So, this is what death is really like.
It was the most coherent though Arrie had had in hours. Or was it days? It was dark to tell; silence and darkness were the only things in her world.
She had been waiting for Autumn, she remembered that. It was late, and Autumn was out with someone. Tolly, she thought, or was it Kyle? Or both? The details were fuzzy in her mind. She’d been waiting to tell Autumn something important. Or waiting for Autumn to tell her something. After that there was nothing. Silence and darkness. Time lost meaning for her. She willed herself to move, shout, breathe,
anything, to no avail.
Arrie knew who was responsible for this. There could be only one suspect. Neville.
Suddenly there was… a sound! A loud, piercing shriek that sounded more beautiful to her than the finest elven choir. It was Autumn, her dear, sweet sister; she was shouting for someone – for Kavan…
No, dear, it’s Madrone now…
There were footsteps, and more voices, voices she knew and trusted. But why couldn’t she see anyone? Why couldn’t she move? Why did everyone sound so far away?
They were talking now. Talking about her. She heard words that made no sense – “not breathing” – “cold and pale” – “no pulse”. There was talk about something in her water –
the water! – and of magic.
There was a sudden flash of light all around her, but only from her right side. She saw Maddie looking down at her, peering into her face, the elf’s hand right up next to her eye touching her face –
why can’t I feel her hand on my face?
“The eyes are rolled back as if she were asleep, not staring like the eyes of a dead body,” she heard Maddie say.
She’s talking about my eyes. My body. My dead body.
Maddie pulled her hand away –
no no no no don’t shut my eyes don’t take away the light and now there was more talk about her, about what Neville had done to her.
Help me please help I’m still in here.
There was talk about trying to help her, trying to end whatever held her trapped in her own body. But she heard Kyle telling them not to try.
Kyle why won’t you help me? I thought we were friends. She heard Autumn refusing to leave her side, heard the anger in her voice.
Yes, please stay with me. Then there was more talking, and she didn’t hear Autumn’s voice anymore.
There was the sound of people moving, of grunting as they lifted something heavy. Suddenly what sound she could hear began to echo strangely, as if she were inside a very small room. She heard Kyle and Tolly talking, something about leaving her something in case she woke up while she was still inside.
Inside? Inside what? Where are you putting me? Don’t leave me alone!
Suddenly all the sound ended, and all the light disappeared. Arrie hadn’t realized before that the silence and darkness she had experienced before was relative; what she now perceived was total. Absolute silence, absolute darkness. And there was nothing she could do about it.
A scream that only she could hear became Arrie’s entire world.
* * *
Everyone quickly scrambled to get their belongings together as Togusa strode away. Everyone, that is, except Autumn, who sat down with one of the large tomes she had pilfered from Neville’s townhouse and began reading.
“What are you doing?” Tolly asked.
“I’m not here to chase down this necromancer,” Autumn replied tersely. “I’m here to save my sister’s life. The answer may be in one of these books. I’m not going anywhere until I know what to do.”
Tolly rolled his eyes and walked off, getting ready to return to The Cedar Grove and get his horse. Kyle came up to Autumn and knelt down beside her. “Autumn, do you even know what you’re reading?”
Autumn’s jaw tensed. “What are you saying, Kyle?”
“That there’s days worth of reading here,” he said gently, “and you’re not trained as an alchemist or as a wizard, which means it will take you even longer to find the answer even if it’s here.” He laid a hand tenderly over hers. “Autumn, we need you with us. If we can capture Neville, we may be able to force him to tell us about the poison he used on Arrie. At the very least, he’s bound to have more books wherever he’s hiding.”
Autumn sat quietly for a moment, letting Kyle’s words sink in. A tear rolled down one cheek. “Damn you and your logical thinking,” she said at last.
He smiled at her. “I promise not to let it get in the way too often.”
They both stood at the same time. “I’ll stay here,” Kyle said. “I want to go over my own spellbooks before we leave, to prepare better for the next encounter. Autumn, can you bring my horse?”
The party, minus Kyle, quickly departed. They returned within the hour riding their horses, Autumn leading one by the reins. Togusa also returned around the same time. Kyle looked up to see that Xu was now with the party, but Kavan, who now went by the name Madrone, was absent.
