The glow Wren had seen turned out to be cast by a row of thighbones, hammered into sconces and burning like candles. They lined the wall of the chamber he stumbled into out of the dark and gave it a warm, almost friendly glow.

Well, that’s unexpected and yet perfect, isn’t it?

Anyway, so not only is this not the way out, it’s impossible bone torches, and it doesn’t get better:

the ceiling was obscured by a heavy gray mist that stank of rotting meat. The torches, such as they were, lined only the wall to the east, while the one on the west was unadorned. At the north and south ends of the chamber were massive openings into darkness, which the pitiful light from the bone torches did little to penetrate. Far off in the darkness, he could hear a confused jumble of sounds-laughter, crying, flames, the crack of a whip-but here there was absolutely nothing. There was no sign of life, no reason for the torches to be lit, no sign what the gaping doorways led to

And indeed, the Labyrinth really shouldn’t make sense. It’s the dreams created by the rotting twitches of neverborn brains. All the pieces should bear every indication of deliberate creation while the whole should defy any sense. Kind of like the house.

It’s such a perfect example of the Labyrinth that Wren actually stops in his tracks and realizes that oh shit, that’s where he is. Not sure where else he was thinking this was, but I guess maybe he just figured regular underground malevolent tunnels.

the Malfeans, the demonic gods of death

Like so much else, yeah sort of but that’s not the point. They’re related to the same creatures that were flensed into demons, sure, but only because they were all the creators of reality the exalted overthrew, but they were murdered while the survivors were only maimed. They’re not gods of death, they’re titans of such power and majesty the very act of their murder created the concept of undeath as a minor side effect.

and where the spirits of the dead-and worse waged eternal war upon one another for reasons no mortal could comprehend.

This is one of the times where actually knowing is more frightening: they wage eternal war because the minor bleedoff of the god corpses has driven them mad – they’re devoted to the goal of destroying creation and freeing the neverborn, and yet unable to think clearly enough to accomplish it despite, and this is the important bit, having the power to do so. There is no point to any of this, and yet it involves world-shaking powers and if things shift slightly, if they go left instead of right, then maybe instead of running into another insane ghost pack they bubble out of the underworld and massacre people. Every day in Creation is because so far, the dice rolls have gone in its favor.

(It’s also a good tie to what the primordials were, which is the emergent properties of the sum of disparate parts, a corporate entity. The Labyrinth, then, is them continuing to work in the same way without anything actually functioning. They’ve still got moving parts, but the moving parts do nothing but grind pointlessly against each other.)

That’s why they jump at the chance to ally with the solar ghosts from the usurpation and despite the fact the solar ghosts don’t seem too motivated, just lash out occasionally in ways that are totally counterproductive rather than destroying them. Exalted actually has a reason why Team Evil isn’t competent: most of it’s insane and the sane people are trying for the narrow win condition of Creation mostly destroyed with them ruling over what’s left while doublecrossing undying all-powerful corpses. And that’s why the abyssals are then serious business despite the deathlords having fifteen hundred years to destroy Creation: there’s a hundred of them now and that means the chance of finding people insane enough to actually do the job they were hired for is worryingly high.

Wren considers returning to the evil surface castle, informing us that apparently when he fell into the void actually there were stairs, he just kinda missed them.

“A door which by now has no doubt been barred, nailed shut, and sealed behind brick, and beyond which wait Ratcatcher and his prince,”

But assuming Ratcatcher and the Prince of Shadows wait there, why the hell would they block the door? I mean, it’s true, but there’s no reason for anyone else to think so because it doesn’t make sense. He’s totally outmatched, that’s why he ran down there in the first place.

So instead he’ll keep wandering around down there. He decides to grab one of the burning bones.

Forward it is.”
“Forward,” whispered a voice in the darkness, beyond the doorway that Wren now faced. He stopped, freezing in his tracks.

In conclusion: the Labyrinth is the best setting.

Wren reacts by holding perfectly still and barely breathing. He doesn’t even recognize the voice, although for some reason he thinks that’s better than it being the snakes, despite them being perhaps the only thing in this place who didn’t want him dead right that minute. He waits for half an hour and nothing happens, so with no better plan, he ends up going forward after all.

As he travels, he finds the bone torch, like everything, doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t seem to be burning any actual fuel, so there’s that in its favor, but it doesn’t really cast much might either. Granted, torches are generally terrible at that regardless. And how bright it is appears to vary randomly, or else based on the power of whatever else is around.

