Utterly Mad

"Scholar Damon," started the woman before him. "I would like to give you a gift." Damon Painterly, a scholar of the house of scrolls, reigned in his interest. He knew, as did everyone who had associated with this woman, that she was prone to sudden swings of character. Some of those "characters" could be quiet cruel and childish. "The devil" most called her, while a handful of others refered to her as "The imp." Zakki Du Nicols, the Devil of Gulgatha and patron of the house of paints stood before Scholar Damon dressed, as usual, in her customary green cape, armed with both bow and magic "pin," though Damon could not see her. "Aye my lady?" He asked, turning his eyeless sockets up towards her voice, "For what service should I recieve such a gift?" His eyes had been put out by elven manhunters when his troupe of knowledge seekers and friends were ambushed outside Bha-Yahn. It had been a trip to help the fledgling city sort it's water shortages. Damon, a young man at the time, and his associates had directed the construction of deep wells. They had shared the knowledge of their construction and of where they should be dug with the people of Bha-Yahn. The manhunters target had been the city, little more than a large village at the time, but had come across Damons group first. The slaughter had attracted the attention of Bha-Yahns proud militia, who drove off the manhunters with specially made bodkins and spears. As they fled, the elves had set fire to the carts. Only Damon had survived the attack, but the elves had taken his sight and a good measure of his skin as grisly trophies. The Bha-Yahnese villagers had cared for him, mending his wounds, doing the best they could until he was ready to travel once again. "I don't need a reason to show my favour." said Zakki, "The house of scrolls has done a great deal for Gulgatha's culture. My own teachings in the art of golem craft would be forgotten if the house of scrolls did not exist. Why you though? You're peers have already recieved a great deal of your own patrons favor. You though, have not. It so happens that my gift to you is also a bit of an... experiment. Your own patron has sanctioned it." Damon nodded. The house of the scrolls did many experiments, it was their domain in Gulgatha. They aided their patron by collecting and preserving information. He had no qualms with being the subject for such. It interested him greatly what Du Nicols had in mind though. A spark of hope had ignited as he thought of the collaboration between their houses. It wasn't possible that 'it' had suddenly borne fruit? "Hold still." said the devil. Her hand gently took hold of his chin and something cold was placed where his left eye had once been until an elven skinning knife had cut it out. A moment later another of the round objects was placed into his other socket, still bearing the scars of elven cruelty. He heard a loud "click" as of someone snapping their fingers somewhere beside his head at eye level, and suddenly his world filled with light and the grinning face and dark hair of a wild eyed woman dressed in green.

The thing from Isaacs office turned out to be a map, or rather, a very old street plan. The overcity had been a mess of semi-organized houses and shops. According to the street plan Lydia had shown her, the undercity was much more organized. The whole thing looked rather like the inside of a tree with knots in it at regular intervals. Row after row of concentric circles, radiating outwards, breaking up only when they encountered some out of place object. One such object was the chapel of Gulgatha. Lydia managed to pull another rolled up map from the collection of rolled up papers and maps stored in a bin leaning against one wall. This she layed on the table and Ferret unrolled it. It was a more in depth, actual map but focused on a much smaller area. It detailed a path through the under city through various tunnels and rotundas beneath the streets. "So we just find this hatch here and this map will lead us right to the chapel undercroft?" Ferret asked, "what are these red X's?" she asked, pointing to one such X. "Walls in the undercity that had to be broken through. A lot of the old constructions that went on in the undercity were mostly walls for holding up the street. Arches would have been more effective, honestly, and a lot of the walls are redundant. You won't have to break through more than one I think. Isaac and his group managed to get pretty close to the chapel and their tools might still be down there." Ferret got the feeling that Lydia wouldn't be going, and so she asked, "You aren't coming with me? I might need your help down there, I don't know the way." "No. I won't go down there again. you have a map and I'll show you where the hatch is, but I won't go down there again." It was plain now that Lydia feared the undercity greater than death. She had already experienced death and it was that which gave Ferret pause, for if someone who was already dead showed certain terror at the prospect of visiting Gulgatha's undercity, what would lie in wait down there for the living?