“Xu was waiting at the inn when we got back,” Osborn said to the question Kyle was about to ask. “We’ve filled her in on what’s going on. But the innkeeper’s son is still not doing well, so Madrone is staying to watch over him. She says that she would feel responsible if the boy died because of something that someone tried to do against one of us.”
“I left Neville’s books and papers with her,” Autumn said. “She agreed to start reading through them while she waited.”
“Perfect,” Kyle said. “Now what?”
“Now we need to determine which direction The Brute took out of the city,” Togusa said. “There are only two gates, to the west leading into the Steppes, and to the east leading into Medos. We should divide up and check each gate to see if The Brute has been seen.”
“Autumn and I can take the west gate,” Kyle said.
“You two are going to the west gate?” Tolly said. “I’ll go east.”
“I’ll go with you two!” Osborn said to Autumn and Kyle.
Xu and Lanara decided to go with Tolly. Togusa stated he would wait at the townhouse, which was nearly in the center of the town, and wait for both groups to rendezvous there. After an hour, Xu ran up to where Togusa waited.
“What news?” he asked in Xhintai.
“Lanara’s inquiries at the eastern gate were quite thorough,” Xu replied in the same tongue. “We are certain The Brute did not go that way.”
“Then we should go to the western gate,” he said, standing up.
“The others are already on their way.”
The entire party met up just outside the western gate, where Osborn was talking with a group of merchants that were waiting to leave Miracle. They waited as he finished his conversation and returned.
“I don’t know,” the hin said, “nobody seems to remember The Brute coming through the gate here, and it’s not like he’s easy to miss. Are we sure he’s even left the city?”
“Well, I know for a fact he wasn’t at the east gate,” Lanara said.
“I can hardly imagine the man would remain in the city knowing he was being pursued,” Tolly said.
The party began to discuss their options. Lanara, growing bored, wandered over to a cluster of people talking in hushed tones next to a small doorway in the wall flanking the main gate.* One of the people wore a bright yellow cloak. As she watched, they went through the door, and a few minutes later she saw a flash of bright yellow from the other side of the gate, walking away from the city.
“Hey, Osborn,” Lanara said, wandering back to the group. “You know, there seem to be people leaving the city but not going through the gate.”
Osborn looked around, and spotted the door that the bard nodded toward.
“Huh,” he said, “looks like there’s more than one way out.”
The party quickly moved toward the gate and emerged on the other side. They asked around, and a pair of merchants running a roadside fruit stand mentioned that a short while ago, a large hulking figure on a very strange horse ran across a group riding in on a wagon. The figure had growled, and the people in the wagon had backed off. The hulking figure had then rode off to the north, riding fast but not in a panic.
“Well, we know he’s got another one of those weird horses,” Osborn said.
“Can you track him?” Tolly asked as they moved out in the direction the merchants had pointed.
Togusa dismounted and examined the ground carefully. “I believe these tracks are his. Neville’s horses ride heavy in front.” He jumped back into the saddle. “I can follow this trail, but not quickly. With luck The Brute will think he’s avoided pursuit and slow down.”
The party wheeled their horses around and rode north. They rode for hours, Togusa stopping every once in a while to pick up the tracks. They rode along what seemed to be a barely-used trail, leaving the city far behind them. After three hours or so, Togusa stopped.
“The tracks are gone,” he said. “The Brute left the trail some time between here and the last place we stopped.”
Osborn, squinting at the horizon, suddenly pointed back the way they had come. “You think he might live there?”
They all looked. A distance away, barely visible from the trail, a large manor house stood. “It’s worth a try, right?” Osborn asked.
The party approached the home cautiously. It was a large, two-story manor that had seen better days. The grounds were overgrown with vines and wild shrubs, which seemed unusually dark and twisted. Gnarled, sickly trees cast long shadows across the ground.
“The plants seem… odd here,” Autumn said.
“Yeah, they’re not supposed to look like that,” Osborn commented.
