“Everyone in, and let’s stay sharp.” The group moved into formation as Anahi pulled her bow off her shoulder. A minute or two later and her vision cleared; the glare of the sun seemed far brighter than it had been before. As she walked into the cave with everyone else, she found that she could see a dozen feet ahead of her in the dark. It wasn’t clear sight, but it was good enough. She unconsciously patted the remaining potions she had stored on her belt in a special pouch.
The air of the dungeon was dank, and smelled like a dead animal that had been in the sun too long. The ground was wet and a bit squishy, and she thought she saw moss growing along one wall. She heard nothing but the squelching footsteps of the adventurers as they walked further into the dungeon.
Innear held a fisted hand up, then knelt down to examine something. Anahi held an arrow loosely in one hand as she watched, ready to launch when given the word. Innear had his special bow out as well but kept it shouldered for the moment.
Despite her best efforts, she felt a thread of fear invading her mind like a dark smoke. She had spent the majority of her life afraid, and she’d recently become much stronger, but this fear felt different. It permeated her body, pushing at her mind for better access. Shaking her head, she focused ahead on what was happening.
Innear made a hand signal so everyone stopped, then he motioned Anahi forward. Despite her fear, she was fascinated as she watched the scout check for traps. Then he found one, and she helped him disable it before placing it to the side. As she moved her eyes up the wall, she noticed the metal points of arrows embedded into the stone wall. There were over a dozen of them on her right, and another group on the left. She shivered.
The group moved forward again, although much slower than before. The first sounds came to the group after another dozen steps in, echoing down the stone tunnel. At first, Anahi thought that someone was breaking sticks to make a fire, but then dismissed the idea. There were too many snapping sounds for that.
Innear kept a steady pace, but the sounds grew louder. Finally, he held another closed fist up, and she heard Mos pull his sword free. Nocking her arrow, she waited breathlessly for whatever was coming their way to arrive.
The smell increased, and Anahi gagged in response. She heard a bow twang, and looked up to see Innear nocking another arrow. A group of cats were shuffling forward, their eyes gleaming strangely. Jessel cursed behind her.
Mos was the first to name them. “Zombies.”
Innear loosed another arrow; this one was a freezing arrow that hit one creature and spread to the nearby group. Moving to get a clear shot, Anahi moved between Mos and Geb, her shot a bit off as the arrow impacted a frozen cat’s forehead. She had been aiming for an eye, but her temporary night vision was affecting her aim.
“Everyone else stay back and let the archers work,” ordered Geb.
The next arrow penetrated the cat’s skull but had no overall effect on the shuffling attack; the unfrozen ones kept moving forward. Small animals moved between them, including rats, weasels and raccoons, each plodding forward until there was only a few feet difference between the adventurers and the animal zombies.
Nocking another arrow, Anahi calmed her breathing before firing on a second cat. This time she did hit it in the eye, and the arrow penetrated a hand-length into the cat’s head. The unnatural light in its eyes dimmed further, until the cat fell over and died.
She prepared to loose again but Geb said, “Stand down, archers.” Then he moved forward with Innear to begin hacking the smaller creatures to pieces. Jessel was watching their backs, so Anahi relaxed for a moment as her mind adjusted to this new reality. Never in her life had she seen monsters like this, and they terrified her. She thought she’d heard before that zombies like these were actually smaller monsters that infected a host, but regardless of how they were created, most agreed that a shot to the brain or hacking them to pieces would stop them.
Her calm was shattered as the rats and weasels got close enough to attack. The rats’ teeth looked sharper in their emaciated faces than they had when the animals were alive, and she felt cold teeth bite into the leather of her boot. She stomped down, catching one in a crushing attack but the other lurch-scampered away. She tried to pull her dagger free but was having trouble finding the time to do so as more small animals poured into them.
