The Gates of the Underworld

“Here, take this.”

Ravingari was holding an improbably large crossbow out for the fox. They had just finished a quick breakfast, and now that the light of dawn had begun filtering into their camp, they were preparing to leave.

Azalon blinked a couple times as he looked at the weapon, “That’s way too big. I could barely lift that, much less draw the thing.”

The assassin smiled and shook his head, “Ahh, that’s where you’re wrong. Watch this.”

Using only his pinkie finger the elf pulled back the thick lever that drew the crossbow into its firing position. While the thick and ornately carved wooden frame hadn’t looked magical, there had to be some sort of enchantment on the mechanism to make it that easy. “That’s a magically assisted four hundred pound draw.”

“Four hundred pounds? That’ll knock me flat.”

He shook his head, handing him the loaded weapon, “It’s fine. With the correct stance you’ll barely feel a thing.”

Azalon felt the heft of the weighty weapon as he pointed it off into the woods. It wasn’t as bad as he thought. The blocky construction just made it look heavier than it really was. The elf put his hands on Azalon’s hips as he corrected his stance, smiling a bit at the mixed messages he knew he was sending him. “Right leg back, put your weight on it. Now turn it to the side, then front foot facing forward. There, now fire.”

The fox held the crossbow up to his shoulder, head tilted slightly so he could look down the sight. He had to give the trigger a surprisingly firm squeeze before it would fire, though once he did the twang of the bow was met with a satisfying ‘thunk’ as the small bolt it fired buried itself several inches into the tree in front of him. The crossbow rammed painfully into his shoulder when fired, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it thought it would be. That he was still on his feet attested to that fact.

The elf gave him a satisfactory nod, “Well done… assuming that was the tree you were aiming at. Keep practicing, I’ll be back in a bit.”

Azalon nodded and pulled the crank back, arming it once again. There was another enchantment on the weapon that pulled a fresh bolt from his inventory. While the bolts it shot weren’t themselves magically infused in any way, he had to admire the ingenuity of whoever had built this. Effects like moving something heavy and pulling something out of an inventory were relatively cheap when it came to enchantments. Those simple additions made all the difference though, making it quite simple to arm and fire.

He carefully lined up his shot, trying to hit the same place he did before. Just before he fired though he heard Ravingari yelling somewhere off in the woods behind him. “Excuse me, do you mind!”

Azalon shook his head and chuckled, knowing Willowing’s absolute indifference to personal boundaries all too well. He couldn’t quite make out what the pixie was saying, but soon enough he heard the elf growling back at her, “Fine then, have it your way.”

Ignoring them for the moment, Azalon returned to his target practice. He was taking his time, aiming carefully with each shot, and in short order he managed to put another three bolts into the tree. It wasn’t a very tight grouping though. The weight of the crossbow was still a bit much for him, making it difficult to hold steady.

“Not bad, not bad…”

He turned and saw Ravingari nodding at the injured tree as he walked back out from the woods. Willowing was glumly hovering along behind him. She was completely soaked, dripping onto the forest floor under her.

She glared at the fox, “What?”

Azalon didn’t bother answering her. Given the rather pungent odor coming off of her it was obvious what had happened. In an effort to obscure his smile, he stashed the crossbow into his inventory, glad to give his arms a bit of a rest.

Ravingari made a show of adjusting his belt and leather doublet, “Right. Ready?”

The fox nodded, “Thank you, really. The crossbow is magnificent. I think it’ll be a big help.”

The elf waved him off, as though it wasn’t a big deal. “Don’t mention it. It’s in my best interest after all. You can’t very well watch my back if you can’t defend yourself.”

Azalon nodded, walking alongside the elf as they started off in the direction of the graveyard. His leg was still a little stiff, but much better than it had been the previous night. When he had taken the bandage off he saw that the wound had completely closed. There wasn’t even a scar.

For the first time since being forced on this particular journey the fox was feeling optimistic. He had slept well, woken up well, and was both well fed and well armed. The further they walked away from their camp though the thicker the trees grew around them. The forest was silent and ominous. The sooner they could be done with this place the better.

✦ ✦ ✦

Reaching the graveyard was a much simpler task than it had been the day before. They encountered a few small groups of wandering undead, similar to what he had faced the day before. Armed with the crossbow though, Azalon was able to defeat most of them with relative ease. The slow moving zombies were practically stationary targets, giving him plenty of time to line up his shots before firing.

The fox had usually been able to kill them all at long range when they had encountered groups of them. Ravingari had to step in a couple times, finishing them off with his bow when they got dangerously close. For the most part though, the elf was letting Azalon get in all the practice he could.

The only real difficulty was that, in order for his crossbow to be effective, the zombies had to be shot in the head. He had missed the first few times because he hadn’t anticipated how far the bolt would drop at that distance. The bolts had enough penetrating power that they would pierce them completely through, but having holes in their chests wasn’t enough to slow them down. After the first few misses though the fox’s aim started to improve. He was getting better at judging the distance, and learned to aim just slightly above where he wanted to hit.

The group they had just fought were clustered around the ornate wrought iron gates of the graveyard itself. Because there were at least a dozen in the pack he and Ravingari attacked together, again killing them all at range before they had a chance to pose a threat.

Ravingari stepped over the corpses with languid indifference, walking up to the large metal gate. One of the zombies lay slumped against it, but he simply shoved it aside as he bent down to look at the lock.

