Hate. It’s a feeling that goes beyond simple dislike or displeasure. Many definitions make it out as an intense dislike or a feeling of extreme hostility. It fails to capture how dark the feeling truly is, how all consuming it can be. It fails to capture the anger and frustration that comes from trying to hold it back.

Peak was familiar with hate. It was an old friend that he hadn’t remembered. An old friend that had been his constant companion throughout… something.

And the object of Peak’s hate was something the once-a-human had hated for a very, very long time. Like all else, the stone had forgotten the target of its ire. 

Now, Peak had been reminded. Now, the stone remembered its old feelings, even if its memories eluded it.

Self-hate. Self-loathing. 

Peak well and truly hated itself. 

Self-hate can be even worse than normal hate. You can usually get away from the object of your derision, but Peak couldn’t run away from its self-hate. After all, it didn’t have any legs!

Ha.

Ha ha.

Ha.

Hilarious.

The stone really cracked itself sometimes. If only that happened literally.

If it did that, what would happen? Would it leave for the afterlife? Was there even an afterlife?

Peak hoped not. Otherwise, it would just have to deal with itself for eternity. There would only be hell awaiting it, even in heaven. 

Maybe if it went to heaven it would get to stop being itself?

Ha. What a dream that would be. To wipe it all away.

I guess, Peak supposed, that in a way, becoming a nameless rock was its own blessing. Nothing left of who it once was. Everything was wiped away.

Or so it seemed. 

How unfortunate. At least Peak had been given a reprieve from the hatred. 

Well, now the dumbass was back to being a useless sack of shit it always was. The trash bag knew what it was, the clown in a circus of its own devising. How could it have… 

It had…

It had been…

…

Why did I hate myself again?

What did I do?

…

The question was enough to bring the stone out of its fugue state. 

“What was… what?” The stone was confused by its new surroundings. 

“You’ve stopped chanting.” Emmeth stated. “Good. If I were to listen to you for another hour, I may have thrown you away.”

“Another…” Peak’s mind was becoming more clear. “I was doing what for an hour?”

Emmeth was supremely pissed off with Peak. “You were chanting a million ways to say ‘distracted’. Why were you saying that?”

“I was…” Peak could remember it but the reason eluded the stone. “I don’t know.”

Emmeth woodenly turned his head to stare at Peak. “‘You don’t know?’ What do you mean, ‘you don’t know?’ You spent the last hour muttering to yourself about something you don’t know?”

“I-Yes, I did.”

“Do you not realize how insane that sounds? That you can mumble about things you don’t understand for an hour because you accidentally killed some rats? That you completely broke down over a few rats that we were already planning to kill?”

“I, I get that but-”

“No.” Emmeth cut off Peak, “You have had your chance to berate me and I’ll have mine. You acted like a child. You made a mistake and threw a tantrum over it that risked our lives. This goes beyond being squeamish. You are acting as fussy as a toddler.”

“I-” Peak started laughing, “You have the fucking gall to critique me on how I act? You of all people? All you’ve done since I’ve met you is continue on a stupid plan for revenge! You, who haven’t been able to help with any of the obstacles we’ve come across! You, who plans to grow stronger by fighting monsters when you lost your sword in the first battle! You, who can’t even figure the right way to go! You’re an idiot!”

“THEN WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!?” Emmeth shouted, “There’s nothing left for me! My wife is gone, my son is dead, all of my old friends I brought back to help me and now they’ve died once more! All of them are gone, and yet, here I am, carrying on! 

“I HAVE NOTHING LEFT FOR ME BUT THIS, PEAK! NOTHING!”

“THAT DOESN’T MEAN I’M A WORTHLESS SACK OF SHIT!” Peak shouted in turn.

“What?” Emmeth asked, shocked.

“When have you thanked me for helping you? When have you!? I’ve saved you from an evil tree, dragged you through the dirt for hours, and did you ever thank me? NO! I GET NOTHING! I don’t have to help you, but here I am!

“SO STOP TREATING ME LIKE I’M YOUR SERVANT!” 

The two lapsed into silence. 

“Do you have anything you want to say?” Peak asked.

“... I’m sorry.”

Emmeth took a moment to collect his words before continuing.

“I have been dragging you along with me on my quest for vengeance. You never had to save me from the Crastor or the soldiers, but you did. You spent several hours digging through the dirt to save me when it would have been easier to leave me behind. Despite this, I have continued to treat you poorly. So, I am sincerely sorry for not treating you better.”

“... Thank you,” was all Peak said.

The two sat in silence once more. Peak took the moment to observe their new location. 

