Catacombs... there's going to be zombies here, I just know it. It beats being dead though.

Astoria followed Garland into the cramped passageway, which wound its way down in a spiral for what Astoria estimated had to be a few floors. It was hard to really tell in a place like this.

The walls of the passageway were time worn and there were bricks missing here and there which had crumbled into dust and were scattered along the stairway.

Roots of plants had worked their way down into the tunnel and Astoria wondered which direction this ancient escape route would take them in. At one point there were so many roots in the way that they had to cut their way through them to continue forward.

After what felt like forever, they finally stopped moving downward and leveled out. The narrow passageway widened into a proper hallway and soon they reached an expansive room that had three doorways leading off in different directions.

The room was very dimly lit for some reason. Was it magic? At the very least, she could see a little bit without Garland’s spell now. Astoria felt the strong urge to cover her nose, the place smelled of mold and decay.

This is how horror movies start. All that's missing is for someone to say, 'Let's split up to look around,' Astoria thought as she looked around the room hoping that nothing that craved brains would be popping out at her.

"Should we split up and check out the individual passages?" Ladriel suggested.

"No fucking way! We're going to stick together and that's that. Haven’t you ever read a horror story?" Astoria shut that down immediately. It was unbelievable that the elf had suggested what she had just been thinking about. Was the game reading her mind? She doubted it.

"Astoria is right, this place is designed as a labyrinth of sorts to confuse pursuers. Many generations ago, my family buried there dead here and used it as a secret escape tunnel, but something happened and the entrance had been sealed. We should stick together. Be wary of traps," Garland said.

"So do you know which way we need to go?" Astoria asked. She hoped that they wouldn't just be relying on blind luck to get out of this place.

"Unfortunately, not. As I said before, this hasn't been used in ages and we don't have a map. We'll have to explore carefully."

"This place just feels wrong. Elves have no business being underground. We need to be outside in nature, this place is for the dead and should remain so. Let’s hurry."

Astoria watched as Ladriel rubbed her arms nervously. It was the first time she had seen her friend so shaken. She completely agreed with the elf as far as wanting to get the hell out as fast as possible, though.

"Well, let's get a move on? The sooner we get going, the sooner we can get out of here and have a nice cooked meal outside," Tilly suggested.

"Right. Let's go." Astoria pointed to the passageway to the left. "Since we don't know where we are going, let's go there first. Garland, do you have the stealth skill?" she asked.

"I don't. I have never had any need of sneaking around."

"Alright. Tilly, stay right behind me with Garland and I’ll go a little ways ahead. Ladriel keep that bow of yours ready, okay?"

"Understood."

Astoria unsheathed her twin daggers and activated stealth. She slowly crept towards the open door. Her stealth icon remained closed and she controlled her breathing. Undead creatures were terrifying, but she could handle this.

It's not as if she was still on Earth, she wasn't defenseless anymore. The others stayed close enough behind that there was a faint amount of light in the room ahead as well, but it still wasn’t very easy to see.

She tentatively poked her head inside the doorway and looked around. It was a dead end. Seeing as there wasn’t much here, she held her hand up to tell the others to stay back as she slowly stepped inside.

An empty room filled with piles of dust was all that remained of whatever this place was. There were holes for coffins in the wall that were more empty than not, and full of cobwebs. She had never seen so many cobwebs in her entire life. Astoria rubbed her arms reflexively. I hate spiders. There’s nothing here though. She turned around and walked back towards the exit of the room and to the others. That’s when it happened.

Fuuuuuc—

She tripped over something and landed on one of the tiles on the ground with a thud. What's worse was that the tile she had landed on depressed slightly into the floor. An audible click resounded in the dimly lit room.

Instantaneously, three darts flew through the air where she would have been standing had she been upright. The projectiles snapped into the far wall with incredible force.

That was way too dang close!

She sat up carefully and looked around. Unfortunately, the darts weren't the only thing she had to worry about. Several of the sarcophagi in the room popped open and hands reached out as the undead pulled themselves out of the holes in the wall.

Great. Just fucking great.

She quickly stood up and yelled, "We have problems! I tripped a trap, there are undead coming!" She ran back to the other room and her party prepared for what was coming.

Several undead creatures ambled their way out of the dark corridor after her. They were slow, but not as slow as the zombies she had seen on most TV shows. The undead warriors dragged huge greatswords behind them and one of them lunged for her with speed that she wouldn't have thought possible from a decaying corpse.

Astoria was more than a match for the thing in speed, however, thanks to her choices in leveling, she easily dodged the monster’s attack.

She hoped that zombies in the game were like the ones on TV, and she tested the theory by moving behind the creature and stabbing it in the back of its skull.

The blade sunk deep into the rotting creature’s skull and pierced its brain. The zombie thrashed for a moment and Astoria twisted the blade before pulling it free. The enemy dropped to the ground. She didn’t know if this was common knowledge here or not, so she said, "Stab them in the head!"

Astoria turned to see Tilly fighting with an undead nearby. It smashed its heavy greatsword into Tilly’s shield and the cook grunted against the force of the blow, but she held on.

