Into the Woods

“What took you guys sho long?” I asked, irritation evident in my voice.

I can not believe that all of them just stood there and watched as I faced off against an army of walking corpses.

I looked around. About twenty villagers left. Frankly, it was a miracle anyone survived this carnage. They all looked tired and terrified, which was understandable considering what had just happened. One needed guts of steel to gird themselves for hellish situations such as this, and the people here had none of that. They were just regular people; tailors and bakers, not fighters and soldiers.

Not too long ago, it was these types of people that I would have been terrifying. Robbing them of their valuables and supplies, laughing while I did it. Now I’m forced by God to help them. Looks like I got a healthy heaping of irony to go along with my breakfast.

“Sir! Sir!” called out a familiar voice. I looked around and spotted the barkeep rushing towards me. “Oh, I knew you would help! I knew you wouldn’t just leave us!”

“Uh, of coursh not,” I told him. I guess they still didn’t know about the invisible barricade blocking the exit to the village.

“What were those creatures?” asked the barkeep’s wife. “Where did they come from?”

Everyone was silent until a tall, young man with the beginnings of a red beard spoke up.

“Those were obviously undead,” said the man. Undead? What kind of stupid word was that? Not dead? Hell, I guess that made me an undead, too! Unliving was a much more accurate term.

“Undead, here?” asked an older man.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I spoke up before anyone else could. “What’s an undead?”

The young man once more began to explain. “Well, according to the stories, the undead are corpses that have been brought back to life by a magician. They’re nothing more than puppets, doing the caster’s bidding.”

“Sho someone sent those things after you all?” I asked.

The man nodded.

“But that’s insane,” said the barkeep. “Who would want to kill us? We’re just a small village out in the middle of nowhere.”

“You’d be shurprised,” I said. “It could be a wealthy tycoon wanting your land. Or maybe local nativesh not too nappy about having you fer neighbors. Then again it could be a former neighbor who you kicked out and is now out for revengsh.”

“Well, whoever it is, he has to be stopped!” the young man exclaimed.

“Agreed. But where do we even start looking?” an old man asked.

“Th-the monsters came from the woods,” spoke up a young girl who was clutching tightly at her mother’s hand. “I saw them out my window. I thought they was people, but then they came nearer and I…” The girl broke down in tears.

“The woods, huh?” I asked. “Anybody know if there’sh anything out there?”

“Just some elf ruins,” said the barkeep. “Everyone here knows not to go near them, lest we anger the forest folk.”

Elves were those guys with the pointy ears, right? Avanta had them.

“Well, it’s a good place to start looking,” the young man said. “I’m going up there.” He looked towards me. “Will you help me, Mr. Lizardman?”

“Sure.” Else I’ll never get out of this stupid village. “Call me Nero.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Francis Holtz. I was apprenticed to the blacksmith, but he’s dead now, so I guess that makes me the new smith.”

I shook his hand, making sure not to slice his wrist open with my claws.

“I’ll come, too,” said an older man around my age. “The name’s Ness. Tyler Ness.” I shook hands with him as well.

I looked over my impromptu posse and noticed something very troubling. Neither one had any weapons. Francis was holding a pitchfork like a makeshift spear while Ness was empty-handed.

“Don’t you have weapons? Real weaponsh, I mean.”

Francis looked embarrassed as he shook his head. “Sorry, sir. Never had the need for any before.”

I sighed. Fantastic. I was about to go into a probably unliving-infested forest and my only backup was two peasants with no weapons. Great.

Ness managed to get a butcher’s knife courtesy of, well, the butcher. After thanking him, our party started our journey through the forest. The other villagers waved to us farewell, wishing us goodluck, and all those other platitudes that don’t do you any good.

“I’ll, um, hold the fort until you come back!” shouted the barkeep.

Sure. He’ll be singing a different tune when he realizes that the safest place to be was near me.

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It didn’t take us long to get to the elf ruin. Despite the villagers’ assertions that they stayed away from the place, they sure knew an awful lot on how to get to it. It made me wonder if one of these yokels was messing around with the elf ruin and angered some evil spirit or something.

The ruin was actually the remains of a tower. I had no idea how high the structure might have risen since all that was left was its base. It was made of a strange green stone that I didn’t recognize, and was thirty feet in diameter. It had two sets of stairs, one leading up to where the upper levels of the tower used to be, and one that eerily descended into deep darkness. Since the upper floors no longer existed, all that was left for us to do was go down.

So down we went. Thankfully, Francis had the foresight to pack some torches; he said it would be useful against the undead since they were vulnerable to fire. I lead the way down, torch in one hand and pistol in the other. Francis followed, then Ness. At the bottom of the stairwell, we found an open stone door that led into even deeper dark recesses. A musky smell rose up from the darkness and I knew that I was not going to enjoy going down there.