NOTE: God, I wish wordpad had spellcheck

The undercity of Gulgatha. Once this dark and dangerous place was itself the overcity and the labyrinth beneath it was simply "the crypt." In those days, that which dwelled beneath had not risen up into the overcity. As Gulgatha's old avenues were covered over by brick and mortar, new buildings constructed atop the old, the darkness rose up out of the crypt to claim this new territory freshly hidden from the light. Nora "Ferret" Painterly, possibly the youngest living daughter of the house of scrolls, descended into Gulgatha's stygian undercity to complete a journey her forebears had either failed or not attempted at all; to navigate the damnation beneath and infiltrate the chapel of a malign faith. There was no ladder so ferret dropped down. To her surprise, the walkway wasn't quiet as far down as she thought and the water came up her feet only about half an inch. Not as "dry" as Lydia said it would be, but still. There was more water beneath her though, and the unnatural dark of Gulgatha's underground became obvious when she looked back towards the opening. It was as if she were looking up through thick clouds at the sun casting a sharp beam down on her, showing only that narrow shaft but no more. She spotted a lantern hanging just under the inner lip of the hatch which had been hidden from her sight by the unusual dark. The lantern was oil fed and had not suffered water damage. More over, it had a small mechanism on it's side that she could wind and when a spring inside had built up enough tension, it released and struck a spark which would light the lanterns wick. After a moment, she had it burning, and it lit the area admirably. The sudden change of ambiance around her became suddenly cold and malicious though. The sunlight had been no fault of hers, and so had not incited a reaction from whatever old things dwelled down here, but the lantern was an unnatural light brought into a realm where it did not belong. She pushed on along the walkway, pushing back the shadows only to have them close in close behind her as she went. In the distance she could hear the rushing of water and guessed that a significant amount of water was being drained off into some deeper place just as fast as it rushed in to replace what flowed away. As she moved she found sconces with torches and lanterns, she tried to light them to relieve a bit of the oppressive nature of the place, but to her horror she discovered that they snuffed out as soon as she got some distance from them. "No more of that then." She thought. It was no surprise to her when she discovered she was lost. She had followed the map, stopping at every intersection she came across to check it and make a mark on a wall, the ceiling, or a railing. This place had no respect for the map she carried though, and Twice she had come to an intersection only to find a mark she had left. Another problem was the whispering. Many days before, she had emerged from the cold desert  and into the boreal woods beyond it. On that occasion she had suddenly found herself being followed by voices, the source of which she could not discern. The whispers heard here in the undercity seemed so much less malicious, but were somehow colder. Crueler even. Ferret stopped once again to check her map and upon withdrawing it from her bag, a small, squared, wooden tube clattered to the floor. As she picked it up, she realized it was one of the boxes of incense she had taken from the aromatics shop earlier in the day and remembered something her father had told her when asked about her mothers love of the reeking stuff. "Maybe you'll understand when you're older dear. It's bit of superstition really, but once upon a time, House wives all over this world of ours would burn incense to drive away evil spirits." Ferret had never seen an "evil spirit" and in her younger age she had assumed that the incense was working. As she had gotten older though, she cast away such childish things. Or she thought she had. She opened the box, the smell was not as strong as she thought it would have been and the sticks within were not as long or sticky as those her mother bought from the merchants that came to Bright Point every summer. They were short and dry. "Gulgathan incense." She thought, touching the tip to her lanterns flame. It took a moment to ignite and when it did, it simply smoldered and released it's smokes. Her mothers incenses had always burned with a small flame at their tip. This Gulgathan incense released a great deal of smoke as well as an inoffensive smell of burning wood. A little acrid maybe, but not terrible. The darkness that pressed around her seemed to draw itself away and the feeling of that she was being watched eased. The voices though, did not fade. Ferret noticed that something new had added itself to the menacing menagerie of the undercity; the sound of something following her and as Lydia had mentioned, objects thrown