The Depths of Charnal-Hage

The translation from one realm to another possessed the quality of awakening from a deep swoon—that peculiar disorientation wherein one finds oneself in surroundings both alien and strangely familiar, as though viewed through the distorting lens of fever. The hour Ashley had mentioned proved to be not journey but ceremony; we had been processed through bureaucratic rituals with the somnambulistic precision of sleepwalkers participating in their own dream.

Charnal-Hage sprawled before us like such a fever dream, perhaps overly rendered in chromatic metal. The city breathed with the labored rhythm of a consumptive, its copper lungs wheezing steam through great arterial conduits that writhed between corroded structures and tarnished brass that stretched toward the weeping heavens, their surfaces pocked with irregular apertures that might have been windows or wounds… Here was a place where geometry had grown sick, if anything, where towers leaned into one another with the intimate desperation of lovers or conspirators.

Great pipes snaked between the buildings like arteries in some colossal circulatory system, venting steam that carried the acrid perfume of industrial decay.

The sulfur embraced me with the cloying persistence of an unwanted caress, coating my throat and lungs with its mineral kiss. I found my hand rising unbidden to my lips, fighting the urge to retch.

"The scent will become… familiar," Ashley murmured, though her voice held the tremor of one who speaks of an old wound that has never properly healed. Her form had undergone a curious metamorphosis since our arrival—she moved now with the furtive grace of a creature that knows itself hunted, her shoulders curved inward like folded wings, her wide brimmed hat drawn low to create a cavern of shadow where her face should be.

The denizens of this place drifted through the amber-tinted streets with the purposeless purpose of figures in a recurring nightmare. Their forms suggested humanity viewed through a lens of corruption—scales that caught the sickly light like scattered sequins on a tattered gown, faces that seemed to shift and blur when observed directly, as though my eyes could not quite accept what they beheld. They moved with the fluid uncertainty of beings caught between waking and sleep, forever suspended in the liminal space where transformation occurs.

A strange languor had begun to steal over me, whether from the oppressive atmosphere or some more subtle influence, I could not say. "What draws you to accompany me on this venture?" I found myself asking, the words emerging with the dreamy quality of thoughts spoken aloud during twilight meditation.

Ashley's step faltered—a barely perceptible stumble, like a dancer missing a beat in some melancholy waltz. "I have… intimate knowledge of these markets," she replied, her voice carrying undertones I could not quite decipher. "Without my guidance, you would find yourself… lost in ways that maps cannot remedy." She paused, her mouth parting as though some confession balanced upon her tongue, but the moment passed like mist touched by morning sun.

We wandered through that maze of corroded dreams until time itself seemed to lose meaning, the amber sky neither brightening nor darkening but maintaining its eternal, opium-tinted hue. At length, Ashley led me to an establishment that existed in defiance of all commercial logic—ten objects arranged upon a counter with the careful precision of ritual offerings, presided over by an absence that felt more substantial than any proprietor's presence.

"The distilled water," Ashley whispered. "And the mute bell. These you must possess, or all that follows will be… meaningless."

The shopkeeper, I discovered, existed only as a constellation of wires and gleaming metal equipment—a mechanical oracle that demanded communion through more intimate means than coin. A slender electrode, white but stained with the unknown, dangled limp in the air.

I pressed the cool material to my temple, and the world dissolved.

Mary's face materialized from the shadows of memory like a photograph developing in chemical baths—her blonde hair catching laboratory light, her expression shifting from professional curiosity to dawning horror as the robed figures closed their circle around us. The recollection tore a gasp from my throat as cold sweat beaded along my spine like the cool, raised dots of a secret and terrible braille.

I ripped the electrode away, my hands trembling, but the transaction had already completed itself with mechanical indifference. The required items materialized upon the counter as if conjured by my distress.

"Are you quite well?" Ashley's voice seemed to reach me from across a great distance.

I nodded, though my breath came in a shallow current. The memory receded slowly, leaving behind the auriferous taste of panic and the ghost of Mary's frightened eyes. "I am… composed," I managed, willing my voice to steadiness.

"Now what—"

The door behind the counter burst inward like a thunderclap made wood and iron. Through the violence of its opening swaggered a figure that belonged to no drawing room or civilized establishment—a woman whose very presence seemed to corrode propriety, if anything. Her hair fell in black tangles across shoulders clad in what appeared to be some manner of animal hide fashioned into a jacket—as I still did not know if cattle existed in the Makai, it appeared the same slickened leather as Ashley’s coat, though blacker than her wine hue—worn over the baggy visage of a crop top. An eye patch covered her left socket, while the remaining eye blazed with an angry fervor.

She raised a bottle of cherry-dark liquid to her lips, the motion dreamy as smoke curling from dying embers.

"Well, well," she drawled in a slur, her voice carrying the rough music of grinding glass. "If it isn't Ashley, come crawling back to nest among the ruins."

Ashley's form tightened like a bow string under tension. "I exchanged nothing. My companion here—"

"Ooooh, and who might this delicious morsel be?" The woman's lurid gaze fell upon me. "Your new paramour, perhaps?"

