by Max Anthony
Jera had started to wish she had a helmet, such were the quantity of blows which rained down in the direction of her head. The shield she wore was a marvel of its type and it assisted her arm, always managing to get to where she wanted it to be. After blocking more than a dozen blows, Jera found herself descending into what felt almost like a trance and suddenly she found that the shield was no longer so important. Her feet moved as if they were controlled by a part of her brain that she couldn’t directly access and she began to dodge as many as she blocked. Energy coursed through her muscles and she didn’t tire, answering each attack with one of her own as she landed stinging blows of her own. Jera’s attacks did little damage but in this instance, they weren’t meant to – all she needed was to keep the dread knights occupied and to stop them from attacking Rasmus.
With Jera holding the attention of the dread knights, Rasmus was given freedom to cast his spells without having to rely on his uncertain prowess in the field of dodging six-feet black-bladed swords. Sparks and balls of arcane energy jumped from his hands as he depleted his array of low-level close-quarters attack spells. Even a basic spell could be devastating when cast by a high-level wizard and the dread knight upon which Rasmus focused showed signs that it was weakening. After a particularly well-placed shard of ice took it on the codpiece, the creature’s helmeted head jerked round and the red eyes stared at Rasmus. At once, the wizard knew that he’d overdone it and the hatred that kept the creature attacking Jera would now send it after him.
“You cowardly undead dung bucket! Don’t you dare go running home to mammy!”
The dread knight’s head snapped again, this time looking back at Jera. To drive the message home, she stepped towards it and thumped her shield against its wounded crotch, before leaping to one side as the other creature attacked her.
Deciding that discretion was perhaps appropriate, Rasmus cast a couple of spells at the second dread knight, which was thoroughly engrossed in trying to kill Jera. It flinched as electricity washed over it, but it didn’t stop attacking the woman before it.
As the pair fought, they became aware that the huge crowd of grey-skinned undead nearer to the bridge was reducing in size. Where once there had been many hundreds, now there was less than half of their number remaining.
“Hurry up, Viddo,” Rasmus muttered to himself, his arsenal of close-range attack spells now almost exhausted. He hadn’t really been equipped with anything suitable to destroy such creatures quickly and efficiently – at least nothing that he could cast with Jera in such close proximity.
Jera was starting to flag. Her opponents were relentless and although they had been injured by the wizard’s magic, they showed little sign that they were willing to give up the fight. Jera’s legs were now a fraction slower than they had been and her shield arm was battered and sore from intercepting the heavy blows that came at her. Worse still, her sword didn’t seem to be doing any damage to them. She’d made a few successful strikes through the gaps in their plate, but the dread knights showed no signs of concern.
I wonder if my sword lacks the magic needed to hurt them, she thought, remembering how the revenant had been untroubled by it. Maybe I should have taken Viddo up on his offer of the other sword after all.
A sword bounced off her shield again and she stumbled. Another blow landed after the first, staggering her and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. There’d been no sparks or daggers of frost from Rasmus for a few seconds and she wondered if he’d spent himself. The next strike pitched her down onto the floor and she’d only just managed to push herself to one knee when a sword stuck again, this one getting past her shield and ricocheting off her pauldrons with a shriek.
Within, Jera discovered that she was as calm as ever. The voice of Goosty the Placid came to her. If you ever find yourself close to death, there is always one final act of defiance you can call upon, said the words. Remembering her training, Jera prepared to call upon this last desperate power available to a fighter.
She had no need of it. As one dread knight stepped in for the kill, it staggered sideways, the blade in its hand striking wide. Jera scrambled away and then rolled to avoid the plate-booted foot of the second undead as it tried to grind her bones into the floor. Viddo was there, sword in one hand and dagger in the other. His arrival gave Jera the moment she needed to clamber onto her feet and ready herself.
Such was the hatred that the dread knights felt for her now that they attacked without regard for the greater threat which had arrived. This was the defensive fighter’s lot – to take the blows and distract her opponents long enough that others in the team could use their abilities without being attacked themselves.
Viddo plunged his dagger again through the plate back of one dread knight. The creature turned suddenly, dragging the weapon from the thief’s hand. It swung at Jera, weaker now but still threatening. The strike missed and Viddo drove the tip of his sword into the creature’s side, forcing the magical blade deep within and twisting it as he did so. The dread knight dropped to one knee, badly hurt. It swung a backhanded blow towards Viddo and the thief ducked beneath the gauntleted hand at the same time as he recovered his dagger from where it was lodged in the black-plated spine. He sprung to one side and stabbed behind him as he went, driving the dagger between the holes in the undead’s visor. It roared – the first sound that had come from its mouth since they had engaged it in combat – and it toppled onto the ground with a crash.
With the number of her opponents halved, Jera found that her life had become much easier. She was drained and felt a numbing weakness in her muscles, but using the power of will, she forced her body to continue its defiance. The remaining dread knight crashed three more punishing strikes against her shield before it, too, succumbed to Viddo’s unchallenged attacks. It fell onto its side and the red light of its eyes faded.
There was silence for a moment and then there was a clang – the noise being a metal cosh hitting the helmet of an already destroyed dread knight.
