The hallways of the under city were largely intact. I supported Myrkai as I treaded ever deeper into the halls haunted by the dead. Most of the spirits remaining were so faded that they didn’t even appear to my attuned senses. Rather, the faint sounds of battles long ended would drift down to my ears through the centuries and the disembodied weeping of the dead that never found solace would pierce my heart with the hint of long forgotten grief and tragedy.

Many chambers opened off to either side of the corridor, but the doors were also of that strange indestructible material and thoroughly stuck. I only made a cursory attempt to open the first one before I pushed deeper in search of Bia’Keres. Cracks spread crazily through the ceiling in places and I occasionally had to skirt places where the ceiling and walls and partially collapsed exposing rock and dirt beyond the nearly meter thick supernatural stone. I didn’t want to consider what kind of stresses were powerful enough to shatter a material said to be stronger than steel.

I faced my first serious decision as we reached a T intersection going both right and left. I visualized a simple map of the city overhead and tried to guess at the distances we were traveling. At this point, we were still under the arena plaza. Either direction was as good as the other for my purposes, but not if I wanted to find Bia.

“I have no skill in tracking, do you?” I asked Myrkai.

Myrkai seemed to consider a lengthier explanation, but simply shook his head negatively as well.

I searched for some sign to indicate which direction Bia had gone and a rush of relief washed over me as I recognized clear scuff marks toward the left. The heavy dust carpeting the ground held prints clear enough for even my amateur tracking attempts. I took the left fork and pushed forward with renewed hope. Perhaps we could actually catch up with Bia before anything befell her. There didn’t seem to be anything living in these halls, but I wasn’t sanguine about our safety here. The anger of a thousand ghosts floated through these halls like a choking smoke of ill will and unquenched hatred.

As I pushed down the corridor, Myrkai’s attempts to support himself grew weaker until his legs completely gave out and his arm released its hold on my should. I caught him and lowered him carefully to the ground and checked him once again.

“Myrkai!” His eyelids fluttered faintly and looked at me dimly. My death sense prophesied his eventual death within the next day from a continuously weakening constitution and biological agents. In other words, it would be a combination of exposure and troll blood that killed him. Neither one on its own would be enough to bring the cat warrior low. In fact, I sensed the influence of a supernatural agent weakening him even now. These halls steeped in death were not a healthy environment for him. I cast about for something to ease his suffering, but the dusty ruin didn’t even offer two sticks to build a fire and we had entered the arena focused on surviving the battle with little concern beyond it. I didn’t even have a cloak to lend him to ward off the chill. With no other choice, I picked him up. He was barely conscious enough to stay in a piggy back position and thus we proceeded deeper into the ruin with him leaning against my back wafting the acrid stench of troll blood and wet cat past my nose whenever I slowed.

The corridors were often damaged, but as I moved further and further from the epicenter of the impact, the more intact things became. At the same time, Bia’s trail turned only when absolutely necessary when the hallway she was following turned or dead ended. Several times I followed the same dead ends as she must have into small rooms crowded with rubble or closed doors that stayed stubbornly closed. My pursuit stretch out to hours and I could only hope that the statistical averages were on my side and I was gaining some ground by skipping some of the dead ends she fell into. Still, she must have been untold hours ahead of us. Who knew when we would catch up? I had long since lost any clear understanding of where we were except that we continued to go mostly south and west. Presumably, we were near the edge of the city by now, perhaps even beyond the walls.

The corridor I was following suddenly broke out into a large hall and I slowed to a stop as a tableau of battle centuries old spread out before my eyes. The corridor I stood in overlooked a wide hall that disappeared into darkness to my left and right, but the ghosts in this hall were more tortured than any I had ever seen. Poised in mid combat through out the hall were men and women engaged in a desperate struggle for their lives that had been frozen millennia ago, yet never ended. Their forms and bodies remained locked in combat, frozen like a photographer’s action shot or the sick joked of twisted sculpture.

