25: The Zombies

You know those stories about zombies, mum, that you used to frighten us with at bedtime, well, they’re totally real (I know the stories about zombies, too, Mrs. Chard – Willow). And I have to say, even though you tell a good ghost story, your stories were nowhere near as scary as they really are. And I should know.

We went into the magic corridor behind the magic door and I was expecting the doors to all open at a wave of my magic wand. But that didn’t happen. I had the wand tied around my neck so I had to move my head towards the doors. And none of the doors had any knobs on or anything. And we ended up arguing about which door to try first and which to try next but it didn’t matter because none of them opened.

We all ended up crammed in the little corridor with Blume with her blunderbuss and Guido at the front and willow holding the lantern and Dreamy trying to train his bow at everything and me waving my wand, and it was all a bit confused.

I shuffled around, trying to get to the front to open the door there, and when I did I was far enough away that the outside door closed and it got a bit scary, an then I had to shuffle back to open it because Willow was a bit worried we might get stuck (I was a bit worried we might get stuck – Willow) and then I had to shuffle to the side to try to open the side door, and in the end I had to admit that I wasn’t a wizard and the wand wouldn’t be opening any more doors.

And then I ran outside and let the door close behind me so everyone was now locked in the corridor and couldn’t get out. But I only left them there for a few seconds, and it was only a joke (It’s not a joke if you actually do it – Willow).

And so we all shuffled out and decided to try up in the tower itself. As we left Blume started talking to the ghostly voice that had spoken to her, telling it she was going now. I’m not even sure there was a real ghostly voice.

Up in the tower all the dwarfs were busy at work because it was still the daytime, and they didn’t pay too much attention to us because they were working so hard. But I think I would have paid some attention to us, had I been a dwarf. They had already cleared all the floorboards away around the trapdoor when they were trying to get it open. And sure enough as I approached it the stone trapdoor slid open, as if by magic (I think it really was magic – Willow).

So we all looked down into the darkness below and could see the body of the ghoul lying there among the filth and detritus, and Blume reminded us of the terrible time we had had in the sewers of Boegenhafen and how we had all got ill and she had only just stopped shitting, and suggested we throw the magic key into the Reik and never think of this place again.

And for a moment, I thought she might be right, but Guido said that it was important we oppose evil wherever we find it, and Dreamy said that we couldn’t be sure there weren’t other ghouls with other keys down there that could come up at any time. And we agreed that we should go down and sort it out, like we were being paid to do.

So Willow went to borrow a ladder from the dwarfs and Guido jumped down into the darkness and Dreamy handed him the lantern. Guido was in a sort of curving corridor and followed it north, while Dreamy climbed down the ladder and went south, and they both found one of the stone doors on their way, and met up again, showing that the corridor made a complete circle.

They came back to the ladder to tell us, and I climbed down but as soon as I got down, the trapdoor slid shut again, and so I had to go back up the ladder so that Willow and Blume could join us. Having a magic necklace is not as easy or as fun as it sounds, mum. But maybe when I get back to the Mootland I can give it to Rose, as long as she promises not to walk by any magic doors.

Willow worked out that the south door probably led out to the corridor we had been in earlier (I was drawing a little map – Willow) so we tried to open the north one. But we had no luck. The magic wand wasn’t doing anything and there was nothing like a doorknob or a keyhole or anything like that to even think about.

We had a look at the south door, and I did a lap of the corridor with my wand, and then I noticed a sort of metal handle pop out from the inside wall, and on the other side of the corridor another metal handle popped out too. And then we noticed that the entire inside wall was made of metal, just like the handle. And when we pushed on the handle it made the entire wall rotate. And so we pushed it as far as we could and after about half a lap we had exposed an opening, and discovered a round room in the middle of the tower.

And in this room was a six-pointed star within a circle (I think it’s called a hexagram – Willow) etched into the stone of the floor, and the star was actually glowing, like magic, which was definitely nefarious. It immediately reminded me of the star and the glowing monster in the sewers of Boegenhafen, but luckily there was no glowing monster.

