Pete hovered above the dead.
Through his familiar’s eyes, Leonidas saw the rubble field below the butte in sharp, unnatural detail.
Old skeletons lay among broken stones and shattered pieces of masonry. Most had been exposed to the weather for centuries. Their bones were gray, their armor reduced to stains of rust.
The other bodies did not belong among them.
They were fresh.
Six guards lay scattered across the rubble, wearing the same modern temple insignia as Captain Varesh and his surviving soldiers. Their wounds were difficult to see from above, but none had died peacefully.
One corpse rested face-down directly beneath Pete.
“Can you tell what killed them?” Grazim asked.
Leonidas closed his eyes, concentrating.
“Not from here.”
“Send Pete closer,” said Kaylor.
Leonidas frowned.
“He is already close.”
Fendor looked down from the edge of the butte.
“Then send him closer intelligently.”
Pete descended.
The familiar became visible only a few feet above the rubble. For the first time, several of the heroes caught more than a glimpse of him: a small, narrow-bodied creature with wings, bright eyes, and an expression suggesting that he understood far more than he intended to explain.
Pete landed beside the nearest body.
He examined it.
Then he found a stick.
Nethnarel watched over Leonidas’s shoulder.
“What is he doing?”
“Investigating.”
Pete poked the corpse.
Nothing happened.
He poked it again.
The dead guard’s head snapped upward.
Pete leapt backward as the corpse rose with unnatural speed. Its jaw opened far wider than the bones beneath should have allowed, and stringy tendrils tore through its cheeks and chest.
The corpse lunged.
Pete vanished.
Its teeth closed on empty air.
Leonidas opened his eyes.
“It is alive.”
Grazim looked down at the dead soldier clawing blindly through the rubble.
“No,” he said. “It is moving.”
Around the first corpse, other bodies began to stir.
Hands pressed against the ground.
Broken limbs straightened with wet cracks. Freshly dead guards and ancient skeletons rose side by side, though the guards moved differently from ordinary undead.
They did not push themselves upright with their arms and legs.
They floated.
Their bodies lifted several inches above the rubble as if suspended from unseen strings. Torn boots dragged across the stones beneath them. Tendrils emerged through armor, writhing around the corpses like exposed nerves seeking something to grasp.
One of the floating dead turned toward the heroes upon the butte.
Its mouth opened.
A wave of terror climbed the rock.
Grazim felt it enter his mind.
For an instant, the ruined city vanished.
He stood alone upon the mountaintop monument. The other five heroes lay dead around him. Their bodies were older than the stones, reduced to skeletons still clutching broken weapons.
Below the mountain, every village burned.
The forgotten goddess behind Grazim’s symbol remained silent.
He had failed again.
The vision pressed harder, demanding that he flee before the same end found him.
Then Kaylor stepped beside him.
The paladin’s presence struck the fear like a shield striking a blade. His oath radiated outward—not as remembered words, but as certainty.
Grazim straightened.
The vision broke.
“You saw it?” Kaylor asked.
“Yes.”
“Was it true?”
“Not yet.”
They descended.
The path down the worm tunnel was faster than climbing the exterior rock. Hexen sent his remaining wolves ahead while the heroes followed through the broken passage.
By the time they reached the street, more corpses had awakened.
One floated directly toward Kaylor.
Its dead fingers split apart.
Black tendrils shot from beneath the nails and wrapped around the dragonborn’s arm.
Cold corruption entered him.
It did not feel like winter magic. It felt like decay accelerated through every layer of flesh beneath his armor. Scales darkened around the contact. Muscles weakened.
Kaylor cut the tendrils with one sword.
The severed strands continued writhing on the ground.
Another corpse drifted closer and raised one hand.
Magic entered Kaylor’s thoughts.
He saw movement among the ruins—figures circling behind him, blades flashing in windows, enemies appearing where no one stood.
Kaylor recognized the deception.
He ignored it.
The false assassins disappeared.
Fendor’s arrow passed over Kaylor’s shoulder and entered the floating corpse’s forehead.
The creature barely reacted.
Its body rocked backward, then resumed moving.
Fendor fired again.
The second arrow struck the first and drove it deeper. Frost spread across the corpse’s face.
The body fell from the air.
Something inside it continued to move.
“Those are not ordinary dead,” Fendor said.
“An important distinction,” Nethnarel replied.
The rubble shifted farther down the street.
A new creature climbed from beneath it.
At first it appeared to be an enormous mouth.
Rows of curved teeth opened vertically through the center of a round, pale body. Four swollen eyes protruded around the jaw—two upon each side—while a confusion of arms and legs carried it forward.
It ran without coordination but with terrible speed, limbs slapping against stone as the mouth snapped repeatedly.
