The Madness of Craven
The bronze doors did not open.
Fendor tried first.
He knelt at the seam between them, worked his tools into the ancient lock, and listened.
A click.
Another.
Then nothing.
Fendor frowned.
“Again.”
The second attempt went worse than the first.
He withdrew the tools before the lock could damage them and looked up at the carved dragonborn standing triumphantly over his mountain of mutilated bodies.
“I dislike him already.”
Grazim uncorked a vial.
Kaylor glanced toward him.
“What are you doing?”
“Testing something.”
Grazim threw holy water against the image of Craven.
It splashed across the bronze wizard's chest.
Nothing happened.
A thin line of dust ran down the carving.
Leonidas nodded appreciatively.
“You cleaned him.”
Grazim put the empty vial away.
“I dislike him more now.”
Nethnarel raised the Wand of Secrets.
The small rod had already proven useful in places designed by people who preferred their doors hidden and their traps unfair.
She invoked it.
Nothing.
No concealed mechanism.
No trap.
No secret opening.
Only a locked pair of enormous bronze doors that had resisted Fendor's best effort.
Leonidas sighed.
“I suppose we do this the easy way.”
He reached inside his gear and withdrew the Chimes of Opening.
The small chimes looked absurd in front of a door nearly fifty feet across.
Leonidas struck them.
One clear note passed through the chamber.
It did not echo.
The sound seemed to enter the bronze instead.
Deep inside the door, something moved.
Once.
Twice.
Then came a grinding noise so low that the stone beneath their feet trembled.
The seam split.
Both doors began swinging outward.
Air escaped from whatever lay beyond.
Not wind.
Breath.
Ancient, trapped breath.
The stench of death rolled over them.
Nethnarel covered her nose.
Hexen turned his head.
Fendor froze.
For one terrible instant, beneath the smell of decay, he imagined roasted meat.
Wine.
Music.
The feast.
The woman.
The impossible celebration still lived somewhere in his memory.
He looked back.
The chamber behind them remained dark.
No banquet waited.
No voices called.
Fendor faced the opening again.
“Keep moving.”
Kaylor watched him.
“You good?”
“No.”
Fendor tightened his grip on the Oathbow.
“But I'm moving.”
Beyond the doors, stairs descended.
The air grew colder with every step.
Kaylor stopped halfway down.
The battle around the great egg had left wounds beneath his armor, and something one of those creatures had done to him still felt wrong.
Not merely pain.
Corruption.
He placed one hand against his chest.
Divine power answered.
First he drove the sickness from himself.
Then he let the remaining strength of his Lay on Hands close the worst of his wounds.
When he finished, he drew a deeper breath.
“Better.”
Hexen, still wearing the body of a giant scorpion, attempted to follow.
His armored bulk filled nearly the entire passage.
He managed three steps.
Stopped.
Turned slightly.
One claw struck a wall.
The other blocked everyone behind him.
Nethnarel stared.
Hexen stared back.
“I can fit.”
“No,” she said.
“I am fitting now.”
“You are occupying the corridor.”
“That is different.”
Kaylor pointed downward.
“Change back.”
The enormous scorpion vanished.
Hexen Brew stood in its place.
His wolves crowded around his legs.
Leonidas sent Pete ahead.
The invisible familiar slipped down the stairs and into the darkness below.
The passage eventually leveled into a narrow stone corridor.
The walls were old but carefully fitted.
The ceiling arched overhead, reinforced every few yards by shallow stone ribs.
No dust moved.
No air stirred.
Pete continued.
Then stopped.
The corridor ended.
Leonidas closed his eyes and looked through the familiar.
“Dead end.”
Nethnarel touched the Wand of Secrets.
“I have charges left.”
Kaylor reached into his own gear.
“Save one.”
He brought out a gem.
It appeared ordinary until he held it before one eye and invoked the magic within.
Then the corridor changed.
The wall at the end remained stone.
But Kaylor could see through the lie of it.
“There.”
He pointed.
“Door.”
Everyone looked.
They saw wall.
Kaylor crossed the distance and began searching where the Gem of Seeing showed him the concealed seam.
Once he knew where to look, the mechanism was easy to find.
A hidden lever sat flush inside the stone.
Leonidas raised one eyebrow.
“Perhaps inspect it first.”
Kaylor pulled it.
Part of the wall slid aside.
Leonidas smiled.
“And people call me impulsive.”
Kaylor stepped through.
The hidden chamber beyond had a marble floor.
That alone made it feel wrong.
Everything they had passed through so far had been ancient stone, mechanisms, bones, or traps.
This room had been built for work.
A wizard's work.
Tables filled the chamber.
Glass vessels stood in racks.
Beakers.
Retorts.
Long-necked flasks.
Books lay where someone had once left them, some open, others stacked beside instruments none of the heroes recognized.
