36

It was Fyodor alright, and he was scared to the core. Hunter laid his hands on the wall as he had seen Brother Aurochs do the previous day and willed it to disappear, which it promptly did, leaving nothing but mist in its place. The direwolf bolted in the chamber with his bushy tail between his legs, panting heavily, too frightened to even sit still.

Alarmed, Hunter took a peek outside. There was no sign of anyone or anything else. No Fawkes, no Brethren, no low-dwellers, just still darkness and the ever-present, muffled heartbeat of the Halls. Whatever had happened, Fyodor had made his way back alone. That didn’t sit well with Hunter. Ever since they’d entered the Halls of the Cor Ancestors, the direwolf hadn’t veered more than a few feet away from them. Whenever he wasn’t at Hunter’s own side, he was at Fawkes’s. To wander in the dark like that, scared and alone… Something bad must have happened.

“What is it, boy?” he asked Fyodor, scratching him behind his ears. “What happened? Where’s Fawkes?”

Visibly in distress, the direwolf looked at the dark corridors, then at Hunter, then back at the dark corridors. It was as if he was trying to tell him something but didn’t know how. He padded up and down the room, whining and whimpering as he sniffed around in the flickering torchlight, increasingly restless and agitated. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for; he grabbed the shaft of the glaive in his huge teeth, dragged the great weapon to Hunter, and looked him straight in the eyes, almost pleading.

Well, shit.

Though unable to put it into words, what Fyodor was trying to tell Hunter was all too clear; “Something happened over there in the dark that scared the shit out of me, boss, so grab your big pointy stick. You’ll definitely need it.” He didn’t have to repeat himself, either. Already worried, Hunter wasted no time. He grabbed the glaive and the rest of his gear and got ready to see what had gotten the direwolf whimpering like a pup.

He considered bringing a torch with him to light the way as he left the room behind, but ultimately decided against that. He had his Low-Light Vision to guide him–which also extended to his familiars, by the way. The direwolf didn’t seem to have much trouble finding his way in the dark, either. Carrying a torch would probably just give him away to low-dwellers and who knew what else, so he simply snuffed it out. Fyodor didn’t like that; he let out a low whine and moved closer to Hunter, so that constantly brushed his thigh with his flank.

“Well, tough titties, boy” Hunter whispered to the direwolf. “We’ll have to go dark for a while, pun intended.”

They’d also need to scouting ahead and gather as much information as possible, so he concentrated on his mental link and summoned his familiars. They landed on his shoulders and gave him the mental equivalent of a question mark.

“Have you guys recovered from yesterday’s rough-and-tumble?” he projected to them. They stumbled for a moment, as if surprised, then projected they had. Figures. Hunter had to keep reminding himself they were spirits of the Aether given flesh, yes, but barely subject to that flesh’s restrictions. He instructed them to scout ahead and keep him up to date with what they found, but try not to draw any attention. He didn’t need them baiting any low-creatures back to him this time; the previous day’s ambush tactics wouldn’t work, not without Fawkes and the Brethren ready to make short work of the uglies. Signaling their now-customary “Aye aye, sir!” through the mental link, they took flight and vanished into the dark.

“Alright then,” Hunter told the direwolf and scratched his big head behind the ears. “Show me, boy. Take me to Fawkes.”

Despite his fear, Fyodor didn’t waste any time. Only stopping to sniff the ground and reorient himself, he led Hunter through the lightless labyrinth that the lower levels of the Halls were with purpose. Biggs and Wedge scouted the corridors and side-passages around them, making certain that nothing was going to flank them or get them from behind. Three or four times they signaled Hunter to tell him they’d come across dead things, but other than that, there didn’t seem to be anything of note around them.

About ten minutes later, the direwolf took Hunter through the rooms and corridors where they’d fought the previous day. The remains of low-dwellers were strewn all around on the floor, along with the arrow-peppered hulk of odious flesh that was the dead low-ogre. He didn’t have to rely on his Low-Light Vision to find those. Their stench was so powerful he couldn’t miss them if he tried. Fyodor gave the dead and mangled bodies a wide berth, but Hunter wasn’t as fussy – not when it came to body parts he could loot and use to fuel his newly-acquired passion for arts and crafts. He stocked up on Warped Flesh and low-dweller essences, and also found a particularly chunky-looking Essence of A Low-Ogre. Flirting with crossing from being pragmatic to being full on ghoulish, he also bagged the disembodied head of a Kannewik – probably the one the low-ogre had chucked at him. It was better than plucking hair from a live one, he told himself. Another day, another dollar–that was another of the truisms he’d inherited from his old man.

As they delved further into the Halls, Hunter came upon more butchered low-dweller bodies, downed by the Brethren’s brutal spear wounds and Fawkes’s clean, almost surgical cuts. Those were fresher, too. Some of them weren’t even cold yet. Whatever had transpired, wherever his companions were, Hunter was getting closer. Fyodor must have thought so–or, more likely, known so–too, because he was getting progressively more cautious and vigilant with each hall and corridor intersection they left behind.

Predictably, the ravens to figure out where Fyodor was taking them. Hunter might often grumble about their penchant for curiosity and meddling, but when it came to scouting, the things were starting to prove themselves really dependable.

“Uglies!” they projected. “Very angry, very many! Look at wall, scratch at wall!”

