Regrouped under the shroud of the prisoner’s desperate escape, the trio of Krav. Mac, and Greenblatt quickly tended to their wounds. Greenblatt stuffed strips of cloth into their mouths to protect the exposed inner pulp of their teeth. Both of them winced and tried to resist medical care. When it was done, they looked like squirrels with cheeks packed with a week’s dinner.

  Greenblatt couldn’t walk. Being used as a throwable weapon while being wielded by the ankle consequently saw his foot dislocated. The bunching muscles in the area were swelling and turning a shade of purple, and the foot itself hung at an uncomfortable angle. Mac was able to help a bit. With Krav’s help, she set the foot and bound it in place with clothing from the dead prisoners. The two of them helped him to his feet and shouldered him like a landmine victim.

  They hobbled together up the corridor towards freedom. Mac had a general sense of direction, but it was ultimately Greenblatt who was the one to guide them. Through pained grunts, he directed them from one hall to another in the massive anthill that was the hive. By his predictions, they were nearly out of the chaos. Then he was nearly pulled in half when the girl stopped.

  “What is it, Mac?” Greenblatt asked after sucking air through his teeth and bracing his leg.

  She was staring into a room. The three of them could see stone slabs at the edge of the torch light. On top of the nearest one, Greenblatt could make out a foot, but the rest of the body was shrouded in darkness. Mac pulled them in that direction.

  The growing chamber wasn’t much larger than the one that held the prisoners. Most tables were empty, but the ones that weren’t were arranged like farm plots. They were aligned in rows of five by five, equally spaced and sized. The slabs that were occupied held mutilated corpses that were sliced up with a surgeon’s care. From their exposed wounds sprouted a mushroom that glittered pink and blue in the torchlight. Mac was almost too eager to let Greenblatt go.

  “Mac!” Greenblatt yelped as he fell. Krav shouldered him before he could land in the naked lap of one of the corpses. “What’s the big deal, we have to go!”

  The girl was hastily plucking the mushrooms from the bodies. They snapped low at the base of the stalk, where the fungus had softened the bone and drained all of its nutrients. When she had cleared one of the corpses, she pulled the cloth from her mouth before moving onto the next one.

  “You don’t recognize this?” she asked. She found a way to angle her mouth where she could pronounce her words better. “It’s DMD. Dead Man’s Delight.”

  “It’s foul is what it is. Leave it and let’s go.”

  She stared at him for a moment, weighing her options. For a second, it looked like she was going to listen to him, then she began stuffing his pockets with her bounty. “It’s one of the rarest substances in the Valley. Rumor says it only grows on the dead when their souls haven’t moved on. They say it’s side effects are on par with real magic!”

  “What could that possibly mean?”

  For a while, the only noise was the plucking of the mushrooms. “I don’t know. Want to find out?” She held one out for Greenblatt to try.

  “Unless it will heal my leg, I don’t think we have time for this. We have an entire clan of raiders looking to round us up as we speak. We need to get the Pit Lord and get out of here!”

  Mac opened wide and aimed her broken teeth at the mushroom. Greenblatt moved to snatch it, nearly jumping out of Krav’s arms. He fell to the slab, holding himself up with either arm and panting loudly. “I mean it! We can’t afford to die down here.”

  When the warlord withdrew his hands, he found them coated with a film of greasepaint. At first, he thought that they must have decorated the corpses before they placed them. It would make sense that a gang of cannibals venerated death enough to dress it up. But as he wiped it onto his pants, he realized it wasn’t greasepaint at all. It was too gritty, and it shimmered green in the light. He rolled the substance between two fingers and his heart dropped. It was shale.

  “Mac… Maybe we can afford to investigate this?”

  “Good!” She said. Her growing smile looked like a shark. “I need to know how to grow it! If I can find out how, Jackmaw will be so impressed he’ll give me a slave as an apprentice!”

