Chapter Twenty-eight
(*)
"So. As much as I hate to copy another elf, I feel compelled to say 'we're all doomed,'" Acherai said.
"Now is not the time for jokes!" Sephiria hissed.
"Who's joking? From what we heard, that thing was thrown out a third-story window onto a stone road, then struck by lightning, and it's still alive. It killed Kivan in single combat, and for all his faults I'm sure he was a better warrior than me. And do you hear that? That chittering sound? Probably more undead."
"Definitely," Viconia murmured, rubbing her holy symbol thoughtfully.
"We should move forward, then. See there?" Dynaheir said, pointing down the path. "That structure still stands, for the most part. 'Tis little more than stones piled atop each other, but zombies and ghouls have little mind to speak of and it has only one door I can see. It could be a chokepoint to hold them at bay."
"It could also be a very good tomb for us. Only one entrance to defend also means we only have one path out," Viconia countered.
"No… no, she's right. You hear how many there are? They can't be as strong as the ones in the sewers. Those were masterpieces of a high-tier necromancer, but that shuffling, the moans… basic zombies, the garbage of the undead world. These they must have been naturally drawn in, or animated just by the magic of the area," Acherai said. "Ask your goddess to intervene on your behalf. When they bear down on us, turn as many as you can against the others."
"Are you seriously suggesting I invoke directly beseech Shar to help me defend a paladin of Torm?" Viconia hissed.
"Are you seriously suggesting she invoke her vile goddess to enslave the dead and tormented in my presence?" Sephiria hissed in much the same tone, at the exact same moment. The two women stopped, turned, and briefly shared a glare that could have melted steel.
"No!" Acherai snapped.
"None of that!" Imoen growled.
"You two want to get even more religious on us right now?! Really?!"
"I swear I will kick both your butts all the way back to the surface!"
"Viconia! Your goddess encourages selfishness and the pursuit of power, no? Well you can't pursue power if you're dead! So be selfish and protect our lives already!" Acherai snarled.
"Seffie! You barely count as a paladin, so please stop whining. We'll like, go help out some kittens later to get your goodness back, but for now we have one plan that we can think of to not die!" Imoen snapped.
For a long moment, everyone was silent. Even the distant dead seemed to have stopped their chittering and scraping along the abandoned roads.
Acherai and Imoen turned to each other, and without a word, shook hands.
"Thanks for backin' me up there. Sorry if I ever implied you were like, slimy and creepy. Just I kind of get the impression you'd kill me if you thought you'd benefit from it."
"Oh, I don't blame you. I wouldn't trust me either. Really, it's such a pleasure to work with a fellow professional I hardly even mind. I saw you pick Edwin's pocket at the inn last night and it was masterful. You'd do well in a thieves' guild, you know. I could introduce you in Scornubel."
"Nah, I prefer to do my own thing. And besides, all he had was twenty coppers and some kinda mummified hand."
"I am in a madhouse. Shar, protect your faithful," Viconia muttered. But she fell into step with the group as they ran toward the closest thing they had to shelter.
(*)
"My love," Jaheira said, keeping her tone low so the others would not hear over the sound of bony fists clawing at the debris, "What odds do you give us for living through this?"
"N-not our finest. I w-w-w-would hesitate to be sure of myself against these things in s-single combat," Khalid murmured back. "W-we have some strong swords to b-back us, but we are outnumbered. W-w-when they reach us…"
"If I told you that I would be willing to leave these others to die, so that the two of us might escape, what would you say?"
"I-I-I would say t-that you might suggest it in the heat of the m-moment, but never f-f-forgive yourself later. We are all that s-stands between Gorion's daughter and these creatures. H-he would chew our ears off in the afterlife if we let her f-f-fall."
"I love you more than I can put into words, man."
"And I you."
A few more stones fell from one of the piles of rubble than should have. A larger piece of stone, that could not have moved on its own, rolled a few feet down the tunnel.
"The first ones are through, people! Magic weapons to the front, and if someone takes a wound too grievous to fight with, close ranks on them and funnel them to me!" Jaheira snapped. "Frankly, speaking, we won't all survive this, but anyone who shows cowardice or betrayal will be left to rot here when we drag the rest of you to the temple district to find an arch-priest. I'm especially speaking to you, Thayan! Turn on us or try to flee by magic and I will gut you with my bare hands. Just tear your stomach open with my fingers andrip your entrails out like a hunting falcon."
