Split the Party

by Drew Hayes

  “I’d actually be up for that,” Bert said.

  “If there are forests,” Alexis added.

  “Well, you definitely don’t have to go chasing after him,” Russell told them. “The wizard reappears at the other end of the room, standing over a small chest with arcane runes running up and down it. Before your eyes, he pulls out a dagger and presses it into his torso, coating the blade with his heart’s blood.”

  “Holy shit, are you kidding me?” Cheri leaned forward, waffling between looking at the figurines on the map and her brother, who seemed to have gone a shade or two paler than minutes before.

  “I wish. He pulls the blade out, presses it to the chest at his feet, and then looks up at you all and says: ‘Better sealed from the world than in the hands of your kind.’ Then he touches his hand to the bloody dagger, and a blinding flash fills the air. When you can all see again, the wizard is slumped over dead, and a new set of blood-red runes are woven around the entire chest.”

  “What the hell was that?” Tim asked. He was the only other one to have seen things go awry once before, but he seemed more concerned with Russell than the game.

  “Let me check it out.” Cheri tossed her die onto the table, fingers crossed for a high number. “That’s a twenty-two for my Arcane check.”

  “You . . . you know what it is,” Russell said, slowly regaining his composure. “It’s a blood seal, one of the highest forms of magic. The wizard gave his life to make that chest impossible to open—at least, impossible without a powerful archmage to undo the spell.”

  “Must be something really powerful in there,” Bert speculated. “Do we have a clue what’s inside?”

  “Since your party will be looting the tower’s top chamber anyway, I’ll go ahead and give you this.” Russell peered down at the writing in the book and swallowed, reminding himself that it was just words on paper. What he was seeing was a coincidence, nothing more. “The wizards have various notes scattered about their lab about a magical artifact they’d recently discovered. While they were taking pains to study it without triggering its latent magic, they speculated that it might have a myriad of different properties, most prominent of which was the power to connect their realm to other worlds.”

  “Oooh, dimension hopping. Now that’s a good hook.” Cheri nodded approvingly. “But I guess first we have to get the thing open.”

  “Wimberly will immediately begin investigating the chest from every angle, searching for physical flaws to exploit,” Bert declared.

  Russell nodded and motioned for him to roll, but the GM’s eyes quickly found their way to Tim’s. An artifact in the game that could impact other worlds . . . it was a long stretch to assume that was what had caused the events of their previous game. But both had watched Tim’s die spin itself into dust with no explanation. Both knew that there was more to this than logic could readily explain.

  For now, all they could do was keep playing. Once the session was over, however, Russell planned to pore through his notes and see if the book matched up with what he’d taken down. If it did, then he could relax, knowing that he was letting one unexplained incident get the better of him. If it didn’t, though . . . well, Russell didn’t actually have a plan for that contingency. Should that happen, he would officially have to decide whether to push it all aside and pretend it never happened or take another step forward and embrace theories that would technically mark him as insane.

  At this point, he really didn’t know which path he would choose.

  * * *

  “You’re sure he’s back in town?” Fritz, quite possibly for the first time since Gabrielle and Grumph had met her, seemed anxious as they rode through the farmlands toward the town of Briarwillow. This was doubly surprising since the “he” in question was Ferdy, a man they’d never seen muster a single cordial word for the elven trader.

  “I cast a Finding spell, and that’s what it told me,” Talcia reiterated. “Plus, his horse was gone.”

  “Along with hundreds of undead.” Eric’s head kept moving as he rode, scanning the area lest an army of undead villagers burst out from hiding and overwhelm them. He didn’t imagine his warning would make much difference in that sort of situation, but there was always the chance of escape if nothing else.

  “Should we be worried about that? I mean the undead, obviously, but also the fact that we were all exposed to that cursed skull back in the mountain.” Gabrielle, despite the concerns she was voicing, felt far better than she had only an hour prior. Thistle had used the last of his daily healing to patch the worst of her wounds, and while she would still need rest and more healing, it was a world of improvement from where she had been.

  “I think we’ll be fine,” Thistle assured her. “As it was explained to me, destroying the heart also destroyed every other piece of his body and the magic therein. A curse with no magic is simply ill-will, and it shall take more than that to bring all of us down.”

  “Well, that’s one thing in our favor, at least.” Eric noticed movement coming from up the road and held up his hand to halt the others.

  It was a lone figure atop a horse, riding toward them slowly. Eric could feel the others tense; daggers were drawn and spells prepared. A whoop from Fritz broke the heavy worry in the air, as she leaned forward in her saddle and pointed to the oncoming figure.

  “It’s Ferdy!”

  Sure enough, within minutes the young sorcerer could clearly be made out, and he waved at them as he approached, signaling his friendliness just in case they hadn’t realized who he was. Soon, he’d covered the ground between them, and Ferdy slowed his horse to a halt, staring at the bloody, burned, and dust-covered party with curiosity and perhaps a tinge of admiration.

  “You know, I was absolutely certain I was going to have the more interesting story to tell when you all emerged, but now I fear that may not be the case after all.”