  “I think I know how to grow it,” Greenblatt said. His voice was saddened by memories of the strange substance. For a long time, he stared at his coated fingers, then the memory of Sinestra sucking the shale from them like a baby breastfeeding made him recoil. “Have you ever heard of shale?”

  God Blight. Behemoth Blood. The Clay of Creation. The Shale. No one Greenblatt had ever met in his travels had known where it came from, but each had a name for it. Most abhorred it, claiming it brought disease and madness. Settlements across the valley told tales of the shale turning their alchemists and druids into decrepit witches that sowed their ravings upon the valley. For a long time, he didn’t believe the nonsense they spouted. Then it happened to Sinestra.

  He had just returned from a reconnaissance journey to Thousand Eye Gulch. The journey had been successful, netting nearly a thousand pounds of scrap metal for the tinkering work of the Black Thumbs in exchange for a handful of lobotomite laborers. Among the heaps of rusted building girders and sheet metal was a clump of grey ooze that had worked its way into the cracks and crevices of the metal.

  The discovery had almost caused an all-out war between Kiva Noon and Thousand Eye Gulch. The Black Thumbs looked at the ooze as an attempt to rig the scales and provide less material for trade. To make matters worse, their warlord had shown enough respect to personally arrive at their doorstep and negotiate. The Thousand Eye clan had spit into the eye of their beloved leader, and to raze their settlement was a fitting punishment in a younger Greenblatt’s opinion.

  Luckily for both clans, the high fabricator of the Black Thumbs, Sinestra Mode, had taken an interest in the substance as soon as she noticed it was in fact not clay. It had so many properties to it that were unfounded in most metal ores. It could conduct heat so well that it had to be kept away from open flames, otherwise it would explode in large quantities. When smelted with metal, it forced out impurities and bonded to make a lightweight and dense material, the very material Greenblatt had masterfully crafted his bodyguards from.

  Sinestra was a scientist at heart. A true pioneer of the unknown. The work she was able to perform with the shale was on par with the abilities fabled to have been lost by society’s fall. She didn’t just create things that obeyed, she created things that lived. Sinestra Mode was a genius before being handed the shale. After, she became enlightened to the secrets of creation.

  Greenblatt spent many nights learning from her. There were other students, sure, but it was hard not to be favored when you’re the warlord of the clan. When time came to retire for the evening, the other students saw themselves out of her workshop and Greenblatt led her back to his palace. There, they continued their studies. Greenblatt’s workshop was crafted with love. Tool chests were packed neatly and organized with the scrupulous eye of a drill sergeant. Every wall was a polished metal decorated with etchings. He could never call himself an artist, but the tender hand of Sinestra often found its way to a sawdering torch and she would add her own portraits to his wall. At first, these were just notes and schematics, but Greenblatt would often find hidden notes in the mornings. They were fun little treats for him to find, mostly cheeky answers to questions Greenblatt never could answer for himself, and then he found the one that changed his heart forever.

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  Albert Ibram Ao Dominus-Greenblatt hadn’t even had his coffee yet that morning. He had just woken up from a dream with the perfect answer to the night’s previous equations when he flew into his workshop. He barely registered that the workshop was in immaculate condition as he dug through drawers for a stick of charcoal and a page. Someone had cleaned his workstation, and it wasn’t appreciation he felt, but annoyance. He made a mental note to decommission whichever lobotomite laborer had tidied it up, when he saw the only page left out of place. It was a note from Sinestra asking him to complete the equation left for him on the wall. He squinted at it, a lightbulb in his head screwing into place. It wasn’t long before he had forgotten the laborer and his dream entirely.

  The equation had so many variables in it that it took him over an hour to reach his conclusion. When he finally had, the work completely defaced one wall. The equation slowly eliminated every number perfectly, always rounding out to zero and leaving the variables behind after zeroing out. It was a jumbled mess of letters, most of which weren’t used commonly. There was no “X” as could be expected, but there was a “Y”. There was also an “I” and an “L”, and suddenly he had the idea to rearrange the letters. He came up with the phrase, “I love yu” and smiled that she couldn’t find a way to come up with a second “O”. Then he checked his work and found it deep in a simplification halfway back up the wall. It was the most fun he had ever had humbling himself.

