32 - A Creeping Evil

"Holy crap!" he swore, back-peddling away from the stumbling horde. Mojo and Eacellwen moved with him.

Given their speed, the trio easily made it back out into the field before the slow, beastly undead throng could catch them. Joe and RC killed, or rekilled, a dozen or more in a few seconds, but any hit that did not damage the head or heart was pretty much useless. The only effective non-lethal shot was one [Grit Razor] spray that sliced through the knees of four walkers. It didn't kill the monsters, but it did slow them to a literal crawl.

On his last easily available rock, Joe scooped up Mojo and prepared to run. He and RC would easily leave the leadfooted throng in the dust; he was just waiting for her to finish her volley.

Yet long before the elf emptied her second quiver, they realized they didn't need to run. The dead refused to step out of the shadows. The huge mass of undead packed up to the edge of the treeline and stopped. One of the creatures was pushed into the dappled light by the weight of the line behind it. Even the sporadic touches of the sun's illumination were enough. The rotting monster screamed and fought, clawing its way back into the full shade of the trees.

While Joe refilled his bullet-bag and RC her quiver, they had a moment of panic as a large cloud moved in front of the sun. The cloud only dimmed the sky slightly, but the moment the direct sunlight no longer fell on the grasses, it released the horde. The entire mass stepped forward. A hundred-foot wall of walking corpses, lurching out of the trees, was a heart-stopping sight.

The adventurers and changeling backpedaled further into the field, prepared to bolt when, a minute later, the fast-moving sky uncovered the sun once more. The creatures cried out and shoved their way back into the shadows. Joe was wondering if they would burst into flames like vampires or just fall over. Disappointingly, neither of those occurred. The throng just shuffled out of the direct light and hovered at the shadowy forest edge.

"This would be a very bad place to camp for the night," Joe muttered.

"Agreed," Earcellwen answered, driving an arrow into the head of one of the zombies. "The question is do we finish this … I'm not even sure what to call it. A mass mercy massacre."

"Nice alliteration," Joe chuckled as he threw another gritty crescent into the zombie wall. Given how far away he was, his head-height fan was wide enough to strike eight of them, felling five.

"Thanks. So, after we take all these guys out, do we want to fight our way through the forest? The other alternative is to try to circle this stretch of woods. Well then, there is a third choice of heading back, too," she offered.

Joe looked up at the sun and saw it was still pretty high in the sky. He guessed it was around 3:00 as he counted time.

"I'd rather not head back yet. It would be great if we could determine the source of the evil. It seems to be spreading. This could be huge. We should get as much info to bring back as we can."

"It is spreading, but I can tell you it's a very slow creep. The trees here are aware of the bad dirt around their roots, but the dirt here has been befouled for several rings, or years. The trees back at the ravine were just starting to notice the darkening of the soil. If it took years to cross the field, then we are dealing with more of a slow seeping, not a flood."

"Ok, then let's go around," he stated, using his force fist to grab a good rock he spotted for Mojo. "Granted, as far as navigation goes, I'm gonna count on you. My sense of direction is awful. You would not believe how many times I've gotten lost trying to get somewhere," Joe admitted, shaking his head at some of his memories. He had gotten so turned around at a comic convention once that he somehow found himself in a completely different hotel.

"Ok, let's run then. Are you going to carry Mojo, or do you want me to add him to [Spirit of Stags]?"

"I think he wants to run with us. Let's see how well he does."

The answer was very well. Mojo streaked across the grassy ground as they ran in Earcellwen's travel aura. [Efferous Endurance] was even more effective on him than it was for the two adventurers. The only downside was his poor hands. His canine back legs were perfectly shaped for running, but for his front limbs to maintain that pace, Mojo's knuckles were taking a beating. That was until Joe came up with a solution. He used a bit of bandage to wrap the small, simian-like hands and then layered [Bonemail] onto the cloth. The damage resistance was more than enough to shield the little guy's fists from the ground.

They followed the edge of the forest south until the treeline curved back westward. Following the wooded border, they covered miles. The party only had to backtrack once when they hit a dead end. A quick southern loop brought them around it, and they ran until they started to reach the foothills of Mount Serabuk

The hills grew taller as they went. By the time they were able to turn north again, the two adventurers were climbing a steep pitch. They scrabbled to the top, thankful for Joe's [Efferous Endurance]. When they finally reached the top, the trio found themselves standing on a high ridgeline.

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A sinuous apex cut through the forest they had been skirting to the north until it rose to join the towering Mount Serabuk. Behind them, it ran in a south-west curve, looping to reach more of Serabuk's mountainous neighbors. The mountains and this ridge defined a deep valley. This lowland was surrounded on all sides by high slopes. The bowl was filled with an even thicker woodlands than those they had been skirting outside the valley.

