The phantom whips across the ceiling, its very presence inhaling the air and life around it like a void. My breath puffs in wisps of white, my fingers numb around my blades.

Elias positions himself at my side, a longsword in his hand.

“What happened to your axe?”

“The serpent,” he answers. He makes a quick scan of the room. Though he says nothing, his forehead folds into creased rows.

“Luci’s okay. She’s still in the puzzle room.”

He notes the awakened bodies writhing on the floor, racked by forks of miniature lightening. “Those weren’t here before.”

“Animated corpses. The cauldron’s making them. We need to destroy it. What about the Sluagh?”

“Flying ghost. When she transitions into her corporeal form is the only time we can use physical attacks against them.”

“Them?”

“Now!”

An arrow darts through the air, sinking into a mess of tattered cloth hovering over the cauldron. Wailing with the strength of a thousand lost souls, the Sluagh wraps decayed black fingers around the arrow and snaps it in two.

No longer floating, the monster is latched onto the ceiling like a spider, her necks twisted towards us. Yeah, necks. The woman, if I can call it that, has four extra heads sprouting like fungus from her shoulders, chest, stomach, and back, greasy clumps of hair hanging over their gaunt, rotted faces. Like their host, they have no lips, no nose, no eyelids or eyes. They glare from hollowed sockets, their mouths hanging open in silent, tormented screams.

💀 The Sluagh (Level 20)

Known as the host of the dead, the Sluagh is a restless horde of countless lost souls. Forbidden from entering the afterlife, they scour the land for dying souls to add to their number. This particular Sluagh began as Laserian’s lost love but is now a vessel to all the dead who have breached the tower.

Elias swats a center bookshelf down to the floor with ease, then propels himself off the back. Mid-air, he clutches his blade with both hands and cleaves a head from the monster’s side. It’s such a clean slice that, when he lands, he manages to shear off a piece of the cauldron too.

An avalanche of corpses spills across the floor.

He lunges back just in time. A hand lashes out from the squirming heap.

Above us, a pie-shaped gash leaks oily ichor from the phantom’s belly. Before anyone can make another move against her, she fades into the shadows and, with a ghastly howl, flees up the stairs.

Just like that, I’m released from her spell. I can breathe again. Warmth returns to my fingers, to my lungs, to my soul.

Dave effortlessly leaps back onto the stairs and bolts after her. A kid from the other party joins him - the other fire wielder, I think. In the center of the room, Melinda makes a move as if to follow, but a pair of undead blocks her path. Cursing, she casts another fiery sheen over her sword and slashes high.

I don’t move. I don’t know where to hit next. With the undead in the way, I can’t chase Dave and the other kid. And I can’t help Melinda clear them without getting in her and the knight templar’s way. I can’t lob the explosive at the cauldron, not while half of us are out of cover. Plus Elias might be able to just slash the damn thing apart.

This room is just too fucking crowded.

Okay. I’ll wait until Melinda and the templar take care of their problem. Then I’ll yell at everyone to make a dash up the stairs while I toss the bomb and hope to god I’m fast enough to dodge the shrapnel.

Just need to wait.

I hate waiting.

My attention flits back to the cauldron. At its feet, the freshly spilled corpses flop and wriggle like an emptied bucket of fish. A few hands flounder about in search of something to snatch.

Kenji smacks one of the prone bodies on the head, shocking it into stasis. Not sure what good it will do. On the other side, there’s another body about to climb its way out.

“Kenji, back up,” I shout.

Definitely too crowded.

Only a few paces back from the cauldron stands Elias. He’s wound tight as a cable. I can see it in his shoulders. He eyes the stairs, his lip curling. “We need to be careful of Hayato.”

“What, why?”

“Fire hurts the Sluagh when she isn’t corporeal. It appears to take some time for it to melt down one of her heads, but-”

“But only the other two teams have fire mages.”

Dammit. I spare a glance to my side. Melinda’s still struggling against the enemies in her path. She’s jittery. Impatient. In anger, she thrusts her sword.

It’s a bad strike. The blade sinks to the hilt and stays there as flames engulf the living corpse. Luckily for her, the other Japanese kid’s got a glowing sword too. Probably some ‘holy’ magic infusion by the looks of it. He slashes the second enemy in half, giving Melinda the time she needs to recover.

Near the cauldron, Kenji shrieks. A hand is latched around his ankle. Then two hands. Then three. I knew he was too close.

Elias slashes down, slicing off at least two of the hands and carving a sizeable chunk from the floor. But another hand takes its place.

The bodies yank Kenji off of his feet, dragging him into the writhing tangle. Screaming and flailing, he whacks at them with his staff. The end of the weapon simply sinks into the pile like it’s quicksand. It doesn’t take long before his legs go with it.

