Mask of Humanity

Nicolai looked himself over. He wore the ragged rotting cloth he’d taken from the rat and the thug, using it as a wrap around his waist that hung to his knees, torn and open in places.

He’d created a little belt of the cloth which was also around his waist, the knife pushed through it, and he’d attached the three pouches to it, one holding his Oma crystals, the other holding the points tags, the last barely fitting in the radio, which poked out the top.

The blue water bottle hung from its strap over his shoulder, and he wore the orb of rejuvenation’s necklace around his neck, the orb itself hanging over his bare chest.

In his right hand he held the gory metal baton.

Nicolai stepped up the rough rock of the short stairway out the crypt and into the corridor, his eagerness making him move a little faster than was smart. He slowed himself before he emerged, ensuring he was quiet, and peeked left and right down the corridor.

The left side was still ominously dark, while the right still held the lit area with another stairway. He headed right, to the stairway.

This stairway was larger and made from smoothly cut and worked white stone, shining like a beacon in the dimness. Nicolai crept up it towards bright opening above.

Reaching the top he peered around with mingled interest and wariness, looking out into a much larger and significantly better lit area.

It looked to him like some kind of large dining room, maybe a medieval style banquet hall. On one side there was a large throne made from white stone, with a hulking skeleton sitting within it. Spread around the room away from that were many long wooden tables with chairs, aged and half-rotten. There were many more skeletons and bones scattered around, along with ancient, rusted armour and weaponry.

It seemed to him there had been a fight here, long ago. Many of the tables and chairs were upended and smashed, and he could see clumps amongst the skeletons where many had quickly died. Continuing to look, he made out more. One of the skeletons nearby to him was huge and inhuman, something that in life must have been the size of an elephant. There were quite a few of this type around. Of the others, they tended to be more squat and humanoid, and these were the ones with rusted armour.

The banquet hall was half-collapsed. The far side from him was just a wall of crumpled masonry and wood and dirt, the ceiling leaning down towards that point.

There was a main exit on the left side of the room from him, opposite the throne, however the collapse extended to that point before stopping and though he could see there should be a hallway there, it was now blocked.

To the left of this, there was a large metal double doorway, arching, which was not collapsed. It looked solid and heavy.

Finally, behind the throne was a small opening in the wall and Nicolai could see a cramped stairwell within it.

The room was lit by the same fuelless ever-burning torches as had been in the crypt, lining the walls. Some of them were broken, the walls cracked and ruined around them. The far side of the room with the collapse was darker, no torches left there. There were also a pair of great chandeliers hanging from above in the middle of the room, covered in similarly ever-burning fuelless torches. One of them hung at an angle where the ceiling sagged down towards the collapse.

Moving cautiously and quietly, Nicolai stepped out from where he’d lurked and into the room, alert for any changes. The mention of “undead and necromancers” was still fresh in his mind, which led him to regard the many skeletons with wariness he wouldn’t normally have felt, part of him expecting that they might suddenly come alive.

Nicolai decided it was best to see if something like that would happen now, while he had the route of the crypt behind him. He’d rather not go into the dark tunnel without a light source, but if all these skeletons rose and came for him he would have little choice but to flee, and that would be easier with him standing where he was, rather than, say, on the other side of the bones. He made a bee-line to the nearest skeleton, one of the elephant sized creatures. Bending down he picked up a heavy, curving rib bone. There was no response from the dead thing, so he Examined it.

Oleumpis Rib Bone

A bone from a long-dead Oleumpis.

Useless information. Nicolai gripped the bone in both hands, spun in a circle, and tossed it into the centre of the banquet hall to crash noisily into the piles of bones resting there.

As the echoes of the bony collision bounced off the walls, Nicolai fingered his metal baton and watched.

Nothing happened.

Still wary, he picked up another heavy rib bone. This time he lobbed it at the large skeleton sitting in the throne.

The bone cracked into the larger skeletons skull and knocked it flying. The whole of it, rib-bone and skeleton, fell from the throne and clattered untidily onto the ground, and Nicolai waited for a response.

Nothing happened.

Nicolai grunted, uncertain what to think. He still half expected that as soon as he ventured further into the room they would all come alive. But he’d done all the testing he could think of and he wasn’t going to just stand there and wait to starve to death.

Nicolai headed around the room towards the side opposite the throne, where the big metal door and the largely collapsed hallway were. He stuck to the sides of the room, clinging close to the walls, unwilling to venture into the centre. From what the rat had told him, they had actually done so to retrieve the weapons he now held. But even so, Nicolai’s paranoia made him unwilling to copy the act just yet. He could all too easily imagine himself stood in the centre of the bones, pawing through rusted weaponry, then hearing the bones rustle and clatter as the skeletons rose around him.

