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antics-pedantic · 5 years ago

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RALLY CO. #3: THE RACKETEER PART 3

Rib-Eye Renzo was valuable. That’s why Don Malvoli holed him up in a hotel whose owner was on their take. Cozy little spot, though hardly luxurious. So he tried to sneak out as often as he could to go shopping for things to help stave off the frustration of being stuck here until the job was done. Malvoli’s thugs were his security, but Renzo knew ways to convince them into relaxing their guard.

“Mister Renzo! Whatcha getting’ us today?”

The neighborhood kids were set to heckle him again. But Renzo didn’t mind: For a little pocket change he’d buy them some candy or a small toy. He couldn’t spend too much all at once, but it felt nice to at least do something until this business working for Don Malvoli was squared away. The nearest grocer or butcher shop would provide him with ribeye steaks, the fresher the better. And then he could resume his divining for the gang.

Just as he was carrying his paper bags of personal things like toilet paper and deodorant—and a lone plastic bag, tied to secure the ribeye steaks within, he bumped into someone who had stopped by to purchase the latest newspaper from a corner stand run by a teenager.

“Oh! Dreadfully sorry, my man. Allow me to help you.” said the fellow Renzo bumped into.

“Aw! I’m sorry, I shoulda been payin’ attention. Real lousy and lout-like I was—what.”

Renzo perked up when he recognized the famous occult detective, Solomon Callahan! Did that mean that Callahan was onto him? And that Rally Co. bunch that had come back—he’d heard of them! And how they fought ferociously against fiends, despite being new to the adventuring scene.

“Something the matter, my friend?” said Solomon. The older man couldn’t place what it was, but he tried to maintain a calm appearance. Solomon had no intention of frightening Renzo. In fact, the occult detective wasn’t even looking for him.

“Here, you dropped your ribeye steaks! Fresh looking cuts, you’re a lucky—”

But mid-speech, Renzo had just stood up and started jogging away, terrified. Solomon took up the groceries and hurried after, confused but determined to ask what was bothering the poor man.

“Ya told me you wasn’t followed!” exclaimed a woman in a fancy vest, and shirt with folded up sleeves. One of Don Malvoli’s captains: Menace Melanie, as she was called.

“Get off my back, Mel!” sputtered another gangster, who had tied a bandanna around his mouth. “It was a whole blasted chase! And look!”

The lowly gangster gestured to his car: Three other enforcers, all knocked out.

“If I hadn’t taken the wheel and covered my mouth… You shoulda caught a whiff of that juice! They had these fancy pellet-capsule things filled with the crap. Each shot enough to lay out my boys. I ways swayin’ through traffic just catching the secondhand… gas!”

“Well whaddya waiting for?!” bellowed Melanie, before waving to a few other goons to grab their weapons. “They’re gonna crash this joint real soon! So we gotta nix ‘em before all our product and operations in this neighborhood get busted!”

“No, I mean—there it is now!”

Melanie turned to see some of the pellet-capsule things colliding with the wall: She’d just lost a couple more guys to these things, as Felix and Tycho came charging in.

“Prepare ta be blasted!” bellowed Tycho, letting loose with a barrage of impellets. The remaining gangsters let loose with their own weapons, as impellets and bullets flew every which way.

“I’ll do the blasting, pintsworth!”

Ez wasn’t far off, flicking the cap off of a test tube and lobbing it forward to create a small explosion.

“They missed us! We’ve got ‘em!” cried a gangster.

“You idiot!” screeched Melanie. “It’s a smoke bomb!”

Melanie stumbled through the smoke, trying to get away when she caught a glimpse of Felix trailing after her. Ez snuck up on a gangster from behind and poured a handful of impellets into their back, forcing them forward and falling into an open crate. Tycho found a ladder propped up against a stack of crates, and began to climb it, before dropping onto a gangster with a body slam.

“Your number’s up, Mel!” exclaimed Felix, between coughs as the criminal captain struggled to open a backdoor that would have led into the alleyways.

“I ain’t done yet, you goody two-shoes!”

Menace Melanie drew a switchblade and thrusted it forward at Felix, who took up her jutte with her free hand and used it to redirect the blade in a circular motion. The lightning fast motion twisted Melanie’s arm and forced her to let go.

“We want to know about the rising star.” said Felix sternly. “Don Malvoli. Last I heard, the old bosses weren’t stirring up such trouble.”

“You’re right about that—guy’s a pain in the ass. He had a lot of grief with all the other syndicates. Our old lead, Gramps Toretti took him in on account of the fact Malvoli wouldn’t have made it on the streets on his own as a youngster. But too much pity went around for that little bastard. He had free rein to live comfy. Took some of our… less disciplined people and they all put together a plan. Took out Toretti together.”

“And now you’re just following him? Isn’t anyone going to stand up?”

“You don’t get it: He made friends with all the meanest legbreakers, and the saps who run the numbers, balance our business books. All the guys we used to keep in check before he talked Toretti into letting ‘em roll with him. An idiot like Malvoli needs people stronger and smarter than him to buy into his schemes. And if nothing else, Malvoli could sell a sob story. Made all of the slimeballs—even among mobsters, see themselves in him.”

Felix scowled at the thought. Malvoli might have had a rough life, but that was no excuse for his actions now. The only one he aimed to help now that he had the power to do so, was himself! All others would be his pawns. Loyal to him, but never the reverse.

“I’ll tell you where he is, if you think you’re tough enough to stick it to him.” said Melanie. “But be warned: He’s turned to some mumbo jumbo and monsters. Another reason why we couldn’t jump him ourselves. But I hear you Rally Co. people got some tricks of your own in the weirdo department.”

“Quite a way to phrase it, but yes.”

Felix dragged Melanie back over with her fellows, and the lot of them were bound to a pole with chains found by Tycho. Once Felix had the information she wanted, she nudged the shorter adventurer.

“I’m going to call Solomon to inform him of our findings. I thought I’d let you know there’d be a cryptid involved.”

“Any idea what kind?” said Tycho.

“Hopefully nothing large. I could do without a big monster for a while… That and I doubt its size because I’d have caught wind about the gangs carrying something like that, or using it against enemies.”

Meanwhile, from a nearby van parked on the curb, a couple of jumpsuit-clad working men were staking out the scene: And In the back, one more of their number keeping a caged beast at bay.

“They’re boutta go.” said a gangster, adjusting their jumpsuit and cap repairman disguise. “Let that thing out already before they get away.”

“Youse got it.”

The third gangster opened the rear doors, and turned the cage to open it: As Felix had suspected, it wasn’t a terribly large cage. But it was spacious enough the nimble cryptid within could move around. Agility was the ally of this one.

“Hey, is it out yet?!”

“Don’t scream at it, Agata—”

But it was too late. The nimble little cryptid reached out a limb and latched onto Agata’s face, becoming a flurry of pain for the two gangsters up front. At least, until one of them could roll down the window in time to allow the cryptid to escape. But by the time they did, their faces looked as if they’d been belted one too many times by a handful of stones and a nightstick.

“If I was one of them gangsters, Felix,” started Tycho, as the two headed back for the car. “I’d get one of the biggest, meanest jerks I could. And tough luck if they’re too chicken to get a real beasty! In fact, I’ll bet they just up and got an oversized chicken to come after us.”

But before Felix could respond, the two perked up at a sound: Something hopping along the roofs of the parked cars. Felix would reach into her jacket for a weapon, but by the time she’d fired off a couple of impellets, the approaching aggressor had seemingly vanished. When she turned, she spotted Tycho wresting with something, as the two fell into the shadows of an alleyway.

“Tycho?!”

Tycho was swinging his fists, trying to find his opponent, but something caused him to bash his fists into the nearby brick wall. He would have cried out, but the cryptid had its tail around his mouth. It had meant to ensnare his throat, but the stout cryptozoologist was not easily taken.

“I can’t get a clear shot!” exclaimed Felix. She tried to move in to pry the thing off of Tycho, but he gestured for her to stay back. As Tycho teetered back into the light, she could see just what it was: Some sort of monkey, but the tail seemed to have a stony layer, rendering it a deadly weapon.

“Mmmph!” Tycho sounded off. Just as Felix watched, Katrina and Ez had wheeled up in the car. Katrina of course, was quick to try and use her telekinesis to tr and remove the cryptid. But as its legs were forced off, it simply latched on with its arms, while its stony tail whacked Tycho over the head repeatedly.

“Eep!” cried Katrina. She pulled at the arms now. It latched on again with the legs, that club-like tail battering Tycho some more until finally, Katrina got the idea to levitate it by its tail.

“Tycho! Oh, I am so sorry dear.” said Katrina. “Are you well?”

But the Irishman was dizzy from the assault. And all he could blurt out was:

“Slàinte!”

“I’m almost glad for Malvoli’s rotten luck…” sighed Ez. “Felix being able to intercept Dr. Leistung’s creation, and now Katrina capturing this little nuisance? Otherwise Don Malvoli might have actually had a hypercompetent fighting force.”

“Issa Granite-tailed Howler.” puffed Tycho, holding his head in his hands as he recovered. “They’re not as bad in the wild if ye leave ‘em alone. But this one was steamin’ mad.”

“Ah, that’s always how it is with distant relatives, you foolhardy orangutan!” said Ez, getting some things from her bag. “Come here, Tycho. Let me see how badly that thing hurt you.”

The next morning, Don Malvoli was at a golf course upstate, outside of the city of Arcadia. But despite his best efforts, he never could seem to get a hole in one… or anything resembling getting his golf ball into the hole. And his instructor had long since been threatened into near silence. Rib-Eye Renzo was driving a golf cart over to Malvoli’s spot, with the third gangster from the night prior—who had disguised themselves as a repairman or some such.

“Renzo! What gives?! I thought I told youse to stay put!”

“That’s just it, boss!” cried Renzo. “I ran into Solomon Callahan on the way to getting more divining steaks. And this goomba here says they not only busted Menace Melanie, they caught your cryptid!”

“What?! But I ordered a big monster!” spat Malvoli, moving for the repairman-gangster with an impotent thirst for blood in his eyes. But Renzo had stepped in.

“Wouldn’t you eh… rather have me peer into the future? I only got one steak left and it’s been goin’ bad fast!”

“What? Oh, aw right, Renzo. Keep me updated… They mighta found youse, but I guess you technically ain’t failed me yet.”

Renzo nodded meekly and took out a plastic bag he’d filled with ice. There was a ribeye steak starting to lose its crimson shade. But he held it up to his eye, as it peered through the round bone, and into the future.

“Well?” said Malvoli.

“I see… I see…!” chanted Renzo. Malvoli just stared for a while, before Renzo slapped the steak a bit before putting it back up to his eye. Malvoli himself proceeded to slap Renzo about the face.

“Whaddya see, wiseguy?!”

“Gah! Alright, alright! I see lotsa guns firing. Rally Co., and a spectacular ambush!”

“Is it ours or theirs?!”

“I can’t see so good no more. This steak’s bit the dust.”

Malvoli’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head at Renzo’s inability to clarify. But then he just started laughing.

“That’s good, that’s good! I’m gonna set up an ambush of my own… That way, Rally Co. ain’t gonna get the jump on us! Cause see, we’ll get the jump on them!”

“Wow. Real swell plan, boss.”

“Damn right. Now get outta my sight. Get yourself some new steaks!”

Renzo nodded and scurried back to the cart. But before the gangster-repairman could join him, Malvoli beckoned for him to turn around. And then with a swing, Malvoli walloped the nine-iron against the repairman-gangster’s rump, an anguished cry ensuing as Malvoli forked over some extra money for his golf instructor to help him beat the underling up.

Renzo had caught a ride back to the city. Took a walk for a while to clear his head, but that did little good for the stress. So it was back to his safehouse to try and relax. He’d go in thirty minutes to get a fresh steak. Working for Don Malvoli was such pressing work—in the past he’d just been counted upon to help win at gambling. Horse races and blackjack at the underground casinos and backroom card games. Still criminal, but Gramps Toretti kept him away from any drugs or death-dealing actions. Easy enough since Toretti put the organized in organized crime. Settled things with conferences between the local syndicate leads before coming to blows. Now, it was like Don Malvoli used him for every little thing. Regardless whether there was blood to be had or not.

And under Malvoli, they went from fencing goods, gambling and embezzlement to plans for heavier drug trafficking, protection and loan sharks, arms dealing, and controlling prostitution with an iron grip. And with that the rival syndicates would step up to try and match Malvoli’s high stakes operations. Renzo felt a little guilty at first—Toretti’s jobs weren’t exactly noble. But now they were taking more money from the neighborhoods and less from the banks or the suits uptown.

There was a knock at Renzo’s door. One of the thugs guarding Renzo had drawn a pistol, and gone to check: It was some of the kids from down the block. The ones he’d bought candy for whenever he was out.

“Mister Renzo, you can’t do this!”

“What?! What’d I do?!” cried Renzo. One of the kids had lunged at Renzo, battering him with their fists to a little over minimal effect.

“Papa’s store! Your bums wrecked Papa’s store! He never snitched on your gang, and this is how you pay him back?!”

Renzo shouldn’t have been shocked. But Leonardi’s shop was around as long as Renzo could remember. Renzo himself used to go in there to bring the best ingredients home to cook. And now here was Leonardi’s kid, blind in his desire for bloody vengeance.

“That’s enough, peanut.” said the guard, ushering the children away. “Get lost before you get hurt.”

Renzo sat there a while. This had to end. He was privy on Don Malvoli’s schemes. Heck, even out of his good graces he could combine his knowledge of the mob with his divining power. Put an end to this all! But how could he? The police would never trust him. And Rally Co. was crashing as many operations in town as they could, weren’t they?

“Hey, yer steaks are here. I didn’t know they delivered.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah! All classy-like with that suit. At least ya don’t have to worry about going out in public no more for a while.”

