The torch did nothing. Levi held it high and behind his head, but the small puddle of light it cast didn’t reach either the walls or the ceiling. He felt like a firefly, adrift in the space between stars. It was eerie, the dark in the cave seemingly devoured the light, trying to preserve the secrecy of this hallowed, untouched hall. He wanted to call out to Eric, or Adrian, or Pit, even Hamzir, but fear constricted his throat and he couldn’t bring himself to make a sound. Instead, he kept walking, one foot in front of the other, his eyes so wide the muscles in his face ached.
He heard something, barely louder than a whisper, in the darkness before him. He crept forward, torch high and spear at the ready.
Then something screamed in his ear.
He jumped, spinning and swinging his spear through thin air as another noise shrieked nearby, calling back to the first. Levi’s heart raced as he whirled, more and more shouts filling the surrounding darkness. They were everywhere, swirling through the impenetrable dark just beyond his circle of light.
And then the voices started. They were all around him, dozens of raspy whispers, speaking in perfect unison.
“You should not be here, son of the Aluwai. It is not yet your time.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Levi shouted back, but the voices simply devolved into a chaotic mess of ramblings and snickers. The sound wormed its way into his mind, feeling like jagged flint grating against the soft matter in his head, breaking off chips that irritated and dug deeper, even as the rest of the blade continued its morbid work. He cried out in pain and dropped his spear, covering his ears, but the voices were already inside him. The pressure built in his ears as his limbs twitched, as though trying to obey commands from a different master. With sweat pouring down his brow and his jaw clenched so hard it hurt, he willed his limbs to still. In retaliation, the cacophony grew louder and louder, his head feeling like it was about to burst, until the voices coalesced into a single, deafening scream.
“YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE!”
And then they disappeared. Levi realised he was sobbing on his knees, the torch sputtering in the dirt beside him. With an effort, he calmed himself, taking deep breaths until he felt the blind, instinctive panic receding. But he could still hear sobbing. It was coming from deeper in the cave. He grabbed the torch and cast around, finding his spear and collecting that as well.
“I know I shouldn’t be here,” he grunted into the darkness. “But I am. Deal with it.”
The voices had caused him physical pain. They had him at their mercy, whoever ‘they’ were, but they had released their hold on his mind. He had to believe that was, if not explicit, at least implicit permission to keep going.
Pit, he didn’t have much of a choice. Feeling like he had weights around his ankles, he forced himself forward, the sound of the sobbing growing louder with each step. The terrain around him changed too. Where before it was largely open with a few rocky growths, the deeper he went, the denser the forest of stone became, until he was surrounded by a wall of jagged stalagmites. He felt as though he was crawling through the mouth of an enormous drake, a shudder running up his spine like a shard of ice trickling against gravity. Finally, he rounded a large stalagmite and found a small clearing.
Eric was on his knees in the centre, his unlit torch on the floor beside him. Levi called out to him, and the mage looked up, shock and relief on his face in equal measure. It quickly gave way to a look of resignation and despair.
“So, they got you too? Gods be damned. We deserved it, but you, Levi? Hamzir should have left you your damn money. No one’s going to get a lick of good out of it in here now, anyway.” He was looking at Levi as he muttered, but his eyes were glazed over, his mumblings more for himself than the Aluwai. Levi approached until he was standing over the mage, Eric’s eyes refocussing as they made eye contact.
“Be gentle.”
Levi slapped him as hard as he could. Eric cried out as he fell to the floor, flailing around and cradling his cheek.
“What the fuck? You shitty, undead fuckwit! You slapped me! What is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?” Levi shouted back. Eric immediately stopped squirming, blinking through his tears up at his attacker.
“Levi? You’re alive?”
“Of course I’m alive, arsehole. If I was dead, I wouldn’t be up and about and slapping you in your backstabbing face now, would I?”
Eric pulled himself up into a seated position. “Oh, Levi. So, you haven’t seen them?”
“Seen who? Aside from some creepy voices, you’re the first person I’ve run into.”
Eric’s eyes misted over again, and he started rocking back and forth. Levi groaned and bent down, snapping his fingers in the mage’s face to bring his attention back.
“Eric, what happened here?”
“Initially? Dunno. By the time we got here, the others were already dead. I know because I saw Adrian stumbling around with his head hanging from his shoulders by a thread of skin, and I saw Hamzir crush a guardsman’s throat with his bare hands. No way he could do that when he was still alive.”
Levi staggered like he’d copped a physical blow. He didn’t know half of what was happening here, but if the dead were out among the stalagmites, stalking the living, they needed to get out, and fast.
“Come on, we’re leaving.” Levi tried to haul Eric to his feet, but the mage pushed his hands away.