Sometimes it would flare into dazzling prominence as he walked through a narrow corridor, causing all manner of small, scuttling thing to squeal and pain and dash for their dark hiding places. At other times it dimmed to something barely brighter than an ember, and Wren could sense vast, looming entities in twzexdytignjokhe encroaching shadows, watching him hungrily.

“could sense” is bad wording here. Any vast looming hungry entities would just eat him immediately. Possibly there could be smaller hungry entities that weren’t brave enough yet, or vast looming entities that aren’t hungry at the moment, but this really seems more like the way you feel when you’re in a terrifying place and can’t see beyond your nose. But Wren actually might be able to tell this kind of thing despite the lack of obvious sensory information, so it’s just as likely we’re to take him at his word. “thought he could” or similar modifiers would help a lot.

He’s currently in Silent Hill area, where there’s mysterious manacles and grating that may or may not just be part of the Labyrinth itself (probably yes) and have Ominous brown stains.

Apparently it’s been quiet, so he notices the sound of stone scraping, but then he doesn’t see anything and decides to talk to himself, despite that being such a bad idea last time.

“This place is starting to get to me. I’m surprised it’s taken so long.”
“Why? How long have you been here.”
The voice came from above, even as long fingers attached to a long hand at the end of a long arm came down and pinched out the flame of Wren’s torch.

See? Don’t talk to yourself.

Wren freaks out and whatever it is says it’s not going to hurt him. Wren is very not convinced. He flails around failing to hit it. It apologizes for killing his light but it doesn’t want to be seen. Wren reminds himself and us that he’s totally skilled at blindfighting, despite the fact he keeps failing to hit it now and that there’s every suggestion it can actually see down here. Anyway, it says he really needs to stop going this way.

Wren heard the solid plink of a pebble striking stone. There was silence for an instant, and then a grinding, gnashing sound. Wren felt, rather than saw, a fine cloud of dust waft past him, and stayed very still.
“Even the stone can be hungry here. It tends to pick up the habits of the things that dwell in it for a long time.”

Last book, of course, there was the whatever-it-was with a name that was also a devouring tide. It’s that again, which actually makes a lot of sense given we know she borders the Prince’s territory. Then there’s a lot of pointless chatter and grandstanding that repeats what we already know.

The thing says that that it’s helping because it doesn’t like the other bidders and it thinks Wren can give a suitable payment for safe delivery instead: one finger.

Your knucklebones will have power someday, once they’ve been suitably polished.

Sure, why not? And apparently, they have to be freely given to be max power, so it’s better to help him out than just try to chew off a finger.

A finger? Which one would he give up? His hands had always been clever. He’d had a knack for undoing locks and knots from an early age, for pleasing a woman (Not that one was allowed such things in the order, he thought) or taking things apart. How would it feel to be missing a finger? Would the others become more clumsy?

First, your pinky. This isn’t even a question. Second, bad wording. It’s quite right to wonder if his hand would be more clumsy without a finger, but the idea his other fingers would stop working is stupid.

Anyway, with that agreed to the unknown thing yanks him up into the air. They hear a river that’s actually the whatever-it-is that hungers and they run away faster until they reach a smooth area that’s made of glass and has random flashes of light and he’s all yes so cool I will touch this all over. He naturally tries tapping it.

The entire room rang like a bell.
“Would you please stop that?“ Idli’s voice was rife with annoyance. “You’ve just spread word of our presence here through a thousand corridors. There are things hunting you that can hear you lick your lips from a dozen leagues away. Please don’t give them any more help than necessary.”

This amuses me for an instant, but it makes me think of all the insta-deaths by touching a sphere of annihilation in D&D. Although we’ve got some good atmosphere here, the actual danger level is sticking firmly on “informed”. DM introduces scary potential guide, player’s all NO FUCK THIS IMMA PUNCH so the guide has to be extraordinarily tolerant of this shit, and then they introduce another NPC to give them something to run away from because the player still won’t take the hint. Then the player fails to be quietly awed by his beautiful lightning show glass room and just starts tapping it, so he’s all SERIOUSLY THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS but…nothing comes of it. The guide doesn’t say that fuck, now he can’t check this area properly because they’ve got to move, monsters don’t jump out, the guy just keeps doing what he’s doing.

All we get is Wren apologizing and feeling super bad for screwing up like this in front of the guide.

To cover his embarrassment, he turned back to the wall and once again placed his hand against it. Again, the sparks danced around it, but this time, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he felt the sharp stings as they brushed against his hand, and then a curious tingling as they began moving up his arm.

Wren really doesn’t want to take the hint. He tries to bug Idli again, but the guide’s busy, so eventually Wren tries removing his arm and finds he now has lightning in his palm and growing fast.

