by Max Anthony
“This should be worth a bit,” Viddo said, showing Jera the ring he’d recovered.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” said Jera miserably. “What an awful place this is.”
“We’ve done these creatures neither a favour, nor a disservice,” said Rasmus, quietly and with sympathy. “They are nothing more than animated sacks of flesh, without dreams or desires. If I felt that they suffered, I would kill them all, yet there is no need for us to spend time doing so, or to concern ourselves about it.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Jera replied. “Still, I have not grown used to all of the sights that a career in adventuring can confront one with.”
“Give it time,” said Viddo. “Rasmus and I might appear to be heartless bastards, yet we have learned enough to know when it is time to care about something and when it is not. These undead do not need our sympathy.”
“Even so, let us leave the room,” Jera said.
“We can’t,” Viddo told her. “There’s a secret passage in that far wall. We have to take a look.”
There was nothing like a secret passageway to cheer up an adventurer. Rasmus and Jera followed Viddo as he skirted the room, avoiding the kicking legs of the hanging zombies. He reached a spot in the wall, where he reached up and pressed one of the blood-red gems. The gem sunk a full inch into the surrounding stone. There was a rumble and a three-feet-wide section of wall swung back into a passageway behind.
“How did you know that was there?” asked Jera, curious. “Are there signs I could look out for in order to find these hidden doors myself?”
“Certainly,” said Viddo. “If you look here on this gem, there is a slight blur, causing a faint change to the properties of the light. When you look closer, you can easily deduce that the last person to press the trigger had greasy fingers – doubtless the residue of a recently-consumed pie or similar pastry-based product.”
“And you saw all of that from the middle of the room?” asked Jera.
“One of the benefits of being a trained thief,” said Viddo airily. “Each profession has its skills, and you have witnessed one of mine.”
They switched their attention away from professional secrets and looked along the passage. It was lit, though dimly when compared to the other rooms on this floor. The walls were as smooth as any of the others in the castle and it turned to the left some way ahead. With his eyes peeled for danger, Viddo went in first, the other two following. The kicking zombies in the room behind were already well on the way to being forgotten.
After its left-hand turn, the passage soon went to the right and then ended at a door. This door was solid grey metal, with no handle or other feature to behold, apart from a small lock. Viddo checked the door and gave it a delicate rap with his knuckles.
“It’s about four inches thick,” he said. “I’m impressed by the effort it must have taken to get it up here.” With that, he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the lock and drew out his lock picks. He studied and muttered under his breath. Jera and Rasmus listened carefully since there was nothing more pressing to pay attention to. The thief could be heard describing magical wards that were protecting the door from intruders.
“Can you get it open?” asked Jera.
“I can, though it might take me a good few minutes to circumvent the magics. Then there’ll be an additional few seconds to disengage the lock.”
In normal circumstances, Rasmus would have allowed Viddo to partake in his personal game of cat-and-mouse with locksmiths he’d never meet. On this occasion, the wizard felt as if they’d be better off trying to take the most efficient route to their goal. He asked a question directly, to give Viddo the least opportunity for manoeuvre.
“Will that key Jera found under the plant pot fit in this door and avoid triggering the magics?”
“Yes,” said Viddo. “That’s not the point, though.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was a point,” said Rasmus. “However, we found that key using ingenuity and perspicacity, therefore it is more of a moral victory to use it to our benefit, instead of waiting here while you remain hunched over a lock for the next fifteen minutes.”
Viddo knew when he was beaten. Without offering a case in his defence, he withdrew the key from a concealed pocket and pushed it into the lock. It turned easily and without a noise. The door swung back, offering entry into a room which they were not surprised to find Baron Valps had wanted to keep well-hidden.
18
The room they’d revealed was huge – at least fifty feet to a side and with a ceiling so high that it must have eaten into the fourth floor above. It was lit by the most powerful blood gem illumination they’d seen so far – there were dozens of the gems about the place, throwing their sickly light onto every surface, whilst still managing to sprinkle shadows into places where perhaps there should have been none.
In the centre of the room was a low wall, four feet high and made from the same expertly-cut blocks of stone as the rest of the castle. This wall made a complete square in the centre of the room and was fifteen feet to each side. The space within these walls was filled by something, which appeared almost black in colour, in spite of the amount of light falling upon its surface. It was a thick liquid, which glistened darkly and gave the impression of movement, even though there was nothing to disturb the surface. All around the base of this open tank were steel pipes, which emerged from the floor at irregular intervals, bent at right-angles and then fed into the tank. Other pipes – much fewer in number - went upwards from the liquid, vanishing into various places in the walls and ceiling above. There were metal valves on many of the pipes, opened and closed by rotating discs that might have been metal or stone.
The room was filled with figures – dozens or perhaps more than a hundred of them. These figures were animated, rotting corpses, and they clustered around the central wall as if they were desperate for whatever the contents might be, yet too scared to lean over and drink. At the side closest to the adventurers, it looked as if there were a leak from the tank, and seven or eight of the figures had their faces pressed to the ground, jostling each other to lick the spillage from the ground.
