TW: Blood and gore
The walk to the outskirts of Brennale was a study in contrasting rhythms.
But contrasting rhythms Linda was now used to.
Theodore paced himself with a scholarly deliberation, his robes sweeping the dusty road, while Izze practically bounced beside him, her energy a jagged contrast to the quiet morning. The Aelvyn followed a step behind, feeling the unfamiliar weight of the gear pressing against her frame. The bow was slung across her back, the quiver of arrows clicking against her hip, and the shortsword felt like a heavy, grounding anchor at her waist.
They were geared up and making their way to "Mad Mudo's" house.
To Linda, it felt like over leveling for a beginner quest, but the Krithak's words rang in her head and she made sure she was ready for this.
The Great Tree loomed over the horizon first as they walked, a colossal pillar of bark and shimmering emerald leaves that seemed to hold up the very sky. Lyra had described the path as a simple trek past this landmark - the one her and Theodore had sat under multiple times - and a short dip into the deeper forest, but as they passed beneath the tree's suffocatingly vast canopy, the air turned thick and cool. The sunlight filtered down in dusty, golden shafts, illuminating a carpet of iridescent moss that muffled their footsteps.
Izze’s eyes were on a constant swivel, her gaze darting from the dense thicket of ferns to the high, swaying branches above. Even Theodore, usually the portrait of academic composure, walked with a coiled tension in his shoulders, his hand resting coiled around his staff e as if expecting the forest itself to lunge at them.
Despite the oppressive silence of the woods, the Krithak suddenly broke the tension with a sharp, nostalgic laugh.
"You’ve got that look on your face, Linda. The 'I’m-prepared-for-everything' look. Better than me!" Izze said, her voice cutting through the damp air. She adjusted the strap of her armor, a faint smirk playing on her lips. "My first quest was just as simple. A farmer named Mr. McDougal had a problem with Globkins... Those translucent, gelatinous pests... sludging through his cabbage patches and dissolving his fence posts. I went in alone, abso-fucking-lutely convinced I was the most capable warrior Velmoira had ever seen. Ah... the mindset of youth..."
Theodore let out a low, knowing chuckle, his eyes scanning the treeline.
"Most of us start that way. We think the blessing is a shield that makes us untouchable. Then the world finds the one crack in that shield and hammers it until we break. It’s the only way to actually learn how to survive." Theodore explained, pushing up his glasses that had slipped down his nose.
Izze sighed, her expression softening into something more distant.
"Drevan humbled me that day, that's for damn sure..." Izze responded with her own chuckle filled with memories.
"Please tell me more," Linda asked, leaning in.
Izze grinned, her eyes glimmering as she recalled the disaster.
"I get to the farm, right? Old man McDougal is just sitting on his porch, chewing on an apple and watching the chaos. I see this Globkin sludging toward his fence. I dive in, absolutely certain of my victory, and plunge my blade right into its center. Problem was, the thing was like packed mud. My sword got stuck. I panicked and tried to punch my way out, but my hand just sank in up to the elbow. Before I could even scream, the damn thing surged forward and just... absorbed me. I was floating in a world of lime-green goo, staring at McDougal's confused face." Izze explained as they got closer to Mudo's house.
"And how did you get out?" Linda asked, a small, genuine smile tugging at her lips.
"McDougal walked over and poked the thing's core with his knife," Izze groaned, rolling her eyes. "Can you believe that? A regular old, rusted thing. The creature popped like a blister and spat me out onto the dirt. Only problem was, the Globkin had a taste for leather and linen. It had digested my fucking gear! Should've guessed they could do that by the fence... I was naked as the day I was born, right in front of this old fucker who just saved my green ass with teeny knife, and I went red up to my ears."
Theodore gestured toward a sagging, lean-to structure that barely qualified as a house. It sat crookedly in a clearing of dead grass, surrounded by a fence that looked more like a collection of random stakes than a boundary.
They had been talking, but now that Linda focused on it the hairs on the back of her neck were risen...
Weird, Linda thought.
