The chamber wasn't the biggest underground space I'd seen. The WCP in Rajak was bigger, but something about this one just made me feel...small. Not the size so much as the untamed wildness of it gave the impression that this was a place beyond the world of men. It was just so other. All my encounters with Ascendant stuff had been in the context of cities and heroes and things I was familiar with. Sure I'd seen some odd things, but they had all been part of that same structure I'd grown up with.

This though...this was new. It was like something out of a storybook, and it just drove home the fact that it was a big weird universe, and I had plenty left to see in it. I wanted to explore with my friends and get stronger, and that meant coming into contact with a lot more of this, so I needed to adjust to the crazy stuff sooner rather than later. In the spirit of that I turned to Sarah, our resident expert on all things that were formerly alive. "Ok, I take it you can see some of those things down there? Any idea what they are?"

She worried at her lip as she stared down into the cavern. "Several, but I have to give you a bit of context. To understand what we're dealing with you need to know a few things about how the undead are categorized. To sum it up, there are three basic categories of non sapient undead. Bone, flesh, and spirit. We've come across bone and flesh so far, but I see at least a few spiritual undead down there. Luckily they're all H rank from what I can see, but we might run into some higher level ghosts later on, so you need to know how to deal with them."

A quick finger point down and off to one side brought our attention to a glowing blue figure in a cloak. "That for instance, is a phantom traveler. Their main form of offense is stealth, and they're known for falling upon the unwary and smothering them with their cloaks. My holy hand skill can deal with them fairly easily." She motioned to a different spot. "That on the other hand is a Banesidhe, and their bodies are made of ectoplasm so dense it might as well be physical. Fire is a better counter to them than holy energy, because it can take a while to erode them with light based skills."

This was much more complex than expected, but Sarah was on a roll and just moved on to the next shape in the darkness. "That one is a jumping corpse, a type of high level zombie. They aren't particularly dangerous along, but they tend to travel in packs. If you see one there's probably another another dozen nearby, they're almost always followed by a type of ghostly fish called a silvermist minnow. They swim through the living and lap their strength by draining their Vitality temporarily. I can help with those as well, but there's usually a massive number of them, so Mr. Cark may need to help."

She continued on in the same vein for a while, explaining the various undead and their functions before finally coming to a rest staring at the keep. "Now, the Lich is going to be up there, that much is clear. They prefer height and range for their magic, and tend to gravitate to fortified strongholds because of their lacking defense. Most likely there will be a regiment of Death Knights in there too. That's going to be a problem, but it's the best case scenario, because if there isn't, the Lich will most likely be attending a spectral court."

That didn't sound particularly pleasant, and I had to cut in. "Wait, Death Knights are G rank, a regiment of them would be all but impassable. Why is a spectral court worse than that? Wouldn't the ghosts be easier to deal with? You said light and fire work on them pretty well right?" In all honestly the idea of fighting a 'regiment' of Death Knights wasn't one I relished. I'd had a bitch of a time taking down the two Benny and I had fought.

She shook her head seriously. "Not in this case. Spectral courts are usually attended by an undead noble. At this rank it'll be either Ectoplasmic Earl of a Grave Lord. Most likely the latter given the presence of Dullahan. Grave Lords are powerful support type undead that empower the others of their kind in their vicinity. The issue there is that it would be not only another sapient undead, but another source of power for the Lich. The Grave Lord would strengthen the magic user even more."

I winced at that. "And the Lich summons the other undead, which are also strengthened by the Grave Lord. The synergy there is not fantastic. So...what do we do? Because I sincerely doubt you would have bothered explaining all this if we had to turn around." As neat as the information was, I assumed Sarah had at least an idea of how to bypass the monsters down there or she would have just told us to pack it. I admit, I hoped it would be something good, because I didn't really feel like fighting a ghost army.

She smiled widely at that, her blue eyes shining with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm that told me she liked being involved in the higher level planning. "I do. See, Grave Lords are powerful, but their main weakness is that they can't interact with the living directly. They're proxy fighters, and they're so specialized in fact, that they can't even SEE excessive sources of life force. Our normal Vitality isn't enough for that to be a factor sadly, but we just so happen to have someone with us who can supercharge the life force of a being, thus rendering them invisible to a Grave Lord." She shot Jessie a wide grin, clearly thrilled with her own plan.

