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‘Ah, good memory,’ said Garovel. ‘Technically, I said “raw agony,” but that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m getting at is that souls have power. As you’ve seen. Many times now. And over the course of human history, an absolutely RIDICULOUS amount of people have died. Each one leaving a soul behind, a little packet of power. And even with all the reapers in the world--try as we might--sometimes, we miss them.’

‘I think I see where this is going...’

‘Mmhmm. Now, if we miss a few souls here and there, nothing happens. It’s very sad and unfortunate, of course, because those souls are left to suffer constantly until one of us finally stumbles onto them, but beyond that, there aren’t any “real world” consequences, as it were.’

‘But?’

‘But, let’s say... an entire town gets wiped out. And let’s also say that no reaper finds them for, maybe, a decade or two. Or a century, even. All those souls just sit there. All that power. Think for a second about the potential there. A reaper and a servant together, only TWO souls--but given long enough to synchronize? Those two can become virtually unstoppable.’

‘Oh...’

‘Over time, even without a reaper to bind them, all those souls together will coalesce. It’ll become like a melting pot, cooking by the heat of that same “raw agony” that I mentioned before. Their shared suffering gradually fuses them together. And that is how a feldeath is born.’

‘Shit...’

‘Now, a whole town being obliterated and then completely forgotten, even by reapers? Historically, that is a rare occurrence. At least, on the surface world, it is. There’ve only ever been a handful of feldeaths on the surface, which is why they’re regarded as largely mythical up there. But in the Undercrust... not so much.’

‘Why’s that?’