by Max Anthony
“Watch its claws!” shouted Rasmus. “They are almost certain to infect you with a hideous disease. Assuming the poison doesn’t kill you instantly!”
“Just great,” muttered Jera, as the revenant muscled its way through towards her. Its arms were long and they reached easily over the heads of the lesser undead. Jera got her shield in the way of the first of its attacks, the power of the blow rocking her on her heels. Distracted by this, a punch got through her guard, landing on the side of her head, while a clawed hand skittered across her new pauldrons.
Two of Rasmus’ summoned statues had been toppled now. They were so top-heavy that the force of their connection with the solid floor had broken them into pieces. The last statue was too far away to be any assistance, though it still swung with enthusiasm at undead faces. Jera breathed in deeply and concentrated on maintaining her focus in the same way that Goosty had shown her. Suddenly, something clicked within her head and she found her body coursing with a new strength. Without knowing where the ability came from, she opened her mouth and shouted. The sound was strangely sensual and bestial at once. It spoke of triumph and destruction. Rasmus felt it from his spot thirty yards away. The undead certainly felt it and many of them were frozen by the sound. The undead knew no fear, but the power of Jera’s shout clutched at their limbs and prevented them from acting.
The revenant was too strong to be affected and it pushed through the crowd of its rooted servants. Jera backed away from it, using her shoulders to force her way in the opposite direction. She didn’t know how long her opponents would remain frozen and wanted to use the time to her advantage. The revenant didn’t give her the chance. It was fast and much stronger than it looked. It clubbed at Jera’s shield, which at times seemed to move of its own accord, intercepting blows that she’d have never thought her arm fast enough to reach. Her sword was cramped by the crush around her, yet even so she managed to drive the point deep into the revenant’s stomach. To her dismay, when she pulled the sword out, the wound closed immediately. Rasmus or Viddo would have seen the problem at once – the weapon she held was lacking the required level of enchantment to wound many of the most powerful denizens she could expect to encounter. If she managed to survive this confrontation with the revenant.
While Jera had performed far beyond the level which Rasmus or Viddo had initially expected, she wasn’t yet ready to face a deadly creature like the revenant alone. It flailed at her and although she put all of her training to good use, the undead always seemed to anticipate where she would be and attacked accordingly. Up close, she saw the dirty yellow claws at the end of each finger as they came nearer to her face with each strike. They dripped with filth and rotting waste matter and she knew that Rasmus had spoken the truth about her chances if it managed to pierce her skin.
Fortunately for Jera, she didn’t have to face the revenant alone. Sparks flew across her vision and a dozen tiny balls of white-hot light bombarded the creature, striking it everywhere and causing it to raise its arms to protect its face. When the first salvo had ended, another arrived straight after. Grateful for the distraction, Jera was able to spare the time to glance at the source of the magic. Rasmus was close to her now and moving at his usual speed. He cast the spell for a third time, leaving the creature’s body a mess of welts and burns. It hissed, the first sound that Jera had heard it make. It seemed to draw in upon itself, crouching low, and Jera felt a surge of hope that it might be close to death. With horror, she realised that it had coiled up for a spring and knew at once that she was its target. She brought her shield high, realising that the weight of the revenant might just be enough to crash through her defences.
The attack didn’t come. Or rather an attack did not come from the revenant. There was a shimmering in the air, the faintest of disturbances. Viddo appeared, his arm already halfway down the arc of its strike, the bright steel of his dagger looking as cold as the ocean. The thief’s arm was true and the dagger plunged into undead flesh, severing tubes and organs within the revenant’s body cavity. All thieves had an ability to magnify the damage of their strikes when they hit from behind and such was Viddo’s skill that he could inflict a mortal wound on all but the most stubborn of creatures with a single well-placed strike.
The revenant jerked violently, arching its back to an impossible extent. Even as Viddo was pulling his dagger free, it spun around to face him, the long arms thrashing as it hoped to get a lucky hit. It was something that Viddo had expected and he sidestepped neatly to keep pace with the turning revenant. His dagger descended again, the blow not quite as clean as the first, but still doing ample damage. The revenant thrashed and flopped, like a freshly-caught fish upon the deck of a boat. The creature was still dangerous and Viddo took great care as he stepped in and landed a third stab, followed by a fourth. After a fifth backstab, the revenant stopped moving completely, though that didn’t dissuade the thief from landing another six backstabs in order to be certain.
Whilst Viddo had been at work, Jera had shown her great aptitude under duress and had resumed her defensive position, from which she cut at the frozen undead. The power of her shout was dissipating and the undead started to move in her direction, albeit as if they were wading through thick mud. Before Jera could worry unnecessarily that they might have to finish off the twenty or so lesser undead which remained, they simultaneously collapsed to the ground, dead once more.
“How’d that happen?” she asked, recovering the tiny part of her composure which she’d been in the slightest danger of temporarily misplacing.
“Kill the big one and all of its little ones fall over,” said Viddo, delivering a vicious kick to the dead revenant’s head. Rasmus was familiar with these minor bouts of petulance and wasn’t surprised to see three or four more kicks following hot on the heels of the first.