Nethnarel stared.
“That is mostly teeth.”
Fendor drew another arrow.
“Enough teeth?”
“Too many teeth.”
The creature raced toward them.
It did not reach the line before Kaylor charged.
Fire ran down one of his swords.
The blade struck the floating corpse that had wounded him rather than the approaching maw. Flame spread across the dead guard’s armor and entered the tendrils beneath.
Kaylor’s second weapon followed.
Divine radiance erupted within the body.
The corpse convulsed.
Black strands burst from its back, twisting in the air before burning away. The ruined guard collapsed into a hollow shell.
More bodies rose.
One drifted toward Grazim and extended its hands.
The tendrils missed his armor by inches.
Hexen’s wolves reached it first.
The pack struck the creature in a wave of gray fur and snapping jaws. They dragged it from the air, pinned it against the rubble, and tore at the strands moving beneath its skin.
Grazim raised his holy symbol.
“Return to the death you were denied.”
Divine power spread across the field.
Golden light touched the floating corpses.
Most resisted.
One did not.
The creature recoiled as though struck. It turned away from Grazim and fled over the broken street, its dead legs trailing uselessly beneath it.
Grazim watched it go.
His authority over the dead was returning, but only in fragments.
Once, perhaps, entire armies of corpses had fled from the sound of his voice.
Now he could drive away one.
One was enough for the moment.
The many-legged maw reached the wolves.
Its enormous mouth closed around one of them.
The summoned beast vanished in green light between its teeth.
Another wolf leapt onto the creature’s back. There was barely enough body beneath the four eyes to hold onto, but the wolf buried its claws and bit at one of the swollen orbs.
The maw thrashed.
A third wolf seized one of its legs.
Hexen roared and changed.
The cave bear struck the creature from the side.
Teeth snapped inches from his throat. Hexen drove one paw against the upper half of the mouth and the other beneath it, trying to force the jaws apart.
The creature possessed little muscle that he could see.
It was still monstrously strong.
Its mouth began closing around the bear’s forelegs.
Nethnarel stepped forward.
Her clothes burst into flame.
The fire did not consume the dark fabric. It swept across her in bright red and violet patterns, outlining the shape of her body and curling around her pale hair. Her eyes ignited with the same inner light.
For one startled heartbeat, she resembled the legendary version of herself that had existed before the monument.
Power split between her hands.
She threw two bolts of fire at once.
The first struck the maw attacking Hexen.
The second curved toward one of the floating corpses.
Both spells hit.
Flame entered the maw’s open throat. Its four eyes rolled in different directions as fire erupted from between its teeth.
The floating corpse caught fire from within. Tendrils burst through its chest, burning like black roots pulled from a furnace.
Nethnarel lowered her hands.
The flames covering her remained.
Kaylor glanced at her.
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Are your clothes supposed to be burning?”
“Probably.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“They are not your clothes.”
Leonidas pointed at the wounded maw.
A black mark formed across its pale flesh.
His curse settled upon it.
Two beams of violet-black force erupted from his hands.
The first struck the creature above its central mouth. One swollen eye burst.
The second entered between its teeth.
The blast tore through the rear of its body.
The maw folded inward and collapsed into a pile of limbs, ruined eyes, and broken teeth.
Pete reappeared above Leonidas.
The familiar made an excited sound.
Leonidas looked at him.
“You began this.”
Pete vanished again.
“Did he apologize?” Nethnarel asked.
“No.”
“I respect his consistency.”
The rubble field continued awakening.
Ancient skeletons dragged themselves from beneath stones. Fresh guards floated above them, their dead flesh swollen around the things hiding inside.
Another maw climbed from a collapsed street.
Then another.
The heroes had not found a graveyard.
They had found a field waiting to become an army.
A floating corpse reached toward Hexen.
Its tendrils wrapped around the cave bear’s shoulder and drove through his fur. Necrotic cold spread around the wounds.
Hexen tore the creature from the air.
He smashed it against the ground.
The body broke.
The thing inside did not.
Red flesh pushed through the shattered ribs. Tendrils seized the pieces of its host and pulled them back together.
“It is rebuilding the corpse!” Grazim shouted.
Fendor changed his aim.
Rather than shooting the body’s head, he placed an arrow into the pulsing red mass beneath its ribs.
The frost arrow struck.
Ice spread over the parasite.
The tendrils stopped.
The corpse collapsed completely.
“There,” Fendor said. “The body is only armor.”
Kaylor drove one sword through another guard’s chest. With the second, he opened the wound wider.
Inside, something red and wet contracted away from the light.
Kaylor’s blade ignited.
The parasite shriveled.
The host fell.
“Strike the thing inside,” he called.
