Incompetent and Vile

By the time we reached the actual lounge, all semblance of normalcy had fled. From the moment we stepped into the room it felt wrong. The vague vibes mentioned by Jaquis had turned into an almost physical sensation of pressure and dread.

Inside there were several old plywood tables with chairs around them, there were shelves and cabinets all around the walls and there were a couple of couches in there as well. There was a large, patterned rug on the floor and a single halogen lamp on the ceiling, so, if you were to make an inventory list of a room it was indeed a normal lounge. But everything was subtly wrong. First of all, just like the library, this place was too large compared to what you'd expect in a real school. The rug was patterned with spirals and shapes suggesting faces. The table was normal, but the chairs around it looked more like the dining chairs in my grandmothers dining room. The shelves and cabinets creaked and were all opened at a crack.

And even that was not truly the strange part. The slight, nearly unnoticeable tinge of green in the lights in the halls had turned to much more prevalent green-tinted lighting. There was a smoky distortion to the view of the room, and a slight acerbic medical/cleaning smell at the back of my throat.

The silence was not the silence of a room with nothing moving in it, but the silence of the background music disappearing in a horror movie. The whole room just felt like it was slightly tilted. It was like it was in a Dutch angle, but I couldn't tell because I was also standing in an angle. It was, in a word, creepy.

"Don't see any enemies. Sig, you first," Hannah said. "Ja, fraulein," Siegfried said.

Floorboards creaked as he walked in his heavy armor and the rest of us followed. Nothing happened immediately, so we moved on to the center of the room. By the time we reached the table I felt cold and shivered and my heart was racing, imagining all the things lurking in the shadows, in the cabinets. But nothing jumped out. So we started exploring the room.

I moved to a cabinet and opened it and nearly shouted in excitement. Three old, rolled up scrolls. I checked the titles and sigils quickly; I didn't dare take the time to internalize them. The scrolls were for the spells Control Undead, Curse of Misfortune and Conjure Fog. I was getting sort of tired from getting situational support and control spells. I mean, magic was cool, period, but couldn't I get a spell that let me shoot lightning out of my hands? Still, I quickly read them

Control Undead, Tier 2, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Necromancy spell Control Undead. This spell allows you to contend with the controller of an undead creature to take control over it. Upon casting this spell, gain control over an undead creature. You are able to issue the creature mental command which it will do its best to comply. If the creature is controlled by another, it will attempt to break free every 1 x Arcana seconds. The difficulty of the initial test and maintaining control is based on the Willpower attribute and the Mind capacity of both parties. Cast using the standard casting procedure. The incantation is Krov-Vec-Ny-Tyr-Ko-Nav.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Control a hordette of 0/5 undead simultaneously

Curse of Misfortune, Tier 1, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Curse spell Curse of Misfortune. This spell allows you to bestow a curse upon an enemy that you can see. The spell will take effect after one hour after casting. The target will then suffer ill fortune for Arcana x 1 hours. Effects that include randomized damage or healing will always randomize twice, applying the worse result. The spell may have additional effects based on Misfortune. Cast using the standard casting procedure. The incantation is Hex-Te-Nil

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Curse then defeat 0/3 enemies

Conjure Fog, Tier 1, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Conjuration spell Conjure Fog. This spell conjures 10 x Arcana cubic feet of mist through a pseudoportal from the Elemental Depths. The fog lasts for 10 minutes or until dispersed by wind. Cast using the standard casting procedure. The incantation is Pos-Illy-Cor

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Cast the spell in a combat situation 0/5 times

I looked around and saw that the rest of the party had found a few valuables as well, and had started carrying them over to the table in the middle. None of us spoke; we'd agreed ahead of time that we should try to avoid attracting attention as much as we could.

There was what looked like a cookie tin full of silver and copper coins, six small bottles with subtly luminescent blue liquid in them, a white-bleached skull. I went over and put the scrolls on the table, and saw Jaquis pull out a sheet of paper out and wave at everyone to get attention. He wrote bad vibes source on the paper in surprisingly beautiful handwriting and pointed at a far end of the room to the left of the door we'd come in through.

