Cat's Quest

by Roman Prokofiev

  “There’s something shiny there!” The restless halfling dove into the pit and, dodging the spikes, started shamelessly looting the skeleton. I didn’t even notice him fastening his bollack instead of a rope. What a light-footed NPC! Soon, his head appeared above the edge of the pit. After climbing back up, he handed me a dusty red gem.

  “Take it, master! There’s nothing else of any value there, just small fry!”

  You obtained a new item: Huge Flawless Pomegranate. A semi-precious stone.

  “What’s with the door?” asked Alex, examining it.

  “I don’t see any traps,” Richie said, shrugging. “Let’s just open it.” After stepping on the narrow ledge next to the pitfall trap, Flame tried to pull the handle of the door. He failed.

  “I can open it!” he puffed. “But it’s closed real tight! I need some help!”

  I squeezed in behind him and started to help. Little by little, we managed to open the door just a crack; it seemed like something was holding it on the other side. We heaved, and it gave in with a nasty creak...

  “Down on the ground!” AlexOrder screamed. We heard a loud clicking and whistling. The door swung open, as if somebody had let go of it, and we saw a dark passage behind. Flame and I had not anticipated it and collapsed, plummeting down into the pit from the narrow ledge. I was quick enough to grab the edge and hang there, but the dwarf wasn’t so lucky: he fell right onto the rusty blades, hitting them with his armored body producing a horrible screech.

  “Vanya!”

  “Everybody down!”

  “Shit, it hurts!”

  The torches rolled downward; I couldn’t see anything anymore. In the darkness, I heard cries of pain and swearing. In the meantime, the door banged against the wall and, with a loud click, closed back up, as if nothing ever happened.

  “Is everyone OK there?” Alex tried to restore order in several seconds, as he picked up a torched and examined the team.

  “What was that?” said Helga, nursing her scraped shoulder and cursing as she stood up from the ground.

  “Bolts!” Richie helped me climb up and showed me a crossbow bolt with a triple-edged rusty tip.

  “The door’s held by blocks connected to the crossbow string,” he explained, looking like an expert. “When it’s opened, they shoot. Bang! When the door is closed, the trigger is pulled back. That’s mechanics for you!”

  We started counting injuries. Thankfully, Flame, who had fallen onto the spikes, wasn’t wounded—he hit them with the tower shield that protected his back and got off with a scare and a few scratches and dents to his armor, while the rusty blades hadn’t survived his onslaught—most of them got bent and broken.

  Ten crossbow bolts had been shot from the doorway. Thanks to Alex’s command, the majority of them only hit the wall opposite the door, but two had found their target, grazing Helga and piercing Valkyrie’s thigh. Maria winced, bit her lip, and stoically suffered through the pain, but she was wounded, infected from the rusty tip, and bleeding. I prepared an elixir and some bandages, but just one silver flash of Elle’s wand put the archer back on her feet.

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked. “Richie, can you disarm that door?”

  “Nope!” the halfling shook his head. “Master, I’m telling you—it’s M-E-C-H-A-N-I-C-S! And I’m no mechanic, we weren’t taught that!”

  “I could cover you all with my shield,” Flame said. “We could enter under its protection.”

  “There’s an easier solution!” I offered. “The bolts aren’t infinite, are they? How about that—all of us hide behind the corner, and one person opens and closes the door until the crossbows are out of ammo.”

  “Or the mechanism gets jammed,” AlexOrder nodded. “Not a bad idea. It could work.”

  “Let’s try it! Dibs on opening the door!” Richie said, hopping.

  We did the following: after tying the adventurer’s bollack to the door handle, we hid behind the corner and all together, pulled the rope. As it turned out, the crossbow had been loaded five times. After the fifth discharge, nothing flew out of the dark opening, and we could hear the blocks and the trigger mechanism clicking and wheezing. However, we got another surprise.

  “It’s a dead end” screamed Richie, who was first to enter the doorway. “It’s empty! No necromancers!” It was true. There was just a small square room, some simple machinery, and a crossbow trigger mechanism. The door didn’t lead anywhere else.

