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"I didn't see it at all," Okora's voice whispered his desire to commiserate with Cajetan.

The human nodded in agreement a moment before responding, now that the first aid was settled, it was dawning on him how such a massive thing sprung up on them. "Didn't see a damn leaf twitch. What is that thing anyway?"

The inert hulk of decaying plant matter was sprouting new fruiting mushrooms before their eyes. Small, furtive, decomposers grew with undue speed. He was overcome by this memento mori. The vision of him falling in battle here and immediately being broken down by the rot that lay in everything here nearly made him shudder.

Okora didn't answer for a while, and it was just as well, Cajetan was ruminating over his mortality. Rodwald, ever straightforward, decided to lend his intellect to the discourse.

"Is a plant. Hurtin' plant." He rubbed over his bandage.

Content with that, they shared a gruff laugh to blow off some tension, and once more took up watchful posts. This time, all three were back-to-back. And Rodwald refused to sit on the wall he had before.

Okora turned his beak to the human beside him, side-eyeing and speaking softly. "Impressive work there." He wanted to keep the conversation between them, it seemed, his tone slight and sneaky.

"I know my way around a bandage. Mighty fine spellcraft."

"Draining. That wall isn't a walk in the park to make. Lots of focus without prep."

"Do they teach you that or did you learn on your own?"

"Taught, that at least was taught. I know some tricks though," he allowed himself a smug smirk about his beak feathers. His small form shivered from the cold. What little warmth there was in midday had faded quickly. "And you? Learned it walking the path?"

"Mmm, grail hunting is dangerous work. Kills many men, it does." Cajetan tilted his head a little, peepers full tilt to the side to steal a glance at the wren.

"I'm cold."

"Want to hop in my lap?"

"Oh you'd like that, I'm sure." Okora's voice wasn't distant this time, no. Instead, it had a bit of tease to it. It spurred Cajetan on.

"Look at you, pretending you wouldn't flash up your tail feathers and nestle up for some warmth."

The wren hummed and blinked, looking with more focus at the surroundings. "Under better circumstances, I wouldn't mind stealing some warmth from you."

"Oi, that's my heat. No freebies."

"I'm sure one can work out an equitable price."

The wren delicately reached his hand out, across Cajetan's lap, and squeezed his junk playfully, but nothing more. The two left it at that, something to chew on while their loathsome watch continued.

The sky began to grow glum with storm clouds. The yellow of the blazing globe above eroded into a sickly sort of orange, fighting to break through the grey and black riders traveling across the heavens. They all dreaded rain, it would be adding insult to injury. As she said, Tirah returned before dusk.

She looked haggard from her efforts but uninjured. They conveyed their report to their handler, and she updated them. Unsurprisingly the dead were walking all over these tunnels. However, she found an entrance that would take them closer to their goal and evade many of the preliminary defenses.

Wary now, with newfound fearful respect for Elsteron, they followed Tirah's lead. She took them along the east side of the structure. Like the solidified carcass of a snake, the dark entrance they stopped at carried on. The throat of stone wove into a body that traveled alongside the River Gend's main branch.

Tirah illuminated her companions onto its purpose. As Cajetan had suspected initially, it was some sort of aqueduct. Water would flow from the north, and drain into aquifers, and an underground river. Collecting minerals and rinsing itself of pollutants naturally, a structure was built over it for collection and distribution to whatever communities lay on Elsteron's border.

"... and beyond."

"The orcs, correct?" Okora asked. "Many of the kingdoms here have good rapport, or so I am told."

Cajetan recoiled. "Absolutely bloody not. The men of Elsteron hated those orcs."

"Why would they be willing to share a water source with them, then? Seems odd."

"They didn't!" Tirah qualified. She paused, as if she didn't want to add anything more, but spoke anyway. "Elsteron used to stretch to the coast."

Okora wasn't fazed by this historical tidbit, merely whistling a slight sound. Cajetan's face twisted up in thought though, he had to bite his tongue. Not a moment to debate though, Tirah called them forward.

The stone serpent's side was open, and its ribs and guts revealed. The bricks had been smashed open by something, leaving behind rubble and an unguarded entryway.

