by Jez Cajiao
Always, there was the feeling of eyes watching us, and occasionally, we’d see some of the more feral gnomes, but as long as we kept moving, they seemed to decide we weren’t worth the hassle.
“Giint, will you be safe enough going back to join the others through this?” I asked at one point, and he just laughed. I shrugged and dismissed it as unimportant for now, remembering what a handful he’d been to fight, now that he was aware of himself properly again. I almost felt sorry for the ferals if they attacked him.
He led us to a large door in one wall, braced and barred, with a circular lock on it, operated by a lever.
“There,” he said, turning and walking away.
“Oi!” I called after him, making him pause. “Anything we need to know about the area past this?” I asked, exasperated, and he bared his teeth at us in what I took for a smile.
“Don’t dieeee,” he snarled. As he passed Tang, he reached out furtively, and Tang passed him a small bag of something before holding his hands up as Yen grabbed his shoulder.
“It’s sugar, for fuck’s sake, nothing else…you know gnomes!” he said, and I shook my head, resolving again to let Restun deal with whatever it was when we got back.
The door took a few minutes to unlock, twisting and pulling on the metal that had settled into place over the years, but eventually, we managed it.
“Everyone ready?” I asked, and got a round of nods in return, as those without dark enhancements to their vision secured magelights to their armor. “Remember, people, we can’t slow down. Kill everything but keep going. The sooner we reach the Lich, the less time it has to gather its forces; let’s go!” I yanked the door open and jumped back as the first undead lunged forward out of the hallway.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a decrepit skeleton, its armor barely holding together. It bore no weapons and seemingly was barely able to move under its own violation. It had clearly been stationed there long ago, in the vain hope that the door would be opened.
Now that its reason for existing was fulfilled, I imagined a sense of relief as Grizz smashed it from its feet with a single blow of his gladius.
While not the ideal weapon for the undead, his incredible strength made short work of the creature, hacking its head clean and sending bone shards flying.
The animating force fled the skeleton, and Grizz ploughed into the hallway, his magelight casting weird shadows as he went.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted, matching action to words as I followed Lydia, who was second through the door. It was filled with filth; one wall was bulging inward, and there was a constant ‘drip-drip’ sound coming from somewhere overhead, along with a steady rivulet of foul water and scum that ran down the left-hand wall to gather on the floor in shallow puddles.
We ran on, coming to a crossroads and pausing to look at the choices: left, right or straight ahead. Grizz looked to me, and I pointed forward, shrugging, as Tang and Yen took turns scratching or burning an arrow into the wall where the gnomes would be able to see it.
Grizz nodded, and we were off again. The slight downward slope made it feel like we were almost falling as we ran forward, thundering along, with the clatter and racket of our weapons and armor building as we picked up speed.
“On the left!” Yen shouted, and Grizz altered his direction, seeing a skeleton come out of the darkness. It had been laid on the floor, but at our approach, it started to clamber to its feet. Grizz lashed out with his shield, smashing it into the wall with enough force that it collapsed back to sit on its ass, stunned. Jian took its head as he sprinted past, while the rest of us barely slowed.
Two more crossroads came and went before we hit our first dead end, retracing our footsteps and taking the right passage, then a left at the next one.
Ten more minutes passed before we took a turning that led out into a large room, skidding to halt.
We’d barely seen any undead up to this point, but here, we found dozens, and worst of all, they weren’t the docile kind.
As soon as we left the cover of the hallway, they struck. Four Shir, creatures I’d not seen since I first arrived in the UnderVerse, ran at us, lumbering towards us side by side.
They were huge creatures, humanoid, but more ox than man, with wide horns and massive shoulders. As the four lowered their heads in unison, I saw the plan. Either we’d split up, and they’d defeat us in detail, as dozens more undead ran behind them, or we’d stay together, and the Shir would smash us into paste.
I paused for a second, trying to figure out what to do, but for the first time, Lydia didn’t.
