The first thing Damarys did upon returning to camp was to ensure that both Kasyn and Emilie were alright and being tended to in the medical tent. Zeter wasn’t much better off than the other two so he joined the ranks of people being treated. Amber needed some looking after as well and it only made sense for her children to remain with her so Damarys reported alone to Jelvaic.

“Good to see you,” Jelvaic nodded to a set of chairs in the pavilion a little bit removed from the main queue of people.

They sat down and someone handed her a drink of water which she gratefully accepted. She was exhausted from the ordeal but relieved because of their success.

“Anyone else back yet?” she asked immediately.

Jelvaic shook his head.

“Tell me what you saw in there.”

Damarys did her best, though she was no great story teller or orator. The undead and elementals were expected but the news about the hostile plants surprised Jelvaic, though it was the warded area within the city around the farmhouse that interested him the most.

“Do you know how they did it?” he asked eagerly, sitting forwards in his chair.

“No, and neither did Amber, the mother. And we don’t know why they did it either.”

“Something to ask the Tower of Light if we ever find any survivors,” Jelvaic grunted. “Well, go get some rest. You look like you could use it. I’ll have the wagon unloaded and catalog what you’ve brought us.”

She nodded and leaned further back into her own chair.

“I think I’ll just sit here for a while,” she sighed as she shut her eyes.

“You’re welcome to, but why here?”

“It’s close to the medical tent, close to you and news of the other teams, and it’s as comfortable as anything else I have in my tent.”

He left her alone after that and she drifted in and out of a shallow sleep. A part of her felt guilty since she didn’t think she’d done as much as the rest of her companions since all she could do was sling stones, punch, and stab at the hoard to keep them at bay whereas it was the other three who really did the heavy lifting as far as making sure they survived. Magic was not a thing she had much experience with and now she wished she could go back and learn more of it.

As the evening waned she kept her ears perked for news of returning teams and Jelvaic became noticeably more anxious the later it became.

“You been here all evening?”

Damarys jolted as Zeter tapped her foot with his own while he sat down opposite her. He looked much better now that he wasn’t bleeding from his eyes, ears, and nose. There was still a certain, unhealthy paleness to him but other than that he looked simply tired.

“Wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“What, just me?” he teased.

“All three of you,” she insisted and kicked him gently. “How’re the others?”

“They’re awake,” Zeter told her. “Kasyn’s new to magic so he’s having the rougher time of it but they’ll both be up and about by tomorrow. They just have to be careful not to cast any magic for a few days.”

“What about you?”

“I could cast a little if needed,” he shrugged but the look on his face told her he really wouldn’t enjoy doing it. “I’ll probably take it easy for a few days all the same. How’ve the other teams fared?”

Damarys just shook her head.

“Hasn’t any of them come back yet?”

“No,” she cast an uneasy glance over to Jelvaic who was pacing nearby and whom she suspected could hear them.

“Here’s hoping they’re just going slow,” Zeter muttered before getting to his feet. “Well, I’m heading to bed. See you around, I guess. Let me know if you need a locksmith for anything.”

He winked and left.

“Locksmith,” Damarys whispered to herself. “How many locks are in a land ruled by an omniscient lich?”

She’d heard of people being robbed before but it was vanishingly rare. They were almost like fables with how infrequently it occurred. Some people had locks on their doors, or on their chests of holding, but most didn’t bother. Damarys herself had never used a lock for any of her belongings. She found it unlikely Jelvaic had selected Zeter just for his locksmithing abilities and she wondered why that was the skill he claimed when introducing one another. She wondered who he’d been before all this.

As torches and lamps were lit, Jelvaic came back over and sat down heavily into the chair, concern in every line of his face.

“They’re all dead,” he spoke so softly that Damarys barely heard him. “The other teams,” he went on. “I’ve had diviners checking in on each one throughout the day. They can’t get a clear image inside the city with all the magical interference but they can tell the basics of what’s going on. The last group just died. They were within a mile of the gate. It’s hard to tell for certain, but it looked like they were carrying something with them. Something big. They dropped it in their last effort to escape the city but whatever it is it looks intact. Might be a few chests of holding, lashed together. That’s all they can tell for certain.”

“Is this your way of asking if I’ll go back in there and retrieve whatever it is they were carrying?” Damarys felt a tingle go down her spine, reminding her of the terror she’d felt as she and the others raced for the main gate.

“We’ve enough food now to last us a couple weeks,” Jelvaic kept his voice low so no one in the queue would overhear him, “but that’s it. If we don’t get more, well…and we still need farming tools if we’re going to get any fields out here planted in time to get a harvest before winter. Otherwise we’ll be starving to death before spring.”

“Do you need someone to go in right now or can it wait a bit? The rest of my team’s only just stopped bleeding out their eyes.”