From the lack of earth immediately around them, they appeared to be in a large house. There was a large basement beneath them and many spots for a foundationEmmeth seemed to be leaning up against a wall or table or something, Peak couldn’t see what it was. Peak couldn’t see much of anything in the house.

Wait, hold on. There was a really tall structure made of stone. It was rectangular with an opening at the bottom and the top.

Oh, it was a stone chimney. Figures. It was weird though. The stone seemed oddly packed together, condensed in some--

“So? Do you have anything left to say?” Emmeth asked Peak.

…

Peak would have sighed the mother of all sighs if it could, but the stone knew it had to do this. 

“... I’m sorry.”

Emmeth didn’t say anything in response. Peak took a moment to find the right words.

“I’m sorry for flipping out over the rats and acting insane. I didn’t mean to do that… You didn’t really deserve that. I’ve got some issues that I need to figure out, and I will. I just need some time. But for now, I’m sorry.”

“... Thank you.” Emmeth responded.

There was a pause between the two before Peak piped up.

“So, uh… thanks for looking after me while I was acting crazy, but where are we, exactly?”

“A farmhouse.”

“... Why are we in a farmhouse? Why was this a good idea?”

“While you were acting strangely, I gained a few skills.” 

“So, the uh, the rat thing worked out?”

“Not exactly.”

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Emmeth was half compelled to toss the damn rock away. While in the middle of its hysteria, it had developed an amazing skill only to immediately use it to potentially give away their location. The rock was almost as troublesome as it was helpful and it was taking a lot to remind himself that Peak wasn’t without his virtues. 

Keeping crouched low, the undead tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible away from the shed, doing his best to rely on his stealth skill from hunting. As he did so, he continued to curse Peak.

He only stopped when he realized that if he kept focusing on Peak, he wouldn’t be focusing on not getting caught by anything.

After sneaking along for about a half hour, Emmeth came to the conclusion that either he was already being tracked and was probably dead, or no one had seen or heard Peak’s panic attack, or whatever it might have been. This was very good, as it meant that Emmeth would either be dead forever and would not have to deal with Peak’s shit anymore, or they were in the clear and Emmeth would be able to continue on with his revenge mission. Either way, a win.

Emmeth sat down among the oats and dropped Peak, who he had been holding in his right hand. In his left, he held the rest of the dead rats.

While Peak did enter his state because it accidentally killed them, Emmeth brought them anyway. This was because it would have been a complete waste to leave them behind now that they were dead. Sure, Peak was mad about killing them, but now that they were dead, why shouldn’t Emmeth use them? It seemed only reasonable.

Peak probably wouldn’t have seen it that way, but Emmeth was beyond caring about Peak’s opinions. 

Emeth dropped all but one of the dead rats to the ground to try, once again, to gain insight into the deep powers of… corpses.

…

Nothing happened. 

Of course, nothing happened. He should be trying something different. 

A comparison might be necessary, Emmeth realized. He reached over to an oat stalk and held the plant, trying to seek some sort of existential difference. The difference between life and death… It seemed like a rather silly thing to try and do. 

Peak’s blasé way of treating magic seemed to be rubbing off on him. Whether that was beneficial or not had yet to be seen, but the idea irked Emmeth anyways. 

So, a contrast between the living and the dead. 

…

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be helping him either. 

Honestly, he didn’t know what he had been--

… 

There was something there, for a moment. What was that?

He closed his eyes and focused on it. It was…

Putrescent. 

Emmeth blinked. Though he had been hoping for a skill within that skill group, he was surprised he actually got one. The skill group was rare, and for good reason.

Carcass was a skill group with absolute infamy. Those with the skill group were sentenced to death with no exceptions. This was because the skills granted were extremely dangerous to a variety of groups. The skills usually allowed the user to create undead and allowed some holders to raise themselves as undead, but that was hardly the issue. The main issues came from finding secrets in the brains of dead men, being able to slowly kill simply by willing it, and people gaining power through sacrificing others.

Emmeth had no idea how much of that was true. All he knew was that such a skill group was going to be very, very useful for a being like him.

As for what the skill was like, well…

He didn’t just sense the rat in his hand and the one on the ground. There was a… bird’s body, he recognized, under the dirt just a few feet away from him. 

Emmeth tried to focus on the plants but was unsuccessful at finding them with his new sense. It was either because plants weren’t carcass or he couldn’t sense the living at all.

Oh well. He could figure it all out later.

It was time to experiment. 

He ripped off the rat’s head.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

“Would you fucking stop!? What the fuck, stop fucking talking!” Peak protested Emmeth’s gruesome description of the dissection.

