I tumbled down to slam against a hard stone floor. The fuck?! I flipped back to my feet and glanced about wildly, but there was nothing to see. The sudden burst of bright light would risk blinding me at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t that. The stone was flat beneath me, and the way the sound of my bare feet slapping down on it echoed wasn’t anything you could here in a wide open space.

No, this was a sound you could only here with sturdy walls enclosing you on every side. Stone, unless I missed my guess. I’d not have to walk far to hit the wall, even if I wasn’t about to start making any more sudden movements in the pitch blackness. I’d have to move very carefu-

A flash of light cut through the blackness, giving me an equally brief flash of sight. I saw dim outlines of carved reliefs on the walls and what looked like a legitimate sarcophagus against one wall. More concerning, the flash of light immediately preceded the arrival of another individual: fucking Garrett.

The human slammed into the ground, barely managing to keep his feet as he swore emphatically. Well, that was interesting. I froze, and began to slowly edge my way backwards. I heard the soft sounds of Garrett rifling through his pockets as I did so.

At least the spell was gone from my mind with no lingering effects. It was no curse either, but teleportation. Why it it appeared to confuse Garrett I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about to waste time wondering. All that mattered was that he was distracted, and I could get away.

...or I could do something else. I came to a stop after only a few steps backwards. Why not finish it? The human adventurer continued to search his pockets, completely oblivious to my presence mere feet behind him. I couldn’t ask for a better chance.

I reached up and withdrew my thorn-bladed club from my mouth, working the stiffness out of my jaw. I’d have to make this quick, any time to react would give Garrett the chance to turn the tables. Just a quick blow to the throat, then I could leap back, dragging the club through his flesh as I went, and let him bleed out from there. Difficult to say what hidden powers he might possess, but with the kind of damage a weapon like this did to unarmored flesh there was no coming back. He’d be dead in minutes.

All I had to do was strike.

I swallowed, hefting the club in my hand. It felt a lot heavier all of a sudden, but I lifted it above my head nonetheless. It wouldn’t be easy to land the strike properly, so I took the time to line it up. No margin of error here.

I leaned into my backswing, ready to finally attack, when something cracked. I hopped backward, drawing the club down in front of my body to block any incoming attack, but none came.

Garrett was just as frozen, so it wasn’t him, but there was no one else her-

The cracking came again, and Garrett burst into motion, going from fiddling through his stuff to hurling shit out of his pack to get shit out of the way and find whatever it was he was looking for right the fuck now.

Oh. Oh no.

I had a dreadful suspicion I knew what was making that noise. I mean, enter a room with a stone sarcophagus and all of a sudden hear the sound of stone cracking? Didn’t take a genius to figure that out. Something nasty was about to crawl outta there and I had no interest in being around when it did. I backed up to the rear wall and ran my hands across it, searching for a door.

My fingers caught on something. I latched on and yanked. Nothing happened. I twisted my body and put the full force of my core wrenching the door open. With a hiss of pain I succeeded….in tearing off one of my nails. Not exactly what I was going for.

With a sinking feeling I realized that I didn’t have my hands on a door. Bloody stars, I was lost in the dark worse than a human. I had my hands on a damn bas relief carving, not a door jam.

Fuck. I wasn’t gonna find my way out of here in the dark. Not with things as they were.

The crack of shattering glass joined the crack of breaking stone, and the room lit up in ghostly green light. Garrett had finally found what he’d been looking for evidently, and he’d shattered the glass vial on the stone floor to release a luminescent ooze that gave off a deceptively strong light.

Garrett still had his back to me, keeping his eyes on the sarcophagus lid. The heavy stone lid was at least three inches thick, but its entire surface was laced with deep cracks. The light seemed to sink into them, leaving the surface around them unnaturally dim while the cracks themselves seethed with darkness.

Damn. Nothing pretty was coming out of that coffin. Time to make my exit. I turned to find the door among the eerily lit bas reliefs, with the advantage of sight this time, and found nothing. Nothing but creepy-ass carvings of screaming humans with thorns sprouting from their flesh. No doors.

I spun around. No exits, not on the left, not on the right.