And Guido noticed that at each point of the hexagram there was a small hole that looked like it could fit my magic key. I went to try it out, even though Guido warned me against it. And I found that the holes received six pointed stars and mine was only a five pointed one, so was never going to fit.

I noticed Guido was a bit on edge. He didn’t like all this strange magic stuff. We had seen a lot of that sort of thing before, in Boegenhafen, so we were taking it in our stride, but the strangeness was getting to Guido. He ushered us out of the circular room and suggested we leave the tower altogether. Blume said he was afraid. So they had a bit of a fight with Guido telling Blume to go into the centre of the hexagram and sit down in it if she was so at home with it all, but of course, she didn’t, and we all made to leave.

We went for one more lap of the circle to make sure we hadn’t missed anything and when we got to the north door I tried again with my wand, but nothing happened. But then something did happen. I don’t think it was anything I did. But suddenly the door slid open to reveal three terrible figures. They were people, kind of, but had been dead for a while, and they were rotting in hideous ways, with broken limbs and bloated organs and they shambled towards us.

I’m not sure it was sensible, but without hesitating I drew my sword, shouted a war cry, and charged at them. I slashed at the first one, and hit him hard, but what with it being already dead and its rotting flesh, it was  difficult to see whether I’d hurt it at all.

And then they attacked me, and there was nothing I could do to defend against them. I saw an amputated foot fly through the air and land on the ground behind me. I thought for a moment it was my own, but as fate would have it, it was the zombies’. And that was the last I remember because I fell unconscious immediately. So, what I can tell you about the rest of the fight, mum, is all pieced together from what everyone told me afterwards.

I think Willow ran away, shouting that they were zombies, and Dreamy shot his arrow, but missed them all. Guido was hesitant, but in the end he resolved to face the creatures, and said a prayer to Myrmidia then attacked one of the zombies with his sword. And Blume shouted at everyone to get out of the way, so she could get a clear shot at them with her blunderbuss. But it was so cramped in there that this wasn’t really possible.

Willow saw that I was unconscious in the middle of the fight, so she came back to drag me out of the way and see to my wounds. And Dreamy shot another arrow and this time got a good hit on one of them.

And then, even though Guido wasn’t out of the way, Blume fired her blunderbuss anyway. She caught all three zombies in the blast, but she caught Guido as well. One of the zombies was completely destroyed and the other two were hit badly, but Guido also caught much of the blast and was seriously wounded.

I think by now, everyone except Dreamy has been shot, and nearly killed, by Blume. I think the only reason Dreamy hasn’t been yet, is that he stands even further back than her, so he can get shots off with his bow. She keeps insisting that it is for the common good, because hitting three zombies and one Guido is better, in general, than hitting nobody, but I’m not sure it really works like that.

Then one of the zombies struck at Guido. Surprised, and wounded by Blume’s blast, he couldn’t fend it off and fell to the floor, badly injured, and ruptured his left arm as he fell. And the zombie jumped on him, clawing at his head. The last zombie went for Blume, and she tried to  defend herself using her blunderbuss as a club.

Dreamy shot at the one on Guido, and destroyed it, and took a second shot, hitting the one on Blume, and although the arrow pierced its brain, it continued to attack her. Meanwhile, Willow decided that I would be fine, and shimmied over to Guido to look after him.

The final zombie laid into Blume hitting her twice and she fell to the floor. Willow couldn’t do much to help Guido but decided it would be too dangerous to try to help Blume, even though she needed it. And she may have been thinking of the time Blume shot her (It was just too dangerous – Willow).

Dreamy shot at the zombie again and got a good hit on it. The arrow went through its guts, and black goo spattered all over the place, but the zombie just turned its attention to Dreamy and started shambling over towards him. It was like the zombies were actually regenerating themselves as they were fighting. You never told me about that in your stories, mum. Dreamy had time to get off one more shot, but he missed. And just as the zombie was upon him, Guido found the resolve to get to his feet and make a devastating blow on the creature, destroying it, before he collapsed again from the effort.

