"Ash, it's not working." I hated myself even as I spoke the words. He knew it too.

  "No, keep going!" Meredeath's desperate words clawed through my [Heart] bond. The Tuli Monster had returned with a bag. It growled from the sea with its head poking out of the water, then swished away to find the rest of the bags.

  Ash sat back.

  "She's dead." His voice was tired, dull. Final.

  Meredeath shook Leyla's body.

  "But she's not. I saw her move." The words resonated with me. I'd heard her say this before, about another dead woman.

  I remember how she nearly knifed Tad and Lennie, the Eddie’s Mill guys who took care of the unclaimed. Good men. Meredeath had lost it, sure the dead girl in their charge was alive.

  Meredeath was seeing a dead woman move. It was one of her [Death Knight] skills. It must be a [Death Knight's] version of [Self Critic] triggering before you even know it.

  What was it they’d said? She carries that pain deep? After this, assuming we survived, I was going to talk to her about it.

  "Meredeath, it's not real. It's one of your skills." Her skull amulet glowed red against her pale skin. She must have taken damage at some point in the ascent. Maybe this was just another way the amulet tortured her.

  "She can't be dead. She was just here. Leyla, wake up." The plea in her voice broke my heart.

  She looked up, her eyes looking straight at me, but completely through me. I'd never seen her look so... lost.

  "She was just here. Alive in the bubble." I could tell that Meredeath wasn't really talking about Leyla. She hadn’t been close to the snobby noblewoman. This was something else. This was the deep wound that gave her nightmares.

  Just as I was about to say something conciliatory, her expression changed.

  "I've got skills." Her eyes flared as she pushed Ash out of the way. Suddenly frantic, she leaned over Leyla, pulling at the collar of her dress. "Hold on, I'm coming to get you."

  Magic danced on her face as she bent down. Meredeath’s red lips whispered a promise as she placed her index finger on the girl's forehead. "[Death's Servant]."

  Meredeath's magic crackled, harsh and unhinged. Her bones glowed under her skin as a pulse of magic went straight through her finger into Leyla's head.

  Ash took a step back from the body, repulsed by the fiery bite of Meredeath's magic.

  Meredeath squatted over the dead noble, eyes rolled up in her head as though locked in a grotesque parody of a prayer. The [Death Knight’s] skin seemed to deflate on her skull as she channeled more of her own vitality into the magic than she had to spare.

  "Meredeath, you don't want to do this." I was numb. What was she doing? This wasn't the way. [Death's Servant] wasn't one of the legendary [Resurrection] skills. No, this was something dark. This was a binding. An enslavement of will and body. This was not going to bring Leyla back. And it certainly would bring whomever Meredeath had lost before back.

  Leyla's shriveled hand twitched, her fingernails scratching against the ancient world snail’s pliant hide.

  "Meredeath, this isn't the way." I leaned forward, waving a hand between her and Leyla. She was transfixed, her body locked in the effort. Green fire danced in her eyes...

  And Leyla's.

  Meredeath's spine flexed, bending her backwards in a scream. Gouts of sickly green flame dripped out of her mouth, hitting Leyla's body. Each splotch of magic soaked into the body. It didn't repair Leyla's graying lips and bloating body, it reanimated her. Muscles twitched in uncontrolled spasms, flashes of dark magic illuminated the inner workings of the dead girl’s flesh. It was as though something was testing out how the muscles in a human worked.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Meredeath's hand still connected the two, her index finger burning into the Leyla's forehead. This was their connection, the pivot point for the skill.

  I had to break the link between the two. Grabbing her hand, I lit myself on fire.

  The magic was hungry. It wanted life. Not some life, but all of it. It wanted to devour, to enslave. It hungered for the world denied by the veil of death. She was a [Necromancer] in the robes of a [Death Knight]. Meredeath wasn’t going to cheat death. She was going to stick this hunger for the living, this undeath, into the poor body of the girl.

  My hand was on fire, but I knew if I didn't break this spell we'd lose more than Leyla.

