“Not just that,” Ermolt said gruffly, grabbing his hammer from the nearby wall. “Undead rats.”
Elise drew her sword when she saw he was right.
They were not like the giant rats they’ve face in Khule, but these were still warped by some magic. No normal rat would have charged at her like this. These rats were long dead, their flesh pale and missing large patches of hair. Where there was fur, it hung limply from rotted flesh that clung to bone. In places, the skin and meat of their flesh had been either rotted away or chewed off, revealing tiny yellowed bones beneath. The lack of muscle didn’t slow their advances, however. Tiny mouths opened to bare needle-like teeth.
There wasn’t many—only about half a dozen—but they were dangerous just the same. A bite from those teeth could carry an ancient disease, or cause a nasty infection. Even a scratch could be deadly.
Motivated by an ancient and insatiable hunger, they were vicious foes, even if they were smaller than both of Elise’s fists put together.
Ermolt’s hammer came down hard and there was a chittering sound cut short as one of the rats was reduced to nothing more than dust and powder under his weapon. The rat behind it leapt up onto the head of the hammer, running up the haft. Ermolt was forced to abandon the weapon before the creature could reach his bare fingers.
Elise stepped up to the approaching rats and lashed out with her booted foot. She caught one of the rats as it leapt up at her, and sent it sailing into the wall. The impact was enough to crack it into two pieces, and the tiny corpse lay limp when it fell back to the floor.
A second rat scurried up onto her leg, but its claws and teeth couldn’t penetrate the heavy armor. She quickly slammed the pommel of her sword into the creature’s back. It exploded in a puff of hair and bone fragments, and Elise winced at the impact on her own thigh.
Ermolt roared in rage, and Elise spun to look over, afraid of what she might see.
The barbarian seemed fine, though, at first. Somehow, he held one of the rats in his hand, and he smashed it against the wall. Before it could drop to the ground, he was swatting at another on his chest, where its tiny claws dug at his hide armor. There was yet another scurrying towards his feet, ready to leap up onto him.
He was going to get overwhelmed.
Elise ran to his side and leapt up, bringing both of her feet down hard on the rat as it coiled to leap.
With a nod of thanks and a smile, Ermolt turned towards the wall. He hurled himself at it, crushing the last undead rodent between his chest and the stone. He stumbled away, looked down, and then quickly launched himself forward again. The impact made the wall shudder in a way that worried Elise. But when he turned back, the tiny rat was no more than dust against his powerful body.
“An interesting approach to that,” Elise said with a small laugh.
Ermolt grinned and shrugged. “Seemed appropriate. And a good way to avoid being bitten.” He ran his hands down his hide armor, dislodging small bits of bone and rat fur. “So, anything other than these guys in there?”
“A kitchen, I think. Which makes sense.” She paused and tucked her sword into its sheath. “I think there’s even a dining hall behind it, although I couldn’t tell very clearly.” With a frown, Elise looked towards the hole. “We’ll need to clear a bit more space for you. I can squeeze through, but just barely.”
“Easy enough,” Ermolt said with a nod. “And domestic things sound like a step in the right direction. At least perhaps we’re getting closer to the stairwell.”
Elise looked towards the hole in the rubble. An unsettling noise echoed from beyond, but it was likely just settling rocks. She firmly set her jaw and marched forward, towards the hole. “No way to find out unless we continue.”
Chapter Eighteen
It took nearly another quarter bell of digging for Ermolt to expand the hole wide enough for his broad shoulders to fit through. And even then, he kept at it a bit longer after that if only so he wouldn’t make a fool of himself squeezing through.
He and Elise worked as a team, with him dislodging rocks both forward into the room and also backward where she would neatly stack them in the previous room. It was hard work, and they were both breathing heavily by the time the passage was clear.
Ermolt made sure to fetch the torch Elise had dropped, and even relit it so they could see. He held up the light source and looked around by the flickering torchlight.
