by Logan Jacobs
The resemblance to all the statues and carvings we’d seen throughout the fort was unmistakable. The corpse looked exactly like Eutrem.
“What in the hells?” Dehn demanded as the corpse raised its hand and pointed a gnarled finger at us. The point of red light at the center of its ribcage began to glow brighter, and I just raised my hand to counter the creature’s spell when there was a booming crash behind me.
The first crash was quickly followed by several others. I whirled as another of the statues that lined the crypt broke and crashed to the floor. Then a chill went through me as I realized that the statues weren’t simply crumbling. They were opening, because they weren’t statues, they were coffins. As they fell open, their occupants began to stumble out, skeletal figures dressed in moldy furs and tattered rags and carrying weapons that had corroded around the edges over the centuries. Like the first, any skin they had left was stretched taut over their bones, and many were missing parts of their noses and ears. Their otherwise empty eye sockets glowed with the same red light of the first corpse’s mana.
The shambling corpses were faster than they looked, and they were upon us almost before we could react with steel and bared teeth. Maruk swatted a few of them back with his shield, but they hardly seemed fazed by the kind of blow that would have stunned a living fighter and were quick to resume their assault. They seemed to be speaking, or trying to, but the only sound they could manage was a hair-raising hiss that was like flowing sand.
Yvaine stabbed one through its ribcage, but it didn’t even pause as it walked up her blade to get closer to her, and only stopped when Aerin cut its legs off at the knees. Even so, the lights in the thing’s empty sockets didn’t go out, and it flailed about with its skeletal arms and hissed.
Maruk, Yvaine, and Aerin struggled to hold the line while Lavinia, Lena, and Emeline launched their own attacks. One of the shamblers fell, but only after Lavinia had filled its head with half a dozen arrows, and the rest waded through Lena’s smoke bombs and other concoctions without any care to the smoke or burning acids. Only Emeline seemed to be making any real headway against them, and the corpses that she targeted with a jet of magical flame stayed down.
A deep rattling cry behind me drew my attention back to the first corpse, the one covered in red bandages. The cultists who had resurrected it were already dead, so this wasn’t the typical sort of necromancy. Whatever blood magic they’d used, it obviously allowed the corpse to exist and act on its own terms, without any of them needing to puppeteer it. It had summoned the others, though, so if we could destroy it, the others should fall, too.
No sooner had I turned, though, with a half a plan formed in my mind, when Dehn rushed past me and launched himself with a roar at the corpse. Eutrem, or whoever it had been, looked as surprised as I was to have a screaming, tattooed halfling suddenly hanging onto its ribcage.
Dehn used his two short swords like icepicks and climbed up to the corpse’s shoulders with them while he shouted insults and challenges, but it didn’t take long for the creature to recover from its shock, and it grabbed the stout warrior around the waist and threw him to the ground, heedless of his swords or his signature spiked armor. A chill ran down my spine as I realized that unlike the shamblers, Dehn’s attack hadn’t even slowed this one down.
They clearly all had some sort of resistance to nonmagical attacks, but fortunately, I had a solution for that, albeit a temporary one. I closed my eyes and focused my mana like I’d practiced, and I felt the raw magical power run down my arms and pool in my curled fists.
I had mainly been working on interrupts with Merlin, but now I visualized mana enhancements for my guild, and as I exhaled, I uncurled my fists and a wave of humming power flowed through me.
When I opened my eyes, the rest of my guild was glowing bright blue, their weapons and armor all enhanced with my magic. Yvaine stabbed at one of the corpses, and as soon as her shining blade connected with the creature’s moldering flesh, it disintegrated into a pile of dust and smoking fabric. Its own sword fell to the ground with a metallic clatter.
Maruk smacked another two with his shield, and they were crushed to dust as well on impact.
Confident that my guild could handle the shamblers, I returned my attention to Dehn and the bandaged corpse. The halfling was actually able to cause some real trouble, now, and the corpse’s flesh was covered in scorch marks where Dehn’s swords or armor had pierced it. Dehn got a solid strike in and buried his blade in the thing’s cheek, and the corpse seized up like it was paralyzed.