The vale below where they stood was undoubtedly the source of the corruption. A dark, lingering sense of wrongness hung in the air like a foul stench. Gloom and mountain-wrought shadows darkened the valley. Joe guessed that the sun would only shine into the lowland for a few hours each day, right around high noon.

The most notable feature of the contained forest was a tall ziggurat breaking its way out of the canopy of leaves. The stone was a dark blueish-gray color. If the size of the trees matched the one they had seen so far, then the stepped pyramid was massive, hundreds of feet tall.

As Joe studied the structure, he saw a twisted form scamper across one of the stone ledges and disappear back into the forest. It reminded him of the minor ghoulish miners, but bigger and faster.

"We are definitely not going down there this time," he said, looking up at the sun. From their elevation, he could see the bright orb, resting on the tops of the western mountains. In a very short period of time, it would start slipping behind those peaks and they would lose its radiant protection.

"You won't get an argument from me. We should check out those menhirs before we go." The ranger pointed to a large standing stone about a hundred yards away. Even from the distance they were at, Joe could see it was covered with carved runes. Following the ridgeline with his eyes, Joe saw that there were more of the monoliths evenly spaced. As far as he could see, there were tall standing stones defining the borders of the valley.

"Ok, but we should be quick about it." Joe scooped Mojo up, set off at a full run for the standing stone. He knew the broodling could keep up, but the ground here was rockier and so would be tougher on his knuckles. As they approached the tall stone, he could see woven carved bands sectioning the menhir. The patterns looked very similar to Celtic knotwork. Each portion of the stone was filled with symbols.

Earcellwen, running at his side, stated, "That is druidscript. I can read it."

"There are different languages? I thought everyone spoke the same thing," Joe asked, as they closed in on the standing stone.

"We do share a common tongue when we talk to each other, but each school of magic has its own language and written form. Your shield, for example, uses runic words. Some folk will call runic 'Dwarven', because the dwarves are the ones who discovered it and were its exclusive users for a very long time. Druidic is the language of nature magic, even though it is frequently called 'Elvin', 'Fey', or 'Sylvan'. The script of artificers is almost always called 'Draconic' because, like the dwarves, the dragonfolk invented that school of magic. And so on."

They skidded to a halt at the monolith. The wildbow began running her finger back and forth a few inches away from the stone.

"Shoot. It's not history. It's an enchantment. A very high-level one. I don't have enough ritualcraft to say for sure, but I think it is a ward. A really big, powerful, continuous ward, surrounding the whole valley."

Earcellwen reached up to her neck and pulled a long tube out of her dimensional locket. She uncapped the cylinder and drew out a bunch of large sheets of parchment. Tipping the tube, she spilled a tin box into her hand before handing it to Joe. "Here, grab a page and some charcoal from the case. Let's make a rubbing of each side, and we can take them back with us. It will take me too long to read all this, and even if I did, it might not make any sense to us. We probably need an arcanist or a warder."

The stone was much bigger than each sheet of paper, so Joe picked a spot that had a contained block of runes that the parchment could cover. He knew time was slipping by, but he was careful with getting the charcoal impression. Rushing too quickly would be a waste if it meant they could not read the transfer back at Fort Coral. Even being precise, Joe finished far faster than RC did. Having a third hand made the process ten times easier for him. Joe finished his second side of the standing stone just a few seconds after she was done with her first one. He grabbed the fourth sheet and this time let Mojo hold it up for him while the elf carefully layered clean pages between the first three rubbings. She added the last page before rolling it all back into the tube and returning everything to her locket.

"Time to go?" she suggested, dusting off her hands.

"Yup," Joe agreed. He took one last look at the line of megaliths. "Wait," he remarked as his eyes snagged on a break in the pattern. "Hey RC, look there." Joe stepped up to her and pointed at what looked to him like a fallen stone. "Are my eyes messing with me or does it look like that menhir is toppled over?"

"No, you are right," she exclaimed after following his indication. "The roots of that old rowan tree must have gotten under it and tipped it over. That might be where the evil is leaking through. I can feel the barrier here," she stated, stepping back and forth across the ward-line. "The ground is tainted inside but not out here. The primary ward is still intact, but that small break …"

"Could be where the corruption is leaking out of." Joe finished.

"Exactly. Come on. Let's go confirm our theory."

They did not even need to reach the fallen stone to see they were right. All the vegetation around the toppled menhir had the same blue tint as the jungle within the valley. They identified the long spiney looking grass before they stepped into it.

Vermicious Tare: Level 2: Undead (Plant): Ambusher: Spirit

The nasty-looking grass and weeds weren't natural scrub vegetation anymore. The leaking corruption had turned it into a form of undead.

Deciding not to cross into the tare patch, they wrote down notes about everything they saw and then turned and ran back for home. The idea of being anywhere near this valley after sundown gave them all the encouragement they needed to push their already rapid pace.

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