Roman Baths

There is a pool of water that babbles. It babbles and babbles, yet the surface lies still. How does still water babble? Seek the riddle in the ruins of the Roman Baths.

It was built in the second century of the transfixed god, to serve the small Roman community. The empire stretched even here, sweetling, however thinly. Romans came here – the troublemakers, the disgraced, the embarrassing, the seventh sons – they were flung to the Land Beyond the Forest, a polite exile to the dark soil that drinks oceans of blood.

It is a barren place now. Plants refuse to grow, and animals refuse to hide in the cracks. Invisible goosebumps float in the air soaking into the skin of any who visit. The still water in the basin darkens with a contaminant from the deep springs.

The Folk of Bacas County consider this to be Apa Moarta – Water of Death – the water of the underworld in Romanian folklegend. The water healed the wounds of dead bodies, but though it knitted the unliving flesh, it could not vivify the cadaver. Apa Vie – Water of Life – could then be used to awaken the corpse. The elderly and the wizened whisper that Apa Moarta is a deadly poison to the living.

Initiate vapour analysis.

The Filth! It saturates down to the bedrock with mollusk divinity. It drips into the well, thin and dispersed, yet its influence bubbles insidiously subtle.

Initiate the secret histories.

Six hundred years ago, the monks of the monastery near Harbabureşti boiled the water down to concentrate it. They then drank to inspire dreadful visions. Their bellies turned to abyssal wells of dead water, and they sang alien hymns that kill small birds within hearing.

“We drink deep the poison,” the monks would say. “Yet unharmed we remain, for we are the favoured of Lillith.”

What of the unprotected? Heed the voice of the grandmother and grandfather. Neither Apa Moartǎ nor Apa Vie should touch the lips of the living. And yet witness all the things your species is willing to imbibe.

Beware the dead water, sweetling. It soaks into depths you cannot possibly fathom.