“Magical seepage,” Kyle explained. “It’s not the technical term for it, but basically when a wizard experiments a lot in an area and doesn’t take steps to prevent it, the magic from his or her work will get absorbed into the land and begin to alter how the plants grow. I’ve heard tell that way back when there used to be bloody conflicts between the various wizard’s guilds and the Druidic Enclaves over this sort of thing.”
Togusa looked around the ground. “The horse that The Brute rode came through here,” he announced.
“Perfect,” said Autumn who began to walk forward until Kyle put a hand on her shoulder.
“Why don’t we see what’s on the other side of that door before we kick it down?” he suggested. “Give me a minute.”
Kyle closed his eyes and concentrated, muttering the words to a spell. After a while, he frowned and opened his eyes.
“Nothing much. The hallway on the other side of the front door is empty except for some strange, hairless saber-toothed rats. There are footprints in the dust, that I can’t make out clearly enough to say who they belong to. But at least there’s nothing nasty waiting for us.”
“Very good,” Togusa said.
“Perhaps some of us should see if there’s a back door,” suggested Xu. “After all, they evaded you in that manner last time.”
“Good idea,” Osborn said, “let’s go, Xu.”
The two of them moved off around the back of the house. They passed close to the stables, and heard the sounds of creatures that were almost horses inside. They debated burning the stables down, but decided that it would attract too much attention. They also decided that trying to block them in wasn’t worth the effort, as the horse-creatures were freakishly strong and their arm-like appendages would allow them to batter down any obstacle. They continued on, past a set of kennels that were eerily quiet, and an aviary containing birds whose wings had been replaced with various appendages; tentacles, clawed hands, insect wings, and so on. Finally, they arrived at the back door. Osborn slipped his
ring of invisibility on, and checked the door, finding it unlocked. At the same time, Xu, noted a set of cellar doors nearby, with horse tracks leading up to it. Xu pointed it out to Osborn.
“Those doors do look big enough for a horse to ride in,” Osborn said. “Want to check it out?”
“Do you think it wise to go in alone?”
Meanwhile, the others had entered the front door, and were looking around in the main hallway. Togusa had lit a sunrod, and was looking at the tracks in the dust.
“Several creatures moved through here at various times,” he said. “Some of Neville’s drug-addicted slaves, and some true undead,” he held up a finger bone as proof. “I think The Brute has been here, too, but not recently.”
“Well, let’s head back and get to Osborn and Xu,” Lanara said.
“I’d suggest looking for them in the basement,” Kyle suggested. “It’s the best place for a lab to be.”
They proceeded to walk to the back of the house, Togusa throwing open the back doors. Xu was standing nearby, looking at a set of cellar doors. Kyle also nodded to Osborn nearby, being able to see invisible beings.
“I see you found the way back,” Osborn’s voice said from thin air.
“I see you found the way down,” Togusa said. The Xhintai warrior reached down and pulled the doors open, revealing wide steps leading downward.
The party went down the stairs into a hallway lit by a soft green luminescence, barely enough to see by. Togusa held his sunrod aloft, lighting their path. The hallway stretched on for several yards, before opening into a large chamber beyond.
“Get ready,” Togusa warned.
Preparatory spells began to fill the air as the party took up their battle formations. Tolly began to glow brightly, Kyle and Xu suddenly sprouted multiple copies of themselves, and Osborn renewed his invisibility.
The chamber at the end of the hallway was cluttered with several large cages, and more cages sat in alcoves on the wall. Some of the cages contained the mutated six-legged horses, while others contained the mandibled dire weasels they’d fought before. A huge, hideously scarred orc-touched hunched over one table, apparently in the midst of work. On the far end of the room were two more figures; one was an older, balding man with pale skin and a feral smile, who was conversing with what seemed at first to be a floating boulder. It turned as the party entered the chamber, peering at them with six eyestalks on top of its head as well as a large eye in the center of the round, fleshy mass.
“We have unexpected guests, master,” the orb said.
The bald man peered at the group. “No specimens worth my time,” he said. “Dispose of them, gauth.”
The party tried to rush forward into the room, but a few of the mutated weasels and horses, who were already out of their cages, sprang forward and filled the corridor, blocking the way in. Kyle managed to get off a single spell, shooting a ray at Neville and enveloping him in a greenish glow. “You’re not pulling the same trick as your lackey!” he shouted, before having to scramble out of the way of one of the horses.
