The door to the bar opened and for a few moments, Vela wondered what exactly had gone wrong in her life to bring her here. Sam may have felt the same thing, but she was too busy tottering from side to side, her eyes looking off in two different directions. Vela had gotten her friend out of the crash armor that the logical beings of Mechanicus had strapped her into and led her to the nearest doorway that hadn't gone straight into a home or a burned out slum, and now Vela was starting to regret that decision.
And lots of others.
The interior of the bar was a low, smoky place. Music trailed form the corner of the room, where a three armed hideous mutant wrapped in ragged cloth was playing a strange instrument that appeared to be mostly string and piano wire and produced a sound not too dissimilar from the eerie howls of the damned. The occupants of the bar ranged from rough looking humans to scaled, hunch-backed creatures with short wings and a color pattern that went from black to blue depending on the beast in question. There was a large suit of armor that Vela had been
sure
was empty until it knocked back a mug of ale, which pattered down the inside of its chest plate and then dripped through its boots.
Sam shook his head, putting her palm to her forehead. Her fingers glowed and she gasped. "Ow! Okay. I'm good now."
"Not going to walk into walls anymore?" Vela asked, glancing at her. Sam stood straighter, her palms going to the only set of clothing she was still wearing – her sword belt – and adjusting it. She focused and clothes formed around her body, shifted into being using the same skill she used to ape the appearances of other peoples. There were serious advantages to being a half succubus. Together, the two women advanced into the center of the bar, standing atop the large grille that had been planted on a short dais that made up the middle of the chamber. Looking down between the metal bars, Sam saw nothing but blackened metal. It wasn't a brazier or some kind of barrier between this level and another. It seemed mystifying.
But as there appeared to be two large, muscular human-dog fusions sitting in the corner playing chess against one another while drinking, Sam was willing to accept that mystifying was the modus operandi for this place.
"Okay," she said. "Dart said that she'd come to Sigil-"
"And this is Sigil, the fay said so," Vela said. "At least, I think they did."
"Oh, good!" Sam grinned at Vela. "Wait, fay? You were hanging with the
fay
?"
"Yup!" Vela said. "They said it was a self-contained demi-plane in the plane of Limbo. Which I think is...chaos or something? Anyway, I became their Queen and Lord Cocksmith."
"Whaaat?" Sam wailed. "You ended up in the fun dimension. I ended up in the dimension of bullshit and red tape." She crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head. "No. Focus, Sam."
Vela coughed, covering her mouth with one hand. "I notice you
still
managed to get laid, despite ending up in the law of
pure
order."
Sam shot a quick glare at Vela. "So," she said, her voice acid. "We need to find the bar that Dart said that she goes too a lot. Uh, she called it something." She snapped her fingers. "The Burning...something?"
"Burning Man?" Vela asked.
Sam snorted. "Yeah. Like someone would want to go to a place called
Burning Man
. Talk about
morbid
."
She shook her head slowly – and by doing so, she spotted the bartender. Sam strode towards him and wondered, for a moment, why he was tucked off in the corner of this place. If she had been designing the bar, she'd have put his work place in the middle, so people could get the beer easier. She slapped her palms onto the counter and looked at the man. He was short, squat, roundish – like a walking pumpkin plant, though Sam realized that that kind of analogy could get confusing in a place where dogs played chess. The looked at her quizzically, arching a single white, bushy eyebrow, his arm moving in a motion that made Sam open her mouth, then close it and cock her head to the side.
"Yeah?" he asked. Sam realized that he wasn't masturbating. He was cleaning a cup with a rag. Right. She flushed and coughed.
"I'm looking for a, uh, a bar," she said.
"Well, you've found that dark," the bartender said, his voice so dry that Sam was fairly sure he had called her an idiot. Somehow.
"I'm looking for a
specific
bar!" Sam amended, leaning forward over the bar counter. "I'm looking for the, uh, Burning Man or the Burning Corpse or something."
"The
Smoldering
Corpse Bar," the man said. "Well, I've got a shiny for you, Clueless. Yer
in
the Smoldering Corpse." He set his mug down and spread his hands wide. Sam looked around the bar again – noticing that several of the winged, scaled creatures that had been sitting in the back were watching her intently. She gulped and waved at them, trying to seem friendly. Looking back at the bartender, she rubbed her hands together.
"Well, great. Do you know Dart the half-elven wizard?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah, totally," the man said, nodding. "She's a regular. I like her – she spends her jink and doesn't bring her
bullshit
here." He grinned.
"Well, uh, I'm looking for her," Sam said, trying to lean on the countertop of the bar casually. She wiggled her eyebrows at the bartender. The bartender looked less than amused. He picked his glass up again and started to rub the cloth along it.
"I have a quick question," Vela cut into the conversation. "Why is it called the Smoldering Corpse?"
