As a boy, Audren had been educated in the art of swordsmanship. He'd worked himself into a sweat almost every day, practicing techniques, minding his balance and timing and surroundings all at once. He'd practiced his footwork until he felt like his legs might fall off, learned to do well in a fight, both on the offensive and defensive side. His instructor had, by some miracle, been a nice man; maybe too nice. He'd told Audren he was a natural, a gifted child, and encouraged him to give his training his all.

The older Audren got, the more he realised he wasn't all that gifted anymore, just a mediocre swordsman. He could hold his own, but he wasn't anything special, not better or worse than the average Avondorian aristocrat. The realisation he wasn't as gifted as he'd thought himself to be, he figured, lay at the root of way too many insecurities. In hindsight, he would have wanted his well-meaning parents and teachers to praise him less.

The good thing about the Cursed was that he didn't need to be gifted to defeat them. They didn't wield weapons, could only hurt him with their hands and teeth. Audren didn't need to worry about deflecting blows or making sure he didn't leave himself open to an attack; he simply needed to use his sword to kill and avoid being bitten. A different kind of sword fighting, probably easier.

He was pretty sure he could pull that off. He was strong. Not what his sister would refer to as a 'beefcake', but strong. He wouldn't tire easily. His opponents were literal bags of rotting meat and decaying bones. All he'd need to worry about was the close range; a bow might have been a safer weapon than a longsword, but archery had never been Audren's forte.

He did a quick count of the Cursed loitering around the entrance of the Hasswater Caves; it would be roughly eight against two. Nothing he and the mage couldn't handle. With a nod at Terry, Audren stepped off the ferry, into the shallow water by the rivershore. He began to make his way to dry land, sloshing through the cold water, hearing Terry follow him. The noise caught the Cursed's attention: they'd already been fixated on the fresh meat from the ferry, but their growls and grunts actually sounded delighted now.

Audren planned to turn that delight into horror.

He decided to go for the one on the far left; if he started in the middle of the group, he'd soon find himself swarmed. Determined and wordlessly, he sped up, charging at the monster with his sword. He assumed the undead being could not be killed by going for the heart and the head, the brain, was his best option for a quick kill.

Trying to lop off an opponent's head was tricky if said opponent was alive. Audren's blade would have to cut through skin, muscles, tendon and the spinal cord; even using the proper techniques and a good weapon, a successful decapitation was a matter of luck. But the Cursed's skin and bones weren't strong and healthy compared to a living person's, his sword was well-maintained and sharp, and his blow was solid. The monster's head came clean off, dark blood splattering on Audren's skin. The rotting, severed head rolled away, teeth still bared in an eternal, malicious snarl.

Audren didn't look at it for long, unwilling to look into the rolled-back eyes and be confronted with the Cursed's lost humanity. He didn't have time to, anyway, for a second undead man came at him, slobbering and looking for a meal. With a quick slash, Audren separated one of its arms from its body. His assailant, unhurt but surprised (he hated how the beasts could still show some emotion), briefly faltered. With all his strength, Audren rammed his sword tip-first into the Cursed's mouth. He kicked the body away and pulled his sword out again with some difficulty.

Looking up, his breath hitched when he noticed three of the bastards approaching him rapidly. Too many at once. He took some fast steps back, putting more distance between him and the Cursed, but he couldn't hold off the uneasy feeling that he could soon be surrounded and lost forever.

After only two kills?

From the corner of his eye, he could see movement; not the clumsy stumbling the Cursed did, but something fluid, fast and hard. Water, as if being poured from fifty buckets at once, shot out of the river like a bolt being loosed from a crossbow. It hit the Cursed full-force and the broken bodies flew, slamming into the rocky hill.

That bought Audren time. He used the Cursed's temporary elimination to rush towards them and cut off a couple more heads.

"I'm really starting to get the hang of that water manipulation spell again!" he heard Terry exclaim in triumph.

"Thanks!" He called back, turning to his companion to see if she needed help. She didn't. The remaining three Cursed, all focused on Terry, promptly burst into flames upon the mage's uttering of yet another unintelligible spell.

