Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 625: Operation Polar Winds : Part Thirty

"If there is anything dangerous hidden within the mountains? Well, there was the Schneebiest… But it was actually pretty cool as far as strange creatures go, I suppose… Except when it decided to leap into the air and throw a powerbomb sourced directly from its waste-hole, of course…"

"...But the Schneebiest was already tamed by you, Mister Alkayne, so we can cross that off the list"

"In terms of dangerous things, well, except for the accursed, there was me who prowled around the mountains and I have never encountered anything apart from the rocky bears, wooly goats and wolves… So nothing out of the ordinary"

"I remember a few stories about scary monsters, but I am fairly certain they were made up to scare little children"

Alkayne asked around, most prominently Janus and his paladins as they seemed to be the likes of those who would know if there was danger somewhere, but they had no clue either, the kalt people had only ever travelled away during the time of famine, which had not been willfully caused by the pope, some people deciding to move away to find food and falling prey to the curse had been purely coincidental events, or at least, not the work of another kalt.

Even with knowledge from Janus's perspective, the story still seemed weird, Alkayne did not quite understand how a lake could suddenly begin to run out of fish before teeming with life again for no discernable reason, although used to the nonsensical and illogical coexisting with the logical, one couldn't just shrug and chalk it up to the world being weird every single time.

So he had his soldiers inspect the lake, first things first, it was not linked to any other body of water, no rivers or anything led to it, the lake was closed off on its own, meaning that the life within should be able to come and go as they saw fit, the ecosystem was shackled here.

That was already suspicious, but to be sure he was missing nothing, he brought in some soldiers specialised in underwater operations, his decisions to make his elite be composed of flexible units and more specialised troops was showing its worth, they jumped through one of the fishing holes and showed back up again after a few hours of exploring the depths of the lake, which was certainly deep, but Alkayne had already known that, his darkness awareness could go far but it had not been able of reaching the bottom.

The lake was not home to any monsters, has had been previously thought, neither were there any beasts of exceptional dangerosity, it was mostly peaceful, but his soldiers did not come back without anything interesting, in the depths, there was a submerged passage, resembling a natural cavern, that seemed to be leading further into an area that was not filled with water.

His soldiers had not ventured too deeply, turning back once they confirmed this through darkness awareness.

"Did the fishes venture into that cavern at all?"

"No, Lord Alkayne, in fact, they seemed wholly uninterested in it, they didn't mind brushing close to it or using it to hide if necessary however, so they are not afraid of its existence" replied a robed undead, her face had growths of grey mould.

"I see, can you take me there?"

"Of course" replying instantly, bringing her hands together, and the same grey mould that grew over the undead began manifesting out of thin air, then promptly weaved into the form of some sort of eel or serpent that surrounded both her and the minor lord.

Rot weavers were a pretty diverse bunch due to the various possibilities the ability to manipulate rot brought, she specialised in forming bodies that could be controlled from within, more specifically, the sort that could travel underwater.

Using that as a method of transport, Alkayne was soon standing within that underground space, the water stopped just short of the ground here, any disturbance to the water and some would be getting onto dry ground, accompanied by the rot weaver and a few other soldiers that could tread the underwater with ease, the zombie analysed his surroundings.

In the ambient darkness, an undead like himself might appear omniscient as no light could reach here, his undead sixth sense was working perfectly, no details could escape his attention and so, he quickly noticed that this was no simple cave, although it appeared to have been formed through natural means, but the brackets containing burnt-out torches clearly indicated that something intelligent had gone here, something not used to traversing the darkness, and they had come here often enough to consider installing sconces important enough.

The somewhat flat area by the pool of water also bore marks of multiple things occurring here, there were a few bones piled up in a corner, faded marks of some sort of symbol once being drawn upon the ground as well as remnants of some ghost plants of various sorts.

This seemed to indicate that something or someone had come here, and performed a ritual of some kind, or perhaps build a totem hex considering the bones, but there was a problem with that idea, there was no traces of it actually working, the energy in the area was perfectly normal and the 'tools' that would have been used had not been used up or altered in any way.

It looked more like someone attempted something, and failed to produce any result.

"My Lord" one of his soldiers emerged from the water and presented him a withered antler, its time in there had evidently taken a toll upon its physical integrity.

"There are dozens of pair of them that have sunk at the bottom just over here" reported the soldier, Alkayne looked at the antler in details, it appeared like it had belonged to a deer of some kind, they weren't exceptionally large and from what the zombie could see, it had fallen naturally, having been shed rather cut sectioned or broken off.

"So, we are looking for someone or something with antlers?" he wondered, that didn't seem too hard, there didn't seem to be any creature that possessed antlers in the mountains, and considering that their owner had the capabilities to craft and install torch holders as well as the torches themselves, then they ought to have at least two hands with dexterous fingers.

"Let us ascend and see where it takes us" he led the way, the cavern was rather spacious, but still did not allow for more than two people to travel side-by-side.

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Being that they were rather deep, it took a little while for them to be greeted by sunlight and the blizzard, emerging into a small plain amidst the mountains.

Considering that they hadn't been ascending the whole time and had actually moved in a straight line for some time, they should be rather far from the frozen lake by now.

Remembering every twist and turns taken to arrive here Alkayne ordered for them to just go back for now, he would return here through the mountains with more troops.

After the undeads disappeared back into the cave, a figure carefully approached through the howling winds, said something in an unknown language and quickly ran in the opposite direction.