“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens...”

― Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

The old guardsman reflexively slashed at Vanessa, who simply caught the blade on one of her claws, flicking it to the side where it hit the wall with a screech of metal.

“Let us not be hasty!” Leomund tried to calm the situation down. “We might have a lot in common!”

The younger soldiers, a woman and a boy just out of his teens- if on the brawny side- looked at them nervously and had also drawn their swords.

“What are you people doing?” The rough-looking guardsman asked, shaking his hand, still numb after hitting the wall.

“We...you won’t believe we are here for the good of the people?” Leomund tried.

“No. But I don’t want to die either. Letting you pass and fighting you...each might lead to my sudden death, so I’m conflicted.” The guard spat on the ground. “Convince me.”

“Now, now.” Leomund looked at his erstwhile captors and focused on Vanessa. “Help me here, will you?”

Vanessa shrugged. “The dead walk, your dead. Family, friends, neighbors. Defiled corpses stalk the streets, and the living grow fewer every day. Your lord is a bloodsucking fiend in the truest sense of the word. We want to end him before all that is left to be liberated is a cemetery the size of this duchy.”

“Ha. Would that it were that easy! In the beginning, there were some who tried. They are now part of his guard. And no longer living.”

“Why are you still here then?”

“It’s my home, and I swore an oath.”

“You most certainly did not swear to protect a dead person. So this oath ended the moment Duke Zygmund died and became an undead. And to protect your home is most assuredly not seeing it laid to waste like this. We can’t talk any longer. Make your decision now.” Vanessa made a cutting motion. The ice-claws lending weight to the gesture.

“I…” He began, then stopped.

“Think about the people you could save if you helped us,” Johanna interjected.

“We will not obstruct you...but fighting the duke...” The older guard swallowed.

“I will do it.” The young soldier determinedly gripped his sword.

“Me too.” The female guard nodded, her dark brown hair bouncing beneath the low steel helmet.

“Ah, Gesserach damn it.” The older guard gritted his teeth. “Do what you want. I will try and divert other patrols so that you can do your ‘good deed’ in peace.” He swallowed, “and may the gods favor you.”

Jamila looked at them, tapping her foot impatiently. “We have to hurry. Please, don’t waste time.”

The two younger guards fell in with Johanna and Ralf while Leomund gave the middle-aged soldier an understanding look.

“He really, really made his own people hate him, did he,” Mireille mumbled while intentionally bumping into Alyssa, who gave her friend a wry grin.

Alea looked at the two and was very nervous herself, quickly stroking Cecily to calm herself. As she stumbled over her too-large robes, a cold metallic hand gripped her arm and steadied her.

“Thank you, One.”

Down they went. The labyrinthine stone stairs, so far removed from the well-lit corridors and rooms aboveground, spread a gloomy mood. Alea was especially affected as she remembered the fateful day, years ago, when she lost her eyesight in one of the rooms of this same castle.

She shivered subconsciously.

“Are you alright?” Mireille whispered.

Alea simply nodded quickly.

Descending another set of stairs, they reached a great, arched doorway leading into a large, columned hall. It had once been a temple to Gesserach, and the golden sun symbol still shone in the light of huge braziers, but the statue had been toppled, and the sun disfigured with harshly cut runes, the very lines of which echoed decay. Dark doorways to the side of the altar led deeper into the earth.

But that was not what caught the group's attention.

Several warriors clad in armor reminiscent of the first days of the conquest of the continent stood between them and two doors that led further into the crypts beneath Nordmark Castle.

And even if the armor hid most of their forms, it was quite clear that they had not been alive for decades, centuries maybe. The armor was ornate, covered in gold and jewels blinded by dust and grime.

Alyssa grinned as she focused on her artifact. “Should I try to control or destroy them?”

“Destroy them. No sense in risking anything.” Vanessa replied.

With a conscious effort, Alyssa fully opened her gate and drank the void energies suffusing the desecrated temple.

Without any further words, the undead facing them began to advance as Alea began to chant, and Mireille burst into lightning. Vanessa had never relinquished her claws.

Iseret faded into the shadows, her Khopesh flaring with new energies as she stroked some mana dust into the runes.

Leomund hastily incanted, and a glowing shield made of flowing water covered him and his apprentice. He did not seem to be in a hurry to join the attack.

The soldiers, Johanna, and the two new additions, brandished their swords but seemed to be shaken by the wights approaching from the front.