The room was slightly cramped compared to its predecessors, with vents in the low ceiling to carry smoke away, and plenty of long stone tables to work on. Ermolt was impressed. It would be a good space for three of even four cooks to work together to feed a large number of people quickly. There was an efficiency to its layout, and he was reminded of the massive cooking huts of his youth, before Klav was founded.
On the edges of the room were a few crates and casks, and Ermolt walked over to them to examine more closely. He found them empty, of course, full of chewed holes from rodents long dead. There was a whiff of rot on the air, but it was faint, separated by centuries from the last time there was any actual food here.
“Through this way,” Elise said, drawing his attention away from the empty containers. “It opens up just over here.”
Ermolt followed her past what looked like a seating area marked with stools that were little more than bare wood, since any organic material had been long-since devoured. The space beyond was much larger than the kitchen, the ceiling rising away once more and the walls spreading out. Three enormous wooden tables stretched before them, reaching beyond the pool of light cast with the torch. The tables looked heavy and thick, nearly petrified with age. Chairs lined them, and though many of the chairs had broken apart, the room had been sealed tightly enough that the wood hadn’t rotted. Some of the chairs still even had organic materials attached to them, and Ermolt could see a spiked eye symbol in faded gray thread.
“This place is huge,” Elise said. “How many people could this have possibly sat?”
“Hard to say.” Ermolt started forward, walking between two of the tables. Somehow this walk felt more intimate—more akin to entering a person’s house uninvited. It might have been the dining environment, or perhaps just that he could almost see the patterns of folks moving about their day here. “Two score, maybe three?” He held the torch up and ahead of himself, illuminating more of the seats. “More than that, possibly.”
Elise whistled low. “I can’t imagine a Temple filling this space. And this is behind that trap. This was for clergy, not petitioners. Just how many Priests and Conscripts did Isadon have?”
Ermolt noted the hint of frustration and possible jealousy in Elise’s voice, but didn’t know what to make of it. “A lot, it seems,” he said, cautiously, watching the ex-Conscript for a moment. Did she miss being a part of a Temple so much as to be jealous of long-dead followers of the God of Death?
“How is that possible?” Elise shook her head, and Ermolt noted her hands clenched tightly at her sides. “With this many faithful, how were His followers wiped out? The other Gods may have worked together to erase all evidence of Him once He was already dead. But with these kinds of numbers? A heretical sect devoted to His memory would have had scores of devoted clergy. And they would have been trained and ready, too.”
Ermolt found himself nodding. So not jealousy. Anger. Another thing she chalked up to Ydia’s lies. And she might not have been wrong. But… “Don’t forget—it’s been centuries.” Ermolt shrugged and pushed aside a broken chair, which partially crumbled under his hand. “No matter how many faithful there were, the human lifespan is finite. The Gods who wanted him forgotten would only have needed to be careful for a century. After that, it becomes a story that grandpere used to whisper about when your folks weren’t around. Fiction at best. Dementia at worst. Another century after that, and all that’s left are long-forgotten books, forbidden and hunted down to the last few. Like the one Athala took notes from.”
“It seems ridiculous though.” Elise looked up a
t him, and her eyes were hardened with anger. “It’s obvious that the Gods wanted Him erased. Why didn’t the survivors fight? Why isn’t there some underground cult or something?”
“That’s what I mean,” Ermolt said, finally stepping out from between the tables. He stopped and turned to Elise. “Maybe they did. But it was so long ago that the fight was lost. The cult was killed off, either by zealous Conscripts, rampaging dragons, divine wrath, or just the ravages of time. The Gods had centuries to work on this. This was so long ago, it didn’t happen in our parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ lifetime.”
Elise fell silent at that, but her lips were pressed into a line. She was biting back an argument, and that was fine with him. He didn’t know what happened here, or how devoted the Gods had been to altering history. But regardless of any argument Elise could make about the devotion of the Priests and Conscripts, any people who lived at the same time as Isadon had been dead for centuries. If their bones weren’t animated by the potentially wild magic that permeated the Temple, then they had been dust since before Ermolt had been a twinkle in his mother’s eye.
