When Zo’Dal first awoke, she was aware only of the wet, stale air, and the sound of shuffling feet. As the fog of unconsciousness drifted away, reality and understanding began to flow back to her senses, along with an intense pounding in her head.

Then she felt the bony hands clamped around her arms, the numbness in her limbs, and her bare feet dragging on a rough stone floor, and realized she was being carried.

Memories slowly emerged from the fog clouding her mind in half-formed glimpses. She remembered setting off for Darkmere with her companions, days of hard travel, making camp in the foothills, looking up at the glittering stars over the Wyrmspine mountains. Then nothing. Only darkness. Try as she might, she could remember nothing after that night in the foothills. Perhaps, she reasoned slowly, too slowly, they had been attacked and she had been captured. She wondered what had become of the others, but the fog began to close in on her thoughts again and scattered them.

She opened her eyes and was greeted by utter darkness, and that brought her some comfort. She was at home in the dark. She always had been. As long as she could remember, she had felt a natural affinity for the dark. Things were strange like that, when one was a shadowdancer. The darkness felt like an extension of her own body, and in a way, it was. At least, normally. But not now. Now, her mind was too clouded to reach out, to feel the shadows curling around her, to twist them to her will.

Evidently, her boots had been taken, and she no longer felt the comforting weight of her armor and equipment. Whoever had taken them had been decent enough to leave her her clothing, and the coarse fabric of her traveling tunic and trousers, damp with sweat, clung to her skin. She doubted they had left anything else. She was dimly aware of a cold weight around her right wrist. A manacle perhaps, but only on her right? Suddenly, she remembered her necklace and realized with dismay that it too was missing. Instinctively, she tried to reach for her neck to feel for the charm, but her hand was held fast. Her father had it to her as a girl, a polished jet pendant, the same deep black as her eyes, hanging from a fine silver chain. She could still remember the day her father had given it to her, the warm smile on his face, the sweet sound of his voice. The necklace had appeared to her more beautiful than the stars in the sky, and she had worn it around her neck since that day. It was her good-luck charm, but more than that, it was a token of her father’s love and of his people, her people, that she had never truly known. Its loss left a hollow feeling in her.

When she had regained enough strength and sense to lift her head, she looked up, and the sight of her captors surprised her and filled her with a creeping dread. Even in the darkness, her keen eyes, a gift of her elven heritage, could make out the pair of skeletal figures flanking her, holding her up by the arms, and recognized them for what they were: dead-walkers. The restless dead. The tattered remains of clothing hung from their frames and the bare, age darkened bones of their hands dug sharply into her flesh as they shuffled forward, half carrying, half dragging her down a long corridor hewn out of the stone. She saw that the weight around her wrist wasn’t a manacle, at least not a normal one, but a wide iron band with silver letters etched around its surface. She tried to focus on the small letters, but they blurred and overlapped in her vision, and the attempt only intensified the pounding in her head.

She heard the jingle of metal beside her and her eyes caught on a key ring that depended from the belt of the skeleton on her left, heavy iron keys clinking quietly with each lurching step. If they noticed that she had regained consciousness, they showed no sign of it. Their fleshless skulls were fixed ahead, paying their captive no mind at all, focused on some unseen destination. Perhaps they knew she lacked the strength in her limbs to resist them, or perhaps they were unable to know anything at all, only able to carry out the will of whatever evil had animated them. Wherever she was, it was not a good place, she knew.

Finally, they reached the end of the passage and the skeletons came to a halt. A wooden door, banded with iron, was set into a doorway carved into the right wall of the corridor. The left skeleton released her and she slumped limply down, kept from collapsing only by the skeleton still holding her right arm. The left one stepped forward and, retrieving the ring of keys from its belt, unlocked the door with a heavy click. It pulled the door open, and the other creature roughly dragged Zo’Dal towards the opening.