A narrow passage spanned in both directions, dark and musty. Water had collected in the massive sort of culvert, pooling down in the walkway. A drop down a half-meter and they'd be in.

"Ogre, you're vanguard. Okora behind him, Cajetan behind him. And I will take rearguard."

"Ogre first." Rodwald's lucidity brought a spark of amusement to their glum task. Tucking his head low to get under the ridge of bricks, he went in with his club. And immediately began walking the wrong way.

"Other way, slab!" Tirah said with a hiss of frustration.

The trudge of his stomps through the thin layer of water was his only reply. Okora slipped in after, nearly disappearing into the black what with his plumage and garb.

The passageway smelled offensive. Stagnant water had the explorers' noses bemoaning their fates. If only they had a bit of scent cloak, they'd be right as rain. The walls glimmered here and there with dampness. Considering all the rest they had seen about Elsteron, it was a surprise not to see any moss of grubby, ugly plant life growing here.

Cajetan joined and when the elf took her post she surprised the human. A tap on his shoulder. It was so hardwired to him that he instinctively reached out and tapped Okora. 'All clear', that was the sign. A reminder to the unit they've got men behind and things are ready to move.

Okora, despite being an operator in his own right, merely regarded the human with a glistening volucrine eye. He shrugged, unsure what it meant, and turned back forward.

"You're more professional than I thought, elf."

"Thanks. You're less ogre than I thought, man."

Cajetan's eyes strained in the dark. The cloudy skies had made it so his acclimation to the dark of the passage was instant. "A bit of light?" He ventured.

"I could provide. Any issue, Tirah?"

"Be ready to snuff it."

Okora opened his palm, and from it, a twinkling bit of starlight blossomed. The cool, blue light was easy on the eyes, dull enough to preserve any night sight they'd gained.

The wren decelerated his pace so he was closer to the human. He leaned back limberly, the soft bristle of his feathers to the human's shaven cheek. He whispered with a thin whistle that even the elf couldn't pick up. "Don't get too distracted guarding my rear that you miss the skeletons at your feet."

Cajetan reached out and pinched the bird's ass to get him to scoot along with haste. He was lucky he didn't make Okora chirp.

Sound carried if it were loud enough. Tricky, sharp, metallic sounds tortured their ears with painful sounds. Okora in particular hated it, covering an ear with one hand.

An abrupt clearing of her throat came from the elf. "Halt, Rod. You've gone too far."

The ogre, good at taking orders, stopped his sloshing forward. He held his club in two hands, ready and waiting. Cajetan turned his head to ask what she meant. As far as he knew, it was all stone. But as he did brought a passage into view. A few paces ahead, alongside the bird, the wall dipped into an aside and opened up into a wooden bridge.

Railed by wood, it was perhaps sturdy at some point. But now it had rotted with years of moisture and misuse. A small set of steep stone stairs fed into that bridge. The blackness of the pit it overlooked flinched with light sources below. At first, he thought it was catching Okora's spell, whatever they were, and reflecting it back.

His stomach sank when he realized it was dozens of fire-sparked eyes. The undead, milling about, trapped below, eternally yearning for life. In the murk, shapes made themselves more apparent. Skulls, bony fingers, rotted and decaying forms cast away and forgotten.

"Will he make it across that bridge?" Okora asked, looking with uncertainty to Tirah. He ventured down the stairs a bit, gasping as his light brought to his vision the carcasses.

"Do you have any magic that might support his weight?"

Okora shook his head to the negative. "Wollach's floating disk won't be carrying an ogre's heft any time soon."

"Can you leap across, pal?"

"'Cross the bridge, nah." He shook his head.

"Do we have to cross at this point?"

Tirah nodded. "Anything else and we're wading through dead."

"Bridge snaps and we'll be doing that anyway," Cajetan said, pointing to the wet, sucking earth below, and the undead trapped there. The corpses absent-mindedly rattled at them, grasping up at them. The thirty-foot fall into that, soft mud or not, would hurt.

Their handler made a judgment call. She and Okora were the lightest. They would go across. After, Cajetan by himself. Finally, Rodwald would take the rear. This way, if the bridge broke, the riskiest person was last.

Cajee hardly liked the idea of the ogre, smelly as he was, being abandoned to that pit. As expected, the lightest two got across with little more than a creak and sway to the wood.

