Kara looked down at Erika and screwed up her face. “… Lady Erika you just told a former soldier that we are, potentially, part of a hostile foreign power invading his resting place and you don’t know why he’d be interested in that? Even the dead keep their prejudices.”

Erika looked up at Kara for a moment then swore loudly and turned back to the undead trapped in its altar-coffin, it still hadn't restarted its hurling but the single lidless milky eye kept staring from the shadows.

“We aren’t hostile to the people you once served we are just here for…. Flowing quickly water? Distance longer than a pace? Damn what’s the word… ah mushroom, we are here for mushroom.”

“Which one?” replied the draugr its voice seemed a bit more interested now, Erika just pointed at the fan of Respite that grew from the peak of its coffin, the dead eye rolled madly in the darkness for a moment then stared upwards, after a moment it looked back at Erika.

“Why?”

Erika went for honesty. “Our fellow delvers were injured by ambush, they have… damn what’s the… merchants of soap… favourable orchard… blood poisoning! Infection after their wounds, that mushroom helps.”

For a long moment the coffin was silent, Kara held still as well despite the doubtless agonising pain she was in, the moment tensed like a coiled wire… then Gunhilda wandered back in from the tunnel.

“Some of the little monsters nearly got away but I caught up and I killed one using another one like a club! Best day ever!”

The three humans stared at her in mute astonishment for a long moment before a rough bubbling caught their attention, a strange sort of bubbling chocking sound like pebbles dropped in a river filled with sludge, the draugr was laughing.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I like this one… very well clever little breather… take the mushrooms from my coffin I care not... in exchange however… push my coffin back into its proper resting place.”

“Deal!” Shouted Erika happily.

“What deal?” Whispered Kara.

“We get the mushroom if we push his coffin back into the wall.”

Kara didn’t seem keen on that but Erika knew one thing she apparently didn’t, undead couldn’t lie, at all, if they did their souls were dragged down to Nidhogg and devoured. It was something to do with being undead her mother had said, their souls were already loosely anchored and had had their chance at life, breaking an oath even implicitly like lying got you sent to the Oathbreaker place which was, to put it lightly, not great.

Erika walked over staring into the glittery eye in the darkness, reaching up she tore a squishy handful of mushrooms from the coffins crown and tucked it in a pocket, the eye never moved, the limbs didn’t stir, the draugr simply watched her.

“Gunhilda, Kara, can you push it?”

A few sweaty seconds later the false altar toppled over, a few more and it was shoved into the hole that the wargs had tunnelled into the wall, apparently it wasn't a tunnel but instead a sort of private chamber for the honoured dead.

Kara stood next to Erika and Reidar as Gunhilda said the rites, tapping the runes on the coffin she invoked Aesir and Vanir both, alive and dead and, breath by breath, the eye in the darkness seemed to become… lesser, it didn’t move, it didn’t change, but in its pupil, there was less until suddenly something in Erika’s hindbrain told her it was a corpse again, just a corpse and nothing more.

The group turned away, heading back up into the light, Reidar leading and Gunhilda lagging behind, at the rear Erika tried to prop up Kara as the adrenaline of the fight washed away leaving only the agony of her arm.

“Thank you,” murmured Erika. “For saving me… I don’t know if I would have survived that throw.”

Kara managed to a ladylike smile, although the edges verged on a grimace. “We’re even then, aren’t we?”

Erika laughed. “Yeah, we are, guess you don’t need to hang around me now, right?”

“… You’re not getting rid of me that easily lady Erika.”

“It’s just Erika, Kara.”

Kara stared at Erika, a strange look in her eye, then she grinned and looked away “Ok.”