Several braziers stood cold and unlit.
Containers of fluid rested along one side of the room.
The room had been sealed for years.
Perhaps far longer.
Yet some of those vessels still contained liquid.
Leonidas noticed immediately.
“No.”
He looked at Nethnarel.
“I have not done anything.”
“You're thinking about it.”
“That is not illegal.”
“Yet.”
Leonidas found a wooden chalice.
He dipped it into one of the preserved liquids.
Kaylor stared at him.
“We know absolutely nothing about that.”
“Correct.”
“It has been sitting in Craven's laboratory for gods know how long.”
“Also correct.”
“And you are going to drink it.”
Leonidas considered the chalice.
“Yes.”
He drank.
Nothing happened.
Leonidas looked disappointed.
Then some of the cuts on his body began to close.
He blinked.
“Well.”
Grazim looked closer.
“Healed?”
“A little.”
Leonidas smiled.
“We should take the keg.”
Then his smile faded.
His stomach twisted.
His skin went pale.
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“There it is.”
Leonidas steadied himself against the table.
“Poison.”
“Obviously.”
A second effect followed.
It was subtler.
The lines around Leonidas's eyes deepened slightly.
His face changed by an amount so small the others might have missed it if they had not been staring.
Leonidas touched his cheek.
“What?”
Grazim examined him.
“You look older.”
“How much older?”
Hexen considered.
“Three years?”
Leonidas stared at him.
“Why three?”
“Feels right.”
Leonidas looked down at the chalice.
Then back at the preserved fluid.
“We are not taking the keg.”
Kaylor extended his divine senses.
No celestial presence answered.
No fiend.
No undead.
Not in the laboratory itself.
That somehow did not make the room less disturbing.
Craven's image had been carved above tortured bodies.
Now they had found the place where he had apparently worked.
Preserved liquids.
Books.
Unknown instruments.
Nothing moved.
Nothing attacked.
The stillness made it worse.
Three doors led from the laboratory.
Nethnarel approached the first.
No light showed beneath it.
No sound.
Only the same smell they had encountered since opening the bronze doors.
Old death.
She crouched.
There was enough space beneath the door for something very small.
Nethnarel reached into her clothing.
A mouse climbed into her hand.
Gygax twitched his whiskers.
“You know what to do.”
The familiar disappeared beneath the door.
Hexen watched.
“You send the mouse.”
“Yes.”
“Into Craven's vault.”
“Yes.”
“What if something eats him?”
Nethnarel looked at Leonidas.
“We apparently bring familiars back now.”
Pete remained invisible nearby.
Leonidas nodded.
“Eventually.”
Gygax returned.
The connection between Nethnarel and the tiny creature did not give her Pete's distant vision, but impressions came through clearly enough.
Corridors.
Turns.
Dead ends.
Nothing immediately waiting to kill them.
“A maze,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor looked at the door.
“No.”
No one objected.
They tried the second.
Gygax disappeared again.
He was gone longer this time.
When he returned, Nethnarel received a different impression.
A long corridor.
A door partway down.
Another farther beyond.
Behind at least one of them—
Bones.
Many bones.
“Room full of bones.”
Kaylor looked interested.
Leonidas looked less interested.
They checked the third.
Gygax came back quickly.
Nethnarel's expression changed.
“Well?”
“Torture chamber.”
Grazim looked at her.
“Empty?”
“No.”
“Alive?”
“No.”
Bodies.
Corpses.
Whatever had been done in that chamber had ended a very long time ago.
But the dead remained.
They stood in Craven's laboratory considering three choices.
A maze.
A torture chamber full of corpses.
A room full of bones.
Kaylor pointed toward the second door.
“Bones.”
Leonidas sighed.
“Of course you choose bones.”
“They're probably undead.”
“You say that like it improves the choice.”
“It does.”
They entered the corridor Gygax had explored.
The passage turned several times.
One door appeared partway down.
Another stood farther ahead.
Gygax's impressions suggested both entered the same chamber.
Fendor studied the arrangement.
“If we go to the farther one, anything near the first entrance won't have us directly in front of it.”
Kaylor nodded.
They continued.
The wolves moved with Hexen.
Pete vanished again and drifted ahead.
The others kept their weapons ready.
At the far door, they stopped.
Leonidas, still suffering from whatever he had swallowed, examined it.
“No obvious trap.”
“How confident are you?” Nethnarel asked.
“Extremely.”
“You're poisoned.”
“Yes.”
“And magically older.”
“Yes.”
“And the Demon Dice slowed you.”
Leonidas looked offended.
“I can still recognize a door.”
Kaylor opened it.
The room beyond was enormous.
The smell hit first.
Bones did not rot the way flesh did.
But flesh had once covered many of these.
Piles filled the chamber.