Renzo looked up to see Solomon Callahan as the door closed. He held in his hands a small crystal, of which Renzo caught a glow. It was the sort of arcane stone that alerted one to other mystical powers in the area, the glow stronger the closer the source was. And once the door shut and Renzo had a chance to test one of the steaks, Solomon was certain he’d found the place: The crystal grew even more brilliantly.

“Mr. Callahan?”

It was Felix. She had helped Solomon stake the street, and follow Renzo around the area unseen.

“That fellow you said you needed help shadowing. Is he?...”

“Not so loud, my young friend. But yes, you were right.”

Solomon gestured for Felix to follow him outside. They could not linger here, but they also did not depart from this street right away. The more experienced occult detective between the pair of investigators pressed his index and middle fingers to the temple of his skull, and he glanced back up.

“Do not make a sound. Your bodyguard needn’t know of this commune.”

“It really was you!” thought Renzo, responding to Solomon’s telepathy. “I’ll come quietly. I’ll confess to everything, but you’ve got to get your Rally Co. bunch to lay off! I want to help bring in Don Malvoli!”

“Perhaps. But for the time being we need you to stay in his good graces. Can we count on you, Renzo?”

“Yeah! Youse ain’t gonna regret this none, Callahan. But I should warn ya: After some fortune telling, Malvoli’s settin’ up an ambush of his own.”

“Where?”

“Dunno yet. He’s been private with that info. You’ll have to be careful wherever youse guys track him!”

Solomon looked over to Felix.

“Felix. Inform the others: Rib-Eye Renzo is with us. But Don Malvoli has prepared an ambush at an unknown time and location.”

Felix’s eyes widened with astonishment at Renzo’s change of heart. But nodded.

“I’ll do you one better, sir: I’ll snoop around and find out just what… then we’ll mount our own counter-attack!”

#Rally Co.#Web Fiction #Antics Pedantic #Rally Co. 3

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krogthebattleprince · 6 years ago

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Jack Nazareth, The Beggar King, Part 1: The Tomb of Mauzolous

Slightly Later Than the Beginning of Our Story…

“Bad idea! Bad, bad, bad idea!”

“We are pretty much out of options- kind of don’t have a choice here!”

Even over the rush of river water and the roar of the waterfall, Jack Nazareth could hear the army of fish people and their abominable, underwater pets fast approaching. The din was one of bubbling language: half-croaking frog burps and sloshing squeals. It was terrifying in its own right. Only slightly less terrifying was the waterfall directly in front of him that promised to lead deeper into the sunken city beneath the waves. Between being captured, flayed and devoured, or throwing himself over the edge of the cataract into the depths of unknown horror, Jack’s alternatives were few and grim.

The little dragon on his shoulder knew as much, too. “I knew it. I knew the day I met you in Mauzolous’s Tomb, you were going to be the death of me.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Jack replied resolutely, his voice devoid of its typical mirth and arrogance.

“You think you can survive that plunge?”

“I can as long as I have the Anchor.”

“Yet I cannot help but notice you’re choosing the course of action to which you believe your odds of survival are higher,” the little dragon pointed out. “We’ve never actually tested whether or not the Anchor makes you immortal- we’re just assuming that’s how it works. And someone’s confidence is shaky, no?”

“Will you shut up for a second so I can think?!” Jack snapped back.

Several of the fish people came racing around the corner behind them, and charged.

“You have run out of seconds, beggar king,” the little dragon reckoned.

He agreed. “Ready to find out if your life flashes before your eyes in your last moments?”

“I have lived an incalculably long time, human.”

“Well,” Jack peered over the edge of the falls, “it is an awfully long way down.”

“By the way- what makes you think they won’t just follow us? They’re fish people. I imagine jumping off waterfalls and into dark pools with no discernible bottom is a fairly average mid-morning jaunt for them.”

“Stop poking holes in my ideas and just hang on tight.”

“Sure. Great. Such wisdom.”

“Here we go!” Jack spread his arms wide and threw himself over the edge of the cataract just moments before the black, shiny claws of the fish people could grab hold of his flowing tunic. The clothe fluttered out behind him like the feathers of some great, plummeting raptor as it was ripped from the heavens and hurtled towards the cold grip of the earth. He could hear their squealing, burping voices fall away from him as he dove towards the pool of oblivion far below. Disappointingly, his life did not in fact flash before his eyes as he fell. Just a series of poor life choices that ultimately led to him having to fling himself off the edge of an underwater river that ran through the heart of a lost, sunken city because he had managed to somehow offend the elite class of a highly developed aquatic human hybrid society.

Pretty much par for the course.

Introduction Story: The Tomb of Mauzolous

Something to the tune of two hundred and fifty years prior to the waterfall incident, Jack Nazareth had been a, more or less, regular sort of hopeless, rock-bottom, going nowhere gentleman criminal. No, you read that correct- two hundred and fifty years, but we will address that pesky little gap in time shortly. Our (what we will very unfortunately have to call him as there is nothing heroic about Jack whatsoever) hero in these stories will find himself quite lost soon enough- although, not lost in the world, but rather lost in the spaces between time. Have you ever had trouble finding your way through the streets of an unfamiliar city? Imagine that city stretched infinitely in every direction, and you no longer remembered how to get back to the home you started out from. Herein, was the plight of Jack Nazareth.

However, at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, let us instead start back at the day his life took an unexpected turn for the… well, unexpected. Jack was sitting in a sandy, hot, low-ceilinged tavern named- actually, it is not really important what the tavern was named, just that he was there in a perfectly nondescript place at the edge of a completely mundane existence in the midst of a totally unassuming universe. He was at his favorite little inn with one of his least favorite people: a titanic, beast of a man called Vilos. Vilos was a mercenary, and Jack was a sell-sword, and their paths occasionally crossed having similar lines of work. Just because they sometimes worked together, however, in no way obliged Jack to enjoy the company of Vilos.

You see, Jack fancied himself a bit of a vagabond poet, a sort of romantic murderer-for-hire that made his way in an unforgiving world by living just beyond the border of morality. He was found to be of above average cleverness, eloquent to a point that most people accused him of having flowery speech, and slightly overly self-assured. A pair of glimmering, boyish eyes under his fair brow were always a gaze away from suggesting he did not so much enjoy the life of being a sell-sword, that if it were within his means he would leave it behind for a life of contemplation and civility, but clearly enjoyed the hustle all the same. Jack was a walking contradiction, not quite the poet, but not quiet the cold-blooded killer, a man at odds with himself.

Vilos, on the other hand, was perfectly content being a world-class son-of-a-bitch. He was gigantic, and used his size to crush his way past anyone who dared suggest he was wrong in the slightest about anything. Loyalty to him was something to be bought and sold like a commodity or any other goods, and he was unapologetic about this. Worse, apart from his immense size that was wielded strictly in the interest of the highest bidder, he was boorish, uneducated, and unwilling to be open minded about anything other than money. Vilos was exactly the kind of typical mercenary that Jack hated to be associated with. And yet, all too often, they had to work together.

On that particularly auspicious day where nothing out of the ordinary was happening whatsoever, Jack and Vilos were sitting at a dimly lit, wooden table, debating the finer things in life.

“I just…” Jack was at a loss for words, “I cannot possibly accept your stance. More often than not I pride myself on being a man of wisdom- one who thinks critically and can see beyond just my own opinions or judgements. Yet, I find I just cannot reach the ground you are on, Vilos.”

“Why not?” the titanic man sitting opposite grunted as he wiped white suds of ale from his enormous, black beard. “I am right. Accept it.”

Jack tapped the wooden table several times for emphasis. “But how does one not enjoy cheese?”

“It flummoxes the gut and fouls the bowels, just as all things of dairy persuasion do. It is the byproduct of the blood of demons,” Vilos snarled.

“You know, considering your propensity for being ill-spoken, you do occasionally challenge my perceptions and prejudices of you.”

“I don’t know what you just said,” the larger man growled, “but if you say it again, I’ll cut your tongue out.”

“That feels more like the normal.” Jack nodded and made a disgusted face.

Vilos belched loudly. “I want more beer.” He got up to leave for the bar.

Jack looked at his empty cup. “No, that’s fine, I can get my own, no need to offer.”

He was just about to get up and follow the larger man to the bar, when the tavern door opened and a woman walked in. This was the kind of inn where women often entered, though they tended to be of a certain profession, and this particular woman was clearly not. She walked differently, and her dress was modest even if her features were anything but plain. Her eyes were inquisitive as they scanned the bar, but not suspicious or afraid. It was clear she was looking for something, that she knew what it would look like when she saw it, and was not interested in wasting time on compromise. Yes, Jack could tell off that just by how she was considering the patrons of the tavern. At least, that’s what he told himself. Either way, he was immediately struck by the woman’s presence, and found himself drawn to her magnetically.

“Today is about to get a whole lot better.” Jack ran his fingers through his hair, adjusted his sword at his side, and tried to take a drink from an empty cup. He looked at it quizzically as though he had already forgotten he was off to get another drink, and cast the humble tankard aside. “Drinks here are shit anyway.”

Jack swaggered across the bar like a jungle cat he had once read about in a book he had half-thumbed through, and sidled up next to the woman at the bar. He gave her a flippant nod, and did his best to sound detached and disinterested.

“The company in this place can be so atrocious- it’s almost unfathomable to find the right kind of person. You know what I mean?”

She fixed him with an icy stare. “If everyone in here is as insufferable as you, then yes, I would say I know exactly what you mean.”

Jack threw up his hands, and immediately became defensive. “Whoa, hey, I was just trying to say hello, that’s all.”

“A suggestion- the next unfortunate soul you approach: just say, ‘hello.’”

“Of course, of course.” He chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive me. I am simply unused to meeting someone of such singularly alluring presence in this desert-rat infested place.”

She gave him a look. “I doubt you are used to talking to a woman, period.”

Jack opened his mouth to respond, but just as he did, Vilos approached and made an equally charming introduction.

“This tavern is nearly drunk dry,” he said to Jack. The massive mercenary’s eyes turned towards the woman. “We should sleep together. I’m huge.”

She blinked a few times, perhaps in complete shock, and perhaps because the invitation was all too churlishly familiar. “Yes, well. As charming as the two of you have been, I do have business to attend to. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Well, wait a minute,” Jack tried to stop her. “What’s your business? Obviously you came here looking for a certain sort of help, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this tavern. Perhaps I can offer the kind of assistance you are seeking.”

“Yeah, me too,” Vilos said. “If you’re paying money, anyway.”

She fixed Jack with a cold, steely stare. “Just what business are you in?”

“I am a sell-sword,” he replied proudly.

“Hm.” She raised her eyebrows and made a noise like it was painfully obvious already what his profession was. “And you?” Her eyes flitted disgustedly towards Vilos.

“Mercenary.” He belched and picked up a half-eaten loaf of bread someone had left behind on the bar and took a noisy bite out of it.

She cleared her throat. “I see. Unfortunately, ahem, gentlemen, I am not certain either one of you qualify for what I am seeking. Mercenaries are not necessarily what I need.”

“Then you have no need for my large and ill-mannered occasional accomplice,” Jack interjected. “I am no mere mercenary- I am a sell-sword.”

With a squint, she asked, “And just what exactly is the difference?”

“My blade is for hire- I kill only when and if the price is right, and only when and if I agree to a job. I have rules that I abide, and not everyone is necessarily welcome to my services.”

Vilos snorted. “I don’t care what you want me to do. If you pay me, I’ll do it.”

Jack made a face. “That is the difference, my lady.”

“Seriously,” Vilos went on, “I’ve done it all. If you pay me, I’ll scoop someone’s eyes out with a spoon, brand their feet with hot irons, tear their ribs out with a hook, just ask. And pay me.”

Her eyes went wide. “That list is far too specific for those not to be actual examples of your work.”

Vilos shrugged. “Once or twice.”

“Really? All of them?”

“Yeah.” Vilos took another loud bite of the stale bread he found. “They hurt.”

“You see?” Jack took the opportunity to build on his pitch. “Vilos here is an animal. I’m certain whatever job you need done requires more finesse than what he offers.”

“Call me an animal again.” Vilos chomped on the heel of the loaf. “I’ll break your teeth out one at a time.”

“And only earlier you threatened to cut out my tongue. Losing track of our threats?”

The massive mercenary snorted. “Keeping them fresh.”

“Again,” the woman said loudly, “I do not think either of you offer the particular brand of talent I require for my purposes. I am not looking to have anyone murdered, or their eyes scooped out or their feet branded, or whatever else it is you do.” She looked exasperatedly at Vilos again. “Really? All of that?”

Again, he shrugged. “It hurts.”

“Pain is not what I am here to hire, nor is death.”

“Then just who are you, and what are you looking for?” Jack asked pointedly, quite put out with the course the conversation had taken.

She sighed. “My name is Elie. I practice the mystical arts.”

It was Jack’s turn to affix her with an extremely suspicious look. “Mystical arts? You mean magic.”

“Yes, for the uninitiated, magic. And…” she paused for a moment, “I steal things.”

“Steal things?”

“Occasionally. Mostly because spell elements are often too expensive to buy outright… or too difficult to come by in abundance.”

Jack laughed. “I’m certain. Well, are you any good?”

She gave him a a subtly furious look. “What did you say your profession was again?”

“I’m a sell-sword.”

“Right. So, sell-sword, where exactly is your blade?”

Jack reached down to tap the hilt of his trusty weapon, but his hand met an empty space where it should have been. His eyes went wide as he grasped for a nonexistent sword, until he felt something very sharp tap him between his legs. He looked down to find Elie was holding his weapon, and had placed its edge rather dangerously next to his nether region.

He coughed quietly as she held the sword an uncomfortably long time. “Magic? Or did you steal it?”

