Utterly Mad

Lydia walked the streets of Gulgatha, picking her way through them unhindered. It seemed as if the streets had gone quieter than usual. It was the first time she had come out of the college in some time. She hadn't told ferret, but until she had opened the front doors of the historical college, Lydia had been trapped there. The walls and doors were inscribed with well hidden injunctions against the undead. Hot runes that repulsed her being if she tried to cross them. They were older than she was, and made to keep imps out of the collection, she assumed. Perhaps they were older though? It wasn't until Isaacs experiment with imperfect resurrection had been carried out on Lydia that anyone even realized they were there. Lydia had been trapped sure enough, and now that Ferret had freed her Gulgatha was once again an open book to her. Again and again though her thoughts drifted back to Ferret and what she herself had experienced in the old tunnels under the streets. She thought about the old man again. Thought about the emaciated thing dressed in rags that had fallen on the old man and seemed to suck the very breath out of him. More so though, she remembered the elf. Lydia had been separated from the rest of her group when the undercity had suddenly gone silent and a tall humanoid abomination clad in ceramic armor had stepped out of the darkness. The clay shards that still clung to it's head showed that it had once worn a mask of some kind, but that mask had been smashed to bits revealing a pair of beady black eyes and a wide grinning mouth like a slashed throat filled with pointed teeth. Or glass. The thing beneath that clay shell seemed withered to the point of desiccation. "Some kind of demon." she thought. She was wrong. In most cases, even a greater demon would have been preferable to what she had encountered. "Hello lovely." it had rasped, it's lips twisting and curling as it articulated every syllable. "Come lovely, we need new skin. Why don't you give us a bit, just a little bit?" On that occasion she had been rescued by one of the locksmiths whom the college had hired on to access certain parts of the undercity. A rescue that had cost the man his life. That locksmith had been a man named Hans Labormen, and he knew a great deal about the undercity. He had dashed from the passage the thing had come from and shoved Lydia roughly to the ground, giving the elf a slash to the hip with his shining knife as he passed it. It's scream at the fairly minor wound had been unearthly. One would have thought it was being tortured. After a brief struggle where Hans had stabbed and slashed his way around the elves twisting grasping limbs and snapping jagged mouth, he stood triumphant over it and withdrew his tool from it's shattered chestpiece.  "Aye, you're a fortunate lady. Not many get to meet an elf and escape. For me though, my fortune's run out." He had told her before lifting his shirt to show her what the elf had wrought upon him. She could see through the holes the elf's touch had rotted through it without his lifting of the garment though, his skin had turned yellowish, like a bruise, and was rapidly shifting to purple. Soon it would turn black, and after it would begin to spread and slough off. The elfs curse for the man who had struck it down. "The touch of an elf is the touch of death ma'am." He had told her. "I am a dead man, but it was an honor to serve the college instead of rotting away in a prison cell." Hans held out a little more than half an hour. Long enough to guide Lydia back to her group. The rapid change in him had horrified her more than the sight of the elf had. His last act before succumbing to the decay was to give Lydia the knife he had used to slay the blighted thing. "take it... steel... The undead... Hate it... Wave it in their direction... and they'll back off..." Later on she would realize his sacrifice had been in vain. Before the Ateshite ambush, she would experience a great deal more, but the memory of her encounter with the thing which even Gulgatha's undercity drew away from and what it had done to all it touched would haunt her well into death and after. Her lessons and her experience had taught her what was down there, perhaps even prepared her. Ferret did not have that luxary. "What have I done?" she said aloud to the empty cities fog choked streets. Lydia turned then, if she were to get to Ferret in time she would need to cut through the chapel itself. She then had a thought, what if the chapel had the same runes that the college had been protected with? Not the chapel then. The only option she could think of was the hatch she had led Ferret to in the first place. "Fine then." She said. As she did so, a nearby pile of rags shifted and an aged corpse stood and watched her. "You there," she called "Shove off, and steer clear of the chapel." For a moment, Lydia believed it hadn't understood but was reassured then when it suddenly turned away and moved off down an alley. She wasn't sure what had made her try to command the corpse. Something she must have learned long ago and forgot about. "Gulgathan undead." She thought, retracing her path back to bakers row and the darkness beneath.