The light was coming from patches of moss that where growing everywhere, from their regularity he guessed that they had been cultivated as street lighting and then grown out of control when the place was abandoned because just like the rooms behind him the whole place was empty he couldn’t see a single person. He started walking along one side checking each building as he passed. There where homes, shops, businesses all empty of everything not fixed to the stone.
In all the businesses he found intricate carvings in the walls telling their story it seemed history was important to these people. He started noticing details like when a place extended it dug deeper into the rock except they didn’t hide the seams. A nub of the old wall would be left just enough to see the broken carvings then the carvings would be carefully reproduced and extended over the new walls. It was fascinating and beautiful to Gar he would have liked to have known that place when it was populated and alive. He could see the warmth the place would have had in the care and attention put into the details, as it was it just felt cold and dead.
Gar made a full loop round the crevasse at his level he had passed many buildings all empty frames most he could identify their use, while some had weird stone furniture and facility’s and even looking at the carvings he lacked the context to work out what they were for. He had passed stair cases to go up and down levels and had ignored them until he had done his full lap. He then stood against a railing looking both up and down he wanted to explore more however it was already afternoon from his best estimate and it would take weeks to explore every level of the place. Where he was most interested in was the top and bottom levels if there was anything interesting he felt it should be at one of those.
From what he had gleamed about these dwarves history was important to them as was hard work. They would have started from the bottom then worked up therefore making the oldest buildings the ones at the bottom and for a culture that valued history that would be where they would keep anything important or interesting. The logic seemed good to Gar. So not knowing when he would get a chance to go back there he would head straight to the bottom. He started looking for the stairs that would take him down. There was no one staircase that led from the top to bottom they were staggered between the layers so that Gar was constantly walking back and forth working his way down.
As he went he noticed that it was getting darker it was hard to tell at first as there was so much of the glowing moss and he could see in pitch black which activated automatically in any dark environment. However as he went further and further down it became more and more noticeable when he was on the final few layers before the bottom the light seemed to stabilise although the light seemed to be of a grey colour that seemed familiar he just couldn’t place where it was from. The badgers seemed to be picking up on something as well if he didn’t know better he would say they were moving smoother and quieter than normal.
Then he was on the bottom floor and seemingly minor things where forgotten. He moved into the closest building to check it out. As before he planned to give the building a quick check for anything living then go back through it checking it out in more detail. It didn’t take long to realise that the buildings where much bigger there more like whole complexes to themselves than just individual buildings. From what he could tell the one he had ended up in first was a multi-generational family home. The next one was a restaurant that could have easily seated a hundred people. It was taking too long to check each one and Gar did not want to miss anything by skipping checking some. So instead he split his forces he sent B1 and B2 ahead to do the initial check through of the next building while he finished checking out the kitchen that would allow him not to have to go through each building twice.
It seemed that these larger places hadn’t been cleaned out as thoroughly as the other places as Gar found a metal ladle and two forks all still in good shape along with a few other metal scraps, all of them went into his bag to be used again later. The next building had been cleared by B1 and B2 by the time he got to it, it was another family complex and in what he thought was a child’s room he found a crumpled maroon shirt even though it was too small for him he tool it anyway as he might find a use for the material. The next building must have been large as B1 and B2 where only just coming out of it as Gar exited the one he was doing. He watched as they entered into the next building along then looked up at the one they had just cleared.
It was much more ornately decorated even being made with stones of various colours a jet black and a dark green neither of which he had seen anywhere. It had been set into the buildings front and used to build a short set of steps up to the front door. It just screamed some sort of government or leadership building. There was something carved into a large slab of black stone set above the door Gar couldn’t read it so pushed the door and headed in knowing that it had already been cleared meant he could be a bit more thorough of his searching of each room and not worry too much about the noise he was making. Gar moved quickly through the entrance room and then moved through a series of rooms that where a mix of offices and meeting rooms.
At the end of the first corridor he came to a large room more ornately decorated than the others he had seen so far. With more colours and shades of highly polished stone, there was no sign of the natural stone of the area. In the middle of the room was a large round table with five, what only could be called thrones around it. Each throne was carved from a single piece of a different type of stone, each one ornately carved and decorated. Four of them polished to a high shine and smooth the fifth matt black with a textured finish yet no less beautiful each a work of art in its own right. The room was large yet other than the table and the thrones it was empty he could see on the walls hooks and fasteners where tapestries and wall hangings should have gone yet there was nothing.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
He moved closer to the thrones, going round touching and examining each one in turn. Sat on the seat of the black throne was a box, well more of a chest. Slightly larger than a shoebox Gar picked it up only to be surprised by how light it was. He tried to open it, despite no visual lock it would not open. Gar was aware time was passing so he put it in his bag to deal with later, leaving the room with the thrones he moved deeper into the building. It was then he had moved onto the second corridor deeper in.