The zombie raised its sword to slash again when Garland rushed in from the side like death incarnate and decapitated the monster, severing one of its raised arms in the process. He didn't even pause for a second before dashing towards the next creature and ending its miserable existence.

Another undead came for her and she dispatched it just as she had the first. She was just too nimble for these slow monsters. It was empowering to know that she had grown so much stronger.

To her right, Ladriel had her bow out and was firing arrows at a rapid rate. Each projectile met its mark directly in their eye socket. And in the blink of an eye, there were only a few monsters left.

Astoria didn’t need to move, however, as the remaining undead both fell in the blink of an eye to Tilly and Garland. Her friend had managed to knock the heavy sword out of the way as one had been trying to perform an overhead strike at her and she stabbed it right in the face.

"Is everyone okay?" Astoria felt like her heart was going to pound out of her chest and was breathing hard.

"No injuries here." Ladriel stated.

"Man, those things hit a lot harder than I would've thought." Tilly stretched her shield arm and moved it around in a wide circle.

"What happened in there?" Garland asked. He sheathed his sword again and strode over to her.

"I tripped over something and then landed on some kind of dart trap. That was when those things started coming out of the coffins."

"We'll need to be more careful. You were lucky. There are surely other traps down here. Was that room a dead end, or did it continue forward?”

"It was a dead end. Let's keep going." Astoria still couldn't believe how lucky she had been to not have those darts hit her. What she wouldn’t give to find a 1-UP mushroom or something in a chest, just so she could feel a little more safe while exploring.

"Which way do you think we should go next, Astoria?" Tilly had begun pacing back and forth nervously. Astoria had little doubt her friend shared her extreme desire to get out of this dank place.

Astoria pointed to the room on the right. “We may as well be thorough.” They got back into the same formation they had used previously with Astoria out front, and they made their way over to investigate.

She made sure to be extra careful of where she stepped and did her best to watch for trip wires. The second room was also a dead end, but there were no holes in the walls for bodies here, just a few empty sarcophagi on the ground.

Astoria carefully stepped around the tiny room and looked inside the empty coffins. She spotted something interesting in the one by the back wall. The item she found was a bronze disk about the size of her fist. It was over an inch thick and heavy. There was what looked to be an image of a mountain etched into the front of it.

She pocketed the disk and went back to the main room where the others had been waiting for her. "I found something. What do you guys make of it?"

"No idea. I think we should hold onto it though,” Tilly said.

It's probably some sort of clue on how to get out of this place. Might even be a key or a hint to some puzzle. She imagined the old Legend of Zelda games where dungeons were filled with keys and puzzles. It wouldn’t surprise her if this disk was somehow important.

No one else had anything to say about the item, so Astoria stowed it away again and they moved forward. As the group walked towards the second room, Astoria read through her notifications. Additionally, she was more than a little curious about Garland’s level.

He seemed to be far more powerful than her and her companions combined from what she had seen in the fight against the undead. Not to mention the fact that he was able to escape the situation outside the manor unscathed.

Notifications You have gained 1200 EXP for defeating 6 level 8 Emaciated Corpses. (Experience to next level: 7066/7667)

Dang... I'm so close. She moved on and checked Garland's status page.

Spoiler: Garland's Stats Name Garland Level 028 (250,429/269,358 EXP to next Level) Class Knight HP 750/750 MP 315/360 AP 0 Attributes Vitality 50 Magic 26 Endurance 47 Magic Resistance 20 Strength 42 Luck 16 Agility 22 Dexterity 24 Abilities • None

Skills • Swords - Level 24 (3% toward next level)

• Disarm - Level 9 (27% toward next level)

• Riposte - Level 17 (14% toward next level)

• Flurry of Blades - Level 6 (13% toward next level)

• Shield Mastery - Level 10 (11% toward next level)

• Shield Charge - Level 4 (81% toward next level)

• Shield Bash - Level 8 (19% toward next level) White Magic • Analyze - Level 18 (1% toward next level)

• Enchant Weapon (Holy) - Level 6 (3% toward next level)

• Minor Light Orb - Level 7 (41% toward next level)

• Minor Light Barrier - Level 1 (91% toward next level)

Her eyes probably bulged outward as she read the man's stat page. Hopefully, no one noticed. Holy shit! This guy is strong! I feel like I'm Cloud travelling with Sephiroth in Nibelheim right about now. That didn't end very well though. Hopefully, he won’t snap and try to kill us or something like that. Satisfied with what she now knew about her newest companion she closed out of the windows as they stepped into the next room. There wasn’t anything really to see here. There was one branch that led off of this room, but they decided to continue straight.

The next room only had one exit, and the following one had two. There were old urns of various sizes in each room and more than a few cobwebs, but they had been lucky enough to not have triggered any more traps. Please don't let there be gigantic spider monsters down here. That's all I ask, okay game gods?

The odd thing about this last room was that at the end of it was the first time they had seen a door that was fully intact. Astoria wasn't sure if she was glad for the change or not though, but it was something different and that was good, wasn’t it?