“The door’s open,” Francis said.

“So?” I asked.

“The door’s never open!” he told me. “Every time I’ve been here, the door has always been closed.”

“Oh? I thought no one was supposed to visit thish place?”

Francis turned red while Ness laughed. “Ha. That’s what we’re supposed to do, but every kid in the village has been here one time or another. It’s harmless.” Ness then paused. “Well, it was.”

With no other choice, we entered the ruin’s dark interior. We found ourselves in a narrow tunnel. The walls were made of the same green stone that the exterior was built from. As we continued moving forwards, I noticed that the floor had a slight decline to it. Wherever this tunnel was taking us, it was downwards. We cautiously advanced, keeping our torches held high to fight off the all-encompassing darkness that surrounded us.

Eventually, the tunnel leveled off and we found ourselves in a large chamber. It was empty except for the walls. Built into them were shelvings of stone and wood about five feet long. The shelves were stacked three on top of each other, and most were empty except for a few. Those held the bones of the long dead.

“We’re in a tomb,” I announced to my companions.

“B-but, where are all the bodies?” Ness asked, pointing out all the empty bunks.

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“We probably met them in Darb,” I told him.

“You mean the zombies,” Francis said.

“Yup.” I swung the torch around and found another tunnel leading deeper into the ruins. “Let’s keep moving.”

The tunnel lead to another chamber that was identical to the first. Here most of the shelves were empty like the first chamber. We continued moving.

Tunnel after tunnel we searched through, finding nearly identical burial chambers. As we went deeper though, we found that not all the bunks were empty. The deeper we went, the more bodies there were. These bodies looked ancient though, much more bones than flesh.

That’s where we found the campsite. By the corner of one of the chambers were the remains of a fire as well as blankets that served as bedding.

“This is all new,” Francis said as he examined the items. “Can’t be more than a few days old.”

“Someone’s been here,” I said. “Maybe still here.”

Ness gulped loudly.

We continued to descend. Down the tunnels we went where we found dozens of burial chambers, all full of the ancient dead. We may have spent hours trawling through those tunnels, we weren’t sure. The all-encompassing darkness pervaded everything here, especially our sense of time.

Just when we thought we’d never see the end of these tunnels, we saw a light. We slowly and methodically stepped towards the light source, taking care to not make any sound. As we approached, we heard a voice. It was a man’s voice, and he seemed distraught.

“No, no, no,” it said. “You promised me. You promised!”

I signaled for the others to be quiet as we advanced towards the sound. The light turned out to be a lantern. It was laid down in the center of a burial chamber, thus casting light and shadows all around. Kneeling next to the lantern was a man, a little older than Francis, who was clutching at something in his hands.

“I did everything you told me,” the man said. It looked like he was speaking to the thing he was holding. “I did everything you asked. You promised!”

“Malcolm?” Ness spoke up in recognition.

The idiot!

The man, Malcolm I presumed, looked up and spotted us. His face took on a venomous hateful look as he hissed at us through his teeth. “No! This is all your fault! You’re why she’s still dead! Damn you all!” He then shot up to his feet and took off running down another tunnel, going deeper into the tomb.

“Wait, Malcolm!” Ness called out.

We started to chase after him but then noticed that the figures lying stiff upon the bunks in the walls were not staying motionless this time. They moved, pushing themselves out of their place of eternal rest, rising to their feet.

“Damn it,” I muttered as the risen dead started surrounding us. We all dropped our torches and readied our weapons. The monsters trudged towards us, their skeletal arms reaching out with sharp, bony fingers.

I aimed my pistol at one of the unliving heads and fired. A bright flash of light lit up the dark room as the bullet shattered the creature’s skull. Smoke and the sharp scent of gunpowder was in the air when I drew my sword and hurled myself against the tide of risen dead.

These unliving were unlike those we fought in town. Their corpses were much more decrepit, decayed. They were nothing more than skeletons in tattered clothing so they were much easier to deal with. The only problem was the sheer number of them. There were so many of them that they threatened to overwhelm us.

I continued to smash away at the tide of unliving with my sword. A solid strike to the head seemed to put them down, though I wondered about that. These monsters were so ancient that there was no brain in their skulls left; so how come a blow to the head would take them down if there was no brain to damage? I scoffed it off to magical shenanigans and continued fighting.

I heard Ness screaming. I turned around and saw that he had been overtaken by the monsters. They had him surrounded and were biting chunks of his flesh off. Francis was trying to get to him. He had lost his pitchfork somewhere and was using his torch to burn the unliving that were attacking him. Unfortunately for Ness, Francis would not get to him in time; there were just too many of the skeletal monsters in between them. He continued screaming as the unliving tore him to pieces.

Eventually, we were victorious. I had smashed through the monsters with my sword while Francis set many of them ablaze. The young smith found his pitchfork among the desiccated corpses. He also found Ness, or what was left of him, under a pile of bones.