Ermolt looked ahead. The far end of the dining room had an open door that led into a hallway. That hallway was lined once more by those glowing globes—which had been conspicuously absent through the kitchen and dining room—and they illuminated a few stone doors on either side of the hallway. But beyond it, the way forward was choked with rubble.
Ermolt sighed.
“Do we dig more?” Elise asked, having followed his eyes to the mess ahead.
“I don’t think so.” Ermolt grimaced. He crossed the few fen remaining to the rubble and rapped on a wooden beam that ran through it. “This beam had to have been part of the underlying support structure, holding up this part of the building. It’s not a bit of rock in the way—the room above us has completely collapsed into here.”
“So, there’s no digging through it.”
It wasn’t a question, but Ermolt still nodded. “Not quickly, at least. And there’s no telling how much rubble is above us right now. Digging through it could cause a collapse.”
“Think there’s a way through the rooms?”
He didn’t, but Ermolt didn’t want to be wrong. “No way to know but checking.”
Elise opened the first door, and Ermolt held the torch up to illuminate it, in spite of the globes. It was a small closet, lined with shelves. They were filled with shattered ceramics, presumably dishes from the dining hall long ago. With a frustrated grunt, Elise darted around behind Ermolt to the other door, and then gave an irritated huff when she found it was another closet, this one full of chairs.
The other two doors were more of the same—one of them filled with tarnished, but mostly intact, eating utensils, and the other sporting rather rotted cloth napkins.
“Nothing,” Elise said, angrily slamming her hand on the outside of the door. “This has just been one giant dead end.”
“Not much we can do about it.” Ermolt shrugged. “I just hope the other way isn’t this bad. Climbing might be our only option.”
“Right. And at least the trap won’t be too much of a problem now.” Elise fumed as they walked back into the dining room, but her anger was dissipating fast. “We know it’s there, and we know how it works. You can trigger it with your hammer again and we can both—”
Ermolt reached out and touched Elise’s shoulder, silencing her.
There was someone standing in the dining room.
The man was upright atop one of the tables. He was nearly Ermolt’s height, though he didn’t have the pale complexion and bulky build of a barbarian. And while his skin wasn’t light, it was still waxy and drained of color.
Undead.
He wore black leather armor, cracked with age, and torn away in places. Where it revealed the skin beneath, there were open wounds that didn’t bleed. In one place on his chest, the wound revealed the bare bone of rib.
His fingers were nearly flayed clean to the bone. One hand held the top of a tall black cane, and between his fingers, Ermolt could see a metal skull adorning the handle.
Tattoos evoking the same eye-like pattern as the holy symbol of Isadon snaked up the undead man’s right arm under his armor. Ermolt could even see the same markings where some of the armor was damaged.
The mans’ face was painted half in white, and the skin didn’t cling to the teeth and skull as the previous undeads’ had. His eyes were intact as well, and looked impossibly well-preserved, with rich brown irises.
Ermolt sized him up quickly. He was lanky and wiry, but there was an obvious strength to his arms. The way he stood was like a fighter, and a formidable one at that.
Power and confidence somehow oozed from his undead stance.
“Hello?” Elise asked, surprise clear in her voice.
The creature standing atop the table didn’t shift. Its eyes oriented on Elise, but it didn’t move to attack. The silence stretched between them for a long moment.
“Excuse me. What are you doing up there? You startled us.”
“Elise,” Ermolt whispered through clenched teeth, “what are you doing? He’s another undead!”
“Hush,” Elise hissed back.
The undead’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, but he didn’t move a rhen. Elise shifted uncomfortably under that gaze, and Ermolt shared her fear.
This was not normal behavior for any undead he had ever heard of.
