by Max Anthony
Most wizards, even after many decades of training and practice, needed to stand still and concentrate in order to cast their spells. They needed to mumble and point, waving their arms in the air, occasionally rolling their eyes into their heads even to perform a minor feat such as conjuring a slug. Rasmus was not those wizards. As he continued his headlong flight, he muttered a couple of words and twitched his fingers once or twice. Then he pointed back over his shoulder and a small, orange light shot away from the end of his finger. It sped across the gap between he and the pursuing horde, until it connected with the chest of one of the creatures. Then, this small orange light exploded with violent force as it rapidly expanded in the corridor. Arms and legs were torn away by the force of the blast, and dozens of the creatures were hurled bodily into the walls or into their fellows.
It was often thought that wizards were immune to their own magic. This was not so, and Rasmus would have been badly burned by the expanding flames had they struck him. Fortunately, he was well-practised in the arts of deploying explosives in confined spaces, and had timed his spell such that it coincided with him darting away along a corridor to the left. The flames licked at the back of his robes, singed a few of his hairs, but otherwise left him unharmed. You can’t beat a good old fireball he thought, imagining himself giving a lecture on the subject to some of the younger wizards back at the university.
Before the ravening dead had managed to clear away the debris of their forcibly deconstructed fellows, thief and wizard had performed a series of dinking left-right-right evasive manoeuvres along several more corridors, hopeful that they might delay the pursuit. Their hopes did not come to fruition and one such turn brought them face-to-face with six of the grey-faced people, who had evidently been familiar enough with the inside of the pyramid to head off the would-be plunderers of their temple.
Viddo punched the first one in the mouth, scattering teeth liberally about the passageway. A dagger followed the punch, cutting through dry, stiff tendons and connective tissue as it plunged into various areas about the creature’s abdomen. Spouting blood was notable by its absence. Viddo had a natural eye for a weak spot, but it took him three or four tries to discover the eye to be a good place to stab. This was no surprise, since most things tended to fall over when they had a sharp piece of metal jabbed into their brains.
The other creatures had not been idle while Viddo probed their colleague, and they attacked the thief, using their long, yellow fingernails as claws and their fists as crude bludgeons. In the same way that Rasmus was a master in his profession, Viddo was also at the pinnacle of his. He dodged and ducked, his outline a blur as he evaded the attempts to injure him. A grey hand flew into the air, followed by a grey nose and then a grey foot, each sliced away by the dancing blades that Viddo wielded.
Eventually a questing hand did make contact, but the fingernails slid over the thin, supple leather breastplate that Viddo kept upon himself at all times, except when he was in the bath or in the private company of a lady.
While Rasmus did not carry a stave with him, which would have been an excellent implement with which to beat these creatures, he did carry a foot-long metal-headed cosh, which was generally tucked into his belt. Not wanting to deploy another of his repertoire of spells at the moment, Rasmus used this cosh effectively, smashing a couple of jawbones and a trio of collarbones. The undead did not flinch in pain, but their bodies were still vulnerable to the damage wrought.
Within twenty seconds of the combat starting, the six creatures were reduced to a flopping, twitching mass on the floor. They were only weak undead after all, and in small numbers hardly a threat to two such strapping adventurers as these. The pursuing pack was a different matter, and even this slight delay had given them the opportunity to locate the interlopers and set off after them again. Several of the frontrunners had obvious burn marks over their frontages, where Rasmus’ fireball had caught them at the extremes of its range.
“I’d like to see what’s down that hole in the room back there!” said Viddo, his face alight with the excitement of it all.
“I don’t fancy making it through six thousand zombies!” replied Rasmus, in full flight.
“No indeed. We must skedaddle in order to gather our thoughts!” said the thief, pulling easily into the lead and thereby exposing Rasmus to the lion’s share of the danger.
The sacrificial wizard thought Rasmus sourly, wondering if he could trip the thief over and claim it was an accident. Perhaps sensing his colleague’s ill-will, Viddo opened up an even greater lead, before flashing away along a new corridor. With scrapings and patterings not far behind, Rasmus followed. The wizard found himself unexpectedly at the stairs leading upwards and almost tripped over the first tread in his haste to adjust. Up they flew, making the ascent in somewhat less than half of the time it had taken them to make the descent.
At the top, Rasmus knew the balcony was close ahead and he emerged onto it at full pelt. What happened next took place in a much shorter amount of time than it would take to describe it. As Rasmus collided with the back of the stationary thief, that same thief asked if Rasmus had memorised a spell of levitation, to which the wizard replied that he had indeed memorised a single such spell. As he was speaking these words, Rasmus noticed that the dead creatures were already ahead of them on the balcony, whilst behind them were the distinct sounds to indicate the imminent arrival of more.
Without a further pause, Viddo leaped over the low parapet and into the wide-open space of the huge central room. A fraction of a second later, he was followed by Rasmus, who triggered his levitate spell just as his feet left the safety of the balcony.
