They didn’t have long to walk as while the corridor did branch off to the right they could see Dal waiting at the end of the straight passage standing next to a door that seemed to be the source of the wailing they had been following. As they got closer to the door Delde could see that the floor was covered in brittle yellowed bones, all cracked and broken. Everyone else saw them as well and they all held their weapons and breath tight, half expecting another ambush, but the bones remained still. Delde couldn’t shake the feeling that one of the half-smashed skulls was staring at her with its hollow eyes. A trick of the light or her own overactive imagination she assured herself.

‘The wailings coming from behind this door, it isn’t trapped I’ve already checked. Will I try and open it?’

Igmar nodded at Dal and the gnome tried the handle. It was locked. He turned to look back at the rest of the group questioningly.

‘I can probably unlock this you know; you want me to give it a go?’

‘Perhaps we should try and actually talk to the poor soul within before we frighten them by attempting to break into their haven’.

Adriana said as she stepped towards the door and called out.

‘Excuse me! Whomever is within there! We are not undead, we have just come here from Kassen on the Quest for the Everflame, are you one of the townspeople who were sent ahead to prepare the crypt for us! Do you know what happened here!?’

There was no direct response from behind the door save that the wailing suddenly stopped. Dal, who had his ear next to the door raised his hand and whispered to the rest of them.

‘I think I heard a crossbow being loaded!’

Everyone looked around at each other not entirely sure what to do. Delde had thought that any survivor would be thrilled to hear another person’s voice and would be eager to greet a living soul in this charnel house. If they were loading a weapon though did that mean that the wailing was bait to draw them deeper into the crypt? Or was the survivor just being cautious?

‘Aw right, Dal you unlock the door, ah’ll open it. The rest o us ‘ll keep an eye oot fer ony o these skeletons gettin’ up fer a fight’.

It took only a few brief moments for the gnomish rouge to unlock it after which he gave a sweeping bow to Igmar and gestured with a flourish to the door. Igmar went to open the door but seemed to have difficulty in doing so.

‘Ach, bloody things barricaded on the other side. Ah’ll just gie it a wee bit o a shove’

He rammed into the door with his shoulder and forced it open a few inches. The sound of heavy objects behind it scraping against the cold flagstones of the floor echoed down the empty corridor, and a gleam of light came out from the crack in the door. More disconcertingly though was the crossbow bolt that shot out from that same crack and whizzed over Igmars head. Had he been a few inches taller or a human it would have very likely struck him in his temple, gravely injuring him if not killing him outright.

‘Bloody hells!’

The dwarf called out as he leapt back from the now ajar door. The rest of them all took a step away from it was well and moved out of the limited range that the gap provided the crossbowman.

‘Angry bones! Angry bones! More angry bones! You won’t take me! I won’t let you! NEVER!’

Another bolt flew out but struck the wall far from anyone, their attacker appearing to have not clear target or plan.

‘Sir, whoever you are, we are not undead! We have been fighting them since we entered the crypt! We only want to help you escape this place, you and anyone else who is here!’

Adriana drew a little closer to the door, close enough to be heard clearly, but still far enough that she couldn’t be easily targeted by the man behind the door.

‘LIES! Lies and tricks! Tricks of the dead one! The dead one that speaks!’

He spoke in a high pitched, frantic tone sounding quite hysterical to Delde, but he did not fire his crossbow again.

‘Ah dinnie ken if yie’ll be able t’ talk him doon. Man sounds like he’s lost it bein’ doon here wae the dead for so long. Might be that we’ll just need tae force oor way in an try an drag him oot. Either that or we leave him fer the noo’.

‘No. I understand that it would be easier to simply leave this person behind, but if he is left in this state, he may end up harming himself or any other survivors that happen to come by. What’s more, he could be a vital source of information into what exactly happened here and what traps we could expect to find ahead. I want to try and talk him down, please just give me a chance’.

She looked at the others earnestly, though not as pleadingly as Delde would have expected her to be. This wasn’t the begging of a child wanting others to play along with her, rather it was a woman attempting to do what she saw as the right thing and trying to convince others of the merits of her method.

‘She’s right. We would be much better off knowing what we’ll be coming up against and whoever is in there is probably our best source of information. And we’ll need to deal with him anyway on the way out of here, better to calm him down now than find ourselves being shot at when we’re retreating later. Plus, if Adriana can calm him down then we might be able to use that room as a defensible resting place. I’d rather be able to rest somewhere dry and protected than outside in the rain or in the room with all the pits.’

‘Aw right, aw right. I’m no gonnie stop yie, just try an no get shot by ‘im. He’s got an itchy trigger finger wie that crossbow o his’.

