Vol2: Chapter 2

Mattick proceeded down the corridor with due caution. The torch he held didn’t provide as much illumination as Halana’s blazing mace had the day before, but he didn’t begrudge her not invoking the gods’ power today. After everything she’d been through, he was just impressed the priestess had insisted on joining the men scouring the lich’s dungeons. He suppressed a shiver in the damp air. Never mind the wizard’s assurances that no undead still roamed the corridors: they were still damned creepy.

Teln kicked in another door and swept his torch about the other side before pronouncing it empty. Mattick took the next – torch in one hand and sword in the other, kicking in the doors was the only way to open them. It was a poorly made dungeon: prison doors should open outward, not in. According to the elf, they’d started as labs. The lich had repurposed them at some point and then forgot them, leaving them for the ghouls to claim. She’d told the truth about where their weapons were kept, and she’d claimed the lich didn’t have any other prisoners.

But you can’t trust an elf. “Empty,” Mattick grunted into the hallway, and they moved on to the next one.

They continued in that manner through the dungeon, with Halana unlatching the few barred doors. Her weapons and armor had not been in the store room with everyone else’s. That made a sort of sense: it figured that the undead would do something special to dispose of that holy gear. Probably buried it.

The priestess wore Teln’s tabard over her ruined vestments: she’d insisted on combing the dungeon and liberating Seril at first light, before sir Dedran even arranged the parties who would search the woods or secure the ship. Personally, Mattick approved. The boy had been too young to tag along on any of his father’s campaigns before he found himself in Dedran’s tutelage, which made this his first real fight off the tournament grounds. He didn’t need to spend the aftermath alone in the stinking dark. Not anymore than he already had.

Still, for his first true battle, Seril had done well enough to impress Mattick. Throwing himself at the demon on the beach? It had been insane, but there’d be no one doubting the kid’s courage in the barracks, anymore.

When they reached the lower level of cells, they found him. Seril’s prison was one of the ones that had been latched from the outside. Halana swung open the door and said at once, “In here!” Teln followed her into the rat-hole, and Mattick set himself to guard the door. Unwary soldiers, in his experience, were the worst kind: dead.

“Sweet patrons, they worked him over.” It was Teln’s comment, followed by Halana’s command that he assist her. Mattick ignored them both, sweeping his eyes across the corridor. Something wasn’t right. His torch gave poor illumination, but he studied the old stone while Teln and Halana struggled with an apparently unconscious Seril.

Then it hit him: the open door, barely a dozen steps down the hall was the one to their cell, the one they’d been locked behind before the elf set them free and Halana bashed in the skull of the lich. He stepped away from the door he was guarding so he could look out from the one that had imprisoned him the night before.

Too few corpses. He’d been witness to the macabre scene of ghouls fighting each other the night before. There’d been more than twice as many bodies littering the hall when they’d been liberated from their cell.

Raekar had said the undead wouldn’t last the night without their boss feeding them power, but you couldn’t trust wizards any more than you could elves. Besides, even if he’d been right about that, it was obvious that at least a few had gotten up and shambled around before day had broke.

“Hurry it up,” Mattick barked to Teln. “Let’s get Seril to the boat and let someone else search the rest of this damn plane of hell.”

Continue to Volume 2 Chapter 3