Jim and I slept in on the 14th of November. We both felt we deserved it, unlike Beldrak, who was wicked, thus, no rest for him. The poor fellow had to wake up at the dawn as usual and was dragged into the smithy to work.

We, on the other hand, slept until after the Sun was already up (not that we have seen it though) had a nice, warm meal with actual fresh eggs (Quirinus knows how the duergars got their hands on those), and had a leisurely stroll along the creek in the Duergar’s main cavern. Then, of course, we started to pester Beldrak to leave the duergars to their work and come with us to do the job our other employer, the illustrious Baron Alton tasked us with.

The duergars had no objection against that. While the dragon was the most problematic dweller of the maze around these parts, there were also undead and other inconvenient neighbours residing in the corridors north from the dwarves’ territory.

In the end, Trueanvil resigned himself to his fate, and our merry company pushed into the web of unknown shafts again.

Jim had an unusual companion this time. As the maze was more or less flat around these parts, he decided that a horse would come in handy for him. So the tiefling used his magic to summon a steed, just like Beldrak was able to call on his familiar. Jim’s choice was rather peculiar though, he rode a skeletal horse instead of a living one. He claimed that a skeleton was superior to flesh and blood horses in many regards. I assume he knew what he was talking about.

On the other hand, Trueanvil pointed out that riding into any civilised city on a mount like that was bound to raise eyebrows in the best case, and probably would end in Jim being lynched on the spot. I just remarked that I wished I would be able to cast a spell like this. A mount that cost nothing, ate nothing, and could be replaced for free if died, sounded infinitely useful.

We encountered the first mindless undead as soon as we entered uncharted territory. We accumulated too much experience about exploring underground rooms and corridors to let ourselves ambushed by such foes: we sneaked upon the skeletons instead and obliterated them before they knew what hit them.

Mere skeletons and zombies were quickly disposed of. They were even dumber enemies than goblins and had no misgivings about spreading out, letting us defeat them in detail.

But there weren’t only these undead waiting ahead of us. The fourth room we entered was empty, the fifth also. Some intelligent mind realised that we pushed into its territory and was now organising the defences.

We found the culprit in the final room, where the skeletons and zombies assembled.

“It is a wight,” said Beldrak, after he sent in his spider through a crack on the wall. “I count two skeleton archers, four zombies, one wight.”

“What is a wight?”

“An undead with some limited intelligence. It can give commands to mindless undead assigned to it, and it can even create zombies by killing people with its own hands. Thankfully it only has a small army this time.”

A small army that we were already chipping away. By this point, we have destroyed three skeletons and three zombies already, effectively halving the wight’s forces. This battle was promising to be more challenging, but the outcome still wasn’t a question.

We barged in, spells and javelins blazing. Jim carved though the zombies, cutting down one, his steed kicking apart another, then clashed with the wight. I went for the skeletons. As I learnt in the sunken citadel near Oakhurst, this type of undead was extremely vulnerable to bludgeoning weapons. Back then, I used a mace against them, but now I had a great hammer made by dwarven smiths, and both skeletons simply disintegrated under my blows. By the time I was finished, Jim also backed the wight into a corner, and Beldrak was levitating a ball of flames nearby, smashing it into the undead again and again. I took a wound from an arrow, and Jim was bleeding from two smaller slashes he got from the wight, but that was easily put right by the tiefling’s magic.

The room where we fought the wight had to be some kind of chapel in Durgeddin’s time. There was still an altar and several small statues there to hint that we were at a place of worship. Only one corridor led away from here, a long one that had rooms opening from it on both sides. It was a ghastly sight: the ground was littered with ork corpses, or rather skeletons after so much time.

“The greenskins got into this part of the fortress. They have won, we have seen them even drown their prisoners,” Jim summarised. “But then something starts killing them, and spooks them so badly, they don’t even come back to collect their dead. I am not buying that this is the work of the wight we just fought.”

“No, that seems unlikely,” agreed Trueanvil. “I think the wight himself was but a servant. This seems the handiwork of a necromancer. He probably had more than one wight even, it’s just the last two centuries whittled down their numbers. I bet we will still find skeletons and zombies that were assigned to other wights, but now they are without a controller.”

“So this was done by a dwarven necromancer?”

“Yes. I think a dwarven wizard must have set up contingencies before the orks stormed the fort, and when the greenskins started to swarm on these corridors, the spells activated. Some orks died, rose as wights, some other nasty spells started raining down on them, so they left in a hurry and never came back.”

“Interesting theory,” I said. “But why did not all orks rise as some kind of undead?”

“Not enough magic, probably,” shrugged Beldrak. “And you can’t argue with the results. Whatever he left here got the job done. In fact, we best hope that the orks triggered all the wards and traps here because I don’t think I could match this kind of power. If we only meet some more undead, this will be our lucky day.”

“Why not put up the contingencies on the very first level, though?,” mused I. “Why set them up here, at the last place where the orks will come to? If you place them right behind the gate, the ork charge may penetrate the fortress, but then it will simply fall apart, and leave behind an undead-infested area that will be an obstacle to subsequent attacks.”

“You are right,” the wizard allowed. “Maybe he only started to set up the wards after the orks got into the fortress. This was not defence, but revenge.”

The discussion petered out after that, and we got to work. We went ahead room by room, clearing the chambers out with our usual method. Beldrak prepared a mote of fire, I prepared a javelin, Jim opened the door afar. If there was something inside, we killed it, if there was nothing inside, we looted the place. Silver was steadily accumulating in our pouches, while the number of skeletons and zombies dwindled.

We only had one inconvenient surprise, but that was indeed a bad one. We were in the process of smashing three skeletons to smithereens, when an old, well-dressed dwarven gentleman emerged from the wall, radiating some silvery glow. I looked at him, and my mind was filled with inexplicable dread. I screamed, slashed at it, Jim likewise, but the Beldrak had the worst of it. He just quietly passed out.

The glowing dwarf seemed like he wanted to tell us something, but in our fear-induced frenzy, we couldn’t care less and hacked and slashed at it, until it simply dissolved in the air. Only then did we go to check up on Trueanvil.

The man completely passed out. For a while, I even thought he died, because I couldn’t simply shake him awake. Then I saw that he still breathed, though weakly. His face was also somehow changed.

“Was he always so wrinkled?” asked Jim.

“No,” I frowned. “And I don’t think the man had any grey hair before…”

It took half an hour before Beldrak finally came too, but he instantly guessed the solution we were debating.

“You say, the bastard made me older? There are some ghosts with that ability. What rotten luck! Curses like this are easy to remove right after they are put on someone, but much harder later on, and in a few days, it becomes impossible. If only we could find a higher-ranking priest somewhere, it would be alright… Jim, maybe you can try to break the curse?”

“I am sorry,” the tiefling said shrugged. “But I have no idea how to do that.”

“Well, that’s that then. I will just live some years fewer, it seems.”

“How old are you anyway?” I asked.

“Fifty-three. Or at least I have been that many an hour ago, but this affair has left me a few decades older by the look of it. My father’s hair started to turn grey in his early nineties, so I would assume I have been aged around thirty-forty years.”

“That’s a lot!” I exclaimed, horrified by the possibility.

“I still have more than a century left to live, if I take care of myself,” he shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I will come by a Potion of Youth even. That would restore some of those lost years. Stranger things have happened before. Now, help me stand, my legs are still weak.”