Mitch led them forward. Drew was next pulling the cart, while Sarah and Katie walked together with spears in hand and the Knight behind them. It didn't take long for them to reach the stairwell. Six massive rats had been wandering the hallways. Each appeared alone and Drew merely double cast fireball and frostfire ball as soon as their beady little eyes began to reflect the light in the distance.
They quickly checked that the stairwell was clear and then descended. The cart's weight made it a little tricky, but gravity did most of the work for them. Drew kept it steady as they slowly lowered it down the stairs. Unfortunately, their luck ended there: the stairwell only went down to the fourth floor.
"Well, crap, anyone ever been down this way before?" Drew asked from within the safety of the stairwell.
"I had a meeting down here once. I think I remember there being another stairwell a couple hallways down on the back side of the cafeteria," Sarah offered. She had recovered some of her spirits after killing the rat.
"Well, that's better than nothing," Mitch said with a shrug that seemed to be the consensus.
Stepping into the hallway, they saw a few placards giving directions to the cafeteria and some of the offices that had been on this floor. Sarah thought the stairwell was to the left, so they followed the Ensign's half-remembered directions.
The first cockroach landed with a thud in front of Mitch. Two hooks that had grown from his foremost appendages scored red lines along his arm, his shield preventing a significant amount of the damage, and one leg even bounced off to the side, deflected away by the magic protecting him.
Before anyone else could react, Mitch's axe had already taken on an electric buzz as he used his skill on the axe head and then used it to push the cockroach away from him, opening a distance between them. Drew launched an acid dart at the beast, though Mitch's push caused the projectile to go wide and the acid sizzled as it impacted the wall. Katie and Sarah advanced around Drew, the weaponless man unable to help due to the close quarters of the combat.
Each of the two women stabbed at the cockroach, but the sharp spider leg tips simply bounced harmlessly off its armor. The cockroach swiped at Mitch again, the sharp claws attempting to rip at his legs. Mitch refused to allow that though, stepping back before shifting his grip on the axe, bringing the blunt side of it down with an audible crack on the cockroach's carapace. Another of his skills came into play as a gust of wind caused his blow to impact both harder and in a longer range than he could physically achieve.
The two women continued to thrust their spears at the cockroach, but their attacks didn't seem to be doing any damage. They did, however, keep it occupied so that Mitch could get in close enough to swing his axe. Drew ducked in close enough to cast spark on the beast, but it didn't seem to affect the bug at all. He dodged back, not wanting to get in his group's way. His fingers moved in the motions that would allow him to cast another acid dart, but the spell was still on cooldown. He looked down the hallway, "Katie, walls! There are more of them." He could see another half a dozen cockroaches making their way down the hallway, the noise of combat having alerted them to a potential meal.
Katie backed away from the cockroach, shifting over to the other side of the hallway and casting a wall to block off the reinforcements.
Mitch took a step back, then shifting his grip on his axe again, he brought it in underneath the cockroach, flipping the bug up onto its back. It immediately began trying to right itself, but Mitch's follow up blows--hard overhand swings with the blunt end of the axe on its underbelly--kept the creature from doing anything. Katie and Sarah shifted their attention away from trying to do damage and instead started sweeping their spears at any legs that appeared to be getting traction, helping to keep the creature defenseless.
Drew watched the wall, and when he saw the first cockroaches begin to crawl over, he cast a cone of frost, which encased some of the bugs in ice along with the top of the wall but didn't seem to do any damage. Another cone of frostfire added a little damage and more slick ice. Drew angled a fireball to explode on the other side of the wall, hoping the kinetic energy of the explosion would keep them from making their way over the top of the wall. His spells damage didn't appear to be affecting the cockroaches, but their secondary effects had made scaling the wall difficult. With the seconds that bought him, he began casting ice storm, centered as far as he could see down the hallway.
Mitch had cracked most of the underbelly of the bug and blue ichor was leaking out of it slowly, but it had taken a dozen heavy swings. He switched to the sharp side of the axe now that the shell had been cracked and began cutting deep impacts into its flesh. The bug was mostly dead, which gave Sarah a chance to back up and cast a heal. Katie glanced behind her, and seeing Drew in the process of casting storm, prepared to cast another wall on top of the current one as soon as she felt the wind.
