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Melvin, Rich and Jason screamed. All their voices were so high it was impossible to tell which shriek came from the woman’s body.
“Hell naw,” Mike cried in disbelief as the ever-increasing number of corpses shuffled their way. “What the fuck is next, vampire dragons? A kung-fu killer werewolf priest? What the hell did you fools get me into?”
Vacant-eyed and slack-jawed, the undead warriors dragged their spears and swords along the floor as they stumbled and shuffled. They stopped in unison, and all the ones that still had mouths spoke as one.
“Free... me.”
Runt twisted his Z-weapon in the middle. The shaft separated; now the big man wielded an axe in each hand. The undead warriors took another step, unfazed by Runt’s gleaming twin blades.
Melvin heard a splintering crash behind him. He snapped his head around to see the fort’s entrance door imploding, taking the iron bar and hinges with it. With a loud yell, the first weagr came through the entryway, charging toward the closest thing in sight. That was Melvin.
Melvin was close to reaching his shock tolerance level again. All he could do was look up with his mouth open as the weagr’s massive axe came down.
A violent shove forced Melvin forward. As he collided into Rich and Jason, he looked back to see Mike had pushed him out of harm’s way. But now Mike was in the weagr’s path.
The weagr was too busy looking at his target escape to notice the tiny megrym. Mike got tangled up into the weagr’s legs, getting knocked back and forth between them as the weagr stumbled. The weagr crashed head first into the corpse warriors while Mike was sent tumbling across the room. Runt rushed over to Mike’s aid.
On his hands and knees, the raging weagr took wild swings with his axe back and forth through the undead throng like he was cutting jungle brush with a machete. Many swarmed him, stabbing with their weapons. Many others stumbled past him as if he was not even there.
The undead began splintering off into a “Y”. The left branch headed toward Mike and Runt, the right toward Jason, Rich and Melvin. And the stem of the “Y” was stabbing the weagr, who had already dropped his axe as he succumbed, in wet, bubbling wails, to the onslaught.
More weagrs were piling into the entryway, making a “Y” of their own as they pursued the split party. Melvin knew getting across the room to rejoin Mike and Runt was suicide at this point. Mike pointed behind Melvin, to a tunnel made visible by a nearby netherfire sconce.
“Run!” Mike cried. With that, he and Runt fell back into a passage on the opposite side of the room, corpses and weagrs either in tow behind them or fighting each other.
Melvin, Rich and Jason turned and fled into the tunnel. The netherfire light that illuminated the tunnel entrance quickly disappeared and they found themselves running into inky blackness, their hands out in front of them. Despite the near perfect darkness, they did not slow. When their hands hit coarse cave wall, they groped around frantically until their hands met empty air and their blind dash continued. After a few awkward turns, they saw a faint blue light at the end of the tunnel.
The tunnel opened up to a vast chamber. The solitary pole sconce in the center of the room showed it used to be a mess hall. Rows of wooden tables and benches disappeared into the surrounding darkness, the light too faint to show where they ended. Empty cups and bowls lay scattered across the tabletops, the chaotic place settings of a ghost garrison.
“What do we do? What do we do?” Rich asked, wheezing to get his breath back.
“I don’t see another tunnel,” Melvin said. “There could be one on any of these walls, or nothing at all.”
“We need more light,” Jason said.
Melvin looked at the pole sconce and came up with an idea. He whacked at the pole with his sword, his strikes hurried and imprecise. When he had whittled enough away, he pulled at the pole until it broke away into his hands.
“Nethertorch,” he dubbed it, raising it up. “Let’s find a way out of here,” he said, proceeding down the row of tables.
It did not take long to reach a wall. This one offered no adjoining passageways. As they moved along it, Melvin heard yells and footstep as their pursuers made their way toward the mess hall.
“Hurry!” Jason cried.
They ran along the wall until they found the corner and ran the length of this new wall. They came to another corner. Still no new tunnels.
Commotion in the room stole their attention. Yells, grunts and the clatter of plates and cups crashing punctuated the air. Something was in there with them, hidden in darkness. Melvin’s good idea for a nethertorch also meant they were now huddled around the room’s only light, a beacon in the corner that advertised their presence.
