Calaf ran through the darkened halls of the Battletower late at night. His shield and spear were aflame, the better for slaying reanimated fungal thralls.

  The tower had been in lockdown all night. Nothing could reach the ground floor through that wall of deactivated archway portals. The foyer remained standing and under guard. Where, then, had the rot come from?

  “Is anyone here?” Calaf said, but there was no response from his empty halls.

  The Gospel of Aldia remained in his Inventory. Keeping it safe from the undead horde was paramount.

  The path took Calaf down to the basement. He observed the transportation archway and saw it was still untuned with that ever-moving ‘static’ pattern. Good, the rot was still contained here.

  But how did it get in?

  The Battletower’s foundations were a half-league thick. No spore or spell or wayward creature could penetrate it. There was only one archway into the tower at ground level.

  Calaf checked the dissection room and found a scene of bedlam, with half the specimens consuming the remaining scholars. One of the unbranded dire-beasts – so rotted that Calaf could not make out the nature of the creature – was hard at work assimilating its unbranded counterparts with fleshy flower-stem growths. Two more mages sat glued to its back, limbs twitching. The undead fiend looked at Calaf and snarled. The Squire slammed the door shut.

  It wouldn’t stop the deluge. The creatures were already loose. A trail of blood and fungal muck flowed out the opposite, wide-open door. As Calaf made for the hostel areas, he mulled over the cause of their latest crisis.

  From down the hall, a scream came from a nearby library.

  Calaf arrived at his party’s room. The door was unlocked. He threw it open and found Enkidu waiting, sword raised.

  “There a dire-hound running loose in the halls?” Jelena asked, fastening her effects to her person. “What’s all that noise?”

  “Rot.” Calaf struggled for breath. “In the tower.”

  Jelena shot up off the cot.

  “How’d it get in?” Zilara asked. She was still half-asleep.

  Calaf slunk in and closed the door.

  “It’s not spread by contact,” he said. “At least, not directly. If someone dies to the rot, it will take them. But it's not required. It’s something more. Like it’s in the air, but not something that needs to be breathed in. It just, generates.”

  The party’s reaction was mixed. Enkidu was, as usual, implacable and unreadable. Zilara was still half asleep but word of the rot rapidly shocked her into focus. Jelena looked concerned.

  “The Squire has it,” said another voice from within the closed room.

  A moldy dire-rat, Branded and with negative-twenty-odd hit points, leaped up onto a nearby crate.

  “Do not lash out, but listen,” said the rot through its rat vessel. “Behold, for this is the inevitable fate of all—”

  A shot rang out as Jelena blasted the dire-rat in half. Sickly off-colored rot interfaced with the pale fleshy corpse and coagulated blood of the rat. Like a moldy apple had been torn in two. It was clear the dire-beast had been dead for days or weeks.

  “How’d it get in?” Zilara asked.

  “It’s – look, it’s everywhere.” Calaf tried explaining the phenomenon with his hands. “Not even in the air, just ever-present.”

  “We can discuss this as we run. For now, we’ve got to find someone who isn’t dead.” Jelena reloaded her flintlock.

  Calaf peeked out the door. Eerie silence reigned. He gave a hand signal that it was safe to leave.

  The party filed out, blades drawn and spells ready to fly.

  The ‘omnipresent’ theory of rot was something Calaf was still developing as they walked. One of the scholars could speak more to it if any of them were still alive.

  Regardless of how the rot established itself, it could be assumed that it was here for this book. The Gospel of Aldia. The level-governing relic of the Battletower, and apparently the only thing keeping the portal network locked down. Calaf kept it in his inventory. He hadn’t seen a reanimated rot-corpse with a Brand interact with the Interface before, so it ought to be safe there even in death.

  They backtracked up to the front foyer and found the portal open with the room still fully guarded by experienced Battlemages. The ground outside was still dark, still hours from dawn.

  “Has anything come through this gate?” Calaf asked.

  The guards shook their heads.

  “There’s a massacre in here.” Calaf brought out the gospel. “Come, shut down that portal so we’re not being overrun from two ends.”

  The annex garrison looked at each other. They had not heard a thing from within.

  “Come on. How do I turn off this portal?”

  “Needs a senior Battlemage,” said a guard.

  “None of you are one of those?”

  “I’m still three levels away,” said the highest-level guard. “The technique is a closely guarded secret.”

  Even if they had the manpower to get back up to the roof and cast mini-flare again, it wouldn’t help with anything inside the tower. At least nothing stirred out there. Yet. They took the faintest moment to dwell on the fact that they’d burnt the rot away outside just for it to take purchase within the tower.