  They spent a year studying the shale together. Sinestra Mode sold off her workshop halfway through and moved in with Greenblatt. The breakthroughs they made together could have brought a new dawn to the wasteland. With the shale, they produced strange new metals that the body accepted more cleanly, and the business of bodily augmentation boomed under their leadership.

  Eventually, Sinestra’s sights far exceeded Kiva Noon and the Black Thumbs. She began to speak of far-flung dreams that she believed could be achieved with the shale. Mechanical beasts that crossed the valley in place of pack animals, crafts that rode preconstructed highways and delivered supplies at speeds previously unheard of, and machines that could pull water from thin air. It was only a schematic here or there before she would scrap the idea and move on, but in the later years they became obsessive. She would lose sleep, staying up for days on end and wasting through reems of paper. It had gotten so bad, Greenblatt assumed the black circles forming on her eyes were from the lack of rest.

  Eventually they ran out, and Greenblatt swore he would return with more. That was almost ten years ago now. If he could use one of those crackpot schematics to go back in time, he would tell himself it wasn’t worth it. The shale was in rare supply, and it wasn’t worth seeing his love in that sarcophagus. If he had stayed, he would have put her down long before she became the witch he saw only a few days ago. It was hard to imagine it had been so soon.

  “We used it for science… but the Bone Eaters seem to be cultivating the drug with it,” Greenblatt told Mac. He was rubbing his hands in the dirt now, trying to remove the shale while forcing the memory of Sinestra away for the time being. “It has some side effects on the human body, I believe. Perhaps it’s the secret ingredient.”

  “Then scoop up as much as you can! We can grow this and get rich! Just wait, as soon as we’re out of this mess, we can all eat one in the tent and it’ll be such a good time. I’ll trip-sit you guys and we can eat another carpet beast and-”

  “Did you not listen to my story? I wouldn’t recommend being in the same room as the stuff. I spent a year with it and still don’t fully understand it. Let’s just get out of here.” Greenblatt moved to walk away, careful not to touch the slabs again. He was able to limp slowly without Krav’s aid, but he caught himself in the threshold of the chamber and leaned against it. “You’ve got plenty of your mushroom. We can make it last, I promise.”

  Mac frowned. Greenblatt’s words made sense, and she didn’t want to stick around to fight another spindly Bone Eater in the tunnels. Still, she couldn’t leave the bounty. It was the treasure hunter’s bitter irony, stumbling across a treasure trove worth an untold fortune only after forgetting their bags at home. But she wasn’t a quitter. She took off her robes and tied off the arm and neck holes. “Krav help me load this up.”

  Greenblatt shook his head and sighed, but he was pleased that it didn’t take them long. They were wasting too much time down here now, and there was no telling if 001 and Ulrich were still alive up there. Soon, Mac’s linen-wrapped body emerged carrying the robe over one shoulder like Santa’s sack of toys. “See? Not so bad.”

  “Let's just go. Krav, will you help me?”

  But then the two of them heard something from the boy’s direction that sent them into fits. More precisely, laughing fits for Mac and rageful ones for Greenblatt. Krav chewed and smiled. His broken teeth glittered blue and pink in the torchlight. The warlord knew he was being far too quiet.

  “You just pulled that off of a dead man for Karma’s sake!”

  He did, Krav thought. But the savory taste and the tingle he felt in his mouth were worth it. The mushroom was acting quickly, spreading its numbing poison throughout first his mouth, then down his neck and up his face. There was a brief second where he thought he might die as his head spun and his throat closed, but it passed. Soon his body felt airy and nonexistent, then he started seeing things.

