I fought through the terror grippin' my heart like a drunk chockin' out his friend and raised the scatter gun. The man and women, the little girl's folks most likely, closed in. They called, voices like drowned kittens cryin' from the bottom of a burlap sack sinkin' in the river.

  "No, just help us Sirrah..." Rasped the man.

  "Please, our daughter is sick, she needs what you got..." Moaned the woman.

  My chest pounded so hard I could hear the blood rushin' in my veins. I damn near pissed my pants, damn near broke and ran.

  But I couldn't. The moment I put myself on the other side of them warded gates I'd be sealin' my fate. Even if the horde couldn't pursue me out into the wetlands, it still wouldn't matter.

  It was gettin' dark, the veil was gettin' thin. If I didn't face the horrors of Murkwater Station, I'd be facin' down the evils of a full moon night.

  I was trapped.

  The man and woman moved on either side of me, raising a rusty axe and a steel hook respectively. Their faces were black and cracked, the blood on their skin had congealed and dried. It was like someone had taken a torch to them, cookin' them slow like good bronto brisket.

  I didn't want that to be me.

  I drew in a breath thick with mana and decay, and I pulled the trigger keeping my mind of managing to the Drift, so as not to force myself back through the gates.

  Boom!

  I slid to the side.

  Boom!

  I slid back.

  Each fell, white fire sparkin' up where the Scaras-made shot caught them. It wasn't purposely made for revenants though, and it wasn't enough to end them. The woman, whose face had been blown clean off by the blast, stood up from where she had fallen, eyes billowing smoke as she frantically swatted at the flames. Her husband was worse off, his midsection hollowed out by the blast, guts burnin' and bleeding onto the black earth beneath his gore soaked boots.

  And around them, the rest of the horde moved.

  "Oh gods, gods save me..." I whispered as I snapped the breach and broke into a run.

  The main road was choked with shuffling revenants, but the alleys and side-

  More.

  More, smashing through windows and climbing up from the wells. More, leaping from the rooftops, more falling from the skies.

  A cloud of Strix, their feathers black as the night, cawed and screeched above as a tide of rotting unlife welled up before me, and all I could do was run.

  I sprinted for all I was worth, the street twisting and winding, cutting a zig-zag pattern between the buildings as I searched for something, anything to fend off the dead.

  One the dead caught me before my keen sense could catch him and my arms reacted, pullin' the trigger before my brain could register the cold grip of a monster's claws tearin' at my fancy coat.

  Boom!

  I rode the Drift out of its grasp, the Ability harnessing the recoil of my shot to propel me into yet another slathering embrace.

  Boom!

  Madness erupted in the tight alley my terrified flight had led me to as I shoved my way past the duo of ignited revenants. More were rushing in to chase me, calling and taunting as they did.

  "Young and supple..."

  "So much mana!"

  "... won't you play?"

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  The voices were so loud I couldn't even hear my own thoughts above the din as I fired, reloaded, and ran for all I had ever been worth.

  I didn't want to die. I didn't want to join them. I had to run and run, but already the walls were closin' in, the alley narrowin' and fillin' with the hungry dead. I spared a moment to glance behind and what I saw only carried me faster to the dead end ahead, to the pile of boxes and refuse and a rickety lookin' ladder that was my only chance.

  I was never quite an acrobat. I was stocky, heavy, and short. Built to grit my teeth and take a punch, not the type to run from a scrap or dance out of harm's way.

  But I tried anyway.

  I slung my scattergun and tucked into a desperate charge, leapin', thinking to land atop the closest box but-

  Power surged in me, my muscles flexin' and tightenin'. I found myself, not on the boxes, but clearin' them, my body sailing high as I clawed for the rickety remains of the sea-rotted ladder. I grabbed it with both hands, and the timber cracked and broke.