“Grizz, right flank! Jax, center… Shield! Jian, get their legs!” she snapped out, hunching behind her shield, and I followed her, seeing Grizz slide in on the right, locking his shield alongside my own.
As I settled into place, I felt a sudden searing heat wash over us as Jian’s demon let rip with its beam ability.
A terrible flare of heat seemed to fill the air, slamming into the four Shir and cutting from left to right. The plasma burned deep into their lumbering corpses, making them scream in fury as they caught fire, bones exploding and rotting flesh erupting into sooty smoke.
The blast had staggered them, destroying two and leaving the remaining two on the right damaged. We slammed into them seconds later, shields held up and braced. My naginata was gripped tight and held upright, further bracing the shield, yet I still cried out as we slammed into them, their sheer physical weight being enough to send us staggering backwards like we’d shoulder-charged a wall.
The Shir collapsed into piles of bones, though, and the others took up the attack, giving us time to recover. I staggered, my left arm totally numb and barely responding, while Grizz, with his massive shoulders, seemed to hardly have noticed the impact.
He lunged forward, stabbing down and shattering their skulls with his gladius, quickly making sure of the kills.
I grunted in relief as I felt a heal hit me and gritted my teeth, letting out a hiss of pain as my left shoulder popped back into place.
“Thanks, Arrin!” I called over my shoulder, knowing it could only be him, and grinned as a trio of Magic Missiles flashed past me seconds later, as I started rushing forward again. Grizz was already hacking and slashing his way into the next staggering wave of the undead. Lydia slid to a halt, bracing her shield and bashing a skeleton that had leapt at her. It cartwheeled backward, slamming into the floor with a clatter of breaking bones, before her mace slammed down, smashing the skull into smithereens.
Tiny firebolts flashed through the room, thrown by Miren’s summoned Flame Atronarch, and arrows cut through the air as well, slamming into the undead and staggering them more than killing, but that broke up their charge, allowing us to face more manageable numbers.
I lunged into the fray again, stabbing out with my naginata. In a stroke of inspiration, I began infusing it with a little healing energy and grinning when a stab to the chest, not normally fatal to an undead, made it scream before collapsing into a pile of moldy bones.
I twisted around, locking my shield back into place on my back, thankful again for the utility of the Legion armor design, feeling the hooks click as it slid to a halt, and I started to spin my naginata properly.
It was a pain in the ass using the shield and naginata together, and I knew I needed to practice with it, but not right now. I needed to hammer these fuckers out of the way and go, go, go!
I sprinted forward again, the flickering light from the various magelights sending dancing shadows across the vaulted ceiling and walls of the chamber, and I could feel the building adrenaline in the group.
We smashed through the next ranks, then more. I ducked down, flipping my naginata around and grabbing it in both hands near the base of the blade, swinging the metal clad base at an oncoming gnome corpse, the staggering creature seeming to smooth out its motions as it came closer, and I knew the Lich had assumed direct control.
“Too late, motherfucker!” I shouted, slamming the base into the side of
its head and sending the small three-foot figure flying, bones shattering and deaths-head lifting in my vision.
I grinned; there was something about fighting the undead that I just liked. There was no moral gray area. They were undead, they were attacking me, and they were essentially bags of bones, so when they were like this, they were almost fun.
“Left!” came Miren’s shout of warning, and I saw the disassembled bones starting to collect together to form an abomination. They were bouncing and clattering across the floor toward each other, and I paused, slamming the base of my weapon to the floor and standing still, bracing it in the crook of my arm as I started to cast.
A handful of seconds later, the Fireball materialized fully, and I threw it forward with a huff of exertion, sending it flashing across the distance that separated us to slam into the bones that were even now beginning to form a mound. Just before it landed, three ‘Magic Missiles’ impacted, blowing a hole in the middle; then my Fireball detonated, sending bone fragments flying across the room.
