It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
-- Unknown.

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CHAPTER 4:

Fear of the Dark

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It must be the individuals that she liked; because, on the whole, Jiraath was finding the human race to be rather…boorish. A bit like an angry toad that has nothing better to do than sit next to your ear when you are trying to sleep and croak until the ungodly hours in the morning, and then claim that it is all part of a divine plan.

Or, it may be because she really, really hated underground lairs. Catacombs, jails, the lot. All underground. Jiraath could have stayed in the camp, but nooo, Kashya just had to get uppity about it and convince the group of humans to take her on their little quest.

A rock fell from the ceiling and she jumped, letting go of a tense hiss that had been building up behind her teeth; all this earned her was an arrow's tip poking her in the rump and a sharp reprimand from the Amazon who was holding it.

Maybe it was the arrow in her butt that was making her think that. Most likely.

At least with the dark colouration of her back, Jiraath was able to camouflage into the shadows a little more. She was feeling a little sick, she had to admit to herself, after seeing the mutilated and defiled corpses all through the jails, they had chanced upon a cell with a single rogue tucked in the corner, jabbering unintelligibly. When they had tried to talk to her, she had started screaming, 'GET AWAY GET AWAY', she had kept screaming until the silent zombie creature had appeared from the shadows and torn her jaw off before the balls of fire, the arrows and the spears of concentrated death energy had destroyed it. She bled out as she screamed past gurgling blood, and they searched for a door that was not there.

Jiraath sniffed, poor Tamsin had been in a bad way since that, she was alright with undead and the corrupted rogues, she could dissociate from them, but when she was actually confronted with a scene such as that…she was white as death. Javyn, too, had slowly paled as they came, Rook help the poor boy, because his own god doesn't seem to be helping him that much other than the 'holy' magic he casts.

Jiraath could swear that the Amazon was the least affected of them all, including the Necromancer, and not surprisingly so because Jiraath could swear that she had spent the entire way with her eyes on her butt, just waiting for the moment that the dragoness would set a foot wrong. Kedar was still limping a bit, but had surrounded himself with something of a fine powder of bones, making him seem to shimmer a bit when light hit him. Reminds me of the magic tricks that the Marrha sea dragons would do when our clans met to trade.

Weylin and his wolves were on the hunt. That was the impression that Jiraath was getting, it was very animal. Those two men were otherwise unreadable. Which wasn't saying much; human expressions were hard to read; they didn't have crests, mobile ears or hackle scales that they could express with. They just wiggled bits of their faces. And showed their teeth a lot…even when they were happy. Jiraath just couldn't understand that.

No one had spoken otherwise since they had entered the catacombs. Andariel, or so the old man who had appeared by the fire had said, was in the lowest part of the catacombs, where the most important of rogues were buried. A demon queen he had called her. Jiraath would shudder to think of what a demon queen would be in comparison to the hideous lesser ones, she would shudder now but she was concerned about getting an arrow tip in her rump again.

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Javyn seemed to do all he could to remain on the other side of the group to Kedar; the older necromancer ignored him and concentrated on wiping out whatever threat appeared. Jiraath watched his cold command of death energies, watched him raise skeletal warrior and skeletal mage every time another of his dead minions fell. But where Jiraath could glimpse into why some feared him, she had the extra benefit of being protected by them; she could not understand why someone would fear a person who would only protect them, regardless of means. It was like a fire dragon fearing a water dragon when the water dragon was trying to protect the fire, simply because it was from the sea, Jiraath thought it was silly. Clearly Javyn would not have agreed with her. He had been increasingly leery around Kedar since they had entered the catacombs, his guarded courtesy seemed to be reserved only for the encampment as if by some unspoken rule he had to be mannered; here, in the deep and tainted catacombs he acted far more on his deep seated fears.

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They were approaching the stairs that would lead them to the fourth level of the catacombs; Tamsin shakily pulled out a tome of town portal scrolls in preparation to open one once they had descended. Jiraath glanced behind her, the Amazon was rubbing her right shoulder, she looked drawn and tired, and all of them did.

