Asking the Way

Wednesday 7 October, 23:33. The Rogues’ Quarter

The Undercity is built in rings, and I have been walking the wrong one all evening.

It is dark in the way a cellar is dark, with no sky to be dark against. The light is a sick green and comes from lamps hung too far apart, so that each passage is a short bright smear and a long stretch of guessing. The walls are old stone gone black and slick, and they sweat. Down the middle of every avenue runs a channel of sludge, yellow-green and slow, with a skin on it that trembles when anything passes. Where it pools it bubbles, and the bubbles break with a small wet sound I have begun to hear in my sleep, if what I do can be called that. The air has a taste. Rot, first, and under the rot something sharp and chemical that sits at the back of what remains of my throat, and under that the sweet note of old meat. I do not breathe, as far as I can tell, and it finds me anyway.

The Undercity lies under the ruins of Lordaeron. Poisonous sludge runs through its avenues, and toxic fumes and fetid odours fill the whole city, so that the living of the Horde can hardly bear it. It is dark, and it is built in a ring of quarters around a central plaza, with canals between them. The Forsaken do not seem to mind. Their dead queen is said to find it appealing.

Every passage in the Rogues’ Quarter is the same wet green, lit by the same lamp.same. I have passed the same lamp twice.

We have passed that lamp twice, said Mezzlos. I have counted.

I did not tell him I had counted too. I do not tire, which is the worst of it. A living man would have sat down by now and been found.

We have passed that lamp twice, said Mezzlos. I have counted.

I did not tell him I had counted too.

There was a guard at the end of the third passage that I had not yet rejected. ItI smelled the guard before I saw it.

It came down the passage ahead of the guard like a hand laid flat on my face: blood that had been left out, a butcher’s yard in summer, wet cellar and old meat, and under all of it the sweetness again, thicker here, which I decided not to follow. Then the passage opened, and there it stood against the wall as if it had been leaned there. It was enormous, grey-blue where it was not grey-green, and it

It was enormous. Its skin was the grey-blue of something that has been in the water too long, and in places the grey turned a sickly yellow-green, like a bruise that has begun to think for itself. It had been put together with the loose and generous stitching ofby someone who ran out of time and then ran out of thread. Where its hands should have been there were hooks. One of them was larger than my head.The stitching was loose and wide, big black loops that did not close the seams, and where they gaped I could see wet red under the skin, and in two places something paler. Its arms were different lengths. Its shoulders were wrong. Across the belly a great gash had been drawn shut with a few rough ties and had given up, and what lived behind it hung out in a heavy green-grey fold, glistening, moving a little as the thing breathed. I did not know it needed to breathe.

Twelve places were offered. I wanted the inn. [Picture description: Percy in a yellow and purple robe stands before a huge pale stitched figure with hooks for hands, a directions menu open at the left and a blue voidwalker behind him.]

It is a thing I know without having been told, that one asks the way of a Guardian. The question it puts is the only one it has. What are you looking for? I looked down the list. The bank, the bat handler, the mailbox, the inn. Nobody had put out on it.

I do not breathe, as far as I can tell, and I could still smell it. A slaughterhouse in a wet cellar, and under that something sweeter that I decided not to follow. It stood in a faint haze, as though the air around it had been left to go off. I took the inn, and I held a sleeve to a face that did not need one.dripped. That was the thing I had not been warned of. Blood ran off its fingers, and off the points of its hooks, and out of the seams along its ribs, and it had made a dark patch on the stone that had stopped being a puddle and become a floor. Flies lived on it. They walked in the open sores on its arms and rose and settled in a slow cloud, as if the cloud were part of the body, and a faint haze stood about the whole of it, shimmering, the air itself gone off. Where its hands should have been there were hooks, curved and flat, as long as my forearm and crusted brown. One of them was larger than my head.

It smells, said Mezzlos, a long way behind me. I did not know that I could mind.

The GuardianHe had not come within ten paces. I do not blame him. I stood in the haze, and my robe took it up like wet wool, and I held a sleeve to a face that did not need one.

It is a thing I know without having been told, that one asks the way of a Guardian. It turned its head. The eyes were small and wet and not unkind, and there was nothing behind them. The question it puts is the only one it has. What are you looking for? A list opened. The bank, the bat handler, the mailbox, the inn. Nobody had put out on it. The thing waited, and a drop of something fell from its chin and struck the floor with a sound I will remember. I took the inn.

It pointed with one hook toward the tunnel I had already rejected. It never looked at me.me again. I thanked it anyway. It is polite to thank the dead, and I was not sure which kind it was.

The Guardians are abominations, and the Forsaken make them in the Apothecarium. Many corpses are stitched into one body and kept whole with blood and embalming fluid.fluid, which is why they drip. The builders choose the brain with care and takecut away the parts that think, so that nothing in it can grow a conscience. What is left is slow, loyal and hungry, and itcheerful, with a vacant, smiling face. It guards the city and gives directions to those who ask.ask, and it craves flesh, the living and the dead alike. The reek is disease, and in the old accounts the sickness hangs about it in a visible cloud. The stitches are loose because the Forsaken are in no hurry.

I walked the tunnel. It was the right one, and I resented that. I walked it with the smell on me, and it came the whole way. Somewhere in the second turning I understood that the Forsaken I passed were not wrinkling their faces at me, and I did not like what that meant. I cannot tell what I smell like. I suspect I stopped being a fair judge some time ago.

I have been lost among the living, and I have been lost among the dead, and tonight I found a third kind, which is to be lost among those who were made. In the book I wrote left, and underlined it. Below it, smaller, Do not stand downwind.

Percy has stood under the hooks of the Apothecarium and has not asked what they are for. It is a short walk from his question to this answer, and nobody has yet offered to take it with him.

Set down in the Undercity, Wednesday 7 October 2026, 23:33.