by Ramy Vance
Suzuki pointed his torch. “Sandy, can we get a little bit more light.”
A handful of small, non-flammable blue sparks floated out of Sandy’s hands. The sparks took an orb shape and floated down the tunnel, shedding light on the catacomb’s dark crevices.
Suzuki had been right. The walls were brick. What he hadn’t noticed though was that there were crypts dug into them. Thousands of skulls were stacked on top of each other. Their blank eyes stared out as if they were meant to watch whatever was coming to pass. The floor of the crypt’s open area was covered in bones, some more decomposed than others, although many of the bodies still wafted the fumes of the dead.
Among the skeletons and rotting corpses were rats. They were scuttling about, ignoring the lights that flickered over them. Each rat was nearly five feet, long, and they were indeed undead. Most of their flesh had rotted off and what was left was green and toxic-looking. Their hair had mostly fallen out, and the remainder was knotted up in mangy tuffs.
The undead rats gnawed at the flesh of the decomposing carcasses, occasionally snapping at each other. Their teeth, visible from behind their gaunt cheeks, never ceased moving.
Suzuki looked closer. He could see that there were even more rats than he had initially expected. Much of what he had thought were the bones of humans were nothing more than smaller rats piled on top of each other. The floor looked as if it were waving back and forth because of the unceasingly moving, ironically dead bodies.
Sandy peered over the edge of the ledge. “Well, there’s your mischief.”
Suzuki sat at the foot of the tunnel and looked out at the crypt beneath him. “ ‘Mischief’ does not do justice to how disgusting that is.”
“Can’t we just have Sandy drop a firebomb or something?” Stew suggested. “All of those rats are pretty close. The whole thing would probably go up in flames.”
“Not a bad idea, Stew. Not a bad idea at all.”
Stew looked extremely proud of himself. Somehow, he was flexing as smugly as he was smiling.
Suzuki waved away Stew’s celebratory mood. “Unfortunately, decomposing bodies release methane gas, and this crypt is probably filled with it. And the rotting undead. They’re surprisingly explosive.”
“So?” Stew stopped flexing. “That’s a good thing, right?”
Suzuki gave Sandy a troubled look before returning his attention to Stew. “Maybe if we weren’t miles and miles underground. You ever see the movie Backdraft?”
Sandy made an exploding gesture with her hands.
“So, I guess not.” Stew was deflated. “So if I understand you correctly, what you’re saying is that we have to go down there and kill everything.”
Suzuki nodded. “Yep. Any Area of Effect spells from Sandy are pretty much out of the question ‘cause it’ll be too cramped.”
Sandy pulled out her staff and spun it. “Guess it gives me a chance to try this.”
“Might as well,” Suzuki said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, you don’t have a plan or something?” Stew asked.
“I was thinking we could just wing it. See what happens.”
Suzuki stepped to the side, holding out his arm as if guiding Stew over the edge of the ledge. “Stew, please, be my guest.”
Stew cracked his knuckles and looked around, with a smile as wide as an anarchist’s on being introduced to his first pipe bomb. His eyes settled on an empty crypt to their right. He reached in and dislodged a hunk of a wooden beam that was being used to support the bricks.
The small crypt collapsed in on itself, skulls and other wooden planks falling and shattering against the ground. Stew held up his plank and surveyed it closely. After he was satisfied, he grabbed a few other planks and started working. When he was finished, he had somehow managed to connect each of the planks together so that they made a large square.
He scrolled through his HUD, selected hemp fabric that instantly materialized in his hand and stretched the fabric over the frame he had built, before hammering it to the frame. “Sandy, could you cast Stoneskin for me?”
Sandy raised her hands, and they took on the consistency of rock. “No problem.” She waved her hands over Stew’s impromptu sleigh and the fabric hardened.
Stew picked up the sleigh and looked down at it, satisfied with his work. “Looks good to me.” Then he jumped on the sleigh and, holding on, leapt off the tunnel’s ledge. He sailed through the air for a few seconds before he fell to the ground, still standing on his structure.