So…Wren decides that, literally seconds after being all sincerely crestfallen to have fucked up and disappointed Guide-sempai, that now is time to shove light in the face of the guy who hates it.

He was naked, his skin the color of old bark on a long-dead tree. The best that could be said of his shape was that it was roughly human, though its limbs were too long and its fingers too many. Those many fingers now covered Idli’s face, hiding it from the light.
“What have you done?” he moaned. “You can’t see me!”
“I think I can see you, Idli,” he replied, and strode forward. “Let’s have a look at you.”

And this is why the solars had to die. Look at what monsters they are.

First we have the seamless transition from caring about this guy’s opinion to doing a different thing he also told you not to do. It seems like his apology was all based on the internal – it was embarrassing and that upset him, and he hates looking dumb in front of others, but he doesn’t feel bad in the sense he’s made the other guy’s job harder.

Second we have his response here. It’s understandable he’d want to see the mysterious creature leading the way, especially after having that expressly kept from him. But as soon as he does, it’s obvious the reason why has less to do with any plot and more that his guide is terrifying and pitiful, and simply did not want to be seen. But perhaps he hasn’t quite made that connection.

Idli made no move to run, but instead huddled on the floor, whining softly. “Too bright, too bright,” he whimpered.
“This is not a place for light.”
“It is now,” Wren said pitilessly, and pulled Idli’s hands away from his face.

No, he totally has, he just doesn’t give a fuck.

The third is that this is all pointless. There’s nothing he can learn from seeing Idli’s face – honestly, there’s nothing he can learn from seeing Idli, since he doesn’t even know enough about the Labyrinth to recognize it until he sees bone torches. If there was some sort of mark of the neverborn’s servants, then there’d at least be reason for this, though I’d still think a supposedly good character would at least be feeling guilt and justifying it to himself as necessary here. Here he has no justification at all.

That’s not what Wren is thinking at all. He’s thinking this is dumb because Idli is stronger than him. That is the beginning and end of Wren’s grasp of morality.

But with the coming of the light Idli was suddenly a different creature, and Wren felt compelled to take advantage of it.

Now, there’s a good argument to be made that the fact Wren is a monster is unrelated to the fact he’s a solar. The solar exaltation comes with a more specific curse than that, and it clearly takes a while for what’s initially a once in a while bout of insanity to start to warp people’s whole personality. And perhaps the fact both solars introduced in this book are monsters is mere coincidence – maybe it’s just that people in Creation are generally monstrous.

But if so, most people lack the same power to act on it. Wren has just said that he only hurts this person in front of him because he’s compelled to take advantage of another’s suffering. Without power, he would be just as evil inside, but his ability to act on it is far more limited.

And that’s why the solars all got stuffed in a box.

Wren says that this is justified because the guide didn’t explain stuff to him, and he doesn’t like having to take things on faith. He says what he learned in the Immaculate temples is that proof is needed to help faith. This is very reasonable except for the part that he doesn’t know anything about the Labyrinth and therefore has no idea what proof is. Is is how human looking his guide is? Because so far completely human looking things like Ratcatcher and the Prince have been evil, but also completely nonhuman looking things like the snakes have been treated as evil too, so neither would prove anything. Is it if his guide is alive-looking? Because the place is currently filled with dead things that want to murder him, but again, Ratcatcher and the Prince looked relatively alive, if gothy. Even if the mere appearance of something in an area of things that change their form could mean anything, he simply doesn’t have any way of knowing what that meaning is.

Idli’s visage was a horror. It might have been human, or something like human, once, but that had been before fire, disease and rot had worked their will on it. His oddly elongated skull shone forth from beneath the blotched skin in places; in others, both skin and meat were gone. One good eye of shocking blue lolled in an eye socket; the other was filled with a mix of writhing grubs and gangrene. Long strips of skin hung down in tatters from his scalp, much of which was a mass of burned flesh and scars. Incongruously, his mouth was perfect, with full lips and even teeth. His one eye met Wren’s, and he smiled, bitterly.
“Are you happy now?” he asked, softly. “Have you seen enough?”

Wren still does not feel sorry but does feel horror and swears by the dragons.

Idli shook his head. “No, not dragons. There are older and crueler powers in the world than they.

Uh…unless you’re talking dragonblooded the dragons are souls/extensions/something of Gaia, who is a primordial, and the primordials appear to all start existing at relatively the same time in so much as time has any meaning at all when we’re talking about the inventors of the concept. I was actually thinking of making the two surviving primordials actually be the younger creations of the rest, which explains why they both seem so much lesser, but canonically, there’s really not much distinction and even assuming you can list them all and she’s objectively youngest it’s still a meaningless distinction given there’s no real point in measuring time prior to Creation’s creation.

