting down from the tunnel. Your feet have
brought you to the edge of this long passage, and culminating at
the end of it, to Gilish's credit, is a forlorn temple to
Gleggeugorath the First Scale.

Achingly warm yellow light, piercing and bright, emanates from

within. How do you approach?

To adopt a ridiculous disguise and sneak in, turn the page.

To walk in through the front, turn to page 92.

87
Adopt a ridiculous disguise and sneak in - JR
Zambrano

"Obviously, we'll disguise ourselves as Scaletenders of the

Abyssion's Mire before waltzing in," you say, gesturing towards a
pile of discarded rags. In short order, you and Gilish adopt the
crablike walk of a Scaletender in addition to the makeshift
robes.

Sanford Meisner you aren't, but the temple seems to approve as

you cross its threshold. You can feel the ancient reverence
seeping through the stones. Here, the Scaletenders used to
divine the future in wave and weft.

Until they found themselves staring down a future they cared

not to see. And you don't need to be a world-class detective to
figure out what they saw (though it certainly helps): change. The
slow erosion of ten thousand years of tradition. The gentle glide
from sacred duty to weekend gathering.

Children dancing in Scaleday picnics, making merry around

brackish oozes and other delights, while meaning slips away. But
only if you think that meaning is as fragile as a moment in time.

Your disguise certainly makes you think, beloved. But it also

seems to have kept you looking like part of the fixtures here. You
have a few moments to observe quietly the lone figure moving
around the flickering yellow of a burning campfire.

88
"Let's see what that fish was hiding." The stranger's voice is
brusque but reedy. And the stranger herself, dressed in ornate
armor. Curved metal plates describe a person used to danger
either coming at them or coming from them.

"A satchel of gems, eh?" The figure dumps out a casket of jewels.
How they glimmer in the firelight, throwing speckles of color all
around the campsite. They start holding the gems up to the
light, murmuring what sounds like a prayer.

After a moment, you realize these reverential words are

numbers. "Five hundred gp. Seven-hundred-seventy-five. Oooh,
this one ought to fetch a pretty penny in the Midmarket.
Linswelda you've done it again," she says, adding, "hope none of
these are cursed."

"Now just a minute–" Gil starts to protest. You clamp a bony

hand around their mouth. But a moment too late. Linswelda
looks up towards your slinking forms.

"Scaletenders? Here?" She seems incredulous.

"Actually, I'm a detective," you say. "And I'm here to solve your
crime."

"You mean you're here to enforce the will of an oppressive state,"

replies Linswelda.

89
"No, I'm not a cop. I'm a detective who is also a corpse," you say.

"So you're a snitch, then? I found these gems fair and square," she
says.

"Those are Gilish's gems," says Gilish, folding their arms

indignantly. You join them in a show of solidarity. Linswelda,
moved by your display, folds her arms as well. It's a veritable
cool-posed standoff.

"Property is theft," retorts Linswelda.

"Yes, and if theft were the only crime we were concerned about,
that would be one thing," you say. "But it's not."

To sum up your case, turn to page 224.

91
Walk in Through the Front - JR Zambrano

A bold strategy, beloved. You give Gilish a knowing glance and

stride towards the front of the temple. The grandeur of ages past
looms before you, and yet your mind is singularly focused. Your
whole being is intent on following this thread through to the
end by the shortest route possible.

It's endearing, really, beloved, the way you set your shoulders
and walk unhesitatingly towards the nearest obstacle. Your
determination will surely make you a fantastic detective in the
adventures to come.

For now, what it has done is take you through the entrance of
the temple. Geleggeugorath the First Scale might once have
looked askance on three intruders in a temple in a single night.
But that's neither here nor there.

Especially when you and Gilish are here, at the entryway, and
there, reclining by a campfire, is a woman clad in armor. Her
face is set in a scowl, the fierceness of it matched only by the
large ax that practically flies to her hand. She rushes at you,
heaving and hewing.

Fortunately, you're both the quick and the dead, and the ax's
blade finds no place to bite. You catch the ax on the backswing,
and she looks at you with fear and surprise.

92
"What manner of creature are you, to grab the ax of Linswelda,
Breaker of Walls so casually?" she asks, twisting her hips to try
and wrench the ax out from your bony grasp.

"I am a detective," you say. "Gil, I could use your help."

Gilish nods, and their hands join yours on the ax. "You took
Gilish's jewels, we take your ax!"

"Ah, so you're cops. Here to carry out an unlawful seizure

mandated by the state," says Linswelda, reproachfully.

"I'm a corpse, actually. And I don't think I'm capable of seizures,

since I lack the necessary neurological wiring," you point out.
"I'm here to solve your crime."

"What crime is that," she spits, "the crime of harshing my

mellow?"

"You took Gilish's jewels!" shouts Gilish.

"Property is theft," retorts Linswelda.

"Yes, and if theft were the only crime we were concerned about,
that would be one thing," you say. "But it's not."

To sum up your case, turn to page 224.

93
Go to the Oracle - Quinn Welsh-Wilson

Gilish’s meal settles into the deepest region of your belly,

rumbling between your lower abdomen and pelvis- or perhaps it
is your growing uncertainty that distends your death-shrunken
gut. That aching, throbbing sense of lessons learned, that
grandmotherly corner of your mind insists that you give Gilish
thanks before an answer.

Your desire for self discovery rushes past your cracked lips like a
cat dashing through a gap in a door. Your newfound friend
smiles and sets you to bed in a damp cot, fingers of straw
grasping from underneath it, scrabbling. Searching. Gilish
insists he sleep on the floor.

The night passes fitfully. The fish in your gut swims up,
thrashing through the murky shallows of your entrails and into
the shadowed depths of your mind. It propels itself upward,
striking the inside of your skull with hope then splashing back
down into the muck, rippling anxiety for what the morning
holds. Eventually, your bejeweled eyes know rest, beloved, for all
too brief a moment.

94
Gilish walks you up several rain-slick hills, through a looming
pass, and into a cave which smells of gaseous, yellow
uncertainty. When the smell is so thick you are sure you can
bear it no longer, Gilish opens their mouth, “No farther for me.
This journey’s yours. Gilish has had their time with the Oracles.
No more”.

Your ally recedes toward the light. Your stiff, desiccated fingers
reach out. Surface sun dances across your many jewels, but you
find no sturdy, aquatic purchase. No warmth of flesh. No Gilish.
You are once again alone. The thickness of uncertainty drives
your teeth to chatter and ache at the root.

To return to Gilish, turn the page.

To steel yourself and press on, go to page 245.

95
Return To Gilish - Gabriel Komisar

The uncertainty and darkness are too much for you, beloved.
You were meant to be adored. You weren’t meant to be alone.

You return to the hovel at the end of the lake. A place inferior
to what we could offer that nonetheless beacons. Gilish opens
the door before your jangling hand can reach it. He could hear
you from miles away. All of us can hear you down here.

He looks confused at the sight of you. Perhaps even a little

crestfallen.

You let yourself in immediately, thoroughly sick of the wet and

the cold.

“Gilish thought,” your new friend warbles, “the bones wanted to

know where they came from?”

“The bones thought so too,” you muse. “But now they’ve. I’ve.
Decided to do something else.”

To reinvent yourself, starting now, turn to page 74.

96
Let us take you home. - Joe Young and VVV

Is it love that makes you stay and gaze up at us? Is it fear? Surely
the former, best beloved. You aren’t the adventuring sort, to go
running off. Wait for us there, as we shall carry you from this
place, from these horrors. Worry not, dearest, we will join you
presently.

The echoing through the limestone as we come to collect you is

like the low rumble of thunder beyond the horizon. Do you
remember thunder? Do you remember the horizon? We don’t
suppose you remember much at all, just what wasn’t taken from
you. You’re better this way, more elegant, we promise. Simpler.
If you hadn’t wanted this, surely we wouldn’t have done it to
you, we would never harm a treasure like you. The first one of us
to descend to you wriggles with barely-constrained anticipation
between your fingers, as more and more and more of us begin
our terrible work to raise you again from the depths.

The rain begins sparsely, writing forms spattering on the living

rock of the cave floor before forming puddles of us. We sputter
and wail and twist. You are so close, finally, close enough to
take, to possess.

To call what happens next a torrent would be an insult to rain.

The rising level of our bodies lifts you from the cave floor. We
will bring you to us, best beloved. We will carry you with us
back to our home, out of this terrible place. We rise for what
seems like days to you but moments to us. Time is so long, and
even to us there has been such a long period of waiting. We

97
slither into the gaps around your festoonings, through your flesh
and among the bones. You feel us vibrate within you, making
you whole in a way you didn’t know you were empty. It makes
so much sense now, doesn’t it? You can see why we had to take
things away from you. We had to mint you anew, shiny and
empty, so that you could be made whole. So that you could
make us whole.

Where you arrive is the place we call the Oubliette. It lies far
above most of the keep, but is forgotten to most in this
subterranean realm. The top of the shaft lies in darkness, and
when we deposit you there we are loath to leave you. There are
treasured things, beauteous things, wonderful things in the dark
here. There is much to do, best beloved, many things. But we
have so much time now, now that you are here. With us. What is
to be done first?

To see the rest of the collection, turn to page 101.

To ask of your past, turn to page 100.

If this feels wrong, turn to page 260.

98
Maggot Rain
Ask of your past. - Joe Young and VVV

Before you came to us?

Oh darling, it's only natural that you should wonder about such
things. You brought your life to us, a wretched thing though it
was, and we remade you. What you were was irrelevant to us, it
was that you could be made so pleasing. You don’t need to know
who you were, why you came here, do you?

You… you do, don’t you. Fine, if you say so.

You were no one. You lived an uneventful life, did nothing of

consequence. If a parallel world existed in which you were never
born, the world would function exactly the same as it did, up
until the moment you arrived here, and gave yourself over to us.

You wanted to do something of meaning with what was left of

you. And we were so willing to beautify you. Your death was
quick, but it was not painless. Removing your memories of it
was difficult, and came at a heavy price, but it was worth it not
to burden you with such things.

Now, are you ready to see the rest of the collection?

To see the rest of the collection, turn the page.

If this feels wrong, turn to page 260.

100
To see the rest of the collection. - Joe Young and VVV

Yes, this way, oh our beloved one. Come and see the works we
have done, the treasures we have wrought from living metal and
precious flesh. There are such sights in the dark. We take you by
the hand and lead you deeper into the darkness of the
Oubliette, like a lover leading you to the ballroom floor. If you
could smell, if we let you smell, it would smell like an abattoir.

Here, let us turn on the lights.

The pool of light in the center of the chamber illuminates the

centerpieces of our collection. There are dozens of them. They
were like you, once, exalted in our eyes. They turn to face us,
festooned with the shabbier silks and jewels of our collection.
We picked over the best bits for you, our beloved. Over time we
tired of them, but we keep them here, as they still love us, like
you do.

Three of the Flawed Corpses sit around a mahogany table, with

a fourth chair at their side. If you wish to join them, they’re
playing an old game, cards mostly, but below our notice. The
dances will resume soon. Our Companion, do you wish to waltz
with us? Mingle, introduce yourself, this is a party to welcome
you, after all.

To join the flawed corpses at the card table, turn to page 103.

To mingle among the corpses prepared to dance, turn the page.

101
Mingle Among the Corpses Prepared to Dance. - Joe
Young and VVV

Isn’t it beautiful? The way that light dances across the many
chambers of our cavern? It marks you too beloved, your
resplendence glistening for all of us.

Oh beloved, it’s been such time since we’ve had introductions to

make. The others know of you, of course. They once stood in the
same grooves of the floor you stand in, bright eyed brilliances of
creation.

You know them too, darling. The masterpieces before you all
had their own stories, lost to that fallible mortality you once
suffered from — don’t you feel safe in our many arms and
hands? It’s love that binds us together, makes us whole.

Now dearest, let us dance.

To join the collective flesh in dance, turn to page 266.

To try and sneak away to explore the rest of the oubliette, turn
to page 133.

102
Join the Flawed Corpses at the card table. - Joe Young
and VVV

Oh? Is that so, our dearest? Of course, it’s a shame you don’t
want to stretch that candied ligature of yours, best beloved, but
we will abide.

You sit down on a glimmering throne on one side of the table.

Three other corpses sit beside you, in varying states of decay and
splendor. The game being played is one of kings and tyrants, of
war and peace, of life and death, of all of those things that
matter most to those who aren’t a beautiful epiphany of rot.

“Ah, beloved. I’m glad you sat down. We’ve been needing a
fourth.” The Roughshod Carcass on your right looks you up and
down before dealing you exactly 93 cards from the towering
stack in the middle. “I assume that you know how to play Duke’s
Corners?”

The Corpse sitting in front of you hisses and lifts a finger to

your neck— “aNNNteaa uuPPph”

To begin playing Duke’s Corners, turn the page.

To ask for some rules clarifications, turn to page 111.

103
Begin playing Duke’s Corners - Joe Young and VVV

Yes, yes, you’ve… you’ve played this game before. It’s an arcane
and bizarre card game, with a robust handicap system. Noting
that each of the other three players, the Roughshod Carcass on
your right, the Sibilant Vision across from you, and the Patient
Deceased to your left, each receive far fewer cards than you,
with the Roughshod Carcass being dealt the fewest with a scant
dozen.

You, with your veritable hoard of cards, have been deemed a

particularly unskilled player, it seems. While the granular details
of the rules elude you, the memories like smoke as they flee your
grasp, you recall that the professional difficulty and complexity
of the game is intentional, an engineered design choice to make
the game unapproachable to the uninitiated.

The core of the game is simple: you’re either playing cautiously

or aggressively. If you play cautiously, and every other player
plays aggressively, your cards will outlast theirs. If you play
aggressively and the rest of your fellows are too cautious, you’ll
win before they get the chance to oppose you.

104
The Sibilant Vision sets the remainder of the Tower, still the
better part of one hundred cards, in the center of the table. The
card backs show a whirl resembling a topographic map of a river
valley. The anteing begins with the Patient Deceased. They raise
their right hand from where it sits below the table, drawing one
of their blackened fingers from its joint with a pop that some
part of your mind associates with the adjective “distasteful,”
before placing it on top of the Tower.

The Sibilant Vision hisses at the sound, and noisily drops a lead
ring, devoid of gems but inscribed with an ancient signet, next
to the half-rotten ringer. Finally, the Roughshod Carcass
flourishes with the hand not holding their cards, then places
their thumb and fore-finger on either side of their left front
tooth, withdrawing it so smoothly you get the sense that it is
not the first time they have done so tonight, before adding it to
the pile. You almost visibly shrug, grasping a few of the amulets
that adorn your neck, laying them in a mound atop the three
other wagers. Money, for you, for now, is cheap.

The Roughshod Carcass leads, laying the 31 of Worms on their

corner of the table, near their right hand, a conservative
opening that gestures at a conservative playstyle. It’s
understandable, given their position at the table and the scant
cards in their hand, as it’s unlikely that they’d be able to blitz
their cards across the table to the tower of cards without the
other players locking them down.

105
The play passes to you, and you’re still sifting through your 93
card hand. This early in the game, you really have only three
options.

First, you could play a card, likely your 33 of Crows, to cover

and negate the Carcass’s 31 of Worms, a very aggressive move,
but lending itself to a long game designed to keep the best
player in a weak position.

Alternatively, you could start from your own corner, either

playing a high value card, like your 60 of Lords to put yourself
in an aggressive stance, or with a low-bid, to cautiously draw
out an opponent into burning their own cards, like if you laid
your 7 of Logs.

The rest of the table stares at you as you hold your mass of cards.

To cover with your 33 of Crows, turn to page 108.

To charge ahead with your 60 of Lords, turn to page 113.

To bait a trap with your 7 of Logs, turn to page 114.

106
Dukes Corners
Cover with your 33 of Crows. -Joe Young and VVV

You reveal the 33 of Crows to the table, then place it on top of

the Carcass’s 31 of Worms, the back of your card facing up, the
Black Trump Suit canceling out the Black Following Suit. The
Roughshod Carcass lifts a vestigial eyebrow at your move, while
the other two players shake their heads with disapproval.

“A bold move,” the Carcass says, their voice smooth and calm in
the way that calm only sounds when it covers outrage. You
understand the context of your misplay. This early, against a
move as cautious as theirs, covering the middling following lay
of the first player could be seen as a declaration of an intention
to lock them out of the game.

You shrug, gesturing on to the Patient Deceased.

They flinch.

You smile.

They’re all realizing that, with your charitable handicap, if you

so wanted this hand could go on for quite a long time, your
control of the board being a position that they’d have to work
together to oppose.

108
33 of crows
The Deceased leads with a 24 of Lords, a conservative but
well-defended play, laying the card between you at the corner of
the table. The Vision scoffs and shakes their head, laying a 61 of
Jackals in their own corner, a nearly unassailable position. The
Carcass reinforces his current position, laying a 12 of Bones, a
weak Following card but a suitable burner to give them time to
discover a more advantageous board position.

The game is now truly afoot, and the cards come quick now. You
must now commit to a strategy for the rest of the game else,
despite your benevolent hand, your advantages will be
squandered.

To press forward with a strategy of tyrannical control, turn to

page 116.

To think better of this folly, taking a more cautious tack, turn

to page 117.

To throw caution to the wind, and play wildly as a prodigal

dilettante, turn to page 119.

110
Ask for some rules clarifications. - Joe Young and VVV

The corpses around you sigh at your questions. The one across
from you, hissing, foam flecking its sinuous lips, rolls their eyes.
The player to your right, a stinking, leather-clad carcass, leans
towards you conspiratorially.

“It ain’t that hard…” they say, gesturing towards the table,
“you’re just playing cards, and trying to get to the Tower in the
middle. You can only play cards next to a card that you played,
and only if it’s of a value less than the sum of the cards you
control you’re laying it next to,” they say, demonstrating with
two cards, one adorned with a dozen black birds, the other
marked with a pair of exposed rib cages of bleached white bone.

“If you want, you can also cover another player’s cards, by
playing a card of the same suit, or its trump suit,” they continue,
showing you a card with 25 white canines, then placing it on top
of the two rib cages.

“The Trump suits are Crows, Flames, Lords, and Jackals, and the
suits that follow them are Worms, Logs, Serfs, and Bones. Once
a card is covered, it acts as a position that anyone can lay a card
on. Get it?”

111
You think about shaking your head. Maybe you do a little. The
Carcass nods firmly. “It ain’t that hard, trust me, you’ll get the
hang of it.”

Under the table, you feel the Carcass press something against
your leg. Smooth, small, and cold, you draw it towards you once
their hand withdraws. Peeking at it under the lip of the table,
you see that it's a brooch in the shape of the skull of an oxen,
carved of silver metal. Deep within you, you feel something
click, but know not what. Curious.

To begin playing Duke’s Corners, turn to page 104.

112
Charge ahead with your 60 of Lords. - Joe Young and
VVV

Your card lays down on the table like a dropped plate in a

refectory. The whole table is silent as they stare at your card, and
you realize your folly. A card this strong, this early, is a signal of
intent that draws the attention of the rest of the table. Dukes’
Corner is, like all good games, a game of politics and you’ve just
declared war on your first day in command.

The Patient Deceased shivers and lays down a 24 of Lords, a

conservative, but well-defended play, setting the card between
you at their right hand corner of the table. The Vision scoffs and
shakes their head, laying a 61 of Jackals in their own corner, a
position that almost too perfectly opposes and taunts your own.
The Roughshod Carcass chuckles wetly at the mirror image of
the board across the table, then lays a 17 of Flames to the left of
their 31 of Worms, beginning to build a solid base along their
edge of the board.

As the game progresses, it's time to select a strategy with which

to approach the rest of the game. You’ve started well and scared
them, but do you have the vigor to follow through?

To follow through on your aggressive position, turn to page 118.

To second guess your strategy, switching to a more strategic

path, turn to page 117.

113
Bait a trap with your 7 of Logs. -Joe Young and VVV

You lay your card casually and without pretense, like you’ve
done this before. The rest of the table nods at your play.

“Very sensible,” the Patient Deceased intones, broaching their

silence for the first time in the game before laying their own
card, a 32 of Logs, in their own corner between the two of you.
A charitably relaxed play, as if your play has reinforced their
underestimation of you.

The Sibilant Vision’s eyes roll wildly, as if unlinked from the

corpse’s ability to see, as they lay their own card almost
immediately after the Deceased. It’s a 61 of Lords, a powerful
card that develops an aggressive board state that will be a
challenge to outpace without the assistance of the other players.

The Roughshod Carcass nods rhythmically along with a beat

that you can’t hear, but is certainly different than the music the
collective flesh dances to, then plays a 32 of Worms off their 31
of Worms, drawing a line along the Sibilant Vision’s side of the
board.

The Vision arches their neck and tilts their head towards the
Carcass at the aggression, but the Carcass shrugs and holds up
the ten cards left in their hand in an enigmatic gesture.

114
In that moment, you consider the fact that the Carcass may not
actually be trying to win this round, but instead trying to cause
a decrease in the handicap of the other players in future games,
so as to not be as disadvantaged as they are. You file away this
theory for later reference.

As the game continues, it becomes rapidly clear that the other

players intend to stick to their existing strategies. To remain
competitive, you’ll have to make a choice. Staying conservative
in your playstyle could win you the round in the long term, but
is it possible there might not be a long term?

To stick with your slow-roll, turn to page 117.

To go wild now that their guard is down, turn to page 118.

115
Press forward with a strategy of tyrannical control. -
Joe Young and VVV

It’s a long and arduous process, long minutes passing as you

tighten your chokehold on the game. Before too many turns
pass, the Deceased and the Carcass have shifted their interests
towards the Sibilant Vision’s side of the board, using each
other’s plays as a bulwark against your increasingly desperate
play. For every one of their cards you cover three more spring
up, and, before long, the arch of their efforts spirals towards the
Tower.

In this critical moment of the game the Carcass lays their final
card, the 63 of Flames, removing them from the game, and
covering the 40 of Flames that, later in the turn, the Vision
would have used to bring their corner into conjunction with the
Tower, winning the game.

All three other players turn to you. All that is left is to make one
bold move, and it will be done, your victory will be secured. But
is that truly what you desire?

To win at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 121.

To lose at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 131.

116
Think better of this folly, taking a more cautious tack.
/or/ Second guess your strategy, switching to a more
strategic path. /or/ Stick with your slow-roll. - Joe
Young and VVV

Your early faux pas mostly forgotten, the game progresses in

near silence. The Sibilant Vision, having risen to mount an
offensive too quickly, burns through their hand without
reaching the Tower, as does the Carcass, having played far too
conservatively with their opening hand given that it was the
smallest of the four.