Willow was able to patch up Blume a bit but couldn’t do anything for Guido except thank him for saving her cousin. And Dreamy was quick to go over to Blume and kick her gun away, angry that she was still shooting at us after he had already warned her against it. And when Willow was not looking, he drew his dagger and put it under Blume’s chin and told her she was lucky that Guido was still breathing otherwise, she wouldn’t be. And, I think, for the first time since we had met her, Blume had nothing to say for herself.

We noticed that the zombies each had a necklace a lot like my magic one, except these bars had a six-pointed cross section instead of five. And we decided that they must fit into the points of the star in the central chamber. And so we concluded that there must be three more of the creatures shambling around somewhere down here. So Willow poked her head round the door where the other three had come from and told any other zombies that might be there to piss off. (That was very rude of me, please don’t tell my mum, Mrs. Chard – Willow).

She noticed that the room was a library, or as Blume called it, a book room. It was stacked with books, but we weren’t really in the mood for reading and wanted to get out of there as quickly as we could before any other zombies turned up.

Guido managed to get to his feet, and he walked over to Blume and spat on the ground next to her and said something in Estalian. I’ve no idea what he said but it sounded very angry, and that wasn’t like Guido at all. But Blume told him that she thought that she had still made the right decision, and that perhaps we should buy her some pistols.

Dreamy said that Blume was trigger happy. He had given Brandy the nickname Trick-Shot because of some of the impressive shots he had done with his sling, especially when he killed the bully in Altdorf, and I think Blume took Trigger-Happy to be a similarly impressive sort of nickname, which it wasn’t.

I think everyone who could read quickly grabbed a book to see what sort of books they had, but I think that there were all sorts of books, and we would have needed to spend a lot longer studying them to work out if there was a theme or purpose to the library.

Dreamy took the three keys from the zombies’ necks and hurried us up the ladder, because he knew that if more zombies attacked we were too injured and exhausted to deal with them. Guido had trouble climbing the ladder because of his ruptured arm. And then we pulled up the ladder so no zombies could get up and hurried back to Das Moot.

I was exhausted, despite doing little except falling over in the fight and so I went to bed, and Dreamy joined me because he decided he would need to go on watch again soon, to look after the dwarfs. Willow said that she would sort out the dwarfs’ dinner, so I was a bit concerned for their safety, too.

Guido was worshipping at the little shrine he had made to Myrmidia on the boat. I think that the priest in Altdorf had said that Myrmidia would soon test him. And I think that Guido had decided that this was the test, and that he had passed it, and so Myrmidia would be looking on him favourably, now. Willow made him a sling for his arm, exactly how the field medic at the temple of Myrmidia in Altdorf had showed her.

Blume felt a bit unwelcome, I think, on the boat, and so she took her bedding and went up to the tower to sleep with the dwarfs. Before I went to sleep, I took the healing draught that Willow had  given me, and as I drifted off, I did wonder about the strange tower, and the weird things going on there. It was certainly a strange place, and I couldn’t think of what it might be for or why anyone would want to build something like that. But hopefully we would find out tomorrow.

At night-time, Willow went up with Dreamy to go on watch. But the dwarfs told them not to bother and that they would do it. I’m not sure whether they said it because the dwarfs thought they looked exhausted and really needed the sleep and were grateful for what we had done that day, or because Willow kept them awake by singing the traditional Mootish folk song, ‘I like to Moot It, Moot It.’ In any case, they ended up drowning her out by singing one of their dwarvish work songs, and Willow joined in even though they wouldn’t tell her the words (I think they liked my singing – Willow).

Anyway, mum, that’s what happened to us in the tower. It was full of zombies and they were extremely frightening, and so next time you try to tell the girls a story about zombies to frighten them, you will be able to tell them a real story which is much more frightening, and one that actually happened. I will write to you soon to tell you the rest of the story so the girls will know how it ends and not be too scared.