Part 69

The dwarf held a book in his hands, his arms clutching it like it was the only thing that would've saved his life. Of course, he was dead so his intention clearly failed. After a moment of inspecting the dwarf, I walked forward and dropped to one knee as I slowly attempted to pull the book from the dwarf's grasp.

I didn't care how disrespectful I was acting, as the dwarf was dead anyways. Once I got close enough to touch the book, I instantly recognized the lack of decay on the book's surface. Everything in here was nearly three thousand years old, but the book only seemed to be a few centuries old.

It was in a well-preserved condition, which meant some passages in the book could still be readable. As I pulled it from the dwarf's hands, his body suddenly began to crumble. His arms fell to his sides, no longer supported at the joints. As his arms moved, the rest of his body began to disassemble itself as well.

Once I got up to my feet, the dwarf's skull had already fallen to the ground. Hazel looked to me, then looked to the book.

"It still looks okay," Hazel muttered with surprise. I nodded, then slowly opened the book to its first page. Despite being in a good condition, the book was still fragile. I needed to be as careful as possible to not tear it apart. Once I began to move its leather cover, several centuries of dust fell off the book as if the dust was brand new.

"This thing is strange," I muttered as I looked at the pages in front of me. It was all in dwarvish, but I only understood a few of the words. This text was much more complicated than the plaque in the stone hall where the remembrance statue stood. This felt like a textbook for a school, as a few of the passages were followed by scribbles and doodles.

As I read, I began to understand what the book's purpose was.

"It's a notebook," I muttered. Hazel looked at me, confused.

"You can read it? Since when have you known how to speak dwarvish?" She asked as she turned her entire body to look at me. She placed her hands on her hips as she stared at me with an inquisitive expression.

"Since this morning," I told her. Then, before Hazel could say anything else, I continued reporting what I read, "the person that wrote this was a scientist, but I can't make out the name. He was here to study some recently discovered cavern. It looks like he meant this place."

"Oh? What else?" Hazel asked.

"I don't really know. I can't read the name of the discovery, but the scientist seemed insistent on calling it by his own nickname. 'Lazarus'," I mentioned. As I spoke, Hazel's eyes lit up in recognition. I looked at her, confused.

"We need to get out of here, now," Hazel told me, her voice filled with fear, "We can't deal with this, even at our strength. Only holy magic can help us here."

"Why? What's Lazarus?" I asked.

"The undead," Hazel said. As she spoke, her voice was filled with even more fear, which confused me. The undead? Those sounded weak, so why was she so scared? She looked at the notebook, then said, "Keep on reading."

I nodded and turned my attention back to the notebook. As I kept on reading, the scientist made sure to mark down his discoveries. He spent upwards of ten years in the cavern. In the first five years, he managed to map everything out, but the map itself was too faded to read. Then, for the five years that followed, he wandered around in helplessness. The dwarves that owned the cavern, the ones from a city called the fortress of Dram, were small in number. They appeared to have populated the area long after Doragem, as the scientist made sure to mark down the dwarf city's direct ties to his legacy. Most of the dwarves in Dram were direct descendants of his, but it had been so long since his death that the bloodline had thinned out.

Once the dwarves of Dram decided to start helping, that's when everything went wrong. The scientist soon discovered a route that had been hidden. He had never found it and was ecstatic about its discovery. The scientist then went on to write his experiences in the new cave route.

The scientist didn't write much about the cave itself, only the flora. Most of the plants he found were underground fungi that specialized in growing in moist areas. The most common fungus he found was something called the deep fungi. It was dark violet and was about as large as a human fist, though it stuck to the ceilings more than anything else.

During the scientist's sixth week on the new route, he finally discovered what he was looking for. Lazarus turned out to be another fungus, this time as big as a human. It stuck to the walls like moss and only expanded every few years.

The fungus was a thing of legend, as it was capable of reversing time on a specific thing. The scientist was curious about the effects of what would happen if he used it on a dead body. Once I read that passage, I froze.

"A dead body? So that's what you meant by the undead," I muttered. Hazel nodded. I turned back to the notebook and continued reading.

Shortly after they discovered Lazarus the scientist and a few Dwarves from Dram decided to test the effects on the first dead creature they could find. However, as they took samples of the fungus, one of the sample containers broke and a bit of the fungus directly touched one of the dwarf's skin.

What followed was a massacre. As soon as the fungus touched the dwarf, it began to burrow deep into him. The scientist and the others panicked as they attempted to aid the dwarf, but it was already too late. Once the fungus managed to find its way into the dwarf's bloodstream, it quickened his death.

It traveled across his body as it used his blood as a road system. The dwarf soon went into a fever and was brought back to the city of Dram. He rested there for two days as the fungus ravaged his body. When it finally reached his heart, he died. The fungus took over his circulatory system on instinct as if it only wanted to spread itself through his body.

The dwarves prepared a funeral for the fallen dwarf. However, before the funeral was properly planned, one of the dwarves decided to gather friends and family to the event to give his friend a good send-off. This delayed the funeral by a day.

A day was all the fungus needed to reach the dwarf's brain. When it did, it gained its own consciousness that was driven by hunger. The dead dwarf, now controlled by the fungus, began to walk through the halls of Dram.

Because of the fungus's natural time regression trait, the dwarf's skin and body turned healthy again. His skin became soft and his muscles became strong. This only helped the fungus in its rampage. The fungus used the dwarf's body to prey upon Dram. With each kill, a small portion of the fungus would transfer to a victim, which would spread the fungus.

When the fungus managed to invade a corpse, though, the process of domination didn't take a few days. It only took an hour.

The city of Dram was swarmed overnight. The scientist and a few dozen others survived and traveled deeper into the caverns. It was their only option for survival, but it would also be their worst mistake. The last few pages of the notebook detailed the slow decline of the dwarfs that had survived Dram's destruction.

Down in the deep, where the light of day could never reach, the dwarves began to change. The scientist was one of them. They lost their main source of food, comfort, and sunlight. Their skin turned grey and their hair turned white. Over a few thousand years, the descendants of those dwarves devolved into monsters.

The notebook was the only remaining thing to keep the memory of Dram alive. The deep dwarves kept it safe, probably on instinct, in a place where it couldn't decay. Then, the last passage was read out.

"We are the deep, we are the forgotten. Soon, we will rise up and take Dram once again, though that day will never reach the eyes of the pure dwarves that lost Dram in the first place," The scientist wrote.

I looked to Hazel, who was staring at me with a solemn face.

"There are a few different types of undead," Hazel told me, "The Lazarus fungus is the worst. We won't be dealing with weak skeletons, but athletic and intelligent enemies that know how to fight. The stronger ones are capable of infecting their victims with a single scratch."

"How do we kill them?" I asked.

"Holy magic," Hazel answered, "The fungus is weak to it, so it can't heal. If we use anything else the damage will just get reversed and we'll have to restart the fight. It's not safe, Arthur. We'll die if we get involved."