The fog billowed off him, leaving chem trails in his wake as he made for the source of the alarm. His tugged his beard as he went, occupied by events of the last week. There was no doubt in his mind the inn had purposefully brought Calponia to him. Not after he laid eyes on that state of the art foolishness in the kitchen. He was lucky to coax four burners and a hot plate on a good day. It went to the nines to please her. He spotted a bread maker hiding in the corner. A bloody bread maker. The woman never met a floor that didn't like her face, but the Edgewise appeared to have complete faith in her ability to cook without burning the place down.

The question was why. Why had the inn gone out of its way to bring Calponia to him?

He paused, squinting through the fog as he tried to follow the way signs. Calponia stumbled up beside him, gasping for breath and clutching a stitch in her side. She was also missing a shoe. Mack felt a small stab of remorse for that. The fog between the ways was a strenuous journey for the uninitiated.

"Could...you...please....slow...down," Calponia wheezed, tossing her sweat soaked hair out of her eyes.

He should apologize to her. "What is it with you and losing shoes?"

She squinted up at him. "You're aware you smell like an exploded keg in a sewer?" The missing shoe proved to be tucked under her arm which she hopped in place as she shoved it back on.

Mack stiffened, trying not to let her see him lift his arm high enough for a whiff. Christ on a bike, the tart was right. He swore loudly, cupping his hands through the fog to gather it to him. An ephemeral shroud of gray moisture settled over him, leeching the stench from his skin and clothes. He shrugged his shoulders, flapping his coat until the stink literally rolled off him in scummy droplets of foam. Calponia wiped a drop from her cheek, caught between disgust and amazement.

"Neat trick," she said, wiping her hand on her baggy pants. Mack sighed, realizing at some point he would have to explain the complex metaphysics of what he just did. Or he could tell her it was magic. She seemed the type to buy it.

Refreshed, he seized on the way sign blazing in his Sight, following it mentally to their destination. He frowned. It was rare for an alarm to go off there. Another prick of remorse rattled him at the thought of bringing his very human and fragile tavern wench to such a place. He really should have given her an over view of the realms.

"Cal, stay close. Don't look anyone in the eye, and, most importantly, don't bleed," he said

"What?" She sounded like an startled pup.

Mack didn't answer, stepping into the Way Route. He heard Calponia's started yelp as she followed. The Way Route seized. He could feel it pressing down on him, trying to expel the bearer of the bête noir. To Mack it felt like a tight sweater. It would be ten times worse for his unfortunate apprentice. He snagged her arm and pulled her through to the other side.

Calponia collapsed to her hands and knees in two inch deep muck, her face blue- white as she tried to reclaim the oxygen the Way Route squeezed from her body. Mack leaned over her. Despite her sweaty cheese complexion, she was relatively intact.

"Hmm," he said, "I'll have to make you a travel charm." Her hand shot up, gripping his beard with the strength of the pissed and desperate. She nearly yanked him off his feet as she forced him to look her in the eye.

"Never again," she hissed.

His eyebrows shot up. Perhaps his wench had more back bone in her than he thought. "You could always quit. Move out. Go back home." The grip on his beard disappeared in a flash as her expression slackened. A flicker of fear whispered through her too large green eyes. It left a sour taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with his hangover.

Mack sighed, helping her out of the muck, realizing to his dismay she had threaded the slime in his beard. "I should had prepared you for that," he said, flicking his fingers. The slime rolled off her skin. "I did not expect the Way Route to react so strongly to you."

The light returned to her eyes. "Is that what that was?" She looked up, her eyes widening as she took in their surroundings with a sharp intake of breath. "Where are we?"

They were surrounded by a forest of dripping trees, their leaves a dark poisonous brackish brown from the iron rich sap running through their veins. The low light hid the color of the liquid seeping from the cracks in their trunks. It disguised the rusted color of the muck at their feet. The air reeked of old metal and rot, a smell that didn't truly hit you until you were aware of it. He knew the minute Calponia did by the gagging sound.

"Breath through your nose. Trust me, tasting it is worse," he advised. She lifted her shirt over her face, her eyes the size of saucers as a cloud passed off the bleached out sun and lit up the rivulets of red coating the trees.

"What in the unholy fu--"

He held up a hand. "This is Sanguinhiem, home world to the Blood Empire and various other bloodthirsty factions."