Before the human rolled the dice he spoke to Rodwald, who was too simple to understand the danger judging by his lack of fear.

"If the bridge creaks bad, or feels like it will snap, run across. And if you feel the wood falling from under you, try to make the jump across to the safe side. Where they are, got it?"

They parted with a firm nod from the ogre, and a pat on the bicep from the human.

Cajetan's heavier kit and bulkier frame meant negotiating the bridge required slow and steady movement. The creak and sag of the wood under him made a cold sweat form on his brown.

He made no hint of it, what with his stone mask of an expression. But internally, his mind was a buzzing hive of stinging warnings. Run! Flee! Leap across! Hurry! His forebrain fought to wrangle his instincts back constantly, step by careful step.

He hadn't realized he was holding his breath until he put his boot on firm stone and signed. Okora patted his back and gave him a comforting smile.

"Didn't piss yourself in fear, yes?" Tirah prickled with a smirk.

Absolutely not having it after that harrowing experience, Cajetan was quick to snap back. "Keep talking shit and I'll be pissing down your throat, dandelion-eater."

She relented, turning her eye to the moment of truth with the ogre. What could have been a disaster was instead endearing. Rodwald tiptoed with mum caution, the only thing louder than the wood creaking being his breathing. With huff and puff, he got himself right on solid ground, nothing broken.

"Praise be, we can use that to exit when we're ready," Tirah said. Now that they were deeper, she got pep in her step. Deeper she led them in, and further into the earth, they descended.

The hallways here were decidedly more human. The ground below was a series of black and white tiles, cracked and neglected though they may be. The walls had more room for movement and a less austere design.

Tirah avoided the labyrinthine passageways to their sides and focused on a largely straight shot. Only a few twists took them off course from the bridge. Escape would be easy, Cajetan soothed himself with that thought.

Suddenly they happened upon the entrance to an anteroom. Warbling and shifting in the doorway was not a blockade of wood. That would be too easy. A blood barrier had been ensorcelled here. Runes of crimson creased the air. It reminded Cajetan of Okora's wind wall spell. Thicker and more opaque, but it was similar in how it bent the air. The sickly scent of spilled life clung to the air.

"A blood barrier is beyond my skill. I couldn't dispel this. You'd have better luck asking the ogre to dig us a tunnel around it."

"No need, the human is our key. Go on, try it. Put your hand through it."

Cajetan wasn't so sure. He stepped closer to the barrier. Beyond some light seeped through, it was surely a room on the other side but the details of which were too distorted. He stretched out his gloved hand and his fingers passed by the cold of the barrier to the other side.

Relief washed over him, and he stepped partly through with ease. An odd, cold feeling fell over him. Sound didn't travel, aside from some muffled garbling, so he quickly darted back out to hear what they were saying.

Rodwald put his hand out to touch it too, but the wren was quick to stop him and pat his hand. "Best not risk it." And, after a second, "Pal."

The ogre gave him a big thumbs up and half-toothed smile.

"A bit of your blood and the enchantment will allow us passage," Tirah said, already handing him a knife.

He grasped the offered blade and pulled down one of his gloves. On the back of his hand, he made a small incision and drew blood. It welled at the wound with a squeeze of his fingers, and refused to follow gravity's call. Instead, it tried to run toward the barrier - a weak pull suckling it in.

He flicked the blood-stained knife at the barrier and watched in amazement as it faltered and faded.

Okora spoke up. "How were you so sure he would work? Just because he's from Elsteron means little. Blood barriers can be keyed to particular families, or just a single person."

Tirah gave a tight-lipped reply. "We have intel regarding how the Forsworn operate."

With the anteroom unlocked, they were given free rein of it. It wasn't intended to be so, but it appeared to be a study of some assortment. Illuminated only by Okora's light, they were given a glimpse, finally, into this place's purpose.

Furniture had been hastily shoved against both walls, desks, and tables, but curiously no chairs. The tabletops were stacked high with tomes and texts. Scrolls lay unfurled and weighed down by inkwells and pebbles. The scrawling notes meant little to anyone, but the hand that wrote them was fervent. The author's passion showed in their sharp pen-flicks.

