Myth-ion Improbable by Robert Lynn Asprin

As Aahz helped Glenda up the stone ladder, Tanda and I went on up to the trap door. Since Aahz hadn’t taught me a spell yet that could sense if something was on the other side of a wall, or a floor in this case, I was leaving that up to Tanda.

“We still in the clear?” I asked.

“We are,” Tanda said.

I eased up to the wooden trapdoor and pushed slowly. The wood scraped as it went up, then the door seemed to catch on something. It took me a moment to realize it was a rug. From the looks of it, a very old rug.

I pushed even harder, and the rug lifted and pulled aside enough so that I could get through. I went halfway up through the trapdoor and stood, torch in the air, lighting the dark room.

Tanda had been right. From what I could see, no one was around. Just a bunch of tables and a wooden door leading off to the left. But the minute I stepped up and stood, I knew that Tanda and I had both been wrong. No one alive was around.

But the place was filled with dead people. Tables full of them.

Chapter Twelve

“There’s gotta be a way out of this dungeon.”

G. GYGAX

Okay, this was another first for me. I had never had the luck, opportunity, or bad timing to be in a room full of dead people. And these weren’t just any dead people, but people who had clearly had the life sucked out of them through their necks just the night before. There had to be at least fifteen or twenty bodies, all naked, with ugly marks on their necks, and eyes staring at the ceiling.

I stood, holding the torch in the air, not really wanting to move in any direction until the others were beside me. Not that I thought the dead could do anything to me, or that I was superstitious about dead spirits. I wasn’t, I was sure. I just didn’t want to make a wrong move until I had someone beside me, or at least that was what I told myself.