Lanara’s song filled the room as the party pressed forward into melee. Togusa tried to maneuver around the mutated animals to get to Neville, but found his path blocked by the hulking mass of The Brute, swinging a large flail. The Brute growled and glared menacingly at Tolly as their weapons locked, but the priest only stared back intently. “May Ardara send you back into the pit from which you crawled,” he said.
Togusa’s blade flashed as he stepped up to challenge The Brute, and they locked in combat. Neville, in the back of the room, calmly walked behind a large table and turned a metal crank, and the cage doors began to crank open, allowing the other animals to join the battle. Meanwhile, the gauth casually floated in the corner of the room and fired a pair of eye beams into the melee, missing with one but striking Tolly with the other, tearing at his flesh with negative energy.
Xu, Tolly, and Autumn attacked the weasels and horses, trying to get past them and into the room. Tolly blasted one of the horses with acid as Xu blocked the beast’s slashing limbs and pummeled it with her fists, and Autumn hacked at it with her greataxe. For a brief moment there was an opening, but suddenly the gap was filled by a mass of writhing black tentacles that rose up out of the floor. But the tentacles were no obstacle for Osborn, who moved right through them thanks to his other magical ring. Still invisible, the hin ran to the far side of the room, preparing his daggers to face Neville.
Kyle shifted and moved forward as well, barely avoiding the slashing mandibles of one of the weasels. He tried to envelop a trio of animals in a cloud of smoke that would render them senseless, but they were largely unaffected. Then Tolly focused on the mass of tentacles, and dispelled it, once again making a clear path into the room.
“Go!” he shouted at Autumn, as the other mutant horses and weasels began to close in.
The sentinel ran full-bore into the room, greataxe held high, heading straight for Neville. But as she came around the large table, Neville raised a hand casually, and another field of tentacles sprang up around Autumn, pulling her off her feet and miring her down. She screamed in anger as she struggled, but to no avail. Only a few feet away, Neville tittered at her. “Perhaps there is something worth my time here after all,” he said to Autumn. “I wonder how you would look with tentacles of your own. Yes, my pretty, I think that would be splendid.”
The gauth floated toward the center of the room, still firing rays from its eyestalks. A pale beam struck Tolly, and suddenly he felt as though he’d just run twenty miles in full armor. His arms and legs felt like lead, and he couldn’t seem to draw enough breath. A second ray of fire struck the wall inches from Kyle’s head, and a third was aimed behind the gauth at Autumn, wounding her as she continued to struggle with the tentacles. Kyle tried to blind it with a
glitterdust spell, but the sparkling dust did not get into any of the gauth’s eyes.
Togusa ran The Brute through, smiling with satisfaction as his blade emerged from the back of the hideous orc-touched. But The Brute only smiled back as he swung back with his flail, smashing Togusa’s ribcage. Togusa stepped back, pulling his blade free, and noticed there was no blood.
“You are undead!” Togusa said, startled. The Brute only continued to grin in response.
The monsters continued to press in, still keeping the bulk of the party from getting into the room. Lanara summoned a large spider with her wand to help, sending it to attack the closest horse. Xu pointed her
ring of the ram at one of the horses, breaking bones as the force-bolt struck it but failing to push it back. She went back to her trusty feet and fists, but it was a struggle; though her skills meant she could hit the horses and weasels easily, their altered anatomy was foreign enough that the pressure points and weak spots that she normally relied on to inflict serious damage weren’t working. But the protection afforded by the
mirror image spell Kyle had cast on her meant that the animals were having just as much trouble striking her.
Tolly, who had seen Togusa run through The Brute and the results of that attack, stepped back and raised his holy symbol.
“As I said before, vile undead,” he shouted. “May Ardara send you back into the pit!”
Holy power blasted out of the symbol and struck The Brute full in the chest, blowing straight through and hitting the far wall. The Brute did not so much die as fall apart, as though he were a rag doll and someone had pulled out all the stitches at once. As The Brute fell, Togusa saluted Tolly with his blade before wading into the mutant horses. The Xhintai warrior winced as another beam of negative energy from the gauth hit him. At the same time, another ray hit Autumn, draining her vitality even as she continued to struggle in the tentacles. “It’s better if you don’t resist, my pretty,” Neville whispered to her.