She smiled curtly. “Either way, I think I proved my point.”

“You certainly did.”

Elie finally handed the sword back to Jack. “Thank you, Mr. Sell-Sword, for the chance to demonstrate. If you’ll excuse me, this has been a colossal waste of time, and I do have business to attend to.”

“I’m not convinced it was such a waste of time,” he tried one more time to stay her exit. “Clearly two talented individuals such as ourselves were not brought together by accident. This meeting has a touch of kismet to it, yes?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I have no need of a murderer for hire, where I’m going. So, unless you are as gifted at thieving as you are making a fool of yourself, then I maintain we are concluded.” Elie chided him patronizingly just a bit further. “Have you ever stolen anything?”

Jack smiled slyly. “I’ve stolen hearts.”

Before Elie could object to his misplaced, uninvited flirtation, Vilos interrupted.

“So have I. Still have several of them with me. You want to buy one?” He reached into the satchel at his side and started to rummage through its contents.

“Gods, no!” Elie held out her hands in objection and pleaded the mercenary not draw a gory horror out of the depths of his bag. “Not ever.”

Vilos shrugged, but went back to his drink.

Jack quickly interjected before Elie could slink away in disgust. “So you need to rob someone. Do I gather that correctly? I can still be of assistance in your endeavor. My blade is for hire, though if you do not wish to direct it to slay, it can be instead used to defend. Certainly you will need protection on this job, right? Why not hire the best sword jockey in the desert?”

“Whatever you’re going to pay him for the job,” Vilos shoved Jack out of the way, “I’ll do it for less.”

Jack looked at the mercenary aghast. “You are just… the worst negotiator, do you know that?”

“Beds are cheap, so is ale. I want to get drunk and sleep.”

“See, this is your problem, Vilos- you have absolutely no vision. You never see beyond the immediate, you’re not planning for your future.”

“I’ll die someday. Future planned.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Ms. Elie, I do apologize, but I can assure you…” By the time he turned back towards the young woman, she was already nearly to the door.

Now, Jack Nazareth may have been quite adept at pointing out the flaws in thinking of his large and dimwitted companion, but recall- he himself was a sell-sword going nowhere. In an age where shining kingdoms lay stretched across the broad Sha’rahn desert, when the mighty colossuses of ancient times rose proudly against the setting sun, at the very edge of the birth of the great empire, he was an insignificant speck of sand under the boots of stirring titans. And on top of being completely inconsequential, he was very nearly out of money. It had been an arduously hot, slow summer, and even in a city as violent and sand-scattered as Zagron, killing work had been sparse. For all his talk of considering the future and keeping an eye on what was to come, Jack was basically totally broke. And he was not about to let the first job prospect to walk through the door of his favorite tavern in two weeks walk away without really making a case for why he should be a part of it. Even if he had absolutely no skills whatsoever that might be useful in such an endeavor.

“Wait!” he shouted after her. Nearly tripping over his own sandals, he crossed the bar and scooted around the young woman before she could leave. “Admittedly, this was probably not the best first impression.”

“You think?”

“Hear me out,” he said breathlessly. “If you think you’re going to find anyone in this city with a better moral compass than me, you’re setting yourself up for massive disappointment.”

Elie looked at him quizzically. “You kill people. For money.”

“Yes, that’s true, but I also have rules!” Jack defended. “Principle among is no matter the counter-offer, never to turn on my employer. A mercenary like Vilos, he’ll sell you out for the next shiniest object, and Zagron is full of cutthroats, torturers and thieves just like him. It’s not just my blade that is for sale, but also my loyalty. If you have a job that needs done and you want someone to count on, hire me. You’ll be in the safest place in the desert- behind my sword, not in front of it. Just make an offer.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is another one of your rules to say with one hundred words what you could have said with ten?”

“What ten would you have used, Ms. Elie?”

The young woman counted on her fingers. “Give me money and I promise not to kill you.”

He considered it for a moment. “Still leaves an awful lot of ambiguity, don’t you think?”

Despite herself, Elie smiled slightly. “You are persistent, I’ll give you that.”

“Is that a job offer?”

“Maybe you’d like to hear what I’m actually trying to acquire first.”

“We don’t care,” Vilos approached and clapped a heavy hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Pay us. We’ll steal it.”

Elie looked at the large mercenary undecidedly. “I was not looking to hire a gang.”

Vilos grinned through his thick black beard and yellowing teeth. “Too late. You just did.”

***

Away from the noise of the bar and the crowded tavern floor, tucked in a small booth lit by a tiny lantern throwing of a dim, yellow glow, over the grumbling of the inn patrons and the roar of the Sha’Rahn desert winds outside, Elie laid out her plan. Of course, she was not able to do so completely without interruption or ill-mannered interposing on the part of Jack and especially Vilos. She had just opened her mouth to explain the heist she was hiring for when Vilos tossed aside his cup, snorted loudly and picked something green and slimy out of his teeth.

“Gonna need another drink.”

Elie could not hide her revulsion. “Do you ever stop drinking?”

“Never thought to.”

“He’s not kidding,” Jack motioned at his erstwhile companion. “The thought literally has never crossed his mind. If you were hiring for brains, you got halfway there with me- Vilos on the other hand has a certain lack of cerebral hardiness.”

The immense mercenary glared at him. “For a tiny man, you say a lot of things.”

“Are the two of you willing to calm yourselves for a few moments so I can explain what we are doing, or should I skip right to the part where I regret all of this?” Elie put a stop to their childish bickering.

Jack waved her on. “Proceed.”

“Talk.” Vilos grunted.

Elie nodded. “Have you ever heard of-”

“Never mind, already bored. Going to get beer, just tell me later what I need to hit.” Vilos stood up and crashed his way back to the bar.

Jack sighed. “He’s really quite good at what he does. Though, come to think of it, I cannot for the life of me reason why I am defending him.”

“I’m certain you don’t understand the irony of what I am about to say here, but I am rather short on time. Can we get on with it?”

“Please, of course.”

Elie huffed, but continued. “Have you ever heard of something called The Mortal Anchor?”

He shrugged. “In legend only. Supposedly a diamond the size of a tear drop that makes its wearer unkillable.”

She made a face and her shoulders slumped. “That’s such a juvenile interpretation of what it actually does.”

“Fine- enlighten me.”

“The Mortal Anchor is exactly that- it’s an anchor to the mortal realm. So yes, in a way, it would make its bearer essentially invulnerable because it would hold your spirit to this dimension instead of crossing over in death. There are a number of other uses for it though, and its power to keep one from slipping into the wrong phase of existence has immense potential for a mystic like me.”

Jack considered her. “Such as?”

Elie leaned in. “Time travel. The ability to skip across whole segments of future history, or leap back to places of antiquity. Magically traveling through time requires one to step outside the folds of our realm, and if it is not done correctly, you may find yourself ending your journey in a universe not of the one you began. But, if you knew the right spells and you possessed the Mortal Anchor, you could move through time with impunity and never worry about landing in the wrong dimension.”

Most of it went right over Jack’s head. “Why not. If I may be so bold, how exactly do you plan on stealing something that is a legend?”

“Because it’s not a legend- it exists and I know where to find it.”

“Putting aside whether or not I believe in all of this magic and time travel nonsense-” he paused, “oh, short on time, now I get why that’s ironic. As I was saying, let’s assume I believe you. This comes down to stealing a diamond, which doesn’t seem especially difficult. Considering you think you’re a magician of sorts-”

“I am a magician,” Elie cut him off.

“Yet to be definitively proven. But, since you’re so confident, what would a practitioner of the mystical arts need from a thug and a murderer-for-hire? Not to sell myself short-”

“I’m certain you never would.”

Jack smirked. “Not to sell myself short, but some muscle and a blade seem a little unnecessary to someone who can bend reality to her will, yeah?”

“Let’s leave it at I’m still learning and I’m not stupid enough to attempt something like this without even some modest help.”

“Fair enough. So that leaves two important details. How much are you paying, and who are we going to steal your diamond from?”

“Not who,” Elie corrected, “where. The Mortal Anchor has disappeared from the world several times in its hundred thousand year history, but its most recent vanishing left some clues. If my sources are correct, we can find it in the Tomb of Mauzolous.”

Jack’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “The Tomb of Mauzolous?”

“Your fee for the job is whatever you can carry. The Mortal Anchor is mine, but any other treasure we come across is yours.”

“Hold on. This just took a leap to a bridge too far.”

“You can’t combine phrases like that.”

“Whatever,” Jack waved dismissively. “You want to hire me to help you steal a diamond, that may or may not exist, from the palatial crypt that literally has no entrance so that you can time travel. Do I have that more or less correct?”

Elie wrinkled up her face. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

Jack laughed loudly, drawing the attention of several nearby patrons who looked at him vehemently for disturbing the growling quiet of the tavern. “The problem is I could be looking for a legitimate job instead of listening to the fairytales of a supposed magician.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Ms. Elie- I don’t deal in magic because for the most part, I don’t believe in it. Your trick at the bar may very well have been the handiwork of a gifted pick pocket. And I am not especially keen on breaking into a tomb that has no entrance. You are no more getting into the Tomb of Mauzolous than I am getting into your…” he gestured suggestively at her.

Elie raised her eyebrows sharply. “Say something like again, and I’ll make more than your sword disappear.”

Jack went momentarily white. “Can… can you do that?”

“Try me.”

“And anyway,” he threw up his hands and kept griping, “why is everyone threatening me today? I’m the sell-sword, I do the threatening. And the killing for that matter. I feel as though there has been an imbalance in threat etiquette today.”

“You’re obnoxious, that’s why. And Mauzolous’s crypt does have an entrance. It’s just… bricked over.”

“Exactly! The stairs that lead up to the main chamber were sealed behind bricks centuries ago, and unless you intend on trying to hammer our way through some pretty impressive mortar work in broad daylight, I stand by ‘there is no way in.’”

“If you know what you’re doing, and I do, there is a way in, but- and I cannot believe I have to remind you this considering how much you were begging for this job- if you want to do this we need to get moving now because we really are running out of time here.”

At this, Jack narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, what about that? Why are you so short on time if it’s time travel you’re interested in?”

“Because I’m not the only one who knows how to get into the tomb,” Elie hissed. “And the people I stole that secret from are neither the type sit on their laurels nor be forgiving. I have a plan to keep us from their grip afterwards, but it is dependent on us being successful.”

The sell-sword chewed his tongue for a moment. “If you were looking for proper thieves, you never would have stopped and listened to Vilos and I. So you are looking for protection. Who’s after you?”

“The Magi.”

“More fairytales.”

“The Magi of the Sha’rhan are real. They’re a true secret society, one everyone thinks is fake because they’re actually pretty good at keeping secrets. The fact that I know how to get to the Mortal Anchor would be enough for them to want to kill me, and the fact that I stole that secret from them is enough to make them want to do far worse. I can’t match their power, so I need a little…” she trailed off.

“You need a couple of idiots to get burned alive while you make your escape,” Jack finished.

“Not necessarily, not if- when!- we’re successful. Like I said, I can keep us out of their grasp permanently if we get the Anchor, but believe me they are already headed this way and if I had the time to find another pair of idiots I would but I don’t and we really just need to get moving on this thing.” She took a deep breath after her wildly delivered run on sentence.

Jack sat back and crossed his arms. “How are you going to keep us from getting pinched when this job is done?”

“Are you serious right now?”

“You’ve told me enough fairytales already, might as well complete the storybook so I can decide if I want to leave you to your magical trouble or actually attempt this act of insanity.”

Elie made a frustrated noise in her throat, but relented. She pulled a scroll out of her robes and put it on the table between them. “This is a spell. It allows the chanter to open a portal backwards in time. As soon as we have the Anchor, I’ll send us backwards to the day before I steal the location of the diamond. It’ll be like it never happened. You’ll have your treasure, I’ll have my anchor, we can go our separate ways with our ill-gotten gains and no one will ever know how or where we acquired them. Does that pretty much explain it all?”

For a moment, Jack looked at her entirely disbelievingly, but then rather abruptly gave in. “That seems airtight to me. For the record, though, if I had even one job prospect that didn’t seem so ridiculous on the face, I would leave you sitting alone in this booth faster than an empty glass.”

“You are so caring.”

“Only when it comes to money.”

“Something you and your friend Vilos have in common.”

“What do we have in common?” Vilos sat heavily down in the booth and crushed Jack into the corner just as Elie asked the question.

“Right now?” Jack shoved the mercenary away as best as he could. “A job.”

“Good. What does it pay?” Vilos had a tankard in each hand, and on asking what his potential financial gain would be, he promptly drained one and threw it aside.

“Anything and everything we can carry out of a tomb,” Jack said.

“Grave robbing. Good. I can carry a lot when no one alive is trying to stop me.”

***

Jack was no sky-scraping titan like Vilos, but he was certainly taller than most men, and even he had a difficult time keeping up with Elie’s brisk pace as they practically sprinted through the streets of Zagron. Her cadence seemed effortless and graceful, yet she moved like she were floating across the sands of the city streets almost out of time with the rest of her surroundings. Whether it was by some magic spell or she was just surprisingly fleet-footed, Jack could not tell. All he knew was their hurried walk to the Tomb of Mauzolous quickly became an unpleasant reminder that he was not in nearly the fighting shape he used to be when he was a younger sell-sword and a more spritely battle-brand.

This was not to say that Jack was by any stretch of slovenly dress or build. He was, after all, accustomed to a brutal, active existence. Being a professional killer for hire meant maintaining a degree of physical form. And unlike Vilos, who was a barrel-chested, oxen-backed monstrosity with arms like thunderheads, Jack was of a more average persuasion. Still, there was a time his muscles looked like they had been carved out of marble, and recent years had softened his steely composition some. Too many nights spending extra for soft beds and too many days spent swilling ale instead of chasing the coin. Now, chasing Elie through the narrow, twisting alleys of Zagron, Jack pined for the days his belly was carved like cobblestone and his arms etched like the statue of god.

