“Let the past lie dead. All we need to worry about is how to get the Favor of Isadon without fighting that monster again.” Ermolt grimaced. “We’ll likely have to fight him on our way out, however.”
“But we’ll have Athala with us. We’ll be fine. Nothing will be able to stop us once we have her back.”
The ex-Conscript’s words were fevered, and so Ermolt said nothing in return. Elise let it go.
They pushed through the doors behind the pulpit and found the next room was just bare stone. There were shadows on the floor where furniture had once been, but it had been removed. It could only have been taken in recent years, or time would have worn the marks away. But Ermolt didn’t waste time examining the place. They had to keep moving.
The next door was filled with rubble, but it was only waist high, so even Ermolt was able to clamber over it and into the next chamber.
Glowing white globes lit the room. It was another long room, like the dining area on the opposite end, but it was clogged with rubble. There was no sign of furniture. Holes in the walls and high ceiling marked where rock had come loose and fallen to the floor. Elise and Ermolt picked their way through the room quickly, as though they both anticipated the created undead to burst through the door behind them at any moment.
But even the rubble was no match for their determination, and they crossed the room without incident. Another hallway lay beyond it, much like the one at the end of the dining hall. Only this one wasn’t blocked. They ignored the doors on either side of the hall, knowing they were likely closets once more, and instead rushed into the next room.
This room was large as well, and while the interior wall had collapsed inward to block the far side of the room, they could see through the gap. They were on the opposite side of the Temple from the entryway now.
Ermolt felt it odd that they had crossed the distance so fast, until they stopped to examine the gap. Elise was panting heavily, her hands pressed against the back of her head to help open her airways.
Had they been pushing themselves? Ermolt hadn’t thought so, but perhaps there was just so much panic in his system from their encounter with the cane-wielding undead that he hadn’t noticed.
“There’s no stairs,” Elise said between breaths. “And with that rubble in the way, we’re at another dead end.”
Ermolt looked ahead. The room they were in held the remains of rotted furniture—like all the others—as well as a few long-dead bones and some disintegrating tapestries decorating the walls. But what dominated the center of the room was a strange sculpture. It was a ring of metal rising out of a large metal disc that was set into the stone floor. Upon closer inspection, Ermolt realized it was made of the same metal as the axe head from the trap.
“Do you think this is something?” Ermolt approached it cautiously. There were runes set into the stone. They looked like Draconian, but then again, every bit of written language he didn’t understand looked like the ancient text. “It looks magical.”
“Perhaps,” Elise said, lowering her arms. “But without a living God to power it, it’s going to be as useful as Teis’ false sky.” Despite her words, she held out a hand to Ermolt, and he handed her Athala’s notebook.
“Good idea. If it is the way, it’d be better to know than not.” Ermolt stepped up to the contraption and knelt down next to it. He poked one of the runes set into the metal with the end of his torch. “If this is the way up, then we’ll know it’s useless to try to do anything but climb up the inside of the Temple.” He gestured over his shoulder to the collapsed inner wall.
Elise said nothing in return, and Ermolt turned to look at her. She had settled herself to the floor and was leafing through pages. Completely oblivious.
With a small smile, Ermolt decided to poke around the room while he waited for her to figure something out. He didn’t want to mess with the metal structure, mostly for fear of breaking something. Instead he kicked at the rubble on the far side of the room. It was dense, but mostly rock. If it came down to it, he could likely dig through it to reach the rooms beyond. But how far would it be before they reached the collapsed roof that had blocked the dining hall on this side of the Temple?
He eventually found himself staring out of the broken inner wall, watching the cracks in the walls across the pit. There wasn’t enough light to see much from this distance, but he realized he was searching for signs of the created undead they had fought. Did he expect to catch a glimpse of it running through the visible rooms to catch them?
Absolutely ridiculous.
But there was no sign of him just the same. Ermolt feared it would just be a matter of time. The trap couldn’t hold him forever. And then what would happen? They would be reunited with Athala, sure, but not in the way he hoped.
The Nether was no place for a barbarian.
“It’s the way,” Elise said finally, snapping Ermolt out of his dark thoughts. “See, Catarin mentions it here: ‘the Temple was traversed using a magical device’.” She pointed to the page, as if Ermolt could see from such a distance. “It’s a teleporter. Matches her description.”
“So how do we work it? Can we activate it?”
“Normally, no.” Elise looked up at him as she struggled back to her feet. “Most magical things in a Temple are maintained and powered by a God. With Isadon being centuries dead, there would be no chance of activating it.”
“But you think there’s a way? Or do we need to climb?”
“I would have stopped reading right there, but then I thought about the lights.” She pointed to the faintly glowing white globes that illuminated the room. “These are still lit, and obviously are not flame.” She flipped the page in Athala’s notebook. “Isadon’s clergy found a way to conserve their God’s power. Catarin didn’t translate all of Athala’s notes on it, because she said the next four pages were her gushing on and on about how the scholars at the Wizard’s Tower would swarm the Temple if they knew something like that had been constructed.”
