The world reeked of rain-soaked decay. Black soil clung to Darr's boots as he trudged through the uneven ground, each step dragging with it the weight of the man who leaned heavily against his side. Bullteik was no longer the warrior he had been—no longer the towering figure who once swung his blade like thunder across a battlefield. Now he was a husk, bent and brittle, his body betraying him with every rattling breath.
Darr gritted his teeth as he tightened his grip beneath Bullteik's arm. He would not leave him. Not after the blood they had spilled together. Not after the oaths sworn under fire and steel.
But each time he glanced down at Bullteik, his resolve faltered.
His friend's flesh was paling to an ashen hue, mottled by thick black veins that spread like cracks through stone. Those veins pulsed faintly, as though carrying not blood but shadows through his body. His eyes had grown glassy, pale, rimmed with bruised circles, and the stench that clung to him was foul—worse than rot, worse than death. It was the stench of something living that should not live.
"Keep your footing," Darr muttered, though his own voice trembled. "We'll reach the ridges soon. You'll have rest."
Bullteik let out a rasping laugh, hollow and sharp. "Rest?" His head drooped forward, his lips curling into a cracked grin. "There is no rest for me, Darr. Not now. Not ever again."
Darr ignored him, forcing his body forward, though his chest tightened. He could not allow despair to gnaw at him. Yet even denial could not silence the truth seeping from Bullteik's every word.
"Why do you waste yourself?" Bullteik croaked, his voice like dry leaves scraping stone. "Why do you drag me, when I am already lost?"
"You're not lost." Darr's voice rose, louder than he intended, echoing faintly between the twisted trees. He did not want to hear the weakness, the resignation, in Bullteik's tone. "I've carried men through worse."
"Not this," Bullteik whispered. His eyes lifted, burning faintly with an unnatural light. "Not when the hand upon me is his."
Darr stopped dead in his tracks. "Whose hand?"
Bullteik's lips curled into a grimace. His answer came softly, but the name was heavy as stone.
"El Como."
The sound seemed to crawl through the air like a worm. The trees shivered. Darr's heart clenched violently in his chest. That name had been spoken only in whispers before, never aloud without trembling. El Como. The necromancer. The shadow who bent men's minds and hollowed out their souls until only his will remained.
"You speak madness," Darr growled, though his grip on his sword hilt tightened.
"No madness." Bullteik coughed, black spittle oozing from his lips and hissing as it struck the mud. "You see it, do you not? The veins crawling my skin? The rot that is not rot? That is his mark. He has already claimed me. Do not waste yourself. Do not think to save me. Even if you burn me, bury me, scatter me to the winds—I belong to him."
The silence of the woods deepened, pressing down as though unseen eyes stared from the shadows. The air grew heavier, and with it came a faint, almost inaudible whispering, like a thousand voices muttering beneath the ground.
"You sound as if you've yielded," Darr spat, forcing defiance into his tone though his throat was dry. "As if you welcome him."
"Yield?" Bullteik's laugh broke into a groan. "There is no yielding. There is only taking. El Como does not wait for men to bow. He walks through their minds as if they are open halls, rearranging the stones until no thought is theirs anymore. That is what he is. That is what he has done to me."
Darr shook his head violently. "No man, no sorcerer has such power. Even death itself cannot steal a man's soul unwilling."
Bullteik's body seized suddenly, jerking him free from Darr's grasp. He collapsed to the ground, his limbs thrashing wildly. His back arched as though invisible hooks were dragging his spine upward, and his jaw clamped shut so tight blood seeped from the corners of his lips.
Darr dropped to his knees beside him. "Bullteik!" He reached out—but froze.
The eyes staring up at him were not his friend's. They burned faintly with a crimson light, dim but unmistakable. A fire not born of life, but of something far beyond it.
And when Bullteik spoke again, his voice was layered—his own, yet beneath it throbbed another, calm and cold, reverberating as though spoken from within the bones of the earth.
"You see now, Darr. He does not ask permission."
Darr's hand flew to his sword, though he hesitated to draw it. His voice cracked with horror. "El Como…"
The lips that were Bullteik's twisted into a cruel smile. "At last, you speak my name."
The shadows thickened, curling unnaturally at the edges of the clearing. The air grew heavy, pressing into Darr's chest until every breath was labor. He staggered to his feet, torn between unsheathing his sword and fleeing. But his loyalty rooted him in place. He could not abandon Bullteik.
"Leave him!" Darr shouted into the gloom, his voice raw. "Take me instead, if you crave a vessel!"
The laughter that spilled from Bullteik's throat was not his. It was hollow, vast, echoing as though from within a cavern of skulls.
"I do not bargain, soldier. I do not trade one vessel for another. He was weak, and the weak are mine."
Bullteik's body convulsed again, limbs twitching like a marionette's strings had been yanked. For a moment, his true voice broke through, frail as a dying ember.