“I suppose you don’t need to hear about that.” Emmeth conceded.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

With his hands once more covered in fresh blood and four more rat bodies ripped apart, Emmeth was one step closer to fixing himself. Or rather, he believed himself one step closer.

He had gotten significantly better at figuring out the bits and pieces of the body. While he had previously hunted animals for meat, he hadn’t spent much time trying to figure out the details of how their bodies functioned. With this, he was one step closer to… 

Well, he wasn’t sure yet. He would figure out. 

With no more rat corpses left, Emmeth decided it was time to move on. Onto… wherever. He didn’t know where they were. 

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

From the outside, the farmhouse looked empty, perhaps abandoned. The porch had fallen into disrepair, the paint was peeling, and the roof was in dire need of rethatching. However, the crops in the field were still well tended to, so it was difficult to make a proper judgement on whether or not someone lived there.

Emmeth could have avoided it. He could have. However, there was something that he needed to check, and it was something he would rather learn now rather than later.

Emmeth walked up the stairs up to the porch, each step creaking ominously. Emmeth listened in the hopes to hear some sign of life.

He knocked on the front door.

…

The house remained silent.

And so Emmeth gripped the door handle, turned it, and stepped inside. 

The interior of the entry was sparse. There wasn’t any furniture Emmeth could see. 

Emmeth wasn’t sure of what compelled him to at the time, but he found himself drawn towards the stairs. Up.

He followed the feeling.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Walking into the bedroom, Emmeth learned a valuable piece of information about his new sense. He had thought that since Peak continually did so with its own sensing skills that his would behave the same way, but that appeared to be a false assumption. 

Sense Carcass did not go through walls. The dead man in the bed proved just that. 

The man in the bed did not appear to have died peacefully. He died with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Over his mouth and in his beard were flecks of blood. A handkerchief on the bed had large spots of red all over it. Even an idiot would be able to guess it was the man’s blood.

In his sleigh bed, he lay on the left side, by the night stand. There, many empty glass bottles stood, though some were on their sides. A few had fallen to the floor, one broken. They each had a label on the side with an alchemist’s insignia. Medicine? Likely. The farmer was old, maybe in his eighties. Even with a certain amount of constitution, age catches up to everyone. 

The bottles were empty though. That meant that the farmer had used up all his medicine before he died. Rather than die of natural causes, the old man most likely died once his medicine ran out. Maybe someone normally delivered it, but the surrounding areas had been raided. You could hardly fault an alchemist for forgetting a few deliveries if some of their loved ones had been killed. It was even more difficult to fault them if they were dead. 

Just one more death to attribute to the raiders.

A window popped into Emmeth’s view and interrupted his musings. 

Emmeth gained a certain amount of insight just by looking at the body. Interesting. Ever since he had died, he had been gaining skill much faster than normal. It was something to look into.

Just by looking at it, Emmeth could see that the body was… not fresh, but it had been vacated recently. Maybe a few days old. Something about the body felt odd to Emmeth. It felt… welcoming. As though it was inviting him. 

Emmeth dropped Peak. He placed his free hand upon the corpse and the feeling got stronger. 

‘Come closer.’ it seemed to whisper. 

But he couldn’t come closer. He was touching the body already.

‘Come closer.’ 

Something in Emmeth’s hand twitched.

‘Come closer.’ The feeling was overwhelming now. He needed to get closer, he needed to get INSIDE--

Emmeth’s soul pushed through his hand and into the corpse.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

“So let me just get this straight: your solution to fixing your arm was to just ditch the body and get a new one?”

“Yes.”

Now that Emmeth mentioned it, Peak was able to notice some oddities to how his soul looked. He still looked similar enough for Peak to overlook it normally, but there were some differences. Peak likened it to having a new haircut, except it was all over the body. Manscaping?

Peak belatedly realized that likening possessing a corpse to manscaping may have been a bad sign. How could it have gotten to this point?

While Peak was considering its increasingly stranger thoughts, Emmeth tried to search his cover story for any holes. Peak didn’t seem to find fault with him searching the upstairs first or heading into the farmhouse. It was a good thing. Emmeth didn’t want to explain why he felt drawn to the body. Peak might have assumed something was wrong.

Something was, but Emmeth wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

“You realize we’re still in about the same position as we were before, right?”

“How so?”

“If you get injured, we’re not going to just have a human body lying around that you can just possess. Even if we do find one, it’s not going to be looking very good. How are you going to fix yourself the next time?”

“I do not know, but I no longer have to worry about my arm.”

“I guess…” Peak thought it over. “Well, it’s progress. What now?”