The restaurant was a higher-class affair than Jacques usually brought Martin to. He supposed he was trying to cater to their visitor’s tastes. If the waiter felt any disdain for Martin in his trappings of a working man, he was well-trained enough not to let it show on his face, and he led the three of them to a private room with all the politeness Martin could imagine.

  They were served wine and brought menus, from which Aelar led in ordering for the table. As they waited for the first appetizers to arrive, they made small talk. Over the course of an appetizer, Martin learned Aelar lived on the continent and had been a servant of the Faceless God for over thirty years. His appearance was that of a younger man, so unless he had been transformed from boyhood, Martin guessed it was not his true appearance, and he reminded himself to take every detail with a grain of salt.

  “What brings you to Alderbridge?” Martin finally worked up the courage to ask. He noticed the slight frown Jacques gave him, but Aelar waved it off.

  “A task from our lord, of course,” Aelar said, helping himself to some more wine. “I can’t go into the details, but I may ask for your help along the way.”

  “If there’s something I can help with, please let me know,” Martin said. Jacques gave an approving nod and changed the subject.

  Dinner was served, and the story of the clash with the servant of the Beautiful Goddess was told, and as the wine flowed, embellished. As worldly as he was, Aelar unfortunately had no insight into the cipher. The talk turned to politics from there, and Martin did his best to follow along with the events referenced by the two using the knowledge he had gained from the newspapers.

  “If the Admiralty gets their wish and Monitor class vessels become standard, war with the continent is just a matter of time,” Aelar was saying, “the rulers of the various continental nations are all scrambling to furnish their own iron-clad vessels in preparation, and the historically peaceful Drelthune Commonwealth has just invested heavily in fortifying the island of Ursaland. You used to be able to see the hot springs from the boat on the way in, now they’re obscured by the walls of the star fort.”

  “I thought the island had been fortified long before the Monitor first set sail,” Martin asked, remembering an article he had read through with Will. The island lay between the Eldamris Empire and the Drelthune Commonwealth and had changed hands between the two several times throughout the centuries.

  “I’m sure that’s what the papers and Admiralty had said,” Aelar replied, “but the Monitor project has been in development for years. A few years back, there was that Eldridge University professor who died of a sudden heart attack. Do you remember him?”

  “Angus Douberville.” Jacques supplied. “From Ursaland originally, but came to Alderbridge as a child. Grew up here and became a member of the university staff after his military service.”

  “Right. Turned out he was still loyal to Drelthune. He had been leaking some of the gun designs back to their agents.”

  “You said he died of a heart attack. He wasn’t tried for treason?” Martin asked.

  “He was taken care of in another way,” was all Aelar said. “Just one of many souls lost in the game the various kingdoms play.”

  Sensing the political talk had reached its conclusion, Jacques changed the subject. “Our Martin is taking the role of a former soldier who served in the colonies. The real Martin would probably have been there around the time you were. Do you have any details to add that might help him if he ends up needing to elaborate?”

  “You were in the colonies?” Martin asked in surprise.

  “Also in our lord’s service. That’s where I got this scar.” Aelar tapped his cheek, and his skin suddenly drew back to reveal a small scar. “Hideous, isn’t it?” He said with a laugh.

  “And I thought Jacques was hard to look at,” Martin replied.

  “I’m still a more attractive figure than that drunkard you’re ambling around as, scars and all,” Jacques responded.

  “Aye, I was in the colonies.” Aelar returned to a more serious tone. He began to outline some of the general situation of the colonies, as well as add more information about the environment and the people who lived there.

  “Not to eclipse your own struggles with the Beautiful Goddess, but I, too, had a run-in with one of her servants there. Word had reached our master of an inheritance.”

  Jacques caught the look of confusion on Martin’s face and jumped in to explain. “It’s a leftover from a Cosmic. Various entities have made their way to this world over the centuries, and many met tragic ends at the hands of the True Creator or his servants, or even from other Cosmics. Sometime before their death, they’re able to prepare an inheritance as a way to continue their legacy. Those who find it can gain access to their powers or memories, though often at a terrible cost.”

  Aelar gave Jacques a nod of thanks and continued with his narrative. “Centuries ago, the God of Gravity and the God of Memory clashed with the True Creator and were soundly defeated. Rumor has it that the God of Gravity had fled to the colonies and buried his inheritance somewhere in the jungle. I set out from Treasure Bay with a local guide, Asher, following the story of a sailor who had washed up some kilometers down the coast. On his journey back to Treasure Bay, he claimed to have stumbled upon the stone ruins of a temple.