"The real joke..." Theodore noted, his voice dry. "...is that McDougal was a notorious pervert. Everyone in the district knew he bred those slimes on purpose. They’re slow and sticky... perfect for catching an unsuspecting adventurer and stripping them bare before the owner comes over to 'rescue' them."
Izze scoffed, the sound vibrating with a visceral disgust.
"I’m still mad just thinking about it. That old fucker had the audacity to proposition me while he was staring right at my tits, practically dripping with lust and hard as a rock. I nearly took his head off right there." Izze responded.
The Aelvyn frowned, the image of the predatory old man making her stomach churn.
"He really shouldn't have done that. It's just... it's not right to treat people like that." Linda added with a frown, anger simmering in her gut.
Izze paused, glancing at Linda.
A small, genuine smirk tugged at the corner of the Krithak's lips.
"Look at you, all fired up," Izze said, bumping her hip against Linda's leg. "Thanks for being my knight in leather armor, Linda."
The Ardel man didn't join in on the teasing.
"Quiet now," Theodore whispered, the sound barely a ripple in the air. "We're here."
Linda felt the shift in the atmosphere immediately. She adjusted the strap of her quiver, her fingers brushing against the fletching of her arrows, and felt the familiar, reassuring weight of the shortsword hanging at her hip. Despite the combat training, the sudden silence of the woods felt oppressive, making her feel small and exposed. She tried to steady her breathing, fighting the instinct to shrink inward and disappear, instead focusing on the analytical way she had learned to scan her surroundings.
Theodore stepped forward and rapped his knuckles against the rotting wood of the door. Three sharp, hollow thuds. For a long minute, nothing happened, and then the silence was replaced by a slow, agonizing groan of rusted hinges. The door creaked open just a few inches, leaving the interior swathed in a thick, suffocating gloom. A sliver of dim light revealed a face half-lost in shadow, the skin like cured leather stretched tight over a skull.
"Whut in the hell do y'all want?" The voice barked, sounding like gravel being ground in a blender.
A pair of bloodshot eyes peered through the gap, wide and twitching with a manic, unpredictable energy.
This was Mad Mudo, Linda thought.
Maybe the nickname was accurate after all...
He looked like a man who had spent seventy years fighting the wind and losing, his white hair standing up in jagged tufts like a dying bird's nest. He didn't step back to let them in, but simply hovered there, his breath smelling rancid and like death.
The Aelvyn's grip tightened around the grip of her shortsword.
"The Tarnished Blade," Theodore announced, his voice remaining calm despite Mudo's aggression. "We're here about the Skrat infestation."
Mudo didn't answer immediately. He narrowed his bloodshot eyes, his gaze darting between them with a twitchy, predatory intensity. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic thumping of something unseen deep within the house. Finally, he spat a glob of dark phlegm onto the porch and swung the door wide with a violent jerk.
"Hurry up 'n get it over with, then," Mudo rasped. "Ain't got all day for y'all to stand there lookin' like lost calves."
As the grumpy, Ardel man turned to hobble back into the gloom of his shack - presumably leading the way? - the collar of his greasy, stained tunic shifted. Linda caught a glimpse of his neck, and her stomach did a slow, sickening roll. Nestled against the weathered skin was a jagged black spot, looking less like a bruise and more like a piece of rotting meat embedded in his flesh. It looked wet, pulsing with a faint, sickly rhythm that made the surrounding skin pucker and gray.
The interior of the house felt less like a home and more like a tomb for things that refused to stay buried. Linda stepped inside, her boots sticking to a floor covered in a layer of yellowed grime and unidentifiable slime. The air was thick with the smell of ammonia and old blood, reminding her vividly of the claustrophobic, mold-ridden hallways of Resident Evil 7.
Everything was damp.
The walls seemed to sweat a dark, viscous oil that dripped from the ceiling in rhythmic, heavy plops.
Amidst the chaos of rusted pots and piles of moth-eaten rags, one object stood out. A gold-framed portrait hung crookedly on a peeling wall, depicting an older woman with a serene smile and piercing, intelligent eyes. The painting was pristine, untouched by the decay surrounding it, radiating a sense of peace that felt utterly alien in this place.
