Bee jerked back at a flash of movement in the half-murk, only to find that it was a bird. A crow. It settled on Pigeon’s shoulder, all black and shiny, and turned its head on a swivel to blink at Bee.
“Is that your familiar?” Bee asked. Her voice echoed inside the stone structure.
Pigeon nodded, but put a finger over her mouth to urge for silence.
The stairs went on forever, with steps carved from white stone in perfect uniformity, now cracked and warped with the passage of years. She tried to match Pigeon’s mute footfalls, but found that couldn’t eliminate the whisper of her feet upon stone.
After an eternity, they came out of the staircase and into a long hallway, narrowed in places by the encroachment of collapsed rock. There were stone doors set into the left and right, but Pigeon ignored them all as she led them on.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Bee whispered, unable to keep quiet.
“Yes,” Pigeon hissed back. “Please shut up.”
“I—”
A heavy slab of a door shot open on her left and a great furry shape bore into Bee. It pushed her into the opposite door and they smashed straight through it, They both toppled to the floor inside. The crow squawked in alarm as the pig-headed monstrosity snorted in Bee’s face, drool and mucus dripping from its rotting face.
The smell was like sticking her head into a well-used trash can, enough to make her gag. It was pressed too close for her to reach her weapons, so she pulled it close and shifted her hips to flip it around. Except the thing was damned heavy, and just as strong, so she wasn’t able to budge it much.
The amalgam opened its jaws wide to snap at her. Bee gave a few hooks to the ribs, but it didn’t do much to dissuade it.
“Smite,” echoed Pigeon's voice.
The top half of the creature was erased in a nova of brilliant light, leaving only its smoldering lower half behind. Bee bucked the spasming limbs off of her with a grunt of effort. She felt at herself, but the light had not left a mark on her.
Pigeon stood in the doorway, both her and the bird watching Bee with obvious impatience.
“Thanks,” Bee said, getting to her feet.
Pigeon turned without reply and slipped around the corner, forcing Bee to scramble after her. When she caught up, the Jeweler had Bee go first.
“Pull your weight,” she said. “Take care of whatever comes our way. Need to save my AP.”
Bee pulled out her axe with a grim nod. She wouldn’t get caught off-guard again. The embarrassment of needing to be bailed out burned her cheeks.
A group of amalgams waited for them at the end of the hall, blocking the doorway. Four hulking brutes, big enough that their heads nearly touched the ceiling. Bee took a deep breath and hefted her axe. Pigeon stepped back to give her space.
The monsters didn’t advance on them, remaining by the door in a defensive line, shoulder to shoulder. They stared Bee down and gnashed their teeth, animal faces marred by rot and inflamed fungal growth.
All right. I’ll come to you, then.
She approached the amalgams, speeding up from a brisk walk to a dead sprint. The first one lunged for her, and she met it with a flying knee, crushing its wolf snout and sending it stumbling back. The second came from her left as soon as she landed, and she buried her axe in its chest. It bore past her, ripping the weapon out of her grasp, and she drew the sword just in time to get the blade between her and the third.
Bee went down with the amalgam, the undead impaling itself on the weapon all the way down to the hilt and pinning her hands against her torso. She kneed the wriggling monstrosity out of the way, and kicked out a knee from the approaching fourth, tipping it to the floor. She clambered on top of the beast, fishing a brass knuckle out of her pocket. Grabbing a twisted antler to keep the thing steady, she delivered one, two, three quick blows in rapid succession to the back of its head. When she let go, its head thumped gracelessly onto the floor.
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Dead.
Bee got to her feet, spat, and scanned over her downed playmates. One of them scrabbled against the wall to get back up, and she crushed its spine with two stomps. Retrieving her weapons took some effort, and their sticky juices clung to the metal, leaving a foul odor.
Once she was finished, Pigeon moved past her with a brief nod that seemed to say ‘not completely useless’.
After the hallway, there was a large chamber with a high ceiling. Their light did not reach the corners, leaving them fenced in by a sea of impenetrable darkness.