Alchemist's tools; an alembic, pestle, and mortar, such like this, fizzled with a forgotten brew. A festering green ichor lay at the bottom of a bottle held in iron wire, whatever it was looked unsettling. It glowed with a magical luminescence.

Tirah looked over the items and called a halt, drawing from her breast pocket a monocle.

"Need your reading glasses?" Cajetan asked.

Okora sighed and rolled his eyes. "It's a monocle of comprehend languages."

Tirah gasped, and her pallid mien warped into a fearful contortion of her features.

"What?"

"Can you read High Gothic, Cajetan?"

"No, parents could but—"

She didn't hear anymore, thrusting the monocle into his hand instead. He took it, and squinting through it watched with amazement as the foreign script and letters instead morphed and melted into a familiar common script.

If he looked too hard, it blurred and distorted into nothing, but if he unfocused his eye just right he could glaze through and read much of the writing. At first, it meant nothing. Scattered and unclear notes and adjustments to formulas that would mean nothing to anyone but the writer.

A diagram of a great tube, with cords and piping stemming from it, was etched to a bit of parchment. It was a vile looking device, arcane and foreboding. A container for some sort of fluid.

Keywords leaped out at him as he glossed. Mostly plague. They were brewing a virulent plague here, using some artifact as a base, to use it against the orcs and boars. Methods of distribution, brewing, and application, were all laid out. It was scattered, but it was there.

He offered the monocle back, the warmth having fled from his fingertips.

"Another plague?" He said coldly. He wasn't around for it, but he had heard word from his parents. The destruction, the pain. An unending miasma. Worst of all, another Elsteron. The notion made his blood still to ice.

Rodwald had no idea of their strife, for he was a simpleton. Okora on the other hand, knew little of Elsteron. News of its complete destruction and the level of undeath there were practically fairy tales where he came from. Outlandish news from the north.

"Worse," Tirah pleaded, half-panicked by it. "You know how tenuous the border alliance is. Imagine if the Forsworn had access to the sea. They'd spread like wildfire. And who will contain them?"

"Alright, what's the plan?" He asked her with renewed determination.

Tirah didn't answer, instead a wisping rasp did. A voice like a chill breeze through the boughs of a graveyard curled out to them. "The plan? With any luck, you all die quietly."

Standing in the doorway from whence they just came was a man, wrapped up in an old but fine uniform. A once colorful caparison of green and black lozengy frayed and fettered. Just as the man's life was. Instead of the flesh and features of a face, only a dirt-specked skull glowered back at them. One of his center incisors was chipped, and long drafts of grey-white hair clung to his scalp and obscured part of his visage. He had a lanthorn jaw, sharp and shut tight. One of his eyes blazed with a bluish glow.

Before anyone could react, the true son of Elsteron's ghastly hand shot into his robes and withdrew a large orb. It flashed green, the glass globe did, sloshing with putrid bane. He threw it only a few meters, dashing it at their feet. It exploded into a fetid cloud of death!

"Gas!"

"Poison!"

Cajetan sucked in a gasp of clean breath and winced, shuffling back into Tirah. Okora was their savior, calling on the winds to buffer and whip back the billowing clouds at their maker. Papers fluttered and books flapped around them. Glass rattled, and shattered to the floor, as Okora used his power to counter the attack.

He stopped channeling, the wretch was gone. The only trace left was the bit of melted stone where the globe had shattered. Cajetan thought he saw the budding of shrooms before Tirah patted his shoulder.

"We move on, and fast. Okora keep your eyes on the back. Rodwald, forward. Beside me, knight."

They moved in a tight diamond, down a short hall into an impressive rotunda. The room had a second tier visible, stairs along either side leading up to that balcony above. Some natural light filtering in from the ceiling. The silvered light of the moon cast a glum aura. A great cage made the centermost portion of the ceiling, overlooking the hole below. At one point it likely had glass between the iron railings. All shattered now. The rotunda was encircled around that hole in the middle, guarded in part by warped iron railings with many gaps.

A scratching itched at their ears. Movement. Lots of movement. Far away... or was it close? The echo played tricks.

