Hope

Irwyn stared into the corridor for at least a minute. Still there was no motion, not so much as a sound besides the rattling of chains. With dread he had to admit one thing: The undead was aware of him and intelligent enough to act like this.

Irwyn had many areas of confidence, reaction time and close-quarters combat were not among them. It would be incredibly dangerous to try and walk through the main corridor and rely on burning the zombie to ash before it shattered his spine. So he absolutely did not do that. Instead, he erected a wall of solid but somewhat transparent light in place, blocking off the direction the creature had run off into. That way at least he would have an early warning even if it couldn’t stop it. Then he backed off to where the Stars goon was fettered, though he only located him on the second attempt, the first corridor he had looked into was actually empty.

“We need to get out of here and we need to help each other,” Irwyn told him. It would be dangerous to put any trust into the man later but for now, they were allies of necessity.

“Get these damn chains off me and I will call you my new boss.”

“No need to go that far. Just don’t move for a moment,” Irwyn instructed. When the man properly stilled he approached and carefully cut the fetters about in the middle using his flames. He knew that metal tended to conduct heat but he was not sure how much or how quickly and burns were never a good start to a desperate alliance. When he felt that it was actually not as bad as he had feared he recut a bit closer to the Star’s limbs, freeing him with just a bit of chain hanging off of the man. He looked into the corridor, the wall of light was still blocking the way out off, and picked up the dead guard’s dropped baton.

“Ok, take this, we have a serious problem,” then he handed the weapon to the star. “I hope this one works for you.”

“No worry years of practice,” the man stretched his hands and legs, then did a quick practice swing. When he walked into the corridor he saw the dead man with their throat ripped out and did a double take. “I don’t suppose you did this one.”

“No, there is an undead somewhere in the exit’s direction,” Irwyn pointed. “It has lost both arms but I have no idea where it is, meanwhile I think it knows exactly where I am. I can burn it quickly but I am screwed if it manages to jump me.”

“So I go ahead first. Well fuck,” the Star cursed. “Better than the other options I suppose. Let’s get out of here before your Blackburg friends come back to burn this whole place down.”

“That will be an absolute mess,” Irwyn sighed. They had killed unrelated people over a failed robbery. He did not want to think about what would happen over this. “But we can only worry about it if we get out alive. I will create you some light, we need to check it one corridor at a time.”

And so they went. Irwyn would move the barrier of light a corridor forward, creating light while the Star would carefully check each corridor. What they saw… disturbed Irwyn. He had wondered why there were only 2 people talking with him when he first awoke. Just a single look revealed the sheer cruelty of why that was. Half the people Irwyn was pretty sure were already dead, chained in pools of their own blood. The rest were a sorry sight to behold; he did not spare them many glances but very few of them looked like they could possibly walk on their own legs.

“How come you are fine?” Irwyn could not help but ask when they were about halfway through. He kept moving the wall of light to still be in front of them so they could afford a moment of respite.

“They got so many people to fuck up it wasn’t my turn yet,” the man grunted, apparently also in a bad mood from the sight. Irwyn thought he heard someone cry out for help and forced himself to ignore it. He did not have the time to carry a stranger out; nor the physical strength really…

Then Irwyn heard something shuffle behind him. He spun around, saw those hollow white eyes filled with hatred and did not hesitate. A cone of frankly too much Starfire with all the intention to incinerate burst out and the undead was no more; same could be said about several corridor walls. It had been uncomfortably close; if Irwyn had not noticed it sprinting at him from behind it could have been too late.

“How did it even get behind us?” Irwyn gasped, not actually tired just a bit shocked. He tried to really not think about the alternative scenario.

“No clue, you said you saw it coming this w…” the Star was shrugging when suddenly the wall of line Irwyn had placed in front of them shattered as something burst through. It was just as they had lowered their guard, just the sheer surprise delayed Irwyn’s reaction by at least a second. So did the shock of seeing the attacking creature: It was the armless undead. The thug had tried to defend himself with the baton but the ambush was too effective. A blow to the temple did not even make the undead stagger as it bit out the man’s throat. By the time Irwyn managed to send a bolt of Starfire his newfound ally of necessity was already falling to the ground with a fatal wound. The undead, on the other hand, was struck by the Starfire, looked up, and rushed Irwyn as half his torso burned away in an instant. Just barely, Irwyn was able to gather up for another cone, stumbling backwards as the undead was burned away just in the nick of time.

He looked at the Star choking on the ground but it would be too late even if Irwyn could use healing magic; the man’s throat had been ripped out and if he were not dead yet it was a matter of the following seconds. It made Irwyn realise two things: There were more undead and they were smart enough to coordinate over a distance, or at least react to his magic. For all he knew there could be 2 more waiting to ambush him in the next corridor. He needed to protect himself.