Nodding mostly to himself he said, “Mmm, trapped most likely. Want to shake down our friends here while I take care of this?”

Azalon looked around at the bodies piled around him, noting once again that they were all completely nude, “I mean… doesn’t look like they have anything.”

The elf shook his head, “You’d be surprised. Take a look at that one over there.”

The zombie the elf was pointing at had toppled backwards over a log; an arrow protruding from between her eyes. She had fallen with her back arched upwards, thrusting her breasts high into the air above her. For the most part, Azalon had been trying to ignore their bodies. It didn’t feel right to be ogling a corpse, even if they were in surprisingly good condition. Even on a dead girl though, tits like those were hard to ignore. They were unusually large and seemed to defy gravity the way they rose up above her body like snow covered mountains.

Azalon frowned as he walked over to her. Looking closer, he saw that her breasts were completely covered with scars. Zombies didn’t scar. She must have gotten them when she was still alive. But then, if she was just a monster, then she had never been alive. He shook his head, not really understanding what he was seeing.

After a second though he realized what Ravingari had been on about. Her nipples had also been pierced through with thick curved barbells. The D-shaped rings were quite large, perhaps an inch or so wide, and skewered through her dark areola. They looked heavy as well, solid gold perhaps. Not that gold was particularly valuable. It was easy enough to conjure or even transmute from lead. These rings however glowed slightly when he looked at them with his Mana Sight. They were fairly weak enchantments, but they were probably still worth something.

He hesitated for a moment. He’d been killing zombies all morning, but what he was about to do, that felt like defilement. It didn’t make sense logically. She was just something created by the dungeon wasn’t she? No different from a piece of furniture. She’d never been alive. She never was a person. But then how did she get those scars? What was her history?

Finally he shook his head, chasing such thoughts away. The zombie was a monster. If she had caught him, she would have eaten his face right off without a single moral objection. Carefully, Azalon knelt down next to the corpse and began to unscrew the end of one of the barbells. He had half expected some kind of reaction from the dead monster, but the body remained still as he carefully pulled the bar free from her thick distended areola.

“Hey, take your time and all, but whenever you’re done fondling her, I’ve got the gate open.”

Azalon glanced over at Ravingari. He’d probably been watching for a while, but of course chose that moment to say anything about it. Willowing was hovering next to him, frowning angrily at the fox with her arms crossed over her chest. Knowing her, she probably thought he was going to start fucking the zombie any moment now.

“Just a moment. They’re… kind of attached.”

He had briefly thought about just ripping them out of the zombie’s rotten flesh, but with as deeply as they were embedded in her breast, trying to yank them free would only have lifted her up off the ground.

Despite what Ravingari was insinuating there was nothing remotely erotic about what he was doing. The body already smelled like rotten meat, and with the removal of the first ring her nipple started to ooze a black ichor that smelled strongly of spoiled milk. Finally though he was able to remove them both, stashing them away in his inventory for now.

Ravingari was smirking slightly as he walked back to them, perhaps thinking that the fox was merely being squeamish around the dead bodies. Azalon shook his head, wanting to dispel that notion by asking about what had given him pause. “Why would a zombie be covered in scars?”

The elf shrugged, “That’s not so unusual. It just means that the dungeon has seen enough humans with scars to know that it’s a common trait. The same could be said for the piercings, or even zombies with beards.”

Azalon nodded, feeling foolish for reading more into her appearance than that. Looking past the elf, he saw that while the gates had been unlocked they were still closed. Giving him another nod, the two approached the gate and together started to pull on the ornate metal bars. As would be expected in any good horror novel, the gate creaked open ominously, loud enough to alert anything beyond that might be waiting for them.

Despite the screeching of the gate though, nothing had rushed out to intercept them. If anything the place looked abandoned. The gate opened up onto a wide landing that overlooked the rest of the graveyard, stretching out below in a deep bowl shaped depression.

The first thing Azalon noticed was that it wasn’t really a graveyard, it was a necropolis. The distinction was academic, but the scholar in him insisted that a graveyard should at least have graves. This place didn’t. It had tombs. Some of the tombs were not much bigger than the coffins they held, but others were the size of houses or even larger. Even the smaller tombs though were lavishly decorated; ornately carved with pointed archways, false windows, and niches displaying a variety of statues and other embellishments.

A wide set of stairs led down to a cobbled pathway that wound its way down through the nearby tombs, but the path soon disappeared into the confusing mass of the cathedral like crypts. It was clear that the necropolis was never intended to grow to this size. Tombs were practically built on top of each other, the ornate stonework of one tomb blending seamlessly into the architecture of its neighbor. But perhaps that was just the influence of the dungeon showing. If there had once been an order to the arrangement of the tombs in the densely packed necropolis, it was now a confusing maze of dark twisting pathways and disturbingly baroque crypts.

While Azalon stared down into the confusing mass, still trying to get his bearings, Ravingari blithely walked past him. The fox hesitated a moment then hurried to catch up with the elf as he walked down the stairs. “You know where you’re going in all this?”

The elf gave him an unconcerned shrug. “Mmm, not really. Whatever we’re looking for down here… well, I’m sure we’ll know it when we see it.”

Azalon nodded, nervously looking down the narrow twisting paths and deeply shadowed alcoves they passed, wishing that he shared the elf’s confidence.