Despite his taunting, however, Neville had grown somewhat concerned that the intruders in his home had not yet been dispatched. The destruction of his servant was also unfortunate. The master alchemist cast a spell and starting climbing up the wall to the ceiling, out of reach of the intruder’s swords and axes. But from out of nowhere came a hail of daggers, piercing the necromancer in several places. Osborn appeared in the middle of the room, grinning at his success. But the grin faded as he saw that no blood was seeping out of the wounds, and that despite the damage to Neville’s frail form, he seemed to experience no pain.
“Crap,” Osborn said.
Neville fixed the hin with a glare of pure contempt, then pulled a vial from his belt and drank the contents. Osborn’s six daggers fell to the floor with a clatter as Neville suddenly turned into a fine gray mist, and began drifting slowly away to the far side of the room.
“Crap!” Osborn repeated. “Hey, Kyle! Can you
fireball this thing?”
Tolly, hearing Osborn’s distress, glanced up from his fight with the weasels to see Neville turn gaseous. He threw out his hands and summoned a wall of solid iron, which blocked off the corner that the cloud seemed to be drifting toward. Tolly wasn’t sure if Neville had some sort of escape route there, or was simply trying to get out of the way; either way, it would take him longer to go around the wall, buying them time. But with his muscles still aching from exhaustion, it was all he could do to defend himself, let alone break free to aid Osborn. Tolly glanced back at Kyle. “Can’t you do something about these creatures?” he complained.
Kyle pulled out a wand and pointed into the room. Seconds later a
fireball erupted behind the cluster of horses and weasels, singing several of them. The animals scurried around for a moment in confusion, trying to identify the source of the fire. They settled on Togusa, who was the closest, as the cause, and leapt to attack him. But the confusion left another opening; without waiting for a comment from Tolly, Kyle hurried through into the larger room. Looking around, he saw Osborn dodging a
scorching ray from the gauth, and return fire with a
searing light from his jeweled headband. He saw the misty form of Neville slowly drifting around an iron wall. Then he saw a mass of black tentacles on the other side of the room, and Autumn’s gauntleted fist rising up out of the mass, trying to escape. Gritting his teeth, Kyle summoned up the energies for a dispelling rite, and negated the arcane energy powering the tentacles.
Autumn quickly rose to her feet. She was exhausted and wounded by the gauth’s eye rays, and the tentacles had dislodged some of the plates of her armor, making it awkward to wear. She looked for Neville, but couldn’t see where he was. What she did see, however, was the gauth, hovering a few feet away, its eye stalks swiveling around to target Kyle and Osborn. Autumn gripped her greataxe tightly, and stepped forward as she brought it up over her head. One of the gauth’s eyestalks caught movement from behind it, and the aberration swiveled around in time to see the blade of the axe coming down.
Seconds later, a gore-covered Autumn stepped out from between the two halves of the gauth, a smile of grim satisfaction on her face.
Togusa, still pinned down by the mutated horses and weasels, growled in frustration as he saw Neville floating away, just out of reach. He swung his katana around him, shouting in rage, and brought down the last two horses. With a path clear, Togusa turned to charge at Neville, activating his speed-enhancing boots, but suddenly he screamed in pain as one of the weasels finally got past his adamantine armor and sank its mandibles into his leg. With effort, Togusa turned and addressed Xu in his native tongue.
“A little help with the rodent?”
Xu met her countryman’s request, running up and kicking the back of its neck, causing it to go limp. The mandibles, however, did not detach, but remained locked in Togusa’s thigh. Ignoring the pain, Togusa turned and ran across the room, dragging the dead weasel behind him. Blood trailed behind him as he picked up speed. Using an overturned workbench as a launching platform, Togusa leapt into the air, sword gleaming even in the dim light of the basement. The katana’s blade passed through the cloud that Neville had transformed himself into, ripping through the vapors. The entire cloud seemed to jerk and twitch violently, as if struck by a sudden air current, and then the vapors dissipated, emitting a foul odor as they vanished.
