I carefully backed away from the monsters in front of me, trying not to make a sound that might draw their attention. The spell’s light followed me back up the tunnel, but I could still see one of the creatures slowly lift a leg and stagger in my direction. That convinced me to speed up a bit.

“What’s going on down there?” I heard Ruculus call down the shaft to me, with the creatures so close to me I didn’t dare to speak. “You get eaten by monsters yet?”

“I doubt it,” Senet added. “The wisp would have returned to me if he was dead.”

“Ruculus,” I heard Lysander interject, “go down and take a look. You can handle the fall and climb back up easiest.”

“Are you mad?” the raccoon retorted. “I’ve got no intention of meeting the gods just yet. What about you, oh champion of law?”

I heard a loud snort from the top of the chute followed by a certain dwarfish brogue. “Ah’ll go yah cowards.” There were a few clanks and then I heard a heavy object rolling down the slide. I shoved myself against the wall just in time to avoid getting sliced up by a spinning axe blade held in the center of a ball of steel-clad dwarf.

Balan unfurled himself from around the haft of his battleaxe and got to his feet just as one of the monsters came into the full light of the spell wisp. It looked like an anthropomorphic horse, but emaciated, with patches of fur falling out and some tears in the skin showing exposed muscle. The creature slowly reached one bony arm towards Balan, who chopped it off with his axe without hesitation.

“Catakhanai!” Balan called out as he swung two more times, slicing the horse-thing’s leg and then bringing the heavy blade down on its head as it collapsed. “Git ur arses down here!”

“Get back!” I heard the mage’s warning barely a second before his fireball streaked down the slide and past the dwarf. The explosion engulfed Balan and all the monsters, catakhanai I supposed, that I could see. Lysander came sliding down before the flames receded, leaping to his feet sword in hand. As the flames receded I could see the catakhanai still stood, but were badly burnt and in some cases parts were falling off, still burning slightly. Among them Balan kept swinging, his armor slightly soot-stained but otherwise no worse for wear. The wolf champion sliced two burnt catakhanai in half with a pair of strokes as he charged into the fray. Balan cut down another monster, but as he was pulling his axe back for another swing the catakhanas next to it opened its mouth and spewed a thick red substance all over him.

Senet and Ruculus slid down the chute just in time to see Balan get covered with monster vomit. The thief faded into shadow while the mage tossed a concentrated jet of flame at the offending catakhanas, turning it into a glowing skeleton that clattered to the floor. The dwarf looked down at himself, then reared back and let loose an enraged howl. He flung himself into the thick of the remaining catakhanai, axe flailing wildly.

Twitching undead limbs went flying every which way, Lysander taking out most of the stragglers. Senet threw more jets of flame at the edges of the horde, one or two catakhanai fell to daggers that came flying out of the shadows into their eyes. In a couple minutes the last few monsters dwelling in the hall stopped moving.

Lysander caught sight of the dwarf with catakhanas puke covering his armor and ran over to him, pulling loose a roughly tube-shaped leather bag from his belt. He pulled out a stopper at the end of the bag and started a soft chant as he poured water from the bag over Balan. The bulk of the red vomit flowed off onto the floor, but a thin crust remained attached to the armor, and his skin. The dwarf tried to brush it off, but to no avail.

Balan fell to his knees, panting heavily. “Ah’m stained,” he gasped. “Ah’m a dead dwarf.”

I cautiously stepped forward from the corner where I’d been trying to stand out of the way of the melee, trying to step carefully around any dismembered bodies. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What were those things?”

“Catakhanai,” Lysander explained. “Dead bodies given a crude mockery of life by foul magics.” He reached a hand out for the dwarf, starting to glow with restorative magic.

Balan pulled away from the hand. “Don’t waste ur elan on me.”

“You have three days to remove the stain!” the wolf exclaimed. “Don’t give up yet!”

“We didn’t bring anything to cleanse me!” Balan shouted out again. “Ah’m dead already.”

Senet turned away from the dwarf and the champion trying to reassure him, head bowed. He paused as his gaze passed over me, “why didn’t you warn us?”

I drew myself back from the accusing rabbit. “I…” I tried to explain myself, “I didn’t want to draw their attention to myself.”