Jiraath breathed in deeply, with every intention of sighing afterwards until she noticed the rotten thickness of the lung-full she had taken. Then the stench hit them. The fetid smell of ammonia and bile, faeces and burnt flesh. Jiraath half expected to hear the moaning that the relatively fresh zombies on the higher levels had made, but there was nothing except a faint rasping sound that gradually grew louder. The group drew into a protective circle, back to back to back, warily looking for the dark corridor down which the impending undead would lumber. The rasping sounded like someone dragging many hands along the moulded stone walls. The smell was suffocating and the zombies had not even appeared yet. Jiraath swayed on her feet, overwhelmed by strength of the smell, she retched and coughed the acidic taste of dragon vomit out of her mouth. She glanced upwards, down the corridor that lead to the stairs, and saw them clamouring on putrefying joints towards them. Jiraath hissed and caught the Amazon's attention with a brush of her wing; the woman saw the zombies and alerted the rest of the group.

Fluidly, the humans around her moved, arranged themselves in a strategic position around the mouth of the corridor; Amazon and sorceress with their backs to the wall opposite the mouth, paladin, druid and necromancer.

Immediately pyrogenic missiles and arrows breezed past Jiraath. She counted in her head the zombies she could see, one…nine…twelve. At least twelve. She crouched and recalled something that Kedar had said as they had entered the monastery.

'Don't let the zombies bite you.' Javyn had scoffed at him.

'What? Will we turn into them?' Cliché's forgiving, his voice had been dripping with sarcasm.

'No. It hurts like a bitch.' Which had clearly been the end of the conversation.

So, that means don't get bitten. Which is the worst they really do, other than stink. And bitchslap. Jiraath tensed and leapt forward, running for the wall, to get around and behind them. The walls gave under her claws and allowed her to direct a jump up and over the heads of the undead.

Not one decaying head turned, no arms flung out at her. One mandible dropped, but that was due to the tendons holding it on the zombie's face finally giving up. Jiraath started hacking away at their legs with tail and claws, avoiding going near them with her face. A couple of the zombies fell; they started to drag themselves towards the humans. Completely ignoring her. She slammed her forefeet into their head and necks, it seemed to work, they stopped moving. A ball of fire cut through two zombies in front of her and grazed her wing; she yelped and was answered with a weak cry of 'sorry!'

One of the zombies turned when she ripped its arm off with her claws, it turned back shortly afterwards and continued its advance on the humans.

Their numbers were dwindling, only three left, which were quickly felled by five arrows, a small fireball and an angry wolf.

The smell of rot hit Jiraath again and she wretched again, she decided that she far preferred the necromancer's clean skeletons which only smelled of old metal, sweaty hands and parchment. She trotted up to the humans, they were tired, as was she, and the Amazon didn't even raise her weapon.

Weylin coughed, 'We need to take a break; we have been going at this for almost an entire day.' Kedar was heading towards the stair well. 'Kedar.' The white haired man turned and raised an eyebrow. There's another part of their face that they wiggle? What the hell is it supposed to mean? 'Where are you going?'

'The stair well is just here; I'm going to quickly have a look on the other level. It may be safer to open a portal there than here. Zombies have more than a little trouble getting down stairs.' There was a tense pause, Weylin nodded. He crouched and rested an arm on Bran's back. Jiraath glanced back at Kedar, she figured that he knew what he was doing, and then sniffed noses with Bran. The spirit wolf seemed to squint at her, like it was trying to see through her. Its eyes glowed briefly and it snuffled at Weylin's cheek.

'What?' The wolf's glowing eyes pulsated. Weylin nodded and glanced at Jiraath strangely, he sighed. 'We will worry about that when this is over, alright Bran?' The wolf flicked an ear in response. A yes, in body language.

Jiraath sat next to the wolf, she was about half a foot taller at the shoulder than it was, but that still only meant that her head topped at four and a half feet. She could have sworn she was bigger before.