The last two weasels were dispatched by Tolly and Xu; even Lanara contributed, hitting one of the weasels with her whip. As the din of battle died, the party gathered around Togusa, who was standing quietly staring at the spot where Neville had been.
“What happened?” Autumn asked. “Where’s Neville?”
Slowly, Togusa extended his right hand, palm up, and uncurled his fingers. The hounds-head mark in his palm slowly faded and disappeared as they watched.
“It is done,” he said quietly. “He is defeated at last.”
“No!” shouted Autumn. “What about my sister! What about Arrie! We have to save her! We need Neville to tell us how!”
“Autumn.” Kyle called out to her from across the room.
The sentinel turned, eyes bright with fatigue and grief, and looked at Kyle, who was standing behind Neville’s desk. Kyle opened a drawer and withdrew a large, black tome.
“We don’t need Neville to tell us anything,” he said. “He already has.”
* * *
It was nearly dawn by the time Kyle had finished brewing the antidote. Autumn had brought Arrie out of the
portable hole, and laid her out on the floor on top of blankets, inside a protective circle that Kyle had drawn in chalk. The others had gone about either ransacking the manor, or dispatching the remainder of Neville’s monstrosities. They studiously avoided the basement; Kyle had said that the antidote was complex, involving both magic and alchemy, and wanted to avoid any accidental disturbances. Most of the others were now asleep in upstairs rooms.
Kyle came up to the two sisters, holding four vials. “Are you ready?” he asked, kneeling down next to them.
Autumn nodded. “Kyle, if this doesn’t work, I want you to know that…”
Kyle silenced her by placing his fingertips on her lips. “It will work.”
Autumn closed her eyes, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She kissed Kyle’s fingers before he pulled them away. Kyle gently placed three of the vials in front of Autumn in a row, setting the fourth down next to his knees. Then he pulled a funnel out of a pocket and placed it in Arrie’s mouth.
“When I start the spell, I’ll pause three times in the middle. Don’t concentrate on what I’m saying, it’ll just sound like magic mumbo-jumbo to you. Listen for the pauses. Each time, you need to pour one of these into Arrie’s mouth, in order from left to right. After you pour the third one in, pull the funnel out. Got it?”
She nodded. “What’s the fourth one for?” she asked, pointing at the vial next to Kyle.
“That one’s for me.”
“For you? I don’t…”
“It’s part of the ritual to bring her back. It’s called the Breath of Life. You’ll… you’ll see when I get to that part.”
Kyle shifted into a more comfortable position, and laid his hands on Arrie’s body, just above her heart. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began.
The entire ritual took ten minutes, though to Autumn it felt like an eternity. Fears crept into her mind; what if the antidote wasn’t as reliable as Kyle believed? What if there were risks Kyle wasn’t telling her about? She pushed the doubts aside, though, and focused on her task, pouring the vials down Arrie’s throat each time Kyle paused in his incantation.
After the third vial had gone in and Autumn had withdrawn the funnel, Kyle continued to intone the ritual for several seconds. Then, in one rapid motion he picked up the vial next to his leg and drank it in one gulp. Thick, light blue smoke immediately began to pour out of his mouth and nostrils. He inhaled deeply, sucking the vapors back in, and then suddenly bent down and placed his mouth over Arrie’s, exhaling even as he reached up and pinched her nostrils shut with his free hand. Autumn watched Arrie’s chest rise as her lungs filled with the blue vapors, then drop as she exhaled sharply. Kyle broke away from Arrie, stumbling back out of the magic circle, looking as though he were choking. Autumn began to stand up to help him, but Kyle thrust out a hand warning her to stop. She watched as he struggled for a few minutes, then with a sickening cough spit out a black stone the size of a sling bullet. As Kyle gasped for air, the stone clattered on the cold stone floor, shattered, and vanished in a puff of black smoke.
Autumn watched, wanting to go and help Kyle but fearing to move. But after a moment he regained his composure, and crawled back into the circle. “Sorry,” he said, a little hoarse, “The ritual said I’d have to do that. I didn’t expect it to be the size of a turkey egg.”
“I could have helped you, you know.”