I had to admit, as plans went it sounded pretty good at least. I wasn't entirely sure how well it would work, but she was the expert. Being able to sneak past the defenses and rob the castle sounded awesome, but there was a bit of a hole in that idea. "Ok, but will that be enough to get us past the REST of the undead? Because if we could have been invisible to them this whole time and weren't im honestly going to be pretty pissed." My ribs creaked with phantom pain and my arms ached with remembered agony. If I could have skipped that I'd be pretty annoyed.

She just waved me off. "No, the whole life force thing is only really relevant against Grave Lords. Their connection to death means they're much less solidly anchored to this world than even other spirit type undead. Regardless, it won't so much against any of that stuff down there, so we're going to have a long way to go to put the plan into action." She looked embarrassed. "Plus, if it IS Death Knights we might have a bit of trouble. Still, this concentration of spirits makes that unlikely. I'm almost positive it's a Grave Lord."

Her confidence kind of tanked at the end there, but I thought it was impressive she had managed to get up her courage to try to make a suggestion like that. Callie had stated multiple times she was open to people's ideas, and Sarah, aside from her regular updates about the undead when asked, tended to be extemely quiet and shy. The little Cleric clearly felt more at home with her own team than the rest of us, but she was actively making an effort, and that was more than most people could say.

Callie clearly thought so too, because my girlfriend gave her an encouraging smile. "I think it's a great plan. We need to do some recon to double check the enemy ahead to make sure it's viable, but if it really is a spectral court I'm all for it." She fished in the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small white shape, holding it out to Jessie. "Luckily, I considered the possibility, so I decided to try something and it seems like it worked, at least if you can still hatch this outside the base?"

I blinked. That was a great idea, I hadn't even considered grabbing one of the raven eggs, and neither had anyone else apparently, because Jessie looked pretty much poleaxed, and then got really excited. "I bet I can! I'd have to try, but I bet the raven egg works just as well out here. Give me a few minutes to sort this out and I'll get us a birds eye view of the place!" Without any further conversation she closed her eyes and started pouring green energy into the egg.

We waited for her to finish, but a minute turned into ten, and she showed no sign of being done. Apparently without the building to help boost efficiency hatching the eggs was MUCH more energy intensive, so we all settled in to wait for our scout to be ready. I saw Callie talking to Sarah, obviously trying to bolster the Cleric's confidence, and I made my way over to talk to Benny. "Hey man, you psyched about this? We're going to be breaking into an evil ghost castle. How cool is that?"

He snickered a little. "It does sound like something out of a bad movie. Easily the coolest thing we've done since we left home. Of course, I'm obviously going to kill way more undead than you on the way there, so I guess you can do the break in if you want. Assuming Nightstrike doesn't do it, since she's so much sneakier than you." I cursed. He was right, she was definitely going to be the one to sneak in and raid the treasury or whatever.

Still, the first half of that little boast had been nonsense. "She's the best person for the job, she should definitely do it. Also you have a better chance of spontaneously growing wings than killing more undead than me. Unless you were expecting me to fight them barehanded, and even then I would still probably outscore you by a bit." I made sure to use just the right amount of smugness, which got an eye roll and a middle finger from my friend.

It was all nonsense of course. Neither of us cared who beat up more zombies or skeletons, but the familiar routine of shit talking helped calm our nerves. I was pretty excited to go out there and wreak havok in all honesty, but a part of my was worried about my friends too, just like every time we went out to fight. Knowing that Benny felt confident enough to trash talk me about this helped me calm down about that in a weird way.

We lapsed into silence, looking out over the cavern. Despite the palpable anticipation in the air around us, it was still a bit chilling to see all the shadowy forms moving in the dim light. Some huge and lumbering, some small and fast, and some barely even visible at all. We stared out into the dark, psyching ourselves up about the adventure to come, until we finally heard a cheer from behind us.

I turned to find Jessie cradling a small bird that was still growing even before my eyes as she pumped energy into it. Seems like our scout was up and running. We headed over to join up with the group as Jessie finished pumping in enough life force and then sent the bird soaring off toward the castle. It took a few hours to cross the cavern having to constantly avoid enemies, with but Jessie kept us updated on it's progress and gave us details about the terrain until finally we got the go ahead from our healer. With the presence of the spectral court confirmed our mission was ago. Time to head for the castle.