by Max Anthony
“A gas trap,” he said. “You’re lucky this place is so old. The gas must have decayed or whatever it is that happens to toxic fumes after ten thousand years in storage.”
Jera was still waiting in the doorway. “Come in,” said Viddo with a wave of his hand. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to travel with someone who waited patiently for him to complete his professional business. Rasmus usually just stampeded wherever he fancied, triggering traps left, right and centre.
There was nothing else to draw the eye in this room, so Viddo looked up the ladder instead. “You climbed up here willingly?” he asked Rasmus. “I’m impressed.”
The ladder was little more than a series of grooves in the wall. They were deep enough to get a firm grip on, but weren’t the sort of ladder one would normally want to climb for any great distance.
“It’s not so bad once you get into the shaft above,” replied Rasmus, pointing at the hole into which the ladder ascended. “I was able to press my back against the wall and mostly use my feet to push myself up. It goes for quite a way and then comes out in a narrow corridor with carved walls like we’ve seen elsewhere.”
“I’ll go first this time,” said Viddo to Jera. “I’m the most likely one to escape notice if there’s anything wandering by at the top.”
Jera nodded and Viddo climbed smoothly up and out of sight. Jera followed as quietly as she was able, her arms straining with the weight of her chain vest. Rasmus came last, following a few feet behind Jera.
11
There was nothing waiting for them at the top and soon they were all standing in a new corridor. It was exactly as Rasmus had described. The floor was yellow stone, smooth and without blemish. The walls were clad in a white marble, flecked with gold and silver. The stone’s surface seemed to shimmer in the light of the glass globes which were embedded into the ceiling. Here and there were reliefs, etched into the surface. They showed the usual panoply of grisly-faced creatures or gods that appeared regularly in the artwork of these forgotten people.
“The workmanship is beautiful, though the subject matter is less so,” said Jera, running her hand over the surface of the walls. “The marble has been polished until it’s as smooth as glass.”
“Yes, it is quite fancy,” said Rasmus. He was already familiar with the stoneworking skills of the people who’d lived here. He wasn’t quite blasé about it, but was heading that way.
“Out of interest, why did we come up here?” said Jera, asking a question she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to.
“Those corridors below were getting a bit samey, don’t you think?” asked Rasmus. “A bit of variety is good for the soul.”
“It doesn’t look that much different up here,” said Jera. “Except for these marble walls, I suppose.”
“When everything looks the same, even the smallest of changes can help liven things up,” said Viddo, striding away purposefully along the corridor. At least he tried to give the impression of having a purposeful stride, when in reality he was looking for tripwires. Less experienced thieves had to creep along at a snail’s pace to have any hope of finding traps. Viddo had a knack of spotting them anyway, as long as he was concentrating. The others followed him.
Rasmus suggested that these corridors formed the administrative part of a temple and in appearance the layout did resemble other places that they’d been. In one such former place, there had been a tripwire that Viddo had disarmed successfully. Here, there were no traps in evidence and Viddo soon relaxed. There were rooms whose purpose was unknown, but which were still clad in the marble of the corridors. They came upon one room with a stone table, upon which the sharp eyes of Viddo spotted a small stack of gold coins, seven in all. They were placed perfectly on top of each other, as if the unknown stacker had possessed a desire for them to be completely aligned. This expression of order irritated Viddo for some reason and he prodded the coin stack so that it fell onto the table, before he pocketed them with a promise to share them out later.
The corridor became wider and taller, until they could see that it opened out ahead into a vast space. Viddo raised a hand to indicate that they should stop. While Jera and Rasmus waited, he crept ahead, vanishing into the shadows as he did so.
“How does he do that?” whispered Jera. “There was a thief with me in the dungeon above, but the most he could do was hide behind a door and he wasn’t even any good at that.”
“How come you can handle your sword and shield as well as you do, yet haven’t seen a good thief or wizard at work?” asked Rasmus.
“I’ve only ever known my teacher,” she replied. “Goosty the Placid. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. She was my mother’s aunty.”
“Goosty the Placid? She’s still around is she?” asked Rasmus with surprise. “I thought she’d given up the game long ago.”
“She has, but she said she couldn’t let me face the harsh realities of life without a little bit of training to keep me safe from harm.”
“Goosty was one of the best fighters I’ve seen,” said Rasmus. “Do I remember you saying that she’s trained you for a few years?”
“A little few years,” admitted Jera. “She warned me that I should only use what I learned in order to defend myself.”
Rasmus shook his head. “One of Goosty’s pupils. And you started off your career with those incompetent fools we found dead above.” He considered his words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean them any disrespect.”
“It’s no matter,” Jera replied. “I wondered what I’d got myself into about ten seconds after we’d found the dungeon entrance. Our wizard had only learned one spell and the thief had a tree branch for a weapon. The other fighter didn’t have a scabbard for his sword and he nearly stabbed the cleric in the back when he tried to pull it from his belt. It wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings.”
Viddo returned, emerging suddenly into sight a few feet away.
“One of Goosty the Placid’s pupils,” said Rasmus, pointing at Jera. Viddo raised an eyebrow, but chose not to say anything.