"Darr… don't. Don't waste yourself. He's already inside. He'll use me against you. Run… before he makes me your death."
Tears burned in Darr's eyes. He shook his head furiously. "I will not run. Not from you. Not ever." His sword slid free with a hiss, its edge glowing faintly with the enchantments bound into its steel.
"El Como!" Darr roared into the thickening dark. "If you are here, face me yourself. Do not hide behind the body of my brother!"
The laughter deepened, a chorus now, many voices speaking through Bullteik's mouth.
"I am everywhere. In every wound, in every grave, in every whisper a dying man breathes. Why should I come to you, when you have already brought yourself to me?"
The ground trembled faintly. The air stank of soil freshly turned, as though graves were opening nearby.
Bullteik rose unsteadily to his feet, his movements jerky, unnatural. His eyes glowed brighter now, crimson light bleeding into the night. He lifted his head, staring at Darr with a gaze that was not his own.
Darr's sword quivered in his grip. "Fight him, Bullteik! Remember who you are! Remember our oaths!"
For a heartbeat, something flickered in those eyes—something human, something pained. Bullteik's lips trembled.
"I… remember…" he rasped.
Then his body lurched forward, his hand shooting out to grasp Darr's throat with inhuman strength. His grip was iron, crushing, and his face twisted into a mask of cruelty.
"Remember nothing," the layered voice intoned. "He is mine."
Darr gasped, his sword arm straining to lift, but his vision blurred as the grip tightened. Yet even as darkness clawed at the edges of his sight, he forced his blade upward. The enchanted steel flared, its runes glowing, and with a roar torn from the depths of his soul, he slashed downward—
Steel met flesh.
The scream that followed was not Bullteik's. It was vast, shrieking, filled with the fury of a thousand restless dead. Shadows exploded outward, writhing like smoke in the shape of skeletal hands, clawing at the earth and trees.
Bullteik collapsed, twitching, his body convulsing as the crimson light dimmed.
Darr staggered back, panting, staring in horror. The whispers in the air rose, furious now, a storm of unseen voices.
"You dare!" El Como's voice thundered through the clearing, deeper than thunder, colder than stone. "You dare strike what is mine?"
Darr tightened his grip on his blade, though his body trembled. His heart cried out in grief, but his will hardened.
"If he is yours," Darr growled, "then I will tear him from you."
The trees bent as if under invisible wind. The ground split, faint cracks radiating outward, and shadows poured from them like black fire.
Darr raised his sword, his eyes blazing with defiance. He was one man. But he would not bend. Not to El Como. Not while Bullteik's soul still lingered within reach...
Darr spat the mud from his lips and leveled his blade at the twitching figure before him. Bullteik's body still writhed on the ground, half-puppet, half-man, his eyes burning with that dim red light that belonged to no mortal. The air around him crackled with unseen whispers, hundreds of voices hissing in unison.
And then, slowly, Bullteik rose again—unnaturally, like a marionette whose strings had been yanked by a drunk puppeteer. His head lolled to one side before snapping back into place, and the lips that once belonged to Darr's friend split into a smile far too wide, far too cruel.
"Do you see now?" El Como's voice echoed, layered through Bullteik's throat. "Your friend is gone. He is mine. His bones are my cage, his breath my smoke. You are alone, soldier."
Darr wiped his blade on his cloak and narrowed his eyes. "Alone? You call this alone? I've got your rotten voice to keep me company, don't I?"
The possessed body tilted its head, like a predator bemused by its prey. "You jest before the inevitable?"
"Jest?" Darr barked out a laugh that startled even himself. "If you think I'm going to sit here and let you croak your doomsday sermons through my friend's teeth, you're more deluded than I thought. Honestly, El Como, for all your supposed power, you sound like an old crone scolding children at a fire."
The grin on Bullteik's face faltered for the briefest instant. "Mind your tongue, mortal."
"Mind my tongue?" Darr planted his sword tip into the mud and leaned on it as though he were about to start telling a campfire story. "You crawl into men's skulls like a rat, make them twitch around like broken dolls, and then you have the gall to lecture me about manners? You should be ashamed. A rat with better taste wouldn't have chosen Bullteik, I'll tell you that. He snores louder than a warhorn."
Something flickered in the unnatural glow of Bullteik's eyes. El Como's voice rumbled low, strained, like stone grinding against stone. "Mockery will not save you."
"Oh, save me?" Darr waved a hand in mock terror. "You mean the great El Como—lord of whispers, master of graveyard gossip, eater of toenails in the dark—plans to finish me off? I've had chickens with more menace than you. At least they peck."
The possessed body stiffened. Its head jerked, its jaw twitching. The whispers in the air surged louder, as if a chorus of unseen spirits gasped in outrage.
"You are a fool," El Como thundered.
