The diseased soldiers escorted Eris, Aeternam, and Moros through the night to a crude shantytown. The further they tread into the dead zone, the swampier the ground became, until just as much muck and putrid water lay underfoot as earth. Though they held no light, the soldiers found their way with a surefootedness that could put a mountain goat to shame. Clearly they knew the area well, or some sort of power was guiding them. Perhaps both, ruminated the red woman as she navigated her way through the wretched bog; after all, the luminescence of their eyes denoted some sort of sorcery at work. 

Her thoughts were interrupted as the lantern light hit a structure in front of them, followed by a dozen others like it. The term 'building' truly overstated them, as they were little more than shacks made of wood, sod, rusted metal sheets, anything really. Together they formed a dingy mockery of a shantytown, huddled together like lepers over a fire. As they were led through the narrow spaces between the shacks, the three observed all too well the squalor permeating this miserable residence. The people were no less repulsive than their dwellings. All looked alike, thanks to a coating of mire and generally stooped, ragged personage. Here and there brimstone torches interrupted the darkness with seething, crackling yellow fire, and in their mad illumination the denizens of the swamp looked less than human. Long, hooked noses, gray or drab olive skin plastered with blemishes and scabs, sunken skin, and long chins gave them the appearance of goblins.

The triumvirate hadn't long to examine the natives, however, before their escort stopped them at a packed dirt plinth at the shantytown's approximate center. Immediately, a different building became obvious. Tucked in between the trash dwellings was an actual wooden abode on stilts, thatched in black grass and laden with all sorts of occult paraphernalia from hanging charms to skulls to wax candles. Into this building one of the blighted men ventured, and from inside dim voices could be heard over the irritating, high-pitched drone of mosquitoes. They seemed to avoid Aeternam, and when they landed on Moros their tiny lives were drained into him, leaving the bodies to fall to the ground, so they converged on Eris instead. A short time later the blighted man reemerged, slamming the creaking door wide open. After him came a woman.

At her presence, the night grew ever more ominous and silent. Everyone present, including the trio, felt a creeping illness in his or her gut, tugging and twisting. The woman was an inch taller than Eris, with skin the color sepia but blanketed by pox scars. Her long, white hair fell down to her upper back, but her face was hidden beneath a huge, yellowed cow skull. More bones, accompanied by green lengths of cloth and stained bandages, defined her garb; she wore a sleeveless robe that reached to the ground supplemented by dark, ornate leather armor. In her hand was a crooked staff tipped with a mess of barbed wire wound around a huge needle. Her voice, deep and echoing due to the skull, reached out to the triumvirate, “Why have you breached the land of Malady?”

-=-=-

Some distance away from Ifrit and Shaige hovered an unusual revenant. This specter, no mere mundane apparition, was like them; it hadn't been in the stark, sepulchral spirit world for long. Though in previous existence it had been a being of incredible power, it was only a ghost now, ravenous like all its kind for life and warmth. Purpose, however, was something it did not want for. The drive present in this indomitable spirit had assisted in untold destruction before, and it was what would raise it from this gloomy world of the dead back to Elysium. At least, that purpose was part of the revenant's salvation, as it needed some sort of link to the other side to find a way through. As such, the presence of Shaige and Ifrit in the spirit world -particularly the flames and burning pride of the Infernal King's Scion- was an incredible temptation, discernible even through Shaige's stealth enchantments. Slowly, inexorably as death, the revenant drew nearer.