Kedar appeared out of the stair well. 'It seems clear down here, there's a large double door, and I think that leads to the antechamber before the catacomb gallery.' He rolled his shoulder and it cracked, Jiraath saw Tamsin wince at the sound. 'If we do not touch those doors it will be safest to open a portal back to the encampment there, rather than here which is open to attack from all sides.' Jiraath saw most of the others nodding in agreement; they moved down through the passage that had previously been crowded with zombies, Tamsin and the Amazon, Kiyana, that's her name, caught their breath as they passed the corpses. Once they all had passed and had started going down the stairs, Jiraath turned as she heard a muttering.

Kedar stood over a couple of the corpses, after a short incantation the skeletal remains of three of them rose up; each wielded a magic in their hands, ice, fire and electricity. Javyn had paused beside her and witnessed the raising; he made a disgusted sound and paced down the stairs faster than he had started. Jiraath sniffed at the skeletons as they passed her, out of pure curiosity, and found that they no longer smelled vile.

I like the smell of old leather boots.

Once they were all on the same floor Weylin began rummaging in a small sack for a scroll of town portal. Tamsin stood by Kiyana wringing her staff anxiously, the Amazon took the sack from Weylin and held it open for him to make it easier for him to feel about in. Jiraath sat down at the foot of the stairs where she would be able to hear if anything decided to come near them. Kedar glanced at everyone, the same blank look on his face that he had worn the entire time they had been in the catacombs. 'Just do not touch any of the barrels, at least until we return.' This just irritated Javyn.

'You didn't check to see if there were any zombies or skeletons hidden in them?'

'No, at that point I did not have enough energy to deal with them if there were.'

'But you had enough energy to raise three of the dead back up there?' Javyn's voice was rising. Jiraath shifted her wings and tapped her claws on the stone floor, wishing that he would be a little more quiet.

'You would do well to keep your voice down, Javyn.' Kedar replied, and Javyn, although angry, was not a fool and lowered his voice in kind. Again with the repeat-y thing.

'So we could have just walked into a trap, and you would have gladly lead us into it?'

'Only if you planned to kick, sit on, stand near or have a picnic in close proximity to the barrels. But I was fairly sure that we had all learned from the barrels higher up in the catacombs.' Kedar responded calmly, which only served to agitate the young paladin further; he took a step back to turn his body so he could point to the rather large number of barrels in the room. What he had not expected was for the stonework under his foot to crumble and give way into a pool of what looked to be boiling blood. He stumbled out of it, away from the barrels, but the rupture in the floor caused one of the barrels to splinter. A mouldering hand began tearing at the wood and another appeared and stretched out towards Javyn who paled from his position on the ground. Kedar flung a cluster of barbs of death energies that he had begun to call 'teeth'. The rotting hands quickly stopped moving. The necromancer turned and reached down to give the paladin hand up. Javyn pushed is arm away violently and let out a strangled 'don't touch me'.

Jiraath watched from the base of the stairs, she flicked her tail idly as she watched the necromancer and paladin argue. It reminded her of a pair of her cousins; they were brothers and would argue in a similar fashion. They always managed to work around their problems with each other, but that was because they were family. But even if it was a belief based argument, Jiraath did not see the sense; dragons from different areas often had varying beliefs, but – namely because of external threats – they had discovered that the beliefs covered common ground. That was the reason that the clans often had good relationships. Although there were some extreme clans who had an 'all or nothing' mentality.

Kedar sighed and left Javyn to get up on his own, he made his way over to the fwishooow of an opening portal; Jiraath rose and followed. She noticed three things when they started to cross through the portal, the first being that the Amazon hadn't so much as looked at her so Jiraath assumed that she may just be safe from the arrow-in-the-butt. Secondly that Kedar's limp had suddenly become pronounced, where it had hardly showed as they had walked through the halls of the catacombs.

Lastly that there was a time delay between entering the portal and appearing on the other side.

Oh, hell no. Was what went through her mind as Weylin, with a decisively cheerful grin, pushed her through with his foot.

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I'm beginning to think that these chapters are rather poorly written. They seem, disordered to me, please let me know what you think, if there is any way that you see that I could fix that up.

Anyhoo. Thus another chapter. Woohoo.

I promise that nothing will happen the next chapter either. ;P

Ta-ta ladies.

dragonsdemons.

}:=8D