  “It seems only fair that you at least get to go first, especially since we’re all wondering what happened to you and your hundred or so undead opponents,” Thistle replied.

  Ferdy looked away, the most sheepish expression any of the adventurers had seen him make since their respective meetings, and then turned his horse around and headed back toward town. “Let’s ride and talk. Some of this will be easier to accept if you see it for yourself.”

  The others, not having any real option, and having planned on heading in that direction anyway, complied with his request and began to move forward once more. They rode for nearly five minutes before Ferdy spoke, and when he did, it was with a sense of humility that seemed utterly foreign in his proud voice.

  “I overestimated myself. I thought that with Talcia helping me get started, I’d have the mana and focus to keep that many undead at bay. Sometime after you all left, though, it became clear I was wrong. My magic began to fail, and eventually, a cluster of undead broke free of their binding. At that point, I was sure I had reached the end of my journey. As they rose from the ground and began to approach me, I expected to be ripped limb from limb or eaten outright—perhaps even made into an undead myself. The last thing I anticipated, however, was what they actually did.”

  Ferdy slowed his pace just a touch, making sure everyone was in earshot for the next portion of his story. In the distance, Eric could make out the beginnings of Briarwillow and what seemed like movement between the town’s buildings.

  “They asked me, very politely at that, to let their friends and family up from the ground. No threats, no undead moaning, just a straightforward request. I honestly think they were far more afraid of me than I was of them; they kept talking, and then darting backward, like they expected me to hex them. Since it was going to happen soon anyway, I decided to take a chance and comply. I released the spell. The rest of the town rose from the ground . . . and proceeded to ask me for directions on how to get back to Briarwillow.”

  “Wait, so they came back to life?” Gabrielle asked.

  “Oh no, they were still very much corpses. Magically a
nimated undead through and through,” Ferdy told her. “But it seems that without anyone holding the skull and ordering them about, their own minds returned. They were quiet, nice, farming folk, and they insisted on leaving the mountain and getting back home. I think they were afraid of the place, honestly. Since my job was to watch over the undead, I made a judgment call and followed them back.”

  “Interesting,” Thistle said. “And they were still up and moving when last you saw them? They didn’t suddenly drop into corpses an hour or so ago?”

  “I’ve been with them until one of the men I asked to watch for you gave me the signal that you’d been spotted,” Ferdy replied. “Why on earth would they simply stop moving?”

  “The skull that commanded and cursed them was destroyed, so I assumed they would return to being, well, normal dead.” Thistle turned the facts over in his head, trying to figure out what their continued existence could mean.

  “Though I’m not a necromancer, I do know a little something about their magic,” Talcia butted in. “While the skull might have made these people sick and been used as a totem for control, we don’t know if it was used as the source of magic for the undead change or whether it was merely the impetus. If I cast a spell from my staff, for example, the spell doesn’t end if you break the staff. If, however, I enchant my staff to glow, that will be destroyed with the staff’s physical form.”

  “Great, so now we have a whole town of undead to deal with.” Gabrielle started to reach for her axe, but then halted her hand. Perhaps the time for battle would come, but she didn’t fancy gripping that weapon until the need was truly upon them. Having tasted such strength and paid the price for it, Gabrielle found herself with a sudden appreciation for restraint.

  “You really don’t; that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Ferdy pointed up the road to where the buildings of Briarwillow were in plain view. “Listen, just come with me and see. Showing you will do what words never could.”

  With that, the group began to ride faster, hurrying down the road until they began to pass the outskirts of Briarwillow. What met their eyes was something that, even with Ferdy’s warning, none of them could have ever imagined.

  It was just like the first day the adventurers had come to Briarwillow. The streets were flooded with activity: booths were being set up, the smell of food just beginning to cook filled the air, and on top of it all, the citizens of the town darted about in a flurry of motion. They were preparing for another festival, and from the looks on everyone’s faces, they seemed downright enthusiastic. It should have been a quant, heartwarming scene to walk into after the hard battle they’d fought.

  Except, of course, for the teensy little problem that every one of those excited faces wore the telltale pallor of the undead.

  They rode slowly through the streets, taking in the sights around them with a mix of relief and apprehension. The idea of not having to fight an entire town was deeply appealing, certainly, but none of them were quite certain this constituted a good ending. After all, Briarwillow was a moderately well-known outpost on the kingdom’s roads, and when word spread that the plague had lifted, it would be filled with travelers once again. An entire town of undead, however, was not the sort of thing a proper kingdom tolerated.

  It was Grumph who summed it up, twisting in his saddle to look at Thistle, whose own eyes seemed half-vacant as he took in the sprawling scene before him. “What now?” Grumph rumbled, capturing their complex sentiments as only he could.

  Thistle looked up at his old friend, then at the others who had followed him bravely into the darkness of the mountain, and finally at the townsfolk that were flitting about, being sure to steer clear of the scary adventurers atop their horses.

  “Personally, I am going to see if the woman with the meat pies will be setting up a booth. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I after the night we’ve had, I am simply famished.”