“So, it’ll work?”
“If we can figure out how to activate it.” Elise squinted down at the text. “There’s a system in place to convert… mechanical to magical energy. We flip the switch, and it should pump power into the device.”
“What switch?”
Elise frowned. “I think we need to find it.”
Ermolt frowned as well, but not at the prospect of looking. His eyes narrowed as he looked out across the Temple. “Quickly, then. We don’t have much time.” There was still no sign of the undead monstrosity, but that didn’t mean they were in the clear.
In fact, it was likely the opposite.
Chapter Twenty-One
The pair of them split up, and Ermolt left Elise to check the room as he returned to the hallway behind them.
Catarin’s notes had been unclear. While there might have been actual details in Athala’s ramblings, they were lost to them now. Elise was sure they were looking for a switch or a lever. Something that would activate the mechanical components.
Before checking any of the doors in the hallway, Ermolt peeked into the empty room they’d come through previously. He was somewhat relieved to see no sign of the lanky corpse they had fought before.
But also, incredibly nervous.
He knew the creature would be around sooner rather than later.
The sooner they reached the second floor, the better.
Perhaps the undead would be unable to follow them through the teleporters. That would be a stroke of luck.
Confident that he was alone, if only for the moment, Ermolt set aside his hammer.
The first door he checked was a narrow closet filled with cleaning supplies. There were piles of rags, a few long-rusted buckets on a shelf, and a half dozen mops and brooms filled the cluttered space. They looked to be in various states of decay.
While he wanted to ignore this and check the other spaces, if Elise was right, and the switch was hidden, it wouldn’t be enshrined with a grand fresco placing the switch at its
center. It would be here, in an inglorious and otherwise negligible place.
And so, with a sigh, he squeezed into the tight space and started to dig.
He started at the bottom, kneeling down and checking the floor. It was the same stone tile as the rest of the Temple, and none of the tiles were loose. Armed with the knowledge that the floor was unimportant, he reached over and swept the bottom shelf clear of rusted buckets. They almost disintegrated into rusty iron filings at his touch, but he cleared the space and found nothing behind them. Ermolt moved on to the next shelf, this one full of cleaning rags. Just like the buckets, they disintegrated under his touch, and what he swept to the ground were little more than fibers and dust.
But there was nothing behind that shelf either.
Ermolt moved from his knees to a crouched position to look at the next shelf, and what he saw caused him to flinch away. Centuries ago, it must have been a storage place for antiseptics and soaps. But after being abandoned and unused for so long, the containers were filthy. The irony was as thick as the layer of fungus growing on them.
A few dark glass bottles were cracked and empty, and those ones were clean, but the ones that had remained sealed had attracted condensation over the centuries. The moisture, combined with the dark quarters, caused mushrooms, mold, and lichen to grow on the jars.
He tried to peer around the jars, but the shadows they cast, along with the flickering of his torch, kept the wall obscured.
Ermolt braced himself and then swept his arm along the shelf, clearing it as he had the ones before.
The glass jars shattered when they hit the floor, and while the full ones dumped fragrant disinfected on the floor, the air was also filled with spores from the fungus. Ermolt flinched away, but the impact was too great. The spores reached his face before he could put a hand over his nose.
He sneezed violently, and it made matters worse by kicking up more dust.
When he inhaled again, it hit his throat and sinuses, and he sneezed immediately. And again. A fourth time.
He grabbed the wall nearby and shoved himself away from the closet. Ermolt nearly fell over, unbalanced, but once he was out of the enclosed space, the air of the hallway gave him a chance to catch his breath. He wiped his dust-covered hand off on the chest of his armor, and took a few careful breaths.
Ermolt backed further away from the closet.
It would take a moment more before the dust in the air would settle, but it would be worth the time for him to not stick his nose directly back into the spore-filled mess when he didn’t need to.
He checked the room behind him while he waited.
Still no sign of the undead.
When he returned, and Ermolt was sure the dust had settled enough to be safe, Ermolt poked his head back into the closet.
That was when the sound began.
It was deafening, and Ermolt clapped he free hand over his left ear protectively, while he used his right shoulder to block the sound on that side. But it didn’t help. The sound was shrill, like the cross between a screaming preoke and the whistle of a kettle. It cut right through his skull, despite his best efforts.
For a long moment it seemed to be coming from everywhere, and then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
Ermolt hesitated for a moment, afraid that it would begin again, before taking his hands away from his ears. The echo still lingered in the air, a faint whine that seemed to resonate through the very stone of the Temple.
His first thought—once he could think again—was for Elise.
If she created that noise, there might be consequences for it. And if she didn’t, he wanted to be sure she had weathered it alright.
She would also likely be heading towards him to check on him as well.
But the next moment, she let out a startled cry that echoed down the hall.
Ermolt broke into a run, down the hallway towards the room he’d left Elise in. She was near the exterior wall, on the opposite side from the giant hole to the interior shaft. From Ermolt’s quick perspective, it looked as if she had been tearing down the remains of the rotted tapestries, but Ermolt couldn’t tell if she found anything.
