“Alright. You scholarly types have surely put your minds to all this. What’s with these living fungal corpses?” Jelena asked with a hand on her hip.

  The Menu described their greeter as Alberich, Licensed Battlemage. Level 71. Despite this, he didn’t carry himself like a high-level experienced battle magician, more a learned scholar. He bowed morosely as if he were resigned to be naught but a door greeter.

  “Many apologies. There are countless theories. Rest assured, we are working to resolve the problem,” said Alberich. “The tower is a little understaffed at the moment. But we have high-level Battlemages working on a solution even now.”

  Alberich held a hand up to his ear. His eyes glanced about as if focusing on a faraway place.

  He has a communication snail, Calaf realized.

  “Wait. I’m hearing that the advance team just wiped.” Alberich sighed, dejected. “Last week’s church guard contingent hasn’t returned either. Let’s get you out of here. There are archways in the basement we can tune to take you wherever you want to go.”

  “Go?” Jelena frowned. “We just got here.”

  “Aye.” Alberich nodded slowly. “Skeleton crews need less rations. The church engaged in a totally justified and holy anti-heretical action in this place last season that destroyed some eighty percent of our scholarship to say nothing of the effect on qualified Battlemages. And with the nights as frightful as they’ve been of late, it’s for the best if nonessential personnel flee the tower in the safest possible fashion.”

  By the Menu, pilgrimage season starts in two weeks. Low-level initiates would hit the trail, venture north of Deepwood to get a glimpse of the fabled tower of scholarly learning, and be slaughtered by a rising tide of fungal corpses. That’s assuming the ranks of the undead didn’t start attacking the route. They could only be growing in numbers.

  Calaf shook his head. “Let us start from the beginning, shall we?”

  The group walked deeper into the Battletower annex. Another mage took Alberich’s place as a door greeter and guard.

  “The rot is a phenomenon we have studied here before,” Alberich admitted. “This is unprecedented in modern history.”

  The tower was occupied by numerous haggard Battlemages and an equal number of Clerics and Paladins labeled as ‘Church Guards’.

  “A contingent of arbitral auxiliaries arrived two months ago. They went in search of the source of this infestation but never returned. A second corps arrived three weeks ago. Then a third last week.” Alberich looked down at his mage’s boots. “Only a small number of late comers and logistical officers remain. This is… no army.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been feeding increasing numbers of church guards to the zombies,” Zilara said.

  Alberich slumped over further. He sighed.

  They made their way down some stairs to the Battletower ‘basement’. This was a storage space for the more scholarly work above. Much of it was now taken up with war supplies.

  “Do any settlements yet remain in the hinterlands?” asked their minder. “We received refugees in the past. Sent them to the Old Capital with a plea for aid from the church.”

  Calaf provided the approximate location of the nameless barrowside settlement. Neither stronghold was in any position to reinforce the other.

  “Good sirs. And ladies.” Alberich shrugged his shoulders. “Is our plight truly not known to the outside world?”

  “First we’ve seen of this since Port Town last year,” Jelena said.

  “Weren’t aware of any problems in this region until we reached a barricaded town last evening,” Calaf added.

  From his body language, it looked like another weight was piled on Alberich’s shoulders all at once. “I see. Well, perhaps that is for the best. We are still receiving church reinforcements. If the knowledge were public, why, more people could come here looking to help, or just to our of simple curiosity. And you said this happened in Port Town? If the port still lives, why, perhaps this problem is surmountable.”

  Calaf gritted his teeth. While the posse could stay the night on some pretense, discover the hidden gospel, and take an archway out in complete safety, this was a world-shaking crisis waiting to happen! This was more dire than even Port Town; fungal walkers weren’t flooding the streets every night.

  “How can we help?” asked the Squire.

  Alberich looked at Calaf as if he was a level 4 bandit who accidentally cast an immolation spell upon himself.

  “We could not possibly beseech an under-leveled Squire, a child, and two unbranded to try and hold the rot at bay.”

  “Looks like you could use all the help that you could get,” Zilara said.

