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heart,
the entire monster exploded, instantly turned into a mass of
stinking, scorching, puss.
    The bulk of it splattered across Leo, who was
now pumping his fists excitedly.
    "Did you see that, Marvin? That was
incredible!"
    I threw up.
    Uhh made short work of the second Ugly, and it
burst apart in an identical fashion. I pulled the collar of my
shirt over my nose, but the stench assaulting my olfactory senses
didn't acknowledge that flimsy filter.
    Diana picked me up for the third time that
day, and I felt her shaking, a sensation I recognized as her way of
laughing.
    "I seriously fail to see what's so
funny, Diana." I was hot, humid, terrified, and altogether in a
very foul mood. Even if she was Inval's disciple, and a killing
machine, I wasn't in the mood to take any more crap from Diana
today.
    "You took out those monsters all by yourself,
Marvin."
    I blinked.
    "Diana... Uhh took them out."
    "And Tully!" Leo shouted, running after
us.
    "And Tully," I amended, trying to ignore the
taste of vomit in the back of my mouth.
    "Marvin, Uhh is your golem," Diana pointed out
as we passed beneath the curtain of bones. "A modest success is
reading off individual runes; respectable necromancers can string a
sentence together. It's been very long time since I've seen anyone
recite three at once."
    Uhh had no trouble keeping up with Diana. I
felt his eyes scanning the caverns ahead, and realized that, like
always, Diana was right. He was an incredibly advanced golem. Most
golems in Nethermount could only follow basic commands, and their
movements were choppy throughout. Uhh reacted in a human manner
from speech to execution. The scientist in me wanted to discover
the extent of Uhh's sentience.
    "Diana, where are you leading us?" I
wondered.
    "Krisenburg."
    "Krisenburg?"
    "It's a town."
    Leo bull-rushed his way next to us. "Town?
There're towns down here?"
    "Just the one," said Diana. "And a
few homesteads
    scattered here and there."
    "Uhh," I began, out of sheer curiosity. "Do
you know anything about Krisenburg?"
    "Marvin," said Leo, "he's just made of bones,
you can't expect him to know anything."
    "Bones that were found here, Leo," I reminded
him. "We already know that if we resurrect a normal person, they'll
retain the memories they had while they were alive."
    The phenomena I was describing was called
Afterlife Embossing. The theory behind it is rather
simple.
    Let's say that there's a body of a desert
nomad. He died of old age, and the only wound he had on him was a
scar he received while he was a young boy.
    If a necromancer decided to resurrect him,
then this old man would sit up, now undead, and still remember how
that scar came to be.
    In the simplest sense, Afterlife Embossing was
based on the theory of muscle memory; that our bodies are like
scrapbooks an undead can look to in order to remember the events of
their life. I was curious whether Uhh had any such memories, since
he was cobbled from organic matter, but I guess Leo was
right.
    " Krrrissenburrg. " Uhh stared into
space. " Fooounded... centurrries ago. Town
forrr failurrres; rottinnng scrapss of
Netherrrmountain. "
    Leo, Diana and I exchanged surprised
looks.
    It explained why that long drop existed in
Nethermount. I could see disgruntled necromancers throwing
disappointing results down here. In a way, the Moor of Souls was a
retirement facility for undead, a place for them to rot into the
poisoned earth.
    I squinted at Diana. "I still have more
questions for you."
    "They can wait." She held me closer to her
chest. "Rest, Marvin. We need to get supplies from Krisenburg if
you want to find the Eyes of the Leviathan."
    "See, that's one of my questions: what are the
Eyes of the Leviathan?"
    " Gems ," said Uhh.
" Stttones of grreat power. A unniverrsal
sssoul. "
    "A universal soul?" Leo asked, and
I was glad that someone was finally as lost as I was in all of
this.
    "Hush," Diana urged, and I wondered whether
that word had some kind of magical compulsion, because