The Crimson Blades' young priest, Grissom, was beyond a doubt dead.
Surrounding Lea Monde like the sea surrounds the island upon which the city sits lies the Snowfly Forest. Droves of the white insects that give the forest its name flutter wildly all through out it, a living blizzard. In the deepest glades Grissom made his stand, intending to show Sydney just how far his skills with the Dark extended. He attempted to summon a defender powerful enough to drive off both the black-clad priest and Ashley, who suddenly stumbled upon the scene.
But, as Sydney had warned, Grissom overstepped himself. He called more power than he could handle, being devoured by the very strength he'd hoped would save him. By summoning a being far exceeding what he had imagined, the extra strain on his mind and body likely caused sudden cardiac arrest. Obviously, the sorcerers the Cardinal thought to train in secret still had a long road ahead of them before they could reach Sydney's level of mastery.
Yet Grissom had barely fallen before he stood once again, for all appearances completely revived. High on the new life and power the Dark had infused in him, Grissom triumphantly raised his voice and called forth a living armor greater than Dullaham, this time intent on killing the two interlopers. Perhaps it was the influx of power from the portal to the Other Grissom's first summoning had half-opened that triggered his surprising revival. Or maybe, in the second that he died, the Dark already in his system gained an opportunity to infect his entire body, morphing into a different sort of fell strength.
Quickly appraising the situation, Ashley chose to fight with Sydney, an opponent he was only supposed to capture, in order to destroy Grissom and his summoned defender, who were both actively attempting to kill him. Slamming his sword through Grissom's heart, he felt it still for a second time. Once again dead, the priest did not rise a third time.
For those humans stained by the touch of the Dark, death means one of two things. One is simple inconvenience, as in Sydney's case. Even with a crossbow bolt running straight through his heart, he was capable of swift and total recovery. In other words, Sydney posessed "complete immortality". However, not just anyone could attain it. Ashley was certain there was some other secret to it. A secret for which Grissom and all the rest of the Cardinal's forces were searching. They would have no easy time finding it, he was sure. Was that missing piece simple to attain, the Crimson Blades would not have been able to hunt the Cultists into near annihilation. Likely, Sydney's complete immortality was something only one man could posess at a time.
All the other souls bearing the Dark's stain were assured the other death-- "incomplete death". When a soul merges with flesh, the resultant state is called "life". Upon "death", the soul is freed from the flesh, returning to the Other. Likewise, the moment a new flesh is conceived in the womb of a mother, a soul comes out of the Other to merge with it. That is the proper cycle for all things of limited life-span.
Souls touched by the Dark have been yanked out of that cycle. Even after the body has perished, the soul is not allowed the peace of the Other. Bearing the taint marking it as part of the Dark, it is condemned to walk the world of the living for eternity. Bodilessness alone brings on indescribable agony for the damned soul-- a soul which cannot die. That is "incomplete death". Those bearing that cursed fate slowly go mad, their sense of "self" fraying to shreds. Desperately, they seek any suitable body to posess, so that they can escape their torment even for a short time. A "suitable body" is one which lacks a soul; a corpse.
All the zombies and skeletons Ashley had seen rambling about ever since setting foot within Lea Monde were undoubtedly manifestations of that theory. Long since having forgotten who they were when they had lived, driven relentlessly by a jealous hatred of the living, they attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path.
Once the body they posessed decomposes, or is otherwise rendered unusable, the souls are once again forced out bare into the pain of the Waking World. Immediately, they begin to search for another flesh cage to lock themselves in, fighting others of their kind viciously for the chance. And so on, forever.
That, Ashley thought, was a pretty good picture of what he'd expect Hell to be like. Grissom failed to achieve complete immortality. That left only the path of incomplete death for him to follow.
Given what Ashley had witnessed thus far, the deeper the Dark's stain upon a creature, the faster its body turns to dust upon death. In many cases, mere seconds passed between the striking of the fatal blow and the complete disintegration of the body. Killed by his own summoning, Grissom should have crumbled to ash within a few moments, his soul stripped of self and left to prowl the confines of Lea Monde's bespelled walls.
Emphasis on should have.
But he once again found his way into Ashley's path in the broken and sunken alleys of Undercity East, far from the wild green and dancing white of Snowfly Forest. His body was stone cold and his blood sluggish, but Grissom was still unmistakably himself. By some tragic fall of Fate's dice, he'd re-posessed his own body. He was completely unaware of his own death. Wondering at his body's strange unresponsiveness, he did not even think to name it what it was; rigor mortis.
Then Neesa and Tieger arrived, a pair of the few surviving Crimson Blades. It wasn't until they-- his sworn companions and fellow commanders-- told him, that Grissom realized the truth. As if that revelation was the trigger, madness erupted within his mind. Voices from nowhere whispered to him that his "friends" were only after the hard-won flesh he'd so recently possessed. They were just another group of condemned souls, the incomplete dead, and thus just more ways to split the few available corpses. Grissom's self began to unravel, the coldly polite priest disappearing under the ravening jealousy of the living felt by all the undying souls of Lea Monde.
Voicing a strange noise, the thing that once was Grissom moved far faster and smarter than expected of a zombie, quickly retreating into the labyrinthine ruins of Undercity East. First, he needed to gather up some more of the Dark's power… …then he could come back and drag his "friends" down into his new world---
If existence meant only constant pain and an unending search for corpses to posess, that was certainly Hell. But to discover suddenly that you were already long dead, and only sheer chance had thrown your soul back into your own body-- that had to be Hell's deeper levels. Ashley decided then and there that he wanted nothing to do with immortality, neither Grissom's or Sydney's variety. He sent up a quick prayer to the god he'd chosen temporarily to believe in once again, praying that death would bring him nothing but an end to everything. When somebody died, it was best and proper for all of that person to die, both body and soul.
Ashley paused for a moment. Was he really all that different from Grissom? The past he had thought was his was slowly being torn away, new memories and skills floating out of the darkness of his mind. Was the "Ashley Riot" he had believed himself to be for so long, was that man already dead? Did some unknown pain-mad soul sit in the back of his head, manipulating his corpse to kill the living Crimson Blades? Was he truthfully just another of Lea Monde's innumerable zombies?
Be that as it may, it was still too early for him to give in to eternal sleep. So Ashley told himself, pulling together the frazzled edges of his self. He hadn't the right to flee into agony-provoked insanity. He had a mission to complete.
It didn't matter how brutal the Truth hidden in the Dark heart of Lea Monde, Ashley would face it. As one whose soul bore the taint of the Dark, he would hunt that answer until his body faded to black dust on the wind. He would follow it like a hound on the scent, until he recovered his true self.