Free Frostborn: The Undying Wizard by Jonathan Moeller Page A

billowing around him, and shattered a skull or a leg. Gavin guarded the dwarven friar, bashing with his shield and striking with the orcish sword he had taken from the arachar in Aranaeus.
    But Ridmark tore through the undead like a storm.
    His staff had a steel core, and Calliande knew firsthand how heavy the weapon was. Yet he wielded the staff as if it weighed no more than a light willow branch. He fought through the undead, striking right and left, shifting his grip from one-handed to two-handed and back again. The creatures reached for him, rotting robes billowing around them, but Ridmark remained just ahead of them, so close that Calliande feared that he would fall again and again. 
    But they never touched him, and he left a score of broken corpses in his wake.
    She had never seen a warrior like him. Of course, she could not remember anything that had happened before she had awakened thirty-two days ago. But even if she could, she doubted she could recall a man like Ridmark Arban.
    Ridmark, Kharlacht, Caius, and Gavin tore through the undead, driving them back toward the crypt. 
    More of the creatures poured out of the doors, and some of them got past Ridmark and the others and charged Calliande, drawn by her magic like flies to a lamp.
    “Morigna,” said Calliande, her hands trembling as she struggled to maintain the spell around the weapons.
    She expected a mocking answer, but Morigna only stepped forward, purple fire crackling around her fingers. The sorceress clapped her hands, and a ripple went through the ground, the heavy flagstones of the courtyard folding and bending like paper. The shock wave knocked a half-dozen undead to the ground. At once the creatures started to rise, but Morigna gestured again. Mist billowed from the ground, wrapping around the undead. Calliande wondered what good that would do, but the undead sizzled and hissed. The acidic mist ate into their rotting flesh and dissolved their bones, and the undead collapsed into piles of burning slime.
    Unease went through Calliande. The Magistri used their magic to defend, to heal, and to seek knowledge, never to harm or kill. What would stop Morigna from conjuring acidic mist against living men?
    Morigna raked her hands through the air, face tight with strain, and knocked another wave of undead monks into her pool of burning mist. They dissolved into smoke and slime, the stench hideous, and Ridmark and the others battled to the doors of the crypt. 
    Silence fell over the courtyard.
    Calliande looked around. Dozens of undead lay strewn across the ground, their skulls and limbs smashed. No more issued from the crypt doors, and Ridmark and the others stood at the threshold, glowing weapons in hand.
    “Is that it?” said Calliande. “We destroyed them all already?”
    “No,” said Ridmark. “There’s more down there.” 
    “Torches?” said Gavin.
    “No need,” said Morigna, lifting a hand. “I can provide the necessary light.”
    She lifted her right hand, mist swirling above it, and for an alarmed moment Calliande thought she meant to attack. But the ball of mist began to glow with a gray light, shining brighter and brighter. 
    “Good enough,” said Ridmark, and they descended into the darkness.
     
    ###
     
    Scuttling noises echoed in crypt’s darkness.
    Morigna’s eerie spell-light threw back the darkness, but cast crazed shadows in all directions. Massive, thick pillars supported the vaulted ceiling, and hundreds of graves had been cut into the floor, sealed with lids of stone. 
    Most of the lids had been smashed open. 
    Ridmark raised his staff, the weapon’s glow helping to throw back the darkness. He glimpsed dark shapes moving in the distant shadows of the vast crypt, caught glimpses of empty eyes gleaming with pale blue flames. Yet none of the undead approached. 
    The creatures had shown no cunning during the fight in the marsh, and none during the fighting in the courtyard. Did that mean the necromancer was down here,