“Wait wait wait,” I said uneasily as I hurried after the forms of Dusk and Hook. After our meeting in the tavern, we left immediately without resting in order to get into the city as quickly as possible. Dusk was leading us through the Stacks like it was the back of her, even though she hadn't been here for very long. “You were joking, right? Funny ha ha, let’s play a joke on Nate? Undead aren’t a real thing…right?”

Hook just looked over his shoulder as we passed an impromptu food stand and smirked at me before turning back around. Dusk didn’t react at all, she just kept walking.

Sylvia meanwhile cut her eyes my way at the agitation in my voice. “Are you…alright?”

I felt my eyebrow twitch as I tried to smile at her. “He’s just messing with me, right? Undead aren’t a thing. That’s just ridiculous.”

Sylvia studied my face for a moment, before signaling for Hook and Dusk to stop for a moment. When they did, my partner grabbed my hand and dragged me into a nearby pseudo-alleyway in between two large wagons. She turned her still hooded head a few times to check if the coast was clear, before lowering said hood. I was finally able to see her illusioned face.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t expect her to look like Honoka of all people.

Her skin was pale in the same manner as her mentors was, and her features were ever so slightly different than normal. Her eyes were a tad more almond-shaped than they normally were while her lips looked to have been tinted darker with a cosmetic of some kind. Her normally golden hair had been darkened to a chocolate brown as well, but the style was mostly the same in a familiar high ponytail.

Her eyes were still the same crystalline blue color, though.

The difference was stark enough to knock me out of my anxiety. As it died down, I was finally able to get a handle on it with my middle ring. I took a deep breath as Sylvia studied me critically.

“Nathan, what’s going on?” She asked me with a frown. “You’ve been…off, ever since Hook described our next steps.”

I cringed slightly, before trying to smile at her. By the look on her illusioned features, it must have come out as more of a grimace. “Ah…sorry. It’s just an old childhood fear that I didn’t expect to get poked like that.”

Sylvia blinked at me in surprise. “You’re afraid of the undead?”

I ran a hand through my hair sheepishly. “Kind of? I saw a…kind of recorded play when I was younger that featured the undead. It,” I tilted my head trying to put into words what the zombie movies that my mom had loved had done to me as a kid. “Kind of messed me up. I…didn’t know that Vereden had anything like that.”

“Well…” Sylvia said slowly. “It does, but I don’t believe they’re common? I don’t personally know much about them. They were never a focus of my education and training.”

“The girl is right,” Hook's voice said from the mouth of the ‘alley’. Turning to look, I saw him standing there with his arms crossed and a frown on his lips. Dusk was watching placidly as well, seeming not to care about my mini-freakout. “They’re uncommon, but the kind we’re going to run into are…well. We can handle them. Now c’mon. We don’t have time for this.”

I took the rebuke as it was meant, and used my mental skill to suppress my emotions as much as I possibly could. When I was done, I nodded at Hook in acknowledgment to show I was ready.

Hook studied me for a moment before nodding back. Without a word, he and Dusk turned around and walked away.

Sylvia and I followed along behind them.

…………………………….

Surprisingly, Hook led us back outside of the Stacks and into the countryside that surrounded them. However, before we left, we left our horses with an impromptu stable that had sprung up on the outskirts of the shantytown. It seemed a little sketchy to me, as the proprietor looked like an almost stereotypical criminal with rat-like dirty teeth and beedy black eyes. However, Hook spent a few minutes speaking with the man before we turned over the horses that the Thunderheart clan had gifted us.

I don’t know what Hook said to the man, but he was actually bowing and scraping to the dwarf afterward. He promised on his mother's life to look after our mounts.

I was skeptical, as this guy looked like the kind that would sell said mother for a single gold coin. But Hook was the boss, and we were in a hurry.

I said my goodbyes to Marquis and followed Hook out into the countryside.

Once we were out of the ill-defined limits of the Stacks, Hook elaborated more on our plan.

And why there were undead inside.

“The old mausoleum we’re heading to has a direct path inside the walls,” Hook said, marching up a hill with the rest of us following. “Problem is, it leads to Tlatec, and not into Elderwyck. They used to have ideas about expanding beyond their enclave long ago, well before my time. But they put an end to that when their Goddess decided Vereden wasn’t worth the effort, with the way its Aether density was so much lower. And thank fuck for that, or we might all be speaking Orcish right now. They used to have a small town out in this direction, and that town had a massive mausoleum that connected underground back into Tlatec itself. Records tell us that it was named Xolotlan.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“And…why does it have undead in it?” I asked tentatively, struggling to keep up with the surprisingly quick pace the dwarf was setting. For such a small guy, his legs sure moved quickly.

Hook looked over his shoulder at me and snorted. “Because the Orcs have some incredibly messed up magics, that’s why,” He said bluntly. “The bastards are crazy about sacrifice, with entirely separate methodologies of Magic and Cultivation. They worship blood and battle as much as their remnant Goddess, and with that comes a ton of dead people. Some side effect of their kind of Mysticality is that their dead have a tendency to get up and start trying to take a bite out of other people. And they haven’t outlawed Necromancy like everyone else on Vereden has. It’s led to some nasty, nasty situations in the past.”

