She took another step, putting herself only five fen from it.
It didn’t move.
“Ermolt, we have a problem here.”
“I see that.” He was only a few fen behind her, but he still felt anxiety running up and down his spine at her being so close to the creature. “What do we do now?”
“There’s only two ways I see it—we can go back and tunnel through the rubble we just walked away from, or I can take another step forward and push this guy out of my way.”
A moment of silence hung between them. The undead didn’t move.
“How confident are you in your ability to get past him?”
Elise chuckled weakly. “I would really rather not. I can try if you think it’s a good idea, but I’m really not comfortable with it.”
“Then we won’t,” Ermolt said, eyeing the undead. “We can go back and try digging.”
“Thank you.” Elise stepped away from the undead carefully. When she was about ten fen away again, she sighed deeply with relief.
She turned to face Ermolt, and to walk back across the kitchen and through the dining room once more. But as soon as her back was turned, the lanky undead bent low at the knees and charged forward.
Ermolt had been expecting it, and shouted her name in warning.
But what he hadn’t been expecting was for the creature’s cane to come apart in his hands, revealing a long blade hidden within.
Chapter Nineteen
At Ermolt’s shout, Elise whirled around, her shield preemptively coming up. The undead’s cane had become a blade, and it was barreling right at her. It moved faster than she expected—and she expected it to be fast—and closed the distance before she could draw her sword.
But the blade wasn’t what met her first.
The corpse’s off hand came around with the lower part of the cane, which had acted at the sheath to its blade, and hooked it around the side of Elise’s shield. Inhuman strength yanked the shield out of the way as the tip of the blade lined up and lanced forward.
With a yelp, Elise raised her arm to deflect the blow with the splint mail sleeve of her armor, but it was a close thing.
She winced at the sound of the metal blade scratching across the surface of her metal armor.
The sound was lost, however, when Ermolt roared in challenge. The barbarian launched himself at the undead creature, sweeping his hammer down. But he was too slow. The creature danced back out of range without even turning its head.
Its retreat gave Elise the space she needed to draw her blade, but it came back in again too fast for her to do more than that. The creature’s blade led this time, and Elise had to move with uncertain speed to parry the attack. She stumbled back as the weapon swept in again and again. It refused to allow her to get her footing.
But it was also only half paying attention to her.
Behind it, the baton of the cane swept around rapidly, striking Ermolt around the head and shoulders as the barbarian tried to fend off the strikes with his arm. He bellowed in frustration and swept out with an unplanned swing of his hammer. The wild attack had no chance of landing, but it did force the creature to retreat away from them to one side.
They both took the miniscule moment to recover from the chaos.
The corpse held its position as Elise gained her footing and took a defensive stance. Beside her, Ermolt adjusted himself, holding his hammer up at an angle before him, rather than low and to the side as he usually did.
A moment passed between them as the undead creature observed them. It stood with its blade in its right hand, and the sheath held like a baton in the left. The corpse stood as still as a statue, if it weren’t for its eyes. They darted between Elise and Ermolt. Elise could feel tension in Ermolt beside her as he sized the creature up for true combat.
“What are we up against?” Elise whispered. She didn’t know why she was trying to keep her voice down. The Temple was deathly silent, and their foe was barely six fen away. But it made no movement, and gave no sign that it could hear them. Or understand them. It could have been a ruse, but Elise wasn’t too sure.
“I don’t know. His fighting style is something I’ve never seen before. With time, I could feel it out. But he’s fast.”
“Too fast.” Elise shook her head. “And it’s strong to boot. If we let the fight drag out… just one missed parry will mean one of us is dead.”
“Right. We end it before it comes to that.” Ermolt shifted his grip on his hammer, moving his upper hand higher on the haft. “You go low, I’ll go high?”
“Go!” Elise shouted, charging forward.
Elise crossed to the creature’s left while Ermolt crossed behind her to its right. She raised her shield against the baton it wielded. As her shield came up, she brought her sword in low, swiping at its legs. To her side, Ermolt swept his hammer in from above his head, throwing his momentum into his hammer as it came down in a quick and brutal motion at the corpse’s face.
The undead contorted in place.
Its legs bent sideways, and its back arched. Both strikes caught only air.
Elise wasn’t sure how.
But before she could parse what happened, its weapons lashed out. While its uneven stance failed to give its blade enough strength to cut through the hides on Ermolt’s exposed midsection, its baton slipped around Elise’s shield and jabbed at her face. The strike was hard enough across the side of her head to make her flinch. The wounds along her ear—courtesy of Ibeyar’s hired help in Jirda—had healed with a few well-placed potions, but it was still a sensitive spot. She stumbled away from the creature, moving more in line behind her shield to protect herself.
As soon as she backed away, the undead whirled, turning its full attention to Ermolt. Elise cried out in warning. Its stance straightened again, and when the sword came back in, Ermolt had to dance back from the slash as the steel sang through the air. The corpse didn’t let up, sweeping the sheath around to smack against Ermolt’s side.