“I see,” Jera said, straightening from her crouch and finally lowering her shield. “How come you were able to run so fast?” she asked Rasmus.
“Boots of speed!” he said proudly, pointing at his spotlessly-clean footwear. “Once per day, they permit me to run almost as fast as a thief with a purse of stolen copper and a half loaf of stale bread.”
“They might only work once per week,” Viddo warned, concerned that the wizard might become complacent if he thought the boots could get him out of every scrape. “He’s been too lazy to test them, since he spent every day in Gargus sozzled on the floor of his favourite tavern. That shout you did to freeze these undead might only work once every two or three days as well. Until you get a bit more practise.”
Jera looked around the room and saw the extent of the devastation. Rasmus had not been idle during the brief period of his vastly increased velocity. Many grey bodies still smouldered where they’d been electrocuted, burned, scorched, ignited, or a combination of all four. Although Rasmus professed no favouritism when it came to unleashing the elements, in his heart of hearts he knew that nothing made him happier than a good old, honest and reliable fire spell.
“So this is what adventuring is all about?” she asked. “A hundred undead and a creature with no skin that wants to poison me?”
“Yup, that pretty much sums things up,” said Viddo. “Did you enjoy it?”
“It was…exciting,” Jera admitted. “I think I’ll have fifty bruises when I wake up in the morning.”
“The life of a fighter,” Viddo replied, stooping over the revenant with his dagger still in hand. “You get the shit beaten out of you while we wizards and thieves burn and stab our opponents.” As he spoke the word ‘stab’, Viddo plunged his dagger into the stomach of the revenant and began to saw vigorously at its abdomen. Jera was a few feet away, but the scent of something vile reached her nostrils.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“You can find treasure in the strangest of places,” he replied, dragging out a glistening mound of sacs and valves. “When your dead foe wears no clothes, they must perforce hide their loot elsewhere.”
Viddo spent a minute
or two rooting through the offal, eventually standing up disgusted. “What a cheap bastard!” he vented. “Not one sodding thing!”
Rasmus clapped a comradely arm about his shoulder in commiseration. “There’s always the next one, my friend,” he said. “Come, let us leave this place and see what treasure lies beyond this room.”
“Aren’t we here to stop Him Without Name from rising again?” asked Jera.
“Yes, of course we are! But we must never let an opportunity to unearth shiny items slip through our fingers on route to our goal. Come, young Jera and we shall seek together!”
With little choice, Jera nodded and fell into step beside them.
“I must say, you did exceptionally well in there,” Rasmus continued as the trio left the temple room.
12
The corridor along which they travelled was wide and tall, making all three of the adventurers feel exposed. Not wishing to be caught on a main thoroughfare, they took the next branch that they came across, this one being only six feet wide and tall. There was no marble cladding here and the walls were rougher than they’d come to expect. They talked in hushed tones, concerned that a pack of undead might still be in pursuit.
“It seems a wonder how these undead managed to locate us so easily,” said Viddo. “While we could have likely taken greater care to remain undetected, it’s not as though we have been trumpeting our whereabouts as we travel. Apart from the occasional explosion and the trail of dead bodies.”
“Which could have come from anyone,” offered Rasmus.
“Are you sure they are still following us?” asked Jera. “It seems to me that we came upon that revenant purely by accident.”
“You could be right,” said Viddo. “Though I have a feeling that you are not. It’s just a hunch, nothing more.”
As they walked, they ate and drank from their hefty parcels of rations. The last time they’d come here, Rasmus and Viddo had been limited by their lack of supplies. On this occasion, they had ensured they carried plenty of food and water with them. Jera’s pack was also well-stocked and she confessed that she’d topped up her provisions from the packs of her erstwhile colleagues.
“Nothing to be ashamed of there,” said Rasmus.
“Indeed not. The dead can’t eat after all.”
“Except the undead of course. I hear they like to eat a bit of human flesh every once in a while.”
“And undead flies. Always settling upon wizards, so I’m told.”
Jera let their hushed chatter wash over her as she thought about what had happened so far. She was already a comparatively rich woman simply from the coins they’d taken from the undead wizard’s house. She’d sworn to her mother and father that she’d return to them when she’d earned some money, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that her life was destined to be spent in places like the one she found herself in now. It was definitely a lot more interesting than sewing cloth for a living.
“What’s in here?” she heard a voice ask.
“I don’t know,” Rasmus replied. “The door is locked and I can’t see through it.”
Jera brought herself back to the present and found that they’d stopped in front of a metal door. She’d already learned that only the stone truly endured down here, but that metal and magical items sometimes remained, unsullied by the ravages of time. The passageway had been on a downward slope for some time and they’d followed it, since Viddo believed it would take them towards their goal. There was a sort of thick, black dust underfoot, through which they’d been traipsing for a while. Some distance back, Jera had stooped and run her finger through it. Whatever it was, it had been there for so long that it had solidified and her fingertip had remained almost clean.
“I’ll have this open in a jiffy,” said Viddo, pulling forth his spoon. He inserted it into the ancient lock and twisted. There was a screech and the handle of the spoon bent. “Aha!” exclaimed Viddo quietly. He gave the door a quick check for traps and then pushed the stout metal handle. The door didn’t open, so he increased the pressure, straining and pushing his shoulder against the surface.