I set Myrkai down, before I stepped into the room and slowly wended my way through the statues. As I gazed into their faces, their gazes turned toward me, small shreds of their tortured souls tracking me with their eyes and no matter what expression of excitement, fear, or bloodlust had actually been frozen on their faces countless years before, I saw it warped by the purest agony. Yes, each and every one of these seemingly ivory sculptures still contained a soul.

I stopped in the center of the room and gazed in every direction, imagining a time when these halls were not made of eldritch material and when its inhabitants were not dead or horrifically cursed. The walls would have been stone, perhaps marble, at one point. These warriors would have been flesh and blood. The doors would have been wooden and their slightly rusty hinges would have given way beneath a man’s push, rather than locking up solid.

As I contemplated, in that field of dead and petrified, but not quite still, bodies, a body moved through them towards me. My eyes disregarded the movement as the shadowy movements of a ghost or the writhing of the maddened souls within these cursed statues. By the time I realized it wasn’t my imagination or a phantom, a heavy blow had already struck me and I tumbled backwards, almost knocked sprawling by the unexpected assault.

“This is your fault!” screeched my attacker.

I wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth and set myself to receive another charge. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Disappear!” it snarled. The green glow of my tattoos was the only light, but its eyes still glowed red. It wore a tattered robe coated in dust and its hands were continually grasping. With a snarled word it lunged forward again and when I tried to block, it grabbed my arm and jerked me forward with strength greater than my own. The other hand raked across my face, all but taking my eyes out and blood ran freely from the triple wound.

I ignored the damage and accelerated in the direction of the pull, brutally slamming into it… her. She stumbled back and one of the weapons of the petrified warriors pierced through her back. I took a step back as she pulled herself off the impaling weapon. It was Bia, although she was all but unrecognizable. Her face was a mask of grief and anger and her clothing had seen the worst of hours stumbling through the ruins for mile after mile. Something was inherently wrong here. She had magic, yet she hadn’t used any of it in some time, nor was she attacking with it.

The wound in her back didn’t seem to even slow her down. As soon as she was free of the weapon, she lunged at me again. She wasn’t fighting with her usual skill, but her strength was impressive, beyond impressive for a woman who massed barely half of what I did. I let her charge forward and clocked her upside the head with as much care as possible. The blow seemed to stun her for a moment and I grabbed her and pulled her into a sleeper hold, a move I had never used in earnest in my previous life, but very useful here. At first her struggles were a real challenge to contain as she thrashed in every conceivable way to try and get free but after about 30 seconds, the hold began to work its magic and she soon passed out completely. I picked her up and carried her back to Myrkai where I set her down carefully.

Myrkai roused himself to make a questioning noise.

“She attacked me in amongst those statues,” I said. “She seemed to blame me for something and want me gone.” I paused as I let that sink in, then deliberately shut my mind off that depressing train of thought. “I’m going to study this room some more. If I think of any brilliant ideas, I’ll let you know.”

I stepped out amongst the statues, but this time, I stopped at the first warrior I reached and looked into his eyes. The torment of being frozen in place yet conscious for an unfathomable time period look back at me. This state was a horror I couldn’t allow to persist. I activated my abilities and reached into the statue’s chest. Retrieving the soul was easy, evidence of willingness on the spirit’s part, whether it understood what was going on or not. I moved through the room, collecting the souls of the warriors, regardless of which side of the conflict they were on. I didn’t know what the sides were and they hardly mattered anymore. It was safe to say that these men were all equal in death. My journey took me down to the end of the hall where the were a pair of double doors blown off their hinges, and back around and up to the other end of the hall, where there was a throne on a raised dais over which two sculptures leaned, one fallen backwards and his sword locked with the statue above him.

I retrieved their souls, leaning awkwardly around the bulky warrior to reach the slimmer man below. As my glance turned away from them, my eyes, accustomed to the absolute darkness, spotted a speck of light far beyond the ceiling. There was a hole above the throne that led out to the sky!