Adriana gave him a smile that shone with brilliant confidence and turned back towards the door, getting even closer to it to the point that she was looking into the room. If she was worried about being shot at, she didn’t let it show.

‘Can you see me better now, as I said we are from Kassen, we are not some trick or illusion conjured up by the dark forces within the crypt. We are the group from Kassen sent here to collect the Everflame as is tradition. My name is Adriana Uptal, could you perhaps cease your attacks for the moment?’

The man behind the door only muttered in response, too quiet for Delde to work out what he was saying, but she thought that she heard the mechanical sound of a crossbow being drawn back. There was no shot fired though and the man’s mutterings became louder and clearer.

‘Uptal, Uptal. Mayor Uptal. Sent me here, sent us here. From Kassen, from home. Far from here, far from the angry bones. A-Adriana… y-you’re the mayors daughter. You weren’t here, weren’t here when the bones came, the angry bones. And the dead one that speaks, t-that took…’.

He began to loudly break down into hysterical sobbing, it was so noisy that Delde was half afraid that the undead would be attracted to the sound. Then it struck her that they would most likely be safe, if the dead were attracted to loud sounds, they would have been drawn to the pillar room after all the pitfall traps, they set off.

‘Yes, we have seen the angry bones, we fought them when we entered the crypt, and we destroyed them in the name of Kassen. There are no more angry bones around us, only still bones, bones that don’t move. Are you hurt? Did the angry bones injure you, if so then I will heal you to the best of my ability’.

‘N-no. Not hurt. Didn’t get me, I-I ran as I saw them rise, I ran so fast. I was s-so scared when I s-saw them. A-and I-I just ran. D-didn’t fight. Not like V-Vark and Gerol. I heard them as I ran. I-I heard them screaming and dying and I just ran and hid like a coward!’

He once again broke down into another sobbing fit, but Adriana did her best to comfort him from the other side of the door.

‘It is all right, it is all right. There were too many for you to fight off, if you stood and fought with them you would have died. But now you can help us. You can tell us what happened here, and we can warn the rest of Kassen about the crypt. Could you perhaps allow us to enter so that we might talk to you properly?’

The sobbing continued and Delde thought that the survivor had either wandered away from the door or become completely lost in his despair. But then she heard more heavy objects being dragged away from the door and in a few minutes, it opened to reveal an utterly broken and bedraggled figure.

He stood before them hunched over in a fearful pose, his gaunt face with sunken features reminding Delde of the undead that they had earlier faced. His hair was a shaggy mess of dull brown with several bare patches that suggested to her that he’d pulled some of it out in hysteria; his eyes were bloodshot with dark bags underneath them and seemed to flash between manic motion and dull glassiness. The man’s clothes would have been the typical fare for someone in Kassen, but over his nightmarish stay in the crypt they had become caked in filth. As the sharp stench of waste struck her nose it occurred to Delde that the man had at some point in either his escape or stay in the room soiled himself.

The room that he was in contained a few old crates that all seemed to be empty and some bedrolls on the floor. There were a couple of bullseye lanterns resting on top of one of the crates, with one lit to give the room some light. The smell of mildew and human waste hung in the air, but outside of that it was the same as the rest of the crypt that they had seen, although the mural seemed to be in slightly better condition in this room.

‘Roldare, is that you?!’

Dal spoke to the man with a look of undisguised shock in his eyes, apparently only able to barely make out the person he once was. “Roldare” seemed to still be in a despondent daze and didn’t fully understand what was happening around him.

‘Do you know this man, were you friends with him?’

Adriana asked as she slowly entered the room, acting with caution and doing her best to not make any sudden movements that would distress the man.

‘I’ve seen him in the Seven Silvers before, served him a few times, not really friends with him though. He’s a cobbler by trade, always seemed nice enough…’

Dal’s voice faded away as he stared at the wretched state that Roldare had deteriorated to. His eyes snapped away suddenly, apparently realising that he had been staring at him. Adriana addressed Roldare in a calming tone as the others began to slowly enter the room following her lead to not disturb the man any more than he clearly was.

‘Your name is Roldare?’

He nodded his head listlessly, like a puppet with loose strings.

‘As you can see Roldare we are all living people, we are not a trick. We want to help you get out of here, but we need to know how many people were here, do you know if there are any other survivors? Is there anywhere else they would hide other than in here?’

‘D-Dimira. M-my s-sister. It t-took her. T-the one w-with the voice of death. I saw it g-grab her and drag her away. H-heard her s-screams but she’s not dead! I know she isn’t! I know she isn’t!’.

‘It is all right Roldare, it is going to be all right. Do you know where this talking undead is? Where it took Dimira?’.