Minsc wiped a tear of joy from his eye. "Jaheira, if you were not so small and elfy, Minsc might mistake you for his own mother, such is your fervor."
"Excuse me?! Why am I being singled out for this abuse?! Your own mage is far more cowardly than I! Even as we prepared spells now, he spoke of our certain doom!" Edwin protested.
"I spoke of it. I didn't say I would run from it," Xan said calmly. "Why run? It's inevitable. It will find me now matter where I go. Truthfully, dying here would be a relief. Just get it over with in a fairly standard manner, and move on to my centuries of horrible nothingness as my Moonblade traps my soul and locks me away here, forgotten in the muck. I will never be free from it until my family line has no heirs left to take up the weapon, you see, but since they will never find it here, in the sewage of a foreign land, I will most certainly be trapped hundreds or thousands of years. It's actually quite reassuring to know what form my doom will take, instead of having to ponder the implications of each step forward."
A bony fist slammed through the rubble, pulverized stone falling off it in a cloud of dust.
"See? Much less horrifying than walking through life each day unsure," Xan said in satisfaction.
And then the rubble to their east lurched, and shifted, and through the miniature avalanche the softly glowing eyes of the walking dead…
(*)
… stepped into view.
"This is not good," Dynaheir murmured, watching the horde shuffle down the side street through a hole in the wall that all of them were painfully aware meant the wall entirely could probably be broken down to flank them at any time. "There are dozens. I see zombies, ghouls, and skeletons, at the very least… that might be a wight or two, I'm not the best at distinguishing them. I see no higher undead, at least, nothing sentient, but it looks like they're turning this way. They must have heard us, or smelled us, and…"
"And we are most likely going to be surrounded, swarmed, and killed if this doesn't work," Acherai finished. "No pressure, m'dear."
"I am asking Shar to intervene," she replied calmly, her head bowed over her holy symbol and her eyes closed in prayer. "I power my plea with my undying hatred of all surface dwellers, and my regret at ever joining this doomed expedition. I was better off hunted and alone in the woods, and aligning myself to you all was a punishment from the goddess, I know that now."
"So how do we know if she decides to help? One of 'em is gnawing on another one's arm," Imoen asked. "Was that Shar? Is that how Shar does it?"
"That was just a ghoul deciding to eat a zombie. It happens occasionally, when they cannot find fresher corpses," Dynaheir said. "I assume it thinks there isn't enough of us to go around, if it's even capable of thought. No, I have not made a study of the gods of evil, but I have to assume when Shar chooses to manifest her aid, we will…"
Viconia opened her eyes, and the blood-red common to the dark elves was gone, her pupils having grown wide enough to cover the orbs entirely in pure blackness.
"…definitely notice."
The ruin seemed to grow colder, the shadows deepening in the pale and unnatural light of the cavern. "Nightsinger, hear our prayer…" Viconia hissed, stepping toward the door of the broken home and holding her symbol high. "Those who should not walk on this world. Those who step in Shar's night unbidden. I turn you. Obey me, or flee this place in fear of Shar's unholy wrath!"
There was nothing physical to it. More of a cold that seemed to roll over the skin of everyone in the small building, and Sephiria in particular paled at the sense of something evil and hungry looking down at them.
The undead, so seemingly implacable and emotionless, reacted far more strongly.
As the group watched in horrified fascination, the creatures shambling down the dead boulevard in the darkness turned on each other like starving animals. Once united in purpose, the front ranks hissed and dug their yellowed fangs into those marching beside them, or turned to rake rotting fingers across the faces of those coming behind. The attacked barely reacted, most of them marching forward inexorably and dragging along their attackers or trampling them… only to be turned themselves as soon as they got close enough to the sphere of Viconia's power, fleeing in as close as they could manage to terror, or joining their own attackers as the drow's thralls.
"Good work. Coran, Imoen, can you pick off stragglers? Ideally, we want the undead so focused on eating each other that they draw all attention to themselves, and we can find a path to Sarevok without…" Acherai began.
And then, from the other side of the small building, a roar shook them all down to the bone, just before an impact like the breath of a dragon shook everything else. An ogre's huge, knotted green-yellow fist slammed through half a foot of stone, reaching in to pull the wall down… and behind it, the moans of a dozen more zombies.
"… running into any more difficulties," he finished, somewhat pitifully.
(*)
Jaheira was pushing seventy years old.