“We didn’t mean to disturb anything,” Elise said after another spat of uncomfortably long silence. “If you don’t mind, we’ll just go.”
She took a step forward, and the creature instantly mimicked her, taking a step back on the table it stood on.
There was a metallic click as his cane rose and fell against the heavy wood surface of the table.
Elise froze, and she looked over her shoulder to Ermolt. He nodded. He’d seen the same thing. The undead’s movements hadn’t been stilted and sluggish. Whatever empowered this creature didn’t impart upon it the usual clumsy qualities that accompanied undeath.
“Created,” Elise whispered in a way that made the word sound blasphemous. Ermolt’s blood ran cold. The ex-Conscript pulled her shield arm close to her side defensively, putting the steel between her and the creature.
Ermolt knew it had been a very long time since someone last created an undead on purpose. The practice—called a lost art by those who thought no one was listening—had been outlawed a long time ago, and was treated by the Temples as the most heinous of crimes.
No scholar would even study how it was done, lest they be accused of trying to replicate and revive the practice.
It had been so long since the last that Ermolt didn’t even know many stories about what created undead were capable of. He knew a few tales that depicted them as monstrous abominations, just like regular undead, but larger or stronger. There were others that claimed they were misshapen horrors, lightning fast with extra arms and hooks for hands.
Ermolt had never considered the possibility of one being simply an ordinary person, animated to operate forever without aging or degrading.
“Keep moving,” Ermolt said as he stepped up behind Elise. He readied his hammer, just in case. The torch was still in his other hand, but he could drop it if things escalated. “If he was made to protect this place, we just have to keep moving. We’re not here to destroy anything, or cause any trouble.” He said this last part slightly louder, hoping the undead could understand him. “Could be he just watches and waits, like a guard would.”
“Right.” Elise took another step forward, and the creature once more mimicked her, stepping back. “We just have to get around him.”
Elise moved to the left side of the room to go around the outside wall. With a flurry of movement, the lanky man leapt to the left table, staying in front of her. His leap was a single, fluid motion, and he stood with the same posture on the new table. The tip of his cane came down again with that same metallic click.
With a frustrated grunt, Elise switched directions, moving back to the right.
There was another flurry, and the undead was in front of her again, this time on the rightmost table.
And what was worse, there was another metallic click.
The sound grated on Ermolt’s nerves.
“Alright,” Elise said, her own voice drawn thin with anger, “if we can’t go around, I guess we’ll just go forward.”
She stomped towards the entrance, and once again the undead retreated from her as before, matching her pace with that periodic click of the cane against the table. Every step she took, he took one back.
Ermolt followed behind Elise. He considered going along the left side, to see if the undead would follow him or the ex-Conscript, but what would that have accomplished? The best he could hope for would be to leave Elise alone in a staring contest with the creature.
Or, at worst, it might pounce on her as soon as Ermolt was no longer protectively at her side.
Traversing the dining room was tense. Elise set a slower pace than they had on the way through the first time, perhaps for fear of getting too close to the walking corpse ahead of them. But what was worse was the rhythmic click of the creature’s cane ahead of them.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Ermolt thought, perhaps, that the corners of the creature’s mouth were curling slowly into a smile when they flinched in advance of the echoing sound, but that was likely a trick of the flickering torchlight.
Everyone knew undead didn’t feel emotions.
It felt like an eternity before the ends of the tables came into view. The undead stayed with them all the way there, retreating down the table ahead of them until there was no table left to stand on.
With an agility Ermolt somehow didn’t expect, the creature stepped back off the end of the table and to the floor with a surprising fluidity. The metallic click of the cane took on a higher pitch against the stone instead of the wood of the table.
They followed it back, through the kitchen, until they arrived at the rubble-choked passage. When it stood in the entryway between the kitchen and the room Elise had identified as being for parties to celebrate new conscripts, the undead stopped dead. Elise took an experimental step forward, but it stayed still, staring at her.
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