He pushed open a door with the two badgers a few steps behind him and he froze. The grey light was everywhere in the room and Gar finally realised what it was death mana so thick in the air it was visible without mana sight active. Alone it probably wouldn’t have been enough to remind Gar it was what else was in the room that really drove it home for him. In the middle of the room was a pile of corpses, dwarf corpses. That wasn’t the worst part sleeping like the dead atop the pile was a beast. Unwilling to move Gar just stood there looking at the curled up beast. How the badgers could have missed this he didn’t know. Needing more information Gar activated observe and nearly crapped himself. He had expected the beast to get labelled.
“Death dog level 6”
What he wasn’t expected was for every corpse in the pile to get marked.
“Zombie (dwarf) level 3”
“Zombie (dwarf) level 2”
Each and every corpse was a level 2 or 3 zombie. Gar started backing up ever so slowly closing the door. Until the beast on top lifted both its canine heads, its four eyes staring into Gar’s two it let out a loud bark and things started happening fast. The death dog leapt to the floor and zombies started pulling themselves out of the pile, standing up and shambling towards the door. Gar saw none of this as he was already running.
He heard more barks from other rooms answering the first. There was more than one of these things did they all have their own pile of zombies? That was answered rather quickly when he looked over his shoulder and saw zombies coming out of doors all along the corridor. Resolved not to look back again Gar kept running, he was out pacing the badgers but he really didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that. The one bit of luck on Gars side was it seemed the zombies were filling the corridors blocking the faster death dogs from getting to him. He was almost to the front door he could hear the death dogs still barking behind him. What made his heart drop was he could also hear more barking in front of him. He rounded a corner and could see the door he could also see through the window next to it the zombies outside waiting for him.
It was only then that he realised how screwed he really was, he was in a trap. It had been less than a minute since the death dog had started barking, so the only way zombies could have come out of another building and spread out like that would be if they were moving before the barking started it had been planned. Gar hadn’t explored enough of the building to be happy to take another corridor so he did the only thing he could think of. He kept running at full pace straight at the door, at the very last moment he lowered his shoulder and rammed the door. The stone door swung open easily and slammed hard into two zombies that had been too close. The zombies went flying having not braced for an impact. Gar used this brief opening to slip through the zombie line and ran for the stairs.
He ran straight past the stairs as he saw another death dog prowling behind a group of zombies at the top of the stairs. Gar was really worried he had come down the last set of stairs so he was near the end of the crevasse he was seriously running out of places to go. With nowhere to really go Gar looked back, he had observe and mana sight going anything that might give him an advantage. Mana sight was next to useless with the thick death mana in the air the zombies and even the death dogs just disappeared into it. Only when focusing on them could he see a mix of something else flowing in the death dogs with the death mana. No wonder his badgers had been fooled with no eyes or other organs he had suspected they used some form of mana vision and if they did curled up on top of zombies in the fog of death mana even the death dogs would be invisible to them.
Thinking that, he realised the badgers weren’t beside him. B1 and B2 where further down the street only just coming out of the building they had been in. It took a moment to find Bodger and B3 because they were in amongst the horde of zombies. Gar worried for their safety before realising the zombies weren’t paying any attention in fact as he watched he saw one zombie trip over B3. It wasn’t too much of a leap in logic to think that perhaps the badgers were as invisible to the zombies as the zombies had been to the badgers.
Gar had a few moments the zombies where slow and he had opened up a bit of a gap. Gar studied his options looking for an opportunity. It seemed the zombies where converging on him but not as one cohesive mass they were moving in groups, not far enough apart for him to dash between but if he could disrupt one group it might be enough. Each group had a death dog with it. The death dogs where ugly things all black with matted fur coated in blood and other unidentifiable substances, fur sticking out at odd angles and most striking two heads each uglier than the other and both twice as mean. They prowled behind their little group of zombies almost herding them towards him not that the zombies needed much encouragement.
