485 Road's End

I would not compare the Road’s End to a street-side dunghole on a backwater dimension.

That would be far too demeaning toward cesspits. I have seen more well-staffed bars on worlds in the middle of Incursions. I have seen cleaner bars on post-apocalyptic tomb worlds ravaged six times over by orc Orchestras.

I refuse to even get into the absolutely disgusting state of the establishment itself, and I don't need to, because the bar's owner is a ten times bigger problem on his own. Oh, System, the bar's owner. Sweet Pop Queen Karna, spare me from this miserable wretch known as the Realmrunner. Wanted across all known Integration, for good reason, for infinite amounts of degeneracy.

This man threatened me. Threatened to have his way with me if I didn't give him a good review. Well, Realmrunner, this review is for you. You do not get a good review. You don't even get a bad review. You get the single worst review I can provide. You are beneath assessment.

I would recommend that everyone go to their toilet and clean it up with their tongue before they ever go to the Road's End, because the Road's End deserves to be burned to the ground to cinders. When next I find this place, I will leave a mana marker upon it and share the signature with the Farwalkers.

In summation, damn this place, damn the drink it serves, and damn the Realmrunner.

Absolutely do not go!

—The Wayfarer’s Guide to Integration, Issue 4e134(Reviewer was later found dead in his home with an entire urinal shoved up his rectum, an excrement-smeared message left on the wall stating “aye for gayyyed”.)

VIII-45

Road’s End

Maria had hidden in cesspits cleaner than the Road's End. For one, the floor was crusted in a layer of grime so thick and dense that every step she took caused a crack to spread across the floor akin to a frozen lake. For another, it seemed that a colony of awakened roaches had become patrons themselves, setting up minuscule tables and chairs that appeared to have been stolen from a young girl's playset to serve as furniture while they consumed the same drinks as the bar’s actual patrons—who left much to be desired.

Maria counted the Breaker amongst their company, after all, and that was no point in their favor at all. Yet he still stood a mountain above the rest of the clientele, for he was capable of walking under his own power and didn't spend his time resting face-first against table tops that had, in some cases, fused with said patrons’ faces thanks to the unidentifiable filth coating them deep enough to sink a finger in. There were corpses splayed out in the footroom of the bar counter that were in the process of decaying. Maggots spilled out from them, considering a vote to join as second-class citizens under the roaches.

Somehow, the living smelled worse than the dead in this place. They reeked like cheap slaves. Most of them were dressed in rags and miserable, misbegotten hunks of rust. They were of all races, of organic and mechanical descent, but they all shared in a few aspects: They were downtrodden, miserable, and all unimaginably weak.

Except for one Low Master, Maria couldn't sense anyone who was above Adept-Tier, which left her and the Breaker as outliers; they and one other: the fugitive patron of the Road’s End.

Said patron swung from a wooden support beam on the ceiling like a misshapen pendulum. With every swaying motion, the ceiling groaned, and the voluminous rope bearing the weight of his corpulent body creaked. His shadow passed over Maria, then shifted back to coat the Breaker. Beneath, an ostrich dressed in a skimpy maid’s outfit, the one Low Master in the establishment, awkwardly worked knobs and valves with her beak, pouring drinks for the mess of customers pressed against the sticky bartop.

Maria’s frown deepened as she swept the room again. The bartop was an island at the center of the room, while the rest was a sprawling mess of non-uniform couches filled with meandering, empty-eyed wretches who seemed to have no purpose in life beyond the booze and brooding. Past that point, there was a rat’s nest of hallways leading into the establishment—a few seemed like something out of a dungeon, while others were linoleum-tiled and lit by fluorescent light. All the paths shared a wrongness, however—a feeling that they were places copied over from other locations in Integration and meshed together to create a moving liminal space that randomly jumped along the axis of space and time.

A massive dollop of paint fell from the ceiling just before Maria, dripping from a badly spelled declaration that “alle roaads lad to roads eend”.