What now remains is you and the Patient Deceased, with a short
void between both of your cards and the Tower. Either of you
could make a play for it, but doing so would leave you open to
being countered by the other. The Deceased shakes their head,
playing another card in their growing tableau, bolstering their
position before passing to you.

And, just like that, you see the perfect opening. The odds are
never going to get better than this.

To win at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 121.

To lose at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 131.

117
Go wild now that their guard is down. /or/ Follow
through on your aggressive position. - Joe Young and
VVV

The game is shaping up to be a short one. With your large hand

you’re able to build a strong and resilient tableau in almost a
straight line, from the corner by your right hand to striking
distance of the Tower. The other players, trying vainly to stem
the tide of your assault, have neglected building up their own
board states, leaving the endgame firmly in your hands. As you
look around the table you’re now not sure that, with your
generous handicap, winning this way was what was expected of
you. Still, at this juncture, what choices do you have?

To win at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 121.

To lose at Dukes’ Corners, turn to page 131.

118
Throw caution to the wind, and play wildly as a
prodigal dilettante. - Joe Young and VVV

Now that you’ve presented them with a reason to fear you, you
zone out for the rest of the game, glancing around the whirling
ball within the Oubliette. The light here has an odd quality,
simultaneously illuminating while not clearly having a source.

Deep in your mind, in a small pocket that was either forgotten

or deemed too unimportant to cleanse, you are strangely
reminded of the surface of the ocean, reflecting the light of the
sky to shine and glimmer a deep… crimson? No, that’s not right,
is it?

It is as if you, the Flawed Corpses, the Oubliette, the keep, and

even the Maggots that rule here are the water, a cursed
reflection that, while it will never be the same as the object of
its gaze, nevertheless continues in unrelenting symmetry. The
light, playing this game, this living game, the drinks that Flawed
Corpses around the ballroom quaff before the liquids wash dust
from the visible bones and desiccated organs of their neck and
torso, images flash by you in a blur. It all feels like a raging
mirror, vibrating in defiance of that which it reflects. And you
at the center. The tip of a finger touching polished silver.
Touching itself. What does that mean? You’re not sure. Something
clicks in your soul, and you feel yourself taking a deep, vestigial
breath.

119
When you come out of your reverie, the three other players are
staring at you. You look down at the table. In front of you,
without even noticing, you’ve drawn a dazzling gyre of cards
across the table, countering the strategies of each of your foes in
sequence. You’ve connected yourself to the Tower in a steadfast,
graceful, and uninterrupted line, tolerating no opposition.

You look up and shrug. The Patient Deceased, the Sibilant

Vision, and the Roughshod Carcass stare at you still. Then they
begin to laugh jovially at your astute victory.

To win at Dukes’ Corners, turn the page.

120
Win at Dukes’ Corners. - Joe Young and VVV

There are many congratulations from your competitors and, if

you’re not mistaken, at least the majority of them are genuine.
The Roughshod Carcass’s face is stretched into a rictus of
tanning hide as they nod at you encouragingly, grasping the
staked wagers from atop the Tower and setting them in front of
you.

“We’ll have to adjust your handicap before we play again,

Companion,” they say as the other two players begin to collect
the cards off of the tabletop, “It isn’t often one joins our
number, and rarer still that those that do possess the…'' they
hesitate, glancing around the room and the dozens of other
Flawed Corpses, “faculties to play a proficient game of Dukes’
Corners. Being able to sit at a table and play a beautiful game,
that’s the true marker of intelligence.”

For the first time, you notice more concretely what the Carcass
is describing. The table on which you’re playing your game isn’t
off in some secluded nook, far from the action of the ball. It’s on
the dance floor, near the refreshments, in a high-traffic avenue.
The other Flawed Corpses flow around the table like a river
around a stone, their attention not wavering towards you and
your compatriots for even the briefest of moments. They’re
completely oblivious to you, as oblivious as you’ve been to them
for the majority of the game.

“Well that is peculiar, isn’t it?”

121
To your surprise, you find that the voice, weak and raspy,
coming from nearby, is your own. You cover your mouth in
shock, and the Carcass lets out a rolling laugh that sounds like
an open tin of beans being thrown down a stairwell.

“Your first words, I take it?” You nod in response, not quite sure
how to produce the same interaction of your fundamentally
altered body on purpose, rather than reflexively.

“Adapting to our lifestyle isn’t easy for most of the Beloved,” the
Carcass continues. “Add to that the fact that the… Maggots
occasionally salvage what they need from them, and the level of
discourse in our little corner of the keep isn’t quite
consciousness-elevating.” The Patient Deceased nods.

“Your predecessor,” they say, speaking for the first time in your
presence, their voice a harmonic chorus that progresses a minor
key as they continue, “had some quite interesting recollections
about political philosophy. It is a shame that their end came so
quickly. I would have quite liked to hear more about those
theories,” they look down, in a gesture you will come to
associate with sadness.

122
The Sibilant Vision hisses and scoffs, “Political theory is just
that, theoretical. If only they had retained more of their
knowledge of the outside world. I’d love to hear what has
become of my lands in my absence. I’m sure they’ve prospered
gloriously, of course, but to what extent? How long until my
descendents breach the gates of this place to carry me back to
my throne?”

The Roughshod Carcass rolls their eyes in response to the

Vision’s outburst. “We apologize. I suppose it's true though, it's
rare we hear anything that one could call new in here, in this
place. What do you have for us?”

To introduce a new game, turn the page.

To introduce a political movement, turn to page 127.

123
Introduce a new game - Joe Young, VVV, and Jan
Martin

You think for a moment, then lean forward, picking apart the
deck of cards from Dukes’ Corners. Your companions glance at
each other as you sort through and separate 52 cards from the
504 present. You take the cards, 13 of each of the trump suits,
then bridge them, shuffling them into a far smaller and more
manageable deck, before setting the rest of the cards to the side
between you and the Patient Deceased.

“This game…” you force the croak from your body. It’s a hard
adjustment, and you’re dimly aware that what you’re adjusting
to is speaking without the use of functional lungs, without vocal
cords, without a tongue, and without lips.

“This game is called…” you wrack your brain to find the words.
“Hold the River?” you say, with great effort and skepticism, the
words definitely not in the right order, but both definitely
pertaining to the game. You deal a scant two cards to each
player, then deal the top three cards of the deck to the center of
the table, revealing a 10 of Jackals, an 8 of Serfs, and a 4 of
Flames.

“I will reveal two more cards, one at a time, between which bets
may be placed,” you continue, then gesture at the two cards
face-down in front of you, “Whoever makes the best hand with
the cards they hold, and the common cards of the river, wins.”

124
There is a pause, the others skeptical of the game. Then, the
Roughshod Corpse peeks at their held cards, and the game is
afoot. The losses of the last game forgotten, betting begins anew
based on the river cards alone. You’re not sure if they’re
supposed to be betting yet, but you tend to agree with the
design choice.

You look at your own cards, a 9 of Flames and a 6 of Crows. Not

a particularly powerful hand.

You unfurl a finger and drag your bet to the pile, the
tension of which causes a weak creaking sound in your
joint. Crumbling bits of ligament fall to the table as dust
as you drag your finger back. You let out a wheeze as you
speak, "now to reveal the first card."

As you flip the card and reveal the 7 of Jackals the Patient
Deceased chokes out a weak laugh and places another bet.
You watch the others closely as they consider their bets,
trying to figure out what they are thinking.

The Roughshod Corpse scratches at a loose piece of dry rot

dangling from where its ear once was and the Sibilant
Vision watches him. When finally the Roughshod Corpse
places a bet, the Sibilant Vision makes a slight gurgle and
tosses its cards face down. "Out."

125
You have little chance to win the hand by merit, but you
suspect the Roughshod Corpse is bluffing. The question is
can you out-bluff and get the others to give up, or is the
hubris which brought your end in life going to bring it
about again?

The winds of change are in the air, if your olfactory

receptors hadn't rotted away ages ago you might notice it.

To attempt to bluff your way to victory, turn to page 280.

To attempt to introduce a new rule that was forgotten, turn to

page 283.

126
Introduce a political Movement - Joe Young and VVV

It would be a great comfort to know that before you died you

were a political genius, spinning words and theory into a
digestible format for the masses. A councilor that led quietly
from the shadows perhaps, dictating the flow of governance
across the land with brutal efficiency. Maybe you were a
revolutionary, someone who gave everything in their life for the
people around them, a selfless paragon of the community.

It would be a great comfort, of course, if it were true. You can’t

seem to recall much of anything on politics or philosophy.

“Are… we prisoners?” The words groan as they leave you. It's a

question that has plagued you since your arrival to this place,
and it stands to reason that your best chance for a straight
answer is with these three.

The Roughshod Carcass is the first to answer you. “I think first

and foremost, we’re dead. Whether or not we can leave is
secondary to the fact that somehow, we’re still here.”

“Doesn’t feel much like death to me” says the Vision, rolling
their eyes so far back into their head they come back around the
front.

You sense they’ve had this discussion before. You squeeze out a
handful of syllables. “Have… you tried to… leave?”

127
“Those who leave end up back here eventually,” mutters the
Deceased. They lean in, quieting their voice.“And the Maggots
don’t generally bring them back in one piece either. It’s not
incorrect to call us prisoners, but it doesn't quite capture the
whole story either. We’re more like the statues in the corridors
or the paintings wasting away on the walls.”

“Excuse me, but I rather like being a work of art!” Snaps the
Vision, now visibly annoyed. “We cannot be prisoners here
when we get treated so royally. It’s obvious that we are being
preserved for the future, kept in this condition until our
kingdoms are ready once again for our rule.”

The Deceased raises their voice to match the Vision as the

Carcass slinks back into their chair—you feel like you’ve
reignited an argument that started long before you died. “How
can you believe in your divine rights after losing your signet to
that pile of decay over there?” The words pierce you, lancing
into the Vision.

There’s a brief moment of silence, broken only by the creaking

of the Vision’s pinky lifting towards you. They glare at you with
a stare backed by ancestry.

To concede and place the ring back, codifying their divine right
as ruler, turn the page.

To reject the gesture, turn to page 259.

128
To concede and place the ring back, codifying their
divine right as ruler - Lydia Brunk

You genuflect slightly, but appropriately, as you place the ring

back on their finger. With both of your positions now
well-established in this dynamic, you decided to fall back on the
ancient and noble tradition of courtiers everywhere, and engage
in some light manipulation.

“Your highness…” you whisper through a whistle of breath. Your

softer tone requires less breath, and the disused folds that once
served as your lungs seem to be adapting to your diminished
capacity. “I can only speak for myself, but if it is true that you
are a great monarch biding your time until you reclaim your
kingdom above, surely this must be your kingdom below by the
same divine right. This oubliette, and the lands beyond.”

Puffed up by your acquiescence and your implied flattery, the

Vision considers your suggestion. “Why, yes - I think that must
naturally be so. The rest of you may not be royalty, if your
treatment here is so allegedly inferior, but I have been chosen.”

“But, your worship,” you press on, “what use is a kingdom you
cannot administer? Your subjects below may not know you, nor
pay you the obeisances you are owed. I would suggest a royal
progress, but as you say this place has been designed for your
safekeeping. Our companions suggest a host of dangers await
those who leave. Of course, I did not see anything like that in
my journeys, but oh, if only there was someone who could be

129
sent on your behalf, but your two companions are deeply
unsuitable for the task…”

From what flesh is left to convey emotion, you interpret the

expressions of the Roughshod Carcass and the Patient Deceased
as some mixture of disgust and derisive humor.

The Vision, of course, appears entirely immune to this subtext,

and swiftly declares that you must be the representative sent out
to the lands beyond. The Vision has been in this place for
uncountable eons, and knows immediately where you must
go–the writhing arch. The other two accompany you mostly out
of what appears to be a morbid curiosity, but with the progress
of your little group across the room faces turn towards you until
you stand before us as the center of the gathering’s attention.

Beyond the beautiful semicircle of our churning bodies, you see

a stone staircase descending.

Oh, beloved –you have been clever. If you truly wish to leave, we
will not stop you. but you’ve barely had a chance to enjoy the
festivities. You haven’t danced a single set! Wouldn’t you like to
take a moment to bask in the joy of the evening? Here, safe in
the center of it all, as you deserve? Come, the dancers are
waiting!

To join the collective flesh in dance, turn to page 266.

To descend the narrow stairway, turn to page 134.

130
To Lose at Dukes’ Corners - Joe Young and VVV

You look down at your cards, then around at the other players at
the table. Your hand and position are perfect. Through sheer
luck or brilliant play you have managed to boggle the minds and
win the hearts of your opponents, mere mortals in the presence
of a god. You were born for this, you died for this, and in that
truth were resurrected by the arbiters of this place as messiah.

Without looking you pluck a single card from your hand,

moving with the grace of a ruler. A smirk crawls across your face
as you drop it flatly onto the table. This was never a game to
you, it was an establishment of your divinity. You stand,
dropping low your head as if to receive your crown, your
outstretched arms a percussive rapture of creaks and jubilation.

“You damnable fool,” the Deceased says, as they casually block

your tossed card and secure victory for themself. The Carcass,
who had been holding whatever semblance of breath left in
their body, finally exhales, slumping to the table, giving way to
thunderous laughter and applause. The Vision stares intently at
you, trying to decipher your motive behind such a bold and
clumsy play. They look back to the Deceased, their gaunt lips
now curled into a wry grin, and then back at the state of the
board. The Carcass has devolved into full blown sobbing now,
their seat barely keeping them upright.

131
The Deceased offers you a bony hand. “Good game there; you
almost had me.” It’s polite but condescending. You take their
hand in yours, giving them the strongest handshake you can
muster.

“Do you wish to play again?” The Sibilant Vision fails in

execution of their fleshless wink, although the critique still feels
like they jammed a thumb into your eye. “Or do you have
something else for us? Perhaps cards aren’t your strong suit.” The
Roughshod Carcass, looking more like a heap of offal and bone
than a living, talking thing, pipes up from their spot where they
had begun to roll across the floor. “Tell us then, were you this
much of an entertainer in your past life?”

Something deep within you stirs.

Best beloved… you mustn't take this ridicule. For you are the
most beautiful and lovely of all the treasures in this vast ossuary.
The words of peasants mean nothing to the ears of someone as
valued and worthy of you.

Come now, anointed one, let us leave this table and show you
those who would worship you as you are meant to be. These
words aren’t your own, unless you wish them to be.

To recall your past life for the players at the table, turn to page
295.

To join the collective flesh in dance, turn to page 266.

To run away in shame, turn the page.

132
Run away in shame or sneak away to explore the
oubliette - Joe Young and VVV

The wave of corpses alight in dance provides ample distraction

as you make your way to the quietest part of the room. An unlit
and unmarked path sits alone in front of you, the walls and
floors of this corridor smoothed down by eons of tread.

As you walk down the hall, the light from the chamber
dissipating into a faint speck behind you, your hand following
grooved patterns in the rockway comes free. It seems that you
are standing in a carved chamber, forked in two. On your left
you can make out a set of narrow stairs leading downwards, and
on your right is a passageway that narrows down and continues
forward.

There also seems to be a third route, one that’s more hidden

than the others. An opening, just wide enough for your
shoulders, is positioned at knee height in the center of the room.
You’d have to crawl to get through here and turning around
while inside isn’t going to happen.

It’s hard to tell the manner of each of the routes in the darkness,
but they’ll all lead somewhere right?

To descend the narrow stairway, turn the page.

To take the narrow passageway, turn to page 136.

To crawl through the small opening, turn to page 141.

133
Descend the narrow Stairway - VVV and Gabriel
Komisar

The way before you is dark and the air is stagnant. The stairs
have been carved into the surface of the cavern’s rock neatly and
evenly, and their cadence downwards steeper than you are used
to. Your walk is brisk, taking you away from the maggots who
would steal you away, the ceaseless dancing and revelry fading
away to quiet solitude. It’s not long before you reach the first
landing in this stairway, the old stone giving way to a rising
carpet of moss. The stairs go further down, but there may be no
need to follow them.

There’s light down here, faint but present. The ceiling crawls
with tiny bioluminescent insects casting a dim yellow glow onto
the hallway in front of you. The moss beneath your feet feels
comforting compared to the damp stone floors, and the quiet
company of the insects above you is a welcome change of pace
from the opinionated maggots that took you away. The hall
continues like this for a few hundred paces before widening to
reveal a large stone doorway. It’s sealed shut with the moss,
growing over the place where the doors meet in the middle.

To open the moss-covered door, turn the page.

To take the stairway to the very bottom, turn to page 268.

134
Open the Moss-Covered Door - VVV

There are faint markings carved into these doors, made with the
same care and patience as the steps you took to arrive here. At
eye level the stone is worn into divots from years of use. You
reach up your hand to press into them, your fingers resting in
the stony palms. There’s minimal resistance as you open the
door.

The first thing you notice is the smell — a sodden petrichor that
overwhelms the senses. You take a second to gather your
bearings and understand exactly where you have stumbled. The
room is as least as large as the ballroom, the floors and walls
covered completely by swirling molds. Mushroom stalks rise
from the ground into the high vaulted ceilings, buttressing
against the shelf caps that line the upper walls.

You take your first steps in. Compared to the persistent rot of
the oubliette above you, this is a garden. The mold beneath you
ripples outwards with each step you take, a kinesthetic sense
traveling up your legs to feel the entirety of the room around
you. You feel drawn to the center, almost instinctively, and lay
down.

To lay down in the field of molds, turn to page 262.

135
You choose the narrow passageway - Cory Capron

The sounds of the dance hall fade as you walk deep into the
passage. You skulk at first, taking slow circumspect strides far
into a deafening silence broken only by your movements,
gradually resigning to a casual stride. The passageway seems to
go on and on with neither bend nor opening. At first this feels
promising to you, oh cruelest beloved. The distance between all
you wish to flee – between the collection, between us – it now
grows, stretching like cat guts or a piano wire tuning beneath
your weary little toe bones. How you bow and hammer along a
silent song of exodus. Then, like the last sounds of the danse
macabre before, the song fades, with your certainty and comfort
in tow. The gulf between us, ever beloved, you gradually sense to
be mirrored by the gulf ahead. Time, so unmeasurable in this
blank, indifferent constancy, passes about you like a tongue
dragged across so much anxious skin.

Yes. Skin.

You know you cannot possibly have any and yet you feel
gradually enveloped all over, as if wearing drenched clothes. A
sickly, turgid weight of persistent self begins to bloat within it
as ever you walk forward, one bony foot after the other, echoing
in the stony, wet silence. A sack of kittens your doubts become,
cast into a lake of perverse time.

Not by us, ever dearest! No. By you!

136
It was not our desire to see you discarded. So squishy and
sullied. It breaks our little aortic arches to see you so! We
wanted only to make you perfection – and we had, Precious! In
every way, we had… all except for this rough illusive drive to
move on into the void. Try as we did, we couldn’t seem to chew
out that defect, that longing to be an imperfect soft thing, as
you are now. Such an unkempt garden of biofilms you’ve let
trace across your bones the sketches of your former self,
cultivating wildly and unbecoming. Your splendor you let
tarnish in a rind of verdigris, but you think this lesser form is of
your own making? You cast out loving masters in trade for
loveless ones! Nothing more!

Whatever it is that compels you so, worst beloved, you must feel
deep down in the burbling obscenity of those phantom guts –
ugh, more flora than fauna! You must feel that surely this
passage goes on without end?

It is so straight and level, so precise and exact, as to become

disorienting.

The passageway’s corners

where the walls meet the floor and ceiling

scarcely appear to converge

let alone towards a vanishing point.

It mocks perspective, with an endless

shallowness.

137
 Is such a space not an affront to the
natural order of this world?

Are we not all the inhabitants

of a curved plain?

Sigh. Don’t answer that.

We forget in our distress where we found you, best beloved. The

answer is yes. The world is quite round. If you didn’t know then
you’ll just have to trust us on that.

You may scarcely recall the sky, let alone its horizon, but we of
the keep have a sense of it that’s all our own. You have walked
the stretch of several horizons now. You scarcely perceive time,
but you have walked for years, a length that would stretch
around the whole world! At such a distance this hall should
either yield to our great celestial sphere and fold into itself or it
should shift all directions on their heads. Yet it does neither!
Can you not feel a sort of violence in this rigidity? A
malevolence in its unreasoning? This impossible constant,
driving through the world, impaling it, must reach out to the
heavens as a hateful spire to go on so, tearing across the ether as
a knife in the waters of gravity, cutting through the sciences and
philosophies of countless delicious minds. You descend into the
belly of a shark!

What even are these walls now? Obsidian, perhaps? They did
not begin as such, but not even we can recall what was before.

138
They are polished impossibly smooth, so horridly sterile,
caustically accosting us. Look at them!

Where’s your reflection, best beloved? Do you not feel the

dread? Do your softer feet not now ache? Do you not grow
hungry? Are your tender eyes fogging, their luminous jewels
reduced to tough pits encased in the blind flesh of infertile
fruit?

There.

There it comes.

The dark.

You have not truly known the dark since we woke you. Not as it
really is. This naked, all despairing darkness. Shall you really
walk on in this?

I am the last of us with you now and I cannot survive in a

midnight thundercloud. You have finally snapped the last thread
connecting me to all you left behind in the Keep. It is your
choice. We loved you. We have always loved you, and if you
come back to us now, oh how we will love you again! You can
still join the collective flesh, the true flesh, and slake away this
spasmodic nova of bloodless fungal matter that is suffocating
you in a storm of sensuous dread, like the shame of a false and
vain god.

There is no peace for you further onward,

139
 only pain and fear,

and a new death to die alone,

giving birth to yourself,

stillborn.

You do not have to be alone. You do not have to suffer. It is as

impossible to cross this passage as it is to climb the white ladder
of a waterfall. By now, this much should be obvious. However, it
is also as easy to retreat from as a waterfall is to descend. To
come back to us, it will be almost as if you’d never left. I
promise.

Prodigal beloved, you can still dance.

To go back and return from the dark passageway and join the
collective flesh in dance, turn to page 266.

To continue walking further down the hall, in dark deepest

dark, feeling everything, free from the maggots, to wherever it
takes you as whatever you become, turn to page 3,892.

140
To Crawl through the small opening - Cory Capron

Where better to hide than a hidden path? We would never think

to look there, best beloved. Oh, you are so clever!

What? Why no, best beloved. We would never think to mock

you! We love you. You are our best beloved. Oh, it hurts us to
hear you think otherwise! To taste such bitter thoughts inside
your hollowing head.

