With Sam working on rescuing the prisoners, Thag and Cheezus turned their full attention to trying to find Smash. Since she didn’t want to give away their position should they be caught in a corridor of advancing undead, Thag pulled one of the maces out of the armory. It was pretty similar to swinging a baseball bat which she’d done a few times as a kid and besides that it looked like most of the enemies they’d seen in the fortress were skeletons which were notoriously weak against bludgeoning objects. It wasn’t as good as her shotgun or sword but it would do in a pinch.

“Where should we go from here,” Thag asked, after she had finished equipping herself.

Cheezus thought for a moment before he replied, “Kevin was always into mid-1600s castles. So, I think that the other dungeon he’ll have will be in one of the towers.”

There were four towers so that still left a bit of exploring. “How did you come to find that out?”

“Don’t you remember he missed like four raiding sessions about a year ago? He was on vacation in Europe and somehow we got to talking about it afterwards,” Cheezus replied with a shrug.

“Nope, I don’t remember but it does sound like something he’d be into. Let’s give the closest tower a shot,” she replied. It was pretty crazy that they had gone from close friends to mortal enemies, Thag reflected. It must be even worse for Sean since he and Kevin had been best friends before this game came between them.

From there they went down the hall towards the closest tower. Unfortunately, they mistook the tower entrance with another room. Opening the door, Thag barely suppressed a scream. Inside the circular room was a large vat of boiling liquid. It smelled like burning flesh and she wondered if it was human renderings. It was probably best not to think too much about it. Inside the large steel vat was one of the fat zombies, seemingly under construction. Parts of it were definitely missing. Surrounding the vat were a number of regular zombies, wandering mindlessly.

Cheezus quickly closed the door behind them. Why was he trapping them in here? He quickly whispered in her ear. “They haven’t attacked us in here yet and there was an entire patrol of skeletal warriors walking down the hallway between us.”

She nodded silently and gave him the thumbs up. The question was why hadn’t they been attacked on sight? The other undead had gone right for them when they were out on the field. While she was contemplating their strange position, she saw the fat zombie reach out and grab one of the smaller zombies, shoving it right into a gaping maw on its chest. Holy shit! She’d never seen one of the fat ones do that before. Apparently, they had a larger mouth on their stomach and just ate right from that. Good thing she’d never gotten too close. Moments passed and she waited for the ball to drop. Thag had her shotgun aimed right at the closest zombie too. Cheezus tapped her on the shoulder and she nearly fired off a round accidentally. Glaring at him she saw he was pointing back at the now open door to the hallway. The coast was clear.

Silently, or at least as quietly as she could, she followed Cheezus to the actual tower entrance. It wasn’t far from this fat zombie room so she saw why they had originally mistaken one room for another. They ascended the tower and could see several arrow slits that opened out onto the courtyard below them. In the center was a mass of zombies, skeletons, and other undead, some of which she had never seen. A horrifically large two-headed cyclops zombie loomed over the entryway to the gatehouse. How the hell were they supposed to get past all that? Maybe they could scale down one of the side walls but she doubted that anyone but Cheez would be able to make that type of climb. While the walls weren’t slick, they were made from soft clay and bone. It was mostly dense enough to hold things up; however, it wasn’t probably all that safe for gripping. If a big rain ever visited the Outback the entire structure would wash away.

At the top of the tower was another door. Cheezus opened it just a crack and Thag winched as he heard it squeaking on its rusty hinges. They stepped through and on the other side was a mass of bones. She could see the rotted organs of the undead in front of them, sitting in its ribcage. She pulled Cheezus back a step and shut the door as quickly as she could. It was the oldest trick in the book but she hoped it would buy them a few seconds to ready their weapons. Fortunately, the door swung in so to get at them the creature would have to open the door towards itself. When it did, Thag would be ready to smash its bones to pulp with her newly acquired mace. She had hoped not to have to test her limited knowledge of the weapon and as the seconds ticked by sweat began to drip down the back of her spine. White knuckling the mace, she prepared for all hell to break loose.

Thag wasn’t disappointed. Just another second went by and the door was ripped off its hinges by the massive skeletal creature. It looked like it was one of those giants but it had been stripped of nearly all its flesh. Only its innards remained. She vaguely wondered if pulping this things heart would cause it to die but something about the way that the creature’s beady red eyes hung in their sockets told her that this was an aberration and followed no such natural rules.

She let forth a warrior’s yell and swung the blunt weapon with both hands. Thag heard a satisfying crunch where her weapon struck the creature’s chest but that didn’t stop it from rearing back to crush her with the large wooden club it clenched easily in one hand. She figured whoever had designed the weapon must have used the entire tree – it was probably nearly as big as she was. Fortunately, the giant skeleton was not nearly as adept with its weapon and it missed her head by a few inches.

During the action, Cheezus had somehow snuck past the creature and he stabbed his dagger right into the monster’s back, penetrating its inner organs and causing it to scream. Maybe it was weak to those types of attacks, she pondered briefly while trying to stay out of arm’s reach of its wild swings.

She ducked and wove between its attacks. If it connected with her, she knew that she would be smashed to pieces and at the bottom of the stairwell. Fortunately, with her being on the other side of the door and the creature being so tall it couldn’t get at her very easily: an effective countermeasure to the undead’s superior reach and strength. She would just have to bide her time for the right opportunity to attack. Suddenly, she saw her opening when Cheezus caught it off guard in the spleen.

