Chapter 116: Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

The chamber wasn't the biggest underground space I'd seen. The WCP in Rajak was bigger, but something about this one just made me  feel...small. Not the size so much as the untamed wildness of it gave  the impression that this was a place beyond the world of men. It was  just so other. All my encounters with Ascendant stuff had been in the  context of cities and heroes and things I was familiar with. Sure I'd  seen some odd things, but they had all been part of that same structure  I'd grown up with.

This though...this was new. It was like  something out of a storybook, and it just drove home the fact that it  was a big weird universe, and I had plenty left to see in it. I wanted  to explore with my friends and get stronger, and that meant coming into  contact with a lot more of this, so I needed to adjust to the crazy  stuff sooner rather than later. In the spirit of that I turned to Sarah,  our resident expert on all things that were formerly alive. "Ok, I take  it you can see some of those things down there? Any idea what they  are?"

She worried at her lip as she stared down into the  cavern. "Several, but I have to give you a bit of context. To understand  what we're dealing with you need to know a few things about how the  undead are categorized. To sum it up, there are three basic categories  of non sapient undead. Bone, flesh, and spirit. We've come across bone  and flesh so far, but I see at least a few spiritual undead down there.  Luckily they're all H rank from what I can see, but we might run into  some higher level ghosts later on, so you need to know how to deal with  them."

A quick finger point down and off to one side  brought our attention to a glowing blue figure in a cloak. "That for  instance, is a phantom traveler. Their main form of offense is stealth,  and they're known for falling upon the unwary and smothering them with  their cloaks. My holy hand skill can deal with them fairly easily." She  motioned to a different spot. "That on the other hand is a Banesidhe,  and their bodies are made of ectoplasm so dense it might as well be  physical. Fire is a better counter to them than holy energy, because it  can take a while to erode them with light based skills."

This  was much more complex than expected, but Sarah was on a roll and just  moved on to the next shape in the darkness. "That one is a jumping  corpse, a type of high level zombie. They aren't particularly dangerous  along, but they tend to travel in packs. If you see one there's probably  another another dozen nearby, they're almost always followed by a type  of ghostly fish called a silvermist minnow. They swim through the living  and lap their strength by draining their Vitality temporarily. I can  help with those as well, but there's usually a massive number of them,  so Mr. Cark may need to help."

She continued on in the  same vein for a while, explaining the various undead and their functions  before finally coming to a rest staring at the keep. "Now, the Lich is  going to be up there, that much is clear. They prefer height and range  for their magic, and tend to gravitate to fortified strongholds because  of their lacking defense. Most likely there will be a regiment of Death  Knights in there too. That's going to be a problem, but it's the best  case scenario, because if there isn't, the Lich will most likely be  attending a spectral court."

That didn't sound  particularly pleasant, and I had to cut in. "Wait, Death Knights are G  rank, a regiment of them would be all but impassable. Why is a spectral  court worse than that? Wouldn't the ghosts be easier to deal with? You  said light and fire work on them pretty well right?" In all honestly the  idea of fighting a 'regiment' of Death Knights wasn't one I relished.  I'd had a bitch of a time taking down the two Benny and I had fought.

She  shook her head seriously. "Not in this case. Spectral courts are  usually attended by an undead noble. At this rank it'll be either  Ectoplasmic Earl of a Grave Lord. Most likely the latter given the  presence of Dullahan. Grave Lords are powerful support type undead that  empower the others of their kind in their vicinity. The issue there is  that it would be not only another sapient undead, but another source of  power for the Lich. The Grave Lord would strengthen the magic user even  more."

I winced at that. "And the Lich summons the other  undead, which are also strengthened by the Grave Lord. The synergy there  is not fantastic. So...what do we do? Because I sincerely doubt you  would have bothered explaining all this if we had to turn around." As  neat as the information was, I assumed Sarah had at least an idea of how  to bypass the monsters down there or she would have just told us to  pack it. I admit, I hoped it would be something good, because I didn't  really feel like fighting a ghost army.

She smiled widely  at that, her blue eyes shining with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm  that told me she liked being involved in the higher level planning. "I  do. See, Grave Lords are powerful, but their main weakness is that they  can't interact with the living directly. They're proxy fighters, and  they're so specialized in fact, that they can't even SEE excessive  sources of life force. Our normal Vitality isn't enough for that to be a  factor sadly, but we just so happen to have someone with us who can  supercharge the life force of a being, thus rendering them invisible to a  Grave Lord." She shot Jessie a wide grin, clearly thrilled with her own  plan.