The scattered bones that had cluttered the room had risen—whether in response to something Elise had done, or to the screaming alarm that had filled the Temple—and they formed a half-dozen animated skeletons. They were closing in on Elise, and she had her back to the wall, shield raised protectively.
Ermolt went to let out a battle cry, but realized something very important.
He had in hand his torch.
But not his hammer.
It was still resting against the closet wall.
Ermolt growled in frustration and tossed the torch aside. He couldn’t go back. Elise needed his help now. The first of the skeletons reached her, and lashed out against her presented shield. Potent magic animated the skeleton, and so, when the creature shoved her back against the wall, it was with an impressive force of strength.
Outnumbered as she was, she would be battered down in moments. He didn’t have time to fetch his weapon.
With a bellow full of frustration and anger, Ermolt charged in against the skeletons. The cry didn’t echo and resonate as the shrieking alarm had, but it still got he attention of the creatures harassing Elise. Skulls rotated at the top of barely-connected spines to orient on the new threat, and Ermolt saw these were not like the skeletons beneath Khule.
The bones were barely coupled, and there were faint lines of visible magical energy filling the spaces left by missing bone and tissue.
Did that mean these were created undead as well? Or did the wild magics of a Temple to a God of Death just make stronger undead?
It didn’t matter, Ermolt decided. They were here, they were a threat, and he would crush them.
Ermolt charged directly into the nearest skeleton. It raised its bony fingers like claws as he approached, but Ermolt ignored the gesture. He slammed his shoulder into the skeleton’s ribcage, lifting it off the floor, and he kept running.
The creature’s bony fists pounded against his back and shoulders, and from the strength of the hits he knew they would turn to bruises.
But he didn’t stop running until he reached the wall next to Elise.
He slammed the skeleton against the wall, shattering its bones between his body and the wall. There was an audible crack of energy as the magic animating the skeleton started to dissipate into winking motes of energy.
Ermolt whirled as he stepped up beside Elise, facing down the remaining skeletons with his bare hands.
“Thank you,” Elise said quickly as she found the space to draw her sword. “I think I found the switch, but it was trapped.”
“The alarm?”
Before Elise could answer, a skeleton rushed in, and Elise raised her shield. It struck with both hands, and the impact nearly knocked her over. Another one charged her, bony fist raised as she staggered, but Ermolt stepped in front of it. He caught the blow across his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. With one meaty fist, he repeatedly punched the skeleton in the ribcage. After the second strike there was a crackling sound, and the third strike broke bones. The skeleton reeled away.
Beside him, Elise’s blade whipped down and cracked open the skull of her attacker, drawing an audible crackle of energy that was accompanied by the clattering of bones to the floor.
The three remaining skeletons circled around, but didn’t charge. Ermolt wasn’t sure if they were afraid, after seeing what happened to their fellows, or if they were planning some coordinated attack. Were undead capable of communication? He didn’t know. Perhaps they were just stalling.
Stalling.
“Elise, we need to end this,” Ermolt said, glancing at the door to the hallway. “They’re delaying.”
The ex-Conscript’s eyes widened. “The created undead. Nether take it, you’re right. I’ll go left. Watch my back.”
Elise charged towards the skeleton closest to her and slammed her shield into it be
fore it could react. She raised her blade to dispatch the creature, but Ermolt lost sight of her follow up. His attention was stolen by the two other creatures, who surged forward to their fellow’s aid.
Ermolt stepped up to meet them, protecting Elise while she dealt with the third.
One of the undead tried to run around Ermolt, while the other distracted him with a swipe of its bony claws, but he sidestepped the blow to body check the one trying to avoid him. The creature stumbled, and began to stagger away. Ermolt reached out, closing his fist around the undead’s collarbone. When his grip was firm, he yanked.
Despite the strength offered to the creature by undeath, he directed its movements easily with the bony handhold. He swept the creature across the front of him, slamming it into the other skeleton. Cracked and broken ribs meshed together through the faint magical aura holding the skeletons together, and the pair became tangled together. They struggled to free themselves, but the magic held firm.
Ermolt laughed at their pitiful attempts.
“Just finish them,” Elise commented from behind him. There was a cracking sound, and Ermolt felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. She had safely dealt with her foe. “We don’t have time to play games.”
“Fine, fine,” Ermolt said with a grin. He stepped up to the struggling skeletons with his fists raised, and he struck hard and fast.
A jab and a cross to the front of one skull left cracks in the bone, and seemed to stun the creature for a moment. The other one stop trying to shove its interwoven ally away and reached out for Ermolt instead. But he countered it, sweeping aside its attack and smashing his other fist into the skeleton’s temple. The punch nearly knocked the skull off its neck.
Ermolt stepped back from his foes, brought his knee up, and used the natural advantage his height offered him. His giant boot swept across in a crescent kick that caught first one skull, then the other. The damaged bone gave way like cheap pottery, and the interlaced skeletons collapsed with a pair of synchronized crackling sounds.
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