  “We’ve got to find Gael. I’m sure he can help,” Calaf said.

  The annex garrison hastily assembled backward-facing barricades to defend against any reanimated dead hitting them from within the tower. Few guards could be spared, so Calaf and Jelena’s party carried on through the tower following the nearest sounds of combat.

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  The church party who’d handled the north face of the tower encountered them in the halls. Armor and robes were torn and damaged. Hit points were listed in the negative teens.

  Calaf’s fire shield kept the rot at bay. He lashed out with his equally incendiary spear, catching one Paladin aflame. The rot-addled dried out fast, and no traditional way of dealing damage, beyond total dismemberment and incapacitation of each individual limb, could put them down for long. Enkidu and Jelena touched their blade and knives to Calaf’s shield, inheriting the flame buff. With artillery from Zilara’s fireballs, they made their way down the hall.

  Sounds of battle hailed from that central, circular library room. Within, a dozen Battlemages of various ranks fought back the rotted corpses of their laboratory experiments and fallen comrades both.

  Fire was a mage’s specialty, so they required no coaching before busting out the flame enchantments and fireballs. This gave them an advantage when aware of the threat and organized.

  Calaf joined the battle, shield-bashing a once-dissected dire-lycan with his incendiary shield. The dire-lycan caught alight, then broke a table as it collapsed backwards. The corpse and fungus burned, but the table and its collection of books did not.

  Battlemages north of level sixty busted out some truly impressive spells. When a new double door broke down and a horde of fused creatures surged out, they were immediately checked by a wall of flame.

  Wayward fire striking the surrounding books did not ruin a single tome. That was something Calaf noticed during that first ill-fated trip to the Battletower—the books were magically enchanted.

  The rot surged into the room, seeking the relic tome. Calaf’s plan was to stand in a doorway, keep his shield alight, and block as many creatures as possible. With the fire walls and other high-level mage crowd control spells, this was hardly necessary, so he ran about the room and burnt bodies where and when he could.

  A flaming mallet shot up sparks that cleared the room. Gael was there, enchanted mallet blazing.

  “Gael. We have the book,” Calaf said.

  The Squire moved to pull the gospel out of his inventory. He hesitated for a moment. This proved fortunate, as a reanimated corpse leaped from the floor and swung at Calaf’s outstretched hands. Calaf tumbled over. The rot-monster seemed aware that the book was inaccessible and so took off through a door that had been kicked open in the fighting.

  “After him,” Gael implored.

  A renewed cry from the opposite hall indicated that more reanimated dead were in route.

  “With me, laddie.” Gael motioned to Calaf and his party.

  Calaf nodded. Jelena, Enkidu, and Zilara followed suit. With three out of five members of this posse capable of fire spells, they ought to be able to handle themselves. Another fire wall sealed the room off immediately after Zilara filed out.

  Onward they ran in pursuit of the fleeing fungal zombie. Even one of these things left unchecked in the tower could spread the rot, assassinate the garrison, all manner of sabotage or destruction could be done.

  Fleeing was a new trick for the forces of the dead. If they ceaselessly, thoughtlessly charged towards the nearest living creature, then the horde would prove predictable. If they could think, however…

  The shuffling undead juked rightward through an open doorway. Calaf fought back a grin. They had it right where they wanted it.

  They filed into the trophy room once more. The far door was shut, having been barricaded by Calaf upon receiving the sudden fright that had started this gauntlet of the dead. Gael ran in, batted the undead guard into the fire, and their target was slain.

  Still, the trophy heads on the wall continued their ceaseless bleating.

  “We’ll have to burn them, I suppose.” Gael shrugged. “No helping it. Do you have the relic?”

  Calaf nodded. He pulled the book out of the inventory and traded it—manually—to Gael.

  “Alright.” In the time it took to blink, Gael whirred through the Interface. “Sealed the front gate. Aye, now we just have to search each room of the tower floor by floor. Should be done in three days or so, at full manpower.”

  Calaf grimaced. They were nowhere near full manpower.

  “This tome?” Gael examined the hefty book. “Did you find what you seek yet?”

  Before Calaf could answer, he noticed a shimmering form out and around the breastplate of Gael’s mage robe-armor. It was a cubical geometric shape, green-orange. Like a stake pointing perpendicular into Gael’s chest cavity. It was a kind of barrier Calaf had seen before in the Port Town, and again in the depths of Fort Duran. In both cases, they obliterated limbs and tendons with surgical precision. Calaf rapidly changed course and tried to shout a word of warning, but it was too late.

