I didn't know where I was. I couldn't see, I couldn't feel. I could still hear them babbling on and on...
   
His head was racked with pain. Power drills dug into his spine while jackhammers pounded on his skull. His arms and legs screamed in pain as he'd been stabbed by a thousand needles. Warm blood dribbled down his head and body. Cold iron was clasped around his wrists and ankles, spreading his limbs apart like Da Vinci's anatomy painting. Cold, humid air clogged his nose with the stench of rot, mold and mildew. His ears rang, drowning out nearly every other sound around him.
   
A voice, weak and barely audible in comparison to the ringing, echoed from in front of him. It sounded water-logged and distant. "I see we have our new guest today! Oh what fun." His vision was badly blurred but he saw a figure in front of him. The figure that stood in front of him was not actually giving him attention, rather it was instead focused on someone else who was in the same position as he was.
   
"Don't touch me you monster!" The second voice was female and frightened.
   
He watched the man bend over and flick his arm straight across her. She screeched and he laughed. "You'll make a wonderful host..."
   
As the man stepped away, his vision began to fade to black. He only saw what he believed to be her stomach ripped open and hanging out. He blacked out for what seemed like only a minute but was actually much longer since she'd been replaced by someone else. The man stood in front of him again but this time faced him. "I know who you are," The man said with a wicked grin. "I've been told of a great many things about you. I have a little show for you to watch. I'll enjoy it more than you but that's life, right darling?"
   
Another female was bound to the wall like him and the girl before him. "Let me go!"
   
"Go? Already? Tsk tsk, no I can't just let you go. No, no, no, no. that would be bad." He sounded delusional, demented even. Something was very wrong about him. "I must have my cure, deary... y'know how it is. Science is EVERYTHING!"
   
The female cried out in pain as something was injected into her arm. The fluid made her veins glow a sickly yellow-green. "It hurts! Make it stop!"
   
The man grabbed another syringe and jammed it into her neck. The sickly green left her veins almost instantly and she let out a huge sigh of relief. Then little by little, her body turned to ash and crumbled away. "Damn... too much salt..."
   
His vision started to clear as the headache dulled into a back of mind throbbing. The man who stood before him was old, decrepit. His skin showed advanced age. He was human, pale as a ghost with faded black tattoos all over his body. His clothes matched him, shredded grey robes with a faded and indecipherable symbol painted on his back. The man turned to give him a disgusted look. His face was plagued with sores, discoloring and rotting teeth. He had been in poor and actively declining health for some time. "So you see me clearly now, eh Catholic?"
   
Chained to the wall like some dog, Tangurple hung from his wrists and ankles. He was without armor and weaponry, clothed only in threadbarren fabric to cover the crotch. He groaned and spat at him.
  
"I have a special cure for you boy!" The sickly man boomed with anger. "I think this might even make Boudal die. I'll be back because lucky you, I left it upstairs." The old man groaned and headed out the door to Tangurple's right. With him away, the stench of death dissipated quickly.
   
Tangurple shook and yanked on his chains but to no avail. He wasn't strong enough to break them. "Bastard..." He cursed, looking down at the pile of ashes that was once a living woman. He mumbled a short prayer beneath his breath and looked up. In front of him was a familiar female. She was fair skinned and hidden in robes. "Storm?"
   
The female shook her head and pulled back her tattered hood. "Not even close."
   
"Enderia? I thought you were-" He coughed violently. "Dead?"
   
"You can't kill a god but..." She sounded very hesitant, "you can wound them badly."
   
"You here to rub my fate in?" Tangurple formed a very resentful scowl.
   
"Not this time, no," she said. "I'm getting you out of here. You have a war to win."
   
"How'd you find me?"
   
"I knew two things, I knew you were coming to this zone and I knew who the enemy was."
   
"Enemy?" Tangurple gave her a confused look.
   
"We can discuss that later. Let's get you out of those shackles." Enderia summoned a skeleton key into her hand and released him from his chains. Tangurple hit the floor with a loud squish. The floor was covered in a layer of blood, muscle tissue and scattered organs with some dust sprinklings. "Maybe there's some clothing in here."
   
Tangurple shook his head, "I need my armor."
   
"Eonus to Catholic, you're in a torture chamber."
   
"My name is Tangurple," he growled.
   
