The white-hot agony of reincarnation faded into a cold so profound it felt like a physical assault. Zac gasped, his breath pluming in a thick, white cloud. He was lying naked on stone that leeched the warmth from his skin with a greedy, parasitic hunger. This wasn't just cold; it was the absolute, soul-deep cold of the grave. Getting dressed was no longer a matter of dignity, but of survival.
He scrambled to his feet, teeth chattering so hard his jaw ached. The room was a mausoleum, vast and echoing, the walls lined with stone sarcophagi carved with faces twisted in eternal agony. Frost glittered on everything, a cruel and beautiful blanket of crystals.
Somewhere deeper in the dark, a beast howled. It was a long, mournful sound, thick with a guttural hunger. The howl of a predator that had cornered its prey. The sound vibrated through the stone, up Zac's bare feet, and into his bones. It was a sound designed by evolution to trigger a primal, pants-wetting terror.
Zac waited for the shiver of fear, the ice in his veins. Nothing. The sound registered, was cataloged as 'threatening,' and was then dismissed. His body was freezing, but his mind was a placid lake. Ose's 'gift' was a strange and hollow thing.
He began his search, hugging himself for warmth. In a recessed alcove, he found a body. An adventurer, by the look of him, impaled on a spike of ice that had erupted from the floor. His leather armor was stiff with frost and mostly intact, though a significant portion of the back was shredded and stained a dark, frozen brown. Zac looked from the corpse's vacant, staring eyes to the silent, watching sarcophagi, and the sheer, macabre horror of his situation attempted to butt in.
He recoiled, stumbling back with a gasp. "Holy shit, dead body!" he yelped, his heart… beating at a perfectly normal resting rate. The reaction was pure performance. He felt a wave of foolishness wash over him. He wasn't actually scared. He was just acting like he should be.
He sighed, a fresh plume of steam in the frigid air. "Right," he muttered to himself. "If I'm going to be a professional liar, I guess I need to work on my method acting."
He returned to the corpse, his movements now deliberate. He apologized the whole time he was stripping the body, his words puffs of white. "Sorry bro, really. But you're not using these anymore, and my balls are trying to crawl up into my chest cavity." The leather was cracked and stiff, the under-tunic little more than rags, but it was a barrier against the killing cold.
A deep, guttural bellow echoed from a nearby corridor, much closer this time. It was a roar of frustration and hunger. Something was hunting. And it was getting closer.
Zac, now smelling faintly of death and lavender-scented despair, began to move. He crept through the maze-like crypt, the cold blue torchlight casting long, dancing shadows. He wasn't running in a panic; he was moving with a purpose, trying to find an exit. But every corridor seemed to loop back on itself. The bellows grew louder, closer, sometimes seeming to come from the passage right behind him, then echoing from the one just ahead. It was toying with him.
He rounded a corner and skidded into a dead-end chamber. The roaring stopped. A heavy, predatory silence fell. Zac spun around, back hitting the wall, as a colossal shadow filled the entrance.
A… massive, antlered… Windago stepped into the torchlight, and Zac's placid mind finally understood the meaning of awe. He was a creature of winter and violence, a god of the frozen north. The bipedal caribou stalked forward, moving with a deliberate, terrifying strength. He stopped a few feet from Zac, lowered his massive, antlered head, and unleashed a deafening, full-throated roar directly in his face.
The wave of sound washed over Zac, fluttering the rags of his new tunic. Zac's mind screamed at him, 'Be scared! Cower! This is a ten-foot-tall murder-deer! You should be terrified!' But the feeling just wouldn't come. The disconnect was dizzying.
The furry monster straightened up, a look of profound frustration on his monstrous features. The human wasn't screaming. He wasn't crying. He was just… blinking, a strange, thoughtful look on his face.
"Are you broken?" the wendigo rumbled, his voice thick with annoyance. "You're supposed to be terrified."
"I think my fear response is on backorder," Zac said, the words coming out before he could stop them.
The wendigo's eyes narrowed. He drew himself up to his full, imposing height, his antlers scraping the ceiling. "You will show respect, mortal. You stand before Skarg! Great Earl of the Frozen Waste, Commander of Storms and Tempests!" He took a heavy step forward. "And you will be my next meal."
Still nothing. Skarg's frustration began to curdle into a strange curiosity. He took another step, leaning in, his nostrils flaring as he took in Zac's scent. Underneath the stench of corpse and fear-sweat that wasn't his own, there was something else. Something clean. Untouched. It was a scent that spoke to the deepest, most primal parts of his demonic nature, a scent of something pure and ripe for the claiming. A low growl, this one not of aggression but of possessive interest, rumbled in his chest.
"Tempting offer," Zac said, trying to break the sudden, charged silence. "But I have to decline. President Ose sent me. I'm his new Avatar."
Skarg barked a harsh, disbelieving laugh, the spell broken. "Ose doesn't send hairless runts who smell like they slept in a tomb. He sends killers." He grabbed the back of Zac's tunic, lifting him effortlessly off the ground, intending to shake some sense into him. "Now, let's see what-" He stopped. His nostrils flared again as he saw it. The tattered tunic had ridden up.
On the skin of Zac's lower back, a complex, swirling rune glowed with a faint, crimson light. The President's Seal. Unmistakable. The demon of deception had given Zac an infernal tramp-stamp.
Skarg's grip loosened, and he dropped Zac to the floor with a grunt. The wendigo's entire demeanor shifted from frustrated predator to disgruntled employee. All thoughts of the alluring scent were shoved aside by the cold, hard reality of official business.
He let out a long, aggrieved sigh. "Unbelievable. I was halfway through a very promising evening with a surprisingly flexible incubus, and now I have to babysit for the President's new toy." He glared down at Zac, the earlier fire in his eyes replaced with pure irritation. "Get up, Avatar. You're with me. I have to take you to the Captain."
He grabbed Zac by the scruff of his collar and began dragging him out of the chamber, muttering to himself. "First I have to find it, then I have to haul it back… so much paperwork…"
Zac stumbled along behind him, his mind racing. He was struck by the fact that the ten-foot-tall murder-deer, just like Ose, was completely naked. Maybe all the demons were naked… Ose was too! More importantly, though, was the other revelation… incubus.
Zac thought, a spark of hope igniting in the cold, hollow space in his chest. 'So they're gay. Or at least, demonically bisexual. Ose was right, this afterlife might have some perks after all.' The allure was undeniable. Even grumpy, Skarg was a magnificent beast, a raw, primal force of nature. Zac found himself wondering just how flexible that incubus had been.