“Fine. That name is fine, Garrick. Now, can you please focus on the present? Are you sure this is the only path to the armory?”

I was whispering to my new allies whilst looking around a bend in the tunnel towards a large cavern. We had moved through the cavern complex at the bard’s direction, as he was the only one who had ever had anything like free roam of the place. He had directed us deeper inside upon Jaric voicing his need to reclaim a weapon of import. According to the hulking man, he would be thrice as effective in combat with said blade in his hands. At the moment, Jaric bore only a rusty shortsword scavenged from the ashes of the zombie guards, while Garrick had picked up a shortbow and some arrows.

The cavern complex itself was of interesting lore. Garrick had mentioned in passing that this was once the hall of an ice giant king, which explained the massiveness of all the tunnels and rooms. No furniture of giant size remained in the few empty rooms we’d passed, though, so it was entirely possible that the bard was, again, lying.

Garrick looked disappointed at my lack of interest in his proposed name, the sixth of its kind voiced in the few minutes since our departing the room. He then smiled, a gleam in his eye, and said, “Well, don’t you worry about the name then, I’ve just thought of an even greater one. But you asked for my focus, so my focus you shall have. There is, indeed another path to the armory that avoids this room, however it would take us past not only the Carrion Lord’s laboratory chamber, but also past Lavory’s playroom. As such, I thought this was the lesser of two evils.”

“Lavory?” I asked.

“Oh, have you not met? She usually accompanies the Carrion Lord on his expeditions outside. You’d remember if you had. About this high,” he raised his hand to nose height, chin height on my own frame, “blonde, beautiful and,” he moved his hands into a cupping gesture around his chest, motioning up and down, “bouncy?”

Ignoring his innuendos, I thought back. I had seen a woman, briefly, before passing into unconsciousness. I couldn’t recall the color of her hair, but one aspect of her had stuck with me. “Does she have bat-wings?”

Garrick’s expression lit up, “Ah, the very succubus herself. Indeed, though she tends to hide those when not mid combat.”

“I thought Reginald was a necromancer, not a warlock.”

Here the big man spoke up, “Demon summoning is not exclusive to warlocks, they’re simply the most common of demonologists. Any wizard worth their salt could summon a demon.”

“Indeed,” said Garrick, frowning, “though it’s this one’s eagerness that is most concerning. Most demons, in the tales, a begrudging slaves for their masters. They tend to turn on their summoner the moment they get the chance.

“This demon, though, seems to go out of its way to please its master. Yet, I’ve seen no signs of her sleeping with him, which is bizarre for a succubus. It’s the one way they typically assert any form of power. Could be an elaborate ruse to manipulate the Carrion Lord, but worrying if it’s not.”

I shook my head free of the speculation those sentences threatened to spawn. “We’re getting off track. So, this is the best route, then?”

Garrick smiled again, a teasing look in his eyes, “What’s the matter, Runes, don’t have the power to deal with this little group?”

The ‘little group’ Garrick spoke of was the current residents of the room before us. It appeared to have once been a kitchen area, from the looks of the shelves and counters hewn into the rock. Inside, a quartet of zombies stood, aimlessly puttering about the room, while a pair of skeletons stood motionless in the center. The more concerning figure, however, was the largely-intact corpse sitting atop one of the counters. Its eyes watched the zombies move about, a definite glint of intelligence in its eyes. A ghoul.

Ghouls were a stronger brand of undead than zombies or skeletons. Raised from fresh corpses, ghouls retained a portion of both the intelligence and the physical capabilities of their once-living selves. This one was a male in a suit of armor, a spear on the table beside him.

I shook my head, “Nothing to do with power. Actually, I’ve still got quite a reserve of divine energy left, not even mentioning my storm magic, though I doubt that’d be as effective against foes like these.”

“You worry about the ghoul?” Jaric asked.

“Well, that, and…” I sighed, “to be honest, I’ve never actually practiced with my divine element. I mean, I’ve had this power less than a week, and the majority of that time I was trying to hide the divine portion’s very existence. Hitting those zombies before was easy, they were all clustered up in the same area. But, here…”

Garrick and Jaric shared a look. Then Jaric turned to me, “Do not worry about the ghoul, I will close with him and keep him occupied. Simply try to hit as many as you can with your initial attack.”