Before she had a chance to question why the penmanship and spelling were so atrocious, she sensed a subtle burst of movement approaching her chest and looked down.

Only to find the cheap mug of stale beer she'd ordered animated into a foamy hand and reaching toward her left breast.

Maria’s formidable mind went veering off a cliff. Her thoughts were in freefall, unable to find purchase on any point of logic nor reason to explain all that was unfolding.

The foamy hand, meanwhile, flinched back with hesitation, only for the liquid to bubble and somehow produce worse in the tone of a man: “Uh, ‘scuse me, pretty elf lady, but your mammers look mighty heavy on one end—I’m willing to hold that titty up for you, if you toss me a mith.”

Maria's Harbinger twitched with riotous violence. “In any other circumstance, I would advise you to kill absolutely everyone and everything in this room before leaving. However. Give the Breaker a chance. And by that, I mean give the Challenger a chance, for we still need the loyalty of his Orchestras to see our desires fulfilled. Master yourself. This place may be a madhouse, but you can be more. You can be higher.”

“So, what do you say?” The mug of beer bubbled joyously. It was only now that she noticed the twin pinpricks of thought and emotion dotting the center of the amber fluid. “Ain’t no one got nicer hands than Beero!”

Maria glared silently at the grope-happy beverage. Her glare broke as, in the corner of her eye, she watched the Breaker unequip his chestplate, flick a mithril coin at the maid-ostrich, and pour the alcohol all over himself with a loud order for the drink to “tongue his nonexistent orc areolae good and clean.”

“Do not react. It’s what he wants. It’s probably half the reason he brought you to this place. The Breaker is using your reactions to all the absurdism to amuse himself—oh, dead gods and foremost blood, the beer is actually licking him all over. The beer is moaning. The Breaker is too.”

The tendons in Maria’s jaw came afire with brutal cramps as she struggled not to bite her tongue off. Once more, her drink tried to pinch her left breast. This time, she swatted the self-dubbed Beero eight minutes into the future, casting it away from the present with a desperate and hasty cry of: “Fuck you bitch, I hate small tits anyway—”

“You really should loosen up a little,” the Breaker said as he leaned back against the bartop while his animated beer massaged his pecs. The orc sighed. The entire bartop rattled and squealed as he shifted his weight. Another creak sounded from above as the Realmrunner swung left at the end of his noose, bouncing in the air like an ugly apple from its tree in a passing storm. “You might have liked Beero. The drinks here are usually pretty good at kneading the knots out of you. But don’t let them get their hands on your holes, alright, sister? Use your Hydromancy and keep them away—otherwise, they’ll give your plumbing a good fracking, if you know what I mean.”

Maria didn’t dignify any of that with a response. Her expression was at once impassive but unspeakably murderous. “Breaker. Why are we here. In this place. Doing this. If you do not give me a reason to stay, I am going to return to the Tutorial and—”

A loud, ragged snort sounded from the ceiling. The hanged man choked and coughed out his tongue. “Tutorial? Tutorial!” He exploded into a messy wriggle, and he somehow unlatched the folds of his neck from the taut noose sustaining his mass. In the next instant, he was plunging like an artillery round with a loud bellow of: “Deandrus! Catch!”

The maid-ostrich shrieked with high-pitched terror as her eyes snapped upward. Rather than doing what was commanded, she flung herself over the counter to avoid the falling meatwad of a Pathbearer and ended up tumbling over the Breaker’s face, sending them both toppling onto the floor. A deafening, earthquake-like impact shook the room as the Realmrunner struck the ground like a gong that radiated both space and time mana. His body vibrated violently as gold and static sparkles exploded off his form. When the shaking finally stopped, he pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his knees and cursed the “stupid bird bitch” for not cushioning his fall.

After a good minute of rubbing—and a few wet tongue kisses gifted to his knees—the Realmrunner righted himself, and Maria beheld one of Integration’s most infamous smugglers and skin-runners in his full infamy.