  “Search the room!” AlexOrder commanded the halfling, who was rummaging through the passage without effect. “Use Find Treasure! There must be a way out…” Richie nodded, all serious, and with a swagger, started carefully exploring and tapping the walls of the room with the tip of his hoopack, all but sniffing them. In five minutes, the halfling confidently pointed at the wall to the right side of the door.

  “Break it!” Alex said, giving me a hammer and handing Flame a pickaxe. From the looks of it, all of the tools I had purchased would come into play. Richie was right. Behind the wall he had shown us lay a hollow, secret passage. In five more minutes, the dwarf and I had created a gap big enough for the entire team to crawl through.

  “Look, it’s all different here!” I heard Richie’s clear voice say.

  The passage we found our way into was much higher and wider than the previous one, able to accommodate three of us walking side-by-side without bumping our heads. It led downward with a sharp incline. In the white light of the magic torches, we saw that the walls were covered with strange murals, mostly destroyed by time and damp. The things we were able to discern didn’t give us much hope: headless men, monsters executing humans, demon summoning, victims burned at the stake... Piles of rubbish—fallen plaster, a half-decayed tapestry—lay along the walls, while the ceiling was covered in cobwebs. We advanced carefully, keeping the same order—Richie followed by Flame and me, then the rest.

  “Necromancers!” the halfling told us in a chilling whisper, a few minutes later, pointing at the rectangular alcoves on both sides of the tunnel that contained mummified remains and bones overgrown with dust and webbing.

  AlexOrder commanded us to stop and apply Holy Ointment to our weapons. It had the same effect as holy water, but as a weapon oil, remained in effect for almost an hour.

  “They’ll start attacking now, and we’ll need to get rid of them,” he said. “Everyone ready?” As usual, Alex was right. As soon as we reached the first alcoves, the corpses there started to come to life, accompanied by horrible moaning and screeching. It was like a scene from a horror movie: mummified skeletons dressed in tattered armor, rusted weapons in their hands, rose in clouds of caustic dust and ribbons of cobwebs, red flames burning in the dark holes of their eye sockets.

  Ancient Skeleton

  The first skeleton was defeated by AlexOrder, surprisingly easily. He appeared to the side of the creature, rooted it to the spot using the Rune of Chains, and chopped it into several pieces with three strikes of his longsword.

  The Ancient Skeleton was killed! Receive 25 XP. Current value: 25,220/45,000

  Flame took care of the second and the third, pushing them back with a shield strike, and I dealt with the fourth. My opponent, despite his age, was quick on his feet and nimble and wielded a terrifying ancient halberd that he used to attack in cross pattern. Still, I took the lessons of the last three weeks to heart, and deftly dodged his blows. Timing my movements, I waited until he made a sweeping motion and dove right below the strike, knocking him out in just two hits—a sword coated in holy ointment deals impressive damage.

  You dealt the Ancient Skeleton 45 damage! Critical hit! You dealt 76 damage!

  Richie, who suddenly appeared next to me, finished the enemy off by crushing the skull with the iron tip of his hookah, winking at me all the while. The rest of the skeletons were defeated by the other teammates, while the dwarf held their attention.

  “Not so strong after all!” said Valkyrie as she picked up the arrows.

  “Yes, but this is just the b
eginning,” AlexOrder replied. He looked over the passage that lead downward, illuminating rows of alcoves with more skeletons.

  “And there will be more,” he added. “Well then, come on. Let’s clear them out.” And so we did. The skeletons attacked us in groups of four and six, and we followed the same pattern: Flame tanked, I covered him, and the others dealt damage. Whenever it was necessary, Alex manually controlled the undead that got close, while the halfling collected everything he could get his hands on. Still, the loot was unimpressive—rusty weapons, bones, skulls, and other grey crap. We stumbled upon entrances to side rooms four times. It was there that we first started to encounter problems. Each of the rooms had a stronger mummy rise from the sarcophagus in the center, while eight to nine skeletons assisted it, two of them armed with throwing weapons. However, by that time, our team had fallen into step, and we managed to mop up the packs with only the slightest of injuries that were immediately dealt with by Alex’s henchwoman. We showered the mummies in firebombs, making them burn slowly. The drop was a few magic gems, ancient copper-ware, and an odd unidentified amulet.