“That man,” I said. “Ness knew him, called him by name. Who was he?”

Francis frowned. “Malcolm. Malcolm Foster. He was our village alchemist. His wife died recently and he disappeared last week. We thought he’d killed himself because of his grief. I never would have thought…”

A grieving widow being responsible for this mess? I guess it was possible, though how he managed to bring the dead back to life was beyond me. He probably used some type of magic spell or something. Where he learned that spell was another question.

“Let’sh go,” I said after reloading my pistol. “He can’t have gotten far.”

I picked up my torch and stormed down the tunnel Malcolm had run through, eagerly seeking to find the missing alchemist. I heard Francis’s footsteps close behind me.

We ran through several alcoves before reaching the final burial chamber. It was much larger than the previous burial areas and was filled to the brim with mummified bodies. I saw Malcolm standing in the center of the chamber, carrying a lantern and something else in his right hand. I couldn’t see what it was since he was holding it very close to his chest.

“Malcolm, please! Stop this!” Francis called out to the man.

“No!” the alchemist shouted. His face was pale and covered in grit. It was obvious he’d been down here in this dark tomb for a while now. “I can’t! Not now, I’ve gone too far already! Why? Why couldn’t you people have just died! Then she’d be with me again?”

“Who, Malcolm?” asked Francis as he approached the deranged alchemist. “Who would be with you? Annie, your wife? She’s dead, Malcolm. She died of the fever, remember?”

“I know that! I know that!” Malcolm snarled. “B-but he could bring her back, you see? He could bring her back. And all he asks for are souls.”

“Souls?”

Malcolm nodded. “Yes. Your souls!” He suddenly lifted the thing he was carrying high over his head, holding it up like some native totem of power. The thing started glowing and soon, all around us, the corpses started moving.

“Malcolm, no!” Francis yelled.

The bodies began to claw their way to their feet. The corpses here were the oldest in the tomb and were nothing but bones. Yet that didn’t stop them from rising and reaching out with their skeletal fingers towards us.

“Screw this,” I said as I aimed my pistol at Malcolm. With a pull of the trigger, the flash of the explosion illuminated the room. The bullet hit the alchemist through the heart, killing him instantly. As he collapsed onto the dusty floor, so did the risen corpses. One by one the unliving monstrosities crumpled into piles of cloth and bone.

ERROR: 0001558394217HAA2

Event concluded. Player movement no longer restricted.

I waved away the annoying blue screen and focused on the task at hand.

I strode up to Malcolm, kicking him to make sure he was dead. He was. I then looked down at the thing he had been carrying. It looked like an ordinary skull. I reached down for it, and as soon as I touched it I felt something clawing at my mind.

Give me souls….

Give me souls….

I can bring her back for you….

I can bring her back….

Memories began flooding the forefront of my mind. Soft black hair. Lovely brown skin. Kind, sad eyes. A smile that took my breath away.

She can be with you again…

She can be with you forever….

Just give me souls….

Souls….

Souls….

The touch of her hand. The smell of her hair. All of it was there again. Like she never left. Like she never died. Alicia…

Yes. You know I can do it.

I can give her back to you.

Just-

“No!” I snarled. I lifted my fist, then brought it down onto the skull with all of my might. “No!”

Why?! Why!

“How dare you use her memory against me! You God-damned piece of shit!” I roared as I continued to pound the skull, smashing it into bits. I heard it screaming in agony inside my mind and I reveled in it. I sneered and snarled like the animal that I was as I destroyed that filthy, miserable, disgusting thing. I ground it into dust with my very fists until nothing of it was left. Nothing!

Silence descended on the tomb. Silence, both in my ears and in my mind. There was nothing left of whatever that thing was. Nothing. All I could hear was my heavy, exhausted breathing.

“Nero?” I heard Francis ask me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Francis,” I told him. “Just fine.”

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We made it back to Darb around mid-afternoon. Francis had wanted to bring back Malcolm’s body to be buried back in town next to his wife, but I vetoed that idea. Since he liked spending so much time with the dead in the ruins, let him stay with them for all of eternity.

We did bring back what was left of Ness, wrapped in some cloth we found. He was buried that same day.

All the villagers were grateful to me for what I’d done. They would have probably thrown a celebration right there if it weren’t for the fact that there were so many people that needed to get buried.

I went to the edge of town and saw that the invisible wall was gone. I was finally free to get moving again.

But in the end, I stayed. I stayed for another few days in Darb. I needed the rest, and to get my head clear. That damned skull, whatever it was, really did a number on me.

I also needed to use Darb’s forge. After fighting all those unliving sons of bitches, it came to my attention that having only one shot available before having to reload was not gonna be enough. I needed more.

It was time I started working on making myself a better gun.