Jack Sunder
Lore was the smallest and the quietest, plus she had more experience in the under-city than anyone else in the group. Sunder had hired her specifically because of her experience in stealth. She was the obvious choice...
Still, standing there in the tunnel, shadows flickering the the torch-light, and the occasional wail drifting up to them... it didn't feel right to have sent her on down below. Was this degree of concern for her unprofessional? Was it proper concern? It was a life of risk they led...
No familiar scream came wafting up, however; just unfamiliar ones, all sounding horrific.
Still, Sunder couldn't wait much longer.
“Perl, you're the rearguard now. Keep your torch lit. Selena, douse your torch. We stay ahead of Perl, just far enough ahead that we can see what we are doing. We don't want to send light too far ahead, but we also don't want to stumble in the darkness, right? And I don’t have to tell you to keep your voices down too.”
There were nods all around, and then Selena put out her torch, dimming their surroundings considerably. Off they went, as quietly as possible, heading down the tunnel towards the sounds of agony. The tunnel went down, then came to another catacomb hall. There were a few stones on the ground indicating a right turn. Heading further, they were directed into another right, heading down another sloping tunnel.
The screams grew louder, and Sunder started to wonder whether the sounds of stumbling around in the dark would be loud enough for him to hear, let alone any sentinels that might be listening.
“Sunder!” The cry came from the darkness down in front of him. He strained his eyes to see Lore, but there was only darkness before him. Then, out of the gloom, he noticed Lore, crouching with her hands touching the floor. He hurried towards her.
“There's a stone wall – a newly built brick one, not part of the catacombs down there. I followed it around, according to the sounds, and found a gateway. Two guards.”
“Did they see you at all?”
“No – they can't hear over the moans and the cries, and they seem pretty night-blind from their torches.”
“Any sort of uniform? Describe them.”
“Black helmets, black chain under a jacket, I think. Not a lot of decoration, just a sigil on their jackets and helmets. Some sort of snake, I think. They had a bell at the gate, so I figure there are more guards on call on the other side.”
“Mmm... good. Okay.” Sunder thought for a moment. “What is the gate made out of?”
“Wood, metal studs coming out of it.”
“Studs mean metal reinforcement on the back. Right. We aren't going in that way.”
“Then...?”
Sunder turned to Selena. “You have those tools?”
Selena nodded in the dim light. “Drills and explosives. Just point me in the right direction.”
“Lore, did you see any parts of the wall that seemed weak? Water damage? Not enough mortar?”
“Um, should we really be blowing things up down here?”
“If they built a wall, there would have to be an open space there before hand. Oh – were there other passages leading to the gate? I can't assume they come and go the way we did.”
“Yeah, there's a paved passageway heading... somewhere.”
“Is it lit?”
“No.”
“Can you get to it without them noticing?”
“Hmm... if they weren't looking for me. They seemed pretty bored.”
“Okay, do you know of a weak point?”
“No, but there's nobody watching there, we can all look.”
“Right.”
The group started walking down the tunnel, and came to a fork in the tunnel. Lore waved for them to stop. She came over to Sunder and whispered in his ear: “The sounds come from that direction, but it leads to a brick wall blocking the passage. The other way is the main wall and the gate – part of a larger natural chamber, I think.”
Sunder nodded, and waved the group in the direction of the screams. Sure enough, they came to a brick wall blocking the tunnel. Sunder put his ear to it. He could hear the cries, but they didn't sound as if they were directly on the opposite side.
“This is our entry point,” he whispered to the group. “Selena, set up explosives here to blow a hole we can run through. Lore, take one of Selena's little explosives—the throwing kind—and crank the timer on it for a bit. This is the tricky part... you say the main way is paved and sloped, right? Cobblestones, stuff like that?”
Lore nodded.
Sunder took the bomb in question from Selena, and showed it to Lore. “Do you think this can roll down it?”
Lore stared at it for a moment, obviously visualizing it rolling down the incline. “Yes, I think so. It's good cobblestone – there are little cart-ruts, so I think that they wheeled stuff on it. Maybe something sensitive.”
“Okay, that's good to know. ...Do you think you can roll this up the slope, and then have it roll back down?”
“Oh, I see where you're going with this... I roll it up the slope, then sneak back into the other tunnel as it rolls down into view, then explodes.” Lore grinned for a moment, then was sobered by a howl from the other side of the wall.
“Exactly. Do you think it will work?” he handed the small explosive to Lore
“Yeah, it should be no problem.” She held up the bomb, a spherical device with a crank sticking out the side. “Twist the crank for the timer, right? How much time does each turn give me?” she asked Selena.
Selena looked up from her rucksack. “A full crank is fifteen seconds, give or take three or so. You can do four cranks before the spring maxes.”
“One minute?”
“Give or take 12 seconds or so.”
“You're reassuring.”
“And you pull out the crank to start the timer.”
“...Oh.” Lore looked slightly embarrassed. “Thanks.”
Selena was back to digging around in her pack already, and Sunder wondered if the screams were making her rush. A rushed Selena had not been good in the past. “Take your time, Selena. We want to be sure about this all. No mistakes.”