“Don’t bother. They’ve already claimed me. There’s no way they’ll let me leave.”
“Eric, look around, they aren’t here, we can make- “
“They were,” Eric cut him off.
“What?”
“As in, they were standing right here. The guards had surrounded me, and Hamzir was standing where you are right now, hands reaching for my throat. Adrian was flopping around on the ground somewhere behind him, I think he’d tripped on a rock or something. I would have laughed if I wasn’t about to die a horrible death. But anyway, there he was, about to ring my neck like a cat, and he stopped. He looked off into the dark, and then he… turned around, and walked away. The guardsmen followed, and I collapsed here.”
“Eric,” Levi said, crouching and looking him dead in the eyes, “how long ago was this?”
“How long have we been talking?”
“Maybe a minute?”
Eric stared back. “Oh, about a minute and fifteen seconds, then.”
Levi swore and lurched back to his feet as Hamzir stepped out from behind a stalagmite. The mage was definitely dead, his eyes milky white, a gaping hole in the side of his neck that extended from his ear to his collarbone. At odds with the horrific wounds, a faint smile hovered over his lips.
“Greetings, Levi, son of the Aluwai.”
The voice was raspy, and whoever was working the meat puppet struggled to enunciate properly around the bloated tongue, but even so, Levi recognised a distinct tone of mirth. “You should not be here.”
“Don’t have much choice. Your puppet has something that belongs to me.”
Hamzir the Horribly Mutilated cocked its head, its smile widening as Levi shuddered. The motion had torn the wound open further, and the neck was bent at a right angle from halfway up its length.
“Let me guess,” the puppet said, reaching beneath its robes and retrieving the coin purse. “This?”
“Yes,” Levi said, raising his spear and taking a step forward.
“Easy there, boy,” the puppet rasped, holding his hands up in supplication. “We have no need of such things.”
It tossed the purse through the air and Levi snatched it, quickly fastening it to his belt and resuming a defensive stance.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You begged forgiveness for your transgression, and we have decided to be merciful.”
Questions ran through Levi’s mind, the foremost amongst them; why? But he had what he needed. If this undead monster was willing to let him walk away, he didn’t care about its reasons.
“Eric,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off the puppet. “Let’s go.”
The mage clambered to his feet, but the puppet’s voice stopped them. “He stays.”
Eric swore and flopped back onto the ground as Levi glared at the corpse, but he doubted arguing with the undead would get them anywhere.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Eric, get up. When I give the signal, run,” he whispered.
He thought he had been quiet, but the corpse chuckled, and the dead guardsmen stepped into the light, fencing them in.
“Shit.”
“We see and hear everything here, Levi. Leave him, his desecration demands compensation.”
Eric looked up at Levi with a weak smile. “It’s alright, Levi. Fair is fair, no sense you die for our sins.”
Levi looked at the mage, the man who had smiled with him and laughed and stabbed him in the back without a second thought. “Fucking… damnit.”
As angry as he was, he couldn’t leave the man to die alone in the dark. It was one thing to die in battle, another to be ripped apart by a drake or raptor, but dying at the hands of these things? Judging from the nature of the puppets’ wounds, Eric’s death would be as horrible as the spirits in this place could manage.
Levi looked around at the guardsmen. There was no telling what it would take to put one of these things down, or even if they could be killed. Assuming he could stop them somehow, his spear wouldn’t do much against their plate armour, anyway. Which left Hamzir. Eric had mentioned the puppet killed a guardsman with its bare hands, so maybe the spirit couldn’t use his magic? It sounded like they possessed strength beyond that of a living man, too, but there were some limitations imposed by the vessels. Adrian’s inability to do much of anything with its head flopping around was proof of that. A cunning plan formed in his head.
“Hey, Hamzir. You in charge of this lot, then?”
“I’d say spokesperson is more appropriate.”
“Close enough. So, Eric’s transgressions, they’re directed more so at the… tribe, than you lot as individuals, correct?”
“Levi, you’re sounding very calculating right now. Which is a polite way of saying you sound like you’re about to do something very stupid.”
“Probably, but here goes: it sounds to me like you’re invoking the right of Blood Reparations to punish Eric. As the leader, carrying out the rite is your responsibility.”
The corpse’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “I guess, if you want to be formal about it. We were just planning on mobbing him, though.”
Eric whimpered, but Levi shushed him. “In that case, as Eric is a guest of mine in Marduk, I invoke the right of the chieftain to accept responsibility on his behalf.”
Levi held his breath. Around him, the previously implacable corpses exchanged glances. The silence broke when Hamzir laughed.
“Levi, you are one dumb bastard. But no one could ever call you a Bark Eater. Your argument is shit, but we’ll humour you. A duel, you and I, to absolve the foreigner.”