The storm exploded around them, the small confines of the hallway channeling it beyond its normal radius, and Sarah ducked an ice chuck that bounced off the wall above her and sent razor-sharp shards of concrete and ice raining down around her. Katie threw the prepared wall spell out and the impact of the storm lessened, although they could still feel and hear its fury through the small gap at the top of the ceiling.
Mitch finally killed the one cockroach he had been hitting for the last minute straight and grunted, his breath short. "Back to the stairwell, we can't fight these things," Drew said as he pushed the cart back the thirty feet they had managed to come down the hallway. Everyone else following behind him, casting glances behind them to ensure that none of the cockroaches managed to climb the wall and make it through the two-foot gap left at the top. Once back in the stairwell, Katie created a wall behind the door to prevent it from opening. Mitch and Sarah collapsed on the floor, the adrenaline wiping their energy reserves out.
The short fight and retreat from the cockroaches had taken a lot out of them mentally. Drew cast refresh on himself and kept watch while the other three slumped against walls.
"So, what do we do now?" Sarah asked, looking towards Drew while carefully picking ice and concrete out of her hair.
"We have a couple of options," Drew said after a few seconds of thought. Ticking his fingers down, he listed them for the group. "First, we can head back to the ambush spot and use the main staircase. We've already cleared the path, and with the walls in place, it should be relatively safe until we get there…" He trailed off, everyone filling in that they had been ambushed by the orcs there once already and would have to deal with whatever else they had prepared for them. "Two, we could go up to the second floor and head over to the western stairs and head down those."
"We'd have to break through the clinic, and even then, I'm not sure there's an exit to the far side of the stairwell. I tried coming up that way to get to the clinic once and got stuck behind it," Mitch offered. And everyone groaned, the joke before the building had turned into a dungeon was that whoever had designed it was trying to make a maze. It was clear that it was working against them now. The building was massive, meant to be the headquarters of the entire Department of Homeland Security. Movement through the building was far more complicated than it needed to be.
"Might not be a bad idea, might be able to grab some medical supplies while we're up there." Katie offered.
"But probably not worth getting stuck if there isn't a back door, especially since we have healing magic." Drew said with a shrug, "Anyway, our last option is going up to one and trying to make our way down the hill. Either way with options two and three we run the chance of running into more cockroaches or something worse."
The group considered their options in silence. "I think we need to do option one," Mitch offered, "We've already cleared that path, and with OS1's walls still in place, it's going to be the safest trip we have, and it gets us to where we really want to be. The other options are potentially riskier for worse results."
Sarah nodded her head in agreement with Mitch, "I agree, we could run into another bunch of cockroaches the other two ways and end up having to do option one anyway."
Everyone looked at Katie, "I don't really want to go back that way, but I guess it's better than the other options we have."
"Alright, back the way we came then," Drew said with a shrug, giving Katie a hand up while Mitch and Sarah picked up their weapons.
They made their way back to the central atrium, Katie unsummoning the walls as they went to clear the path. As they got closer everyone fell silent, the site of the ambush weighing on their psyches. When the last wall came down, Drew held up a hand. A faint thumping could be heard echoing through the space.
"What is that?" Sarah whispered. She was near the back, behind the cart. Mitch and Drew were in the front, Drew holding the rope of the cart, since it was the easiest for him to drop if they got into combat because everyone else carried a two-handed weapon.
"No idea," Drew motioned for Mitch to check it out. Mitch peered out and then looked back shrugging, "Nothing out there."
They left the cart there, no one wanting to drag it around when there might be a fight pending. The pounding echoed through the room, making it difficult to tell the source. "I think it's coming from…" Drew frowned, advancing on the tomb they had made for Juan. Sure enough, the pounding got louder as he put a hand on the wall. He could feel the faint vibrations as something pounded a dull rhythm against the inside.
"It's Juan," Sarah said, her voice tight and shrill.
Katie moved to dispel the walls and Drew raised a hand to stop her, "That can't be Juan. There's no air in there. The pounding is constant, no breaks for rest." Realization blanched everyone's faces as they stared, horrified, at the tomb.
