The graveyard was, well, a graveyard. The 'wall', such as it was, that surrounded it was piled stones, barely coming up to my knees. We all stepped over it easily (apart from Lidda, who had to put her hands on it and swing herself over). The graves on the other side were mostly overgrown, a scattershot of illegible tombstones at the head of patches of wildflowers and brambles. One section was in better condition than the rest, the weeds and debris cleared away to reveal tombstones that were of lower quality but much more intact than the others. About halfway down the graveyard, off to our left, was a building that might have been made of a white stone once, but was now an ugly grey, any decoration or embellishment having long been eroded by time.

Julie stepped into action once we'd made our way over the wall. "Weapons out, everyone." She followed her own order, drawing her arming sword from the sheathe while slinging her shield from her back to her arm. It was a surprisingly silent movement, the sword sliding out soundlessly, with the shield only mildly clacking against her armour. "We don't know where these things are, or how many of them there are, so pay attention to your surroundings." She glanced over at Lidda while saying this, who just smiled and nodded in return.

I debated for a second if it was worth me actually drawing my dagger, but there were probably situations where friendly fire (heh) would prevent me from using my breath weapon. Pulling the blade out from where it was stored at the small of my back, I weighed it in my hand. There was a comforting weight to it. I'd always enjoyed playing around with knives, but this had the heft of something designed to fuck someone's day up, and for some reason that brought a savage grin to my face.

The other members of the party had all drawn their weapons, bar Sabrina. Zahri had her mace out in one hand, her shield in the other, and now that it was more prominently displayed, I could see a yellow sunburst painted on the surface of the heavy wood. Lidda had her bow strung and an arrow knocked, ready to pull. Sabrina, on the other hand, had pulled a small piece of leather out of a pocket, and with a gesture and an incomprehensible word, the leather disappeared. Picking up her staff from where she'd dropped it to the floor, she adjusted her shirt slightly and smiled at Julie. "Ready to go."

Julie nodded (and I internally noticed that she'd become a lot more confident the moment we'd stepped into the graveyard) and took the lead heading towards the building, Lidda close behind, the rest of us a couple of steps back.

As we slowly approached the building that I could only presume was the crypt, given the lack of any other buildings in the area, I found myself anxiously paying attention to my surroundings. I'd never had someone (or something) genuinely try and kill me before, and the thought worried me. Sure, I was resistant to physical damage, but that's not the same as immune, and one lucky crit would seriously hurt. And I was a big fan of not being hurt. Different scenarios involving different kinds of threats ran through my head as I kept it swivelling around the graveyard, although my relative lack of options meant that most of the plans that I could come up with in response to those scenarios boiled down to 'run away'.

'What if there's a vampire in there?'

'Don't look at it and run away.'

'What if there's a bodak in there?'

'Don't look at it and run away.'

'What if there's a lich in there?'

'Start practising yoga, so that I can bend over and kiss my arse goodbye.'

These thoughts whirled through my mind as we got within spitting distance of the crypt doors. The crypt itself was wide, but squat and shallow, a pair of double doors in the front. The lack of depth to this thing indicated that either this would be a relatively short encounter, or that it lead into some underground complex. Voicing that thought, I got a couple of agreeing sounds, including a pleased sounding one from Julie, resulting in a curious look from the rest of us.

Julie brought her wooden shield halfway up to her face, and sheepishly lowered it again. "Well, if it is some kind of underground area, then it'd be a full on adventure, and we'd be a proper adventuring party for clearing it out, right?" she admitted. "No more shitheels telling us" and here she continued in a terrible falsetto "oh, you don't count as adventurers because you haven't gone on a 'proper' adventure yet!" A scowl appeared on her face as she hefted her sword.

"Or there's a short fight, and we make some easy money." Lidda opined. She'd moved closer to the doors, and was inspecting them from a few feet away.

The scowl disappeared from Julie's face as she sighed. "Or that too, I suppose. Still, I can hope."

Lidda continued inspecting the doors for a few seconds, before turning to the rest of us. "It doesn't look like there's any mechanism attached to them, and the area where the lock was has been torn off with a crowbar at some point, probably from the looters who started this whole mess off. I think it's safe to open, barring whatever's on the other side."

The doors were just about wide enough for two people to comfortably stand abreast, and Julie and Zahri stepped up to them. I thought about volunteering to swap places with one of them, as I was probably the tankiest member of the party, and it would allow me to breathe fire more easily, but I held back. Part of that was me worrying that my lack of experience would bite me in the arse and I'd freeze up, and part of that was that I was pretty sure it'd be really awkward for me to (verbally or otherwise) shove my way to the front for the fight. In retrospect, I probably should have brought up things like 'fighting tactics' and 'formations' before now.