Enderia rolled her eyes and helped him to his feet. "Look, we do not have time on our side, your jailor friend is coming back with some nasty concoction that'll kill you. I'd rather have us both out of here so we can properly deal with him."
   
He looked up at her with a very upset look. Nevertheless, he agreed. "I'm in no shape to fight... I'm still bleeding and less than forty percent of my health. The regen isn't kicking in..."
   
"Then we better move, the sooner the better." Enderia pulled a small bag out and handed it to him, "you might want these."
   
He opened the bag and his eyes glowed red at the sight of an all too familiar object. He growled "Why is this here?"

With Falcher in tow, the three of them ventured north across the fields towards the draugr crypt. There was a breeze that swooped in from the mountains which hummed and sang through the tall grass. It brought with it a deathly cold chill and the smell of rot. They were not too far away from the crypt. The field of grass bled into a small forest at the mountain's base. Pine trees stood taller than any house in the region and many of them wobbled in the wind. A thick fog poured out from the patch of forest but traveled only a few feet before dissipating.

Silhouettes of hunched over bodies mindlessly roamed within the fog, some wielded weapons. Tilamo nudged Mirvelle, "I see five draugr in the fog there."

Mirvelle nodded. "I'm not stepping foot in that fog though."

"What happened to that eagerness for delving?"

"Fog happened."

Falcher unsheathed his rapiers and watched the treeline. "You going to fill me in?"

"Oswald gave us a clue as to where that corpse Storm mentioned came from. There's an old viking crypt in that fog and draugr are coming out of it." Tilamo explained. "Once Storm and Michy get here, we'll push."

Not a moment too soon, Michy and Storm came within earshot. They approached the other three members of the group. "So this is the crypt?" Storm asked.

"The area where it resides, yes. A few guards to wipe out and should be clear."

"Sounds easy enough." Storm turned to Mirvelle. "Have at it."

"Why me?!" Mirvelle made it obvious she didn't want to go in.

"Because you're the mage, because you have ranged attacks, because I said so." Storm argued.

"But..." any counter Mirvelle attempted to put up was proven ineffective and with a huff she drew closer to the foggy woods. "Here goes nothing." She casted a taunt spell on the closest silhouette but it aggroed them all. Five draugr came rushing out of the forest, their ghostly eyes were a bright luminous blue which focused on her. They came in range very quickly. Mirvelle started speed chanting her tier ten spell.

A large shockwave erupted from her, knocking back the draugr and slamming them into trees. They raised their rusty iron swords and rushed again. Mirvelle casted another AoE attack followed by several lower tier direct attacks. Bursts of dark magic flew from her hands impacting the draugr slowly whittling away at their health. She kept them at safe distance for the most part.

She sidestepped one strike and swung her staff like a baseball bat, decapitating one of the draugr. The other four were weakened and eventually finished off by her rapid fire of spells. It was over and done with rather quickly but it left her breathless.

Storm patted her shoulder, "you make it look easy. Come on, let's go."

They followed her into the fog which encased each of them in a pocket of blindness. Their visibility barely extended beyond arm's reach forcing them to rely on hearing each other. Falcher called out to the rest of them, "see anything yet?"

"Nothing over here!" Tilamo shouted.

"Gelmen hates fog!" Gelmen announced.

Storm stopped in her tracks and looked down. The ground in front of her had caved in. A ten foot drop into a dark stone room. "I found something!" she called out. The fallen ground made a cone shape in the center of the hole making it easier to get in. They piled in around her. Storm jumped first and slid off the snow cone.

Inside, cobblestone lined everything. The walls, floor and ceiling alike where all cobblestone with cracks and rotting cement. It came as no surprise as to why the roof caved in. "It's safe, jump down!"

Tilamo followed by the other three slid in and knocked into each other. Tilamo dusted himself off and looked around. "Dark, dank, grungy, and reeks of death. This is probably it."

Michy looked over the edge and shook his head. "Uh no.. I'm good I'll stay up here and keep watch, fog is less scary than crypts."

Placed against the walls were dozens of coffins made of stone with very heavy lids bolted to them. The coffin lids were decorated with carved images of skulls, bones and ancient Norse text. Tilamo walked over to one of them and tried to read the lettering. "This is real norse."

"Can you read it?" Mirvelle asked.

