“Ay, we don’t have any of these fungus monsters back home,” Mal said once the worship hall had quieted down. “Got a ship with no crew and the captain’s probably down there eatin’ brains still. Goanna sell the boat, buy passage back home for me, Barb and the kids, I will!”

  Barbara seemed receptive, so long as she got to stay with Mal. She hadn’t left his side since he barged in.

  “Deacon, what was that thing?” Calaf asked.

  The interim Pryor shook his head.

  “I truly do not know. There are church rituals for purification and the like. Extensive instructions regarding how to dress the dead for consecration. They’ve been in use since before the Demon Age. It’s possible…”

  Pryor Deacon stopped talking, deep in thought.

  “Where could I find these church records?” Calaf asked.

  “Deepwood, where all church records are stored.” Deacon nodded. “The grand cathedral at the end of the line, perhaps, but that’s seldom open to the public. Deepwood is closest and likeliest.”

  Calaf smiled. “I was heading there already.”

  “Arbiters have already been summoned. They’ll be here within twenty-four hours. If your friend hasn’t left town already, I recommend warning her.”

  “F-friend?” Calaf tried acting natural. “The relic thief? I’m sure they’re far from here by now.”

  Rather than pressing, Deacon gave a knowing nod.

  “If you are heading through Deepwood, may I request you visit the archives?”

  “I was going to check a few things while I was out there.” Calaf nodded.

  Deacon looked this way and that as if checking over his shoulder.

  “While there, if you would please find what you can of, “The Spark of Life Unbridled.”

  Again, Deacon paused and checked around as if this conversation was potentially being overheard. But they were alone at the front door of the cathedral.

  “That’s the phrase that repurposed assistant deacon referred to him… itself by?” Calaf asked.

  “Indeed. You may have to be quite thorough in your search. But if you find anything, pass it on to me. A simple letter will suffice.”

  Calaf made his leave. On his way out of town, he couldn’t help but notice a significant procession building near the north gate.

  Three of four church hunters marched down the street. Drawing this many in one place in peacetime was sure to draw a crowd. And crowd the good locals of Port Town did, cheering, glad they’d soon be able to venture out after dark these days.

  “By the Interface, it’s General Perarde!” cried a maid.

  “Heck, that means something really bad is lurking in the alleys at night!” said another.

  “Still, with the Hammer of Faith here no problem’s going to last for long.”

  None would know the deeds that Calaf, Jelena, Enkidu, Zilara, the dozens of nameless sailors from foreign lands, and especially Karol had accomplished the night before. Well, Deacon would know. Barbara would know, certainly, Mal would tell all who would listen. But their accomplishments would pale in an instant to the famous arbiters who came to clean up afterwards. By name recognition alone they would hog all the glory.

  Still, virtue was its own reward. Calaf had saved lives, and he was gradually weaning himself off the adoration of crowds or the dictates of chivalry.

  Calaf left quietly out the eastern gate, Plains Junction-bound.

  Another day’s walk brought him to the edge of the great plains. In a lax season such as this, the ferries were easily conscripted without much of a wait.

  Calaf was becoming quite adept at traveling the pilgrimage route. No beast of the river Delta was of any threat at this level. He marched on the slow but steady route down to Plains Junction. The town shimmered far in the distance like a mirage and grew steadily closer.

  After a half-day travel, the town was still visible. Such was life on the plains.

  This was Leggy Lizard territory. The corpse of the legendary monster was found, pre-looted, near a rocky outcropping.

  Someone had beaten Calaf to this prize. Not that the lizard would’ve been much of a threat to the Squire. Instead, Calaf stood on a rocky outcropping and got his bearings. It would be another quarter of a day before he was in Plains Junction.

  Calaf got to thinking about his parents, themselves born Under the Menu. Many years prior the pair of initiates had left their child in the Riverglen Cathedral's care while they attended their holy pilgrimage. The pair never returned.

  It was perhaps a common fate for low-level initiates on the pilgrimage. Certainly, for those who strayed off the path, danger did not always summon a higher-level helper to rescue them. Perhaps this is why all those pilgrims of low regard out in the hinterlands had turned to level-spoofing cultivation so easily. Things were dangerous off the trail.

  Were they out here, somewhere? Bleached along the side of the road? That thing in the Port Town sewers claimed it knew them, dead somewhere in the plains. Perhaps the one fate worse than being a pair of bones forgotten off the roadside. Entertaining the thought sent a shiver up Calaf’s spine. The chill grew so bad his Interface shuddered, then quickly reestablished itself. He refocused on something, anything but that fetid entity.

  Over on the western horizon, however, he couldn’t help but notice a great whirlwind.

  Huh. That should be near the lakebed, Calaf thought.

  Calaf compared his route to the junction with a detour over to the lakebed. At this rate, he’d be in town before sundown either way. Spear and Shield in hand, Calaf took off to the west.