Seven ancestors had been raised, and five remained. Calmund and his skeletal riders were still approaching Sevenpeaks, and one of the others had fallen in the siege of Volstedt.

Alyssa smiled grimly as strands of void energy burst from the jewel in her wrist, ensnaring the silent warriors. Her will crushed down on the guttering self left in the dried-out husks.

Jamila wove strands of windmagic into a net, her eyes focused on any weakness.

“I don’t think so.” Ivyander took a step forward from behind the fallen statue, lips curled in disgust. “Brutes, all of you humans are just brutish dilletantes.” With a quick gesture, he activated the runes carved into the temple, and black energies warred with Alyssa’s spell. “You won’t find it so easy this time.”

With a snarl, the white-haired girl pushed more energy into the spell form, and one wight stumbled before gripping its head. Unearthly screams rang out, soon joined by another, but then the three remaining charged forward.

Vanessa jumped forward and slashed her claws against the first wight, bearing a two-handed sword. Sympathetic pain flared from her breast as she remembered just such a sword pinning her to the cobblestones in Volstedt. Hitting the hulking undead was not difficult, but the armor, despite being old and rusted, seemed reinforced by the spells surging through the former temple, and not even an ornament was damaged. Cursing, she backflipped her cloak, billowing around her slight form.

The two-hander slashed through her billowing clothes, thankfully missing her body, causing Vanessa to grimace at the speed and power contained in the blow.

Iseret appeared behind the wight, stabbing her enchanted Khopesh into its unprotected back. Accompanied by a metallic screech, sparks flew, and with a violent twist, the wight turned, punching with his left fist while holding the greatsword with his right. Bowing backward, Iseret let the heavy gauntlet pass her face by inches, but in dodging, she lost her momentum and had to retreat hastily.

Golden light flared from Alea’s hands and impaled the next undead; the light vied for dominance, with the dark energies rushing forth from the disfigured golden disk behind the altar, temporarily stopping the ancient warrior. Butler one rushed forward and pushed it back even further.

Jill copied her and intoned another light magic spell, a shimmer cloaking her form as the protective magic took hold.

Mireille clashed with another, and her lightning-infused degen pierced the gold-encrusted armor. Blue energies flared from gaps in between the plates and shone from the empty eyesockets, briefly overwhelming even the darkly flickering flames of the undead’s own magic.

The battle surged back and forth, with the group of friends and allies sometimes gaining the upper hand, but Ivyander and the prepared spells and runes of the temple were forcing them back the next second.

Alyssa grasped at the shadows tearing void energies from the very air, but whenever she pushed it through the spellforms in her jewel, Ivyander was there to counter her. The diadem on her forehead became darker, and frost spread from where it touched her skin.

Dust drifted from the ceiling, and several runes burst under the strain. The fight had been going for a few minutes, and even with her lesser skill, Alyssa was gaining ground fast due to the inexhaustible supply of magic supplied by her gate and amplified by the jewel.

Mireille was forced back by an underhanded swing from the morning star her opponent wielded, and with another step, the shield the wight was wielding in his left hand slammed against her side. With preternaturally quick movements, she avoided the worst of it, but a pained hiss escaped her as she crashed into the wall. With a defiant snarl, she shook her head, and droplets of blood scattered from her nose.

Jamila flicked her wrist, and the net of wind magic she had been holding restrained the wight just as it readied a follow-up blow on Mireille.

Cyrus jumped over a chop from an axe-wielding undead, grabbing its head with strong hind claws while stabbing furiously into the slits of the old visor.

“Cyrus!” Alyssa snapped out her hand, and tendrils of darkness formed by will and intent more than any spell grabbed at the axe, hacking at her familiar, slowing the blow for that decisive fraction so that Cyrus could push the wight away with a heave of its legs just evading the sickly gleaming edge of the axehead. He did not escape a bruising blow from the backswing of the single-headed weapon.

The two undead she had been keeping at bay slowly began to regain their mobility. But one of them seemed to be near destruction.

“What a ruckus, Ivyander. You can’t do anything by yourself, can you?” A hoarse-sounding voice came from the stairs to the side, leading deeper into the crypts underneath the castle.

A tightening around his eyes was the only sign the elven necromancer had heard anything as he directed his undead to attack. But he nearly radiated his displeasure.