‘D-deeper in the crypt. Into the dark. I-it said that it would k-keep her. Keep her until he came…’

He began shivering and shaking as he sobbed, holding himself as he knelt and began rocking back and forth.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

‘Roldare? Until who came? Who is the creature trying to draw out? Is it someone from home, from Kassen?’

He looked up at Adriana and the rest of the group with haunted eyes.

‘K-Kassen… Y-yes… It said that it would keep her until Kassen came. Til Kassen came. Til Kassen came…’

Whatever sanity Roldare had left was perilously close to exhaustion as he simply rocked back and forward repeating himself as tears fell down his face.

‘Did he say Kassen, as in the town or the actual person? Because if this talking undead is waiting for ol’ Kassen to turn up he’s probably going to be waiting for a long time’.

Dal was speaking quietly but Delde could still hear him talking in the back of the group. If Roldare heard him, it didn’t register, and Adriana was too focused on trying to comfort him to comment.

‘Tae be fair the man’s been trapped here fer days wieoot sun, seein’ his friends die, hearin the undead roamin’ aboot. Widnie surprise me if he started hearin’ things an aw’.

‘Perhaps…’ Delde ventured ‘But he might not be mistaken. From what I have learnt in my studies, which I will acknowledge as not all encompassing and that I may not have all the pertinent information to make an informed analysis’. She paused to see if anyone took issue with her speculation. Nobody expressed any concerns leaving her free to continue. ‘Well, from what I understand there is a wide variety of different kinds of undead, and they run the gamut in terms of intelligence. From mindless undead such as these skeletons, to liches possessing some of the keenest minds in the world’.

‘Yie cannie be sayin’ that yie think there’s a lich in this crypt, are yie?’

‘No, I don’t think that there is’. Dal, Igmar and Baye all sighed a breath of relief at this, and Delde deemed it prudent not to remind them that she had just said that she might be wrong in her estimations. ‘Rather I was thinking that this undead might be unaware that it is dead, believing that it is still fighting against Kassen almost two hundred years ago. Or it may know that it is an undead being now but is still compelled to finish the fight it started before it died. Hence why it took a hostage and is trying to get Kassen to fight it’.

‘Wait’ Dal interjected ‘how could it not realise that its undead now? I mean it can still see can’t its own hands, the other undead around the place?’

‘A fair point. But from what I understand undead that are on the lower scale of intelligence tend to not register such significant changes or developments. Such undead tend to be obsessed with a specific task or purpose that they had in life, usually the thing that they were doing just as they died’.

‘Like tryin’ to kill the leader of an enemy force?’. Baye asked.

‘Precisely. Although even if I am correct, which I believe is most likely, it still doesn’t help us that much. At most we might be able to distract the monster for a moment, but such undead are impossible to negotiate with or reason with. I suspect that the only way we’ll be able to recover Roldare’s sister if by defeating the creature with force’.

‘I agree wholeheartedly. The abomination leading or directing these undead must be destroyed and any survivors freed from their cruel torment’.

Adriana spoke up as she came from where Roldare was. He seemed calmer than he was before, though still greatly distressed. For her part Adriana appeared to have only heard the very end of her assessment, which was probably for the better as Delde didn’t want to get into an extended discussion with her on how she had learned so much about the undead. The books that she had read were in no way illegal, but she doubted that such a devoted cleric of Sarenrae would be happy to know that the town wizard had such tomes in his library.

‘Have you made any plans on our continued excursion through the crypt whilst I have been tending to poor Roldare?’

‘No, we’ve just been listening to Delde speculating on what kind of undead grabbed Dimira. It sounds like it’s some sort of bandit from the great battle that’s got just enough brains that haven’t rotted away to go mad, in both uses of the word. So, you know, not great’.

Dal sounded his usual glib self, but Delde could see him eyeing the shattered bones in the corridor outside the room suspiciously at times.

‘Anyway, how’s Roldare? He seems to have quieted down a bit with you talking to him, did he tell you anything else about the crypt? Like what traps they set up and how to disarm them? Because that would save me a lot of trouble’.

‘I’m afraid that Mr Roldare is rather troubled after having been through such a traumatic experience and living under tremendous pressure in this small room. He cannot recall much about anything since he came to the crypt. And what he can recall disturbs him deeply, it wouldn’t do us any good to upset him any more than he already is.

Baye sighed. ‘So, we know nothin’ about what we’re walkin’ into’.

