012 – Undeath

***

I didn’t dare complain about the long march through the night, because at least I had boots on. Malisent walked in her bare feet. The rough terrain didn’t trouble her too much, as the witch’s magic gave her superhuman levels of endurance, pain resistance, and healing.

Our transportation had shattered to bits, leaving us to walk the next leg of the journey. I expected it to be another grueling march, but found walking overland to be almost refreshing after more than a week cramped on the goblin raft. Meditation exercises built up a supply of mana in my body, which in turn made me feel well rested and lively. But there was a long way to go before I could match Malisent’s athletic feats, such as diving into a river while avoiding a snapping turtle the size of a truck.

Traveling down the Spitpoison River had kept us from the predators that stalked the wastelands, but we neglected to watch for the aquatic monsters that menaced the rivers, lakes, and seas. No part of the continent was truly safe. We tried to stay more vigilant for dangers in our path.

I found myself distracted by Malisent’s current state of undress. She wore only my loose coat, which reached down to her thighs. My eyeballs had a magnetic attraction to her exposed legs, and my gaze drifted that direction no matter how often I pulled it away. Maybe the mana affected my brain. She also lost the covering for her sword; the unsheathed steel glittered naked in the moonlight and served to remind me of the witch’s true nature.

Malisent insisted on walking in front to watch for traps. The wasteland had other perils besides monsters. Many of the plants were toxic, either when ingested or touched. We passed by many plants I had never seen or heard of before: fireblood nettles, snapgrass, stinking susans, fatal moonshade, flak pods, jilted lovers, glue-pot willows. It was a botanical fever dream. Some of the plants could move their limbs, and would shoot out barbed spikes or thorny vines at anything that passed too close. The skeletons of small animals littered the ground at the foot of a tree with wicked looking spikes; their rotted flesh had become fertilizer.

The wilderness was an awful place.

We marched through the night and stopped briefly at dawn to scan the skies for devil-birds gliding at high altitudes. When traveling on land, we could stay under tree cover to hide ourselves from the giant avians.

“What are you looking at, novice?” Malisent said.

“Nothing. It’s just. Your hair. It’s gotten, uh, big.”

“Damn it. This always happens.”

She swept aside her hair. Earlier, cords and metal clips kept her hair restrained, but after getting soaked in the river and drying out on a march, her hair exploded into a wild mass of curls. It stuck out all over and fell down into her face.

“We’re almost to the abandoned settlement. It’s good we arrived in the day. The sun will give us an advantage over the undead gaunts.”

“Those are monsters, right?”

“Corpses. Animated by the tortured specters of the dead. They roam the place, jealous of the living and hungry for flesh.”

“That’s… Wow. Okay.”

“There’s nothing to be gained fighting them, as the gaunts will rise again the next day. Only an exorcist or a necromancer can permanently deal with such monsters. So we will avoid as many as possible and race to the lighthouse at the end of the jetty. From there, we may be able to signal a passing ship.”

We came to the end of the river valley where the Spitpoison flowed into a sheltered harbor. Beyond that, the dark waters of the gulf extended to the horizon. An open clay pit sat at the bank of the river, where settlers had dug up clay and baked it into red bricks for their town. Smokestacks crumbled over a row of old kilns nearby. Obtaining durable construction materials was paramount for any newcomers to the continent, for the land was rife with danger. The townsfolk used those bricks to erect a large wall that fully encircled the settlement and kept out the local monsters.

That wall did not save them from whatever curse befell the town.

“Follow me close, novice. Don’t let anything grab you. The gaunts are weak, but they can overwhelm you with numbers.”

She didn’t have to tell me that. I had no intention of fighting walking corpses unarmed. My polearm had fallen in the river.

The front gate had rotted away, giving us open access to the town. This settlement was nowhere as old as Power Station Thirteen, but even a single century could reduce a place to ruins. Weather and decay turned all the wood to dust. The roofs of the buildings caved in, leaving empty brick shells behind. Weeds and grass grew everywhere, and dirt paths cut deep grooves through the streets where the undead wandered restlessly.

A moaning figure emerged from a ruined building. It rushed forward with its arms reaching out to us. Time had also decayed this person into a withered corpse, but one far better preserved than it had any right to be. Its skin was like dried leather. I could not tell if it had been a man or a woman in life. A dark and morbid energy radiated from the monster.

Malisent removed its head from its neck with an effortless slice. The leathery skull bounced into the tall grass. These monsters were even weaker than the trolls. The body fell to the ground, but then rose back up again. It charged a second time, in no way inconvenienced by its missing head.

The undead had a clear advantage over normal monsters that needed to keep all their organs in the right places. I could see how they’d be a nuisance. Malisent followed up by chopping off a leg. That did not kill the creature or cause it any pain, but it did make walking difficult. The headless corpse crawled after us.

“More are on their way. We need to make a run for it,” she said.

I ran behind as Malisent cleared the path. The undead rushed out from all parts of the settlement and converged on the main street to stop us. They attacked heedless of any danger to themselves, driven by their mad hunger. Malisent hobbled them as she passed by, but did not stop to fully dismember the corpses. Fallen gaunts and severed limbs marked the path we took.

As more undead obstructed the street, one of them managed to grab hold of me. Its skeletal hands gripped with unnatural strength. A horrid chill ran through me. The monster’s touch weakened me and drained away a bit of my mana.

