7.20

  “Twelve, fucking knife-ears.” - Excerpt from Eric’s Enchiridion of Encounters.

  As our journey went on, it became clear that what was at the Bundriroc Temple was not a fluke. At the first village we arrived, we were tasked with clearing out a local abandoned manor that had started flaring up with undead. It was a perfect job in a lot of ways. We had holy water leftover from escorting Johnny and the pay was small; which meant working off our negative karma. The party agreed easily given that we were solving a problem and not too in the way.

  We arrived at what many would call a stereotypical haunted house. Three storied and large enough we couldn’t see it’s entirety from the front. The wood decor had rotted leaving only the stone skeleton, it smelled about the same. The front yard was completely overgrown and we had to fight through brambles just to make it to the front door.

  Utoqa took point, the ancient doors crumbled after the slightest shove. Since we weren’t idiots, we went in during the day. Sunlight peeked through the collapsed roof, creating areas of bright light. I stood out of them however, lighting up the darker areas with my mushrooms. Much as my bark armor protected me from sunlight I still preferred actual darkness. It was an acceptable sacrifice since everyone else worked better in the day, and my role would actually be rather insignificant for this quest specifically.

  Our frontlines’ weapons were all wet with holy water, so a few smacks were all it took for the undead skeletons. Given that the holy water had been bought from the Mercantile Church of Ethelinda, the skeletons crumbled into gold flakes, though Celine assured me that it was all fake gold.

  Our first pause came at the main hall. Two large stairways curved outwards, framing a centerpiece of seven marble statues of human woman placed in progressing dance forms. My untrained assessment likened it to ballet, though I couldn’t figure out more as significant parts of the statues were missing.

  The first statue only had the feet and ankles left, still stuck to the stone floor, the second was missing everything from up the waist. The surrounding marble rubble suggested it had been smashed off with a hammer. The thief apparently changed their mind afterwards, as the remaining statues were only missing their heads and bits of their upper torso.

  At the foot of these statues was a single bronze placard with writings that we had all seen just a day before.

  “The rest of this statue can be found at the Elven Museum of Natural History,” I read.

  We all turned and stared at Tai.

  “Hey! It’s not my fault that some uppity high elves took some stuff.”

  “I was wondering why the manor seemed so empty,” I idly commented. The rooms we just came through were entirely bare. The wood may have rotted away, but there were empty armor stands and no trace of cutlery or other pottery.

  Tai pushed onward, “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  The upper floors were largely empty and it took my mana sense to catch a hidden stairway under some stone slabs. Tai and Utoqa worked together to lift it up, releasing centuries old dust and a musty scent that quickly pervaded the room.

  Utoqa knelt by the staircase, “Footprints.”

  I looked over his back. The stairs had prints in the dust leading up and down them. They weren’t new, as more dust had settled over them. “The outside prints must’ve been blown away by the wind.”

  We descended with our standard lineup. Utoqa and Noam front, Celine in the protected middle and Tai and I holding the back.

  The Light Sporages I created weren’t bright, but volume made up their dimness. The glowing mushrooms bounced down the stone stairways, revealing an ancient crypt. The place was clearly ransacked, stone coffins with their lids thrown, their occupants littered the floor as if tossed aside. No skeleton was whole, which was what gave us confidence to proceed.

  The coffins were on a raised step on each side of the crypt. The center pathway was broad, covered with the footprints we saw above.

  “This is the crypt of a noble family,” Celine commented as she read the epitaphs. “Must’ve fallen out of favor some time ago.”

  Noam tapped a loose skull with his sword, “Any chance these guys will rise once we get too deep to run?”

  “Separate the bones just in case,” I said. Noam kicked aside a few of the more complete skeletons and bone heaps, ensuring they were well and truly dead before we continued on.

  “That’s weird,” Celine tilted her head as she examined the skeletons and empty coffins. “They aren’t buried with their possessions. Western Kingdom style is to bury the dead with their finery.”

  Noam and I turned to Tai.

  “Hey! This proves nothing!”

  “We haven’t said anything,” Noam said.

  “Yet,” I finished.

  Utoqa stiffened into a guard.

  Everyone’s hands fell to their weapons.

  Ahead the rows of coffins connected into an upside down U-shape. At that center was a coffin raised a step higher than the others. The coffins closest to us were carved with roses, symbol of the Mourner, but that furthest coffin had been carved with bows and wolves. Those were the symbols of the Three Brothers, who were the preceding death gods to the Mourner.