Aw, hells. The prickling at the back of my neck ascended to new heights, and I was beginning to get a picture of the mess I’d put myself in. The grip on my mind had been the targeting component of a teleportation spell, presumably cast from a scroll or something. I didn’t want to underestimate Garrett too badly, but I didn’t figure him for a magic user.

So he’d tried to teleport us both gods know where, I’d fucked that up, and we’d ended up in some mouldering tomb instead. That was the kind of fuckup that an actual spellcaster would catch coming, but scrolls were fire and forget. You set the spell off, and then it’d do what it’d do, no take backs.

And I was avoiding the real issue here wasn’t I? There was no way out, not before that thing broke free. If I couldn’t run, then I had to fight.

I swallowed and turned to face my fate. Garrett was still oblivious to my presence, more concerned with trying to recollect all the crap he’d thrown on the floor to get at his alchemical light and cram it back into his pockets before the sarcophagus opened, but the sarcophagus lid was bent upwards, stone broken, twisted, and pushed to its limits. I doubted he’d succeed at his task, it was only a matter of moments before the thing exploded outward. Not to mention he a shitload of crap, enough that he had to have extra dimensional storage of some kind if he’d been lugging it around.

Fucking human priorities. Have stuff or not die? Have stuff or not die? Well, have stuff obviously. What was a life worth when compared to a handful of random crap?

I drew a javelin from the case on my back, lined it up, and whipped it forward. The javelin wobbled through the air without the air time to fully stabilize and glanced off the stone a full inch from the crack I’d been aiming for.

Ah, fuck. I was gonna have to do this wasn’t I? I gritted my teeth and sprung forwards, driving my body to move before I had the time to question the decision and piss my pants instead. Garrett glanced up in shock as he finally realized he wasn’t alone in the room, but I was already past him. I reached the sarcophagus before he had any chance to react.

I slammed the javelin through the cracks the only way I could: from melee range. The spear scraped past the stone and slammed to a stop inside flesh. At least I think it was flesh, I’d only managed to penetrate half an inch past the stone, whatever was on the other side was tough enough to be wood, and for all I knew it could be.

Whatever the creature trapped within was, it was angry. It screeched in its pain and fury, the sound powerful enough to hit me with physical force. I gasped in pain, clutching the impaled javelin to hold myself up. The sound bored into my ears to stab at my brain, and the vibrations reverberating through the javelin numbed me to my bones.

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Ah, fuck you! I’d already lost the sharpness of my vision to a dumbass human, if I got my hearing damaged by some fucking undead in a forgotten tomb I was gonna lose my shit. I reared back, releasing the javelin and shifting both hands to my club. I flipped my grip and brought the flat side down on the end of the javelin like a hammer on a nail.

The shrieking coffin-dweller cut off, leading into a sharp hiss, like a dozen pissed off asps. I responded by slamming it home again, driving my javelin another inch deeper. A section of stone finally gave out, a gaunt arm breaking through to flail about outside its stone prison. I hopped out of reach, glancing over my shoulder as I drew another javelin.

“The hell are you doing standing around with your mouth open?” I shot back at Garrett. Honestly, the second something unexpected happened he shut the hell down. He needed to shape up quick, or he’d die quick, and I just might be the one who did it. “Start fucking helping!”

Thankfully, Garrett was spurred to action. Less thankfully, that action involved drawing steel on me.

I stared him down calmly, not moving a muscle. I even avoided opening my mouth too widely, no sense giving him a flash of my jagged teeth. “Garrett. An enemy of my enemy…”

Garrett narrowed his eyes. “A goblin is not trustworthy.”

“Ugh.” I sighed and rolled my eyes in the most exaggerated way possible. “I got dumped here before you, I had a solid thirty seconds to plant a knife in your back, and I didn’t.” Because I got spooked by some corpse too stubborn to know that it was supposed to be dead, but Garrett didn’t need to know that.

The slightly fudged reflection of truth got Garrett to ease up a bit, and I was happy to take advantage. “Look, that fucker is the real issue at hand, so why don’t we just set this aside and you can get back to trying to murder me later? I mean, there ain’t much you could do to make yourself more vulnerable than you were while rooting around on the floor, so you might as well be fucking useful.”

