Chapter

Ten minutes later Mikel wished he’d taken the left-hand turn. Nothing was saying he had to continue down this path, but something inside him urged him to continue. That and the fact The Callisto Jewel had begun shivering angrily almost as soon as he’d left the crossroads.

The Jewel shivering wasn’t anything new or unique - but it did seem to coincide with events, objects, people, or other… things, with a connection to The Jewel.

After the midnight meeting he’d had with Celine he felt more comfortable with the artifact and felt he had a better understanding of how to use it, but there were still so many unanswered questions.

He’d originally sought out The Jewel for the power it represented.

Yes, he’d had to kill someone to get it.

No, he wasn’t sure exactly how to use it, but the few instructions he’d read indicated it worked in strange and mysterious ways.

Yes, he was sure taking The Jewel had been the correct choice.

No, he didn’t regret his decision.

In his mind, all Mikel had to do was to find out more about The Jewel and everything surrounding it would be better.

Now, holding it in his right hand as it vibrated like an angry cicada, as a pack of what looked like half-rotten, shambling corpses stalked ahead of him through an intersection he had to take, he (not for the first time) wondered if he’d done the correct thing by starting on this adventure at all.

“Yes,” He muttered, angry with himself. He had made the right choice.

He wasn’t usually this despondent but the compound effects of the nights of drinking he’d been subjected to, along with the strange dreams he’d been having, had rendered him tired, grouchy, and weak-willed.

Mikel was intent on changing that but knew he had to get through these obstacles first.

As his dad would say when he was younger.

The only way out is through.

He exhaled and began counting the shambling bodies until he’d gotten well past thirty and stopped.

They were like an inexhaustible herd, moving along at their own pace, with their own goal in mind… Minds?

Mikel wasn’t sure how the pack moved so well together. Like fish or birds, there seemed to be some unconscious consensus among the pack members regarding which way and how fast they moved. The rotten heads swiveled empty eye sockets around as if they could still see.

“Librarian,” Mike whispered.

Immediately the air shivered around him and Librarian’s voice emerged from the air around Mikel loud enough that he was sure everything in a ten-stack radius had heard her.

“Shhh!” Mikel admonished as he pulled back behind the stack he’d hidden his body behind. In a smooth, quiet motion, he pulled the sword free from his hip and held it in his right hand, abandoning the vibrating Callisto Jewel to shiver against his chest.

There was no telling how well the steel would work against the non-living, but he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He figured, even if he couldn’t kill that which was already dead, he could take off a leg, arm, or even head and slow them down if not outright cripple them.

“They’re going to hear you!” Mikel whisper-shouted, “Are you insane?”

"I am not insane,” She admonished, “You haven’t figured it out yet. You’re the only one that can hear me when I speak to you. I cause the ambient Essentia to vibrate the air around you, directing what becomes sound into your ears and your ears alone. There is no chance for anything else to hear me.”

“Not even that horde of… Dead bodies ahead of me?”

The air hummed in Librarian's way of “thinking” before she responded.

“You see the non-living things in this area? Can you describe them? How many of them are there? What is their ecology? How -”

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Mikel cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand, “If you want to know that sort of thing you’ve got to help me get the book you sent me to find and get me back to the main desk alive. I’ll only tell you if I make it back alive.”

“Fine,” came the curt response, “I can live with that, although I’m not going to be too useful to you at this juncture without information. Like I said, I can’t sense the non-living.”

“Can you tell me about things I see and give me information on how to get around or kill them?”

“Of course - but I thought you weren’t going to tell me -”

“I won’t tell you too many details, that’s the deal,” Mikel said in a huff, peering around the corner with the utmost care.

He didn’t reveal much of himself, only the tip of his nose and part of his face, while keeping his sword tucked near his hip ready to lash out if needed.

The pack of corpses continued to slide through the stacks as if they were a soupy, gunky mass of water instead of a pile of stinking dead bodies.

Mikel thought they should smell at least. He hadn’t caught a whiff of what normal dead and rotting things smelled like, but that didn’t mean the things didn’t stink. It might just mean he was too far away to notice yet.

“There are a bunch of dead… Humans, I’m guessing, walking along in a pack. There doesn’t appear to be a leader it’s just a tide of -”

“Dead Tide,” Librarian said directly beside Mikel’s ear. It was all he could do to stop himself from leaping back and slashing at the sound as if it were a threat.

“Can you please turn the volume down, just a little, please?” He held up his index finger and thumb and pinched to a tiny degree.

