Part B: Den of Evil
"Here." Heero reached it first; the road wove between a few pools of water and dead-ended in a hole set into the side of a small hill. A narrow path wound downwards into the darkness. "Here is the source of the evil," he growled, eyes fixed with hatred on the cave.
"It seems like a simple enough mission," Duo remarked, eying the uninviting black maw of the Den of Evil. "Go in, chop things up. End of story."
Quatre shivered, and it wasn't just from the rain. "I hate caves," he muttered.
"Really?" Duo said brightly. "I rather like them."
"You should feel right at home in here, Necromancer," Heero said coldly. "Just be certain that should you turn on us, I will kill you."
For a change, Duo didn't reply, although his jaw tightened as he glowered at Heero's stiff back as the paladin vanished into the darkness. Wufei, ignoring the other three warriors, slipped in after him as softly and naturally as one of the shadows.
"I don't like this, Trowa," Quatre said, although he was ashamed to admit even that much weakness.
"Neither do I. There is something unnatural... something unclean in that darkness," Trowa said softly. "It's part of the same thing that drove the Rogues out. But if we cannot face it, then who can stand against the might of Diablo and his minions?"
"You're right, of course," Quatre straightened his back, and gripped his staff more firmly. "All right. Let's go."
They descended together, leaving Duo standing on the moor with only his skeletons for company. "Well," he sighed, "at least it will be out of the rain. Let's go, boys."
As they wended through the dark, labyrinthian underground passages, Quatre kept sending nervous glances towards Wufei. He could have sworn, in the uncertain light, that something about the assassin's shadow was... unnatural. It flickered and moved in a way that was not quite in accordance with the movement of the illumination provided by a ball of light floating above the end of Quatre's staff. He kept trying to the light over, trying to catch the shadow in action, but it flickered away every time. It was unnerving.
Duo's undead creatures might be disturbing, but at least he could see them. And he had to admit, watching the skeletons wade readily into the melees, that they were useful. The skeletons, like Trowa's creeping vines, drew off the enemy's attacks; and when one crumbled into white dust, Duo simply called up another one.
A soft chittering sound from the darkness was all the warning they had. Suddenly their party was swamped by waist-high creatures of an unnatural red color. Small as they were, they moved with incredible speed, and the weapons they hacked with were deadly sharp.
Immediately the fighters went to work. Shrieking in high-pitched voices, the little demons had an annoying tendency to mob a target in groups of four and five, then scatter in all directions as soon as the fighter tried to hit back. Heero and Wufei charged off after the retreating demons; Trowa, a bit more sensibly, stayed on guard and waited for them to come back within arm's reach. Quatre backed away to a sensible distance and began shooting fireballs; to his consternation, the demons moved so fast that his missiles never hit their target, although there were so many of them that any fireball that missed one demon was certain to hit another.
Heero crushed a Carver with a single blow, and smiled grimly. They could run, but they could not escape from the Light... there was little time to revel in his satisfaction, for as soon as he struck one down, two more took its place, looking exactly the same.
In fact -- Heero had to look closely to make certain, and nearly got his eye put out as the demon jabbed its crude sword at him. But he wasn't mistaken -- he sliced the demon nearly in two, and then watched as it immediately sprang back to life.
"They're regenerating!" he shouted in frustration, slamming the demon with his shield and knocking it backwards. "Someone is raising them!" Furious, he started to turn on the one he knew to be a practitioner of Dark Magic, the one he had witnessed reviving the dead -- Duo. He would make the traitor pay with his life --
"There!" Trowa's voice rang out over the infernal chittering, and one of his ravens flapped cawing past Heero's head. He turned to follow it automatically, and saw circling in the far corner of this chamber, above a red demon larger than any of these and heavily decorated. It was chanting to itself and walking up and down, and every time it rattled its staff, a new demon sprang up.
It croaked something in an inhuman language, and pointed at the raven; a fireball erupted from its staff, which the bird easily avoided. When the shaman was distracted, Heero found, it could not raise its minions; the little red things that he killed stayed dead. Busy with killing demons, Heero saw Wufei slip past the melee and confront the shaman.