Unloading his crossbow at the chanting elf, the male, young guard they had acquired previously grabbed the string before pulling it back laboriously, inserting another bolt. His face a rictus of terror and determination.

With a negligent-looking gesture, Ivyander flicked a bolt of black flame at the new nuisance, and the female guard hastily interposed her shield, catching the flaring missile just before it would have hit the young man in the face. The metal rusted, and the wood of the shield warped and rotted but still held.

A giggling creature about a meter in height with skin the color of aged blood looked around the corner of the stairs, eyes glowing a bright red with black pupils slitted like a snake fixed on the group of friends and allies. Horns jutted from its head every which way, and it giggled again before it opened its mouth wider than seemed possible before a sibilant whisper echoed from its throat. Johanna, the scout, gasped before stumbling back, grabbing at her head, blood flowing from her eyes and ears.

"An Imp!" Jill pointed, "Keep it occupied with something. Otherwise, it will kill with its whispers!" She grabbed Johanna, pulling her back, and began to incant a healing spell

A hand patted the horned being, and an old man with flowing white hair, clad in ornate metal armor fit for a duke, strode from the darkness of the stairwell. With a dismissive gesture, he threw back a dark cloak, freeing both hands while eyes the color of ice at dusk glared at them with disdain and hatred. Accompanying him were two bowed cultists in dark robes carrying metal bowls dispensing dark smoking incense. Two hulking demonic figures followed, humanoid but with claws instead of fingers and bestially twisted faces without noses and horned ridges running over their bald pates to the neck. Reptilian and unnatural-looking things clad in plate and mail armor of exotic but crude make.

“Kill them. They will have value in death. But if you want to eat them. I won’t care.” Zygmund waved at the two fiends following him.

Alea had not been idle, and with a look of concentration beams of brilliant light shone from her hands, dispelling the gloom of the temple for a brief but decisive moment. The axe-wielding wight took the full brunt of the rays of brilliance, and with a deep throbbing sound, the animating force left the old bones, causing armor, weapons, and corpse to fall to the ground. Wailing with anguished relief, the spirit of the ancient warrior soared over its fallen form before dispersing into the darkness. Runes on the armor sparked once, then began to crackle and release a burning stench.

“Disgusting wretches! You will suffer for that!” Zygmund snarled and concentrated before beginning an incantation. The words were unsure, and there were a lot of pauses.

“I recommend you focus on your martial prowess, sir,” Ivyander remarked dryly as he directed the fading energies of the temple, eliciting a raised eyebrow and angry glare from the distracted vampire duke.

One of the wights Alyssa had stopped jerked as her renewed focus grabbed at the wight’s consciousness. With an unwilling scream, the undead began to hack at his companion using a heavy mace and shield. Slamming the shield against the opponent's weapon arm, the controlled undead created an opening, and, surprised by the onslaught, one lucky blow caught the other wight straight on the head, denting the helmet and shattering the skull beneath. With a prolonged sigh, the spirit departed from the ill-used husk.

Behind them, several pairs of feet tramped down the stairs, and a large group of guardsmen accompanying the captain burst into the room.

Leomund half-turned and grimaced, running through some calculations in his head before eying the back of Alyssa standing some steps before him.

“Don’t think about it.” A voice whispered in his ear, and Iseret vanished into the shadows near the doorway.

Breaking off the spell, Zygmund winced as scattered void energies singed his fingers before being absorbed by his undead flesh. “Finally. Kill them, capture them. I don’t care. But be quick about it.” Nearly as an afterthought, he added. “If you hurry, I will kill only half of you incompetent laggards. How could they come so far without me knowing? Imbeciles.”

The captain who had raised his sword to command his troops faltered, and for a moment, everything seemed tinged in red as a deep rage welled up from somewhere he had long shut away. His men killed, the townsfolk terrorized. At first, it had been gradual, and the Nordmarks were never the lenient and gracious sort of lieges, but all the injustices, the swallowed complaints and remarks.

He found he had not much left to lose. “MEN! CLEANSE NORDMARK OF THIS FILTH! KILL THE TRAITOROUS DUKE!”

Several of his soldiers had clear hesitation written on their faces, but the next bellow from their duke rectified this quickly.

“So all of them it is. You two, help the wights. No one is left alive.” Zygmund shoved one of the demonic creatures following him, and the hulking beast growled at him, twitching its claws, but one of the cultists spat a short syllable, and the demon turned toward the fighting, falling into a ground eating trot.