Our frontliners readied themselves, bringing their shields up to their midsection at a slight angle. Lidda pulled her bow back to half draw, and Sabrina held her quarterstaff up in a blocking position. I just kind of stood there awkwardly.

With a glance back at the rest of us, and a nod, Julie shoved her shield into the door, slamming it open (a small part of me kind of wished it'd been a pull door, just to see what would have happened, but I damped it down and focused), briefly revealing an antechamber of some kind before the space was filled with a yellowing claw striking out.

The fight that followed was somewhat frantic.

Julie stepped backwards, taking the blow on her shield, and the creature that stepped outside after her resembled the classical medical textbook image of a skeleton about as much as I did. It was the yellowish-brown colour of cheap mdf, and in place of ligaments the joints where each bone should meet were melted together, its whole body unnaturally twisting with each motion it made.

An arrow fired by Lidda shot fruitlessly through the skeleton, and imbedded itself into the thing that stepped up behind it. This was more visibly a corpse, intact aside from its face, which looked like someone had taken a belt sander to it. The entire front of its skull was missing, allowing us to see the exact point the ocular nerves plugged into the brain.

I strafed around to the side, trying to find a good spot to breathe at these things that wouldn't either hit my allies or put me in arms reach of the damned things. Zahri chose to have a much simpler reaction to the appearance of a skeleton next to her, which was to twat it with her mace. Quite successfully and all, her blow slamming into the mass of bone where the elbow of this thing should be, shattering it and taking off one of its claws completely.

The follow up blow from Julie slamming her shield into it was much less effective, with the awkward prod with a staff that our resident wizard gave it as she stepped up behind Julie also achieving approximately fuck all.

The skeleton's remaining claw lashed out at Julie, the ringing sound audible from where I was as it slammed into her side, Julie flicking her sword down just too slow to catch it. Her return shield blow staggered it slightly, allowing the cleric to lash out with her mace again, this time taking out one of its legs and causing it to crumple to the floor.

No honour among undead seemed to be an applicable phrase, as the zombie behind it immediately stepped forwards, crushing the skull of the skeleton under its weight at it slowly raised its arms up. Unfortunately for it, I'd moved into a better position by this point, and with adrenaline and panic coursing through my veins, I stepped forwards, the cone of fire that slammed into both the corpse and the wall next to it flowing from my mouth with barely a thought.

A follow up slash from Julie cut straight through its chest on a diagonal, and as the two parts of it slowly collapsed to the floor we focused back on the crypt. When it failed to disgorge more monsters, and the new pile of body parts on the floor failed to move even after a prodding from a curious quarterstaff, we relaxed.

I was shaking slightly, I noted, the adrenaline still flooding me. I wanted to move, to run, to lash out at something and sink my fucking teeth into it. Even as I tried to pay attention to the others, I couldn't stop my entire right leg bouncing up and down like a jackrabbit overdosing on cocaine.

As Lidda moved up to the door to stand watch, Zahri had already sat Julie down and was prodding at her side.

"Does this hurt?"

Julie scowled. "Yes, ramming your knuckle into my ribs hurts! What did you expect?"

Nodding to herself, Zahri continued to poke around Julie's ribs, causing a few muttered sounds. "Armour's fine. Held up. Padding took most of it. You'll bruise, but you're fine." Extending a hand, she hoisted Julie to her feet. Her follow-up advice of "Try not to get hit again." was accompanied with a gentle punch to the shoulder.

Focusing on stopping my leg from jittering just made the other one start up instead, so I instead paid attention to Sabrina, who was using her staff to flip over parts of the undead (although they were just dead now, I guess) bodies to inspect them, occasionally making vague noises. Her hands kept twitching towards her backpack, although every time they did she just tightened them around the staff.

After half a minute or so of Julie testing her range of motion, and occasionally wincing as she tugged on the muscles around her new sore patch, she moved over to the corpses, nudging Sabrina's shoulder with her own. "Anything interesting?"

Not looking up from where she was rolling one of the bones over with the end of her staff, the wizard responded. "Yes, the preservation technique is one I haven't seen before. The way she's been kept intact over what I can only imagine is a substantial period of time is fascinating. If you'll look here..."

"That is useful for us. Anything interesting that is useful for us." Lidda hadn't turned around from where she was standing by the door, but had apparently been listening in.

"Oh, of course. No, I don't think so. Certainly I can't tell if there's anything you'll be able to use in a fight, if that's what you mean. Mahziron? Any ideas?" She hadn't looked up, or raised her voice, but I was still wired enough to jump when she addressed me.

"What? Erm, no, no ideas. Not really my area of expertise, poking bodies." I rattled through the words like a machine gun.

