Leftover Apocalypse

The temptation to have Mila just tunnel down was intense. We started off searching for stairs or ramps or just places where nobody ever built a floor, and to be fair we found them on most levels without too much difficulty - but it was never as simple as I wanted. We would find a perfectly made flight of stairs, but it would end at a wall. There would be a hole, but it would go down too far - vanishing into darkness with nowhere stable to tie off a rope. We'd come across a place where the ground was just the roof of the section below and allowed us to climb down, but it would lead to an alley so narrow that we had to take off our backpacks and slide along sideways with no guarantee it would lead anywhere good.

I saw my first zombie just a few levels down from where we started, thankfully not up close. We were skirting along the edge of the pit - as we often did since it tended to have a clear walkway at the rim and we all needed frequent breaks from the claustrophobia - and the zombie was staring at us from the far side. It watched us with cloudy eyes, then turned and looked from side to side as if attempting to determine a route. There was a mausoleum that went right to the edge on one side of it and a collapsed bit of walkway on the other, so it ended up turning back to just watch us pass. I was worried that it would raise an alarm somehow, since the warning about getting surrounded implied they would swarm under the right circumstances, but it just stared.

The second zombie I didn't see at all. It lunged out at Sige, who was taking a turn in the lead, and he simply flipped it over his head into the abyss without breaking stride. It was gone before I had any idea it had been there. Likewise, later in the day Aestrid was attacked by three of the things and she just let them gnaw on her force field while she stood there, immovable and inviolable and preventing them from reaching the rest of us. Connie pulled out a weapon she'd bought back on the surface, a short stick with a hook-shaped blade, and leaned past Aestrid to hack at the things' heads until they collapsed. Cyne looked away, but was smart enough to not comment.

There were a few others, normally one at a time and easy to handle. At any given time Sige and Aestrid were at the front and back with the rest of us safely in the middle - Connie didn't really need to point the way, just to occasionally check the dates on a plaque. We'd been dropped off about forty levels down, and by Connie's reckoning we would need to go down another hundred and twenty - but in reality since the "levels" were overlapping tangles of arbitrary height that was an extremely rough estimate.

I didn't mind the idea of going down that far, since at worst that would take us maybe two days - but the idea of climbing up the whole way was starting to make me nervous. By the end of the first day we were exhausted but had found a tomb labeled with the year 123,340. That was base six of course, but it meant we were almost exactly halfway to the year 122,301 which is what we were searching for. In regular old base ten that would be the year 10,909 which was six hundred and thirty-nine years ago, and apparently that was long enough for people to have lost a ridiculously important magic-granting building somehow.

I assumed I would have trouble sleeping in what was practically the underworld, but Mila sealed us into a room and we all piled into a heap together and it was... pretty comfy. Back on Earth I can't remember the last time I would have fallen asleep touching someone else. Movie night with Bill, or... no. That didn't happen. I had to remind myself to keep it together. It was like Connie had said, these memories weren't just fake they were absurd. Why would I be snuggled up on a couch with my case worker? And we certainly wouldn't be watching Lord of the Rings, he hated fantasy. No, wait. Did I know that about him? Why would I? Were my fake memories conflicting with each other now? I put the whole bizarre situation on the list of things to worry about later, and went to sleep.

The next day was when things started to go wrong.

We had barely gotten anywhere when Sige was attacked again. These ones were basically just skeletons, somehow held together by nothing but a few old tendons and magical energy. He popped the head off one like it was nothing, swung another to the ground, but then the third clamped its jaws down on his arm and while he was dealing with that situation the one on the floor began to attack his legs. We were in a tight passageway with no easy way to change marching order - Connie tried to reach past with her hook thing to help, but Sige kept moving around in a way that Connie clearly was worried would result in her slicing his arm open. The whole thing was over in probably a minute or less, but being stuck helpless in a tight hallway while I listened to someone be attacked by skeletons was... upsetting.

"Fucking biters! Man. Sorry, not used to fighting motherfuckers that don't have pressure points or vital organs or muscles. Tried a fucking joint lock on that one and the whole joint just broke, fucker kept attacking me. Shit. I'll do better next time." I liked Sige a lot, but I was starting to question the wisdom of bringing a wrestler to deal with undead hoards. As soon as we got to a place where we could spread out a little Cyne fussed over Sige's wounds and I watched closely as they knit together and scabbed over - they didn't look fully healed, but had the appearance of an injury from several days ago. "Ah fuck, that always makes me sleepy. Thanks though, wouldn't want it to get fucking infected down here."

"It may regardless. I washed them out as best I could and the creatures you fought were old which is preferable, but I can't guarantee anything. If I had talent with life magic I could have combined it with the regrowth, but... well, it should suffice."

"Yeah, it's great. Don't fucking sweat it. I'm good, let's just keep going."

