The full plate we found in the room was made for the woman who we had decapitated. It was far too small for me, and was the wrong shape for Attar, and neither of us knew how to fit armour.
We had no compulsions against looting her grave, as it hadn’t been a grave when we’d entered, and neither of us were feeling particularly benevolent towards her.
The bows and scimitar weren’t magical, though Attar took the scimitar to complement my cutlass.
Attar also studied in the plate in detail before sighing, “None of my spirits can wear this. It is an unusual size.”
And here I thought ghosts could haunt any old suit of armour.
He took more time with the bows and arrows, “I will bind these while you check the other items,” he turned to the pixie, “if we have time.”
The pixie smiled, “All the time and more.”
My initial impression had been correct. The woman had clearly been of Delta royalty. Their funeral customs were similar to ours thankfully, so her soul was still honoured by our actions as well as intentions. Nestled in the tomb was a red and white sling, the sort carried by royalty as a sign of status. A tortoise shell bowl and a flower made from aquamarine and ebony sealed the deal. Perhaps she had been Erin and Eric’s liege, though how she had ended up here, and why the warlocks allowed her to have a tomb, or had created a tomb in her dungeon was strange.
And what was that? A scroll, stiff and ancient, written in the Ancient Delta language. I wasn’t fluent in the language by any means, but I knew enough to get the gist. “Have.... mine... place... land... castle? Order... God...”
It appeared to be a deed. Perhaps a deed to this very dungeon.
And there were two of the items I’d seen scattered about the dungeon in numerous stashes. A light chain veil for decorating or covering a woman’s breasts, and a blowpipe. Were they forgotten signs of ancient royalty? Had the delta once owned this dungeon? Perhaps Eric’s kidnapping had had deeper political implications.
Some of the object here were strange: a pulley, a large, bulky crowbar, pliers, grease, a small grappling hook, and a silver needle.
Someone had come to this tomb preparing to rob it, and preparing to deal with a vampire. Had she killed them?
A chill ran up my spine.
Or had she been the robber?
I dropped the needle.
“Leave the bows. We do not want to dwell here.”
She was the robber. I felt it intuitively in a way I never had before. The nature of the room was clear to me. A tomb, yes, but one which collected its own inhabitants.
Attar tossed a concerned look my way, then his eyes widened.
“This place... the whole thing is enchanted.”
He stood quickly, “Lead the way good fellow, we need to be off.”
The pixie swept his gaze about the room, but his eyes didn’t find whatever Attar had. He shrugged, “As you like it, after me.”
He skipped and slid past the funerary slab and around the corner to the other length of the room at the far end, in the furthest corner, was the next door.
The pixie slid the latch free and pushed. The door refused to move. The end result was the pixie squashing himself against the door as his momentum carried him forward.
“If you would be so kind?”
The pixie asked, stepping back and gesturing at the door.
“Is it safe?” Attar asked.
I held out an arm to stop him, “He wouldn’t know. Everything is safe for a pixie. We’ll open it from a distance.”
It had been a ten minute walk from one end of the room to the other. Even with the pixie’s guidance I moved slowly and carefully, eye out for traps and dangers. He’d probably stroll straight through them, or worse, skip over them without setting them off.
My sword was still active however, though it felt like I’d activated it hours ago.
I sent it to the door.
The door crumbled.
The pixie skipped forward. Attar made to follow but I kept my hand up. A moment later my efforts were “rewarded”.
Hands of fire rose from the floor and grabbed the pixie. His clothes caught fire at once.
“How do we deal with that?” Attar asked.
I studied the hands which were now groping their way around the pixie, no doubt confused at his lack of reaction. Indeed, delight twinkled as reflected flames in his eyes as he watched the hands work.
“It isn’t the whole room. Only the section he is standing on. There is an enchantment on the flagstone.”
“How can you tell?”
How could I tell? The insight was as much a surprise to me as it was to Attar. I knew nothing of enchantment, yet now my mind was racing, thinking of different paths it could create to enchanting my own flagstone with the spell.
“I... it must be Myrra’s soul. I have her spark for the magic, but no knowledge or memories to draw on.”
“Can you save him? Or end the spell?”
