31 - Major Damage

'Not good,' Joe reflected as the ghastly face hovered above him. The trow's flesh was gray and cracked. It had more of a dessicated than rotten look to it. This dead, dwarven derivative had plenty of facial hair, even though it lacked a true beard. Huge, dirty mutton chops sprouted from its cheeks. It glared hatefully at Joe, with ebon eyes that looked like chunks of coal.

As it reached for him, a nut slammed into its outstretched hand, followed by a stream of arrows which drove the undead commander back away from his prone body. The trow ghoul moved behind the crates for cover. As it moved off, it bellowed out a garble of commands. The words sounded like the language Joe knew, but they were so heavily distorted he could not quite understand them.

The moment the major was not right on top of him, Joe willed a stone from his bullet bag into his stiff hand. Thankfully, the rock pushed his grip open just enough to fit, not materializing into his flesh. He began to crumble the stone, hoping he'd be mobile in time to release the shards. He had found out during his training sessions that if he held on too long, [Grit Razor] dissolved the rock into dust, and the magic faded away.

More ghouls, out of Joe's restricted line of sight, grunted fearfully in response to the major's sharp commands. They sounded reluctant to cross the [Halefires]. The leader was having none of their hesitation. Its shouting ramped up to the point he sounded like a drill sergeant berating its cadets. Unwilling or unable to resist the leader's orders, more feet leapt through the flames to land beside Joe's frozen body.

These too felt the wrath of Earcellwen's bow, but there were more pushing through the flames than she could repel. Mojo knocked a few of the dead trow off balance, but his contribution was more annoyance than lethal.

"Joe! Get back here! Too many!"

'And just how do I do that while paralyzed?' he thought. 'I can't cast purge like this … oh shit, yes I can.'

He had forgotten that his whole body was his spell focus. He didn't need to move and touch something with his hands to cast his spells. Especially on himself.

Your skill [Purge] has increased to rank 10.

You have removed the {Paralyzed} affliction from yourself.

Freed from the paralysis, Joe rolled away just as a scabby foot slammed into the rock where his head had been. Since there were already far too many ghouls in the room with him, Joe dual-cast his [Halefires] on the floor under his body. This extinguished the ones by the entryways, instead enveloping his whole body in their ethereal flames. The undead miners howled and hissed, jumping away from where he lay on the stone floor of the chamber.

With his moment of unfrozen, free space, Joe locked his eyes on the spot of the floor next to where the elven archer and the hybrid hurler were firing from. Mojo had switched to plain rocks at this point. In a blink, Joe was gone, reappearing on the other side of the locked gate.

"RC! Go limp!" he shouted as he appeared at their side. Joe scooped her up with his left arm, grabbed Mojo with his force fist. Spinning them backward, he released [Grit Razor] at the ghoulish major from his right hand. Some of the spell tinged off the bars, but the rest of it tore into the crates. While the shards barely nicked the undead commander, Joe had expected that to happen; directly hitting the undead commander had not been his plan. The real damage came from the massive detonation of poorly-made trow bombs.

He swept the three of them around an outcropping of stone in the tunnel, protecting both of them with his body from everything but a blistering wash of heat and the deafening explosion. The ghouls in the chamber had no such cover. They took the full brunt of the explosion, especially the Minor Ghoulish Major, who Joe guessed had likely been evaporated instantly.

With ringing ears, the guild members staggered back out into the sunlight. Joe healed himself and let [Wellspring] restore their hearing before he cracked a wide smile. "Okay, that didn't go exactly according to plan, but it was still awesome."

"True," Earcellwen remarked, wiggling a finger in her ear. "But 'Rare are bombardier reunions.' Let's not do that again."

"Another Dadism?" Joe prompted, scooping up Mojo.

"Yes, which are maxims for a reason."

"Fair enough," Joe agreed as Mojo settled back up on his shoulder. "Hey, can I try something with you? RC just doesn't feel natural for me. Maybe for an archon it is, but I'd rather a name that feels like something I'd call a friend."

"Ok. Do you have something in mind?"

