The black passageways were faintly lit green, and the sick realization came to her that it was the glowing embers of her three eyes that cast the light. She tore a lengthy strip from the enfolding, crimson robe beneath her cloak to cover her scalped head and luminous senses. She was surprised to find she could still see through the thick cloth.

“It seems the hive see in complete darkness,” the ghost ruminated, flitting through her thoughts.

“Perhaps they visually perceive with darkness, as we perceive with light?” Eris wondered back. The hollows of the pitch-black dungeon gleamed in photo-negative. “Where is the way out, ghost? Through the mountain?”

“We came through a portal from our world to theirs,” the ghost answered. “This is a pocket dimension of one of the Hive’s lowly gods. Other dimensions exist beyond, both further out and back to our origin. We came this way, through the prisons of Crota’s keep and up into the seat of his power, over the bridge. I believe I can lead you back.”

She traced through interminable chambers, down corridors of cells filled with rotting bones and flesh. The air was rank and fetid, the stone floor wet with slime and flitting insects. At times the ghost dwindled and fell silent, and she wandered, lost in those black halls. Always there were spiraling stairways down, always down. The ghost would wake and wonder whether these were the halls they’d walked before, and just as soon fall silent again.

He had restored what he could to her; impressions, passing conversations. He had done what he could to graft his memories upon her mind, to show her in visions what few memories of her he possessed. She had fought in battles before the spires of a great city. The last city, he had called it.

“You were a gifted tracker,” he’d recalled. “Your knives were legendary; you were known, I heard at least, to eschew the weapons of science for those of primitives.”

“Ghost…something’s been troubling me.” She hesitated, almost afraid to ask. “How did you find me, in those pits? How did you come there to begin with?”

The ghosts response was uncertain. “I was tossed away there, by my master. I long thought you dead at that time. I presume they did the same with you.” He did not seem at all confident. “There were many corpses in that place; be grateful the light was too little for you to see.”

“Where did the dead come from? I thought our party to be small?”

“We were few; only six,” replied the ghost. “The husks and shells of bodies that I found were much older and…less complete.” He hesitated; he did not seem to desire further explanation.

“Less…complete?” she stammered.

“I do not desire to be more specific. When I found you, you were more or less whole. Enough to revive. I’m not sure why they left you in such condition: the hive uses the dead of their foes for fell purpose. I have traced the remnants of many guardians I knew in the frames of the hive’s armies.”

“What horrible creatures.”

“I would not be so quick to judge,” he replied, warily. “I heard tales that Eris Morn was known to hide, dressed in the corpses of her enemies, to lay in ambush for their mourning dead.”

There was silence for a time. She had another thought that burned in her mind.

“Ghost…how did you not recognize me? My clothes at least would be the same.”

“Those…are not the clothes you came here in.” He paused, turned somber. “From what my master showed me of the rituals of summoning, that their witches had performed in ages past…I understand them to be sacrificial vestments. For the summoning of their Kings, as they traverse between dimensions.” He would not speak further on the subject.

Time was incomprehensible in the netherworld. There was no sun, nor stars to begin with, much less to be seen in the dungeons of Crota. Eventually a stairway gave way to a floor of dirt, not stone. “We’ve reached the abyssal gate of this world,” whispered the ghost. “It won’t be far to–“

The words were cut short by a horrible howl from above, but this one was not like the phantasm’s; it was pained, tortured. Human. Eris crouched, looking back up the stair.

“Eris, don’t!” whispered the ghost. “We must escape if we are to warn–“

“Which is it!?” Eris hissed, rounding on him. “Which of us would still be fighting, broken, even now?”

“It’s Omar.” The ghost was morose, resigned. “I know it in his voice, for I heard it before my master cast me down; but how he could he still live, now…? It is a trap, Eris.”

But she had already turned back, flown up the stairs and back through those wet passages. The scream came again, from above; and with each fresh shriek, and each furtive stride closer, strange light grew in the ensuing chambers. She flew fast and far, a silent apparition of vengeance; down long hallways, the source of the glow intensified. Horrible echoes muddled with strange sutras, like a horrible chorus chanting in a nightmare. Down a final corridor, the source of the light emanated in the torches of a forlorn cell.

She rested just beyond the light, in the doorway: furtively, she looked inside. Stretched on a rack, arms and legs chained, was the shuddering, skeletal musculature of the screaming man; his wet flesh glistened, skinless and steaming; writhing in pain, splayed by his cruel bonds. Around him in a ghastly circle, ragged skeletal forms chanted a horrid mantra; they were bedecked in ornate raiment, bearing cleavers and wet carvers bathed in red blood. Hovering above him, silent and mercurial, was the ragged form of a hag, floating, weightless, like a horrible Sea Nettle, circling. The witch poured tendrils of black liquid from two vessels in its hands, down onto the exposed muscles of its wretched prisoner, and as the steaming liquid hissed and evaporated on his form he screamed in agony.

The ensuing moments were a blur. Fury boiled in her eyes, white hot tears mixed with the enraged cry of her voice. She was the flash of a shadow in the chamber: her hands found their cleaving knives, then knives found eyes and teeth, throats and bones amongst the circling deviants; the witch turned to throw its black acid too late, as Eris leapt up, grabbing its face, driving the nails of her thumbs deep into its brain. They collapsed on the ground, the blind witch writhing as Eris stabbed its face, thoughtless, blood-blind.

She came to: covered in ash and smeared in black oil, the dead form beneath her disfigured and unrecognizable. The chamber was silent. She turned to Omar, his splayed form trembling, his exposed musculature drying.

“The oil,” the ghost intoned silently, “or acid, it must have been preserving his organs even as it burned them.” She crept to Omar’s side, his form heaving with anguished breath, his lidless eyes raised to her.

“Eh-hihh?” His unintelligible whisper was pitiful; his lipless, tongueless mouth could barely put shape to his breath. She looked about, through tear strained eyes, for cloth or water to salve his frame; but all that came to her gaze were nails, hammers, and iron armor.

“They would make further disciples of our rent forms,” she choked out, impotently. “They attempted this…they tried to…on me….”Her voice failed her where she stood, hopeless above his broken body. “Oh Omar.” She put her hands on his exposed eyes, to cover them. “Forgive me, Omar.”

They left in silence, as quietly as they came.

I keep forgetting to say:

I LOVE EVERY PART OF THESE STORIES

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