"Fire spell," she explained, beaming, while the three Cursed burned to a crisp and turned to ashes where they stood. As if Audren hadn't been able to tell what kind of spell it was. The smell of roasted meat for once didn't please his nostrils. "Never did let myself get sloppy when it came to that one. It's great for campfires."

Audren had no trouble believing that. He looked around; the eight Cursed on this side of the river had met their end. On the other side, more stared at him and Terry, blind to the murder of their congeners. All they had eyes for was their unreachable food. Audren didn't see any other Cursed approaching from the distance, but he wouldn't wait for them to come. He wanted the beasts to stop hearing, seeing and smelling him as soon as possible.

"Come on," he told Terry, nodding towards the robust wooden door behind which lay the underground system of tunnels he wished to reach. "We should go in before more get to us."

She nodded and muttered her fire spell again. This time, its effects were far less violent; a small flame, like dancing candlelight, burned in the palm of her hand. Audren opened the unlocked door, let them both in and closed it behind them.

If it wasn't for Terry's portable fire, they would have stood in pitch-black darkness. The torches lining the stone walls were unlit; the men and women watching over the dead had likely joined their wards in the Spirit Realm. Shadows coated the uneven stairs leading down to the underground, only some driven away by the light they'd brought.

Though he wasn't a child anymore, Audren still didn't feel comfortable here.

"We shouldn't let our guard down," Terry said, taking the first steps down. "I think the Cursed can't open that door, but let's not make assumptions. And we don't know who might be down here. Perhaps someone bitten sought refuge here and turned later."

"You're right," Audren said, following the mage into the dark. He'd never liked it, that absence of light; if it didn't pose significant risks, he'd sleep with lit candles by his bedside. He focused on placing his feet in front of him, the sound of his footsteps, the small flame in Terry's hand. Anything to ignore the shadows. "Hey, that fire spell you roasted the Cursed with... I don't know if it was horrifying or amazing, but it worked well. Couldn't those mages still living have burned a bunch?"

"They probably did," Terry replied. "But it wouldn't have been enough. Magic may seem effortless, but it's tiring. Not that different from your sword fighting, really. You fight for too long and too hard... Eventually your body and spirit just can't go on."

That, Audren supposed, made sense. He and Terry reached the bottom of the stone staircase, where a tunnel stretched out to the left and right both. Audren remembered where the tunnel to the right led: the workers had stumbled upon an underground cave system while working to create the ossuary. One did not go there without a desire to disappear. The system was vast and treacherous and had not even been mapped out in its entirety. He and Terry did not have any business there.

Audren turned to the left.

"Lord Audren," Terry said next to him, "forgive me, but you told me to trust you, and I did. Now, do you mind if I ask what we're doing here? Don't get me wrong, it does seem safer beneath the Free City than in its streets, but to my knowledge, the only entrance to the Hasswater Caves is the one we passed through just now. How is being here going to help us get to the Pantheon?"

"There's more than one entrance," Audren informed her. "Hardly anyone knows about it, but I do. I do... You'll see."

He soon began to notice a change. While the walls had been of plain stone before, they began to be decorated with bones; even the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling were made of them. There were femurs, hip bones, bones of the arms and the legs, wickedly grinning skulls with hollow eyes of nothing. Stacked up in a macabre display of skeletal lifelessness, they stared Audren down, made him uncomfortable. Terry, on the other hand, didn't seem too bothered by the sight.

In the flickering orange light of the flames, Audren could read the inscription on one of the various plaques hanging amongst the remains: What you are now, we used to be; what we are now, you will be.

He'd read this same text years ago. It hit him harder now.

The Cursed were the undead proof of the statement's truth.

While it had been years, Audren's feet found their way through the maze-like halls of the giant death cave. Left, right, straight ahead, right, right, left, right again. It was as if a part of him had never left, had been held hostage there ever since he'd last set foot into the place. Still remembering the way was convenient, but it also creeped him out. Just a little.

What we are now, you will be.

He didn't want to get too comfortable here.

They encountered a Cursed; an old woman, roaming about the halls as if lost. Audren almost jumped out of his skin upon first spotting her, but quickly came to his senses. The Cursed was dealt with swiftly, his sword slicing through the paper-thin body with ease. There'd be a new skull to join its friends in the walls.