from dark passages. It was one of these that, as Ferret entered a relatively dry intersection, came hurtling out of the darkness to her right and smashed into her lantern. The lantern dropped from her hand, the glass exploding outwards at the impact of what looked like a brick. Larger than most of the stuff that had come flying at her. It was knocked from her hand in a shower of broken glass and sparks, leaving Ferret alone in the darkness of Gulgatha. She scrambled for the lantern and cut herself quiet badly. The sudden feeling of malice was pressing in on her, closer and closer it came, some unseen thing in that place moving to wring the life from her. After what seemed like an age, she found it. From the feel of it, it's reservoir was still in tact and the dial still turned easily. The voices in the dark had grown quieter, Ferrets incense still produced its smokes but it seemed to matter very little. The loud snap of the spark in her lantern cut off those voices as if it were a pair of shears used to snip off a troublesome vine. "damn..." Ferret mouthed when the lantern failed to light, feeling a sudden draft at her ankles as something moved about them. Even the sound of rushing water or the drip of the ocean above her head could not be heard now. All except her frantic attempts to get the lantern lit, the undercity had gone completely silent. Some of Lydia's last words to her before she descended into the depths repeated over and over in her head now. "If everything goes completely silent, for your own sake, run." When the lantern failed to light again, Ferret panicked. She drew her sword and lashed out, cutting a wide arc in the darkness. The blade made contact with a wall and the vibration of the impact sent a shock up her arm and her sword clattered to the floor. The clash seemed so loud in her ears, and over that ringing she heard another voice in her head, that of her tutor. "Wide strikes with a weapon like that will only get you in trouble girl, it's a swort sword, not a cleaver." She pawed the unseen floor for her sword, and another voice, this one not in her own head, but rather all around her. The voices of many. "Come dearest. Come. It brings light to us. We do not want it's lights. Come and share with us. Come and drink in what we share with it." The wick of the lantern suddenly flared to life as she once again attempted to spark a light, and Ferret immediately wished it hadn't.

Ferret ran. The thing had made a grab for her as she sat on the floor of the intersection but had only managed to slap at a bit of loose skirt. She had believed the thing would try to pull her in by the hem of her skirt, but the fabric had immidiatly turned to dust beneath it's touch. Her sword had been close enough to grab, and Ferret had rolled for it. The thing had lunged again and managed to grab, momentarily, the brass basket of her sword. The things grip only allowed her to quickly pivot the blade down into the monsters shoulder. It screamed and scrabbled away and Ferret saw that the basket was corroded beyond usefulness, falling away in flakes of green. She could even see where the blade had made contact with the thing. At first, she believed it to be blood but when it failed to wipe away she realized it was rust. Except... The cutting edge was strangely unmarred. No time to ponder the meaning of that oddity, she had to be careful not to trip, not to let her lantern drop again, not to stop. Except for the sound of her flight through the derelict sub terrain, all was silent and it was that which told her that her pursuer was still close. Again it's voices came to her in the dark. "Come back lovely, we've hunted it since they were little more than animals living among the trees. Come back slinky thing." It wasn't a demon, Ferret thought. She had seen a demon since being here and had them described to her. This thing was certainly not one of them. It's frame was large and lithe, it's flesh withered beneath the solid red shell it bore in shards. It looked like glazed clay. It seemed to be a mockery of the golems Lydia had described as she had shown her the hand in the case. It's face was hidden well behind a grotesque laughing mask. "Oh little rat. Come to us." It hissed, "It will never feel the grass or the breeze. We will take it's eyes and it's heart and all the skin we want. Come lovely." She was suddenly blinded by a sudden burst of evening daylight piercing through a collapsed section of street above as she broke out of the dark onto a walkway over looking some kind of rotunda. Her momentary lack of sight made her nearly miss the hand and it's long sharp fingers enter the periphery of her vision. She side stepped and fell, again her lantern hit the ground and went out. The sound of it bouncing off the walkway and splashing into the water below made Ferrets stomach sink. It was standing over her now. "We have it! Not a fine hunt to be sure, not like the old days, but it will do dearest."

