As Joe stepped into a thick bower of trees, he was hit with what had to be the sensation Earcellwen had been trying to tell him about. As he entered the shadowy grove, a sickening feeling washed over him. It was as if a thousand icy-cold worms had been spreading across his bare skin. The cold crawling feeling made him stop dead in his tracks and shudder.
“Finally,” RC croaked, shivering herself. “I was beginning to wonder if you had any spiritual sensitivity at all.”
“I—I have a very high Spirit, I’ll have you know,” Joe stammered, trying to shake off the writhing cold feeling.
“Not the same thing,” she huffed. “The Spirit attribute is how effective we are with spiritual manipulation. Sensitivity is something else. Some people and classes have it, some don’t. In the wilderness, my folk are especially sensitive. My Wildling class makes it even more so.” The elf hooked her bow over her shoulder and shook out her hands as if she was trying to wake them up or shake something off them.
They had walked for a little over an hour. The whole time, Earcellwen had been telling him the corruption had been getting stronger. They had finally reached the point where it was now obvious to Joe as well.
“Gah! This is what you have been feeling this whole time?” Joe groaned. He vigorously chafed his arms through the sleeves of his blue gambeson, trying to drive off the clammy sensation.
“Probably,” the ranger shrugged. “If it's a cold slimy sensation then yes. That is exactly it.”
“Yeah. That is what I have now too. Bleh.” He looked around the thickly wooded area. The dense canopy blocked everything but a few rare beams that managed to find an open channel through the leaves. “At least we now know for sure we are heading in the right direction.”
The wildbow threw a scowl at Joe, planting her fists on her hips. “Now you know for sure. I have been certain since the trow mines.”
“Sorry. Fair enough. I hope it doesn’t get much worse. This is … ”
“JOE!” Earcellwen shouted. “On your left!” Arrows launched from her bow past his chest in a rapid burst.
Turning Joe saw a number of lurching forms shuffling towards where he and RC stood. Some were humanoid-shaped. Others were quadrupeds. Summoning a chunk of obsidian, he began to break it down.
Joe used the moment before being engaged to activate his [Spot Weakness] skill. Like with the alpha badboon, his eyesight seemed to fade into irrelevance. It was his ears that perked up. This time there were no heartbeats at all. No pumping blood. Instead, he could pick up the sounds of a maddening whisper. The harsh dark muttering was echoing through what was left of the walking corpses’ minds. It was forcing them to hunt, never allowing them to find peace or rest.
Joe assessed the three forms closest to him. The trio was comprised of the desiccated corpse of a goat-legged aresa, a mangled raccoon, and an animated undead wolf.
Shambling Cadaver: Level 7: Undead(Zombie): Brute: Vigor: 72/64
Rotting Varmint: Level 3: Undead(Zombie): Lurker: Perception: 26/24
Skulking Corpse: Level 6: Undead(Zombie): Lurker: Perception: 64/61
The attention of the two undead animals was locked onto Joe, while the goatman seemed to be following the decaying beasts. All three of them seemed not to care if they walked into branches or tripped and fell on rough terrain. They were being driven by those harsh commands Joe had heard echoing through their skulls.
Unlike what one would expect from the classic zombie trope, hunger was not what the creatures were focused on. To Joe, the sibilant mutterings spoke only of violence and hatred. It was compelling the damned to harm and kill anything that lived. Feeding was not part of the equation.
“Headshots, RC. They are zombies.”
“I know,” the archer called back. “Don’t get bit. These things are infectious.”
“Great.” Joe’s spell was charged but he was not sure the best angle to throw it at if he was going to try and send it through their rotten brains. The heads of the three shuffling forms were at all different heights. Joe had gotten his [Grit Razor] to launch at an angle before but it really messed up his aim. Maybe with more practice he could count on tilted waves, but not yet.