Selena picked out a handful of devices and started attaching them to the wall with tree sap from a waterskin.
Turning to Lore, who was holding the explosive warily, he said: “When Selena is ready over here, go ahead. We'll set off our explosion the moment we hear yours – hopefully it will mostly blur together, and we can get in and slaughter anyone who noticed our explosion before they alert anyone else of the second explosion.”
Selena looked up to Sunder and Lore, and gave them a nod. Lore started back up the tunnel, and then disappeared down the the fork.
“You heard all that, Selena?” Sunder grabbed the young lady's rucksack, and they all backed away from the wall, heading up to the fork. Selena unwound a cord as she backed up, taking care not to jerk on it by accident.
“Yeah, pull the cord when I hear Lore blow the guards.”
Perl nudged Sunder. “How long do you think we will have before they notice this damage?”
“Depends whether they see the bomb roll down the incline, or whether they are too distracted. I'm counting on them hearing the thing roll.”
“Guards get bored. I know that better than most.”
“Too late now.” Sunder drew his machete. “Prepare to attack.”
Perl drew his sword, Maureen pulled out her hammer, and Selena gave them both a nod.
“Any moment now,” said Sunder.
They waited, for a few moments, but nothing sounded from the direction of the gates.
“Should I check on Lore?” asked Perl.
“No, the tunnel was probably longer than I imagined, or something. Lore will do it.”
“Well it should have gone off by now.”
“Just a little bit--” Sunder was cut off by a thundering explosion, and then a second, closer, much, much louder explosion.
Sunder whipped his sword to point at the cloud of smoke and dust, and silently charged forward, Maureen and Perl flanking him. Leaping through the center of the cloud, he continued to charge forward, then opened his eyes. There was some sort of cultist in front of him, wearing black robes with a snake sigil. With hardly a thought, Sunder brought his blade down, chopping deeply into the man's neck.
Grabbing the corpse and pulling his blade out of it, he lunged forward, sprinting across the debris in the room to get to the main exit. Broken glass cracked underfoot, and Sunder swiped at another black-robed man, missing, then got to the exit first. The man reared back, and seemed about to scream, but Sunder lunged forward, swinging a heavy cut at the man's neck. Blood sprayed, and a follow-up blow clove the man's head from his shoulders.
Elsewhere, there was the sharp bang he knew to be Maureen's firestick, and a black-robed man sprawled over a table, knocking down beakers and a few small tanks of churning ichor.
“Clear!” said Perl, not terribly quiet.
Sunder checked around him, makings sure his exit was the only one, and that nobody nearby was moving. “Clear.”
“Clear,” said Maureen.
Sunder wiped his blade on the robe of the nearest dead cultist, and sheathed it. Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself, ignoring the screams still echoing from behind him.
“By the Aspects, this is amazing!” Glancing at the hole they had blown in the way, Sunder saw Selena step over the rumble. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the contents of what only could be some strange laboratory of alchemy.
As he gazed over the half-ruined lab, 'Amazing' was hardly the word that came to mind for Jack Sunder.
Jack Sunder
“What... is this place?” said Maureen. There were four long tables in the room, and many lamps kept the place relatively bright. On top of the table were a wrecked assortment of beaker and vials, dirtied notes and the occasional piece of red brick. A few large tanks still stood, a combination of thicker glass and good luck protecting them from detonation.
Sunder shook his head. “Reload your firestick, Maureen. Selena: What does this look like to you?”
“It's amazing. It's probably the most well-equipped biology lab I've ever seen.”
“Biology?”
“The study of living things.” Selena walked over to a cracked tank of dark red liquid. “Look in this, you can see things swimming in it.”
Sunder walked over to her, treading warily on the mess of broken containers, spilled fluids, and dead bodies. “What are those things?” he said, starting into the murky redness of the glass tank. The liquid inside was dark red, and he thought it might be blood, but swimming inside... little silver... fish? Worms? He could only see them for a moment, whenever they swam close to the edge of the container.
“Sunder,” said Maureen, her voice unsteady. “I think you should see this.”
Sunder looked over to her. Suspected in a translucent yellow liquid, was quite obviously a human arm. “Selena, there's nothing wonderful about this. This lab is an abomination.”
“Sunder... look at this.”
“It's an arm, alright. Some poor bloke got his arm chopped off.”
“Sunder, it's moving.”
Sunder started at the vat. Sure enough, the arm was twitching, jerking in the fluid. “Oh god...”
“I wonder how they do that,” said Selena, walking around the table with the vat of blood to take a better look at the arm. “If that arm's still alive, the applications to medical science would be amazing.”
“Medical... oh...” Maureen took a step back. “Hey, do you feel that. We are in the Life Aspect's domain.”
Sunder paused, and soaked in the sensation of the air. He had been to busy going through the wall to notice the difference when he entered, but sure enough, there was the pulsing feel of life.
“I can't believe the Life Aspect temple allows this under their grounds,” said Maureen. “They seem like such nice people.”
“Nice, maybe in the abstract, but I think I understand what's going on,” said Sunder. A scream echoed in the background, much louder than before. “This place... they must be exchanging medical information with the temple in exchange for housing and political protection.”