Lydia had entered the undercity and found it more accommodating than she had believed. For one, the dark seemed to hide little from her attention. In life, she had been harried constantly by mocking voices and strange feelings of being watched. Now though the undercity seemed to welcome her, and she wondered briefly why she had been so afraid before. She followed the walkway as Ferret had and realized that she was being guided. In life the undercity had been a confusing shifting maze, even to the imperfect. To a ghost though... "That way dear." came a  voice. "Follow the smokes." said another. The voices seems more organized than they should have been. "Of course," Lydia thought "like a foreigner visiting a distant land. I'm not the foreigner anymore though am I?" What did that last mean though? Follow the smokes? It didn't take long to figure out. At some point, Ferret had lit incense. Lydia couldn't smell it, but she could see it. The smoke had lingered down here and like the undercity itself, it seemed almost inviting to her. She felt drawn to it, like a moth to flame. It certainly seemed to glow and sparkle. A superstitious like Ferret? Probably lit the stuff thinking it would guide her in some way. Or perhaps drive off the darkness. Lydia came to a dry intersection and there found a spray of broken glass, a few drops of blood, and a dusting of verdigris. "We broke her light." came a voice, both jovial and full of remorse. "We put it out, and it came for her." Lydia shook her head, looking at the glass and asked "Who came? A demon?" A deeper voice, closer than the first, "The old one. The last. The hunter. The hollow." She shivered, remembering as a lighter voice chirped, "The cruel ones. The punished ones. The arrogant ones. The hollow." It couldn't be possible that there was still an elf in the undercity. In her fear of this place, she had convinced herself into believing that the last had been killed by a long gone savior. Gulgatha was a mysterious place though. Perhaps the flooding had driven it up from some deeper reach far below. Lydia would never know, for to venture in that direction lay only fear and loathing. The voices around Lydia began to clamor in a fearful, nearly religious fervor. "The hollow. The hollow. The hollow." Lydia picked back up the trail of smoke with the call of the voices ringing in her ears. After a time she realized that the chant had faded and what she heard now was all in her head. The undercity had gone silent.

The undercity was still terrifying to Ferret but to her eyes, Lydia did not show the fear she had expressed as they had stood in the college or at the hatch into this dark place. "Nothing for me to worry about down here. Well... sort of. The incense might placate demons and drive off imps. A demon could be dangerous to both of us. Besides, it's nice." Lydia seemed relaxed. Even when they came into a large dark room and encountered something that looked like a boquet of skulls. "What does it bring eh? What does it bring? Hello girls. Hello. Hello." It had approached them at first, "Bah! What a stench they carry. Hello. Hello. Put it away, It offends us." Lydia had shaken her head, "No, we think not. Bugger off you. Go to some other hole where you'll find the air to your liking." After it had slunk off and they were sure it was gone, Lydia said "Lesser demon. I imagine it would have been more aggressive if we hadn't had the incense. Strange stuff. If I'm honest, it makes me feel nice. Incense was banned in the college, would ruin the books." After that, Ferret had begun to relax. In time, and in truth it seemed like ages, they at last came to a crumbling wall. "Looks like we won't be needing any tools after all. Just beyond this and a few more chambers, we can get out of this disgusting murk and up into the chapel undercroft. Hopefully, Ferret, we will find what you came for there."