Linda lingered on the woman’s face for a second too long, wondering who she was and how such beauty could exist here, before a sharp nudge to her shoulder snapped her back to reality.
"You're paying for the drinks after this," Izze whispered, her voice barely audible over the rhythmic drip-drop of the ceiling. "Enduring this dump is a tax on my sanity."
Mudo didn't wait for them to catch up, his gait a twitchy, erratic shuffle as he led them toward a heavy wooden hatch in the floor.
"Down you go, you lazy curs!" Mudo barked, his voice a grating, wet rasp. "The cellar's crawlin' with 'em, and I ain't payin' for your leisure time!" He spat on the floor again, gesturing wildly toward the dark maw of the cellar.
As Theodore and Izze followed the old man down into the gloom, a sound drifted from the upper hallway - a wet, rhythmic sliding, like something heavy being dragged over floorboards. It was accompanied by a low, guttural clicking that vibrated in the back of Linda's throat. While the others disappeared into the cellar,
The Aelvyn paused, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The sound wasn't coming from the cellar...
...it was emanating from one of the rooms.
It was a slow, hungry scratching that seemed to call out to her from the dark.
Driven by a sudden, terrifying curiosity, she tightened her grip on her shortsword even further and drifted toward the door...
Such a bad idea...
Such a bad idea, Linda thought frantically, but her hand reached out toward the doorknob and turned it slowly.
The room inside was freezing, smelling of formaldehyde and old lilies. At first, she saw only a figure seated primly on the edge of a rusted iron bed, her back to the door. She was wearing the same dress as the woman in the portrait.
But as the figure began to turn...
...the horror set in.
The skin of her face was sliding, hanging in translucent, gelatinous sheets that exposed a raw, pulsating mass of black muscle beneath. One eye was missing entirely, replaced by a cavernous hole that leaked a thick, tarry ichor, while the other eye - a milky, clouded orb - fixed on Linda with a hunger that felt predatory.
It wasn't a woman anymore...
It was a Hollow, a distorted echo of the beloved face from the painting, now twisted into a living corpse.
Linda screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!"
The sound ripped from Linda’s throat, a raw, jagged noise that echoed through the stagnant air of the hallway. The creature didn't move with grace; it twitched, its jaw hanging by a single string of grey sinew as it let out a wet, clicking hiss. It was a living autopsy, the woman from the painting stripped of her dignity and replaced by a pulsating mass of necrotic tissue and exposed nerve endings. As the thing lunged forward, the scent of formaldehyde and rotting lilies surged forward, clogging Linda's nostrils and making her stomach heave.
Panic surged, cold and electric, as Linda scrambled backward. Her boot caught on a loose floorboard, sending her crashing onto the grime-slicked wood, and for a terrifying second, she was staring up at the creature's clouded, milky eye. Instinct took over. She didn't think; she simply reacted, her hand blurring as she snatched an arrow from her quiver and notched it into the bow in one fluid, desperate motion. The string snapped against her cheek with a sharp thwack, and the arrow buried itself deep into the creature's shoulder, pinning it momentarily to the doorframe with a sickening squelch.
The Aelvyn moved.
Linda raced to where her friends were, her feet tripping every once in a while, blood pumping in her ears.
The cellar stairs groaned under her weight, each step descending further into a damp, cloying dark that smelled of copper and old vinegar.
As the Aelvyn reached the bottom, the silence was gone, replaced by a cacophony of wet tearing and guttural shrieks. She flung the heavy cellar door open, and the scene that greeted her was a nightmare rendered in shades of grey and crimson.
Theodore and Izze were locked in a desperate dance with five massive Skrats, but these weren't the scavengers she had expected. Their skin was peeled back in jagged, raw strips, exposing pulsing black veins and exposed muscle that flickered with a sickly, necrotic energy. They had the signature mark of the Hollowed, the holes in their chest, but their lips were pulling back past the teeth that differentiated from just rot.