Viddo sailed through the air, though not with the same speed that one might normally sail were one to find oneself in the middle of a headlong fall to one’s doom. Instead, Viddo reached a certain velocity, from which his speed increased no further. Behind him and higher above, Rasmus floated serenely through the air as the magic of his spell kept him in control of his fall. The wizard looked back and saw that the balcony was now so crammed with undead that several of them were pushed off the edge, causing them to fall to the floor below.
Falling fast, but not impossibly so, Viddo dropped through the ten-feet-wide hole that they’d noted from above when they’d first entered the temple. The thief’s hand snaked out, striking the lip of the hole with a violent contact that he used to slow his fall. Viddo was almost impossibly agile, and Rasmus had once seen him land safely after jumping off the edge of a two-hundred feet high cliff, because he was too lazy to use the path. Every time he’d fallen close to an outcrop or jutting rock, the thief had used the surface imperfection to slow his fall to the bottom, until he’d landed gently with no greater injury than scuffed hands and a bruised elbow. Only the very best thieves could manage to do this with any form of certainty.
As Rasmus drifted down, he saw that not all of the creatures had left the room in pursuit of the adventurers. In fact, several hundred of them remained and, having been alerted by the falling thief, now cast their blank eyes upwards at the incoming wizard. Where before they had eschewed the dais, now they clambered onto it, arms reaching towards Rasmus.
“I’m going to have to hit that hole dead centre,” the wizard said to himself. “Else they will tear me apart.”
Further problems confronted him and he grunted in pain when a lump of stone hit him on the leg. More stones flew in his direction, most of them poorly-aimed, but hurled enthusiastically. Rasmus had to fend off two or three more pieces of rock with his hands and arms, but was struck by three or four others, luckily in places that would only bruise, rather than do a permanent injury.
With nothing better to do, his brain wondered where the zombies had found these rocks, given that the stone-working expertise which had been responsible for this city had left no other signs of spoil or rubble. Furthermore, he was slightly irritated that this was his first ever encounter where the undead had shown themselves capable of throwing objects. He’d destroyed his f
air share of the blighters in the past and not once had they ever shown the initiative to throw anything.
Before he’d reached any conclusion about how these undead had learned to throw stones, Rasmus found himself floating into the hole, hitting it dead-centre as he’d intended. The grey figures leaned out as far as they could, desperately waving their arms as they sought to grapple with their intended prey. With a sudden lurch of worry, Rasmus asked himself if these zombies had also learned to jump. He didn’t like the idea of struggling with a dozen of them clinging to his robes as he descended into the hole. It was his lucky day and these undead showed no talent for jumping, though several toppled off the edge in their eagerness, and dropped silently into the darkness.
The hole proved to be an exceptionally deep one and after a few minutes, the entrance above had become little more than a pinprick of faint light. Rasmus wasn’t especially fond of the dark, so summoned up another light spell, before realising that he might as well not have bothered. The sides of the hole were featureless and smooth, as grey as the stone above and, he assumed, as grey as the stone he’d find below.
After twenty minutes, Rasmus started to worry about the duration of his levitation spell. The more powerful the caster, the longer these things lasted, but since he’d never been required to levitate for longer than a minute or two, he’d not bothered to take much note of the maximum duration of his controlled descent. Would it last thirty minutes, or another two days? He really couldn’t remember, and he didn’t have his companion’s ability to fall nimbly and safely. If the spell expired before he reached the bottom, it was certain that the wizard would also expire when he made high-speed contact with the unyielding stone below. He’d seen what happened when a watermelon was dropped from a second-floor window and he didn’t have any desire to become the wizardly equivalent of that.
Rasmus’ patience and stress levels were tested to their extremes when it became apparent that the shaft had no intention of ending any time soon. The wizard muttered curses about the limitations of his levitation spell, in that it didn’t permit him to increase or decrease the rate of fall. He further cursed that he only had one such spell memorised, though in fairness he didn’t get out of bed each morning with the expectation that he’d be foolish enough to get himself into a situation where he’d need to survive two falls, nor indeed that he’d find himself in a hole more than two miles deep.
Eventually, the spell of levitation did expire, but when it did so Rasmus was little more than two feet from the bottom of the shaft – all the most successful adventurers had a lucky streak as wide as the Kopera river. Even so, his landing caused him to stumble in an ungainly fashion and he fell atop the smashed remains of one of the grey undead who had preceded him by falling.
“Steady on there!” came the voice of Viddo. “You’ve not even bought the poor lady a drink and already you’re squeezing her breast.”
Rasmus took a second or two to gather himself, at which point he realised he’d landed face-down in the bosom of a large-chested undead.
“Urgh!” he exclaimed, pushing himself to his feet with alacrity and making a few exaggerated spitting actions, whilst wiping his mouth with his hand.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t like it,” said Viddo. “I’ve heard about you wizards and your predilections.”
“I have no such predilections, you unpleasant man,” responded Rasmus, now sufficiently composed to take in his surroundings. “And where are we?”
“We appear to have found ourselves somewhere deep beneath the surface and in a chamber of some sort, with passages leading everywhere. I had a look around while I was waiting for you.”
Rasmus increased the illumination of his light spell, until it shone for thirty yards in all directions. They had landed in the centre of an empty room hewn from the rock, with walls and ceiling about twenty yards away from where they stood. The crumpled remains of the undead were on the floor around and about, with none of them having had any levitate spells available to save them.