There was a scream of rage and pain somewhere in the distance, as the Lich casting the spell had to suffer the backlash of the collapsed spell.
“Go!” I shouted, as the undead around us staggered. The greater capacity for, well, everything that the Lich had bestowed by taking direct control was lost, and those that had been under its direct control at the time almost collapsed.
“Hoo-ah!” Grizz shouted, jumping into the air and using his shield to smash a staggering skeleton from its feet, even as his blade flicked out and severed another’s skull.
I shook my head as I sprinted forward again. The others were almost past me, and I couldn’t help but grin at Grizz’s exuberance. I pushed to catch up, seeing the others smashing their way forward. Lydia was doing amazing; she kept ducking her head down behind her shield and using her ‘Shield Bash’ ability, sending herself flying forwards, smashing the undead from their feet, while Jian ran behind her, spinning and slicing, sending the remains clattering to the floor permanently.
Miren and Stephanos had given up firing arrows and had instead concentrated on keeping up and shepherding Arrin as he cast spell after spell.
I stormed ahead, pushing myself harder and harder to catch up to the front line. Lydia saw me and dropped back, taking the time to slow so that her Stamina could recover, as I started to clear the way.
I spun my naginata end over end, in a style that I’d been taught was called Kali. I didn’t know the name for sure, but I remembered the training, using my left hand high on the haft as a guide and the right lower down, sweeping it back and forth, then stabbing up and out and yanking back. My left hand remained partially open, allowing me to slide the haft up and down fast, but I kept it tight enough that when a blow landed, I didn’t lose my weapon.
I stabbed out, cut, sliced, and swept the blade back and forth, taking an arm off here, a leg there, deflecting a badly thrust rotting spear and slicing off the arm that held it, then the leading foot the skeleton was braced on, then taking its head.
The battle dissolved into a flurry of stabs, cuts, and sweeps, and as I ran forward and jumped, using the base of my naginata almost like a pole vault, I slammed both feet into one of the oncoming skeleton’s skulls, catapulting it backwards in a pile of bones, before the room suddenly snapped back into focus, and I heard my labored breathing as my body tried to keep up with the demands placed on it.
I glanced about, seeing the room was filling with silent bones, and my team were still going, starting to pass me again.
“God damn it!” I grunted, digging deep and catching up again. Grizz dropped back to the third in line, behind Lydia, then me in second place.
We’d slipped into a routine, I realized, taking turns as the leading edge, smashing our way forward, then dropping back to third in line, catching our breath and refilling our stamina, before the second place stepped back up to take the lead, and the one who’d been in front moved into the third line, waiting for their turn again. It’d not been discussed, it just happened, like the way that Jian swept the injured and disabled undead up, smashing them and moving on, or the way that Tang and Bane appeared and disappeared, picking the outliers off; the way that Yen, who was skilling in magic, archery, and the sword protected and guided Arrin, Miren, and Stephanos, trading off with Arrin so they both had time to replenish their mana.
Lydia looked at me as she raced forward, her heavy Legionnaire armor fitting her more and more by the day, and I caught the flash of her grin as she went, returning it unthinkingly.
This was where she’d always wanted to be; maybe not underground in a sunken city out in the middle of the ocean, but adventuring, living on the edge, and being relied upon, respected as a warrior. I grinned as I remembered what I’d not told her yet.
Augustus had come to Restun, Romanus, and myself the day before we’d come down here, when we were talking. He’d explained that he’d named her Optio in the battle for the Airships, as he felt she deserved it, but he needed it ratified. The rank of Optio was apparently a rank that was ‘taken, not requested,’ Romanus had explained. You couldn’t apply for the Optio’s ranking; you had to be in the right place in the rankings, and show that you deserved it.
As leader of my personal squad, Lydia had the right of rank, and clearly the right of ability, so he’d named her, and now it was up to us to ratify it.
I’d taken great pleasure in approving it, and Restun and Romanus had agreed. She wasn’t a full Legionnaire, not yet. She needed a hell of a lot more training and to be brought up to a minimum standard of skill in all weapons, but that was coming.
