***

The battle was coming to an end. Like an iron broom, Inon's troops swept through the corridors of the ancient labyrinth, cleansing its dank corners of every manner of undead. There were jumping undead, undead crawling and flying, biting, undead stinging and spitting foul-smelling venom. Undead with souls and without...

Leaving his companions to deal with the semi-intelligent creatures spawned by death magic, Inon focused on those whose dead flesh concealed dim yet still quivering lights of captive souls. Unlike regular priests, Inon had neither armor nor symbols of the Merciful that protected those who wore them with an invisible shield. He had no weapons of any kind – he was a weapon unto himself, "a life-giving sword in Veindor's hand." With imperious strokes, Inon tore the souls from the bodies of the undead with the ease of a farmer deftly yanking carrots from the rich black soil. The priest breathed evenly, his heart beating slowly, rhythmically, as he strode forward to the beat of this internal metronome toward the center of the labyrinth, where, like the decaying carcass of an elephant, sprawled the House of Eternal Being. Their goal. The live lair of their current Enemy.

What from far away looked like the skeletons of ships piled in a heap, draped with thick faded pink vines and covered with ragged shreds of dark sails, up close appeared to be an amorphous creation, stripped of skin, like those hideously deformed monsters perforated by their own bones into which overly thrifty tourists are transformed as a result of cheap, defective portals.

It wasn't the first time Inon was seeing a creature like this – a "triumph of the flesh" lovingly assembled by necromancers from the corpses of thousands of their victims, but all the same his heart ached with pity and disgust. Just like the very first time...

He stopped to offer a short prayer to Veindor. It was not appropriate, after all, to administer justice while overflowing with hatred. The Merciful heeded him, and tranquility again descended on his faithful servant. Approaching the unnaturally small gates, which resembled the neck of a pink sack drawn tight, Inon even chuckled, thinking to himself, I wonder if the locals simply call them "doors," or do they use some anatomical term like "sphincter?"

It was hot and dank inside. Inon's soles parted from the floor with a crackle every time he lifted his feet – the floor was sticky and covered with dark streaks, like in a slaughterhouse. Beyond the bumpy living walls, something was roaring, bubbling, growling, buzzing, moaning, muttering – a muffled and nasal cacophony. From time to time he heard squishing claps, as if hunks of raw meat were being slapped over and over against a metal sheet.

Almost unopposed, the priests of the Merciful reached the central hall. Through the glass of its flat roof they could see the colored abdomens of huge beetles, devouring one another in the deathly light of the moon. Their innumerable feet scuttled along the smooth surface, among fragments of crystal, rusty nuts, bundles of hay, dandelion heads, scraps of posters and pieces of gilded furniture.

Hideous bas-reliefs stretched all along the walls, woven from glowing innards. Cat-shaped shadows raced across them – angular, broken, coal-black. Their insane dance hypnotized the priests, while the vibrating, hysterical, hungry cries made them grind their teeth. Inon looked down. He was now walking on a carpet of dirty, matted black fur, as if someone had dug up the body of a gigantic cat and ripped off its half-rotted skin. Small cemetery flowers were even stuck to it here and there.

In the center of the room, on a scaly stump bathed in blood, which looked like the stub of a dragon's neck, sat the master of the house. He was tall yet stooped, and tightly wrapped in a dirty, brownish, shapeless leather garment, traditional for members of his profession. Three bone golems stood before the necromancer, backs to their lord. At the feet of the first golem – long-necked with a flat, python-like head – lay a pile of thin sacks with buckles made of snake teeth. The second – black as a firebrand – was like a cat with disproportionately long fangs, clutching a basket containing dark waffles, collapsed in a tube. The third skeleton, also in the form of a cat, glimmered with chipping gold plating. It sat on the floor, ankles crossed delicately, with a glass bowl of animal bones resting on its lap.

These monsters began to move upon seeing Inon and his four companions. The black one grabbed a waffle and aimed it at the nearest priest. The gold one set the bowl in front of him and managed to blow into it, although he had no lungs. The snake skeleton sprinkled its own poison on the "sacks," and they immediately flew up into the air. One by one they opened, showing a pale pink silk lining inside, and Inon realized that they were the crushed, withered, eyeless heads of snakes. They pounced on the two youngest priests, forcing them to stand back to back and go on the defensive. The remaining two had it even worse. One, as if frightened by the golem's waffle, broke into a run. A spindly, needle-like sphere of bone dust formed around the other, like frost forming on an invisible ball, except that the "frost" didn't appear in such regular prickly lace spirals. His jaw set, the captive priest hacked away at the sphere as hard as he could with his sword, but the blade glanced off the bone powerlessly, not even leaving a scratch.