Selena nodded, her eyes still glued to the arm. “It makes sense. If I were studying these processes, I would want to be in Life's domain. It would make a lot of things... so much... easier.” As she spoke, she started copying down the notations on the vat.
Perl kicked one of the dead scientists. “I'm glad you're figuring things out, but I want to get going. This place gives me the chills, and those guards are going to notice this soon enough.”
“We should wait for Lore. I don't want to leave her out there.”
“Right, boss,” said Perl, looking uneasy. “I'll just stand here, and, um... try not to look at anything.”
Selena waved her hand, catching Sunder's eye. “Hey, look at this. The arm isn't just cut off – you'd be able to see the artery endings, ripped tissue, that sort of thing. Instead, the end of the arm has some sort of growth on it. Black tendrils of some sort. I bet this limb is built to be able to be reattached to an open wound, with the tendrils facilitating some sort of connection. I think the tendrils are alive as well...”
“That's great, Selena. How about you tell me more later, when we aren't trying to rescue... humans turned into lab experiments.”
“Father Stone... how many of them are still alive?”
“The ones who are screaming,” said Sunder.
There was a gasp from the broken wall, and Sunder saw Lore, her hand over her mouth, and her eyes wide with horror. “What is this place?”
“It's not a sadist den. It's some sort of medical laboratory.” He tapped Selena on the shoulder. “Look, time to go, okay.”
“No, I need to study this longer. This is some really amazing stuff. The files here say that this arm has been here for over a month, and that the symbiont attached to it is supplying it with nutrients from the solution. No lungs, not heart, no organs, but the thing produces everything the arm needs to--” Sunder grabbed Selena by the arm.
“We go. Now.”
“Hrmph. You're not going to come back here and destroy this place any more than you have. The damage is done, but these notes could mean--”
“I don't know, Selena, but we have a job, and the job comes first. Let's not get caught, too – remember, the base is on alert since Lore bombed the gateway.”
Drawing his blade again, he stepped through the mess on the floor over to the door, pulling A grumbling Selena along. “Draw weapons, Selena, you get your crossbow running.”
The group crowded around the door, preparing their weapons, and trying to ignore the continuing wails from down the hallway. “If it’s wearing black robes, kill it quick.”
They started down the hallway with Perl in the lead. The tunnel curved around, and went upwards, then came to a four-way intersection. The screams were coming from their right. “Maureen, Perl. I want you to hold this intersection, kill anyone who comes here, we want our exit free.”
Sunder led Lore and Selena along with him towards the sound of the screams. The tunnel made another right, and then they came into a room with a half-dozen cages built into the walls. But the screams were not coming from the cages, but instead came from the other side of the room, where an open door led to another tunnel.
“Sunder, those aren't people in the cages.”
Sunder looked over at one of the cages. In the gloom and the darkness within the cage, he could see something, like a human face... but scarred and with an inhuman hunger in the eyes. The face stared back, and then with a step forward into the light, the rest of the creature came into view. Four arms were attached to its shoulders, each looking green and sickly, but well muscled and strong. The hands ended in claws, and slobber trailed down from the sides of it's mouth. But in the better light, Sunder could see the face was clearly human, if looking warped and diseased.
“What are you, who are you?” said Sunder, his hands tightening on his machete. The blade quivered uncharacteristically. “What have they done to you?”
The creature did not reply.
“Sunder, it's not the only one...” said Lore. Sunder looked behind him, and in one of the other cages he could see another humanoid. This one's cheeks were puffed out, and something was moving within them. It crept forward, sticking its... her head out between the bars.
“Who were you...” said Lore.
The creature's mouth moved, as if to reply, but instead something long and wet lashed out. Reacting quickly, Sunder grabbed Lore by an arm, pulling her out of the way. Instead the thing lashed against his brigantine jacket, leaving a mark of slime, but not hurting him. “Selena!”
A mess of clicks and twangs came from where Selena was standing, and three bolts seemed to grow from the creature's head and neck. It slumped to the ground, a few meters of tongue lying limply on the ground.
Putting himself between Lore and the four-armed creature, he held his machete at the ready. “Selena, this one too. Put them down.”
There was a click and a thwang, and a crossbow bolt knocked the creature's head back. It slumped to the ground as well, the bolt protruding from its nose.
“Any others?” said Sunder, his voice trembling slightly. He had fought many times before, but this wasn't... natural, wasn't right. “We need this tunnel safe for whoever is still alive.”
Selena stood there for a moment, then slowly inched her way forward. Sunder kept pace with her, checking the cages to the right as she checked the cages to the left. They were empty.
Sunder breathed a sigh or relief. “Down the tunnel we go. Lore, keep up.”
The girl stood there, staring at the long-tongued creature that had lashed at her. She shivered, then hurried over to Sunder and Selena. “I... I think I knew that woman...”
They hurried down the tunnel, away from the cages, and the creatures that were once human.
Maureen
Maureen stood in the junction, peering around the corners. She would have preferred to hear people coming, and planned accordingly, but with the screams echoing from behind them, she couldn't hear a thing. And so peering it was – first to the tunnel to her right, to check if anyone was coming from the lab, and then to the tunnel to her left, seeing if anyone was coming from that direction. Sunder was across the junction from her, waiting a bit down the tunnel, ready to jump anyone who came around the bend and into view.
