"So you're going on instinct," CassaRoc offered.
"That's what I said."
"Do you feel anything from your amulet?"
Teldin caught CassaRoc's gaze and looked down. The glow from the amulet had ceased once they had passed into the warrens, and Teldin could feel nothing from it, as though its powers were muted down here. "No, nothing," Teldin said, "nothing at all."
Stardawn concentrated. Magic ran through his elven veins, and he reached out with a minor spell of detection. He pointed with his sword down a tunnel. "Farther in that direction. The taint comes from there."
They proceeded farther down. At one intersection, Teldin caught a wisp of black smoke curling in the distance, and he led the warriors toward it. At another intersection, each connecting tunnel except one was thickly layered with phosphorescent lichen. He chose the dark tunnel.
The Fool had designed his trap very well. '
Teldin led them down the tunnel, his light rod held high. The lichen here glowed red and brown, as though diseased. The tunnel walls seemed to close in, tapering so that the warriors could walk only in single file. The light from the rods seemed to grow dimmer, as though the brightness were being absorbed by the lining of the walls, or countered with a lasting spell of darkness.
"I don't like this," Djan said behind Teldin. "I don't like this at all."
"You think I-" Then Teldin clutched his chest and staggered against the wall. His mind went cold. Pinpricks of ice tingled across his chest. "Cold," he said weakly. "It-it's calling me, and it can't.. sense me here in the warrens. It is searching for me, but it hurts! '
The group stopped and waited while Teldin relaxed and the pain of the Spelljammer's summons faded. Then they started forward again as Teldin regained his composure, and they trudged steadily deeper.
Teldin knew they were close when he saw a thin layer of black mist curling around his feet. He stopped the group and warned them. "Can you feel that?" he asked. The air was chill and reeked of rotting flesh. "We're near his lair, I'm sure. Be ready for anything."
He stepped into the mist. It curled coldly up his legs as he led the party in, then it rose higher with every step, until it was so thick that they could not see before them.
Teldin's senses told him that they had stepped out of a tunnel and into some kind of chamber. He tensed, his ears alert. In the darkness, the light from the rods was practically insignificant, swallowed by the black mist, and he heard rustling, almost like the soft, shuffling footsteps of others, from somewhere deep in the mist around them.
He felt the rustle of a breeze on his arms, then the mist swirled and eddied around them, borne on a cold wind that sprang from some unknown source. Their light rods spread warm, yellow light upon nests of crumbling blankets and broken bones, into the narrow entrances of other tunnels, and upon weapons and chests and leather pouches heaped against the far wall. Teldin picked up a pair of discarded short swords and looked them over.
"Well, we've found something," CassaRoc said, staring at the wooden chest. He stepped forward cautiously and kneeled. He opened a chest, and the light from his rod was reflected in a million sparkles upon his face.
"Gold," he said softly. "Gold."
The chest was packed with gold and silver coins, with necklaces and amulets, brooches and bracelets. He plucked out a gold ring boasting an opaque green stone that bore a diamond-shaped carving, with angles emanating from two points. He smiled and pocketed the ring, then lifted out a dazzling necklace encrusted with rubies and emeralds. In the center, a silver disk had been engraved with symbols and jewels, and CassaRoc held it up to the light.
Teldin noticed the warrior's uncustomary frown. "What is it?" he queried.
"I know this necklace," CassaRoc said. "This used to belong to a fighter of mine."
"Damn!" Na'Shee shouted behind them. "That's Chel's! I know her!"
CassaRoc turned. "Knew her. She died when you arrived here, Teldin."
Teldin said nothing.
CassaRoc gave Na'Shee the necklace, while Stardawn and Djan looked through the chest. CassaRoc waved his sword around. "What is this place?" he asked.
"I don't know," Teldin said. "It looks like someone has been staying here." He picked up one of the bones on the floor. "I don't like their eating habits, though. This is a human bone."
They all heard them then, closing in from the intersecting tunnels. The gold and silver and jewels were forgotten in the rush to bring weapons to bear, to arrange themselves defensively in a circle as their assailants shambled in from the tunnels around them.
"The undead," CassaRoc announced.
The warriors were quickly surrounded by a score of the undead. Most were human; two were elves, and three were halflings. Some bore swords and daggers, ready to use them, albeit awkwardly, with a semblance of living memory. Most just stared hungrily at the intruders, ready to kill by tooth and jagged bone.
'
"This was a trap," Na'Shee said. "We were suckered in." Then one shape stepped from the farthest tunnel and stood in the entrance. Its teeth gleamed wickedly in the yellow light as it hissed with sadistic laughter. Its fur was mottled with blood, with the colors of the spectrum layered in dizzying patterns across its obscene body. An intricate series of circles was painted on its forehead.
"Trapped," the undead Coh said, snapping at them with his sharp yellow teeth. "Compliments of the Fool."
The zombie neogi turned then and plunged into the surrounding wall of mist.
The undead swarmed upon them.
The living sliced their way through the ranks of the undead with incredible ferocity. CassaRoc swore constantly as his sword cleaved through bone and dead flesh, severing heads and arms without conscious thought. He recognized two of the zombies, his own warriors who had died protecting Teldin from the neogi hordes: Chel, who once owned the jewel-studded necklace, and Gar, a fighter and merchant from the open market. He grimaced and killed them as mercifully as he could, staring at their long-dead faces as they lay together on the floor. "Sorry, my friends," he said.
Na'Shee left her crossbow hung at her waist and depended instead on the swiftness of her steel. She cut a swath through the undead forces, then spun around and came back, finishing off those who were still mobile with clean thrusts into their soft skulls or necks. When she was finished, she looked upon their peaceful faces and realized that she had sent friends of hers to their final, true deaths: K'aald, once a guard of Cassa-Roc's, and Jenn, from the Academy of Human Knowledge.
Na'Shee looked up and saw CassaRoc staring at his own dead compatriots on the floor, and wondered if undeath would happen to her as it had to their friends,… if the Fool were successful in his plans.
Djan was attacked by seven undead, who grappled with him and tore his sword from his hands. Stardawn saw the half-elfs plight and dispatched his own assailants with relative ease. He picked up an axe from the stack of weapons by the treasure chest and leaped into the fight, chopping through spinal columns and skulls as though they were made of twigs. Djan finally picked up his sword and, back to back, he and Stardawn fought off the zombies until most of the undead were a heap of bloody limbs jumbled at their feet.
Stardawn's last assailant was particularly strong and single-minded, virtually ignoring Stardawn's blows as one would the sting of a gnat. The elf was pressed against the wall, and the zombie's fetid hand was reaching for his neck when Stardawn realized that physical force would not be enough to finish the creature off. As the undead's fingers closed around his flesh, Stardawn whispered an ancient elven spell. The zombie's eyes rolled back in surprise. Within seconds, it loosened its grip on the elf as its body shook with a thin, papery rustling sound. The undead screamed once, and it fell to the floor in a cloud of black dust, decomposed instantly from the inside.