He pushed his long, black hair out of his face and wiped the sweat from his brow as the late afternoon sun beat down on them. Behind him, he could hear Vilos huffing and puffing noisily through his massive beard, but Elie barely seemed to have even a shimmer of perspiration on her. More and more, Jack was convinced she had some mystical assistance- he just could not come to peace with the idea she was in substantially better form than he was. Between you, dear reader, and me, she was. In better form. Again, Jack was not a slouch, but beyond the quick sprint of combat, he was pretty much out of his depth trying to keep pace with Elie. As their adventures go on you will see some substantial change in him, of course, but it is worth noting at their first meeting, the sell-sword was out of breath just jogging from his favorite bar to the immense tomb at the city’s edge.

The desert around Zagron was a cruel mistress, and its loathsome heat and torturous winds slithered between every sandy building and baked every being foolish enough to still be out. There was a reason most of the crime in Zagron happened at night- it was the only time anyone could even stand to leave the cool confines of their shaded homes and taverns. Legend held that the Sha’rhan desert was once a mighty oasis, overgrown with tropical trees and spotted with crystal clear lakes. The king of that primordial paradise spurned the gods, they say, and in retribution they turned him into the red cliffs that jutted up among the desert and burned his tropical world down to just sand and heat. Even the original Sha’rhan people for whom the broiling expanse was named had only barely adapted to the blistering lands. It was an elder kingdom where only the strong could survive.

For all the devastating heat and furious sun, Zagron was home to some of the great monoliths and monuments of that ancient world. It is any wonder how they were built, considering just how brutal it was to stand outside- try to imagine doing hard labor in such conditions. There was a grisly rumor that had more truth to it than is comfortable, that the broken, half-dried bodies of the laborers who were forced to construct the great colossi were simply mixed in with the mortar, and their baked guts and bleached bones held many of the buildings together. There was not one monument that did not have the distinct scent of decay hanging over it, nor the uneasy sensation that something within its walls still lived a damned life beyond death. Every immense statue, every towering obelisk, every shadowy temple all had the same shiver inducing air to them. None, though, were worse than the Tomb of Mauzolous.

The family Mauzolous, direct descendants of the original Sha’rhan, had once been the ruling lords over Zagron, and their familial tomb was an looming reminder of the power they once wielded in times before written word. Just its base was more than fifty feet high and almost twice as wide, and carved into enclaves around it were towering statues of the family entombed within. Atop that immense base was the resting hall, a temple that would have been sizable on its own but straddling the great foundation it was absolutely colossal. There were, without exaggeration, towns that dotted the Sha’rhan desert that were unequivocally smaller than the Tomb of Mauzolous. And, as Jack had pointed out earlier, there were buried vaults that were easier to get into.

At one time, a grand staircase had run up the base of the tomb into the resting house at the top. It was, according to stories, a glittering, gilded marble affair with a red stripe down its center meant to be reminiscent of a royal carpet, though supposedly it had been stained that color from the blood of hundreds of sacrifices at the Tomb’s dedication. After the Mauzolous family fell out of power, there was neither the treasure nor the interest to keep a standing guard at the Tomb, so the stairs were bricked over and the entrance eternally sealed. Its sheer walls were notoriously unforgiving for those who tried to scale the monument and get inside, and only the strongest of arm could sling a grapple to the top of the base. Perhaps even more terrifying, there was no record of anyone managing to sneak into the Tomb and then returning. Naturally it gathered a reputation as being cursed, and that the spirits of the Mauzolous family guarded over their own treasure having been abandoned by their old, mortal sentinels.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the shade thrown off by the tomb was a chilling affair, bereft of any kind of comfort and a wholly uncomfortable, eerie darkness to stand in. Jack got chills as they approached the tomb, and not the kind of chills that made the blazing heat of the day feel more bearable. The kind of chills that precipitated him wanting to be absolutely anywhere other than right in front of that immense structure, standing in its late day shadow. He grimaced slightly as they got near to the mighty monument to mortality, and his stomach turned over unexpectedly. Half warrior and half poet he may have been, but the sell-sword was certainly at no lack of confidence, and he was rarely put at unease by anything at all. There were few odds he felt he could not stand against, and yet walking up to the tomb he quite suddenly felt as though he were far beyond his ken.

“Ugh,” was all the more Jack could manage as they stopped in front of the tomb.

Vilos snorted and scratched at his beard. “You should not so outwardly reflect your fear. It makes you seem weak.”

Jack screwed up his face and shot the mercenary a disgusted look. “And you should be wary of places like this, as you will eventually end up in one without breath in your lungs. That commands a certain degree of respect, yes?”

“This place can respect the whole length of my-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Elie broke in before Vilos could get too much more crude. “Are we ready to do some thievery, gentlem…?” Her voice faded. She could not bring herself to call them gentlemen by any stretch.

Jack rapped his knuckles on the stone wall. “We’re still rather stuck on the outside, Ms. Elie. Unless your magic can float us over the parapets, you are yet to explain just how we are getting into this thing.”

“I’ll climb,” Vilos offered. “You wait down here and I will toss down treasure.”

“Why do I not for even a moment believe that to be true?” Jack asked.

“Because you are suspicious and untrusting.”

“As though you have give me reason to be anything but.”

Vilos grinned darkly at what he knew to be true.

Again, Elie interjected. “No magic and no climbing necessary. Just make sure no one is watching and be ready to move when I say so.”

“Make sure no one is watching?” Jack looked at her quizzically.

“Do you want other people to see the secret entrance into the tomb we are about to raid?”

The sell-sword squinted at her and then abruptly turned to his larger companion. “Vilos, keep watch. If anyone comes near, I don’t know, growl at them.”

“It’d be more effective if I just hit them. They won’t get back up.”

“Whatever works,” Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “I want to see the secret entrance for myself.”

“If you try and leave me behind,” Vilos started.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll do something terrible to my teeth or my lungs or my eyes. I get it. Just stand watch there, okay?”

Vilos grunted, but crossed his arms and turned his attention to the very few people wandering around the alley near them. The Tomb of Mauzolous was not a particularly popular place to be so late in the day.

Elie had already clambered into one of the alcoves where a thirty foot statue of some ancient, dead lord stood looking severely down at the city of Zagron. Jack climbed into the towering recess after her. She pressed her shoulders against the wall and wiggled her way behind the statue. He took a few cautious looks around, and then followed. It looked like a tight squeeze, but the sheer size of the statue must have been playing tricks on him because it was actually quite a wide gap once they were around the back of the effigy. Elie was running her hands along the recess wall.

“When the staircase was still here, they wanted the guards to be able to come and go almost unseen,” she explained. “So tunnels were built just behind the wall of the base, and they lead out to many of the statuary alcoves. All of them connected back to hidden doors just off the main staircase. When they bricked over the stairs, they left the tunnels intact, apparently. All we have to do-”

She stopped short when a handful of sand came away from a clear seam in the bricks. Elie smiled.

“Is find one of them.”

Jacks raised an eyebrow. “There’s no way it’s that easy.”

She chuckled. “It isn’t. It’s locked, for one thing, but I can help with that part. Other than that- yeah, it pretty much is that easy. Would you ever think to look for a door behind a thirty foot monolith to get into a tomb that is supposedly haunted by its own inhabitants.”

“I mean when you put it that way.”

“Here, help me clear away the sand so I can find the keyhole.”

Jack ran his fingers along the seam in the bricks until the outline of a door appeared. Elie knelt down in front of it and fiddled around with the gaps in the mortar until more sand fell away and a keyhole indeed materialized.

He could not hide his awe. “Your fairytale is coming to life, Lady Wizard.”

“Watch and learn, Mr. Sell-Sword.”

Elie removed a small satchel from her belt, and unrolled an assortment of thieves picks and miniature tools. Jack chewed his tongue at seeing the parcel.

“Do you actually know how to use any of that?”

Elie shot him a look as she went about picking the lock of the hidden door. “I told you- components for magic and the spells themselves are pretty expensive. I can’t exactly afford most of it. Desperate times…”

With a dusty cough, the lock sprung free.

Jack cocked his head. “Lead to impressive results.”

She smiled curtly and rolled her tools back up. “Your preconceived notions are childishly offensive. You better be as good with that sword as you claim to be.”

Jack snorted. “Are you expecting a whole lot of resistance in a house literally built for the dead.”

Elie shrugged. “There has to be some reason everyone who has gone in there hasn’t come back out, right?”

At that, Jack went white and his heart skipped a beat. “That is a truly terrifying and eldritch supposition. I don’t want to think about what one would have to do to survive in there all these years.”

“Who says they’re surviving? Time has little bearing on the undead.”

“Ha, right, the undead.”

She shrugged again.

Jack pressed. “You’re kidding right. You are kidding. Come on, you’re kidding. Are you… are you kidding? You’re kidding!”

“Choose a few more words.”

“Lady Wizard, I have cut down more men in my time than there are grains of sand in the whole Sha’rhan desert-”

“Doubtful.”

“Horror stories about the ghosts of deceased lords are all fine and good, but I would not know the first thing about slaying the undead, if such a thing actually exists. A walking corpse provides a particular kind of challenge in that it’s already dead- which makes it decidedly difficult to kill, right?”

“I imagine if you cut off enough pieces, it would be rather hard for a walking corpse to continue to be a threat.”

“If you cut off enough… this is insanity, you realize this, right?”

“You don’t have to come along. And besides, could all just be legend and rumor. For all we know, this tomb is riddled with booby traps and the last few raiders who came through simply plummeted to their death through a hidden trap door, or were crushed by a falling false ceiling.”

“Much more comforting.”

“For a murderer-for-hire, you are remarkably apprehensive about the idea of a challenging job.”

“A challenging job for me, Lady Wizard, is fending off six assailants at once. Tomb raiding and grave robbing are not my typical business.”

“Consider it a growing experience. Go get your friend, we don’t have much time left.”

“He is not my friend,” Jack grumbled to himself as he edged around the statue to retrieve Vilos. It was just in time too- the immense mercenary looked just bored enough that he probably was about to wander off in search of something either more interesting, more profitable, or just something smaller than him to torment. “Vilos,” Jack hissed, “let’s go.”

The mercenary clambered into alcove. “Someone asked me what I was doing here. He wont ask that question again.”

“I don’t need to know the details.”

“Your squeamishness is unbecoming of a murderer.”

“And your unseemliness is just that- unseemly.”

The two attempted to squeeze past the giant statue at the same time. It left them uncomfortably pinned shoulder to shoulder in the narrow gap as both struggled to go first. After a moment of jostling, the overpowering girth of Vilos won out and Jack tumbled past the statue behind his much larger companion. Brushing sand out of his hair and attempting to brush his wounded pride off his shoulders, Jack threw one last look behind at the city of Zagron as the sun dipped low behind the skyline and an ominous, blood-red twilight settled itself into the alleys. It was an uneasy sight. Everything about the moment felt uneasy. With all the confidence and moxie he had left, Jack shook off the sensation of creeping flesh as best he could, and ducked into the tomb.

If he was expecting things inside the massive crypt to be any less accommodating or pleasant, the sell-sword was sorely mistaken. The silence just beyond the secret entrance was harsh and oppressive. Sands beneath his sandals seemed to shift under a phantom breeze, but it was bereft of the telltale whisper of slithering earth. Musty air that was colder than it had any right to be in the heart of the desert choked the passage way with the scent of stale time and ancient death. The bricks along the passage were punctuated by the occasional skull, giving credence to the macabre rumor that those who died completing the tomb were built right into its walls. And only the slightest distance in front of Jack, the whole hallway was swallowed by singularly the most impenetrable blackness he had ever witnessed.

There was immediately no sign of Vilos or Elie, and the sell-sword wondered if his erstwhile companions had already managed to fall into some terrible trap, or had been wholly and silently devoured by a lurking beast. Jack hissed both their names quietly, but the sound barely seem to penetrate the hedge of his own lips, much less the curtain of darkness before him. He tried again, but again to no avail. Feeling no particular sense of loyalty to either the strange wizard girl or revolting mercenary, and especially not one that precipitated braving the terror inducing darkness of that hallway, Jack very slowly turned on his heels with all intent of sulking back out of the tomb and finding something else to do. There might be just enough time left in the day to get another job- a real job.

No sooner had he turned did a gust of wind blow the door shut with a resounding and disheartening boom. Jack threw himself against the stone portal, but it was either locked from the outside or stuck. One way or the other, it positively would not budge, and it left him with slim options other than trying to find his way down the bewildering passage in what could only be described as absolute darkness. It was not an especially thrilling prospect.

At first, the sell-sword put one hand against the wall and tried to feel his way down the hall. When, in the process, his fingers fell into the jaw of an agape skull and something skittered across his hand, Jack withdrew his arm swiftly, shook it several times in frightened discomfort, and preceded with his hands out in front of him instead. Step by step, as bravely as he could manage, the sell-sword crept down the dark hall with his hands groping out in front, hoping they would grab hold of something much more pleasant, or somehow find their way into light of any kind.

Instead, something grabbed him. Jack shrieked. Shrieked. Made the kind of noise you would expect a cat to make when you accidentally step on its tail with a pair of metal-studded boots. A thin hand clapped over his screaming lips, and a face pressed itself into his limited field of vision. It was Elie. She had both a look of extreme amusement and complete befuddlement.

“Did that noise really come from you?”

Jack cleared his throat. “It’s really hard to see in here.”

“I know- Vilos and I were looking for a torch.”

“Can’t you just conjure up some light or something?” he asked.

“Yeah, I can,” she replied curtly. “But only if I have Goblin Weed. Do you have any on you?”

“I do not.”