Like a calling card.
It was grotesque.
In the center of the chaos stood Mudo, his bloodshot eyes wide with a manic, jagged glee. He wasn't helping, but was cackling, his voice a sandpaper rasp that cut through the screams.
"Hee-hee! Give 'em a taste, ya nasty little shits!" Mudo howled, his Southern drawl thick and dripping with malice, spittle flying everywhere from a mouth full of rotted teeth. "Kill 'em quick now! My sweet darlin' wife needs fresh meat for her table, and you three look just plump enough for the feast! KILL 'EM!!!!!!!"
The Skrats didn't need a second invitation. They moved with a sickening, twitching speed, their limbs clicking like broken umbrellas as they blurred across the cellar floor. Izze let out a guttural roar, slamming her palm against the damp earth and invoking the blessing of Drevan, and her tattoo glowed. Thick, thorny vines erupted from the floorboards with a violent rip, coiling around the creatures' ankles and snapping shut like organic shackles.
For a heartbeat, the room went silent, the only sound the frantic scratching of claws against stone, until Theodore stepped forward. He slammed his staff into the ground, releasing a blinding, concussive burst of radiant light that bleached the darkness white and seared the retinas of everything in the room.
The flash left Linda blinded, her vision swimming in dancing white spots and searing after-images.
The Aelvyn backed away, her shoulder hitting the cold, weeping stone wall as she felt the vibration of a wet, clicking sound echoing from the shadows. Her breath came in shallow, jagged gasps, and her hands shook so violently that her bow clattered against her leather armor.
This wasn't a quest.
Or some light-hearted adventure.
It was a slaughterhouse.
The realization that they were being hunted in a cellar of filth made Linda’s stomach churn. She looked at the carnage - the twisted bodies, the manic grin on Mudo's face - and felt a crushing wave of fear.
So so much fear that the world around her felt like it wasn't real and that this couldn't possibly be reality.
Why was the Aelvyn even here?
Why had Vael sent her here to die to some insane man?
Why, why, why—
The internal loop of panic was interrupted by a guttural roar. Izze’s face was a mask of splatter and rage, her eyes wide as she drove her blade upward, punching through a Skrat’s skull with a wet, crunching pop. Blood, hot and metallic, sprayed across her cheek and into her eye, but she didn't blink.
"GET YOUR FUCKING HEAD IN THE GAME, LINDA!" Izze screamed out, her voice cracking through the cellar's dampness. "Move or you're dead meat!"
The visceral sound of the creature's skull collapsing and the Krithak's words acted like a cold shock to Linda's system. The world stopped spinning, and the analytical part of her brain - the part that could dissect a firewall or find a needle in a million lines of code - finally kicked back in.
The Aelvyn saw the pattern...
The Skrats were circling, but the true catalyst was Mudo.
The old man was leaning back, his chest heaving with manic laughter, his bloodshot eyes darting with a predatory hunger as he cheered for their demise. He wasn't just a witness, but the anchor for the chaos somehow.
It was video game logic and Linda clung to it.
The Aelvyn’s hands trembled, but her fingers found the notch of her bow by muscle memory. She didn't think about the gore or the smell of the cellar and focused on the only strategic weakness in the room. Mudo was open, his guard completely dropped in his delirium. She drew the string back to her cheek, the tension humming in her ears, and released. The arrow hissed through the stagnant air, a silver streak of precision that caught Mudo square in his bulging, bloodshot left eye. There was a sickening, wet thwack again like earlier as the shaft punched through the socket and lodged deep into the bone of his skull.
The man instantly collapsed to the floor below and the skrats stopped for a second.
The sudden silence was short-lived.
The Skrats froze, their clicking jaws hanging open as they looked from their fallen master to the arrow protruding from his socket. For a heartbeat, the cellar was still, then a collective, guttural shriek ripped through the air. They lunged, not with animal instinct, but with a frantic, jagged desperation.
Izze didn't hesitate.