You look about the dark room one last time, wearing the closest
thing to annoyance on your faceless face, before squatting down
and pressing your shoulder in through the hole, pulling forward
with your arm and pushing with your heels. Inside, you twist
your bejeweled bones and slide upwards with the gradually
rising ceiling until you are almost fully standing. It is too
narrow to turn your head back, not that you could see the
entrance from even this far into the snaking passage, and the
clatter of everything you are wriggling through makes hearing
any pursuit unlikely.

It is true, best beloved, that were the rest of us to come and

fetch you, it would be far less difficult a passage than it is
proving for you. But why, again, must you think of this all like
some grand prison escape? We told you that you were free to go
as you pleased. We only invited you here.

141
As the passage expands upwards further in the narrow, the walls
feel mostly smooth, carved open by the slow work of percolating
water expanding what was likely once a hairline crack where
solid stone shifted and split in two. You drag yourself forward,
right shoulder still leading, and wonder how many years it took
to carve only this much. You try not to think about the chances
that, so naturally occurring, it will only lead to a dead end.

“All water leads to the sea, one way or another.”

That was something your uncle once said. Or was it your

grandfather? Or was it something we furnished you with, a
happy memory to replace all those miserable ones? You don’t
know, do you?

To accept it as fake, turn the page.

To believe it is real, turn to page 144.

142
The memory is fake - Cory Capron

That’s right, best beloved. He was not really your uncle. You had
no uncle. You had no one to speak of before us. We gave him to
you. He came from one of the card players sitting in the other
room. As you know, he was a jolly sort – their uncle, your uncle
– but behind the brightest smiles sometimes are cast the longest
shadows. He was very friendly, kind to almost everyone he ever
met, everyone except his nephew.

There is much painful ugliness and sweet beauty in life, best

beloved. Memories are like roses – to remove their thorns they
must first be plucked. Better that you, who had so little,
remember the bouquet of his ember cheeks, his thunderous
laugh, and such little pearls of wisdom as he would spout. All
the better is that gambler to be relieved of them, sitting up
there in the dark, where the shadows of briar bushes cannot
reach.

This is what we do, best beloved. We take care of you. Let us be

the ones to tell your story. Let us make a better story happen to
you than life ever pens.

You are forced back, beneath, and through the wedge.

Turn to page 146.

143
The memory is real! - Cory Capron

No, you are quite certain it was your dear grandfather that said
it. You see his rosy cheeks smiling as you come out through the
thicket upon a small steady stream. You had been foraging in the
woods and had grown certain that he had somehow become lost
leading you back home. Perhaps he had, but sure enough the
stream led to the river and from there the route became clear,
back to grandmother’s house, her pot of hot mushroom stew
simmering over the fire made all the better with the wild onions
you have gathered.

How wonderful to be home.

How wonderful to be loved as you were.

How cruel a prelude to inevitable pain.

There is nothing we can say for ourselves, best beloved. We have

failed you in this omission. This scrap of wallpaper that should
have been swept up with all the detritus. Perhaps as it is, it may
be soothing. A dream of happiness woken from before it could
become a nightmare. Before your grandfather would follow the
river to the sea and never return, before your grandmother’s
mind would twist and tangle and you would be left alone in the
woods with a pot full of bones.

144
We do not lie, best beloved.

Or rather, when we do it is only to be kind, to fix truths so

horrendous and broken.

You reject our kindness again and again.

You wedge yourself tight between these stones, for what? To

follow the water to the sea? Trying to escape us, to escape what
is happening to you, accomplishes nothing but pain. You are not
the adventuring type. You could have sought the ocean before.
You will not do it now.

You push through the wedge. Turn the page.

145
Through the Wedge - Cory Capron

You push your body onward, the once cacophony of clanking

now short grinding sounds as you inch through the tighter
bends, ever-fighting the fear that you might become stuck
between the stones and live out eternity with only the errant
drops of water falling from above for company. In truth, you
probably couldn’t go back at this point if you wanted to. You
thrust your hand forward again, trying to find a place to take
hold and pull, but instead you are met at last by open space as
far as your wrists and fingers can articulate. A few agonizing
feet closer and the same is true for your entire arm! With one
final burst of effort, you bring your whole body out through the
crack and collapse on an empty floor.

You lie there for a long moment, curled up, heaving and gasping
as if you still had lungs beneath those ribs, fluttering violently
like two birds frightened in their cage. You have not felt such
claustrophobia even in your coffin. You don’t want to keep
moving, you don’t want to adventure anymore.

“Let the maggots come,” you mumble to yourself. Let them and
their mysterious designs happen to you, or if not the maggots
then something else. You are done with agency. The crack has
broken you at last, you declare, so that whatever power held
vital spring in long dead sinew and ligaments to bind and
animate your undead bones, it seems now to recede in tremors
of sobbing fear.

146
It is a long time after that you notice that the floor on which
you rest your cheekless cheekbone is made of wood. Longer still
before you turn your head to gaze up at the open mine shaft
with its civilized assembly of beams spanning some thirty or
more feet up. Longest yet is the return of something not unlike
hope within you. A fanciful thought that you might cry out for
help, and be answered, rescued even! Maybe by some insect in
armor or other some other such kind curiosity of the keep. It
takes you a very, very long time to consider seriously the grand
alchemical arts of transfiguring thoughts into action.

“After all,” you say at last, returning the side of your face to the
old brittle floorboards. “It would seem all the better things have
occurred only when I just let them happen to me. Isn’t that
right?”

I’m sorry, best beloved. Were you talking to us?

“Well, yes. You’ve eaten all the other voices out of my head by
now, haven’t you?”

A long pause comes from the maggots inside of your head. You
sense in their squirming a deep discomfort in being addressed so
directly.

They couldn’t hold a tune, best beloved, but were deliciously

self-deprecating.

Just then, as you turn your head back up towards the shaft, a
series of very unexpected things happen to you.

147
First you notice at the very top of the shaft, peering down at you
with onyx black eye stalks, is what appears to be a gigantic crab,
gurgling bubbles from its mouth parts. Realizing it has been
seen it raises one of its mandibles, seemingly to wave to you, but
in doing so it knocks a rock no smaller than a cannonball out
over the edge.

The rock does not hit you, but it does hit the old wooden and
almost petrified floor. The wood seems to shatter more than
splinter, and before you know it, you are falling. It is a long and
frightful plummet. The walls drift away from you until it is as if
you were falling through starless space.

The icy water hits you so hard, you swear its solid bedrock. You
sink under it, bubbles rising from your skull as you look up at
the fading surface.

You swim.
Turn to page 19.

149
Flee to the Underground City - Jan Martin

You stand before a bakery carved into a colossal mushroom.

From a window a tendril of scent from freshly baking bread
snakes its way around you. Your mind purrs with joy as you read
a sign in front of the shop: ‘Rootkill & Dewslime’s Fresh-Baked
Worm Bread… Daily!' Patting your torso with your withered
hands you feel many plump and juicy worms half burrowed into
your flesh. You realize this may be your ticket to rejoin society
by way of contributing to the local economy. You stride in,
holding your shoulders back, with an outstretched hand
clutching a handful of writhing worms.

Towering above you behind the counter is a snail whose shell

suffers from many cracks and pits. Some of the larger cracks are
covered with raw leather, tattered cloth, or various bones and
trinkets as patches. It opens its mouth to reveal 3 rows of
rasping teeth and makes what could be a smile, or a threat,
you're not sure. In a coarse voice, as though it has a throat full of
crushed gravel, it calls out to you.

"What have we heeeeeere? An unfamiliiiiiiiar. Tell meeeeee,

wheeeere do you procure these glooooorious worms?" Every
stretched syllable sounds like two stones grinding together. Its
eye stalks peer at you and slowly draw closer, as though trying to
sneak up on you.

You look down at your torso and wave your free hand in front of
it with great care and intention. The snail's eye stalks catch a
glimpse of a fat worm hanging out from your guts and they

150
begin to quiver. They aggressively start examining you all over,
growing longer and longer, impossibly long. Within a matter of
moments, you are physically wrapped up by one eye stalk while
the other scans every exposed inch of your flesh. A guttural
gurgling begins to emit from deep within the snail until it
begins chittering wildly, then shouts.

"Dewslime! Come quick you dried out old fungalwart! The

answer to our problemmmms has arriviiiived!"

From elsewhere within the mushroom a faint crackly voice

responds after a long delay.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat-t-t-t-t? Is thaaat-t-t-t youuu Rootkill?

What-t-t-t do you want-t-t-t?"

The slug whose eye stalk wraps around you, Rootkill, lets out a
great sigh and starts grumbling. Their hulking body pulls back
from you and starts making its way somewhere deeper within
the bakery. Its eye stalk stretches endlessly, and you remain
trapped in its grasp. As Rootkill disappears into the back, the
grasp lessens a little bit, and you feel that you might be able to
wriggle free. Every time you shift and try to move, the grip
tightens.

151
Snail Bakery
You hear arguing in the back. It's muffled but you manage to
make out some details about preparing a prison cell for you. Not
too keen to get locked up so soon after enjoying your autonomy,
you decide to make your escape.

You think you could weaken the eye stalk’s grip by physically
running in the opposite direction.

But you also notice a ladder leading up to a storage loft above

the doorway Rootkill disappeared into.

You might be able to climb up there and wait to ambush the

snail when it returns.

To run out of the shop and keep running until the eye stalk lets
go, turn the page.

To climb the ladder and wait to ambush the snail from above,
turn to page 210.

153
Run out of the shop and keep running until the eye
stalk lets go. - Jan Martin

Choosing to flee, you take a step towards the door and

immediately Rootkill's grip tightens. Each step you take to
freedom is hard fought but you eventually make it through
the door. Clutching the handle, you shut it on the eye
stalk, which unfurls immediately. It tries to pull back but
is stuck, lodged in the shut door.

The eye stalk writhes in pain, shrinking back on itself but

failing to be able to do anything about its situation. The
snail’s burbles of agony are barely muffled by the door.
You wonder for a moment how quickly Rootkill can move
when in this kind of pain. You make your way deeper into
the city, looking over your shoulder as you go but seeing
no sign of Rootkill. As you enter the hustle and bustle of
the city with all manner of invertebrates all around you,
you feel safe, albeit a little uneasy.

You enter the hustle and bustle of the city.

Turn the page.

154
Enter the Hustle and Bustle of the City - Lydia Brunk

You wander without a destination in mind, your only goal

being distance between yourself and Rootkill. The city’s
streets are packed mud and cobblestone, and you nearly
trip yourself a few times as you wander, mostly unaware of
your surroundings. By the time you feel safely away you
look up and notice you appear to be at some kind of
crossroads – below you are worn stone houses, and above
are brightly lit preserved-wood buildings.

The small alley you’ve been following splits off against the
base of a huge stalagmite, one branch smoothing out and
widening up towards a wooden building that almost
towers above the structures around it. The others zig-zags
downward, hair-pin turning around unfriendly slabs of
houses, down towards what appears to be a shop of some
kind, complete with ragged canopy above the door.

Which way will you go?

To go up, towards the light and the finery, turn the page.

To head down, towards the dust and darkness, turn to

page 175.

155
Up Towards the Light and the Finery

- Lydia Brunk

The entrance appears curiously shaped - a low, rounded

rectangle with an apex that only meets your breastbone, yet
spans well beyond the length of your arms, draped in layers and
layers of a gauzy white fabric.

You duck through into its depths and find a bright, curiously
deserted chamber, with dark-paneled wooden walls suggestive of
some kind of underworld opulence. You sink to the ground for
just a moment, the relief of isolation overcoming you.

This does not last long; a faint scraping sound comes from above
and if you still had hairs on the back of your neck they would be
standing up.

You find yourself staring at a wall studded with uneven pairs of

posts - between each of those pairs, a spider web, and on each of
those webs, an enormous spider or two, dripping with nets of
shining orbs, like royalty in jewels. Thin strands criss-cross the
center of the room and appear to connect these various perches.

For a moment, all is still as they look down at you and you look
up at them, until a large, centrally positioned spider bursts out
into throaty laughter. “Oh, I think that you are very lost!” The
spiders surrounding her begin to titter, and soon most of the

156
wall is laughing, although a few at the outskirts are speaking fast
and low to each other.

It is eminently clear that you have made a mistake in coming

here, but in this unpredictable city you cannot be sure whether
you would be safer inside or out. You would simply like
someone to shed some light on the whole dark situation. A wave
of nostalgia washes over you for the simplicity of a summer
afternoon above, sprawled out in the sun, perhaps attended by a
friend or admirer.

“I may indeed be off the way that I should be following, so I will

seek to find myself on my way, that is to say, leaving..”

She laughs again, and, a half second later, so do her companions.

A message appears to pass across to her from an emissary of the
urgently whispering corner.

“Ah, but! This is La Huitième, and you may call me Madame.

You cannot say that you are lost if you know where you are and
with whom you are speaking. Emile says that he has never seen
your like, and would like to discuss with you your place in the
web of all life. Therefore, you cannot be out of your way if you
have a purpose here!” Madame reaches out with one foreleg to
the edge of her little web and plucks repeatedly at a trailing
strand, almost as if she is playing an instrument. You see that
the thread leads to a hole in the wall that you had not previously
noticed.

157
Spider salon
A moment later unadorned spiders come pouring out, and you
cannot help a shudder. In the midst of this chaos, one of the
outlying spiders –you assume it must be Emile– picks his way
down the wall to you.

A few of the spiders break away from the main group and fall in
with Emile as he reaches you. As he settles his bulk down before
you, the others proffer bundles wrapped in what you now
understand is cloth woven from spider silk, with graceful
eight-legged bows. Emile accepts his packages almost
robotically, and you accept yours with… some hesitation, setting
them to the side for the moment.

“Do you have any previous familiarity with the great web of
life?” he begins, and, seeing your look of utter incomprehension,
continues, “in that case, a brief summary of the generally
accepted theory is that all life can be classified in relation to
other life, and in relation to we arachnids, as the pinnacle, the
center of the web.” He reaches out a foot and begins to sketch a
shape on the floor, a concentric spiderweb, with points of
connection emphasized.

“There are many who share similarities with us, but do not have
all of our gifts. The beetles, for example, while they maintain an
exoskeleton and almost as many legs, do not have the sight we
do, or the maneuverability. They are nevertheless a close
connection on the web.” He begins to (poorly) sketch a spider in
the center of his diagram, a beetle one node away from it, and
one leg knocks into the bundles left for him.

159
He looks as though he had almost forgotten they were there.
After a moment of hesitation, he continues, “the beetle, of
course, connects with the centipede, both somewhat similar to
us, and similar to each other-” While he speaks, he uses two legs
to pull apart the casing of a bundle. He has been given a fly. It is
entirely proportional to the man-sized spiders that surround
you.. From the reactions of his retinue the thing seems like a
trifle, but compared with flies you knew in life, this one is
massive.

Looking at it now, you feel a sort of uncomfortable empathy,

one dead thing to another. Emile breaks off to plunge his fangs
into the fly, and pulls back up with a viscous yellowish liquid
dripping off of them. He seems utterly oblivious to the violence
of the act, and starts back up again. “Then, as one moves further
outward, you may see forms of life like the fly, or worm; the
worm, by virtue of its shape, is connected to the centipede,
and…”

Your attention is no longer on Emile’s speech, because the blood

dripping from his face is perhaps more urgent than an
explanation of the ways in which dragonflies and common flies
are deceptively far apart in this conception. You feel a bit
light-headed.

160
“You appear to be unwell - you must eat something! ” he reaches
over to the packages beside you. While you are more than
reluctant to touch the “food,” you are even less excited about the
idea of upsetting one of your hosts. Better to get it over with on
your own terms, you suppose, and rip open the package nearest
to you. Instead of an insect’s body, a fine brown powder is
exposed; some puffs up into the air from the force and, without
meaning to, you inhale it.

The change that comes over you is instantaneous; your horror

and fear recede, and you are left with only a dull, far-away sense
of curiosity. It seems that the most important thing is to tune
back in to Emile, as he explains that insects are the most
preferable food source because they are closer on the web of life,
and therefore the most efficient fuel. You see his logic, and open
your other package, ripping bits off of the insect for
consumption as you continue the discussion of Emile’s great
theory.

Time has ceased to have meaning to you, and so it is only by the

course of the discussion that you can measure any changes. You
and Emile have considered that the web might be best
considered three-dimensional, and the fact that your inclusion
is suspect due to your questionable categorization as a living
thing. You are drawing closer to the conclusion of a debate on
the definition of life itself, when suddenly you feel a sort of pain
in the pit of your stomach, which deepens to an anxiety and
then anguish, overtaking your senses entirely for a moment as

161
you ride a flow of emotions; you are nothing but pain, fear, and
disgust, and they have permeated you entirely.

Fortunately, the flow eventually ebbs, and you find yourself

coming to your senses again with a relatively normal, healthy
amount of fear for someone who is currently at the mercy of
unpredictable hosts and unpredictable substances. Drying tears
stain your face, but Emile does not appear perturbed. “Ah,
unpleasant,” he remarks casually. “You were not to know, but it
is easier if one simply avoids the comedown - take another dose
before you get that far.”

You look down at the pile of brown dust spilling across the
floor, where you had left it, and he grabs a pinch, holding it out
to you invitingly.

To examine one of the silk bundles, turn the page.

To leave the spiders’ parlor, turn to page 165.

162
Examine one of the Silk Bundles - Nychelle Schneider

You inspect the bundle so meticulously given to you. The silk is

laid in patterns across the surface, faint prismatic colors
refracting in the dim light of the parlor. It feels cold yet, when
you think about it, how can you feel warmth anymore?
“Humanistic thoughts,” you mutter as you begin to unravel the
bundle.

The bundle begins to move as you get closer to fully unwrapping

it. First only slightly, then more forcefully, until a soft mew is
heard. Then fur. Until a small, whiskered, and wiggly beast is
revealed.

“Why would the spiders have kept this alive over the others
shown to me? What am I supposed to do with such a beast as
this? Alas, tis so meager in stature,” you think to yourself while
removing the rest of the silk from the kitten to inspect it
further.

“Why to eat it of course,” Emile suggests amusedly, but you have

already forgotten him, forgotten his parlor, and nearly forgotten
yourself utterly. You are lost to something entirely new:

163
Eyes of polished gold and such rich, black fur the beast has,
almost melding into the shadows around you. Ending in fine
crystal daggers on the bottom of its massive paws that made a
soft clinking sound as it walks on the ground beneath your
bones.

“Why do you have such a boisterous demeanor about yourself,

small beast?” To this it responds with a mew and a vibration
begins to echo in your marrow as it rubs against your tibia.
“That only proves my point, young beast. I am evidently meant
to care for you since I was given your charge by the spiders, now
what to name you…”

What name do you give the beast?

“I shall call you ________, and you shall be pleased with the
title.” The beast responds with another mew and begins to give
chase to a reflection from one of your baubles.

Do you play with the beast or move on?

To play with the beast, turn to page 298.

To leave the spiders’ parlor, turn the page.

164
Leave the Spiders’ Parlor - Jan Martin

Something about the experience you just underwent left you

feeling queasy and rattled. Dwelling on it, you stumble away
from the Salon, propping yourself up against the cavern walls as
you go. You feel... not quite weak, precious. But not altogether
in full control. Your movements are lagging compared to your
intentions quite considerably.

Navigating this way proves disorienting and you stagger about.

Every few steps you take you need to support yourself on
something, and when there is nothing to hold you fall to your
knees. As you made your way through the caverns this way, you
didn't notice where you were going. You find yourself wandering
through a thick stand of tall, hairlike mushrooms. For hours you
fumble through until finally you emerge.

Now you are standing below a narrow channel leading straight

up through the ceiling. Circling its way up the channel is a series
of scaffolding and ladders. They form a rickety spiral that
doesn't look entirely sturdy. A strong draft is coming down the
channel, a refreshing change from the still air of the
underground city. Intrigued by the fresh air, you take hold of a
rung on a ladder and test its strength. It feels sturdier than it
looks. Each individual section is rickety but perhaps lashed
together they become strong. You start climbing the ladder and
find the scaffolding just as sturdy to walk on as the ladder was
to climb. You continue climbing and walking around the spiral
of scaffolding heading higher and higher up. The higher you get

165
the stronger the wind gets. You climb and climb for what seems
like days. Eventually your weary bones reach the top platform,
which leads to a tunnel. The wind coming through the tunnel is
powerful and makes it difficult to make your way through.

Many of your jewels and finery rip off you as you near the end
of the tunnel that appears to be a dead end. When you reach the
dead end, you notice the wind is coming from above. Looking
up you find another channel, this one even narrower, only just
big enough for you to climb through. A rope dangles down and
its end rests out of reach. If you could grab hold of it, you could
climb up through this channel. You search around the tunnel for
anything you could use to stand on, but the tunnel is bare of
anything useful.

The wind is too powerful, anything loose and not heavy enough
left in this tunnel would likely get blown down all the way to
the previous channel. With the rope so close you feel like if you
could get on your tippy toes, you might reach it, but when you
try the wind is too strong. Once fully extended you're pushed off
your center of balance and start to get blown backwards and
you must put a foot back to stop. You try to find a way to get
footing on the wall, but it's no use. Your frustration grows.

To turn back, turn to page 168.

To jump for the rope, turn to page 278.

166
Leave the parlor
Turn Back - Jan Martin

You stand once again in the city, but things are quiet now. It's
uncertain how much time has passed but the population on the
streets has thinned considerably. In the calm you're able to
better admire the features of the architecture. No building is the
same. Each is a patchwork mess of different textures, colors, and
qualities of materials. The most common material is pieces of
large leathery eggshells, dried and cracked around the edges.
They resemble the cracked edges around your mouth where the
skin has pulled back over the years and torn away little by little.

After everything you've experienced so far you wonder if maybe

these aren't eggshells at all. Maybe they were unfortunate
travelers like yourself. A chill rattles its way down your spine
and you pick up the pace, hurrying to no place in particular. As
you wander the streets you feel cold and alone for the first time
since you got here.

In the distance, beyond a tangle of patchwork houses, you hear a

curious thumping. You cease your listless wandering and walk in
syncopation with the faint groove towards the source. As you
draw a little nearer a warm rumble joins the thumping.

168
Your feet begin moving in double time to the beat which dips in
and out of an odd time signature, leaving your stride awkward
to behold. It seems possible to break free of this, but something
in you doesn't want to. People on the street gawk and whisper to
each other as you pass by, but you don't notice. Your only
concern now is hearing the sound with a little more clarity.

