Chapter 1-11: Finding a New Place (1/2)

The zombies were quick to help me out. I cycled a new Dart in every three seconds, instead of two every six, leaving me one in reserve all the time.

The corpses of the zombies built up pretty quickly, and as they burned and fed one another, I soon had a vivic bonfire going on down there. A couple zombies tried to climb over it as it started to rage, and didn’t get past the turn at the foot of the stairs before they joined the misting flames of the vivic fire.

I naturally wasn’t going to wait up there for something to happen, and moved slowly down the steps until I could see more of them. Bereft of strategy and most senses of self-preservation, they were more excited to see me and try to eat my brains than to flee or duck for cover.

I walked right up on the vivic flames of their buddies and proceeded to start head-shotting them, one every three seconds, alternating sides, and spreading out the love as they naturally overbalanced forward, spreading a line of vivic fire backwards towards their entry points.

When I had ten feet of space in both directions, I actually moved out into the entry hall, backing away towards the kitchens, while I blocked the main door with a few burning corpses after they’d trashed it, and filled up the front room with burning dead.

I didn’t shoot any outside, as I didn’t want the vivic fire to be seen from a distance, and really wanted to get those curtains back up as fast as possible.

It actually didn’t take too awful long for the undead outside to clamber inside, and the front room to become a heavily burning white mistfire of vivus. I hauled a couple corpses back into the main pile, unblocked the front door, and the remaining three outside kind of stumbled in.

I headshot the first two, and the last one followed me right onto the major mound of them and burned out trying to cross it, collapsing as the negative energy on it was consumed and it began to quickly fall apart like the others.

Ignoring the ones in the back held up by the stacked dead in the connecting room there, I salvaged the curtains, fixed them with Prestidigitation, and quickly hung them back up to disguise the light of the vivus from the front.

There was a moan from all the zombies at once, and I froze for just a second, then snapped up Detect Undead, scanning quickly.

Something stronger than the zombies was approaching from the back. I watched it come right through the wall in the back of the house, and pause as it saw the vivus and burning corpses. It started to rise through the ceiling, and there was a sepulchral moan as it ran into the burning wight directly above it and got burned there.

It got out of the house sideways, moved up, and looked in a window to the bedroom there. Seeing nothing, it came inside, poked its head through the open doorway, and saw the burning zombies and the open trapdoor to the attic.

Instead of taking the open hole, it went straight up, and naturally found nothing up there.

The moans of the zombies below must have attracted it. It moved out into the upper hall, staying high to avoid the corpses, and hovered at the edge of the stairs, clearly not eager to try the burning unwhite bonfire below...

I tracked it as it moved to the side, down, out, and came flowing through the wall... and materialized right in front of me.

Just a shadow, but I popped it with a full mess of no-miss Shards as it swung at me instinctively.

The searing not-cold spreading through my arm was not welcome, and it fell limp to my side, unable to sustain its own weight. I swore as an explosion of vivus blew it apart in front of my face, glaring at my limp arm, but I didn’t actually need to gesture much to cast my Shard spells.

Lucky freaking hit; I’d even put up the Force Armor from my Ring Domain, just in case!

I didn’t take the time to Assay. I grit my teeth, noted there were only ten zombies in back to kill, and started for them.

I basically walked down them, headshotting them as they crowded into the kitchen, and turned them all into burning dry flesh.

I Detect 0’d for valuables on the undead; the wight actually had a golden necklace and cufflinks, plus a diamond ring. Minor jewelry like wedding bands was on the others, somehow clinging to them despite their bony fingers, maybe just for an intrepid adventurer to collect? Minor TK whisked them all to my hands, no bending over and working them off fingers for the spellcaster...

I dropped it all in my purse, cast Invisibility to Undead as I exited the back door, closed it behind me, and ran away awkwardly and stiffly.

My Strength was down to 5! I grimaced at the lucky hit that had basically half-paralyzed my right side. Ability damage sucked almost as bad as level drain, and I wasn’t in shape to take either of them!

I had ten minutes and ticking to find another place to hole up. At the speed I was moving, that was basically a half-mile...

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There were other undead moving around, just not many of them. The mostly-dead foliage didn’t really screen anything, although the bare trunks provided some cover, just in case.

This time I found a larger farmhouse off away from the main road more. I went all around it, scanning it for any occupants, found none, and went inside carefully, scanning again once inside, especially down through the floor to the basement.

I was clear.