The battle changed.
The floating dead were no longer mysterious creatures. They were occupied bodies.
Fendor’s arrows sought the pulsing shapes beneath their armor.
Isamu moved among them, striking ribs and joints until the hidden parasites were exposed. His final blows crushed the soft red masses without wasting force upon the dead flesh surrounding them.
Kaylor cut openings for his own radiant attacks.
Leonidas’s Eldritch Blasts tore through host and possessor together.
Hexen’s wolves learned through instinct. They stopped attacking limbs and began ripping open the center of each corpse.
Grazim’s magic burned whatever remained.
The creatures still had numbers.
One corpse floated above Kaylor and sent another assault into his mind.
Spectral figures appeared around him, each wearing the faces of his companions.
The false Grazim struck from his right.
The false Fendor fired from behind.
The false Nethnarel laughed as she raised burning hands.
Kaylor stood within the illusion and listened.
None of them breathed.
He closed his eyes.
The phantom attacks passed harmlessly through him.
When he opened them again, only the possessed corpse remained.
Kaylor destroyed it.
A maw leapt onto his shield.
Its teeth closed around the blue-and-silver metal.
The dragon emblem disappeared between its jaws.
Kaylor tried to pull free.
The creature shook its body, dragging him across the rubble.
Isamu ran toward them.
He stepped onto Kaylor’s braced shoulder, launched himself above the maw, and came down with both feet against one of its eyes.
The eye collapsed.
The creature released the shield and turned toward Isamu.
Its mouth opened.
Fendor’s frost arrow entered between the teeth.
Ice filled the maw from the inside.
Kaylor struck the frozen creature with the edge of his shield.
It shattered.
“Planned?” Nethnarel asked.
Fendor did not look at her.
“Entirely.”
More possessed guards clustered together below a broken wall.
Their tendrils intertwined.
For an instant, the individual bodies moved as one larger thing.
Nethnarel saw the grouping.
She also saw Kaylor, Isamu, and several wolves dangerously close to it.
“Move!”
The heroes had learned to respond when Nethnarel sounded alarmed.
They scattered.
She hurled a bead of fire.
It passed between the fleeing wolves and landed among the dead guards.
The fireball consumed the group.
The blast rolled across the rubble, lifted bones into the air, and struck the broken wall hard enough to collapse part of it.
Three host bodies emerged from the flame.
All were burning.
The parasites inside them screamed through borrowed throats.
Leonidas marked the nearest.
His Eldritch Blast removed it from the street.
Fendor struck the second.
Grazim’s hammer finished the third.
Another maw ran from beneath the collapsing wall.
The wolves swarmed it.
Dozens of jaws attacked the greater one.
The creature snapped left and right, catching only fur and summoned light. Hexen struck in cave-bear form, forcing it onto its back.
The pack tore the maw into pieces.
One detached leg continued running several feet before falling over.
Nethnarel watched it.
“That may be the worst thing I have seen today.”
“We began the day with giant worms,” Hexen reminded her.
“They were structurally sensible.”
The remaining possessed dead converged upon Kaylor.
Three surrounded him.
Tendrils struck from every direction. One wrapped around his sword arm. Another caught his leg. A third reached for the opening beneath his helmet.
Kaylor’s dancing sword rose from the ground behind them.
The weapon moved by itself, striking the nearest corpse in the back.
Its first blow opened the host.
Its second destroyed the parasite inside.
Kaylor tore free and attacked another.
His greatsword missed.
The possessed corpse lunged.
Grazim intercepted it.
His hammer struck the creature’s shoulder. Golden light flared around the weapon as the half-remembered goddess appeared behind him.
For an instant, she was clearer than before.
Tall.
Fierce.
Unashamed.
She wore pieces of golden battle armor over skin marked with old scars, as though no mortal forge had ever created enough metal to contain her.
Her spectral hands closed over Grazim’s.
Together they swung.
The hammer caved in the corpse’s chest.
The parasite burst beneath the impact.
Then the goddess was gone.
Grazim stared at the empty air behind his weapon.
He still did not know her name.
But she was drawing closer.
The final maw attacked Kaylor.
Its teeth closed around the paladin’s side, piercing armor and scale.
Kaylor grunted but remained standing.
He jammed one sword between the jaws to prevent them from closing farther.
Fendor fired.
The arrow struck the creature’s side.
Frost spread across its limbs.
Isamu attacked next, driving the creature backward ten feet with a sequence of blows that seemed impossible from a human body.
The maw slid across the rubble in pieces.
Part of it continued moving.
Hexen’s wolves finished the rest.
At last, the field became still.
Bones lay scattered among collapsed walls.