“There!” said Rasmus happily. “Got the bastards!”
Jera couldn’t help but laugh and then she sank to her haunches. “I think I need a few minutes to catch my breath,” she told them.
16
After a scant time of recuperation during which much praise had been heaped upon Jera, the trio stood on the bridge as close to the edge as they dared.
“There’s no way I can jump that,” said Rasmus.
“Nor me,” said Jera.
Viddo wasn’t surprised and didn’t press the issue. “We’ll have to go back through the catacombs. I think that the exit we can see on the other side of this bridge would take us most efficiently to the area wherein the god-summoning antics are purported to be taking place. However, if we go into the catacombs and take the right-hand turn as we approach the central room, I believe that will lead us to the same place. Eventually.”
“Did all of our pursuers fall into that channel?” asked Jera.
“All of the ones in the immediate vicinity did,” said Viddo. “Though I feel certain that there are others who have yet to catch up to us. Fortunately, I still have my flute.” With that, he reached into his pack to display the item. What came out wasn’t an entire flute, but half of a flute.
“It’s broken,” said Rasmus.
“Balls!” exclaimed Viddo, now convinced that he was a master musician. “It must have snapped when I was engaged with the two dread knights.” He put the broken end to his lips and blew. It produced no sound whatsoever. “Can it be fixed?” he asked.
“No,” said Rasmus.
“Oh well,” said Viddo. He threw the two halves of the instrument into the channel. “It was fun while it lasted.”
They left the now-damaged magnificence of the room behind them, along with the thoroughly-searched but lootless dread knights. None of them liked to backtrack, so it was fortunate that there wasn’t a vast amount of it to do before they were able to reach the centre of the catacombs, whereupon they made a right
-hand turn. Most of the alcoves were empty, though there were skeletons in a few. The adventurers left the remains undisturbed. None of them had shown any signs of activity so far and these ones were no exception.
The catacombs ended and they emerged onto what looked like an exceptionally wide balcony – as wide as the catacombs corridor. There was no light here and Rasmus called upon his spell so that they could all see ahead of them. The place they’d entered had a solid stone wall to the right-hand side and on the left, there was a knee-high parapet. Above them, at the furthest reaches of the light was what looked like another balcony, with the actual ceiling lost somewhere in the darkness overhead.
Viddo glanced over the parapet and didn’t like what he saw there. The others approached and peered over the edge. The floor was too far below to make out any details, so Rasmus sent his light as far down as its range would permit. There were bodies lying on the stone, row upon row of them, all on their backs and staring upwards with dead, open eyes. They were naked and though the distance was too great for specifics, Rasmus thought that their skin looked tight and sunken, with a green tinge to it. Next to each, was a weapon of some description. Mostly there were swords, but also axes and spears.
“Are there more?” he asked Viddo.
“Lots more,” was the reply. “They stretch as far as the eye can see. I would not like to count them.”
“They are from these catacombs, aren’t they?” asked Jera.
“It looks like it.” Viddo leaned out over the parapet. “The catacombs are stacked. There is another one directly below us. I can’t see far enough to be certain, but I think there is another one above us. The ceiling is far higher still. There could be more.”
Rasmus let out a low whistle. “The dead of an entire civilisation buried and preserved for eternity. Now taken from their graves and laid out here in this room. For what purpose, I wonder?”
“To kill,” said Jera firmly. “To be raised as undead and sent to the surface in order to wage war upon the cities of men. To kill them in order to bring about the return of Him Without Name.”
They stared at each other. “That sounds a bit shit, doesn’t it?” asked Rasmus.
“We should get on and ensure that the brains behind this dastardly plot are denied the opportunity to bring it to fruition. On a separate note, a few of the bodies down there are actually wearing clothes. They’re a little bit further across the room so you probably couldn’t see them when you looked. Reckon I should have a rake through their pockets?”
“It would be a shame if these poor wretches were callously used as undead slaves whilst being heavily burdened by an excess of coin in their pockets,” said Rasmus, looking sideways at Jera.
“They don’t look like they’ll be spending it any time soon,” said Jera hesitantly.
“Excellent!” said Viddo. With that, he hopped over the parapet and into the gloom below. Rasmus didn’t spend any time wondering about how his friend would manage what was an impossible climb to most people. He’d seen Viddo pull off enough stunts to have long ago stopped worrying that the thief might end up hurting himself. Neither Rasmus nor Jera were afraid of heights, but the parapet was just a tiny bit too low for them to stand closer to it than they had to. Rasmus dropped to his knees and watched the dark shadow of Viddo flit across the floor below. Then, he was gone from sight.
Viddo wasn’t gone for long and after only a few minutes, he hopped over the parapet. “Cheap, miserly bastards,” he said without preamble. “It’s not too much to expect that you’d lay your nearest and dearest to rest with at least a couple of their favourite baubles, is it?”
“Not find much?” asked Rasmus.
“Three sodding copper coins. And don’t ask me where they were hidden.”
Jera opened her mouth and closed it again.
“You can’t win them all,” said a philosophical Rasmus. “Let’s get on with things.” With that, he began walking along the balcony. The others followed him without a backward glance.