  I nudged my cap, without another word the wisps leapt out and began planting mushrooms. Noam and Utoqa moved up to that last coffin, weapons in hand. That coffin’s lid was slightly ajar, both fighters raised their weapons.

  Noam saw a glint of bronze inside the coffin. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  A skeletal hand shot out of the coffin. Neither fighters hesitated, smashing down with their weapons, stirring up a massive dust cloud that temporarily obscured my sight. Metal clashed within. Noam flew out along with the stone coffin lid. Utoqa’s ivory weapon blocked a blow by a massive great sword. The force of it still threw him backwards where Tai caught him.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The undead skeleton was tall, clad in rusty full plate and bearing a great sword wider than most of us. The weapon clanged against the stone floor as the skeleton dragged it forward.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  The enemy had no head, instead hammered into the neck vertebrae was a bronze placard. I didn’t even need to read the elvish to have an idea of what it said.

  “The rest of this artifact can be found at the Elven Museum of Natural History,” Celine read.

  The headless knight swung its great sword, gouging the stone walls and coffins as it went before it exploded the floor on impact.

  “Tai why are you elves like this!?” Noam yelled as he dodged the wide, devastating swings.

  “It’s not all elves!” Tai answered back. That momentary distraction allowed the headless knight to gain on her, its great sword a moment away from her back.

  “Focus!” Celine yelled, silver string wrapped around Tai and pulled her back. The blade crashed into the stone, sending rubble flying. The weapon was momentarily wedged, and Utoqa rent its exposed back. It spun to strike him with a fist but Noam hooked the wrist with his blades.

  The wisps finished placing the mushrooms.

  I slammed my staff down. “Fairy Circle, Light Domain.”

  Light enveloped the room, covering every inch and burning the undead. It was mana inefficient, but I had few options as my spells almost exclusively targeted living creatures.

  The headless knight tried to reach for the swords hooking his left wrist, but the tongue of the swamp elemental caught the other hand. Together Noam and the familiar pulled the undead’s arms apart. Utoqa slashed its ankles, forcing it to a knee.

  Tai drew her sword, in a flash she was behind it. Her blade cut through the densely armored midsection of the undead, leaving it to fall in two. The light from the Fairy Circle continued to eat at its remains, though I poured some more holy water over it to make sure. Only once the skeleton had fully dissipated did I release the Fairy Circle.

  “Remind me why we didn’t just have you set up the circle around the entire manor?” Noam groaned as he fell on his ass.

  “Because I don’t have the mana to support such a large expenditure.” I sat down to rest on the steps. “Tai I thought you said you would be weaker during your re-spec.”

  She smeared some dust off her cheek, “It’s not like I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned. It’s more like I don’t have any direction to keep going.”

  Utoqa briefly looked at the body of the undead- or lack there of, and turned back. “Why did she want you to abandon that Path?”

  I raised an eyebrow, though I should’ve expected it. Utoqa was the least likely to catch on to why.

  “She wanted me to stop chasing her shadow,” Tai answered. “Though I half suspect she’s happened upon an existential crisis recently and is being stubborn.”

  “Are you fine with it?” Noam asked.

  Tai shrugged, “It’s not like I particularly wanted the Path of Discipline. It was always meant to be a weak path that accumulated and evolved strongly. A transition to something greater.”

  “A very standard elven Path,” I commented, and very alike my own thought style.

  “But just because I’ve lost that next evolution doesn’t mean I’ve lost what I’ve accumulated,” she said as she sat down with us. “Beside, it’s just a few decades.”

  “Also a very standard elven way of thinking,” I commented.

  “I dunno, it seemed to be more like robbing people blind,” Noam commented.

  Tai punched Noam’s shoulder, “I will hit you if you keep this up.”

  “You already hit me!” He complained, rubbing his sore shoulder.

  Tai rolled her eyes. “Besides, this is all stuff that happened in the past, it’s not like elves are still doing it.”

  At the next town we received a request to investigate strange sounds that came from the cemetery at night. We posted up around the area, with me a good distance away because I glowed and wasn’t stealthy. Leaving Noam and Utoqa to be closest to the cemetery, and thus first to catch the anomaly.

