Atzi stared in horror at the blood-soaked room. The gore seemed to extend even further beyond the confines, blood spilling into two side rooms, and also over a set of stone stairs leading to the second floor.

  Qun made a strangled gurgling noise.

  "I... I gotta know what happened..." Atzi lifted a clawed foot to cross the threshold.

  "Are you serious?!" Qun grabbed Atzi by her arm. "If she's dead they're gonna assume you did it!"

  "She's obviously been dead for a while. I only arrived today. And you were with me! You can say I didn't do it. Keep watch outside."

  "Fuck. Fuck. If anyone shows up I'm out. I'm not getting tied to this."

  Atzi crept in, closing the door behind her. Her clawed feet made a nauseating squishing noise against the bloody floor. She breathed through her mouth, trying to not inhale the scent of death permeating the home. It was so strong that she could smell it anyway.

  I have to be thorough, I'm never coming back here if I can help it. Or maybe I'll have to come back here. If things reset again, maybe I could arrive early enough to stop this?

  She checked the two side rooms. One was a small kitchen area, and the other a bathroom. There was nothing in them but blood, same as the main room. So Atzi carefully climbed the steps, holding onto the thick stone bannister.

  The stairs led into a short hallway with three doors, left, right, and center. At the very least the doors themselves weren't covered in blood, though blood stained the floor beneath all three.

  Atzi took the knob and opened the door on the left.

  She struggled to comprehend the horror she was seeing. At first the thing on the floor looked like a reddish lump. Meat, perhaps. It was a bat woman, presumably the one she was looking for, in a heap on the floor, all her fur and skin flayed off. Her guts torn from her belly, strewn about. She was surrounded by multiple canvases atop easels or mounted against the wall, all soaked in blood. In the center sat a single easel on which rested a book.

  It was bound in skin and fur.

  As Atzi's gaze landed on it, it was as though something suddenly changed inside her. She felt the same sort of terror as when the undead appeared in Sostra. Fuck. Fuck. She backed up. Did she do this… to herself? Atzi turned her head away. Is this related to the undead? Her corpse- ugh- it doesn't look like it's started to rot. I need Terra. Damnit.

  To distract herself from thinking about it, she looked through the other two rooms.

  The middle door was a small storage that had a cloth over whatever it holds. Not covered in blood. On the right was a blood covered bedroom. A bed, drawers, bathed in blood. But nothing Atzi could see besides what she expected.

  Atzi looked back at the book. She smothered an impulse to investigate it, worried about what would happen if she touched it. What if the thing's trapped? No-one's found the body yet, maybe I have time to go get Terra...

  Atzi quickly ran downstairs and flung open the door, leaping from the doorway onto the mushroom path where she began using the mushrooms to remove the blood from her clawed feet.

  Qun quickly shut the door. "Well?!" she asked.

  "She was up to some really, really fucked up magic in there. I think- I think it killed her." Atzi checked that her scales were clean of blood before moving back to Qun. "One of the people with me is a mage, she's a genius at this stuff. I need to find her." Then she fished out a gold coin and handed it to the fish woman, the implication unsaid.

  "I'm dipping back underwater. Good luck, I guess." Qun inspected the gold coin before eating it.

  -

  Atzi ran all the way back to the public house. Park wasn't there, so Atzi scrambled up the stairs, finding Hemm and Terra chatting.

  "I found something! Where's Marco? He with Xathy?"

  Hemm shook her head. "Ah, no. Xathy went off on her own, and so did Marco. He wanted to look around."

  "What did you figure out?" Terra asked.

  "A few weeks back, around the same time all the fish people went missing, a bat went nuts. Started talking about the old gods. The ones before the Uniter. Apparently painted them, then locked herself up ever since," Atzi rambled. "I went to her home, and there was no response so I went inside and-" Atzi steadied herself. "There was... a lot of blood. A lot of it."

  "Blood magic?" Terra asked.

  "I dunno! Th-there was a book upstairs that made me freak out just seeing it. It felt the same as- as when that spell got cast and all the undead showed up. A-and the book was bound in skin and fur, probably hers. She looked like she died pretty recently." Atzi waved her arms. "Maybe around the same time as when the undead showed up. I- I think she's involved in it!"

  Terra raised her eyebrows slightly. "You think a random person in Cthargictha is involved in the undead attack on Sostra?"

  "I don't know, maybe? It might just be a coincidence, but if she was going on about the banished gods here, maybe she knew something."

  "At the very least, the magic involved sounds fascinating," Terra said. "You should show me the house."

  "Yeah. B-but we gotta be subtle, alright? The last thing we need is getting framed for this… When we know what happened, we'll figure out if it's worth passing along to their leader."

