After two full days of walking they arrived at the foot of the mountains, instead of continuing to the stairway they set up camp and rested the night to be prepared to clear the stairs of monsters.
freeZe felt quite good the next morning, the combination of her robes and the blankets they were lying on made for very comfortable sleep, not quite as comfortable as the beds in the base but far better than what she was used to from the mine and the journey. After eating some of the food they had brought with them and drinking some water they were ready to start walking again.
Fire took the lead as they climbed the mountain, he had told them that the entrance to the stairs was located in a rock wall on a plateau a few hundred meters higher. Climbing the mountain without any sort of path was difficult but it was something they were used to. freeZe had expected her mentor to at least be a little bit slower than them since she was shorter and seemed to be physically weaker than the rest of them. To her surprise Shadow seemed to have no problems what so ever, freeZe also quickly figured out why, with a bit of concentration she could sense the Air magic below Shadow's feet. freeZe wondered if she could use the subtler applications for Air magic to her advantage as well once she practiced it.
They reached the plateau Fire talked about within an hour, they could already see the rock wall the entrance was supposed to be located in.
"Where is it?" Unchosen asked.
Fire said: "It's locked. Takes a Mencur-Besh or an Eye-and-Claws mark to open it."
With those words he walked up to the wall and placed his hand against it. At first nothing happened but then the old mechanism awoke from its sleep. With a grinding sound a part of the wall swung backwards and revealed a passage into the mountain. After passing through, the door closed again, becoming flush with the surrounding stone. freeZe suspected that there was a little bit of magic at work here too, otherwise the door wouldn't be quite so invisible.
Shadow approached freeZe. "Don't be wasteful with your magic in here, since we are going underground there won't be much environmental energy to refill your life force from."
Fire explained to everyone: "The deeper you go the stronger the influence of the Void gets, weaker creatures just instantly die when they get deep enough. There is also a point where most unprotected humans get significantly weakened up to being put in a coma. Monsters are not immune to this either, which is why you find stronger and more dangerous monsters the deeper you go. We will encounter scarier things than we have so far. Zombies will be faster and more intelligent, skeletons will have better aim. Your armor may protect you but it doesn't make you invincible, especially not against stronger creatures."
freeZe mumbled: "Like ghouls."
Fire nodded. "Like ghouls."
They all checked their weapons again, this time TehLulz seemed to be willing to use his crossbow. freeZe went through her mental list of cost-efficient spells that she could use so that she wouldn't burn so much life force.
As they started their descent down the wide spiral staircase she asked Shadow: "So, I guess necromancy is harder against the stronger monsters here?"
Shadow nodded: "Yes, controlling them is hard but making them crumble isn't. It just requires a lot of concentration so that you just turn the zombie to dust and not something else. It's more useful against single targets than groups."
Shadow lit a glowing orb that floated above the group, it revealed that the walls of the staircase had countless engravings in a familiar style in them.
Ambigious asked: "Why aren't the stairs lit?"
Fire said: "They were originally. It's just that this entrance hasn't been used in hundreds of years. Things decay."
freeZe spotted a group of skeletons, seemingly lying in wait with their bows drawn at the edge of the light. She quickly shot a ball of compact flames at them. It exploded on impact and lit the entire group on fire. Ambigious and Unchosen moved in to finish them off while they were distracted by the flames. The noises of shattering bones echoed throughout the entire staircase. A few seconds later freeZe heard many feet climbing stairs, the monsters had been alerted.
Fire said: "Get ready, this won't be easy."
The first few monsters came around the corner, they were four zombies that looked a little bigger and less decayed than their surface counterparts, they were also noticeably faster and more decisive. The four warriors had formed a defensive line in front of the two mages. When the zombies reached them Ambigious attacked one with his mace, stopping it in its tracks with a well-placed blow to the head, Fire impaled another one on his halberd. The remaining two were cut down by TehLulz and Unchosen.
"Those were more durable." Ambigious noted.
Nobody had time to answer, the next couple of undead came around the corner. This time it was even more zombies and a few skeletons. Fire looked to his sister, she nodded and her runes started glowing. The skeletons were lifted up into the air and then slammed into the ground with bone-shattering force. freeZe lobbed another fireball into the crowd of zombies to help thin them out. This time it wasn't as easy to kill them since there were more than before. Ambigious had been knocked off his feet and was now being focused by the horde. The others tried their best to keep the zombies off their friend. Fire had dropped his halberd and switched to a lighter axe with which he was now splitting zombie skulls. Eventually the zombies were fought off and nobody had sustained any major injuries.
Unchosen said: "If you can spare the energy it would be good to have a bit more artillery support, especially if the next horde is even bigger."
freeZe nodded and said: "Can do, I still have plenty left."
The next horde took a few minutes to arrive but it was indeed bigger and much more frightening. The zombies were now noticeably larger and more muscular, the skeletons had larger bows and there were now creepers in the mix.
While the monsters approached, TehLulz used his crossbow to shoot out a couple of the creepers before they could come closer. He landed a couple of head shots, making them explode and thin the zombies out but there were still a few creepers left that he didn't have shots on. Shadow and freeZe were now laying waste to the zombies with a combined flame attack, they couldn't afford to hold back anymore.