The adventurer took a deep breath through his teeth. “What the hell do you think you I’m doing? I know I’ve got some blessed oil around here somewhere.” He glared around at the junk he’d scattered all over the floor like it’d personally offended him. Yeah, sorry mate, but that was your own damn fault. Garrett might have a better reason to be fucking around on the floor than compulsive neatness, but if he organized his shit better this wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.

But I was dithering. There was only one thing to do, and I wasn’t happy about it. “Find your damn oil. I’ll hold off the creature.”

An undead would just keep coming if you didn’t put them down very thoroughly, and properly sanctified materials were a far easier manner of doing so than dismembering something as tough as this fucker was.

I turned back to the sarcophagus. It’s free arm was pale and gaunt, barely more than skeletal, but that didn’t seem to be slowing it down much. Its gauntness was the only reason it had managed to worm any part of itself free and it certainly wasn’t relying on something as mundane as muscles for its strength. Even now the freed arm was taking advantage of its new angle to reach over and pry at the cracks from the side, tearing them wider.

Well we couldn’t have that. I wasn’t happy to be the one stuck going toe to toe with the enemy when there was a perfectly serviceable human to risk his life instead, but I was more than a coward. I was a sensible coward. There were circumstances where blindly avoiding danger was the most dangerous thing you could do. A wild animal might run at the first sign of a predator, but corner it and it would fight tooth and nail for its life.

I swung my thorn-bladed club at the exposed arm, aiming for the inside elbow.. The razor thorns bit into its dessicated flesh, but stopped as they hit bone. The creature screamed again, wrenching its arm away from the thorns embedded in it. My club jerked in my grip, nearly tearing free entirely. I kept hold with only a few fingers, half a dozen of my hard earned thorns had torn from their bindings and scattered across the floor, but I still counted myself as the winner of that exchange.

I’d lost part of my weapon, the creature had lost part of its arm. Its sudden movement had dragged the jagged edge through its flesh with far greater strength than anything I could have mustered. Enough force to saw through the connective tissue of its elbow and leave it’s arm hanging on by a loose scrap of flesh.

The creature screamed in agony and my club fell from numb fingers as I clutched my hands over my ears. Oh sweet stars, how had I thought its previous racket was bad? This was so much worse. I stumbled back, watching in helpless horror as the remnants of the lid shook themselves to pieces and crumbled to the ground.

The creature stepped forth with a sibilant, undulating hiss. The sound was barely audible after the sonic force of its rage, and it sounded almost...satisfied. Even with one arm half missing and half of everything else reduced to mummified skin and bone with the passage of time, it no longer seemed all that put off.

Was this fucker laughing at me!?

I hissed right back as I drew another javelin. The undead didn’t bother to acknowledge my attack any more than it did my hiss, simply taking the javelin to the chest without a care in the world. The light spear stuck in its flesh for half a second before its own weight dragged it back out a again and it clattered to the floor.

The undead grabbed its dangling arm and twisted, tearing it fully free from its body. It flicked its wrist, and the limp limb shot at my face. I snorted and hopped to the side. It wasn’t all that bright if it thought that would catch me with that. What it was even hoping to accomplish with such a stupid attack was beyond me.

The severed arm twisted in the air, spreading out and stretching ites fingers towards my face. I flinched backwards, windmilling my arms to keep from falling over backwards, but managing to make enough distance keep the undead limb from grabbing hold of me.

Goddammit! The fucking murder chicken had tried the same trick, and I’d fallen for it then too. I snarled at the undead and lunged forwards, then jerked back as it reached out for me, letting it overextend itself. I whipped another javelin out and around, slamming it into his wrist.

Sadly, that accomplished little.

The undead kept coming, with little more than a scratch to show for my efforts. No spurting blood from a nicked artery, which was equally unfortunate and unsurprising.

I circled the creature, keeping on its weaker right side and dodging between its flailing strikes. “Garrett, now would be a great time to find that damn oil!”

“Damn oil? What I’m looking for is nearly the exact opposite of that.”

“I swear, if you get persnickety with me I will shove this spear up your ass.”

Garrett huffed. “Typical of a goblin to resort to such petty threats.”