“There’re dead bodies ahead,” he said. “Lots of them.”
“What sort of dead bodies?” asked Rasmus.
“Come,” said Viddo, beckoning the two of them to follow.
At the end of the passage was another of the huge temple rooms that Viddo and Rasmus had seen before. It was close to a hundred yards long and fifty wide. Light globes in their thousands filled the space with their grey-white glow, insufficient to disperse all of the shadows, or to reveal the ceiling which was lost to sight above them.
They had entered on one of the shorter sides, at the top of a series of steps. These steps ran all around the perimeter of the room and descended steeply to the floor. The walls were covered in the marble – a monumental quantity of it must have been needed to provide the covering. There were more of the drawings, which ran from the bottom of the wall to a height of ten yards. It looked like the drawings were part of some sort of mural that showed either the history of a short war or a single bloody battle within such a war. The details were indistinct from this distance, though when they emerged from the tunnel, they could make out the unpleasant images on the wall behind them.
The dead bodies which Viddo had mentioned were strewn everywhere. There were dozens upon dozens of them – grey shapes which were slumped randomly across the lower level of the floor, with a few on the steps. They approached one, Viddo’s confidence telling them that it wasn’t about to spring up and claw at their throats.
“These all seem to be the same type as those undead people who attacked us at the wizard’s mansion. This one’s had its belly opened by something sharp,” said the thief, doing his best to roll the body over with his foot. They had a look at the wound – there were three slash marks across its abdomen. There was no blood and the entrails were visible within – they were a pale and sickly yellow, like rancid fat.
“That other one over there has had its throat cut,” Viddo told them, indicat
ing where another body lay, a few feet to one side. “They’ve all been killed by something.”
“I wonder why they are here,” said Rasmus. “I don’t like it.”
“Nor me,” said Jera. “Something feels wrong.”
“I think we need to cross over to yonder exit,” said Viddo. They looked to the opposite end of the room, where there were two wide doorways visible in the wall. “Straight across is the quickest way.”
Rasmus looked at the longest two walls. Each one had three doorways in it and he was fairly sure that the corridor they’d just left would eventually lead them out of one of those, assuming they decided to backtrack and see if they could find the route. In his head, he imagined them stumbling around trying to guess which way was the quickest and only managing to get lost.
“Let’s go across,” he said.
They finished walking down the stairs and reached the floor. From the peripheries of their vision, they could make out tantalising details of the mural as it begged them to look at the horrors it portrayed. None of them succumbed to the temptation and all kept their eyes glued upon the far exit corridor. The bodies were clustered in groups that were difficult to avoid without making large detours, so they found themselves having to step over several. Jera looked down at one and saw dead, grey eyes staring back at her, with the rotting yellow teeth frozen in a grimace of something akin to both fear and hatred. Half of its scalp had been torn away, bringing a section of the creature’s skull with it. Jera was glad to leave the sight behind her.
They had reached almost exactly half-way across the room when something emerged from one of the side corridors, twenty-five yards to their left and ahead of them. It stood at the top of the steps, eight feet tall and spindly. It was a brownish-red in colour, as if it wept blood from pores across its skin. With a start, Jera realised that it actually had no skin at all, as if it had been completely flayed when alive and then brought back to life. Her eyes caught more details – muscles and sinew tied to bone by dark magic, a rough covering of hair on its head, and clear, blue eyes which burned with a malevolent intelligence.
“What is it?” asked Jera.
“Revenant,” said Viddo, snapping off a blindingly fast shot at the creature. His aim was good and he caught the creature by surprise, striking it directly in the forehead. The magical bolt sank almost all of the way through the creature’s skull, penetrating deep into the brain matter beneath. It didn’t die, though it staggered back a single pace, raising a clenched fist as it did so. A split second later, a fireball detonated with a thunderous bang, engulfing the creature in agonising flames. When the magic had dispersed, the revenant was no longer visible, though it had not finished with them yet.
“Did you get it?” asked Jera.
“No, we did not,” replied Rasmus grimly. “Be ready, Jera. You are shortly going to need all of Goosty’s skills to make it to the exit alive.”
Viddo had already started to run for the exit, expecting the others to follow him. He didn’t get very far. On the ground, the corpses twitched and spasmed as though a huge current of electricity was surging through them. Almost twenty of the bodies in the close vicinity jerked rapidly to their feet, as if pulled upright by invisible strings. Viddo didn’t hang around for an invitation and stabbed rapidly to the left and right, his arm a blur as he plunged his dagger into the backs of these newly-risen undead. Where he struck, they fell immediately to the ground again. On top of the steps, the head of the revenant appeared in the same doorway from which it had first appeared. Almost without looking, Viddo lifted his crossbow and fired. His quarrel went clean through the clenched fist of their opponent, which it had raised in the gesture it used to re-animate the bodies. More undead stirred away to the adventurers’ left side.
Rasmus had not been idle. While Viddo stabbed, he sent volleys of sparks from his hands, which crackled and snapped as they jumped between the bodies of the newly-risen creatures which had yet to get their bearings. The first group was too close to use another fireball on them, but when the second group climbed to their feet, they found their new lease of life to be exceptionally short-lived as a fiery explosion tore many of them from their feet, casting them this way and that across the floor. In the aftermath of the blast, there were many burning corpses to be seen, some of them a great distance from where they’d been just a moment before.