“Myrkai!” I called, still softly despite my excitement. In the profound silence of this tomb, my words were clear even though we were separated by half the length of the hall. I quickly ran back to him, waving away a blue window as I went. He was still slumped against the wall when I reached him and hadn’t woken for my shout. “Myrkai, I need you,” I said as I shook him.

Myrkai woke slowly, but he was still weak. I frowned and looked at the dozing Bia’Keres. I didn’t know what caused her hostility before, really, and I couldn’t promise it wouldn’t repeat, but I couldn’t get Myrkai out of that hole without her help. In fact, I could really use some light, too. If she had been thinking clearly, she likely would have defeated me in combat, but then again, being unarmed was a larger detriment for her than it was for me. I decided to bite the bullet and shook her gently awake.

“Bia! Bia!” I called. She slowly came too. As her eyes opened, there was no trace of that red glow I remembered so clearly. As she looked at my face she seemed startled and her eyes traced the lines of the deep scratches she had made across my face.

She turned her gaze to the floor as she answered. “Y-yes, My Lord.” I silently thanked which ever higher powers were meddling with my life for her apparent sanity, temporary or not.

“Bia, there is an exit, but I can’t get Myrkai out by myself.”

“Of course, my Lord,” she answered. “What can I do?”

“Follow me,” I said as I gathered up Myrkai. I led her over to the throne and pointed to the ceiling. “There’s a hole up there. I think I can lift you up and then you can take Myrkai from me and pull me up after.”

“I-I’ll try, my Lord,” Bia answered.

“Good,” I nodded. I climbed up on top of the statue. The hole was almost directly above my head. Bia’s eyes suddenly began to glow with a comparatively blinding light. For the first time I could clearly see our escape route. It seemed to be a chimney more than two dozen feet deep, formed by one of the ceiling stones falling and the dirt sifting out of the crack. It would be a difficult road to climb, especially with dead weight, but both of us were beyond humanly strong, currently, so it should be possible.

“It would be better if you can lift us both, my Lord,” Bia asserted. “I will increase my strength, temporarily.” She closed her eyes for a moment and a palpable aura of strength settled over her along with a glimmer of luminescence that seemed to coat her body. When her eyes reopened, the light from before was gone, leaving us to darkness again. “There, that should help, my Lord.” She picked up Myrkai and using strips ripped from her robe, she tied his body to her own. Then she lightly stepped up onto the statue next to me.

“I’ll have to throw you a bit to make it,” I said, as I pictured dimensions of the hole from my recent memory. “Ready?” She nodded. I formed my hands into a stirrup and lifted her until I was fully standing with my arms upraised. Bia jumped from that unsteady perch and managed to establish a chimney hold with her arms and legs in the hole. She was just about to reach a hand back for me to grab and hoist myself into the chimney with her when the walls of the dirt fill hole began to crumble beneath her hands and feet.

“Go! Climb!” I shouted, and Bia’keres obeyed flawlessly as always. Her glimmering body clearly scrambled and clawed her way up the nearly vertically shaft as dirt rained down like a river past her. I heard loud crashes as first one and then half a dozen of the thick square ceiling stones around the hole collapsed and the ceiling caved in. I dived away, scrambling through the rapidly disintegrating ceiling and dodging immobile statues until I cleared that end of the hall. A dull rumble filled the air as the dirt filled in the upper end of the hall, burying the throne, the dais, and many of the statues. The dust was oppressive and for a time I didn’t breath as I tried to see if Bia or Myrkai had come back down with the cave-in. I could determine nothing. My last glimpse of Bia’keres had shown her moving with fantastical speed up the shaft, so I hoped that she had reached the top with Myrkai. My need, or perhaps desire, to breath finally forced me out of the hall and I stumbled out through the smashed double doors into a new corridor, far enough that not too much of what I breathed in every breath was dirt.

That route to the surface was gone with no more hope of escape. I couldn’t even try to dig a new hole, since fresh dirt would sift down continuously to thwart the effort. My only option was to press deeper into the ruin and hope that luck would present itself again.

I settled down against the wall, alone, in the darkness, and for the first time I let my head fall into my hands. No tears escaped my eyes, but I shuddered with reaction for several minutes while largely incoherent thoughts and emotions rampaged through me. I let them run their course until they began to make some sort of sense.