In truth, Imoen occasionally referring to her as 'auntie Jaheira' was not so terribly wrong; Gorion had seemed to father everyone he met on pure instinct, but he truly had been more of a brother to her than anything else. A younger brother. As a half-elf, she could expect to live another seventy years before she even really started showing her age, but despite this she had always felt old. Too much blood in her past; a childhood was nothing she'd ever really gotten to experience, and she had always felt that when she finally passed from this world, it would be with a quiet acceptance that she was returning to the cycle of nature as all things must.
And so, as the undead blade slammed into her staff with the strength of an ogre, pushing her own weapon back against her chest with enough force to hurt even through her armor, she was a bit surprised at how hesitant she was to die.
Part of it was the nature of the enemy, perhaps. A horrid unnatural thing animated by arcane magic and attacking her in the filth-encrusted bowels of an overrun city, far away from anything green and growing. Part of it was the notion her husband was beside her; she had always somewhat hoped he would outlive her. He deserved a life of peace, and he would never find it so long as he was married to a busybody who could not stop carrying a weapon so long as even one slaver or poacher roamed free.
But mainly, it was that if she died in battle, as she was certain she would one day, she would hope it was in the company of less worthless people.
"If you are going to stand here, holding weapons," she snarled as the bony fingers of the skeleton's other arm tried to reach through the locked weapons to try to dig into her throat, "at least use the godsdamned things!"
Kagain slammed his own opponent into the tunnel wall with his shield, not so much as scratching the rotting bone but at least knocking the thing off its feet for a moment while he stepped across to slam his warhammer into the creature's knee, snapping it and lessening the pressure enough for Jaheira to push it back, bringing her staff down full on the thing's skull with more than enough force to kill a human three times over. The bone cracked, but did not shatter as it should have, and the thing began trying to pull its way back to its feet without so much as a hiss of pain even as both warriors brought their weapons down again on its ribcage in unison, shattering the spot where the heart should have been and driving through to shatter its spine against the slime-soaked stones.
Kagain took a deep breath, and said, "Do ye ever stop whining?!"
"E-enthusiastically helping us a-adjust!" Khalid said, defending his wife as best he could, because he was rather busy defending himself at the moment, a rusted blade sawing into his shield as he futilely tried to hack its arm off. She raised a hand, calling to mind a prayer of protection…
And a bony hand wrapped around her ankle, yanking roughly and sending her down face first into the sludge, and she realized belatedly that the skeleton Kagain had knocked from its feet had not risen again. Perhaps he had damaged its leg, or perhaps these things were simply smarter than they looked, but it had come after from under the filth of the sewers, trying to drag her down, and now her eyes burned with filth, the air was knocked from her lungs, and her staff was pinned beneath her…
Khalid of my heart, if I journey to Silvanus's side without you, lead a good life, she thought, trying to get her head back above the sludge while the pressure on her ankle continued to pull her back, and already the space behind her eyelids was turning red…
There was a sudden, crushing pressure across her boot, and sudden relief on the heels of it. She pushed herself up, gasping for breath, and turning to offer a curt thanks to the dwarf before rushing to her husband.
Standing there, shards of bone still on her mace, was Tamoko.
Jaheira was a hardened veteran, and she didn't waste time asking how the witch had gotten free. All she said was, "Friend or foe?"
"No friend to you, but foe to your foes."
"Fine. I can't turn away a sword, so hold the damn line, th-"
And then the priestess, without even bothering to utter so much as a 'by your leave', charged toward the tunnel leading down to the temple, even going so far as shoving Xan into a wall to get there more quickly.
Jaheira had just enough time to think, Well, at least she didn't kill him, before turning and rushing to her husband's side to deal with something a bit more pressing than an unlovable cleric who truly did seem to be on their side, at least to some capacity.
Besides, if she knew Sephiria and Imoen, it was seriously unlikely that Tamoko could make their situation any worse than they did to themselves.
(*)
Twice. We have killed this thing twice and it just will not stay dead, Sephiria thought, her mind going practically blank with dread as she realized they were within seconds of being in a small, blocked room with an ogre twice her size and strong enough to rip a grown man to pieces with his bare hands. And as the wall buckled, the world seemed to slow.
Two mages, a cleric, and a pair of scouts.
All of them are between myself and the wall. If any of them get in his grasp, they're going to die and there won't be anything I can do to stop it. And when the wall falls, the undead will swarm in. In this box, with that thing, and Torm knows how many other monsters…
We'll all be killed.
And I will not lose another friend to this animal.
"Dynaheir! Before the wall comes down, blast it outward with the biggest spell you have!" she snapped.