  We weren’t alone in pursuing it, of course; treasure hunters of all sorts rushed into that damn jungle in pursuit of gold or power or whatever they believed was contained in those ruins. Most of them were fools who never returned, but among them was one whom I had every reason to fear. To this day, I don’t know his name; he was known only as the Collector. He was a servant of the Beautiful Goddess, and he earned his moniker by harvesting pieces of those he had slain in the Goddess’s service. He was known for wearing braids of victims' hair as bracelets and necklaces, and always wore a pair of leather gloves, crafted from human skin.

  I had every intention of avoiding a man like that, but as you know, the envy of the Beautiful Goddess towards the powers of our Lord runs deep. I’m not sure he ever really had any intention of finding the temple. I think from the very moment he heard a rumor of my presence in Treasure Bay, he wanted nothing more than to add some piece of me to his collection.”

  Aelar paused a moment for a drink, his eyes lost in the memory.

  “Asher and I set off a few days after most of the treasure seekers had departed Treasure Bay. We followed in their footsteps. Between their tracks and Asher’s knowledge of the local terrain, we were able to avoid the gruesome ends that meet most intruders in that ancient jungle. The first two days were fairly uneventful. The afternoon of the first day, we found the pack of a party from the empire. Nearby, we found a single skeleton, the bones had been picked clean and were left pockmarked from the acid of the frogs that had devoured it.

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  On the second day, we found a small grove. Inside that grove were these masses of pale quivering flesh, streaked with lines of purples and blues and capped with two gaping orifices. The surface was slick and glistened with a mucous that seemed to glow in the pale light filtering through the trees. I first thought they were inert, but after a moment's observation, I noticed a shallow, periodic movement through them, which I came to realize was the thing breathing, pulling air through one orifice and expelling it out the other with a slow, rhythmic wheeze.

  'Look, below the masses,' Asher whispered, as if not to wake the things.

  I gazed below and saw remnants of a camp, bags strewn around, and even a pistol lay dropped on the ground, its hammer down as if it had been fired uselessly. Below one of the masses, I realized a hand was sticking out, motionless and decayed, reaching out for some savior who would never arrive.

  'What are they?' I asked Asher, my voice matching his quiet.

  'Tunicates,' he replied, 'parasites. If their children manage to make their way inside of you, they take over your mind and make you their host, driving you to plant yourself into the ground and give birth to one of those things. I’ve seen men driven crazy by it, ripping the skin from their fingers trying to claw their way through wood and stone to get themselves into the ground. We must back away slowly and take care not to disturb any of their children, or we will join that camp as food for their offspring.'

  We detoured nearly a kilometer around the former campsite and continued on our way, mercifully without disturbing any of those things. As we went along, I noticed Asher seemed to be struggling more, stopping periodically to lean against a tree to catch his breath. I offered to slow down, but he insisted he was fine. That night as we made camp, he seemed particularly nervous, and as I observed him cooking over the fire, I realized his hair seemed noticeably thinner than it had when we set out just a few short days ago. We said goodnight as usual, but I did not fall asleep, and neither did he. Three days is long enough to start to acclimate to a place. The noises of the insects, the breeze through the trees, the soft smoke of the campfire, but that night it was still, unnaturally still.

  He came not long after midnight. Asher ran when he arrived, crying out that he was sorry, the last of his hair falling off his head. I clashed with the collector there in the campsite. Much like the servant you clashed with, he seemed damn near impenetrable, and my blades bounced off those gloves of his. I was faster than him, for a while at least, until finally I misread one of his swings and he caught me in the side. I went flying, a rib broken, and my breath exploding out of me with the force of a steam engine. He laughed. It was only three or four ha’s, but they sounded musical, and fake, and yet I still hear them on nights when the moon is overhead, and it's quiet enough for devils to whisper in your ear. I ran.

  Through the night, he chased me, and every trick I had ever learned was ineffective. Nothing would throw him off my trail, nothing would hurt him, and nothing would tire him out. He chased me as one possessed, and nothing on the planet would drive him off my trail. We wound through the jungle, dodging poisonous plants and deadly animals, crashing through the trees and over streams until suddenly, the jungle fell away.

  I found myself in a clearing, the air thick with the smell of salt and decay. The trees around the edges leaned unnaturally outward, as if trying to escape what lay in the center, and what lay in the center was them. The tunicates, in far larger quantities than we had found in the camp before. Some were ancient and massive, their flesh withered and losing much of the sheen that covered the younger ones, which grew along the outside of the clearing, scrambling for space among their larger brethren. On the far side of the clearing, I could see the rocks and, through them, the coast. If I could get through the other side from here, the Collector would have to detour for miles to get back on my trail. This was my final chance to get away, but it meant walking through these monstrosities, where a single misstep would mean my painful end as food for a parasitic monster.

  My momentary panic was broken by the sound of laughter behind me. The Collector had caught up with me. Not bothering to look back, I took a deep breath and began to slowly enter the clearing. Suddenly, I felt a sting along my cheek. Fearing I had accidentally trodden on one of the things, I froze, only to hear the laughter again at the edge of the clearing.