Audren hoped he wouldn't need to add many more. His wish was granted; no more Cursed showed before they reached their destination.

"The Mayors' Crypt," Terry mumbled when they entered a chamber, where the walls were not, in fact, decorated with bones. The former mayors of the Free City, elected for life by the City Council, rested close to their people, but not among them, not as nameless bones in the wall. The mayors laid in stone coffins, effigies of their honourable persons on the lids. Audren could see some of them in Terry's weak light.

"When Dyna and I turned sixteen, our parents sent us away to live in the Free City for a year," Audren began to explain. "The Free City was among our most trusted allies and my parents always believed we could learn from it. We stayed with the Mayor and his family. He fed and housed us and we assisted him in return. Learnt a lot about a different style of government, trade, people... We had to broaden our horizons and look beyond the mountains."

"Beyond the mountains?" He saw Terry raise an eyebrow. "And into the Hasswater Caves, you mean? Broadening your horizons by getting acquaintanced with corpses?"

"No," Audren replied. "Zavian showed me around this place. Zavian Gilvertos, Mayor Gilvertos' son. His father wanted us to memorize the mayors and their achievements and we'd go down here to look at the effigies, to link faces to the names and hope it would help us remember so the old man would get off our backs. We brought beer sometimes and that was... fun, I suppose. But one day, Zavian showed us something memorable."

"What kind of memorable?"

"The helpful kind. That day, there was unrest in the harbour, some kind of protest against... I don't remember what it was about. Either way, Zavian brought me and Dyna to an old storage closet, where there was this... hidden trapdoor. We opened it and climbed a rope ladder down underground, where we ended up in this small chamber. There was a crack in the wall there."

"So?"

"Zavian told us that crack in the wall hid behind the statue of Alys in the Mayors' Crypt. It's just wide enough for an average-sized person to fit through. If the protest would truly get out of hand and the workers in the harbour would reach the Mayor's official residence, that crack would allow us to escape. We could slip away into the ossuary and out into the night without anyone noticing. We didn't need to use it that day, but we can use it to get into the Mayor's home now."

Terry's eyes shone with understanding, her flame casting a ghostly glow over the tombs. "The Mayor's Residence is next to the Pantheon."

"Exactly. We won't need to cross a Cursed-infested city to get there. We just need to find a way to keep them out of the Pantheon while we do what must be done at Solmar's shrine."

But that would have to wait for now. They had to get into the Mayor's Residence first. Audren and Terry moved farther into the crypt until they came to the statue of Alys, goddess of death, placed in front of the wall.

Audren immediately felt like something was wrong.

Under normal circumstances, two robed skeletons flanked the statue, one carrying the goddess's scythe, the other her hourglass. They also further obscured the crack in the wall from sight. The robed skeletons had, however, been shoved to the floor; hundreds of bones lay scattered around this part of the crypt. The robes, the scythe and the hourglass could be found amidst the mess. The glass of the hourglass had been shattered, leaving sad grains of sand covering the ground.

"Either the Mayor and his family escaped," Terry observed, "or someone else found your way to their home first."

Please, let it be the latter.

Without further studying the scene, Audren rushed to the statue, trying his hardest to avoid stepping on bone and glass. He slipped behind the statue, Terry close behind, and manoeuvred his way through the crack and into the small chamber. What he found there shocked him.

There was a body beneath the old rope ladder. A corpse.

The person wasn't a Cursed, that Audren could tell; he lay far too still to be anything but truly dead. He'd already reached a certain stage of decomposition, for the smell made Audren gag. It was a young man, his neck angled oddly, facing away from the lord and the mage. Audren gathered his courage, went up to the corpse and inspected it.

He recognised this young man. The burly physique, the brown curls now stained by blood and dust, the broad face that had worn easy smiles back in the day when the world had, in all respects, been a more pleasant place. That face was almost unrecognisable now: it looked like it had been smashed in, which, paired with the skin starting to slough off, didn't make for a handsome image.

"It's Zavian," he told Terry, feeling the sadness wash over him once he spoke the words out loud. "He's... He's dead for certain."

"But not walking." Terry's tone was grim. "If it wasn't the curse that killed him... It means someone else did."