Also Gaia kind of let her siblings get massacred because Luna was really hot and sat in her lap, so I dunno how we’re measuring cruel here.

Poor Idli begs the monster to turn the light off already but Wren hadn’t actually thought that far ahead and doesn’t know where the off button is.

“Please,” said Idli. ‘‘I can’t bear the light.” Even as Wren watched, bits of flesh flaked off Idli’s face, wafting to the floor.

Wren just insists that he doesn’t know how and by god he’s not going to bother actually trying to solve this himself, so Idli has to explain how Wren’s powers work while his flesh is being charred off his face. They work by thinking at them, incidentally, so Wren was really super not trying to accomplish anything himself. So he pulls in the power before it murders Idli.

This all seems like it’s a jumbled version of the fact the zenith caste can produce sunlight and solars have a bunch of holy effects that hurt creatures of darkness, where for some reason he’s using random plasma lightshow effects rather than his own anima to do it.

Anyway, Idli says thanks, he’s still clinging to existence. Wren finally apologizes and Idli’s all nooo You did,” and Wren could hear the bitter smile, “what you thought you had to.” and Wren’s all so yeah whatever are you still able to move?

“I shall have to, won’t I? Otherwise I’ll never get your finger. Help me up, if you’re still willing to touch me.”

Wren does so and works hard on pretending to be fine about it because he doesn’t want Idli to disappoint Idli by being creeped out.

So yeah. We’re left with some poor dead guy who just didn’t want to deal with someone telling him yet again that he’s a hideous monster who Wren nearly burned to ash out of distrust.

Let’s switch to bad things happening to a deserving hideous monster! Ratcatcher’s now seven days into his trip down the river getting slowly devoured by the fish. Also, it’s really damn boring otherwise, so Ratcatcher’s extra irritable and has nothing positive to think about – he doesn’t think his prince wants him back (for some reason he seems to think the the prince had allowed Unforgiven Blossom to put her accursed needle in his eye despite that not really being what happened) and he’s mad at SO MANY people. SO MANY.

You know, now that we’ve not dealing with a semibyssal, Ratcatcher’s new power level is handled pretty well. Nemissaries are a good fit for the author’s love of more mundane low-fantasy problems, since they don’t have the impervious solar LOLNOPE going on. You know what would’ve been a good fit? Doing a story set prior to the unboxing of the solars, about a bunch of heroic mortals with some minor dragonblood NPCs giving the orders. The author seems to be okay with powerful forces so long as they’ve kept out of the PC’s grasp. So, heroic mortals run around for three books after the +1 sword, which is actually a meaningful artifact for them, then exalt at the end. Also gives a lot more leeway for all the destiny stuff getting thrown around, since mortals can have destinies.

Anyway, deciding that the prince doesn’t want him and assuming Unforgiven Blossom is still with the unbeatable superbyssal and figuring Wren is dead already…he decides he’ll go after Yuyu because the prince was interested in Yuyu and ERROR FURTHER EXPLANATION MISSING.

I mean, if he really wanted to go back to the Prince of Shadows, it might make sense he thinks getting Yuyu will do it, but he has no reason to want to go back and in fact apparently thinks the guy ordered his murder. Maybe another point for the Prince of Shadows having every last point invested in social combat, his servants can’t even imagine leaving. (This and so much else would make just so much more sense if only the Prince of Shadows was making out with people. He’s even hand-picked by the Lover, it’s practically mandated by his themes.)

Ratcatcher goes on to explain that of course it’s impossible to find the kid, because why give characters tools to do stuff, but he knew the boy was important. And when one was important to the grand scheme of things, Creation itself had a way of warping its fabric around you, to bring you to the place you needed to be at the time you needed to be there. There’d be signs of the child’s presence. He’d already disrupted the auguries and disturbed the spirit world; no doubt as he progressed along whatever path destiny had laid out for him the boy would leave more and grander traces of his passing.

I really have no idea why this would seem like a good Exalted plotline, when Exalted is about chosing your own destiny and all. I mean they plunk you down in a setting that is canonically doomed and ask if you want to do anything about that. And there’s enough effects for actually finding people without them warping reality so hard you couldn’t miss it that there’s not really much point to adding it in.

when the barge tied up for the night, Ratcatcher released his grip on it, leaving shreds of pale flesh caught between the sharp mussel shells.