“Is there anything valuable in this place?” Bee asked while they crossed the empty room. “I feel like Will would flip his shit over some old angel artifacts or whatever.”
“A wayshrine this close to civilization will have been ransacked years ago,” Pigeon replied in a dull tone. “Don’t bother looking too hard.”
With a sharp hiss, the Jeweler stopped dead and dropped onto her belly, the crow alighting from her shoulder. Something fast passed over her head and caught Bee in the arm, drawing a hot streak of pain. She sidestepped the second and third projectiles, but couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Out of the dark. All directions. One struck her from behind, something long and sharp, and the surprise of it sent her stumbling forward.
“What the fuck,” Bee growled.
“Compress,” Pigeon said as she bounced back to her feet.
There was a dry, rattling scream from the blackness. Then an old, yellowed bone flew up to her hand to hover above it. Joined by another, and another, and a whole heap more. A mess of calcified remains wrestled for space and pressed in on itself, condensing until all that remained was a powdery, off-yellow sphere the size of a football.
“Wretcher’s been making bone wraiths,” she remarked. Tossing the sphere aside, it crashed against the floor and spilled into a loose pile of dust and bone shards.
Pigeon was down to 7 AP.
She came over to Bee and beckoned the floating light closer, inspecting Bee’s wounds. She yanked a sharpened bone pipe out of her back and tossed it aside, and dug a few smaller shards out of her arm.
“They carry poison,” she muttered. “Have Deathbed see to you later. It’ll probably go bad otherwise.”
“I didn’t even see it,” Bee admitted.
“There were three of them. Lucky I was here. They can be tricky.”
They pressed on. After the chamber, there was a yet larger hall, the high ceiling held up by two lines of crumbling pillars. There was evidence of habitation of the foulest sort. Spoiled animal carcasses that had been gnawed to the bone in places. Piles of dried excrement. Blood streaked on the walls and pillars in crude symbols.
But nothing that moved. At least, nothing that Bee could make out.
“The wretcher should be here,” Pigeon said. She sent out her crow to circle the hall, but the angry click of her tongue when it returned suggested it hadn’t found anything. “Suppose there’s nothing for it.”
She went down to 6 AP and briefly shut her eyes. The crow hopped about on her shoulders and screamed at Bee, flapping its wings threateningly in her direction.
“Yes, yes, I’m very frightened,” Bee murmured. She extended a finger to pet the bird and got bit for the trouble.
Pigeon opened her eyes. “It’s escaping,” she said. “Think I know the way. Hurry.”
She set off at a hard run, and Bee followed. Pigeon took them into a narrow side passage that had been half-hidden behind a pile of debris.
They sprinted down the tight corridor. Bee lengthened her strides and pushed her body as hard as it would go, but still found herself quickly falling behind.
“I’ll go ahead,” Pigeon said without looking back. “Catch up when you can. Take the bird.”
With that, Pigeon shot off even faster. Bee had no hope of keeping up, and skidded to a stop. The crow flew up and landed on the floor, the ball of light hovering above it. It hopped over to her, turning its head this way and that as it peered up at her.
“Guess it’ll be you and me for a while,” Bee said. “Let’s get a move on. Your master hasn’t got a lot of juice left.”
Then she heard faint shuffling footsteps and heavy breathing behind her. A lot of them, from the sounds of things.
“Guess we’ve got company coming up on us,” she muttered. “Should probably keep going anyway. I’ll be able to outpace them.”
Then, at the edge of her light, she saw the face of a huge, scarred bear, its eyes glinting in the dark. It stepped forward, standing on a mangled, two-legged frame with much of its fur replaced by a thick, patchy hide. It had a pair of stubby hands instead of paws at the ends of its forelimbs.
“Oh. It’s you.”
Guess you didn’t get your happy-ever-after, huh?
Bee took out her axe and tossed it from one hand to the other. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll give you some peace. I'll do the job properly this time.”