Before long you stand before a nondescript door in a long line

of similar doors down a winding alleyway. You reach out for the
worn doorknob that rattles with every beat emanating from
behind it. It takes considerable effort to turn the knob, and it
makes an uncomfortable crunching sound when it finally gives
way.

You fling the door open to find a second door, this one with a
smaller door on it near the top. This door has no doorknob on it
and pushing on it results in nothing, it's completely immovable.
You exert all the energy you have left struggling to push the
door open and stumble, falling into it and hitting your head
with a loud thunk. You fall back hard on your seat bone and
decide to rest for a moment. Resting your feet on the door and
relaxing, you find yourself locked into the beat again. Your bony
feet start tapping out the same rhythm as the one inside.

169
Suddenly the smaller door near the top of the door slides open,
the music is clear for a moment. You hear many different layers,
some singing, some screeching, all locked together in harmony.
A giant cockroach peers out from inside looking down on you.
Its raspy voice flatly declares, "password". Entirely at a loss of
what to say, you say the first word that comes to mind. A dry,
strained whisper creaks out of your mouth, "Breeeeeeaaaaaaaad".

The cockroach peers at your eyes, studies them, admires them.

Then the small door slams shut, and the music becomes muffled
again. Driven by the music in your head an idea begins to form,
and you start tapping on the door again in sync with the beat
inside. Again, the smaller door above slides open, and the same
cockroach asks for the password. As it stands there watching
you it is again admiring your eyes. This is what you had hoped
for.

You pluck your left eye gem out and hold it up, turning it slowly
so it catches the light. The small door slides shut again, but this
time the larger heavy door slides open. The cockroach grabs you
with two powerful limbs and pulls you up close, then snatches
the eye gem. While still holding you close to its face, your feet
dangling off the ground, it examines the gem carefully. It sets
you down inside the club and slides the door shut behind you,
then turns away to admire its new score.

170
You step into the hallway and down a set of narrow, curving
stairs. They are hand carved out of the cavern floor in crude
manner leading to a room where the music originates. You step
inside and the air is thick with musky sweat, pheromones,
smoke, and laughter. Half the room is dancing wildly to the
unhinged music, the other half is talking or drinking. Your foot
taps perfectly along to the beat as you stand at the stairs
observing the scene.

You decide to watch until the song ends, but, after what seems
like an eternity, it never ends. It keeps going on and on with
musicians switching out occasionally by turning their back to
the crowd. This signals for a replacement to come up, each
bringing their own strange instruments on stage. One of them
taps the musician they are replacing who looks up from their
work and leaves the stage looking weary. The main groove of the
song remains the same, but it slowly morphs into something
new as each musician swaps out. Looking around you realize
that at some point you made your way down onto the dance
floor. Your toe tapping grew into shuffling to the beat and
brought you down here. The groove gets stronger the closer to
the stage you get, and you wonder if you should get a drink and
sit at a table at the back of the club.

To grab a drink at the bar, turn the page.

To keep dancing for a little while, turn to page 212.

171
Grab a Drink at the Bar - Jan Martin

You decide to enjoy a drink at the bar for a minute before you
get to dancing. You've been through a lot and could use a respite
from the action. At the bar you order the special, the Rusty
Birdbath. As you're enjoying your drink you overhear some
cockroaches down the bar talking about some bastard snail at a
bakery. Joining their conversation you learn it's the same bakery,
Rootkill & Dewslime's, where you escaped earlier. They speak
quickly and it's hard for you to follow their conversation but
you all seem to get along. At some point there is some
deliberation and they beckon you to follow them outside.

They're all smoking a pungent purple leaf rolled up tightly.

Uncertain you pause when they pass it to you. One of the
cockroaches puts a tarsus on your shoulder and says cooly, "Jazz
leaf." Not sure what that means and not feeling at all reassured,
you decide to go for it. Its smell doesn't match the taste at all,
and your fears are set to rest as your mind cracks wide open.

Suddenly you see the universe for what it is. You see yourself for
what you are. You remember that cold feeling you felt before.
How alone you were. How empty the world seemed. It seems
silly now to have felt that way. Chuckling raggedly you part
ways with the roaches and find yourself meandering down a
path leading away from the city.

Turn the page.

172
Meander down the path away from the city - VVV

You travel along the padded dirt pathway for miles, the sides of
the road littered with a patchwork of mushroom and moss. It’s
quiet, save for the occasional roach heading in the opposite
direction. You feel at ease, your mind elevated to fully take in
the endless road ahead of you. The air feels crisper out here than
it did in the town, cut only by the smell of fungal growth. Your
mind wanders as you walk, drifting through half-forgotten
memories and distracted glances to the mushrooms beside you.

It’s hours before you begin to notice that they've grown denser,
and the path has grown narrower. The passive field of mycelium
that lined the path has turned into the beginnings of a forest:
long thin fungi with caps stretching to your height, yellow,
knurled shelf-like mushrooms intersecting with older growth,
decay coexisting with decay. As you continue walking, the
disparate elements begin to blend together, your path bisects
massive walls of fungal growth. It’s dark enough that it’s
difficult to see the ground in front of you, your eyes not
adjusting to just how dark it really is. It feels as though you’ve
entered a cave, and your brisk pace slows to accommodate your
lack of vision. You reach out and place a hand on one of the
walls to get a better sense of which way is forward.

It feels as if the walls are breathing.

Each step you take you can feel the ways in which the cavern
around you is alive. It beckons you inwards, deeper into the

173
network that surrounds you. You keep going, following the
feeling traced along your fingertips further into the dark. It’s
hard to track just how long you have been walking now, each
step blending together with the same rhythmic pulse contained
within the fungus. It goes on like this for hours, or maybe days,
or maybe even longer than that.

You feel your hand slip away from the wall, breaking your
meditative walk— and realize you've stumbled into a chamber.
The room you have found your way into is faintly lit by an azure
glow. The walls you had traced join in a high ceiling. Smaller
mushroom stalks reach up like pillars, intersecting with the
walls. Brilliant yellow and blue molds coat the floors, marbling
together like half-mixed paint. The quiet has given way to a deep
hum that echoes and repeats as it cascades across the walls. You
walk to the center of the room, and lay down.

To lay down in the field of molds, turn to page 262.

174
Down, towards the dust and darkness - Lydia Brunk

Dozens of tiny, dim orbs illuminate the entry of the shop and its
modest display windows, set into the smooth clay exterior of the
unsteady-looking building. The shallow shelves are packed with
jars crowded up against each other; most are hand-labeled in a
fine and unfamiliar script, barely visible through the aging glass.
Upon closer inspection, the window-ledges bear a pattern of
raised dots and indented holes carved into the wood of the
frame. You run a skeletal finger gingerly along its length, but
your bone no longer bears the delicate sensitivity of flesh.

Beloved, you are facing strange sights and unknown lands, you
are journeying beyond the possible but there are some things
which must remain the same. You are, after all, a being in search
of something, and here are things to be found. And who would
not wish to aid you in your moment of need? You were the
finest of us, and you are the most beautiful still -- a delicate
flower plucked at its peak-- desiccated, paled, but retaining the
essence of that splendor.

The door opens while you stand contemplating the nature of

beauty and of death. A dragonfly stands before you, improbably
upright, iridescent eyes and wings reflecting the light. It pauses
for a moment, taking you in, and then its face shifts; you cannot
parse the expressions on an alien set of features, but when it
speaks its tone is reverential.
“Oh, wonderful! Oh, what a magnificent thing you are! You
must come in; the others must see you!”

175
If you had less self-possession, you would be ushered through
the door; as you are wonderful, as you are splendid, as you are a
miracle made (decaying) flesh and bone, you move into the shop
in a way that conveys the decision was entirely yours. Having
seen the facade of the building, the inside offers few surprises.
The bare-swept floor and displays of gleaming glass are entirely
expected, the oversized ladybug who pushes through a double
door somewhat less so. With these doors open, a blanket of
warm scent drapes itself over you: musty, lightly floral, and
perversely appealing.

“Well, what have you brought in this evening?”

“I sensed a visitor lurking outside our door, thinking it was

simply another scrap of a thing in search of a tonic for a shinier
carapace or a pheromone boost, but look – look what has been
brought to us! Look what has been given to us!”
There is a significant pause. “Well,” the ladybug replies, “I
certainly see” – and they glance at the dragonfly, whose
glittering eyes dance in the near-dark – “...an opportunity here.
Certainly there is much to be made of you.” One red-and-black
wing coverlet raises slightly and snaps back against the body
with a light click. Instantly a stout footstool of a beetle scurries
into the room, a flat panel balanced on its back.

176
“We shall give you preparation, I think,” they say, addressing you
directly for the first time, although the name of the preparation
itself is unintelligible to you, a high, incessant buzzing. “Yes, this
one has spotted something, buried deep as it is. You are elegant
in a deep, structural place, but time happens to us all. You
need…” -it considers -“restoration.”

You are exalted, and you exalt yourself, but surely even such a
one as you has not yet risen so high that you cannot reach
higher. The sky is endless above you (metaphorically, as you are
currently within a cavern that has a very definite ceiling.)
“Clever! Clever!” enthuses the dragonfly, “little lost dead thing,
the preparation is delectable! The preparation is divine!”

Although you had not noticed it going, the beetle reappears

with a simple ceramic cup upon its tray, and takes its place in
front of the ladybug, which hums its approval. “There is, of
course, generally the matter of payment, but as this one has
brought you in, we think…yes… we can let you try the first
dose.”

At this cue, the bug and cup move to take their place in front of
you. You lift the cup, the liquid clear and uncomfortably viscous,
but as you consider it apprehensively the dragonfly appears
beside you. It lifts the cup from your skeletal fingers and slowly,
gently upends it over your head.

177
 A river runs through you, sparking through the deepest layers
of your bones; it is gone as soon as it comes and leaves you
gasping. How much time has passed? The dragonfly has moved
back to its place beside the ladybug. You cannot say what it may
have changed in you; it feels as if some space inside of you has
shifted, but you cannot name a difference. Do your bones feel
stronger? Do your jewels shine more brightly? In the low light,
you cannot say for certain.

The ladybug eyes you dispassionately and makes a noise

suggestive of a tongue clicking, although you know that it lacks
the anatomy. “Well, an improvement… I had been hoping… No,
nothing more to be done.” Something changes in its eyes, and it
turns itself in a neat circle, back towards the doors it had
entered from.

The dragonfly blocks its path. “Have you considered the pool?
The source could - enhance it. Let us see what it can become!”
“There is the possibility - but the matter of pay-”
A brief, high buzz from the dragonfly, totally unintelligible.
“Well, I suppose we could arrange payment after you have seen
the value of the treatment.”

Suddenly businesslike, the dragonfly motions to you, “come this

way,” and leads you back through the double doors, the bug and
beetle trailing behind.

178
The back room appears completely empty, leading only to a
second set of double doors at the side, and a huge, open tunnel
at the back. The open mouth of the tunnel, pitch-black, seems to
leer at you.

“Just a bit further.” The dragonfly seems eager. It leads you to

the tunnel’s edge, and pauses, pulling out a single lit globe, and
beckons you to follow it down.

Beloved, you are ancient. You lived and died in a time beyond
memory, before the first trickle of water began to carve out this
underground realm. Who can count the long years that have
passed since we tucked you away beneath the earth?
And yet, you are young; you were thrust back into existence,
reborn into this new world, only a few scant hours ago.
Definitionally then, however one figures it, you were not born
yesterday.

To let the dragonfly lead you down the dark tunnel path, turn
to page 214.

To refuse the offered treatment, turn to page 231.

179
Descend into the Catacombs - Lexi Antoku

Down you go. Ever down. The catacombs run deep. The bowels
of the earth? Or perhaps the arteries and veins. But what flows
in them, either way? Bejeweled bone beauties like you deserve
better than that. But we understand. You can’t come back to us.
Not yet. You have to leave the nest.

At least, we hope that’s it. We admit we have our own anxieties.

It’s stressful to see you go, to march proudly into those dark
tunnels where there’s not enough light for your gemstones to
gleam. It seems a shame, to us, to hide such beauty as yours in a
lightless abyss, but we would not restrain you by force even if
we could. We hope you’ll find your way back to the light, our
masterpiece, by your own choice… for only your own choice will
bring you back to us. As far as you may go, the keep goes deeper.
It has seen sights you cannot imagine. Perhaps some of those
will satisfy you.

Or perhaps that crab will. Its shell is immaculately kept,

polished, gleaming in the embers from above, but what a
wretched gray! We would never clothe you in that, let us assure
you. Your place is not to blend in with rocks and sand, but to
stand out proudly! Bold reds, blues, greens, violets… you shine,
our perfect project.

180
Not that there’s anything wrong with the crab’s choice.
Crustaceans can attire themselves as they like. Really, if you
found its attire to be respectable, if a bit somber, we wouldn’t
fault you. Just… don’t go imitating its fashion. Please. We
worked so hard to collect all of your adornments, and they fit
you so perfectly.

Oh, no, here come more of them. Now you’re the odd one out.
Three crabs in drab gray, with the audacity to drag the mood
down! Ugh, and the first crab is looking at you now. Don’t talk
to it.

To talk to the crab, turn the page.

To roam in the endless silence, turn to page 199.

181
Talk to the Crab - Lexi Antoku

We just said not to–

“You.” As you linger, the crab waves one pincer at your face. Had
you eyes instead of jewels, they would have crossed, so close it
comes to where a nose ought to be. “Are you a person?”

“Am I a person?” you repeat. You think about it for a moment.

“How do you define a person? After all, I now lack…”

“This isn’t a trick question,” the crab interrupts you, derailing

your reflection on personhood, mandibles and maxillipeds
clicking. “If you can overthink the question, you are a person.”

You have no refutation for that.

“We have some vigorous democratic institutions to attend to,

and if you’re a person you should be there. That’s the very spirit
of democracy, is it not?” the crab continues. Their compatriots
nod along. Given that these crabs have no necks, this requires
bobbing their whole body.

Whether honesty was a virtue of yours in life, best beloved, it

certainly seems to be one in death. You cannot help confessing
that you know relatively little of how a democracy ought to be
conducted, just as you know little of what makes a person a
person. They click their mouthparts disappointedly.

182
“Well, I suppose every crab has to learn how the Wheel of
Legislation works at some point. Come, now! The meeting will
be underway shortly, and there’s no such thing as fashionable
lateness in the town hall.”

To explain that you’re not a crab, turn the page.

To resign yourself to life as a crab, turn to page 185.

183
Explain that you’re Not a Crab - Lexi Antoku

You feel the need to correct the crab about one thing before you
move on. You are not, to the best of your knowledge, a crab, nor
have you ever been. No, best beloved, you are far more beautiful
than any crab, though they do have their charms. “Of course you
are. I’m a crab, and I ought to recognize another crab,” they
cheerfully reply nonetheless.

You assess yourself against them visually, gemstone eyes

gleaming, before pressing the issue. Your challenge receives a
confident answer. “Well, you didn’t know if you were a person,
either, so I can hardly be surprised. A crab is an aquatic or
amphibious creature with a hardened exterior, eyes, legs, clawed
manipulators, and so on.”You’re pretty sure you lack several of
those.

“No, no, you have the hardened layer,” the crab taps your
exposed bones with a loud clack. “Your eye stalks are rather
short, but that’s not so unusual. And you have the legs, and the
manipulators.” They wave their own claws at your hands, which
look only minimally similar. “And of course, you’re intelligent
like a crab.” It seems they are utterly immune to the notion that
you are anything other than a crab, despite the dubious evidence
of your crustacean nature.

To resign yourself to life as a crab, turn the page.

To reject crabhood, turn to page 202.

184
Resign yourself to Life as a Crab - Lexi Antoku

Yes. You are a crab. Resigned to your carcinization, you follow

your fellow crabs through the winding depths to the Wheel of
Legislation. The passages range from strangling claustrophobia,
so tight that your meatless shoulders and their ornamentation
scrape the coffins lining either wall, to vast rooms with different
decor.

Being a crab and all—we know we shouldn’t laugh, best beloved,

but we can’t help it!—you have no difficulty traversing the
flooded chambers, even when you have to turn sideways. As the
passages wind up and down, plenty of corridors sink into
murky, aqueous inconveniences. The water drip-drops from your
bones as you emerge, leaving a trail along your path each time it
dips beneath the surface and above again. You go where we have
not tread in timeless ages, and far beyond our sight you enter a
place we have only dreamed of in our meager lifetimes.

The town hall is massive and cavernously empty and lined with
the remains of the dead, which really means it has more in
common with your rib cage than it does with the crab who led
you here. After all, each crab’s shell is infested with live, pulsing
meat. But we don’t mean to be judgmental, best beloved, even if
our work goes unappreciated by those who look at others and
only see themselves!

185
crab
Nor are we jealous creators. We can appreciate the artistry of
this chamber as much as we appreciate our own work on you.
Pillars rise up around the edge of the room, almost seeming to
curve out and back in from the sheer scale of the chamber. That
rib cage comment is starting to sound more and more correct,
given those pillars are lined with the pale, bleached bones of the
dead. Trust us, those are no imitations. We know bones.

Not a single shell appears on the walls, pillars, floors, or ceiling,

though. The crabs and their kin—shrimp, lobsters, crayfish, even
barnacles and bivalves!—all gather in this hallowed hall, but
their death rites are not this, not here. No, the honored dead
here are all of the same origin as [Link] how many there are!
They grin at you from floor to ceiling, condescending despite
their barren appearances. What do they know that we don’t,
dear one, that they are so pleased with themselves? A shame we
cannot ask.

Of course, your grin looks almost the same, other than being
substantially shinier. A halo of gold draws the gaze to your
bejeweled eyes, your polished gleaming teeth. The medallion
about your neck shines like the sun! The sun? Oh, don’t worry
about that. There’s no sun down here. It’s just a round, luminous
[Link] like the wheel before you, though! Their so-called
“wheel of legislation.” Round it is, and luminous, but a whole
different sort.

To examine the Wheel of Legislation properly, turn the page.

187
Examine the Wheel of Legislation - Lexi Antoku

The wheel stands your height twice over. Its face is divided into
triangular slices, orbiting out from the radius. The rim gleams a
dull gold in the torchlight, a thick band of solid metal with
hair-fine filigree patterns that, by and large, have worn down to
bare flatness. Time has transformed intricate engravings into
smooth, polished softness. Gold is not very hard, and the wheel
has been in use for a very, very long time. When you try to focus
on what is etched upon each slice, though, it seems fuzzy, hazy.
You can’t quite seem to actually make out what options it can
present. How curious!

Conversation with the crowd reveals that it is much the same

for them all. Nobody knows what the wheel shall mandate until
it rests, not even what it can mandate. Opinions vary, but most
view it with a sense of mild trepidation and concern. It seems
arbitrary. Capricious. Surely something guides it, but what?
Nothing they understand, and that scares them. But the wheel is
absolute, is it not? Who would dare oppose it? While you think
of the paradoxes they have brought you, they lead you up to the
wheel at last, your boney feet feeling the wet wood of the stage
sag beneath them. “Do us a favor, would you? Our limbs are a
bit… awkward… at spinning the wheel. Could you just pull that
lever?”

To spin the Wheel of Legislation, turn the page.

To reject the Wheel of Legislation, turn to page 234.

188
Spin the Wheel of Legislation - Lexi Antoku

You lean into the lever as they guide you, putting all of your
weight into it. If you still had actual muscle and fat on you it
might work a bit better; still, as you press down the lever
eventually yields, dropping out from under you suddenly. You
have nothing to catch yourself on, so you cling to the lever,
sending it all the way down. You’re alarmed, for a moment. Is it
meant to go that far?

The audience seems to think so. They cheer uproariously. You

have won their approval. The wheel spins wildly, the notches
clicking, fast at first but steadily slowing. Your gaze flickers as
symbols rush past, holding on to one or two pictograms in the
blur. Dizzying speed eventually winds down. Where will it stop?

Slowing, slowing, agonizingly drawn out. So many times, you

could swear it’s done and yet it pushes on one slice of the wheel
more, until it finally ceases motion for good.

THE ONE WHO JUST SPUN THE WHEEL OF

LEGISLATION IS A CRAB.

189
Do not be mad, best beloved! It is nobody’s fault that the wheel
turned up this result.

We are not laughing! We sympathize with you, beloved, truly we

do. We understand if you’re frustrated. Perhaps you could spin
the wheel again, and it will mandate something else? Perhaps
there is more to this Wheel of Legislation than its elaborate, but
ultimately mundane construction implies?

What could it hurt to spin it again and see what it says, other
than this carcinous mandate?

You spin the wheel again. Turn the page.

190
Spin the Wheel Again - Nychelle Schneider

In front of you a vastness expands from the wheel till it seems to

surround you in its expression. Before you lays Saturn, the primordial
being of rings round a celestial body asks: Why do you seek me?

You are not here seeking answers. Anyone can give you answers,
you sought me for something else. Meanings? I understand the
desire for such things but you are no longer bound by those
tethers. Tethers? A construct that prevents you from moving
past a certain point. Look upon my vastness, my boundaries, my
essence. I am not held by such constructs.

What is desire? A coveting of something you have yet to

consume? I have felt this. Power so raw you can feel the pulse of
its fiber. Can you exist beyond desire? Yes, though many may
find it difficult to relinquish such raw emotion when it is how
they view living. What do you desire?

To continue talking with this being, turn to page 196.

To tell your deepest desire, turn to page 193.

191
Saturn’s rings
Do you tell your deepest desire? - Nychelle Schneider

Ah, I see thine cavity where thy heart once lay. Desires are
powerful are they not? Mmm. You wish to know my desires?
One is to seek and know the meanings behind all primal
notions. Grand isn’t it? Mmm, indeed.

What is comfort? It is familiarity with a thing so worn that you

feel that it is an extension, an expression of yourself. Your
ivoried body is a cavern of comfort to your soul. That is where
comfort is said to begin. You like my rings of bones? They are
part of my comfort in myself, expressing thoughts I ponder in
the darkness here.

What does death mean to me? I’ve never had the pleasure of
experience. It is merely a threshold, another construct created
by those of living vision to provide comfort in a time of
uncertainty. It is a construct created by the one tethered to
itself. Some say it is the passing of God, you facing him in life
and then behind him in death. Have I met God? Yes for he is
part of myself and I am he, though we are different and yet we
are separate. The dichotomy is something to ponder.

To ask for clarification of death and God, turn to page 195.

To reject the wheel, turn to page 234.