Elise winced at the sound of impact, but Ermolt seemed unaffected. His hammer swept around, coming down hard towards the undead’s shoulder. The creature slipped inside the hammer’s range. It brought the baton up, and smacked Ermolt across the face with it this time.
The strike was sudden enough that Ermolt was stunned a moment. His hammer was loosened from his grip and clattered to the floor. The undead moved quickly, striking with its sword, and Ermolt only barely stumbled away before the strike could land. It passed harmlessly into his hair, instead of his eye.
With a face void of the superior smirk Elise thought it should have sported, the corpse planted its feet on either side of Ermolt’s dropped hammer. It faced off with the barbarian, as if daring him to try and recover the weapon.
Elise charged before Ermolt could do something foolish. She led with her shield. The creature turned to face her before she could connect with the bash, her approach betrayed by the clanking of her armor. But she still gave a sharp shout and shoved her shield forward. The shield hit the creature, and, despite its strength, the weight of her charged forced it back. She felt two sharp impacts against her shoulders, but her armor reduced them to nothing more than a light sting.
The corpse stumbled away, and Elise kicked Ermolt’s hammer, sending it sliding across the floor to him.
Ermolt retrieved his weapon and let out a bellow that should have shook the Temple to its foundation. He charged forward, his hammer sweeping around in front of his person. The creature brought is blade to bear, but the barbarian slammed into his foe. Elise expected the impact to carry the undead across the room and into the wall, but it had somehow set its stance against the attack. The creature slid only a few rhen before its strength matched Ermolt’s. He strained for a moment, locked in contest with the monster before shoving back, weaving a defensive pattern with his hammer as he backed away. The opportunist strike of the creature’s blade was deflected.
“How is he this strong?” Ermolt snarled.
“I don’t know
. But we aren’t prepared to deal with it.”
“He shouldn’t be stronger than me.” Ermolt raised his hammer again, preparing to charge. “He’s only human.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s an undead. A created undead, crafted for the purpose of killing people.” She watched it warily, but it stood stock still, once more observing them. Elise looked quickly to her left. During the fight, the undead had been moved out of the path back through the Temple, and the rubble-choked path back the way they’d come was clear. “We have to run.”
Ermolt bared his teeth, but nodded.
Elise was surprised. She expected him to be less in control of himself. To be driven by his rage. Was he holding back? Perhaps his strength would have compared more favorably to the undead if the barbarian had fully committed to it, as he did the dragon Sirur. But she had to trust his judgement.
“Let’s go!” she cried out as she broke into a sprint.
Ermolt’s feet pounded against the stone beside her.
She expected the undead to follow as it charged them with weapons brought to bear. But instead there was a hiss and a click, the sound of its blade being sheathed, followed by the metallic click of the cane striking the floor behind them.
It struck a fast tempo, so she knew it was running, but that echoing click was maddening.
Elise’s panic was made worse by the moment of darkness as they left the light of Ermolt’s discarded torch. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light of the glowing white orbs in the party room, but it was still a fright.
Once she could see again, she looked over her shoulder, past Ermolt, and saw the undead keeping pace. It didn’t seem to be trying to catch up to them, as it likely could with its long legs and inhuman speed.
She felt a stab of fear as she realized that it was tireless. Its undead nature would let it chase them forever—it didn’t need to catch them. By running, they were doing its work for it, tiring themselves out.
Elise turned her head back forward, unsure of what to do with this terrifying new knowledge.
Ahead of her, she could see the narrow space with the axe trap.
“Elise! Go low!” Ermolt barked, and Elise dropped down into a slide as she passed under the statue.
She felt the click of the trap under her as the tile adjusted to her weight. The axe came down lighting fast, but she was too low and had too much momentum. She slid past it before it could catch her. Behind her, Ermolt leaped high, aiming to vault over the trap before it could reset.
It snapped up too quickly, though, and caught his foot. He landed badly and stumbled. Elise shot to her feet to try and steady him, but he turned away from her and raised his hammer with a shout that filled the tiny hallway, echoing off the walls.
There was a ring of steel as the undead charged the off-balance Ermolt, drawing the blade from its cane. Elise had a flash of terror that she was about to watch him be run through right before her eyes.
He hadn’t caught his balance.
Wasn’t in the proper stance.
His weapon was raised, and he had no way to protect himself from the low blow.
But then there was a click.
The axe head came down, and the lanky corpse dropped its weapon and sheath. Undead hands shot up and caught the stone haft of the axe, stopping it cold. For a moment, it pushed up against the axe, moving it nearly half a fen.
But then its legs shook, and it dropped to one knee, barely holding the blade above its face.
“Move.” Ermolt backed away from the pinned creature. “Let’s go.”
“Why?” Elise asked, surprised. “We could finish it now!”
“It’s too dangerous. Look at his eyes.”
Elise met the creature’s gaze, and wished desperately that she hadn’t. Its expression wasn’t strained, and its concentration wasn’t on the axe barely a rhen above its dead flesh. It was focused on them. They held its full attention, and she could almost see it calculating how to handle them if they approached.