Fire was the one to notice the creeper first, it had come dangerously close and was preparing to explode. Fire threw himself down the stairs to kick the creeper off its four legs. The creeper was now on the floor, still swelling up, Fire wasn't able get out of the explosion radius quickly enough. freeZe only saw the bright flash and zombie bits splattering onto the walls. She threw another fireball at the head of a creeper at the back of the horde, causing it to explode and take out all remaining creepers as well in a chain reaction. She could see Fire curled up in a ball inside the mass of zombies, Ambigious and TehLulz were cutting their way to him while Unchosen kept guarding the mages. The remaining zombies were mopped up quickly. Fire seemed to have sustained some injuries since there was blood dripping onto the floor below him.
"It's not much." He assured them.
The others also had been injured but nothing like Fire. freeZe listened out and discovered that there were no more step noises.
"Did we make it?" She asked.
Fire groaned and answered: "Maybe. There may still be some undead left that didn't come up but it seems like this was the bulk of them. Shadow, would you mind closing my wounds?"
His sister nodded and cast the spell. freeZe noticed that it was only a rudimentary healing spell that stopped the bleeding and ensured he would be able to keep fighting. A full healing spell would cost much more than this one, especially on a Mencur-Besh.
freeZe had gotten a feeling for spells that were cast in her vicinity. She could replicate most of them if they had to do with Fire or Air, those spells always had a special kind of resonance with her own life force. Strangely enough she had felt a small amount of resonance as well when Shadow had made that one zombie crumble in the savannah. She had then tried to cast some Wither magic herself, trying to make a plant wilt. It had felt like she was able to generate enough Wither magic for the spell but then she had been unable to give it direction.
They slowly descended further into the depths, always on the lookout for danger. Suddenly Fire stopped and signaled them to do so as well.
He said: "I heard something, there is definitely something up ahead and it just started moving. It doesn't seem to be small either…"
Before he could speak further they heard a primal, bone-chilling scream. A second later something very large came running up the staircase, even taller than Fire. It was a muscular, hunched over figure with long arms. As it came closer to the light freeZe could see exactly what it was. She tensed up as she recognized it, it was a ghoul. Its pale skin was covered in dried blood. It was just as terrible as Andras Thornhook had described it, only that this one wore more skulls than the one in his drawing. She could hear her brother curse as he prepared to defend against the charging beast. She reflexively shot a fireball at it, but it just shrugged off the explosion.
Fire yelled: "Don't let that thing hit you, distract it while Shadow and freeZe deal with it."
Shadow yelled back: "I don't have much energy left, the healing took a lot."
The ghoul went for Unchosen first, he barely avoided its clawed hands as it swiped at him. Meanwhile freeZe prepared a more powerful fireball and hurled it at the ghoul. This one managed to set it on fire but that only seemed to make it angrier. It was just as she had read in the book, it seemed to be almost completely fireproof and she wasn't confident enough to use lighting, especially since the others were wearing metal armor.
While Unchosen still was evading the ghoul, Fire had managed to land a hit on one of its arms with his halberd only for it to turn around and swat the weapon out of Fire's hands with its uninjured arm, the halberd went flying down the stairs into the darkness. Nothing the others did to it seemed to help, it was just too resilient to care about any of their attacks.
Suddenly freeZe had an idea. She remembered when they were in the nether and one of the cultists used Wither magic on Ambigious. She knew that Wither would devour anything that lived or un-lived but needed constant attention from its caster, flames also devoured everything and didn't need any help. Maybe she could…
The ghoul was now towering above TehLulz who was lying on the ground, it was winding up for a crushing blow with its uninjured arm. TehLulz barely managed to roll out of the way but the attack still grazed him. The hit was strong enough to kill any unarmored human. The firesteel armor absorbed the brunt of the impact, when it reached the point where it would break, it instead bent inwards, shattering some of TehLulz' ribs. As the armor bent itself back to its original shape TehLulz cried out in pain.
Another fireball hit the ghoul, only this fireball was noticeably darker than the previous ones and its flames also seemed to be more eager to stay on the ghoul. The ghoul howled in surprise and tried putting out the fire that was undoubtedly hurting it but no matter what it did, the flames only climbed higher.
freeZe heard Shadow yell: "Get away from those flames, come to me!"
Fire roughly picked up TehLulz, he and the others scrambled towards Shadow whose runes started glowing. The flames on the ghoul had grown significantly and were now also starting to creep along the rock. When everyone had made it to Shadow, she projected a white barrier around the group. A few moments later the flames rapidly climbed up the staircase and washed over the shield. Shadow was heavily breathing, struggling to keep her barrier up with her dwindling energy supply.
The flames disappeared from one second to the other. The moment they did, Shadow collapsed on the stairs, the glowing ball disappeared at the same time as the barrier, freeZe managed to catch her mentor before her head hit the rock. Darkness enveloped them. A second later there was light again, this time it was Fire holding a torch up. The lifeless body of the ghoul way lying on the stairs in front of them, it didn't have any signs of burning.
Still heavily breathing Shadow opened her eyes: "Later. Whatever you may want to ask, I'll explain later. Let's just get to the damn train."
They all silently agreed. Fire carried his sister, Ambigious and Unchosen helped TehLulz walk the rest of the stairs. After hundreds and hundreds of steps down there was another door that swung open as they approached it. As they went through it they could see light at the end of the corridor, there were no undead to be seen.
freeZe was glad that they had made it down to the railway in one piece. She hoped that Fire's promise that this was the only dangerous part of their journey to Rockhaven would hold true.