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Looking to the leaf, Arkhel made another groaning sound. He really didn't like the idea of eating anything at the moment, but if anyone knew plants, it would be Koi. He did his best to spit out the acid still in his mouth and throat before taking the leaf. He muttered a weak thanks before putting it in his mouth. He used his ofrmet facemast to wipe off his face, then pullen a new one from his bag. "Useless.." he muttered as he tossed the other to the flood. The acid in his vomit would be enough to eat through the cloth, so he didn't bother to try saving it. Considering the options, he almost puked again, since the only way out now would be to go through the... He could only think of it as a battlefield, to go out the main doors. There was no way to go back though the way they came, many had tried before to disastrous effect, but he didn't really want to have anything to do with whatever had killed all the Dwarves. There was only one thing he could think of that could possibly have done this much damage, but they didn't really exist.
Did they?
He had heard tales of so-called zombies before, but really, who believed that? There were liches and ghosts out, but not zombies. If they did exist, then how could they tell the "dead" in the city from the zombies? Assomung that they weren't all zombies, that is. As Arkhel's thought wandered, they became increasingly morbid. If not zombies, then maybe a dragon? A goblin raid? A raid from the surface races? A disease? None of the theories he tried quite matched the evidence, so he decided to ask Koi. "Hypothetically speaking," he began, "Is there anythingthing that could kill off an entire Dwarven city without leaving any trace except for a horrible stench?"

Arkhel hesitated at first, but then replied, unable to lie to her. "Yes. There's something very wrong. Turn off your wings and take my hand." He wasn't sure if they would survive the next ten minutes, but damned if he wasn't going to try.

Not willing to lie about such a horrible thing, Arkhel responded with a yes. "Yes, there is something wrong. Just take my hand and turn off your wings." Arkhel didn't add that their life expectancy would be about five more minutes if the Org was still in there.

"Just try to walk silently." Arkhel instructed. Whatever was in there might hear their wings, so they would have to walk. He started slowly, pulling her behind him, and trying to avoid paths where she might step on bodies. They wound through the dead city, heading towards the exit, until Arkhel stopped them at a dead end. A literal dead end. There was a pile of bodies, apparently these Dwarves had garnered the time to arm themselves. there was also something that caught Arkhel's attention. A little bit of movement. The movement was the shimmering of a coal, a remnant amongst the dry wood of what had been a blacksmith's shop. "Arkhel barely had time to register it before a sudden fire broke loose. "Just our luck!" He exclaimed quietly, hoping that the light wouldn't attract attention. Now Koi would be able too see what had happened. Arkhel readied to pick her up off the ground where she would almost certainly be falling, before jumping back up as an ear-splitting scream broke loose from behind the remnants of a nearby wall. More and more shrieks began to mount, until Arkhel felt that his ears would burst. It was obvious that they weren't alone. And that they were hopelessly outnumbered. There still wasn't a single enemy body in sight. Or so he thought. A small Dwarven child, held tight in the dieing embrace of it's mother,slowly opened up its eyes. The child was missing a portion of its skull, and it's innards were scattered about, leaving a ragged hole in the infant's stomach. The mother had apparently been killed while she cried over the death of her child. The little one's head lifted slowly, until it was looking straight at Arkhel and Koi. It just stared at them for ten seconds. Then its mouth burst open with another shriek that revealed a horrible mutated mouth. The child's teeth were no more, and in their place were vicious spikes of bone, with a writhing tentacle of a tongue behind them, flicking about like the body of a trapped snake.

Without answering her, or even asking her permission, Arkhel scooped Koi up and took off, flying upwards as fast as they could. he didn't make it far though, since something caught onto one of Koi's feet. Arkhel jerked to a stop, almost losing his grip of Koi, and looked down to see what had caught her. He almost dropped her again when he saw that the tentacle from the child's mouth had shot out to wrap itself around Koi's ankle. The bottom half of the child, which had previously been obscured from sight, appeared to be a sack that provided room for the monstrous tentacle that was intent on pulling them back down. The creature, for it could hardly still be called a child, began to lurch as it tried to reel them in, and the tentacle's slack could be seen squirming around inside the fleshy sack that occupied the space that the child's legs had been. The continuing screams seemed to be "waking" more and more of the corpses, and they lurched to their feet unsteadily, looking around with vacant eyes for their next meal. Arkhel had no idea why some of the zombies seemed different, but they were, and so he shouted over the screams that Koi should hold on. he wrapped her arms and legs around his chest and waist before he moved for his bow, which was safely mounted between his wings. As he pulled it free, he also pulled out an arrow, which he nocked with practiced ease. Taking careful aim, Arkhel launched the arrow down the length of the tentacle, ramming the arrow into the monster's head, severing the tentacle, which went limp and slowly slid off of Koi. As soon as she was free, Arkhel put his bow back and tried to get Koi to a position from which she could take off, freeing him up to try to kill as many of the creatures as possible before one killed him. As the child zombie shrieked out its last sound, another zombie threat emerged. A whole swarm of zombies started to move all over the city, as if directed by a hive mind, and they scrambled as a whole over rooftops, ruins, and other corpses, congregating below the unfortunate hybrids as they searched visually for a way out. only a few areas had illuminating fires, but Arkhel had a plan to put into action as soon as Koi was free of him.

"I'm working on it!" Arkhel shouted, dodging a tentacle that was attempting to capture him. He draw another arrow from his quiver, one with a little fire design instead of a conventional head. He felt the feathers to make sure it was the right kind, then nocked the arrow. As soon as the arrow and bow came into contact, the previously black, glass-like part began to glow a violent red, like a roaring flame. Dodging again, Arkhel took aim at the center of the city's remnants, and released the arrow. It flew in a relatively straight line, trailing smoke, before landing in the central square. The result was a sizable fireball. All the woodwork in the area caught aflame, lighting the cavern as if it were dusk on the surface, not the pitch-black dark of a cave. unfortunately, it meant that all the zombies could see them, and thay could see all the zombies. Arkhel for the first time noticed that some of the stranger zombies were beginning to climb the walls of the cave. Arkhel barely managed to snatch Koi off her seat before one of the zombies jumped off, all but flying to the spot where she had just been sitting. It spring boarded right off from there, launching itself at Arkhel, who did an aerial back flip, kicking the mutation out of the air with extreme prejudice.

As the zombie sailed back towards the ground, Arkhel drew a hidden combat knife from his right boot and flipped it to Koi. "Use that to defend yourself!" he instructed as he shot an arrow into the head of one of the zombies on the end if their chain, causing it to lose his grip on the wall, ending the entire group falling to the floor. More and more of the zombies were gathering below, and one of peculiar size caught Arkhel's attention. As he tried to discern its purpose, a zombie behind him again leaped for him, sailing though the air at the same moment that a small group of fleshy things began to glide out of the bell tower of a church.