Jelvaic hesitated. He clearly didn’t want to wait but he also wasn’t an idiot.

“Get your team healed and then head back in as soon as possible,” he said at last. “I’ll keep the diviners checking in on what the last team was carrying to make sure it doesn’t get moved or anything.”

The next couple of days passed by Damarys in a blur. There was a lot of hurry up and wait going on and for the most part she felt useless. At least her stump arm was healing alright. There were no signs of infection and the skin was already healing over the bone. She was worried her exertion while escaping the city would reopen the wound but the healers had done their job well and none of the stitches came out.

When Emilie, Kasyn, and Zeter proclaimed themselves recovered after two days of rest, the four of them found themselves once more approaching the city gate.

“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you lot back here so soon,” Kamillus cackled when they drew near. “I guess the others think you’re lucky or something.”

Damarys pulled a ring from her pouch and held it out for the imp.

“Anything new going on inside that you’ve seen?” she asked.

Kamillus studied the ring after plucking it from Damarys’ palm.

“There’s blood on this,” Kamillus observed though it wasn’t clear whether that was a bad thing or not in his opinion.

“That ring was on my hand the bear ate,” Damarys explained. “I got it back after killing the bear.”

“Ooh,” the imp cooed with approval and slipped the ring onto his thumb. “Imbued with vengeance and retribution.”

After a moment of admiring the ring, Kamillus sighed and looked over Damarys’ shoulder towards the refugee camp.

“They’ll never survive out there,” he observed. “You lot need to get back into the city. Make it safe to live in again.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

The imp shook his head. “No, but the group that almost made it out did. Too bad they only almost made it out. Find their corpses and ask them what they learned.”

That was probably all she was going to get out of him for the ring so she thanked him and lead the way into the city. After they were a ways away from the gate, she turned to the other three.

“Any of you know how to get the dead to talk?”

Kasyn and Emilie both shook their heads but Zeter nodded after a moment.

“It’s not something anyone else needs to know about,” he stated at once. “I’m not a necromancer or anything like that but I do know the way to make the dead talk.”

“The things they teach locksmiths,” Damarys teased to try and break some of the uneasy tension.

It wasn’t that necromancy was frowned upon in Yume. It just wasn’t that common since Akumu held an almost complete monopoly on the dead. Messing around with Akumu’s undead wasn’t allowed, of course, but there were some corpses that, for one reason or another, weren’t reanimated by the lich.

“Jelvaic knows,” Zeter added. “I didn’t conceal anything from him when he was asking around for people with skills. I just don’t generally like to advertise those things.”

“Don’t apologize,” Emilie smiled while patting Zeter on the shoulder. “We need someone to talk to the dead and you happen to know how.”

“Akumu’s smiling on us,” Kasyn put in and the other three nodded albeit awkwardly since only Kasyn worshiped the lich.

“Do you think the corpses will still be nearby?” Zeter asked.

“Jelvaic said the diviners only saw some of them get reanimated,” Damarys replied, “so chances are at least one of them is still…around.”

With less than a mile to go into the city, they found the spot pretty quickly. The ground was torn up in places from spells and a pair of corpses were left in the road. It was unusual for any corpse not to immediately be pulled beneath the ground before the Tower of Light’s assault but the city hadn’t been acting normally ever since so Damarys didn’t think twice about it. Besides, there had been those members of the Tower of Light back at the farm house who weren’t reanimated. Why should it surprise her that some of these hadn’t been raised either.

“Let’s get upwind of them,” Zeter suggested as he shifted where he was standing.

Being left out in the open like this meant the bodies had begun to decay and didn’t look or smell very good.

“Keep an eye out for any unwanted visitors,” Zeter added as he readied himself to cast the spell.

Emilie, Kasyn, and Damarys kept a ware eye out as Zeter reached down and touched the head and chest of the first corpse. A faint, purplish glow began to emanate and the body pulled in a ragged breath.

“How do we fix the city?” Zeter’s voice came out in a grating hiss that shocked Damarys until she realized that both he and the corpse were speaking together.

“Defenses are active until the city is put aright,” the corpse replied. “Autay Wa needs the main gate repaired and the Captain of the Gate returned to her post. We found where Nyla’s being held but couldn’t free her. We were bringing a replacement gate when we were attacked.”

“Where is Nyla?”

“The Tower of Light chapel in the north of Autay Wa. There are soldiers there, too many for us to fight. They would not let us in.”

An organic, tearing sound was followed by the corpse’s chest deflating and Zeter pulling away from it.

“What’s wrong?” Emilie asked.

“Its lungs are too damaged,” he replied. “Something’s torn inside and it can’t speak any more.” He was already casting a cleansing spell on his hands and wiping his fingers on his robes. “But I think we’ve gotten what we need. The replacement gate shouldn’t be far from here either.”