"What do we do?" Katie asked the silence.
"Leave it," Drew said with a shudder, tearing his eyes away from the tomb to glance around the room. He hissed; there at the edge of the light were three forms. Impossibly tall, bipedal and covered in thick fur. The others looked up at Drew's wordless alarm and raised their weapons, backing up reflexively. The light shifted with them and the figures advanced, seemingly unwilling to come into the light, they nevertheless stalked forward as the light allowed. They appeared menacing, but not overtly hostile.
"Hello?" Drew called out, his fingers pointing at the figures ready to cast fireballs.
The biggest of the three walked slowly into the light, nearly eight feet tall and covered in thick black fur. Scraps of clothing seemed to cling to its torso, stretched near to the breaking point. One hand was shriveled and small, like you see in movies when something has been cut off and is slowly growing back, the last clue to its identity was the name tag, "Omondi" on the ripped ODU scraps still clinging to the body.
"Rob?" Drew asked, backing up with the others as the big figure approached. "Rob? Is that you?" The creature was taller than Rob by several feet, and Rob had been a larger guy already. The creature growled at him, baring fangs the size of Drew's fingers. Sarah let out a soft scream, dropping her spear. The group continued to back up until the light barely illuminated the tomb, where the thing that had been Rob stopped and pounded on the tomb's wall. Shards of concrete went flying from the impact. He continued to hit the surface until he had chipped away enough mass for a hole to appear.
Sticking the fingers of his good hand into the hole, the creature roared and with a loud crack more concrete went flying. The walls Katie had made apparently didn't have rebar support within them, as he was able to tear out chunks of the stuff. Feral light shone in Rob's eyes.
The group watched stunned as it dug Juan out, but what emerged from the tomb wasn't the Juan they had interred. Juan had been short, at five and a half feet. The thing that stood up in its place was just under seven feet, similarly covered in thick brown hair and powerfully built, his clothing shredded to account for the increase in size. The newly risen beast shrank away from the light of the glowstones. All four of the creatures retreated away from Drew's group, dragging the two orc bodies with them as they disappeared into the gloom of the hallway from where Drew had originally come.
"What the fuck?" Mitch asked after the strange scene had ended.
"Another 'gift' from the Advent," Drew said shakily. "Looks like human corpses turn into…" He paused, searching for the right words, "Wereghouls."
"What the fuck is a wereghoul?" Sarah asked, picking up her spear now that the threat was diminished. No one thought it unusual for the normally clean mouthed officer to curse; what they had just seen warranted the profanity.
"Nothing. Nothing that should exist. A lycanthrope like a werewolf but combined with a form of intelligent undead called a ghoul." Drew answered, his mind coming up with a solution from his days of playing Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons.
"Fuck, you're telling me that these things are intelligent undead werewolves?" Mitch asked, and Drew simply nodded his head.
"Why intelligent? They could be zombies?" Katie interjected.
"No, if they were zombies they would have attacked us. They were just coming to gather their new packmate and had plenty of food with the two orcs. We weren't worth the risk. They seem to be photosensitive. Although the one I saw earlier didn't seem to mind my torch, maybe just mana created light?" Drew mused, glancing around, "We should move, I don't really want to be here if they come back hungry." Drew nodded towards the stairs they had been too afraid to go down last time. It now seemed like a much better option than dealing with these wereghouls.
The group followed him, staying closer together than they had before--no one wanted to be near the edge of the light. Katie blocked up the door to the stairwell after they got in. It had taken the wereghoul that had been Rob several minutes of pounding to break through. It hadn't been quiet or quick, and all of them were happy with a little bit of time and warning before having to deal with the wereghouls again.
They descended two flights of stairs, ending up on the sixth floor. Only a few hallways and they would be out.
Drew sensed that it wouldn't be that easy though, and as soon as they exited the stairs he looked around. The coast guard paraphernalia that had decorated the floor had been trashed. In its place, scrawled on the walls in what looked to be blue blood, were strange symbols, angular and harsh with difficult to read words intermixed.
"Shit," Katie said when she saw them. "We're so fucked."