by Logan Jacobs
Aerin had gotten a fire going, but it was still too small to burn one of the skeletons properly, let alone all eight. “I just need a little more time,” she insisted as she pulled more handfuls of kindling from her pack to feed the fire. “Just hold them off for a few minutes.”
All the revenants’ bones shone dimly with magic, and I couldn’t help but think that they resembled glow-in-the-dark Halloween decorations or the animatronics on some sort of theme park ride, but when Avery brought his skull up to look me in the face, I felt a chill and reached for the hilt of my dagger.
Lavinia produced a knife of her own and cast me a glance. “These things don’t stay down until you burn the bones, so don’t waste your energy trying to kill them,” she warned. “Just knock them back.”
“How’s that fire coming, Aerin?” Maruk asked with a distinct note of tension in his voice.
“Working on it,” Aerin replied through gritted teeth.
Avery raised one skeletal arm, and all eight of the revenants lurched forth on his command.
“Can they hurt us?” I asked as I summoned the blade to my dagger. I noticed that none of the revenants were armed.
“They bite,” Lavinia answered, “and the magic that reanimates them is... sticky. If they touch your bare skin, it’ll make you nauseated, and you’ll start seeing things. It isn’t fun.”
I could tell by her tone that she spoke from experience, and as the first of the revenants shambled into striking range, I was careful to push it back with the part of my arm that my sleeve covered before I drove my mana blade into its skull. There was a sharp crackle and a spark when the blade met bone, and the revenant’s head lolled and then fell off. As the decapitated body stumbled back, I realized that the light had faded in the fallen skull, and unlike before, it didn’t fly back to reattach itself to its body’s neck. The revenant hadn’t been wholly destroyed, but at least my mana blade seemed to affect individual body parts.
I aimed my next swipe at one of the revenants’ legs and cut through its femur with ease. The revenant pitched wildly at the sudden change in balance, but then it managed to steady itself on its remaining leg, the bones below its femur still hopped around beneath its hip.
Maruk shoved back two of the revenants with a mighty bash from his shield while Lavinia elbowed another in its ribcage.
Aerin was still hunched over the fire and was trying to enlarge it by dragging in more firewood. I didn’t know how much longer it would take her to build it up to an appropriate size to deal with the revenants, but now that I knew my mana blade could stop them as well, I decided to be a little more proactive. There had to be some sort of enchanted object that reanimated the revenants in the first place, and if I could find it and use my magic to cancel out its influence, we wouldn’t need to try to burn all the bones.
As the revenant whose leg I had severed lurched toward me again, I plunged my dagger into its sternum and jerked my hand up to draw the blade through its neck, then aimed a kick at its pelvis. The light in its ribs and spine faded as it fell back, and I took another look around the camp.
There had to be something, some kind of talisman or charm, but then it hit me. Merlin had already gathered up all the neat and shiny things he had found in the camp. I hadn’t paid much attention to his collection before, but I knew that if there was an object that was responsible for reanimating these revenants, it would be in the puca’s stash.
I dodged the grasping hand of another revenant as I leapt forward and drove my dagger through its skull.
“Where are you going?” Lavinia demanded as she kicked the skeleton nearest to her in the kneecap.
“I think I know another way to stop them,” I explained. Merlin’s stash was almost all the way back by the tunnel, but I could see the various trinkets glitter in the firelight from the camp.
I didn’t know what I was looking for when I crouched by the little pile of the puca’s loot, but I figured I would be able to sense it if anything here was enchanted. I could hear the grunts and thuds from the fight in the camp, frequently interspersed with swears from Lavinia, as I sifted through the buttons, buckles, and other junk Merlin had collected, but still, nothing stood out as potentially arcane. I was about to give up and rejoin the fight when I saw it.
Buried under everything else was a silver coin. A hole had been punched through so that it could be strung on a chain and worn as a necklace, and the metal gleamed brilliantly as though it had just been polished. As I reached out to take it, I could feel the energy it emanated, and it almost seemed to vibrate against the skin of my palm.
A furious exclamation drew my attention back to the camp just in time to see Lavinia shove one of the revenants into the fire. I assumed she’d meant to kill it, but perhaps the fire still wasn’t hot enough, or large enough, because the revenant stumbled back through the flames and then came back around for another attack.
I gripped the coin tightly in my hand and focused on the strange buzz of its power. I hadn’t tried to remove an enchantment from an object before, but magic was magic, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be that different from interrupting a mage’s spell.
Or so I hoped.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, and the coin grew warmer in my hand until it was burning hot, so hot that I had to fight the urge to drop it. That was the magic, I knew, just like the mana in living things. I just had to quench it.
I felt my own mana respond and flare up within my chest, and the burning of the coin against my palm mingled with the warm rush of my own power as I clenched my fist tight, and then the heat abruptly faded from the coin, and its vibrations stilled. When I opened my fist again, the luster of the metal was gone, and it looked like any old, corroded coin.
It was only then that I became aware that the sounds of fighting from the camp had stopped, and when I looked up, Aerin, Maruk, and Lavinia were all staring at me. The revenants had all fallen, the light in their bones extinguished, and Merlin bounded between them and sniffed at them curiously.