Heat rose in my cheeks like wine spilled on white cloth, though I maintained the mask of composure that had served me through countless interrogations. "Certainly not," I replied, catching the peripheral sharpness of Ashley's glance. "I am a detective."

The words had scarcely left my lips when the world became a blur of motion and violence. Before I could draw breath to protest, I found myself pinned against the wall, the woman's arm pressed to my throat with the casual brutality of one accustomed to such intimacies.

"I've little patience for investigative parasites," she snarled, her voice now stripped of all pretense at civility.

"Jun." Ashley's hand settled upon the woman's shoulder with the gentle authority of one calling a rabid dog to heel.

The pressure at my throat vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. I staggered, coughing, while the woman—Jun—regarded me calculating interest.

"We seek information regarding fey oil dealers," Ashley explained, her tone carefully neutral. "The matter is… pressing."

Jun's lips curved into something that might charitably be called a smile. She took another draught from her bottle, wiping the crimson residue from her mouth with the back of her hand. Her movement carried the loose-limbed uncertainty of one who has made intimate acquaintance with whatever spirits her vessel contained.

"Follow," she commanded, gesturing toward the shadowed doorway from which she had emerged. "But keep your detective's tongue civil, little lamb, lest I decide to cut it out and serve it with wine."

My scowl carved itself into the stale air between us like a blade seeking flesh. The audacity of this creature—assaulting an officer, disturbing the peace, threatening violence… In my former world, I would have had her wrists bound in steel before she could draw another breath from that cherry-dark bottle.

The back room revealed itself as a monument to neglect—wooden crates stacked like the bones of forgotten ambitions, their surfaces thick with the dust of years. A strand of lights dangled overhead like a rosary of distant stars, casting sickly illumination through the dark. The air tasted of abandonment and things left too long in darkness.

Jun cleared her throat. "Why would you seek fey oils? Planning a pilgrimage to the City of Blood?"

Ashley's denial came swift as a striking snake. "We hunt a would-be murderer."

"What tedious waste of breath and effort," Jun scoffed, though she motioned toward the rear door with grudging accommodation. "The dealers who traffic in fey essence are the same peddling bloodcaine and bloodoine to the vampire market."

The names struck me like badly tuned bells—so pedestrian in their criminal banality that I could barely suppress a laugh. Bloodcaine. Bloodoine. Had the underworld's imagination withered so completely that it could only append 'blood' to existing narcotics and call the result innovation?

Jun pushed open the door, revealing a curtain of azure fog that writhed as though it were alive. "The underworld remains as it ever was—with most of the familiar faces still drawing breath."

As Ashley stepped toward that blue veil, Jun's hand descended upon her shoulder like a bird of prey claiming its perch. She leaned close.

"The perils are all yours…"

The words hung in the stagnant air, pregnant with implications I could not yet decipher, while the fog beyond the threshold beckoned us.

---

The fog parted before us like curtains drawn by invisible hands, revealing alleyways that possessed the familiar shapes of urban decay. These narrow passages, choked with refuse and shadow, stirred memories of my former life with uncomfortable clarity—the same desperate architecture of need and concealment that bred in every city's forgotten corners.

Ashley halted before a building that crouched against its neighbors like a penitent seeking absolution. A single lamp cast sickly light over a door fitted with iron bars, behind which serpentine eyes regarded us with wary calculation.

Recognition flickered in those vertical pupils. The door opened with a reluctant creak.

The woman who emerged from the threshold was a study in contradiction—white hair falling like of web around features that belonged to no single species. Her tongue, when she spoke, revealed itself as forked, flickering between pale lips that had never known the warmth of honest sunlight. She wore garments that seemed assembled from shadows themselves: a corseted bodice of midnight velvet laced with silver thread, sleeves that billowed like funeral shrouds, and a skirt that pooled around her feet like spilled ink.

"Looking for a fix?" she asked Ashley, her voice carrying the hollow music of wind through cemetery gates.

Ashley's silence spoke volumes, her gaze shifting to me with the weight of transferred responsibility.

"Do you traffic in fey oils?" I inquired, my tone carrying the flat authority of official inquiry. I wasn’t going to play pretend.

The effect was instantaneous. What little color had resided in her pallid features drained away entirely, leaving her face the texture of old parchment. She moved to slam the door, but I was faster—my hand caught the barrier, my shoulder following to force entry into her sanctuary of shadows.

Inside, I pressed her against the wall with the casual efficacy of one accustomed to such interrogations. She cowered beneath my regard, her forked tongue darting nervously across her lips.

"There's an address," she whispered, her voice now stripped of all pretense. "In the maze district. Building seven-hundred-thirteen."

Ashley nodded from the doorway. "It's close," she confirmed.

I released the woman, who slumped against the wall like a marionette whose strings had been severed. Whatever commerce she conducted in these shadows, she possessed enough sense to recognize when discretion served survival better than loyalty.