Finally wising up to who was doing the most damage, it whirled and lunged at Cheezus with its club. He ducked out of the way but this left the monster overreaching with its weight slightly shifted away from her and off-balance.

Taking her club and swinging it low, she used her shoulders and all of her weight to attack the skeleton’s ankles. Thag’s arms shook from the exertion but her efforts were rewarded. It went down with a crash onto its face.

Thag and Cheezus didn’t waste a second tearing the creature apart. Cheezus stabbed it repeatedly in the heart, which didn’t stop the creature but definitely hurt it. Thag resisted the urge to cover her ears from the unearthly screech that it unleashed. Instead, she gripped her newly acquired weapon and using it like a baseball bat, smashed the creature’s ribs to pieces, pulping its insides.

After she was done she checked to see whether she’d taken any hits. There were a couple of bruises from a glancing blow but when she felt her shoulder it didn’t seem broken. “I thought that went surprisingly well,” she said.

“Hopefully the rest of the rescue goes as smoothly,” he replied, grinning at her.

Past the pile of broken bones where the giant skeleton lay in pieces, Thag spotted another door at the end of the hallway. This time, Cheezus carefully greased the door hinges using his thieves’ kit. He tried the door but it was locked. Peering in through the bars above the door, Thag could see a form laid out on a stone table, arms and legs bound in chains. Although he was stripped of his armor, she recognized Smash’s prone body. A few minutes later, Cheezus had opened the lock and they stepped inside.

Inside, the stone room was dimly lit with more of those phosphorescent stones. The red walls shimmered under some sort of magical effect and the gray bones sticking out highlighted the depravity of its creator. Along the walls stood devices of all kinds: an iron coffin, chains on a metal pully device, a rack, a wooden wedge like a sawhorse, and the like.

The center of the room held a stone table with chains which connected to iron manacles restraining their guildleader. His armor had been removed and he wore only his leathers which had been torn and were stained deep crimson. Smash’s fingers wept blood at their tips and Thag could just make out one of the nails inside a clamp which rested on what looked like a metal surgeons’ tray. The tray held various other devices which held Thag’s gaze for several long moments as she contemplated the horrific purpose of each implement.

Finally, when she broke her gaze, she looked more closely at their captured friend. Reviewing his health bar she could see he had exactly 1 hit point. His fingernails had been torn off, a flechette had been used to slice off pieces of his skin, and worst of all there was a gaping bloody hole where his left eye had been. Thag turned and retched in the corner. She hadn’t eaten anything in hours but it all came back up over the next minute.

Cheezus was the first to recover after taking in the contents of the room. She could see his face harden and he made his way over and began working at the manacles, attempting to free Smash. He was made of tougher stuff than her, she realized ruefully, wiping the remnants of bile from her lips. The analytical part of her contemplated all of this in a clinical fashion.

Seconds later, Cheez had freed Smash while she pulled out a healing potion and administered it. She had to be careful just to give him a small amount or it could push him over the edge. He started to rouse but right then Thag heard a scraping coming from down the hallway. She peeked out of the room and her heart sank. There were four skeletal warriors looking down at the remains of the giant bone warrior. Inside she looked around. The torture chamber contained no windows and there were no other exits. “Hurry, we need to get him out of here. A patrol has found us,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt.

Cheezus gingerly lifted Smash onto his shoulder and readied his dagger. They didn’t have time to relock the door and she didn’t want them reporting back to the larger force. Hiding in the corner they waited for the bone warriors to enter. Thag readied her mace and tried not to think. Moments later, the lead skeleton entered the room.

When all four had entered, she closed the door and then flanked them with Cheezus. The first went down easily to her mace but the remaining were much more wary of her attacks. She wove in and out as she had with the giant skeleton but these were trained warriors and much smarter. Two of them stood back to back and held her at bay while the third advanced on Cheezus. He stabbed at it but his aim was off and it got in a nasty riposte that nearly took his hand off.

Meanwhile, Thag nearly lost her head while worrying about her comrades. The two skeletons near her spread out used the same flanking tactic. To make matters worse, the mace was much less effective on them since they had shields and adroitly blocked her wild swings. Damn, this is a lot harder when you don’t level up the weapon skill, she thought. She might have to pull out her gun after all. Taking a nasty cut in the ribs, she cried out and nearly lost her weapon altogether as the other bone warrior tried to knock it from her hands.

“Fuck that hurt,” she yelled. She dropped the mace and pulled out her shotgun. The first skeleton went down to the 12 gauge, its shield providing no defense to the heavy slugs. She came around before the other one could react and smashed its head right off its shoulders with the butt of the weapon. Fighting with a gun was infinitely smarter than using some stupid medieval baseball bat.

In the meantime, Cheezus had cleanly dispatched the other skeleton, “I hope that was satisfying since we can expect more company now,” he said drolly.

“Whatever. Sneaking around is for wimps,” she snapped.

Smash let out a groan. “Get a room. Sheesh, you’re like a married couple,” he said weakly. However, the grin on his face put Thag in a much better mood. Step one complete. Now they just had to get the hell out of here.