"And you," Darr shot back, "are a parasite who can't even possess someone without making them look like they've swallowed a torch. Look at this mess!" He gestured at Bullteik's twitching limbs. "You call this control? His left leg looks like it's dancing to a tavern jig while his right arm thinks it's wringing laundry. At least make him walk straight if you're going to steal him!"
Bullteik's body spasmed, one arm jerking wildly as though mocking Darr's accusation. The crimson light in his eyes flared brighter.
"Silence!" El Como roared. "You dare mock what you cannot comprehend? I am eternal. I am unending. I am the dark beyond thought. I am—"
Darr interrupted with a theatrical yawn. "Yes, yes, you're the dark, the shadow, the whisper, the itch no one can scratch. I've heard enough titles to fill a minstrel's songbook. Tell me, do you ever get tired of reciting your own introductions? Or do you wake up every night saying, 'I am El Como, scourge of socks left unwashed, tremble before me!'"
For the first time, Bullteik's body staggered not from possession but from pure outrage. El Como's layered voice cracked, sputtering between tones, struggling to contain its fury.
"You mock what should terrify you!"
Darr smirked, his eyes hard. "Fear's a luxury, El Como. I've seen worse things than you on an empty stomach. Ever eaten bad stew left three days in the sun? Makes your insides dance worse than what you're doing to Bullteik right now."
Bullteik's mouth opened and closed, jaw snapping like an unhinged hinge, before finally El Como steadied himself again. His voice dropped lower, silkier, more venomous.
"You think your words shield you. But your friend suffers. Every jest, every insult, he hears. His soul writhes beneath mine. You shame him with your tongue while he screams for mercy inside."
Darr's smile faltered, just a breath. For a heartbeat, doubt clawed at him. But he shook it off, raising his chin defiantly.
"You want me to feel guilt? You won't get it. If Bullteik is still in there, he knows damn well I'd rather make a mockery of you than weep like a widow. And if he can hear me, then hear this, Bullteik: you always said I couldn't talk my way out of trouble. Well, watch me try to talk your way out of this one."
For the faintest moment, something flickered behind the crimson glow of Bullteik's eyes. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A stifled laugh? Or only a trick of El Como's control?
Darr seized it, grinning wide. "See? Even he thinks you're ridiculous. Isn't that right, Bullteik? If this so-called necromancer had half the style of a proper warlord, he wouldn't need to hide behind your ribs like a coward. He'd face me himself. But no, he's just a whisper. A shadow. A parasite with stage fright."
The forest shook with a guttural roar. The ground itself trembled, roots twisting from the soil as if recoiling from El Como's fury. Shadows coiled higher, writhing like serpents in the air.
"I will crush you!" the voice thundered. "I will make you beg to join him! I will—"
"Beg?" Darr barked, raising his sword again and stepping forward, his laughter sharp and cutting. "The only begging you'll hear from me is begging you to shut your damn mouth. Do you ever stop talking, El Como? Gods above, you drone worse than old Captain Renfrow after two mugs of ale. At least he had stories worth listening to. You? You're just noise."
The possessed Bullteik lunged forward, hands curled like claws, shadows coiling around his arms. But Darr did not step back. He pressed forward, sword gleaming, his voice rising above the roar.
"You call yourself eternal? Then prove it! Step out of him, face me with your own body. Or are you too scared I'll find out you're nothing more than smoke stuffed into a sack of bones?"
The shadows writhed violently, and Bullteik's body froze mid-lunge, trembling, twitching as though the necromancer inside was warring with his own fury. The voices in the air grew wild, discordant, an orchestra of screams and whispers clashing together.
"Enough!" El Como shrieked.
Darr grinned like a wolf. "Yes, enough indeed. Enough of your pomp. Enough of your stolen body. Enough of your damn whispering like a jealous widow at a market stall. If you've got power, use it. Otherwise, shut up and crawl back into whatever grave belched you out."
For a long, trembling moment, the forest was still. The whispers dropped to a low murmur. Bullteik's body stood rigid, the crimson glow in his eyes flickering. The shadows hissed, curling tighter as though uncertain.
Then El Como's voice came again—quieter, but sharper, dripping venom.
"You cannot win, soldier. Your blade is steel, but mine is eternity. You have a tongue, yes, but words will not save you when the earth itself turns against you."
"Maybe not," Darr said, lifting his sword. His grin sharpened, though his heart pounded. "But if I'm going down, I'll go down laughing at you. And Bullteik will hear it, every word. He'll remember. And he'll know you never broke me. That's more than you'll ever have, El Como."
The silence that followed was jagged, furious. The red glow in Bullteik's eyes dimmed for a heartbeat, and from deep within the body, faint, ragged, came a single sound:
A chuckle.
Darr's chest swelled. He tightened his grip on his sword, stepping forward into the writhing dark.
"Now let's finish this, parasite. You and me."