[Interlude] In the dark of the night...

Quinland State Penitentiary

Underneath the prison, within the bedrock that formed the peninsula it rested upon, a black liquid dripped from somewhere else. It leaked through a scar-like crack in the stone, pooling around the metal supports of the prison and seeping down, deeper into the caverns the struts kept from collapsing. There, in the nearly-forgotten dark, it found a pipe.

Downtown Springfield

Although it wasn't as vibrantly alive at night as larger cities like New York or San Francisco, Springfield had plenty of college students and young adults with money to burn and a red-light district for them to burn it in. No less than a dozen clubs, sex shops and strip bars, along with a handful of less-seedy establishments, were scattered along a street known to the locals as 'the Ruby Road'.

The city council tried to have it shut down for years, but nothing worked. Enough money solves any problem, and the people running the Ruby Road had no shortage of customers or apparent bottom to their pockets. Eventually, an agreement was made: as long as things were kept off the streets and inside the clubs, the city would tolerate their existence. Of course, it was hard not to, when they brought in almost a fifth of Springfield's tax revenue every year.

It was in an alleyway just off the main street that the door appeared. Surrounded by dirty bricks, the burnished oak of its surface and brass of its handle would’ve looked entirely out of place if anyone were there to see it; it was fortunate that no one was.

The door’s handle turned by itself, and it opened with the quietest of creaks, allowing a hooded figure through. For a brief moment, they turned to look back to another alleyway much like the one they now stood in. A flicker of neon light illuminated torn posters, a few trash bags and a slumped body. Red droplets spattered the wall beside its bared throat.

Unfazed by the sight, the figure closed the door, which faded back into the darkened bricks. They then took a long, slow breath, tasting the air… This new city was fresh and vibrant, full of the heady, rich scent of iron and life.

A smile spread across the stranger’s lips, showing inhumanly sharp teeth. Four hours here would be more than enough to satisfy their Thirst.

Still Heart Cemetery - Barrier

“No, not that femur; I said a right one!”

A polished human skeleton tilted its head to one side and reached down to yank free a bone from its own leg. It held the femur out for inspection, arm remaining raised even as the rest of its body collapsed into a clattering pile of bone.

“You idiot! Not yours! Ugh!”

The speaker, a lanky young man whose ominous, black robes were simultaneously too big and too small for his body, batted the bone out of the skeleton’s outstretched hand. It clattered to the ground several feet away. Like a kicked puppy, the bone’s owner dragged itself towards the femur.

“Surrounded, on all sides, by idiots!” it came out as a screech, momentarily drawing the attention of the other twelve skeletons that toiled about the mausoleum. As one, they watched their master rip off his hood and almost trip over the length of his robe. He pointed at one of them, “You! Stop whatever you’re doing and get me the book.”

The skeleton dropped the severed arm it was holding into the cauldron beside it, causing the mixture to glow a volatile red for a second. Then it erupted, spraying its contents all over the wall and the closest two skeletal servants.

Watching from atop the central platform, their master visibly twitched.

What in Hecate’s unholy name did I do to deserve… this?

It hadn’t always been so bad. When the Philosophus had assigned him to Springfield, Mortimer had been excited, eager even. Given a retinue of his own apprentices for the first time, this project was supposed to be his chance at moving up in the ranks. Now...

Halen had managed to poison himself, Jericho and Revina were both torn apart by zombies, and Talis… the pervert hung himself with his dick out. None of them had been especially bright in life, but they were somehow even more moronic in ****!

The skeleton he’d commanded, Halen’s, the cabalist noticed, approached and clacked it’s teeth at him. Mortimer just stared at it, before taking a deep breath, “I told you… worthless… imbeciles… a thousand times! You can’t speak anymore! Stop trying!” It gave him a blank look and held out the book he’d requested. The cover was slightly soaked from the explosion earlier.

Mortimer winced and wiped it clean. When this was all over… no, now. He turned, and a bolt of black energy tore across the space to the skeleton he assumed was once his incompetent apprentice. The spell coiled around him in a serpent of dark smoke. It ate away at the skeleton’s polished bone, reducing it to a pile of dust in seconds.

The rest of the cabalist’s servants paused in their work to look at their fallen comrade… and as one began clattering their jawbones up and down. Mortimer couldn’t tell if it was laughter, fear or some kind of absurd mourning, but it stopped when he screamed at them to get back to work.