As soon as we had time, she would begin her formal training, and as soon as she passed it, which none of us had any doubt would happen, she would be officially confirmed as Optio, the third rank a full Legionnaire could attain.
I grinned with excitement and pushed off again, digging in to take up my place in second behind her as we ran from the chamber, hitting the next corridor and racing down it.
We slowed as we hit a section of collapsed wall, covering half the corridor, then clambered up a pile of rubble that rose into the upper floor, finding the next wave of undead waiting for us.
This room was bigger than the last chamber, easily a hundred meters across, with a lower ceiling, but the circular room had recesses that were randomly filled with braced figures, and I felt my heart leap at the sight of them.
Golems!
There were dozens of Golems, easily thirty in sight, all ‘War’ models, but they were frozen in hibernation or death. I growled to myself as I realized that if they’d had the mana they’d need to respond to me, they’d have already swept the city clear of the undead.
Basically, they were the equivalent of being broke and visiting Fort Knox on a tour. There was all that wealth, and I knew I’d never get my hands on it.
I banished the annoyance and turned my attention back to the undead as the group slowed, realizing that they weren’t attacking.
I slowed as well, coming to a stop at the front of the wedge shape we’d unconsciously adopted, and I glared at the rows upon rows of silent figures.
The skeletons numbered in the hundreds, and I swallowed hard, knowing that this was beyond a problem. I’d been thinking we were cutting through them at speed, making our way to the Lich, and believing we weren’t far from escaping; now I saw I was horribly wrong.
While we’d been fighting the undead below, the Lich had essentially been keeping us busy as it got its real forces into place.
We were outnumbered. Horrifically so.
“What do we do, Jax?” Grizz asked, and I paused, looking around. The undead were at least three ranks deep. I couldn’t see beyond that in the darkness, not with the combination of lights and my DarkVision flaring in and out of focus.
Here and there, amongst the more standard humanoid forms, were others, some Xon’dike, a handful of Shir, a couple of huge crab-like things that seemed imposing, but the way the carapace hung on them, they looked l
ike they might actually be weaker than the rest, and a collection of small figures. At first, I’d taken them for gnomes, when I realized they had strange, thick flexible limbs like tentacles but solid looking, and strange ridges on their hairless bodies.
“Now you see that you have no chance…” a raspy voice addressed us, as though unused to speaking aloud. I spun, looking to my left, and saw a palanquin of bones being carried forwards through the massed undead, four enormous amalgamations of bone bearing it in spiked claws. “Surrender, and answer my questions truthfully, and perhaps I shall let you live.”
“Everyone always wants me to fucking surrender,” I muttered, and Grizz looked at me, cocking his head to the side. “Seriously, that’s what they all say. ‘Surrender…’ like anyone’s going to believe they won’t slaughter us, first chance they get. They always start with that, don’t they? ‘Drop your weapons,’ as if they don’t just want us to be easier to kill…” I muttered, then I raised my voice and called back to the figure I couldn’t quite make out on the Palanquin. “No, thank you. We don’t want to be murdered today, thanks very much!”
There was a long silence as the palanquin cleared the undead, several smaller skeletons being crushed by the bigger ones as they went.
“If you give Oath to leave my city with nothing beyond what you brought when you entered, I may permit you to live.” The figure eventually suggested, as though unsure.
“Nope. Want to go for strike three?” I called back to it, turning and whispering to my people. “Stephanos, that earth Golem, can it make things? Manipulate the ground, I mean?”
“Uh, yeah?” Stephanos said slowly. “But this is metal under us…”
“Fuck, okay, good point. Grizz, get ready to use your Iceshield. When it runs out, Lydia, you use yours. All ranged attacks are on the Lich: bows, magic, everything. Keep your back to the pit; we can run down there if we need to. Jian, is your demon ready for a second blast yet?”