  Their voices transferred through Celine’s dolls, alerting us to rush in, where we saw that Noam had wrestled a figure into the ground.

  “Unhand me! I said unhand me you brute!” the man yelled.

  Celine shone one of my mushroom lights over them, revealing an elf in scholarly robes. Noam looked at me and I nodded. He let the elf go.

  The elf stumbled a bit before he adjusted his glasses then glared at us. “What is the meaning of this!?”

  “I feel like we should be asking those questions,” I said. “What were you doing in a cemetery in the middle of the night?”

  “Ah!” Noam pointed to the man’s belt satchel, which had loosened open during the scuffle. Inside were dozens and dozens of stacked bronze placards.

  The elf pushed up his glasses, “So you aren’t complete savages. I am a historian from the Elven Museum of Natural History! You have just interrupted an important archaeological dig!”

  We stared at him in silence. Tai held her head down behind us.

  The elf continued to speak with his nose turned to the sky. “You short-lifers wouldn’t understand the necessity of keeping historical record! Especially with how often you forget necessary things!”

  As usual, Noam was the only one who wasn’t speechless. He pointed at a grave, where a shovel had been rammed into the dirt and halfway to exhuming. The tombstone had a name, the date of birth and death. “That grave you were robbing, that guy only died two weeks ago.”

  “And what of it?” The elf asked. “Is recency any reason to not pursue historical accounting! How might have this person lived? How did he die? Such things can only be obtained from thorough study of his remains!”

  “Or you could like, just ask his family in town,” Noam suggested.

  The elf glared at him like he was idiot. He scoffed, “You humans repeatedly prove to be an obstruction to archaeology! That’s why I carry smokebombs!”

  “Wha-”

  The elf graverobber threw a smokebomb. The rest of us had been too dumbfounded by the events to react, letting him escape. Tai was hunched over, pulling her ears down, far too embarrassed by her kin to do anything.

  “I guess you guys are still doing it,” Noam commented.

  Tai punched him in the face.

  Our detour completed, we came in sight of the elven capital. Unlike Tai’s home, this city was more conventional. Instead of being grown in the branches of the towering trees, it sat nestled within a cleared portion of the ancient forest. Its tall walls were constructed of white petrified wood, inlaid with opalized wood that formed mosaic depictions of ancient elven ancestors and accomplishments. Tall spires stood behind those walls, constructed from singular petrified logs. Despite the architecture sharing the same soft, flowing nature of Tai’s home city, it lacked… life. As all fossils where, it was stone that only looked like wood. A dead imprint of something once alive. Though the city was clean, measured, elegant even, it was not the wild freedom I associated with nature.

  Inside the walls was much the same. People flocked through the gates and roamed the streets but it was a steady, controlled, and sterile movement. Tree like buildings with slightly different material on each level, stiff, stratified, and frozen.

  Perhaps we would’ve been more excited at arriving at the city, however Tai sat glumly in the back of the cart, and her mood had infected us all. It was hard to maintain morale when we had just spent our journey cleaning up the aftermath of our future quest giver.

  “Should we explore?” Celine asked.

  Tai continued pulling her long ears down, “Let’s just go straight to the museum.”

  The Elven Museum of Natural History was fenced off with petrified bramble fences. The building was carved from the same petrified wood as the rest of the city, but to a flowing, silk like appearance. The entrance hall was great, with displays of various pieces of statues and other artifacts from all around the world. I couldn’t help but try to match the displays with any of the missing from our journey here.

  Tai took the letter to the front desk. Soon an elf came, he was tall and willowy, with sharp angled eyes that seemed perpetually pissed.

  “So you’re Chai’s granddaughter,” he said. “About time. I’m Tou Domski, follow me.”

  He moved without waiting for any response, heading deeper into the museum. We glanced at each other, and followed.

  “I need you to fully understand the gravity of the situation,” Tou said, every step he took he seemed to go a bit faster, until he was power walking. “The utter travesty that has been dealt to this historic institution.”

  We turned a corner and the white stonewood floors ended, instead leading to a massive sinkhole that seemed to have taken a significant portion of the museum. Collapsing the museum’s entire left wing and leaving it exposed to elements.

  At the front of the sinkhole, planted into the dirt, was a steel sign that was written in dwarvish.

  “The rest of this artifact can be viewed at the Dwarven Museum of Natural History,” Celine read.