The numbers of undead which had clambered to their feet had started off great, but been rapidly diminished by the brutal strikes of seasoned adventurers. The few that remained lurched towards the trio, their movements jerky but sickeningly fast nonetheless. Jera stepped towards the group with her shield raised and her sword ready. Two attacked her at once, but the remaining four ignored her entirely and made for Rasmus.
“And where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. The words themselves meant nothing, but there was a power in them which snapped the attention of all four of the undead and each of them wheeled about at once to attack her, the wizard completely forgotten. They flailed at her shield and her armour, finding her slender frame almost impossible to land a blow upon. All the while, her sword jumped out, stabbing and cutting.
The revenant emerged from the doorway in which it had taken cover, wary now against the unerringly accurate bolts from Viddo’s crossbow which had stung it twice already. Its dead flesh was burned in places, though not extensively since it had resisted much of Rasmus’ fireball spell. The injured hand was thrust into the air twice more and another thirty of the bodies began to rise under the power of the revenant’s dark magic. Those of the bodies which had borne the brunt of the most recent fireball had been too badly damaged to get to their feet, though plenty of others remained.
It was not clear if the creature was capable of surprise. If it was, it would have certainly felt this emotion when it realised that there were now only two would-be victims below. The clear blue eyes scanned the fallen, detecting no sign of the third. Only a wizard and a fighter remained in sight, with the man in black no longer visible. The missing man was carrying something that it wanted. The revenant’s eyes had a limited ability to pick up traces of heat, even when its target was invisible. This ability availed it naught and it was as if the third man had never existed.
The revenant didn’t wish to stand in one place for long. It lurched along the perimeter of the room, remaining at the top of the steps for the moment. The blast of another fireball went off nearby as Rasmus began to warm up. He’d not yet noticed that the revenant was visible, since he was too busy enjoying himself.
The undead were too spread out for Rasmus to catch them all in the area of a single spell and he relied on Jera to keep him safe while he looked for the most efficient place from which to unleash his repertoire of destructive magics. Sparks crackled from his hands again and again, toppling the undead almost as quickly as they could rise.
Near to him, Jera was assailed by eight or nine of the creatures. They surrounded her, clawing and punching in near silence as they sought to overcome her guard. Jera ducked and spun, blocking blow after blow. Each time one of the undead lost interest in her, she would strike it with her shield, or nick away a chunk of its flesh with her sword, causing a renewal of its attacks.
Rasmus looked at Jera’s face and judged that she was losing confidence. This was far more challenging than anything she’d ever faced before and it was little surprise that she was concerned.
“Goosty has taught you well,” said Rasmus mildly, watching as Jera steeled at his word.
Sensing the possibility that they might be overwhelmed, Rasmus twitched his fingers to cast one of the unfamiliar summons spells from the undead wizard’s spellbook. To his delight, three squat statues of animated stone appeared close to the scrum which surrounded Jera. They were shoulder high and poorly sculpted. Although they carried no weapons, their fists appeared to be effective weapons which they used to bludgeon skulls into grey mush. The antics of these statues drew the attention of several of the undead, which tried to grapple the
stone warriors and pull them to the ground. The statues were slow but they were tough, and managed to resist this onslaught as they swung at the grey figures around them.
The revenant had now realised that its dead slaves were outclassed. Against lesser foes, its risen mob of undead would have quickly accomplished their intended murder. Given freedom to act by Jera’s skilful defence, Rasmus had caused such damage that many of the grey bodies had already been shattered beyond the stage at which they could be forced again to rise. The revenant came down the steps, aiming to confront these adventurers directly.
Rasmus saw the creature now. He struck it with a spell of absolute zero. The brown-red surface of its tissue shrivelled in places and turned black at the power of the spell. It stumbled before righting itself and continued its advance towards the place which Rasmus was standing.
“Chuffing undead,” muttered Rasmus, when he saw that the revenant’s tremendous constitution had shrugged off most of his spell’s effects. It wasn’t the most powerful magic at his disposal, but he’d hoped it would do a bit more than cause the creature to stumble.
There was something about the revenant’s gait that made it look clumsy, when in fact it was travelling as fast as a man could run. Consequently, Rasmus misjudged the time he had available and had started to cast a spell that wouldn’t be ready before the creature reached him.
“You look like an undercooked spatchcock,” spoke a voice filled with both threat and promise. The words distracted the revenant for less than half a second. Its gaze flicked over to Jera and then it dismissed her command, resuming its approach on Rasmus.
Rasmus was no longer where he had been but a moment before. Suddenly, he was twenty yards distant, his feet moving so quickly that they were no more than a dark smudge against the background. He ducked and twisted, evading the grasping arms of the grey undead, which even now continued to rise.
Without Rasmus to grind down their numbers, Jera quickly found that the eight undead she faced had become fifteen. The revenant, having seen that it had no hope of catching Rasmus, turned its attention to her.