As Darlac looked around from the top of the tor, a breathtaking vista opened up in front of her eyes. To the north, an endless swath of plains stretched to the horizon, as far as Dunsward, dressed in yellow-green grass. And to the south, in the sealed valley, an ancient, ruined city sprawled in the twilight. Larger-than-human shapes haunted its long gone streets, shuffling aimlessly, weaving their way around stray boulders and fallen columns.

  "Astounding, isn't it?" whispered Willas, drawing a bit too close for comfort. "Quite a bit more busy than last time I was here."

  "Such is the difference between a household asleep and a household startled awake by a clumsy burglar," teased him Tehara.

  "So the Horned Hunter spoke the truth," said Darlac, half to herself, drawing away from Willas. "Luckily for you, Chronicler, it's probably too late to hand you over to the homeowner to expiate your mistake."

  "But... you would never do that, General, right? Right?"

  Darlac ignored him.

  "We'll make camp here," she said, pointing at the neighbouring tor with a nice, flat and spacious top. "No fire. We'll dine on rations, then go to sleep. Stay in the middle. Tehara, you have darkvision, so you'll keep watch over the gate to find out whether nighttime darkness affects it in any way. I'll relieve you at dawnbreak."

  The Varnlings were exhausted enough to fall asleep immediately, with the sole exception of Darlac. However her tired body longed for rest, the tension in her muscles remained. If she relaxed one spot, another spot tightened, as the evil permeating this place bristled her nerves and her brain ran frantically in circles. If Maegar believed the zombie cyclops problem had been solved by annihilating the Old Stump Charonites, he would be in for a bitter awakening. That cult had been small fry. There was something far greater lurking in the depth of this valley.

  After a while, Darlac got bored with gazing at the starless sky. Wrapping herself up in her cloak against the wind, she joined Tehara to keep her company for a while. They took up position at the edge of the tor next to the gate, lying down on their bellies, watching. The night was eerily silent, only the wind was howling across the valley. Apart from the shuffling undead, there was no sign of life, not even insects alighting on their skin or attempting to feed on their blood.

  Except a single crow.

  When Darlac pushed herself up into a crouch to check on her companions, she found herself face to face with the bird, and let out a soft yelp in surprise, claiming Tehara's attention. The bird was perching on an outcrop in complete silence, watching Darlac with its head tilted. It was quite a big specimen, maybe not even a crow but a raven. Darlac couldn't really tell those apart (she avoided going near the rookery if she could). It didn't fly away when she moved towards it.

  "Leave it be," whispered Tehara. "There are not many animals here, anyway. Must be hard to get food, what with all these undead around."

  Darlac didn't listen. She just stood and stared at the crow, mesmerised. Those unblinking button eyes sent a chill down her spine. She instinctively reached out with her mind to explore its alignment, but stopped herself just in time. Animals were neither good nor evil, neither lawful nor chaotic. They just were.

  The General of Varnhold, scared of a crow. Ridiculous.

  Her hand felt around for a stone to throw at the bird, just to flush it from its perch and make it go away. Then she realised that the stone would fall inside the gate and give her presence away.

  "Darlac? It's just a crow, okay? Leave it alone and go to sleep. But make sure you close your eyes real tight, before it thinks they're made of gold and makes off with them!"

  Somehow Darlac didn't find that funny. Still, Tehara had a point. Engaging in a staring contest with a crow would only make it crave her eyeballs.

  "Take care, Tehara. If anything goes wrong, wake us, and don't try to deal with it alone."

  So Darlac returned to her sleeping companions, gently pulling Willas and his bedroll out of Vel's personal space, just in case, and taking his place for herself. The happily puffing Chronicler didn't seem to notice the change, but Vel's sleeping form visibly relaxed. Darlac made a mental note to warn Willas against making unwanted advances on his fellow squad members (preferably at the very edge of the tor), then drifted into a shallow slumber, covering her eyes with her forearm, just in case.

  When Tehara woke her at the first sign of dawn, the crow was long gone, leaving everyone in full possession of their eyes and other accessories. Darlac took her time to do her stretching routine before taking up position above the gate. After the taxing climb yesterday and the uncomfortable rest during the night, her joints and muscles needed all the care they could get. As to her fingernails, she preferred not to dwell on their state.

  The gate had not opened all night long, and daylight brought no change, either.

  Crawling forward along the chain of tors lining the twisting valley, the squad continued to map out the necropolis. Tombs, ossuaries, boulders from fallen monuments, undead vagrants. Using Tehara's spyglass, Darlac identified the central building at the end of the valley. In fact, it wasn't exactly a building, more like an entrance hewn into the rock similarly decorated as the gates. Even the rest of the squad began to sense the evil aura radiating from that place. As for Darlac, she almost expected the air to ripple with evil.

  At the moment, there was no sign of mobilisation. The mindless undead roaming the valley were not being drilled or organised into an army. There were no officers to direct them, either. Whatever the necromancer was preparing to do, they were still at an initial stage. Which meant she had to strike quickly and decisively, the sooner, the better.

  The sun rose higher and higher above the eastern horizon, and Darlac had gathered all the intel she could, before the range of tors melded into a veritable mountain, blocking their further progress. She could make out the sparkling blue water of the Little Sellen on the other side. That would be their guide back to the north, once she decided to get out of here.

  But could she return home without even setting foot into the centre of the complex?

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  She wiggled out of her backpack and tossed it down to her feet.

  "I'm going in," she announced.

  "D-don't," said the Bruiser. Gekkor settled for an eyeroll and a barely audible here we go again.

  "What do you need, General?" asked Vel, eliciting a smile of approval from Darlac.

  "Hide from Undead, Cat's Grace. Those will last until I return. Once I'm inside, I'll cast Death Ward for negative energy protection, and I'll be golden."