How could anyone live with the constant screaming? The people here must be without any shred of compassion at all.
There was a crash coming from the lab, and Maureen thought she could hear voices cursing over the cries and sobs from behind her. “Psst! Perl! They've discovered the lab!”
Perl hurried towards her, and peered around the junction in the direction of the lab. “I don't hear anything.”
“Cursing,” whispered Maureen, “I think they broke one of the vats or something.”
The two of them strained their ears, and sure enough there was the sound of a stream of curses, coming closer. The sound of someone running towards them soon became audible as well. Perl nodded to Maureen, and the two of them drew their melee weapons, ducking behind their corners.
The sound of footsteps drew nearer, and then imminent. A guard, distinguished by his black helmet, ran into the intersection, and Maureen and Perl both swung at him. Maureen's hammer impacted his chest heavily, crushing the breath out of his lungs, and Perl cut at the man's legs. The man was driven backwards by the impact, and collapsed on his back, blood dribbling out of his mouth.
“I think he's dead,” said Maureen
“Sssh! Didn't he have a partner?”
The two of them went quiet again. Sure enough, they could hear the sound of slow footsteps in the tunnel. Maureen and Perl ducked back behind their corners, clutching their weapons tightly.
Step... step. Step... step.
The sounds came closer, slowly, painstakingly. Maureen shivered from the anticipation.
Step... step. Step... step.
Surely this person had a limp. But people with limps still had voices, and when they saw the body...
Shoot! The body! Maureen reached down and grabbed the dead guard by the feet, and dragged him out of the junction. Perl stood ready, still waiting. Hopefully the pool of blood on the ground would cause the researcher or whoever it was to at least pause and investigation, and not run in fear.
Step... step. Step... step.
The pace hadn't quickened or slowed, but it was almost upon them.
Step...--
Maureen spun around the corner, and drove her hammer down hard on the head of the black-robed figure. With a wet crunch, the figure slumped to the ground. Perl was up and past her, charging down the hall and around a bend to kill anyone who had heard the impact.
Maureen stared at the corpse. The top of the head had been caved in by her hammer-blow, a bloody crater in the man's temple, but... Maureen blinked and stared again. There was a deep gash in the side of the man's neck, cutting diagonally almost into the chest. There was no way he could have survived that.
“Mother's tits!” yelled Perl, and there was the sound of his sword ripping into flesh, and then the sound of a deep stab. Maureen raced around the corner just in time to see Perl plant his boot on a headless cultist's chest, and pull his sword free from the cultist's chest. Perl stumbled backwards. “He didn't have a fraking head. No fraking head...”
Maureen stared at the corpse in horror. The head had been hacked clean off. “Tell me you cut off his head and then stabbed him for good measure.”
“Oh, no no no no... Aspects protect me. It's not possible...”
Even as he spoke, the corpse trembled, muscles twitching. Maureen felt the prickle of blood draining from her face, as she backed away. “It's dead. It's got to be dead.”
The headless corpse trembled, and one of it's arms moved, groping the ground around it.
“Die!” yelled Maureen, laying into the corpse with her hammer. She crushed the corpse's chest, and broke both of it's knees, and the thing quivered and went still. “You're dead,” she said, breathing heavily. “Dead.”
Maureen backed away from the corpse. Perl was staring down the hallway. There were more cultists there. One of them had a hole in the front of its head, and Maureen recognized him as the one she had shot. “Oh... this is not good.”
“Back!” said Perl, backing away from the three or so cultists.
Maureen backed up, holding her hammer in front of her, her hands trembling. “You're dead. I shot you. Lie down and be dead.”
She bumped into something behind her. Something that felt like a person.
Jack Sunder
Sunder led the way down the tunnel, towards the screams. Reaching a door, he slowly inched it open. Looking out, the room was a large cavern, with a pit dug in the middle. But what caught his eye was the source of the screams – a young man strapped down to a table, with only two bloody stumps as legs, and two cultists sawing away at one of his arms. Sunder's blood boiled with sudden rage.
Sunder roared with outrage, drew his machete, and charged towards the cultists. They barely had the time to look up before he sank his machete into the nearer cultist's skull. The other, a woman with flaxen hair, shrieked and stumbled backwards.
Sunder started around the table, but his machete was lodged deeply in the dead cultist's skull. He shook the blade, but it would not come free. The female cultist scrabbled to her feet, and screamed: “Guards! Guards! Intruders!” She started running towards the far door.
Sunder dropped his machete and drew a knife, but a loud boom sounded from behind him, and the woman's back ripped apart from Lore's thunderstick. She collapsed to the ground in a heap. Sunder grabbed his machete, and, planting his foot on the man's face, pried it free. Behind him he could hear Selena's crossbow firing, and he turned to see two guards stumble over the crumbled corpse of one of their fellows as they entered from the far exit. Sunder rushed to engage them.