“What did you do?” Aerin asked breathlessly as I stood and walked back over to them. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
“I figured something had to be reanimating them,” I replied. “I just had to find what it was.”
“I always thought revenants were magical in their own right,” Maruk said. “How did you know there was something else controlling--?”
Aerin interrupted before I could. “Manipulators can see mana, remember?” she said. Then she frowned. “But everything I ever heard was that the only way to defeat a revenant was to burn the bones. There was never any mention of enchantments.”
“We can probably thank the Mage Academy for that.” Lavinia crossed her arms. “After all, what do they care if a few bounty hunters die for being ignorant of some critical information, as long as no one knows how to summon a revenant?”
“Well, hey, one more win for the Foxes, right?” Aerin asked as she smiled at me. “Thanks to our manipulator.”
Merlin trilled at my feet, and I reached down to scratch him behind the ears. “Thanks to Merlin, too,” I said. “I might not have found the talisman in time if he hadn’t already looted the place.”
The puca purred and flicked his tail, and I wondered if the coin was what he had meant to show us all along.
Aerin and Maruk each gave Merlin a few scratches to show their gratitude, and Lavinia managed not to scowl too much while they fawned over him.
“Not that I don’t love hanging around this creepy murder cave, but maybe we should be getting a move on,” the archer prompted after a moment.
I pulled out our map again and moved closer to the fire to get a better look at the route that still lay ahead. “It doesn’t look like we have much further to go,” I said. “Just another few miles or so.” Our path would take us through a fairly convoluted part of the cave network, full of twisting passages that fed into each other in countless maze-like backtracks and loops, but I had already marked out the shortest course that would take us to t
he chamber where the artifact we needed to collect was supposed to be.
Lavinia came up and looked over my shoulder at the map, and I saw her nod out of my periphery. “Great,” she said. “Let’s not waste any more time.”
Chapter 17
I felt the change in the air currents before I actually saw the end of the tunnel and the cavern beyond, and my steps quickened as my stomach twisted in anticipation. My mind was racing. Had Ren and the Stewards already come and gone? Would the artifact we’d fought our way down here to retrieve even still be here?
When we came to the end of the tunnel, I got my first look at the chamber. A long crack in the high ceiling was open to the world above, and it let in just enough light to cast a murky twilight over the great boulders and heaps of rubble that were scattered across the floor. The whole space was large enough to fit a small village within it, and I realized my guess was correct when I noticed the few columns that still stood seemed a bit too perfect to have been entirely natural.
A tiered section of rock where the cave floor sloped down to a wide pool looked to be the crumbled remains of stairs, and I imagined that the various cracks and juts of the stone had once been deliberate carvings. Three other tunnels aside from ours lead back into the cave network, one for each cardinal direction, I guessed, though the markings above the tunnel were not any that I recognized.
I hadn’t expected we would be scavenging the remains of some ancient civilization. The bounty sheet hadn’t said as much, and neither Aerin, Lavinia, or Maruk had mentioned anything to that effect, but it made sense. After all, we were here for an artifact, and whatever it was must have once belonged to the people who had lived here before. I wondered what had caused them to leave and what had destroyed so much of what they’d left behind, but I could satisfy my curiosity later. Right now we needed to find out if the chest was even still here.
There was no mention on the bounty sheet of traps or beasts or anything else that might stand in our way, but I knew better than to believe the chest would be completely unguarded, or to put too much faith into the bounty documents. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder at the others, and their expressions reflected the mixture of excitement and trepidation that I felt at that moment. Aerin smiled when she caught my eye and gave me a short nod, and then I led the way into the chamber.
Broken sections of pillars and stone, some taller than even Maruk, were scattered around the cavern like blocks that had been tossed aside by a child, and the floor was unlevel and spiderwebbed with deep cracks, so we had to pick our way through the ruins carefully. Well, except for Merlin, who jumped from boulder to boulder with the same ease that he flew through the trees.
The bounty documents had singled out this cavern as the location of the chest but were not more specific than that, and we were left to search blindly through the rubble. It was difficult to distinguish much among the ruins, but occasionally we would pass something that had withstood the test of time and whatever lurked down in these caves such as the corner of a stone altar or a piece of a mosaic. Given the level of desolation, I figured that the chest would have to have been hidden somewhere safe, but I wondered how anyone would even know for sure if it was still here.
I’d learned that usually if a private bounty was put out, the name of the person who posted it was included on the assignment sheet, but there was no such designation for the Shadow Delves bounty. The person who posted it could have done so based only on a rumor. After all, they risked nothing since they only had to pay if a guild was successful in procuring the objects they sought, and it was understood that guilds pursued bounties at their own risk.
The chest might have been taken out long ago in secret, the contents sold in black markets across the continent. Or it could be buried beneath all this rubble, never to be found by anyone.
Just then, my thoughts were interrupted by hushed whispers up ahead.
I stepped forward carefully to peer around the boulders and assorted rubble that blocked my view, and I could feel the others behind me, though they took care to be quiet.