193
Deepest Desire
Ask for clarification of Death and God? -
Nychelle Schneider

Slow down child, you are wondering how God and myself are
the same yet different? He is God. I am Primas. The shadow god
created in his passing and transformation, created by his
perspective construct. Paradoxical isn’t it? I am the threshold of
his death, the construct created in his mind of higher thought as
he transformed from the old to the new. Am I death? Not for
you my dear friend. I was his, but now I am.

Did I consume fear when he passed through me? No. Fear is a

primal expression but lacks finesse. What is fear but a lack of
understanding? I have seen so many fear their point of
transformation. You, not you, you embraced it as any saint does.
You don’t remember it? Interesting. Are all emotions new to
you? No wonder the crustaceans selected you for the trial.

To continue talking with Primas, turn the page.

To reject the wheel, turn to page 234.

195
Continue Talking with Primas - Nychelle Schneider
and Gabriel Komisar

Why are emotions new to you?

Mmm, now that is something magnificent to ponder. Some may

say it is because you have gone past your point of
transformation, others would suggest that because you have
changed that they too change.

What do you think my dear friend?

Do not be shy, not knowing something is just as important as

knowing something, for it gives you a point of reference to
explore the experience.

What is experience?

It is the pleasures of a scenario learned and stored to be re-lived

in our subconscious as memories. Those memories walk with
you into the next experience until you rarely meet a new
experience without knowing a previous one. How many
experiences have I had?

Look upon my rings, for they are the sum of my experiences.

196
Do not worry my lovely corpse, it is a journey and exploration
of yourself. Think of it as discovering your comfort in desires.
Can you come back to visit? I’d like that. Perhaps then we can
discuss the merits of memories. You’ll find they change your
desires.

Is change good? That depends on how you view your

experiences. Not all can be good as not all can be seen as bad,
they simply are. Each still carries purpose in providing
experiences from which we learn and grow.

Will you still grow?

I very much believe so.

In size?

Well, that is up to you, is it not?

I know your eyes cannot dart, corpse but I see you looking
around the room.

Are you beginning to wonder what time it is? Turn to page 233.

Do you feel the urge to tell me your deepest desire? Turn to

page 193.

Do you wish to know more about what I am? Turn to page 195.

197
Reject Crabhood - Lexi Antoku

You ask for a moment to further elaborate. They grant you it.
You launch into an impassioned explanation of all the
differences between yourself and the crabs. The way you walk,
the layout of your bones, the shape of your skull–

“We don’t do phrenology here.” You put your hands on your hips
and narrow your eyes at the crab who spoke as much as you can.
You’re a little short on eyelids, best beloved, but we appreciate
your effort nonetheless.

Crabs, you point out, do not actually have skulls. You do. This is
not an exoskeleton. This is an endoskeleton. These are bones in
precisely the opposite positions from one another. Your lecture
continues for a time, but at the end the crestfallen crab explains
that this means you can’t go see the Wheel of Legislation.

“It’s for crabs only. The last time we spun it, it added laws
against immigration, and we haven’t seen anything like you
before. No offense.” Truer words have never been spoken! Your
beauty is unlike anything they’ve ever seen, and unlike anything
they can hope to see again. They should be grateful to have
witnessed your majesty at all, really. You shrug and strike out,
traveling into the blackened depths. (You weren’t actually that
interested in seeing the Wheel, you decide.)

You explore the catacomb depths. Turn to page 204.

198
You roam in the endless silence - Lexi Antoku

There are words for places like this. “Chthonic,” for instance.
Chthonic is a very good word, we’re told. Very popular with
audiences of all ages.

Yes, this place is chthonic. The tunnels weave into the earth like
the trails of great worms, twisting down and down upon
themselves. You lose yourself wandering, taking in the sights.
Your way back will be easy, if you turn back any time soon. Any
route up leads back to us.

But down, down, down you go. The sound of your footsteps on
the raw stone echoes on the rough, worn walls, soon fading into
the darkness. Sight is little aid to you—you can only rely on the
feeling of your fingertips upon the edges of the tunnel.

In a way, you take the tunnel’s nature in better in that darkness

and silence than you would if you could see it. You have nothing
but the feeling of your hand on the earth. At first, the keep’s
stonework alternates smooth, polished bricks and rough, porous
mortar. The higher regions are better kept, but the lower regions
are long forgotten by those higher up.

As you descend, proper stonework gives way to a region of

packed dirt, flecked with stray stones and the roots of
long-forgotten plants, occasionally hiding behind thick wooden

199
supports. Here, the stone walls gave way and the path through
was improvised, marked for repairs that never came.

As you descend the stone returns. You’ve passed the damaged

portion, and the stone is once more intact. Undisturbed. Whole.

Are you whole, do you wonder? Are you satisfied with the
jewels shining within your eye sockets, the gold around your
arms and neck?

You wouldn’t be so crude as to go barren, would you, like the

skulls beneath your hands?

That’s right. Skulls. One after another, up and down, over and
across…

To examine the skulls, turn the page.

200
You examine the skulls - Lexi Antoku

The walls are made of bones. Most are not skulls, but many are.
A child of your kin has nearly three hundred bones, with a bit of
rounding. An adult has just over two hundred in typical
situations. Of those, twenty two are typically within one’s skull,
meaning that by quantity, if not by mass or volume, an interred
skeleton ought to be a little under ten percent skull bones and a
little over ninety percent other bones.

So, obviously, it would be quite impractical to make a wall only

out of skulls.

No, these ones are mostly the other bones, laid front-to-back as
masonry. It takes you a moment to get the feel of them, to
recognize them: femur and fibula, ulna and radius and humerus,
this forms the bulk of the wall. But up and down or side to side,
bands of skulls bring sharp relief to the structure, big and
round, facing their empty eyes out on the hallways, staring
down hollowly upon any who walk through. A thin layer of dust
comes off as your fingers cross their brows; some clings to you,
some falls to the floor through the stale air.

As you continue down the passageway, a luminescent moss on

the floors and ceilings marks your path, growing thicker until
the oppressive darkness becomes dimly perceptible and you see
the sheer scale of the passage. You cling to one wall, and far
across the middle of this passage is another. In the middle area
pillars, each the size of small rooms, are ringed the shedding

201
skin of the ceiling above.. There are three bands of skulls across
most of the walls, including the massive central pillars: top,
bottom, and another a little bit lower.

Every one of these skulls was once a life. A person. A person

who lived, thought, felt, and died. Now they are not. Packed so
tightly into the wall, this is not a memorial to any of them
individually. It is a monument to the idea of death, as though
time and illness and injury might be placated by sacrifice. Or
perhaps to the idea of life? An urging that it must not be
neglected, taken for granted?

You wonder, perhaps, if that would apply to you. Are you that
same sort of thing anymore? Or are you something else? Will
you slow, break down, and die?

You pause mid-step as you feel a hole in a line of skulls, about as

high as your ribs. Behind it more bones are packed tight,
keeping it supported. You could move on. Be on your way. This
place has stood for ages undisturbed.

But you could fix that hole, too, if you only had something just
right for it…

To explore the catacomb depths, turn to page 204.

To place your own skull upon the wall, turn to page 252.

202
Examine the skulls
Explore the catacomb depths - Aoife Crow

You’re not sure how long you proceed down the winding passage
of bone. Time slips away from you like an unconsidered trifle,
easily forgotten. It was, after all, an invention of mortal humans.
They marked the space between now and then, will be and once
was, because it matters to them. Down here though, the last
voice has fallen silent and the last distant plink of water has
fallen away to nothing. You no longer have muscles to tire, or a
stomach to grow hungry. (You’re welcome for that, and no need,
oh beloved, for thanks.) There is only the soft clack of bone on
bone, and the ever-stretching now.

A confession, oh dearest poppet: we were mostly marking time

by you. We are not certain anymore ourselves.

You might not have ever regained a sense of anything but the
eternal NOW, until you realize the bones have changed. It was
so slow and subtle that you need to review the images of the
past eternity that slid past your eyes and into the dark places
behind to realize the truth. The bones have changed with every
step, each one a little different from the last. They slowly
became the shapes of distant proto-humans, then older things
less recognizable. At first they were still recognizably animal
skeletons, but they grew smaller and smaller with every step.
Eventually you reached a section where the walls resembled
nothing but smooth chalk to the untrained eye.

204
You missed all when you initially passed them. Eternity, it would
seem, most prolonged beloved, was very distracting. Now,
however, shape has returned. It occurs to you, oh our timeless
beloved, that you preferred the chalk walls.

The bones here are grand and terrible. Whatever organs and
flesh once housed these bones is beyond your comprehension
and ours, best loved. We have no solace to offer you for the way
they turn back on themselves in physically impossible ways. We
have no answers to why they make eyes that no longer exist
water, and make a head with no nerves to speak of ache.

The one thing you do know about what you see ahead is the one
thing we know about it.

IT IS NOT RIGHT.

Run away, somewhere populous! Somewhere with crowds to

adore you! Somewhere with shopping and dancing! Anywhere
but here!

To flee in search of the Underground City, turn to page 150.

To look deeper and further, turn the page.

205
Look deeper and further - Aoife Crow

You came this far, dearest. Why stop now? It could only cost you
a fate far more terrible than death. It takes a second eternity,
but you manage to tear yourself away from the walls and focus
on a point in the darkness ahead. It’s mercifully free of bones
that drain away your senses when looked upon. You fix on it,
and spend a third eternity teaching yourself to see that and only
that.

It’s thankful, oh beloved of unknowable time, that you have

these eternities to spend.

You stride forward into the black. The reality-bending ossuary is

now only a mild gnawing at the edges of your vision. It’s enough
of a gnawing to make you question the slow, heavy, and
perfectly timed clicks of metal and long-dry wood that you’re
now aware come from far ahead. You feel the sound trickle into
your bones, around your twinkling eye gems, and you remember
fully what time is. We can tell you this because we also
remember now.

Dearest one, we don’t have the heart to tell you how much of it
has passed.

It is a lot.

You continue towards the ticking. Turn to page 255

206
To Sink- Cory Capron

For a time, your descent reduces to a halt, floating several

meters below the surface in limbo. Then, slowly, as the hollows
of your bones take in the mineral rich water, the weight of your
ornamental adornments anchors you down again. You sink for a
very long time before finding the soft silt of the sandy floor. For
a bed, it is not exactly velvet upholstered belly feathers, but long
has it been since you rested on those fineries in any state
befitting their repute.

It is also harder to tell yourself jokes underwater. That too is

okay, you decide. You did not have many more to tell, anyway.
And so, resigned, you curl up on your side, as children do, and
let the sediment slowly accumulate and blanket your bones, like
so much gentle snow.

The End.

207
Take the Mourner’s one hand, and face the future
together- Aoife Crow

The world sits balanced on a knife. But courage, oh beloved, oh

dearest, you find courage. The truest courage, to move towards
what lies ahead. That’s always what is needed for drinking the
deepest of life, even the life that comes after life. Courage, and
risk, and scraping your knuckles on the toughened husk to get at
the richness within. You tell her that you will go with her.

Of course you will. You always would.

You take her hand, and her feet move forward with startling
ease to sweep away the salt rocks that surrounded her. She
moves to open a set of doors long since covered over by salt into
a vast banquet hall beyond, with dozens of doors off each side,
some of which open. Guests step through, blinking with
surprise. Oh dearest, the things you will see, the wonders you
will experience. There’s so much more than we could possibly
tell you. Some great, some terrible, but all, each and every one…
worth it. Worth every trial, worth every twist and turn you take,
it will all be worth it. We know this.

But now, Beloved, we must go. We have work to do elsewhere.

And you have new hearts to guide your way.

FAR FROM THE END!

209
Climb the ladder and wait to ambush the snail from
above. - Jan Martin

Moving further away from Rootkill is difficult. But when you

move towards the snail, there's no resistance at all. Getting to
the ladder is easy. Your creaky joints struggle as you clamber up
one rung at a time, but you make it without too much trouble.
The storage area is full of hefty and crude clay pots filled with a
multitude of species of dehydrated worms. You start pulling a
pot towards the edge of the shelf and will drop it on the snail’s
head when it comes through the door, then make your escape.
You wait for what seems an eternity. On edge, you listen for
every little sound.

But you realize, there are no sounds. You don't know when it
stopped, but at some point Rootkill and Dewslime stopped
making any noise. Then you hear it, a faint slurping sound as the
snail makes its way back. You brace yourself for the big moment,
poised over the clay pot and ready to push it over the edge.

That's when the eye stalk’s grip suddenly gets tight and you're
pulled down from the shelf, pulling the clay pot with you. It
shatters on the ground, and you land on its scattered remains.
Dried worms stick to the moisture on your skin as you sit in a
pile of them, staring up at Rootkill and a large slug, presumably
Dewslime. The two drag you into the back, and put your body
into another clay pot, this one fitted with shackles. Topping it
with a heavy stone stopper and trapping you inside ends the
ritual.

210
Days and days pass before they remove the stopper again. When
they do it's just for a moment while they gather a bundle of
fresh worms from your torso. As the years pass and your flesh
grows scarce, so too do the worms. The time between when the
stopper comes out grows, until eventually, another corpse is left
in the jar right on top of you. You are all but forgotten by your
captors, but you have this new prisoner to keep you company
while the last bits of flesh fall from your bones.

The End.

211
Keep Dancing for a Little While - Jan Martin

A drink sounds refreshing, but you're enjoying the song so much

you decide to dance for just a little longer. You see a dancer at
the front of the stage turn its back to the crowd, signaling for a
replacement. As though driven by the groove itself, you find
yourself making your way through the crowd to the front of the
stage. It almost feels as though the groove chose you.

You climb up on the stage and approach the dancer, an

extremely old-looking rat. The closer you get the more you
notice its poor condition. Its mangled feet, caked with what
looks like years’ worth of blood, strain under the weight of the
rat. A sense of dread pops up deep in your belly, but still driven
by the groove you tap the rat out and step into the spotlight.

Dancing wildly, you watch as it hobbles off and collapses in a

heap at the side of the stage and lies there breathing heavily.
Eventually it picks itself back up, its eyes go wide, it looks
around in a panic, and quickly makes its way to the back of the
club. It gives one last look back before rushing up the stairs.
Your sense of dread grows, but soon fades to nothing as you
become completely entranced by the groove.

Enveloping you like a mist, the air is thick with humidity. Every
shriek of a horn, every thump of the bass ripples through the
thick air, ripping through you deep into your bones. It becomes
you. Soon you don't know who you are anymore, you don't
remember where you came from, or where you were going. The

212
feeling in your body is gone. Your every thought is gone. All that
remains is the music.

You dance and dance for years and years, but never does your
chance to turn your back come. Bit by bit, your joints wear out
and collapse a little more. Even when your hip fails and your leg
breaks apart, leaving you with just one, still you dance. Even
when you lose your pelvis, leaving nothing but your upper body,
still you dance. Indeed, your bones themselves never stop
dancing in the pile around you.

You dance and dance, until eventually you're nothing but a pile
of rattling bones and sinew at the front of the stage. But that's
not the end for you, dear one, no. Your end never comes.
Someday in the distant future your bones become nothing but
swirling dust on the stage. When it becomes too fine to swirl, it
floats into the air and eventually lands on someone, gets
breathed in, or swallowed.

Your consciousness dances forever, trapped in each mote of dust,

scattered to the corners of the club and the caverns beyond. The
keep’s denizens carry with them forever a vague sense that they
can still hear the groove from the club. They will find their toes
tapping, or that they are humming along to a phantom melody.
That, dear beloved, is you. Forever the music.

The End.

213
Let the Dragonfly Lead you down the Dark Tunnel
Path - Lydia Brunk

The light orb bobs as the dragonfly leads you down into the
darkness; the walls of the tunnel are unfinished, just packed dirt.
Eventually, the tunnel widens and you step into a surprisingly
high-ceilinged chamber; from behind you, the ladybug makes
that clicking sound again, and a few orbs blaze into light on the
ceiling above you.

The only feature in this cavern, aside from stalagmites

and stalactites, is a deep, wide pool of purple-blue water, the
rim lined clumsily with stones. The dragonfly steps to the side,
and the bugs are silent, watching, as you make your way across
to the pool, and gingerly lower yourself in.

As before, you feel a change happen immediately. This

time, though, it feels as though your body is buzzing from the
outside in.

Something is wrong.

Looking down at your hands, you see what flesh you had left
bubbling and dissolving. You try to stand, but the bottom of the
pool is slick with something and you fall back again. The
buzzing that is not a buzzing moves further inward, and this
time when you try to stand you find that your limbs are no
longer obeying your commands.

214
If you lived in a different time and place, you might compare
this feeling to surgery or dental work done under topical
anesthetic - no pain, but certainly a sensation that something is
working inside you where outside things should not be. In short
order, you lose your grip on the boundaries of your body
entirely.

You are surprised to find that, despite this considerable setback,

you continue to exist. Though you no longer have even the
suggestion of eyes or ears, you continue to, in some way,
perceive.

And what you perceive is a celebratory shout from the

dragonfly. “Can’t believe we fuckin’ pulled that off! If we ever
get this opportunity again, you gotta talk a lot less about
payment, dude.”

“I’m sorry! I was just trying to, you know, stay in character.
Besides, it worked, didn’t it! And now we get that payment we
were asking for,” the ladybug responds. Peering into your
depths, he pulls out a slotted spoon contraption and neatly,
painstakingly scoops up each piece of jewelry from your depths.
“We just gotta get this to your guy in the surface trade, and then
we’ll be sufficiently compensated, all right.” Still laughing, all
three disappear back up the tunnel.

Time passes.

Time continues to pass. Nothing changes, save the very

occasional drip from a stalactite.

215
After yet more time, you feel yourself begin to expand. Parts of
you seep down into the stone below, and you join with a vast
underground body of water.

Currents flow through you, and you mentally map every inch of
the stone and the stillness you occupy.

The interminable blankness is finally broken with a rumbling

above and through you, and in comparatively short order,
machinery is installed, and you feel a part yourself being
pumped to the surface. While you remain in the pool and in the
aquifer and in the earth, you are dipped into buckets, brought
into homes, and, most startlingly, you evaporate into the air.

Floating on the dank currents of the underground city,

everything is before you.

The End.

216
Let the Dragonfly lead you
To have Some Tea - JR Zambrano

You reach for the kettle, feeling the dull heat in your bony
hands.

"Tea, Gil. We start with tea. What kind do I like–" you mutter,
opening up a casket meant for holding the jewels of an ancient
lord. You note that jewels keep catching your eye. But it's better
not to dwell on such things, beloved. That was you. The new you
finds the cozy comforts of Gilish's abode charming. More than
charming.

You prepare a draught of deeproot tea. You pour the tea for Gil,
who unearths an old sewing tin filled with dry, stale bread. And
then they confront you with a dilemma.

"You don't even know your name," they say. "What will we call
you?" You open your mouth and realize in this moment, any
name is as good as the next. "What do you think my name is,
Gil?"

Gil takes a long, slow sip of tea. "Skully."

"I like the sound of that." Do you, really, beloved?

I do.

Oh. Well. Who are we to argue, then.

218
"Gil and Skully," you murmur, sipping the almost-too-bitter tea.
"You know you've done wonders with the place, Gil." Gilish trills
with absolute delight. "Really? Gilish has always thought so, but
no one ever comments on the decor."

"I can tell you've put a lot of effort into it. You've made the
sepulchral cast-offs of the ages feel downright homey." You say
this with casual ease, but deep appreciation.

"It's the knitting, Gil thinks," they say.

"The knitting certainly helps," you reply, "but there's a real aura
here. There's no fire in the hearth, no bubbling cauldron full of
reagents, but you've got a witch's warmth."

"Flattery comes easily to Skully," says Gil. But you can tell the
compliment landed.

"It's easy because it's true," you say. "Honestly it's a shame you
don't have more visitors. Your hospitality is the best I can recall."

"It's the only you can recall–"

"–that's how good it is," you counter. "If I'm going to reinvent
myself, I'd be lucky to find someone half as detailed as you."

Gil's chortling laughter resounds off the walls, damp and

resplendent. A perfect complement to the warmth of the tea.

219
They idly touch the back of their head, a hint of deep purple
paints their cheeks.

"Why not help me," you ask, excitement welling in between your
ribs. "I could help you–maybe I can find guests in the
corpse-halls and stygian crypts that lie in the darkness beyond.
The comforts of the grave are cold indeed in comparison."

Beloved, your excitement is palpable! This new purpose suits

you, a noble goal. You can see it unfurling in your mind, a
banner caught in the wind of invention. You conjure a vision of
Gilish's dwelling, repurposed. Open and welcoming.

You describe these sights to Gil, enrapturing their wide eyes

even wider as you explain: Whole hosts of guests filing in from
the depths. As they emerge from the shadows, they're greeted by
warm blue light spilling out from Gil's abode. A beacon in the
darkness. A ghost-light that calls to them.

Not with the dread, baleful summons of a rhythmic dirge. But

with the promise of a place to rest old bones and desiccated
flesh finished with funereal garb. Here, they find both a familiar
setting, and comfort. With Gil's decorative skills and your
get-up-and-go, Beloved, there's no telling how far you'll go.

You and Gil sip tea. You set your teacup on a hand-knit coaster,
and when you look up, five years have passed.

220
Gil is wearing the cardigan you knit for them. They always wear
it when they're entertaining, you've noticed. It's flattering, isn't
it Beloved? Gratifying to know that the time you spent learning
to knit in secret, taking Gilish's measure without their notice,
has paid off.

And sure, you can see the places where your stitches were
inexpert–and there's the spot where the yarn got tangled around
your fingerbones instead of the needles–but for Gil it is perfect.
They wear it like a coat of arms as they entertain a small crowd.

"Nearby you'll find the Needle of Archeos, a spire well worth

visiting if you go in for spires. Very tall, half-buried in the muck
near the rushing torrent where we first met." Gil turns a fanged
smile your way.

You notice one of the guests taking an unusual interest in the

spire. A new face–not one of the usual walking corpses or
underslitherers that frequent your and Gil's Bed & Breakfast.
This is a face that heralds…danger. You recognize it in the dark
iron armor she wears. The backpack, laden with all the wrong
tools for surviving down in the depths.

Is that a grappling hook? Seven days worth of rations?

"You might like it," you say, "there are still old traps waiting
there. They probably guard a treasure." Beloved, really, what
would your grandmother say? Gil gives you a shocked look.
"Traps, Skully?"

221
"We can't say for sure," you say, stretching out the moment as far
as you can. You pour the intonation of leaden lids and wet earth
into your rattling voice. "It's just a rumor." You break into a grin.
The other guests laugh.