One of the prisoner corridors he was standing next to was empty so he quickly stepped there to put his back against the wall. Then he started to work on a possible solution, shutting down any creeping guilt. Because he had always been trying to hide his magic it had not really occurred to him to create an omnidirectional barrier. The fight with Rage made it seem like he would be able to see any attacks coming from a direction and stop them. As for the other fights… well, they were not exactly normal fights between mages and he had not had much time to think about them afterward. So, he had little idea where to begin to form something like that.

First off, he tried the obvious: A simple sphere of Starfire to surround him, excluding the wall at his back. But that had a major issue: namely that he could not see anything. Having a wall of flames between himself and any danger was nice and all but it was not worth losing sight. Creating holes to see would not suffice either, the undead had clearly shown a high level of intelligence, perhaps enough to hide away from his eyes and Irwyn did not fancy another ambush.

After a solid minute of pondering, he tried to implement his second idea. Light, as Irwyn had found out long ago was far more difficult to condense than flames. He could make semi-solid barriers with light that barely gave out any glow but he had never figured out how to do that without losing out on the power. In other words, his solid light did not release a blinding nova when chipped, nor did it have much stopping power. Flames on the other hand were easier to condense, to make solid and saturated, however, it took much longer to create or dispel in larger volume and became far too hard to downscale; in all his training he could not make solid flames thinner than thick knitting needles.

Starfire seemed to combine the best of both of those attributes.

A mesh of glowing strings came alive around him. They were almost as thin as hair but condensed to the point Irwyn was relatively sure they would be harder than steel. Not to mention that anything trying to break it would have to withstand the raw heat and incineratory tendencies of his Starfire intended to do just that. The walls sizzled and Irwyn quickly stood up, pulling the cage-like barrier closer around himself and closing the space where he had stood against the wall. The gaps were relatively small, but with how thin each strand of Starfire was, Irwyn could see without an issue.

Feeling somewhat safer, he set out, actually feeling pretty good about figuring things out this quickly.

He was immediately ambushed. It was so soon Irwyn had not even been tense yet. There was still a good way away from where the exit should be and Irwyn was preparing for a grueling long journey of checking one corridor at a time. He was not sure whether the undead had predicted as much or if it was just chance that they attacked him right away. He had no way of knowing if they had already been there if they moved while he was figuring out his magic. If the barrier did not work Irwyn would be torn apart before he could react possibly even if he was not caught off guard.

But it did work. Because the two undead, one from each side, charged at him directly through the Starfire mesh and quite literally fell apart. The pieces of what had been two bodies fell at Irwyn’s feet, carried that far only by the momentum of the charge.

The main reason he was not sprayed with their blood was that the sheer heat cauterised the wounds. Still, the red began to pool beneath his feet the next second as things were dislodged in the small chunks; Irwyn immediately stepped further forward while intently not thinking about the gore and chastised himself for being off guard in a place like this.

Which was the perfect distraction for him to be caught unprepared again as two more undead rushed him just from the next corridor.

The barrier held steadfast and Irwyn stepped away from the blood again, this time prepared to defend himself from an ambush in the next corridor. But there was nothing. Now that he had a moment to calm down and consider he felt, well, empowered. What could someone even do against this? Well, besides casters, guns, accurate bowmen, probably slings, not to mention pit traps… Alright, Irwyn had to admit he was still far from invulnerable, however, in close quarters against specifically enemies without the option of range he was at an insurmountable advantage.

However, he was not going to let his guard down anymore. Who knew if one of the undead found a gun somewhere and figured out, or just knew, how to use it? They had surprised him enough as things stood and even though there were very few guns across Ebon Respite it made sense for some to be in this place.

Since Irwyn had nothing to fear from the rushing undead, he prepared to create a thicker shield in the direction of anyone jumping him just in case of projectiles and then he walked forward; already, Irwyn anticipated the next ambush. But it never came.

Perhaps there were just no others. Or, far more worryingly, the undead had decided there was no point wasting their numbers on Irwyn and were letting him leave. He could not afford to go and check every single prisoner in the whole dungeon for signs of undeath, especially since many of them were right in the middle.

It sickened him, because the only choice available to him was to leave them to feast on the few still living.

Clenching his teeth Irwyn finally arrived at the exit, a solid metal door that was, as Irwyn tested, locked. He melted the steel out of his way and entered. He considered for a moment finding something to block the entry hole but decided against it. Yes, the undead would get out but it was just dawning on him how dire the situation actually was.

Undead in Ebon Respite? There was absolutely no way this could escape the Blackburgs' notice. If this was not isolated inside the dungeon they probably already knew. And it was less than a day’s journey by fast carriage to City Black. How long for a group of flying mages? He wondered. And how ‘scorched earth’ are they intending their resolution to be.