  Amulet ??? ??? ??? ! Cursed item. If equipped, increases Horror by 1 and decreases all attributes by 10.

  “Almost all the items here are like that,” Alex commented. “Cursed.”

  “Can it be removed?”

  “Yes. Not much point, though—blessing or cleansing it costs more than the item itself.”

  After the skeletons were dispatched, Richie found a secret passage in one of the rooms that lead into a tiny cell with two more undead monsters and a scroll—a page torn from a spell book that described the Ritual of Extending Poison Duration. It was an unusual necrotic spell that prolonged the effect of poison on a poisoned creature for an undefined period. The group got a thousand XP for finding the stash.

  All in all, we spent about an hour and a half clearing the maze, killing, by my count, more than a hundred skeletons and mummies. We got no good loot, just some trash, and one rare alchemic reagent. The passage ended in another door, huge and made of stone, with no handles or keyholes, but a circular recess in the center. We decided to set another campfire, have a brief rest, and get a bite to eat, as the effect of buffs and runes had run its course.

  “We’ve gone through half the supplies,” I surmised after counting them and distributing vials of antidotes as well as healing and cleansing potions among my teammates. We had been wasting them like water—each mummy had a Rotten Touch ability that inflicted disease, while the skeletons and the dust around them could poison, triggering a DoT.

  “Should be enough. It shouldn’t be too long now,” said AlexOrder. “The hardest thing will be the final battle. Fokial is a strong boss. Save some liquid silver, he’s probably undead.”

  “Necromancers are cool!” Clover Richie nodded. “Curses, skeleton, zombies! Fun all round!”

  “Open the door, funny guy,” Alex stood up. The door, however, wouldn’t budge. The Open Locks scroll didn’t work either—it was locked in a different manner. After some time, we solved the puzzle—a round pomegranate that we had found back near the dungeon entrance fit perfectly into the niche in the door. As soon as we inserted it, the stone door plate screeched and reluctantly slid aside, allowing us to pass through to the next room, which was a spacious burial chamber full of ancient stuff. Six huge decorated coffins were set along the walls, and offerings were placed next to their pedestals: large vintage pitchers, tattered tapestries, old weapons and armor. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. The walls of the crypt were adorned with carvings and statues in alcoves, while the opposite side of the hall had a stone door, just like the one we used to enter the room. The stone in the center was unharmed. To get to it, we had to pass all six coffins, but Alex made us stop.

  “Most likely, as soon as we approach the door, something’ll crawl out of the coffins and attack us in the back,” he said thoughtfully. “Let’s first try opening the coffins one by one. What do you say, Richie?”

  “Hmm,” the halfling squinted. “I definitely see some necromantic traps there. Let me see…” He snuck toward the nearest coffin, leaving footprints in the dust, crouched, and threw a rock inside. Bang! Clouds of acid-green smoke shrouded the coffin and the pedestal on which it lay, and Richie deftly jumped back.

  “A magic trap, poison smoke! But nobody’s crawling out!” Valkyrie said, pondering.

  “Let’s try removing the lid,” Alex offered. “We can’t have them behind our backs.”

  After the smoke had dissipated, Flame and I approached the coffin. The dwarf tried touching the edges to remove the stone lid, but snapped his hands back with an anguished cry. Long iron blades coated in something green popped out from the edges of the coffin, where the lid was moved.

  “That’s some strong-acting poison!” Flame hissed, shaking his injured hand. “Inflicts disease and partial paralysis!”

  “Drink a potion! Elle, Helga, take care of him,” Alex commanded. “Cat, we need to break the lid with a hammer or push it back from a distance without touching it.” Through joint efforts, using a pick, Richie’s hoopack, and a shovel, we lifted the lid and pushed it away from the coffin. Inside, we saw rotten bones covered in fragments of skin and tissue. As soon as the lid was removed, they shifted and, finally, rose.

  Revenant Necromancer

  The revenant inside the coffin giggled madly and lifted a black wand in his rotting hand. Blue smoke enveloped him, and in a moment, two translucent figures appeared on the sides of the coffin, as if woven from moonlight.