The nearer guard saw him charging towards him, and parried Sunder's heavy chop with his long-sword. The man counterattacked with a quick swipe, which Sunder ducked, and then performed an awkward backswing, trying to catch Sunder by surprise. Sunder blocked the backswing heavily, and the guard's sword was nearly knocked from his grip. This gave Sunder the moment he needed, and his machete drove upwards into the man's chest. The man crumpled, and over him he saw the other guard taking shelter from Selena behind a overturned table.
Sunder and the guard locked eyes, and the man scrambled to his feet and sprinted back for the door. Selena's crossbow twanged, and a crossbow bolt hit the man in the shoulder blade, knocking him off balance and sending the guard crashing to the floor.
The man was lay on the floor, clutching his shoulder and sobbing in pain. His shoulderblade had been cracked by the bolt, and his face was contorted in an expression of extreme pain. Sunder looked around for any other guards or cultists, then walked over to the man, and kicked him in the shoulder. The man's mouth opened in the shape of a scream, but only a whimper came from his throat.
“Lore, Selena, help that man! I'm going to have a word with this...” Sunder's eyes narrowed in hatred. “...thing.”
The 'thing' in question kicked piteously with his legs, scraping against the rocky floor in a futile attempt to get away from Sunder. Sunder squatted down next to the man. “What is this place? Tell me.”
Tears trailing down his face, the man shook his head. “N-n-no...”
Sunder kicked the man onto his back, then stepped on the injured shoulder, grinding his boot into the man. “What is this place?”
“Lab... research...”
“Who do you work for?”
“The Order of the... Black Serpent.”
Sunder eased off with his boot, and frowned. He didn't know that name. “What are is the Order of the Black Serpent... trying to do.”
The man shook his head, stricken with a combination of pain and terror. “Kill me...”
“No. You protect people who have cut innocent commoners apart, limb by limb, as they screamed in agony every inch of the way. You don't get to live, but you don't get to die just yet either.” Sunder stabbed his blade into the man's gut, and ripped it out the side. “You're lucky I don't have the time to kill you as slowly as your friends killed those innocents, but this is the least I can do. Think on that.”
Sunder stood up and shuddered. His shoulders were all tense from the hate and the anger, and he rolled them as he approached the edge of the pit. He wanted that man to suffer. They all deserved to suffer. But, he reminded himself as he looked down into the pit, and the ragged men and women staring up at him, there were other people who did not deserved to suffer. And that was why he was here.
Maureen
Maureen screamed, and instinctively crouched down, feeling a blow lash out over her head, and then another. Blood poured down upon her, and she saw Perl standing over her, his sword buried in... Maureen started, and scrambled away as the guard, dead again, crumpled to the ground. “Perl! Run!”
Maureen hurried up the hallway, Perl close on her heals. The Cultist whose head she has smashed in was sitting up, and Maureen swung her hammer down as she ran past him, crushing the man's spine. She was back in the junction, whether the dead guard should have been.
“Father Stone and Mother Water, tell me what is going on! Why aren't those people staying dead?”
Perl spun around and hacked his blade into the shoulder of one of the cultists. It fell face-down, and Maureen smashed it with her hammer. “Maureen, we need to tell Sunder about this.”
Maureen nodded, and started running down the tunnel that Sunder had took. She realized, with a start, that the screaming had stopped.
Rounding a bend, she burst out into a larger room lined with cages. In the corner of her eye, something flew at her, and instinctively she ducked. She stumbled, fell, and rolled back to her feet. Without a look behind her, she sprinted for the other door.
Jack Sunder
Sunder threw down a rope ladder, apparently the method the cultists had used. “Everyone come up here! We're getting you back home!”
The people stared upwards at him blankly. “Climb, damn it!” he shouted. “Don't you want to live?!”
Looking around, he saw Lore slumped to her knees. He ran over to her. “Stand up!” he yelled. “There's horrible things in this world, but they don't go away if you look the other way!”
“I... I killed her.”
Sunder followed her stare to the dead cultist, her back leaking blood from a dozen wounds.
“I just pointed it... and pulled the trigger.”
“Lore, some people deserve to die, and some people deserve worse fates than that. She was cutting a living man apart. She deserved to die, if not worse. There's nothing wrong with what you did.”
Looking back at the pit, he was slightly comforted to see several several figures dressed in ragged clothing milling around the top of the ladder, and more climbing up. Good, at least they could handle themselves.
“People!” he shouted. “We are rescuing you. Follow our directions, and we will get you back to your families and loved ones!”
The door behind him slammed open, and Maureen ran into the room. “Sunder! The cultists won't die!”
“What?”
Maureen gasped for breath. “They attacked us, and we hit them, smashed them, cut them... but they just wouldn't die!”
“Where's Perl?”
“He's holding them off... we can cut them down, but they keep getting back up. Some of them don't have heads.”
Sunder shook his head. “Everything dies. If it bleeds, we can kill it.” He turned back to the former captives. “Stay behind us, we'll cut down anything in our way.”
As he turned back to Maureen, Perl ran into view, panting heavily. “What the hell were those things?!”
“What?”
“It tripped me with its tongue... I cut it off, but by the gods, that thing wasn't human.”
“We killed it.”
