17 May 1870, Tuesday

~later~

We have had a meal and Miss Gordon and I are taking a break from translating the ongoing negotiations. It is very disorienting to be cut off from the sun. My timepiece claims that it is only late afternoon outside.

I return to the earlier events this day.

What lay beyond the door was a room with twelve sarcophagi. Nine were open and three closed. I was concerned that three more of the fiends might be lying in wait for us. Mr Salmalin and Dr Wilson leapt for the doors and pulled them open before I felt we were quite ready.

If we are to keep adventuring together (and surviving) we must come up with a better way of handling such things. I was not happy with their impetuousness and they were obviously concerned that I was wasting time or holding them back unnecessarily, and, while I have seen Mr Salmalin perform near miracles of strength, endurance, and speed, he seems to forget that of our party of twelve, only four had weapons that could stop the Undead from a distance, four of our party were armed with rocks (if you can consider Dr Siannaig armed since he was busy during much of the fight keeping people from bleeding to death) and the four of us working magik are unable to concentrate on anything else during the casting and are unable to defend ourselves until the spell is complete.

I wish we had some more training in how to work togther effectively. Maybe we could ask Our Employer for some training before our next assignment. I know that the military drills its members so they are able to provide an effective defence but I do not know if any such training could be developed for our odd crew. We never quite seem to run into the same thing twice. That makes it hard to prepare for what might be behind the next door.

In this case the sarcophagi were all empty (we were ready to set fire to any evil Undead creature we found but that proved unnecessary).

The roaring sound that Miss Sinclair had reported earlier was now loud enough for all to hear. We proceeded down a long fight of stairs, ever so glad of Mrs Cuthbert’s strange light. We went down so many stairs that my legs were quite sore by the time we reached a wide, open passage-way that ran due East-West.

Mr Ramsey drew my attention away from my location notes and to the carvings on the walls of this passage, he indicated that they were very similar to the Egyptian Mode of carving. The ceiling was the highest we had yet seen and a very slight breeze came from the West. A sound like a waterfall, or more horribly, thousands of murmuring voices came on the breeze from the West.

Sir Cosmo’s trail went East so we turned in that direction and walked down the passage. It was easily wide enough to allow 10 carriages to run side-by-side. As we made our way to the East the whisper of water faded.

A few minutes later the sound resumed, this time in the direction we were walking. I wondered if there might be two pillars, one for Life and one for Death, since we had been dealing with that duality ever since we had been drawn into these events by the mad ravings of Mr Pym. Who, I reminded myself, was safely back at Kor with his wife the priestess Zahkali, while we had been up since before dawn, and were now walking in an underground passage with some of our party wounded and others carrying heavy bronze shields between them, hoping the shields might protect us better than they had their masters.

After I had too much time to work myself into a state, we came to a set of massive bronze doors. They were opened by two giant skeletons as we approached. I know that I have used the words “huge”, “large”, and “massive” throughout this account. That being so, I have come to a place where those words are inadequate in describing the place we now entered.

The room was modelled on a cathedral but was much larger than any of the houses of worship we have back home. Upon the dias there was both a throne and an altar decorated with skulls. To the right was the Pillar of Life, a swirling whirlwind of stars piercing both the ceiling and floor of the chamber. To the left were two columns of golden light with Sir Cosmo and Mr Andrew Pryce trapped upside-down within. Even at this distance, Mr Pryce looked like he would pass from this life at any moment and Sir Cosmo looked distinctly unwell.

Standing in front of the throne was the figure of a man with the skeleton of a dinosaur lying at his feet like pet dog. The man glowed with a Necromantic energy that was as bright in its own way as the aura that surrounded SWMBO. It was horrible to look at. Miss Sinclair assures me that his physical appearance was just as terrible to behold.

Dominating all else and giving the room an aspect that would have daunted Goliath, was row upon row upon row of dead soldiers. They filled what would be the apse and nave in a real church; while more dead men stood, with arrows nocked, ready to fire down upon our party from two lofts above us. There were easily one thousand dead men between us and our loved ones.