  A great alliance of six full parties was doing battle against a familiar legendary monster…

  The great dire-worm of the plains whirled about, kicking up a miniature whirlwind of dust and sand as it assumed a defensive stance amidst the dried-out lakebed.

  “Where’s our paladin!?” cried a level-thirty-something Trailblazer.

  “We still have our Cleric!” cried a lower-rank Stalwart-type. “Stick to the plan. Keep healing and providing barriers!”

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  A Cleric of higher rank than the other alliance members stood on a raised mound above the dried-out lakebed….

  The great dire-worm swung its eyeless, mandible-snapping head over to the Cleric and let out a sludge-spewing artillery barrage.

  As it was before, the empty lake-bed was covered in purplish sludge that radiated fell and debilitating status effects. A clump of bile landed right on the Cleric, producing immediate dire effects:

  Health ticked down in fifty-HP chunks, every half second. Well before Calaf or anyone else on the field could cast any healing or poison-cleansing spells, the poor Cleric’s status wound down to zero.

  Iodem, Cleric for Hire, did not so much fall to the ground dead as he melted down into himself. Like a puddle. Purple ooze leaked from a hollowed-out body.

  “It ate our tank!” cried a level twenty-five. “Our healer is down!”

  “Power levelers are gone. Everyone flee to town!” said another, around level thirty.

  “Flee!”

  “We only need to outrun the slowest member of the group!”

  Calaf ensured his grip on his hand-me-down Shield of Fireproofing was tight. The shield did not have perfect poison resistance, but it should keep that thing’s venomous mandibles at bay. He need only dodge the bile-spewing slag attack.

  Where before the dire-worms of this lakebed had been a daunting foe in the distance on that initial walk into Plains Junction, now Calaf had several levels on the beast. A level delta had not been enough to save Iodem, but Clerics didn’t have Calaf’s Endurance or a shielder’s skillset.

  Calaf ran up to the hill where that healer had met his end.

  Time for his good deed for the day.

  For chivalry, yes, but also for his own sake.

  “Rally around me!” he told the fleeing level thirties and twenties.

  Calaf stood at the site of the dire-worm’s last hapless victim, spear and shield both out in a vicious, mocking pose.

  The dire-worm had no eyes, but it sensed its surroundings all the same. Curled up in a spiraling mound, the worm reared back, tendrils snapping, and it surged forward.

  Sheer force and mass from the blow pushed Calaf back, but his guard held Two snapping, venom-dripping incisors failed to get around the massive tower shield. He poked at the creature’s feeling antenna with the spear in his offhand, dealing scratch damage to the HP pool in the thousands.

  The fleeing alliance turned around.

  “Target its back end.” Calaf’s feet slid, and he steeled himself. “And the points between its segments!”

  There ought to be a weak point, not unlike those gargantuan golden dire-spiders of the desert. Focusing on those points should do far more damage than hacking away at this gargantuan worm with basic axes and swords.

  A party of Trailblazers maneuvered around the beast while it was distracted. They began their usual Scout-path sneak attacks and techniques on the unguarded side while the beast was busy trying to eat Calaf. They got a good hundred HP off the creature before a second mouth popped out the back end of it, grabbed the lead party member in its powerful pincers, and ate him in one gulp.

  “It’s got a mouth on the backside too!”

  Calaf continued to poke at the creature with his spear, doing whatever damage he could and looking for a weak point. At least with the thing’s (main?) mouth wrapped around his shield, it wasn’t about to go running off toward his much weaker allies.

  Parties in this alliance were arranged by class. Four parties were made up entirely of mages and clerical-types – ranged damage dealers. A fifth was made entirely of Scout-type bow and knife wielders thereabouts level thirty. A sixth party was more balanced between tank, melee, and healers. It had been anchored around a level 64 Paladin and Cleric Iodem, now in the dire-worm’s stomach and melted on the ground, respectively. That left Calaf to fill the gap for both.

  He cast his AoE protection spell, Tautological Defense, to grant some buffer to his squishy, under-leveled comrades. Immediately thereafter the tug on his shield ended and Calaf stumbled back another three steps before adopting a renewed defensive stance.

  The dire-worm reared up in a now-familiar prelude to its bile-spewing attack.

  “Clear the lakebed!” Calaf said. “Stay well away from the edge, it has deceptive range!”

  “Are you sure you know how to kill this thing?” asked a party member, a cleric.

  “I’ve seen it done. You need to sever it at the joints in its segments.”

  Over by the shore of the long-dead lake, one of the mages went to retrieve Iodem’s gear.

  “Wait!” Calaf cried. He rushed forward, holding his shield out to protect the Cleric as a hail of purple slag rained everywhere.