The soldiers loosed a salvo of crossbow bolts, and Ivyander cursed as several broke against the stones near his head, and he had to deflect three more that would otherwise have skewered him. “Damn it. I can’t concentrate this way. Keep them off me.” Losing his composure, he called out to the undead duke.

Striding forward while drawing a sword with a sleek and deadly-looking blade, Zygmund spat without turning. “Remember your place, slave.”

Dodging another bolt- this time a flaming missile launched by Jamila- Ivyander cursed under his breath.

The runes were nearly spent, and Alyssa slowly pushed through the resistance to crush the wight wielding a greatsword. But then the demons crashed into the fighting, and Butler One caught a blow meant for Alea flying high before crashing into a column; sparks of lightning flashed through his torse as something ruptured.

Several soldiers, along with the captain, charged into the fray and occupied the demon's attention for a moment. With horror, they saw wounds carved into the metallic-looking flesh close in seconds, even as the unnatural flesh resisted cuts and bruises from their steel weapons.

Alea chanted another spell, her head dizzy for a moment from the expenditure of mana before another ray of sunlight flashed from her hands, burning into the advancing Zygmund. Darkness burst from an amulet hanging at his throat, combating the light, before the pendant disintegrated with a bang and flaring green-black energies.

The light seared into his shoulder, burning every piece of visible flesh, the skin flaking off in burning patches while the duke howled in pain, slashed with his sword every which way, and nearly impaled one of the cultists that hastily retreated a few steps.

Mireille stood over the fallen form of the wight she had been fighting, sweat dripping from her brows and blood from several deep scratches, but otherwise, she seemed unharmed. Her lightning spear shifted crazily before she got ahold of herself and stabilized the construct. Her degen lay shattered on the ground, no match for the ferocious might of the undead fighter.

Five soldiers had given their lives in the fight against the demons as one of them was nearly eviscerated by a suddenly appearing Vanessa while Iseret slashed the base of its neck with her Khopesh. The enchanted metal fared much better than the simple steel of the soldier's blades, and with a combined effort, they cut off its head before the whole creature turned to foul-smelling ashes.

The impish hellspawn near the stairs whispered its strange words, but Leomund forced it to keep its head down by throwing wind blades whenever it tried to peek around the corner.

Ivyander looked increasingly worried before turning to flee down the stairs beside the cultists. In this moment of distraction, several crossbow bolts impacted around him, one hitting his clothes and one piercing deeply into his upper left arm. A firebolt set the robes covering his legs on fire, and with an undignified lunge, he more fell than jumped down the stairs. The hellish Imp giggled and pointed, its inhuman eyes devoid of anything but malicious glee.

Understanding his position through the blinding pain, Zygmund began to feel fear for the first time. His unopposed rule, every life squashed beneath his hands, the abject terror of the townsfolk he had dined on everything, had made him more sure of his status and might. It had been unthinkable that anything could happen to him here.

But once, he had been a relatively shrewd noble, and the old instincts came back to him in this moment of existential terror.

With a grimace and focused concentration, he drew upon the stolen blood in his veins before slowly turning into mist. Grinning at the frustration on the face of Mireille as she stabbed the cloud where he had been standing a moment before, he suddenly felt a sharp pull in his chest and, looking downward, saw the small cloaked figure that he had briefly seen assaulting the demon carve several runes into the air where his heart would have been.

With dawning unease, he tried to move back into one of the cracks he had prepared for such an eventuality but found he could not move, and with a painful wrench, he was forced back into his corporeal body.

The last demon gave a deep rumbling scream as spells, bolts, and Iserets expertly wielded khopesh ended his life.

The tableau was silent for a second, then claws of ice, a spear of lightning, the stinger of an enraged juvenile wyvern, and the blades of a damaged automaton carved into Zygmund's leathery flesh. Screaming in anger and pain, he flailed about with his hands, claws sprouting from his fingertips, and a guardsman that came too close was nearly decapitated and fell back, spurting blood from a ruined throat.

But then he saw the small blindfolded girl with the mechanical spider conclude a lengthy spell, and as her thin lips closed on the last syllable unheard in the din of battle, a light blossomed between her hands that shone more brightly than the sun at noon. And with a last flash of brilliance, the light expanded to fill his vision.

Everything was the light.