  "I understand the need for discretion in this," said the woman who had worn her regular mage outfit to stand two houses down from the person who'd stolen her book.

  "Hemm, um- if anyone asks, we just went out for a walk. We didn't tell you anything."

  Hemm looked stunned for a moment before saying, "Be safe, you two."

  Atzi nodded. "H-hey, if there's anywhere that's safe to be, it's next to the sage of Sostra, right?"

  "Accurate." Terra turned her head. "Though if I ever tell you to do something, do it immediately."

  "R-right."

  -

  When they reached the house, Terra immediately headed inside without a care for the blood.

  Atzi checked no-one was watching them before following. She closed the door behind them. "Watch the blood, if you track it outside they'll know we were here." The smell wasn't any easier the second time. "The room on the left upstairs."

  "This was definitely the site of powerful blood magic. And death magic," Terra said as she climbed the steps.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "You feel it, yeah? F-feels the same as then..."

  Atzi followed Terra. When the mage opened the door and saw the book and body, she stopped. A look of fear crossed her face.

  "That bad...?" Atzi asked.

  Terra shook her head. "Bah, it's just magic." She steeled her expression. "Nothing I can't conquer."

  "J-just be careful."

  Terra stepped into the room slowly, gritting her teeth. She moved as if she was underwater. Her heavy steps followed each other with more space between each one. Her movement became a shuffle as she made it closer to the center of the room. Finally, she stood next to the book. She stretched forward a single, trembling hand.

  Atzi watched, unable to look away.

  Terra touched the book.

  The change was immediate. All the tension drained out of her body. Her previously strained expression turned peaceful. Happy. "This..." she mumbled.

  That's either very good or very bad.

  Terra traced a finger along the spine of the book with fascinated reverence. Atzi only then noticed the book had a literal spine. "What is it?"

  "A powerful magical object. Possibly even an artefact. Let me see..." Terra picked up the book and flipped it open.

  Atzi suppressed her fear as she slowly crept into the room. "So? That idea about her casting the undead spell, it's n-not totally crazy, is it? I mean... just look at this place..."

  Terra wasn't paying attention to Atzi. Instead, her eyes hungrily scanned the book, flipping page after page.

  "Terra?" Atzi inched closer.

  Terra closed the book with a loud thwap.

  Atzi jumped.

  "Incredible," Terra said in a breathy voice.

  "Can you," Atzi looked at the book, "tell me about it?"

  "No. You wouldn't understand. I need to study it more. You should leave."

  "Eh?" Atzi was confused. "Why?"

  "I need to study the book more," Terra repeated, expression serious.

  "Yeah, but why do I need to leave for that?"

  "Do you want to stay here for hours?"

  "I can go back and tell Hemm we're okay- but listen, whatever you find out, you gotta share with me, alright? So I can tell you next time, so that if this is what got everyone killed, we can- we can stop it that time. Alright?"

  "Just go!" Terra didn't yell, but Atzi had never heard her sound so upset before.

  "I'm going…" Atzi crept out, closing the door to the room behind her. Before leaving, she decided to take a look in the storage closet, wondering if there could be clues.

  She dug through the sheets and boxes in the closet, finding numerous abandoned paintings. Most of them were finished works showing cave landscapes, relegated to collect dust. Atzi flipped through them, looking for any signs of the 'gods'.

  Then, near the back, she found what she was looking for. Three paintings. One of each god.

  The first depicted a giant cyclops, towering over a literal mountain of corpses. He wore skulls woven together with intestines as a form of armor. His head almost looked like a skull itself, but of stone rather than bone; a single glowing red eye was fixed in the center, gazing malevolently.

  The second was a bat, drawn in mostly black and white. His face and claws were only part of his body painted in detail, which was altogether a miniscule part of the painting as a whole, and depicted his fury. His wings, massive, spread across the entire top of the painting and almost entirely blocked out what appeared to be a subterranean sun. A shower of blood, the only red in the painting, poured below him, the silhouettes of bats below twisting their bodies into mad shapes.

  Finally, there was an Atlantean woman. She sat regally atop a throne of bones under the ocean. Her scales were a sickly green color, peeling away in places to reveal pitch-black eyes. Her head was similar to what Qun had described, but far more horrific than Atzi had imagined. The crab, with its many rows of sharp legs, formed the upper jaw of the goddess, whereas her lower jaw peeled away like petals on a plant, revealing several rows of needle-like teeth. Her face, with glowing yellow eyes and seaweed-like hair, looked like a fake in comparison to the crab, as if it was the real god and the Atlantean merely a puppet stitched from a waterlogged corpse.