He decided to try something else. He swung his arm low and then up, like he was pitching a softball. He figured that if the crescent ended up just skimming the ground, he would kill the raccoon, which was the closest, and cripple the other two behind it.
Thankfully the spell did what Joe had hoped it would. It rose as it flew. The shards shredded the dead scavenger into unrecognizable scraps, then it hooked up to dissect the wolf’s throat, leaving its head dangling by just its spine. When it reached the humanoid zombie, it sliced through the corpse’s chest, tearing meat from its torso and arms.
Joe only needed a single swipe of a claw to finish off the lupine zombie. The aresa took a bit more effort but the monster was so slow, that blocking its attacks was easily accomplished. Just as he finished off the shuffling dead man, he heard his ally call out again.
“Joe back out! Into the sunlight! There are a lot more behind these!”
[Night Eyes] easily pierced the forest shadows and Joe confirmed what the ranger had warned him of. There were dozens of shambling forms moving toward where they were fighting. Maybe a hundred more.
“Holy crap!” he swore, back-peddling out of the grove with RC at his side.
They easily made back out into the field before the slowly stumbling horde reached them. The maddened corpses, like the ghouls, refused to step out of the shadows. So, from a safe distance, the elven hunter and Joe used their ranged attacks to decimate the wall of animated dead.
Earcellwen went through two quivers worth of arrows. After the fourth chunk of obsidian, Joe switched to field stones to save his good rocks. The granite splinters were not quite as effective as the volcanic shards, but since this was more of a culling than an actual fight, it really didn’t matter too much. It was the mana drain that was the bigger issue. Joe wished, probably for the hundredth time, that he knew how Hah’roo made those mana renewal charms of hers.
There was one moment of panic when a large cloud moved in front of the sun. The drop in light was not all that much but it must have been enough for the hate-fueled dead to leave the deeper darkness of the forest. Fifty or more creatures suddenly lurched a step forward. Then another step. Earcellwen and Joe had plenty of room to retreat but a deep sense of dread struck the pair when the horde shuffled forward.
Less than a minute later the cloud moved away and the bright sunlight returned. The creatures moaned loudly and turned about. Joe was wondering if they would burst into flames like a vampire or just fall over. Disappointingly, neither of those occurred. The throng just shuffled out of the direct light and hovered at the shadowy forest edge once more.
“This would be a very bad place to camp for the night,” Joe muttered.
“Agreed,” RC answered, driving an arrow into the head of one of the zombies. “The question is do we finish this … I’m not even sure what to call it. A mass mercy massacre.”
“Nice alliteration,” Joe chuckled as he threw another gritty crescent into the somewhat diminished number of zombies.
“Thanks. So, after these zombies, do we want to fight our way through the forest? Do we want to try and circle this stretch of woods? Or do we head back now?”
Joe looked up at the sun and saw it was still pretty high in the sky. He guessed it was around 3:00 as he counted time. “I’d rather not head back yet. It would be great if we could figure out the source. As for going around, I’d have to count on you. My sense of direction is not great. You would not believe how many times I got lost trying to get from A to B,” Joe admitted, shaking his head at some of his memories from Earth. He once had gotten so turned around at a convention that he found himself in a completely different hotel.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Refocusing on the conversation, Joe peered into the thick forest again. There were far fewer zombies at the edge of the grove now, but the deep wood almost surely contained more of the monsters. “Going through looks like it could get hairy. I wish I had more of those potions that transformed you into a hawk. Flying over would be perfect.”
“And crazy expensive. Only rich folks or high-level adventures use those things. They are great, but way outside my budget. My father always says ‘a squandered shilling might as well have been lost’,” she added with that voice she always used when she was quoting her father. Joe made a note to himself to ask Kendell or Hah’roo if this habit of citing her kin was an elf-thing or just an RC idiosyncrasy.
“I think I could get around this quickly enough,” she added. “If that is the decision, then we may want to leave the last of these guys and build up some mana. My [Trailbreaker] will boost your speed and your endurance boost will keep us going. If we break off now we should be ready to run in a few minutes.”
