T Lain: The Living Dead

Clayn, Soveliss, Pell, and Delia—Delia, Mialee blinked with amazement—dashed to the doors and windows. She didn’t spot Hound-Eye, but heard him whispering soft reassurances to little Nialma.

She rolled Zalyn over onto her back before she considered how foolish that might be—if Zalyn was already a wightling.

The little elf was drawn and injured, but as her eyes fluttered open, Mialee saw with relief that the elder’s sockets still held the twinkling brown eyes she’d learned to trust.

“Mialee,” she whispered weakly, “I am lost.”

“No, you’ve got to fight,” Devis said as the din outside grew into an incessant chorus of pounding, rotten fists and growling, mindless moans.

Mialee felt her eyes begin to well up. Though Devis was typically optimistic, she saw in Zalyn’s face that the little woman spoke the truth.

“I will, Devis,” Zalyn croaked, smiling bitterly at the bard. “Even now, I feel Ehlonna…lending me her strength against the plague. It was—”

The hacking cough shook her form, and Mialee helped her wipe away the black phlegm that dribbled down the side of her mouth.

“It was a small rat, a little bite,” Devis said, growing more frantic. “You can handle that. You’re the big-time elder, right? Right?”

“Right,” Zalyn managed, but she looked far away.

A strange light flashed into her eyes, and suddenly she leaped to her feet, jaw clenched, but glowing with a faint, green halo of light. When she spoke next, her voice was strange. It sounded like Zalyn’s voice, but layered beneath another, impossibly beautiful tone that immediately made Mialee feel a comforting warmth.

“Children, we must go. Ehlonna is ready. We are so close. We will hold off the Reaper that long.”

Mialee and Devis gaped. “Is that—?” the bard stuttered.

“It is me, Devis,” Zalyn smiled beatifically at the bard, and Mialee saw him smile in genuine awe as she felt her own jaw refuse to close. “And we are also a part of Ehlonna. This vessel is tainted, but must persevere. We will see the destroyer cleansed of our body by the morrow.” Mialee wondered which one of the elf’s occupants, the deity or the cleric, had said the last part. She opened her mouth to ask but before she had a chance, the little elf/god said, “Come. We go.” She crooked a finger at them, then leaped into the nothingness in the center of the floor.

Chunks of wood flew into the room as the wightlings finally breached the long-abused defenses. Nialma’s screams of terror were muffled by Hound-Eye’s fur cloak.

“Get out of here!” Clayn shouted, slashing at the wightlings that crashed into the room.

Devis and Mialee scrambled to their feet as Soveliss and Darji followed the Zalyn/Ehlonna hybrid’s example.

“Hound-Eye!” Devis shouted. The halfling was clutching Nialma, who was screaming at her parents.

Pell and Delia turned as one. Delia gave a small, sad wave to Nialma.

“Damn you halfling! Save my daughter!” Pell shouted as he took up a chunk of wood, turned, and cracked it against a grasping, clawed wightling arm.

“Come on, baby,” Hound-Eye said as soothingly as he could to the confused little girl, and dropped into the hole clutching Nialma to his chest. His one eye widened at them, then he disappeared with a long, descending epithet that trailed off into the darkness below.

Mialee didn’t have time to think about what they were jumping into because Devis put his arms around her shoulders and shoved her forward. She stepped out over the black pit and dropped like a stone.

Many wightling elves had clawed their way fully into the little room. Clayn, Pell, and Delia fought them back with the ferocity of a mother bear defending her young. Devis spared the desperate defenders one last look, clutched Gunnivan’s lute to make sure it was strapped in place, closed his eyes, and jumped.

He fell for maybe five seconds before opening his eyes. Above him, he heard bold shouts of challenge and the screeching howls of the living dead. He was descending at a fairly relaxed speed down the inside of a long tube of woven athel wood. Orange light glowed from below and cast long, bizarre shadows all around him.

This escape hatch was magical. He looked down and could barely make out Mialee, falling at a slightly faster rate, but not apparently in danger. Beyond her, he could see tiny specks that must have been the others coming to a landing.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” a voice chirped in his shoulder, and Devis inadvertently yelped. Darji flapped her wings slowly, turning cartwheels. “I feel like a hummingbird!”

Devis looked down and felt his stomach roll uncomfortably. The distance hadn’t seemed real to him as he slowly descended, but seeing the bird zip around the tube made him reassess the distance.

“Gods,” he whispered.

He still had to be at least a mile up. He hoped the orange glow he was seeing wasn’t from an open magma flow.

Devis guessed it was a full two minutes before he finally felt stone beneath his feet. He stood at the head of a long tunnel that descended into blackness, lit by torches. Twin iron tracks ran the length of the narrow tube. A large mine cart stood before him. It was twice his height, and as big as a good-sized fishing boat, but without the charm. About a dozen barrels labeled with the Dwarvish words for “blasting powder” were stacked behind him, where the tunnel ended.

Screams, bellows, and howls echoed down the shaft above him, but he did not look. Devis could not have pulled his attention away from the rest of the area all around the hollowed-out unloading dock. The barrels of black powder, if they actually still held any, along with a surprising number of food crates and iron water tanks, were the only undisturbed containers in the cavern. Everything else had been methodically, almost insanely, destroyed.

The place was an absolute treasure trove of armor, weapons, and, well, treasure.

There were swords with more gemstones encrusted on the hilt than Devis had ever imagined could fit. Hammers, axes, pikes, picks, and elegant, unstrung bows lay everywhere. Gold and silver shields emblazoned with fascinating symbols Devis had only seen before in history libraries, others bearing the unicorn and tree of Ehlonna, were tossed in careless piles. A few empty suits of heavy dwarven plate, the hammer and anvil of Moradin embossed on their chests in platinum, sat in ghostly repose against a wall covered in silver, gold, and platinum. Sweet platinum. Coins of every denomination he had ever coveted and many more he’d never seen littered the ground. Crates and chests had been shattered and all the possessions inside strewn about and picked over.

Amongst the piles of gold, unsettling footprints marked where someone—or thing—on two legs had stomped through the lode. Devis had a disturbing feeling those tracks had not been made by any Silatham elves on a stroll through their siege hoarde. Despite their lousy luck at confining evil overlords, he had to give the elves credit. Everyone else in the world could turn into a wightling, and they just might be able to hold out. They might have, if the wightling plague hadn’t started within their walls.

Devis must have been licking his lips, for only that could explain how badly he bit his tongue when a screech jumped out of the huge cart. He winced and pressed his lacerated tongue to the roof of his mouth. Nialma’s little head poked over the edge of the cart above him. She was smiling with the resilience of youth and the joy of finding an enormous, new toy. She giggled and then disappeared.

Devis looked at the assorted riches and sighed, wincing at the cold air on his injured tongue. The money wasn’t going anywhere, and he supposed if he didn’t get moving he wouldn’t ever be able to spend it anyway. Still…he crouched and scooped up a few handfuls of platinum coins and gemstones and slipped them into one of the bigger pouches on his belt.