To begin, Maria wasn't sure what the Realmrunner's race was. He was either a severely height-challenged ogre who'd suffered numerous facial disfigurements, or inversely a goblin who'd experienced a particularly severe case of gigantism. His organs were a complete mess as well. A good amount of them had been replaced by mechanical implants, while others seemed to be parasitic organisms living inside of him. Each one clutched tightly a dense patch of mithril coins within their depths, like the treasures had been fused into his biology by some bastard act of greed and biomancy.

As for his ensemble, the Realmrunner was dressed in a way that was somehow both cheap and expensive at the same time. The best way Maria could define him was money without any class. He had jackets of expensive velvet, silk, cotton, and half a dozen more materials she couldn't name, all layered over each other, blouses and doublets and pants of hideously clashing styles mismashed in a way a toddler might look after being let loose in a clothing store for an hour. Using another analogy, he looked like the last mannequin in a high-class tailor shop that was on the verge of going out of business. If his aesthetic had a philosophy, it would be: I will put on the most expensive piece of clothing I can find and never take it off, and then I will look for the next most expensive thing until the day I become a perfect sphere of torn garments and ruined splendor.

It was a miracle that his hat didn't suffer the same indignity. Atop his bulbous head sat an armor-plated top hat that was leather at its rim, but had a layer of enchanted Inertium bolted along its outside of the cylinder. It constantly emitted a dull whine, while the mithril-rimmed glasses sitting on his crooked nose blazed bright with carved Divination spells. Maria recognized these spells in an instant. They were part of an economic analysis series, something that allowed a mathematician or a banker to survey the value of almost anything they laid their gaze upon.

And right then, the Realmrunner's eyes were fully devoted to Maria. The lenses of his glasses burned bright and violet, and his irises behind them managed to blaze even brighter still. He drew upon the System's power, wielding some ascended form of the Alayze Skill and Divination at the same time, but before his judgment could be made complete, he turned his gaze away and ire upon the Breaker, growling, "I told you, Breaker! I told you! I'm not into that anymore! There's no business in it, alright? Everyone has kids these days! All the diddlers are dead! Kor’s killed all the diddlers! We don't diddle no more! There's no money in diddling! You can't keep doing that child trafficking stuff! Even for a gag! I got no cages left! I sold half, and the other half is downstairs now, holding the special dogs. Yeah, you wanna know what business there is to run across courses? Special attack dogs. Unique dogs that are grown from people's own biology. Get it? Zoophilia’s in! Pedophilia’s out! Now, I don't know how you found me again, but I need you to get the fuck right off out of here right now and forget this place. And you take this elf child with you.”

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The Realmrunner then performatively gagged at Maria, who was a good two heads taller than him, pretending she was the single most grotesque and pathetic life form he'd ever seen. "Look at her. She's barely out of puberty. Look at that face. All pale. What have you been feeding her? Lint? Even if we were still in the diddling business, I couldn’t sell her as a temp-whore to a limbless, blind-deaf man who got fucking crushed in a debt contract.”

“It's good to see you again as well, Realmrunner,” the Breaker responded, grinning with genuine joy as he climbed back onto his chair and placed the ostrich maid back on her feet. “But no, brother, you mistake me. I'm also done with child-trafficking. That gag lost its bag of laughs some two centuries ago. The short one here is Legend-Philosopher Maria Corcusa. She's the Challenger's newest Insul. She also has a Harbinger.”

The once bombastic ogre-goblin creature swallowed as his pupils narrowed to dilated specks. He let his glasses slide down his long, uneven nose as he garnered a better look at Maria. She stared directly back into his eyes, pouring every drop of her inner malice into the glare. The Realmrunner got the message. He swallowed, and that swallow reverberated in his gullet, resounding as if a stone dropped down a well while hitting the walls on the way down. The Realmrunner didn't exactly have anything like a neck, after all. He was mostly torso and head, almost akin to a fat thumb given limbs. “H-h-Harbinger.”