“Levi, you can’t- “Eric started to say, but this time Levi silenced him with another slap. “If I have to tell you to shut up one more time, I swear to the Ancestors…” He trailed off as the corpses around him chuckled. “Nevermind, just shut your mouth and stay out of the way.”
Eric cupped his glowing cheek, but scuttled off to the side of the clearing, keeping as wide a berth of the nearby corpses as possible. Satisfied he was out of the way, Levi squared off against the puppet. They locked gazes, the corpse’s cheeks scrunching up around its eyes as it smiled.
“Still the same old Levi,” it muttered.
“Who are you?” Levi asked, but the puppet just extended a hand, palm out, towards Levi.
“En garde, kid.”
Levi’s eyes widened, and he swore as he dived to the side, a stream of black smoke roaring past, missing by mere inches. He scrambled to his feet and ran into the stalagmite forest.
“Damnit, Eric! I thought you said they couldn’t use magic!”
“I said he didn’t, not that he couldn’t!”
“Not so clever now, hey Levi?” the puppet taunted. The voice was moving towards him. Levi looked at the torch in his hand. It was a literal beacon, giving away his position, but he couldn’t see without it while he suspected the dark wouldn’t impede the puppet in the slightest.
“Trying to figure out what to do about the light?” a voice whispered in his ear. Levi whirled, thrusting his spear with a shout. He buried it up to his hand in the puppet’s chest. He looked up, triumphant, but the corpse was still smiling. It placed a hand on his chest and pushed.
Its strength was unbelievable. The simple gesture launched Levi through the air, slamming him hard against a stone monolith. He dropped to the ground, wheezing, and looked up to see the corpse sauntering towards him, his spear still stuck in its body. Fortunately, he still had the torch. He dove behind cover as the puppet released another stream of darkness, and tried to suck air into his protesting lungs, but a flicker of smoke dancing past his head told him he needed to move again. He ran as the stalagmite behind him dissolved, barely making it behind another before the stream caught him.
“Think fast, Levi,” the corpse called. Levi risked a glance around his cover, his pulse pounding in his ears. Hamzir was strolling along, checking behind each pillar of rock as he went. The density of the formations was bouncing the light around, making it difficult to pinpoint his exact location outside the illuminated area itself. It was buying him some time, but that wouldn’t help him in the long run. There were only so many stalagmites and the puppet could destroy them in seconds. As Levi’s eyes wandered to what was left of his previous hiding spot, he had an idea.
He closed his eyes and fought to control his breathing. If he was going to survive this, he needed a calm head. He glanced out again, taking in the ambling corpse.
It was just a man, he told himself. An inhumanly strong, undead monstrosity of a man, but a man none the less.
Levi hunted swamp drakes for a living. He could do this. He just needed to treat it like he did all his other hunts. Predators became prey easy enough. So long as you struck first.
“I don’t need brains, Hamzir. I’ve got enough brawn to break that meat suit of yours with my bare hands. If you’ve got the balls to come find out!”
The puppet chuckled and changed its heading towards Levi. The first part of his scheme had worked. He retreated until he found a stalagmite he could use, finding a broad stone spire with a deep fissure worn away at about head height. He jammed his torch in and crept away, fading into the dark. Once he was out of the comforting circle of light, however, he started trembling. As he felt his way through the forest, he could only hope that the puppet was so fixated on the torch, and so flippant about the duel, that he wouldn’t notice Levi sneaking around behind him.
When he reached where the destroyed monolith had been, he dropped to his hands and knees and started sifting his fingers through the loose dirt. He let out a sigh of relief as his hands bumped against something smooth and hard. The tip of the stalagmite. The stone protrusion had been tall enough that the very top had escaped the effects of the Umbral stream. He would have preferred a good sharp spear, but the only other weapon in the cave not possessed by the possessed guardsmen was currently stuck clean through the puppet. This would have to do.
It was weighty in his hands when he picked it up, but narrow enough that he could wrap his hand around it. He spun it into a reverse grip and set off after the puppet. After rounding a couple of pillars, he saw the glow of his torch, a few pillars more, and he caught a brief glimpse of Hamzir’s robes in front of him. He crept forward, wishing his heart would stop beating, just for a few seconds. It was irrational, but he was sure the sheer volume of its thundering would give him away as he stole up behind the undead warrior.
He rounded the final stalagmite and found nothing but a couple of meters of empty space between him and the puppet. It felt like a mile. He inched forward.
Hamzir was half crouched, inching around the pillar before him, literally rubbing his hands together like a child about to open a present. Suddenly, he leapt, shouting, past the stone.