“Run!” Melvin cried, taking off in the direction of the newest wall in hopes of finding a break in it. Wood splintered. Dishes crashed. The sounds of the room being wrecked got louder and closer.
A break in the wall came into view just a few feet ahead. A weagr stumbled into view at the same time. It crashed into the table closest to them before hitting the ground. A dozen strandwolves covered him. A couple more advanced on the boys.
“Into the tunnel!” Melvin said. He waved the nethertorch at the strandwolves, forcing them to back away as his friends made the passage. The two strandwolves turned their attention back to the downed weagr and the easier meal he offered.
They ran. The tunnel sloped downwards and began to curve. The walls became narrower, the roof lower. Melvin could no longer see what was up ahead beyond Rich and Jason. He kept glancing back, sure a strandwolf was about to leap onto his back despite the only sound being their footsteps on stone.
Jason and Rich stopped abruptly, causing Melvin to nearly collide with Rich. He noticed the tunnel had opened up a bit more. They were at a “+” intersection. No going back meant left, right, or forward.
“What if these tunnels start criss-crossing and intersecting?” Rich asked. “We could wind up back here, all turned around with strandwolves waiting for us.”
“Let’s keep going straight,” Melvin said, casting a glance backwards. He didn’t want to spend any time down here standing still.
“No, no,” Jason said. “We have to go left.”
“Why do we have to go left?” Melvin asked, looking into the dark passage as if a way to tell its potential merit was going to jump out at him.
“Dungeon rules,” Jason said. “Any serious dungeoncrawler knows you always go left.”
Melvin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We got three different flavors of the Apocalypse chasing us and you want to treat it like we’re in it for experience points? This is crazy; do you see any 1-ups? There’s no save file to load if things go bad. We’re going straight.” He took a step down the middle.
“No, no, no,” Jason said, shaking his head and waving his arm club like a truce flag. “Most mazes are built in what’s called a ‘simply-connected’ design. To keep from getting lost or going down the same tunnels over and over, you keep your left hand on the left wall and follow it around. Do that and you never go down the same tunnel twice.”
“Why can’t we do the same thing with the right?” Rich asked.
“Talk about this later!” Melvin cried, taking off down the left passage with Jason and Rich scrambling behind. The tunnel opened up into a barracks room. The wooden frames had caved in on most of the bunk beds, spilling mattress and support slats onto the bottom bunk. Dust lay thick and undisturbed on footlockers. Netherfire in wall recesses told them this room was a dead end.
They turned around and saw three pairs of eyes shining in the darkness. Strandwolves, and this time there was no escape route.
Melvin brought his trembling sword up as he backed up into the barracks. Beside him, Jason raised his arm club, a look of menace etched into his gray aian face. Behind them, Rich looked around the room frantically as if something useful lay hidden in the dilapidated wood.
The strandwolves lunged. A massive hairy body dominated Melvin’s field of vision as it jumped at his face.
He flinched, stabbing wildly at air while his eyes stayed squinted shut. He felt his sword hit something, followed by a yelp.
He opened his eyes and saw his blade stained with blood tinted blue under the netherfire light. One of the strandwolves was down, blood steadily seeping from a wound in its chest. Beside that one, another strandwolf lay asleep. Jason must have hit it with his arm club.
Jason was yelling. The third strandwolf was on his good arm, its maw full of sleeve and the forearm underneath. Apparently, Jason’s swing had knocked out the one but had left his arm exposed. Now the strandwolf was shaking its head violently, pulling an already off balance Jason down.
Rich kicked the strandwolf in the face. It yelped and released Jason’s arm as it backed away snarling. Melvin readied his sword, but he noticed the strandwolf was looking beyond them, snarling at something low to the ground.
He turned and saw the strandwolf he had stabbed in the chest was back on its feet. Its eyes were vacant. The beast was clearly dead... and freshly risen.
“What the...!”
