After a bit of throwing up and cleaning up from half the group, they were ready to move again. Corvayne led them down a gore soaked ramp that corkscrewed around the outside of a large cylindrical chamber. Cold water misted them from both the entrance they had come from and another part of the complex as they wound their way down and helped push some of the reek of death out of the chamber. There were more murals, mostly repeating the pilgrimage scenes he had seen before. He wasn't fully paying attention, having set a glow stick near the top of the ramp that he was eyeing, as well as one near the bottom that hopefully would catch anything moving to attack.

Bodies alone could mean anything, but how clean the kills were put him on edge. The bandits did not look like they had been wounded more than once or twice in each case, aside from the hole in the skull which on a closer inspection of a body seemed to not be leaking blood.

One more he looked up then back down at the murky water the ramp was corkscrewing towards. There was also a cross passage too. If he was going to ambush someone, it would be down by the water or from a side passage.

Hari meanwhile was using her [Investigate] skill on a body and frowned. “Bandit-Cultist body.”

Corvayne looked around. “Anything else?”

“Bad gear, most of it damaged and poorly kept up. The good news is that my [Investigate] tells me they are much weaker than us, so even if this fight was catastrophic for them...”

Corvayne nodded. “It might not be another Argyle situation.”

Gary stammered out “Uh you know, me and Brines could totally make sure the route back is clear.”

“Alone?” Wick looked between them. “You know that if Corvayne fought these guys, he'd had made an even bigger mess.”

He looked back at Wick. “That's part of why I'm worried. A few of these guys were killed by precision strikes. A regular monster probably doesn't know that you can cut the inner thigh to kill someone nearly instantly.”

Brines looked around. “Four threats? A monster and an assassin?”

“These bodies are not very old.” Corvayne stated, wiping a hand off on one of his storage ring towels. “We might be dealing with more than one monster, after all. The elders described one with a large sword....”

“Which wouldn't make these kinds of wounds.” Hari gestured.

“Not unless the target is totally unaware. At least a few of these men had drawn weapons in their hands.”

Gary blinked. “Any good loot?”

“No. As Hari said: inferior weapons. Mosh makes far better stuff.” Corvayne looked down and with his toe pulled a net from under a slumped man.

“Maybe they were after the monster?”

Nobody else had any other theories, and Wick was already ahead of him in the time he stopped to try to examine a body. Corvayne jogged downwards, air cool and damp as the sound of water falling and flowing came from the bottom.

“Wick slow down. We don't know if it's got a faster way down here.”

Wick paused and sighed. “Look, if it comes at us, we'll kill it. No way some monster is more dangerous than a guy trained in a Tower for years and given hand picked artifacts.”

“I'd rather not find out if we don't need to.” Corvayne frowned.

Wick patted his shoulder and pointed at the walls. “There's answers down here. Don't get all Scully on me now Corvayne. You're the one who's charged into zombie dragons for no reason.”

The moment he heard the Z word Corvayne had a terrible chill run down his spine, and he had his spear out before his nose picked up the smell of rotting flesh.

He saw the things start to rise from the water pooled near the bottom of the ramp, limbs reaching as a mixture of lumpy rotting flesh and odd fleshy segments rising up. It looked like the living parts were animating the dead.

“Gary, up here! Seru watch our back, the bodies behind us might get up.”

There were at least thirty of them, and as they started to stumble on four legs up the ramp Corvayne used a shadow hand to pull out his fire knife. Shooting a jet of fire he ignited the first wave and could hear them make sounds like wet balloons deflating, shivering but stubbornly crawling at them.

Wick aided him then with a blast of [Disrupt] that bounced between monsters, leaving trails of green and causing the first hit to simply fall apart.

“Hah, magic is keeping the thing together!”

Corvayne didn't gloat even as he started jabbing monsters and moving back, spraying with the dagger in short bursts to ignite anything that wasn't already ablaze. “These might be a distraction. Hari, keep alert back there!”

Gary, to his credit, whimpered but stood next to Corvayne and followed his example, throwing out [Thrusts] to match Corvayne jabbing the slow moving monsters and backing off. It was almost a weapons drill, similar to the fight he had with waves of goblins but slower. He had to force himself to look forward and trust Hari, as he kept expecting an assassin to drop in the middle of their formation.

