Time slipped away as they trudged on in silence. The toxic fog churned and roared around them like countless invisible, vengeful spirits, trying to worm its way into every pore of their bodies.
Then faint, sickly yellow lights began to glimmer through the toxic fog ahead.
At the same time, a more complicated stench drifted toward them on the poisonous wind: rotting food, human waste, and the acrid fumes of some cheap, poorly burned fuel.
They had reached the village.
The old doctor stopped beside a huge rock covered in green moss, leaning against it as he gasped for breath. He removed his ridiculous bladder mask, revealing a face deeply furrowed by age and illness. His skin was an unhealthy grayish white, his lips faintly purple from lack of oxygen. He greedily breathed in the relatively "fresh" air at the village outskirts, only to erupt into another wrenching fit of coughing.
Mortarion walked past him without a second glance. His entire attention was fixed on the village looming ahead.
It was a place... beyond description.
Rather than a village, it was an enormous rubbish heap. Countless crooked shacks built from rusted metal sheets, rotten wood, tattered oilcloth, and the bones of unknown giant creatures crowded together without any semblance of planning, forming a jungle of steel and decay. Foul sewage ran through the narrow, muddy streets. The dim yellow light came from crude lanterns made with animal fat and luminous fungi, hung beneath the eaves and casting ghostly halos through the thick fog.
Countless ragged, emaciated mortals with sallow faces drifted through the streets like ghosts. They wore crude breathing masks of every strange description, their eyes numb and empty, like a horde of walking corpses. When they saw Mortarion, a pale giant nearly three meters tall, extreme terror and