“I know, but I didn’t want to chance you being exposed to that stuff before it dissolved. But I think you’re getting distracted from something a little more important here.” Kyle gestured at Arrie, whose skin had become flush and pink, and whose chest now rose and fell steadily.
Kyle put out an arm to hold Autumn back as she was about to pick up her sister and embrace her. “She’ll be waking up any second,” he warned, his tone strangely dire. “This all could be… a little disturbing to her. Wait a minute and let’s see how she reacts.” He withdrew his arm, and from another pocket pulled out a small flask, which he uncorked. Autumn caught the faint scent of apples and metal, and looked at him questioningly. “Tincture of corundum,” he confirmed, “a safe dose. In case she freaks out a little on us.”
Arrie’s eyes opened rather suddenly. She looked around the room, seeming as though she were in shock. Then, as her eyes focused on Autumn and Kyle hovering over her, her face became strangely serene.
“Welcome back, Arrie,” Kyle said. “Rest for now. You’ll wake up soon, and we’ll explain everything.”
As Arrie closed her eyes, Kyle stood up and offered a hand to Autumn. Autumn went over and grabbed a blanket, laying it over her sister. “Will she really be all right?” she asked.
“She’ll be fine, she just needs to rest a little. Probably will be up in an hour or so; after all, in a sense she’s been sleeping all day.” He started to smile, then it faded. “Um, wow, that didn’t come out very well. What I meant was…”
His explanation was halted as Autumn ran up and kissed him, throwing her arms around the wizard in a passionate, tender embrace.
“It’s all right, Kyle,” she said as she pulled away, laughing. “It’s very much all right.”
* * *
“So, he was undead, huh?” Arrie gulped down another ale, waiting for Kyle to answer her question.
The party had returned to Miracle four days ago, and was busy with last-minute affairs. They’d found the deed to Neville’s townhouse among the alchemist’s personal papers, and had decided to keep it for their own use. Maddie and Lanara had been out selling a few odd items of treasure to raise money to pay back taxes and to pay a staff, and were also searching for a diamond to replace the one Tolly had used to raise Autumn from the dead. Tolly had been tasked with filing the proper papers with the city, paying any taxes or fees, and making sure there ware no legal complications, and Autumn had been placed in charge of searching out suitable candidates for a steward to handle affairs once the party left. Osborn was assigned the task of spreading the word through Miracle’s underworld that Neville’s townhouse was no longer a narcotics den or a place to bring corpses for quick cash. Xu served a somewhat similar function, staying hear the townhouse and ‘re-educating’ those who wandered by looking for Neville’s drugs or illicit potions.
Kyle had been working inside the townhouse itself, using a combination of magic and muscle to clean out the building and grounds and make needed repairs. Tolly was also helping in that regard, sanctifying the grounds to help remove the necromantic taint. That had left Arrie alone most of the time to rest, though she received frequent visits, especially from her sister. But this evening Arrie had insisted on taking Kyle out drinking, to which he readily agreed. But unlike the last time they’d gone out for ales, this time it was Arrie’s side of the table that held the majority of the empty mugs.
The wizard set down his own mug. “Seems that way. Maddie read about it in his personal journal while we were gone. Seems that back before the first Hunt, Neville was trying to make an Elixir of Life.” At Arrie’s curious look, he explained, “old alchemist’s legend, supposed to make you immortal. Well, he thought it hadn’t worked, but actually it did, sort of. It just turned him undead after he drowned in that river. So, you guys really did kill him on that first Hunt, he just… recovered.”
“I’ll be damned.” Arrie set down her empty mug next to the others, then waved down the barmaid. Then she opened up her right hand and looked at the palm. “I’m glad that Mark is gone for good,” she said.
“So was Togusa.”
“How’s the old boy doing?” Arrie asked.
“Good. He left the city yesterday, said he was heading for Sargia. He gave Xu a scroll before he left, something in their native language. Xu says that it basically means ‘The Dreamer sees and approves’. Apparently, though, it has a lot of different meanings depending on how you read it.”