‘That is not quite the case. Mr Roldare did tell me that they did set up all the traps on the top level of the crypt for the most part. He just cannot remember where or what they were. He did tell me that we would need shields and keys however! And that we would need to swim at some point, although he is uncertain whereabouts that would be. Oh, and that this room was intended to be set up as a place for us to rest in whilst we explored the crypt. Hence the bedrolls and additional supplies here. He said that he is fine with us resting in here, but that he will not leave this room until Dimira is recovered and we can all leave. I have promised him that we will return her and escape this place together’.

‘Well, at least we’ve a place to rest our head now. Presumably without having to worry about having a bunch of skeletons giving us a wakeup call if Roldare has managed to last this long. Think we should leave our backpacks in here while we’re going through the rest of the crypt? It’d save us having to lug them about the whole time’.

Delde considered Dal suggestion. On the on hand, she would like to take off her backpack and not have to carry it about like a pack mule. It might even be safer for Onyx to remain safe in what seemed to be the one secure room that they knew of. On the other hand, she wasn’t completely sure how much she could trust Roldare. The man was half starved and maddened from his trauma, she didn’t want to give him the opportunity to try and eat her familiar if she could.

‘Ah think we should keep oor backpacks wae us. Dinnie ken when we’ll need somat from them an it’s probably better tae keep everythin’ we’ve got with us on hand. Speakin’ o which, yie mentioned that this room had some extra supplies fer us, is there onythin’ we can take wie us?’.

In the room they recovered two more potions labelled ‘Healing’, some rations that Roldare hadn’t eaten, along with four pints of lantern oil. They agreed to let Roldare keep one of the lanterns while they would take the other and half the oil as well. The advantage the lantern had over Adriana’s light spell was that it could be shuttered and dimmed if they needed to hide themselves. Delde was also aware that the oil could be used as a primate weapon or trap if they found the need for it, although how effective it would be she wasn’t sure.

They gathered themselves and left Roldare in the resting room. He had no desire to leave it and Delde suspected that even if they did manage to convince him to leave that he would wind up being more hindrance than help. Adriana left her waterskin with him as well as apparently he hadn’t drank anything for the past couple of days and promised him that she would bring him more if she found it. The lack of obvious water sources was also of a concern to Delde, while they did have enough rations to last them for almost a full week, longer if Baye left the crypt to attempt some hunting in the Fangwoods, it wouldn’t do them much good if they didn’t have a ready water supply as well. But given that Roldare had mentioned that they would need to take a swim in the crypt suggested that there might be a body of water somewhere within.

‘So, we got a plan about how we go through this place? Or are we just going to wander around aimlessly?’

Baye sounded unhappy but not excessively so. Delde wondered if it was due to her preferring the open spaces of the outdoors compared to the dark and enclosed tomb they were in. The ever-present threat of the undead might also have been a factor she figured.

‘I mean it’s been working out for us so far, so I guess we just keep going? It’s not like we have a map of the place or anything, the best we have is Roldare telling us that we need shields, keys, and to swim at some point. And that his sister is being held hostage by a crazy talking undead. So, we’ve got some general goals which is good I suppose. I say we keep doing what we were doing before we found Roldare, I scout out ahead and the rest of you follow behind a bit further back. If I see something dangerous, I’ll head back and warn you. That work for everyone else?’.

They all agreed that bereft of any clear directions in the crypt it was as good an idea as any, but Delde spoke up with her own suggestion.

‘I think that we should try and clear out or at least explore every room in this level before we go to the second level in the crypt. Roldare said that all the traps they set up were on this level so hopefully that means that it might be a little safer up here. It’ll probably save us time if there is some sort of key on this level that we need in the next as well. What’s more, if that room that Roldare’s barricaded himself in is anything to go by, the townspeople might have left other supplies for us scattered throughout the complex’.

‘It might be a wee bit dangerous wanderin through the whole bloody place, but ye’v probably got the right idea aboot it. An it’ll be bad if this big beastie wie Roldare’s sister can call other undead tae it, if it can then oor best bet is tae put doon every skeleton that we can’.

‘So, goin’ through the whole place one level at a time?’ Baye shrugged not coming across as either opposed or enthusiastic about the prospect. ‘At least we should be able to make a decent map to keep track of where abouts we are’.

Recognizing a good idea when she heard one, and only slightly disappointed in herself for not thinking of it earlier, Delde retrieved a spare sheet of parchment from her backpack and a small stub of charcoal she used for taking quick notes. She carefully went through her memory and made a small sketch of what little of the crypt they had explored, leaving plenty of room for the map to expand. While she wasn’t entirely certain about the scale of it, she felt it would serve their purposes for the time being.

‘From what I can tell we have three different paths we can try traveling down. The second branch from the corridor we’re in, which is the closest to us, the first branch off this corridor, and we could try the other door we saw in the entrance chamber, I don’t think we checked to see where it led to or if it was locked’.