The water was deep in the chambers between the broken wall and the spiral stair leading into the chapel undercroft. Lydia had gone on ahead to make sure everything was safe, and upon returning told her so. "I'm actually a bit excited. Very few, if any, collegiates have ever seen the inside of the undercroft. The older lower level is flooded, but it looks like the upper level is fine. Don't worry, I'm sure your eyes are in the upper level." Ferret navigated the flooded chambers carefully, sucking in oxygen from the narrow gap above the water. As it turned out, there were a great many holes in the street above which annoyed Ferret greatly. She could have bypassed all the trouble of the undercity had she known that these would connect more directly to the church. The nearly nonexistant light coming from the holes in the street above showed her that the day was just about done. To her surprise, she could see stars out against the deepening blue of the clear sky above. The clouds and fog had cleared off or at least thinned while she was beneath Gulgatha. It gave her hope. Hope and determination. She would get the eyes back, rest up somewhere safe, and leave the dead city the next day. She wondered what would become of Lydia though. She wasn't bound the the city, perhaps she would follow Ferret back to Bright Point. Then what? It was a question for later. For now Ferret had to focus on making her way from one hole to the next until finally, she reached a spiral staircase and Lydia waiting patiantly. She was worried that Lydia would have moved on without her, but she hadn't. "Come on out of there." She said, "You can dry yourself off on one of these banners. They've been surprisingly well preserved down here." It didn't take much doing to pull one down. Well preserved or not, the fabric tore easily from the hanging rod. It did an admirable job of drying, and after she relit the mechanical candle she took a better look at the banner. It was a vibrant red like Ferret had not seen in fabric. "It used to have a triangle on it." Lydia explained, noticing Ferrets interest. "They used to hang all over the outside of the chapel. They were always either very fresh and vibrant or covered in filth from the factories. Either way though, they really broke up the drab surroundings after the church knocked out and bricked up all the stained glass." They were in a small anti chamber filled with barrels and crates.  Like the banner, they were also well preserved. The contents on the other hand were not. Even the smell of the fish that had been stored in the barrels was gone, leaving only the little piles of pin bones. The skulls, she assumed, had been swiped by Gulgatha's imp population. Her suspicion was well founded. The crates were likewise empty except for one which housed a group of imps, each of them indistinguishable from the mass except for the little fish skull which identified each individual as a single entity. They looked up at her warily as she moved the crates lid back into place. A heavy door, the miniature of there huge counterparts at street level, gave access to a long hallway along which were more doors on either side. The walls were rough in places but smooth in others. Lydia explained that the chapel had once belonged to the city itself as a nondenominational place of worship. It had been decorated with engravings and the words of peoples and faiths from all over the continent. When the Ateshites had seized the chapel though, they had begun removing such things from the chapel and the city as a whole. "The stelle in the study we met in was one such item. Found by a farmer in the foundation of his cellar while he was removing stones to expand it." The rooms contained what Lydia had said they would contain. Long ago, the church had disenterred the bodies that had lain in the undercroft and burned them. In their place, they interred the treasures of every culture on the continent and it's vast horde of wealth. Getting the doors open was as simple as using a set of keys that still hung on a hook at the other end of the hall. The first dozen or so rooms were packed with the churches treasures. A horde of valuables piled haphazardly from wall to wall.  Ferret debated with Lydia on whether they should take some of it or not, and they agreed that while it was very nice and such wealth could be of great worth, they could not afford to carry it around. So with one last glance, Ferret closed the door on the churches ill gotten gains. The rest of the rooms were filled with another kind of treasure, and Ferret found that she was just as interested in them as her ghostly friend. Row upon row of weapons and armor comprising various makes and materials, some of which had simply been tossed as bundles into barrels. Paintings, relics, items that looked mundane but were likely the heirlooms of other families, and crate upon crate of regular household items. Lydia was a flood of information, spouting on and on "These swords were made by so and so" and "Look at this glass! Dwarven surely." Again and again they would come to some item and Lydia would exclaim that one thing or another had come from the college collection. One room was filled with shelves and shelves of scrolls, papers, and books. Lydia looked upon them much in the way that Ferret had looked at the chapels treasury. "Such knowledge..." she whispered, "They didn't burn everything it seems..." She had managed to take hold of a scroll tube and remove it's cap. Before she could get the papers out though, she seemed to lose focus and it dropped through her fingers and onto the table she had brought it to. With Ferrets help, she managed to withdraw what the tube contained and spread it out before her. "It's a series of letters. No. Funerary reports. Very old ones. I think the church just kept all the old documents in here and never bothered to look at them." Ferret pulled down a book. "This one looks like a ledger. I'm willing to bet you are right, but I also think they must have added to the collection with their own stuff. Look, this one here is some kind of tithing record." Among the more mundane items were more interesting texts. Ferret flipped through one unbound quire wrapped in brown cloth to find that it was a text on medicine. Another she found outlined where to find, and the uses for, various herbs in all manner of situations. Lydia attempted to pick up another scroll case but withdrew her hand from it with a hiss. "Ferret, get this one for me?" Ferret had attempted to take the tube down for her, but the moment her fingers touched the cold metal she was laid flat upon the cold stone floor with the muscles in her arm spasming and screaming in pain. "What the hell was that!?" she shouted, sitting up. "I'm sorry, I thought I was the only one who would feel it. Perhaps it's an injunction against the living?" They tried again with a pair of tongs from a crate in the next room over, but the effect was much the same if a little diminished. "Leave it alone then." Lydia said disappointedly. "Who knows what will happen if we keep messing with it." Ferret agreed and they went to the next room.