“Didn’t think so. How about you come help us find a torch now?”

“That seems agreeable.”

“Good. And keep your mouth shut, we don’t need anymore attention coming our way- this is supposed to be a theft,” she chastised.

“You just caught me by surprise, that’s all,” he defended. “Feeling your way along in the dark leaves one’s hands rather vulnerable to unfortunate shock.”

Even through the dark, Jack could see the intensely quizzical look Elie was giving him. “Why in the nine hells didn’t you just use your sword to find your way along, then?”

Jack made a number of undignified noises in his throat. “You… you said you might know where a torch can be found?”

“I do.”

“Then please lead on.”

Elie snickered, but continued down the passage. She placed Jack’s hand on her shoulder so he could follow her through the darkness. It drifted lower once, and after a surprisingly well-placed slap given the pressing black, the sell-sword left it on her shoulder the remainder of their slow march through the tomb’s hall. Less and less she seemed like the kind of woman who should be trifled with. Jack had to begrudgingly admit that much to himself at least.

Up ahead, a faint crimson glow illuminated a turn in the hall and promised the comforting embrace of precious light- something Jack never thought he would ever be at want for living in the midst of the sun-bleached desert. As soon as they rounded the bend, Elie and Jack found Vilos was holding several torches and standing bored in the middle of the hall. He fixed them with a disgusted look when they finally arrived.

“Nearly left,” he grunted, and thrust out a torch to them both. “Took you long enough to find your way down a one way hall.”

Elie nodded in agreement as she accepted one of the blazing brands. “The tides of time certainly seem to shift oddly in this place. I can sense magic.”

“Lovely,” Jack said he as he too accepted a torch. He nearly dropped it when he realized Vilos had, in fact, improvised it from a few dirty rags and the leg bone of what was almost certainly a human being. “Where did you find this?”

Vilos just squinted at the sell-sword. Jack put up his hands in surrender. It clearly was one of those questions he did not actually want answered. Elie walked briskly past them both and started further into the passage. The sell-sword and the mercenary followed quickly behind her.

After a few more twists and turns past even more ominously dark doorways that beckoned in no particular direction, the little troupe very suddenly emerged into an immense, wide-open expanse. Before them was the gargantuan main staircase that had once lead to the top of the ziggurat before being sealed and bricked over centuries prior. Each stair was fully three feet high and the longest steps at the base were nearly eighty feet in breadth. The meager light of their torches did little to reveal the full width of the enormous chamber, and they could see no discernible ceiling. Only slightly more terrifying was the fact that every shadow around them seemed to flutter, and the claustrophobic stillness of the passage behind them gave way to a creeping, squirming dark. Wisps of what might have been spiderwebs brushed Jack’s face and toyed idly with his hair. He shuddered- though, hopefully not visibly.

Naturally, Elie was the first to begin ascending the staircase, climbing as best she could with only one available hand over each ridiculously tall step.

“Urgm!” Vilos did not do much say any word in any particular language to get her attention, he just made a noise that he assumed would get his point across. “Where do these stairs go?”

Elie looked at him, turned and looked up, up, up into the darkness above, and then turned back at the mercenary expectantly.

“Well?” Vilos pressed further.

Jack huffed loudly. “Where do you think they go, my large and unburdened-by-logical-thought, friend?”

The sell-sword started to climb after Elie, and after a moment or two, Vilos followed behind them, grumbling about not getting a proper answer to a perfectly reasonable question.

As tall as it was and as oversized as the stairs were, the climb up the tomb’s grand staircase was an arduous affair. Further, as Elie had pointed out earlier, there was a strange warping to time that made some moments seem as though they stretched out ridiculously long, and other moments seem so hurried they almost did not occur at all. The sensation was truly more one that had to be experienced and is rather a difficult thing indeed to describe. Consider, if it is simpler, being handed a bundle of strings that you have been assured are all the same length. As you pull at them, you find some are with all certainty longer than others and some are barely more than a snippet of thread. Yet, when you place them all next to each other again, they are indeed the same length. Now try to imagine experiencing time this way. Not a fun way to climb a giant set of stairs.

When they finally reached the top, only a short distance in front of the troupe was the grand, ceremonial casket of Maouzolous, a gaudy, monolithic stone and precious gem monstrosity that supposedly contained the remains of the great lord himself. Marble pillars held up the roof over the immense casket, and the peak of the tomb once again broke into open air. Around them, the three companions could see the pinprick lights of the city of Zagron like dozens of glittering topaz scattered over the dark sand. Jack was breathing deep the cool night air when a gargantuan, hairy hand was clapped on his shoulder.

“Your muscles are few but needed,” Vilos grunted. “Push.”

The mercenary dragged his sell-sword companion over to the casket, and both put their hands against its thunderous lid.

“‘Please’ would have been nice,” Jack snorted back.

“Push,” Vilos repeated.

Jack did. So did Vilos. They grit their teeth, sweated and exerted, challenging the hefty casket covering to grind slowly off its base. At first it budged only as much as one would expect a mountain to move when a goat bangs its horns against it. Then, with resentful leisure, the massive stone lid began to rumble off the coffin. More wind of rancid death and stuffy age burst from the casket as it was forced open, and Jack stepped away, hacking, just before the great lid teetered off the base.

Elie was looking, annoyed, at both of them. “So, that I did have the spell components to move, if you had just asked for my help. Woulda saved you all that fun lifting.”

“Speak louder next time,” Vilos demanded.

Jack coughed the last of the mummy dust out of his lungs. “Truly. For once I agree with loud-and-angry over there. Speak up if you have a better solution.”

Elie shrugged. “Maybe you should just not jump to ‘my brawn is always the right answer’ solutions in the future and consult with the rest of the group, mm?”

Jack shot her a look. “There better be something, just, SO valuable in there that we can pawn to make this shit worth it.”

“It’s empty,” Vilos reported.

The sell-sword rolled his eyes. “No, you oaf, it’s dark and you just can’t see what’s in there.”

The mercenary grabbed Jack by the scruff of his neck and forced his face and a torch into the casket. “Empty!” he shouted.

Jack’s eyes searched the contents of the stone box. There were, in fact, none contents. Empty. Just like Vilos said. He wriggled free of the mercenary and looked angrily at Elie.

“What gives?!”

She leaned casually on the casket. “Would you like my input now?”

“Yes, that would be very nice, Lady Wizard.”

“Thank you for being so obliging, Beggar King.”

Elie reached down to one of the large gemstones that studded the casket, and depressed it. The gem sank inward with a raspy sigh, and the faint ticking of a hundred clockwork gears and cogs could suddenly be heard in the walls of the coffin. Almost silently, the floor of the casket fell away, and a steep, narrow set of spiral stairs appeared. The ticking stopped as everything clicked into place and the casket fell quiet.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t that fine. More stairs.”

Elie chewed the inside of her lip for a moment. “In terms of grave robbing, just exactly how much of it did you imagine would take place above ground? Just so I can properly set your expectations going forward.”

The sell-sword pointed a gloved finger at her. “Weren’t you the one speaking to me about brevity?”

She smiled curtly. “Why don’t you just poke around down there a moment and be sure it’s safe for us. You know- what you’re being paid to do.”

Vilos elbowed Jack painfully out of the way. “I’ll be damned if the little man gets to all the treasure first. After you?” He scoffed loudly. “After me!”

The hulking mercenary went swiftly down the narrow staircase. Well, at least as swiftly as a man of his stature could descend through such a lean space. Jack looked up at Elie.

“He’s charming, isn’t he? All the wit of the world’s finest poets with the grace of a lithe little acrobat. Truly, I am so glad you hired us both- absolutely capital decision on your part, Lady Wizard.”

“Get your ass down there, sword jockey.”

Without another word, Jack followed after Vilos. The spiral staircase that cut down below the false sarcophagus was tight business indeed. As one who positively loathed small spaces and close quarters, Jack was patently uncomfortable. He much preferred the open step, the wind in his face, and the mountains of sand that stretched eternal under the diamond sun. Even his work as a murderer for hire usually kept him out of doors. He was not, after all, a robber for hire. Not usually, anyway. All of this dust and darkness was decidedly against his liking. He had no taste for it. As soon as he had his cut of the nasty little dungeon crawl, he made up his mind to move out of Zagron permanent and towards somewhere less seedy, even if it meant a smaller town. Maybe somewhere near the Stonesoul Mountains. Dreams, anyway.

Jack again became potently aware of the strange lensing of time. Maybe it was partly in his imagination, given just how wildly claustrophobic their surroundings were, but he could not help but feel that odd stretching and squeezing of each individual moment. Something about it was beyond the strange, but downright weird, like an eldritch dread that crept in the shadows. He was certain he could not sense magic in the same manner as Elie, but none the less, Jack was certain he could sense something magical about their surroundings. Something was off about the tomb, and the lower they descended the more unsettling it became. Not even the cool hilt of his sword was enough to ease his nerves. Normally it was a comfort; that day it did little.

As they went lower, the air became cooler and damper. The dry blaze of their torches cut a smaller and smaller swath through the impenetrable darkness, and the heat they gave off slacked with each step. Jack shivered, and was glad he was behind Vilos to do so. The mercenary would never let him live down such an act of humanity. Though for one so accustomed to the scorching Sha’rahn sun and the daily toil of life in the sands, a wet, chilly tomb was exactly the opposite of what the sell-sword was used to.

“Any idea how much further?” he tried to casually ask Elie over his shoulder.

“Because I’ve been down in this particular crypt so many times before,” she shot back.

“You are the one who lead us here.”

She sighed heavily. “Look, even if I did know the answer to that, exactly what good do you think it would do us? We already know it’s next to impossible to tell how much time is passing down here. So what good is it to know how much further we have to go?”

“Fair point,” he conceded.

“We’re there,” Vilos barked gruffly.

Blessedly, the mercenary’s perfectly timed snarl was correct. Jack felt the stairs give way to flat ground, and the room around them opened up into a downright cavernous underground chamber. Even from the dim light of their torches, the sell-sword could tell the room was absolutely palatial in scope, with high vaulted cathedral-like ceilings and absolutely immense pillars holding up the soaring roof. Each pillar was carved with hundreds upon hundreds of ancient runic texts, or covered in frescos of heroic and demonic grandeur. It might have been wondrous had it not been for one minor detail. Between all those pillars and lining the chamber from wall to wall was a truly horrific over-abundance of coffins.

Coffins like rows of crops went on as far as the chamber stretched. And considering just how immense the room was- there were really an awful lot of coffins down there. They were all fairly uniform, neither especially ornate nor completely plain, and they were all covered with a fine layer of dust that assured none had been disturbed in quite some time. Well, there were a few exceptions. Here and there, every now and again, there would be an open casket with its lid dumped carelessly on the ground and the scattered remnants of bones nearby, as though someone had hastily rummaged through the coffin and left the owner’s remains thoughtlessly strewn. Otherwise, the chamber was unperturbed and still. Still as death, as it were.

“There are, and this is no exaggeration, about a million and a half other places I would rather be right now,” Jack announced.

Vilos, on the other hand, was more than willing to do some slapdash salvaging. He threw the lid off the nearest coffin and reached inside. The mercenary came up with a fist full of rags and bones, but little in the way of valuable or shiny. He made a disappointed and angry noise.

“Where is the treasure?”

Elie rolled her eyes, an action she was getting increasingly used to around Vilos and Jack. “This is just the first chamber, gentlemen. The resting place of the servants to Mauzolous.”

Jack looked over the mass of caskets wide-eyed. “All of these were his servants?”

“Sacrificed at the time of his death,” Elie confirmed. She then followed with a comment that was horrifying but delivered with a distinct air of sarcasm. “And cursed to serve him eternally, even after their passing.”

She wiggled her fingers and made a low moaning noise, like she was performing a terrible impersonation of a ghoul reaching out for Jack.

“Not funny.” He jerked away from her and did not take his eyes off the coffins.

“Come on, Beggar King,” she ribbed him. “You don’t actually believe in the walking undead, do you?”

“You seemed rather convinced of them not long ago.”

“For all your skill for it, sarcasm is just completely lost on you, isn’t it?”

“In as much as simple manners seem to be lost on you, Lady Wizard.”

Elie opened her mouth to respond, but Vilos cut her off.

“Company,” he grunted. “Dead company.”

Replete with shock and horror, Elie and Jack looked in the direction the mercenary was pointing and watched as the lid of a coffin quietly pried itself loose and the skeletal remains of its former inhabitant climbed out. With the creaks of an ancient door and the crackles of dead leaves underfoot in the late gray of autumn, the shambling corpse drew itself up and turned its empty eye sockets towards the trio.

Jack was slack-jawed. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Even Elie was at a lack of comprehension. “They… they’re really real.”

Vilos was slightly less miffed at the unusual moment. He quickly grabbed up the lid of the coffin he had opened and strode towards the walking skeleton. The dusty corpse reached out a clawed hand at the mercenary, and Jack imagined it closing tightly around the throat of his cohort to strangle the life out of the titanic man. Vilos was quicker than the skeleton, however. He took one single swing with the coffin lid and blasted the undead creature into all two hundred odd separate pieces. Dust and bone clouded the air, but in the midst of it stood Vilos the victorious.

He shrugged. “Not so hard.”

Jack looked aghast around the room. “Feel like doing that about a hundred more times?”

The once silent and still chamber was quivering to life as more casket lids pushed themselves aside, and the servants of Mauzolous drew themselves up from the dead to do their sworn, accursed duty. Vilos narrowed his eyes as the army of skeletons rose up around them.

“That’s more difficult.”