The magus hissed softly. “Catakhanai can see the living from any distance without the light, they knew you were there the moment you slid down the chute. They were just too slow to catch you.”

“Well I didn’t know that!” I objected. “I’m not a professional adventurer or whatever like you guys.”

“Ah was a woodcutter,” Balan whimpered. “Shudda stayed dere. Bezerkah training was a mistake.”

“Craig doesn’t have any training,” Lysander pointed out. “If anyone is at fault, it’s Ruculus for throwing him down the chute.”

“Where is that rat anyways?” Senet inquired, looking around. The raccoon was nowhere to be seen, not even the shadow he tended to fade into was visible.

Lysander groaned in exasperation. “I doubt we’ll be able to catch him. Now, we need to decide what to do next.” He wiped his blade with an oiled cloth, carefully removing every drop of blood. “Do we keep going and hope that there’s some cleansing wax further down in the dungeon? Or head back up and return to town?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“The walk back is too long,” Balan stated. He picked up his axe and climbed back to his feet. “Ah might as well go down fighting.”

“Maybe we’ll meet a merchant on the road,” the champion suggested. “If you die while stained you’ll rise as a catakhanas you know.”

“Maybe Ah’ll spew on dat thief,” the dwarf retorted. He started walking off down the hall, away from the slide. After a few seconds hesitation Lysander and Senet followed. I considered whether I’d be safer with them or waiting on one of the levels they’d cleared. But for all I knew more monsters would arrive to fill the territory the adventurers had opened up. I hurried after them, but hung back, far enough back that hopefully I wouldn’t fall to any traps or wandering monsters.

Lysander halted abruptly, lupine ears perked warily as his hand went to his sword. Senet cocked an ear himself and brandished his staff. Balan looked around before whispering under his breath, “wat ya hear?”

“Clicking,” the wolf whispered back, sliding his sword gently from its sheath. “Might be clockwork, could be bugs. Couldn’t say more.” The group cautiously advanced, assuming fighting stances as the lights from Senet’s wisps revealed more of the hallway ahead.

A door emerged from the darkness, wood and brass ten feet tall. At the keyhole in the middle of the doorway a hooded figure stood bent over with a ringed tail sticking out. Ruculus looked over his shoulder as Lysander stepped up to him, pointing his sword at the raccoon.

The thief held up his hands, dropping a set of bronze lock picks to the floor. “I was just scouting ahead,” he claimed in a trembling voice.

Lysander twitched an ear towards the rest of the party, as if asking them their opinions. Senet shrugged, while Balan grumbled. “Jus git the door open,” the dwarf said. Ruculus nodded and turned back to the lock.

While the raccoon tried to pick the lock I approached Lysander, I still had a few questions. “Err, what exactly,” I asked cautiously, “is going to happen to Balan?”

The lupine champion gave a mournful sigh. “Unless we can get that stain off in three days,” he explained. “Balan will die, and when he does he will rise as a catakhanas like the ones we fought earlier.”

“How can one remove the stain?” I inquired, curious.

“Sometimes blessed water is enough,” Lysander said, fingers brushing the waterskin hanging from his waist as he spoke. “But you saw that the stain had already begun to set by the time I got to him. We’d need something stronger to scrub it off. There’s this foul-smelling wax that can scour such a stain when combined with holy water, but we neglected to bring any since we weren’t expecting to fight the living dead. As is we’re lucky it didn’t get into his blood.”

“I see,” I commented. There was a heavy thunk sound from the direction of the door and I turned in time to see Ruculus start to push the door open. He shoved it open a crack and looked through, then nodded and opened it the rest of the way.

Beyond stood another hallway, curving gently to the left some thirty feet out. “Well,” Ruculus said, turning to me. “Better go and check it out, slave.” At Lysander’s glare he quickly revised his statement. “Just joking, I’ll start searching for traps then?”

Without further prompting the thief began to look around the hallway from one wall to another, calling for a spell wisp to provide light after a minute. He shifted the wisp from side to side, scanning the walls and floor for something, I couldn’t say what. When he approached the turn in the hall he stopped and bent down to look at a white floor tile in the middle of a brown section of the floor. “I think there’s a trap here,” he suggested. “Stand back and give me a minute to try and disable it.” He pulled out his lock picks again and started prying at one of the tiles he’d been examining.