  “I should have enough INT to use his catalyst. I can keep us healed!” said the nameless mage of no renown.

  “How did you get that much intelligence as a non-healer class?” Calaf’s shield kept them both in shadow as the toxic rain died down.

  “Uh, cultivation.” The mage averted their eyes. “Over by the Battletower, there was this merchant…”

  Apostasy. Good. Not for the first time, Calaf turned to that old axiom: what would Jelena do in this situation? Well, whatever she needed to win, verily.

  Calaf chewed on his tongue, then swallowed his pride. “Great. Well, if it gets the job done.”

  The unimportant mage looted that catalyst from their dead power-leveler.

  “Ready!”

  “Get back,” Calaf warned. “It’s going to charge again. I’ll draw it off.”

  The worm angled both ends of its armored form towards Calaf. He still had its attention.

  Good.

  Shield up, Calaf stood his ground. One mouth slammed against it, then another. The Squire held his ground even as that ground itself was pushed back by the worm’s twin maws acting as massive shovels, excavating entire tracks of the lakebed.

  There was scarcely an opportunity to strike back with his spear under this barrage, for what good it would do. Instead, those mages and clerics gathered in the wings, preparing a flurry of mid-level fireballs and lightning bolts.

  “Wait for it to rear up, that’ll expose its underbelly!” Calaf said.

  Sure enough, the creature reared up, bile ready.

  A sea of flame and lighting struck the beast below the maw, forcing the creature to abort its attack.

  Calaf smiled. They’d figured out its pattern! Celebration proved premature, as the dire-worm's back end reached out for Calaf with a quick jab.

  The shield blocked its venomous teeth, but the blow sent Calaf to one knee, off balance. The dire-worm’s front rushed at him, still dripping with Bobbit venom from its failed bile-spew.

  No time to dodge nor block! He could probably tank a single blow before healing would be needed, but that venom was another story. Calaf shut his eyes and looked away, only for the creature to bounce clear off a barrier that dissipated.

  That mage had cast a holy blessing upon him. It was a saving throw, salvaging the entire operation!

  Calaf gave the mage a nod and was back on his feet in time to block another blow from the main mouth.

  Footing was not with Calaf, and this blow sent him tumbling like a Plains Junction weed on the wind. He collapsed to his hands and knees in the lakebed, amidst some recently upturned dirt.

  From a distance, it looked as if the dried-up lake bed that this dire-worm called its nest was layered in fine white chalk. Close-up, however, this chalk was revealed to be chewed-up and digested bone dust coagulated into a thin gruel.

  Deep under the surface sat a layer of more intact bones. Dire-horses, yes, but also humans.

  Squire Calaf found himself face to face with a skeleton, its empty eyes whitewashed by decades in the elements. It gazed back at him, just as the entity claimed it watched the world go by through corpses. The thought caused Calaf’s Interface to act up again.

  They could have been mirror images of each other, the Squire and this corpse. Thereabout the same height and build. The long-dead pilgrim stood in a crouching pose where the slag had melted him. A broken and gnawed-on right arm indicated where a basic and now-melted shield like those starting from Riverglen would’ve carried. Held out in a vain attempt to defend against the worms. And behind this figure lay another skeleton, curled up. Her bones hollowed out where dire-worm larvae had consumed her from the inside.

  Calaf spotted the faint markings of a Menu Brand on the bones of this Stalwart-corpse’s left wrist.

  Dead on the side of a random road in the plains. The entity’s guttural gloating echoed through Calaf’s mind.

  Again, his Interface buckled against the weight of his inner turmoil. His Brand-hand felt coarse – as if burning, even as he held his shield in a death grip.

  Outside this excavated shallow grave, the sounds of battle continued.

  “It’s turning to face us. Everyone scatter! Flee! Flee for your lives!”

  Calaf shook his head. When he stopped, he was staring right into this skeleton’s empty eyes. Immediately he was back in that negative headspace. But this time he was itching to murder.

  “Hey!” Calaf, Disillusioned Wayfarer, emerged into the lakebed as the dire-worm finished up another bile-spewing barrage.

  “Hey, you!”

  Calaf had harnessed the most important of a Paladin’s duties – the ability to draw and maintain the enemy’s ire. He held his spear out in mocking challenge, spittle flying from his lips as he let lose all manner of taunts.

  “Yeah, you!” He bellowed whether the beast could understand him or not be damned. “Who the hell do you take me for!? C’mon! Hurry up and eat me. Come and have a go! Uglier things than you have tried!”

  They weren’t dead yet. This was a fight they could win.

  The worm’s main head reared back to try and devour Calaf once more. It lunged, and Calaf lunged in response.

  With a renewed grip on his shield, Calaf held it like a battering ram. He leaped and, with a mighty thrust, rammed the shield bottom-first down the dire-worm’s waiting gullet.