Inon did not get involved. His very presense determined the battle's outcome from the beginning, and he wanted this episode to be a lesson to his apprentices. Watching his younger companions, he thought that they were relying too heavily on weapons and not enough on the force of their will, their priestly gifts. Couldn't they understand that? Apparently not.

Things came to a close very quickly. One of the priests opened up, and a green "sack" dug into his palm. The priest staggered, dropped his sword and, giggling drunkenly, sat on the floor.

There was no point in delaying any longer.

Inon could feel the faint pulsating of the living tissue under his feet. Ripping up a scrap of the carpet, he pressed his palm to the elastic yellowish mass beneath it, concentrated... and the flesh of the House of Eternal Being became his flesh. Inon had no trouble getting it to transform, to take on the shape he desired, to serve his interests. Like monstrous shoots breaking through the shaggy carpet, powerful and lithe tentacles rose to the ceiling. Cracking like a whip, they caught the "sacks" one after another, broke the spine of their handler, tightly wrapped around the two other golems, darted at the necromancer... and froze, because Inon froze.

"In the name of Veindor! Cease!" a high, clear voice sounded from behind him.

Inon looked around. A herald of L'aenor, the ruler of Elidan and head of the Guardians of Death Council, stood in the doorway.

"What is the meaning of this?" Inon asked.

"He means to say, noble hero, that you're writing the wrong story," the black golem purred instead of the herald answering. "You've played too long, Inon, and you've forgotten whom you serve. Your friend is here to remind you."

"You've... bewitched him," said Inon, feeling his hair stand on end. Never before had he met an enemy capable of such a thing.

"Worse, Inon, much worse. I logged a complaint about you in your own Council."

"And what do you have to complain about, you carrion?"

"That you're using your position as a servant of Veindor for your own personal interests."

"And these interests are extremely unseemly," the gilded golem chimed in. "Heinous, actually. Couldn't be worse."

"You're a priest of Veindor the Merciful, right? Right," the black one went on. "Then we don't really understand what you're doing here at all. Why are you here, hmm? According to the Convention on the Rights of the Dead and Body-Challenged, there could be two reasons. Either we've all become the way we are by force, that is, others have forced us into it." The skeleton ran a claw over his own ribs like a xylophone. "Our souls were not made for this and are suffering inhumanely, and you've come to free us, poor devils that we are. But no, we're all perfectly content to be what we are! There are many advantages. As for the cons – eh."

The other skeletons nodded in agreement. There was something ridiculously childish, defiant in their movements. The sneers, this attempt of the undead to feign delight in life, to show that "what they are" is just another version of the norm, harmless to souls... it enraged Inon. The tentacles squeezed the skeletons again... but then went limp as Inon's will went up against someone else's. And the other's will – evidently, the herald's – was stronger.

"The second reason could be that we're the ones who've imprisoned the souls of others in these terrible cage of dead flesh, rock, iron and so forth. Imprisoned, forced them to work for us, and their souls are suffering," the erudite golem went on. "In that case, you ought to free them and punish us. But have you seen any captive souls here? There aren't any! Not a one, no matter how wretched!"

"And so we're as-s-sking you," the snake-golem hissed, "what did you forget here, esteemed Guardians of Death? It used to be that you, Inon, could kill us just for being our ghastly undead selves, and no one would bat an eye. But not anymore. Times have changed."

"You're murderers, just as before. And Veindor does not accept his creatures ending one another's lives," Inon hissed back through his teeth.

"What then, he sends one priest to every murderer? How about that! Such a large body of servants! How does he manage to maintain them all?" snickered the gilded golem.

"He sends his priests to those whose black deeds have exhausted the abundance of his patience. And you can count your victims in the thousands," Inon responded.

"The same goes for most inhabitants of our world. Would you like us to give you the list? Why then have you turned your grand attention to us, out of everyone? Childhood traumas rearing their ugly heads?"

Inon took several deep breaths.

"Oh! I know, he's about to blame us for desecrating the corpses of our victims," the snake boomed; propping himself up on his hands, he nestled the broken end of his spine in the black fur.

"And we'll show him how one southern king ate the family of his brother, and how a certain northern queen, once she'd destroyed the native people of the Frozen Woods, ordered their fur to be used to stuff hundreds of pillows for her attendants. Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it!"

"And so we ask, Inon, why us? Cat got your tongue? All right then, let's chalk it up to coincidence. Pure coincidence. But see, the strange thing is, my lawyer's gathered some statistics on your previous missions. And you know what he found? The target of all your punishing deeds have always been the 'ghastly undead!' The undead and no one else! Across the board. Not a single breathing, sweating, pooping being. And that's dis... discr... discrimination! It doesn't look good, Inon. You can't have it both ways – serving an impartial god and being partial yourself. So, prepare to get slapped on the wrist with a mouse bone for a hundred and fifty years, at least!" the skeleton concluded.

