As Gwen looked at the dungeon’s dark entrance, she could almost smell it. The stench of blood.

How many had walked inside this cave and never come out? How many adventurers had foolishly lost their lives looking for treasure, glory, or the thrill of power? How many young people had fallen to the undead, fueling their master’s armies?

In the end, the princess of Avalon was no different. She knew knights had tried to clean the place of monsters in the name of protecting the city above, but as far as she knew, the local undead had never made any serious attempt to threaten it. The necromancer could have probably broken the wards keeping his forces from crossing the threshold, but never did. In all likelihood, he had no interest in the surface.

Gwen could have told herself that she did it for the realm, to protect the citizens from a potential danger, but she didn’t delude herself. To reform the kingdom, she had to keep winning. The end.

“Gwen,” her half-sister Morgane whispered softly. “We’re all waiting.”

Her hands on her waist, wearing her silver armor and a rapier, the princess turned around to face her party. Morgane, her ‘faithful cousin,’ fire sparkling in her deft fingers; Annie, the Academy’s most promising spellcaster, fidgeting in nervousness; Takeru the archer, cool and sharp; that lying [Alchemist] Walter Tye, a potion bandolier around his chest; and Lady Yseult, Lyonesse’s most experienced and fairest priestess.

Not the best party that she could have assembled, but each of them had proven their worth individually during the Convergence. A shame Percy had refused to come help avenge his master…

Then again, maybe he is the wisest of all of us, to let it go. “Behind me is the point of no return,” the princess told her troops. “Once we take a step, there will be no turning back. No retreat. The undead know we are coming, and they will show no mercy; neither should we. Either we return victorious… or we won’t come back.”

She had practiced the speech, the inflection in her voice, her very poise. She needed to radiate confidence, to present a strong face.

“If you wish to leave, this is your last moment to do so. I will not begrudge you if you do. None will accuse you of cowardice. I am asking you to follow me down to the depths of Helheim, and I cannot guarantee victory. All I can promise is that if we die, it will be with honor. Now, do any of you wish to leave?”

They all reacted differently.

Morgane was excited. She had been surprisingly bolder lately, uncharacteristically so; her victory during the Convergence must have given her some courage.

Lady Yseult remained dignified and confident, as befitting of an experienced leader.

Annie, the youngest and least experienced member of the group, was tense, but resolute. Gwen couldn’t help but smile a bit. The kingdom needed hard-working people like her at its helm.

Takeru kept a neutral face. He was strong, and confident that he could make it. Maybe he even relished the challenge deep down.

Walter Tye too kept a neutral face, but unlike Takeru, it wasn’t born of confidence. Gwen prized herself on being more in tune with the emotion of others than most.

When she looked at him, she felt coldness.

As for Gwen herself… even when surrounded by these strong, courageous people, only one word came to mind.

Loneliness.

She had only shared her dream with her half-sister, and Morgane supported it out of personal ambition. “Thank you,” the princess told the group. “Thank you for standing by my side, in spite of the setbacks.”

“The death of Jarl Gales was a tremendous blow, Your Highness.” The priestess shook her head sadly. “I pray that the gods were merciful with his soul. He may have died of a stroke instead of a blade, but he lived a warrior.”

That was no stroke, even if it only looked like one, the princess thought, that was a cold-blooded murder, and a warning.

If the necromancer had thought it would intimidate her into backing off, he had been mistaken. The fact he could reach even a Jarl had only increased her determination to take him down.

It had thrown a wrench into her plans though. With their leader dead, the Jarl’s private guard had immediately switched priorities from assisting in her quest, to bringing their leader’s corpse back home and managing the power transition. Just as the enemy planned.

“Neither his death nor his son’s will go unpunished,” the princess declared. “You have all drunk the gas antidote?” Everyone nodded. “Then cast your long-term buffing spells. Takeru and I will go first, Lady Yseult and Annie will follow, and Walter and Morgane will close the march.”

The group followed her demand, with Lady Yseult showering everyone with Balder’s divine light. Gwen made a sign to Morgane, inviting her to talk in private for a minute. “Yes, Gwen?” her bastard half-sister asked when they were out of earshot.