Mos leaned down to kill a weasel only to have a rat jump at his head. He batted the rat away, towards Anahi, and she stomped on its head while it was dazed. A weasel began running up her leg just as she got her dagger free; its smell was nauseating so close. Its skin had sloughed off in places, and small pustules had formed along its back.
She slashed the weasel with her dagger and threw it to the ground as hard as she could. Then she brought her foot down hard on the weasel’s head.
Anahi had been so absorbed in defending herself that she had ignored the larger battle. Jessel yelled something, but she didn’t turn to look, too transfixed by the tableau in front of her. Dead humans, goblins, and one large ork were now shuffling forward, but their movements were smoother than the small animals, and some of them held weapons. Geb began battling the large ork, while Innear badly damaged the goblin but was being pushed back by a human zombie.
When Anahi saw the man, her first disjointed thought was to wonder whether she knew this person or not. His clothing was similar to all the other poorer areas of Ludus. Long, scraggly hair was matted to the monster’s head and it moaned.
Anahi focused, ignoring the small animals unless they bit or jumped on her, and aimed at the human. The moment Innear pushed the zombie human back, she released, and the arrow hit low, taking it in the throat. The zombie didn’t drop its sword, but did reach up with its other hand to paw at the arrow. Given an opening, Innear flicked his sword and beheaded the zombie.
Jessel yelled again, and Anahi turned around to find the tunnel blocked in the direction they’d come. A small door near the floor of the dungeon had opened, and had released more small zombie animals. Jessel was trying to hold them all off, but a dozen cuts on his arms and legs told her that he likely wouldn’t be able to by himself.
Anahi loosed arrow after arrow, not even aiming for specific areas on the small animals but only hoping to slow them down so Jessel could kill them. She missed once or twice, but the flood of animals was too close to miss very often.
Then she reached for another arrow only to find her quiver empty. She had a second quiver of arrows on her left, but didn’t want to use it until she absolutely had to. Shouldering her bow, she stomped on heads and used her dagger to slash or stab a few that were too big to kill that way, or that began climbing her body. Her mind was empty, but she stayed focused, reacting to each new threat as they came into reach.
If she had actually ever let herself think about what she was doing, the horror of the situation might have overwhelmed her.
Once all the larger enemies had been put down, the team could all focus on the smaller threats. It didn’t take long after that until all the zombie animals were dead, or at least immobile, and Anahi began to woodenly reclaim as many arrows as she could. The missiles that had struck bone had all mostly broken, mostly shattered heads, but she kept the shafts anyway in case she could repair them.
All the arrows that she’d recovered were disgusting and smelly now, but she chalked the entire experience up to one of the less glamorous parts of being an adventurer. The moment she got back to civilization, she planned to thoroughly clean her arrows, or maybe even burn them.
Now that her quiver had been at least partially refilled, she turned back and leaned against one rocky wall. Geb was sitting with his back against the wall as he drank from his canteen. Innear was trying to scavenge swords and anything else he could find from the zombies, before moving the larger dead to the side of the passage. The ork zombie’s head lay a few feet from its body, a small pile of broken weapons right next to it.
Anahi blinked, having a difficult time understanding how the adventurers could just bounce bac
k from something like this, begin working again like they hadn’t all almost died.
Innear said over his shoulder, “Some of these weapons still have value if we can get them to a good blacksmith. The daggers are mostly junk, but the human zombie had some armor that only needs to be cleaned and repaired.”
Geb nodded and only replied, “Good.”
Mos finished a health potion and put the bottle back in his potion satchel. He’d taken several nasty bites and cuts. The zombies couldn’t turn them into zombies unless one of their group died or almost died nearby, but the things were unsettling. From what Anahi had seen, Mos had only been badly cut and bitten a few times, probably not worth using a health potion, but she didn’t blame him for drinking it. She’d never felt more unclean in her life.
The group stayed silent for a long moment, before Jessel growled, “Why in all the hells did this place have to have zombies?”