Librarian answered in a diminished tone, not bothering to answer or otherwise acknowledge his request.

“Dead Tide. A low-level collection of even lower-threat corpses. These accumulations can occur naturally at the sight of massive amounts of death, or artificially when constructed and controlled by a lead ghoul, sorcerer, necromancer, or lich. The Tide has terrible sight, hearing and cannot taste, smell, or feel anything aside from the most grievous of bodily traumas. There is nothing magical about the bodies aside from the reanimating effect of the Essentia fueling them. Normal weapons and Skills will work on the Dead Tide as normal. No known weaknesses other than mass dismemberment. To kill a Dead Tide one has to kill the leader, or in the case of natural formation, total dismemberment of the Dead Tide party.”

“That’s a mouthful,” Mikel said, looking back as the Dead Tide continued to intersect the way he needed to go.

He could just make out the light to his left through the fog spawned by the library. He wasn’t sure if the fog was a natural byproduct of the place, or something put there to keep would-be treasure hunters and knowledge seekers out of the most important areas without fighting or lucking their way to them.

Mikel had hoped he’d luck his way through the maze - but when he first caught sight of the things he now knew was a Dead Tide, he knew that was a foolish conceit. He had his family's luck - which was always bad unless they made it come through good.

“Any idea on how to fight this thing? I don’t think it’s going to stop. If I were still counting I’d say so far I’ve seen well over two hundred unique bodies.”

Librarian whistled in amazement.

The incongruity of the action, coupled with the strange environment he found himself in made Mikel feel most unwell.

How in the hel had he gotten here again?

“That’s a large sample,” Librarian said, “Most Dead Tides contain at most fifty bodies - humans at least. There are records of Troll Dead Tides which destroyed entire armies. I -”

Mikel cut her off with another sharp wave. Although she didn’t have eyes, or at least none Mikel could see, she still somehow managed to interpret his body language as if she were standing next to him.

“Weaknesses. How do I kill it?”

“Well, I already told you,” Librarian said, “You have to kill the leader or destroy each one. It’s fairly straightforward as far as explanations go.”

Mikel used his left hand to pinch the bridge of his nose with his left hand before he shook his head in disappointment.

“I’m going to have to wait for this thing to pass by, aren’t I? There’s probably no chance of me sneaking through, is there?”

“None. Although The Tide has poor senses, if a meal comes within striking distance, that meal’s days are limited. With your current combat level and equipment… I’d say you’d last about thirty seconds before your heart gave out from blood loss.”

“Reassuring,” He said peering out again. He half hoped the tide would go slack and the main mass would pass, leaving only stragglers, but instead, all he got were more and more shambling, decaying bodies.

He took some time during this observation to mentally catalog what he was seeing.

The people, or corpses, which made up the Dead Tide were from all walks of life. Some had been rich with once fine clothing and hordes worth of jewels - while others had been poor with little more than the shabby clothes on their backs. Mikel didn’t know if the moth-eaten state of the cloth was a recent development or something that had been part of the bodies composing the Tide from the time they were still alive.

“Librarian,” Mikel said as he slid back along the bookcase.

“Yes, Mikel. How can I help you?”

“Can you tell me whether this thing is a natural formation or artificial?”

The tell-tale hum.

“I cannot. I searched for any living creature that might be responsible for the formation, but nothing is living near you or the Dead Tide. This might explain why such a large conglomeration of living entities has taken up residence on the other side of the internal square you are trying to get into.

He glanced at the light above him and to the left and cursed. If he’d been able to climb over the bookcase beside him he would have been right under the guiding light. As it stood, since he couldn’t climb the bookcase if he wanted to leave alive, he had to go around. Somehow.

“Any idea on when this Tide will shift? It seems to be going on forever.”

“None.”

Mikel nodded and shoved his sword back into its sheathe.

“Is there anything I can do to bypass the Tide? It looks like there’s more than one way forward, but the whole body of the thing looks like it’s wrapped around where I’m standing.”

“I can’t comment. I can’t detect -”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Mikel said tightly, shaking his head, “You can’t detect dead things.”

“Non-living things,” She corrected as if there were a difference.

“Fine. Any ideas?”

“You have The Jewel - why not use that?”

Why not?

The thought hit him like a galloping horse.

He could use it - hadn’t Celine shown him how?

The Jewel vibrated angrily against his chest as if reminding him of its presence.

As if he could forget.