"Ehehe... um... Nii. I'm good now." Kiku chitters.

I let her loose. Her face is like a radish. It's cute, so I rub her forehead.

"You're such a player, Nii." She grins.

"I was worried about Kiku." I state.

"I see you have little faith in my prodigious healing abilities... hmmph!" Rishya adds from behind Kiku.

Rishya is pouting whilst healing a big scratch to Kaede's forehead. The blood dripping from it has closed her eye and was probably caused by her being thrown off from her skeleton rodeo attempt, but the sparkles of light dutifully swirl around it, knitting it together without any evidence of scarring on her doll face. She wipes the blood away, opens her now clear eye, and carries on as if nothing had happened.

I ruffle them both on the head as well.

"I'm also glad you are both safe." I add. I thought Rishya would back away, but she accepts it with a complicated and begrudging expression.

"This much is nothing, yes?" Kaede interjects. I withdraw my hands.

"The void here has died down temporarily. It was truly choking before. Quite strange." Seria ponders.

"Is it not normally like this, then?" I ask.

"Though it is a higher danger training ground than some by default... I do believe ones of that calibre should be rare. The flow and aggression of the residents is certainly heightened. I wonder if the high quantity of void spirits is to blame?" She replies, mostly talking to herself.

"So... we should be careful?" Aria summarises.

"Ahem! Quite..." Seria flicks a twin-tail.

"Nii, there are three ways to proceed here. Um... generally it is normal to go right. There is a fairly safe area to camp out there, and beyond is stairs further downwards... the other routes loop round to each other and the intersection earlier."

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"Not much of a choice, then. Right we go."

Kiku nods, retrieving her thrown sword from the pile of bones. She flicks off the blue ichor from the blade.

"What is that stuff. It was a crystal, but it melted?" I question.

"It's a soul shard, Elijah. The ghosts of the dead are attracted from the Void and form into them. Malicious and grudge bearing ones constantly return to life." Aria answers.

"The shard forms in all undead. The smaller, less vicious ones normally return in wraiths and revenants. Larger ones, the souls of the especially malign, create skeletons, liches, and skull beasts." Seria explains further.

Huh. Skeletons are normally the bottom of the undead food chain, but maybe not in this case. Liches are still normally a problem in any good RPG.

"No dracoliches then? That's good." I sigh.

"Draa-ko-lee-shee? What's that?" Rishya asks

"An undead dragon." I say.

This causes a fuss with the girls. Kiku, Aria, and Seria all gasp and recoil. Even Kaede and Rishya raise an eyebrow as if to you 'you jest, bro'.

"That would be horrifying!! No wonder your world has such powerful weapons if you have to deal with that." Aria exclaims, wide-eyed.

It's probably best to not correct her crazy assumption. Might bite me later though.

We continue down the right hand passage. It is not long before it descends further and then opens into a room full of urns neatly stacked like crates in a warehouse. Several prominent ones are clearly adorned with scary designs of skeletal creatures. Are these all... ashes?

There is a flickering necrofire here as well, but it is nowhere the size of the one in the room of the thrones, and does not stir the dead.

It's best to think of these things as spawn points, right?

We carry on tentatively. After another drab passageway, stairs lead to another open room.

This one is disturbing.

It is... frankly... a butcherhouse.

The smell in the stagnant underground air soon becomes that of blood.

Twelve corpses, nine men and three women, litter a raised platform that overlooks a dramatic temple like affair, with a macabre altar of bones at the far end, which is of course flanked by two necrofires at a high blaze.

Kiku and Aria recoil in shock, and Rishya gags. I feel a tad queasy myself.

"Well... I would say the rest area is compromised, yes?" Seria comments, narrowing her eyes at the carnage.

This is the rest area? Now that she mentions it, there are tents here, and a large brazier has been repurposed as a camp fire. This overlook seems easy to guard, with the only way down into the temple proper being a bloodied rope looped around a gargoyle statues mouth.

You could probably get away with just a watch on the way we came from, considering the dead would have to scale a twenty five foot sheer ledge from below, and you would have plenty of notice. Even one of those big skeleton knights should have troubles.

But clearly in this case, there has been a rather catastrophic security failure…