I wasn’t sure, but I could find out. I had my ring. I had Myrra’s intuition. I had my own spells to protect me. It was enough of an arsenal that I willing crept toward the flaming pixie until the edge of my spherical vision encompassed the whole of his flagstone.
There it was!
On the underside of the stone was carved a small rune in the Language of the Gods.
φωτι?
Fire.
Given that most dark magic involved deals and binding, I could assume that a demon was bound to this stone, or the demon itself had enchanted it. The question was how to free the demon or release its enchantment.
Alternatively, a sorcerer could have bound fire itself to the stone, though that wouldn’t explain the hands. Perhaps a fire elemental? The only ones I were aware of were salamanders.
No, the question was different.
The question was, what would happen if I freed the demon, and also, did I need to free the demon?
“Are you stuck, my friend?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“A moment,” the pixie twisted and grunted for several long seconds, “I am, dear Oswic. Can’t budge an inch.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. This dungeon was no place for a pixie.
“How many steps did you make it last time before you were frozen in ice?”
The pixie rocked his finger back and forth, “You have me wrong, Oswic. I was trapped above ground, far from the Bleak Fort, and brought here. I’m not so foolish as to enter a warlock stronghold without reason.”
“A good reason?”
“A reason,” the pixie said firmly.
“Can you talk to the demon or elemental which binds you?”
“He is no demon, but not quite an elemental. Perhaps a spirit of fire would be better. And yes, I’d be happy to!”
“Can you tell him to talk with me?”
The pixie lowered his voice to a whisper, and bent low over the grasping hands. Whatever he said was wiped from my mind as he said it, leaving only a memory, which, judging by the expression on Attar’s face, was more than he himself experienced. A divine language, akin, perhaps, to the Language of the Gods, but without the binding humanity had placed on the words.
The hands spoke.
“I am a piece of the Shining Power. I am Death. I mark the end of creation. The Death who brought Death to himself. What is it you want from me?”
“I offer you freedom,” I’d planned to say the words before his spiel, and they leapt out once he was done, but now I wondered if I should be freeing something who introduced himself like that.
“In return? Would you like another piece of my Shining Power?”
“I want you to promise not to harm us.”
My presence is death. My mother burned when she birthed me. My father slew me for matricide before I uttered my first cry at the loss I myself had created. I. Am. Harm.”
“Can we contain you instead? Free you in a manner which traps you in bounds you can eventually break?”
“No bond can hold me forever. One day the fortress will erupt, and my blood will burn the lands and my breath will darken the sky until all freezes over. But a lessened bond would be agreeable.”
I had a feeling I knew who the ritual keeping the volcano at bay had been directed at.
Normal witches and wizards collected dogs and cats. The warlocks collected Gods.
I was tempted to free him and reduce this fort to a molten crater. There were enough dark rituals here that Bleak Fort’s utter destruction would be a salve on the wounds of humanity, regardless of history and lives lost.
But power was opportunity, not wisdom. As a Magus, I could do more than choose the best of bad options. I could show the spirit his false choice.
“Why must babes be kept from ledges? Why must children be watched when playing with dogs?”
“I recognize you, Magus. Your kind always speaks in riddles. Statements so vague you can claim credit for any wisdom gained.”
“The source is wisdom is always the self, Shining Power,” he’d said it like a name before, and I wasn’t about to call him Death, “But I have a specific point I wish to make here, no tricks. I can answer the question myself if you wish.”
“Fine! I’ll answer you! Because the babe doesn’t recognize the danger, and the child may offend the dog and be unable to defend themselves.”
“And why may a man sit on a ledge or play with a dog on his own?”
“Because he is not so foolish as to jump, and he is wise enough to please the dog, and strong enough to restrain it if he must.”
My intended lesson was a bit on the nose, but spirits and fey and gods were known for a strange sort of simplicity. They were almost childlike, despite their intelligence and power, and simple stories could sway them. Perhaps another way to look at it was an utter lack of true arrogance. Alternative perspectives were incorporated almost immediately rather than denied. A sense of self; an ego; was a mundane conception after all, whereas humility was divine. Which was to say, the immortal and all powerful could afford to divest themselves of the protection an ego provided. For a mortal, that path led to madness.