  "Ash, help me!" The words slurred in my mouth. My hand blackened. The magic was sucking at my life, latching onto my [Gelatinous Regeneration] and feeding off of my body. It was insatiable. My health plummeted towards the red in seconds.

  In the corner of my eye, I could see Ash rooting through his pack.

  Leyla's eyes moved to look at me. Whatever she was, she wasn't a debutante looking for a husband. She was a monster.

  The monster’s lips pulled back in a macabre grin, snapping its teeth as though promising I'd make a good meal.

  "Meredeath. STOP! You can't do this. This isn't you." But it was. "It's anathema, unholy." I wasn’t wholly sure the words were making it out. My vision flickered, a candle in the night.

  I knew what it really was. This was [Corruption] incarnate. Magic that twisted, that warped, magic that thrived on the hunger of the light and life of the world. I couldn't snap her link, and I couldn't break my hand away as my skin bubbled. In a flicker, I saw black tendrils of foul greasy smoke, pulling my essence away to feed the candle flame. My life leeching out of my body to feed this thing.

  Cole, stop it!

  No shit, Richard. I don't know where the slug was, but he'd picked up that something was going horribly wrong.

  "Ash, help. I can't break it." The words came out in a gasp, I couldn’t draw breath. It felt like my arm was dipped into an acid bath. My body was as locked to this reanimation of death as Leyla's. I'd become the power source for the skill.

  Like many things in life, I was making it worse.

  As my health bottomed out, my mind let go of consciousness. The world was fading to gray, my vision blurred. Where was Ash? Where were Richard, Tandy, and Leo? Meredeath?

  The room was dark. A single candle sat on an antique table. It flickered in the night, succumbing to its own hubris. How could one candle hold back the darkness?

  Flicker.

  Kwang.

  The bell rang. The Guardians of the Wall were here. As in the last age, they saved us from the encroaching [Corruption]. To tear back defeat and hold the line.

  My connection with Meredeath had snapped. I slumped over, my bare skin hot against the cool, slimy foot of the World Snail. Each breath labored as I watched my health tick up from two in my interface. The scene slowly came back into focus.

  Meredeath slumped over. Leyla had resumed the peaceful slumber of the dead. And Ash...

  Ash stood above us all with my old frying pan held triumphantly in his hand. He looked like a heroic dishwasher that'd vanquished his first bogquacker.

  The Tuli Monster snapped from the water, growling at us both. Thankfully, as fearsome as it was in the water, it couldn't touch us on land.

  "It took you long enough," I muttered, sitting up on my elbow. I held out my burned hand in shock. There was no sign of bubbled, charred skin. It was whole, unblemished.

  "It's been a long day, okay?" Ash sat next to me, cradling the frying pan, looking defeated.

  For once, I didn't have the urge to argue with the man.

  "We didn't get a death notification for Meredeath, so you didn't kill her. Good job." Didn't mean she still couldn't die. I moved forward to examine Meredeath, leveraging my [First Aid] skill. A goose egg was forming on the back of her head. She'd be fine, just taking an unscheduled nap.

  The Tuli Monster was swimming back and forth along the shore.

  "She's going to be fine." I yelled at the beast as though it were a concerned dog. "She's going to be fine." I told myself, as though saying the words out loud could make them real. The truth was, though, nothing was fine. Meredeath had crossed so many lines that I wasn't sure there was any coming back from this. The hunger of her magic, the need to feed, wasn't something that could be ignored.

  Meredeath. Meredith Steele was [Corrupted].

  The Tuli Monster had stopped pacing in the sea. It breached the surface, angrily showering us in a full broadside of spray from its gills. The eyebar poked above the gentle surf, two dangling eyes watching us suspiciously.

  My mind twisted, and I heard the deep brassy sound of a straining ship’s hull combined with a sound like rocks tumbling along a current cracking in the torrent.

  It was a voice in the language of the deep, mind-numbing abyss.

  I eat the hungry.

  The words were low and feminine and alien. As though she, the Tuli Monster, were trying to force an underwater concept into the language of land dwellers.

  I stared at the beast staring at me.

  Sure. It eats the hungry. Great.

  Just what we needed—another unhinged companion.

  "Welcome to the party, Briyain."