“Did you search these bodies for valuables?” asked the wizard, getting the most important question out of the way first.
“Thoroughly. Not even a sodding copper earring,” said Viddo glumly. “Obviously, it was the poorer undead that decided to undertake this headlong tumble, doubtless with their wealthier colleagues holding back.”
“How’re your arms?” asked the wizard, knowing that a long fall like this would result in the thief taking numerous minor injuries.
“Not too bad, as it happens,” said he, showing his heavily bruised forearms. “I’ve fallen shorter distances and ended up worse off. The shaft was a bit smoother than I’d have liked, but you can’t have everything, can you? I’m quite pleased with the result, as it happens – I can’t recall the time I fell anything like as far.”
Dismissing his friend’s bruised forearms as a minor problem in the bigger picture, Rasmus changed the subject. “This is all a bit exciting,” he said. “Where do you think we are?”
“I have no idea whatsoever,” said Viddo. “But if you look over there at the walls and ceilings, you can see that the rock here is much less evenly carved than the rock of the shaft and the city above.”
Rasmus brought the information he’d been spoon fed to its conclusion. “So, whoever made this room weren’t the same people as those who made the shaft.”
“That’s how I would view matters.”
“And the presence of the shaft indicates that the people above were looking for something down here. Or why else would you make a two-mile deep shaft?”
“Not for a dare, that’s for sure,” said Viddo.
Rasmus furrowed his brow as he thought further. “Those writings we found in that house looked like they were counting down to something. Furthermore, all of the people gathered must have come in from the city in order to see something at the shaft.”
“As if they thought they’d found what it was they were looking for and everyone wanted to gather in order to see what it was,” said Viddo.
“Except that the thing they found wasn’t as friendly as they thought it would be and it killed them all, before turning them into undead,” replied Rasmus.
“That’s as far as my musings have taken me,” said Viddo. “The people above were looking for something important to them – treasure most likely.”
“Or their god,” said Rasmus.
“Whatever they found, it appears to have shown little concern about killing all of its would-be followers.”
“There’s an awful lot of people up there,” said Rasmus. “Some of them may have been accomplished warriors, wizards, priests and thieves. If it murdered them all, it must have been a being of incredible power.”
“Or beings,” said Viddo, adding the plural.
“On the other hand, the people above may have been a very unpleasant bunch and might have brought this wrath down upon themselves.”
“Who knows?” Viddo said with a shrug.
“Which way are we heading?” asked Rasmus, peering off into the gloom.
“Over there, I think,” said Viddo. “Though there’s no method to the choice – I’ve simply taken a fancy to heading that way. But before we go, can you conjure us up some food and water? I’m getting a bit peckish.”
Rasmus sighed a long-suffering sigh. “How many times do we have to go through this? I’m a wizard. I can’t conjure up food and drink. You need a priest for that.”
“Can’t you summon a snake or an alligator for us to slaughter and eat?”
“It doesn’t work like that, as well you know! The summoned creatures only last for a few minutes and then they disappear. Even if we were to butcher one, its flesh would rapidly decompose or vanish before we could eat it.”
“What spells do you have?” asked Viddo accusingly.
“When you discount the spells you had me waste in the cave far above, I have several fireballs and a couple of lightning bolts, though they tend to bounce around dangerously when cast near stone
walls. I could bring forth a few hefty beasts, a wall made of flame and there’re a few melee-range surprises in there as well. All the usual stuff.”
“Can you teleport us out of here?”
“Nope. Not got one of those spells to hand. They’re a bit dodgy anyway. You never know whether you’re going to appear too high, too low, or fifty miles to the east of where you intended. I’ve always found it easier to just get to places on foot,” said Rasmus.
“Never mind,” said Viddo. “I’ll not starve to death for a couple of weeks anyway, and hopefully we’ll find some water down here.” There it was, the possibility of starvation dismissed for the moment, in order to focus on the joy of exploration.
They walked in the direction that Viddo had indicated, the light from the wizard’s spell following them like a bobbing globe as they went. In contrast to the city above, this chamber was hacked from the rock, rather than being lovingly carved. Whoever had made this wasn’t interested in the craftsmanship and their work was done at speed. Or as much speed as it’s possible to muster when chipping away at solid rock thought Viddo to himself.
Rasmus believed they were headed to the north, not that it was especially important which direction they went. The room ended at a passageway ten feet high and ten feet wide. It proceeded with only moderate deviations to the left and right, while the floor was just uneven enough that the pair had to take care with their footing. The wizard reduced his light spell to a few feet around them. He didn’t know what was down here and it made sense that they did their best to remain unnoticed.
“This looks like an ancient catacomb,” said Viddo.
“Or a dungeon,” said Rasmus.
“I prefer to think of it as a catacomb,” said the thief. “The dead have often been buried with their treasure and I’ve always had the opinion that once you’re dead, you can’t spend it. Therefore, I feel it incumbent upon me to relieve the dead of all their once-worldly riches. If it’s an ancient dungeon, I don’t want to find out what’s been imprisoned down here.”