  A sharp snap echoed through the trophy room. The barrier shattered, disintegrating a fist-sized cavity clear through Gael’s heart. The Interface was redundant and failed to keep up with the damage. Gael fell, landing on another barrier that had formed around the tome, then sliding to the floor.

  The barrier the book was sitting in collapsed, replaced with a ‘shelf’ box below the book. The box raised, taking the book with it. Then a second barrier box formed cattycorner and pushed the tome over to a wielder standing on twin barrier blocks near the tall ceiling.

  “Well, didn’t even get a drop of blood on it.” A spiffily dressed Arbiter said, high above.

  Baldr’s Interface was unchanged since Calaf’s last encounter with the arbiter.

  “Oh, were you talking to him?” Baldr read through the tome by hand. “Easier than saying please, and I am on the clock. Don’t you know the rot is loose?”

  “Baldr.” Calaf gritted his teeth.

  Baldr, the church arbiter. Last encountered by Calaf outside Fort Duran and by Jelena’s party in the desert slightly later. Easily Calaf’s second most-despised figure on the entire continent.

  Down on the floor, Gael’s Interface registered double his max HP in damage. Dead, irreparably.

  Jelena whipped out her gun and fired a shot at the arbiter’s footholds. A barrier shattered – but Baldr jumped up to avoid the shot and landed on a new summoned barrier. He didn’t even stop looking at the book.

  “How did you get here?” Zilara asked. “Tower’s locked down.”

  “I was sent here to investigate a group of troublemakers running around the pilgrimage route digging up old testaments.” Baldr jammed the book shut. “Assuming that’s you lot. Got any fond connection to your jugulars?”

  The barriermeister’s fingers danced about, ready to summon new barriers. With gritted teeth, Enkidu braced to prepare for a flying leap.

  ”Ah.” Baldr wagged his finger. “No sudden movements, cousin. I can surgically lobotomize the three of ‘em in the time it would take you to swing at me.”

  Still, Enkidu remained in position, ready for a leaping strike.

  Baldr looked down towards Calaf. “How much of this have you read?”

  Calaf did not respond.

  “Very well.” Baldr shrugged, then snapped his fingers.

  A barrier formed and instantly broke along the second half of the thick book. Loose papers fluttered down from the spine alongside a clump of termite dust and shredded paper. Baldr chucked the remains of the book off into the corner.

  Zilara dived to catch the book. She caught it, then immediately sent it to Inventory. Her eyes darted about as she examined the item.

  “Half the description is gone,” she said.

  Calaf’s teeth made a sickly grinding sound.

  “I heard the Battletower’s short-staffed as of late. Set up a Barrier of Gold around the perimeter. Should keep things contained.” Baldr laughed. “Don’t try the elevator; you’ll get splattered against the barrier’s roof. Church’s varsity reinforcements will arrive tomorrow. Just have to survive until dawn, yes?”

  Baldr headed off, summoning a walkway of barriers as he went. The party remained, the constant wailing of reanimated dire-beast heads still bleating along the wall.

  ”Ancient enemy,” said a head. “Fiend in a mask. Wearing a skin.”

  Baldr stopped to glare at the head. He snapped and this head’s jaw lopped off, landing on the floor opposite the fireplace. The deed done, Baldr resumed walking on air.

  “You.” Calaf looked to the strutting Baldr, then to Gael’s corpse on the floor.

  Calaf blurted out some string of obscenity in strange tongues he didn’t even recognize. He struck out at the floating arbiter with a thrown spear.

  Another snap. Threefold barriers surrounded the spear in mid-flight. A second snap detonated each barrier, from in to out, smallest to largest. Not even dust remained of Calaf’s trusty spear. Baldr didn’t even break stride.

  “Did he—did he come here just to destroy our next breadcrumbs?” Zilara asked.

  “Definitely.” Calaf formed a fist in his offhand.

  “What can we do now?” Jelena asked.

  The half-a-relic would still work for editing the portal network and the level ranges of the tower. It no longer contained the information they sought, and neither would it point them towards the location of the gospel after this one.

  “One problem at a time,” Jelena said. “We’re stuck in the tower until we either coax this book to open portals again, or clear out the rot.”

  They kept the book in Inventory at all times, now. All the better to preserve it from further damage.

  The party members looked at each other, once again left with more questions than answers. They would have to return to the library and rally the remaining mages. One by one, the group turned to the door. There was still an infestation to cleanse. Calaf turned last, casting one last look at the room, pristine aside from the corpse, the blood-stained carpet, and the nightmarish trophy wall.

  The corpse of Gael rose back to its feet.