“I’ll make sure to pick off what’s left afterwards,” Garrick said. “My aim’s good enough that from this distance I should be able to land a few leg shots to keep them from running and alerting the rest of the place.”

I looked at the two. They seemed to be confident that we could do this. Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “Alright, ready?”

Both nodded in return.

Closing my eyes, I reached back into my font for the divine energy. I felt that same rush as before when it filled my body, leaping to my command. This time, though, I pushed that thrill away immediately, focusing instead on the nature of the power.

Different from the jagged, unstable, electrifying feeling of my storm power, the divine contents of my font was more… regal and overbearing. It was as if, by existing, it could force all other forms of energy to kneel and subside.

I thought it would be difficult to shape it to my will, to create, instead of a beam of power, a burst of energy. After all, I had practiced with the volatility of lightning, not the oppressiveness of divinity. And while it did, indeed mean that I had to throw my lightning spells out the window, I was once again touched by that unnatural instinct. I simply knew how to bend this energy into the shape I desired. If it were any less useful, I’d be concerned about this intuition.

I opened my eyes, seeing Garrick flinch in front of me. Raising an eyebrow, he simply shook his head and motioned me forward. Shrugging, I looked at the big man, who nodded to me, then down at my hands, where a little orb of pure light was pulsing.

“Three, two, one.”

At the end of my count, I spun around the corner, pushing my payload forwards. It flew like an arrow into the room, propelled by my will, and struck the ground right next to one of the skeletons. A golden dome silently blossomed in the room, instantly enveloping all its denizens and obscuring them from view. Then, an instant later, the radiance vanished, and I was jostled slightly as Jaric sped past me. As the magic cleared, I was able to see that, as intended, I had managed to hit every undead in the room. However, while the zombies and skeletons had been vaporized, their weapons only now clattering to the floor, the ghoul was made of sterner stuff.

It was picking itself up off the floor, bowled over by the force of my magic. As it lifted its weapon from the table, I saw the damage its front had borne. The clothes it was wearing were intact, if rumpled, but the visible skin underneath looked as if it had just sustained the worst sunburn in the history of man. A pained expression adorned its newly torched face, the lips mostly burnt off by the celestial radiance.

“Intruders!” it garbled, its voice either damaged by its manner death, decay, or the radiation. I counted us lucky that its calls weren’t loud enough to leave the room.

And then Jaric was upon it, his shortsword swinging. He wielded it as I might a dagger, so large were his arms in comparison to the blade. Hacking down, his blade hacked through the spear the ghoul had raised in defense, splitting it in twain. He followed his downstroke with a punch, gauntlet smashing into the undead’s midsection and sending it flying into the counter.

However, the ghoul kept its grasp upon its spear, nerveless existence allowing it to shake off what would have winded a mortal fighter. It stabbed forth, spear seeking the gaps in Jaric’s armor, but the big man shifted a fraction and the piercing thrust bounced harmlessly off his side.

Then an arrow found its way into the ghoul’s eye socket, and it crumpled to the floor. I looked to my side, and saw Garrick, bow in hand. He saw me looking and winked, “Good aim, right?”

Chuckling, I moved into the room. Jaric was kneeling over the ghoul, one hand holding its twitching body steady while the other used his shortsword to sever the undead’s head. While ghouls were more dangerous than zombies, their nature required the use of the physical systems present in the originating body. As a result, an arrow to the brain or spinal cord could disable a ghoul just as easily as a man, while a zombie would just keep coming, animated purely by magics as it was. However, a ghoul would not truly die until its head was severed from its body, as Jaric was now ensuring.

A moment later, and the big man stood. He looked to me, “You did well, Runes. I did not expect all of them to be taken out, from the way you were talking.”

I shrugged, “I guess I’m a natural.”

“Excellent,” Garrick said as he approached, having picked up a dagger from one of the zombies and strapped it to his side. “Well, now that this room has been settled, shall we go see about getting your shield a sword?”