A lone figure sat on a throne of stone. No servants waited on him, no knights guarded his gates, no lords awaited his counsel. He was alone, quite alone.
He sat with his chin resting on his fist, like a bony mockery of “The Thinker”. He’d taken to sitting in that pose and staring at the floor, thinking. What about? Not much, just a few thoughts here and there on when the sheets would need to be changed and when the floor needed sweeping, which wasn’t very often since they were barely used these days. Despite his melancholic and apathetic attitude, he would not allow his abode to accumulate filth, at least not too much of it. His audience chamber, golden and brown still shone like a jewel under the sun. The only blot on the otherwise otherworldly charm of the chamber was the bony figure and his stony throne.
His home needed cleaning quite a bit more often back in the days when he was still young and full of initiative, always running around with his face stuck to a scroll and a vial in his hands. He’d had lots of questions that needed answering and he’d found answers to lots of them, philosophical, scientific, societal and many more which couldn’t even be categorised. He kept answering questions until he ran out of questions to answer. Of course, one can come up with an infinite number of questions to answer, but “What is objectively the best window colour?” somehow elicits less enthusiasm than “What is the meaning of life?” But eventually when the boredom was too much to bear, he ended up finding the objective best colour for windows. And then, he was bored again. The corridors needed the most cleaning at this point in time. He took to roaming across his domain, no longer thinking but fantasising about something to think about. Eventually, when he began fantasising about fantasising about something to think about, he realised maybe he should give up on the thinking angle altogether, so he took to staring at things.
His abode was quite large but not large enough to facilitate the numerous staring bouts he held with its occupants. He had stared at every single object in there a dozen times at least and had come to the conclusion that spoons are the most enjoyable objects to stare at. It was a shame then that he had few spoons in his home, they were really only there for fancy occasions when he would have to invite guests to his home, he had no need to eat himself. He was currently staring at the chamber floor and not a spoon. This was his 22nd time staring at the floor of the audience chamber, he had been staring at it for…for some time now. However long it was, it was a bit overmuch. It was time for a change in scenery. Thinking so, he took an ornately carved spoon from one of the drawers in the chamber, sat down on the throne in the same posture, placing the spoon on his lap, and began staring at it.
A gentle creaking sound filled the air just as he was relishing the most interesting part of the spoon. The huge stone doors of the audience chamber slowly edged open and a brilliant light shone through, blinding him, but he could just about make out four silhouettes at the doorway. Servants? He hadn’t called for any and they wouldn’t dare set a light without his permission, nor would they want to, permission or no. Light was no.2 on the list of things his servants hated looking at, no.1 was him.
The light slowly dimmed to a level at which he could see. Four…four…four…humans! Yes, that was the word. He hadn’t used it in so long, he’d almost forgotten it. Yes, four humans stepped through. It was the first exciting that had happened to him in centuries (the previous being the time he decided to look at the spoons under a light instead of in the dark) but he was not in the least pleased. He would have been more than pleased to entertain a few guests, he hadn’t spoken with a person in over a millennium. But these were not guests. First, they had no invitation. Second, they were filthy and their clothing was entirely inappropriate for a graceful hall such as his. Third, they seemed to be carrying a lot of things that guests usually don’t, like swords and bows and other instruments of barbary. He watched the four humans warily saunter into his hall. One of them wove a spell that lit all the lamps in the chamber simultaneously. He winced as the light assaulted him.
A second later they noticed him.
“…is it dead?” the man in green asked. He had an arrow nocked.
“I dunno, it looks dead.” Answered the warrior clad in plate and mail, “What do you think Ealea?” he asked the mage, with a slight nod in her direction.
“I can feel a slight darkness emanating from it but I think that’s just residual.” She said with a shrug. “Pretty cool posture to die in though.”
“Yeah, when I die, I want to be buried like that.” Agreed the man in green.
“Please, nobody’s going to waste money on a funeral for you, Ellis” Replied the woman in mock outrage.
“Yadda-yadda, who cares how he died?! Look at this place, it’s straight out of a legend! I don’t even know what the walls are made of, the pillars have inlays of gold, the chandelier is half rubies. This carpet has gold thread woven in for heaven’s sake! It makes the king’s court look like a stable in comparison. What we should be doing is filling our coffers and making a dash for it before trouble shows up.” Spouted a short woman, named Lera, lightly armed and already digging out a huge folded sack from her backpack. Her description fell short of the true splendour of the chamber, it was worth more than the domains of a half dozen lords and barons.
“Gold isn’t the only thing valuable here. This guy probably knew a lot about magic, I can recognise a few magic runes in the walls, most of the others I’ve never seen. It’s fascinating to think how much lost knowledge might be stored in this crypt.” Said Ealea, sounding no less manic than her friend as she furiously began to scribble down the golden runes on the wall onto a thick scroll.
The other three busied themselves with pawing and pocketing anything that seemed valuable, which was basically everything in the chamber. They pulled at the gold thread in the carpet, pried gemstones from hanging weaponry and armour, cut out the silk from garments and plundered well enough to make a buccaneer proud.