The Krithak dove beneath the first creature’s reach, her dagger flashing in the dim light as she carved a jagged line from the beast's belly to its throat, right through the hole in its chest. A spray of black, viscous ichor coated her face, but she ignored it, rolling through the filth to drive the blade upward into its grey brain with a wet crunch.
Three hollowed skrats were still in existence.
Theodore was engaged with one and Izze turned to another, but the third charged right at Linda.
Panic clawed at her chest, suffocating her as she scrambled backward over the slime-slicked stone. She reached for the hilt of her shortsword, but her fingers were numb, trembling violently as she fumbled against the leather grip. The blade snagged in its scabbard, refusing to out, leaving her wide open as the Skrat leaped. Its jaw unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, needle-like teeth dripping with that same tarry ichor that she now associated with these monsters.
No...
No, no, no, no, NO!, Linda cried it in her head.
In the moment the creature’s claws grazed her skin, a sudden, searing warmth bloomed in Linda's chest, radiating outward like a surge of overclocked electricity. Her green eyes flickered, the iris bleeding into a brilliant, piercing gold, and the mark on her hand ignited with a blinding, celestial light. She didn't know how to call the power, but she instinctively threw her palms forward.
A column of raw, golden radiance erupted from her hands, slamming into the Skrat with the force of a falling star.
The creature didn't just stop, but shrieked, a sound of pure agony that drowned out the wet tearing of the other fights. The light clung to the Hollowed beast, searing through its necrotic flesh and bubbling its grey skin into blackened ash. It tried to scramble away, its claws scraping frantically against the stone, but the weight of Vael's dormant power pressed down on it like a mountain. The creature groaned, its form crumbling into a heap of smoldering charcoal and bone under the crushing pressure of the divine light.
The goddess's light faded.
The threat gone.
And Linda could see Izze and Theodore had also won their respective battles.
They were covered in black blood, but alive.
The only noise in the room was there heavy and labored breathing.
The adrenaline that had fueled Linda’s sudden burst of light evaporated instantly, leaving her muscles feeling like overcooked pasta. Her vision blurred, the edges of the room swimming in a sickening grey haze, and her knees buckled. She started to tip backward, but Izze was there in a blur of green skin and leather, catching her by the waist and pulling her close.
The Krithak's expression had softened, the bloodlust fading from her eyes.
"N- Not bad, sunshine," Izze murmured with a slight stutter, leaning in to press a brief, surprisingly tender kiss to Linda's forehead. "Not bad at all."
A wet, guttural groan interrupted the moment.
From the cellar stairs, the thing from the upstairs room - the gelatinous, sliding horror that had once been Mudo's wife - dragged itself into the light, its skin dripping in thick, translucent sheets. Before Linda could even gasp, Theodore stepped forward with a guttural snarl. He slammed the base of his staff into the stone and channeled every remaining drop of his spirit into a singular, piercing beam of radiant light. The blast punched through the creature's clouded skull with a sound like a gunshot, the force of the spell causing a thick vein to bulge violently in the Ardel man's forehead. As the Hollow collapsed into a heap of steaming rot, Theodore stumbled, his face turning a ghostly, sickly pale as the glow of his Calyx tattoo flickered and died.
Linda looked over at Mudo, who lay sprawled in the filth, his one remaining eye staring blankly at the ceiling.
Even in death, the man looked irritated and crazy…
Izze didn't give Mudo a second glance.
The Krithak moved with a predatory efficiency, her hands gripping Linda’s shoulders to spin her around for a quick inspection. Her eyes flicked over Linda’s curvy frame, searching for the telltale signs of a lethal wound amidst the grime and gore of the cellar.
That was when Izze saw it.
There were three jagged furrows torn into the flesh of the Aelvyn's forearm, left by the Skrat just before the golden light had vaporized the creature like a piece of scrap paper in a furnace.
The wound wasn't deep, but it leaked a thin ribbon of crimson that contrasted sharply against Linda's tan skin.