Dal just shrugged, ‘I say we go for the closest path and see where it goes, if there is something too tough to fight, we can run back to Roldare and take shelter for a bit’.

No one had any objections, so Dal headed off to scout ahead, followed sometime later by the rest of them. But after only a couple of minutes Dal returned and gestured for them to stop and be quiet before whispering to them.

‘I just saw a bug!’ before anyone could draw him a look he quickly added ‘A giant one! About as big as I am! I think it has the body of one of the townspeople it was dragging it into a corner, I think it was going to… to eat it. What’s something like that doing in here, I thought this place was taken over by undead? Can they summon them? Is it some kind of undead bug?’

Delde was about to respond when Baye piped up.

‘Calm down! It’s just a giant bug. They’re not uncommon around these parts. Probably found the entrance to the crypt and is tryin’ to make a layer here. Either that or it burrowed its way in here. If it’s just the one we’ll be fine, though I’ll just switch back to normal arrows first’.

The halfling ranger began to swap some of the blunt headed arrows in her quiver with some of the normal ones she had put in her backpack. While she did so Delde carried on explaining things.

‘The undead might not register a giant bug as being a threat, especially if they think they’re still in the battle for Kassen. The bug probably isn’t interested in the undead either if they don’t look like food to it. It could also have just avoided encountering them if Baye is right and it burrowed its way in. In any case if it’s trying to eat, its likely not an undead creature, typical tactics should work against it’.

Hearing that Igmar stepped forward and directed everyone in how to approach the imminent combat. He recommended Dal to sneak over to the other side of the room as best he could and then charge at the giant bug while he did the same from the passageway. They would only do so though when Baye signalled the start of the fight by firing some arrows at the creature. Delde would stay by her and fire off some of her offensive cantrips to try and kill the bug as quickly as possible and hopefully confusing it as well. Adriana was also to engage the beast in melee, but to give Delde and Baye a reasonable target to fire at she would need to go midway across the room before charging.

Baye showed some initial reluctance to attacking the creature, noting that it was just an animal and had no malicious intent unlike the undead. She did accept the decision of the rest of the group to kill it however, everyone else felt that it would be too dangerous to leave in the crypt, especially if it had developed a taste for flesh. Dal tried to get her more enthused over it by pointing out that she could probably sell the hide of the giant insect back at town, but Baye responded that insect carapaces were difficult to harvest and there was no great demand for them. With them all in agreement the group waited for Igmars sign to begin, after they had all drawn their weapons he gestured to Dal and he snuck over to the opposite side of the room with the bug, the creature too immersed in its meal to pay any attention to the gnome. Once Dal was in position Igmar looked over everyone to make sure they were ready, seeing that they were he raised his hand high then brought it down sharply signalling the start of the attack.

Baye fired off an arrow that hit the giant bug in the space were its head joined its thorax, she had told them before the fight that the creatures joints were more vulnerable, and she had proved herself correct as the giant bug screeched out in pain. Igmar and Dal charged down towards it, the dwarf battering down loudly in his armour, battle cry bursting from his lips, the gnome as silent and swift as a shadow. Adriana also made her way towards it, but as she had to position herself to allow the ranged fighters a better aim of the beast, she was slower in reaching the bug.

Igmar swung his sword in what seemed to be a downward slash, but the blade never connected with the bug. Instead, he let the momentum of the swing take the blade underneath the insect’s carapace, at which point he thrust it upwards impaling the creature on his sword. Almost as soon as he had performed this impressive piece of swordsmanship Dal thrust his dagger into one of the insects many eyes making it cry out in pain again. By the time Adriana reached the giant bug it was already more than halfway dead, her slash to its face more a formality than a necessity at this point. The blow didn’t seem as powerful as Igmar or Dal’s, but it cracked its exoskeletal face and was the final strike needed to kill it. Delde hadn’t even needed to cast a single spell and not one of them had even been so much as touched by the beast, let alone hurt by it.

The ease of their victory had buoyed their spirits and made them feel that the dangers of the dungeon were more manageable than they had first feared them to be. A quick search of the room found nothing of interest save for the mostly intact remains of one human corpse. Unfortunately, the giant bug had begun feeding from the headfirst which had removed most identifying features of the person in a most grisly manner. Adriana gave a few prayers over the body and covered it with a dirty sheet that was amongst the trash and refuse that the bug was using to make a nest for itself. Delde was grateful to not have to look at it anymore, the small glance she had taken of the body let her see that the head had been stripped of most of its flesh, a sight that turned her stomach.