  Atzi was crestfallen. None of them looked like the woman in her head. Thinking of the goddess, she whispered to herself, "Psst. Hey. I wish I knew your name to make it easier to wake you up. You seeing any of this?"

  "I see it," came the reply, echoed in Atzi's head.

  "You recognize 'em at all?"

  "My memories are hazy, and I don't have many." The goddess paused. "But I recognize all three, somehow. I've seen them."

  "So you're definitely not the fish one. Well, you don't look like her anyway, but there goes one theory. But they were around when you were. That's a clue, at least."

  "The book seems dangerous," the goddess replied. "Are you sure you should let her have it?"

  "I can't 'let' her do anything, she can kill me with a flick of her wrist," Atzi said.

  "And death is the worst possible thing. Right."

  Atzi shivered. "I've just gotta hope she's not gonna do something crazy with it..."

  "It's wrong. But also right. The book, I mean. I like it and I hate it." The voice in Atzi's had a wary tone.

  Atzi closed the door to the closet. "That's how Terra reacted too... she freaked out like I did, then she got really into it the moment she touched it. Maybe it messes with your head, both ways?"

  "I don't know. But then why would it work on me? I'm not even sure I have a head. Gods are supposed to talk to someone, but still exist outside them. I don't think I exist outside you." The goddess sounded melancholy.

  "And no-one even knows who you are." Atzi thought about Malus. "Besides one psycho who won't share anything."

  "...Thank you for trying to figure out who I am."

  "Oh. Um, you're welcome. H-hey, when we do figure out who you are, maybe you'll have some cool prophet stuff to share with me." Atzi gave a short, awkward laugh.

  As she made her way down the steps, she felt the mental equivalent of a shrug.

  -

  When Atzi returned to the public house, Jih was standing just inside.

  Atzi approached her cautiously. "Hi...? You confirmed what I said was true, right?"

  The cyclops woman turned her crystal-like, rainbow colored eye towards Atzi. "Wu wishes to see you and your companions again."

  "Right now?"

  "Yes."

  Oh boy. Hm. I don't think I can move Terra at all right now. "Uh, one of us was exploring the city right now, so... we'll just come without her for now, that's alright, yeah? Don't wanna keep Wu waiting after all."

  "You are speaking of the mage? The cyclops is here. Unless your male companion is actually a woman?"

  "The mage, yeah, the mage," Atzi clarified.

  "Her presence is especially requested," Jih said matter-of-factly.

  "Sh-she is?"

  "Yes."

  Atzi panicked, wondering how to explain herself. "Um... this is a little complicated. It's not that I was keeping this secret, I just wanted to know more before passing it along to you guys, that's all!" She tapped her claws together nervously. "Y-you know there was some bat lady drawing heretical paintings recently?"

  "Yes."

  "Well... this lined up with something weird a-and I wanted to talk to her, and... her door was open, and…" Atzi wrapped her tail around her leg so tightly it hurt. "She's dead. I think she killed herself with magic. And I wanted to ask an expert, so Terra's there right now studying it!"

  Jih blinked her single eye. Slowly. Then she said, "We should fetch her."

  "Right. Yes. Um, just, one thing… Have you ever heard of a magic book that's... made of skin and has bones on it?"

  Jih reacted so suddenly that it took Atzi a second to realise what had just happened. She made no explanation. She just spun on her heel and sprinted straight out the door.

  "W-wait!" Atzi ran after her.

  As soon as Jih's boots met the stone, it swelled like something was about to burst out from underneath. Her legs sunk in, and then the stone surged forward like a wave, carrying her faster than Atzi could keep pace.

  "Hold up!" Atzi did her best to run after her, anyway.

  -

  Atzi made the best pace she could, never once slowing down in her mad sprint even after she lost sight of the earth reader.

  As she got closer, she heard shouts - perhaps screams. She passed a few groups of people running in the opposite direction. Atzi's stomach sank, a terrible feeling engulfing her.

  Then Atzi rounded the corner and stopped, stunned and horrified. Jih faced the house, still half-buried in her hill of stone. Hovering in the air in front of her was a body-sized boulder. The earth reader thrust forward her hand. The stone shattered into smaller chunks, launching violently towards the open doorway.

  The open doorway from which several bone-white, skeletal figures poured. Some had the elongated bones of wings in place of arms, while others had only a single socket fixed in the center. The stone shattered them into pieces with a snapping noise, but there were more behind them.

  "Oh no. No, no no no no no," Atzi muttered to herself. "Not again... not again..."

  From somewhere within the house, Atzi heard a muffled shout. Terra's voice - but she wasn't shouting in pain or fear, but in defiance. "You can't have it!" she screamed.