It was then that Maria realized she had misjudged the Realmrunner. She'd thought he was overcome with fear, but as she sank her Harbinger's senses into his empathetic core and gazed at the rapid currents of his mind, she realized that he felt something between lust and greed in equal measure. He was regarding her as a valuable prospect once more, a potential slave made immensely valuable by the ultra-rare skill she possessed. It wasn't terror at all; it was pure, cold-blooded avarice. Integration and all the Pathbearers who dwelled within it were merely walking numbers in the eyes of the Realmrunner.

“What a ridiculously single-minded creature,” the Harbinger commented, mostly in disgust, but partially with fascination.

A long, heavy strand of drool curved over the top of the Realmrunner's bottom lip. It resembled a river breaking through a dam, and soon he bobbed like a hammer-shaped pendulum, swaying as he did mere moments ago from the ceiling. The rope he had used to hang himself was actually a tie upon second inspection—a garishly colorful yet unimaginably ugly thing that called to Maria’s desires all the same. She felt the enchantments along that single article of silk pull at her attention, prick her heart, and cast allures upon her mind. Her Harbinger pushed it aside, but it startled her how much effort it took to resist the seduction.

“The Realmrunner, like the Breaker, plays an exaggerated version of himself. The state of his bar, the way he dresses, how he acts, it is all partially mired in calculation. Another part is because he truly is that manner of degenerate. But never confuse him for a complete fool. His foolishness is a weapon, not a liability.”

Maria chuckled to her skill. I’ve noticed.

By this point, her outrage had long since melted away, replaced entirely by interest and the building flow that demanded she play the game. “Realmrunner,” she greeted. “We've come here seeking your services. I am not one for auspiciousness. Do you have a private office, or do you conduct your business out in the open, where everyone can hear? We wish to strike a bargain.”

The words made the Realmrunner snort. He waved a short, stubby limb at the rest of the room. "Oh, these miserable shits. Yeah, those fucking dorks are my slaves. Don't worry about it. They're bent to my will. They can't betray me even if they wanted to. Huh? Isn't that right? Or have any of you been talking with the Farwalkers? Huh? Anyone? Anyone? You guys can't even get out of here! You can't! You don't even know the way out! Go, go, run away! Try to escape! These halls, they all lead back here! They all lead back here because I want them to! I am the master here, huh? Remember this: Y'all, y'all fucking suck! Y'all suck fucks!"

His incoherent tantrum inspired less fear than weary resignation. The clients, now revealed to be actual slaves—which further explained why they smelled so bad—just stared down into their drinks. Some of them allowed themselves to be fondled without resistance. Others lay against the floor, unmoving, allowing roaches to crawl up their ears or even down their throats. All had given up.

The Realmrunner wasn't a particularly intimidating figure, but his control over this place was absolute.

A series of other questions blossomed in Maria’s mind: How did someone like him come across this place? Did he create it? How did he avoid the Farwalkers for so long? Connected to that, how did the Breaker find this location so easily?

All he did was lead her through a random series of seemingly ordinary doors across a smattering of desperate lower dimensions. He always knew which to take somehow, and judging from how the Realmrunner regarded his presence, the Breaker wasn't supposed to know.

Another point in favor of the orc’s competence.

“Deandrus! DEANDRUS!" the Realmrunner bellowed. The ostrich came sprinting back, leaning over a dense mob of hollow-eyed drinkers hovering behind Maria. A squawk of absolute indignation exploded out from her, and Maria noted that, of all the people within this bar, the ostrich was the only one who possessed any measure of fury—and she directed the full heat of her temper upon the Realmrunner without fear of repercussions.

Which means this relationship goes far further than master and slave, Maria observed.

“Don't you ‘what the fuck’ me, you birdbath! Go to my office and clear out the trash. We got clients, actual clients to talk to! We got a chance to get back on top, to make up for all that merchandise we lost!” The Realmrunner noisily slurped his tongue as he regarded Maria once more. The ostrich, noticing the Realmrunner's attention locked onto Maria, suddenly darted forward, tilting her head at an odd angle to examine her for herself.