  "Owl's Wisdom, too," said Tehara sharply. "Perhaps some extra wisdom will make you reconsider."

  "No, Tehara. I need a general impression of what's inside. If nothing else, I need to check if this is another fey illusion or a real cyclopean tomb."

  Tehara shook her head in disbelief

  "Calistria help me! To think I always defend you when people say –" She trailed off, embarrassed.

  "People say what?" snapped Darlac. "That I'm out of my mind? That I'd be better off raising children in the baron's castle, somewhere far from the world?"

  Gekkor stopped his pointy ears and began to chant his spells. He knew his General all too well. He could tell she was about to turn on her heel and run off headfirst into danger before this conversation got even more out of control, and wanted her to have her protections in place by that time.

  Tehara didn't argue anymore.

  "Just please take care, will you?" she finally said. "I'll keep the ropes ready."

  Darlac reached out to her for a handshake.

  "I won't stay long. Until I'm back, you are in charge. Gekkor, as to Hide from Undead, cast it on the others as well, just in case I draw more attention than I intend to."

  Rejecting the crazy idea of attempting to glide down, right through the entrance, Darlac started the climb down the inner side of the tor. Her aching muscles softly whined in protest, but compared to yesterday, it was nothing. She landed with a jump, her boots scraping the rock. The handful of cyclopes milling about near the entrance paid no heed to her arrival.

  She walked straight to the large, circular hole in the rock wall exuding cool, evil darkness and the smell of crypts. The hole seemed to be sized for creatures larger than humans. If it was an illusion, it was perfect. As Darlac touched the rock, it felt like... well, rock. Cool and rough, it scraped her skin as she brushed the back of her hand against it.

  She cast Death Ward, shielding herself with positive energy against anything that might try to siphon her life away, and slipped through the entrance.

  The atmosphere of the place was markedly different from Lostlarn Keep. The repurposed Taldan fortress had felt deeply unsettling, but not downright evil. Unlike this tomb, or whatever it was. This was plain, old-fashioned, all-devouring evil, the same as how the Charonites' cave sanctum used to feel in Old Stump Village, but a hundred times stronger. The kind of evil that made Darlac want to hold onto her goddess's hand – and the kind of darkness that held unspeakable horrors. She didn't dare push her camouflage spell's limits by activating her halo, so her eyes relied solely on the light falling through the entrance, like a ballroom for dust motes, delineating another circular hole in the wall, aligned with the entrance but blocked by a metal door. Between the two, a small structure stood, like a little stone altar. Racking her eyes, Darlac could make out a switch on the wall, so high up that she had to stand on tiptoes and reach up to touch it.

  As she did so, she heard metal scrape against stone, from the front as well as from the back, soon to be joined by a hissing sound and strange, cawing laughter.

  The door in front of her was slowly pulled aside by an invisible mechanism, opening the way towards a corridor. As she looked back, the entrance, hitherto open, was being sealed off by a door sliding in from the side. A pungent-smelling green fog was gathering around her ankles, churning and rising upwards at an alarming speed. And in the middle of all that, a big, dark bird perched on the altar, watching her with apparent glee.

  Darlac decided that she had enough general impression for a month. It was high time to leg it while she could.

  The fog didn't reach her face and lungs yet, but that didn't mean it was safe to stand in. It was seeping through the skin, entering the bones, eating at the marrow, cramping the organs, spoiling the blood, and Death Ward did next to nothing to stop it. Steeling herself, Darlac dashed for the exit, stumbling, rising again, filling her lungs with the gas, and reached it just before it became too tight for her to fit through. Even so, it was a close call. Flattening herself as much as she could, she just about squeezed through the remaining gap at the cost of some scratches and bruises and a handful of shirt buttons.

  She slipped through between two huge undead gravitating towards the entrance, quickly tying the two dangling flaps of her shirt into a knot at her sternum, and started up the rock, exhaling vigorously to oust the rest of the gas from her lungs. Alas, the harm had been done. Climbing up alone and unburdened didn't feel easier at all than a man's extra weight pulling at her spine had. Her momentum wore out after the first quarter, and halfway up she was out of breath. Still, she'd been through worse. Her physique was in top shape, apart from her sore muscles. She only had to push through her early exhaustion... or so she told herself.

  At a snail's pace, she worked her way up to three-quarters of the tor's full height, and her hands finally found the rope Tehara lowered for her. The squad was disciplined enough to refrain from rooting for her aloud, but once she caught the rope, they did their best and more to pull her up. At least six arms reached out simultaneously to embrace or support her, or just pat her on the back.

  It would have been so nice to just collapse at the top again and catch her breath.

  Maybe next time.

  "Are you okay, General?" asked Vel. "You smell like Cloudkill!"

  "That's a little disrespectful, young lady!" scolded her Willas, his gaze never departing from Darlac's reshaped uniform. The Bruiser broke into a high-pitched chuckle.

  "Cloudkill," panted Darlac. "Holy fringe. Did I just survive a Cloudkill trap?"

  Gekkor rummaged in his backpack and heaped four vials into Darlac's hands.

  "Get guzzling. You must be dehydrated anyway."

  "What do you say, General?" asked Tehara with a sarcastic twinkle in her eyes. "Do we have enough intel?"

  Darlac nodded, after she forced the content of the third vial down her throat, her stomach already at the risk of bursting. The fourth one she gave back to Gekkor.

  "I mean, there is no such thing as enough intel, but we'll make do with what we have. Let's get the hell out of here. Vel, Feather Fall on all of us, please."

  Floating gently towards the ground on the outside of the tors, Darlac found a little comfort in the fact that she hadn't seen the crow escape through the door. Perhaps it would rot in there. A girl could dream, right?