Wondering what fresh kind of fuckery that meant, Hunter went on. Nothing good, judging from how reluctantly the direwolf followed. He could hear them, he realized, along with the ever-present heartbeat of the Halls; a distant cacophony of growls and claws scratching the dark stone of the corridors’ walls. Hunter peeked behind a corner and saw them, too. Hell, he practically smelled them; there they were, a throng of twenty-or-so frenzied low-dwellers swarming around what looked like a random, nondescript spot on the wall of a random, nondescript corridor.

Hunter, having seen a thing or two about how the Halls were designed and built, didn’t need more than a couple of moments to realize what had probably happened. The wall was quite obviously the entrance to a room or a vault. Fawkes and the Brethren must have stumbled upon the large group of low-dwellers and, not able to fight off so many at the same time, retreated in there as a last resort. They’d saved themselves, yes, but now they were probably trapped in there with nowhere to go. Fyodor must have somehow escaped and made his way back to the other vault room to get Hunter. An impressive feat, especially for what was essentially a wild beast with zero training, but one that still left them with almost two dozen murderous low-dwellers to deal with.

“Is Fawkes in there, boy?” Hunter asked and absentmindedly patted the direwolf on his big furry head. Fyodor whined what could only be taken as a “yes”, but Hunter barely heard him. His mind was already racing, calculating, looking for ways to get his companions out of there in one piece.

He had to consider his options, few as they were.

Taking them on all at once was out of question, of course. He could maybe manage a couple at a time, provided the direwolf wasn’t too much of a pansy to help, but not without drawing the attention of the rest, too. Fawkes and the Brethren could be of any help either, assuming that they were indeed in that vault, and still alive and well. Not while the low-dwellers were waiting to tear them apart the moment they peeked their heads out of their hiding place. He racked his brain for other ideas and solutions, and came up painfully short.

What would Packman have done in such a situation?

Had he and his gaming group ever faced anything like that while raiding?

As it turned out, they had; in fact, the similarities were almost uncanny. They’d been casually raiding Tomb of the Thousand Dead for a while at that point, doing runs three or even four times a week to get their hands on extra loot to sell at the auction house. Things were going smooth as butter, until one day they weren’t. One day they got too careless. Or maybe it was too greedy, or too unlucky; it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter whose the blame was; things like that have an unfortunate tendency to happen, sooner or later. It’s what they call Murphy’s Law.

It all when to hell in a handbasket when they decided to pull two groups of undead at the same time, thinking that they could trap them in a dead end and have Aries burn them to a crisp all at once with a well-placed Wall of Fire. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for a particularly aggressive ghoul that bum-rushed Aries, interrupting her casting and leaving their raiding party exposed to the rest of the monsters.

Only Packman made it out of that scrap alive, somehow managing to slip away with the party’s Cleric’s corpse thrown over his shoulder as the ghouls were finishing off the rest of them. It was the right call; as soon as they were out of aggro range, Packman used a rare and expensive Phoenix Elixir to bring Bass–said Cleric–back to life. Bass, in turn, would be able to revive the others, if he somehow managed to reach their corpses and cast his long-winded Mass Resurrection spell without getting killed by the ghouls again.

At that point, Packman knew the floor plan of the Tomb of the Thousand Dead dungeon like the back of his hand. He had Bass hide in an out-of-sight safe area, then went and drew the attention of the monsters, leading them away from the corpses of the rest of the party. He corralled them all and had them chase him in a circular course through the dungeon for the better part of ten minutes, giving the Cleric ample time to get Alex and Aries and Rona back on their feet. Once they were back in battle shape, they ambushed the distracted undead, flanked them, and cut them down in half a minute flat.

Maybe that was the right play here, too, Hunter thought. The idea of running around the Halls and being live low-dweller bait didn’t exactly thrill him, but he didn’t see any other choice. Worst case scenario, they’d catch up with him and kill him. It would be excruciating and it would traumatize the hell out of him, but he’d respawn. As a Transient, he had that luxury. Fawkes and the Brethren didn’t.

It was settled, then; that’s what he’d do. For starters, he had Biggs and Wedge pick out a suitable course for him, a series of halls and corridors and intersections that were safe to move through and formed a circuit. It took him a while to convey the concept to the feathery buffoons, but in the end they understood well enough.

When it came to Fyodor, on the other hand, Hunter didn’t have the advantages of communicating through a direct mental link. He scratched him behind the ears, explained to him what they were about to do, and prayed the direwolf would follow him instead of doing anything unpredictable. He steeled himself, took a deep breath, and stepped around the corner and in clear view of the low-dwellers.

“Hey, assmunches!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, hopefully loud enough for his companions to hear him in their hiding place. He couldn’t but smirk at how the low-dwellers turned their ugly heads his way all together and in near-perfect unison. Fyodor, on the other hand, didn’t find so funny. If anything, he looked horrified by Hunter’s attention-grabbing antiques.

“Yeah, you lot!” Hunter shouted again, now grinning from ear to ear. “Come over and see if you can get a hold of me, you bunch of motherless turd-apes! You’re all worthless and weak!”

The low-dwellers didn’t need to be told a second time. Driven into a frenzy by his resounding shouts, the screeched and growled and scrambled after this new target, practically trampling one another.

“Run, boy!” he told a bewildered Fyodor, and turned to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. He didn’t even bother to look at the throng of monsters that was after him and already gaining. Now wasn’t the time to think things twice.

Now was the time to run like the wind.