"Not really. Can we see if something just pops up between us?"

"Very well," she replied. "But I get to nix anything awful."

"Completely fair," he answered as he looked around the gully one more time, focusing on their quest again. There was still something that was bugging him.

"So, we have made a complete circuit of the ravine," he started. "All the tunnels we found have been locked up. The only thing that we still don't know is why the apes moved from their normal habitats to here. The other two sites seemed ok, but this one makes no sense. The undead trow are a terrible thing to move in with. So why do it?"

"The only thing I can tell you is that dark feeling was far more prevalent on the west side of the ravine than it is on the east end. That second tunnel that was caved in is the furthest west we were able to go, and I could barely stand to be in there. Could that be the clue we are missing?"

"It could be. I was wondering if being underground was making it worse, too. As soon as you got back out into the sunlight, your aura perked up. Could the sun be burning up the badness that you were feeling?"

"That's very plausible, Joe. Many old forms of necromancy can not function in daylight. Given we have ghouls and dread, we could be dealing with something old and necromantic."

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Ruffling a hand on Mojo's thigh, Joe looked up into the sky and then to the west. The sun had just recently passed its apex. That meant they had at least six hours of daylight left to them today, barring a sudden influx of clouds. Factoring in the further west they walked, the more time they would need to get back, Joe came up with a three-hour window. If they did not find anything in that time, they'd turn back and try again another day.

"I'm for heading west to take a look," he announced. "We have plenty of daylight left, and I hate not knowing the answer to a puzzle."

"I agree. It's going to vex me not knowing where this evil springs from. As my father says 'An unwanted mystery is as worrisome as a sore tooth."

"I have got to meet your father someday," Joe declared with a smile for his teammate.

"That would entail a few weeks of travel, but I would be happy to introduce you. I think he will like you as much as Naenaeon did."

They took a minute to reset their gear before heading off. Joe refilled his bullet bag. He also emptied out one of his belt pouches and let Mojo collect rocks; unfortunately, the nuts had not survived his explosion. If Mojo was going to go out with him again, Joe would have to think about what sort of equipment the smart little guy should have.

They set a good pace jogging west. Mojo loped alongside them, his movement made Joe think of a bear, being a cross between a dog's fluid run and an ape's bounding dash. This time, they did not speed-run, both for Mojo's benefit and because they were looking for clues. Any time the trio passed a deep underhang or a creature burrow, Earcellwen checked it. Those areas of persistent darkness were filling with the same taint she had felt back at the trow mines. These stops confirmed their hypothesis; the corruption withered away in sunlight, and it grew stronger the further west they went.

They left the trees and entered a large plain, at least a couple of miles long. Mojo rode for this stint as Joe and Earcellwen picked up the pace. There was no point in testing every gopher hole at this point; they knew the corruption was under the ground, and they were getting closer to its source.

They covered the miles in a few minutes, closing on another thick wall of semi-tropical forest. The closer they got, the more animated the changeling on Joe's back became. Joe was almost certain Mojo recognized where they were headed to.

As Joe crossed out of the grasslands and into the thick bower of trees, he was hit with what had to be the sensation Earcellwen had been trying to tell him about. As he entered the shadowy grove, a sickening feeling washed over him. It was as if a thousand icy-cold worms had been spreading across his bare skin. The cold, crawling feeling made him stop dead in his tracks and shudder.

"Finally," RC croaked, shivering herself. "I was beginning to wonder if you had any spiritual sensitivity at all."

"I … I have a very high Spirit, I'll have you know," Joe stammered, trying to shake off the writhing cold feeling.

"Not the same thing," she huffed. "The Spirit attribute is how effective we are with spiritual manipulation. Sensitivity is something else. Some people and classes have it, some don't. In the wilderness, my folk are especially sensitive. My Wildbow is one of those such classes." The elf hooked her bow over her shoulder and shook out her hands as if she was trying to wake them up or shake something off them.

"Gah! This is what you have been feeling this whole time?" Joe groaned. He vigorously chafed his arms through the sleeves of his blue gambeson, trying to drive off the clammy sensation.