  For a moment I was weightless, my body suspended above the horde of grasping hands and gnashin' teeth. My heart hammered, my mind raced. And then my arms finally tore free from their prison, the tendrils erupting from the leather like sprouts erupting from the earth. The tentacles wrapped themselves around the sagging wood and dug into the timbers of the wall it was mounted on, just as they had dug into Songbird during our sanguine exchange.

  They pulled, the power of them straining the bones and sinew in my shoulders, but the pain was distant, far away as I was propelled up the wall. The mana, it was coursing through me, driving me beyond my limits.

  I could feel it, the rush of the Wyld. Its power was in me, and it was pushing me beyond humanity. Even my Arcane Eye seemed to burn brighter, the normally faint visions of the reality beyond sight were bright as day and clear as water. I could see the mana in the world, in the air, it was like looking into the roiling currents of stormy sea, yet the things that swam here, the things that moved in the depths-one-should-not-see?

  They were not like the creatures I knew. Things with beaks, and snapping claws, tentacles and spines. Serpents of light and wings of fire.

  These were beautiful.

  These were terrible.

  And now I saw them in full, they saw me. They knew my name, and I theirs.

  And I. Fucking. Ran.

  I expected the things that swarmed above, that choked the sky-sea of this rotten island to swarm me like the monsters that raced below, but they didn't. As I dashed, lept, and rolled across the tight packed roofs of Murkwater station, the things above seemed fit to simply watch.

  And somehow?

  That was worse.

  I ran scared, nearly blind from the overwhelming sensation of my Arcane Eye tryin' to process all the shit I was seein', my arms carryin' me when my own legs couldn't keep pace and I missed a jump, and my heart hammerin' in my ears as the moans of the dead grew closer and closer still.

  It didn't matter. None of it. All the things that had once made me who I was, the guns, the grit, the whiskey and the song?

  Gone.

  In their place was flowin' a torrent of mana and instinct. I had thought to resist the Rush, to keep control of myself and my power, but there was no hope of that, not here, not now. This town, and all the power that had been unleashed in it, it was a thing of such chaos and magic that the only way through it was to embrace it.

  Embrace the mana.

  And become as the beasts that swam in it.

  A part of me, the part I kept locked away and buried beneath my fears, my hopes, my many, many insecurities, it awoke. It was a thing of Wyld, a thing that lived in Old Blood and Northern Legacy, and as it did, as I did, I felt a song stir in my heart. No thing of prose or rhyme or words.

  No.

  This was the music of ego and ideals.

  In the madness of my flight through Murkwater Outpost, I came to learn my own song, just as the Skalds of old sung in the Halls of the Honored Dead. It was the tale of my life and my legacy, the music of a man who was a monster, and a monster who was a man. And I sunk into it as I embraced the nature of what I was. What the world would make of me.

  Reality bled. Sensations faded. The music swelled. My arms writhed and the power of the Drift flowed in me, each shot of my scattergun sending me further and faster than any mortal man had right to go. I flew through the world of mana, and the world of mana flew through me.

  And then, in a moment, it all stopped.

  Boom!

  Crash.

  The fiery pain of jagged glass digging deep into tender flesh, the wetness of blood spillin' from my wounds, and the shattering of wood and the breaking of pottery. The crack of my skull on the floor, and the splat of vomit on the ground.

  I felt like I'd just been hooked like a fish, dragged from the endless ocean and slapped, air-drowinin' on the deck of a boat. My head spun, and my mana burned.

  And the Rush, no, the Berserk, it faded.

  I was back in reality.

  I looked up. My vision was blurred and my Arcane Eye had been forced back closed. Blinded by the sights beyond mortal ken, closed as penance for my trespass against the boundaries that divided the Veil.

  Thankfully, my other eye was fine.

  And what it saw did not chill my blood nor spark yet more mortal terror.

  No.

  Instead, it just left me kind of confused.

  I lay in a shabby kitchen. The cold wind of the night and the rot it carried fightin' against the warmth and scent of fresh baked bread. A stove, an iron wood-burner, sat nearby, and before it, stared a woman.