Beyond the Village Borders, Chapter Seven
Once outside, before the group was about to enter the dungeon again, Innear brought out a pouch of jerky, and carefully everyone took a piece or two, not touching the food with their bare hands. “Eat up while you can. We’re heading out in a few minutes.”
Jessel groaned, but Anahi said nothing. She felt proud for having carried her own weight, but wondered what might be ahead of them. They easily could have lost a person or two during the earlier battle, and everyone knew that dungeons got harder the closer they came to the treasure.
They’d already ferried the loot out of the dungeon, hiding it next to the packs before getting ready to head back in. Innear made sure that the traps hadn’t reset first, and luckily, they hadn’t.
Geb said, “Night vision will last another hour, so be ready to drink down a second potion when it starts to fade.” With that, everyone stood up and got into formation. Innear led them back into the dungeon again, and the group went deeper than they had been before.
The first noticeable change was the dirt floor changing to stone. Innear whispered something up ahead, but Anahi couldn’t make out what he’d said. Then their pace slowed again as Innear tested each stone before stepping on it. For a few seconds Anahi thought she saw his hands glowing, but dismissed it as a trick of night vision.
Finally, the group came to a stop as Innear marked a stone with white chalk. The scout said, “Don’t step on anything I’ve marked with chalk.” Mos nodded, carefully stepping around the marked stone. Anahi followed, wondering what the mark meant. It couldn’t be anything good, that was clear, but was it a trap, or something else?
She passed a half-dozen traps and marked stone before Innear called a halt again. What had been a straight, uniform passage opened up with carved stone doorways on each side. The scout peered into each while hiding behind the wall, then pulled out a piece of cured leather he was using as a makeshift map and made a precise cut in it to mark where the doors were.
Geb and Innear conversed while the rest of the group waited. Anahi only overheard a bit, their voices low in the dank, cold air.
“…check them out to avoid being…”
“If we had another team, …”
“…either way, it’s a chance…”
This went on for a few minutes, before Geb turned to address the team. “We’ve got two doors here and I think we need to check them out. If we don’t, we could be flanked, although that can happen even if we do try to be thorough. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We’re not splitting the team, but I want Mos and Jessel watching our backs when we go in. Zombies kill by using overwhelming numbers or close confines, and they could have both. I’d rather not be trapped in a room if and when they come.”
Anahi lost sight of Innear as he turned into the right doorway. Geb stood between the arches, while Mos faced ahead and Jessel behind. Anahi stood somewhere in the middle of the loose formation. A few moments later she heard a small clicking sound, and Geb moved forward.
To her surprise, Mos respectfully motioned for her to enter ahead of him and Jessel while they were mostly watching the other direction. Nodding, she silently stepped into the doorway. The first thing she saw was a dozen or more chalk marks indicating where Innear had found traps. She knew what the marks meant for sure now after hearing Jessel grumble behind her earlier about the “damn traps” during the long passage of the dungeon.
Anahi’s night vision couldn’t make it to the edges of the room, but in the middle stood four massive pillars. In the center of the pillars was a sarcophagus, its broken lid off lying next to it. Geb was checking the sarcophagus as Innear paced around the room, marking more traps.
Walking forward to the pillars while avoiding the traps, Anahi marveled at the workmanship. The pillars were so large that she doubted Geb could wrap his arms around them, and carvings had been cut into each one. The language was unknown to her and definitely not Luda, but it had a fascinating look as the letters looped and ran together.
Innear cursed, moving away from a stone that had depressed slightly. Blood welled into his hand as he pressed against the wound on his side, then he unstopped a health potion before downing it. Then he pulled a thin shard of metal out of his body. After he wrapped his wound, he went back to checking traps, his movements slower and more careful than before as his hands danced over the stones.
Anahi’s eyes were drawn back to the stones, and she reached out to touch one when Geb grabbed her hand. “The first rule of dungeons is to touch nothing,” he said. His expression was entirely stern, and Anahi nodded, embarrassed for being so foolish.