  Ha ha ha ha.

  I turned slowly to see the Collector at the edge of the clearing, a few needles in his gloved hand. He gestured slowly with his other hand for me to come to him. I felt the blood start to flow down my cheek and touched my hand to the wound. I knew that death lay before and behind me, but only by going forward did I stand the slightest chance. I slowly turned back ahead and continued my slow walk forward.

  Something pierced my right shoulder. A larger needle than the one the Collector had thrown before. I brought my hands quickly to my mouth and held down a scream. I continued to walk, allowing my body to swing as recklessly as I dared without brushing the tunicates to make myself less of an easy target, but still the needles came on. Another one hit the small of my back, another came flying past my right ear, just barely missing the tip. A fifth hit just below where the second had embedded itself in my shoulder. I could feel my right arm getting numb. Through the fog and fear that had brought my brain to a crawl, I realized there was likely some kind of sedative in those needles. I pressed on. Only a few more meters and I would be past the center and nearing the edge of the clearing. From there, the shore was just a short run away.

  Just as I reached out for that faintest glimmer of hope, the worst-case scenario happened. The Collector missed. I had swayed suddenly to the right to avoid stepping on a small tunicate, and the needle destined for my left shoulder went flying past, embedding itself in one of the larger tunicates nearby.

  The slow, rhythmic wheeze of their breathing, a sound that almost could have been hypnotic if not for the circumstances, stopped for all of them. In unison, they all drew in a huge, wheezy breath, and then they exhaled, each of them sending a mist of purple up into the air.

  I ran. I took one deep breath and held it, not daring to draw another. I called upon every blessing I had ever received from the Faceless God, every power I had taken from my enemies or received from my friends, and I ran. A purple worm landed on my arm, and without thought, I lashed out with my dagger, slicing it in two. Almost as soon as it fell, another fell in its place. I took a diving roll forward, feeling some of them that had landed on my back squash underneath me. Coming out of my roll without breaking my momentum, I continued to run, wildly slashing around my body, at times cutting my clothes or even nicking my flesh, but not caring, only knowing that if one of those things made it inside me, I was damned.

  I made it out of the clearing and into the rocky pass towards the shore. I couldn’t feel any more of the worms on me, but I continued slashing, randomly rolling whenever I had a clear enough space of ground to do so without bashing my head on a rock. I made it clear of the pass and onto the beach. Not knowing if those things could survive the salt water, I dashed into the sea, throwing myself into the surf and under the waves. There I stayed for as long as I could hold my breath. I had lost my dagger when I had entered the surf, but I didn’t care; my hands were still roaming all over, looking for any worms that had somehow clung on to me. I found one running along my neck, trying to get into my ear. I grabbed it between my thumb and index finger and held it in front of me, watching it squirm under the water, writhing its way to get free, until finally it was still.

  Still not willing to let it go, but with my lungs screaming for oxygen, I broke the surface of the water. There on the beach, I saw the collector. At first, I was ready to throw myself back under the water and start swimming, but then I noticed he was motionless. The smile that had been plastered across his face throughout our chase had vanished, and his laugh had been silenced. We stood staring at each other for a moment. The sun started to rise behind me, and in the dawn light, I noticed the worms. They were everywhere on his body. I could see the tip of one poking out of his ear and another out of his nose. The rest slithered around helplessly on his body, looking for a way inside. As we stared at each other, his body began to shake, softly at first but then increasingly wildly as the parasites began to take hold of his brain.

  Suddenly breaking our eye contact, the Collector turned and ran away from the beach, clearing the sand and arriving at the dirt closer to the rocks. He dived forward, and without care began to claw at the ground. I watched him dig for a while. As Asher had said, the gloves on his hands soon ripped, and even when the skin on his hands started flaying, he didn’t pause, widening and widening the hole until it was nearly large enough to encompass his bulk. As he neared completion, he stood up, tensing his body to jump into the hole, but before he did so, he suddenly turned his body back to look at me.

  His eyes ran with blood, and his smile had returned, blood clearly pouring through his teeth and staining his mouth bright red. His eyes were equally bloodshot, and for just a moment, they still had the same clarity of obsession I had seen in him throughout the night. He let out a final laugh, hauntingly musical.

  Ha ha ha ha.

  I could see the clarity in the eyes begin to fade, and moving like a puppet in the hand of an amateur, the Collector turned back to the hole and threw himself in. I watched his arms flail around for a bit, covering himself with dirt, until eventually all was still.

  I looked down at the worm still in my hand. It was mercifully still, but not wanting to take any chances, I crushed it in my fist and threw it as far away from me as I could. I swam along the coast until the corpse of the collector, and that clearing of monsters was far out of sight. Only then did I dare return to the beach and make my way back to Treasure Bay.”