Melvin didn’t get to finish the expression, as the living strandwolf exploded past them and launched itself at the undead beast. The two went at each other, snapping and growling in the barracks. Rich pushed Melvin out of the room and grabbed Jason by the arm. Together, they fled back to the intersection.
When Melvin looked at the three identical passages, a surge of panic rose and died a moment later. The “always go left” trick meant the way to the mess hall was on their right. Their only options were left or straight. He was able to keep it all clear in his head, despite his heart racing and the fear rising.
“Left,” he said and began proceeding. He stopped short because Rich had followed him but Jason had stayed in the intersection. Jason was shaking his head, staring into the tunnel that led back to the barracks.
“Might as well give up,” Jason said to the empty tunnel. “Nothing stays dead here.”
“Jason...”
“It all comes back. It all comes after us.”
“Jason... c’mon man...”
Melvin took a step toward his friend. Hands emerged from the darkness of the tunnel behind Jason, several hands, their fingers caked with dirt or missing nails in places.
“Jason!”
Jason looked back and screamed as the hands grabbed him and pulled him into the darkness. Melvin ran forward to see the briefest glimpse of his friend getting pulled into a sea of corpse warriors. The undead shuffled toward Melvin and Rich.
“Free... me.”
Melvin raised his sword. Rich grabbed Melvin’s arm and shook it.
“Mel! There’s too many. We gotta run!”
Melvin shook his head, looking for his friend in the mass of bodies growing closer.
“Mel!”
Rich was right. Melvin yelled out, a mixture of anger, despair and frustration before turning to run with Rich down the tunnel.
*****
JASON WAS IN THE MIDST of festering rot. Slimy, putrefied hands pushed and pulled him. Every second he expected all their mouths to start biting into him. But their hands just kept pushing, pulling, herding him where they wanted.
He was ushered through a grand chamber. The netherfire light revealed four weagrs in the center of it, fighting against an undead army of weagrs, men and strandwolves. One of the undead weagrs put his axe through a living one’s forehead. His eyes went vacant around the axe handle before pulling it out and turning on the remaining three weagrs.
Jason was pushed out of the chamber, down tunnels and through halls until he could no longer tell where he was. When the undead finally stopped pushing, he was in a small room with a high ceiling. Dead men lined the walls and blocked the way back.
A creature occupied the center of the room. It was black, as if its skin was made from total darkness. A white aura of sorts surrounded it, allowing Jason to see the humanoid contours of its legs and head. Jason saw it was kneeling down and looking back at him with white, pupil-less eyes.
The creature opened its mouth and only white light escaped. However, the corpses in the room spoke words in sync with the creature.
“Free... me.”
Jason saw no bars, chains, nothing holding the creature down. He looked above the kneeling creature. A glowing, red crystal floated at eye level.
He had seen this before, in the Secret Blades expansion. A Majora witchlock. Resembling a twelve sided die, it created an invisible magic prison. The creature was helpless beneath it.
As helpless as the ruler of an undead army; some of the dead pushed Jason forward while others spoke their master’s wishes. “Free... me.”
Jason had never seen this creature, not in any bestiary or expansion or even in the background of any artwork. And he knew if it was under a witchlock, it was for a good reason. They were difficult to make and too rare to waste on even dangerous criminals.
“Uh...” was all he could say as they pushed him ever closer to it. He was pretty sure the creature wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Can’t you, I don’t know... free yourself?” he indicated the legion of the dead around him.
One of the undead stepped out from the ranks lining the wall. It reached a hand out to the Majora witchlock. When its fingers touched, the red light swelled within the crystal and melted the fingers. The red light continued to travel along the corpse’s body, incinerating as it went, even burning up the ancient armor it wore. In seconds there was nothing left but ash.
“You want me to touch that?!”
The all white eyes of the darkness creature stared at Jason. The corpses spoke around them.
“You... give... to me. I... give... to you.”
Jason felt pain shoot through his shoulder blades. Hot, excruciating, unbearable; he screamed as the pain consumed him.
*****
MIKE BASHED ANOTHER corpse in the head, sending it tumbling to the chamber below. He knew it was a useless win. A fall like that would seriously injure or kill most folks. This enemy was just going to get up and shuffle his ass back up here.