“Pay attention to the rear, but to the alchemist even more,” Gwen ordered. “He is stronger than he pretends, and he may be involved with the Master Below. If he acts suspicious, you have carte blanche to act with force.”

She had researched his background, especially since he had mentioned having survived a Convergence with Niflheim a decade ago. There had been four such incursions in the last two decade in the Feylands region, devastating entire towns and leaving only refugees behind.

In short, while the dates matched, his exact birthplace was impossible to track down; nor could any witness prove that a Walter Tye had ever lived in the area. A believable, but conveniently unverifiable, backstory. Her own private investigation into his ‘intern’ had met a similar dead end.

Finally, while albinism happened in populations descending from fairies, she had noticed that he didn’t make any sound while moving, and his breath rhythm never varied. That implied either extensive training or supernatural abilities.

Maybe Gwen was paranoid, but something felt off about this man.

“That’s…” Morgane frowned. “Okay… but what do you mean by stronger?”

“I asked a professor of Elemental Magic from the Academy,” Gwen said. “A spell capable of killing a giant warchief in one shot would have to be at least Tier V. Yet he only registered as capable of casting Tier IV spells in official documents.”

“He could have landed a critical hit,” Morgane said and shrugged. “He nailed the giant in the head. Or he simply forgot to fill the paperwork.”

“Maybe.” But Gwen’s guts told her otherwise. “Still, keep an eye on him.”

Keep your friends close, and your enemy closer. If he was involved in this dungeon nightmare, she would rather keep him within her rapier’s reach.

Still, if she was mistaken and he only hid his abilities to keep a low profile, Walter Tye might prove a welcome asset. With her country battered by monster incursions, she couldn’t afford to waste a skilled combatant.

It didn’t matter where he came from.

All would be judged on their merit, herself included.

The dark, stone corridors of the dungeon were eerily silent; and empty.

The toxic smog had long dispersed, allowing the group to progress without risking asphyxia. Yet they had been walking down for over an hour; they should have encountered monsters by now.

“Where are the undead?” Annie asked, more and more uneasy. “The underground was overflowing with them last time.”

“Did we kill that many of them?” Morgane wondered out loud. “I can’t believe so.”

Takeru scoffed. “They killed more of us than the opposite, and the corpses are missing.”

“Which means their numbers have grown instead of dwindled,” Gwen agreed. That was partly why she had chosen to lead an elite party instead of launching another raid; numbers didn’t help when the enemy could add the fallen to their ranks.

As for the lack of opposition, maybe the Convergence had reached the dungeon, but they should have seen battle marks.

No. In all likelihood, the necromancer had gathered his troops deeper within for an ambush.

The group eventually walked down a familiar, wet corridor; one leading to a dome cavern with a ceiling covered with blue moss. “Gwen…” Morgane whispered from behind, as the princess stopped the group near the entrance.

“Yes,” she said, recognizing the two murky pools and the narrow path between them. “That’s the place.”

The cave where Lamor and Ser Sigurd were killed, their bodies never recovered.

“So, you have come,” an ominous, male voice echoed through the cavern.

Gwen readied her sword first, and Takeru his bow, while the spellcasters behind them prepared themselves to cast emergency spells.

A shadowy specter appeared at the end of the walkway, a dark, smokey figure which the princess immediately recognized. A sinister entity from the Kingdom’s distant past, slain yet risen again. The Master Below.

The second he appeared, Annie struck him with a lightning bolt; but the specter remained unfazed; he was a mere illusion. “A [Phantom Projection],” Lady Yseult recognized the spell. “You came to taunt us, wicked one?”

“No,” the ghost said. “I have come to parley.”

Takeru scoffed. “Chitchat, really?”

Morgane glared at the specter. “Did you speak the first time we met? Because I mostly remember you trying to murder me.”

“How many people died from your gas?” Annie asked sharply.

“I have killed people invading my home, I admit it, but how is that a crime?” the ghost shifted as if confused. “If someone were to break into your house, looking to steal what rightfully belongs to you, are they not robbers? Should you not defend your people with all you have? I could have sent monsters above, but I never did.”

“You want respect for not murdering anyone when you had the chance?” Annie asked, aghast.

“He’s distracting us,” Tye whispered to Lady Yseult, grabbing an explosive potion on his bandolier. “We should keep moving down.”