  “Perhaps my fatigue is making our position appear more dire than it actually is. We can completely cut off all entrances to the tower. Our reinforcements arrive via port arch from Demon Lord’s Fall. We are not in danger of being overrun. It’s just… constant stressors.”

  “Mind if we spend the night?” Jelena asked.

  “No refugee who arrived at the tower has even thought of trying to stay for longer than necessary,” said the mage.

  “We’ve got business,” Enkidu said, a rare interjection. “Besides, you’re not in danger of being overrun. So there’s minimal risk. Right?”

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  A hasty room of four cots was arranged for the group, provided they promised to use their own provisions. The first thing Calaf, Jelena, and Zilara did was take a nap. Fatigue caught up to them from the sleepless previous night and their fraught run to the tower.

  The Battletower stood through the night. Mages were all hands on deck maintaining some spellcraft on the archways. Sleep came easy, exhaustion overcoming the lingering sense of dread at being surrounded by an army of fungal dead.

  A handful of freelance adventurers, all level 60 or above, arrived by portal or pitched rush through the hinterlands. They received much the same welcome Calaf and company had, and much like the posse, they muscled their way into staying on the premises.

  “I hear they’re sending another group up the tower,” Calaf said as he thumbed through his inventory.

  Jelena sat on their cot, one of four in a cramped storage room. There wasn’t much personal space for privacy overnight.

  “We’ll join ‘em,” she said confidently. “Or sneak in after them. Ah, haven’t been back here in ages. Ought to be able to procure some gadgets as we go.”

  The bottom levels of the Battletower were devoted to scholarly learning, while the basements were full of old and mothballed curios, the result of scholarship from centuries past. This was the extent of where Calaf explored in his first visit to the tower. There’d been books, magically enchanted against fire or physical damage. These remained. There were also booby traps, which were mercifully deactivated while the scholars were present.

  A cool, empty feeling pervaded the mage’s college. They were understaffed, and not because of the late unpleasantness. Heretic purges had come to the Battletower last year. Calaf once assumed it was those level-manipulating cultivators who had put the scholars to the sword. Now he wasn’t so sure that mages hadn’t been purged alongside those wayward pilgrims.

  The group walked through the basement, where most non-mage, non-church soldier visitors were being held until they could be spirited away.

  “What’s that?” Calaf asked.

  Zilara read something in her Inventory as she walked. Upon prompting she summoned a book. ‘History of the Battletower.’ The tome was larger than her head with a thick and leathery binding just barely holding it together.

  “Figured it would help us narrow down the search.” Zilara took the book back into Inventory. “Says here that the tower’s construction wasn’t complete when the Ancient Heroes are said to have visited.”

  The group passed through a wide room with a stone archway carved into the wall. On the other side of the arch was an arid savannah.

  “That’s…” Calaf began.

  “Last transport to Plains Junction!” said a mage.

  Some small number of frightened travelers hurried through the arch. The room grew quiet as it emptied out. Then, with a wave of a Battlemage glove, the scene behind the archway changed to that of a stone alleyway. A bustling crowd milled about in an antiquated but grand stone street.

  “Anyone for the Olde Capital?” asked the mage. “We had specific reservations for the Olde Capital. Did… did someone go early? Tsk. Come, now. Each portal takes a great deal of concentration to tune.”

  Calaf recognized this room as the portal chamber that could take travelers to Fort Duran – and myriad other places, it would seem. Through proprietary Battlemage magic, it altered the distance between the tower and other key points. The Squire explained as much to Jelena and the crew.

  “Hey, can this thing take you to the Demon Lord’s Fall?” Jelena asked the attendant mage.

  The mage shook their head. “Not without three keyrings from regional archbishops and a letter of marque from the archpope.”

  Jelena shrugged. “Okay. Not an option. Still might be useful. Can it go between dungeons?”

  “Only Duran and here. Well, and the Capital, which gets you to the Priestess’ shrine.”

  “Oh, this could be very handy.” Jelena’s lips pursed.

  “Is there anywhere you need to go, madam?” the mage asked. “We have another scheduled crossing.”