It looked down from it's place high in the darkness of the chapels arches and rafters.  It had not expected to ever see the one he had been stalking before in this place. There came a shout and she stumbled, dropping the light she carried. He watched as she emerged from the lower chambers onto the main floor and begin picking her way through the pews, struggling with some sparking thing. There was something else with her now. It seemed to show as a dull light that followed closely, no doubt some raw life without a body. It had been ages since it had seen one of those. It began it's descent to the chapel floor just as the cursed congregation began to rise from it's hiding among the chapels pilfered finery.

Lydia could hear the clash as several undead attempted the altar all at once, and once again Ferret turned them back with a broad cut from her steel sword. She had a hard time maneuvering the milling horde around her. She thought that they had spiked the doors against the college, but looking at them she thought perhaps something else had been going on in the city. If they had sealed the gates against the college, then why was the chapel filled with so many women and children? Not all of the bodies here were of clergy. The point was driven home as she came breifly face to face with the shambling corpse of an old woman. They had come to the chapel to avoid some fate, but had sealed themselves into one massive tomb instead. She and ferret had disturbed that tomb. It occurred to her then that the streets had been oddly devoid of unlife. She had seen a few small groups and individuals, and Ferret had told her of her own encounters, but even excluding refugees from the disaster there were not nearly enough undead out there. There came another much louder noise, like the toppling of a candlabra. "In fact," thought Lydia, "That's probably what it was." Ferret had probably tipped it to slow the encroaching dead. She could tell where she was going by the dim light shed by the moon, her own hightened night sight, and her distance from the shattered window. A few more tense seconds and she heard the sound of crunching glass. Undead trampling shards of stained glass window. She pushed, and in some cases passed, through them to the door. It had indeed been spiked shut. At the base of each of the small access doors was a deep recess, and in them sat a simple metal rod. She tried to withdraw one of them, but found that they were stuck fast and she just couldn't stay corporeal long enough to wrestle them from where they nested. It was then she remembered something. As she had turned back to rejoin Ferret, she had done something she had not given any thought to at the time. It didn't seem odd, but then again Lydia had been dead an awfully long time. Nothing seemed odd to her anymore where the undead were concerned. Back out on the street she had given an order, and the corpse she had given it too had obeyed. Ferret couldn't do that. Even demons couldn't do that. Demons and undead usually ignored each other. Lydia wasn't an ordinary undead either. She was imperfect. A ghost sure, but wasn't a ghost just an imperfect without a body? There was a kinship here, but where they were stupid with death, she had retained all of her faculties. "You," she barked to a stout looking corpse. she turned to another heavy looking one, "And you. Get this bar removed. Now." The corpses stared at her for a moment. There came another crash and a short yelp from the direction of the altar. The two bodies had turned back in that direction, but Lydia stopped them "No you bastards! Get these bars removed now. I order you!" As an afterthought she threw in "In the name of Gulgatha." They turned back to Lydia and when another sound came from the altar, they did not turn towards it. Instead, each grabbed one of the rods holding a door in place and began pulling on them. A few others even joined in the effort. Satisfied that their exit was secure, she turned back towards Ferret, only to come face to face with a familiar looking skull.