He looked down at the book in his hands. Everything else be damned, this alone was worth his assignment. His family’s legacy, the ‘von Stitches’ legacy, was back where it belonged. Mortimer smiled and opened to the page he needed.

“Ah, yes… of course! Oil the joints with Ichor of Undeath to keep them limber and the sinew loose. One of you, bring me a new femur and three bottles! She’s almost ready…”

Quinland State Penitentiary

‘Burnside’ Joe was, to put it simply, one of the most dangerous criminals that Quinland State had ever been responsible for incarcerating. He'd been indicted for thirteen counts of arson, two of manslaughter and a singular charge of first-degree ****, but that hadn’t been enough to land him in solitary confinement. Not until he cobbled together a batch of home-made napalm using seemingly innocent parts and burned his cellmate’s face off. When the guards responded to a fire-alarm, they found Joe standing over an unrecognizable body, cackling as the heat melted straight through the unfortunate convict’s skull.

Hairspray, three brands of mouthwash and other articles had been banned, and every cell swept for contraband after that. The results were surprising, no less than twenty-two shanks of various types were found, but ultimately nothing could be identified as the accelerant the arsonist had used. Joe, of course, refused to disclose how he’d managed to produce such a potent mixture, so the guards threw him in solitary until they could figure out what to do with him.

It had been just over a week since then. A long week of absolutely nothing to do and nobody to speak to… which would’ve been agonizing if not for a surprising twist of fortune. Joe’s cell had been furnished with a connected shower to allow the inmate some degree of personal hygiene. It wasn’t much better than the facilities available to the rest of the prisoners, save one minor detail. Due to a previous warden’s insistence on privacy, Joe’s shower wasn’t equipped with a camera, and in the time since he’d been moved to isolation, nobody had been much interested in remedying that.

He stood in the dry shower with his hands outstretched, sparks dancing from one finger to the next. The reason the warden hadn’t been able to discover what Joe had used to start the fire was simple: there never was any accelerant. With a gesture, a lance of white-hot fire leapt from the prisoner’s fingers and burned a line into one of the tiled walls, joining dozens of the same that crisscrossed the once-white surface. Joe smiled. Fire always made him feel better.

After adding another handful of scorch marks to his bathroom, the prisoner grudgingly stripped down and turned on the shower. If he stayed too long and came out with dry hair, then the warden might get suspicious.

The shower handle squeaked loudly, and a spray of lukewarm water jetted from the ceiling above. Joe grudgingly stood under it for a few minutes. He hated the way water felt; compared to the elating warmth that fire brought, the clamminess of wet skin was just another **** this place **** him to endure. Joe looked down at his hands, which glowed with contained heat. Steam rose from them as the droplets of water hit. Soon. Soon he’d be able to melt the bars and escape from here. Soon he could return to the life he was meant for. He was hard just from imagining the smoky scent of burning wood...

Something landed on his palm but didn’t evaporate. It was oily and black, darker than anything he’d ever seen. Curious, Joe held it up to his face to get a closer look. Another droplet landed on his skin, then more and more. It spattered across his cheeks, then arms as he tried to cover his face from whatever sewage had made it into the plumbing.

Joe swore loudly as he turned the shower handle to off, trying to wipe the stuff away with his other hand. To his surprise, it clung to his body, and even more sticky ink poured forth from the shower. He savagely twisted the handle, snapping it clean off, but that did nothing to stem the tide. The goo splattered against his hair and eyes, and he pressed his sticky hands over his face to futilely protect it.

It was far, far too late.

The ichor soaked into his skin, absorbing itself into the tissue and injecting into the prisoner’s veins. It reached his heart first, which skipped a beat as it tried forcefully to close itself off from the invading liquid. Joe collapsed to his knees, **** on the slime that **** itself past his lips and into his throat, arms rigid and unable to claw away the rest as it slid under his eyelids like inverse tears. Some slithered up through his nose and infected his brain, driving the prisoner into spastic convulsions. It rebranded his cognitive pathways with alien sigils and blasphemous names, tearing apart everything he once was and restitching the leftovers into something altogether different.

When the guards next checked the solitary confinement wing, they were surprised to see the infamous ‘Burnside’ Joe sitting quietly on his bed with a vacant and distant smile.