“You might have to give this a go, Jera,” he said. “It seems to be stuck.”
Jera stepped forward and looked at the door. Then, she reached out and grasped the handle. With a turn and the slightest of tugs, the door swung open into the corridor. “You have to pull this one,” she said.
“That’s preposterous!” said Viddo. “Doors should open inwards, not outwards into a passage! It’s an accident waiting to happen!”
Jera smiled and looked into the room. “And after all that, it’s empty in here,” she said, letting Viddo in on the bad news. The thief peered through the doorway and saw that she was correct. Undaunted, he marched inside in order that he could be absolutely certain.
“It’s empty,” he muttered, stalking out again. “Looks like a storeroom of some sort. I bet it was once filled with wondrous produce - crates and boxes piled high, waiting to be opened and stolen from.”
“You’re wittering again,” said Rasmus. “Let’s forget this room and move on.”
After another fifty yards, there was a second door, which Viddo once more insisted upon opening. There was no resistance to his suggestion and the others waited patiently.
“Coal!” said Viddo. “Look at all of this in here!”
The room was many yards to each side and stacked to the ceilings with coal – great, irregular, heavy lumps of it.
“It’s starting to make a bit of sense now,” said Rasmus. “If these people were stone workers, it’s certain that they’d have come across coal. We’ve seen fireplaces on our journey and it makes sense that they’d crave heat in the coldness of their dwellings.”
“Not only that,” said Jera. “The murals and decorations we’ve seen depict creatures with an array of weapons that could only have been made from metal. You can’t smelt metal without having a source of heat.”
“An excellent point,” said Rasmus. “Viddo and I have not seen much evidence yet of weaponry in this place. Perhaps there is a vast armoury somewhere that contains the forgotten remnants of their swords and axes.”
“Or they could have made their weapons from poor-grade iron and it has all flaked to rust like much else we see in here,” pondered Viddo.
“Anyway, this find is an interesting one from an academic viewpoint. In terms of our personal enrichment, I have no use for two hundred cubic yards of coal.”
It was unfortunate that Rasmus had no way of converting the coal into gold coins, since the next room contained more coal, as did the one after that. After they’d explored the third of the coal-filled rooms, they came upon something else in the middle of the corridor. It was a stone cart, shaped from hollowed stone and mounted upon solid metal axles, with metal wheels, the latter of which were thickly coated in rust.
“This cart is massive,” said Viddo, giving it a push and finding it completely beyond his capabilities to move. “I dread to think what manner of beast they used to push it up and down this corridor.”
“These people appear to have great skills with stone, yet in other ways they are more primitive than the remotest tribes on the surface. There aren’t even any tracks for this cart, which would have made it so much easier to push it to and fro.”
There were two more rooms full of coal and they passed two more of the stone carts, one of which was still piled high with the stuff. The corridor finally ended at another of the cavernous rooms, which seemed designed with the specific purpose of making them feel insignificant.
“A foundry,” said Rasmus. The sound of his voice was lost in the space around him and he cleared his throat to be sure that he was speaking at his intended volume.
They stood in awe for a moment, taking in the sights of this place. The room was over two hundred yards to a side and roughly square. The ceiling was lost too far above for them to see where it was. Vast, thick pillars of functional, carved stone vanished into the air. It was as if in this one place, the
skills of the creatures who’d made it hadn’t been sufficient to ensure the ceiling stayed in place without additional support. The floors and walls were studded with the glass globes - in here their light was a deep orange. These globes went at least fifty yards up each side, yet still not far enough to see how high the walls were.
“Forges,” said Jera. “Smelters, castings, anvils. On a scale I’ve never heard of before, let alone seen.”
The facilities required to work and mould metal were everywhere - massive, squat blocks of stone and iron, with hinged doors, some of which were missing or hung open. The anvils were vast, dwarfing anything similar they’d seen on the surface. The furnaces were cold, but every so often the trio would hear a creaking or a banging sound as if a rustling wind were moving heavy metal objects into contact with other objects.
“You could kit out the biggest army the world has ever seen in here,” said Viddo. “I’m glad that the place is in ruins.”
“Me too,” said Jera. “If this death god plans to return, his soldiers will not be equipped with swords and shields from here, at least.”
“There’s no sign of any bellows. I wonder how they kept the heat up high enough,” wondered Rasmus. “Perhaps they had a few wizards who specialised in fire magic, who could assist.”
They set off across the room, with no particular plan in mind other than to see what they could see. There was something grimly sinister about the foundry and even after what they assumed was thousands of years dormant, it reeked of cruelty and death. Rasmus and Viddo were used to the unusual, so they could tune out the emotions they felt. For Jera, it was still new and when she closed her eyes, the background sounds became magnified to her hearing and she found it easy to imagine the activities that had taken place in here as weapons of death in their thousands were carted away, ready to be put into eager hands. None of them particularly wished to stay for long, but they found their feet reluctant to carry them onwards and they made slow progress across the floor.