“Sounds good to me,” Joe agreed, dropping the rock he had just picked up. “I’m already feeling a bit loopy from mana loss. Let’s start with a walk and I’ll let you know when I’m ready to run.”
They could see the forest extended for a very long way to their right. To the south, they could see the edge of the trees curving back in the direction they wanted to go. They jogged through the field, following the wooded border. Within ten minutes they had recovered enough mana to use their skills. Their pace tripled and the ground flew by. RC flawlessly navigated, keeping the sun either on their right or in front of them. They only had to backtrack once when they hit a dead end. A set of hills had hidden a dead end. Instead of braving sinister shadowed wood, they turned south for a bit.
The hills grew taller as they went. By the time they were able to turn north again the two adventurers were climbing a steep pitch. They scrabbled to the top, thankful for Joe's [Efferous Endurance]. When they finally reached the top, the pair found themselves standing on a high ridgeline. The sinuous apex cut through the forest they had been skirting to the north until it rose to join the towering Mount Serabuk. Behind them it ran in a south-west curve, looping to reach more of Serabuk’s mountainous neighbors. The mountains and this ridge defined a deep valley. This lowland was surrounded on all sides by high slopes. The bowl was filled with more of the heavy thick woodlands that the zombies had inhabited.
The valley below where they stood was undoubtedly the source of the corruption. It hung in the air like a foul stench. Gloom and mountain-wrought shadows darkened the vale. Joe guessed that the sun would only shine into the lowland for a few hours each day, right around high noon.
The most notable feature of the valley was a tall ziggurat breaking its way out of the canopy of leaves. The stone was a dark blueish-gray color. If the size of the trees matched the one they had seen so far, then the stepped pyramid was massive, hundreds of feet tall.
As Joe studied the structure he saw a twisted form scamper across one of the stone ledges and disappear back into the forest. It reminded him of the trow ghouls but bigger and faster.
“We are definitely not going down there this time,” he said looking up at the sun. From their elevation, he could see the bright orb, resting on the tops of the western mountains. In a very short period of time, it would start slipping behind those peaks and they would lose its radiant protection.
“You won’t get an argument from me. We should check out those menhirs before we go.” The ranger pointed to a large standing stone about a hundred yards away. Even from the distance they were at, Joe could see it was covered with carved runes. Following the ridgeline with his eyes, Joe saw that there were more of the monoliths evenly spaced. As far as he could see around the ridge that defined the vale, there were tall standing stones. It looked like there might be roughly a quarter of a mile between each one.
“Ok, but we should be quick about it.” Joe set off at a full run for the standing stone. As he got closer, he could see woven bands of lines blocking out sections of writing and runes. The patterns looked very similar to Celtic knotwork.
Earcellwen, running at his side, stated, “That is the script of the elves and fey. I’ll be able to read it.”
They skidded to a halt at the monolith. The wildbow began running her finger back and forth a few inched away from the stone.
“Shoot. It’s not history. It’s an enchantment. A very high-level one. I don’t have enough magecraft to say for sure but I think it is a ward. A really big, powerful, continuous ward. I think it surrounds the whole valley.”
Earcellwen reached up to her neck and pulled a long tube out of her dimensional locket. She uncapped the cylinder and drew out a bunch of large sheets of parchment. Tipping the tube, she spilled a tin box into her hand before handing it to Joe. “Here grab a page and some charcoal from the case. Let’s make a rubbing of each side and we can take them back with us. It will take me too long to read all this and even if I did it might not make any sense to us. We probably need an arcanist or a warder.”
