For almost a month, Louven Solovino had finally known peace again. The dreams had stopped almost completely. For the first time in recent memory, he’d sung all the verses of a particularly bawdy song to a crowd of drunks in the common room of the tavern he was staying in last night. He’d told them all exactly how the maid had gotten waylaid, and even during the encore verses, he’d felt no need to switch gears and tell everyone about that awful swamp or its dreadful riches.

He’d only done it to bring the barmaid back to his room, of course. It worked as it always did, but the difference was that for the first time in half a year, he’d actually enjoyed spending the night with the buxom lass. Now, even though she’d left before sunrise to avoid a walk of shame, and her side of the bed had long since grown cold, he finally felt like a weight had been lifted from his heart. Not so much that he dared to try taking off that damnable medallion, of course. He’d learned that lesson too many times already. Just this measure of peace was enough.

He slowly rose and stretched, absently scratching his neck and shoulder. Maybe today, he’d go as far as Cambria or Anwoken. He hadn’t been to either village in an age, and they’d been decent to him in the past. As he started looking for his trousers, he was sure that today would be a good day. He kicked off the blankets and brushed aside his boots, finally noticing what a number he and that barmaid had done on his room. His backpack had gotten knocked over, and its contents were scattered across the floor, along with half of the pillows. Louven supposed he should be grateful that the whole damn bed hadn’t given out after the night they’d had.

“Tiarna?” He asked himself quietly. “Temara?” He couldn’t remember her name. He supposed it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was getting dressed and getting downstairs before they ran out of eggs or sausage. Finally, he found his pants peeking out from underneath her side of the bed. Tired of standing around in just his breeches and more than a little hungry, Solovino bent down to grab his pants, but clumsy as he was, he succeeded in only pushing them further under the bed. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He didn’t think he’d been that drunk last night and was only the faintest bit bleary now. Still, as he got down on his hands and knees to fish out his clothes from the darkness, he was grateful that, at least this time, he wasn’t in a hurry to get out before an angry husband found him.

The darkness under the bed was almost absolute. None of the faint light from the window reached him, so it might have easily been an abyss except for the brown cloth he was reaching for. Memories of true darkness flickered in his mind, but he pushed those memories away as quickly as they surfaced. He’d been in the pitch-black darkness of that maze for days and tried very hard to stay in well-lit establishments ever since. The bard clutched his pants and yanked them out from under the bed. The unpleasant memories were doing an excellent job of souring his wonderful morning. It would take at least two or three beers to fix his outlook once he got downstairs, he decided, frowning.

Halfway out, though, the clothes got stuck and wouldn’t come any further. “Of course,” Solovino sighed. As he crawled a little bit further into the darkness so he could grope with his hands and find out what they were stuck on. Idly, he wondered if there was a song in this mishap. Undoubtedly other men in the audience had faced a similar dilemma of trying to get dressed and get away after a rough night.

“But I’ll need something that rhymes with trousers, of course. Ours? Flowers?” he muttered, shrugging mentally. He could work on it after his brilliant creative mind had been adequately lubricated. He could—Solovino barely had time to scream when he felt the first pair of hands grab him, and he instantly let go of his clothes and tried to pull away from them. Maybe Tenessa really did have an angry husband, he thought in a panic, before he felt a second and a third pair of hands grab his arm and pull him into the darkness with irresistible strength.

Then suddenly, he was back in that room with that awful golden cadaver. Aside from a foot of water on the floor and dark mold that had blossomed across the walls, nothing had changed. The bard could feel the amulet he wore on his bare chest throbbing like a second heartbeat.

“You’ve been lazy, bard,” the skeleton said with slow, precise words in a hollow voice. The last time he’d seen the Lich, it had sat there, frozen on its throne like a particularly distasteful sculpture. This time though, it leaned forward and spoke. “You’ve been lazy, and that will cost you, but not just yet. Right now, I need something from you.”

“Anything!” Solovino gasped, his voice cracking from fear as he shied away from this thing’s presence. “Just don’t hurt me!” The bard had long ago given up on being brave. He’d thought that he’d run out of those urges. But right now, he felt an anger in him that he knew would have withered to nothing under the cold gaze of this monster if he’d really been back in the swamp. This was a dream; it had to be. In a dream, there were no zombies that could rip him to pieces.

“I need a new song.” The Lich continued. “You must sing to all who will listen that I am dead, and the rains of the archmage have washed away the darkness and—” Solovino’s heart was pounding in his ears so loudly that he could barely listen to what the gilded skeleton in front of him was saying. Suddenly his hands shot out and wrapped around the thing’s throat and started to squeeze as he throttled it. There was nothing to choke, but he shook it violently, trying to break the brittle old bones.

“Dead? Why settle for a song about being dead,” the bard growled, “I can just give you the real thing.” One final shake, and he felt as much as he heard something crack as the Lich’s skull tumbled across the floor. The head rolled half a dozen feet away from him before coming slowly to a stop, face up.

“Compose my song, or your misery will never end,” it cackled. Even as it laughed, though, the room began to darken until seconds later, only the skull was still visible. “Sing about my death, or yours will be quick to follow.”

Solovino woke with a start, gasping for air as he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He looked down in the predawn light to find that even though his hands had been wrapped around Lich’s throat in the dream, they’d been wrapped around Temira’s in the waking world.