Seconds passed as the ostrich's eyes and emotional core blazed with jealousy. Maria once more found herself taken aback. This was the first time she sensed an unrelenting feeling of envy from an ostrich. She'd tasted similar emotions from her competitors back in the First Blood, especially those who warred for the Grandmother's attention, but that was another life, a false life, engineered by a false master.

None of that mattered anymore, however, as the ostrich screamed in her face, bellowing a feeling of absolute disbelief, as if she couldn't believe the Realmrunner was interested in Maria at all. Her tantrum-like squawking took on a similar tempo and tone as the Realmrunner's outburst earlier. From that alone, Maria grasped something. Either the Realmrunner was the ostrich's master and had imprinted his behavior upon the creature, or, for whatever reason that made it feel more likely, he was the ostrich's actual father.

“What do you mean, 'why her'? Of course her, you bird bitch! You wanna know what she is? A Legend. With a Harbinger. You know what a Harbinger does? A Harbinger lets someone punch another asshole across time. A Harbinger lets someone crack someone based on their emotional volatility. If she backhanded you once, you'd turn into sparkly dust, you dumb fuck. Now, get in there and clean up my office, you worthless bastard. You Master-Tier cat food, fucking disappointment shitfuck!”

The ostrich swung her head between Maria and the Realmrunner, trying to decide who she scorned more in that moment, before lifting her neck high and letting out a final piercing shriek. With that, she exploded through the crowds, knocking people over and crushing a dozen roaches and maggots along her way, before she finally took a sudden turn and slammed through a rusted metal door. A series of crashes followed. All eyes turned in the direction of the cacophony. Rolls of toilet paper and mops were flung out, followed by plungers, then files, then boxes, then some actual valuable treasures: golden ingots, gems, chests, chains, ivory necklaces, enchanted items, and more.

“It's probably gonna take her a minute to get everything out.” The Realmrunner snorted with disappointment. “Fucking dumb bitch got two left legs. Takes after her mother. Takes after her mother in brains too. It took a miracle for me to awaken her.”

“Which means the Realmrunner made it with an unawakened ostrich… What a singular kind of vermin this one is,” the Harbinger mused.

“Anyway, another beer on the house while you both are waiting?” the Realmrunner asked, fixing Maria with a winning smile.

She hummed. “Will the alcohol you pour attempt to molest me again?”

“Probably,” the Realmrunner admitted without any shame. “The whole dispensary system here’s got the soul of a sex offender stuck inside of it. Water comes out the same fucking way.”

Maria pressed her lips together and endeavored to ask a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know. “And why is there a sex offender sealed inside your dispensary?”

At that, the Realmrunner chuckled. “Bitch owed me money and couldn't pay.”

He said it like it explained everything.

In a strange, messed-up way, it kind of did.

***

Somehow, the Realmrunner's “office” was even more of a cesspit than the rest of the bar. Maria suspected this to be the case because the office was built quite literally within a convergence of bathrooms. She knew because there were still urinals fused in the walls and protruding from the ceiling, and because there were rolls of “out-of-service” tape messily dumped over a bunch of rancid toilets. Then there were the rusted showerheads at the end of the room and the dark brown curtains, which probably weren't so dark brown originally, as Maria sensed entire Awakened bacterial colonies living along the hardened screens of filth.

At the center of the room was a desk. She suspected it had been an expensive, ornate desk once—stolen from a far more esteemed domain than the festering dunghole it now found itself trapped within. These days, the desk was stained eight times over with uncleaned liquor, paint, blood, and rat semen. Entire fungal colonies were sprouting out from the cracks in the desk, while within, a dimensional space expanded a few centimeters into a full bunker. Inside that bunker was a group of gas-mask-wearing Awakened rats armed with gunpowder weapons, awaiting the Realmrunner’s order to fire through cracks in the wood to shred the orc and vampire.