Mack watched her mull over that piece of information. "This where Eugene comes from?"

He nodded.

"No wonder he's so depressed," she said, shying away from the drips falling around them in loud wet pats.

His lips twitched. "You haven't seen anything yet. Come apprentice," he said, jerking his head to moldering roadway slowly ceding back to nature.

"Sanguinhiem," she tested the word on her tongue. "Is everything here..."

"Drenched in blood?" Mack glanced at her over his shoulder with an apologetic grin. He sighed. It was becoming a common reaction. "This is not an ideal first outing for you. In truth, I am rarely called to this realm. The factions have their own conflicts but it rarely involves anything in my wheelhouse."

After a pause she spoke. "Will we run into Eugene while we're here?"

Mack snorted. "Hopefully not. Outside the tavern, the rules don't apply. Nothing to stop him from ripping your pretty little head off."

He felt the weight of her silence, thick and filled with a thousand unspoken protests. "You don't know him well enough to defend him yet, Cal," he said, easing her conscience.

"Do you?"

He didn't looked at her this time. "Likely more than his own mother, rest her blackened soul."

She hung back for a moment, wrestling with what he could only guess, before squelching up beside him. "What are we looking for here?"

"Oh, we'll know when we see it," he said off hand, but he could feel it creeping up on them. The taste of decay thickened to an eye watering sharpness, ripe and stinging. There was death ahead, lots of it, and in a moment of conscience, he couldn't let his little tavern wench get a face full on her first outing. "Cal, I need you to wait here."

Except, she'd already stopped, her eyes fixed on the ground. If she'd been pale before, her face looked bleached of color now, ghoulish in the blood tinged light of the wood. She tried to say something to him, but her jaw was clenched so tight all that escaped was a whimper. He followed the direction of her gaze. Another sigh built in his diaphragm. This was going to be a long day.

A monster lay on the ground, quite dead, twisted in several interesting angles a body was not meant to achieve. He had hoped to spare her from this sort of spectacle but that would require any sort of luck which Calponia was severely lacking. Mack crouched beside the body to examine it, glancing up at his apprentice with a note of understanding in his fathomless brown eyes.

"If you need to vomit, turn to the bushes over there."

She obliged, pivoting to rush into the bushes as her breakfast forcefully ejected onto the ground.

He tuned out the sounds of her retching, examining the dead creature, a hirsute beast, its coarse gray fur matted with long dried blood. In death, its mouth lolled open, its swollen pinkish gray tongue lying in the muck. The eyes were open, milky and lifeless, swarmed with flies. He frowned at the twisted broken length of its body. There was something off about it, something he couldn't quite pinpoint that sent his alarm bells ringing.

"Mack," Calponia choked out his name, staring through a gap in the bushes. She pointed, unable to keep her hand from shaking. Mack rose and joined her, laying a hand on her shoulder. He couldn't blame her for such a reaction, not when the sight before him made his own stomach flop.

"You really have no luck at all," he murmured, staring at the trench of dead bodies, all in the same broken condition as the first one.

"They look like someone put them back together wrong," whispered Calponia, her voice surprisingly calm, as if the impact of death lessened by the sheer quantity. Mack frowned down at her, turning over her words.

"I think that is exactly what happened," he murmured. Her observation was more accurate than she realized. The creatures weren't simply twisted, but ripped apart within their own skin and carelessly reassembled. He knew of few beings who could unleash such a gruesome fate and none of them were good news.

"What are they?" Calponia hugged herself, trembling in the tepid humidity of the wood.

"Wolven," said Mack. He absently pulled on the ends of his bandage. "They don't belong here, not in this realm. Their presence here is bad enough, but this manner of death...something is stirring."

She turned to ask him more when a whistling scream peeled through the air. He didn't have time to do more than inwardly curse Calponia's boundless rotten luck before the spear split his sternum, ripping into his heart.

Calponia shrieked.

Mack gritted his teeth, tasting metal as he gripped the silvered shaft protruding from his chest.

"Bloody Crimson Legion Bastards," he sputtered, choking on the fluid filling his throat. He could feel the world tipping sideways and caught sight of Calponia's terrified face. He really was a terrible teacher. "Bother."

Mack's body collapsed into the muck.