Elias raises his blade to intervene when the knight templar shoves him aside. “Kenji, I’m here!”

Before the kid even reaches his friend, he slashes his sword through the air, releasing a darkened shroud in the shape of a crescent. The magic ripples through the bodies, cleaving off rotten slivers of dead. It’s a cool power. But it isn’t enough.

Lunging forward, he slices his broadsword through the snarl of bodies. Angelic light bursts from the blade, piercing the undead mass with brilliant beams and burning flesh away like it’s kindling. With a bloodcurdling scream, Kenji passes out. Then, from beneath the pile, a thick river of blood flows.

Aaand now I’m not the only one to chop off a friend’s leg.

Horrified, the templar casts his blade aside. You know, like a moron. Then he dives into the corpsey clump as if to pry off the undead by hand. Elias, god bless him, tries to grapple the kid by hooking him under the armpits so he can rein him back, but the poor idiot struggles until it’s too late. Soon, both he and Kenji are hopelessly tangled as they’re dragged toward the cauldron.

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The templar is buried head-first, his screams muffled beneath the all-too-quiet undead. I rack my brain for ways I can fix this. I have blades, poison, stealth, possibly an explosion, and a handful of parlor tricks. Elias has strength, a common sword, and the ability to take several solid hits.

Shit. Shit. I should have shouted at Kenji until he moved. Restrained his friend. Told their dumb, teenage asses to sit this one out. How did they even get this far?

Suddenly, a thin white circle forms around Elias. It’s waist-high, about two meters across. The corpses continue to writhe and pull, but they’re no longer making headway toward the cauldron. They’re stuck within the ring.

His new ability.

I immediately fall to my knees and start peeling apart fingers and hands with my dagger, trying to separate Kenji and his friend from the undead. It’s like untangling Christmas lights with a cleaver.

Beside me, Elias crouches and does his best to help with his sword. At one point, his eyes flick past me and his lip twitches.

“Melinda’s gone. We’re losing time.”

A face appears in the crack of the fractured cauldron. Sallowed, empty eyes stare at me, unblinking, unfeeling. The enemy teeters forward, flopping into the pile and crawling over our hard work to reach us. Elias’ ‘Inescapable Stance’ is a one-way door. He can stop enemies from leaving; he can’t stop them from getting in.

The corpse claws over the dead and the living and grasps my wrist, its grip as tight as a vice. I slice off its hand, shuffling back just before its other hand reaches out. Another corpse tumbles free of the cauldron. More are closing in from the other side.

Kenji is still unconscious, his lower half buried. It doesn’t seem to matter how many hands and fingers I sever. They’re digging into him with their teeth, wrapping their legs around him, doing whatever they can to constrict his movement and tug him deeper and deeper into the growing pile. His friend continues to kick, so I know he’s still alive, but his screams have dulled to a whimper. He can’t be getting much air down there.

I stumble back, tugging Elias along with me. Then I swipe up the templar’s sword and hand it to him hilt-first. “Destroy the cauldron.”

“Carving a hole into the cauldron is what caused this to begin with.”

“And if it’s gone, the undead have nothing to do but stumble around. The cauldron is the monster, not them.”

He sets his jaw. Then, with a curt nod, he approaches the cauldron. The circle around him dissipates, no longer of use. Arcing the sword behind him, he sweeps the blade across the pot, chipping a wedge off the rim.

With my scian, I decapitate the nearest corpse ambling towards Elias, then carve off a wrist as it inches too close. More bodies surge forward.

Elias whacks at the cauldron again and again. Chunks of metal clang to the floor. I’m keeping the undead off of him, but I don’t know how long this can go on. At his feet, the enemy has almost managed to lug Kenji inside. I don’t know what will happen to him once he’s in there. Nothing great.

More and more bodies spill across the floor the more Elias cuts. They’ve latched onto his ankles, clambering up his legs as if to pull him down. He’s stalwart, but he can’t stand tall forever. This is not how our story ends.

With a whump, the air shifts and my ears pop.

“What the giant hells is that stink, man?”

Ron, Luci, Shota, and the berserker stand behind us, noses wrinkled. They’re back! I manage a quick smile before stabbing another dead guy.

Luci tenses as the berserker side-eyes us and then races past her up the stairs, a sword in hand. Guess he lost his axe too. That makes three of the dick party and one Japanese kid against the Sluagh. No way I’m letting them take that extension without a fight.

Smelling fresh meat, a pair of corpses stumble toward the new guys. I kick the legs out from under one and stab down into its neck.