"Probably," the ranger shrugged. "If it's a frigid, slimy sensation, then yes. That is exactly it."

"Yeah. That is what I have now, too. Bleh." He looked around the thickly wooded area. The dense canopy blocked everything but a few rare beams that managed to find an open channel through the leaves. "At least we now know for sure we are heading in the right direction."

The wildbow threw a grimace at Joe. "Now YOU know for sure. I have been certain since the trow mines."

"Sorry. Fair enough. If this is where Mojo's troop was from, then I can see why they fled east from here. I hope it doesn't get much worse. This is … "

"JOE!" Earcellwen shouted. "On your left!" Arrows launched from her bow past his chest in a rapid burst.

Turning, Joe saw a number of lurching forms shuffling towards where he and RC stood. Some were humanoid-shaped. Others were quadrupeds. Summoning a chunk of obsidian, he began to break it down.

Joe used the moment before being engaged to look at their auras. There was no blue in the creatures at all, just whorls of black, purple, and red. The red was not the bright red of damage but the darker crimson Joe had begun to associate with pain. These things were in constant horrible pain.

The purple seemed to be some sort of affliction, warping their bodies. It was warping beasts into humanoids and the humanoids into more bestial versions. It also seemed to be driving them. It pulsed inside the creatures, keeping the same beat within each undead monster.

The black was necrosis, yet it too was wrong. It was not eating away at the undead, as it would with living tissue. It was sustaining them in their wretched state, a perpetual state of static rot and agony.

Joe assessed the three forms closest to him. The trio was comprised of the desiccated corpse of a goat-legged aresa, a mangled raccoon, and an animated undead wolf.

Shambling Cadaver: Level 7: Undead (Zombie): Brute: Vigor

Rotting Varmint: Level 3: Undead (Zombie): Lurker: Perception

Skulking Plaguer: Level 6: Undead (Ghoul): Lurker: Spirit

The attention of the two undead animals was locked onto Joe, while the goatman seemed to be following the decaying beasts. All three of them seemed not to care if they walked into branches or tripped and fell on rough terrain. They were being driven by the violet pulse he saw within them. The closer they came to Joe and his friends, the faster and more powerfully it throbbed.

"Headshots, RC? Where I come from, that is the way to kill zombies in the movies."

"Target the head or heart with the undead. Those are the nexus points for their vitality," the archer called back. "And don't get bit. Most of them are infectious."

"Okay. Pretty much the same as Earth lore." Joe's spell was charged, but he was not sure the best angle to throw it at if he was going to try and send it through their rotten brains. The heads of the three shuffling forms were all at different heights. Joe had gotten his [Grit Razor] to launch at an angle before, but it really messed up his aim. Maybe with more practice, he could count on tilted waves, but not yet.

He decided to try something else. He swung his arm low and then up, like he was pitching a softball. He figured that if the crescent ended up just skimming the ground, he would kill the raccoon, which was the closest, and cripple the other two behind it.

Thankfully, the spell did what Joe had hoped it would. It rose as it flew. The shards shredded the dead raccoon into unrecognizable scraps, then it hooked up to dissect the wolf's throat, leaving its head dangling by just its spine. When it reached the humanoid zombie, it sliced through the corpse's chest, tearing meat from its torso and arms.

Joe only needed a single swipe of his claw to finish decapitating the lupine zombie. The aresa took a bit more effort, but the monster was so slow that blocking its attacks was easily accomplished. Just as he finished off the shuffling dead man, he heard his ally call out again.

"Joe, back out! There's a lot more behind these!"

He looked over at the elf and found that Mojo was obeying Joe's last command. The little changeling was hurling rocks at anything that came close to Earcellwen. Even though his missiles were bouncing harmlessly off the shuffling creatures, it was the thought that counted. Mojo was trying to protect RC.

He looked past the pair. [Night Eyes] easily pierced the forest shadows, allowing Joe to confirm what the ranger had warned him of. There were several dozen of the shambling forms moving toward where they were fighting. Maybe a hundred more.

That was a lot of restless dead.

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