"Oh, it was named after the central attraction," the bartender said.
Sam's eyes bugged. "You set people on fire here!?"
"No, just the one," the bartender said. "Some barmy wizard – got his ass chained to a portal to the plane of fire and just kinda floated there for a few years, burning. Then some...some..." his face twisted. "Wandering
adventurer
just wandered in and
doused
the main draw to this place." He sighed. "Fortunately, by that point, enough fiends came here and liked the bub. Nice thing about the Lowers?" He grinned. "They're immortal. They
hate
to change unless they gotta. So, even with the big draw gone, they kept coming."
"Uh, yes, wonderful," Sam said, looking a bit queasy. "So, about Dart..."
"Clueless," the bartender said. "You got a bigger problem than finding Dart. Dart can take care of herself." He jerked his chin. "You've got Baatezu."
"Gods bless?" Sam asked, wondering if the man's tongue had suddenly gone into convulsions. Then a scaled palm slapped down on her shoulder and spun her around to bring her nose to snout with one of the green scaled lizard-creatures that she had waved at earlier. He was smiling toothily – and Sam didn't even want to
know
how she could tell his gender just by scent – and yet, for some reason, Sam felt nothing but palpiable menace oozing from his every scales. His two friends looked just as nasty, their scales a dark black.
"T'narri," the lizard-creature hissed. "Let usssss buy you a
drink
."
"Uh, uh, uh," Sam said, holding up her hands carefully. "I don't want to cause any trouble, Mr, uh-"
"Abissssssshai," the lizard-creature hissed, tongue flicking out. Its head tilted backwards and it looked down its snout at her. "We are
Abissssssshai
, T'narri."
"Oh, uh, well, I'm not a, uh, one of those," Sam stammered, feeling like she had blundered into something very dangerous. She gulped. "But I think that you've gotten me confused with, uh, something else."
The bartender leaned forward, whispering. "You're a succubus, ain't ya?"
"OH!" Sam's eyes widened. She beamed at the Abishai, knowing how to solve this. "Don't worry. I'm a Paladin!"
The loud
smack
of palm meeting face was the only sound in the bar for a moment as everyone who had been watching the gathering tension looked at Sam, mouths agape. The Abishai looked at his friends, then back at Sam. He bobbed his head.
"Very good," he said, happily.
The next thing Sam knew, her back was hitting the bottles behind the bartop, shattering them into a thousand shards of glass, coating her body with flame as trilling war-cries burst from every single fiend in the entire bar. Sam hit the ground and noticed the bartender was making good on his escape – he had flung open a trap door underneath one of the stools behind the bar and was scrambling down it. Vela had flung herself behind the bar and was curling up – which seemed to be fine, the Abishai looked like they were only interested in Sam. Fine. Sam could handle that.
She kicked herself to her feet, sword in hand. She slashed at one of the demons and sent its hand flying in a spray of black blood. The black scaled creature howled in pain, gutteral words streaming from its mouth. Sam didn't recognize them, but she saw the demons all spring backwards, hissing at her. Then all of them opened their mouths at once and
sang
. The sound made her ears ache and the walls rattle. Then, with a series of
cracks,
roughly two dozen hideous lumps of malformed flesh appeared between her and the bar. They were horrifying creatures – soulful eyes peered from sunken pits that were planted on barely humanoid faces, while their legs flowed together into puddling, bubbling mounds of viscous goop. The smell was incredible – and the wailing sound they made as they slumped towards the bar was all the worse.
Sam shook her head slowly. "I feel like I have made many mistakes in my life," she said. Then, snarling, she shook her head. "But coming here wasn't fucking one of them!"
And with that, she jammed her alcohol soaked left arm into one of the candles that flickered on the bar – blue flames exploded along her arm, flickering and crackling and feeling more comforting than painful. She leaped over the bar and landed in the mass of the monsters. Her blade hummed as she cut three down in a single vicious sweep, before turning and punching an Abishai in the snout. The green scaled creature screeched – more shocked than hurt – and staggered backwards. That opened him up, and then Sam opened
him
up from hip to neck. The Abishai hit the ground face first and died.
The other hideous creatures swarmed towards her. Sam flew into the air, her back hitting the ceiling, and then fired a bolt of hellfire down. It slammed into the mass of creatures and exploded outwards. Other customers in the bar started to flee, running for the doors as chunks of exploded demon went flying, leaving a mass of wounded beasts. Sam landed on them, her sword stabbing down – cutting and hacking at the weakened creatures. Then the black scaled Abishai sprang onto her back and, to her shock, his hand had completely regenerated. His claws dug into her chest and and his tail whipped around, plunging into her thigh.
Pain and fire seemed to burn through Sam's body as she opened her mouth in pain. The Abishai laughed, snarling in her ear: "I am going to
eat
your eyesssssssss, T'narri