With the Shaman distracted, the tide of the battle turned; but no sooner did the red demons begin to thin out then the shadows began to disgorge more of the zombies they had seen on the moor above. Distracted by the fireball-casting demon, Quatre didn't notice the zombies until a group of them were closing on him, pinning him back against the wall.
"Uh, guys?" Quatre shot a fireball directly into the closest zombie; it absorbed the hit with little effect. One of the zombies moved forward even faster than its fellows, and its skin crackled with an ominous red hue. In desperation, he exploded an expanding ring of ice, severely draining his energy, but that no more than slowed their advance. "Help!"
The other four looked over at the sound of Quatre's cry, and immediately took in his predicament; the spellcaster, although powerful, was in big trouble in such close quarters. Trowa and Heero began making their way towards the trapped sorcerer, but their paths were still filled with monsters and it was evident they would be too late. The ravens flew through the ranks of zombies to attack the ones surrounding Quatre, but they were not powerful enough to do any damage.
"Get them!" Duo shouted at his minions, gesturing towards the ranks of zombies. "Go on, attack!" Obediently, the skeletons started forward, but their pace was even slower than that of the other undead monsters. Duo eyed his skeletons rather nervously. "You know, guys, something's wrong if you're being outrun by zombies," he remarked.
Just as Quatre's back hit the wall, the ground in front of him burst open, and a hulking brown figure rose up out of it. It carried with it the stench of an open grave, but stood between Quatre and his attackers stolidly. Peeking out from behind its massive, rocklike shoulder, Quatre switched to lightning and threw out sparks as fast as he could. The zombies sizzled, and jerked like marionettes with their strings tangled, but kept on advancing.
At last all the other monsters were dead, and none re-spawning, and the entire party converged on the place where Quatre was trapped. The five warriors, not to mention the skeletons and the ravens, made quick work of the zombie minions and converged on the unnaturally fast zombie. Within a minute he, too, crumbled.
Quatre, almost spent from the effort of casting so many spells, leaned against the golem, breathing heavily. "Thanks so much for the help, Trowa," he said, indicating the earth-like creature. "I thought I was done for. Your golem saved me."
"Uh --" Trowa eyed the golem apprehensively -- "that's not mine."
"It's mine, actually," Duo admitted, looking almost sheepish.
Everyone looked at him, surprised. "It's not a spell I use often. They're sturdier than skeletons, but --" He sighed, looking at the patient golem. It was falling apart where it stood, crumbles of dust leaking from the places where the zombies had gouged it. "It seems unfair, somehow..."
With a strangely wistful expression, Duo quietly unsummoned the golem. It melted back into the ground without a sound of protest.
Quatre blinked and peered blearily into the darkness around them. "Are we done here?" he said somewhat plaintively.
"Not quite." Heero frowned, his eyes narrowing. "There's one monster left."
As it turned out, the last monster was no more than one of the red demons, gibbering unintelligibly to itself in a corner. It was a simple matter for Quatre to freeze it in place with a quick ice bolt, and a single blow from Heero's weapon shattered it into pieces that melted into the earth. Almost immediately, some lurking aura off malice lifted, and sunlight began to stream in through fissures in the earth above.
Heero watched the sunlight, a thoughtful frown on his face. "The Rogues are safe," he muttered quietly, "...for now."
"You think this will be enough to buy the rogues' trust?" Duo said hopefully.
"Perhaps," Wufei allowed. "At any rate, let us return to town. There is nothing further for us to do in this cave."
They trekked out of the cave, and back across the Blood Moor to the encampment. Akara, somehow, had already known of their success, and seemed quite willing to trust them -- although she still charged them money.
"There's something awfully backwards about this," Duo grumbled as he bargained with the mystic for healing potions. "We're trying to make a demon-free world for Rogues to live in. So why are you charging us money?"
To Be Continued... *insert demonic laughter here*