Four pairs of milky eyes turned in my direction. I gave a shy wave and a long moan of greeting to the deaders from the precipice of the hall. All four corpses turned away from me, uninterested.

How rude!

Before marching over to give them a piece of my mind, I took a moment to examine the new cavern. Like the altar room from before, this chamber was in the shape of an oval with two tunnels leading into and out of it at the points. However, the size was significantly larger, with a guesstimated thirty feet between the floor and the ceiling. Depressions lined the wall for burial in rows of four, but all the alcoves were empty. The roof arched upward to a circular mosaic—blurry as it was from this distance—of the masked ghoul god featured throughout the catacombs. Curiously, someone had punched a hole through the right cheek of the masked god, leaving a dangling rope in the cavity. The rope hovered some six feet off the ground. At the center of the room was a half opened stone sarcophagus. A single torch remained alight on one wall.

Satisfied that I’d seen everything important, I shuffled over to check out my zombies from another mommy. Hesitantly, at first, because I was not sure how they would react to me once I got close. Undead as I may be, I was still suffering from a solid case of impostor syndrome. Fear accosted my every step, and I waited for them to figure out that I was just pretending and savage me.

That wasn’t the only psychological setback I faced. Intellectually, I knew that the rotting remains of animated people should have terrified the dickens out of me. The reeking stink and unhinged groans surely would have sent the old me fleeing away at top speed—that is, when I had a speed. Yet, I remained clinically detached.

After a moment of reflection, I decided that the feeling that I should feel a certain way was irrational. And dumb. I threw the emotions out and boldly resumed my shambling inspection.

I’d made it within the ten-foot range of my clearer sight and learned that they had been adventurers. These were the bastards that stole the mana from my skeletons in the hall! How dare they! They would pay for this affront by dying to my stone of bowling.

Two of the zombies were human, one male and one female. The biggest was the female, who had an impressive frame reaching over six feet. She had a long gash across her gray-skinned zombie stomach which revealed a hollow where entrails were supposed to be. Her attire was rough brown leather armor that looked both poor and useless at the same time. I left her to her fascination with staring up at the roof and checked out the male.

Now, in his defense, he might have been as big or bigger than her, but it was too hard to tell. Something had cut him in half at the midsection. For whatever reason, the leg removal, or perhaps an initially different skin color, had him more on the green-colored side of things hue wise. Being a former disabled person gave me a twinge of sympathy for his handicap.

I promise to make it quick, buddy.

Unlike the poor quality armor the woman wore, he had richly attired noble clothes similar to my own. Based on Oran’s knowledge of dungeoneering, it was probable that he had been the one to commission the expedition. Also, he’d been a fool for going around armorless.

Now the other half of the party was far more interesting.

Coming in at approximately three feet tall was my first elf. Oran knew next to nothing about the species, save that they lived far to the north in their frost-covered forests. Rarely were they seen this far south, unless traveling with an adventuring band. You could count on one hand how many times Oran had seen one in his life. Being a taciturn species hadn’t helped human understanding of their culture.

Physically, elves weren’t all sexy like you find in fantasy novels, wherein they were uber attractive humans with pointy ears. Instead, she was more in line with what one thought of as “Santa's little helpers”. Large pointy bat-like ears stuck out from the side of her pale-skinned head. Her facial features were unattractive to me, high-boned and sharp, with lips that were so thin as to be nearly nonexistent and an upturned nose. What remained of her rotting black teeth was like a human, except for the canines, which were long and sharp. Though her eyes were a dead milky white, you could see they’d once been an effusive aquamarine. Even in death, she looked aloof.

Guess the fantasy stories got that part right. Resting dead bitch face.

A slash had neatly cut her neck open, spilling the contents of her life’s blood down the front of her fur armor. An empty bandolier crossed her midsection, leaving me to speculate about her role within the group.

Last but not least of the heroes was a Gorlain. A four armed scaly humanoid whose once purple coloring had become almost white in death. His dome shaped hairless face had two slits for a nose, and a large extendable jaw. Two beady milky eyes sat under where a human’s eyelids would be, giving him the illusion of a giant forehead. In defiance of his alien appearance, the creature looked more docile than savage. Slender limbs and a height that barely reached my nipples didn’t help him with being threatening.

Gorlain were a mostly peaceful race of plant eaters that roamed the great plains to the east. Their nomadic tribal lifestyle often saw them traveling to places around the world, and Oran had met his fair share of them.

From his heavy chainmail armor, I thought the Gorlain was the frontline warrior for the group. Like the other three of his team, he had also died of an awful laceration. His left shoulder was missing, along with both arms on that side.

I was no Sherlock Holmes, but seeing as how every one of them died to a single slash, I had a pretty good idea who had done them in. The same creature that had also probably raised them afterward, like it did me. The tomb guardian.

Hah! So that’s your game.

The guardian roamed the catacombs, slaying anything alive, then raising the corpses to defend its charge. What I assumed to be a mana “donation” was just an ability! It probably passively reabsorbed the spent death mana somehow. That was how people with classes that used mana worked, too.

My working theory was that they’d opened a hole in the catacombs from above and slid down to loot the tombs below. They easily defeated the skeletons in the walls, then looted the sarcophagus.

Yep, empty, I concluded, looking at the mashed up corpse in the stone coffin. Absolutely nothing of value there.

This must have made them overconfident. They went deeper, but the noise from fighting the skeletons drew the tomb guardian to them. Either that or just plain bad luck running into it during one of its patrols. It caught up to them and cut the rope before they could flee. A terrifying thought; it was capable of tactics.

Why did they stay and fight? Or did some escape?

There was another exit, after all. I turned to look toward the other tunnel, but decided not to investigate further.

My curiosity settled for now. I concluded it was time to satiate my desire to butcher my new friends!

I wasn’t sure how they’d react to my aggression, so I started cautiously.

A piece of the overhead rope sat in a pile around the entryway. Doing my best to drag it over toward the torso zombie, I cut past the other three, only awkwardly stumbling into the elf. For a tense second, she growled, but didn’t look in my direction or otherwise seem to notice. She seemed over it, but I didn’t feel the same way.

I never liked you.

Tying a rope with one arm was grueling. I had to keep one hand on the back of the neck of the “halfling” because of his constant growling every time I touched him. Worse, the sounds kept drawing the attention of the others, and they were steadily moving closer. I was too risk-averse to continue my plan surrounded by potentially hostile undead. So, after I felt the rope was secure enough, I began dragging him toward the hallway.

What followed was the lamest game of chase in history. The crybaby wouldn’t shut up, and the others continued stumbling after the racket he was making. All of us going at a snail’s pace.

Belatedly, I stuck his robe in his mouth, and the bastard tried to bite me! It still worked, mostly. The woman and the Gorlain quit following us, but the elf with her ostensibly better hearing continued along.

Now, at a good pace away from most of the others, I readied myself to enact my plan. Using Rigor Mortis to grip my bowling stone in my right hand, I slammed it down on the back of the head of the prone zombie at my feet.

The zombie screeched so loud, I almost fell over. Catching myself against the wall, I redoubled my efforts to brain it, but the stupid thing started biting my boots. Adjusting to its uncouth attack, I put my back to the wall and gripped the stone with two hands instead.

Every time I cracked its head, the monster got louder. A growing fear that I didn’t have the strength to pull this off wormed its way into my heart. And that really pissed me off. I refused to be weak. Ever again.

I promised—thud—to make—thud—this quick! This—thud—is all—thud—your fault!

With a last heave, I brought my stone down and broke through the top of its head.

I only had a second to enjoy the tremendous rush of mana before the snarling elf tackled me to the ground.