The stench was the first thing that assaulted him, hitting Swinter with suffocating waves of humid, sticky air. Ahead of him was a great wall of rough, gray stone, easily forty feet high and extending as far as the eye could see in both directions. A sulfurous light bled over he walls, illuminating the stone.  As he approached, an ancient, barely visible path came into view.  He turned from the wall and peered into the black abyss behind him, where hundreds of hoofed tracks scattered in all directions out into the abyss. The strangely comforting glow of the pillar was hidden from view.

 

The thought of heading out into that chilling blackness, following the hoofed tracks, filled him with a greater dread than following the path from which the pigmen had clearly come from.  With a heavy sigh, Swinter began walking along the wall. Every so often, he heard faint squeals and cries carried over the immense stone structure. The pervasive, sulfurous yellow hue of the light here was intensely disorienting, causing him to stumble repeatedly. In minutes, he lost sight of the river that had guided him, leaving only the oppressive wall and a small slit of ground illuminated before him. The dirt path he walked upon seemed to glow with a faint golden color. Rubbing his face in frustration, he muttered an attempt to recall an old parable: Follow the yellow road? Follow the yellow gravel road? No, the yellow dirt road? Or was it... the yellow brick.. ? Shaking his head and wiping sweat from his brow, Swinter pushed those thoughts aside. 

​

Lost in thought, he almost missed the sudden appearance of the river ahead. Only when the wall angled sharply inward, giving way to an abrupt gust of wind, was Swinter roused. The air, now far more potent and wet, felt thick with filth that coated his exposed skin in a slimy film. Just before the river, the wall made a near ninety-degree turn, creating a walled canal that ran a couple of hundred yards before the wall resumed its original course over the water and then angled back toward him, making a long stone drainage canal.  To his dismay, the path abruptly terminated at the water's edge, only to reappear on the opposite bank. Down the canal, he could glimpse the river’s origin and see a dark shape at its end.  Between the wall and the river was enough space, he thought he could carefully work his way down, without having to touch the filth.

​

With painstaking care, Swinter pressed his back to the wall and shimmied along the foot-wide strip of dry ground. Slowly, he made his way to the canal’s end, where the mysterious shape resolved itself to be an ancient brass drainage pipe. It was shaped like a huge human head with a gaping, grotesque maw. From the maw, foul wastewater continuously poured from its mouth.  Oddly beautiful was its craftsmanship, the only sign of art he had seen in this wretched world, yet the face bore an expression of profound sorrow, as if the craftsman could not conceive of happiness. Staring at this creation, a sadness fell over him.  What kind of lives did the craftsman have? A thing of grotesque beauty, the only sign of art and culture in the dreary world, was clearly forgotten down in here in the muck.  

​

His path had truly ended. The distance from the wall's edge to the brass pipe was too far for him to jump to. There was no question that trying to wade or swim through the water was not an option. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply, feeling the infectious stench of this place with every breath. He opened them as a sudden breeze tickled his face, warm and fetid, but the first genuine air movement he had felt in a long time. The breeze originated from a fissure in the wall. Swinter leaned in and saw the mortar had cracked away almost entirely.  Holding his breath, he pushed with all his strength a the large stone. The terrible angle made it difficult, but the stone block shifted, just slightly. Stopping periodically to rest, Swinter finally managed to lever the stone out of the wall, letting it fall into the muck below.

​

Swinter instinctively turned away to avoid the anticipated splash. To his disgust, there was no spray; the stone landed and was instantly pulled down into the liquid muck. Holding onto the wall, he peered through the new opening. The land beyond was barren, save for a long, winding river of sludge. His view into the distance was obscured by what seemed to be a towering wall of ash. Regardless, it was a way out of the suffocating canal. With a grim grin, he spat on his hand and worked at the next stone. Without the first block, the others came away easily; the ancient mortar was crumbling and turning to powder. Once the hole was large enough, he climbed through. As he pushed off the wall and onto the slightly safer ground on the other side, he inadvertently kicked another stone loose. The wall, critically destabilized, began to sway and then promptly failed. Forty feet of stone collapsed with a massive roar, burying his escape route and blocking the flow of the river water.

​

Swinter watched as the dust settled and the river began to pool around the wreckage. The ancient drain was now a dam. He had left his mark on this land, a realization that unnerved him, as if a piece of his own soul had been trapped in the collapsed stone. Backing away and turning, he tried to ignore the idea.

​

The air grew thick, the putrid smell now mixing with the sharp scent of ash. Like snow, ash began to fall from the sky, so smoothly and slowly that it seemed time itself was moving at a glacial pace. The ash wall quickly became so thick he could not see a foot in front of him.  Stepping over the fallen stones, Swinter walked blindly onward until the ashfall began to lessen, allowing him to see again. Regaining his bearings, he began to make out scattered corpses, chained down and lying face down in the vile muck.

​

Pushing onward, the bodies became more frequent until the dark field revealed giant, bronze statues of morbidly obese horrors. Naked and oxidized green, these hideous effigies seemed to look down on their domain, their silent expressions a grotesque mockery of laughter. As far as the eye could see, the field was littered with corpses, all lying face down and chained to immense spheres. Tiptoeing around the corpses in through the field, the dead began to become less still, twitching and writhing as if their destroyed and decaying bodies were still clinging to life. The less-dead soon gave way to the actively living.

​

The barren, flat plain abruptly ended at a great lake of filth. In its center, a lone, crooked statue remained. Whoever created it must have had a vision of an angel before their fall, for the statue was startlingly beautiful, pure white, and pristine. A slender, graceful figure extended its hand as if offering salvation to the damned souls around it. Yet, the angle of its lean made it appear to be slowly sinking, its goodness washing away inch by inch as the muck consumed it.

​

The ground around the lake moved, as if it were alive. In a way, it was. Millions, by his estimation, of people pushed and writhed to trying to reach the lake's edges in desperate fervor. As if undergoing a horrific test, these people were scooping up the muck by the handfuls and devouring it desperately, as though it were more essential than breathing. They gorged themselves until they burst, expelling everything inside. The flow of this expelled waste streamed downhill, and that was how Swinter finally discovered the true source of the polluted river he had followed. These damnable wretches, in their gluttony, damned themselves.

​

A few—so few Swinter almost didn't notice—were kneeling with their hands clasped, as if in prayer. Eyes closed, they chanted over and over. Swinter watched as one, appearing saved, grew luminous and began to float upward. With a look of pure jubilation, the man wept, believing he was redeemed. His hope was instantly dashed as the massive, heavy sphere he was chained to held him in place. The chain became taut, and the man began chanting again. Harder and harder he prayed, slowly gaining elevation. The massive, old loops of the chain looked as if they were finally breaking. Click, click, click—the links' welds fractured. Swinter's heart swelled at the sight of the man's impossible faith. And then it was torn asunder as the man fell back into the muck. He pitied the wretch, for as soon as his face hit the filth, he began to devour it, fast and grotesquely, until his insides burst and he lay lifeless.

 

Swinter felt overwhelming pity for all those wretches who believed they could be saved; it was all utterly hopeless. Unable to comprehend the point of this punishment, he stood there, watching. He stood for a long time, only realizing that he, too, had sunk to his shins. The sudden, chilling realization that the very point of this place was its futility filled him with a new, savage rage, breathing life back into his despair. Pulling himself free, he marched on with renewed vigor. With a final look back as he passed the lake, he couldn't help but almost smirk. He had dammed the river, and the resulting floodwaters were already beginning to pour over the fields of the dambed. Picking up his pace, he thought, "Let the place flood in its own filth."