When they moved, it was as one, altogether in one horrifying surge of clattering limbs that rattled like dry reeds in a the winds before a storm. A ring of death closed in around the trio, and it became frighteningly clear to Jack they were far, far out of their depth. He drew his sword, though to what affect it would have he felt less assured. Its gleaming blade was honed to tear through flesh, but against clunking bones- what good? And the sheer number of horrors alone… Jack immediately regretted getting out of bed that morning. He was about to become just another casualty to the curse of the Tomb of Mauzolous, fallen victim to its all too real curse of undead. Not what he had in mind when the sun came up.

As Jack and Vilos assessed and reassessed their hopeless situation, Elie was doing something slightly more useful. She was rummaging through her supplies, looking for a very particular component of a spell she was almost pretty certain she could pull off.

“Hold them off!” she shouted at the sell-sword and mercenary.

“Hold- hold them off?!” Jack asked incredulously.

“And get ready to run!” she followed up with.

“Lady Wizard, if you have something to say…”

She found what she was looking for.

“That might in some way shed some light…”

Elie tossed the item into the air and started to chant under her breath.

“On just exactly how you plan to escape…”

When nothing happened, she grabbed the component, threw it up in the air and started the chant again, pronouncing each word of an ancient, long forgotten tongue as deliberately as she could.

“Our current plight, it would be most appreciated right about now!”

This time, Elie felt the otherworldly thrum of power race through her. She finished the spell and whispered, “Second Sun.”

Overhead, a blast of garish, desert light leapt into existence. In all its painful brilliance, it rained down on the army of skeletons, and its impossible brilliance struck them all to the ground. They hissed and keened as though the sunlight bathing them was a geyser of acid melting them from within.

Elie grinned widely. “You were saying something about shedding some light?”

“Run!” Jack grabbed her arm and took off for the far side of the chamber.

Vilos hurried ahead of them, shattering skeletons as he went, bashing them aside with the coffin lid he was still carrying. Despite the burning light, they clutched out for the trio as they raced by, but the mighty mercenary hammered their withered hands away, clearing a path for his companions trailing behind.

Even as the troupe of tomb raiders raced for the far side of the chamber, it was clear their window of opportunity to escape the undead army was going to be a narrow one. Already Elie’s false sunrise was melting into dusk, and they had only moments longer before the light went out completely and the swarm of skeletons would be able to clamber back to their boney feet and give chase. The thieves sprinted towards an immense set of doors that Jack felt fairly confident not even dozens skeletons would be able to move, and that he hoped would lead somewhere not totally overrun with the undead.

Vilos, Elie and Jack barely managed to skitter through the doorway before the magic sunlight went out completely. Elie whipped around to face the onslaught of shambling corpses and barked orders at the mercenary and sell-sword.

“I’ll get the door! You find something to bar it with!”

Jack and Vilos looked frantically around the new room they found themselves in for something to block the door shut. Behind them, they could hear Elie chanting something again as the young wizard tried her hand at another spell. The two hired hands found a beam that looked like it was specifically for the purpose of barring the door, and hefted it to their chest to rush over to the portal. Vilos did most of the lifting, naturally. Jack turned just in time to be horrified to find the army of skeletons had almost reached the doorway and one was reaching out to grab Elie. Her eyes were closed and her arms were spread as though she were welcoming the deadly embrace. Suddenly, she clapped her hands together, and the doors slammed shut with the force of an avalanche, severing the bony arm and sealing the skeletons behind.

She looked expectantly at Vilos and Jack. “Any time you want to put that jam in place, that would be great. I don’t know how long the doors will hold.”

They hurriedly placed the massive beam into the waiting bar clutches, and took a long breath. From the other side, they could hear the undead fiends scratching and banging on the immense doors, but between the weight of the portal and the huge jam they had just put in place, everyone felt pretty assured they were safe… for the time being. Jack slumped down, and Elie collapsed as well. Only Vilos remained standing, and he looked quizzically at his exhausted cohorts as though he could not fathom just why it was they were out of breath.

Jack side-eyed Elie. “How did you do that? Any of that.”

She looked somewhat disgustedly back at him. A moment later, she handed him his sword. Jack took it from her, mouth agape.

“Did I drop this?”

“No,” she shook her head. “You did not drop it.”

“Did you take it by pick pocketing, or magic?”

“What in the nine hells do you think, Beggar King?”

“Okay, Lady Wizard- you’ve got some skill. That sunlight thing- that was an especially cool trick.”

“I thought I should be prepared on the very off chance there really were undead down here. Looks like that was the right call.”

“What were those things you threw into the air to make it work?”

She sighed and pushed the hair out of her face. “The teeth of an infant bat. Like I said- spell components can be remarkably hard to come by. Between rare and just downright expensive, nothing magical happens for free. You would not believe what the current markup on some of my components is.”

“Hence you steal things,” Jack suggested.

“Hence I just saved our collective asses from being torn apart by an army of skeletons. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Vilos seemed less than grateful. “The doorway narrows the passage. We could have taken them here.”

Elie huffed. “You two are the height of terrible, you know that right?”

“I didn’t see you being particularly helpful with the door jam,” Jack fired back.

“And I didn’t see you smiting down a few hundred skeletons and closing the door to begin with.”

Before things could get too acrimonious, Vilos interrupted. “Is there treasure in here?”

“Why don’t you look instead of assuming I know?” Elie asked pointedly.

The mercenary gave her a dark look, but moved on to rifling through the chamber’s contents in search of something he could turn a profit on.

They found themselves in a room much narrower and shorter than the massive assembly hall they had just passed through, but no less tall. It had the same palatial height as the burial atrium, and from floor to ceiling the walls were bursting with shelves of books, scrolls and tomes of all description. Leather bound spines inscribed with runes and lettering from every known tongue packed every inch of wall space in the room. In the center was a large table decorated only with a few candelabras that looked like dragons. Several open books were scattered on the table, arranged around candles that had long since burned down to small pools of wax and wick. It was a much calmer space than the burial chamber, and with decidedly fewer places for undead things to jump out of.

Vilos was unimpressed with the collection of books. “Useless,” he grunted as he tossed several aside. “No money in paper. Where is the gold?!”

“If you would quite be careful with those, I would very much appreciate it, they’re very old.” The voice spoke from the shadows of the room surprising all three of the tomb raiders.

Jack, Elie and Vilos whirled towards where the sound had come from. Their torches barely pierced the shadows of the room, and they could see nothing. They all jumped when the startling sound of clawed feet scratching over stoney ground met their ears, but there was still nothing to be seen. The skittering came again, and in unison they all whipped towards the source of the sound. Jack was the first to find his voice.

“Show yourself, fiend, and face retribution!”

“Very intimidating,” Elie whispered at him.

“Thank you,” he whispered back, evidently missing her sarcasm.

“All due respect,” the voice replied, “you are trespassing in my room, so if anyone is going to be facing retribution, it’s you. Not that I am in any particular mood to dole it out, I would just prefer you not be here any longer. You’re disturbing my reading.”

“Perhaps you did not see, fiend, but my companions and I just defeated all of the undead warriors you had posted outside your chamber! If a hundred walking skeletons were not enough to stop us, what makes you think YOU will be?!” Jack shouted back.

“Oh yes, I saw your performance,” the voice replied drawly. “My favorite part was when you weakly conjured up a fake sun and turned tail and ran. Quite heroic. Such courage and skill.”

Vilos had enough of his courage being called into question. “You curse us for cowards yet you hide in shadow! Face me, doomed one, and know your destruction!”

The voice sighed. “Ugh, fine, if you insist.” There was an additional skittering sound, and a tiny dragon, much like the ones the candelabras were modeled after, appeared on the reading table. He was a fine, metallic blue color, and instead of shimmering scales on his wings, he had a course of beautiful feathers. No bigger than perhaps the size of an average house cat, it perched on the edge of the table and considered the group, while they in turn considered it right back.

Jack slowly lowered his guard. “You’re not exactly what I expected you to be.”

The little dragon cocked its head. “And what exactly where you expecting, you who have so much experience raiding tombs and fighting the undead? A phantom in a sheet? A mummy covered in dusty rags?”

“Well,” he admitted, “I mean, yeah.”

The tiny monster sighed deeply again, and adjusted a minuscule pair of spectacles that were riding at the end of its snout. “I can’t really tell what’s more stunning: your naivety or how trite and cliched such a thing would be. Also, I am more than mildly insulted. Have you ever, and I mean ever, met a member of the walking dead with diction and syntax as advanced as mine? I should think not.”

Elie took a step closer to the miniature dragon. “Who are you?”

It swept a wing out and bowed courteously. “Sharpwitmonstrominius.”

Jack balked a moment. “That is quite a name.”

The little dragon cocked its head. “Well I’m quite the being. You, being of decidedly a pedestrian variety, I’m just as certain have a pedestrian name. Like Pete. Or Jack.”

Elie gave a short laugh. “Solid guess.”

Jack shot her a look. “I am not pedestrian, and neither is my name.” He turned back towards the miniature monster. “Yours, however, is just far too long. Is there anything shorter you go by. You know, to match your stature.”

The little dragon smacked its lips, and unless Jack was very mistaken, the faintest hit of a smile tugged at its mouth. “Now that, Jack, was very nearly clever enough to be amusing. If my full name is beyond your ken to speak, then I would kindly settle upon a nickname that appropriately illustrates my intelligence- though even the idea of such a thing as a nickname is borderline derogatory. Never the less. As I am dealing with beings of lesser acumen, you may call me Wit.”

“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jack asked sarcastically.

Wit rolled his eyes. “You have no idea, flesh being.”

“Know you where the treasure is?!” Vilos snarled.

“Well, we are of a one track mind, aren’t we?” Wit admonished.

“I’ll squish ya!” Vilos threatened further.

“My my, and such a temper.” Wit clicked his tongues in disgust. “Tsk tsk. And to answer your question, my very large and overly vexed friend, that should depend entirely upon what treasure it is you are seeking. There are a number of them here, you see. Could you be a bit more specific?”

“We’re looking for the Mortal Anchor,” Elie interjected.

Wit raised his eyebrow horns suddenly. “Is that so?”

“And something to make OUR time worth it,” Jack reminded them both. “Namely something shiny that can be sold for, if not vast sums of wealth, certainly a moderate heap of it.”

Wit rolled his little eyes. “That feels more like what I expected from a band of raiders as ill-prepared and under-skilled as yourselves.”

Elie visibly sulked. “I thought I did okay just now.”

“My dear, meaning no offense, but the conjuring of a false sunlight should be a most basic cantrip to even a novice student of the magic arts. It took you more than one try to execute, and whilst the results were perfectly satisfactory, they were ultimately short-lived and lacking in a certain spectacular brilliance that would have rendered that entire company of necromantic nitwits unto not but dust. You have a ways to go before being considered even passingly skilled,” Wit appraised.

Jack smirked at her. “I somehow feel like you owe me an apology.”

She scowled. “I disagree wholeheartedly.”

“TREASURE!” Vilos roared in his own way.

“Yes, yes of course- the Mortal Anchor and, ahem… shiny things.” Wit glowered at both Vilos and Jack. “I can lead you there if you can manage to not become completely lost even with my most specific instructions.”

Jack considered the little dragon very suspiciously. “Just like that? Why would you help us so easily? That feels like a trap.”

Again, Wit adjusted his tiny spectacles, and sighed heavily. “Master Jack, just what in the world do you imagine I would have use for worldly treasure?”

Jack shrugged. “I dunno. Buying… like… meat, or something?”

“I’m vegetarian,” the little dragon snapped back. “And even if I wasn’t, do you really think me so inept a hunter as to not be able to find my own prey that I should have cause to buy it?”

The sell-sword looked at Wit quizzically. “You’re vegetarian?”

“That is correct.”

“Why are we still talking about this?!” Vilos shouted. “Why do you always insist on talking?! More doing! More treasure!”

“Hold on just a second,” Jack raised a hand to shush the mercenary. “I need to unpack this. Why in the nine hells would a DRAGON, even a little one, be a vegetarian?”

“My lord,” Wit explained exasperatedly, “if you must know, I have a cousin on the far side of the world. Do you know what he prefers to dine upon? The toes of human beings. Almost to their exclusivity. Now, you tell me: would that not be enough to ruin you on a carnivorous diet for the rest of eternity, or do you imagine you would find your own pleasure in such a course of faire?”

Elie rubbed her temples. “What in the name of the gods is wrong with this world?”

“Quite more than you know, my lady,” Wit replied.

Jack had not yet unwrinkled his face in disgust. “Yeah. Okay. I’m now with Vilos. Treasure. That’s enough conversation for, like… a few years. At least.”

The little dragon shrugged his wings. “As you wish. When you are reasonably prepared, we may carry on to the lower catacombs. That is where the resting place of Mauzolous’s closest adviser, the wizard Kraakish, lies.”

Something about everything Wit said made Jack more than a little uncomfortable. “Do you care to first explain why we must go into the lower catacombs?”

“You wish to find the Mortal Anchor?” the little dragon affirmed.

“Yes,” Elie said eagerly.

“The to the tomb of Kraakish we must go. To the nearest of my understanding, if the Anchor is anywhere here, it is there.”

“But you’re not entirely sure?” Jack asked suspiciously.

“I only arrived here two thousand years ago, Master Jack,” Wit replied. “And given the absolutely sumptuous supply of fine reading that exists in the upper tombs, I have hardly had want or cause to venture much deeper. I only just last week memorized my six thousandth one hundred and ninety second book- there is still an immense amount of reading to be done.”

“Then how do you even know the Anchor thing is down there?” the sell-sword pressed.

“Because that is what the records here suggest.” Wit said it as though it should have been obvious.

Jack threw up his hands. “I’m sorry, but I find this all far too convenient for my liking. If you know how to so easily get to the Mortal Anchor, then why would it still be there? We can’t be the first thieves to go after it.”

The little dragon pursed its lips. “While I appreciate your line of reasoning, appreciate the following. Just how many raiders past do you figure have made it past that lot?”