“I want to listen still,” the priestess answered. “Murderous he may be, but it is against my god’s tenets to refuse an offer of peace when genuine.”

“I am saying that we could coexist,” the specter explained. “My only desire is to be left alone.”

“I do not think so,” Gwen said, having investigated the local rumors. “I studied the history of Lyonesse, and there were a number of unexplained disappearances in the past few years. While they abruptly ended two years ago, they remained unsolved. But it was your doing, was it not? You needed to feed because you are an [Ankou].”

“An [Ankou]?” Annie asked.

“The last unworthy dead of a year, who escaped from Helheim,” Walter Tye explained. “They are thieves of souls, who steal the years of others to fuel their immortality.”

The necromancer didn’t deny his nature. “Your criminals, and I found a workaround.”

“True,” Gwen agreed. “But that’s still murder.”

“So it is right for you adventurers to kill criminals for bounties or justice, but it is wrong for an undead needing to live? What is the difference with hunting—”

“This is a waste of time,” Takeru cut in.

“I am not interested in a philosophical debate,” Gwen replied. “Make your case quickly.”

“Then turn back. There has been too much blood, too much pain. If you take another step, carnage will follow. I do not know what you want to achieve by disturbing my rest, but all I wish is to be left alone.”

“I know that you are a Pale Serpent,” Gwen said, a few members of her party gasping upon recognizing the name. “If we leave you alone, you will create more undead and disrupt the cycle of souls.”

“And how would that be a bad thing?”

“Death is a necessary part of existence,” Lady Yseult said. “It is death that gives life meaning, and an unavoidable part of existence.”

“Bold words for someone who has never died!”

The specter raised his voice, his facade of calmness falling for a moment to reveal simmering wrath underneath. “I will tell you what the souls of Helheim feel,” the specter rasped. “Their existence is an eternity of regrets and misery. Centuries spent in cold and darkness, simmering in their jealousy for the living and the gods’ chosen souls. The afterlife is nothing but agony!”

“If they wished to avoid punishment, they should have lived an honorable life, following the will of the gods,” Lady Yseult replied, quoting the Aesir’s doctrine. Gwen herself kept a straight face, although she privately disagreed with it.

“Die honorably? How many people die ‘honorably’ in a world besieged by monsters? What about those who perish from accidents? From bad luck, or plagues? Countless mortals will never get the chance to die ‘honorably’ with a weapon in hand. The gods’ system is biased.” The specter shook his head. “Death is necessary? That’s a lie mortals tell themselves to avoid facing the brutal reality: that death is painful and pointless. But undeath offers an escape from this absurd system. The possibility for artists to create forever, for families to never be separated by monsters’ claws.”

“At what cost?” Gwen argued, remembering Ser Sigurd and Lamor. “How many good people need to die before you can succeed?”

“If I am successful, all those who died up to this point can be returned,” the specter pointed out. “Immortality will not only make those sacrifices worth it, but will erase them too. There will be no need for young people to die ignominiously against the forces of the Nine Realms.”

The words hit Gwen a bit too close to her liking. She too had sent warriors to their death in the name of eventually reforming Avalon, praying that the eventual result would be worth the cost.

No, it’s different, she thought. I don’t murder teenage students, nor assassinate old warriors in their sleep.

“I am not convinced,” Gwen replied. She had gone too far to back down now, and for her dream of changing Avalon, she would need to claim his head.

“Yeah, we won’t let you get away with all the blood on your hands,” Annie said.

“We have a job to do, the end,” Takeru added.

“All I can offer is a prayer, that you be released from the regrets that still anchor you to this world.” Lady Yseult shook her head with compassion. “I understand how you must feel, but the cycle of soul is necessary for the world to survive Ragnarok. May the gods have mercy on you.”

The specter remained eerily silent, as no one took his offer to leave.

“Then die.”

The ghost vanished into nothingness.

Takeru instantly tensed, his sharp senses noticing something. “Behind us!” he shouted a warning, the group turning around to look at the corridor.

Gwen heard them crawling towards them, long before she saw their red, bloodshot eyes staring from the darkness. A hungry horde of thousands, coming to devour the group whole.

Rats.

Gwen immediately started barking orders, and the battle for the dungeon began in earnest.