"That's not for you to decide," the herald spoke up. "Come on, Inon. They're waiting for us. My people will take care of your apprentices."

"This is insanity!" Inon exclaimed, but obeyed the order.

"Should you be the judge, really?" the messenger asked in a critical tone, but Inon paid no mind.

"I don't understand how his complaint even reached the Council? Whose idea was it to even put it on the agenda?"

"Council member an Kamian."

"Who?" Inon practically choked.

"Council member Lady Talia Aella an Kamian," the herald repeated flatly. "I'm sure she's profited from doing so, too. Quite the business acumen on that one."

"But how... how can... how can it be?" Inon mumbled; his head was spinning with the surreality of it all.

"Technically, she's following the letter of the law. It's all within the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Dead and Body-Challenged, which she and you both advocated for so passionately. Taking anonymous donations is now also not prohibited. There's nothing left to do but accept it. The same goes for countless committees and commissions, endless agreements, inquiries, approvals, reports and accounts. And the fact that we're drowning in lawsuits. Every vampire now has the right to vote. And so it shall be forever," the herald gestured apocalyptically.

"No, it won't!" Inon caught him by the wrist and spat between clenched teeth.

Then he woke up.

His shirt was soaked in sweat. He was laying on a sofa in a corner of the glass cube in Talia an Kamian's basement. He was holding a wooden viper by the throat. It was one of four supporting a plain vase containing sugary-pink cacti. Fighting back nausea, Inon squeezed even harder, and the solid lacquered wood broke with a crack. The vase fell to its side, making the cacti look like some monster's grotesque udders. Removing his hand in disgust, Inon sat up. His eyes made a sweep of the room.

Inon had the strange impression that he was still dreaming. Reality muddled with absurdity, as if someone had carefully assembled the pieces of his nightmare and hung them around the room, like an unkempt dame drying her laundry. These nasty cacti... and the horned beetles stuck to the walls, the oval bed – decorated on the sides with scale-like metal and fitted with linen of scarlet silk that made it resemble a half-gutted fish. Curled up right in the middle of this gaping wound was Enaor. Clay and dry grass stuck to his shaggy coat. Above the cat's head bobbed lamps – a retinue of pink and yellow ringed tubes... they were like balls of guts, which Enaor was said to have loved to play with as a child.

Inon shuddered. Indeed, he had long been living a nightmare, surrounded by ugliness and perversion. Moreover, he was creating the nightmare himself, bringing it to life by defending the rights of all manner of degenerates and their minions. Wasn't he the one who once argued that "living" in a stone was quite natural for some? That it were just one version of the norm? And yet this was one step away from what he had just dreamed of. Damn him! Damn this indefatigable Talia an Kamian and her "humanitarian" ideas!

Inon wiped the sweat from his brow and pulled out from behind his back a bumpy throw pillow. No, not a pillow–it was a rag doll. A freak with two heads, Talia and Enaor. On the cheek of the former, the words "half-wit an Kamian" were embroidered, and on the forehead of the latter, "half-wit an Al Emenayit." The chest displayed, "A smart Alae of unknown breed."

Inon stared at the doll for a while, unable to pin down exactly what about it captivated him so. Then he whispered, dumbfounded, "What if Talia really does have two heads?" What if all her actions were carefully planned by someone else? That loony Enaor? Selorn with his open hatred of Veindor? Her scheming mother? Or... Alasais herself? What if someone were consciously trying to undermine the power of the priesthood of Veindor? To unravel the millennia-old foundation of their faith? Spread the rot of bureaucracy through His Temple? Corrupt his clerics, turn them into hawkers and bribetakers? Squash them all with the heel of public opinion, which cats had been able to twirl like their tails since ancient times?

And what if this poor priestess who'd attacked Talia, who'd fought with him for Restes' soul, had also understood, as he was now beginning to understand, what all these "humane" reforms would lead to, and only for this reason had opposed her brother in faith?

Inon took his aching head in his hands.

Yes, it was all falling into place. Sensing horrible danger, the priestess of the Merciful and her comrades-in-arms had decided to act. Restes had played the role of the provocateur. He was reaching out to those who might rise up against Veindor and, pretending to be one of them, unearthing their nefarious plans. The only thing that bothered Inon in this scenario was the presence of an Eale telepath among the priestess' pals. Then again, even among cats there might be some respectable specimens, right?