Wit motioned with one wing towards the door they had all come through, which was still quaking and shivering as the army of skeletons pounded and clawed at it.

He went on. “And those few who did manage to heroically outrun the undead never chanced to pass back this way. Which is, for the record, the only way in or out. No other secret tunnels past this point, my new friends. Just a lot of stairs and tunnels that go deeper and deeper into the catacombs. It therefor, stands to reason no one has ever made it back out- least ways not in the time since I have been here.”

“And how did you come to be here?” Jack queried finally.

“I was counsel to one of Mauzolous’s descendants. When she passed, I stayed. I had little use for the outside world after she was gone, so I remained among the libraries, and will remain among them until I have consumed their accumulated knowledge, after which point I shall go where I feel is next most agreeable. Is that quite enough for you, Master Jack? May I now show you the way to Kraakish’s tomb, or will you just allow me to return to my reading.”

The sell-sword finally relented. “Lead on.”

Wit bowed sarcastically with a sweep of his wing. “Thank you kindly, good sir. Who might be in the lead of this company? I don’t suppose it is you?”

“I am!” Elie spoke up.

“Very well, dear lady.” The little dragon fluttered to her shoulder and alighted. He waved with a wing towards the dark hallways ahead. “Just that way then.”

She took a few cautious steps forward. “What about all of them?” Elie motioned behind her at the door quaking from the efforts of the undead army. “If this is the only way in and out, what do we do about them?”

“Yes, well, I imagine that is a problem for you to solve, now isn’t it? The undead have little interest in a well-read feather dragon, such as myself, so my supposition is that particular quandary rests upon your rather lovely shoulders.”

Jack rolled his eyes hard enough to see the lining of his own skull. “You are just the height of helpful, you know that?”

Elie shot him a look. “At least he’s well spoken, mercenary.”

“Sell-sword,” Jack corrected. “And let’s get moving. I’d rather not be around if they break through the door.”

“Wise decision,” Wit commended. “Onward then.”

“At last,” Vilos grumbled. “Less talking with my next job. Can’t stand all this jabber. Blood-letting. Very little talking in that.”

“What charming company I have fallen in with,” Wit quipped.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Elie remarked as she moved down the hall.

***

The passage quickly turned into more stairs, and the troupe descended into the further depths of the massive tomb. Every flight or so, the stairs would open up into a landing lined with inlets. Corpses in all manner of decay lay in those inlets, some reduced just to bones, others still surprisingly fresh, as though the tomb were still in active use. Wit explained that the further into the catacombs they went, the less the bodies were exposed to air, which often times slowed their decomposition. It was of very little comfort to Jack who found the whole character of the place- overrun with cobwebs and stacked to its brim with death- entirely unpleasant, to say the least. He very much decided on the spot that furthermore, he would relegate himself to creating corpses, rather than spelunking amongst them. That is, after all, what a sell-sword is supposed to do. Yes, tomb raiding was just not for him.

As they descended further, the dankness of the air gave way to a drier, staler atmosphere as the temperature within the catacombs continued to drop. Jack found himself shivering slightly in the sharp chill of the air, so used was he to the raging heat of Sha’rhan desert. His hands reached out and found the more jagged, rough hewn walls had turned into a more masoned affair, well constructed and finely smoothed. It struck him as odd that the deeper into the tomb they went, the nicer the stonework was. Then, it did stand to reason that over time as disinterest eroded public use of the mighty tomb, they probably gave up making things look nice. Those original depths, the earliest well of souls, would have been appointed for the enshrining of lords who were looked upon as gods.

They might have been better constructed, but they were in no less a place of being overrun with vermin and critters of all manner. Jack squirmed a few times when his hands ran across an oversized cobweb, and he visibly wriggled when he occasionally thought its inhabitant was running across the length of his shoulders. Rats scampered around his feet, and long beetles the length of snakes with thousands of wiry legs darted in and out of the cracks in the masonry. The sell-sword made a show of trying to see into the shadows of the darkness with his torch, but really he was just swinging the flame at anything moving to keep it away from him.

Ahead, Elie and Wit seemed locked in a perfectly pleasant conversation.

“So you were really council to someone who was buried here?” she asked.

“A few hundred generations before you were even conceived, back in the early days of the Magi of the Sha-rhan, yes, I was,” the little dragon replied. “Zagron was a different place then. It still reeked of decrepit crime and moldering corruption, but there was a nobility to the imperial family, back when the line was still descendant of Mauzolous.”

“Why did you stay after he died?”

“After she died,” Wit corrected, “I found that the house of the new king had very little use for a feather dragon with fathomless knowledge of the world, incredibly. I could see it was the beginning of the downfall of the line of Mauzolous, and I elected to remain close to their collected knowledge, rather than take my chances on the wind.”

“How adventurous of you,” Jack remarked offhandedly.

The little dragon turned his serpentine neck round to address the sell-sword. “I rather find, erm, adventure, to be a robust and counterproductive waste of time. Apart from having little in the way of assured outcome, they take away from time that could be better utilized learning.”

“What good all that learning if you never put it to use?” Jack pointed out.

“Because someone around here needs to be a historian. Storytellers, record keepers- they are in short supply in this world. And paper, a glorious an invention as your species seems to think it is, is a rather fragile way to mark down records. I am decidedly less fragile.”

“We could test that,” Vilos growled.

“You would regret it,” Wit replied tritely. “Do not mistake my amicable nature, large one. I am no less dangerous than my larger kin, and immolating someone as drunk as you would be of little difficulty. Why I bet your blood itself would catch on fire you’ve drunk so much.”

Elie immediately changed the conversation. “You said we’re looking for the tomb of a wizard? Kraakish? How did he end up with the Mortal Anchor? Do you think there would be anything else in there useful to a practitioner of the mystical like me?”

Wit turned his attention back to the young woman. “To the first line of inquires: I have very little idea indeed. The Mortal Anchor has a troubled past in general, and while Kraakish was among one of the greatest wizards to ever stride this realm, he was also secretive, aggressively reticent, and simply mad to boot.”

“Mad? As in crazy?” Elie probed further.

“Depending upon one’s definition, I suppose. Madness is, after all, merely an assigned value based on a presumed understanding or acceptance of sanity. But yes, at the time he was alive, Kraakish was very much considered to be mad. Late in life, his principle preoccupation was the practice of necromancy, and then the bending of time.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Jack quipped.

Wit ignored him. “His understanding of the magic of life and death was imperfect, and despite his own power he was unable to ever fully revive the dead. Though he came close enough that I imagine some of the undead guardians of this tomb are derivative of his own ancient spells and curses aimed to bring back the deceased. Hence, his final experiments were with time, for who should need to return life to the dead if you could simply bend time to your will and age no more? Much more dangerous experiments those- toying with the fabric of the universe and whatnot. I imagine at some point in his quest to conquer time, he managed to come into possession of the Mortal Anchor.”

“That’s definitely this side of crazy,” the sell-sword appraised.

“Could you please not be involved in this conversation?” Elie snipped at him.

Jack held up his hands in surrender and turned his attention back to… well, the walls, there really was not anything else for him to pay attention to.

“As to your second line of question, dearest lady,” Wit went on, “that exact madness is why I would strongly encourage you not search too hard among his possessions for something that you might find useful to yourself. I have no doubt that anything Kraakish found even passingly valuable to himself will be trapped and cursed in ways that defy explanation. Likely if you touch the wrong thing, it will turn you into one of his undead experiments, or perhaps phase you just slightly out of time in this existence, rendering you caught between existences for the remainder of the eternity. Nasty business that.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Elie said.

“Of course, my dear. Of all the assorted company I find myself in today, yours is the company I find least objectionable.”

“Hey, no fair picking favorites,” Jack objected.

“What of what we came for?” Vilos elbowed in. “If there traps in the wizard’s coffin, where do we find the treasure we carry out?”

Wit was not listening. Rather, he had his little head tilted towards the ceiling, as though he were listening to something several floors above them in the higher reaches of the catacombs.

The little dragon wrinkled up his snout. “Did you come in with anyone else?”

“Wouldn’t we have waited for them?” Elie pointed out.

“Perhaps not. A smaller band the greater share of pay to each. I only just met you, I don’t know your values,” Wit reminded her.

Elie sighed. “Not altogether unmerited. No, we came in with no one else.”

Wit wrinkled his snout again. “I suspect the skeletons have broken into my library. There is an awful ruckus above us. They’re going to make such a mess of things. It’ll take me a decade at least to put everything back in order.”

Jack snapped his head up towards the ceiling. “They’re free?! You can hear them?!”

“I hear something,” Wit said. “And unless someone else has managed to break in here today, the odds of which are slim at best, I would caution that yes, the little army of boneheads is free of the door you futilely attempted to bar. I wish you the best of luck in your escape.”

“Don’t worry,” Elie turned over her shoulder towards Jack. “If we find the Mortal Anchor, we won’t need to go back that way.”

“If. IF!” he emphasized. “If we’re all wrong about this, what then?”

“Then I imagine you have one pickle of a fight on your hands, Master Jack,” Wit appraised.

Even Vilos grumbled. “Will be more difficult to fight back out with our arms full of treasure. Speaking of.”

“Yes, yes, of course, your treasure,” Wit said exasperatedly. “There will be plenty of it in the chambers surrounding Kraakish. Mauzolous was buried with absolutely heroic amounts of wealth. You will not be disappointed.”

Vilos smiled through broken teeth. “Good.”

“How much further do we have to go?” Jack griped. “There have been more stairs involved in today than I think I have seen the entire breadth of my life heretofore.”

“A sound body is a long lived one,” Wit said. “Better to exercise today than to be bedridden tomorrow, Master Jack. A few more stairs will do you good. And to more directly answer your question, we are nearly there. We are about to pass through the chambers of Mauzolous’s third descendant, Minolous. I trust if you find nothing of interest in the lowest burial chambers, you will find something that appeals here.”

They came to a landing with a heavy stone door ahead. Wit motioned at them to open it, but only Vilos possessed the unbridled strength to move the massive portal. When he did, however, the sight that met them was beyond reasoning. Behind the door was a towering chamber, much like the great entrance hall they came into, just as high and as lengthy. In the four corners of the grand hall were enormous carvings of lions, each with an open, roaring mouth from which gargantuan flames flickered, lighting the entire chamber. Instead of being littered with coffins, though, this chamber was packed with gold. Stupefying amounts of it. Comical amounts of it. Treasure from floor to ceiling in bursting barrels, chests, lock boxes, and where there was no container, just loose piles of it scattered on the floor. Coins, platters, jewelry, gems and precious heirlooms in amounts that would sustain the wealth of a hundred generations of kings and queens choked the massive room.

“Hello and good evening, retirement, it is my absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Jack half whispered as they all stumbled inside.

“Gold,” Vilos growled long and low.

“Where did all of this come from?” Elie asked breathlessly.

“Minolous was a hoarder and a conqueror,” Wit explained. “These are the collected spoils of his conquest of several rival empires. He spent almost none of it, just buried it away so that his sons could use it to expand their own kingdoms. Of the eight of them, though, only one would survive the others- likely he killed his brothers in jealousy. And this was, as you can imagine, far too much wealth for one man or woman to spend in their lifetime. Ozumindolous, as he was named, built several colossi and other mighty works in his time, but ultimately when he died the secret of his fortune died with him, and here it remained.”

“How do you know all this,” Jack asked, still trying to comprehend the glittering valley of money he found himself.

“I read,” Wit scoffed.

“I shall need a cart drawn by many horses,” Vilos calculated.

“It would take you more years than you have left just to dig it all out,” the little dragon said. “Minolous had an entire army devoted just to the collection and accumulation of this treasure. Without hiring your own army, you’ll have to settle for what you can carry out.”

Jack plunged his hand into a loose pile of treasure, and when he drew his fist back out he was holding more money than he had ever been paid in total for every one of his deeds over the course of his whole career. “Where in the nine hells do we even begin?”

“Not here, if you want the really valuable things,” Wit replied. “Wait until we make it to the tomb of Mauzolous himself. Artifacts worth far more and much easier to carry. Consider this your last resort if you really do not find yourselves happy with what is down there.”

Jack stuffed some of the coins into his breeches all the same. “I’m not one to take chances when this stuff is just sitting out in the open.”

The little dragon rolled his eyes. “The greed of man will truly be your undoing.”

“‘Greed is a secondary consequence to the want of power’,” Jack quoted.

Wit raised his eyebrow horns. “'For greed is but means to an end, veritably the simplest way to buy influence without having to shed lifeblood or put one’s own at risk’,” the little dragon finished the quote. “You’ve read the Musings of the Eight?”

“Several times.”

“I did not initially take you to be of even the passingly learned, Master Jack. There is hope for you yet.”

The sell-sword flashed a toothy smile.

“I assume the tomb of Kraakish is near?” Elie interjected.

Wit nodded. “Of course dearest lady. Once through this hall it is only but another flight of stairs down and will arrive in the original burial chambers. Those of Mauzolous and his wife, their children, and their counsel: Kraakish.” He turned his little head back up towards the ceiling. “You’re absolutely certain no one else came in here with you? You weren’t perhaps followed?”

Elie looked uneasily back at Vilos, who shrugged and turned towards Jack.

The sell-sword faltered a bit. “I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

Wit looked a little concerned. “That does not sound much like the scraping of bone against stone, as it does sound like sandals and soft boots and the sweeping of robes. I think there is someone else in here with us.”

Jack slowly drew his sword. “Well, that’s comforting.”

“Best we be finished with your errand, and quickly,” Wit said. “There are many other routes through this tomb, and it concerns me to no small degree that whoever else is in here has come along our exact trail. That is not coincidence, my rather ridiculous companions, that is patently ‘we have been followed.’”

“Aren’t there more traps or guards or curses to stop them?” Elie asked as they picked up their pace through the massive treasure chamber.