He reached the big metal door first. It had a handle which he tugged, but it didn’t move. He wrenched at it, applying more strength, then tried to rattle the door. It was solid and unyielding. Next he examined its edges, looking for hinges, but found none. There was, however, a hole clearly meant for a key.

He peered into the hole, and could see another room on the other side. He couldn’t see much of it but it was well lit and made from similar stone as the one he was in now. He could see some large supporting columns within it, and crumbled stone littering the ground.

If he could find some slender and strong pieces of metal, he might be able to pick it, depending on how the lock worked. Or better yet, find a key. Before leaving, he pressed his right hand against it and thought examine.

Guest’s Minor Banquet Hall Doorway

A large and solid pair of metal doors, built to provide defenders time to resist an incursion.

Little more information than he could see himself, though it was nice to confirm this was a banquet hall.

Heading right, he walked over a dozen metres to the start of the collapse, where there was once a hallway exiting this place. The hallway wasn’t actually too badly collapsed, filled with stone but there were gaps. Peering through those gaps he could see the far side of the collapse.

He wouldn’t be able to fit right now, but with time, effort, and something to use for supports, he might be able to clear a route through. He knew it would be dangerous to do so, as with any collapse it was hard to know what could be cleared out without triggering it further. He didn’t like the idea of being under all that stone, pulling at a rock, then hearing an ominous crumbling.

Nicolai retraced his steps, returning to where he’d entered, considering what he’d found. There were four routes available to him so far, but none of them were without challenge. The big locked door needed to be opened, somehow. The collapsed hallway needed to have a route cleared through it. The dark tunnel in the crypt ideally required a light source, though if push came to shove he could go blind.

His eyes settled on the fourth route, the opening in the wall behind the throne with a stairwell leading up. From where he stood, it was the only one that was truly accessible, and he started towards it.

After reaching the opening, he found it held a cramped spiral stairwell, only large enough for one at a time, which was lit by more torches spaced a couple of metres apart, leading upwards.

Nicolai headed up, moving slowly, his steps silent, his breathing regulated to be as quiet as possible. He held the baton high and ready, in his left hand because the stairs rose counter-clockwise.

Arriving at the top he peered into another lit area, this one much smaller than that below with a ceiling only a couple of metres high, the room only a few metres across. It seemed to be a little foyer type area, with wooden doors spread around it. All but one were closed. There was also a larger metal door that hung open where he’d exited the stairwell, and he was glad it was open as otherwise he would have been blocked from entering here, too.

He heard a faint scuffle and a scrape from within the open room and tensed, crouching down then retreating back into the stairwell to lurk. The noise grew, scuffling and clicking, alongside the scrape of something metal on stone, and then a skeleton stumbled out.

It was humanoid, much like a human’s skeleton but shorter and wider, with an elongated skull. It was wrapped in rotted, faded and torn clothing that long ago had probably been coloured but was now just grey and brown. It dragged a rusted chunk of metal that may have once been a sword behind it.

There was a pale blue light within its skull, the light visible through its eye sockets like eyes of blue fire.

It stopped and looked jerkily around.

Nicolai remained utterly still, staring at it, frozen with surprise. There was a difference between being told of undead, and seeing one for himself. He could hardly believe it, the utter fantasy of an actual skeleton walking around. How did that even work? How could it move its limbs without muscle? It didn’t make any sense to him but there the skeleton stood, swaying slightly.

Nicolai was debating whether he might be hallucinating when it turned towards where he lurked, and started slowly towards him. He didn’t want to have to fight in the confines of the stairwell so he rose smoothly to his feet, stepped out and presented himself before it, watching it, waiting to see what it would do. He switched the baton to his right hand.

The skeleton paused, staring at him, then it stepped forwards and the blade scraped over the ground as it raised it.

That act jolted Nicolai into action. He might never have seen a mobile skeleton before but he knew combat intimately and immediately recognised the aggression in its posture. Time wasted was advantage lost. He launched himself at the skeleton before it could bring its weapon to bear and a two handed swing of the baton sent it crashing through the skeletons head which was smashed apart, chunks of skull bouncing off the stone.

The skeleton collapsed messily to the ground, the pale blue light venting out from its skull into the air where it paused a moment before flitting away.

Nicolai stood above it, his heart thrumming. The rush of battle had risen within him only to abruptly find itself without a target and he gripped the baton tight, eyes hunting for another.

One of the doors creaked open.