The little warrior let out a whoop of triumph, but it wasn’t to last. The corpse came to hardly a moment later and grabbed the halfling by the face with one bony hand and hurled him to the ground. His body hit with a sickening whump, and he looked dazed as he slumped against the side of one of the broken coffins.
The mana enhanced weapons weren’t enough to take this thing down. So maybe amplified magic was what we needed...
“Emeline, Aerin!” I called. “Over here!”
The panthera mage and the healer turned at once and pushed past the shamblers they were fighting to get to me. My mana was already seriously drained from enhancing everyone’s weapons, but I forced myself to summon whatever reserves I had left to give Aerin and Emeline an extra boost.
Aerin grabbed me by the arm, her face drawn in concern, but I shook my head.
“Not me,” I insisted and I gestured to the bandaged corpse. “Attack it at once.”
The women glanced to one another, then Aerin jumped forward to drive her axe into the corpse’s ribs as Emeline aimed a pinpoint surge of flames for its head. White light exploded around the corpse as the attacks connected, and the creature let out a terrible howling scream. As Aerin moved back quickly from the flames that had engulfed its body, I could see it twist and writhe in agony above its coffin.
My heart hammered rapid-fire as the corpse curled in on itself and the flames began to subside. Aerin rushed to help Dehn, but Emeline’s eyes were still locked on the corpse. She looked as tense as I was.
The fire flickered out, and I realized with a stab of dismay that the corpse’s mana still burned between its ribs.
“It’s still alive,” I panted with a glance to Emeline.
“Should I hit it again?” the mage asked, her voice pitched up with fear. “You could use your mana blade--”
“No, wait,” I interrupted as the realization came to me. The corpse wasn’t just immune to ordinary attacks, and a magical attack like that would have killed any other monster. We’d faced creatures like this in the Shadow Delves, a long time ago. Revenants like this could only be destroyed when the magic that animated it was destroyed, and if this revenant could control others...
“It’s a lich,” I explained. “We have to find its phylactery. That’s the only way to kill it.”
“Where is the phylactery?” Emeline asked.
“It has to be around here somewhere,” Aerin answered as she stepped away from Dehn, who still looked a little dazed but otherwise alright. “Go, help them,” Aerin ordered as she pushed the halfling toward Maruk, Lavinia, Lena, Yvaine, and Merlin. My mana had worn off from their weapons and armor, and they were up to their necks in shambling corpses. I didn’t have enough mana left to enhance their gear again and still be able to deal with the lich, and all they could really do against the shamblers was beat them back. Merlin, at least, seemed to be having fun dragging the corpses away from the group and chasing them down, but I knew the others wouldn’t last much longer like this. We needed to find the phylactery quickly.
“The lich can never be separated from its phylactery,” Aerin went on. “One of them might have it.” The healer knelt and began to rifle through the cultists’ robes, and I turned back to the lich just as it began to uncurl its spine. Damn, even an attack like that couldn’t stun it for long.
“Emeline, let’s hit it again,” I called. Our attacks wouldn’t kill the thing, but at least we could buy some time for Aerin to find the
phylactery. The pyromancer nodded, and I saw her mana flow into her hands as I readied my dagger.
The lich had recovered enough to be aware of us, and it let out a sharp screech and clawed at me with its bony hand as I stabbed it in the side of the head. Its cracked nails cut through to my skin as easily as steel, and I felt at once like I was frozen and on fire. A second later, the lich’s body lit up with mage fire as Emeline completed her attack, and I stumbled back as the wave of heat and light rose up before me. The lich howled like a demon, and with its bony silhouette surrounded by flame, it truly looked like a creature of hell.
The strange, freezing-hot pain in my shoulder where the lich had scratched me was spreading rapidly down my arm, making it numb and heavy as though it was encased in cement.