“I saw the bolts, but it sure as hell wasn't dead.”
“What about the cultists?” said Maureen. “Did you kill them?”
“I hacked them all down, but they still moving.”
Sunder shook his head. “No no no, Perl. We've killed vampires, harpies, wurms... everything dies.”
“Maybe they do. But Jack - nothing I did was working. I ran and locked the doors behind me – that's when that... that [i]thing[/i] got me. We need to get out another way. I'd rather kill a dozen guards who can die, than anything that can't die.”
“Right.” Sunder looked at the other exit. “I don't like not knowing my escape route – are you sure about this?”
“Positive.”
“May the Aspects protect us...” said Sunder. “Okay, let's go.”
Perl
Perl helped Sunder move one of the tables over to jam the door shut. Perl didn't think that the undying cultists were in good enough shape to open the door, or to break it down, but... were they actually dead, with just the body moving, or were they unable to die? If the latter, they could open the door...
“Selena,” he said, walking over to the young lady. She was doing something with the corpse on the table. Or was he... alive? Selena pulled tight a binding around the man's arm-stump, the man wriggled with pain. She lay her hand on his face, and he calmed a bit. “Selena. Remember that arm that was still alive? What if that stuff got on a corpse?”
Selena patted the man on his good shoulder, then turned to Perl. “It would... it would let the remaining parts of the body stay alive, in a technical manner. I heard what you said – it shouldn't be possible. If the head is missing, then what's directing the body, alive or not?”
“Well, that's what I thought. Do you think they would retain any knowledge?”
“Hmm... Manarkov's experiments showed that if you cut off blood-flow to the head the body stops working. He found that you can bring the body back, but if the person has been dead longer than four minutes, they suffer damage to their minds. More than six minutes or so, and the body just dies again. But I guess in this case it isn't a matter of the body dying again...”
“That made no sense.”
“Um, you know when people get hit on the head, and go all funny?”
“Yeah.”
“When the body is dead, it's like getting hit in the head constantly.”
“Ah, okay.” Perl glanced over to Maureen, who was watching the far door, then over to Sunder and Lore, who were talking.
“How are we getting this guy out of here?”
Selena looked at her feet. “Can you carry him?”
“I need to be able to fight. Here, I'll get one of the other victims, see if they are strong enough to help.”
Perl hurried over to the crowd of ragged men and women. To his surprise, they all were surprisingly healthy. “You, sir,” he said, addressing a fairly large, muscular man. “I need your help.”
The man slowly turned and looked at Perl. His expression was blank, and there was a dullness in his eyes.
“Sir, I need your help,” said Perl, a bit louder. The man still just stared at him.
Perl hurried back over to Selena. “I think they're drugged or something.”
“It's the food!” cried the man on the table, his eyes wide. “Poison in the food! I knew they were putting it in... that's why I stopped eating!”
Selena and Perl looked at each other.
“That's why they got me...” The man's expression went from manic to horrified, and he started to weep. “That's why they cut me apart...”
Selena took Perl's hand and pulled him away from the dismembered man. “We're going to have to leave him,” she whispered.
“No! We're not leaving anyone,” said Perl, horrified. “Nobody deserves a fate like that. I'll find someone to carry him, and if I can't, I'll carry him myself.”
“No, it's not that. He's lost too much blood, his injuries are too much. The only reason he's still alive is because we are in Life's domain right now. The moment we bring him out, he's going to die.”
Perl turned away from her, and took a deep breath. Then he turned back. “Are you sure?”
“Look, maybe if he had more time to heal, he could survive. But that's at least a day for any chance at all. We don't have that time. He's just going to weigh us down, and then die on us.”
She was right, he knew. Hopefully the other door connected to some exit, or at least a wall thin enough for Selena to destroy, but the longer they waited, the more chance that those undying abominations would spread over to there. But to just leave a man...
“There's always a chance. I'm going to carry him. It's the right thing to do.”
Maureen
Maureen stood by the door, holding her hammer. What was the hold-up? Why weren't they going? Chancing a glance backwards, she saw Sunder and Lore talking, and Perl and Selena talking. Talking... everyone was talking. “Sunder! We need to get everyone going before we get guards here or worse.”
Sunder said something else to Lore, then addressed the crowd. Maureen guessed there must be twenty or so of them... less than the number she had counted missing at the manor, let alone the total number of persons missing. So few...
“Everyone!” said Sunder. “I am Mr. Sunder, leader of Sunder and Associates. We are going to get you out of here. I will be leading the way with Maureen,” Sunder indicated the lady in question, “and Lore.” He nodded to Lore, who curtsied slightly, an action that looked somewhat out of place. “Behind you,” Sunder continued, “will be Perl and Selena.” He pointed at the two of them. Perl was busy hoisting a screaming man onto his back, but Selena nodded in acknowledgement.
Sunder and Lore came over to Maureen. “Okay, two guards came out of there awfully fast, so I assume there's some sort of guard post. I don't think the cultists here walked past the cages on their way to their... um... work, so there's got to be a linking tunnel to the rest of this complex.”
Maureen nodded. “Even if we can't kill them, I think we can put them down, at least for a while.” She smiled wearily. “Let's go.”