Him and Runt were on a stone bridge spanning a huge chamber. Runt was on the other end of the bridge, dual axes flying, while Mike was on this end, doing his level best to crack skulls. They were both giving ground slowly as the dead kept coming.
Mike had no illusions about what was going to happen. He had seen four weagrs in the chamber below go from alive and angry to Night of the Living Dead. Eventually, this crowd was going to push him and Runt back to back. After that, even if he decided to jump to his death, he knew he wouldn’t stay dead for long.
He bashed another one, sending it over the side. “There’s your freedom!” he told it. “Give me a chance, I’ll free every one of you bitches,” he said as the grasping hands forced him another step back. Between strikes he thought of Melvin, hoping his dumb ass had made it out alive.
*****
MELVIN AND RICH WERE fresh out of left turns. An undead pack of strandwolves followed them. The strandwolves had lost their sense of urgency after rising from the dead, and were just plodding after the two. Behind the strandwolves, dead men shuffled in their own slow pursuit. If they had leashes, it would look like zombies taking their dogs for a walk.
Melvin had run out of steam two tunnels back. Now the two of them just kept backing away from the encroaching corpses, occasionally looking behind them to see what lay ahead.
“This doesn’t look good,” Rich said.
They were slowly approaching a chamber. It was hard to make out very much in it. But Melvin saw the undead lining the walls, waiting for them.
“Do something!” Rich cried to Melvin. “We can’t walk into that!”
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Turn on Zhufira mode and cut us out of here!”
“Zhufira mode? What, like I’m a lightbulb with a sword?! You’re supposed to be Razzleblad, superbad super mage. Razzle already!”
Melvin turned to see the chamber had grown much closer in the time they spent arguing. The undead still lined the chamber, making no move toward them.
They were almost at the entrance to the chamber when Melvin noticed the person in the center. It was an aian standing over something black and reaching out to something with a red glow. A severed arm protruded from his back.
“Jason!” Melvin called out as Jason took the red thing in his hand and crumbled it. A shock wave boomed through the fort, knocking Jason down and shaking the walls and ceiling with earthquake force.
Melvin and Rich rushed over to Jason. He looked up at Melvin. “It—it—made me,” was all he said. Jason reached out to Melvin, an act that made Melvin jerk back in horrified shock.
Shiny white bone protruded from the cauterized wound of Jason’s severed shoulder. He had an arm of bone, and he had reached out to Melvin with skeleton fingers. Jason pointed the skeleton hand at the black shape.
It was a man of total darkness. Melvin could only see how giant he was because of the white outline around him. He was twice the size of Runt as he stood up and stretched. Four pitch black wings unfurled behind him. Then he lowered himself to one knee, as if he was going to charge at them.
The winged man exploded upward, fast as a bullet, breaking through ceilings of solid stone. He was gone in the night after a moment, leaving massive holes in his wake.
All the undead men lining the walls fell where they stood, once again lifeless.
Fort Law began to shake much worse than before. Stones started falling from the roof. In the middle of the room, a circle of blue and white light swirled into existence and grew bigger.
“Is this making the fort shake?” Melvin asked, looking at the growing circle of light.
“No, that’s a portal,” Jason said. “Between the Majora witchlock breaking and that creature making its own exit, this place is coming down around us.” As he finished talking more stones, bigger stones, started falling.
The quaking got worse as more of the roof fell away. Even if Melvin knew the fastest way to get back to the entrance of Fort Law, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t get buried under tons of rock first.
He knew about portals. They were magic gateways that could lead anywhere. The few times he had used one in the game he had met a quick and cheap death.
Also a quick and cheap death was getting crushed by roof rocks. He looked at Rich and Jason. He said nothing; he didn’t have to. They nodded.
As they plunged into the swirling portal, Melvin looked up through the massive hole left by the creature. He caught the briefest glimpse of Mike looking down from a bridge many stories up. Giant rocks fell on the bridge, as Fort Law collapsed in on itself.