I had to admit, as plans went  it sounded pretty good at least. I wasn't entirely sure how well it  would work, but she was the expert. Being able to sneak past the  defenses and rob the castle sounded awesome, but there was a bit of a  hole in that idea. "Ok, but will that be enough to get us past the REST  of the undead? Because if we could have been invisible to them this  whole time and weren't im honestly going to be pretty pissed." My ribs  creaked with phantom pain and my arms ached with remembered agony. If I  could have skipped that I'd be pretty annoyed.

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She  just waved me off. "No, the whole life force thing is only really  relevant against Grave Lords. Their connection to death means they're  much less solidly anchored to this world than even other spirit type  undead. Regardless, it won't so much against any of that stuff down  there, so we're going to have a long way to go to put the plan into  action." She looked embarrassed. "Plus, if it IS Death Knights we might  have a bit of trouble. Still, this concentration of spirits makes the  unlikely. I'm almost positive it's a Grave Lord."

Her  confidence kind of tanked at the end there, but I thought it was  impressive she had managed to get up her courage to try to make a  suggestion like that. Callie had stated multiple times she was open to  people's ideas, and Sarah, aside from her regular updates about the  undead when asked, tended to be extemely quiet and shy. The little  Cleric clearly felt more at home with her own team than the rest of us,  but she was actively making an effort, and that was more than most  people could say.

Callie  clearly thought so too, because my girlfriend gave her an encouraging  smile. "I think it's a great plan. We need to do some recon to double  check the enemy ahead to make sure it's viable, but if it really is a  spectral court I'm all for it." She fished in the pocket of her coat and  pulled out a small white shape, holding it out to Jessie. "Luckily, I  considered the possibility, so I decided to try something and it seems  like it worked, at least if you can still hatch this outside the base?"

I  blinked. That was a great idea, I hadn't even considered grabbing one  of the raven eggs, and neither had anyone else apparently, because  Jessie looked pretty much poleaxed, and then got really excited. "I bet I  can! I'd have to try, but I bet the raven egg works just as well out  here. Give me a few minutes to sort this out and I'll get us a birds eye  view of the place!" Without any further conversation she closed her  eyes and started pouring green energy into the egg.

We  waited for her to finish, but a minute turned into ten, and she showed  no sign of being done. Apparently without the building to help boost  efficiency hatching the eggs was MUCH more energy intensive, so we all  settled in to wait for our scout to be ready. I saw Callie talking to  Sarah, obviously trying to bolster the Cleric's confidence, and I made  my way over to talk to Benny. "Hey man, you psyched about this? We're  going to be breaking into an evil ghost castle. How cool is that?"

He  snickered a little. "It does sound like something out of a bad movie.  Easily the coolest thing we've done since we left home. Of course, I'm  obviously going to kill way more undead than you on the way there, so I  guess you can do the break in if you want. Assuming Nightstrike doesn't  do it, since she's so much sneakier than you." I cursed. He was right,  she was definitely going to be the one to sneak in and raid the treasury  or whatever.

Still,  the first half of that little boast had been nonsense. "She's the best  person for the job, she should definitely do it. Also you have a better  chance of spontaneously growing wings than killing more undead than me.  Unless you were expecting me to fight them barehanded, and even then I  would still probably outscore you by a bit." I made sure to use just the  right amount of smugness, which got an eye roll and a middle finger  from my friend.

It  was all nonsense of course. Neither of us cared who beat up more  zombies or skeletons, but the familiar routine of shit talking helped  calm our nerves. I was pretty excited to go out there and wreak havok in  all honesty, but a part of my was worried about my friends too, just  like every time we went out to fight. Knowing that Benny felt confident  enough to trash talk me about this helped me calm down about that in a  weird way.

We  lapsed into silence, looking out over the cavern. Despite the palpable  anticipation in the air around us, it was still a bit chilling to see  all the shadowy forms moving in the dim light. Some huge and lumbering,  some small and fast, and some barely even visible at all. We stared out  into the dark, psyching ourselves up about the adventure to come, until  we finally heard a cheer from behind us.

I  turned to find Jessie cradling a small bird that was still growing even  before my eyes as she pumped energy into it. Seems like our scout was  up and running. We headed over to join up with the group as Jessie  finished pumping in enough life force and then sent the bird soaring off  toward the castle. It took a few hours to cross the cavern having to  constantly avoid enemies, with but Jessie kept us updated on it's  progress and gave us details about the terrain until finally we got the  go ahead from our healer. With the presence of the spectral court  confirmed our mission was ago. Time to head for the castle.

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