The sleigh hit the ground with a sickening thud, sending rat guts and body parts flying through the air as Stew swung his greatsword, cleaving through the closest rats.
“That’s what I’m talking about, Stew,” Sandy shouted. “That’s my man!”
Stew skewered three rats on his sword, then held it up for Sandy to see. “Hey, babe, it’s a rat-kebab!”
A giant rat leapt from the mass of screeching rodents beneath and knocked Stew into the sea of claws and teeth.
Suzuki sighed as he unsheathed his sword. “Guess that’s our cue. I will hand it to him, though. It did look pretty cool.”
Sandy raised her hand to her face and pulled her hood over her head. A stone mask with sullen eyes and a mouth drawn into a grimace shimmered into existence. “It was pretty sick. Not very effective, but pretty sick.”
Suzuki leapt from the ledge and landed on top of Stew’s sleigh. He reached down and grabbed Stew’s leg, which was barely visible beneath the massing bodies of fur which covered the crypt’s floor.
Sandy floated down behind Suzuki and helped him pull Stew out of the river of rodents. A couple of undead rats still clung to Stew’s chest hair, and Sandy knocked them off with her staff.
A couple of small rats ran by, and Suzuki kicked them off the sleigh. “All right. The room isn’t that small. Everyone clear a path to the walls. Take care of the big rats and try to ignore the small ones.”
Stew was still pulling rats off his body. “Yeah, you try to ignore these fuckers.”
“You know what I mean. We clear a path and take care of the big ones, and then we can mop up the rest. For honor.”
“For glory!”
“For XP!”
Stew was the first one to charge in. Hardly surprising, Suzuki thought. What was surprising though was how efficiently Stew was doing it. He had leapt to the far side of the room and was clinging to the wall, looking down on the rats beneath him.
The larger rodents were sniffing around for Stew. Even though they were undead, it seemed they still retained the basic instincts of the animal they once were.
Since Stew was above the rats, they couldn’t get a good look at him. Instead of jumping into the fray, he was taking potshots at the undead vermin with his throwing knives. He had already noticeably cut down on the number of rats near him.
Beside Suzuki, Sandy was twirling her staff, casting non-flammable magic missiles at the larger rodents who were fighting to crawl over their smaller brethren and overtake the little wooden island Stew had provided.
Suzuki could tell that Sandy was bored. The staff didn’t seem to be all that it was worked up to be. He didn’t know much about it other than that Sandy had traded away a good chunk of her loot from their last quest to get it.
An undead rat soared through the air at Suzuki. He held up his shield and was able to block it in time. The rat rolled around on its back, its jaws jabbering uncontrollably as it hissed louder than a king cobra.
Suzuki impaled the rat with his sword and kicked it into the growing pile of recently extra dead undead creatures. “How do you like the staff?”
Sandy shrugged and listlessly knocked a deranged rat over the side of the sleigh. “Eh. It’s all right.”
“You know, I noticed you’ve been kinda bored recently…with the quests.” They were having a casual conversation while killing undead rats. Look at how far we’ve come, Suzuki mused.
“It’s not the quests. There are just only so many ways I can blow stuff up. I mean
, look at Stew.”
Sandy pointed at Stew, who was hanging upside down, his face almost completely overrun by rats, hacking away while occasionally doing a sit up and laughing maniacally. Sandy hung her head and shook it like a child disappointed by her birthday presents. “That man always finds a way to keep himself entertained.”
Stew grabbed one of the larger rats by its tail and swung it against the wall. The rat exploded, sending entrails and rotting flesh flying everywhere. “Hey, guys! If you grab them, they pop! Guys! Guys! Check it out!”
Sandy sighed and hit a rat with her staff. The rat instantly incinerated, and its ashes fell in a neat clump before her feet. “Remember when I used to laugh insanely? When was the last time you heard me laughing?”
Suzuki nodded. “True. It’s been a while. Why don’t you try something new?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, you could try some of the stuff that you’ve been reading about.”
Sandy shrugged. “Everything I’m reading is necromancy. And you can’t use necromancy against things that are already undead.”