It wasn't until the last of the tumor-riddled zombies flopped to the ground that Corvayne realized there was no ambush.

Corvayne looked about, taking a few even breaths. Gary was winded, but unharmed. Wick was resting, eyes closed. He knew she had mentioned meditating to help get her spells back to full power after using too many. Brines was glowing a little, a complex pattern overlaying the ground. Corvayne would have to ask him later what he was doing. Hari was still watching their flank but gave him a thumbs up. Kirae and Seru were near the wall, also looking for other possible hostiles or just staying away from the fight.

His team intact, Corvayne looked to his surroundings. There could be more in the water, which meant he was going to keep the group clear of the passages down in the murk. There was no reason to go all the way down, not with a walkway between the two dry doors to the sides. On top of zombies, without knowing how deep it was it seemed like a poor idea in the already cold ruins to soak themselves. At best, they'd catch a cold.

He pulled the mag light he kept in his ring out, and used it to look for more monsters both in the side tunnel and the water. He could see the current was flowing into something like a rip in the world. A Tower entrance? As he was watching, a pair of the zombies were squeezed from the hole and started sloshing towards him.

Wick was watching them slowly wade towards the ramp, only taking a moment when they got close to blast them with [Disrupt].

Wick hummed to herself then said, “I bet it's like those bigfeet we fought... like there were fifty all right near the portal.”

Gary pointed. “Oh, so it's like a dungeon break? In stories when there's too many monsters in a dungeon it spills out.”

Wick shrugged. “We don't know how the tower works, but if dead fucking bodies are coming out of it I think we can put that rift down there as our last option for exploring this place.”

Corvayne nodded. “I would likely be fine if it were ghosts, but I don't have a zombie killing move.”

Brines was flabbergasted. “You are faced with the living dead, something that's horrified people since the first cave dwellers thought about it, and that's your problem?”

Hari laughed and patted Brines's shoulder. “You will fight a lot of zombies in a standard party. Besides these are some sort of life variant, they are animated by a cancer that killed its host and kept going.”

“How was that supposed to make me feel better? Let's get the hell out of here!”

Hari rolled her eyes. “I looked and they are not contagious, they are just dumb tough monsters. You have a flame thrower dagger too.”

Corvayne guessed that Mend could fix a zombie disease if push came to shove, but was relieved anyway that he would hopefully avoid having to be a human taxi this week. He felt a sharp pain in his leg and found another splinter and pulled it out and tossed it in the water. Back to the mission. Or side mission.

Corvayne started looked carefully at one of the exits. Aside from just admiring how well the stones fit together, he used his light to focus his attention on scrapes or little things left behind, and in a stroke of luck found a little blood marking the floor of one passage. “I think this way... Wick? Hari? Kirae? Any input?”

Kirae responded first. “I don't know if the person with the campfire could make it past those monsters. If the girl is still in the ruins I wouldn't think she is this way...”

Hari “It might have happened suddenly and cut her off from the way out. Or been triggered by bandits dying. Or both.”

Wick patted Corvayne's shoulder. “Any blood in the other passage?”

Corvayne walked over to the other tunnel and looked, but there was no sign of passage.

Hari was also crouched on the ground. “It is more dangerous in the tunnel with the blood. But it might be because I know it's a sign of whatever killed the bandits passing.”

Wick perked up. “Oh, does info change your assessment? So it's not just some sort of augury to the universe?” Wick emphasized this with miming censor shaking.

Hari shrugged. “Knowing more makes it a more accurate signal from the voice of everything. If the beast can kill intruders that easily, either the girl is dead and we'll find a body ahead, or the monster let her live and she's ahead, or we were wrong and she's off in another wing and it's just bandits and monster. Or many monster.”

Wick groaned. “Forget the campfire we found, the bandits, the girl. Monsters! UFOS! Forward!”

Gary nodded. “Glory! Treasure! EXP!”

Corvayne smiled at this deciple putting on a brave face. “Good attitude Gary. You and me lead the way.”

“Err, less glory, less treasure, less EXP?” He offered lamely.

Hari pushed him forward. “You are never going to impress some goat-herder princess with that attitude.”

“Oooh, she's a princess? Why didn't you guys tell me?” Gary looked over at Kirae, who shook her head.

“Whatever he is asking me, tell him no.” Kirae said while looking at Corvayne.