The walls were lined with fermenting vats of glowing, evil rot. In some of them, connected to others by pipes and tubes and pumps, the rotting forms of plague-bearers sat in stasis, constantly producing their putrid gifts and having them drained down into the hole in the middle of the room. Tubing and piping all trailed itself to the middle.

Hanging above the hole was the item. Upon looking at it Tirah took pause and gasped. It's the dagger from the notes, Cajetan thought. Looking at it made his stomach turn, it made him queasy. Not in a natural way, not in the way seeing the fermenting bodies made him ill. It felt like his stomach was being grabbed and squeezed by the presence of the fell blade.

There was something wrong with that knife.

"That's our prize. We need to collect that and destroy this place," Tirah said with sudden vigor. She moved with haste past her companions, denying any dispute to her objective. "Watch my back."

The awful scrap and skitter of a hundred dead bodies ambling toward them echoed from the halls they'd entered from. Clogging the door, a bundle of skeletons and zombies filed out. Whoever they'd encountered had sprung the alarm for sure.

"Of course, running at the first sign of trouble," Cajee growled. The mace alone wouldn't do, not with so many foes of so little skill. He drew his short blade in his off-hand.

"Let's earn that nosh, pal!" Rodwald bellowed, charging toward the tangle of undeath and swinging his club with wild abandon. Bones and beings went flying, hardened wood cracking against the bones of the past and finding them wanting! The thin magic holding them together scattered as they met with such force.

Cajetan, livened by his companion, joined along his side. He had no wish to catch a backswing and thus kept where he felt safe from enemy and friend alike, crushing the heads of any reeking anomaly that approached.

The mage was not idle, but he reserved his power. From a purse along his hip he drew ball bearings. Small rounds of lead. Cheaply forged and misshapen. But that's alright! All they had to do was take to the wind. He manipulated tight, short gales to shoot the ball bearings at anything that threatened his friend's flanks.

Held in reserve for worse circumstances, a brace of throwing knives hid under his silks, and another of crossbow bolts strapped to his leg.

One skull cracked open too close to Cajetan, the splinters of bone rattling against his gorget. "Oi! Watch it!"

While her companions earned their pay, their handler was earning hers. With the adroit acrobatics of her ilk, Tirah clambered from pipe to vein, swinging to the knife upon the pedestal it rested. She grasped it. Her companions couldn't see, but up close she realized there were festering bits of flesh on the blade that were fused to the metal in an awful sort of unlife.

Before Tirah could order them all to leave, a dark presence filled the room. Dropping down from the level above was a death knight clad in robust armor. An emblem of old Elsteron sat upon his chest, embossed to the metal there. The greyish steel had a sheen to it that spoke to its kempt state.

The death knight swung his two-hander at Cajetan immediately, locking the grail-knight down. It was all he could do to block the blows with his sword or mace, cornered and overpowered. Bracing it against his forearm, his shortsword caught a strike in reverse grip, the impact bruising his flesh under the armor.

Half-swording his blade with his cadaverous fingers gave him unparalleled dexterity and force, far in advance of what Cajetan could muster with his tools.

Okora and Rodwald tried to support him, but a dozen clawing skeletons kept them pined. Spell and fist worked as hard as they could to smash the beings, but these were more robust — emboldened and empowered by the aura of the fallen knight.

Rodwald's body took many blows, slashes, and stabs. Okora expended much energy just keeping himself safe, launching himself a flutter to get the superior high ground. He saw then from his perch that Tirah was nowhere to be found, vanished into a whisp again. He panicked for a moment, had the elf abandoned them?

But no, she hadn't. The death knight rained heavy blows upon Cajetan, until something caught his attention. His blazing red eyes flicked from the human to a bit of empty space to his left. He slashed down with a great overhead strike, hoping to suppress Cajetan.

Meanwhile, his other hand shot out to grasp the invisible specter of Tirah. His eyes, cold and undead as they were, couldn't be fooled by elven trickery. All life was known to him so that he could bring death to it. He grabbed her forearm before her blade could find purchase, and with a tense, tight twist he applied an unholy amount of force to her.

Tirah flinched and then shrieked, hissing and crying out in blinding pain as her forearm was snapped with a wet, gut-wrenching crack. Her hand dropped her dagger with a clatter.