"What?!" Imoen squeaked. "Seffie, that could-"
"She's right," Acherai snarled. "No time to talk it over, we have zero other options, so everyone get behind something! Viconia, if you stop praying we're all dead from the other direction, so stay close to Coran!"
"Why m-" Coran began, before Dynaheir began to chant and raised her hands, flame flickering between her fingers, and everyone really came to the conclusion that they should be behind something. Anything. Unfortunately, there wasn't much beyond rubble that felt far too low to the ground…
It was.
A fireball going off in open air was impressive and destructive to a degree Sephiria had rarely seen, most surely the highlight of her adventuring career thus far. A fireball going off in a small, enclosed space was a nightmare, like a small chunk of the Hells brought to Faerun. She felt her hair ignite as the flames roared over her too-low cover and rolled across her head and back, smelled the acrid scent of her own flesh cooking as agony rolled across any exposed flesh, and just barely heard Imoen scream over the sound of red-hot wind rushing past her hears. It was the sound that made it worse than being trapped in the burning Iron Throne tower, she thought. That sensation that the fire was alive, and moving for them… She had very, very little doubt that at least some of them should have died in the storm of flames. Whether it was true or not, she felt it.
But thankfully, there was another path that the flames could take, and like so many things, the bulk of the energy took the path of least resistance.
The wall buckled outward around the hole Tazok had torn into it, the half-stable stones erupting out in a cloud of red-hot shrapnel. The zombies and skeletons were torn down like wheat before a scythe, a dozen of them simply erased by the waves of flame and stone.
Tazok, on fire, dents and holes punched in a plate vest over his hideous torso and a bloody grin on his face, held up the blade Sephiria had lost in her first battle with Sarevok at the Iron Throne tower. "I was hoping it was you. Thieves. Elf-friends. Left me for dead and stole my blade. You don't do that to an ogre. In my tribe, you steal a weapon, that's an insult payable with death. Didn't get to eat your hearts for it back at the tower… but I'm still hungry."
And then, the moaning of the undead redoubled through the streets around them, as everyone in the room belatedly realized Viconia's prayers had stopped for perhaps just a bit too long.
"And so are my friends."
(*)
Winski Perorate exhaled softly, his breath fogging the mirror he gazed through, a tool of scrying that he had thankfully thought to keep in his backup laboratory here in the ruins; his undead sentinels, born from the remains of Bhaal's own Deathbringers, had no minds of their own, and to provide them with commands other than the most basic self-defense, he had to be able to see them.
"Tazok has engaged your brother and sister, my lord. He will…"
"Die, presumably. If he kills them, they were never worth my time to begin with, and then these last few weeks have been a true humiliation…" Sarevok said, his chuckle sending a chill down the old wizard's spine. "Where is your apprentice?"
"I have tasked Semaj with gathering the local undead and leading them toward your siblings to support Tazok. Are you planning to murder him, sir?"
"Only if he returns before I've had the opportunity to exorcise this frustration. Tell him to hurry and drive them from whatever rat hole they've found to hide in. I want blood."
"Well. Fortunately, he is aware that his role in this plan is increasingly tenuous, unlike Tazok, and I had little enough left to teach him. I expect he won't be returning to the temple at all."
"That's fine. The purge will be starting shortly after I ascend, and nobody is guaranteed to be safe. He deserves the chance to be a moving target, just like any other mortal."
"Your generosity knows no bounds, milord."
"Your sarcasm amuses me, old man, but only to a point. Watch your tone."
"What sarcasm, milord? A fair chance of survival is more than you are required to offer anyone. I hope that when the time comes, you are polite enough to offer the same to… oh."
"What is… oh. Oh. Well then…" Sarevok said, his tone so soft and cold that it almost literally seemed to turn the room to ice around him, as he looked upon Tamoko's visage in the mirror, running down the darkened path toward the temple, barely even stopping to swat aside a zombie moving too close to her path, crushing its skull in a single blow. "Ah, sweet Tamoko. I would have forgotten about you if you had just stayed far away, but you never did know how to leave well enough alone…"
"Would you like me to send Semaj to deal with her, sir?" Winski asked, struggling to keep out of his voice the concern that Sarevok had not been standing so closely behind him a second ago, he was certain of it…
"No. No. Keep the pressure on them. Kill the lesser ones, and kill Tazok as well if you can. Have Semaj spread the call wider, send every corpse in these catacombs against them. Kill everything. My siblings will survive. Nothing will keep them from me.
"And before that happens, I want to go have a talk with my beloved."