I already knew the voices belonged to the Stewards, no one else would be down here, but my stomach twisted all the same when I saw them. They were about thirty feet away, and I could see that they were in bad shape. I thought perhaps it was fortunate for us that Ren had tried to sabotage us by blocking off the route we’d meant to take.
There wasn’t a single member of the Stewards who didn’t appear bruised, bloody, dirty, and exhausted. I noticed one was limping, and another cradled her arm against her chest. What was more, there were only six of them now, including Ren himself. I guessed that they’d lost their healer at some point.
A woman with a crossbow on her back held one end of the chest while a man with a set of daggers hefted up the other end.
“Let’s just get out of here already,” the woman with the crossbow said. “We have the chest, that’s all we need for the bounty. I’ve heard about the monster that guards this place, and I don’t want to meet it.”
Ren seemed to be the worst off out of them. His hair, which had been so perfectly styled the first two times I’d met him, was standing up in patchy clumps, and there was a fresh cut that oozed blood down his cheek.
“Don’t be such a coward,” the air mage growled.
Out of my periphery, I saw Lavinia raise her bow, and I tore my gaze from the Stewards to meet her eye. It was obvious that we weren’t going to get out of here without a fight, so I nodded to her.
The Stewards were preoccupied enough with the chest that they didn’t notice as Lavinia moved slightly out of the cover of the boulders and took aim. Maruk and Aerin didn’t need my signal, and each readied their own weapons as Lavinia let her arrow fly.
It struck the woman with the crossbow through the hand, and as she dropped her end of the chest with a cry, she and the rest of her guild finally noticed that they were not alone.
The man with the daggers dropped his end of the chest as well so that he could draw his own weapons, and Ren turned to face the four of us with a look of blank shock.
Lavinia already had a set of three arrows nocked to her bowstring, Merlin hissed at my feet, and Maruk stepped forward defensively as the Stewards readied their weapons as well.
Ren was an air mage, of course, and I guessed that the girl on his left, the one with the injured arm, must be the Stewards’ earth mage due to her lack of visible weapons. There was the woman with the crossbow who now had a useless hand, the man with the pair of daggers, and two tall men who looked like twins, each armed with a sword and shield.
Six against our four. Well, five if I counted Merlin.
Even as the Stewards adjusted their grips on their weapons, I could see the weariness in their postures and the hollow looks on their faces. The Shadow Delves had clearly taken a toll on their guild, and I guessed the odds weren’t exactly in their favor.
“Shit!” the woman with the crossbow hissed. “My hand!”
“And you’ll get an arrow to the face if you don’t scurry away with your tail between your legs,” Lavinia growled, and then she turned her eyes toward me.
She was waiting for my signal to kill them, and I suddenly realized that I was the leader of the guild.
“Forget it, Foxes,” Ren snarled, “this bounty is ours. Save what’s left of your dignity and walk away now.”
“That’s funny,” I replied. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, Ren, but now I’m thinking you need a good kick in the ass.” I knew the intent behind Ren’s words. He wasn’t as confident in his odds now as he’d boasted about before, and he was trying to avoid a fight.
Ren’s face contorted in an expression of fury, and he bared his teeth as sparks of lightning crackled around his hands. “You want to go? Then let’s go.”
The air mage threw up his hand, and I heard a low howl start up as the mana in his chest flared up and began to course down his arm.
I raised my arm in response and felt the rush of my own power as
I closed my outstretched hand into a fist. The low note that accompanied Ren’s spell cut off abruptly, and his mana faded before its light even reached his hand.
The air mage winced, then blinked once in utter confusion before he threw a glare at the rest of his guild.
“Well?” he demanded. “What are you waiting for? Attack them!”
The twins stepped up first with their swords and shields, and Maruk moved forward to meet them both. I realized that perhaps I hadn’t fully appreciated the advantage of Maruk’s unique defense style before, but I did now. Both of the Stewards’ warriors let their shields down and focused on trying to land hits on the orc with their swords, but with his dual shields, Maruk easily kept them at bay.
Lavinia took advantage and aimed shots at the twin warriors’ unguarded chests and arms as they assailed Maruk, and they were forced to divide their attention between the orc and the ladona archer as they struggled to attack Maruk and defend themselves at the same time.
The rest of the Stewards weren’t quite so eager to join the fight. The woman with the crossbow fumbled with her weapon while the man with the daggers edged back toward the cover of a broken pillar.
The mage girl still cradled her broken arm against her chest, but I saw her turn her hand out toward Maruk, and as the mana shone brighter in her chest, I caught the sound of drums.
I raised my hand to counter her attack in the same move I’d used against Ren. The drums cut off, and the mage gasped as though she had been physically kicked in the stomach.
“What is wrong with all of you?” Ren shouted. He hadn’t attempted another attack since I’d interrupted his first, but he had no problem criticizing the rest of his guild. “Do something!”
Just then, a deep rumble sounded, and the entire cavern trembled around us. Ripples broke out across the surface of the pool on my right, and when the Stewards’ archer saw it, her face went pale, and she lowered her crossbow. The other members of her guild followed her gaze, and a few of them swore softly. Merlin made a frightened sort of squeak and tore off to cower beneath a pillar.