Black fluid ran between the stones. The possessed guards had withered after death, their swollen bodies shrinking until only ordinary corpses remained.
Grazim rested one hand against a broken pillar and breathed.
Kaylor used the last of his healing power upon himself, closing the worst of the wounds caused by the tendrils and the maw’s teeth.
Grazim had also spent much of his remaining divine strength. He healed himself, then Kaylor, and found that only the faintest ember of prayer remained.
Fendor had not been touched.
He stood behind them examining the string of his frost bow.
Kaylor looked at him.
“You are unharmed.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I stood where an archer is supposed to stand.”
Grazim glanced at the remains surrounding him.
“I may try that.”
“You would be a poor archer.”
“Then I will continue being struck.”
Hexen returned to human form and immediately looked smaller without the mass of the cave bear around him.
He searched the bodies.
Together, the heroes recovered coins, pieces of silver, intact ornaments, and valuables taken from victims before the creatures had possessed them. The total amounted to roughly three hundred and fifty gold pieces.
The wealth offered little comfort.
Many of the fresh bodies belonged to the temple guards.
Their uniforms matched those worn by the survivors upon the butte. These soldiers had likely entered the city in the same patrol—or one sent shortly before them.
Kaylor knelt beside one.
The dead dragonborn’s armor had been cut open during the battle.
Inside his chest lay the remains of the parasite.
It was small now.
Without a host, the creature resembled a fist-sized piece of red-gray brain tissue. Thin tendrils had curled back into its body.
Leonidas crouched opposite Kaylor.
“It entered after they died?”
“Perhaps,” Grazim said.
Hexen examined another corpse.
“No.”
The druid pointed toward a row of tiny punctures beneath the guard’s jaw.
“It entered while he lived.”
Nethnarel’s expression hardened.
“And wore him afterward.”
Grazim had seen something similar inside Gorvath and Grom. Those parasites had been connected to crimson crystals and the corruption spreading through the conquered world.
These were different in shape.
But perhaps not in purpose.
“Something is collecting bodies,” Grazim said.
“Something is learning how to use them,” Isamu added.
Kaylor looked toward the temple storm.
The purple column continued twisting over the city.
The source of the awakening waited somewhere beneath it.
Pete flew ahead while the heroes rested briefly.
The familiar crossed the rubble field and vanished behind a broken stone wall.
Leonidas watched through his eyes.
“There is a crack in the ground.”
“How large?” Hexen asked.
“Large enough to enter.”
“Fresh?”
“Yes.”
The heroes followed.
The crevasse split an old avenue from one side to the other. It had opened recently, tearing through stone, buried foundations, and bones.
Green vapor seeped from below.
It remained low, clinging to the ground around their boots rather than rising into the air. The gas moved like water, flowing between cracks and spilling into the ruined street.
The earth around the crevasse was stained the same sickly green.
Fendor crouched near the edge but did not touch it.
“This was not here when the city died.”
“No,” Isamu said. “The break is new.”
A low vibration rose through the soles of their boots.
Not an earthquake.
Something deeper.
Regular.
Mechanical.
Grazim looked into the green-lit darkness.
Far below, stone surfaces reflected the unnatural glow. The crevasse did not appear to be a natural opening.
It had split into something buried beneath the city.
Nethnarel approached the edge.
The vapor curled around her black-and-red clothes. For a moment, the fading flames in her eyes reflected green.
“The dead rose around this place,” she said.
Kaylor joined her.
“And the storm stands above the temple.”
“Two sources?”
“Or two entrances.”
Leonidas sent Pete downward.
The familiar became invisible and descended between the fractured walls.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
Thirty.
The green mist grew denser below, but Pete flew above it.
Leonidas’s face tightened.
“What do you see?” Grazim asked.
“A passage.”
“Natural?”
“No.”
He concentrated.
“The walls are carved. There are symbols.”
Kaylor stepped nearer.
“What symbols?”
Leonidas opened his eyes.
“Pete cannot read.”
From below came a scraping sound.
It was softer than the movement of the giant worms.
Closer than the buried machinery.
Something passed beneath the green vapor.
A narrow shape disturbed the surface, leaving a wake like a creature swimming through shallow water.
Then another wake appeared.
Then dozens.
The vapor began flowing upward.
Pete shot from the crevasse and became visible beside Leonidas.
Whatever he had seen had persuaded him to abandon stealth.
The familiar pointed urgently toward the crack.
The green mist spilled over its edge.
Behind the heroes, the corpses they had just defeated remained motionless.
Ahead, the ruined temple waited beneath its purple storm.
Below, something living moved through the buried city.
Kaylor raised both swords.
“We found the way down.”
Nethnarel watched the green vapor creep around her boots.
“Or it found us.”