  “Not yet,” Jelena said.

  The mage took the opportunity to tune the arch once more. This one was inbound. Rows of level fifty-odd knight and cleric classes marched from a minor outpost on a rocky plateau north of Autumn’s Redoubt. Menu designations listed them as Arbitral Auxiliaries.

  Calaf and Jelena made themselves scarce before the auxiliaries completed their transit.

  “No, my lords, we do not need additional garrisons,” Alberich the mage greeter told the auxiliary arbiters. “And it would be suicidal to march out in search of the source of this infestation. None dare leave the tower after dark. Specialized mages have a prepared solution for the problems outside, provided the upper floors of the Battletower can be cleared before dawn.”

  “Negative. We don’t have any Battlemages in our parties,” said a churchguard sergeant.

  “Yes, we have the mages. We just need manpower to clear the upper floors. All the floors. In one night. Perhaps if you would accompany our mages to the dungeon, the necessity of this would become obvious.”

  “We’ve been ordered here to clean up a rot infestation,” said the sergeant. “Is the rot in the tower?”

  “Oh, sweet Interface, I hope not.”

  Jelena’s group had spent an hour or so raiding the tower storerooms for extra gunpowder and any curios of note. With bombs and shot for Jelena’s pistols restocked for another year or so, the group returned to the tower annex just in time to see some of the arbiters march out into the afternoon sun.

  More than a few adventurers had gathered in the annex. They varied in level but were disproportionally crimson mages. Clearly here to brave the tower’s upper stories.

  “Ay, have you not left the tower yet?” Alberich asked. “There should be no danger with the archways locked down overnight. But still, there’s nothing for you here.”

  “We’ve got business in the dungeon,” Jelena said.

  “Ay. As do we all,” said Alberich. “If only we had our full number of Battlemages on premises. It sounds like a party or two of arbiters will be ascending the tower. But…”

  “Need a force multiplier?” Jelena pointed at the other travelers. “They look like mages. Probably hoping to level up before pilgrimage season gets into swing, yeah?”

  The crimson mages nodded.

  “Let us go up there.”

  “We need someone to clear all four cardinal directions of the tower,” Alberich said. “We may yet have someone on the southern point. The arbiters are heading to the northern end.”

  “Right. Two more points, two parties.” Jelena motioned to the other travelers.

  “We have little to reward you with.”

  “Eh, feeling generous.” Jelena smirked.

  Just don’t make a fuss about all the bombs and guns we’ve pilfered, went unsaid.

  “What do we know about the Battletower?” Calaf asked as the newly-minted ‘independent contractors’ rode a lift up the narrow neck to the dungeon proper.

  “It’s a fiendish house of traps,” Zilara said, still reading her book in an Interface.

  “Traps? We’ve already dealt with those at the docks!” Jelena said.

  “Yeah, but those were tripwires and the like. These are… inventive.”

  The elevator came to a stop at the top half of the tower. Stairs angled upward in four directions, leading up into the top hourglass shape that marked the upper half of the Battletower.

  Quiet reigned. The arbiters should have gone north. Some previous party may or may not have cleared the southern quarter. Which left west and east.

  With his shield up, Calaf advanced to the west.

  “What enemies can we expect?” Calaf asked.

  Just as soon as he said this, a winged beast with a dozen hands in place of a torso landed in front of Calaf. Leathey fingers reached out to grab him, blocked by his shield. There was only time to read ‘Manuchimera’ as the beast’s name and get a single spear-stab in before the half-dozen mages (plus Zilara) at his back eviscerated the creature with fireballs. Jelena even got a shot in with her newly re-supplied pistol, leaving only a thumb, pinkie, and forefinger on the nearest grotesque appendage.

  Hundreds of experience points flowed into Calaf, and the other Branded among the expedition. At least they’d be well compensated.

  “Never seen one of those before,” Enkidu said.

  “Me neither.” Calaf adjusted his grip on his shield. “Come, we should be careful. Remember, we have to split up.”

  Calaf and Jelena’s party traveled up the western staircase, while the mages went east.