Corvayne nodded back to her, then turned to his deciple. “Enough, Gary. We go in first. Less chatter, eyes and ears open.”

The tunnel they were in was dry. No bandit bodies, but one zombie was laying off to the side of the path. Some of it's limbs had been sheered clean off. The tunnel split into three paths, one leading into a room with broken stone pots, and one curling up with another curling down. The pot room had murals that to Corvayne looked like scenes of pilgrims meeting, and building things that looked like pyramids. Perhaps the source was one such one. The image showed more than one, and there were figures dictating to smaller builders orders or perhaps the builders were worshiping a king?

“Do any murals have text?” He turned to Kirae.

“The larger ones had words under them, but all the big ones I've seen were gouged.” Kirae walked over to a pot and lifted a stone top, bathing the room in light. She pulled out a glowing stone. “I think this tunnel is new, somehow.”

“You've been here before?” Corvayne asked.

“Most of the kids sneak off to try to find treasure at some point. We usually went up instead of down.” She shrugged and put away a few of the colorful stones.

Wick grabbed a few for herself. “Maybe these are related to the UFO!”

Corvanye was more worried about the monster, but he took pictures then lead the way further down, pushing past Brines and Seru. Hari was still in the rear, keeping an eye on both the tunnel they came from and the upwards one.

Picking down, Corvayne ran into a living pair of zombies and dispatched them with Gary, passing through a small dome-shaped room with what looked like a stone table but no other features. The next open area was a vast chamber, with a huge pillar supporting a dome like ceiling and fallen columns of stone peppered around stone devices. Corvayne guessed from the fragmented ones he saw that if they had been intact they'd be something like an infinity sign pinched at one end. The examples all had parts missing, with about eight of the stone objects visible. Someone had tried to fix one, with elements that looked like white plaster working towards creating a whole statue.

He didn't have a good vantage point for the rest of the floor, only that the room looked circular from the parts lit by the blue lights and that there were other tunnels along the wall. He let his gaze wander, looking for movement. He saw a dead zombie, sliced apart. It reminded him a little of hunting monsters near the town. A weird queasy mix of boredom and anxiety swirled in him.

“Any thoughts Gary?” He whispered.

“Looks like someone's building a stargate.” The large man was twitchy. Corvayne nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. Wary was good. Nervous was usually counter productive. Gary put his chin up, and Corvayne went back to focusing on the environment.

“No UFOs here. I don't see a passage up, and the UFO made a lot of light.” Corvayne added as the rest of the group was out of the tunnel and following him across the rubble strewn floor. He took his time, taking corners around fallen boulders wide. Despite the cold air he was sweating as he moved around pillars.

He was perhaps a hundred feet into the ruins when he was sure that he was being watched. He saw something move for a moment from behind a pillar ahead of them, but in the dim light it was impossible to track the black blur.

“I saw it. No noise when it leapt down... move quiet.”

“I saw it too. Thing's small.” Gary added.

Corvayne didn't respond. Underestimating an enemy based on size could be a fatal mistake. Especially one that was moving around like a silent lightning bolt.

Wick pointed to a side tunnel. “That one.”

Corvayne frowned. The monster might have moved into it. “I don't know if I can protect you in a fight. Something about it... I think it's more dangerous than the dead goats have let on.”

There was a scream from the tunnel and Corvayne didn't even think, running into the tunnel and down to where he heard shouting punctuating a woman screaming for help.

He burst into the room and saw near a campfire a ragged looking man, hole visible in his head, holding a knife to a villager woman, then pointing it at something in the dark. Two other bandits were there, also facing away from the fire.

Corvayne stopped running, and when he blinked, something was moving at the bandit, and a moment later the man was dead, and one of his allies was trying to pull the girl to him. His arm a moment later was cut in half, cleanly.

The woman fell down and shielded herself as a spider-like monster appeared, six red eyes looking between the last standing bandit and the girl. The man charged and the monster flipped into a fore-limb what looked like a bone knife and took his throat while sliding around the scimitar. Corvayne was shocked at how smoothly it happened, as if they had both practiced the motion thousand times. The man slumped to the ground gurgling, dead by the time woman pushed herself away from the body and the spider.

The monster, however, ignored her. Instead, it turned to stare down Corvayne.