Confronted by a sight like this, Viddo would usually have closed the door quietly without entering the room, in order to discuss tactics and whether or not it was worth entering the room at all. He wasn’t given an opportunity to consider the decision – there was a series of hissing, hate-filled moans and gasps from the far side of the chamber, where the figures had a clear view of the open door. Within moments, all of the creatures inside had turned and they began lurching towards the door at a greater speed than one would have expected.
“Fight,” said Rasmus. He didn’t want to later discover there was something vital in what was clearly a greatly important room, and that the door was blocked by a swarm of undead pushing against the other side. To match actions to words, Rasmus cast his final acid ball spell at a place where the zombies where the thickest. The spell exploded in a burst of near-luminous green, coating the closest thirty undead in glutinous acid, which released a heavy vapour into the air as it melted flesh from bones. As soon as he’d cleared an area of the creatures, Rasmus erected a faintly-shimmering force shield, which stretched from the wall near the door and all the way to the tank of liquid in the centre. The wizard was hoping that their attackers would be forced to come all the way around the tank in order to reach the trio. On top of this, the impenetrable wall of the spell would ensure that the undead were not able to attack from all sides. Jera and Viddo entered the room with their weapons drawn. Rasmus allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as he watched low-level undead bouncing against the far side of his almost-invisible magical wall.
To the left of the doorway and a few feet into the room, Viddo stood with his legs slightly apart and his shortswords drawn. His arms felt lighter than usual and an unfelt wind ruffled his pantaloons. He saw with disgust how the zombies which had been licking at the floor were trampled by their
fellows, as the animated cadavers reached their filthy hands towards the adventurers who’d disturbed them. Viddo breathed in deeply, though he wasn’t afraid. He’d wanted a pair of trousers like these for years and after all the longing, he found himself about to see how they affected him in battle. Ahead, six zombies were only mere feet away. Viddo exhaled and raised his swords.
Directly in front of the doorway, Jera had her two-handed axe lifted and ready. She was a few feet from Viddo and could sense his excitement. She watched him holding his body tensed in preparation for the upcoming violence. Coming close, six zombies staggered forward, their eyes staring ahead, never quite making eye contact with either the adventurers or their fellow undead. Jera leapt, covering the intervening space in a spring that gave no sign of build-up or a tensing of her muscles. When she landed, Jera executed her favourite move that Goosty the Placid had only needed to show her once, such was her aptitude for it. Jera felt the magical blade of her battle-axe sever limbs, necks, sinew and bone as she spun in a blindingly-fast whirlwind of razor-sharp steel and strength. All six zombies fell backwards, killed by a single blow.
“Awww,” said Viddo. “I was looking forward to stabbing those ones!”
Feeling robbed, albeit in a good cause, Viddo dashed towards a gathering of zombies which had been close behind the trail-blazers which Jera had just mown down. One shortsword darted out, cutting away a hand. At the same time as it sliced off the hand, an outline of the blade appeared in the air a foot to the right, where it opened a wide cut in the stomach of the adjacent zombie. Viddo crouched and lunged with his second sword. His strike plunged deeply into the stomach of one undead, with a mirror of the blade stabbing a separate zombie in the chest. He tried again, finding each attack striking another opponent close by as the magic of his new pants doubled each attack.
“I love these trousers!” he said aloud in his excitement.
“Pantaloons,” he heard Rasmus correct him from behind. “Ridiculous pantaloons.”
Unwilling to have his mood dampened by a robe-wearing buffoon who was almost out of worthwhile magic, Viddo threw himself enthusiastically into the fray. His initial feeling of invincibility was soon dissipated when his mind calculated how many opponents remained within the room. Although Rasmus’ force shield had performed its desired task of herding many of the undead the long way around the room, a number had broken the rules of etiquette and had started to clamber onto the thick stone wall of the tank, evidently in order to circumvent the farthest edge of the wizard’s barrier spell. A shape dashed in this direction, a staff high above its head and ready to bludgeon any over-eager zombies into paste. Hoping that Rasmus could do enough to stop them from becoming surrounded, Viddo turned his focus on the incoming hordes.
Having swept aside a half-dozen low-level undead, Jera added to her tally by lopping off a nearby head and then a leg. Two more enemies fell to the ground and a third soon followed, with its skull split open by a huge overhand axe chop. As she fought, Jera noticed the finesse of Viddo’s attacks – he was graceful even without his blade dancing trousers to assist him. The thief twirled and ducked as he cut through a second pack of zombies which had assailed him. The creatures were going to arrive in greater numbers soon – there was a lot of space around the central tank wall and the zombies pushed at each other as they tried to become the first into the fray.
Suddenly, Viddo trod upon an arm that had been severed at the elbow. The normally agile thief tottered back a pace and the undead pressed forward. A clenched fist struck him in the eye and a kick almost connected with his balls. Seeing Viddo in danger of a more serious injury, Jera charged across the room, shoulder first and with her axe held cross-ways ahead of her. She collided with the mass of zombies, knocking several stumbling away, as if she were several times heavier than her true weight. It took her no time at all to recover and her axe swept into the pack, cutting through everything it struck.
