T Lain: The Living Dead

Think, bard, think! Devis slammed his fist angrily against the iron beneath him.

Fharlanghn’s beard, he could be dense sometimes. Mialee had one of the last healing potions in her belt pouch. His fingers searched through the pockets until he found the vial. He pulled her up and dribbled the liquid between her parted lips.

As Devis readjusted Mialee into a more comfortable position, a scroll tube fell from another pouch on Mialee’s belt. Zalyn’s scroll tube, Devis realized. Better hold on to that. It might still be important, and it would certainly be worth something—“the parchment that saved the world” and all. He tucked the tube into his belt.

The iron cart lurched upward. The gargantuan roach-thing had switched tactics. Devis hoped the big bug wasn’t smart enough to realize what would happen if it rolled the cart back onto its wheels.

The bottom few inches of the escape crevice disappeared as the cart jerked upward. The bard heard a faint cough.

“Devis? What—what’s happening?”

He couldn’t see her face, but he no longer felt fresh warmth spreading over his blood-soaked hands, either. The cart lurched again, and very slowly began listing back from the wall as gravity took charge and tried to right the toppled cart. In the dim glow that broke into their shelter as it fell away from the wall, Devis saw the escape crevice grow more distant with each passing second.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said, not bothering to ask whether she felt like coming along. “Hold on.”

He gripped the elf woman and stood unsteadily, then leaped out into space.

He landed with a jolt that sent fire into his wounded side, but kept his feet. Escape was a few feet away.

“Put me down,” Mialee whispered. “I can walk, and you need your arms.”

The elf woman slipped gingerly from his grasp and stood briefly on the shifting metal floor before slipping into the crevice. Devis heard her shout in alarm as her feet shot out from under her and she disappeared down the hole. Mialee’s voice shrank down into the tunnel and he could not hear her.

As the cart groaned back onto its wheels with a clang, Devis dived into the crevice, landed painfully on his belly, and flew headfirst into the darkness.

Clipping down, down the slippery tunnel, he saw the orange glow of firelight flickering at the end of the ride. He did not see Mialee or anyone else.

“Fharlanghn abides,” he said, then shouted at the top of his lungs as air that smelled of fetid incense blasted his face. He became delirious from the insane acceleration. “And his favorite bard is comin’ to get you, you gray son of a bitch!”

Mialee landed with a hard thump on her backside and tumbled head over heels, coming to rest a few feet from the end of the slippery tunnel. She thought she heard Devis shout something off-color overhead, but could not take her eyes of the scene unfolding before her stunned eyes.

Zalyn…no, Ehlonna…no, both of them…stood before the hideous wight that had killed Mialee, voice booming as she shouted the incantation of the forest goddess that would make the wight vulnerable. The creature ignored the little elf. It had to be him, Mialee realized. It could be no other. The grinning rictus of Cavadrec, the Buried One, turned to regard the new arrival with a flash of red light in its hollow eyes. It extended a horrible, clawed hand toward the wizard girl and crooked a finger to beckon her forward.

“Welcome,” Cavadrec hissed. “Would you like to try your luck again?”

Mialee gaped. Aside from Zalyn, her friends were not doing well. Soveliss limped around the wight, the only other person still upright. Hound-Eye and Nialma were huddled in the corner, crying in supernatural terror that had to be the effect of a fear spell. And Favrid…

…was dead. At least, Mialee hoped he was, because if he lived, his suffering would have been unimaginable. The elf’s corpse hung motionless and limp in a pair of rusty, iron shackles embedded in the rough wall. He was covered with blood, cuts, gashes, and bruises. He had endured grievous torture. Where his gentle, laughing eyes had once twinkled with mischief, there were only empty, bloody sockets. His throat was torn open as if by some kind of animal.

Mialee placed a hand to her mouth and choked back bile. No, she thought, not an animal, but Cavadrec. And with Favrid dead, all was lost.

The elf woman drew in a quick breath of fetid, foul air and felt for the scroll pouch. There was still one wizard here, and she had to try casting the spell. She kept her eyes on Cavadrec as she frantically patted her belt pouches. Where was the blasted thing?

The wight lost interest when she didn’t rise to its challenge, and turned to block a long sword blow from Soveliss with the black, skull-topped staff.

The scroll was gone. Mialee felt sick. She collapsed, dropped her head between her knees, and pressed her palms against her temples. Everyone was doomed.

“Coming throooooooooooough!” echoed a familiar voice down the tunnel, and Devis slammed into Mialee head-first. They rolled into a tangle of arms and legs behind the bellowing Zalyn-goddess.

Cavadrec laughed as the pair struggled to disentangle themselves and stand.

“How very romantic,” he cackled. “Linelle, what have you been teaching these children?”

Linelle? Mialee blinked, and then realized he was talking to Zalyn. Linelle must have been her name when Cava was alive.

Behind the wight, Mialee saw Soveliss creep forward and raise the Mor-Hakar. Without looking, Cavadrec twirled his black staff and slammed the end into Soveliss’s gut. The elf grasped his belly with an “oof!” and dropped to his knees. His long sword clattered to the ground, and the hand holding the Mor-Hakar slapped against the floor as Soveliss caught himself from toppling forward. The ranger’s open palm pressed the hilt of the short sword into the stone while he clutched at his abdomen with the other, struggling to draw breath.

Mialee and Devis helped each other stand. Mialee felt the wetness on the bard’s right side and realized he was bleeding badly. She fumbled for her last potion and failed to find that, either.

She licked her lips and knew where the potion had gone. “Devis, you idiot,” she whispered urgently as Zalyn and Cavadrec squared off. “Why didn’t you take the potion yourself? You’re going to bleed to death!”

The elf woman felt the bard lean against her, and his face was pale and bloodless.

“You first,” Devis said deliriously and showed her his blood-soaked hands. “Couldn’t lose…yrrrr,” he managed.

The bard’s eyes rolled back and he dropped heavily against her, unconscious. She lowered him gently to the floor and pulled his head into her lap as green-gold energy started filling the room with a warm glow. The shrine of the death god, smoldering with Cavadrec’s interrupted invocation, blazed higher in the rush of oxygen and fresh air that the swelling power of the forest god provided.

The brazier on the terrible shrine of Nerull flared and went dark. A grinning goblet made from an ancient, elf skull stared back at Mialee. She felt a surge as the goddess that walked as a cleric finished her invocation, severing the wight’s connection to Nerull. The wight screamed and staggered, thrown off balance. Now, if the arcane scroll were read, it would be over. She watched Soveliss cough up black, bloody phlegm, struggling to his feet with the Mor-Hakar gripped in one gloved fist and blind hatred flashing in his eyes.

If they could just read the scroll, the wight would be vulnerable, or as close as they could hope to make it. Mialee would accept the risk in a heartbeat. If only she hadn’t somehow lost the precious scroll tube. She wrapped her arms around Devis, propped up but unconscious, and sighed miserably.