Great heaps of ribs and femurs.
Spines.
Skulls.
Things that had once belonged to humanoids.
Things that had not.
An elevated wooden platform rose perhaps eight feet near the center of the room.
The mound atop it was larger than any of the others.
Another pile contained almost nothing but human heads.
Not scattered skulls.
Heads.
Collected together.
Nethnarel stopped just inside the room.
“Craven did this?”
No one answered.
They did not know.
Not yet.
But the bronze door had shown Craven standing over bodies.
The laboratory had stood immediately beyond it.
And now this.
Kaylor invoked his divine senses.
The answer came so strongly that he nearly recoiled.
Evil.
Not somewhere.
Everywhere.
His hand tightened around his weapon.
“We are not alone.”
Pete drifted upward.
Leonidas closed his eyes.
Through the familiar, he saw the top of the central mound.
A body lay there.
Less decomposed than the others.
Armored.
A sword remained in one hand.
Fangs showed between its lips.
It looked dead.
Leonidas knew better.
Pete descended closer.
“Careful,” Grazim said.
“He's invisible.”
“That has never protected Pete from his own decisions.”
The familiar moved closer still.
The corpse opened its eyes.
It rose.
Two wings unfolded from its back.
Kaylor immediately called divine radiance into his weapon.
Sacred power wrapped the blade.
The creature turned toward them.
Its voice was a hiss.
A language from the lower planes.
At least one of the heroes understood enough.
“Rise, my creatures.”
The thing spread its wings.
“Charge.”
The piles of bones moved.
Kaylor looked around the chamber.
“Oh.”
The first corpse pulled itself upright near them.
It did not resemble a skeleton.
It resembled several dead things packed together and forced to share one body.
Its chest expanded.
Then it exhaled.
A cloud rolled across Grazim, Nethnarel, and Kaylor.
Cold struck first.
Then something beneath the cold.
Decay.
Necrotic force passed through armor, skin, and muscle as if trying to convince every living cell that death had already happened.
Grazim grunted and held his ground.
Nethnarel staggered.
Kaylor clenched his teeth.
All three resisted the worst of it.
They still felt part of themselves wither.
Another pile erupted.
A monstrous jaw burst from the bones.
It was vaguely sharklike, but no shark had ever possessed limbs of bone and claws assembled from the remains of other creatures.
The thing lunged into Hexen's wolves.
Its jaws missed one.
A claw caught another.
The glowing animal vanished beneath the strike.
Seven remained.
“Hey!” Hexen shouted.
The Oathbow was already in Fendor's hands.
He drew.
Released.
Then drew again.
Both arrows struck the corpse-thing that had breathed death across his companions.
Another shape moved high above the battlefield.
A piece of bone flashed through the darkness.
It struck Grazim hard.
He looked down.
The projectile resembled a throwing star carved from part of the creature that had launched it.
Grazim pulled it free.
“That's unpleasant.”
Hexen reached the nearest undead.
Spear of Death.
Spear of Life.
The first entered dead flesh.
The second followed with enough force to tear through bone.
For a moment Hexen waited for the familiar restorative pulse.
Nothing came.
He frowned.
“Oh.”
Grazim understood.
“Undead.”
Hexen looked offended.
“I know what it is.”
“You cannot steal life from something that has none.”
“I know that now.”
Another corpse-thing clawed at Grazim.
He blocked one strike.
The second passed wide.
Then two arrows flew from somewhere they could not see.
Kaylor twisted.
One passed close enough for him to hear it.
The second vanished into the confusion.
“There is an archer!”
“That narrows it down,” Nethnarel shouted.
The winged figure still stood upon the raised platform.
Kaylor saw it.
Saw the stairs.
Saw the distance.
And did exactly what everyone expected Kaylor to do.
He ran toward it.
“Kaylor!” Grazim shouted.
Too late.
The dragonborn took several pounding steps and jumped.
He cleared the rise and landed on the platform.
The winged undead turned toward him.
Kaylor attacked before it could speak.
The first blow struck with terrifying force.
The second followed immediately.
His Dancing Sword left his hand and swept around toward the creature under its own power.
That attack missed.
The others did not.
The undead rocked backward.
For one instant, Kaylor thought he had surprised it.
Then darkness pressed against him.
Necrotic force crawled over his armor.
His flesh felt suddenly old.
The winged creature had been waiting for someone foolish enough to come close.
Its longsword moved.
The blade struck Kaylor.
More death magic poured through the wound.
Kaylor remained standing.
Barely.
The creature inhaled.
Kaylor saw what was coming.
“Oh, no.”
The same rotting breath that had washed over his companions struck him almost point-blank.
This time he failed to resist it.
Pain tore through him.
In the space of a few breaths, nearly half his strength was gone.
Below, Leonidas stared up at him.