“Typical of a human to quibble over meaningless bullshit. Where is the fucking oil?”

“I’m fucking looking!”

“Look harde- Aah!” I jumped as something brushed against my ankle. It disrupted one of my dodges, and I had to fall over backwards and frantically crabwalk away. The creature just stood there, slowly spreading its cracked lips into a smile as it let me get away.

Oh sweet stars. I had not wanted to see what its teeth looked like. Its mannerisms were far too understandable, far too human, to belong on something that creepy. It lifted its remaining hand and wriggled its fingers like a coquettish noblewoman at a dance party, a motion I felt mirrored against my leg…I looked down with a sinking feeling. The sight of a disembodied hand resettling its grip on my leg greeted me.

I shrieked and kicked out, but my strikes glanced off to no effect, and hell if I was gonna try stabbing at it when it was on my own leg. The creature just watched with its grim rictus, waiting as the tightening grasp of its severed hand cut off my blood flow and ground away at my bones. “Garrett! We’re running out of time!”

Garrett rose. “There is no we. And the only one running of time is this thing.”

The adventurer drew himself to his full height before whipping a heavy corked vessel at the undead. Honestly, if he called that a vial, I don’t wanna know what he called a pitcher. The undead grabbed the javelin still stuck in itself and wrenched it out to slam the holy oil aside in one smooth motion. The glass shattered and sprayed out to cover half the room. The half the undead wasn’t in.

Garrett stared at it dumbly. Oh, you sweet, stupid human. You don’t stop when you get beat. You keep going. While our resident dumbass was busy staring down a very smug undead I stood and darted towards the oil.

Garrett really was better supplied than he had any right to be. There was far more oil than could possibly have fit, even in his stupid oversized ‘vial’. That was more extra-dimensional shenanigans, even on top of whatever magic pockets he was lugging all his crap around in.

And all that oil made for one hell of a puddle.

I swung out my right leg in a sweeping kick, slamming the arm clutching my leg into the oil puddle at a sharp angle to splash oil across the room. The creature shrieked in pain, cutting of into a wheezing hiss as the oil burn its skin. It slumped over, growing still. It was a morbid sight, a dessicated creature hunched over and held upright only by its own rigor mortis. The sizzling oil and stench of burned meat didn’t help either.

“Well, at least you’re useful for something.” Garrett said.

“Good for doing your job for you, you mean?”

Garrett folded his arms and rocked back on one foot. “Excuse me? You will show me r-”

The undead spun around and socked him in the jaw. Garrett dropped like a rock. Honestly, were undead really so bad? I was starting to like this one.

The undead turned to face me, and the look on its face confirmed that, no, we weren’t friends. The oil may not have killed it, but it was sure as fuck pissed off. The holy oil ran down through the cracks and wrinkles of its face, forming its hideous acid burns into organic patterns.

Truly, I was an artist of flesh. Shame my undead friend didn’t seem to agree. It lunged towards me, but I darted backwards and it skidded to a stop before it reached the oil, shying back.

Heh. Not so cocky now, are you fucker? The bastard was standing steady, eyes narrow and arms wide. Even with one of them reduced to a stump it was still enough to catch me if I tried to leave my protective little puddle. I couldn’t afford to get cocky either.

The hand was still clutching my ankle, and that was beginning to be a problem. I crouched down and and rubbed the side of my ankle through the oil awkwardly, keeping my head up to watch the creature. It didn’t seem particularly concerned with taking advantage of my unsteady stance, instead turning to go over Garrett’s corpse. Or body, hell if I could tell if he was still breathing from here.

I started to smack my leg against the ground, but I still failed to dislodge the hand. The bit of arm attached to it was all but completely reduced to bone by now, but the hand itself dug dug deeper beneath my skin as it was slowly reduced to bony claws. I could feel its phalanges grinding away as they slipped between my ankle bones.

Much more of this and I wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone fight. This undead was far more dangerous than I’d given it credit for. Sure, holy burned unholy, but powerful enough evil shit burned it right back. The blessed oil damaged the creature, that much was obvious, but it was getting annihilated by the undead's animating necromancy faster than it could destroy him.

I needed more power.