The three of them went through the door, and headed down the tunnel. Sunder was correct, and the next room seemed to be a small guard outpost. A table with a half-finished card game sat in the corner, along with two stools. A few other implements were laying around, but nothing that particularly caught Maureen's eye. Looking back, the prisoners seemed to be doing all right, shuffling into the room in a daze.
Their were two other doors leading out of the room, and Sunder opted for the left one. Maureen kept pace with Sunder, with Lore behind the two of them. She heard Sunder mutter something.
“Sir?”
“It's not the cultists – the ones we cut down in the room back there didn't get up. The guards didn't either. Just the monsters in the cage room, and the cultists we killed when we broke in.”
“And the guard who was... fleeing them? So after we killed them the first time, then they weren't friendly towards the rest of this cult?”
“Really, that's interesting. I don't think this is intentional.”
Maureen nodded. “Right – if it were by design, they would have every guard and cultist be unkillable like that, and that guard wouldn't have been running from them, they would have... worked together or something. Well, until he died – they he was just like the other cultists.”
“You killed a guard, and he came back to life?”
“Yeah...” Maureen shivered at the memory.
“Guys!” yelled Lore. “Company!”
Snapping out of her thoughts, Maureen saw the very same guard running towards them. His chest was concave, crushed by Maureen's earlier blow, and a massive gash had gutted him, but heedless of the damage he charged towards them, almost leaping the last few meters.
Maureen hefted her hammer to strike the mutilated guard, but Sunder had already lunged forward, swinging low at the guard's knees. His machete scored a deep gash in the legs, and the guard sprawled out in front of Maureen. She swung her hammer down crushing the thing's back, and then jumped backwards, away from it, less it grab her leg.
“I take it this is the guard in question?” Sunder kicked the corpse. Black liquid was oozing from the man's back, mixing with black-stained blood from his leg. “Do you think he's getting back up?”
“Sunder, stay back!” Maureen stood there with the hammer, ready to strike it again.
Sunder shook his head. “Let's be sure.” Hefting his machete, he brought it down in a mighty stroke against the injured knee, hacking it the rest of the way off. Stepping over to an arm, he hacked it off at the elbow in a few blows. He stared at the stump. “Maureen, what do you make of this?”
Creeping closer, Maureen peered at the stump. It wasn't bleeding as much as the leg had, probably due to all the blood having already left the body, and their was a mess of flesh, cut hap-hazard by Sunder's hacking. Visible in the mess, however, were black tendrils – cut like everything else, but easily recognizable as matching the living arm they had seen earlier in the tank. Could it be the same arm? No – the sleeve was obviously that of the guard. So what did this mean?
The sound of machete chopping into flesh interrupted her thoughts, and she stepped away as Sunder severed the other arm. “Oh, I do not want to have to do that to everyone we fight...” he said, wiping his forehead.
Behind her, she could heard the crowd catching up. She kicked the pieces of the body over to the side, doing her best to repress her desire to stay away from the tainted corpse. “Lore, you okay?”
Lore was looking pale, leaning against the wall of the tunnel. “Yeah... geez... that's what you were fighting in the tunnels?” She shook her head.
“No, the ones were fought were a lot... slower.” Maureen pondered this bit of information. What did it mean?
Sunder wiped his blade on the corpse, then turned to the girl. “Lore, you stay here, and make sure out charges get by the corpse fine. When Selena gets to you, head back up here to us, okay. Make sure everything is okay.”
Lore nodded.
“Maureen, let's get going, stay ahead of all these folks.”
The two of them hurried forward, walking quickly. “Jack, you think Lore is cut out for this?”
“For this? No. None of us are. But we do what we have to do. I think she's holding up pretty well for this being her first job with us. Can you imagine how you would have been?”
“I would have been dead, cut down in that junction.”
Sunder was silent for a few moments, then said, “Do you regret joining this little group?”
Maureen was about to reply when she caught sight of a familiar junction. “Hey, it's a loop. Not far now...”
“Shouldn't there be a pile of corpses here? This is where Sunder fought them.”
“Well they get up.”
“Not all of them,” said Sunder. He pointed past the junction to the tunnel that lead to the lab. Heaped upon the ground, there was a dead cultist.
As they came up to the junction, they slowed, and peered around the corner. Looking to the left, Maureen saw the headless cultist Perl had fought. It stumbled around, groping with its hands in front of it. “Sunder,” she whispered. “They can't see without their heads.”
There was no response. “Sunder?” Maureen looked over at Sunder, who had checked the other direction. He stood there, his head around the corner, motionless. Before him, down the tunnel to the rest of the complex, was evidence of a large battle – blood splattered the walls and coated the floor, and several fingers and arms lay soaking on the ground. Maureen shuddered.
“No corpses...” Sunder murmured.
Maureen had somehow missed it on her first glance, but Jack was right. For all the blood, there was a conspicuous lack of corpses. It was as if someone had cleaned up afterwards... or that all of the corpses had gotten up and walked away.
“The dead won over the living... it seems,” said Maureen. “And the living became the dead.”
“And then they all went down that way.”