I had very little hope that we could survive this encounter. I prayed to God for his protection and help and began preparations for a spell.

The Necromancer caused writing to appear in the air asking if we were ready to surrender.

Miss Sinclair stepped forward and opened negotiations. Mr Ramsey, Mrs Cuthbert, Mr Rupert Pryce and I fell back and began our chant, hoping that the Necromancer was so arrogant as to give us time to work our will.

I was unaware of what else transpired while Miss Sinclair tried to give us time to do our work until I felt a powerful jolt. The Necromancer had pulled the power we had gathered for our spell from my control. He held it, like a ball, in his hand. It was so exactly like what my brother used to do me as a child that I was infuriated. How dare he! He taunted me, asking if I wanted the power back. I was terribly afraid he had contaminated it and that I would not be able to control the power if he did return it to me. I refused and then he started claiming that he knew my family. What a monster! That he would claim knowledge of my Great-Aunt was ludicrous and demeaning. He had no right to use that mouth to speak of people that I cared about.

I told him I didn’t want to have anything to do with something that he had touched. He threatened to hurt Sir Cosmo with my power if I didn’t accept it back from him. I couldn’t help it, I screamed. Anger, fear, and frustration were overwhelmed by panic. He would not hurt Sir Cosmo with my power!

Without thinking, I reached out and yanked the power back from him. I didn’t know if I could do it but it seemed safer than letting him ‘return’ it to me. I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me.

Somehow, I ended up with more power than I started with, as I took control of it and wondered if I could still perform the spell we had started, Great-Aunt Hethalyn’s voice came to me and she said that creatures of darkness could not abide light. I saw Mrs Cuthbert opening her hand to reveal the orb and suddenly I knew what to do.

I poured all of the power into the orb.

A great light spilled out of it, and, moving more like water than light, it swept through the chamber; every Undead that it touched, it obliterated. A warm breeze flowed with the light and filled the room with the scents of spring and the living world.

When the light had passed the orb turned to dust in Mrs Cuthbert’s hand.

The way to Sir Cosmo was clear and Miss Chigwidgeon was already running to him.

I was only a step behind.

The dinosaur tried to stop Miss Chigwidgeon, I reached out to push her out of the way and felt her fill with the other-worldly presence of Kali. I flinched back, remembering Salmalin’s warning that Kali does not like to be touched by unbelievers. Kali punched the three-horned dinosaur skeleton on its nose and it turned from her in search of easier prey. Miss Chigwidgeon ran on and I followed after.

The only Undead left were two dozen men and the dinosaur. They had apparently been protected by the Necromancer when the light hit. I hoped that my fellow league members would keep the Necromancer and his fiends at bay while I figured out how he held Sir Cosmo and Mr Pryce. As I approached the columns of light that prisoned Sir Cosmo and Mr Pryce I saw smoke coming from one of the rooms behind the throne. As I could hear Edward’s gleeful voice I did not worry about it. I hoped that he, also, had found a way to distract the Necromancer. I saw Salmalin creeping around the back of the dais, getting into position to attack when the moment came.

I tried holy water, prayers, regular water prayed over by Miss Chigwidgeon, and finally Miss Chigwidgeon tried her Kali-punch on the stone crystals holding the prisoners but Kali did not come and Miss Chigwidgeon only succeeded in hurting her hand. In frustration she started hacking at the rock under Mr Pryce while I flipped frantically through my spell book looking for something useful. I heard the Necromancer finish his chant and looked around to see that he had opened several stone doors and more skeletons were pouring though to take the place of those we had destroyed with the orb. Dr Wilson was riding the bony back of the skeletal dinosaur and I heard a scream of rage as the Necromancer noticed, finally, the smoke pouring out of what seemed to be his personal library. Edward had done well.

I forced myself back to the spell book for I desperately wanted to get Sir Cosmo and Mr Pryce out of the Necromancer’s hands before we were overwhelmed. I finally remembered where the basic unbinding spell was (and am going to invest some time creating a index for this book when we get home!) and lay out the items I would need to preform it. I was just explaining the spell to Mr Rupert Pryce when there was a tremendous explosion.

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