Hannah nodded, pointed at Siegfried and herself and started walking, then pointed at the rest of us to take up the rear. We moved towards the source of the strangeness together, in the practiced, cautious walk, each of us ready to strike. I held my spellbook out on the page for the barrier, but my mind was on my icicle spell. If there was only one or two monsters we'd best hit them with everything we have as soon as we see it.

"Maybe we should just go," Jaquis whispered. "We'll get out of here if it goes wrong. Just keep your eyes open," Hannah said.

I stumbled and got sick. These kids weren't quite as young as Brad and Clara, but other than that the situations were similar. Clara's screams echoed in my mind, I saw the light in Brad's eyes go out. I had been looking right at him, and now I was following a new group into a place where I knew there could be danger, and we weren't anything like informed about what we were getting into. I stumbled, and knocked a chair against a table. All of the rest of the party jumped and looked back at me, but I shook my head and followed them.

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We had to do something. Every choice we could make here was a dangerous one, and we wouldn't have good information until we took risks to gather it. And so, as they kept advancing, I kept close behind. When we reached the cabinet, we saw that it was more like a wardrobe. Or a fucking armoire, I don't fucking know, it was a big fancy cabinet, large enough for four people to fit inside. There was a definite smell of decay in the air now, and we were now all but certain that there were monsters inside.

Hannah counted down with her fingers behind her back three, two, one and threw open the door.

For a briefest moment it looked like a single pile of short hair, rotting meat and bone, but as the dead muscles started moving with the sound of slimy steaks squeezing together they quickly resolved into the forms of four wolf-hound sized dogs with their ribcages and jaws showing through rotted-away skin and flesh.

The first leaped quickly. So quickly. I once again had a flashback to Brad's death. But even as it bit into Hannah's forearm and she screamed, Siegfried barreled into the middle of the pack, his armor the perfect counter to the beasts claws and teeth- just like he'd predicted back in the guild. Hannah dropped on the floor, sucking air through her teeth and holding to her bloody hand- again I saw bone through flesh, fucking Hell- but the rest of us leaped into action.

Siegfried was definitely the MVP in this fight, just sitting there and taking it. The dogs pulled him to the floor, and tore and ripped at him, but he just covered his face, and with my icicles and Bella's massive sword we dispatched them within a minute.

The last one stopped twitching, and as Siegfried pushed it off of him he said: "thank fuck that's over, I never want to- Aaarhg!" There was a crack, breaking of wood and from underneath his prone back dead arms burst through the floor. Three pairs grabbed him, and pulled him down. We could hear him scream, but even over the screams we heard wood breaking all around the room.

It was on that hour that I learned how much suffering a second of hesitation could cause at a moment of life or death. Bella screamed in fury and began stabbing downwards in between the arms of the zombies dragging Siegfried down under the floor. Siegfried was screaming too in pain and terror, and Hannah and Jaquis were doing their best to establish a perimeter behind me, so that the undead crawling up from under the ground could not take us down in a moment of surprise.

As Bella's greatsword pierced the hearts and heads of the undead holding down Siegfried, he stopped screaming and started panting his thank-yous, even as he was stuck six inches under the floor in his heavy armor wherein he could not rise to his feet on his own. And the horde came. Dozen, no dozens of people. And now I saw that they were dressed in the garb of my home-world- denim, muslin, plaid. These were not monsters transferred from some other world of death and dark magic, but folk that were brought here against their will just like me. And still I did nothing. The noise was overwhelming, Hannah was shouting commands, but I could not hear her over the groans, the screams, the breaking wood and metal and bone.