“We are just going out the way we came and leaving, right? We aren't going to check that out.”
“Our duty is to the prisoners. Once we are back topside, I'm going to warn the Life aspect temple, though. If these things come through their lower levels and catch them unprepared, there will be a slaughter.”
Maureen nodded, and turned back to the headless cultist. “What about that thing?”
“Same as before – dismember before everyone else gets here.”
Maureen walked over to the corpse, and drove her hammer into its chest. It crumpled backwards onto the ground, twitching. She raised up her hammer, and crushed its left elbow, as Sunder chopped into its right.
“It's still moving...” said Sunder, stepping on an arm to hold it still so he could hew at the elbow.
Having pulped the left elbow, Maureen drove her hammer into the corpse's chest again. It shuddered, then lay still. “Just took more...” the torso started wriggling again.
“Just focus on the legs, we need them gone.”
Maureen stepped backwards, and swung her hammer in an over-head strike, crushing one of the knees. What had brought her to this? Earlier in the day had been reading wonderful books, and now she was maiming a corpse.
“Jack! Maureen!” Lore was peeping around the corner, and Maureen could see her wince as Jack lay into the corpse's other knee. “The group is right behind me.”
Maureen shushed the young lady with a gesture, then pointed down the tunnel behind Lore. Lore turned, and gasped, staggering backwards. “Aspects protect me...” the young lady whispered.
Maureen walked over to Lore, and spoke to her quietly. “It seems the undying dead won the battle, and went down that way. We don't want to draw their attention.”
There was a stabbing sound from behind them, and when Maureen turned back to look, she saw Sunder planting his boot on the dismembered torso, and pulling his blade out. The torso was still twitching and moving around. Sunder shook his head, with an expression of disgust, and walked over to them. “The thing won't die...”
Just then, the first of the crowd rounded the corner. Their expressions were still blank. “Oh yes – I watched the crowd when they passed the... um... the corpse. They all looked at it, every one. No expression, though – it was... disturbing.”
“So are a lot of things in this world. Make sure that they all go in the right direction at this junction, okay?” Sunder nodded to Maureen, and the two of them set off down the tunnel, passing the heaped corpse of the dead cultist. With a shiver of horror, Maureen noticed that it was missing all four of its limbs – they appeared to have been torn off with great force.
“Any idea why that one didn't die like the others?”
“No, sir.”
As the proceeded down the hallway, they became aware of a foul mix of scents wafting from the lab. The smell of preservatives was strong, particularly that yellow liquid Maureen remembered Selena using. But also other smells... the smell of flesh, the smell of rot, but also the smell of...
“Pus,” Sunder said. “Why does it smell of pus?”
Maureen and him crept forward, slowly rounding the last bend to the lab. The place was still a mess, as Maureen remembered, but something was different. “Sunder – the tank of blood is missing.”
Sunder nodded. “Which means its mixed in with everything else on the ground. And all the glass from it. The folks we are rescuing – they are all barefoot, aren't they?” He stepped into the mire of mixed fluids, and a crunch of glass sounded forth.
“Any ideas, boss?”
“No. Look, we can use a table to clear most of the mess, but there's still going to be some glass left. It doesn't matter much – the rocks in the tunnels will probably cut their feet anyway.”
“Right. Let's get to it.” Maureen planted herself under a table, then pushed it onto its side. She got to one end, and Sunder positioned himself at the other, and together they began to clear a path with it.
Perl
The man had started sagging downwards on Perl's back, and Perl did a little hop to get the legless man back on top of him. This time, there was only a pained whimper. The man was much lighter without legs, but he was unable to cling to Perl at all, which made carrying him quite difficult.
Selena was right behind him, and they crossed into the junction together. Lore was there. Behind her was a hallway seemingly coated in blood.
“Hey. Just keep going like the others. Mind the torso over there.” She pointed across the junction.
Perl glanced that the wriggling torso, and back at Lore.
“Sunder was pretty thorough.”
“He does what needs to be done. Looks like it wasn't enough to kill the thing, though.”
Lore nodded. “Let's get out of here.”
Perl looked at Selena. The two of them exchanged looks, and Selena mouthed 'we will see.'
Following the crowd, Perl passed another cultist torso, and shook his head. Sometimes Sunder was a bit worrisome, even to him.
They rounded the last corner to the laboratory, and followed the former captives across the pool of unnatural looking liquids. Perl was surprised for a moment by the lack of glass, then saw the table at the end of the path, and the glass heaped up in front of it.
As he got to the hole in the wall, he sighed. “How are you holding up?” he asked.
The man whimpered.
The moment of truth...
Perl stepped through the threshold.
The air was stale, and he noticed his body hurt from a dozen little strained muscles. More than that... the horror of what he had witnessed all seemed to strike him at once. He gasped, and tears welled up in his eyes.
“Quite the difference, isn't it?” Perl looked up, and Maureen was standing there in front of him, her eyes also reddened from tears.
“I... I don't know. Selena, you okay?”
He turned to Selena, who was leaning against part of the broken wall. “Yeah, just give me a moment.”
“What about you, up there?”
There was no response.
“I think he's dead, Perl,” said Maureen.