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Denga followed the pull of prayer to the slightly off-course town of Fasten. Someone under those simple roofs had managed an adequate shrine, gathered sufficient offerings, and raised their voice in prayer all in the name of Deng. His progeny sensed it because he was close enough. Nearing the town the demigods became concerned; the place would have looked busy if the people in the streets moved at all. Nothing changed. If the townsfolk realized anything happening in their immediate area, they showed no sign. Shivers after uncommon spikes in noise generated the impression of sleep, but the unnatural, uniform grayness of their skin indicated corruption. During these brief spasms, green light blinked in patterns of binary code underneath the damaged skin. A synthetic curse had rendered Fasten into zombies.

When the party knocked on the door of one building, a house across the street answered. A woman poking her head out from the entrance was whistling and waving at them, hope as well as tears in her eyes. Denga tripped on his way across the street. The mistake filled the town with more sound than seemed realistic, and the street dwellers shook awake. All subcutaneous flickering intensified, eyes and mouths popped open, pouring out green neon light. Glitter zombies howled in agreement; they swarmed Denga, covering him in a teeth and nails assault. They were damaging in high numbers but that dwindled fast as Ghuma and Herphaes put their heavy weapons to deleterious effect. More cursed townspeople lumbered their way down the streets as the demigods took shelter with the caller inside her home.

In the while she had been surviving she spent her time appealing to Deng for help. She finally had it. Without introduction she asked Denga and his friends to clear the zombies out of Fasten, then to take revenge on the monster responsible. Clagorn, a vampyr ambassador in Charmonde, brought the curse that ended the town. Happy to help, the demigods made quick work of exterminating the remaining undead, then resumed their journey to find Queen Armalu.

Their destination could be seen (in the dark) and heard from a mile away. From atop a hill they looked down on Charmonde; the place was in celebratory flames. Festivities circling around pyres monumental dominated the sky, fireworks gave the smoke colossus menacing personality. The entire display felt like a challenge directed at the demigods. At the anticipation of action, they grinned and marched on.

An age of abhuman chaos had sullied the once beautiful Charmonde. A history told in statuary scattered around the city had been vandalized with varying degrees of cruelty, soon tasteful architecture would be rubble under the romping of Margr, Murden, and Nibovian Wives. Charmonde’s four largest structures stood at the outskirts. Three of these buildings hosted fiery parties, the fourth was much more serious; it gave off blue, electric light and instead of horseplay there were armed guards. To them, it looked like high enough security for a jail. It inspired suspicion that Queen Armalu was incarcerated there.

Attractions they saw on the way showcased human torture on a competitive level, mobiles were built to twist and prod screams from their victims, each one more innovative and horrible than the last. Some were less creative. Margr blood pits were barbaric but impressive in terms of splash value; men and women were drugged to the point of frenzy, then, bare-naked, engaged against savage, heavily-armored goatmen. Prayers emitted from prey were directed to unfamiliar gods and so the demigods continued until they encountered Clagorn. The Vampyr Ambassador was at the center of debauchery. He reclined on a metallic bed that transported his incredible nude, pale mass on dozens of robot legs over orgiastic hills of Nibovian Wives and their unlucky suitors. Clagorn immediately clashed with the demigods. In a show of aggression, he ate a human hole – Clagorn’s bulbous, exaggerated gut parted vertically, showing rows on either side of the schism, then a man walked in and the maw closed tight – then spit an emaciated corpse out; it landed at Ghuma’s feet.

Ghuma accepted the invitation. He opened his coffin and began the process of readying the enormous chain gun inside. It left him exposed for attack. Clagorn opened his gut-mouth and vomited out a torrent of hot, sticky blood, coating the elephantine warrior dark red. It had no immediate effect. The demigods responded full on, the vampyr’s would-be abhuman defenders were washed away in a wave of lead slugs, Herphaes and Denga knocked the corpulent soul-sucker off his transport. The bloody discharge that saturated Ghuma’s armor suddenly started behaving unnaturally, bubbling at first, then skewers fashioned from solidified blood stabbed outward from every surface it covered. Hundreds of blades impaled Ghuma from the ground, his chain gun and the coffin it lived in; red puke that had soaked in his garments shot spires in all directions. Not many beings in the Ninth World could survive such an attack, but Ganesha’s son pressed through and, with the help of his friends, shattered the oblong bone machinations of Clagorn’s mouth-stomach, then destroyed the vampyr.