After that we found something promising - Katrin noticed subtle chalk marks, and after a few false starts we determined which ones indicated a passage down. They had to have been left by another delving group, and probably fairly recently. That sped things up for a while, until we reached a stretch with no markings we could find. We ended up turned around and deep into the outer ring, when I heard a noise in the darkness. It was like something right out of an old horror movie, that classic groan. It might as well have said "braiiiins".

"I heard something," I whispered, though it sounded too loud in the stillness of the crypts, "That way."

Aestrid nodded and took a few steps in the direction I'd pointed, holding her light out. "Are you sure? I don't see anything."

"It was faint, but... yeah. I'm sure."

She took a few steps closer, her light now revealing a large open space ahead with colossal shapes that had to be mausoleums but were the size of office buildings. I couldn't see the ceiling. "What the fuck? Why are they so big? How? Wouldn't this be outside the sinking part of the pit?"

She didn't reply. Entranced, Aestrid walked closer until we could see that it was a whole street leading off into the darkness. Finally she turned around. "Well. I'm tempted to take a break and look into these. It's certainly not what we're here for, however. Does anyone want to take lunch, maybe crack one of these things open to see what's so important? We could..."

She turned, and then looked back at us with panic in her eyes. I hadn't seen that expression on Aestrid before - she was always so calm, so collected. I spun instantly, and yelled for the others to run. They didn't need to be told twice, though Sige deliberately hung back until I passed him. Behind us there was an increasing sound, a horrible soft thudding like cuts of steak drizzling down out of the sky. I spared a glance and saw Aestrid was still in the back, running wildly - for the first time I saw her hair all messed up as it flew from its careful arrangement.

The stark lights were casting our own shadows behind us but at the edges I could see hands, feet, faces - all flashing into view just dimly as they flailed and then falling back into blackness. It was impossible to guess at how many there were chasing her; with just bits and pieces coming into view at any given moment it left far too much for comfort up to my imagination. My mind filled the endless darkness in with no room to breathe, hundreds of thousands of zombies just out of sight.

Katrin was panting. "I can... do the force line. Like... during the attack."

I'd specifically told her to have that ready in case of undead horde, but if anything went wrong she could catch Aestrid on it, or lose her meager lead on the zombies, or just strain herself so badly that she did actual permanent damage. "Not yet. Keep running!"

She did, but we were already tired and hadn't exactly trained for this. Sige was in amazing shape, and nobody was terrible, but most of us just weren't able to sprint for long and I was particularly concerned for Mila. My biggest fear, however, was the idea that at any moment we could hit a dead end.

Sige scooped up some loose stones that had fallen from their places, and effortlessly hucked them into the crowd of zombies. I heard a cascading sound of thudding bodies, presumably meaning they'd started tripping over each other, and when I glanced back next Aestrid had a slightly larger lead on them. Just as I thought I was going to collapse we reached a large stone door and everyone piled through - I stumbled past the opening and Connie snagged my sleeve just in time to keep me from taking a step out into the void; we'd come all the way back to the bottomless pit, and there was just a narrow ledge with no railing between the door and a fatal drop.

I moved out of the way but managed to turn in time to see Aestrid overcome - for a moment. A ripple of pure force flew out from her, knocking them back and cracking the stones by her feet. In the momentary bubble of safety she scrambled through and we pulled the stone door shut behind her. Mila swiped her hand across to smear the stone together with the doorway, sealing it shut.

"Well. That happened." I looked around and saw Connie was doing the same thing as me - counting heads just in case. Of course everyone was there, we would have noticed if anyone in the group had fallen behind.

"I've changed my mind," Aestrid said as she fixed her hair, "I think we should pick a different spot to stop for lunch - this isn't where I want to die, there's not even a couch. Callie, thank you for having Errod stay behind - I suspect he would have challenged those things to a duel on my behalf."

It was disturbingly plausible. We picked a direction and started walking, leaving the creatures still clawing and hammering at the sealed door behind us. Before long we happened across another chalk mark and picked up that trail again, and after taking a long break to recover from our run we made good progress for the next hour before another horror arose.

Sige spotted it first, and came to a halt silently with a hand up to signal trouble. After a moment he whispered back at Connie, who in turn told me. "Light up ahead, moving. Could be another animated body with a light on it for some reason, could be a monster - though they're rare down here for whatever reason - and could be another delving group."

I nodded. "Fingers crossed it's that last one."

"Yeah, so long as they know we're not headed for the same area as them there shouldn't be trouble."

Sige turned around and frantically gestured for us to reverse course - we tried to do so as quietly as possible, but I was the only one with silencing shoes so there was a lot of scuffing and grumbling as we hurried back to a nearby room.

Sige's normal grin was a tight line. "Okay, I got a look and there's a motherfucking ghost up there."