He picked up the pace as he ran by a more spacious hall with several side rooms. Thankfully, the exit was the only door at the other end, a wide stairway leading upwards without twisting. There was a checkpoint at the top but Irwyn immediately realised that it was worryingly unmanned.

The checkpoint led inside a building of some sort. 3 long hallways in Irwyn decided that it was probably the administrative office he had been told the dungeon was beneath. It took him several minutes of running around before he finally found an exit of a kind: A second-story window leading to a small garden by the plaza.

As soon as Irwyn opened the window, the foul stench got noticeably worse. Irwyn was basically certain at that point that it was at the very least correlated with the undead. Because there were a lot of them as far as Irwyn could see. He could see fighting the next street over and unless some gang had managed to get members that fight beyond dismemberment, those combatants were not alive. The guards on the other hand were and were also quite clearly struggling.

Batons were all good for keeping order but they did jack against enemies willing to get their head half bashed in in exchange for even a glancing blow. Some of the guards had swords, which fared better but not exactly great, and Irwyn was pretty sure he saw some abandoned crossbows not far from the fight.

He created steps of solid flame to get down, it being significantly more durable than light and he had barely enough control to get his shoes only very hot instead of straight up scorched. Not that it would burn him either way, but running barefoot was not something he wanted to do at the moment. When he was on the ground Irwyn took a short breath, considered, suppressed a curse and then headed towards the fighting. No matter any grudges or differences in ideology, this was a full-blown undead incursion as far as Irwyn could tell. That meant that there was only exactly one side Irwyn could join. And that meant fighting because every undead he killed could be the same as saving someone’s life. That being said, he was not going to go far out of his way, he had just literally escaped prison right after seemingly wounding a Blackburg, but any undead Irwyn saw on the way?

They would burn.

Irwyn was finally home. On the way he must have killed, or whatever word he was supposed to use, at least 5 large groups of undead and at least 6 smaller ones. He was careful but there were no big surprises. Being a caster actually worked in his favour because not a single guard doubted him for a moment when he came to rescue them. What was worrying was that he first hit 5 large groups and then 6 small. Unless that was a coincidence, they realised there was someone wiping them out in numbers and decided to split up.

It also had the side effect that about every gang in the Ebon respite would know he was a caster by the end of the week. Not that that carriage had not long set off.

The numbers of the undead were frankly staggering. And most of them were from the gangs, their badges still displayed on their shoulders, or other clues on those who did not wear them in the fighting.

It made sense in a way. Ebon Respite was packed as far as open property was concerned. A few rich folks could afford a private graveyard but most of the people who died would be buried outside the city. That meant getting the corpses out there, the labor of digging graves, and whatnot more. Usually that was paid for by family or rarely by other acquaintances as far as Irwyn knew. The slums did it similarly, except it was the Guild that gathered the corpses for a symbolic, and often waived, fee and used mass graves they kept track off. Dead bodies had to go somewhere after all and few around these parts could afford a full funeral.

The problem came with the recent massive increase in violence. So close to City Black, Ebon Respite was simply not built with doubled or tripled death rate in mind. The purge by Blackburg agents strained what the Guild could provide and generally threw things into disarray. Then the war between the gangs and guards escalated, not to mention the in-fighting inside and between individual groups, and that was a lot of dead all around the city. Then it came down to common sense and human nature. A dead friend or coworker? Well, you look after them. Make sure they are not left lying to rot. But a bastard from the other side?

Why not just toss them in the sewers?

That times several thousand, then the dead begin to rise and there is a disaster.

“It is me, Irwyn,” he crossed the almost-hedge-maze in front of their hideout and knocked on the door. “I do not know the password right now.”

“Irwyn, thank the Lightmother,” a young woman of around 12, and Irwyn felt bad for forgetting her name, basically kicked the door open and rushed to hug him, visibly teary-eyed. He looked behind her and noticed the distinct lack of noise from the common room.

“Did we evacuate?” he asked and she nodded.

“Yes. I should not even be here but I was sent to run messages around the time the molesters started hunting people. I was close enough to here so I decided to hide until it’s over. Can you bring me away?”

“Did anyone mention what evacuation plan we were doing?” Irwyn asked as he nodded. Obviously, he would not just leave her here but he had to also move fast.

“I remember Old Crow saying we're doing plan C and leaving some clues in Aaron’s office. Dunno what that means though.”

“You would have been told in a few months, once you settled in as an adult,” Irwyn nodded remembering the details of that one. “It is basically just figuring out what backup hideouts we use and who goes where so that we know where everyone is. Or at least where they are supposed to be. Alright, I will take you away but I do not have the time to bring you to your group.”

“So where are we going?”

“That much should be obvious,” Irwyn said. “I need to speak with the Old Crow."