Looks were exchanged between people, and Julie slowly moved towards me, as if I was a frightened animal. "Are you alright?"

I didn't really know how to answer that. It wasn't the combat that'd I'd had a problem with, that'd been fine. It was now, my heart pounding almost audibly to me, the scent of slightly roasted preserved meat causing me to salivate slightly, and this drive pushing me to do something, anything, as long as it made my blood sing. And how do you even explain that to someone you met yesterday, when you don't even know why it's happening yourself? I decided to take the easier route, and lie. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just took me by surprise a bit, that's all. You good?" I gestured to her side.

Thankfully, she took the bait. "Oh, I'm fine. It might bruise a bit, but it's nothing." As she stood straighter, and flexed slightly, I could hear the snort Lidda let out. Julie could as well, from the looks of it, as she deflated slightly.

Taking the opportunity to leave the conversation before I was asked something else, I wandered over to the doors. Peering through, I noted that it was a small black-and-white antechamber, with a flight of stairs leading down into the ground. Dungeon complex confirmed, I guess. Glancing down at Lidda, who was standing next to me, a new arrow knocked, I opened my mouth and was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder.

Spinning around, I dropped into a defensive stance, flames building up in my throat. Zahri stared back at me, once eyebrow raised, a thick club in her hand. She presented it to me, handle first, avoiding touching the other end. Taking it in my off hand, I noticed this was because that end was wrapped in cloth, and looked sticky.

"A torch. You have a free hand. You want it?" She answered my unasked question.

I shrugged. "I don't really think I need it, to be honest. I can see in the dark well enough." At least, I should be able to. Pretty sure I had darkvision, although I'd not really tried using it.

Zahri nodded, and then waved her hand towards the other three. "So can I. They can't. You want it?"

Ah, that makes sense. Wait, was I the torchbearer now? Damnit, reduced to hireling. Still, I'd rather the other people be able to see than not. "Do you have a light for it?"

I was faced with a deadpan expression. "You breathe fire."

"Yeah, and if you want the whole thing immediately burnt, I'll do that. I've not really practised with making anything smaller than a cone of death. Although I probably should see if I can do that, it does sound kind of useful." I went to scratch my chin, before realising I had a knife in one hand and what was essentially a club in the other. Eh, the torch will be a good enough back up melee weapon, might as well put the dagger back.

As Zahri dug around in her backpack for a lighter of some kind (flint and steel was the term, if I recalled correctly. Do torches need tinder? Probably not, I'd have thought) something about what she'd said struck me as off, and I tried to figure out what it was. It took me until she'd actually lit the torch, and it was burning away, for me to figure it out. "You can see in the dark?"

"Yes."

Well, that was helpful. "I walked into that one. How can you see in the dark?"

She sighed. "I'm a half-orc." Huh. I looked at her, but I couldn't see anything I'd really peg as 'orc-y'. A slight greenish tinge, maybe? Slightly more pronounced teeth? I dunno. "You finished?" Ah, maybe I shouldn't have just started inspecting her after she'd said that.

"Sorry, my bad." How to phrase this... "I've not met a half-orc before, it took me by surprise." She still looks annoyed, fuck, apologise harder. "That was rude of me, though, I apologise for it."

A pause stretched out longer than I'd have liked, before she nodded. "It's fine." She moved over to the door, joining Julie, who'd dragged Sabrina away from the corpses, and I couldn't tell if I'd fucked that up or not. Fuck.

As we gathered at the door, the torchlight revealing the stairs, displaying a room slightly more colourful than the black-and-white I'd seen earlier, with a brown floor barely visible under the dust, and red stucco peeling off of the walls. The dust had been disturbed, and Lidda poked at it for a couple of seconds before straightening up.

"Right, from my guess, and it is a guess, the lass who died was killed here, and then her corpse was dragged down the stairs for some reason."

Well, that's not ideal. With a nod, Zahri and Julie formed up side by side at the top of the stairs, and I figured it might be worth bringing up my idea from earlier.

"So, erm, Julie." Alright, now let's try talking with slightly more confidence. "You took a hit back there, and I was wondering if you wanted me to take the front for a bit. I'm tough, I have the light, and it'll make it easier for me to breathe fire."

I was met with a slightly panicked laugh. "What, no, I'm fine. Barely touched me, it'll take more than that to put me down. The light is more useful in the middle anyway." Ok Julie, that was obviously suspicious, but if you want to stay at the front, that's fair enough. I turned to Zahri to make the same offer, but she just shook her head before I could say anything. Alright then, I'll just be back here, carrying a torch, I guess. At least my heart rate had slowed down slightly, the edge taken off of the adrenaline surge.

With a final look back at the graveyard and the sun, we ventured downwards.