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The foul smell, the stench of rotting flesh and human waste, that spilled out from the small chamber beyond made her gag. It was a plain cell, an unlit, square room with pairs of metal shackles hanging from the bare stone walls. A motionless body hung limp from one set of shackles opposite the door, its head draped down nearly to the stone floor, face obscured by a mess of hair spilling down, emaciated limbs splayed back, tattered clothing hanging loosely from its emaciated form. It was impossible to tell if it had been a man or woman. Zo’Dal’s blood ran cold at the sight, and panic gripped her. That was to be her fate, she knew.

She struggled against her captor’s grip, straining desperately to pull herself free, but it yanked her forward with an unnatural strength despite its utter lack of flesh and muscle. They passed through the doorway, and she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. There was a sickening sound of crunching bone, and the undead creature’s grip on her suddenly released.

Zo’Dal collapsed to the floor in a heap. Pain stabbed through her elbow and knee where they hit the hard stone and for a moment she lay there, stunned. With effort, she forced herself up to her knees, and saw the skeleton that had dragged her into the chamber laying motionless beside her, its skull caved in. In her daze, it took a heartbeat for her to notice the grunts and scuffling coming from the doorway, and she turned in time to see another figure struggling with her other captor. The figure, a man, grappled desperately with the undead creature and the two went to the ground, clawing at one another. After a moment, the man’s grasping hand found the creature’s skull, and, rolling atop the skeleton, he raised a large rock in his other hand. He brought it down with a terrible crunch one, two, three times, and the creature’s struggling ended, its face a ruin of shattered bone.

There was silence, except for the man’s heavy breathing and Zo’Dal's own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Then the man groped about blindly on the floor, eventually finding the ring of keys that had fallen in the struggle. He looked up towards the open doorway of the cell, towards her, or perhaps past her.

“Do you live?” He asked. His voice was a deep, hollow rasp that grated at Zo’Dal’s hearing, and she wondered how long it had been since it had been used.

“Yes.” She managed. The man’s gaze flicked downwards towards the sound of her voice, looking at her directly now. “Who are you?” She asked.

“Fel.” He said, and rose to his full height.

He was tall and muscular, easily a head taller and twice as broad as the slender half-elf before him. In the darkness, she couldn't make out the details of his features, but his dark, unkempt hair reached down to his jawline and a short beard covered his weathered face. He looked to be older than her, and it was obvious he had been trapped here for some time. The way his threadbare clothes draped a little loose over him and the slight hunch of his shoulders betrayed the physical toll captivity had taken on him. His appearance reminded Zo’Dal of the stray, half-starved dogs that roamed Ivonnum’s back alleys, and it gave her pause. He could be as dangerous to her as the walking dead, or even more.

“Thank you for rescuing me, Fel," she replied, doing her best to keep her voice level, to hide her apprehension. "I am Zo'Dal."

“I didn’t ask.” He rasped, and her trepidation was replaced by a flare of indignation. She bit back a retort. The man had probably just saved her from an unpleasant death or worse, she told herself; he could be forgiven a little…impoliteness.

“We need to leave before more come.” He said, matter-of-factly, as if he hadn't considered that she might be loath to follow a complete stranger on a whim. She had spent far too long on the streets too be that trusting of strangers.

He kicked the shattered skull of the skeleton lying before him with a bare foot and it clattered off into the darkness, echoing down the corridor. Zo’Dal stood, grunting against the ache in her limbs. Her head, still pounding, swam as she got to her feet and her vision blurred. She staggered, and had to catch the door frame with a hand to stop from falling again.

“What is it?” He asked, impatience rather than concern in his harsh voice.

“Just getting my balance,” She said.

“Well, be quick about it.”

She clenched a hand into a fist and slowly let out a breath. When she spoke again, she even managed to keep most of the edge out of her voice.

“Do you know where we are? What is this place?”

“If you wish to stay, I won't prevent you.” He replied, then started off.

He headed back the way the skeletons had dragged her, feeling along the right-side wall of the corridor as a guide in the darkness. He didn't look back, evidently unconcerned if she followed, or knowing that there was nowhere else for her to go.

Zo’Dal sighed in frustration, took a deep breath to steady herself, and stumbled after him.