“Says who? Didn’t Niv and Diana say that it’s mostly your imagination?”
“Huh. Yeah, I guess so.”
Suzuki thought to himself, directing his internal monologue to the eldritch imp residing in his body. Fred, do I have enough mana for some holy spells?
The imp was roughly the size of a small man with red scales, wings, and an intimidating smile showing razor-sharp fangs. Suzuki rarely saw that, though, since Fred preferred to stay inside of Suzuki and only came out when it was necessary.
Fred stretched his intangible, invisible wings and sneered in a way that made Suzuki’s skin crawl from the inside. Holy spells? If you wish to cast such banal and simple magic, yes, you do have enough mana to go ‘hog wild’ as the muscled imbecile says. And you will still be able to navigate out of this putrid place.
Suzuki jabbed Sandy in the side. “May the holy waters of…uh, light wash over you,” he said as he raised his sword in the air. Suzuki was no master of warrior-mage magic, but Fred usually helped him muddle his way through those spells. He made a note to himself to ask Sandy for some books when he got back because he was not getting the hang of free-styling spellwork.
Sandy laughed and smashed another rat with her staff. “Is that the best you got? That was terrible.”
“Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”
Sandy raised her hands and floated higher into the air. Lightning jumped between her fingertips. “Let my enemies be drowned in the depths of my power!”
The caverns shook, and Stew looked up from the rats he was killing. Small, swollen clouds had gathered above the rats. Rain came crashing down from the clouds. In a matter of moments, the small room began to flood.
Suzuki grabbed Sandy and turned her around. “What are you doing?”
Sandy tapped the side of Suzuki’s neck. His skin started to itch, and he scratched it. In the open space between his armor and helmet, he could feel gills on his neck. Then she leapt over to Stew, grabbed hold of the wall, and planted a fat kiss on his neck “Making this interesting!”
Stew groaned and tried to push Sandy away. “Ew, that hurt, babe.”
Sandy grabbed Stew’s hand and pulled him into the water before he could object. Suzuki watched them as the water continued to rise.
Swimming in a pool of rotting, maggot-infested rats sounded utterly disgusting. It also sounded more fun than just hacking at them for another half an hour. However, given that he had no choice in the matter, Suzuki jumped into the water.
Beneath its surface, he could see Sandy swimming back and forth. She had a mermaid’s tail and she was throwing what looked like icicle tridents at the rats, pinning them to the wall. Stew had almost forgotten about the rats. He was doing backflips underwater.
Sandy was right.
This was making things more interesting.
The Mundanes stood around a fire in the middle of the room, tossing the bodies of the undead rats into the firepit. The smell of charred, rotting flesh was almost unbearable, and Suzuki constantly had to work to keep himself from gagging. They had been killing for nearly an hour and were finally down to the last three huge rats.
Stew reached down, picked a rat up and cast it upon the fire, watching as the flames consumed the carcass, quickly reducing it to bones.
Sandy raised her hands and the flames jutted out like tendrils, engulfing the last two rats. “You know, that was more fun than usual, but I don’t see how it’s helping us get to Beth.”
Suzuki hit his HUD and pulled up the map of the area. A percentage of success blipped across the HUD’s screen. The area they were currently in read 90%. He swiped through his HUD to a map of the island. The area was darkened; there was a lack of information because it hadn’t been explored. At best, it gave a vague impression of wherever Beth was. The success rate dropped to 0.007%.
Suzuki shut down the HUD’s map. “It doesn’t look like it’s helping us at all.”
“We need to get an army,” Stew muttered.
“We tried that,” Suzuki growled. “And a fucking lot of good that did us. We sent all the proof we had to everyone and anyone…the repeated message, its signal, the HUD’s location, everything. And what did they say?”
“Fuck off,” Stew muttered.
“Fuck off.” Suzuki pursed his lips as he mentally ran through the last conversation he’d had with them. The officer who had been patient the first seven times Suzuki contacted him had eventually lost his shit, saying that it was probably some orc fucking with him.