“Gah!” I cried out. I could not pull free from its grasp.

Malisent saw that I was in trouble and stopped to clear away the threat. She severed the arm of the gaunt holding me and beat back several more of the monsters. That wouldn’t work for long, because every one she disabled was replaced by two more rushing in to join the fight.

“Don’t give up now. We’re halfway home,” she shouted.

I recovered from the undead’s attack and stumbled out of the crowd. Malisent finished off a few more and dashed to catch up with me. Then, suddenly, she fell to the ground.

Malisent had stepped on one of the carnivorous plants. The leafy plant concealed a rigid spike which it shot out into the sole of her foot, piercing the flesh. She pulled out the bloody spike and tossed it aside. But when she took a step forward, the intense pain caused her to limp. She couldn’t put weight on it. She couldn’t run.

“Okay. Now it’s my turn to save you,” I said.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s called teamwork.” I lifted her up and carried her on my back. After witnessing all her fights, I would have thought her to weigh several tons, but she was very light.

“Just run ahead to the lighthouse, you fool. I can handle these things.” She protested but didn’t stop me.

I jogged forward, more mindful of the vegetation underfoot. All the gaunts had met in the center of town, which meant fewer clogged the road ahead of us. The second half of our footrace was less crowded than the first.

In Strythe’s body now improved with an inner fire, I could sprint at a good speed and still dodge the slow moving undead. I let my fire burn freely. Cooling it down when inactive let one conserve mana, while flaring it up in emergencies let one perform amazing martial feats. Malisent’s flames touched against mine, licking against my back.

The far end of the town met the harbor’s rocky shore. A broken gap in the wall led outside. Giant boulders formed a long breakwater that stretched out to lighthouse built atop a craggy rock. Its outer layers of paint and cement peeled away in patches to show the red bricks underneath. No fire burned at the summit.

“Alright. Set me down. The gaunts won’t follow us this far out,” Malisent said as we stepped onto the heaps of boulders. “And don’t ever touch me again, if you want to live.”

I recalled her saying that swordsmen didn’t like revealing their techniques to others. Maybe they also avoided direct contact, since it allowed a mage to sense so much about another person’s inner fire. Or maybe it was because she was almost naked.

She ripped the sleeves off my coat and cut them into long strips of cloth to wrap around her feet. They were not quite shoes, but might ward off nettles and thorns.

We picked our way across the jumbled boulders to the base of the lighthouse. The undead did not pursue us. Near the entrance to the building, we found a wooden rowboat. Unlike everything else in the settlement, the rowboat was fairly new and in good condition.

“It must be the one Veylien and Gritha used,” Malisent said.

The interior of the lighthouse was just a large stairwell leading to the roof. The building had no other purpose but lighting the way for incoming ships at night or in foggy weather. On the roof, ashes filled a bowl-shaped fire pit. The settlers did not have oil or electric lanterns to install, and lumestones had no power source in this age with so little mana. So huge bonfires had lit up the tower.

“We’ll have to collect some drift wood for a fire. When a ship passes, we can throw on weeds and shrubs to create a smoke signal.”

“Do many ships come out to this wasteland?” I asked.

“No. But river estuaries are good fishing grounds, so daring fishers will trawl along the continent’s shoreline. That’s why this people settled this harbor in the first place. It could be days for the next ship, or weeks if we’re unlucky.”

Gritha and Veylien had already departed. They left days ago. So it might be a long time before the next ship visited this cursed harbor. A rescue could be a long ways off.

We had our own little boat now, and could row past the walled town for gathering wood and food. There would be no need for running up and down main street. At the midday gloam, we gazed out from the top of the tower to the ruins. As the daylight faded and disappeared, the town went pitch dark. Faint blue lights appeared over the crumbling buildings, like puffs of glowing gas.

“What is that?”

“Those are the specters that possess the gaunts. When its dark, they roam free. When the sun is out, they return to their bodies. They’re harder to deal with than solid monsters, so we won’t risk going in there at night.”

That explanation didn’t make sense to me. A daemon needed an anchor. I couldn’t see how a glowing gas could work, unless it was tethered directly to a more solid body. If that was the case for these specters, then smashing their corpses should have released and destroyed the spirit. Also, there would be no reason for the monsters to stay in the town; they could wander wherever they moved their bodies.

“And they’re ghosts, right? These things used to be people?”

“Yes. They died under the affliction of a curse. So their souls, instead of enkindling into an inner fire, became dark shadows doomed to forever haunt this place. These specters are weak things, so their minds have faded away. They have only a trace of their former selves.”

“Hmmm…”

That hadn’t happened to me. My memories survived thousands of years. And I wasn’t conscious during that time. But these specters demonstrated that memories could be transferred from a person to an aetheric construct. The manaquake somehow recorded my mind on the crystal monolith, and Strythe’s touch caused it to merge with his. The original Ariman died and a new version of me came into being. I wondered if my unprecedented method of rebirth would have long term effects. I may have become a normal mage, no different from any other, or I might have ghostly disabilities.

The world had changed and magic ruled. I couldn’t make too many assumptions about things. But these mysteries both irritated and intrigued me. I wanted to poke and prod the undead spirits to see how they worked. Maybe a few weeks stuck at this lighthouse would give me a chance to investigate.