"What do you mean you’re the Fool, he’s supposed to be dead." Maya gave the mask a suspicious look.
"I am dead, but why should that stop me from talking?" The mask laughed.
"...are you a ghost?" Elita asked.
"No no no, nothing so scary."
"He’s a memic." Cassian stated.
The fake face jumped in joy.
"Haha! The boy guessed!"
Maya observed the strange creature before asking:
"What the hell is a memic?"
"Memetic mimic, or memic, is a conjured creature that possess a portion of memories from the mage who summoned them. They’re usually used as disposable clones meant for meanial jobs or tasks the real Mage can’t attend to."
"And you know this because...?"
"Because my father was a knight and we got invited to plenty of galas, if you don’t know nobles love to display their wealth - and what’s better than hiring one mage? Hiring him twenty times."
"Sounds like they’re easy to make."
"Excuse me, I am an exquisite piece of art designed specifically for this occasion!" The mask yelled with indignation.
Cassian studied the Fool’s clone for a moment.
"The complexity of a memic depends on quantity of memories you bestow upon him, the most basic ones have only one or two, but there were rare cases where mages have put copies of their entire minds into those summons."
"Wouldn’t that be akin to creating life?" Elira frowned.
"No, the created entity does not possess a soul, and is there for doomed to die as soon as it looses access to magic..."
The three of them looked at each other in realisation.
"The ambient magic... it’s here to sustain you, isn’t it?" Maya asked the mask.
"If you figure out all my secrets so quickly we’ll be out of things to talk about soon!" The jester laughed. "As a reward for you shrewdness I shall disable all the traps on this floor.
The cloud holding up the mask produced a loud sound of something popping, and suddenly the corridors were filled with light. A neat row of torches lined every wall, making the exploration substantially easier.
"You mentioned a game." Elira remembered. "How do we play?"
"Ohoho, it’s simple really! You just need to reach my final resting place without getting trapped."
"So we need to disarm traps and defeat undead?"
The Fool looked a little troubled.
"I’m afraid the second part wasn’t a part of the plan, but if you’re willing to roll with it I’ll prepare special rewards for you."
"Wait, you weren’t meant to raise the dead? Then why did you bring so much magic into the catacombs?!"
The voice coming from the mask now sounded slightly peeved.
"Well that’s because these tunnels were never meant to be the final resting place for anyone else! I designed those corridors as a fun maze, not a mausoleum - it’s not my fault that those idiots automatically assumed that an underground space MUST be intended as a crypt."
"Wait, if it wasn’t intended as a burial site how did they bring bodies in here with all the traps?"
"Well, the traps weren’t on back then obviously." If the mask had eyes it would have surely rolled them. "They’re connected to the same power source as the main array, and that thing was finished only a few decades after my death."
"You seem very keenly aware of the events that have taken place after your death, how is that possible?" Cassian questioned as they made their way to the second level.
"It’s very simple - I arranged for someone to be teleported to my tomb as soon as the array is on, so that I may be informed of everything that has taken place after my death and before I was conjured."
"How come I have never heard about it? I know it was centuries ago, but someone getting inside an unreachable crypt should be at least a myth or a folk tale."
"Why, I erased that guy’s memory of our encounter of course!" The mask chuckled. "It wouldn’t be a very good game if someone won it by coincidence, would it?"
"Interesting..." Elira nodded. "And do you know about the current state of the world?"
"You mean the invasion, Blightborn and the half-baked god that has taken over my city? Sure I do!"
They all stared at the mask in disbelief.
"What, did you think that guardian of yours is the only one with the access to the entire array? Bah, I should teach that little girl to mind her manners..."
"Your problems with Lady Sylara seem... personal." Maya pointed out.
"Of course they are, she dared to say my joke wasn’t funny! Can you even imagine?! My joke - not funny? Preposterous!"
"And how long ago was that?"
"... fifteen hundred years ago, she was seven." The Fool grumbled.
"Talk about holding grudges..." Maya snorted.
"I wouldn’t be so mad about it if her master didn’t ridicule me after that in front of so many people!" Then he mumbled. "Stupid tree hugger."
"I’d love to hear more about the interpersonal issues of immortals, but I think we should focus on clearing this ’game’ as soon as possible." Cassian stated.
"Ah, that’s right! You’re playing my game after all, I shouldn’t accompany you - I’ll see you at the end of the second level!"
The Fool suddenly popped out of existence.
"Great, let’s focus on finding a staircase."
They were in luck - apparently once the traps were off pretty much every tunnel led to the the next level, and they haven’t ran into any undead so far.
The entrance to the lower floor was just as dark as the initial plunge into the catacombs, and Cassian was very glad that Maya decided to keep the torch despite the brightness of the first level.
Elira pointed out traps on their way, and slowly but surely they advanced deeper into the tunnels - until they finally met one.
The corpse was so dry and old that it didn’t even smell anymore - it moved in a slow and unsteady fashion that could be attributes only to the undead. It didn’t help that one of its legs was missing half of the flesh, just like few other places on its body.
Its face was so destroyed that you could no longer tell how it looked when it was alive, with its large cloudy eyes and exposed gums lacking most of the teeth the sight was quite grotesque.
It also seemed to be completely unaware of their presence despite standing only a few meters away.
"A ghoul in a late stage of decomposition." Cassian whispered. " It’s significantly weaker than an average adult, and has most of its senses shut off"
Yesterday’s unpreparedness made him take the sword with him today despite the fact that they were supposed to be working on a lab, and it paid off.
With a single slash he chopped off the ghoul’s head and the body fell to the floor lifeless - well, more than it already was.
"To be honest it was suspiciously well preserved for a body this old." Elira pointed out.
"It was probably embalmed, maybe mummified." Maya said. "Important people did weird shit with their remains before the Sun Kingdom."
"...Which means it’s possible we’ll encounter other, more dangerous types of undead deeper in the catacombs." Concluded Cassian.
"Eh, I’m no mage but I don’t think the ambient magic in here could be so high to create anything more than a zombie, maybe a devourer at most."
The hierarchy of undead was very simple, the more powerful the creature the more ’alive’ they appear, and possess more means for maintaining their undeath.
Ghouls were at the very bottom of the pyramid, and they decomposed like regular bodies, making them little more than animalistic meat puppets.
Next up were Scavengers, their only advantage over ghouls was that they could devour other bodies in order to slow down their decomposition rate - but they couldn’t reverse or stop it.
Zombies were a bit of a special case, while they couldn’t restore themselves, they would also never rot beyond the point they were risen at. Their intelligence still wasn’t great and could only fulfill simple commands.
After zombies were Devourers, those were the first ones that could be mistaken for a human from afar - by consuming flesh of the living they could maintain the appearance they had at the moment of their death- in some cases it meant they were nigh indistinguishable from the living, as long as you didn’t try to talk with them.
Vampires needed no introduction, the cursed bloodsuckers were not only significantly stronger than humans, but they were smarter and virtually immortal.
At the top of the totem pole sat Liches, the true kings of undead. They fed on souls and we’re indestructible unless you found and destroyed all of their vessels.
Maya kindly informed Cassian that the Withered also followed a similar formula, but unlike the undead where only Vampires could turn you into one of them, ALL of the withered were capable of infecting others.
Cassian just prayed that the catacombs were as shielded from the Blight as the city above.