“No,” he whispered, looking at her blue, lifeless skin in the morning twilight. “Nononono - fuck!” Even in death, she was beautiful. Only a monster would have hurt such a pretty young woman, and with a sick feeling in his stomach, he realized the only monster in the room was him. The bard got out of bed and started to panic, dressing and packing as quickly as he’d ever done. There was nothing he could do and nowhere he could hide the body. Part of him wanted to turn himself in, but the rest still wanted to live. It was that part that won the fight and hurriedly left the inn after he’d covered the tavern maid with a sheet out of respect for her dignity.

He didn’t have a horse, and he knew that the law would be looking for him before the end of the day, so he decided to take the backway to Anwoken. He wouldn’t sing there either. He’d just stay the night until he could get further on. Far enough from here, this story might become a rumor that he could downplay as gossip. From there, he could tell whatever lord sheltered him when the news finally ran faster than his feet that it was a case of mistaken identity and wait for it to fade from crime to scandalous rumor. Right here, though? Right now? There was no way to reason with a noose or a tree, and he doubted very much that the darkness that gripped his heart would let him tell even a tenth of the truth. Even if he wanted to.

He stayed ahead of the events that nipped at his heels for three days. After the first night, he no longer stayed in inns. He knew it wasn’t safe. Instead, he slept fitfully in ditches and woods, camping rough and getting off the road whenever he heard the distant sound of galloping. Eventually, he even started to compose the new song the voice in his head commanded of him, if only so he could sleep again. Solovino’s luck didn’t hold out, though. On the fourth night, his campfire was spotted by armed men, who, after a brief chase through the woods, bound him hand and foot before they heaved him over the back of a mule to be brought back to Illingsbruck for justice.

It was a miserable ride, and the darkness in his soul took no pity on him just because he was physically unable to follow the Lich’s orders. For the first couple of nights, they tried to ask him why he did it. They wanted to know why he killed Temira badly enough to beat it out of him, but for once, the bard had nothing to say that anyone wanted to hear. All he could offer was apologies and gut-wrenching sobs.

As luck would have it, though, he didn’t get the noose reserved for him. When they arrived in Illingsbruck, a small band of templars was waiting there to put him to the question about some of the heresies he’d been spreading.

Solovino would have preferred the noose.

They didn’t give him a choice when they tied him to a chair, though, “Please - I-I’m just a singer,” he pleaded, “I don’t know anything!” He tried to explain that to them.

“A singer, huh? You’re a man of high fame and low morals Louven Solovino. Everyone knows that about you, and now they know you’re a murderer too,” the inquisitor said as he went through the bard’s pack, “I hadn’t planned to make you sing loud enough for the whole village to hear until later; but if you want to sing now, then why don’t you start with a hymn to put us all at ease.”

Solovino opened his mouth to try to sing the opening notes to ‘Our Lady of Peace,’ but nothing came out.

“Yeah, I thought not,” the holy man nodded. He had a touch of gray at his temples and sad eyes that didn’t fit at all with the air of danger about him. “Maybe this will help you to find your voice. I find the gods always inspire me in my times of darkness.”

Solovino was bound to the chair by his wrists, so he couldn’t pull away when the inquisitor shoved a small silver icon into the bard’s hand before closing his hands around the bard’s fist.

“Normally, this is when I would pray with you while the pain of your foul, tainted spirit burns, so we can better understand what we are dealing with before—”

“Ahhhhh, just let - I need to…” Solovino babbled. The object that the inquisitor had shoved in his hand had felt wrong from the first moment he’d been forced to touch it, and after a few seconds, it started to burn, but now it was pure agony.

“Gag him,” the inquisitor ordered, and almost instantly, one of the templars came forward to obey. The dirty rag muted the screaming but did nothing for the pain. It was only when thin traces of foul-smelling smoke began to pour out from between Solovino’s fingers that the inquisitor allowed him to let go of the icon. It fell to the ground, where it landed in some dry hay without so much as smoldering. The inquisitor opened the bard’s limp hand and showed him the raw and mangled burn the holy symbol inflicted on his palm and fingers.

“Well, it doesn’t look like you’ll be playing that Mandolin of yours any time soon,” the inquisitor shook his head slowly as he spoke, “But just between you and me, I don’t think you’ve got much singing left in your future either. I think you might have one story left inside that corrupted soul of yours, and I’m going to pry it out of you no matter how many pieces we have to cut you into.”

The inquisitor let the pain of the last minute mix with the terror of the present before he continued. “You see, our hallowed pontiff received a letter from the Magica Collegium in Abenend, warning us of a horrible danger from some backwater and encouraging us to mobilize an expedition to root it out. Can you believe it? Those dogs haven’t dared to speak to us in decades, and then they send us a letter that mentions a corrupted little man like you by name?”

Solovino couldn’t speak, so he just shook his head from side to side. He wanted nothing to do with these people or their religion. If they would only let him talk, he’d gladly tell them anything they wanted to hear, but they obviously had no interest in that yet.

“Our pontiff, blessed be his name, has sent us out on a little fact-finding trip that starts with you. We’ve spent more than a month looking for you in all the lowest places we could find. We might never have found you if you didn’t decide to go and kill that girl.”

The inquisitor’s lips curled into a cruel smile when the bard began to shake his head even more violently. “So, you can tell me everything I want to know about this cursed arch magus and his blasted swamp, or I can take you apart a piece at a time until you change your mind. It’s entirely up to you.”