The balcony was about two hundred yards long and then it became a tunnel for eighty yards. This short tunnel ended and they found themselves in another room, the same as the last one.
“There must be tens of thousands of bodies here,” said Jera. “At least we know where all the weapons from that foundry got to.”
They began to feel exposed and picked up the pace until they were moving at a canter. The noise of their travel was sucked out into the expanse of the open space to the side. As he ran, Rasmus found himself wishing that he was away from this dreary world of death, walking through an orchard on a sunny day or perusing magical staves in an emporium.
They entered another tunnel and each experienced a sinking feeling as they worried that they might run for hours, past room upon similar room, carpeted with the dead bodies of the ages. Viddo had reported that there were signs of decomposition, so the bodies had likely been moved there recently. The trouble was, the atmosphere down here was such that the dead might not rot at anything like the same pace as they would in the damp, warm atmosphere of the surface. The bodies could have been stolen from their catacombs years ago. There’d been no smell of putrefaction, leading Rasmus to suspect that the magic which had preserved them for so long continued to linger.
To their relief, there were only two of the rooms. The tunnel they’d entered ended after a short distance, and offered two alternative, smaller passages for them to follow. Viddo pointed left and they found themselves in a much more pleasing corridor that was ten feet wide and eight high. There were no signs of activity and no horde of undead charged at them. The passage split and split again, and on each occasion Viddo made the decision on which way to go without hesitation.
“These smaller corridors feel much cosier,” said Jera. “I prefer them to the open spaces of the other rooms we’ve found.”
“I agree,” said Viddo, who liked a good skulk along a corridor when he got the chance.
Rasmus wasn’t quite so convinced – if he used some of his more exciting spells in the confines of a corridor, it was harder to avoid causing unintentional injury to his friends. He preferred medium-sized rooms where there was sufficient space to run about and utilise explosives without fear of causing his own death.
They walked for what felt like a good few miles and the colour of the rock changed to a light grey. The workmanship on the walls and floor became rougher and the marks of tools were more evident.
“We’ve passed from one area to another now,” said Rasmus, giving only idle attention to the scratches on the walls.
“I believe we’ve already gone through two or three different areas,” said Viddo, not wanting to appear like a know-it-all, but unwilling to let Rasmus’ statement go unchallenged. “Remember that many different people and creatures have lived here and not all at the same time. Some parts may have been home to several different races over the millennia, whilst others might have been widened or altered over time. It’s probably not possible to distinguish clearly between one area and another as such.”
“I suppose,” said Rasmus. “I remember that we saw signs of purpose-built dungeons here as well, which must have been created much more recently.”
“It’s good that you mention it,” said Viddo. “We are going to pass close to that area on our journey.”
“I’m not sure I am keen to say hello to a bunch of slugs again. Horrid creatures.”
“I said that we’ll come close. In truth, I am not certain if we’ll come to the same place or not. And in here, close could still mean there’s a considerable distance between the two points.”
“We’re going to find that lich again,” said the wizard with certainty.
“I have no doubt it will be responsible for any plan to summon the death god,” replied Viddo.
“If I was unprepared for it last time, I am, if anything, less prepared for it now.”
“Could this single lich raise all of those bodies we saw?” asked Jera. “There was an awful lot of them.”<
br />
“That’s a good question,” said Rasmus. “A single lich can probably raise ten or fifteen low-level undead at a time. It will then need to commune once more with the dark powers that will enable it to raise more of the undead. The short answer is, yes it can raise all of those bodies. The longer answer is that it won’t be able to manage it in any practical amount of time. It likely has a lot of patience, but I can’t imagine it wanting to spend potentially hundreds of years at the task.”
“What’s going to bring them all back at once, then?” she asked.
“An artifact of some sort,” said Viddo grimly. “A relic left behind when Him Without Name vanished, that can manipulate the dead.”
“We need to find a magical hammer so that we can smash the item into pieces!” said Rasmus.
“Or smash those two diamonds into pieces,” said Jera softly.
“What do you mean?” asked Viddo.
“It seems obvious that these diamonds are precious to the lich you have told me about. Is it possible that they are needed to power this artifact?”
“Bah, no doubt you are correct and we have been pretending otherwise,” said Rasmus.
“Why would they have been using them as the eyes of that statue?” asked Viddo. “Seems like a funny place to store the keys for your artifact.”
“It’s quite a good place if you think about it,” said Rasmus. “They were on show for all of those thousands of undead to worship – a reminder of what they gathered for when they were alive.”
“Hmmm,” said Viddo. “I’ll admit that I can’t think of a better explanation. I am potentially open to the idea of breaking these diamonds, but given their hardness I don’t think we have a suitable tool to do it.”
“Could you just throw them into a hole somewhere?” asked Jera.
“I am not sure I would rely on that as a means of disposal,” said Viddo. “And anyway, for the moment I would like to keep a hold of the gems until I am certain that they are intended to be used for something nefarious. I know that if these diamonds had been stolen from me, I would chase the thief for an eternity until I recovered them. We could be pursued for a reason as simple as that.”