  Mac carried the robes in her teeth as she had to shoulder both an injured Greenblatt and a rapidly deteriorating Krav. They followed a trail of dead slaves back up to the chamber of Cathartes Voll and his council. The bodies weren’t entirely mangled like the girl would have thought. It looked like the Bone Eaters had managed to understand one thing: no one wants to eat mangled meat. They all looked to have gone down in as little slashes as possible. Krav was smiling at each of them as they passed.

  The boy was under the effects of DMD, and its main use was for communication with the dead. As they wandered the tunnels dodging the skittering noises and sneaking amongst the slain slaves, Krav couldn’t control himself. His companions thought he was losing his mind, but to Krav, it had never felt so infinite. Translucent figures mingled about, poking and prodding at the dead like they were animals that just needed a little encouragement to rise. He realized they didn’t know they were dead yet. Either it was too early, or they were unwilling to accept it. He didn’t know if it was the despair of the lost souls or the irony of escaping only to be slain in the process, but something was maddeningly funny about it.

  Greenblatt cast a worried glance towards Mac, but rather than return the concern, she shrugged. He would sober up eventually, and if they were lucky, those super powers might not be a rumor after all.

  They had finally made it to the council chamber. Before they reached the rocky entrance, they could hear a concert of battle as grunts and heavy blows echoed off the walls. There was the underlying giggle of devils beneath the noise of combat. When the trio finally reached the chamber, they saw Ulrich still locked in his fight with Garth.

  The two were like a pair of giant elk with their antlers locked together. Both men were panting and bloody. They held each other by the shoulders, their exhausted heads pound together in the middle. At this point in the fight, it looked like the victor would be whoever could stay conscious the longest.

  The Pit lord didn’t look like he had the best odds in that wager. Dark eyes were unable to focus on anything but his own feet. Small bursts of strength pistoled from his bruised arms and sent the Bone Eater Champion off balance for a split second only to be too exhausted to follow up. Garth regained his footing and sent a weak punch into Ulrich’s face. The blow did little more than wipe the sweat from his brow as it glided past weakly.

  Cathartes Voll sat behind his smoldering fire shaking the bone staff at the dueling combatants and filling the chamber with his dusty, gasping laughter. The council was slinking around the shadows, some only a pair of glittering eyes in the dying light. All of the maddened elders of the Bone Eater clan watched the spectacle as if they were rooting for both combatants to die, and at this point they might get their wish if the trio hadn’t arrived when they had.

  “Just end it, Garth!” Voll called from his black smile. “I need you to go check out what that noise was.”

  Garth’s tired eyes left his opponent for a moment, darting to their master as if to ask if he was being serious. It was enough for Ulrich to throw one knee up into Garth’s abdomen, then both men tossed each other. They stumbled backwards holding their wounds and gasping for air. One of the elderly monsters crawled from the shadows prepared to claw at Ulrich with long, ratty fingernails when Voll smacked her with his staff. He was chastising her when the trio walked in, and immediately, all eyes were on them. Ulrich looked like he couldn’t move one half of his face, which was turning purple and swelling up like a bee sting. He had one corner of his mouth turned up, and Greenblatt realized it was the first time he had seen him smile.

  Voll’s brow knitted into his blindfold and the shadowy things cowered to his side like obedient dogs. “Why aren’t you in your cages?” he asked. His bony fingers twisted into his staff like an out of control vine.

  It was Krav that managed to take the first step forward into the chamber. Wide eyes panned the room with all the consciousness of a predator under a charm. He was looking at each of them, through each of them, watching something that dwelled in the chamber unseen and unheard. Then his eyes landed on the skull in a pile of Cathartes Voll’s belongings. A skull that did not belong to the Bone Eater, didn’t belong to anyone in the wasteland for that matter. Black crystals glittered in greeting. His splintered tongue and shattered teeth were unable to form words previously, but under the effects of DMD, Krav was able to calm his mind and find a position that helped him form a single word, a name. He smiled with those glazed predator eyes and said, “Rufush.”