Mos and Jessel stood at the entrance to the room as Innear continued to check for traps. A tense hour passed as they waited, and Anahi’s night vision faded to absolute darkness before she downed a second potion. She only had a few more left, although she suspected Innear had extras in his bag.
Abruptly, Innear stood up, straightening his back after checking the last stone in the room. A deep rumbling caused Anahi’s teeth to chatter as the stones beneath the sarcophagus fell away, revealing a worn set of stairs. She could only see the top two steps, but they each seemed to be coated in an oily substance and the smell was terrible as it wafted up from below.
Innear and Geb conversed again, and this time she didn’t bother to try and listen. There was no sound beyond their voices, but it was as if she could feel the evil below on her skin, like something was watching her from below. Her heart rate quickened in response like a frightened rabbit, and she had to steel her nerves to keep her body from moving away from the stairs.
Geb turned to the group. “Mos, can you peek into the other room beyond the second doorway and see if you see a similar setup? Don’t step into it, just look.” Mos nodded, and Anahi wondered what was happening. The path was right in front of them, and while she didn’t want to go down those stairs, she also wondered what the others were worried about.
Innear pulled his leather map out and started making new markings on it. Mos turned and left the room, peering into the other room while leaning on the stone doorway.
Rotting hands snapped out to grab the man, pulling Mos further into the second room. With a shout, Jessel drew his sword to help the other man, but Innear cursed, and yelled for Jessel to stop. The scout awkwardly ran toward the other man, avoiding the traps he’d marked, but he was too late. More screams tore from Mos’ throat as Jessel left the room to help. As soon as he’d crossed the threshold of the doorway, a slab of stone fell from the ceiling, locking Jessel out of the room, separating him from Anahi, Geb, and Innear.
Anahi heard a second voice begin screaming through the stone, and scrabbling sounds. Tears came unbidden to her eyes. She hadn’t known Mos or Jessel that well, but they had seemed to be decent, honest men, and she had come to trust them. Memories of Jessel’s dry sense of humor, cracking dark jokes around the campfire at night, and Mos’ quiet, thoughtful help ran through her mind. It was sudden, brutal, and unfair for both of them to die so quickly, without the team there to help them. She felt a massive wave of g
uilt.
“Why didn’t you try and save them?” she shouted, the sound echoing in the stone room.
Geb shook his head sadly. “We would have died as well. This dungeon is filled with death, it permeates the very stone. If we’re to survive, we need to move on if we want to get out.” Their leader’s voice was hard but kind, sounding far too much like her father’s had. She only had bits and pieces of memories about her parents, but she remembered her father’s voice to this day.
“Why did you—” began Anahi.
“Order Mos to check the other door?”
Anahi nodded, and Geb said, “We thought this place seemed different than the other adventurers had told us, and it might be a trap. I think Mos was in a hurry and his night vision ran out at a really bad time. Zombies are slow, remember?”
With a slow nod, Anahi wiped her tears away. Her father had said an adventurer’s life was hard, and she’d never witnessed the truth quite like she had today. She had a feeling that Geb was right about Mos, which meant a single mistake had killed two people. Jessel had likely hit a trap to set off the door, too, moving too hastily.
Innear pulled a torch from his pack. “Turn your eyes away.” Nodding, she closed her eyes and turned her head away. A bright light flared to life, pushing the darkness out of the room. Anahi put her hands over her eyes to ease the pain, until the torch disappeared and the darkness returned.
He must have thrown the torch down the staircase. Light shined where the steps descended further into the ground. She listened, but couldn’t hear anything other than her breathing, but then the dungeon shook, just like it had when the heavy stone door had fallen into place.
A feeling of dread came over Anahi. She realized with a start that she would have no one to protect her back any longer. This fact frightened her more than she would ever admit, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking behind her.
Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus Page 12
