Sophie stabbed another zombie straight in the dick. Her pinning it down gave an opening for Bob to get its throat. Having the zombies come around the corner was another one of those things that she had gotten used to. She didn't want to get used to it but there it was doing its thing again.

The corpse of a dwarf slumped against the wall as both of them pulled out at the same time. It was on Stella to do the double tap.

Michael moved up, spear at the ready. The group had finally reached the stairwell and was making a racket to attract more zombies. They would hit their Spears against the wall, the railings, or the stairs to make noise for a little bit. When a few zombies arrived they would dispatch them. This was the third iteration.

Sophie, already a veteran of many dick stabbings, was polishing her game. Much to the horror of the men on the trip with her, each time she got a bit better.

"Hey! My weapons expertise reached level four! I guess that all those crotch shots helped out."

There was a sound of someone throwing up behind. She knew that one of the monks, probably Michael was not feeling it. The monk said also killed hundreds of zombies in their time.

This far up close was a little bit different than what they were used to. There was a lot of overlap between what she could do and what they could take. It was a different thing entirely.

"Sophie, again, I really appreciate you and all the things you do but could you please not tease the monks," Bob said.

"But Bob!"

Another zombie popped in front of them and Michael dispatched it quickly. Using his wind affinity, he first pushed against the wall.

Then using a blunt strike he pierced its throat.

"Oh see now he's just showing off," Sophie said.

"So were you!" Bob said, getting into position.

It took a few more minutes of tedious waiting.

Any remaining zombies had decided that they weren't buying the red light special.

"There are none on our side of the academy," Bob said. " Who's ready for the second floor?"

"I got first then," Stella said, taking point. "Michael? You're next."

The monk gulped, but did as she asked. Sophie slipped into the rear position. She turned to face the hallway. They had gone through. The large stairwell was unfortunately dwarven sized. There wasn't much she could do about that.

They pressed on getting to the second floor landing and waiting for any more zombies to pop. Bob shook his head, before indicating a direction.

"Two," he said.

Stella moved at a brisk pace down the hall.

She stopped at a door, waiting for the rest of the group.

"In there," Bob said.

They could hear the weak sounds of scratching. Sophie doubted that one of his zombies were inside. We'll flick it out, meaning that this was not strictly speaking necessary. For the first time, she considered whether they would be able to skip it. The Goat Lord had given her a card that had one time brought undead back to life. It had since gone grey and no longer had any text on it.

She had raged against the injustice of having an ability that restored zombies to life. Even if they were restored into goat form, she wanted to save them all.

She couldn't, which was even worse.

In the back of her mind, she wondered how two dwarves had gotten stuck in a cleaning closet when they opened it. Maybe they got stuck there while they were having sex when the apocalypse hit.

It would probably be plausible at best.

They didn't have a working understanding of how the creeping zombie apocalypse spread. They just knew that all the people that they came across had gotten it. Sophie made a mental note to talk to Anthony after this. He had the training and understanding and she was trying to grasp it.

It was short work for them after that. Before long they were on the fourth floor looking at the warding scheme.

"You know what?" Bob said, examining the various lines and occult sigils around the floor. "I think it's time to call in a friend."

He summoned his familiar and in a puff of smoke the cat appeared.

"Oh honey," Bob said. "There is a package in there full of high cards. I would love it if you could sneak through whatever is going on here and return with that as soon as you can. I'll let you eviscerate a few more courses. We left a few strewn on the stairs for you."

The cat looked up at him, nodding in a most human way and then bounded off.

Bob counted to five five, as he waited for something to go off, Indiana Jones Style. He was expecting things to pop off, but nothing seemed to be working. He was supremely glad to be able to send the cat in on its own.

He would have spent his time trying to unravel the trap and wasted a lot of time that he could have spent with Stella. But did he have to?

It turned out, he didn't have to.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Well look what the cat dragged in!" Michael said, shrinking before the glare of an Eldritch beast beyond his comprehension. "Sorry, sorry, didn't mean that. We're all friends here right?"

Ca'at accepted exactly one head pat as payment. It was an even exchange of his soul as everyone else had expected. All in all, a fair deal was had.

What the cat did bring back was a large body that wouldn't have been out of place in a comics convention. The entire thing was made of leather and it reeked of power. Bob handed it to Stella for safekeeping after Sophie decided that it was not her job.

"Beer anyone?" Sophie said. "My treat!"

----------------------------------------

"So how do you think that the zombies spread so fast?" Sophie asked, draining her first beer. "Do you think it's magical in nature or do you think it's a plague? It could be something like COVID."

Sophie was holding court with Sonya and Anthony. But what she really wanted to do was talk to Anthony. Finley was listening in but the guy was a little bit preoccupied with some of the stuff that he had him doing.

"You think that this was some sort of virus that went through the population?" Anthony said. "Even if only a few of them were immune to it then that would just make the rest their victims?"

"How do they do in the movies? One of them gets infected and then they spread it somehow? But like if you're infecting everybody then who are they eating. I haven't seen a zombie eating another zombie. You and Bob have been on the front lines. Have you seen this?" Anthony said. "Because this is kind of speculative and I can't prove this but what are they eating? How are they surviving?"

At this, Finley looked up.

"When you say how are they surviving, what are you talking about?" Finley said.

