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As Good As Dead
Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Pollina reflected on her perturbing creation and knew that she was getting worse. She’d known for some time that a crucial piece of her mind was missing. A section, as it were, responsible for governing darker impulses. Over the years, while in the tunnels beneath Valbryde, she’d felt that the solitude had helped her regain a foothold on the war for emotional control. The antagonists that had driven her to such a desperate place weren’t present in the restful catacombs, and she was free to live her life in relative peace.

Until she invited one of them in again.

Pollina was loath to admit it, but enacting her vengeance on Lovina had done more harm than good. The demonic noblewomen had deserved every torment that Pollina had inflicted on her and more. Yet, her mere presence dredged up such a toxic spill within Pollina's spirit that it completely undid the healing that father time had done for her psyche. Her emotional outbursts had become more frequent, and she’d felt herself becoming more sadistic.

Anger, she’d discovered, was a muscle that you didn’t want to exercise. The more she exerted control on its behalf, the stronger it became, and thus, the more she felt inclined to use it. Sadism followed on its heels, like an infection to an already grievous wound.

Pollina had become too much like the object of her hate.

Worse even. Because now she had to admit to herself that she was hallucinating. The likelihood of Oran Farrow, once second in line for rulership of House Farrow, wandered into her den as a shambling corpse was preposterous beyond belief. Pollina’s worst fear had become true the moment she’d revealed the truth to her uncle Milo. The disbelief on his face still made her cringe when she thought about it. She had no recourse but to accept that her damaged mind had dreamt the episode up.

More than anything, what she needed to do was get away from this awful place and the demonic cultists fighting for control of it. Her discovery of the Ossuary of Thalzaxor had led to this war; another horror for which she could only blame herself.

And the only way to end the conflict was to get to the mana stone first.

Mana vents adorned nearly every wall she’d found in the ossuary. To supply a network of that size, there would have to be a deathwell powered by at least a Grade B mana stone. More likely, the stone was Grade A. Whoever got ahold of the relic would get an incredible boost in personal power, shaving off decades of fighting monsters. Even fragmented, the stone could boost her entire cult to prominence within the capital city. House Mavis could be a great house with such an artifact.

Unfortunately, their rival already was a great house. The demonists festering within House Vandergast had pulled no punches, spending an absurd level of resources. Beleaguered from every side by summoned demons, the only reason the death cultists hadn’t already been killed was because undead surrounded them.

The fighting had drawn the attention of a horde of ghouls, and they boiled up like defending army ants. Even that hadn’t been enough to defeat the never-ending stream of imps and hellhounds, only stalling them for a time.

Caught on the edge of extinction had forced Pollina to take a hard look at herself, and she discovered that with Lovina dead, there was no desire to pursue power. Pollina wanted nothing more than to return to the city above and go back to making potions. And spend hours reading and fantasizing about the majesty of Zu-Rakan obelisks, and what they might do to that dirty sky goddess and her egg-shaped moons. Undeath could be so sensual if you just knew how to look…

Anyway, the line of evaluation that had brought her to considering her old profession had given her an idea about how to proceed. Necromancers were resourceful, if anything at all, and as overcome as her group was, her uncle readily supported her last ditch experiment.

Employing the gore of countless demons, along with a vat of corrupted blood potions, and a full coven ritual to Raise the Dead, had resulted in Pollina’s magnum opus.

The Corpse Ooze.

As fascinating as it was disgusting, the bloody pool of demonic entrails and body parts slithered down the tunnel, picking up anything in its path. The creature had a built in taste for all things demonic, so intense that it never even stopped to wave goodbye to its mother. This did not bother Pollina.

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“Will it be enough?” asked a disheveled junior cultist.

“It will have to be,” said Uncle Milo. Purple bags had formed under his eyes, making him look more like the dead he commanded than a living person.

The exhausted necromancers watched the gluttonous monster squeeze its bulk down the main hallway, making pooping noises that were too disturbing to be funny.

Reminds me of that fat kid that always hung around Graham Vandergast. What was his name? Wentworth of House Willoughby, I think. Pollina thought.

