Chapter 54: Chapter 54 A somewhat heavier touch of undeath

Nathan spoke first. “I think I should go first. I’ve got perception skills, as well as resistance to magical traps and healing for non-magical traps. And it seems I’m pretty good at taking on undead in close-quarters.” Nathan gestured to the corpse he’d just finished sucking the necromancy out of. “After me, probably Aarl, then Stella, Sarah and with Khachi bringing up the rear in case any come at us from behind?"

Khachi closed his mouth. He’d been about to suggest their ordering, and it was probably about the same order. The big wolfolk looked confused more than upset, as if he hadn’t been expecting Nathan’s suggestion.

There was a moment of awkwardness as everybody looked at Nathan, then Khachi. The wolfolk had been acting as the unofficial leader of the Heirs since before Nathan had joined. And this wasn’t Nathan trying to take over so much as potentially get the Heirs used to listening to him in tactical situations. Nathan liked Khachi, and he trusted Kia's son with most things. But he didn’t want the Heirs to settle into the pattern of listening to him on everything, especially because Nathan had skills and knowledge that might give him unique insights into tactical situations.

Nathan nodded his head towards Khachi. “Do you agree that it’s best for me to be in front, calling out directions? I have perception skills and can’t be fooled by magic. For now, I believe my suggestion is the best one?”

Khachi slowly nodded, and the rest of the Heirs fell into the suggested order.

Cool. I hope this doesn’t lead to confusion as to who gives orders. I do think this party order is best, and if Khachi can’t see anything he’ll have trouble calling plays. When I get yeeted into the middle of an enemy formation then he’ll be the one calling the shots. Like where to throw Nathan.

They entered the tomb. The first thirty feet looked like they’d been clawed out of the packed earth by bare hands. The ceiling was low and the walls covered with finger-marks. There were signs of multiple cave-ins that had been cleared by hand, from the inside. Nathan saw a zombie ahead blindly staggering towards them. Khachi’s boot scraped on a stone and it quickly raised its arms, lurching in their direction and opening a mouth to bite.

Nathan seized it by the throat, dumping the inert corpse to the side a moment later. He shook his hand in a vain attempt to remove the squishy gore and the cold, slick feeling of the death mana.

That zombie’s hearing was better than its eyesight. Huh.

Stella conjured a pair of lights and set one hovering over each of her shoulders. The paired lights prevented any one object from throwing sharp shadows, diffusing more light around the inside of the tomb. The lights revealed that the bare dirt transitioned to a worked stone floor. Only a few steps further in the walls and ceiling were also replaced with smoothly joined stone blocks.

The tunnel blossomed out into a larger room, decorated with dirty reliefs. An altar of some kind stood in the center of the room, and three passages led deeper underground. Another zombie was wandering out of the rightmost passage, blinking at them in the light. It opened its mouth to moan and Sarah nailed it in the face with a javelin, dropping the zombie with a wet sound.

Nathan took a moment to study the altar and the stone reliefs. They definitely weren’t Quazian, and looked vaguely Mayan to Nathan. That likely meant Sklias dominion, which was a snakefolk empire from long ago. They didn’t tend to leave the most dangerous or impressive dungeons, so weren't prioritized in the Gemore Adventurer education. Most often, Sklian dungeons were tombs of the Sklian mage-lords, who'd had an obsession with legacies. They’d been high on magic but low on the sort of long-term enchantments and constructs that could make dungeons truly nightmarish.

And this is probably one of those. But not a very rich mage-lord, apparently. Not enough decoration for that? Anyway, time to follow the right wall. I want to see wherever those zombies are coming from.

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Nathan gestured toward the right passageway, then stepped forward. He looked around carefully for traps or signs of magic, and was a few paces in front of Aarl. Nothing happened as they crossed the room and entered the rightmost passage. In the rear, Khachi swiveled and started walking backwards, shield up and watching their backs.

Nathan moved forward cautiously, looking for more traps and details. He saw some reliefs of a naga-like creature standing on a pedestal overlooking many bowing figures. The corridor turned sharply to the right ahead, and another zombie stumbled into view around the bend. Nathan grabbed it quickly, laying the now-still body quietly against the wall of the tunnel.

Then Nathan turned the corner, and took a few steps forward into a larger space. He motioned Stella forward to give him lighting and see what was ahead.

It was an ossuary. And a burial chamber. A long room stretched out, two rows of stone shelves arranged like bookshelves. They were heavily decorated with bones. The shelves held bodies, stacked three-deep. Higher shelves held more bones, many of which were nonhumanoid. Central tables held yet more bones, and Nathan saw a dozen Stalker skeletons, carefully laid out on a row of tables that sat between the shelves. Their third eyes were still present, and glistened with a black mist that absorbed the light cast from Stella’s spells.

Most of the bodies and skeletons were inert, though Nathan saw one of the Stalkers twitch slightly. As he watched, a human corpse jerked, falling from the shelf where it had been laying onto the ground. It lay there for a moment, then unsteadily got to its feet.

Nathan took a moment to kick his shoes off, gesturing back to the Heirs to stay put. He ran forward on the balls of his feet, doing his best to stay quiet on the bare stone floor. He seized the newly mobile zombie and rendered it immobile, again laying the body down quietly instead of letting it fall.

Nathan looked around the room again, and noticed another detail he hadn’t seen before. He’d thought the black mark on the ceiling was a trick of the light. But it was a black crystal which seemed to absorb the light. From this close, Nathan could feel a suffocating pressure from it, not unlike what the Grave Tangle had unleashed. But instead of a tide of overwhelming mana that sapped the strength from Nathan, this mana was insidious. With his new understanding of death mana Nathan understood that it was trying to animate him, even as it was absorbed into his skin. He laid a hand against the zombie he’d recently drained, and found that more mana had slithered inside of it in the brief moments since he’d last touched it.

Ok, so that crystal is slowly animating all of the corpses in here. There’s a lot of them. Time to break it I guess? Especially before it gets those Stalker skeletons moving, those things look nasty. I don’t wanna know what those eyes do.

Nathan hopped up onto the table, avoiding the six-legged skeleton stretched along it. He glanced back to the Heirs, only twenty feet away. They were watching him cautiously as he stretched up to grab hold of the crystal. What he felt surprised him - there was definitely a spell in there, which seemed built to shape the mana as it passed through, guiding it into a form that would be better for animating corpses. But the mana was passing through the crystal from somewhere else. This crystal was a conduit for the death mana, not its ultimate source. Nathan got a sense that the mana was conducted through the rock from somewhere else. As far as he could tell it was coming from somewhere farther into the hill.

I’m glad we tested what happens if I absorb mana even when I’m already full of stamina.

Nathan pulled on the mana in the crystal, siphoning a lot of mana out of it very quickly. His stamina was already full from all of the zombie-draining, so the excess stamina manifested as an urgency to move. Nathan felt ready to sprint a mile, leap down a flight of stairs and fight whoever was in front of him. From his past experiments with Stella, Nathan knew his every movement for the next few minutes would be empowered with the excess stamina. It was a surge of energy that energy drinks could only pretend to in advertisements.

Nathan used [Focused mind], pulling his attention back to the crystal and the spell inside. As Nathan siphoned mana, the crystal lightened slightly, showing a smoky-quartz nature instead of matte light-absorbing black. With an effort of concentration Nathan reached past the torrent of mana flowing into him, breaking the spell that guided the diffusion of the mana. Then he released the crystal and studied it warily for a moment.

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