"What I mean is that humans need basic things and I'm sure the dwarves needs some of the same things. We need oxygen from the air. We need water. We need to eat food. I'll discount shelter and emotional needs. They don't need that but..." Anthony waved his hands. "Something is sustaining them. I'm guessing it's a card power or some magic. You remember how well you started seeing lots of shards?"

"Are you saying that their continued survival has something to do with the card powers or the initial virus?" Sophie said.

"Well look at it this way. Let's say that I'm a virus or bacteria like the common cold or something. I want to spread to as many places as possible. Now a bacteria or a virus. They don't have a brain like you and I. They act on instinct. They find a place where they can multiply and they go there. Someone breathes out. Zombie spores-"

"They're not zombie spores," Finley said, holding up a drink. "That I would see coming a mile away."

"Okay. Hmmm. They're not a fungus or whatever Finley is telling us. But they find a place where they can reproduce and a side effect is that they turn the person's brain into mush. Eventually, they will run out of hosts. So how do they keep us up?"

"I'm getting very nervous with your line of questioning," Sophie said. "I guess that they keep up by evolving and doing more. Are our bacteria too small to have their own cards? I'm guessing yes. There has to be a size or an intelligence requirement to be born with a card right?"

Finley nodded.

"Tiny bugs don't have cards."

"Thank the Goat Lord for that," Sophie said.

"Maybe we should really think about why someone would do this to a continent?" Anthony said, draining his beer and going to grab another.

"I know that's relevant. Maybe it'll give us some insight into what we can do about this calamity," Sophie said. She raised her mug to see if she could get it refilled easily. The man was already walking after all.

Anthony placed his mug down and grabbed both Finley and Sonya's mugs.

"Anyone else?" He said.

"This is a jilted lover scenario. Whoever put this curse upon this entire continent... They must have hated someone so much that they wanted to burn it to the ground. And nothing speaks to that like a jilted lover," Sophie said.

"My guess is that he had a bad customer service experience and he wanted to speak to the manager," Sonya said.

"Are you both insane? Doing a continent wide genocide? To get back at someone for bad customer service or because they couldn't get the knob wet? Actually that makes sense," Anthony said, deflating back to the deck.

He raised his mug.

"To those that came before," he said.

Three other mugs raised in unison.

"May they be remembered," they echoed.

The moment was over far too quickly.

"All right, let's assume that it's magical then," Sophie said, standing up to pace around. "If it's magical then why didn't it affect everybody? Borgan and Song weren't affected."

"Borgan and Song both have Epic cards. Maybe that's it?" Finley said.

"We've seen people with epic cards before," Sophie said.

"We were at a dwarven military academy. If there's any place there would be more epic cards than usual, that's where they would be."

"Do you remember that one time that Valerie found the Epic card? What was it? But she found it on one of her Noble classmates?" Sophie said. "That guy looked like he'd been eaten and killed, not exactly turned."

Anthony narrowed his eyes at her.

She hadn't expected that one note to bring something out. She remembered being up on the fourth floor of the barracks. That poor kid had been chewed all over. It was the best way to get a card because it was a strong card for what it was. It had to have been the anchor card.

Anytime they got something for free? Sophie was a little bit suspicious. Murphy wanted to f*** with her. She did not want to f*** with Murphy. If anything, she did not want to tempt, even the actual gods of this place.

"That definitely was the anchor card. Do you think that just having such a strong card would stave off whatever this is? That means that there's a way through. We just have to get every one of the cards that will stop it," Sonya said. "How rare are these epic cards- the obsidian ones?"

"They are quite rare," Finley said. "They are generally a matter of national security. If you're not born with one then it's nearly impossible to get one. The concentration might be higher in the orcish meritocracy. It's their years of campaigns against the elves and dwarves."

Finley had a specific part of his heart where he hated orcs. Especially the number of orcs that were accountants. Sophie could understand that. It was something that ingrained upon him since he was young. He carried it like a single issue voter in a last ditch campaign. It was kind of cute in a way. It also showed how much culture I'd played a part in his upbringing.

"So what's the hypothesis here? Epic cards make you less likely to be... Turned into a zombie? Is that how it works?" Sonya said. "Finley, does that even make sense?"

"It makes sense. If you have an epic card, your soul is just so much tougher than the average person. You can take more. You can endure more. Do I think it's the only reason or the only thing? You're telling me that Borgan and Song should have died? Because they should have returned to zombies? Heck, I should have died except that my card was upgraded right before..." Finley said.

"Weren't you saying that when we met? Your card upgraded to Epic or obsidian? I was scratching my head about that and now? That had to be divine intervention," Anthony said. "It sounds like the gods were meddling with you."

"There is not a god of tinkers. But if you're the last one, you get special powers. I don't know how the Gods would know that. Wait- that could be how the magic works, couldn't it?" Finley replaced Sophie, pacing around on the deck near the keg. He was handed several mugs which he dutifully refilled.

"The real question here is," Anthony said, "What can we do about it? If you know it's somebody with a special card skill that did all this. The chances are that they're crazy. Can we do much with that? I doubt it. It would be great to solve the mystery but in the end, we have a dead continent that we need to what-save for the gods?"

His words hung there in the air and they all drank another sip of beer slowly.

"We've got to do more than survive," Sonya said. "The bare minimum isn't going to cut it. We have to do better. Whether that means we fix it by killing all of the death knights, or something else... The gods can only ask us to do something. We are the ones that have to push forward on our own."

"I'll raise a mug to that," Anthony said.