"Of course I can read Norse" Tilamo replied sarcastically. "When a letter looks like a violin or a pine tree, I know exactly what letter that is in deutsch."

"Har, har. You could've just said no."

"But I felt this was more appropriate."

Mirvelle groaned, "What good are you then?"

"Alright ladies, play with each other later." Storm interjected and pushed past the two of them. "With any luck, we'll find whoever is spawning the draugr further in."

They'd fallen into the middle of a hallway which linked two rooms together. The room next to them was large and rather empty except for the hundreds of coffins tucked away into holes in the wall. The main walking area lacked much of anything beyond digging equipment and a few fallen skeletons. Some armor laid idle in a nearby wheelbarrow but it was old and rusted out. Everything had a thick layer of dust and dirt on it.

It was very dark in that room, the light from outside didn't get past five feet or the thick layer of pine trees. The handful of candles that were in the room were scattered about on sconces and candelabras. They appeared reusable. "Tilamo," Storm pointed to a collection of candles on a stone platform. "Mind lighting the place up?"

Tilamo nodded and chanted a quick flame spell. A quick sweep of liquid fire lit up all the candles on the platform including one very strange candle. The strange candle caught everyone's eye. It was black with weird white waxy decor on it. Its flame also burnt black. "I'm going to take a guess that this candle is a bad candle."

"Gelmen agrees." Gelmen took a step back from the candle. "Gelmen don't like crypts..." He was starting to tremble in fear.

"It's a candle, what sort of hocus pocus crap can come from a candle?"

"You've obviously never played with a ouija board."

"This is a video game, Tilamo. There aren't going to be any real demons."

Then came a series of clicks and clacks. A large silhouette shifted in the dark shadows where the candle's light was too weak to penetrate. It sported a massive ovalish and segmented frame with eight long slender appendages jutting out from its sides. It held onto what looked like the upper body of a human male which dangled from the silhouette.

Gelmen was the first to freak out. "SPIDER!" He stumbled backwards, rolled over and scrambled to his feet to get away. He was up and gone within five seconds.

"And there goes Gelmen... again..." Storm sighed heavily and then redirected her attention to the spider looking thing that hung from the ceiling.

It was laughing, its six red eyes blinking at random. "Oh man that's rich." The voice was masculine and it came from the spider. "Yet he's the smartest of the lot. He ran."

"A spider that can talk. Hey Storm, when did we start taking shrooms?" Tilamo sounded a bit concerned though for very different reasons than she was.

"Long enough to imagine this."

"I'm hardly imaginary." The spider responded. He walked along the ceiling and down the wall. "I am more real than you would ever wish me to be."

"So like Fae level of existent?" Storm asked.

"Faes are nasty creatures, elf. Fortunately for us, they don't exist anymore." It seemed to have been said more for his own reassurance than anything else.

"Spiders are scared of midgets with wings, that's actually hilarious." Tilamo started to laugh quietly as to not directly offend the spider.

The spider got closer to them, his legs clicked on the cobblestone floor. He entered the sphere of light with a fanatical grin spread across his face. However, his appearance was very different from what they expected. The spider was in fact only half of him. He had two bodies which were fused together at the waistline. His upper half was human, white and very muscular. Large biceps paired with a six pack. The strangest thing about him however was his head. It was split as well. Its top was spider-like with mandibles, six eyes and a purple exterior while his mouth and chin was human. His lower body was all spider-like. He was very fuzzy like a massive tarantula with the paint pattern of a brown recluse.

"An arachne? I don't suppose your name is Claude?" Storm asked.

"I am Kosys, the King of spiders." The arachne replied trying to make himself sound more fearsome.

"I hate you less now." Storm pulled out her sword. "Tilamo, mind grabbing Gelmen and dragging his sorry ass back here?"

"And leave you alone to fight a giant spider?" Tilamo sounded a bit worried.

"I'll be fine, I squish these monsters all the time in my room."

"Thirty seconds," Tilamo took off running as quickly as he could.

"One..." Storm tightened her grip on her sword. "Why are you here?"

The arachne chuckled. "Four... I have a task given to me and that task now involves your death."

"Ten. Arrogance, what a surprise from an insolent species."

"Fifteen, hypocrisy from an Aldail, even less so."

"Twenty, what are you guarding?"

"I see no need to tell you," The arachne rubbed his pedipalps together "Thrity..."