“Yeah, but what about Nyla?” Emilie asked. “We barely survived going to the south-west and that’s still close to the gate. I can’t imagine making it all the way to the north and back.”

“We were on foot before,” Kasyn said. “What if we were on horseback? We could move a lot faster and outrun the undead if it comes to it.”

“Jelvaic wants all the horses for working the new fields,” Damarys replied.

“You don’t think he’d lend us some if it meant restoring Autay Wa?” Kasyn retorted.

“What about the noise?” Emilie asked. “I could silence one horse, maybe, but their hooves on the cobbles could give us away.”

“That’s not hard to mask,” Zeter spoke as though he had prior experience with this very issue. “You can wrap their hooves in cotton, or just ride on the side of the road on the dirt. The main noise comes from us if we talk too much.”

Damarys found herself yet again wondering at Zeter and the life he must have led. “Let’s get the new gate and then we can talk it over with Jelvaic,” she told them.

The others nodded their agreement and they continued on up the road until they found the replacement gate. It was a massive set of double doors built into a framework of intricate wood and iron. There were magic runes inscribed into it and the entire thing hovered a few feet off the ground.

“Where d’you think they got it?” Kasyn asked as they each grabbed a corner and began pushing it towards the city entrance.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Zeter grunted.

Even though the gate floated on its own, it was still a huge mass that resisted being moved.

“Whoever did the rune work knew what they were doing,” Emilie observed. “They feed off the ambient magic in the city instead of relying on the person who inscribed them. Good thing too since…

“Since they died,” Zeter finished for her.

Damarys heard a sound like pottery breaking and looked around for the source.

“We need to hurry,” Zeter began pushing harder on his corner of the gate. “I think taking the gate counts as stealing.”

Damarys and the others all pushed harder to speed up the gate but they still looked to Zeter for an explanation. Before he could speak further, however, the sound of yet another piece of pottery breaking sounded and it was clearly coming from him.

“What’s that?” Damarys asked.

“A warning,” he replied. “It means the city thinks we’re breaking the law. We only have a few minutes before the hoards get called in.”

Their destination was in sight but with how slowly the gate was moving it was obviously going to take them longer than just a few minutes to get there.

“Everyone!” Zeter exclaimed a bit more loudly than Damarys was comfortable with but he was speaking with excitement rather than fear. “Start praying for forgiveness for stealing the new gate! Say it in your head or out loud but just repeat the prayer over and over. Doesn’t matter what deity you pray to either. Just pray!”

“Oh great Akumu, forgive us for stealing this gate. We need it to aid you in repairing your grand city and –

“Keep it short,” Zeter interrupted Kasyn. “It’ll delay the city the more you can ask for forgiveness.”

“Oh great Akumu, forgive us,” Kasyn said with a questioning expression on his face. “Oh great Akumu, forgive us. Like that, Zeter?”

“Exactly!”

Zeter was already mumbling under his breath. Damarys looked at Emilie, wondering if she knew what was going on but it was evident she was just as clueless. She herself had never been religious and only knew a handful of deities by name.

Gray Wolf of the Hunt, forgive me, Damarys thought to herself, wondering how appealing to a hunting god would help their situation.

They were a quarter of the way there when the next sound of breaking potter sounded and Zeter cursed.

“What is that?” Damarys demanded.

“I’ll tell you when we’re out,” he grunted as he pushed even harder against the gate. “Keep praying. If you hear it again, drop the gate and run for it.”

“Akumu will protect us,” Kasyn assured them all.

“Keep praying,” Zeter repeated and redoubled his own muttered prayer.

Every step with the gate was an incredible effort, made more difficult for Damarys since she only had the one good arm to push with. She had her body turned sideways towards the gate so she could press on it with her arm outstretched as far as it would go. Her feet slipped now and then until she found she could get a better grip on the cobbles if she placed her feet in the groove between stones with every step. All the while she had her ears listening for the sound of breaking pottery. Whatever strange device this was that Zeter had, the warning it was giving them, she wanted an explanation.

They were half way there and Damarys could see Kamillus in the ruined gateway, speaking with a small group of people as he barred their way. They were animated as they pointed towards Damarys and the others but Kamillus didn’t seem swayed by them. Whoever they were, it was odd for Kamillus to keep anyone from entering the city. It was well within his rights and abilities as a gate guard but why use that authority now? Was he hoping to spare more lives? Unlikely. It was no secret he hated Akumu for binding him to the city and he wanted little more than to see the people of this city suffer and die. Only Akumu’s bindings prevented him from acting on that desire or saying more than the occasional, veiled comment.

“Almost there,” Emilie gasped.

“Pray!” snapped Zeter and he looked ready to bolt at any moment. “No, I can feel the last one cracking! RUN!”

The four of them let go of the gate as the final breaking sound came from Zeter’s satchel and the earth beneath them erupted with hands