“Go upstairs! Everyone else is with the Sluagh. Physical attacks when she’s corporeal. Fire works when she’s not. Heads need to go. We’ll finish up here.”

“Are you sure?” asks Luci. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, she casually nocks it. The process comes easily to her now, her fingers doing the work.

I nod. “If those bastards attack you, scream. I’ll turn you invisible. It’ll last sixteen seconds. Stay out of the way, and we’ll come find you.”

“Okay.” She swallows, giving me a weak smile. Then, without another word, Luci darts up the stairs with Ron behind her.

Finally, Elias shears off another slab, reducing the cauldron to little more than a frying pan. Somehow, the undead are still squeezing out of some unseen, bottomless hole, but the bodies around us have stopped. Every enemy left standing is just milling about, no longer surging towards us or clawing for purchase. Those attached to Elias have sloughed off and are now checked out on the floor. Even the tangle is falling apart, the corpses wriggling aimlessly like blind worms.

“Wait, Shota!” I shout. The Japanese kid reappears on the stairs. “Grab Kenji.”

As Shota spots his friend, his eyes go round. “Kenji! Eita!”

Eita. That’s his name.

As Elias continues hacking at the cauldron, Shota and I pull his friends free from the loosened pile. I still have to snip off a few rotting fingers, but the zombies have definitely lost their steam. The templar comes first and immediately gulps down whatever air he can find. Then we grab Kenji, blood smearing our hands. Shota nearly faints.

“Hayato?” he asks.

“He’s upstairs,” answers Elias. “The portal is above us. Take your friend there. Give him a draught. The Volese will take care of him.”

With a quick bow, Shota helps hoist Kenji into the knight templar’s arms. They shoulder past the meandering dead, then vanish to the floor above.

Elias takes a moment, craning his neck and shaking out his leading arm. “I can’t destroy the bottom of the cauldron. It reflects every blow. We should leave it.”

“We could, but the dead’ll keep coming, and then we’ll be fucked if the Sluagh decides to camp down here. You know, or they figure out stairs. I vote for Plan A.” Sheathing my dagger, I summon the new potion from my inventory.

Inventory item removed: (1) Lesser Volatile Burst

The bulb of luminous orange liquid feels electric, vibrating in my palm.

“You just want to blow something up,” Elias states.

“Aw, you know me.” I elbow him. “Come on.”

Bouldering through the remaining corpses, we hurry up the steps. Elias crouches on the final stair. I stop behind him, giving myself just enough room to peer down into the cauldron. My insides shudder as a dead face stares back at me.

“Here it goes,” I say, and I throw the potion into the cauldron before ducking for cover.

A burst of heat explodes below us. The tower rattles. Shrapnel punches into the wall as the tangy, pungent smell of death wafts upward.

1.

Enemy Defeated:

💀 The Cauldron of Brân (Level 18) [Shared with Elias]

+50% Among Friends

Exp: 86

Earned: 288g

2.

Level up! You are now Lv 17.

Exp to next level: 9/170

Attribute points available: 3

Damn zombies didn’t even count toward the shared XP.

Holding my nose, I dare to look down into the stewy mess of metal and limbs. It’s hella gross. Whichever corpses were left whole after the explosion have keeled over and now lay lifeless as ragdolls. A blanket of horrifying, malodorous, empty-eyed ragdolls.

Alright. Stop looking at the creepy bodies. We still have a bunch of soulless heads to murder. And the Sluagh, am I right? See, it’s funny because we probably have to kill people, and I may be slowly losing my mind.

I stick one point in fortitude, and two in resolve. Strength will have to wait for when I’m not afraid I’ll die. Then I recall the poison dagger from my inventory, keeping it in hand. Scian in my right, toxic death in my left. Three potions of health and three of stamina.

We can do this.

With the penultimate hurdle behind us, we head to the fifth floor. Along the perimeter of the room appears to be furnishings for a scriptorium as well as Laserian’s living quarters: bookshelves, a slanted writing desk, a bed, a table, a slatted basin for washing.

A window on either side emits thick bands of morning light, dustmotes drifting in the beams. Even with a casual glance, I can see the fog, thick as yarn, rolling over the valley below. Making the trek back to the portal would be a nightmare.

Yet there, right there in the middle of the room, stands salvation. A flat white disc with a matte finish, unnaturally spotless save for a fresh trail of blood. The portal. We could piss off right now. Zap ourselves to another region ASAP, leave this whole isle behind.

There’s a lot of problems with that idea, but one rather central issue: the portal isn’t empty. One kid lies unmoving, his three friends cursing and yelling through streams of tears.

Shota wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. A simple oak staff lies beside him. “It won’t activate while enemies remain. The Sluagh must be destroyed. Kenji is dead.”