"You're leaking, sunshine," Izze remarked, her voice low and rasping. She reached out, her calloused thumb brushing the edge of the scratch to check for the telltale grey tint of necrotic infection. "You alright? Or did that little shit get more than just a few scratches in?"
Linda looked down at the wound, then back at the heap of smoldering ash and the mutilated corpse of the man who had tried to feed them to monsters. The adrenaline was gone, leaving behind a cold, hollow shaking that made her feel fragile, as if her bones were made of glass. She felt the weight of her shortsword and bow, tools she still didn't feel worthy of carrying, and felt a surge of that familiar, suffocating inadequacy.
"I... I'm really not," Linda whispered, her voice soft and ragged, her eyes a bit teary. "But it will be okay. I- I'll be okay."
Izze’s lips thinned, her yellow eyes scanning Linda's trembling form with a rare, flickering concern. She opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to offer a rough word of comfort or just her usual gruffness, but a heavy, scraping sound echoed from behind them.
The Ardel interrupted, his voice sounding distant and strangely hollow.
"Izze. Linda. You both need to see this." Theodore called out from behind them.
Linda clutched her bleeding arm, quickly ripping off a piece of her tunic and tying it around the wound, stimming the bleeding.
Beside her, Izze moved with a silent, lethal grace, her dagger still drawn and dripping. They found Theodore standing over the corpse of Mad Mudo, his staff braced against the stone floor to keep himself upright. The man’s shirt had been ripped open, exposing a chest and neck that looked less like human anatomy and more like a map of a dying city. The black spot Linda had noticed earlier wasn't just a blemish; it was the epicenter of a sprawling, necrotic web that clawed down Mudo's ribs and wrapped around his torso in thick, pulsing veins of obsidian ink.
Even his chest was a bit sunken in.
The old Ardel man had been in the midst of becoming a Hollow.
Izze clicked her tongue at the revelation, her expression a scowl.
"Filthy piece of shit," Izze spat, glancing at the blackened veins spidering across Mudo's chest. "The Velmoiri have seen enough of you, Mad Mudo. Rot in the damn dirt and hope Drevan doesn't swallow you whole." She stepped closer, her dagger tracing a line through the air as if slicing away the lingering stench of decay.
Beside the Krithak, Theodore leaned heavily on his staff, his breath coming in ragged, wet wheezes. He stared at the necrotic web on the corpse with a scholarly, grim fascination.
"The corruption is advanced, yet he walked and talked," Theodore murmured. "I cannot say how he managed to stave off the full transition, but the cost was written in his blood."
Linda stepped back, her brain cataloguing and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Feel like Batman, Linda thought with a bitter and internal chuckle.
"The other Hollow... The one Theodore killed..." Linda started, her voice still shaking as she gripped the hilt of her shortsword for stability. "She was his wife, I think. There was a portrait upstairs. It looked like the Hollow... And Mudo, he was controlling the skrats somehow... When I k- killed him, they all just... stopped... for a bit."
"Twelve Hells..." Izze sighed, rubbing her temples. "He thought he could control five Frayed? In his state? Guess he didn't give a shit. Fucker looked and sounded like his moniker, so that doesn't surprise me."
Theodore, grabbing Izze and Linda's attention, moved Mudo's hand to uncover his tattoo.
It was a thin vertical line crossed once near the bottom, like a candle about to gutter out.
"And that..." Theodore started to say while shaking his head. "...is most likely one factor on 'the why' of it all. On how a frail Ardel man who was skirting the line of becoming a Hollow himself, whose mind was like a leaf in the wind, came to control the Frayed and push back the corruption of the Betrayer. Isolde the Veiled. Mistress of Death. Weaver of Fate. One who is Ascended with Isolde's Blessing has access to the thin veil between fate and death. Even a bastardized version of it, combined with the madness of his state, would make this all easier."
But why?
Why control them?
Why was his wife, fully corrupted into a Hollow, locked in his home?
How did Mudo become corrupted?
The Aelvyn had all of these questions swirling in her head, but she got the feeling that this would be a cold case.
One thing she could be thankful for was that her and her friends were alive to continue to question...