The stone was much bigger than each sheet of paper so Joe picked a spot that had a contained block of runes that the parchment could cover. He knew time was slipping by but he was careful with getting the charcoal impression. Rushing too quickly would be a waste if it meant they could not read the transfer back at Fort Coral. Even being precise, Joe finished far faster than RC did. Having a third hand made the process ten times easier for him. Joe finished his second side of the standing stone just a few seconds after she was done with her first one. He grabbed the fourth sheet and captured the last side while the elf carefully layered clean pages between the first three rubbings. She added the last page before rolling it all back into the tube and returning everything to her locket.
“Time to go,” she said, dusting off her hands.
“Yup,” Joe agreed. He took one last look at the line of megaliths. “Wait,” he remarked as his eyes snagged on a break in the pattern. “Hey RC, look there.” Joe stepped up to her and pointed at what looked to him like a fallen stone. “Are my eyes messing with me or does it look like that menhir is toppled over?”
“No, you are right,” she exclaimed after following his indication. “The roots of that old rowan tree must have gotten under it and tipped it over. That might explain why those woods are so full of the dead.”
Her perception had to be far higher than his. While Joe could spot the break, there was no way he would have been able to identify the type of tree or note roots on the ground.
“You think that could be where the corruption is leaking out of?” Joe asked. “If the valley is the source then that might be the hole that is tainting the lands to the east.”
“That was my thought too, Joe, but we should go. There are things moving this way. I’d like to get a good distance from this forest before the shadows get long enough to cause us any problems.”
Joe nodded and followed her down the steep hillside. The going was too rough for quite a while to talk. It wasn’t until they reached the hills again that they could spare a thought to anything but their footing. They skipped conversing for a while longer, keeping up a sprinters pace. Miles flew away beneath their feet even though it was no more taxing than a brisk walk thanks to their spells.
When they finally left the dark woodland behind they let up and dropped to a walk.
“So step one,” Joe started as they walked together, “is finding out what we can about that valley and getting someone to help us interpret the writing on those stones.”
“I have been thinking about that too. It’s too bad this wasn’t last year,” the elf sighed, trekking through the field at his side. “Pencifer Trume was the warder of Fort Coral until last fall. She and her family moved away. I think she was offered a job in one of the Small Kingdoms. There was no one in Fort Coral who knew ward-work better than Peni. I know the town council is looking for a new warder but I hadn’t heard they found one yet. Maybe one of the guild mages can help us.”
“Is warder a class?” Joe asked.
“It is but it’s also a profession. Like healer. You have the actual class [Healer] but there are a number of other classes that are often considered to be in the healer profession. Herbwife, apothecary, medic, allopath. You’d have to ask Myllo but I’m sure he could rattle off a dozen more as well as a bunch of warder-type classes.”
“Makes sense.”
“Speaking of the Guild. We should look to add a few more people to our team if we’re going to try to deal with that valley. I’d like to see those undead purged from the forests, but we are going to need more than just you and me to do so. My father always says ‘Only a fool faces an army alone’.”
“I think you’re right. I have a friend that would be a great help.,” Joe agreed. He wondered what Hah’roo was doing. A minute later, his thoughts turned to Kendell, and he had the same thought. Maybe she’d want to adventure with Earcellwen and him. “We should be able to find some guild members to help us.”
“I can think of a couple who would be good fits for us.”
They met back up with the road out of Fort Coral and followed it, walking in silence for a bit longer before she spoke again. “You and I work well together Joe. I’m glad you asked me to come with you today.”
“I think so too, Earcellwen. I’m happy to keep this partnership going.”
The elf nodded her head in agreement.
For the rest of the walk back to the fort, they talked. Not exclusively about the valley. They started swapping stories and getting to know each other better. He countered her elaborated Lexaroth tales with recountings of Kaid. Joe didn’t go into the whole debacle concerning Azbekt and the courts. That was something he was happy to leave in the past.
For the rest of the trek, he ended up letting her do more of the talking, happy to just listen and laugh with Earcellwen’s dry humor. By the time they reached the city gates, Joe had amused himself by counting her Dad quotes. She was up to number eight as they said good evening to each other, with plans to meet again the next day.