Shining Power had still sounded unsure, so I spelled it out for him, “You slew your mother as a babe. You were death and fire.
“Are you still a babe?”
“I am older than even than this Bleak Fort, Magus. I was the last of creation. The first of death.”
“Are you still a babe?”
“I have flown through the veins of the earth. Moulded it. Made it bleed. I raised up the mountains, and ate away at their roots until they crumbled into dust. I have seen more millennia than you have stars in your lifetime.”
“Are you still a babe?”
“Enough Magus! I am a babe no longer!”
The rule of three was as natural a law as clouds bringing rain.
“Then are you still death and fire?”
I’d be lying if I said I expected his response.
He screamed. Screamed in rage and anger with such ferocity I took an inadvertent step back, and immediately started flipping through my spell book with my ring, looking for potential attacks and counters.
“I will kill him! I will tear down the heavens! I will be avenged!”
“Who?” Attar was braver than me to ask the question. I wasn’t about to invite the spirit’s regard.
“My father. The Inviter. The Ascender. Bestower. He who calls the worthy to his table. The man who killed me as a babe. Evidently I was not worthy. Free me! Free me and I will show him my worth!”
“Has he not changed as you have?”
“He was no babe when he committed murder. He still must answer.”
“How should your murderer be answered?”
“Death.”
“And how should your father as he is now be answered?”
Shining Power growled, “How should I know?”
“I will free you.”
All any of us could do was walk the path and trust others to follow.
Freedom was easier won than lost, it was a wonder it was lost so often. Sorcerers bound other beings by writing them into their grimoire, thus the opposite would be true. I merely needed to destroy the record of the Shining Power’s enslavement.
I couldn’t lift the flagstone, nor could I summon a sword beneath to chop at the rune, and my flames were far too cool to damage stone in any meaningful way. The problem nearly stumped me till my wandering fingers (even with my ring, using my fingers helped me think) came across a rune I’d had little use for, one I’d forgotten I’d made.
Acid Pool II
The endlessly filling pool welled up from nothing directly beneath the rune. My ring detected a faint fizzling, and after a minute, we could all see smoke rising up around the pixie and the hands grasping him.
It took roughly ten minutes for the acid to eat through the stone above it (I raised the pool as necessary). When the rune finally failed I felt it, like a snap in the fabric of reality. A frisson which raised the hair along my arms and the back of my neck.
Attar noticed my reaction, “Is it done?”
He hadn’t felt it. It was obvious, even without my ring. More of Myrra’s influence.
The hands vanished.
“It is.”
I hadn’t answered.
A man haloed by flame stood before the pixie. He was naked—naked as the day he had been slain, for only a moment—then the flames flashed bright for an instant and he was clothed as a man.
“I will not love him,” said the man, “but that will not be his punishment. Nor will I kill him, it is not for me to punish him. Let my father punish himself if he must. Justice will answer itself. Let love and forgiveness fall where they will.”
I nodded, “Love is not a choice. Neither is not-love. But it is your choice whether the fire burns or warms.”
“We shall see. I’ve yet to taste either choice.”
It was then that the world exploded.
Heat, noise, roaring.
I rushed over to Attar, flung myself around him and cast my bone wall about the two of us. I could better resist and heal from whatever was coming.
The ceiling coughed and spat a heavy stone at the speed of an arrow towards us. It stopped, as gentle as a zephyr borne feather, against my wall of force.
Several minutes passed.
The shaking stopped. No more attacks besieged my bone talismans. The temperature had risen by several degrees, and the god was gone.
I gathered up my discs.
“What happened?” asked Attar.
“I think the ritual built to hold back the volcano this place is built on failed.”
“But we are still here.”
“The spirit may have restrained himself. Perhaps he didn’t even intend to set it off, or perhaps this was a test of vengeance and mercy, both at once. Trust is always dangerous.”
“But I am free once again!” The pixie cried, “I must thank you dear sir! Please, another favour is yours!”
The pixie was generous to a fault, but if every favour granted meant an encounter with one such as the Shining Power, eventually his kindness would get me killed.
“We will think on it. Thank you.”