  Epilogue

  “Knock knock, little brother.” Cheri stood in Russell’s doorway, carefully observing the way he was staring at a piece of notebook paper clutched carefully in his slightly shaking hand. Russell was sitting on his bed, surrounded by a sea of papers and the module book, gazing into the scrap of writing like it contained all the secrets of the universe. “Thought I’d come check on you; after the game, you seemed a bit anxious.”

  “Smudged.” Russell lifted his head to face her and pointed to the center of the page in his hand. “It’s smudged. Like I spilled a drop of water on it, and it made the ink smear. I took down so many notes from this module, I worked so hard to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, and now the one thing that would make it clear is, itself . . . smudged.” Russell began to laugh softly to himself. “I swear to God, if I were playing in a game and the GM pulled this, I’d probably think it was brilliant. Never letting me know for sure, leaving me in a state of uncertainty.”

  “Okay, that’s enough of all this.” Cheri strode forward into the room, yanking the page out of her brother’s hand and promptly tearing it in half. Russell tried to take it back from her, but a lifetime of noogies and horseplay had long ago established Cheri as the alpha sibling. She pushed Russell back and ripped up the page again and again until it was nothing more than confetti.

  “Why . . . why did you do that?”

  “Because it was a smudge. It was nothing, but if I’d let you, you’d have spent days obsessing over it, trying to see something that wasn’t there.” With a clap of her hands, Cheri cleared the scraps of paper from her fingers, then reached forward and plucked the module book from Russell’s bed. He hurled himself forward, clearly ready to go to the mat over that item, but Cheri merely flipped it open and scanned to the back.

  “You want to go down this road, that’s fine. My summer was going to be boring anyway. But we’re not going to be passive little bitches about this. Your note idea was a good one, and it seems like you think you found a lead doing it. That lead is gone, though, so it’s time to stop sitting around, waiting for the truth to find you like an NPC. You think something strange is afoot? Go after it like an adventurer.”

  “A lovely speech,” Russell replied. “But without an actual plan, it’s just words.”

  “How about a little faith in your big sister?” Cheri flipped the book around and stuffed it back into Russell’s hands, her finger resting on a single line near the very bottom of a paragraph of fine print. “Every quest starts with a call to action and usually a single clue. Here’s yours: Swords, Spells, & Stealth might be the ones who publish these modules, but Broken Bridge is the company that’s been writing them. If something screwy is going on, then they might know something about it.”

  Russell stared down at the small line of text, barely visible in its small font and black-on-black background. It was like they’d gone out of their way to bury the name of the creation company, the exact opposite of what most such places demanded. How had he never noticed that before? It was one more mystery on the growing pile, but at least this thread could be pulled. For the first time in a very long while, Russell didn’t feel like he was stuck in a situation. Now, at last, there was a chance to start taking matters into his own hands.

  “Thank you.” He looked up from the book to find Cheri still staring at him, concern evident on her face. “For this. For . . . for not assuming I’m crazy.”

  “Oh, I think you’re crazy as hell,” Cheri replied. “But crazy is a lot more fun than sane, if you ask me.” She turned and headed for the door, but stopped on her way out. “You know, if you’re reeeeeeeally feeling grateful, you could always tell me what’s in that chest we found. The whole party is dying with curiosity.”

  “Would if I could, but the module doesn’t say,” Russell replied. “Evidently, there’s no one in the area it covers who can break a blood seal, though it does seem to hint that there might be a character in later expansions.”

  “Fucking corporations; ain’t that always the way.” Cheri shook her head and let out a resigned sigh. “Well, buy the damn
expansion as soon as it comes out. I’m sort of enjoying this group you put together. Also, I’ll deny it in front of the others, but you’ve shaped up to be a pretty good GM. At least, not the worst I’ve ever played under.”

  With that, Cheri was gone, leaving Russell to contemplate whether he was more unnerved by the possibility that he was losing his mind or that his sister had actually said something nice to him.

  * * *

  “Talcia almost has the teleportation spell ready.” Ferdy leaned through the doorway of the inn’s dining area, currently filled only with the adventurers, Fritz, the boar at Timuscor’s feet, and a single undead cook who was stirring wonderful-smelling soup in a massive pot.

  “Thanks; be a doll and let him know I’m on my way,” Fritz replied. Ferdy took the time to give her a dark look, and then complied with the request, heading back to the open area outside town where the elder mage was completing the ritual.

  It hadn’t come as much surprise that those of the magical ilk didn’t want to hang around in a town of the undead, so when Talcia said he was going to open a gate back to Cadence Hollow, no one tried to convince him to do otherwise.

  “Now, you two take care of yourselves,” Fritz said, rising from the table and locking eyes with Grumph and Gabrielle. “No unnecessary risks, no crazy bandit fights in the forest if they can be avoided, none of that. I’m counting on hearing some great stories from the two of you next time we meet, and that can’t happen if you up and die on me.”

  Gabrielle got up from her chair, leaving a half-eaten pile of bear meat on her plate, and embraced Fritz in a powerful hug. “No dying for you either. What if we need to buy one of those fancy carts? Who else but you will give us a fair price?”