“Orcs don’t send emails,” Suzuki had said.
The officer responded by ending the call and blocking Suzuki from being able to contact him…and apparently the entire World Army. He’d been blacklisted.
So had Sandy.
Stew was the only one at the time who could contact them, and that was largely because he’d only tried once and—uncharacteristically—was full of “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs,” sitting perfectly rigid while on the phone.
“Military brat,” Sandy said, “His dad was a marine.”
But even Stew’s charms weren’t enough and eventually he was blocked too, for over-calling. Not that it mattered. No one believed them about Beth, which meant that her rescue was left up to them.
Stew sat down on the crypt’s floor and shook his head. His disappointment was evident. “Yeah, I don’t get how cleaning up rats every other day is going to get us any closer to helping Beth. And we’re still not sure that—”
“I’m sure.”
Stew crouched down next to the fire and watched the flames. “I know Beth meant a lot to you…to us…but we got to be real. We still don’t know for sure that she’s out there.”
Suzuki clenched his fists tight. “I know.”
“Getting a repeating message doesn’t prove anything, Suzuki. It could be just a glitch in your HUD or the message center. It’s hard to accept but—”
Suzuki raised his hand and cut Stew off. “I’m not going to accept that she’s dead. She wouldn’t accept that we were. And if anyone of us was going to survive, it’d be Beth. If we’re still here, so is she. So let’s see if we can find anything to boost our chances of surviving wherever the hell she is.”
Stew shrugged as he walked off to complete his task. “All right.”
The last of the rats had burned. The crypt looked much larger without the mischief of undead rats crowding the floor. It gave the impression of something large and ominous waiting for you, very fitting for a crypt.
Suzuki pointed to the piles of graves. “If we’re going to find anything, it’s going to be in one of those. So let’s get looking.”
Stew grumbled and walked over to the walls. He started pulling bodies out. Some of the skeletons turned to dust the moment they were touched. “So glamorous. Now we’re robbing graves. Isn’t that going to cause a curse or something, Sandy?”
Sandy was already climbing throu
gh a pile of skulls, kicking them to the ground to make more space for her to slide through the tight openings. “Nope. There were no curses here. Niv checked when we first got in.”
Suzuki searched around the crypt. He noticed a lever in the corner of the room. It was broken. He wedged his sword into the open space where a wooden piece was meant to connect and jimmied the lever until it moved, and he pushed hard against it. The lever snapped back, and the walls in the room groaned. Suzuki stepped back as the rest of the Mundanes came and crowded around him.
“Did you trap-check it?” Sandy asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Suzuki murmured. In truth, he’d forgotten, not that he could do anything about that now. If it was booby-trapped, he’d be fucked. Or maybe he’d get lucky, not that he was having much luck anymore.
In the center of the room, the floor opened up. And nothing popped out, exploded, or shot poisonous arrows at them. “Perhaps my luck hasn’t completely run out after all,” Suzuki thought.
A small platform rose from a compartment underneath the floor. A plain wooden chest sat in the middle of the platform.
Stew rushed over to the chest and flung it open, his eyes wide and waiting. “Sweet.”
Sandy shook her head as she walked over to the chest. It was mostly empty, but there was a set of leather gauntlets, a dagger, and a wooden mask. Suzuki’s eyes were drawn to the mask. He didn’t know why. There was nothing remotely interesting about it.
Suzuki picked it up and looked it over before tossing it back in the chest. “This chest is a bust, but at least the payment for the quest was pretty high. We’ll probably be able to get some better gear. You can still have first dibs if you want, Sandy.”
Sandy picked up the mask. She held it up and stared into its eyes. A gust of cold wind blew through the room, instantly sending a shiver up Suzuki’s spine. Sandy pulled her robes closer until the chill passed. The Mundanes all looked at each other.
“That’s a bad sign, right?” Stew asked.
Sandy pocketed the mask, leaned over, and kissed Stew. “Not as far as I’m concerned. I’ll have Diana look at it when we get back. Doesn’t look too dangerous.”