Viddo regained his balance and stood as close to Jera as he could. He’d fought alongside many axe-wielders before and knew exactly the right distance to keep in order that he not hinder their strokes. “When did you learn how to do that?” he asked, plunging the same sword into two undead chests simultaneously.
“Do what?” asked Jera, smashing the top of the battle-axe into a collection of yellow-brown teeth.
“That battle charge you just did.”
“It’s called a battle charge, is it? I did one earlier against that gargantuan undead in the dungeon below us. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“You must have passed a profession threshold while we’ve been in this castle,” Viddo replied, his swords never slowing for a moment.
“I have no idea what a profession threshold is.” A greeny-grey arm flew into the air. “And perhaps we should have this conversation at a more appropriate moment.”
They stopped speaking for a time and turned their attention to the task in hand. Although the tank took up a large area in the centre of the room, there was still nearly twenty feet between the tank’s wall and the boundaries of the room. It was a lot for two people to defend, especially when their attackers showed no hesitation in hurling themselves bodily upon the blades which cut them down so readily. Soon, the footing was treacherous and the adventurers were pushed back, foot by reluctant foot in the direction of the door.
Off to the right, Rasmus was having a whale of a time. Every time a zombie clambered onto the tank wall and tried to shuffle its way around the edge of his force shield, he gave it a smack with his staff and sent it into the tank, which he now realised contained blood. He’d never seen blood in such quantities before and it seemed to be especially glutinous, such that the falling zombies hardly made a splash at all. Without realising it, Rasmus was in danger of becoming cut off from the door. As Jera and Viddo were pushed further back, a number of undead were able to spill around them and several made for the wizard.
“Watch out!” called Jera.
Rasmus clubbed another zombie into the tank and turned to look. “Haven’t you used your helmet?” he asked. “Lower the visor.”
Jera did as she was asked and pulled the helmet’s metal plate over her face. It slid easily into place, as if it were eager to show what it could do. Jera wasn’t sure what happened next – it was as if the world slowed down to half speed, or she sped up to double. The colours of her vision altered, changing the blood-red colours of the room to an angry crimson. Even with the heavy axe in her hands, she discovered that her arms felt lighter than they did when unencumbered. Jera was unaccustomed to anger, yet when she looked at these pathetic, stumbling creatures, fighting mindlessly to kill her companions, she felt a fury beyond anything she’d ever felt before. It blocked out reason, replacing it with a desire to do nothing but kill until there was nothing left standing.
“Raargh!” she shouted. She didn’t realise it, but she’d already cut down a wide circle of zombies around her and Viddo. Many of those she’d destroyed had yet to hit the floor, so quickly had she struck them.
Moments later, Viddo was left standing by himself, only a few feet from the door. There were six or seven rotting corpses nearby, which were trying to kill him. He finished them off, almost absent-mindedly, since he had one eye on the activity that was taking place twenty feet away from him. Jera was almost lost from sight, having charged deep into the throng of flailing undead which approached. Viddo didn’t need to see Jera to tell where she was or what she was doing – her axe continued to whirl, visible above the massed zombies. Chunks of flesh flew into the air – a leg here, a torso there, with the occasional nose, ear and finger joining the tornado.
Rasmus sauntered over. A few zombies were attempting to clamber around the force shield still, but the wizard didn’t think them much of a threat. “She’ll go far, that young lady,” he said.
“She’s got the talent and the luck,” nodded Viddo. He leaned to one side to avoid a punch thrown at him from a straggler zombie. It received a sword in the mout
h for its troubles.
“The effect from those helmets doesn’t last for long, from what I remember.”
“Think we should call her back?”
“I doubt she’ll listen. Do you remember when Brimble the Sword Slaughterer found one of those helmets and he attacked that army of cave trolls single-handed?”
“Yeah. He got killed, didn’t he?”
“He put up a good show, though. Maybe we should ensure that nothing befalls our companion.”
“I think that would be a good idea,” said Viddo, setting off in the direction of the combat.
Another three zombies had climbed around the force shield by this point. Rasmus incinerated them all, with three quick casts that set them to burning most fiercely. They managed a pace or two, with the final undead falling into the tank with a plop and a hiss of burning blood. The wizard pursued Viddo, the latter of whom was now cutting and thrusting his way through the smattering of zombies which had somehow survived Jera’s passage through.
“Jera, slow down!” called Viddo, hoping that his words would reach a part of her brain that might be able to act upon them.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Zombies in such great numbers could be a threat to even an experienced party of adventurers. However, it was still easy to turn the tables on them and there were few professions more capable of mowing down vast quantities of low-level undead than the warrior. Naturally, a wizard armed with a hatful of area-effect spells would have been able to accomplish the same result from the safety of distance, but sometimes it was good to have backup.
As the magic from the helmet faded, Jera felt as if she were waking up from a dream. A dream of brutality and destruction, yet one which left a strangely alluring memory of itself embedded within her mind, whispering sweetly about unfettered power and never-ending death to her enemies. Jera brooked none of its nonsense and primly tucked the memories away, though found herself reluctant to forget them entirely.
