Chapter 9: The Necropolis

One by one, the other warriors appeared around the thief. During that time, Jiarel began issuing orders to them in the same arcane language she had used to presumably bless Fergrin's body. They all took their orders willingly, and for the first time Garrett was able to detect an emotion in them: the same bloodlust that he carried." Finally, they assembled. From what Garrett could see, Jiarel was organizing her men into a main group of ten, led by herself, and two smaller groups of five. The two smaller groups moved to a couple of small doors; Jiarel's moved to the huge entrance door. Then, as an unspoken word was given, they all moved in through their doors. They entered-and Garrett saw and heard no more of them. Then the disturbing quiet was interrupted with the moan of zombies, the swinging of blades, and a high-pitched screeching. The noises continued, and it was a while before Garrett could finally get it together to move in. The doors are out, the whole army is down there, now that those warriors have attracted their attention. If there was a window here with a wooden rim, I might be able to shoot a rope arrow into it…AH HA! On the side of the building, there was a window on the second story that was in reach of a rope arrow. Pulling one out of his quiver, he aimed and fired. The rope arrow flew towards the window. Upon impact, it dropped its payload which the thief then climbed up. Below him, the sounds of battle still continued. Finally he reached the ledge and hoisted himself up.

He found himself in a small staggered room, which contained almost nothing, except for a cheap table, two doors, and an eerie statue. The room was sparsely lit with a flaming torch, which was quickly extinguished with a quick dip of water. Tiptoeing around, he found nothing of interest…but looking closer, he saw a chest in the far back of the room, which he was pleasantly surprised to find that it was unlocked, and contained a statuette, which was quickly removed from its resting place and put in Garrett's loot pouch. Turning around, he went to walk out the door-

But before he was there, the door opened on its own, and a zombie shuffled through. Startled, but still with a cool head, the thief ducked into a shadow and held his breath. The zombie shuffled along, occasionally moaning to itself. Garrett stood as still as the statue on the opposite side of the room as the zombie got closer, closer, closer, until it was practically on top of the still form, upon which it sniffed around and smelled the living flesh of Garrett. With a satisfied moan, the zombie turned to attack.

But Garrett was quicker, and in the time it took the zombie to turn, the thief had already brought his sword up and, with a mighty swing, took off the zombie's head. While, as expected, it didn't stop the zombie, it was effectively blind, deaf, and unable to smell-the only way it would be able to find Garrett was to touch him, and he had no intention of that happening. Smoothly ducking under the zombie's flailing arms, he quickly moved away from the headless living corpse. The zombie, unaware that its prey had escaped it, kept flailing his arms. Upon reaching the wall, it punched it with a rotting fist. It smashed a hole in the wall, but the headless thing didn't seem to notice or care, and the furious attack resumed. Meanwhile, Garrett slunk away into the next room, thankful that his life and limbs were still with him.

The next room was not much larger than the last one, but it had two ladders, one leading downwards, the other leading up. Garrett paused for a second. The only way that he could tell which area was safer was by some inconspicuous scouting. Reaching into his robes, he withdrew a gleaming sphere with a large glass circle: a scouting orb. Throwing the orb down the ladder, the orb landed, connecting directly to Garrett's mechanical eye and showing Garrett what it was seeing. Panning around, the thief saw that this ladder led down into a very odd room, with some odd shrines. One was a pedestal, but Garrett couldn't see what was in it. Against the far wall, there were two electric generators that linked together via a beam of electricity, and next to it, something that looked like a closet. Okay, so now what? What's the purpose of this room? Waiting a few minutes to make sure that there were no patrols, the thief started down the ladder. Tiptoeing across the room, he looked into the pedestal. An odd silvery liquid filled the basin. He dipped the tip of his sword into the mysterious liquid, and was surprised to see that the liquid did not ripple, but instead indented as if it was fabric. But when Garrett pulled the sword out of the basin, some of the liquid hadn't come off. Shrugging, he sheathed his sword again.

But the tip of the sword cut through the sheath, and the protruding end got his attention. Slowly taking his sword out, he saw that the coated tip had cut cleanly through his leather sheath. Astounded, he stabbed the wall with his sword. The tip went through as if the thick stone wall was butter, and the rest of the sword followed suit. This gave Garrett an idea. Dipping the rest of his sword in the odd liquid, he now had a perfectly shiny blade. Smiling, satisfied, he was about to put the sword back in its sheath, when he realized that he was in a jam. His super-cutting sword would just cut right through the sheath. He was still trying to solve this problem when the door opened. And in it stood a specter.

Even though Fergrin had told him of the beasts, they were hideous to behold with your own eyes. They resembled the upper half of a skeleton, with ragged pieces of gray flesh hanging loosely from its bones. But when looked at straight on, there was a faint but visible dark aura around them, which was the necromantic magic needed to bind these creatures together.

But while Garrett's slow eyes took in these details, the specter knew only to attack living things. With a raspy cry, it charged the thief, who barely had time to raise his sword to block the powerful blow the undead beast gave him with a silvery sword of its own. As soon as the swords met, Garrett pulled his back and aimed for the beast's head. But the sword whirled around incredibly fast, impossibly fast, and before thief thief's sword had moved so much as a foot towards the monster's cranium, its sword was there, and it hit so hard that Garrett's sword went flying, burying itself in a nearby wall up to its hilt. The specter emitted an airy laugh as it swung it sword down, cutting Garrett's right arm cleanly from the rest of his body.

Pain was nothing new to this man. Pain was getting your bones shattered by a Hammerite's weapon. Pain was having one of your eyes forcibly removed from its socket. Pain was falling from 35 feet onto a stone ground at full speed.

But this pain was something terribly new. It was as if all the pain of the people in the entire world had been focused onto Garrett's bloody stump of an appendage. Screaming as if he were in hell, (and quite frankly, he was beginning to believe hell wasn't much worse than this) he collapsed, which was quite fortunate since the specter had chosen to swing sideways, intending to cut the man in half. Hitting nothing but air, the momentum of the sword threw the specter off balance, and as it began to right itself three things that undoubtedly saved Garrett's life.

One such event was that Garrett's sword, despite being embedded in a wall, had cut down the wall, to a level at which the thief could grab it easily. He did so, and now had at least some form of protection.

The second was that one of the Nueran just happened to be travelling down this corridor, and it just so happened to check this room, and it just so happened to see the specter and the crippled man together. The warrior saw the specter, and the specter saw the warrior, decided to attack him, and forgot about Garrett.

The third event was that Garrett managed to stand up.

The specter was a skilled swordsman, but even it was no match for a Nueran. Sword combat became gymnastics became a flurry of movement that ended with the holy warrior's blade finding a piece of the specter and cutting through. A piercing scream filled the air, and the specter's malign energy that had given it the power to exist suddenly expanded outwards, flinging its sword across the room and slicing the pedestal that contained the substance that could cut all things.

The liquid spilled onto the stone floor where Garrett had been, cutting through the stone floor, earth, and bedrock below it. Garrett, seeing this, felt dizzy. And it was probably caused in part by the fact that his blood was still flowing freely from where his arm should have been. Seeing this, and seeing his arm lying on the ground, was too much. Garrett fainted.

Chapter 8 / Chapter 10