Everything was in fate’s hands now. The members of the cult of Harhaz took a much needed rest.

Ascending the shaft without a ladder was easy. Rissah was the first one up. Using her ability to transform into a temporary shadow made tossing her upward a breeze for my skeleton.

The tough part was waiting for her to finish scouting ahead. She was gone for a tense hour, where I did nothing but listen intently for sounds of a confrontation, knowing all the while that I would be too late to help her should the need arise. When she returned without issue, the handmaiden had given me a simple thumbs up. A gesture I found endearing, given that she’d almost certainly picked it up from me.

Rissah cast a spell of force to bring the dead tied up ghoul tongue vines I’d made as an impromptu rope. Her ethereal physicality wasn’t enough for her to tie the rope to a ladder rung, though, and I had to send up my ghoul hand to fasten it into place.

The climb upward was ‌painless and monotonous. Rissah had suggested we leave Vlad, my steed, behind, but I abjectly refused. Tying a vine around its torso and connecting it to my skeletal guardian had required little effort. The only struggle that concerned me was whether the tunnel would be big enough to get Vlad through without taking too much damage.

After climbing hundreds of feet above the tower, we emerged from the shaft into a damp tunnel. The moisture was unexpected and unwelcome. Though I had Halted Decay, I feared what prolonged humidity might do to my skin. For its part, Vlad emerged from the shaft with only a few scratches on its hindquarters.

Traveling down the cavern was a one-sided affair, with no deviations along the upward slanting path. Along the way, I’d noticed Rissah become less despondent, and I prompted her again for an explanation about mana sustenance. Although, to get there, we had to play an amusing game of “guess what Oran wants to learn about”. I’d had to point back the way we’d come several times, then reward her correct guesses with a nice clap. Incorrect assertions, which were the majority, got her a finger wag from the ghoul hand.

“You needn’t worry. Unless you are trapped like I was, I mean. Anything with a core, be it monsters or divine classers with a soul core, need access to mana. Most of the time, ambient mana can sustain your existence. The draw is minimal, and it would probably take decades before you noticed. For lack of a better word, death mana is more ‘nutritious’ for us than regular mana. However, so little of it was coming out of the mana vent that everything in the maze lost power. Another thousand years would have probably meant my death.” Rissa explained.

I pointed to her and flexed my muscles to direct my next line of inquiry.

“Will I get my strength back? Yes, most certainly. Mana used for leveling does two things, creates a framework and then strengths it. Mana degradation doesn’t affect the framework, just your personal strength. Meaning that I will only need about half as much mana as the first time around to get back to where I was before. That’s the good part. The bad part is all the choices I’ve made through the Naram-Sin are still codified. I can’t make another choice for those level ups.”

That sounded fair to me. Besides, I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t have made a single choice differently, even if given the option.

As we traveled along, I tried to direct her more toward telling me what she knew about monster cores and their differences, but she misunderstood my intent. I got a long-winded lecture on how the different elemental types corresponded and opposed monster cores. Her information was nothing that Oran hadn’t learned since his schooling as a child, and more than a little sounded like hogwash.

I paid attention out of respect, and let her continue because teaching me things seemed to improve her mood. Rissah never considered that, in the absence of the Zu-Rakan empire, the sentient races had progressed beyond some of the superstitious beliefs that her people held. I might have corrected some of her misconceptions had I been able to. Fortunately, a natural lull fell into the conversation, and we returned our focus to the path before us.

Though I felt the truce break when I caught a whiff of an odor most foul. A horrid smell descended downwind from the tunnel, and I nearly tripped over my own feet. The honorable thing to do would have been to pretend Rissah had done nothing. After all, she was a noble woman in her own fashion. And no doubt the silent flatulence that she’d relieved herself of was three thousand years in the making, strong enough to overpower even my—

“A ghast!” Rissah said, with a worried look on her face.

You fart was so bad you named it? Or are you saying you are aghast from releasing it? It works either way…

A yellowed skin figure stepped from the darkness ahead to reveal itself. Then all hell broke loose.