The Realmrunner began talks by ripping a gangly, white-yellow shroom out of the desk and taking a bite out of it. He then proceeded to offer it to Maria, who shook her head—and then slapped the hand of the Breaker away when he reached for it.

“Fine,” the Realmrunner said, crunching away on the mushroom. “More for me. But, uh, before we get to tickling each other’s cocks and puss-holes, I want to know what kind of service—motherfucking, Deandrus, get away from the fucking door!”

A loud squawk echoed from behind the dented, metal door leading into the Realmrunner’s office. The sound of clawed feet tearing through chunks of floor followed.

“Stupid bitch,” the Realmrunner muttered. “She keeps trying to cuck me out of good business by doing it first. Anyway, if you ever end up trapped in a prison desert world by a WHOOOOOREEEE god you used to bang, don’t pound the ostriches there to give yourself a supply of eggs, alright? And don’t keep one of those eggs because you got all sentimental and fell in love with the bird. Nothing good comes of it.”

Maria refused to react. “Note—”

“And don’t fuck no awakened hyena goddesses either! They won’t let you pull out, and they won’t pull out of you either! Even if you cry and scream no. It just makes them harder. Only way out is faking. Gotta get real fucking good at faking.”

The horrific irony there lay in the fact that the Realmrunner’s trauma was genuine, confirmed so by her Harbinger. Maria nodded, because what else was she supposed to do in response to that?

“Now. Where were we? What kind of gig is this? Transportation? Assassination? Smuggling?”

“Infiltration,” the Breaker replied. “And sabotage.”

That got a scoff out of the Realmrunner. The goblin-ogre leaned back in his cheap plastic chair and sneered. “Another fun little extermination run, eh? Challenger’s ass got too bored? Wants to get his planet-sacking fuck back on?”

“No. Not a planet. Just one Gate. Category 4. Maybe 5.”

Silence followed. The Realmrunner scowled. “This… this some kind of fucking joke? A Cat-4? You don’t need me—”

“Valor Thann is one of the Gate’s residents. Alongside three Legendary-Unique Pathbearers—one of whom is Udraal Thann’s creation. Can you guess?”

The Realmrunner’s head tilted. “The Deathless is there?”

“Oh, yes. And much like Maria here, he has a Harbinger.”

With that, the Realmrunner’s salivation began anew. Maria also sensed a rush of blood flow and heat down to his loins, but she refused to acknowledge that in any way or form.

The Breaker leaned over the table and steepled his hands together. “There’s also the matter of the Challenger’s gratitude, for you see—he has declared a Vaketh-Bakal of his own. One Demigod, Adam Arrow, has assumed part of the Great One’s mantle and taken the Sage for his own. A Holy War is upon us. But I am not so impressed with my god’s pick. I think, if you managed to help us infiltrate the Gate and claim it as our own, I might be willing to offer you all rights to the Pathbearers within. All of the—”

Suddenly, the Realmrunner gripped the edges of his table. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. He bit his bottom lip hard enough to spray blood across the room. His hips bucked erratically, wildly, and his chair screeched and cracked under his shuddering releases. A low, zesty moan escaped the Realmrunner, and the shroom he'd torn away earlier regenerated before Maria's eyes.

A great sadness befell her. A great, and consuming, sadness. “So,” she cleared her throat, “I suppose these terms are to your satisfaction?”

“Eh?” the Realmrunner said, swiveling a single eye to regard her. “Hell no, keep going. Keep teasing me! I’m not done yet! My refractory period's five seconds. Keep talking, and I’ll give you my answer if I ever get dry.”

“Don’t react,” the Harbinger said. “Let the orc do the talking. Also, prepare to dodge, because while you were distracted, several of his release strands cleaved some of his ratkin in half. A few more bursts like that, and it will blast through the front of the desk and blow out our knee.”

Maria thought back to the colorful tie in the room behind her and wondered how the fabric would feel around her neck.