The first zombie to crawl through the opening slipped on loose rocks and tumbled down the rock pile towards Titus, who deftly stepped aside to let it land in the sand. He conjured a spear of light in his hand and drove it down into the zombie's chest, where it exploded and ripped the corpse in half. Eli released a blast of magic from his staff at two more zombies emerging from the opening, but the explosion knocked loose a large rock that tumbled down and quickly cascaded into a rock slide.

Iris blipped to the far end of the underground beach out of reach of the worst of the rock slide while Victoria transformed into mist just before the first rocks reached her. Eli dove to the ground behind Titus, who turned his back to the rocks and hunkered down for the impact. Autumn stepped up between Titus and the rock slide, standing strong and smiling arrogantly with her hands outstretched. She caught the first large rock to bounce towards her and shaped it into a shield to block the next incoming rock. When the rock struck the shield it exploded into small pieces that were morphed and absorbed into the shield to make it thicker and wider. Each rock that struck the shield added to it, until it was large enough to protect Autumn and her crouching companions behind her even as she shaped the base of the shield into a spike and drove it into the sand. The weight of the piling rocks on the other side of the shield was immense, but with the shield anchored in the ground combined with Autumn's heightened strength, she held strong.

When the rock slide finally slowed, rocks spilled around the shield and piled on either side of the three adventurers. Autumn released a held breath while Titus helped Eli to his feet. There were four zombies on the beach now, each climbing to their feet after riding the rockslide down, and Eli swiftly dispatched one with a blast from his staff. Autumn pulled rocks from the pile to shape them into an axe, which she tossed overhead with both hands to bury it in the back of a zombie shuffling towards Iris.

"Hey!" Iris shouted with her sword in hand, "I had that one!"

"Sucks to suck!" Autumn yelled back.

Titus conjured a spear of light in either hand and threw them both simultaneously at the two remaining zombies. Both spears struck their marks and buried halfway into the zombies before exploding and showering the beach with rotting flesh. Eli stepped up beside him and pointed his staff at the ground to explode the head of a disemboweled torso as it crawled towards him with skeletal hands, then moved on to finish off the remains of the others.

"I thought zombies would be worse than that," Autumn remarked casually.

"They are," Victoria said, rematerializing from her mist form, "but their strength is in numbers, imagine how quickly we could have been overrun if there were a few more of them. Without powers, we wouldn’t stand a chance."

"Think these are our loggers?" Titus asked Eli.

"I'd guess so, judging by their clothes," Eli replied as he inspected the remains of a headless corpse. If the curse actually is contagious, it's a good thing we're handling this, can you imagine a zombie outbreak in the city?"

Titus grimaced at the thought.

"Oh no," Iris's voice quivered as her eyes opened wide in terror, "I'm going to turn into a zombie."

"No," Eli said immediately, "no you're not, don't panic--"

"It's a zombie curse," Iris panicked, "I've been zombie cursed!"

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Autumn walked over to iris, reached to grab her by the shoulders and began shaking her violently, "snap out of it woman! Don't you have a feat that makes you brave?"

"That's for monsters and giant shark men, not for ghosts eating my soul and turning me into a zombie!"

"Okay," Victoria said, motioning Autumn away as she stepped in front of Iris, "you seriously have no idea how any of this works. There's no use in getting yourself worked up over things you're basically making up--"

"Making up?!" Iris shouted, "you said yourself there's ghosts in my soul! And look what happened to the loggers! I'm gonna die and turn into a zombie and start eating all of you--"

Victoria sighed as her patience wore out. She conjured two floating cards in front of Iris, who blinked rapidly as her words began to slur.

"Hey," she mumbled, "what are you doing to me...."

Iris swayed in place as she trailed off, and then collapsed into the waiting arms of Autumn, who promptly tossed her over her shoulder like a sack of dead weight. "It’s kind of scary how well that worked," she remarked to Victoria.

"She's a low rank," Victoria shrugged.

"Titus," Autumn called out, "c'mere and let me strap this one to your back."

Titus closed his eyes and rocked his head back while he restrained his urge to complain about Autumn's commands, then walked over and crouched down on a knee. Autumn plopped Iris against his back and draped her arms over his shoulders, then held out a hand to the open air.

"Iris, rope-- oh yeah," she frowned and looked down at the bag on Iris's waist, "Titus, reach in there and--"

"Nope," Titus shook his head defiantly, "I am not sticking my hand in there."

"Ugh, fine," Autumn groaned, "Uh, Abby, right? Can you hand me some rope? It's to help Iris."

The bag loosened and a tentacle rose up out of the void holding a bundle of rope.

"Hell yeah," Autumn said, taking the rope and proceeding to tie Iris to Titus's back.

"I feel like I should have stopped this plan before it got this far," Eli said quietly to Victoria.

"Yeah," Victoria agreed, "I didn't really anticipate the whole ‘tying her to his back’ part, I thought we'd just wait here until she woke up and was hopefully calm."

After Iris was secure, Autumn set about the relatively simple task of molding crude stairs out of the rock pile. The opening at the top was now plenty wide enough for even Titus to fit through, though he did have to crouch low to avoid both his and Iris's heads from hitting the top of the opening. They were soon on their way down yet another dark and cramped tunnel, the walls of this one were made almost entirely of soil with only a few patches of exposed rock, so Autumn chose to mold herself a suit of armor and a pair of hand axes from the rock pile before they continued.

"Do the rest of you feel that?" Eli asked after a while.

"A sense of unending dread warning us to turn back now if we value our lives?" Autumn asked, "yeah, I thought it was just me."

"It's just a fear spell," Victoria said, "it's not unlike the effects of some of the cards I can summon, just power through it."

Besides exchanging a few uncertain glances, the party didn't object, and continued following Victoria deeper into the cave. Autumn yelped in surprise and cleaved an axe down against the wall, slicing through the outstretched zombie arm as it reached towards her from within the wall.

"They're in the walls!" Eli shouted.

"Everyone stay calm," Victoria said sharply, "the cave's opening up, just stay close and watch your back."

True to her words, the tunnel soon grew larger, providing them enough space to stay out of arm's reach of the walls. That didn't stop a countless arms from reaching out of the walls like tendrils and grabbing towards them with skeletal hands.

"How many are there?" Autumn asked with disgust and horror, "where did they even come from?"

"I have a feeling this forest has been collecting corpses for a long, long time," Eli answered, "my question is why aren't they crawling out of the walls to swarm us?"

"Because the arms are all that's left," Victoria answered, "their bodies have already been digested. The arms are just extensions of the living soil now. We should stop here and wake up Iris, we're almost there."

"Almost where, exactly?" Eli asked, "and what do you mean by 'the living soil?'"

Victoria stared down the tunnel, past the grasping arms and into the darkness beyond, "I believe we'll all get answers soon."

Eli was visibly annoyed at Victoria's vague response, but before he could argue further he was interrupted by a loud slap.

"OW!" Iris shouted at Autumn, "what the fuck!"

"Shh!" Victoria hissed.

Iris squirmed against the ropes that held her tight to Titus's back, "why am I tied up? Where are we-- ARE THOSE ARMS?"