Aestrid groaned. "The one thing I'm useless against. And if they're hostile they don't give up until you're dead - they're completely relentless."

I leaned in to Connie and whispered in her ear. "So ghosts are for sure real? What does that mean? Do we all turn into ghosts? Is there a hell?"

She sighed and waved dismissively at me. "Okay well, let's just go find another way around. Sorry guys. I didn't think we'd come across any ghosts, even if someone was buried angry somehow you'd think we were deep enough that they'd have had time to descend into the plane of the dead."

"They would," Cyne said, "which means this is someone that died more recently. Down here."

"Right. Duh. Okay, so I guess I was right when I said the light might be another delving group," Connie said, "But I don't see it coming for us, so like I said we just find another way."

"Shame," Sige mumbled, "we were making good fucking progress following those chalk marks."

I arched an eyebrow at him. "Sure, but since it now seems likely those chalk marks lead toward some corpses it might not actually be the safest route, yeah?"

And that seemed to end any conversation about it.

Ten minutes later we were another level down and pausing to drink water when Connie pulled me aside. "Sorry. I forget this is all new for you. I know there's a difference between hearing ghosts mentioned and being told there's one actually floating nearby. Uh. Ghosts are real. Ta-dah!"

"Cyne mentioned some stuff about ghosts the other day, he said your mind and soul... snap together into a ghost when your body dies?"

She nodded. "Yeah, basically. I guess everyone has actual very real spirit things tethered to them, though honestly I have my suspicions that they're more like parasites than actually... us. Maybe that's just me being a skeptic from Earth and still reluctant to believe in souls and shit. Anyway, sometimes they're physically here with you but intangible - especially if certain wards are forcing it - and other times they're off on other planes. And when you die they... I guess snap together is as good a way to put it as any, yeah.

"Anyway especially if people die in an area with a shit ton of mana - or while they were holding a shit ton of mana - the ghosts can actually do things instead of just being invisible intangible blobs. Sometimes they're really faint and kinda whisper at people, sometimes they throw stuff around, and sometimes they get all angry and try to murder everyone. It's... not really a full person. Like, our brains still are there for a reason - unless you have the right magic to fully back yourself up into your mind or whatever which some people do to prevent dementia and head trauma and shit. Anyway. Ghosts are normally more like an echo of some sort, just some loose memories and stuff."

I looked around, as if I was going to find the ghost right behind me or something. "So that one up there might just ask us for directions or whatever, or might try to fling us into the pit, and if it's the latter Sige and Aestrid are useless. Cool. This would have been good to talk about before now so Katrin could prepare... I don't even know. A mana drain attack? Is that a thing?"

Connie just shrugged.

"Okay, thanks for letting me know. Hey. Wait. Can you... if souls and shit are real can you use magic to like... transfer your soul into a golem or something?"

Connie hesitated and took another swig of her water. "Uh. Yeah, probably. I think that one demigod guy I met with did something like that, you should see him. Although I don't know for sure, there could have been a brain under there somewhere. Anyway you could use... Spirit or Thought magic, I guess - or both maybe - and then Binding probably. But I assume there would be some side effects. Also once you did that to someone they presumably wouldn't be able to use magic anymore, and they would probably need some source of mana. Maybe if they were really small and organic. Like, a squirrel skeleton or something."

"Well that's no fun, I want an unstoppable robot body or nothing."

"I'll meet you halfway, tiny robotic squirrel."

"Deal."

We continued to circle around, having a little trouble finding a good access point to the next floor. We'd used the ropes a few times but it had almost always been simpler to just explore, since the spots where we could go down far enough to be worth all the setup were also the most dangerous areas for inexperienced climbers. I saw a hole off to the side and went over to peek down, but when I did I was immediately distracted by a light coming from above.

I scrambled back, nearly tripping, as the ghost drifted down from the level above us. It was a woman, maybe in her thirties. Her clothes seemed to fade in and out of her existence but her body was almost solid, creating a somewhat inappropriate appearance. She had to be from another delving team, based on the gear I could see flickering in and out of existence on her. Connie rushed over but skidded to a stop a few feet away - what was she supposed to do? We had just finished talking about the fact that we were powerless to harm this sort of thing.

The ghost looked at each us, one at a time, and then turned back to me. It was hard to say, with her spectral form, but I had a sudden impression that her eyes were watering up as if she were about to cry. Her mouth moved, forming a single word, but I couldn't hear anything.

"I can't... I can't hear what you're saying."

She shook her head, and looked at everyone again. There was no doubt anymore, she was upset and on the verge of tears. She mouthed the word again, and I made a decision. Carefully, ignoring a hissed warning from Connie, I stepped closer. The ghost leaned in, cold light bathing my face, and this time I could just barely make out the whisper coming from her.

"Run."

But I knew from Cyne's scream behind me that it was already too late for that.