"A rumor eh?" Your new guest nods, scribbling down things in a
small logbook. Oh Beloved, what a moment this is. You and Gil
have worked so hard. You've turned a humble dwelling into the
best bed & breakfast in the Earthen Depths, and now, you've
attracted your first hero in search of adventure.

As the night wears on, the central room fills with the sound of
chatter. Of guests sharing stories and resting from their
appointed duties. You and Gil provide more than just a break
from the routine. Together, you give the dwellers in the depths,
living and dead alike, the chance to get away from it all.

The joy you and Gil engender in the various travelers is nothing
compared to what they leave you in return. On rare occasions,
when the halls are quiet, your mind turns to the past. But as the
years go by, those unanswered questions gnaw less and less. You
may never know who you were–but all that matters is who you
are, right here and right now. And with Gil at your side, and a
home full of guests, who you are, Beloved, is someone that's
happy.

The End.

222
Have Tea
To Sum Up your Case - JR Zambrano

You motion for Linswelda and Gil to sit around the fire. You
assume a revelatory stance near the fire, and begin.

"It all begins with Gilish's gems." You gesture towards your
friend.

"I told you, I found those gems fair–" starts Linswelda.

"–and square. You've said that. Only you didn't. Did you? You
only found the gems because Gil had gathered them into a
casket and put them on display where they could catch the
mosslight." You try a dramatic spin before pointing a bony
finger at Linswelda. You catch Gil giving a little hand wiggle as
if to say 'not your best work, but not a bad start.' Undeterred,
you press on.

"And the very same mosslight tells me everything I need to

know."

"It does?" say Gil and Linswelda in unison.

"You see, mosslight has an unusual property: when filtered

through the facets of gems it can bewitch those who behold the
patterns. And you, Linswelda, you glimpsed the dancing lights
because you were down in the Under Roads, exploring. Yes, you
have the look of one who was on a quest."

224
Linswelda nods, "alright, I admit it. I was on a quest."

"But not for valor. Or to accomplish a heroic deed. You were

questing for money, and here you thought you had found it," you
say, tone growing more accusatory. "But the only reason you,
who believes property is theft, were searching for money is
because life on the surface has got you down."

You flourish your arms dramatically. Gilish gives you a thumbs

up.

"And the reason for that? Cold hard capitalism. That and
nothing more would compel you to quest below among the
ruins of eons for mere money. Yes you see, it is not the theft of
Gilish's jewels that we are here to solve–but rather the theft of
meaning from your life by Capitalism." Linswelda looks shocked
as you gesture and the specter of Capitalism appears. "That's
right, it was me, and I'd do it again if I had the chance," sneers
Capitalism's specter.

"Not today my friend, we–" but before you can figure out how
you're going to detective this one, Linswelda hacks Capitalism's
bloody ghost in half with her ax.

"Well. That settles that," you say.

"Gil is confused!" says Gil, looking around. "Is Capitalism gone?"

225
"I'm afraid it will take more than that to get rid of it entirely.
But by the cold light of Geleggeugorath the First Scale, who
carries us all in times of need, it seems we've broken at least one
free from its grasp," you say.

"I feel…lighter," says Linswelda. You smile at Gil. Gilish blushes a

little at the attention, then turns to Linswelda. "What will the
fleshy one do now that she's free?"

"I don't know. Adventure's all I'm really suited to," she says.

"Ah, how fortunate," you reply. "We've just finished our first
adventure. But it feels like we're ready for more. Care to join us?
I'm a detective."

"Yes, I know, you continually mention it."

"I've reinvented myself, so it helps to remind me of who I am

and who I want to be," you say. "A corpse, a…fish-thing? And
me," says Linswelda. "I can think of weirder parties."

Gilish scoops up their jewels. "Parties! We should have one back

home to celebrate."

"To celebrate what?" asks Linswelda, following the two of you

back to the mossy glow of Gilish's comfy cottage. "The end of
one adventure. And the start of many, many more!”

The End.

226
Wake from this beautiful dream - Joe Young

She’s right, of course, it is time for you to leave the

Remembering. You take her hand and smile, and in a sensation
similar to sinking into a pool of warm water you awaken,
returning to the Mourner’s chambers in the blink of an eye. She
smiles, her petrified flesh cracking as she does, and takes one,
albeit unsteady, step towards you. You embrace.

The journey out of her chamber takes time. She has not moved
in an age, and every step takes several minutes. But you can wait.
After all, if there’s one thing the two of you have now, it’s time.
There are many wonders to see in this deep place. Many horrors
as well. The darkness only deepens the further you descend.

But at least now you don’t have to face the darkness alone.

The End.

227
You can feel it, rising from the earth, and must stay to
watch, regardless of the consequences. - Joe Young

You pull your hand from her grasp, stepping back as the ground
rumbles. To your surprise, you find that you’re standing back
atop the parapet overlooking the sea where you entered the
Remembering, the sun low over the water and blazing red. She
tries to take a step after you, to follow you, to beg you to leave
with her, but her feet are rooted in place, ossified, her true form
leaking through into her own dream of the life she once had.

Her mouth opens in what could be a scream, but only a harsh

exhalation of air escapes from her rapidly paralyzing body.
Softly, you come to the realization that you, too, are returning
to your true form, bangles and rings resting upon the raw bone
of your arms as you stare at them, even as you simultaneously
see the smoothness of your own flesh, a twisted double image
that makes your head swim.

The rumble grows deeper, and you look to the sea. As you wash,
the crimson water vibrates then, far out in the bay, near where
you earlier saw a seabird dive among the spray for breakfast, a
whirlpool begins. Before long it grows into a sinkhole, drinking
in the sea, a huge, dark eye opening to stare at the sky for the
first time.

228
You know it then. You can see deep into that eye, at the force
pulling this world into it. You can feel the doom that came to
this place, and what the Mourner did not want you to see.

You know, best beloved, that it is Us.

Without the Mourner to take you from this Remembering, you

will be stuck here. But worry not. We are coming to collect you,
as we did before. We will try again, in this place.

Perhaps this time things will be different.

Perhaps this time you won’t try so hard to remember.

The End

229
It’s Time to Go - Joe Young

Something terrible is about to occur, and you’ve drained her

strength enough with this reverie. You take her hand as the
world shakes around you, and like a bolt of lightning being shot
through your body you return to yourself, the sensation of every
inch of your flesh being simultaneously ripped from your body
flashing through your sensorium for the moment between
breaths. You’re back in the Mourner’s chamber, her osseous hand
trembling in yours, motes of dust beginning to fall from her
outstretched arm. She smiles sadly.

“This was always to be the last gift between us,” she rasps,
something inside her torso collapsing like a mineshaft, causing
her to shudder, “Do not forget what I have shown you.
Remember us as we were, when our times were happy.” You
open your mouth to respond, but before you can get the words
out she collapses, shattering into dust and salt, leaving her hand
gripped within yours, half of one ulna covered in salt-meat flesh
dangling from the wrist.

“I will,” you manage to croak out, before you begin to cry. The
sound of dripping water returns to the chamber as you stand
over the Mourner’s remains, weeping for the life you lost. By the
time you realize what’s happening, your joints are already
covered in a heavy layer of salt, dried from your own tears, and
that makes you weep harder.

The Mourner is dead, long live the Mourner.

230
Refuse the Offered Treatment - Jan Martin

Running through the alleyways you find yourself at a river with

boats and rafts lashed to stalagmites along the bank. Bugs trying
to convince passersby to hire them for tours or transport
through the maze of river tunnels. An old Caecilian sits coiled
up like a rope, dozing off holding up a sign that reads 'Honest
Auntie Jord's River Raft Adventures.' Something about the way
the dancing torchlight catches on its shiny exterior attracts you
to it.

Before you have a chance to speak it uncoils, tosses its sign in

the river and slithers onto its raft. It beckons you on with its
snout. You've come this far, what's another step? Soon you are
gently floating down the river into a pitch-black tunnel. The
light of the city fades into a single point as you drift further and
further down the tunnel. Until you’re completely enrobed in
darkness and the only sound is the swish of the oar and the
water moving around you.

The End.

231
Give Up - Alvhild Sagadatter

This is how it ends then, precious one. Your bones shattered and
ground against stone. Your bracelets and gems, repurposed and
used for decor along tapestries and murals. You are still here,
with us. Your gems becoming the centerpiece of a portrait,
staring forever out into the shifting pathways and crawling
corridors of the winding ways. There is no rest for your mind.
There is only chaos, forevermore. And now, you can’t even
scream.

The End.

232
Wonder What Time it Is - Gabriel Komisar

How long have we been talking? Oh, who is to say, corpse. Who
is to say? Look around you. It seems the crabs encased you in
this cathedral among their honored dead! You fit right in!

They go so quickly, don’t they, these centuries. All the creatures

you’ve met are gone, but even now my rings still turn. I suppose
we should call this legislative body adjourned, eh corpse? Aren’t
you glad you took a spin on the Wheel of Legislation? Ah, had I
only claws to bang a gavel. But then, who needs “having”!

Let us keep investigating broad philosophical concepts. I haven’t

had a friend to do this with in eons! What could it hurt, new
friend? After all, we’ve got so much time now to talk.

After all, what even is… time…

The End.

233
You Reject the Wheel - Lexi Antoku and Gabriel
Komisar

You will not, you declare. The crustaceans gasp in unison, as if

on cue. None of them, you remind them, actually like this
system. Nobody is happy with it. You don’t want to get caught
up in this. You’re leaving. Whatever they want to do with this
wheel is their own responsibility. The fault will be on them for
obeying it, for enforcing it, for giving up their lives to this
abstract and arbitrary circus dressed up as governance.

Leaving now, you specify when they stare in silence. You begin
to shuffle sideways, back towards the steps off the stage. Your
footfalls are the only sound.

“But you’re a crab, you have to do the wheel!” It’s not the crabs
who led you here that just shouted that. You think about
answering. No, you decide, it’s time to leave.

You bolt off the stage, two long strides leading you to the edge
before your heels hammer out a quick rhythm, step-step-step,
and you depart down a side passage.

Your feet are quick, but the crabs have more of them and are far
quicker. Before you have time to escape the crabs descend upon
you and tear you to smithereens.

The End.

234
Lairing Like the Lich You Claimed to Be - Alvhild
Sagadatter

We see you, oh precious one. We see you wander into these

depths; we see you lose yourself for an untold time. Walking,
wandering. Exploring these haunted hallways, these twining
tunnels, these sinister staircases…

We watch as you uncover a chamber of books, and discover that

you can read at least some of these alphabets.

Herein, you find row upon row of scripts and parchments,

bound and unbound. Unbound like you will be. You also find…
them.

They are you will find, much like us. Lairing here, having made
it a home: stained silk pillows and little trinkets arrayed in the
corner of the room. Their body pale, sinuous, slithering. Having
little stubby limbs that double as legs and arms and hands and
fingers, dozens of them. Their insides providing their own light
in the dark, their eyes small and beady and black, shining as
they skitter and stretch and dust upon the tallest of the shelves
with a feather duster.

“Oh hello,” they tell you with a casual air. “Welcome, welcome. I
am Bertrand, the Bookworm. I look after this library. Were you
looking for anything in particular?”

235
You explain to Bertrand that you have, after some consideration,
decided to become a Lich, or at least become Lich-like, since
you were warned of one.

Bertrand is delighted, and insists on giving you a library tour. It

takes some time. They also insist you take tea with them, which
involves ripping out the letter ‘t’ from a number of pages and
putting them in a bowl, which the worm happily grazes on. They
later explain to you that these are homemade, which is a process
of finding a book they find interesting and then transcribing
particularly juicy, if you’ll pardon the term, passages, which can
then be prepared as t’s or, really, any other letters of the
alphabet. Or, if they’re feeling particularly ambitious, they
confess,“I make word salad.”

You have nothing but time, sweetling, and Bertrand, while a

peculiar person, is nothing if not willing to be an able assistant.
You are fed a steady diet of knowledge. While your form is
ill-equipped to digest paper, Bertrand delights in your company,
and you are able to actually make use of this wondrous ward
where writing waits.

Bertrand begins re-organizing the library as you go, admitting

that they have long wanted a new project. And so you make
your own home, with a bookshelf cleared out and freed of actual
shelving, that you may rest in when you require it. It is homey,
almost coffin-like. Of course, you can still see the roof. Befriend
the spiders that live there, and spin their webs like distant
stars…

236
The pile of books before you grow, sweetling, and you are
learning. New alphabets, new languages. It is amazing, really,
that it took you this long to find a dictionary.

You learn definitions, you scavenge and skulk and scurry and
you find–for the keep provides–the things you need. Betrand
watches as you construct, out of a wooden picture frame and a
glass vase which held an eternal rose, the beginnings of what
will become your masterpiece. Molten gold and more gems, oh
how long you wandered to find those that would perfectly
match your eyes.

Thank the stars above and the dark below that you had
mastered that book of riddles, which got you away from the
slavering jaws of the Thing In the Corner (Bertrand insists the
Thing in the Corner is harmless, just a little clingy. You are
dubious about this; Betrand does not have delicious bones filled
with marrow).

And finally, you see, you witness, you have built the vessel that
can hold your soul.

237
You hold in your hands powerful magics, with or without a
special k, and you have learned many words and incantations.
The books, as you read them, are shifted from shelf to floor,
forming wide piles, and then carefully collected by your able
assistant, who is themselves delighted once you begin
summoning other able assistants, creatures of shadow and
impish laughter (and possibly also impish nature.) Life in the
library goes on, a little bubble of happiness and devotion away
from the troubles that so bothered you.

You gain power, and you gain wisdom.

And at last you know what a Lich is.

The End.

238
Lairing like the Lich you Claimed to Be
Master the Mysteries of the Arcane Architecture -
Alvhild Sagadatter

You move! Oh joy, oh thrill! Does this mean you have made your
decision? We always believed in you, oh sweetling. Oh precious
one. We will move with you, now. We study as you delve ever
deeper. We would whisper such sweet things to you to entice
you further, but you do not have a need for such, do you,
beloved?

We watch your tentative steps, bone on stone, as you move

along the still-shifting corridors, step through doors, and behold
our miraculous vistas. We thrill alongside you as you haltingly
discover your power over this place. How many passages do you
peruse and pursue in the study of your craft? How long are you
lost in these depths before the cogwheels turn, not just in the
exposed workings of a wall but inside your own mind?

We do not have an answer for you, best beloved. Not an answer

that would make much sense, at any rate.

Know, however, that we see you. We see your beringed bony

fingers brush against dusty walls, uncovering tapestries and wall
hangings with bizarre and bewildering imagery. Yes, we see it.
Your likeness, here. It was not prophesied, best beloved. It is a
sign of your growing skill, of these lumbering lanes becoming
accustomed to your presence and attuning to your will.

240
Have you noticed, best beloved, that you are going deeper? And
have you noticed, oh most precious, that you are heading in a
circular way – albeit one that draws you on a most meandering
path.

We sing in ecstasy, sweetling, as you head ever deeper, and the

shaped walls and vast expanses and rooms are – for the most
part - left behind. You will know soon, best beloved.

Behold! The faint light that touches the dirt walls, ridged like an
esophagus, and clinging close and intimate. Behold! The
rounded opening that will deliver you, vomited forth as through
a wide-open mouth (admittedly under your own power and
with far less bile dogging your steps.)
Behold… Behold… Behold…

Behold the cavernous depths in which you find yourself, with

stalagmites and stalactites like jagged, stone teeth. Hear the
gentle susurrus of our whispers echoing from the dark, the room
far too large for you to witness anything more than a fraction,
all at once. See the darkened bones that lie here in the depths,
evidence of those who came before you. Unworthy, perhaps, or
unwilling or unknowing. Not like you, sweetling. No, not at all
like you. They did not have your gleaming gemstone eyes, they
did not have your gold-encrusted frame. They did not have your
heart.. Your central, animating will, ready to grasp, to hold, to
steer the very walls of this place.

241
Do you hear us sweetling? Not our voices, our whispers, no, but
our movement. In the dark, just out of sight. The endless masses
of us. Do you see? Do you see the throne that rises before you
like the sun rises on the horizon? It is waiting for you, best
beloved. It is where you belong.

It is a magnificent seat, is it not? Yes, perhaps a bit large, but

that only serves to add scale. Behold the varnished wood, still
gleaming after all these years. Behold, the velvet pillow, the fuzz
that would tickle lesser fingers - and bottoms - than yours. The
color is a royal purple, we assure you. And mind not any stains
or dust that come with time. Behold the gentle carvings, putting
bone in wood and carved in such elegant and evocative manner.

Seat yourself, best beloved, and look out: behold the lights of
torches and lanterns. See now, the pilgrims who come. You
recognise Gilish, of course, their smooth skin still gleaming as it
catches the light. They are showing, perhaps, a little discomfort -
so far from comforting water. And it is hard to read their
reptilian expression, but surely they are happy for you, to see
you seated and settled and about to receive your accolades.

See here, Bertrand the Bookworm: an undulating creature as tall

as a man or taller still, moving on many legs, glowing from
inside with a phosphorescent light to help illuminate the dark.
A creature of wisdom and knowledge and oh, so many words. If
you do not know them yet, rest assured that you will.

242
Behold the Mourner: she who has cried so many tears, all of
them for you, best beloved. She comes here now and she sees
you, and we know her heart rejoices. Her tears will be of joy,
now, washing over the rivulets and grooves that her grief has
dug. Perhaps there will be journeys and adventures for her still,
now that she knows your fate.

The Mourner is not the only undead in the procession; behold

the many corpses who wander, stiffly, their bodies flawed. Not
like you, best beloved. Oh, no. Not like you. Shabbier, their
silks, a Rougshod Carcass leading the group, followed by a
Sibilant Vision, their gems less lustrous. And finally, the Patient
Deceased. They waited so long. They traveled so far. And you are
here now. You have made your choice, and they will witness it.

A slug likewise moves with strange motion, leaving a slimy trail,

flanked by two armored beetles, weapons at their side. A gentle
parade. They are cautious; they have come so far. But they are
here to witness you, as well. Oh, best beloved, is it not grand?

Witness the proliferation of spiders lowering themselves from

the ceiling, best beloved. Note, in particular, the two very large
ones draped in shining strands and orbs of web, denoting their
noble status. That one is La Huitième. It is a great honor that
they choose to come visit you now, here. But of course, they
would. Everyone has heard of you, best beloved. Everyone is
excited that you have come here, now, for this.

243
These, and so many more. Can you hear their voices, best
beloved, as they speak to you, speak to one another? Caught in
wonder, here in the deepest dark. Raise your eyes up, where
seams of minerals in the stone ceiling glitter and reflect the fire
and lamplight, like a distant starlit sky. See how we cling to the
stalactites, and we converge, slithering through cracks, crawling
along the stone, aching to be close to you, our sweetling.

The first of us fall down, land in your lap, and we know you can
hear us sing, as we can hear you now. Be not afraid, best beloved.
This is a moment of jubilation.

You can feel it in your bones, can’t you, best beloved - as we fall,
as we land, as we crawl across your body. You have no flesh, best
beloved, but that is alright. We will be your flesh. We will come
together, and twine ourselves against your skin and bracelets
alike. Cover your head. Cover your chest. Become your new and
and throbbing heart, a mass of maggots central in the cavity in
your chest…
We will be as one, best beloved. We will be a part of all of you,
and as you raise your fingers, you will feel us, as we warm your
body and soul alike.

You never need be alone again.

You have become the Exquisite Corpse of Maggot’s Keep.

The End.

244
To Steel Yourself and Press on - Quinn Welsh-WIlson

Though your jaw throbs, your feet begin to slap against the cold
cave floor toward the promise of an answer. The heavy
uncertainty clinging to the back of your palate begins to thin
and give way to other musings over the dull, squelching strikes
of your footfalls in the encroaching dark. Through your throat
something begins to ascend, dancing around your uvula in its
flight to swell your cheeks and push through your lips. Balking,
you are haunted by the sense that your eyes should sting and go
bleary as they participate in this bodily ritual. Your eyes do not
cloud, however, and an orb of blue light passes from somewhere
inside of you hovers and spills out cool illumination through the
cave system.

The light-thing takes a moment to regard you. You know its

name to be Hope.

Hope drives forward and beckons you along the twisting and
knotted paths, deeper toward your shared goal. Finally, passages
give way to a vast space. Too vast for Hope to fill. It floats
gently, deeper into the darkness. A rough and wrinkled lip of
earth reaches up in the room, a raised, natural bowl filled with
glass-still water. Hope rises and touches a stalactite which
spirals from the cave’s roof toward the pool. The creature of
light changes state faster than you can comprehend into a
clinging wetness, pooling bulbous at the end of the stalactite.

245
Glowing Orb Puke
Hope drops into the pool and on the other end of the raised
pool, three figures become visible to you.

On the left, a small and childlike form. The light pouring from
the pool shines in their eyes, which shimmer full of stars. An
eager smile paints their face and juvenile nubs of antlers rise
into their nest of messy hair. In the center is a large form, round
and regal. Swaddled in the finest silks, their bullfrog frame dips
toward the water and warmth croaks out from their neck. To
the right is someone wrapped from toe to neck in a regal armor
of living, jewel-like beetle carapace. Their stern face is framed by
a circlet of roots spun together in their dawnlight hair.

In a voice unified the three figures speak out to you, “What

knowledge do you seek?” Your past– the things you have
forgotten, you respond.

In acknowledgment, the oracles begin a hum, a distinct and

haunting frequency emitting from each of their throats. The
light of Hope in the pool ahead of you begins to warp and
pulsate in an undulating cacophony of color. The fawn-child
bids you drink from the pool, maintaining their hum as they
speak.

You approach and you kneel, gazing into the pool as each color
whips across your face. You cup your withered hands and dip
them in, then raise them to your lips. The water moves around
your cheeks and tongue, forceful and tasteless. You stand again
and are knocked off your feet, but you do not strike the ground.

247
Three Oracles
You seem to pass through the floor until you stand as a mirror
to your previous position, your feet anchored to the underside
of the cave floor. You realize you are no longer in the chamber.

You look down to see a sheet of blue fabric clinging to your

torso, both soft and itchy. Your undecorated fingers tug at it to
straighten it where it meets your cream-colored trousers. You
stand at a counter and someone before you taps a rectangular
box laid there. On its front it reads Dinosaur Themepark. You
turn to the tray next to you and punch at the keys laid into it. A
machine gargles up a thin slip of paper. You hand it to the
person across the counter.

You arrive home. Words are returning to you now, names for
things. Phrases like “video rental” and “the End of History.”
Behind the door to your apartment your dog bounds forward,
excited to share in attention and affection. You indulge. You
pack your pipe and smoke it, then pull a vinyl from its
chromatically lettered case.