Yeah, I bet. That sounds like a nightmare.

“But we can’t do anything about it, because they could wipe out the combined forces of the Kingdom and the Principality without breaking a sweat,” Hook continued sourly. “They could probably deal with the monster horde too. In fact, I bet those assholes are pissed off that their treaty with us means they can’t ride out and drown in the waves of monsters.”

“And they’ll keep to that?” I asked curiously, as we topped the hill. I think I could see something down below us now. It might be the ruins of this town Hook was leading us to.

“Thankfully, yes,” Hook said, nodding. “But enough about that. We’re pretty much here. The entrance to the mausoleum is just down there. Hope you’re ready for a slog, people. Because it’s going to be a pain to get through those tunnels.”

Joy.

Before descending the hill, Hook instructed us to change out of the traveling clothes we had over our armor. We were long since out of sight of the Stacks by now, so it wasn’t an issue. We all walked into a small thicket that was on top of the hill, and emerged ready for battle. Dusk had the most striking transformation out of all of us, I thought. Gone was tawny-furred peasant woman in rags. In her place was the Agent I remembered back at headquarters, with impeccably groomed white fur. She even had her mask on, while Sylvia and I had elected to leave ours off. Once we were ready, an also re-masked Hook led the way down the hill.

Our group of four trudged down to walk into the barest hints of a long-abandoned settlement. Just barely visible through the tall grass were fragments and chunks of the same reddish brown stone that I had seen on the Orcish side of the wall. What I could see was weathered, time-worn, and not much larger than a man. There wasn’t a single surviving structure out here, which made me wonder just how long ago Xolotlan had been abandoned. Looking down, though, I thought I could just barely made out the impression of urban planning. The streets may have been long since destroyed by the growth of the grasslands, but the lines of them were still visible. If only slightly.

Hook led us down one of said long decayed streets, seeming like he knew exactly where he was going.

“Have you ever taken this path inside the walls before?” Sylvia asked the dwarf.

“I have, yes,” Hook said, nodding his head without looking back at us. “A long time ago, to be fair, but I really doubt the Orcs have closed it off. It would be really unlike them to dishonor their dead that way.”

“What, and letting them wander around as undead isn’t dishonoring them?” I asked him incredulously.

Hook stopped in the middle of what might have been a plot, centuries ago. Looking around, he answered me absentmindedly. “Not in the eyes of the Empire, no,” He paused for a moment before smiling slightly. “Aha! There it is.” He strode across the grass to…another patch of it, leaning over to clear it off. In moments he had uncovered a pair of large, worn-looking stone doors set into an equally large slab. It seemed like they were built with large metal rings to open them, but the left door was missing its handle. Only the right door still had its ring.

Hook grasped the ring and tried to lift the door up. It creaked and groaned, but eventually acquiesced to being opened. Halfway up, the ring snapped off of the surface with a ting of fractured metal. Luckily, Hook managed to catch the bottom of it before it could slam back down. With an effortless heave, Hook shoved the entrance fully open, sending the stone door that must have weighed several hundred pounds crashing to the ground on the other side of the entrance. He didn’t bother opening the other side, as the one he had opened was large enough for any of us.

Our group of four stood around for a moment, gazing down into the pitch-blackness of the entryway Hook had uncovered. The wind of the grasslands played across the portal of the hole, causing a low, almost moaning sound to echo outwards.

At least, I hoped it was just the wind.

After a moment of staring, Hook reached behind him and unsheathed his pair of hooked dual daggers, before looking over his shoulder at us. “Weapons free, people. Because we’re going to need them down there.”

I copied the dwarf, drawing both of my extendable spears, right blade forward, left blade back. I don’t think I was going to be able to actually extend them in this crypt, though. What little I could see of the hall below looked to be very cramped quarters.

Meanwhile, Sylvia drew her short sword, so similar in hue to Grey’s own Stellarum. But curiously, Dusk didn’t draw anything. She just stood there placidly, not reacting to my curious stare. Hook noticed, however. He chortled. “Dusk doesn’t need a weapon. She prefers her own claws, don’t you Dusk?”

The Gnoll woman inclined her head slightly, but didn’t speak otherwise. That was something I was noticing about her. Dusk didn’t speak much, and when she did, it was typically terse.

With all four of us ready, Hook ignited a light skill or spell of some kind. It floated down the steps independent of him, with the spymaster trailing closely behind. Dusk moved in behind him, while Sylvia and I moved to follow them. We were stopped by Hook’s voice floating out of the darkness of the hall below. “Oh, and replace the door, will you? We shouldn’t leave it open. Both so we leave no trace, and so nothing can wander out.”

Looking over at the massive stone slab, I sighed. Thankfully, it had another ring on the inside surface of it. “I’ll take care of it,” I said to Sylvia. “You get going.”

Sylvia nodded at me and descended the steps, while I engaged Sylvan Vigor at half-strength. I grunted as I returned the stone door to its original position, closing it above me.

The world descended into darkness for a moment, before it was broken by a light blazing into being. Sylvia had stayed behind for me and was using the same light skill I had seen her use back on Caer Drarrow. She winked at me in the dim light it provided, before motioning forward. I followed her.

Down into darkness.