“Dearest lady, just how many would-be tomb raiders do you figure would made it alive past an army of undead?” Wit posed.

“Fair enough.”

“Besides, I promise you,” the little dragon went on, “in the lowest chamber, where the most valuable things are, there will not be want for traps and curses.”

Something about that made Jack extremely nervous.

They hustled quickly through the remainder of the treasure room and swiftly descended the next flight of stairs. It left the troupe in a circular antechamber, with three vault doors. Above each great door were inscriptions, presumably of who or what might be behind said portal. Wit motioned with his wing at the rightmost door.

“That one- that’s the resting place of Kraakish, later known simply as The Defiler.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “The Defiler?”

Wit glanced in his direction. “People don’t exactly take kindly to someone who meddles with the forces of life and death, Master Jack.”

The sell-sword sighed. “Let’s get your little diamond and then find a payday so we can get the nine hells out of here.”

Elie agreed. “I’m not looking to spend a whole lot more time down here myself.”

“Vilos, if you’ll get the door once again.” Jack motioned at the huge vault.

It took more than one try, but eventually Vilos did manage to bash the door open. The tomb within was surprisingly nondescript. It was a very simple stone room, one wall carved with shelves bursting with scrolls and books as one might imagine a wizard would have, and the center a great stone sarcophagus carved with hundreds of tiny runes. Jack and Vilos wasted little time in hefting the lid of the coffin off its base and throwing it aside. Together, they and Elie warily peered into the casket.

Kraakish, the Defiler, was not a pretty sight after resting below the sands of Zagron for untold millennia. What might have once been fine, brightly colored, royal robes had decayed to rough scraps. A few wisps of white hair and patches of a long, rotting beard dotted his brown, peeling skull. Boney fingers gripped a large tome that looked like it would have once been bound in luxurious leather, but it too had succumbed to time and was decaying. Beneath that book and those crumbling robes was a partially mummified body of yellow flesh and rough bones. Devoid of its muscle and organs, Kraakish’s corpse looked sunken and altogether frightening- as though there was still some manner of life left in it despite having nothing left to give it that spark. One wondrous thing did catch their eye.

Around the corpse’s neck was a simple chain. At the end of the chain was a diamond about the size of a tear drop. It glittered from a light it seemed to be producing itself, and twinkled brightly in the dim chamber.

“Is that it?” Jack asked.

“I think so,” Elie said softly.

The sell-sword reached into the coffin and tugged at the chain. With a puff of dust, it broke through Kraakish’s crumbling neck bones and came free in Jack’s hand. He slowly withdrew his hand from the coffin and held the tiny diamond up for all of them to see. It gleamed intensely, and they almost had to shield their eyes from its brilliance. All three leaned in to get a closer look despite its piercing shine.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Vilos decided.

“How do you tell if it’s the real thing?” Jack asked.

“We’re gonna know pretty well if I try and send us back in time and we get stuck between dimensions,” Elie responded not so encouragingly.

“That sounds like a risk, Lady Wizard.”

“Everything is, Mister Sell Sword.”

“Hey,” Jack turned towards Wit, who was perched on the lid of the sarcophagus intently reading the inscriptions on it, “I thought you said there would be a ton of traps and curses and whatnot.”

“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” the little dragon said. “There’s something funny about these sigils. They don’t so much look like a warning to keep out like I would expect, but more like glyphs of protection keeping something in.”

“Beg your pardon?” Jack asked.

“My knowledge of this particular dialect is a bit rusty, but if I am not very much mistaken these look like they were put in place to keep something in the coffin, rather than preventing us from taking anything out.”

“Now what good exactly would that do?!” Jack practically shouted. “He’s not getting back up! He’s dead!”

“Perhaps not as much as you think.” A voice came rasping behind them.

Wide-eyed, Jack, Vilos and Elie turned back towards the coffin. Kraakish had sat up, and from the depths of eyeless sockets, was staring at them.

Vilos, in his own manner, hauled off and punched the decaying skull right square where its nose would have been. Kraakish’s head flew free from his body and sailed across the chamber. Just before hitting the wall and shattering apart, it snapped upright and floated in the air. In the blink of an eye, it hurtled back towards its anchor on the top of his neck and clicked back into place. Kraakish raised a bony finger and wagged it menacingly at Vilos.

Wit’s little jaw dropped open. “Not great.”

Kraakish waved with one of his skeletal arms, and the whole crew flew across the room and went head over heels back through the vault door. They smashed into the far wall of the landing and slumped to the floor.

Jack grunted. “That explains why there weren’t more booby traps.”

Wit shook himself. “And why those sigils were meant to keep him in his coffin.”

“I can hit him harder,” Vilos assured everyone.

Elie, for her part, was rummaging as quickly as she could through some of the scrolls in her satchel and weeding through the little bag of components on her hip. She frantically found what she was looking for just as Kraakish came hovering through the doorway.

His voice was wet and dry at the same time, a hollow, rattling sound that grated on the ears and induced goosebumps with every syllable uttered. “What insects are these that impede upon my sleep?”

“The kind that will send you to a permanent one!” Vilos hollered. He rushed the floating corpse.

Kraakish barely raised a single finger, and before the mercenary could reach him, Vilos was sent tumbling towards the far wall again. This time, when he struck, dozens of skeletal hands reached out of the mortar and grabbed hold of him. The immense mercenary was clasped tightly to the wall by those clutching claws, no matter how hard his massive girth struggled.

Jack looked on with terror, but charged the undead wizard with as much bravery as he could possibly muster. Kraakish raised another hand, and a length of phantasmal, purple chains extended from his palm. They wrapped around the sell-sword like a constricting serpent, and tightened their grasp. It was excruciating being in their grip, and Jack writhed and bucked to be free of them as burning sensations coursed through him the tighter the magic chains became. Before Wit could do anything at all, Kraakish opened his jaw, and an opalescent bubble floated out from between his teeth. It grew larger and larger, and as the little dragon tried to flap away, it enveloped him, hovering the tiny monster harmlessly into the air where he could do little more than float and watch.

Only Elie managed to get in a strike. She had been chanting under her breath as Vilos, Jack and Wit were all easily cast aside, and just as Kraakish turned her direction, she finished her spell and smashed a live spider in her grip.

“Viscous lattice!” she hollered.

A broad, grey spider’s web leapt from her fingertips and flew towards the zombie wizard. Before it reached him, he laughed in his boney throat and defiantly held up one hand. The web paused in midair just before him before reversing directions and entangling Elie instead. Kraakish snapped his fingers, and a titanic spider was conjured from the ceiling. It dropped to the floor, picked up the young woman and carried her up the wall, where it hung waiting for its next command.

“Now then,” Kraakish began again. “By what manner shall you die today?”

“If I could,” Jack grunted between grit teeth as the agony of his burning magic chains only intensified, “none manner would be preferable. We’ll just go, we know our way out.”

Kraakish threw back his skull and laughed openly, a horrifying sound that was reminiscent of a funeral bell ringing. “Tiny speck, if releasing you were of my proclivity, you would already be vanished into the night and on your way. You tried to take my anchor from me, child- for that you will pay with your lives!”

As the zombie wizard roared the word ‘lives,’ he spread his hands and a web of lightning flashed from his fingers, scorching the assembled companions and eliciting howls of pain from them all. Kraakish only laughed louder as his captives screamed.

The undead sorcerer clenched his fists and the lightning stopped. “Now then. The manner of your deaths. And the order. Who wishes to watch who die?”

“Is this what things have come to?” Wit bemoaned. “Are you fools to be the cause of my demise?”

“Shut up while I try and figure something out!” Jack snarled back.

“Fight me like a man, wizard!” Vilos shouted. “Use not your magics, but your fists, and let us see who then be the victor is!”

“I really hate it here,” Elie moaned as the gargantuan spider hanging her from the ceiling hissed in her face.

Just when it was certain that all hope was lost- another calamity descended into that chamber and things got even worse. From the stairway, from the cracks in the ceilings and the gaps in the mortar in the walls, a dusky red smoke flooded the room. Even Kraakish took pause as the smoke rushed around the room and then gathered in five narrow pillars at the center. The pillars of crimson smoke wavered and then solidified into five broad men, cloaked in burgundy robes trimmed in gold, with deep hoods pulled over their faces. The robed man at their lead barely raised one hand and uttered a single word.

“Nullify.”

The hands holding Vilos, the web and spider menacing Elie, the glowing chains ensnaring Jack, even the odd little bubble holding Wit all vanished instantaneously, and the companions tumbled to the floor again. Kraakish’s empty eye sockets suddenly erupted in purple flame as he roared in rage.

“MAGI!”

“Oh shit,” Elie said beneath her breath. “They found me.”

The lead magician who had banished the zombie wizard’s magic threw back his hood and spoke. “Gods above and below. Kraakish? Is that you?”

If the fleshless skull of Kraakish’s face could have formed a look of surprise, it would have. “Diivroi Ka. How are you still living?”

“I have learned the art of passing my spirit from one vessel to the next, and achieved a manner of immortality that I might pass on the teachings of the Magi properly where I trust no one else to do so. Did we not execute you some time ago, Kraakish?” the wizard named Ka said.

“Evidently not well enough. Who are these children you bring with you?” The zombie wizard motioned at the other robed men.

“They are my apprentices,” Ka snapped back.

“Your standards have fallen,” Kraakish snorted.

One of the apprentice wizards took exception to that. “Speak no more, foul beast! Your time upon this world has reached its end!”

The undead sorcerer waved his hand. The apprentice turned completely inside out, his guts and muscle flipping outward where his flesh should have been. He then exploded, spraying the room with gore and bone. In the same motion, one of the other apprentices began screaming shrilly. The scream was cut short when he vanished into a pile of sand and the tatters of his robe floated the floor.

Jack watched it all happen, bug-eyed. “I am SO glad that’s not how he greeted us.”

“I don’t hate you as much as I hate them,” Kraakish explained.

“Thank the gods for that,” Elie said.

“Enough of this!” Ka exclaimed. “Kraakish so long as you return to your coffin, we will have no quarrel with you. We came for the girl. Surrender her and her companions and you shall be allowed to continue to exist.”

“And what will you do with them?” the undead wizard asked. “Burn them at the stake as you did me?”

“She stole several valuable spell components and information from our palace, and she is practicing magic outside our concordance, the penalty for which is death. The others are aiding and abetting her efforts, so they shall share in her fate,” Ka barked.

“An arbitrary concordance that you enforce at your own pleasure, Magi. I feel little inclination to help you carry out such a capricious sentence,” Kraakish snapped.

“I don’t know why, but I feel compelled to point out that just a moment ago you were going to kill us,” Jack piped up.

“That would amuse me,” the undead wizard replied. “I get no pleasure in them killing you. And besides- you stole from me.”

“She stole from US!” Ka roared.

Kraakish shrugged in as much as he was able with such boney shoulders. “Semantics.”

Ka’s hands started to glow green. “You could not best us in life, wizard, and you shall fair no better in undeath! If you would have it this way, I will obliterate you!”

The zombie sorcerer snarled and magic leapt into his own rotting palms. “I have had millennia upon to perfect my craft. This tomb shall be now your resting place, and I shall be once again upon the world!”

“So be it!” Ka shouted. “Abandah! Mazak! Destroy him!”

Together, all three Magi began hurling flashing spells and unleashing divine magics upon the zombie wizard. Kraakish raised a hand and brushed it all aside, while pointing his free hand and spewing dark power right back at them. They conjured their own magic shields, deflecting the undead sorcerer’s spells. Back and forth it went, a blaze of magic and hollered insults.

Amidst this chaotic battle of magic and will, Elie was furiously digging through the contents of her bag. Jack crawled over to her, desperate to keep his head under all of the spells ricocheting back and forth between the Magi and the undead wizard.

“What are you doing?!” he shouted over the din.

“Getting us the nine hells out of here!” she yelled back. Elie exclaimed in excitement when she found a particular scroll and a very specific component. Immediately she started reading from the tattered piece of parchment, muttering under her breath and trying desperately to keep her attention on the glyphs on the page, and not on battle going on. She broke off only for a moment to yell at Jack, “Grab Vilos!”

Jack reached out and took hold of Vilos’s massive arm, and with his other hand snagged Wit out of the air. Elie reached up and grabbed the Mortal Anchor hanging around Jack’s neck. She kept chanting.

Wit took his eyes off the fight when he listened to what she was saying. His brow horns shot up in surprise and alarm. “Wait! No! That’s not how that spell goes!”

It was too late. Elie finished the words on the scroll and smashed a tiny hourglass on the ground.

“Time rewoven,” she said at last.

“Not good!” Wit yelped.

The floor disappeared from under them all. A whirlpool of reality appeared in its place. The sands of time, events of future history and things long since forgotten spun in a maddening maelstrom beneath the companions and the dueling wizards. Jack could feel its tides pulling them all down. He clung tighter to Vilos and Wit, and hoped Elie had a good grip on the Anchor around his neck. The roar of the whirlpool drowned out the battle between the Magi and Kraakish, and they finally stopped to take notice.

Ka and his apprentices were dragged down first. Screaming and cursing retribution, they were sucked into some kingdom perhaps five decades into the future and vanished. Kraakish was clawing to stay connected to the current time and place, but even he was caught up in the current of the spell. He keened as he was pulled into an empire a thousand years in later times.

“I will have my Anchor back, insects! There is no where in time you can hide from me! Wherever you go, I will be waiting!”

The zombie wizard vanished. Jack could see where he and his companions were being dragged towards- another shining kingdom on the other side of the known world in a time years upon years later than the current day. He held his breath as the spell drew them down into the whirlpool of time and reality. Elie smiled faintly as she gripped the Anchor even tighter.

“I really hope this thing works.”

#amwriting #fantasy #short story #bronze age

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