I stared at Castle Westiral with my mind racing. Eric, the boy lich, had captured Blink somehow and had her in a cage. He was planning on killing me and then doing something to her. Likely he would turn her into some undead monster to guard him.

I wanted to rush to the castle, but that wouldn’t do us any good. We were still around five miles away, which meant that there was plenty of room between here and there for a fight. Worse than that, there wasn’t much cover which meant that if the lich didn’t know we were coming now, he would when he saw us.

I let a big sigh out, then I thought back to my bonded companion. “How did he capture you, and where is he keeping you?”

Blink tried to hide it better, but I felt her sadness and shame as she sent me her thoughts. “Watch.”

Blink’s memories started to fill my mind.

The world seemed upside down. The floor was the ceiling, and zombies were walking through the castle hall on the ceiling, which meant that Blink was holding onto the true ceiling and looking down. She examined each one noting that they were orcs with heavy armor, and each was level 22. Then, she moved forward, slowly creeping down the hall while clinging to the ceiling.

She showed me traps she smugly avoided that were on the floor and patrols of dozens of skeletons and ghouls. She paused at one point as two wraths floated down the hall. Their faces twisted in pain and hate as they scanned back and forth.

Then she focused on some weird monsters that looked like masses of bones fused together. It was a level 15 bone abomination. The thing took up the whole hall as it slowly crept down. It must have had two dozen bone legs pulling it and perhaps a hundred arms. Each had held a sword or an axe, and as it moved forward, they all swung around like it was programmed to be constantly attacking.

Then she went down more stairs until she came to what used to be the dungeons. She paused, looking around at the tables of carved-up people and monsters. Piles of discarded body parts everywhere. At the far end of the room was the lich sewing an arm onto a body.

Blink paused only briefly before moving forward. I felt anger and shame come from her as she showed this next part. She pounced from the ceiling and ripped the head off the lich. He didn’t even get a chance to respond. Then she started to look for loot.

She found the treasure room and went in, and fell asleep. Then the lich woke her from her nap as he walked into the room. He was holding some staff that kept her from being able to move and had her placed in a cage in the dungeon.

Her thoughts filled my mind. “I killed him but didn’t kill him. I should have checked my status like you taught me. Then I would have known that I killed bait. But I don’t know how he found me.”

I shook my head slightly and thought back. “Lichs cheat. They have an item that keeps their souls from moving on. So when you kill the body, they move back into that item and can come back out. We don’t know what his looks like, but we plan on finding it. Once we can break that, he will die easy enough.”

I felt Blink’s worry. “Daddy, there are lots of not living in here. I know that you are good at fighting them, but be careful. The highest level I have seen is twenty-two, and the lich is twenty.”

I thought back. “When you killed the lich’s body, did anything happen to the undead?”

“Yes, they started to just move everywhere. They weren’t on patrol or anything.”

I sent comfort and love through the bond to Blink. “We are coming for you. I think we can do this. Let me know if the lich seems to know we are here.”

With that, I looked around at my team. “Okay, some things have changed, but at least we know where the lich is.”

Kasidy asked. “Is Blink okay?”

I held up my hand and wobbled it back and forth. “Ehh, kind of. She’s not hurt right now, but the lich captured her after she killed it once. The good thing is she is unharmed; the bad thing is she is in a cage. But she has confirmed a few things. One, Eric is in the dungeon where his lab is. Two, he is only level twenty, and the highest level in there is twenty-two.”

Then I smiled. “The other thing that she confirmed is that if he dies, he loses control of the undead. Now I don’t know if he has to claim each one again or if he is now in complete control. But either way, killing him will make the rest easier to control and handle.”

Renfry nodded. “The main dungeons are in the back of the castle. They are carved directly into the heart of the mountain. We are going to have to go through many halls to get there. The good news is that they aren’t the main halls, so there is only so much that we will have to face.”

I scrunched up my face a little. “About that… There was one thing that I’m not sure how we are going to beat. It’s called a bone abomination and takes up the full hallway. I am sure it will be sent our way when he finds us coming.”

Irwin laughed nervously. “That’s going to make things harder for us. Bone is the most resistant of the standard undead to fire.”

I nodded and then sighed. “Well, not much changes, I guess. We just need to fight through everything and win. There are enough breaches in the walls that we should be able to get through fairly easily, and then we just have to find and kill the lich. Once we do, we can find his phylactery and break it after that is clean up work. Now let’s go.”

I gave my horse a little kick and started moving forward again. We didn’t have many options since there was only one road heading to the castle. I could tell that whatever it was that had wrecked the mounds of undead had been here as well. Which worried me; if the lich beat what had caused all this damage, then we were likely doomed. But, if he hadn’t beaten it, where was it, and why did it leave?

The next hour was mostly in silence as we moved up the road. We paused as we got closer to the castle so that we could figure out where we wanted to go. The road bent and went down the wall in the pass. The castle itself was set back another half mile or so from the road. On the far side of the pass near the fort was the main gate.

The gate was the usual way of getting in. However, there were several spots where the main wall had been breached in battle and never sealed back up. So we could leave the horses outside and move in on foot. We would have to dismount sometime. The question, of course, was when.

I looked over at Renfry and asked. “Think we should go through the main gate to stay on the road or head through a breach?”

He shrugged and gave a dry chuckle. “I don’t know. It’s your call. I think I would have trapped those breaches if I were the one defending. That said, I also would have fixed them.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the wagon and Kasidy. “Let’s dismount at that first breach and pick our way through the rubble. I have a feeling that the open gate at the end is an ambush. At least in the rubble, he can’t put skeletons in the ground.”

I waited until the wagon passed, then drifted over to Kasidy. I could tell that she was worried. She had been getting quieter as we traveled, and I could see the tension building in her.

I leaned over close and asked. “Do you want to wait out here? If you headed back a ways, you should be safe. Then you wouldn’t have to go in there.”

Kasidy glanced back at the road behind us and then up at the castle. She was torn, and I could tell neither option was great, but I wanted her to pick. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it a few times.

Finally, she said. “I think I am going to stay with you. No telling what is lurking around here. Besides, Blink would be angry if I didn’t come.”

I nodded and smiled. “Okay, keep close as we move through here.”

A few minutes later, we were dismounted and moving up the rubble. Renfry was right about the traps. That said, they were clearly done by someone who didn’t have a clue about trap-making. With my skill level in trapping, I could easily disarm them as I climbed.

I had my standard back since Kasidy was trying to climb with her lyre. Irwin was the one having the hardest time up the rocks. He struggled to hold his mage staff in one hand while hiking up his robes enough to move. Kasidy was much more practiced in moving in her dress and so climbed the rocks like they were stairs.

When we got to the top of the breach, I gasped. The field in front of the castle was a massive army of mixed undead. I could tell they were all low-level just by looking at them, but there had to be over a hundred thousand. Oddly, they were all milling around like they were unclaimed.

None of them were reacting to us where we were, but if we moved over the wall here, we would be in the middle of the army, ending badly for us. So we had to have a way forward from here. I glanced up higher from the breach to the ramparts of the wall.

I pointed up at the wall beside us and softly said. “Let’s get up there. I’m not sure that this isn’t going to go well if we have to move through that mess.”

* * *