Three days had passed, three days of hiding out in a caravan and listening to the distant shouting had left Erika tired angry and upset, even with Kara being attentive Erika had felt herself boiling down towards an explosion of rage.

Luckily Sigurn had noticed and decided to send her along on a heavily armed scouting expedition, Erika was certain Sigurn had assigned the best of their group to watch her but she couldn’t find it in herself to care, she was done, done being weak and done staying in that damn caravan. She’d dived fully into her Graft sorcery and was itching to see what it did, on top of that she’d finally internalised the rites of subornment, essentially a long spell that made a flesh forged creation obedient to you, dumber than a bag of rocks but still obedient.

Which was why she was being followed by two twisted four-legged pale creatures the size of a dinner table, each laden down with bags. Erika was a vitki and a life smith besides she didn’t want carry bags and, thanks to a fortuitous attack by a few warg scouts, she didn’t have too anymore! She’d twisted the bodies of four of them together to create her two new thralls… it was supposed to be a momentous day when she did that, one under her mother’s supervision, but her own foolishness had robbed her of that moment and all she could do was move forwards.

Speaking of forward that was their goal, to leave losthope and scout towards the “front” of the tower (as defined by where the doors had been found) generally looking for trouble or supplies. Erika had wanted to go on one of the more serious scouting trips which were towards the heart of the tower and aimed to discover either the runes which kept them stuck here or the mysterious “treasure” that Silvermane wanted. Sigurn always lead those trips personally, meaning they were very popular and surprisingly low risk since silver-rank and all that.

But Erika had been discouraged from joining those missions, Sigurn had said that they were only low risk if they didn’t find anything, if they ran into the treasure or the trap runes, then it would be far more dangerous than just snooping around.

So, Erika had been sent on snooping duty, at least Kara with her, she tried not to act to smitten around the scouts but she was pretty sure she failed, it didn’t matter of course nobody complained about being led by a vitki, even if she was only a few years out of childhood the old veterans all deferred to her instantly, that was the power of magic after all.

As such Erika lead the group down the identical cold corridors, oblong slates under her feet and above her head, the darkness was absolute until it fled before their torches and lanterns but the chill still hung heavily in the air which stank of the strange papery ancient scent that speaks of eons unmanned and unmaintained, of abandoned grandeur and mouldering.

Here and there one of those strange dot paintings was visible, most had faded with the centuries, their colour gone leaving behind only a smattering of darker spots on the stone, a few loose stones and bundles of dirt clogged up the corners of the tunnels and passages but that was it.

Erika found it indescribably boring but she was ignoring that, they’d already run into the two wargs who had become her thralls which meant that there was something here, the wargs had lived in the tower for centuries at least, they knew where its treasures were hidden and two of them had been in this section of the tower, their must be a reason.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Unfortunately, whichever direction the wargs had been heading wasn't clear after the battle but fortunately nobody had objected to the scouting party trying to follow their tracks as best as they could, they’d had to split up a few times to map out the more winding and prolific passages.

Oh, and bones.

Lots and lots of bones.

Firstly, it was small bones, scattered piles of rat and vermin skeletons, all so old they crumbled at the touch. Then it was the gnawed bones of warg champions, devoured by their kin in their disgusting cannibalistic funeral rites and finally came the full skeleton. Only one, the party found it in a side passage, the scout who saw it so shocked he could make a sound, his frozen muteness alerting his allies.

A long as four houses even twisted on the ground, as wide a dozen oxen even fleshless and uncovered, ancient almost tar like dust coated the passageway but somehow the bones themselves still gleamed, a full skeleton shining a bright silver like polished plate with its skull staring down reproachfully at the approaching humans, each of its eye sockets larger than Erika’s entire body. In that frozen moment the frost on the ancient bones crackled and cracked, so old and brittle that even the warmth of their torches melted it away as the light struck the bones and shone.

“Metal bones?” Erika said, the first one to speak. “How does that even work! Where would you make blood?!”

Around her people relaxed, the world becoming more normal, the tension broken as people began to grin. “Professional offended love?” Asked Kara, revelling in the way it made Erika blush.

“Wa… i… yes! It’s…” She sputtered to a stop.

“What in Hel’s name even is this thing? It’s massive!” Gunhilda said, the berserker Gothi had insisted on following Kara on their mission and Erika found her company enjoyable which meant she was allowed to stay near the front of the column rather than be banished to the backline with the thralls and Solvor Sigsdottir, she wasn’t bad company but Erika had gotten tired of trying to decipher her bizarre way of speaking.

Speaking the column reminded Erika that she had a duty to perform or more accurately to fob off on someone else. Making a subtle gesture to the man next to her, a hugely tall yet incredible lanky veteran delver named Lauton who Sigurn had sent with her personally, who after she gestured him close and mimed a few words nodded with a slight smile and began to shout the scouts into a defensive permitter, set up some sort of outrider watch thing and… some other stuff Erika wasn't really paying attention

Laudon was tactically in charge of their scouting party whereas Erika was the official leader… which meant he was really in charge but that since Erika was a vitki and he couldn’t be allowed to outrank a vitki, even though he was a battle-hardened veteran and expert leader of men and Erika was barely an adult and only knew the word tactics from some of the popular novels she read.

Erika didn’t mind this at all since it left her with as little responsibility as possible and gave her extra time to flirt with Kara or rest on one of her thralls. Rather than do that thought Erika was thinking, hard, she knew she’d heard of something like this before… a record of some past Life-Smiths’ greatest creations? Some obscure lokispawn? Something about metal skeletons stuck in her mind.

Pulling on a mental string she summoned her thralls over, the twisted shambling lumps of warg flesh were mostly covered by boxes and bags but she was sure she’d made sure to grab her… ah yes!

Taking the heavy bestiary out of its box Erika paged through it until with satisfised grunt she found the page she’d been looking for; of course, metal bones rang a faint bell, their owners were so very famous after all.