Tilamo walked back into the room with a very unhappy Gelmen slung over his shoulder and a slightly concerned Michy following. "Got him mid climb."

"Something valuable is here and this creepy thing is in our way."

"Creepy? Be still my bleeding heart, I'm not just creepy." The arachne's back legs lifted up and started weaving thread, "I'm also talented."

"Recipe for molestation..." Storm pointed to Michy, "you fight?"

"I can hunt," He pulled out a bland looking longbow and a couple of barbed arrows. "Roughly anything."

"Good, give him every shot. Mirvelle, Tilamo, you ready for a joint beat down?"

"Have I ever. Always wanted to try a Tier Ten spell on a bigger bug." Mirvelle clasped her hands together and inhaled.

"On your mark," Tilamo called out. He sneered at the arachne with a dual headed scythe, resembling an oversized pickaxe, resting in his hands.

The arachne pulled the clump of thread off his rear leg and into his hand, hastily knotting it into a thick cat-o-nine-tails without the metal bits. "You'll regret this, elves." His health bar suddenly appeared and revealed him as a rank one boss.

"MARK!" Storm called out and charged forward. The arachne cracked his whip at her and it tagged her arm. She grunted and slid across the cobble floor and took a jab at its legs.

The arachne tucked in his leg and jabbed it at her, its sharpened exoskeleton dug into her armor leaving a sizable indentation. In his view, Tilamo came around his right side and he flung the whip again sending all nine tails into Tilamo's chest. Tilamo was knocked off his feet and spun around.

Michy knocked an arrow in his bow and pulled back as far as it would tolerate. "Mirry, you're next." He let loose the arrow and it soared fast. The barbed tip buried itself in Kosys' chest. The arachne's attention was on him.

Mirvelle then chanted a couple of quick Tier Three and Four spells to disrupt him. Then came the big Tier Ten. Word by word, the spell began to form in her hands. It took the shape of a bladed frisbee and she threw it like one at him. As the last word left her lips, the frisbee spell impacted Kosys. The result was a violent explosion which flooded the room in a dense cloud of dust. She, along with Michy, coughed hard.

A cold breeze came in and blew away the dust cloud. Tilamo was leaning against the wall of the crypt, coughing and groaning. Where the spider once stood, was a huge pile of rubble. A couple of disembodied legs jutted out from the rocks while Kosys seemed to be stuck in them. His upper body stuck out and he was swaying as if dazed. His health was critically low. Michy readied another arrow and let it rip. The arrow pierced one of Kosys' eyes dealing the final fatal blow to him.

Mirvelle let out a cry of disappointment, "awwww, that was way too easy..."

"Be thankful for that," Tilamo grumbled as he pushed himself up onto his feet. "If it had been a real boss, we'd might have been in deep shit."

"Boss?" Michy looked over towards the arachne's corpse. "What's a boss?"

"Huh? How do you not know what a boss is?" Tilamo was a bit baffled. "I wonder... Can you not see the health bar that hovers over him?"

"No idea what you're talking about."

"I see. That makes things interesting. Hey Storm!" Tilamo called out for her but no response came. "Storm!" Still no response to his call. "Mirvelle, help me pull some of this rubble aside."

Mirvelle nodded and unequipped her staff. Michy joined them. It took a couple of minutes but beneath a separated spider leg and several hundred pounds of cobblestones, Storm laid motionless. Tilamo pulled her out towards the middle of the room. "Good news, she's not dead. Bad news though, she may be out for a while."

"I can carry her back to town." Michy offered.

Tilamo turned to Mirvelle, "It's gonna get a bit rough if we go deeper, what do you think?"

"Between you and me, I think we do all the damage anyways and besides, we'll have Gelmen-" Mirvelle stopped when she realized that once again, Gelmen was nowhere to be found. "Or not..."

Tilamo sighed heavily and stood up. "Michy, take Storm back to town and if you find Gelmen along the way, bean him upside the head for me."

"Alright, I'll see you two back in town then." Michy scooped up Storm and slung her over his shoulder. "See ya Mirry!" He said as he turned about and headed out.

"Mirry?"

"You can't get pregnant in this game, right?" Mirvelle asked.

"I don't even want to know..."

"Good, I wouldn't tell you anyways."

No matter the body count, they never stopped...