Jaquis and Hannah engaged the monsters, as Bella was trying to pull Siegfried up. Finally I snapped to, but there were already enough monsters to press past our front line, and, as everyone but me were busy with other things, the monsters came at me. I thought quickly then, like in frozen time, but it came to nothing good. The icicles would do almost nothing to these monsters, the shield spell would be overwhelmed in moments. There was no choke-point wide enough to separate the horde into smaller pieces. I could think of only one thing, and that could only save my skin. The others were pros, I hoped that they could handle themselves.

I leaped on a table, the chant for the barrier spell already on my lips. Then I jumped as high as I could, as I made the barrier a platform underneath my feet. I managed to get a little over five feet up in total, and so my feet were at head height of the zombies. Ten seconds. But the zombies could not reach me and their heads were now in prime kickin' height, and if I knew anything of leverage-

Kra-splat. It worked even better than I could have hoped. The neck of the monster I kicked snapped rightaway, and it fell down dead, and so I started kicking as hard as I could at the heads gathering around me. My basic sandals splattered in coagulated blood, dirt and perhaps even brain matter, as I managed to bring two or three down with my solid kicks.

"No, no, nonono," Jaquis screamed, and as I looked at him he was pushed over and swarmed, even as Siegfried, now pulled free of the floor leaped to his defense. Too late. The screams turned to gargling despair as Jaquis died choking on his own blood. Siegfried roared with exertion, as he threw the zombies off of his friend's body, tossing the monsters by main force against the walls, the cabinets, one even hit the ceiling, but even as he threw the pile of monsters aside, Jaquis' head had already been cracked open, his- fuck, oh fuck- his brain scooped out and devoured by the ravenous horde.

Four, three, I thought somewhere in the back of my mind as the spell was running out and I threw a spray of icicles over the monsters. I shouted: "Here, up here!" and began casting a second barrier even as the first was running out. I knew I could not maintain two, but if I timed it just right- "-Vol!" I incanted, and leaped from one invisible wall to the next. Hannah was right beside me, and Bella was pulling Siegfried away from Jaquis' corpse to join us. I threw icicles at the horde behinjd them, stunning and slowing them enough that they made it too. Again our time was running out.

"Stay up here, kill them as they come, I'll keep conjuring walls," I said, and my brow was covered in sweat. There had been the implication that there was a limit to how many spells I could cast in rapid succession. Chum had mentioned overchanneling and mana, I'd read stuff about mental exertion in the journal, but it had never felt like I was getting near it. It felt like it now. I was not yet exhausted, but I was doing heavy exercise and starting to feel it.

"Shit, boss, I'm useless against these. Sorry, I'd help if I could," Chum said.

Bella was the force to reckon right then. Having gained an unmistakable advantage of high ground with her greatsword, she cleft the heads of the zombies asunder, at times more than one at a time. Hannah was slicing out with her sword when she could, bagging a zombie here and there, but this was not Siegfried's best terrain. He kicked at them like I had before, but most of the kicked monsters- either by him or myself- did get up after a time on the floor. I cast another wall. Then another. My head was beginning to hurt. But we were beginning to win. Twelve, fifteen or so zombies remained underneath us, and none of them seemed to learn or change tactics. I just had to hold out for a few more castings and we'd have them.

There was a flash of black light. A surprised gasp. Bella fell limp off of the edge of the platform, into the remaining monsters. A man cackled from the opposite end of the room. An exaggerated, howling cackle that would have been funny, if anything at all could be funny right then. I looked at the source of the sound and there I saw him.

A man- human, for I could see his face- stood at an average height. He held a gnarled wood staff with a human skull atop it, and a pointed hat of green and black felt atop his head. He had a gaunt, pale face and glowing with fire were two brands on his face. I could not know what they meant, and yet as I looked upon them I heard in my heart the words 'Incompetent' and 'Vile'.

"What greater joy is there in the multiverse than to rip the wings off of insects," he said and his voice was pitch and gravel.

My spell ran out and we fell. The screams of fear from my new friends echoed in my mind. They sounded like Clara's desperate pleas for help to my ears.

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