The barmaid came by the table, already holding two mugs of ale. She moved around Kyle, brushing against his back as she went, and crossed to Arrie’s side of the table before setting the mugs down, careful to lean toward Kyle as she did so, exposing her cleavage to him. The barmaid departed with a smile and wink at Kyle.
“Damn, Kyle,” Arrie said, picking up one of the fresh mugs. “It looks like you’ve got an open invitation there.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Arrie.”
“Oh, come on, Kyle! She practically sat in your lap and pressed her breasts into your face! Even you can’t be that socially clueless. Look, I’ll clear out of here, you can pitch a little woo. The rooms in the basement of the townhouse are soundproof, so you don’t have to worry about…”
“Arrie,” Kyle said, interrupting her, “I’m with Autumn now.”
She stopped and stared at him for a minute. “Since when?”
“The night before you were poisoned. Autumn never had a chance to tell you then, and then with finding Neville, and dealing with the townhouse, there hasn’t been time. Heck, even Autumn and I haven’t seen much of each other lately.”
Arrie smiled. “It’s about gods-damned time. Does Tolly know?”
Kyle nodded. “He’s been a bit snippy to me and Autumn recently, but he seems to be handling it well so far.”
“Good.” Arrie leaned back, and looked at Kyle for a while longer. Then a wicked grin spread across her face. “So, does Autumn sit in your lap and press her…”
“Arrie!”
The warrior began laughing hysterically, leaning over and falling out of her chair. Ale splashed onto the sawdust-covered floor as she sprawled under the table, laughing until she turned red. Gaining a little control, she pulled herself back up to her chair, sitting down unsteadily. “Forgive me, Kyle. And don’t tell Autumn I said that. She’d kill me.”
Kyle looked at Arrie, and glanced at the numerous empty mugs on her side of the table. “I think maybe you’ve had enough, Arrie.”
Her response was to smile, and grab the full mug from Kyle’s side of the table and begin drinking it.
Kyle watched her down the ale, studying her face carefully. “You know, that was an interesting spell that Neville used on you.”
Arrie seemed not to pay attention at first, but the rate at which she was swallowing slowed drastically.
“For all his faults, he was good at what he did. I found it especially clever how the spell was designed to trap your soul inside your own body. And how it allowed the victim to be aware of their surroundings.”
Arrie set the mug down.
“Yup, it’d probably be pretty terrible, trapped, able to hear everything going on around you but not able to do anything, hearing people talk about you like you were dead… maybe wondering if you’d ever come out of it, if they’d end up burying you like that… I’d imagine that’d really do a number on a person’s mind. Maybe drive them to drink. Or worse.”
Arrie’s only response was a strange, wistful smile.
Kyle sighed, then reached across the table and took one of Arrie’s hands, squeezing it. “Of course, that’s just me thinking out loud about boring old wizard stuff. Nothing I feel that anyone else would be interested in hearing about… if I don’t ever have a reason to bring it up.” Kyle looked at her intently. “I won’t have a reason, will I, Ariadne?”
Arrie looked down at her hand in Kyle’s for a minute, then squeezed his hand back firmly. “No, I don’t think you will.”
“Glad to hear it.” Kyle pulled a few coins out of his pocket and slapped them on the table, then stood up, still holding Arrie’s hand. “Come on. I’m pretty sure you’re going to need help getting up.”
Kyle pulled Arrie to her feet, and they left the tavern, Arrie leaning heavily on Kyle. She leaned her head on his shoulder for a moment. “You’re a good man, Kyle Goodson,” she said.
He laughed. “Too late to trade up now, Arrie. You’re stuck with the crown prince of Tlaxan for a husband.”
Arrie laughed and punched Kyle in the ribs playfully. They walked back to the townhouse in silence for a while, letting the sounds of Miracle drift by.
“So,” Arrie said, when they were almost home, “when can I expect my first nephew or niece?”
This time it was Kyle’s turn to fall down.
------------------------------------------
* One of the hazards of playing in a world in development is that certain details become mutable. Observant readers will note that when the party first came to Miracle, it was described as not having an outer wall or gate. Apparently, one was built overnight.
Most of the little inconsistencies like this I've managed to cover up over time - one of the advantages of posting these stories several months after they were played. This one got by me, and I just let it go.
