Marc’s muscles were burning as he got to the top of the ladder. Ratscal was still on his shoulder, and though he didn’t dare turn back, the sounds of the dead grew further away the higher he got.

  Marc rushed out of the room, almost tripping on an uneven stone, as the cleric looked at him oddly and with fear.

  “Undead, in the tunnels.” Marc said through labored breaths. The cleric, though clearly surprised, seemed to gather himself quickly. He shuffled quickly through the door to the ladder, and the sounds of movement below grew louder.

  “Vampires?” he asked, turning to Marc. The adventurer shook his head, and the cleric sighed with relief. “Good. Get your friends, I can keep them away.” The priest began incanting in that same not-language, holy symbol beginning to glow with divine magic.

  Marc knew the least about divine magic, but was hoping his knowledge of RPG’s would hold firm. A classic power was the ability to make the undead flee, or deal more damage to them, or even harm them with healing effects. Undead were usually also unholy, so a cleric was one of the best people to hold them off. . . probably. Thanking the man, Marc turned and ran out of the temple. Once he left the doors, he stood up straight, finally able to after hunching within the short room he was in.

  “Ratscal, can you lead me to Berk and the others?” The rat squeaked and jumped off of Marc’s shoulder, scurrying along the ground as quickly as he could. Marc jogged after him, and the two made quite the pair as they seemed to scare a good number of people out of the streets.

  It was an almost painful amount of time before they found Berk and the twin thieves, keeping watch over things at one of the major streets into the ward. Berk, on seeing them, knew something was wrong, and waited to hear the bad news.

  Marc was, thankfully, not panting (either through high resilience or just having to do it more, he didn’t know), as the familiar climbed up to his spot on Berk’s shoulder. “Undead, a lot of them, in the tunnels.”

  Berk’s eyes went wide. The tunnels were supposed to be secret, or at least fairly unknown, unspoken even within the ward. There wasn’t entrance to every building in the ward through them, but there were enough that closing them all was impossible to do in a month, let alone the short time they had before the undead came spilling out.

  The twins looked at Marc and Berk with concern on their faces. They were, after all, not prepared for combat. Berk shook his head and muttered, “Course it couldn’t be easy. . .”

  Marc thought to the other people there. They had 10 actual fighters, who were theoretically there to protect the whole ward. There were some city guard too, who could help out, but most were brought to the outer walls, leaving only the less experienced guards within.

  “Someone planned this,” he said, “they knew that we were going to be weaker in the canopy.”

  “We weren’t supposed to be,” Berk replied, “Mystle was supposed to send a few of their students here as their final exam. It’s generally a showing of good will between the city and school. The only reason the ten of us are here is because they couldn’t this year, some kind of emergency.”

  Marc connected the dots. The horde sent to Mystle wasn’t to harm the academy, it was sent as a distraction. The necromancer’s real target was the city all along. Or maybe both of them together.

  “Berk, I think I know what happened. And I think I have a plan to stop it.”

  The first thing that should have tipped them off that something was wrong was the smell. Decaying bodies were not a pleasant scent, but in her mind, nobles always had dirty laundry, or in this case literal skeletons beneath their floorboards.

  The second thing that should have tipped them off was the noises. Without Mr. Axe-to-Grind, she was hoping that there would be no sound at all, and was proven correct. It was only after the third hit on their list that they even noticed the noise, like the distant sound of a city at daytime.

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  For the first day, things went without a hitch. Not seen even once as they raided the Iron Mountain nobleman’s vault, and the only flaw for the jeweler’s guildmaster’s house raid was tracking some dirt in, but it was quickly cleaned up by the Sharoaa’s magic. After this, they had one full Vracht Pack, and two more waiting for treasures.

  The next raid went a bit differently. The queen’s head arborist was classed himself, and rumored to be a high level Farmer at that. They were very nearly caught, and she would have been if the paragon didn’t extend his own stealth boon to her. Hers only made her blend into crowds, while his made him less visible the less sound there was. They were two polar opposite methods for the same result. His was simply stronger due to his higher level, and his boons being more evolved in general.