Something clicked loudly and a panel in the wall dropped open, revealing a metal spout. Ruculus started to jump back but a blast of green flame shot out towards him, catching him on the arm. The flame jet splashed against the opposite wall, then slowly tapered off, creating a burning puddle from wall to wall. The thief started waving his burning arm around, throwing off small globs of burning material that simmered on the floor. He tried dousing it in water from his own waterskin, but the fire kept burning. “Bloody alchemists!” he shouted.

I almost felt offended at that statement, given that I was apparently classed as an alchemist in this game world. But I was also reminded of something. Greek fire, waterproof, if not water-ignited, very difficult to put out. I pulled off my pack and started looking through it in a hurry. There was nothing that looked like sand, of course not, but there were a few blankets. I tossed one of the blankets to Ruculus, “wrap this around it tightly!” I exclaimed. “Smother it!”

He did as I instructed, covering his arm with the blanket and clutching it tightly. I started to panic for a moment as the blanket began to catch on fire, but the flame was quickly covered by more layers of the blanket. “Now, carefully pull the whole thing off, don’t open it, try to get all the goop with it.”

Instead, Ruculus yanked the wrapped up blanket off, almost immediately both his arm and the blanket ignited again. Fortunately it seemed that he had taken most of the Greek fire off as the flame on him began to die down almost immediately, while the blanket continued burning after he dropped it on the floor. He looked at his blackened leather armor and grisly red flesh stripped of fur and skin with a look of utter disgust. “Could you heal me, please?” he asked Lysander.

“I’m starting to run short on elan,” the champion of the gods replied. “Why don’t you ask your slave?”

The raccoon turned to me and barked. “Give me a healing potion!” I stood there and did nothing. “I’m your master, obey me!”

“One of them,” I retorted.

Ruculus scowled at me, “fine, I won’t try to use you as monster bait again. Now will you give me a healing potion?”

I shrugged, pulled out one of the potion flasks, and chucked it to him. He drank it and his burn slowly grew a new layer of pasty gray skin. While I was doing this Balan grabbed an iron pan from my pack and started walking over to the burning blanket on the floor. I asked what he was doing.

“Mit as well have a decent last meal,” he said, pulling out a pack of sausages and placing them in the pan, then starting to cook them over the flames as they turned from green to orange. “Not like we’re going anywhere for a while.”

I glanced over to the line of burning Greek fire, it was receding, but slowly, still fed by a diminishing trickle from the spout. “We probably shouldn’t spend too much time in this area. I doubt it’s a good idea to breathe in the smoke from that.”

Senet nodded his agreement. “Alchemist’s flame is foul stuff, we should head back.”

Balan’s sausages sizzled on the pan as the blanket fire gradually died. “These’re done anyways.” He picked the sausages up and handed me the greasy pan as he ate.

I looked at the layer of grease coating the inside of the pan, then set it down and started looking through my pack for something to clean it with. “Where’s the soap?” I called out.

Senet snorted, “if we had soap Balan wouldn’t be in his predicament.”

Lysander looked confused, “what’s soap?”

“It’s that wax-like stuff they use to clean stains,” the rabbit retorted. He grumbled something that sounded vaguely like “high-born.”

Something clicked for me, I tried to remember what I’d knew about soap. The earliest forms were made from fat and ash, right? I looked at the glowing embers of the burned blanket, stomped them out, then reached down and tried to pick up a handful of gray ash. I couldn’t get much, but I poured it on the pan and swirled it around in the grease. Not much happened, some of the ashes started to form ugly clumps, but not much else I could see.

I turned to see that the alchemist’s fire was still burning, though it had receded from the opposite wall to the spout by now, and remembered the last component. Cautiously I approached and held the pan over the flames.

The ash and grease mixture began to pop and boil, releasing an acrid odor. As I swirled it, the mixture began to congeal into bigger and bigger chunks.

“What are you doing?” Ruculus shouted at me.

I pulled the pan back, there was now a grayish-white sludge covering the inside.

Recipe discovered: Basic soap.

Alchemist XP earned: 10/100

“I think I just saved Balan,” I replied.