“This is it. It’s just me now,” I soliloquized quietly. My voice seemed to stir echoes of panic and battle from further down the tunnel. The partially buried hall was quiet, at least. I took a controlled breath and spit out the mud in my mouth. “My biggest threat is probably dehydration,” I mused. “But I’ll be fine right? Undead don’t die of thirst. Of course not. Undead only wish they could die of thirst.”

On that grim note, I rose to my feet again and took stock. One Ker’Haros, Chosen of Death, slightly used. One mystical assassin sword, slightly dulled. One set of trousers. I’d had a shirt once. What did I do with that? Oh, that’s right. The Crystarix pretty much destroyed it. Bia must have taken it off me when I wasn’t looking, or I tore it off myself. Ah, right, one chest bandage, previously a shirt. That was the sum total of my belongings. Minions? Dead or missing, at least the physical ones. I think I’d established that the spiritual ones were of varying usefulness. Well then, onward!

I stepped forward heading down the ancient corridor. Once again the doors were stuck or blocked with rubble, but there were signs that I was approaching a less damaged area of the citadel. As I did, I occasionally would run across the petrified bodies of the ancients, occasionally simply petrified corpses, but just as often knots of soldiers in battle or civilians fleeing, still with their souls tortured by the slow sifting of years grinding their sanity away. I couldn’t simply leave them here, so every time I would reach out my hand and they would gladly flow into me just for a change from their eternal frozen wakefulness.

I grew thirsty. I grew hungry. At first I napped on the cold stone amid the dust, but it wasn’t long before the maddening thirst drove me to my feet moving forward once again. I could find no true sleep here anyway. The dead of this place intruded on my dreams and all was awash with fire and terror and an awful eternity of painfully silent waiting. I had trouble keeping my death sense to a level where I could still see through the murk of death without turning it off completely. I lost all track of time.

It was day six or ten when I stumbled to the end of a hallway and into a room different from those that went before. There were more rooms open in this area. I’d noticed that with my hazy brain. I wasn’t thinking much, anymore. I stopped before I left the room though as the details began to sink in. Pinned to the wall was a contoured map, the raised geography cast into sharp contrast by the faint light of my tattoos. I paused and drew near it, like a rodent attracted to a shiny trinket. It was several minutes before my brain turned over like an aging car and started translating what I was seeing into meaning.

The map showed this ruined city in detail. Apparently, the city had been built on a hill, once. There were various different sections broken out. The map had no color, as it was petrified into that mystical ivory like the walls, the people, the corpses, everything down here. I pried the map off the wall, no easy feat against the nearly indestructible tacks stuck into the walls at the corners. Once I had it down, I laid it on the ground and began a careful study, mumbling to myself as I did. Seemingly endless perusal and repetition was necessary to get my brain to track, but eventually, I determined my location, at least roughly, going on the assumption that the catastrophe that cratered the city hit someplace near the center and that was where the arena was now. If that was at all correct, there should be a western wall, but more importantly, there was a western tower, a tower tall enough to reach the surface after millennia of silt and debris had raised the ground level nearly thirty feet in most places.

I glanced about the room I was in blearily, and sure enough, there were books on shelves and toppled desks. There was a even a petrified ivory corpse, the librarian I presumed, blessed a millennia ago with a quick death. I pulled book after book off the shelf, but few of them opened, and of those few which did, their pages were blank ivory. It would take heavy inlay, engraved tablets, or similar tactile workmanship to be of any use. I followed my task, stopping and starting as my brain occasionally left me staring blankly in confusion, distracted by thirst. I knew I wasn’t functioning on all cylinders.

Eventually, I gathered the map, two expensive heavily frescoed tomes, and a fat work that looked like it was written in brail, and shoved them all under my left arm in an unwieldy bundle. Then, with frequent recourse to the map, I ventured back out into the ruins, stopping occasionally to free a soul from a petrified prison without hardly a thought.