“It is always best to fight the largest monster hand-to-hand.”
Kaylor raised his weapon again.
“Helpful.”
Grazim stepped into the center of the chamber.
Enough.
He raised his holy symbol.
Divine authority rolled outward.
The effect on the dead was immediate.
One of the bone creatures recoiled.
Another twisted away.
The force of Grazim's faith drove them back.
“Turn.”
The undead fled.
One tried to escape past Hexen.
Hexen drove the Spear of Life into it as it moved.
The wolves snapped after another.
For the first time since entering the room, the heroes had space.
Nethnarel used it.
Fire erupted around the winged creature.
Not an explosion.
A wall.
Flame climbed upward and folded around part of the central platform, boxing the undead commander and one of its servants inside burning magic.
The temperature in the chamber surged.
Fendor kept shooting.
Kaylor remained on the platform.
His Dancing Sword moved independently while he struck again with the weapon in his hands.
This time divine radiance joined the blow.
The Smite burst against dead flesh.
The winged creature answered with its sword.
Below, more bones moved.
Hexen saw them.
More jawed abominations.
More shapes trying to reach the others.
He changed the battlefield.
A second Wall of Fire rose.
This one cut across the chamber.
For a heartbeat the battlefield became a maze of flame and bone.
Nethnarel's wall trapped one group.
Hexen's blocked another.
The undead did not care.
One came straight through the fire.
Its body ignited.
It kept coming.
Leonidas had barely enough time to turn before claws struck him.
The first tore across his body.
The second followed.
Blood ran down his clothes.
Thirty-four points of punishment in a heartbeat.
Leonidas smiled through clenched teeth.
“Bad choice.”
Hell answered.
His Hellish Rebuke erupted around the creature.
Flames climbed across its body.
The undead shrieked.
Even after resisting part of the spell, it staggered under the retaliation.
Another creature forced its way through Hexen's Wall of Fire.
It emerged burning.
It carried a glaive-like weapon and possessed horns sharp enough to use as another.
It came for Nethnarel.
The glaive missed.
The horns did not.
One punctured her flesh.
Nethnarel staggered backward but held the spell.
Her wall remained.
The creature pressed toward her.
She considered the magic available.
Witch Bolt.
No.
That would cost her concentration.
The fire mattered more.
She chose something simpler.
Eldritch force struck the undead.
The blast threw it backward.
Back through Hexen's wall.
The creature entered the flames already burning.
It did not emerge.
Nethnarel looked at Hexen.
“That worked.”
Hexen nodded.
“Do it again.”
Kaylor's Dancing Sword cut another path through the chaos.
He attacked with his primary blade.
Radiance followed.
Another Divine Smite exploded against the dead.
The platform beneath him was covered in bones.
Some were beginning to move.
Others already had.
There were too many.
Leonidas began another spell.
Something about the strange magic clinging to him interfered with the timing.
The power hung for a moment instead of releasing.
Leonidas glared at nothing in particular.
“I hate those dice.”
Another undead pushed through the fire toward Nethnarel.
It emerged scorched but alive.
The creature swung.
Missed.
Its horns drove toward her.
This time they struck.
Nethnarel nearly lost control of her wall.
Nearly.
She held it.
The flames continued burning.
Leonidas turned toward another attacker and exhaled a strange shimmering breath.
The creature stopped.
Its attack died before it began.
Confusion spread across its dead features.
It wandered toward the center of the chamber as though it had forgotten why it had risen.
No one questioned how Leonidas had done that.
There were more immediate problems.
One of the bone-sharks erupted from another pile.
It descended toward Hexen.
Jaws snapped.
Claws followed.
Both missed.
Hexen looked at the thing.
“Good.”
More movement came from somewhere they could not see.
Something else was still inside the piles.
Something else was moving.
The fire walls continued to divide the room.
The undead continued walking through them anyway.
One emerged from the flames so badly burned that pieces of it fell away as it moved.
It charged.
Missed.
Fendor saw Nethnarel being pressed.
He started toward her.
Too far.
If he ran all the way there, he would arrive without enough time to strike.
He stopped.
Raised the bow instead.
One creature fell beneath his first shot.
Fendor shifted immediately.
A second arrow crossed the room.
The undead beside it dropped as well.
For a heartbeat, the space around Nethnarel opened.
“Behind us!” Fendor shouted.
She moved.
The fires roared.
Bones scraped across stone.
Kaylor remained on the platform with the winged creature.
Grazim could still feel evil in every direction.
Hexen stood among the remnants of his wolf pack with both spears ready.
Leonidas was bleeding.
Nethnarel was wounded but still holding the wall.
Fendor already had another arrow nocked.
And the chamber was not empty yet.
Far from it.
Something moved beneath another pile of bones.
Then another.
The dead were still rising.