T Lain - The Living Dead

The others had leaped clear as soon as Diir jammed the sword blade into the crocodile’s head, and Devis, too, maneuvered to continue his ballad a little farther from the main action. The bard could not see what happened to Diir. He picked up the tempo on his lute and prayed for the haze to clear.

The upright crocodile snapped its head back like a whip, then the creature’s body stiffened. Devis saw Diir fly into the air in a lazy arc that ended with a splash in the rushing waters of the Mormsilath. Devis squinted to see if Diir was floating or swimming, but could not spot the elf.

The crocodile stood improbably in midair for another full second. Devis thought he heard a keening, un-reptilian scream escape the crocodile’s throat. The bard might also have seen a thin, blood red mist seep from the crocodile’s empty eye sockets, but it could have been a trick of the smog and sunlight.

An involuntary, final twitch of the creature’s tail, and the gigantic corpse belly flopped onto the southern bank of the river.

The bard wiped his eyes and scanned the river for Diir as he moved to help the others regain their feet. Takata was nowhere to be seen. Hound-Eye shouted her name with increasing urgency.

Devis spotted the quiet elf easily enough. The current held Diir pinned against the gore-splattered wreckage. The water level was rising rapidly against the elf’s chest courtesy of the brand new dam formed by the fallen timbers and the crocodile’s corpse.

Devis looked at his feet as cold water seeped into his boots, then back at Diir. The water bubbled against the struggling elf’s face so that in a few seconds he’d be completely submerged. Devis caught Mialee’s eye, but she shrugged—she had nothing that could help.

Pain creased the bard’s side as he groped for his pack. He ignored it as his fingers closed around smooth metal and silk rope. He pulled the collapsible grappling hook over his head.

The hook was still collapsed, folded on clever hinges into a safe, rounded shape for easy packing. Devis’s fingers fumbled with the device, trying to extend the prongs, then his eyes flicked over the water to check on Diir.

The peak of the elf’s golden helm was all that broke the water’s angry surface.

“Mialee! Magic?” he shouted.

“You want me to blast him? That’s all I prepared for!” Mialee shouted back over the roar, stomping toward him.

“Takata! Takaaaaataaaaa!” Hound-Eye shouted.

Mialee snatched the silk rope and still folded hook without stopping. She twirled the metal over her head, then released the heavy weight. It splashed into the water with the rope across where Diir’s body ought to be, if it had been above water.

Mialee pulled, but couldn’t budge the rope. Her feet sank into the muddy bank and water swirled around her shins. Devis waded out to help her pull, hoping the rope wasn’t snagged in the debris. It stretched taut, and Devis thanked Fharlanghn he’d bought the sturdy silk. The wetter it got, the tougher it got. Hemp might already have snapped against the raging current.

Through the tension in the rope, Devis felt small hands join his and Mialee’s efforts a few feet behind. He glanced back, but still didn’t see Takata, although Hound-Eye had stopped shouting for her. As Devis turned back to the river, something white flashed in his peripheral vision: a small, fur-covered boot at the end of a tiny, shattered leg protruding from beneath the crocodile’s corpse. Devis understood the grim, horrified look in Hound-Eye’s good orb as the tough little halfling hauled on the rope like an automaton. Hound-Eye, had found his wife. Now he was the last survivor of Tent City.

Takata was lost, but Diir could still be saved. The length of silk grudgingly began moving toward them. Four sets of arms hauled hand over hand. A few seconds later, Diir’s face broke the surface with a loud gasp.

The soggy, exhausted band dragged themselves well clear of the Mormsilath’s new course and flopped onto the road.

“Hound-Eye…sorry.”

“Not your fault, bard,” the gasping halfling replied. “She knew…”

“All the same…sorry. Bridge is out. Guess we’re committed,” Devis managed before blacking out.

Cavadrec popped Constable Muhn’s last remaining eyeball into his mouth with a flick of a bony claw. The wight felt it pop between his teeth. He chewed deliberately as the fluid inside the morsel flooded his dry tongue.

He hadn’t eaten this well in centuries. Animal eyes varied in quality and flavor, and Cavadrec found nothing was as sweet as the optic nerve of a sentient being. The halflings he’d discovered nesting in the Morkeryth ruins had been a nice appetizer—the first real feast of intelligent food he’d had since his confinement—but the dwarves’ sizeable orbs made a much more satisfying meal.

The dwarves hadn’t known what hit them, literally. As a wight, Cavadrec didn’t necessarily need special magic to turn his enemies into minions, though that was his specialty. All he had to do was kill them personally. He’d relished the work, batting their useless weapons aside and pounding their faces into pulp with gnarled fists as one of them shouted curses at someone named Devis.

He made sure to pluck the delectable eyes while his victims still drew breath. Dead eyes, Cavadrec found, tasted simply awful. And his new wights could see well enough without them.

Cavadrec rolled the skin of Muhn’s eyeball around his mouth and focused his concentration on the bridge. His second self, the semi-independent Cavadrec-mind that he’d sent to dominate the zombie crocodile, was finishing off Favrid’s apprentice even as his wight-self enjoyed this repast. He felt a rush of physical power as his central awareness shifted from this skeletal form into the body of the massive crocodile. Again, he heard someone shout “Devis.” Was this some local paladin? No, he saw through reptilian eyes, the Devis at the ruined bridge was plucking a ridiculous lute. The wight was reminded of his age-old defeat, in which a bard had played a part.

Through his crocodile eyes, he saw an elf wearing Silatham armor and clutching a silver blade yell and leap over the crocodilian snout. Cavadrec felt the weight of the warrior land solidly, and a pair of legs clamped around the back of his wide neck. Cavadrec’s wight-body flinched involuntarily as the magical fire poured into the crocodile’s flank from one side and arrows pierced its thick hide from the other.

One of the rangers had escaped the rats. Cavadrec was stunned. It was inconceivable that Favrid’s young apprentice, the girl Mialee, could defeat the crocodile alone. Even half of the wight’s power was more than enough to deal with the likes of her. But the elf woman had powerful allies. Cavadrec had not anticipated this development. Was the agile elf warrior the same one his wolves chased from Morkeryth? The dumb animals would not have recognized Silatham armor if they were wearing it.

Pain peppered his side and the bard’s incessant singing rang painfully in his wrinkled, pointed, wight ears.

It was time to end this nonsense. Cavadrec began a prayer to Nerull, calling down a hideously powerful blast of necrotic energy that should not only destroy the elf woman and her allies, but the crocodile, the wreckage of the bridge, and most of the landscape for miles around. Cavadrec felt the complex spell building behind the crocodile’s empty eye sockets as the legs around his neck tightened like a vise. Then the elf’s blade split the crocodile’s skull.

Miles away, Cavadrec the wight screamed.

He had been a wight for just under a thousand years, eight hundred more than he’d existed as a living elf. When he accepted the gift of Nerull soon after his imprisonment, he’d marveled at how his new wight body could tolerate harsh environments and most physical harm without the slightest discomfort. As an elf, he had been vulnerable. As a wight, he could endure the heat of the burning earth deep beneath Morsilath or a hail of arrows.