Shocked, but refocused, Okora and Cajetan did what they could to protect Tirah. A hail of wind-guided missiles pecked at the death knight. The arrows and daggers clattered against his armor, sticking here and there where it found purchase on chainmail or gambeson.

This wasn't good. They needed an in. They needed faith. The grail-knight locked in, the darkness of focus on his brow.

Cajetan's mace fizzled with a golden light and he swung a grand pummeling to the death knight's ribs, denting and branding its emblem. The ribs held within were surely shattered, and the metal groaned as it was dented.

Cajetan had smited him rightly. Taking initiative, Okora buffeted him with a strong, fierce wind, knocking him off balance. Finally, having smashed the last of the skeletons, Rodwald charged between the two of his companions to toss the death knight into the pit, putting his forearm up as a brace. The impact of 650 pounds colliding with the face of undeath could not be withstood.

He launched him with a swipe of his forearm, the power behind the blow sending the death knight clattering into the vats below.

"Good one, Rod!"

Cajetan hurried to Tirah's side, who was clutching the elbow of her broken arm with her good hand. She breathed in short, pained spurts. "The vats, they need to be destroyed. This place must come down."

The grail-knight set his pernach aside. The exit was thick with smashed bones but he could already see more deeper in, shuffling forward. They had a small window to breathe.

The broken arm needed to be triaged, and Rodwald was oozing blood from about two dozen sources. "Watch me, if it gets serious let me know. I need to focus."

Tirah was sweating. And with good cause. Her right forearm was snapped in half, held by muscle mostly. It wasn't good. Cajetan didn't let that part show. He pulled away her armor where he could, cleaning the area of blood as it oozed out.

"You're fucking lucky I come prepared," he huffed. Poor bedside manner, but that was his privilege. He applied a splint and then wrapped it tight enough to stay firm while trying to minimize pain.

Tirah was trying to keep a tough face but the squeeze of the binding made her gulp for air, clutching at her thigh with her other hand.

"Your magic, can it—" Okora began.

He shook his head. "Not for this, no." He had no proper sling, but fashioned a make-shift one from a bit of cloth, giving Tirah a way to hold her arm in relative comfort.

"Tel-has." An elven thanks.

"Need to go," Rodwald barked, throwing a stone at a skeleton and caving its ribs in. A slow trickle of them were entering the atrium.

"The vats! Bring them down, they have to be destroyed." Tirah pleaded. Her voice was so impassioned with pain that she sounded on the verge of tears.

"Solutions?" Cajetan turned to Okora. "I bet Rod could pull most of them down. Might take a while. Half afraid he'll splash that poison on himself or us though."

The mage's plumage rippled with thoughts, he held his forehead, swallowing. "I could perhaps cut the wires and smash these vats but, it would—" His face lit up with the spark of Eureka. "I have an idea."

Tirah struggled to stand, and the knight helped her up, patting her back. He also picked up her knife and handed it to her, collecting his mace.

"What then?"

Okora tapped his beak and paced a second. "I can manipulate the air to become charged with the potency of flame. When a spark or fire is added, the chamber will explode. It is highly dangerous, we will need to be very far away when it begins."

"How will you set it off, if we're far away?"

"That part is easy!" He rolls a lead-bearing in his fingers. "Dash this to the floor and sparks will fly. Buy me some time."

Tirah had been rendered useless by her wound. Frazzled with pain and a feeling of uselessness, she followed close to Okora while he chanted and called upon his powers. He enriched the air with fire's fuel, the air becoming invisibly choked with it.

Rodwald and Cajee held down the entrance. The undead came in waves, thankfully. The ogre was tiring though, he'd taken a few blows. Cajee kept searching for a moment to mend him, but there simply wasn't. Anytime he even considered it, he'd have to bludgeon another creep.

"It's done! We flee!"

Cajetan wasn't impressed with the results. It looked entirely the same. Eager to escape, though, he said nothing. The ogre played vanguard again, Tirah protected in the middle.

Okora and Cajetan backpedaled as rearguards. Slow, steady, efficient. Their muscles ached, and sweat seeped into their clothes. There wasn't enough time to catch their breath. This was the danger of the undead. Persistence. Ever persistence.