“Surprise, Lev- oh. Very clev- “
Its words died in its mouth as Levi slammed the stalagmite tip into the top of its head. The puppet crumpled, spasming weakly on the ground for a few seconds before going still.
“By the Ancestors, I can’t believe that worked,” Levi said, not even noticing the irony of his words this time. He retrieved the torch and shuffled painfully back to the clearing, feeling every bruise and scrape he’d picked up in the mad scramble that passed for a duel. As he entered the circle, he found Eric’s initial shock had worn off. That, or his mind had snapped completely. He was chatting to the corpses.
“So, what do you lads do for fun down here? When foreigners aren’t tramping about the place, that is.”
The closest corpse shook his head in disbelief, but otherwise ignored him.
“Suit yourself,” Eric said before spotting Levi. “By the Pantheon! You actually won? Or are you dead and this is a sick joke?”
“It’s me, Eric. I killed it.”
“But how?”
“Destroyed the brain, rammed a foot long stone spike through the top of its head,” Levi said, not even bothering to keep the pride from his voice. His feat had been damn impressive, and he’d make sure everyone knew about it. Although he would need to check the Aluwai’s policy on murdering the hallowed Ancestors first.
Eric frowned. “Levi, that corpse there,” he said, gesturing at a guardsman, “is missing the back of its head, everything inside has been scooped out. Destroying the brain does nothing.”
Levi felt the blood drain from his face. “Shit.”
A chuckle in his ear confirmed Eric’s words. The puppet clapped a hand on Levi’s shoulder, giving an affectionate squeeze that almost cracked his collarbone.
“It was an excellent idea though, Levi.”
Levi shook his head. “I was so sure… but if the brain doesn’t matter, why is Adrian’s corpse flopping around like a landed fish?”
“I can’t talk to the specifics, but simply put, we sort of ‘infuse’ the corpses we possess. That comes with some limitations. We can lose our heads or limbs or anything else without it having too much impact on our ability to get around, but we are restricted by the bodies ‘muscle memory’. Sometimes it takes a little while for us to learn how to drive.”
“You’re telling me, the spirit working the Adrian puppet is struggling because the mage was that uncoordinated in life?”
“Basically.”
“I’m having a hard time deciding if this whole scenario is horrifying or absurd.”
“I don’t see why it can’t be both.”
Levi turned to face the puppet. Standing face to face, less than a foot apart, Hamzir’s corpse was even worse for wear than it first seemed. One eye was sunken and drooped below the other, the orbital bone around it shattered, and the neck wound had started oozing again, glistening in the flickering torchlight.
“So, what now?” Levi asked.
The puppet shrugged. “You and the foreigner leave, I guess. Unless you want to hang around and talk?”
“What? But you’re still alive. I didn’t win the duel.”
“You can’t kill me, Levi. It would be unfair to expect that of you.”
Eric cautiously approached, stopping a few meters short of Levi and the puppet. “Wait, so we’re free to go? You won’t kill us?”
“Nope. Levi gave a good enough showing. You’re free to leave.”
“Alright, but you mentioned talk,” Eric said, taking a few more steps as his confidence grew. Levi fought the urge to face palm.
The puppet turned to the mage, an eyebrow quirked above a milky white eyeball that had started to sag out of its socket. “That was more so directed at Levi, but this is unexpected so, call me intrigued.”
Eric nervously rubbed his wrist, looking around at the guardsmen before turning back to Hamzir. “I need to know what happened here. I can’t leave empty handed.”
“Awfully demanding, considering your position.”
“My position is ‘safe’, if I’m not mistaken.”
The puppet grumbled, but eventually nodded its head. “Close enough. For now. I assume you’re asking about that debacle about fifteen thousand years ago?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what I’m after!” Eric’s eyes flashed, an almost manic excitement gripping him.
“Well, I dunno, paleskin. I wasn’t around for that, bit before my time and all that.” The puppet thoughtfully rubbed its chin, the head wobbling alarmingly on the ravaged neck. “But I can tell you, whatever happened, Marduk is the only place we won.”
“Won? As in, there was a fight?”
“A war. The biggest this world has ever seen.”
“Between who? Why did we win here and nowhere else?”
“Who’s this ‘we’? It was us. You lot weren’t even around back then. Bloody golden age, if you ask me,” he mumbled. “But basically the Outsider came in and gave us this… ‘gift’. Let us fight back against our enemies- “ The puppet’s head snapped up, and it stared intently into the darkness.
“Well? That can’t be it! I need more!” Eric yelled, reaching out the grab the puppet by the collar, but having an attack of common sense just before contact.
The puppet glared at him. “If you care to hang around, you might just get more. Although, Levi, I suggest you run.”