Not just how to handle them, though.
There was violence in those eyes.
A promise of death.
It was calculating how to kill them.
“You’re right. The more distance we get between it and us, the better.”
Chapter Twenty
They rushed through the rooms in near silence. Ermolt could feel Elise’s teeth grinding as if it were a physical thing. His own frustration was mounting as well.
“We need a plan,” Ermolt said as they hurried back through the library. “There’s no telling how long that will hold him.”
“There is no plan. We just put distance between us and it.”
A chill ran up Ermolt’s arms. “Are you suggesting we give up? Turn around and leave?”
“What? No. Never,” Elise said, quickly, her face contorted in confusion. “We just need to move quickly.”
Ermolt nodded, but the cold refused to fade. Why did his anger come unbidden now, but refused to answer his call just moments ago when his life was on the line?
“If Athala were with us, we could have beaten it.” Elise’s words were quiet, almost lost to the deafening silence of the Temple. “And once we have her back, we’ll deal with that… thing.”
Ermolt made a small noise in agreement, even though he didn’t necessarily agree with her words. He wasn’t sure that Athala could have improved the situation against the creature they had faced, but he didn’t want to start an argument about it.
The wizard would have been more vulnerable to the monster’s speed and strength than either Elise or Ermolt were. And where they had the armor and training to deal with his strikes, Athala would have been cut down in an instant.
He knew, logically, that Elise meant that if they could have kept the undead busy, Athala would have been able to set him alight, but Ermolt wasn’t convinced that they had pressured the undead enough to accomplish that.
Being outclassed by a single entity was not a new experience for Ermolt, but it was one that he hadn’t dealt with in a long time. He considered himself the best fighter in a generation, and to be outclassed so handily stung.
At least the one to outmatch him was a created undead. The creature was likely constructed and animated specifically for combat. Ermolt wasn’t fighting another warrior from his era. He had pitted his skills against the best fighter of a generation long past, amplified and augmented by profane magic.
By standing against him, Ermolt had set himself up for failure.
Ermolt’s strength was constrained by anatomical limitations. An animated corpse drew strength from the magic empowering it. It wasn’t a fair fight.
Elise and Ermolt passed through the entryway of the Temple, and neither of them so much as glanced at the open door to their left that would take them outside. Instead they passed through the area and quickly made their way to the far door.
“It wasn’t just me though, right? That was a created undead, sure, but I’ve never seen a creature like that. It was almost human.”
Ermolt wondered if Elise had been talking the whole time he was lost in thought, or if she’d just decided to speak this aloud, out of context. “There are legends,” he said as he set his shoulder against the door and pushed his way into another long-rotted sitting room, “that speak of undead created for purposes as more than just guardians or assassins. In the tale of King Odalric, he goes on a quest to earn a favor of a necromancer who was in control of an undead metalworker. The metalworker’s considerable natural skill, enhanced by the strength and speed of undeath—not to mention the centuries spent practicing and honing its craft beyond natural life—meant that it could perform feats of craftsmanship no mortal could produce.”
“You think this is the same thing? Someone created that monster and then it spent all this time, since the fall of Marska, at least, doing weapon drills?”
Ermolt shrugged and stepped over a desiccated corpse, trying to ignore the thought that it would jump up at their backs as they approached the far door. Th
ey didn’t have time to engage everything in combat. “I just mean it’s possible. No one really knows anymore what created undead could be, except what survives in the tales. I know if I met a necromancer today, I would be afraid of him seeing my body and skill as potential parts for a creature just like that.”
Elise shuddered. “Don’t say such things. I’d rather not imagine meeting a necromancer, let alone think of what they might do with our bodies.”
“Something tells me that we might have come to the wrong Temple then,” Ermolt said with a chuckle. Elise shared his moment of mirth and then fell silent again, lost to her thoughts.
That was fine by Ermolt. There was enough going on that he should have concentrated on anyway.
As he suspected, when he pushed open the next stone door, a bunch of corpses in the sitting room twitched and clattered to their feet. But Ermolt just shoved the door closed behind them. Such a barrier might not actually do anything to stop them, but it would slow them down.
And perhaps they’d create a problem for the undead monstrosity that they’d left pinned under the axe trap. Though he doubted it.
The next room looked to be where sermons were held. There was a crack in the wall, revealing the inner shaft of the Temple, so the room was not as sealed as some of the others. As such, what had once been wooden pews were now piles of rot. There were a few partially intact pieces of wood, and there were signs of long-dead insects having burrowed into the soft wood, but there wasn’t enough remaining of any of the pews for even a single person to sit.
At the head of the room was a stone dais with a pulpit. There were a pair of doors behind it, and so Ermolt started back towards those exits.
“You’re right,” Elise said at last. “Athala’s notes said Isadon was involved with the creation of undead. I hate to think of what life in Khule was like back then, with a nest of necromancers so close to the city.”
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