It’s just going to get better from here.

Slowly, Ratcatcher brought his hands out of the water. They were torn, he saw, tattered by the sharp edges of the shells he’d held fast to and ripped by the unsleeping attentions of the river’s inhabitants. Where it wasn’t shredded, the flesh of his fingers and palms was bloated and white, soft to the touch and stinking unpleasantly of rot.
This, he decided, would do.
Biting his lip against the knowledge of what he was about to inflict on himself, Ratcatcher circled his right hand around his left wrist and gripped it, tight. His fingers sank into his gnawed flesh, which oozed river water and thin blood, and he began to pull.
It came away from the bone like well-stewed meat. Softly, gently, the flesh of his fingers slid off under the pressure of his other hand, leaving him with a fistful of sodden scraps and a left hand that was nothing more than a dangling patchwork of bones and ligaments. He flexed it, once, experimentally, and was astonished to see that it still obeyed his commands. The ragged edge of torn skin and meat at his wrist stank sweetly of rot, but for the moment, at least, this body was still his to command.

Ah, there’s nothing like fantasy stories!

(Though really editor, were you asleep to miss that line about biting his lip set in the middle of a passage about the fact he’s pretty much meat pudding at this point?)

Anyway, Ratcatcher’s plan is thus: clearly he is delicious, so if he throws his delicious skin into the middle of the river, there’ll be a feeding frenzy that’ll distract the guards. I wonder if the author was a fan of oldschool puzzle games.

Guards distracted, Ratcatcher sops his way out of the river.

He could feel the rough brambles and saw grass catch time and again at the sodden guard’s uniform he’d taken in Sijan, and was shudderingly thankful that he’d decided against shucking it in the river. Had he done so, he’d be leaving a trail of scraps of flesh all the way back to the river.

While that’s a great image, like so much it doesn’t really make much sense – why would he have wanted to be naked at all, and why didn’t he realize it was protecting him from the fish too?

Behind him, on the barge, noble sailors and rivermen from the city of Sijan were scurrying to find their nets and harpoons, for who were they to let a harvest like the one before them in the river to go waste?

Why does throwing in a handful of skin do this? It seems like it’s a setup for the fact one person finds a finger in the fish’s stomach and doesn’t say anything and just eats something else, because everyone in this setting is a dick every second of every day. But seriously, there are either fish or there aren’t, if throwing in a couple meat scraps got you a million fish back no one would ever go hungry.

Ratcatcher ends up climbing a tree because he’s concerned about wolves. In doing so, he disturbs jackdaws, perhaps because the author thought jackdaw is a funny word. It is. Oblivious to the fact the jackdaws are also carrion eaters, he decides now is the time for a nap.

Then the jackdaws start babbling:
“You’ve taken our perch, and we’re most distressed about that.”
“Oh, yes, most distressed indeed.”
“Can’t let you get away with being that rude, you know.”
“No sir, t’would set a most grievous precedent.”

It just keeps going. Ratcatcher decides this is a dream in what sounds like a sarcastic way, but apparently it actually is a dream as if talking birds is something that only can happen in a dream. The description of the dream is actually pretty good, with him referencing knowing stuff, like what they’re perched on, without being able to see it.

Indeed, all he could really see were the jackdaws themselves. The rest of the scene was just hazily sketched in; enough to provide context, not enough to distract.

Apparently they’re there with a message from Raiton to say to stay where he is. That sure was useful.

“I don’t serve the Hundred Gods

There really really aren’t any hundred gods. Hundred Gods Heresy is just the term for heathen, it means “a whole bunch of wrong ideas”. And most gods aren’t running cults and servants in the first place, they’re just there doing their thing. Gods do stuff in trade all the time. Be curious why they’re doing it, sure, but it’s not like gods only appear to their worshippers normally.

You tell Raiton that I will wait, and that if he keeps trust with me, I’ll provide him with a trail of carrion the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Scarlet Empress called down the fires of heaven. If he’s lying, I’ll come for him, if it takes me a thousand more years to crawl back out of Hell to do so.

Way to illustrate why carrion gods are probably not the good guys! Why, Rathess, referenced earlier, was brought down by the burgeoning cult of Han-Tha, god of decay and ruin.

Also no, Hell is a totally different place and human souls don’t go there, come on Ratcatcher you work in the underworld you should know this. (Also the abyssal timetable clearly states the Creation’s going to be devoured by void in a few hundred years max were you asleep in orientation. Being an abyssal means you should know you to be a bit more proactive about your revenge, you actually do not have all eternity to get there!)