Above in rusted steel, somewhere below the sharp and forked tips of steel bars it read Hawken’s Cemetery.

Somewhere below, it read in fine print; Not to be confused with Hawkin’s Catacombs. Though the two were too hellbent on pushing past the door, where the rusted hinges whined with the chafing of their rotation.

So many tombs, so many stone angels and stone crosses cracked and dilapidated. Graves in uneven rows, across the fields that curved around muddied stone paths. Somewhere to their rear, a crow squawked, perched along the dead limb of a naked pine tree. Cecil turned her shivering head, the crow screamed and jumped and the dried wood shavings fell around her. The two looked at each other, nodding and they went at it, down the coiling path.

The air dragged past them as Harrogate lifted the top of a tomb decorated with the cherub carving across its gray stone. Here lies Smitty Werben. Harrogate looked down at the space, a wide room for such a thin corpse, his eyes set on the skull below where two empty sockets looked back.

“You know, I don’t think this is a good idea Cecil.” Harrogate twitched.

“What’re you talking about? We barely started.” She was coming from behind, dirt across her face.

“I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to like it, you just have to find something good.” She leaned over the coffin. “Find anything good?”

“No. I did not find anything good, it’s a corpse.” His whole body shook stiff as he spoke with hiked shoulders. “Are you sure you have the right place?”

“Hawkin’s Catacombs.” She said, eyes raised and looking around. “Looks like a catacomb, right?”

“Catacombs are subterranean. Know that means?” He said. “It means they’re down below. Get it?”

Surrounding them were the the crosses and angels and slabs of tombstones slanted with deteriorated lettering.

“I can taste the death in the air. It speaks of horrors lost.” Harrogate said.

“Aw shucks. You’re just scared, Harry.” She slapped him across the back.

“Don’t call me Harry.” He said. “This is your dumb idea, by the way.”

“You know, I’d appreciate it if you stopped thinking so lowly of me.” Her body leaned forward, the wolf pelt bobbed across her neck like a mounted rug. It looked like the damn wolf was talking. “You know what would be helpful? Being nice for once. When’s the last time you appreciated my good ideas?”

“Appreciated your good ideas?” He tossed the shovel to the ground, the empty grave-robbing-bag over his shoulder. She leaned down into the tomb (sat by the edge with one leg in and the other out) and ripped off an arm from the mummified being. A loosely white haired creature with tawny colored bones, cracked midway through its femur. She raised it, the pointer finger directed at Harrogate.

“You need to stop being a coward, that’s your problem.” She said. “We’re going to be rich doing this. Remember, Harrogate. Three hundred gold. We just gotta find this Jenba guy, that’s it.”

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“Three hundred gold.” His body eased into a slouch. Money usually did that. “That’s a lot.”

“You’re damn right that’s a lot. You know how to count that high?”

“Do you?”

She pulled back the skeleton hand and started counting off the numbers, pressing down on its fingers as she went along.

“Nevermind.” Harrogate sighed and jumped out of the tomb, going a little off the ways to a small gated room that led down. A stairway, locked by a heavy chain and two big iron doors pointed at their ends. Above, a devil’s face on a plaque by the top of the entrance.

“Well, I guess it’s locked.” Harrogate started walking.

Cecil grabbed her great axe and raised it high before screaming her battlecry (which was little less of a huff and puff and more of a Gyaaaa) and the lock snapped open, landing next to Harrogate on the dead grass and rolling some.

“Oh boy.” He said. He walked in front of her, inching down the steps. One quivering foot after the other, his arms to his sides hugging himself against a cold draft that continued up and through the stairway and behind him. Into a dark so deep that flesh of his hands two inches from his face was invisible. Around him the shifting stones and crawling auxiliaries that wandered with tiny-tap sounds across the moss-grown rocks.

Ten steps in he took a deep breath of damp air. A rock skittered off.

“Alright, this is a real bad idea Cecil. I know I said it before.”

She pushed him forward.

“Do you want the money or not?” She asked.

He put his hand against the wall near him and felt the walls, the end of a torch rubbed against his fingers and he grabbed it (screaming out thanks!) and hugged it tight. Sparks. The spit of fire. They had light, he held it in his hands as they wandered down and past a web so thick it stuck to his hair like netting they made it to the main burial room.

“I wish I didn’t light this.” He said. Cecil ran past him, fingers tapping in the air like worms come out for sun. The chamber was filled with seven coffins, three on each side and one dead center; the largest one. On it, a wrap of lettered paper that went around the stone coffin.

“I don’t think-” He said. She grabbed her axe and cut straight clean through and Harrogate swore he heard the noise of laughter or screams or something in between, either which not quite right to the natural sounds of the world.

“Oh boy.” He’d begun to sweat and wiped with his forearm as she put her axe through in between the tomb door and tomb. She sat, the door raised to a bevel and slid down to the floor with a loud thump. The dust raised around it like a cloud that passed through Harrogate.

And he swore he saw purple winds rise from the tomb and the thin form of a skull they took, laughing as they ran through the air. Jovial, wretched purple faces in mid joy of a foregone ruin and future coming destruction. It looked like passing gas.

“Let’s stop Cecil. Come on. I’m feeling a little weird now. I mean, it’s immoral, we’re stealing from the dead.” He rubbed his forehead. “I mean, would you like to be stolen from if you were dead?”

“If I was dead what the hell would I care what you did to me? I’d be done-soes.”

“It’s wrong.” His teeth rattled. The faces wrapped and went past him up the stairs, his sides hairs swept back at their sudden push. “Cecil. Cecil. Cecil. L-l-lets go.”

“Harrogate.” She leaned down and smiled and stuck her arm through. He couldn’t quite see what she did, only heard the sounds of shaking of hollow bones but when she came back up she had a ruby encrusted necklace hanging from her hands, gold chained with a rim resembling angel wings.

“Look what I found.” She smiled.

And the two adventurers left, empty in the sack but not empty in their hopes and hearts. They nearly skipped their way through the stone path, smiling and laughing along the way and beyond the slamming metal doors. Naive, in the stupor of a treasure-drunk joy. They left, not a thing of worry in their hearts as they did. But something crept its way behind them or rather - somethings.

In slow, methodical clockwork, the coffin tops moved and stuttered. The ancient graves rumbled and the dirt shifted and the empty sockets of worm-rummaged skulls glowed bright neon green. The birds ran. The auxiliaries skittered off their soon-to-be-living bonemeal. And below in the crypts, an ivory grip took firm hold of its tomb lid. It squeezed and the stone broke to gravel…