Humphrey stepped forward, cleaving two dummies into pieces with one strike as he waded into the most clustered group. Red light flashed as the dummies lashed out, Clive’s retribution spell blasting chunks from their blunted limbs as they hammered on Humphrey’s armour.
Jason was more mobile, using hit and run strikes as he danced over the surface of the water, building up charges on his sword. Unhindered by the environment, he ran rings around the dummies. When a cluster converged on him, he tossed out a throwing dart from the bandolier on his chest, one of the darts with the red cord. It blasted a dummy apart and he escaped through the gap.
Clive focused on using ranged attacks to pick off outliers before they could swarm the other two. Along with his wand and his familiar, he made judicious use of his essence abilities. He cast a spell and a rune lit up under the water. A pair of dummies wandered over it in pursuit of Jason and with a snap of Clive's fingers, an explosion blasted them to pieces, spraying water all through the hall.
Humphrey alone had torn apart half the dummies by the time he slowed down, most of his special attacks on cooldown. Just strength and skill were enough to keep demolishing dummies, though, and his sword continued to smash them apart. Jason was getting into top gear as Humphrey was winding down, his sword now exploding the dummies on contact.
The last few dummies were made short work of. The three regrouped at the end of the fight, chugging potions and eating spirit coins.
“Good fight,” Humphrey said. “I think we work well together. Get a healer on board and we have the makings of a team.”
“I don’t know about that,” Clive said. “I’ve been out on the odd contract with Jason, lately, but my research and duties with the Magic Society consume much of my time.”
“Look where we are,” Humphrey said. “You’re about to sort through what’s left of these ancient combat dummies looking for secrets hidden away for centuries. Can you do that in your study room at the Magic Society?”
“No,” Clive mused as he looked around the hall. “That’s a not-inconsiderable point.”
“Did those dummies feel familiar to you?” Jason asked Humphrey. “The way they fought?”
“They fought like you,” Humphrey said. “I wasn’t sure at first, because the water slowed them down, but that was your fighting style, right?”
“I think so,” Jason said.
“Where did your style come from?” Humphrey asked. “I’d never seen it until you and I started sparring.”
“I don’t know. It’s some kind of secret.”
“Then let’s look around while Clive picks up broken dummy parts,” Humphrey said. “Maybe we can learn that secret.”
87
Can’t Lose
“I think I’ve found something,” Humphrey called out.
The others joined him.
“Look at this,” Humphrey said, pointing to the wall. “See how the mould has grown in the crack between bricks, all the way down this line?”
“Secret door?” Jason asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Humphrey said. They glanced at each other with mirrored grins.
“Let me take a look,” Clive said.
He drew in the air with his finger, a magic circle appeared in the air, traced out in glowing, golden lines. When he was done, the circle vanished and runes started glowing on the wall, in the shape of a door.
“There you have it,” Clive said.
“Nice one, Clive,” Jason said. “How do we open it up?”
Clive looked over the runes, then reached out to touch several in quick succession. He stepped back as a section of the wall opened out, making ripples in the water. They all stepped into the room beyond, which looked to be some kind of book repository. Unfortunately, most of the room’s contents had been taken by rot. There was a breach to open earth in one of the walls, exposing the room to untold years of destructive moisture.
“This is a real shame,” Clive said as they looked around.
“I’m seeing a lot of residual magic,” Humphrey said, picking up the leather cover of a book whose pages had long since turned to wet pulp.
“Me too,” Clive said. “I’m guessing these were all skill books.”
“Would have been worth a fortune, intact,” Humphrey said.
“It also might have given us some idea of who inhabited this complex,” Clive said. “Sometimes a storage room like this will keep the most important items sealed away, so there may still be something to find.”
They searched through long-rotted shelves until Humphrey uncovered a group of metal boxes. Three of the five had been breached, but two looked to be still intact. They were large enough that each could contain several skill books.
“We shouldn't open them here,” Clive said. “The contents are definitely old and may be fragile. I have tools back at the Magic Society that would let me open them more carefully.”
“Sounds good,” Jason said. “Bag them for later and we’ll go find this adventurer.”
Clive carefully lifted the boxes with Humphrey’s help and stowed them in his storage space.
“I’m a bit worried about the state we’ll find this adventurer in,” Jason said as they left the training hall and its hidden storeroom behind. “What if he’s just been eaten and all we find is his badge inside a monster.”
“Then that’s what we bring back,” Humphrey said.
They continued exploring the flooded and debris-filled lower level. Rather than continue on through the filthy, icy water, Clive was now sitting atop his tortoise familiar. Not long after leaving the training hall, something came shambling slowly towards them.
“Zombies?” Humphrey said. “How can there be zombies?”
There were dead bodies making a slow, stumbling path in their direction, looking like skeletons stuffed with mud. Humphrey lunged forward, using his smaller sword in the confines of the tunnel. He still made short work of the animate corpses. Clouds of mist rose off them as Humphrey cut them to pieces.
“Why wouldn’t there be zombies?” Jason asked as Humphrey walked back to them, coughing from the zombie mist. “Honestly, I’m surprised it took them this long to show up in a place like this.”
“The delta is flush with vital energy,” Clive explained. “The water coming out of the astral space that feeds the river is full of it. All that life-force prevents undead monsters from manifesting anywhere in the delta.”
“Then how are there zombies here?” Humphrey asked, still coughing.
“You don’t sound so good,” Jason said.
He held his hand in front of Humphrey and chanted a spell.
“Feed me your sins.”
You have cleansed all instances of [Corpse Fungus] from [Human].
“Corpse Fungus?” Jason asked.
“What’s that?” Humphrey spluttered as he escaped the cloud.
“It’s a fungus that uses corpses to propagate itself,” Clive said. “It takes over a corpse, makes it ambulate like a zombie, then blows spores over any living creature it comes across. Not a zombie at all; just a regular dead body being moved about.”
“What do those spores do?” Humphrey asked.
“They grow inside you,” Clive said. “Kill you, eventually, but there’s plenty of time to find a healer or an alchemist. If you don’t have Jason on hand.”
They waited for the spore cloud to settle before continuing on, Jason cleansing Clive and Humphrey again, just in case. They followed the tracking stone, closing in on the dead adventurer’s badge. It led them to the most ruined part of the complex, where large sections of brickwork had been torn out of the walls, mud encroaching on the rooms and tunnels. At the end of another large hall, all the brickwork from the back wall was gone, with what looked like a giant, burrowed tunnel beyond.
“What needs a hole that big to get around?” Humphrey asked.