“There’s nothing on any of them,” Aerin reported. “We’ll have to-- Gabriel!” She rushed over and grabbed my arm, and only then did I look to see that the scratched skin had turned frostbitten black and was bleeding more heavily than I had anticipated. The healer began to mutter prayers rapid fire and the chime of bells overlaid her words as her golden mana flowed between us. Gradually, the pain leached from the wound, and the color returned to normal, though there were shiny, pale scars from the lich’s nails still visible beneath the torn fabric of my cloak. That was unusual, Aerin’s healing almost never resulted in scars, but I didn’t have time to be bothered by that now. The lich had curled in on itself again as though dead, but I knew it would revive in a matter of moments.
Emeline shot another jet of flame at the creature’s still-burning corpse in an effort to prolong its suspension, but I saw that its mana was already beginning to glow brighter again. I twisted my dagger in my hand to prepare to stab it again, and that was when I noticed the swirling script written in blood along the inside of the coffin behind the creature. Of course, the phylactery was the coffin.
“Inside the coffin!” I called as I lunged forward.
“What?” Aerin still had her hand around my arm as she ran after me.
“This writing, this is the phylactery,” I explained. My heart was hammering and sweat dripped from my forehead onto the stone brim of the coffin. I reached out past the lich and tried to wipe the blood away, but it was dry, stained into the stone. “We have to smudge it out or something. Corrupt it.”
“With what?” Aerin asked.
Beside me, the lich’s arm twitched.
My mind raced. There were scorch marks all over the coffin, inside and out, from Emeline’s attacks. Obviously, mage fire wasn’t enough to destroy the writing. Would we have to use our own blood? Was that blood magic? Would it even work?
The lich’s mana grew brighter, and its head twitched. Its remaining skin was charred black and burnt almost completely away, but we could set it on fire forever and that wouldn’t keep it down unless we destroyed the phylactery.
Maybe we could scratch the writing out. Or break the coffin. Then I had an idea.
“Maruk!” I cried.
The horde of shambling corpses hadn’t been affected by the lich’s incapacitation, and they still swarmed around the rest of the guild. Maruk, of course, was holding off the brunt of the assault and maneuvering as best he could to guard the others.
“I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment, I’m afraid!” he called back as he elbowed one of the shamblers aside.
The lich jerked its shoulders and a garbled hiss escaped its throat.
“You need to charge at the coffin!” I told him. “We have to break it. You’re the only one strong enough.”
“You want me to do what?” The orc kicked at another corpse armed with an axe that sent it flying back into the sea of shamblers like a bowling ball.
“Break the coffin!” Beside me, the lich began to uncurl its spine. “Now!”
The forcefulness of my tone must have been convincing because Maruk turned on his heel and put his shoulder behind the larger of his shields. The spark of his mana flared up and the others moved quickly to get out of his way before he lunged forward and with five steps barreled into the coffin and the lich both.
There was a resounding boom as the shield warrior made an impact. The lich shrieked as it was crushed against the wall and the coffin cracked in several places. The lich’s shriek grew to a piercing wail as the stone coffin began to crumble, and the creature’s corpse body disintegrated and fell among the rubble as black sand.
“Fuck yeah!” Dehn shouted. The shamblers had all fallen as soon as the lich was killed, and their old bones were at rest once more. “That was awesome!”
Maruk grimaced as he stepped back over the rubble and examined his shield. The metal had crumpled against the stone, and there was a shadow of corrosion where the lich had been trapped against it.
“Oh,” the orc groaned. “This was custom made. I’m never going to be able to hammer these dents out.”
“No matter,” Yvaine said, slightly breathless as she sheathed her sword and patted Maruk comfortingly on the arm. “We’ll get a new one made for you. I know a wonderful Morelian smith, he’s practically a mage when it comes to working steel.”
“Is anyone hurt?” Aerin asked.
“Not yet, but I can already tell I’m going to be sore for a week,” Lavinia muttered. “Ran out of arrows before I’d even killed four of those things. I’ve never had to punch so many dead-eyed, mouth-breathing zombies in my life, and I’ve gotten into a lot of tavern brawls.”
