Page 121 of Deadly Maiden

Then…

We look at each other. Naked. Armed with swords and daggers. The gheist pistol has no bullets, so it stays with our rucksacks. And we have one etharum torch clutched in Rorsyd’s hands.

“Shall we?” I ask, cocking one eyebrow in doubt. This is nuts.

“Let’s. You seem convinced you can sense whatever is in this place? You’re certain?”

I nod. “Only we and Kyvin are truly dangerous. And Kyvin, as you know, is happy to smite our enemies.”

“Yeah. I trust that undead guy. Which is possibly the weirdest statement I have ever said. Let’s do this. You, first. My whole plan is to watch your butt while we walk.” He grins.

“I should have guessed. Just so you know, the ghosts will eat your dangly bits first.”

“Shoo.” He spins me and smacks my ass.

I prance down the corridor, swaying my hips.

It’s fun until we return to that cross corridor near the Slaedorth foyer and find the stairway going up…and down. Even I feel nervous. Better to die a hero and not a zero, as Andacc once said.

I choose the downward stairs but draw my sword. The lights are on beneath Slaedorth also, but dimmer.

This new corridor stretches away, changing from mildly well-lit to gloom.

I inhale, shakily, my sword at my side, pointing at the floor.

“Want me to go first?” Rorsyd comes to my shoulder.

“No.” I straighten and close my eyes, searching this level of the fortress. Nothing, nothing, then a whole room of…what? Kinda undead corpses? Faith restored in my necromancy, I sheath my sword and stride forward.

A room with a pump of sorts is down here, chugging away, which must be how the pipes are circulating water. And several storerooms, and then a last big room with row after row of corpses on raised tiers, well preserved, pallid. The room is silent when we enter.

Of course it is.

Rorsyd has stiffened. I glance at him. “It’s okay. They’re somehow preserved. Not undead, but not dead-dead. Safe. Not deadiddy-dead.”

He snorts. “Deadiddy dead?”

“Technical necro term,” I snap out and smile at him. “I just invented it.”

Here I am today, being flippant about death. Yesterday…

I pull myself past my moment of remembering yesterday and Landos lying still and cold in the bag.

Life goes on.

“I figured it was so.”

“I think I could turn them into undead.” I walk up to a man and stare down at him. “Or not? I’m not sure.”

The etharum lights on the walls give me enough illumination.

He’s dressed in pants and shirt, average age, no tattoos or markings. Not a shifter. Dead about thirty years. I check a few more. Most are male. Some appear intact. Others have gaping wounds in all sorts of areas—legs, arms, heads, torsos. A few are missing their brains. Disconcerting. Have they been harvested for something? “Let’s go see upstairs. Next floor above ground level.”

“No. You need food, so do I. And where is Kyvin?” Rorsyd looks at the ceiling, as if he can see through it.

I let myself relax, absorb my surroundings, then expand my awareness, going floor by floor. “He is outside.” Curious. “Sitting near the rear door.”

“That man…that undead, is behaving oddly here? Though we never saw what he did at the library when we weren’t there.”

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