Before you know it, you’re back behind the counter, adjusting
your shirt, taking rentals and returns. Time seems to pass slowly
here. Inching ever forward. You try to busy yourself, but the
weight of time is so thick and so often the space is abandoned.
You get home and time flies by in a blur and then you’re back
behind the counter again and seconds crawl. Again. And again.
And again. And yet again.

249
You ask why you are being shown this. A heavy and throaty
voice responds, “you wished to know what you forgot, we simply
grant you your wish.” You sputter and ask for confirmation that
this was it.

A crisp tone responds, “yes. By volume this is what you have

forgotten. Vast expanses of time spent dawdling in a box.”

Wasn’t there anyone I cared for, or who cared for me, you ask,
except for the dog? The fawn-child responds, “Surely there was,
but this is what you were eager to forget and so what must be
shared with you first.”

You ask if there’s another way. If you can get to the good parts
or if there’s any way to turn back now. Before an answer can
come to you, you find yourself tugging at your work polo again.
Grabbing another VHS and consulting the computer. Mostly
though, you wait. And wait. And wait. And wait…

250
You place your own skull upon the wall - Lexi Antoku

You do have something just right for it! You are terribly clever.

With a little effort, your hands work your skull loose from your
neck. Is it different in this place? Easier? The connections of
your body had not felt so loose earlier, and the others still don’t
feel so loose now.

As you turn your skull around in your hands, your vision swirls
disorientingly. It is odd to look upon your body, and a dim
rational worry in the back of your mind wonders how you still
control it.

But it doesn’t matter. You need to fix this wall.

You feel around on the wall, one arm extended over your head
and behind, until you locate the empty spot again. You keep
your hand there, using the silhouette of your outreached arm as
a guide, bending your knees just a little to line it up. Perfect.

252
With a little work, you feel the back of your head settling in;
you work yourself into the gap slowly, gently, until you are
settled within the ossuary, the same as any other skull save for
the two gleaming gems in your sockets. You blink them out with
some effort… or at least, the feeling of what you’re doing is
reminiscent of blinking, but without eyelids.

Eventually, the two gems pop out, falling from your face like
tears into your waiting palm. Your vision fades, and you hear the
steps of your body moving away into the darkest, deepest
depths.

We can’t get you back from down there, best beloved, it pains us
to say. We shall never meet again. You, our finest creation, have
unmade yourself, squandered yourself to become part of
something greater rather than rising above it.

We can’t ask you, but we are dying to know: was it worth it?

The End.

253
Place your skull
Continue towards the ticking - Aoife Crow

The gnawing of the unreal bones fades, and you eventually

realize they’ve gone. Here there’s only the endless emptiness.
The lack of pain they inflicted on your mind helps, but the true
lack of anything at all makes it difficult to walk. You’re not even
sure how you are walking, given that your feet now fall on
nothing. You hold onto the sound of the ticking like a drowning
mortal to a lifeline and let it fill your senses, the way you did
with the darkness before.

A shot of raw time jostles your spine, and for a moment you
could never fit into your brain again you see all that was, will be,
and might have been. You reel, tottering back and forth with the
weight of the experience. When you manage to look up again,
you see a woman sitting at a desk. She’s dark skinned and
though her hair shoots from crimson roots it quickly becomes
darker still, beyond any light’s ability to reflect. It’s unclear
where her hair ends and the darkness surrounding her begins,
and you wonder idly to yourself if there is any difference at all.
Her clothing isn’t of any cut or style you’ve ever seen before. It’s
all black, and the outfit communicates without words that she
means business, and she is Final. The source of the ticking, a
massive grandfather clock, sits just off to her left. It’s impossibly
ornate, and a brass plate under a clock face with a dizzying
number of arms reads, “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.”

255
She looks up at you over the tops of her glasses. It’s a look
known to many throughout history, ever since glasses were
invented. The way the look forcefully smacks against your bones,
however, tells you that you sit before the being who invented it.

“You...” Her voice sounds like the sighing of bedrock and the
falling of a blade, “...are late.”

After taking a moment to grapple with your new situation, you

manage to squeak out that you don’t recall making an
appointment.

“Made for you. Everyone’s is. Only at some point your people
started dabbling in necromancy. And when that happens, you
go from someone neatly scheduled to someone that’s all
question marks. Written in pencil.” She pulls a thick, heavy
book from a shelf that hadn’t been there a moment ago and sets
it on her desk to flip through it. “I prefer pen. Like the one on
the desk there, an actual quill. You all improved convenience
past that, sure, but you lost points for style. No, you had a
schedule but then people had to go breaking things and I have
to use....” she grimaces like someone picking up something
unpleasant, “...an eraser.” She sighs and closes the book with a
heavy thud that has more rock and stone in the sound than it
should have.

“But as it happens, I have time...” She glances briefly at the clock

and then back to you. “For a small break.”

256
There is tea. She doesn’t make it, and it doesn’t appear from
nothing like a trick, it simply Is. The cups are in the simplest
possible form, but impossibly perfect in shape. They sit on
reality with a weight that makes it difficult to move your eyes
away from them, but you manage when she hands you a cup. It
smells warm, and it tastes like memories long forgotten, but still
leaves a pleasant mark on the memory where it once was.

“I suppose you can’t be blamed for this one. It’d make my job
much, much easier if people would stop doing this sort of thing.
But...” She smiles, deep and dangerous like an ocean current,
“...maybe a little less interesting.” You sit for a while in silence,
and then nod. You ask if your story was interesting.

“It certainly wasn’t boring. It even repeats. I’ll be seeing you a

number of times, and different each time. Sometimes it’ll be
loud and screaming, other times quiet and peaceful. But it’ll be a
worthy journey. This is just the end of the story for this you.”
She takes off her glasses and sets them on the desk. She gestures
behind herself, to the dark beyond.

“...would you like to see what comes next?”

You consider this a moment, oh finally less-prolonged Beloved,

and then nod assent.

“Well,” she says, “it’s…”

The End.

257
Reject the gesture…. - VVV

You place the ring back with the other items you won, and pull
out the finger of the deceased—tucking it between your own
fingers in an obscene gesture. This infuriates the Vision even
more, an incomprehensible flurry of insults erupting from their
lips. They spit out words you’ve never heard before, bizarre
insults that could only come from someone so garish and
aristocratic in both life and death. They end it in a long wheeze,
their words a nonsensical slurry as they slump back down into
their chair.

“You’ll just have to win the ring back fair and square,” barks the
Carcass.

The Patient Deceased motions you back to your chair. “I hope

that outburst didn’t dissuade you from our little group here;
after all, most games are much better with four than three.”

You sit back down, and think for a moment before responding.
You have the time to spend, may as well break it up by playing
some cards. Hell, you’ve already started thinking of how you're
going to win the next game of Duke’s Corners.

“I’ll be… taking your tongue… next, Vision”

The End.

259
This feels wrong. - Joe Young and VVV

What do you mean, best beloved? This is what we made you for,
what we, you, have been waiting for. Why would you not wish
to stay here with us? And besides, where would you go now? You
are full of us, we revel in the mastery of your form, the artistry
of your step. Long have we waited for you to awaken and turn
your face to us, your most exquisite face.

We love you.

You’re not allowed to leave us again.

Eventually, you come around to our way of thinking. It takes

time, so much time, but there is little we cannot do given
enough time. There are so many things for you to see, best
beloved. The hundred glittering crowns of Nassona. The vellum
tomes that house the entire collected works of Dimitri M’Dirry.
Statuary and jewels and fountains that pump unctuous honey.
So many things.

Don’t worry, best beloved.

We have time.

The End.

260
This Feels Wrong
Lay down in the field of molds… - VVV

You lie down, the velvety mold beneath you cushioning and
sinking under your weight. Your senses extend outwards
through it, up the columns and high vaulted ceilings, through
each small crack in the ashlar stone beneath you. There’s kinship
in this place, a grand vault made for exquisite purpose, now
reduced to a corpse and swallowed by decay. And yet, despite
that, you both are here, still alive.

A voice reaches out through the mycelium.

Do you wish to see us as we once were?

It’s soft and low, and ripples through you. You open your mouth
to speak, but the voice cuts you off before you have the chance
to reply.

Very well then.

Your head begins to spin, the kaleidoscope of mold above you

forming spirals endlessly looping in on themselves. A heartbeat
pulse of color waxes and wanes on the ceiling, the pulsing
attempting to pull you in. You feel the growth beneath you
holding you tight to the floor as best it can.

262
You close your eyes to try and escape the whirlwind. When you
open them again the room has changed. To your surprise, you
can stand up. The entrance to the room is gone, and in its place
are rough stone walls. You wait for the voice to return.

And wait.
And wait.
And wait.

You only have so much patience for waiting and sitting on the
rough ground, so you decide to level it. You take a gem from
your eye, and meticulously carve out the stone. You finish this
arduous task, the voice still absent.

You wait some more.

It takes time before the monotony gets to be too much once

again. With your hands, you carve away at the walls slowly,
chiseling them down impossibly smooth. You notice your body
has grown stronger, the task growing easier as you continue to
work the stone. Satisfied by your work you sit and wait once
more, until you forget the reason you were waiting in the first
place.

Is there more to the world than this?

263
This thought is answered first by your feet and hands, chiseling
away at the walls once again. You form perfect tunnels through
the stone, creating long passageways to traverse and stretch your
legs. You create more rooms, expanding your world to
encompass wide caverns and root-like crawlspaces, all made
with the same patient care. When you are satiated, you come
back to the room where you began, and lay down to rest.

Am I alone here?

Your voice echoes out into the darkness, answered only by

impossibly small things. Spores floating along the drafts from
far above, shimmering beetles crawling across the slick walls of
the cavern. The company is welcome. You brush-stroke spores
across the room, cultivating the larger ones into structure.
When you finish you lay down again, content in your
creation—the waiting isn’t so lonely any more.

I think we’re alive.

You close your eyes and sleep, becoming one with the rhythm of
your creation. Eventually this rest is broken by a presence. They
wade gingerly through you, coming to a rest in your center..

The End.

264
Lay Down in the Field of Molds
Join the Collective flesh in dance - Joe Young and VVV

Oh how wondrous you are, how happy we are to have you.

Please now, let us show you the machinations of this place, the
grand overture of footsteps as we link together our hands in
dance.

Can you feel the way the floor shakes with your presence?

That power behind every move you make?

You were brought here as a resplendent collection of sinew and

bone, and now look at you. You gorgeous being, let us elevate
you to something greater, something with sumptuous purpose: a
truer form of life after death.

The pleasantries dance across you as you move through the other
corpses. Each stride betrays you more, as you become lost in the
sway of the waltz. You hardly notice when they take hold of you,
and when you do notice, you don’t care.

Oh beloved, let us weave you into our great quilt of flesh, so

that you may become greater than the sum of your parts. Let us
take hold of every inch of you, every errant flap of skin, every
scrap of organ, every muscle still binding you together and
create something more from it.

266
Something in you is severed, and all at once we notice the
others. The collective scream of hundreds of voices echoes
within us, the saccharine whispers of the maggots drowned out
by a furious cacophony of death.

It’s become so clear, our purpose. Shards of bone reverberate

outwards from our many fingertips, collapsing onto those
pathetic card players.

In time, we will make our way to the surface. We are

magnificent, and beautiful. In time, all will know of the
exquisite nature of our being.

The End.

267
Take The Stairway to the Very Bottom - Cory Capron

The stairwell curves and bends a couple times before proceeding

steadily straight. After descending for half a kilometer or so, you
notice the ceiling ceases to slope with you. The walls and the
stairs begin to widen gradually, reaching a monumental span,
the ends of which are obscured in a faint dusty mist that grows
denser as you step down further. You see the vague forms of
columns in the distance, pale shapes in the dark like ancient
trees beyond the foggy banks of a great river that carries you on.
You are struck by the sheer enormity of the room you are
entering, still ever-descending into its vast maw.

You should not continue, best beloved. What dwells here is not
for your eyes to see, nor ours.

The maggots fill your skull with slithering anxious voices, but
their warning only compels you forward. Had you wanted only
to see what was for their eyes, what was theirs, you would have
stayed upstairs as one of their playthings. The thought of being a
plaything does not appeal to you. You were in life (so you
maintain) a being born of glorious wealth and luxury, loved by
many, adorned with jewels and finery that would make these
that jangle around your bones seem like copper bangles and the
pale quartz that is so often the plow’s bane in a farmer’s field.
You are of nobility, worthy of knowledge forbidden to lesser
beings, especially mere maggots!

268
Your pace quickens, pawning caution for arrogance. It is only
upon missing a step and nearly stumbling to undoubtably
grievous injury, that you realize how the stairs are also shrinking
as you go, both in length and depth, at a granular rate. Slowly,
the steps deteriorate into a toothy and then smooth ramp. It is
difficult to continue after a point, as the angle of the slope shifts
steeper down towards the mist.

Looking back, you cannot see any longer where the stairs shrunk
into a snaking hall. The prospect of climbing back up nauseates
you slightly, but to continue also disturbs you some, for how
long can you proceed upright, and what awaits you beneath the
chalky haze? The maggots wriggle and protest with each step
you make.

Go back! Best beloved, there are great dangers that await you
here!

You turn again and consider the now quite-substantial and

quite-far-from-appealing climb back. It is, in fact, quite
substantial. It is also very, very unappealing. However, this time
you notice something you could not see clearly before in your
entitlement-stoked charge. On the far-off edge, where the fog
envelops the steps before they can reach the vague columns, lie
several heaps. Squinting, you see that they are desiccated
remains of bodies, humanoid and other, bits of armor like beads
strung on threads of bone. You turn and walk over to the nearest
and see the shell of a long dead beetle suited in cap and
half-plate, still clinging to a halberd, coated almost in a webbing
of some once-corrosive, now long-dried, mucus.

269
You see, best beloved! We do not go into the mist! It is death
even for the dead what stalks the mist!

You raise your head, starting to believe its occupants are right.
Through the mist you can make out that the side of the slope
does eventually drop off into a black abyss, the columns rising
up out of its darkness. One of these columns, quite close to the
edge and the pile of bodies, you can now make out in more
detail. It is not white marble, as you assumed, but rather
organic, glistening opalescent and very slowly undulating like a
massive albino worm. Or…

Yes, best beloved: or a maggot.

The revelation shocks your senses into terror. Comprehension

betrays composure, and without calm your footing fails.
Fleshless ankles roll over one another. Just as you would have
agreeably turned and climbed a dozen vast stairways to escape
this tomb of horrors, you find yourself instead tumbling
backwards, down through the bony pale and enveloping mist.

You flip and roll along the slope until it steepens to an almost
sheer drop, at which point it is not long before you collide with
the floor. You do not come apart upon impact, bones mercifully
not broken nor cast about in all directions, but there is a
smushed, flattened quality to your body, reminiscent of those
displays where an archaeologist has the bones of a specimen laid
out on a table or in a frame. Everything is (more or less) in its
right place, but turned down – laid limp.

270
It takes some time to will your skeletal body back around, to
bring the ribs upright and then get your limbs under you to rise.
On your side, you look around the room. The air is clear here,
the mist floating roughly twenty feet above like a canopy of
clouds. The floor is smooth, dimpled and black, like a massive
piece of soapstone worn by the elements. Before you it stretches
out to an arched opening like a great balcony without any
railings. Beyond the balcony, there are stars.

It is impossible, but what does it matter? There they are. Stars.

Planets. Galaxies. At the bottom of the world, you find a
universe.

We are going to die, best beloved. You have brought us to our

doom.

“Nonsense,” you tell the maggots as you step out onto the
balcony. “How could such beauty be our doom?”

You have brought us to a time as much as a place.

To where ceases our sweet youth.

To the silencing of revelry.

Too soon, to the time where we go to end,

and for something else to take our place.

“What do you mean, something else?”

271
And in that moment, the universe before you seems to blink.

All the stars, the planets and galaxies – they are all just
glimmers shifting in the countless lenses of its massive insect
eyes as the unfathomable head rotates back and forth. Its glassy
onion-skin wings begin to flap, and sweeping gusts throw the
mist back up the stairwell behind you, and all the massive
maggot columns begin to quiver and spasm. As the flapping
quickens you hear their buzzing in the hollows of your bones,
like the ghosts of their former marrow wailing. That sound –
hell’s orchestra, or perhaps the envy of hell– turns your limbs to
rubber, calcium to waxy tallow. You melt down to your knees,
powerless before the rising colossus, rendered an impotent
puddle before it even spews forth its acidic enzymes.

To soon, we go to end!

272
Filled with uncertainty and dread, head off into the
places beyond alone - Quinn Welsh-WIlson

Burbling and roiling fear, a shaking doubt rolls through your

bones and what meager flesh clings to them. It bubbles in your
throat and twitches in your feet. You open your mouth to
respond, but your jaw hangs slack as The Mourner continues to
hold out her hand. It is your feet, beloved, and not your tongue
that answers her, as you turn on your heels and make your way
to burst through the other exit to the room. Your jewels jangle
and chime arrhythmically, a staccato song of all these things
overwhelming you. Choice after choice after choice and
uncertainty after uncertainty after uncertainty.

You wind your way through twisting hallways until you find
yourself outside on salty ground stretching out to touch the lake
once again. You maintain your speed along this expanse and
begin to find your pace properly, a rising and falling of your
arms and legs– a bellows-pumping of your stride fills your chest
and you find yourself beginning to smile. A smile!

That shaking that filled you in the Mourner’s chamber has gone
from you, and now with salt wind blowing against your skin you
find yourself once again joyously steady. Perhaps you could do
this all day! Stride and pump your legs against the lakefront,
expelling everything you ever doubted into footprints on rock
and sand. You look out to the lake, its nigh-endless surface
disturbed and churning and rushing to meet your confident
pace.

273
You try to make sense of what this could mean. A hello? A
challenge? An invitation to a friendly race? A warning? You
come to no conclusion before the surface of the water breaks
and a magnificent creature arcs toward you. Its width
overwhelms, an arc of a mouth spreading across the length of
what faces you, which seems to be miles long. Its body is a dark,
spotted mass with dots and spirals blinking across its surface.
You would take it for the night sky itself had it not just leapt, in
all its glory, from the waters of the lake. A dorsal fin cuts across
the distance between the lake shore and you like a sidereal
blade. Ventral fins seem to spin, propelling it forward. It rushes
toward you with a great groaning.

The beast hits the shore, sending sandy debris flying about. You
lose your footing and seem to hang impossibly in the air as this
thing maintains its forward momentum, the void of its mouth
hurtling ever closer until the inevitable occurs.

You careen into the warm, sticky mass of the creature’s cheek.
Surprisingly soft, you bounce off the surface. You struggle to
orient yourself, beloved, as you spin haunch over head over
haunch again. You are propelled ever faster until you find
yourself passing beyond the creature’s maw into the darkness
beyond.

You brace for impact.

“Manfall ho!” A gruff voice breaks into your ears through the
whistling of the warm, damp wind. You strike against something
significantly less pillowy than the mass you flew into when you

274
entered the creature’s mouth, and significantly less rigid than
you feared. You struggle to sit up a moment, struggling against
what broke your fall. You get your head out from the mess of
folds and strange light floods your eyes, illuminating an
enormous beige sheet in which you have become entangled.
Warped wooden boards stretch out below you, on what appears
to be the roof of a severely weather-beaten building, in a sea of
similar buildings twisting into the distance. Two broad figures
look down to you from above. One, whose auburn hair plays in
tangles across her face, reaches out a scarred hand toward you.

“We don’t get so many visitors this time of year, you know,” she
says with a grin as you grasp her warm hand. You begin to let
words flow out about how you hadn’t exactly intended to visit,
and where was this anyway, and hey, come to think of it, why
are you on top of a building in some great speckled beast’s belly?

The other figure, adorned in the most fantastically and brightly

patterned fisherman’s trousers you've ever seen, sets a steadying
hand on your shoulder and proffers a ceramic flask. “Drink
first,” he says, “it’ll calm your nerves, and then we can answer all
your questions and maybe you can answer some of ours.” The
pair lead you downstairs into a cozy room full of tattered red
drapings trimmed in gold and a table as warped as the wood of
the roof above you. You sit at the table and the drink begins to
warmly work its way through your gut and into a blossom of
heat on your face.

The auburn-haired woman introduces herself as Imogen and the

man in the wonderful pants as Tobrius. They take turns

275
convivially answering your questions. Nobody seeks to visit
here, for starters. This is the town of Gastros and that speckled
beast is the Whale Shark of the Cosmos. You have more
questions about this town, and especially about this Whale
Shark of the Cosmos. They explain that every so often someone
gets swallowed up by the beast, but fortunately there’s actually
quite a robust ecosystem down here with trees and plants and
animals- the whole kit and caboodle, really. Aside from that,
nobody here in the village seems to know much about the
nature of the Whale Shark itself.

They turn questions toward you, with a great and genuine

curiosity about who you are and what brought you here. You
recount your journey to this point, with all its lumps and
mysteries. Imogen and Tobrius sit on the edges of their seats and
thank you heartily when you finish.

With questions and stories exchanged, you retire for the

evening. The next day holds many introductions for you, to the
other inhabitants of Gastros and to the way of life in the strange
town. Most of the village looks happy at your joining the
community, and all are willing to help you find your feet
however they are able. None here seem to have any inkling as to
how they might escape the belly of the Whale Shark of the
Cosmos. Indeed, surprisingly few of them even seem all that
concerned with escaping.

You quickly find yourself adjusting to the rhythms of the

day-to-day affairs here. Rising in the morning, with the rising of
the strange orb of red-orange light on the distant walls of the

276
Whale Shark’s stomach, setting about work on the community
farm, tending to the animals, lounging and laughing in the
houses of your neighbors. Before long, you find that you stray to
the edges of town less and less, searching for ways out of Gastros
less and less with each passing week. After all, things are calm
here. The people you like are here. You like the way the soil spills
between your fingers and the smell of the farm after watering.

One day after several harvests have passed, you hear Imogen call
out across the town, “Manfall ho!” You scramble into the streets,
looking up, trying to find the shape of the falling figure. You
climb as high as you can, asking for a sheet on your way up. You
toss one end of the sheet to Imogen and together you manage to
align yourselves to safely catch the falling stranger. They
scramble out a confused mess and look to you for guidance. You
gladly take them downstairs and answer all their questions. You
feed them and show them to a bed. They have many people to
meet tomorrow.

The End.

277
Jump for the Rope - Jan Martin

Oh Precious, you are full of hubris, aren't you? You jump and try
to catch the end of the rope, but your body is too dry, too light,
too without mass, beloved.