  Afterwards though, there were only two more stops before the big finale. The queen’s head arborist was rumored to be second or third-echelon, a rarity for any who didn’t participate in combat, meaning he would be the hardest of the bunch besides the queen. The last one was a personal hit for her. A snow elf, a high mage of some sort. Their plans, well-laid as they were, went off course when they encountered the massive swarm of undead.

  She was not a combat rogue, but she knew how to fight. Given his level, the entire swarm should be no match for him, but this was her time to shine. He handed her the weapon of her choice, a long, thin bastard sword stolen from the Jeweler’s Guildmaster. It was magical in nature, but more ornamental than practical. Its magic had little trouble slicing through rotting flesh, or shattering reanimated bone and skull. Unfortunately, the undead were not easy to re-kill. The sword’s magic seemed to slow it down, but only a bit.

  A swipe here and there and the fleshy ones went down, only to start crawling. The skeletons, thankfully, didn’t get back up nearly as much or as quickly, so she focused on them primarily. She’d yet to be hit or bitten, but the numbers were not in her favor. Then, she felt the quiet wash over her. It was the sensory effect of the Sharoaa’s magic.

  The Zombies looked around, but couldn’t see her. She cut more and more, but where a living person, or even most beasts, would be able to tell what was happening, these corpses simply didn’t have the intellect. They turned away and started moving back further into the town, and as they did they lost more and more bodyparts to the paragon and the elf.

  She continued until her own exhaustion got the better of her. Rogues were not known for their high resilience, even at higher levels and echelons. Even less so if they were not combat-rogues. She stood back, and felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s your audition,” his voice, barely a whisper, cut through the sounds of the undead. “There’s another path up ahead. Stay in shadows, or fight?”

  She thought for a moment. The undead would cause enough chaos for them to do whatever they needed, but at the same time she didn’t want people to die. She was a thief, and an unapologetic one at that, not a killer. Not yet.

  “Shadows,” her voice was loud as a bell when compared to his, “At least to follow them.”

  They tailed the undead, picking off a few whenever the slow march grew too boring.

  Hilda Roen, Philosopher of the Alchemist’s guild, was thoroughly enjoying her time in the Grand Vale guildhall. She had already learned something from Nico, the elven alchemist her son was traveling with. She had spent time with her son for the first time in months, since he’d gone off to adventure full-time. For a Flood, especially one where she was needed to make emergency elixirs at all hours, it was a fairly enjoyable time.

  Beyond that was her pet project. The potion Nico’s underling Marc gave her was unlike anything she had seen. Even the bottle was a unique material, like clear sap frozen into shape, or a form of flexible, soft glass. But the real treasure was the potion inside. It was esoteric in nature, unlike most other potions, and seemed to alter how time moved on the drinker’s body, either reversing it to undo wounds, or possibly speeding it up to accelerate the natural healing process. It was also, seemingly, fermented somehow. She had a ginger bug prepared for when she figured out some more of the ingredients.

  Nico walked into the laboratory as she contemplated whether mirror dust would be enough to infuse it with esoteric properties, along with the rest of his party.

  She turned, seeing them in heated discussion, and stood to approach them.

  “Can’t do that. Too slow for any amount that matters. Plus, I couldn’t fight if I was brewing.” Nico said.

  “Brewing what?” Hilda asked.

  “A Deathbane poison.” Fray said. She knew about the Bane poisons, this one was specially for undead. “Can you make it?”

  Hilda, a philosopher, was not used to making poisons. It would be another challenge. She smiled, happy to help, and happier to try something new, “Of course, how much?”

  “As much as you can make.” Barry said. If it were his friends, she’d brush it off. They didn’t know she could create gallons of elixir in just a few hours. Her son, whose first chores involved bottling, did.

  There were a lot of undead to kill. She prepared part of the lab for the new reaction.