“How many?” Dehn asked with interest.
“What?” The ranger frowned.
“How many tavern brawls have you been in?”
“What kind of a question is that?” Lavinia shot back. “Who keeps track?”
“I do,” Dehn replied. “Bet I’ve gotten into more fights than you. Bet I’ve won more, too.”
“Please,” Lavinia scoffed. “People tripping over you doesn’t count as a takedown, you know.”
“Alright, put ‘em up!” The halfling raised his fists.
“Hey, guys, focus,” I said and I put a hand on Lavinia’s shoulder before she could take Dehn up on his challenge. “You can spar later. Let’s go find those books.”
Chapter 4
While Lavinia gathered up her arrows and Dehn relieved the dead cultists of their knives, which he intended to use to decorate his room back at the guild hall, Emeline approached the broken coffin and studied the remaining inscriptions on the inside with a concerned frown.
“The lich looked a lot like those statues we saw outside,” the panthera woman remarked. “And all the carvings.”
“I noticed that, too,” I said.
Emeline glanced over to me, and there was an uncharacteristic hint of fear in her green eyes.
“You don’t think the lich was actually... you know...”
“Eutrem?” Aerin shook her head. “If that thing was actually a goddess, we wouldn’t have been able to kill it.”
“She’s right,” Lena confirmed. “That wasn’t Eutrem. The cultists might have wrapped it up to look like her as a way to honor her, though. Or maybe they hoped to summon the goddess herself. There are old legends that say she would possess the corpses of the dead to do her work.”
“Isn’t that charming,” Maruk said flatly. “Not to rush anyone,” - he cast a pointed glance over to Dehn, who had moved on to pick over the weapons left behind by the corpses the lich had summoned - “but if we’re all quite finished here, I would like to get out of this moldy basement.”
“Our group passed a library before,” Emeline said. “When we first came in. I think I remember how to get back.”
I whistled for Merlin, who had contented himself with gnawing on the femur he’d found since the fight had ended, and he trailed after us with his tail swinging as Emeline led the way back out of the crypt. The panthera mage’s sense of direction was impeccable, and even in the maze of halls that all looked exactly the same to me, she managed to lead us back to the entrance hall where we’d first come in within a matter of minutes, and from there to the cultis
ts’ library.
The library looked pretty much exactly like what I would have expected from the cult at this point. The shelves were decorated with nearly as many bones as there were books, and on the walls hung scrolls and tapestries that depicted various people meeting their ends in all sorts of violent ways, with Eutrem always presiding over them. The frayed carpet had bloodstains on it, and there was an ornate dagger mounted on the wall at the end of the room.
“Oh! Dibs on the knife!” Dehn shouted, and he raced forward to grab it before any of us could challenge him. The halfling grunted as he tried to reach the dagger, but it was mounted just slightly too high up on the wall for him to reach, and he only succeeded in brushing his fingers against the hilt.
“Here, allow me,” Maruk offered gallantly as he walked up behind Dehn, but before he had even touched the handle, Dehn swatted him back.
“I got it, I got it!” the halfling insisted. He gave another little jump and grasped for the dagger but missed.
“Leave him to it,” Lavinia called to Maruk. “Come help us find these books.”
To my relief, we were able to find all the texts that the Mage Academy was looking for in the library, which meant we wouldn’t have to scour the rest of this place for them. I kept an eye out for any books that might be useful to me and ended up taking a slim volume about necromancy and creating phylacteries in the hope that it could prove useful in future encounters with liches and the other undead, and Aerin took a few more to sell on the black market.
“Dehn, we have to go,” I said as we packed up the books. He’d had no more success at reaching the dagger while we’d been working.
“Hang on,” he grunted in reply as he strained on the tips of his toes to reach the knife. “I’ve almost got it.”
Merlin, who had finally grown bored with being a hound and reverted to his natural appearance in order to better rip up the tapestries while the rest of us were too preoccupied to stop him, wandered over to where the halfling stood.