  Shadow Necromancer

  “It’s summoning ghosts!” I yelled, jumping back.

  “Silver weapons! Valkyrie, SILVER arrows!” I think it was AlexOrder shouting. The revenant turned out to be a serious opponent. After standing up inside the coffin, he...it...pointed his wand at Alex, shrouding him in green light. The Watcher froze in place, unable to move. Two arrows hit the revenant in the chest, but he didn’t seem to notice. Continuing to laugh, he raised the wand once more. I was his next victim. A thin green light pierced my shoulder, leaving an icy burning in its wake.

  Revenant Necromancer uses Shadow Ray! Receive necrotic 52 damage!

  The ghosts charged at us, trying to grab us with their long claws. Flame’s axe passed through one of the transparent creatures without dealing it any harm—we had no time to use Liquid Silver. One shadow seized the dwarf, while the other attacked me, using Life Drain.

  Shadow Necromancer uses Life Drain! Receive 37 damage!

  Everything went south. The revenant paralyzed Elle and focused on Valkyrie, while I was out of half my hit points, and the ghost was about to attack again—our weapons were useless against it.

  “Get out, you old wight! Vanish in the sunlight!

  Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing!”

  A few resonant chords and Helga’s voice was loud enough to blot out the revenant’s mad giggling and sounds of combat. Clear sunlight poured out from somewhere, and the ghosts produced a shrill howl, so high it was barely audible, and trembled as they disappeared. The revenant hissed and shrieked. Clouds of smoke appeared wherever the rays touched it, the perished flesh blackening and shriveling. The dwarf jumped up onto the coffin and pushed the burning opponent down with a shield strike, and then I beheaded it in a single, swift blow.

  Critical hit! You dealt Revenant Necromancer 145 damage! Revenant Necromancer dies! Receive 200 XP. Current value: 28,910/45,000

  At last, we could stop to catch our breath. We had almost died because we were not ready and prepared to fight incorporeal creatures and the revenant’s spells. Thank God Alex was smart enough to think of opening the coffins one by one; had all of them sprung up on us at once, the six revenants would have defeated us in a matter of minutes. Yep, that would have been a total wipe.

  “Helga! You saved us!” Alex congratulated her as soon as the Revenant’s paralysis spell wore off. “Tell me, where did you get Tom Bombadil’s song? It’s a super rare chant!
Epic!”

  “It’s a one-use only,” the bard smiled sheepishly. “Daily, I mean. I can only use it once a day. As for where...sorry, it’s a secret. A girl has to keep some, you know!”

  “Yep, let that be the cherry on her cake,” Valkyrie chimed in, standing next to Helga.

  “Then I should be the veritable jam!” the restless halfling couldn’t wait to joke.

  “All right, whatever!” Alex said, waving his hand. “Let’s heal and patch up the wounded. Then continue opening the coffins. There are five more left.”

  “Yeah, and it’s pretty late, too,” Helga sighed, preoccupied. “Guys, I have an hour, an hour and a half tops. I won’t abandon you here, of course, but let’s be quick.”

  “I have some real life business to deal with as well,” Alex agreed. “Let’s go!”

  We coated our blades with liquid silver—anti-ghost oil, prepared silver weapons, restored stamina and mana, and got to work. Each coffin had one revenant or another: two necromancers, a warlord, a mage, and a black healer. We had trouble with them, too—twice, our group almost lost the tank, and almost everyone was wounded and poisoned. Still, we made it and sent those creatures into oblivion.

  Our reward was a few rare and uncommon items, all of them, unfortunately, cursed. Valkyrie was busy collecting ectoplasm, revenant tongues, bones, and other reagents. It was becoming clear why nobody wanted to visit the dungeon: the loot required expensive cleansing at the temple. The game wasn’t worth the candle. And then, the mobs were quite off-putting, to say the least.

  Having finally cleared the room and searched all the nooks and crannies, our team moved toward the door on the opposite side of the chamber. It was exactly the same as the first door: a thick stone plate without any handles or keyholes. A round red gemstone was inlaid in the center. As we approached, we also saw an inscription carved in stone above the door. It was written in three languages, Undermountain, First Speech, and Common Tongue; I only knew the last one.