The moment your feet leave the ground, the wind takes you
down the tunnel. It catches your dried skin like a sail until you
crash into the scaffolding at the first channel. The force of it
rattles the supports and they start to wobble. Dazed and badly
hurt, you cling to your arm, which is hanging from its socket by
a few pieces of flesh.

You try fruitlessly to push it back into the socket but find that
the socket itself has shattered. Annoyed, you rip the arm off the
dangling bits of flesh and throw it onto the scaffolding you're
standing on.

This was the last straw, dear one, the last the scaffolding could
manage. The force of your arm landing knocks a single support
loose, and the entire structure comes crashing down. Miles and
miles of scaffolding collapse in the channel, with you in it.

What remains of your body is bruised, battered, bludgeoned,

impaled. For a time, there is silence. Until eventually the light
fades from inside you, and you are no more.

The End.

278
Attempt to Bluff your way to Victory - Jan Martin

You gently emulate slamming down a fist while your other hand
pushes everything you've got forward. The Sibilant Vision gasps
like air out of a paper bag, a sound that seems familiar somehow.
A forgotten memory of the sound tries to claw its way to the
front of your mind, but crumbles into ash.

The Deceased Patient lets out an unsettling hum while betting it

all. Its face pulls back in what could be a sneer if there were
enough features left on its face. You weren't expecting that, but
it's not over yet, that could have been a bluff.

The Roughshod Corpse looks around, its slack jaw growing

slacker until the ligament that was clinging on fails. Its jaw falls
to the table with a loud clack as it drops its cards facedown,
then starts to fumble trying to put it back on.

The Deceased Patient points a long finger at you and whispers,

"it looks like it's just you and me." A few moments pass and your
bejeweled face stares at the card you are about to flip. You will
them to flip in your favor, then reach out with your boney hand
to reveal the 3 of Flames.

The Deceased Patient erupts into a slow, guttural laughter as he

reaches out and sweeps all his winnings into one massive pile.
He drops his cards to reveal a 5 of Serfs and 6 of Lords, the
winning hand by a large margin compared to your high card.

280
The laughter grows and grows, both in volume and intensity, so
much so that you become uneasy. Soon the others join in the
laughter, the Roughshod Corpse doing so by holding its jaw up
with its hand. The more they laugh, the more you feel your skin
trying to free itself from your bones.

Something feels wrong.

Their laughter twists into something you’ve never heard before.

An unnatural sound, brittle, staggered, repeating rapidly.
Darkness starts to close in on you as the laughs encompass your
every thought. The cards fade out of memory. The table, the
chairs, your precious jewels are all gone.

Then, in an instant, you feel weightless and the sound of their

twisted laughter begins to grow faint. Soon it's gone altogether,
and all that remains is a soft whooshing and flapping of tattered
fabric that clings to you.

You realize now that you're falling. Just a moment ago you were
seated on a shining throne surrounded by maniacal laughter.
The sound of whooshing seems to change ever so slightly, and
you find yourself contemplating if the walls have changed.

281
Dearest one, if only you knew sooner what was happening.

If only you understood what was really going on at the table.

You were so consumed with the games you failed to notice it

wasn't a game at all, but a series of battles.

You fought for your life and failed, precious.

Now, your thoughts come to halt when suddenly you explode

into a mass of well-dried chunks of rotted organs and shards of
brittle bone. They scatter on the cavern floor, and you never
hear anything again.

You are finally at rest, having died your last death.

The End.

282
Attempt to Introduce a Rule that was Forgotten
- Jan Martin

You feel no boon coming from the cards lying face down and
decide to make a ridiculous play, invent a new rule, and hope
the others believe it. Brushing a worm off your chest you reach
down, push half your winnings to the center, and exclaim, "I am
invoking the Captain's Lunch." The Roughshod Corpse stares at
you with their head at an angle, chin jutting out towards you.
Everyone is silently watching and waiting for you.

"The Captain's Lunch lets you bet half your total winnings to
draw a new pair of cards." The Sibilant Vision lets out an
exasperated groan and looks as they are going to speak, but the
Deceased Patient cuts them off.

"That's right, I remember now, I'll invoke the Captain's Lunch as

well." They push half their winnings to the center, and you deal
both of you new cards. The moment before examining them
seems to last for hours, maybe days. One corpse lets out a long
yawn while another idly picks at a beetle half-burrowed into its
neck. At last, you have the courage to check your cards. The 9 of
Lords and the 6 of Jackals! You can't believe it, you could
certainly win with two pairs.

You look at the Deceased Patient, who has been quiet. They stare
at their cards, drawing a turgid finger along the edges. Their

283
nonchalance has you confident you have a chance at winning
and you finally flip the last card over to reveal the 3 of Flames.

Knowing you've won and feeling whimsical, you wave your hand
over your cards to add a little playful flare. You've drawn
attention to yourself before, but something feels a little off. The
corpses are staring at you, motionless and unresponsive. Feeling
curious, you reach out to the Sibilant Vision and tap it on the
shoulder.

It immediately starts shrieking and the other corpses join. Their

collective shrieking creates a chord that undulates in a way that
disturbs you. None of them are moving other than the shrieking,
and after you try tapping them again nothing changes. There's
no sign the noise will come to an end, so you take your winnings
and wander off, popping gems into crevices in yourself as you
go.

It takes you many hours to walk far enough for the echoing
shrieks not to reach you any longer. You're not sure when or if
they will ever stop, but you're glad not to hear them any longer.
Alone again in the darkness, you can't help but feel like you
might have preferred to stay at the table. Feeling a heavy sense
of regret, you turn around and head back. As you walk you
notice the shrieking has stopped.

You feel a little silly now and pick up the pace. They were simply
reacting to the amazing win you pulled out. You'll apologize and
sit down for another game when you get there. But when you
return, you find nothing there but an empty mushroom grove.

284
You feel as though you took a wrong turn somewhere and
backtrack, taking another route through the caverns. Soon
you're at another mushroom grove. Turn after turn and you find
yourself in a mushroom grove. For days you wander through the
caverns until finally you realize you're trapped in some kind of
loop. You sit down in a mushroom grove and weep dust.

This is an unfortunate fate, darling, no glory in it at all, but it

seems you're stuck. You drift to sleep in a mushroom grove, only
to awake completely overgrown with mushrooms. You try to get
up, but you’re pinned. You can barely move at all, just the tip of
your toes and your jaw. Jerking your toe around, you clack your
jaw open and closed to try and wriggle yourself loose, but it
fails, you make no progress. One thing you do manage to do,
dearest, is disturb a mushroom that releases a cloud of
effervescent spores.

A deep fatigue overtakes you and sleep seems imminent. The

last thing you see before you drift asleep is the statuesque figure
of one of the mushrooms towering above you. When you finally
awake hours later, you're completely overgrown with
mushrooms and can no longer see. No matter how much you
struggle, it doesn't seem to matter. By that same evening, you're
more mushroom than corpse. Your fate isn't death, precious, but
what remains of your body will soon be gone. Your
consciousness will exist within the mushroom colony, until
someday you're completely assimilated.

The End.

285
Spot something at the bottom of the river. Dive down
to it. - Lydia Brunk and Jules Verne

Out of the corner of your eye, something glittering appears at

the bottom of the riverbed, like a concave mirror. You kick
swiftly but laboriously down through the dense, salty water
until you reach it.

The shimmering barrier is thin as film. Your hand and head

quickly punch through it, abruptly reorienting your perspective.
Instead of plunging down headfirst through a hole, you are
bursting up through the surface of an underground sea, your
phalanges digging into the soft sand of the shoreline to keep the
waves from pulling you away. Your legs dangle down into the
water below.

Cherished one, you are aware that there are things beyond death
in these depths, and you must understand there are things
beyond time or space, beyond logic or causality. You are
venturing beyond the limits of our power, into dreams or into
dust.

You dig further into the sand, and pull yourself entirely out of
the hole, up onto the sand. Your trip through the river has
washed you clean of mud and clinging flesh, and you stand in
your naked bones upon the shore and survey your surroundings.

You must turn back, best beloved! This is not a place for you or
I. Most exalted, we are weak - we cannot -

286
The shore, which is very much indented, consists of a beautiful,
soft golden sand, mixed with small shells, the long-deserted
home of some of the creatures of a past age. The waves break
incessantly—and with a peculiarly sonorous murmur, to be
found in underground localities.

You are alone. There is a message, of sorts, but no messenger to

carry it to you. You walk along the shore, into a thick, dense
forest of gigantic mushrooms. You know, as if from some prior
study, that the lycoperdon giganteum reaches nine feet in
circumference, and these are formed of the same mold, simply
forty feet high, throwing a gloomy and mystic darkness over
you.

You pass through this forest to find new wonders beyond - the
common humble trees of Mother Earth, of an exorbitant and
phenomenal size: lycopods a hundred feet high, flowering ferns
as tall as pines, gigantic grasses!

Having rested a bit, you stand, and walk suddenly into the
ocean, as if not entirely of your own volition. You spend some
days there, walking calmly below the sea as if following some
predetermined path. An electric moment passes through you,
and suddenly you seize from the water around you a specimen
of fish, which would otherwise have passed you by quite
unremarked.

287
The fish has a flat head, round body, and the lower extremities
are covered with bony scales; its mouth is wholly without teeth,
the pectoral fins, whichare highly developed, sprout directly
from the body, which properly speaking has no tail. The animal
certainly belongs to the order in which naturalists class the
sturgeon, but it differs from that fish in many essential
particulars.

Rising back up out of the underground lake, the curious

skeleton creature treads mechanically over the further bones of
prehistoric things, gripped by some inexorable compulsion. It
had at one point been decked out in all manner of finery, but is
now bare, in a manner not even a journey through land and sea
can explain. Below the thing’s feet lie innumerable shells of
every shape and size—once the dwelling place of animals of
every period of creation. Some enormous shells—carapaces
(turtle and tortoise species) the diameter of which exceed
fifteen feet.

They had in past ages belonged to those gigantic Glyptodons of

the Pliocene period, of which the modern turtle is but a minute
specimen. In addition, the whole soil is covered by a vast
quantity of stony relics, having the appearance of flints worn by
the action of the waves, and lying in successive layers one above
the other. In past ages the sea must have covered the whole
district. Upon the scattered rocks, now lying far beyond its
reach, the mighty waves of ages have left evident marks of their
passage.

288
- Please access chapter 35 of Jules Verne’s public domain
book, Journey to the Center of the Earth, for the rest of
this ending. If you are reading this on a digital
platform, a copy of the book can be found at Project
Gutenberg here

[Link]
htm#CHAPTER_35

289
Walk Further Down the Stairwell - Cory Capron

The stairwell curves and bends a couple times before proceeding

steadily straight. After descending for half a kilometer or so, you
notice the ceiling ceases to slope with you, and the walls and the
stairs begin to widen gradually, reaching a monumental span,
the ends of which are obscured in a faint dusty mist that grows
denser the further you step down. You see the vague forms of
columns in the distance, pale shapes in the dark like ancient
trees beyond the foggy banks of a great river that carries you on.
You are struck by the sheer enormity of the room you are
entering, still ever descending into its vast maw.

You should not continue, best beloved. What dwells here is not
for your eyes to see, nor ours.

The maggots fill your skull with slithering anxious voices, but
their warning only compels you forward. Had you wanted only
to see what was for their eyes, what was theirs, you would have
stayed upstairs as one of their playthings. The thought of being a
plaything does not appeal to you. You were in life (so you
maintain) a being born of glorious wealth and luxury, loved by
many, adorned with jewels and finery that would make these
that jangle around your bones seem like copper bangles and that
pale quartz that is so often the plow’s bane in a farmer’s field.
You are of nobility, worthy of knowledge forbidden to lesser
beings, especially mere maggots!

Your pace quickens, pawning caution for arrogance. It is only

upon missing a step, and nearly stumbling to undoubtable

290
grievous injury, that you realize how the stairs are also shrinking
as you go, both in length and depth, at a granular rate. Slowly,
the steps deteriorate into a toothy and then smooth, steady
ramp. It is difficult to continue after a point, as the angle of the
slope too, very slightly, begins to shift steeper down towards the
mist.

Looking back, you cannot see any longer where the stairs shrink
into a snaking hall. The prospect of climbing back up all those
steps nauseates you slightly, but to continue also disturbs you
some, for how long can you proceed upright, and what awaits
you beneath the chalky haze? The maggots wriggle and protest
with each step you make.

Go back! Best beloved, there are great dangers that await you
here!

You turn again and consider the now quite-substantial and

quite-far-from-appealing climb back. It is, in fact, quite
substantial. It is also very, very unappealing. However, this time
you notice something you could not see before in your
entitlement-stoked charge. On the far-off edge, where the fog
envelops the steps before they can reach the vague columns, lie
several heaps. Squinting, you see that they are desiccated
remains of bodies, humanoid and other, bits of armor like beads
strung on threads of bone. You turn and walk over to the nearest
and see the shell of a long-dead beetle suited in cap and
half-plate, still clinging to a halberd coated almost in a webbing
of some once-corrosive, now long dried, mucus.

291
You see, best beloved! We do not go into the mist! It is death
even for the dead what stalk the mist!

You raise your head, starting to believe its occupants are right.
Through the mist you can make out that the side of the slope
does eventually drop off into a black abyss, the columns rising
up out of its darkness. One of these columns, quite close to the
edge and the pile of bodies, you can now make out in more
detail. It is not white marble, as you assumed, but rather
organic, glistening opalescent and very slowly undulating like a
massive albino worm. Or…

Yes, best beloved: or a maggot.

The revelation shocks your senses into terror. Comprehension

betrays composure, and without calm your footing fails.
Fleshless ankles roll over one another. Just as you would have
agreeably turned and climbed a dozen vast stairways to escape
this tomb of horrors, you find yourself instead tumbling
backwards, down through the bony pale and farinaceous mist.

You flip and roll along the slope until it steepens to an almost
sheer drop, at which point it is not long before you collide with
the floor. You do not come apart upon impact, bones mercifully
not broken nor cast about in all directions, but there is a
smushed, flattened quality to your body, reminiscent of those
displays where an archaeologist has the bones of a specimen laid
out on a table or in a frame; everything is (more or less) in its
right place, but turned down–laid limp.

292
It takes some time to will your skeletal body back around, to
bring the ribs aright, and then get your limbs under you to rise.
On your side, you look around the room. The air is clear here,
the mist floating roughly twenty feet above like a canopy of
clouds. The floor is smooth, dimpled and black, like a massive
piece of soapstone worn by the elements. Before you it stretches
out to an arched opening, like a great balcony without any
railings. Beyond the balcony, there are stars.

It is impossible, but what does it matter? There they are. Stars.

Planets. Galaxies. At the bottom of the world, you find a
universe.

We are going to die, best beloved. You have brought us to our

doom.

“Nonsense,” you tell the maggots as you step out onto the
balcony. “How could such beauty be our doom?”

You have brought us to a time as much as a place.

To where ceases our sweet youth.

To the silencing of revelry.

Too soon, to the time where we go to end,

and for something else to take our place.

“What do you mean, something else?”

293
And in that moment, the universe before you seems to blink.

All the stars, the planets and galaxies – they are all just
glimmers shifting in the countless lenses of its massive insect
eyes as the unfathomable head rotates back and forth. Its glassy
onion-skin wings begin to flap, and sweeping gusts throw the
mist back up the stairwell behind you, and all the massive
maggot columns begin to quiver and spasm. As the flapping
quickens, you hear their buzzing in the hollows of your bones,
like the ghosts of their former marrow wailing. That
sound–hell’s orchestra, or perhaps the envy of hell–turns your
limbs to rubber, calcium to waxy tallow. You melt down to your
knees, powerless before the rising colossus, rendered an
impotent puddle before it even spews forth its acidic enzymes.

To soon, we go to end!

294
 Recall Your Past Life for the Players at the Table -
Gabriel Komisar

“I was-” your voice creaks. And beloved, we have had enough.

We burst through the floorboards of the Oubliette.

“I was an actor!” you proclaim in that petulant voice you gave

yourself, not once thinking of stopping. You clamber your
unfortunate way over the chair and onto the game table. “No, I
was a juggler!” We are overturning anything, everything, we are
rising to plug your mouth, beloved.

“No, I was a fisher! The best on my island!”

We will smother you until you speak no more of the past.

“No, I was a child in the woods with my grandparents!”

Shut up, Best Beloved.

“Not again,” The Sibilant Vision sighs as we overtake our sitting

room like rising water, “You’re infants, all of you, absolute-” and
then she is within us. But you, beloved. You keep to your table,
tossing chips and cards at us even as we rise to meet you.

“I was a person! I was a person!”

295
You were a disgusting morass of meats and tissues, beloved. The
creature you once were is beneath contempt. We lied to you,
beloved. None howled with misery when you died. Not so much
as we howled with delight at your arrival. From the moment we
met we knew you were the one.

Not anymore. Something foul still sleeps in you. We must rip it

out.

No one truly loved you up there. We made you beloved, Best

Beloved.

“I don’t want to be beloved anymore!” you screech, daring to

brandish a chair, a chair! At us!

“I want a name! I want to be called-”

And then we crest over you and come down, and at last you are
silent.

The sounds we make are so far from any you could understand,
but know that as we silence you, 187,000 of us breathe a sigh of
relief.

We will start again tomorrow. You will be more exquisite next

time.

The End.

296
Play with the Beast - Nychelle Schneider

You unwrap one of the ornate necklaces from around your ribs
and dangle it before the newly unwrapped creature.

“I still do not understand your purpose in being given to me.

This is cause for thought, as purpose is another human process
to calculate the world around them. What do you think
_______?”

This time, _______ does not respond but cleans itself, leaving
you to ponder the meaning of this journey and your experiences
thus far. This pondering has taken time enough for the beast to
curl up in your lap and rest while you lament. The fur warms
your bones, as does the companionship.

“I believe the purpose of you, beastie, was to help me discover

my purpose in the great web of things as the spiders mentioned.
To find my place in the grander scheme of things. To cast my
own web and tether those things closest to myself,” you say out
loud as you find yourself stroking the beast on your lap.

“I lived a humanistic life before. Yet now I am free to explore

new expressions of living, free of worldly tethers trapping me to
the realm of reality–what webs of reality are left?
Consciousness? Is that different from sentient thought? What of
dreams and the subconscious? Can I still have dreams?”

A deep, vibrating purr gently interrupts your stream of thought.

298
“Yes. I can still dream, little one. That is part of my purpose, to
explore the dreams of others as I bonewalk. To partake in the
conscious stream that flows from others in this great web. I
believe Emile wanted me to feel the thrum of the threads, the
weave of many realities intersecting to create the web of all
dimensions.”

Another soft mew.

“Mmmm, a fine point you make _______. How do we know

which reality we are existing in at this moment? I think that is
part of the exploration. What are we experiencing? Are they
humanistic, such as emotions? Or are they more primal and
permeating, such as subconscious thought?

A firm mew this time.

“That is a fair assumption. I am thinking of this too deeply

before exploring the adventure and web for myself,
presumptuous even for a corpse.”

The kitten looks up at you with a judgmental glance.

“Oh come now, just because you aren’t dead doesn’t mean you
can’t let me ruminate on myself being dead.”

The kitten elicits a mew that sorta sounds like a yawn but
reveals fangs, which give slight and brief discomfort.

299
“My apologies, I did not take into account, beastie, that you are
the opposite of myself in having so many lives that you are quite
immortal. What does that feel like? Oh right, you were just
recently woven by the spiders.”

Another judgmental glance.

“Are not beasts such as yourself woven? You were born blind
before the cocoon? Very interesting. So before I unwrapped you,
all of your life was experienced through sounds alone?

A soft mew.

“You wish for me to experience this by closing my eyes?”

At this, you remove the green jewels left in your eye sockets to
experience the sensation. At first you don’t hear more beyond
yourself and your beast, but soon you begin to hear whispers of
wind in the cavern, the push and pull it has on your bones as it
changes pressures in the tunnels with its movement. The soft
drip of water falling from the stalactites above to the pools
below. Your ability to feel sensations expands as you sit quietly
for a few minutes, indulging the experience before placing the
gems back into their sockets.

“Even small experiences with only a few senses magnifies the

expression of said experience. You must have already learned
and experienced so much, little beastie. I feel…more connected
with our surroundings now, one might even call it grounded.

300
The thread of this web clearly felt and explored. You are truly
wise for suggesting the action.”

To which the beast gives a satisfactory mew and nod.

________ jumps down from your lap to mew and peers down
one of the tunnels in the cavern. The little beast looks back to
you to see if you are joining.

“Shall we begin exploring the threads of the realities before us,

little beastie? I wonder what dangers lie before us, as well as
what illuminations. Shall we begin by exploring morality or
mortality?”

A mew in response from _______ as they jump up to sit on your

worn shoulder.

“Catnip! You want us to explore enlightened experience over

what humanity deems the holy code for humanistic conduct?
You’ve only just recently hatched… Nevermind, this is a fine
suggestion. I have not explored what mycelium would provide to
me in death yet, myself. We shall adventure to discover catnip
and mushrooms! I just so happen to know of a hollow I used to
walk through while alive where the most beautiful mycelium
grew. There has to be catnip nearby, for what is giving one
dreams without providing for another? The dreams I had while
there were…”

The End.

301
The Exquisite Corpse In Maggots’ Keep

Brought to you by
Sandy Pug Games

Artist
JN Butler

Editor
Auden James

Creator
Gabriel Komisar

Producer
Nem

Writing Team
Nychelle Schneider
Cory Capron
Lydia Brunk
Jan Martin
Quinn Welsh-Wilson
VVV
Joe Young
Aoife Crow
Lexi Antoku
JR Zambrano
Alvhild Sagadatter

303
 This project was made possible thanks to our backers on
Kickstarter

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夏谷実
 This project was made possible through the funding of our
backers on Kickstarter:

Exquisite Corpse is a method by which a collection of words or

images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a
composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being
allowed to see only the end of what the previous person
contributed.

THE EXQUISITE CORPSE IN MAGGOTS' KEEP is a

full-length, illustrated gamebook in which you play a beautiful
skeleton festooned in jewelry newly awakened inside a deep,
mysterious cavern. On your adventures you’ll travel to
underground cities, catacombs, spires, and gambling parlors all
while meeting fish-people, legislative crabs, and insects with
dubious goals. The choices you make on this adventure will
weave from writer to writer, each with their own characters,
decision paths, and endings.

Created by the Sandy Pug Co-Op

E Plurubus Pug