She and her party made their way over to and through the double doors and opened them. The room beyond was lit up a lot better than the previous ones, but there still weren’t any torches or anything. It was eerie.

At the end of the room, there was a door that looked carved of stone. That was interesting, but not nearly as much so as what stood next to it.

There, on a pedestal, was a wand. It was difficult to see the details of it, but it was blue and about as long as her forearm. It had a glass orb that rested atop the shaft.

Okay! I totally want that thing. But there's no way that this room isn't one huge trap.

She took a moment to take in the rest of the room. There were three more pedestals to the left side of the room, each with a disk shaped recess set into them.

Carefully, she glanced around the floor and walls of the large room. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary other than the fact that the floor was made up of different tiles in front of each pedestal.

Alarm bells went off in her head, and she knew that she definitely didn’t want to just march over there to grab the wand. The tiles started at the edge of each pedestal and continued on to the wall straight across from them.

Each strip was about 6 feet across. It looked like she could approach each pedestal from the side, but they would be impossible to climb over safely. What if the things fell over? No matter how she looked at it, trying that wouldn’t end well.

Remembering advice about traps from Huey, Duey and Louie from an old Ducktales movie she watched when she was little, she reached into her coin pouch and pulled out a copper coin.

"Get back into the other room. I’m going to try something," she told the others in a whisper.

Astoria flipped the coin out over the closest of the three strips of tiles. As soon as the coin passed the invisible line that marked the tiles, a spray of what was probably acid fell from the ceiling all the way across the first region and in seconds the coin was completely dissolved.

She didn’t know what the substance was made of, but she knew that she didn’t want to get it on her. The liquid death drained into tiny holes that she noticed lined the floor and she heard a click above her. The trap had reset.

She tested this out a few more times hoping that maybe the trap would run out of acid, but for all she knew it could be some sort of magic powering the trap. Over and over the same process repeated itself. After the 7th time, she decided that this wasn't going to work.

There has to be some trick to this. She turned around to go back to the other room and saw the others staring at a large metal plate that was attached to this side of the doorway. She read it.

Passage is not for the weak of heart, if you falter, then go back to the start.

If the way forward you seek, then the powers 3 you must appease.

Ancient am I, with hair of green and tears of red,

I am the mother to all and I consume the dead.

I am always hungry, ravenous and red,

In order to exist, I must always be fed.

I am everywhere, but cannot be seen,

I can be captured, but cannot be held.

She looked over the riddles and reached into her bag and pulled out the bronze disc. She ran her fingers over the mountain that had been etched into the front of the disc while she thought about the riddles. The first one seemed to her to symbolize earth. It was also the first of the three riddles.

There were three pedestals with recesses that looked to fit the object she was holding. The last thing to consider was the nature of the trap. Corrosive acid would likely be a spell of earth. She was sure that the disk with the mountain on it would go in that pedestal.

Astoria took a deep breath. “I’m going to try something.”

She stepped back into the room. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear it in her ears. She knew that it was reckless to do this without talking it over with the others, or at least going back and exploring the rooms they hadn’t gone to yet, but she was almost certain that she had this right.

She hugged the wall closest to the entrance and followed it around taking deliberate steps until she stood beside the first pedestal. The small gap before the first tile change left only just barely enough room for her to work her way over to the pedestal.

She looked back at the doorway and saw that Tilly and Ladriel had poked their heads back in to see what she had been doing. She assumed Garland was probably still reading over the plate on the door.

Here goes. Okay. I'm really going to do this. Here's hoping my hand isn't melted off or something. I’m an idiot. I’m going to die.

She gripped the disk in her shaking hand and slowly reached towards the pedestal. With sheer willpower alone she made her hand stop shaking and with a quick movement she placed the disc into the recess. It sunk into the stone and she heard a click.

Did it work? Do I dare step out there? No. Don't be stupid, Astoria.

She went back the way she had come and once she was at the entrance, she took out another copper coin and tossed towards the trap as she had before. The coin clinked as it hit the ground. Nothing happened. Success!

"I did it! The first one is disarmed." She beamed with pride that she had figured out the trap.

The only problem was that there were two other traps and she didn't have any more bronze disks to put into the corresponding pedestals.

"Alright. So we need to find two more of those disks. They've got to be hidden somewhere back where we came from. We're going to have to backtrack."

"You did good in solving the riddle, but you should at least consult with us before doing something so reckless in the future," Ladriel said.

Astoria felt her feelings of pride shivel, just a little bit, at the comment. Ladriel was right, of course. It felt like she was being scolded by her mother or teacher or something though, which grated on her slightly.

"Sorry. You're right," she admitted. Her friend gave her a pat on the shoulder.

"It's okay. I was just worried about you. I’m on edge down in this hole."

"Me too. Let’s get to it, then." Once more, Astoria took point and continued back into the darkness from which they had come all while continuing with stealth activated.

Two more disks. That's it, I’m sure. After that, that big stone door just has to open up and lead to the outside. It has to.