Ellis shot arrows at the chain that held up the ruby-encrusted chandelier, hoping to bring it to the ground where they could then readily unburden it of its jewels but the chain said nay. The arrows had seemingly no effect at all, not even the enchanted ones.
Lera was faster than any of them despite her short stature, the empty sack now bulged. Twice as voluminous as her bag and many times heavier, she struggled to carry it around, in the end being forced to place it on the ground and resorting to throwing her plunder in. How she exactly she would carry it out of the crypt was something for future Lera to worry about. She wandered around the audience chamber, looking for anything small, light and valuable she could nab when her eyes fell on the dead figure sitting on the shockingly plain throne. The corpse’s attire fit that of the throne, both were grey and extremely plain, excepting two gleaming pieces of metal. One was a finger, half-hidden from view under the chin of the figure and seemingly made of silver. She wondered if the corpse had been placed there after it had died, since replacing your finger with silver while alive should be impossible…probably. Well, what did that matter, gold mattered and she could see the glint of it on the figure’s lap. A large spoon, made entirely of gold rested there. The tip was inlaid with diamonds, carvings of platinum decorated the handle. The bowl had some sort of runic inscription but the material it was inscribed on was what really drew her attention. A gigantic emerald formed the interior of the spoon’s bowl, it was even cut concave to maintain the symmetry of the cutlery. The spoon was simply atrocious, a hundred peasant families might be fed with the amount of money it must have cost to make this spoon. Such a large sum spent on a spoon! Such avarice! She had thought herself avaricious but she was nothing but a pious saint in comparison to the ruler of this place.
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Approaching the figure, the first thing she attempted was to pull of its silver finger. The figure did not budge in the slightest, the finger remained stubbornly attached. A knife did little to resolve the issue. Eventually her motions went from trying to pry the finger off to simply stabbing the hand. Nothing was achieved.
Gold is better than silver, a simple statement her mind accepted without question. So, when offered the choice between a silver finger that remained stationary despite her best efforts and a golden spoon simply lying there, waiting to be snatched away, it was easy to choose.
Her hands darted out, snake-like and grabbed the spoon. It was quite a bit heavier than she expected, even after considering the weight of gold. She held it up against one of the lamps to examine it. She rotated the spoon in her fingers, waiting for it to catch the yellow light from the lamps and glimmer like the sun. It never did.
The lamps all went out the instant she held it up. Usually, one would expect to hear cries of surprise if the light suddenly went out, but the room was occupied by seasoned adventurers, not common folk. Giving away your location in the dark was a good way to catch an arrow with your eye. The dull shuffling of their feet seemed tremendously loud as they tried to regroup using whispers and murmurs. Their ears strained but they could catch no noise that they did not make themselves.
Slowly lifting up her staff so as not to antagonise anyone that might be watching, Ealea wove the same spell as before and the lanterns were lit once more, but the merry atmosphere had long since disappeared. The mage, the archer and the knight all stood erect and ready for battle. The antiquarian thief stood erect as well, her feet did at least. Her head lolled this way and that as though it were controlled by a mad puppeteer. The neck hung and sagged, looking very much like a rotten aubergine in the fact that the flesh was purple and grey and bulged and bloated near the head.
Behind the dead woman stood a dead man, seemingly more popular as all gazes were on him. A greyish-white skeleton covered in a soft crimson robe with a golden spoon grasped firmly in its left hand. Garish purple, unnatural blobs of light dripped down from the spoon, evaporating into nothingness before they could reach the ground.
Using his silver index finger as a pivot, he flicked the spoon up causing the purple blobs to spray in every direction. It also caused Lera to move. Her head still lolling, she dashed at the knight with ungodly speed. Deftly avoiding his weak, startled slash, she sunk her knife, hilt-deep into his neck near the collarbone. The man remained upright. The knife withdrew, several spurts of blood followed it as the man’s heart beat its last.
As the scene was unfolding before her, Ealea was walking backwards towards the door as fast as she was able. She could turn her back on her enemy when she had cover-fire. Just after she saw the knight die, she felt the giant stone doors bump against her back. Faster than a fly, she turned and ran down the hallway, simultaneously shouting “Cover-fire Ellis!!” The hallway in front of her was empty and she received no cover fire. Ellis had run away the moment he saw a pile of bones standing up. Better a traitor than a corpse, it was sound reasoning. He was a selfish and callous man and had no qualms about accepting that fact if it meant he lived. Ealea suppressed a scream of fury and ran on, sheathing her weapon to make it easier. Betrayal was worse than death. Better dead than a traitor. That was her philosophy and it meant she often butted heads with Ellis. Despite what he said, he had so far never abandoned them in a time of need. She realised at that moment that it was because a time of need never really came up for people of their skill, and not due to any altruism on his part. If she didn’t die here, she would kill him, thus she vowed in her heart.
Consumed by her emotions, she had momentarily detached herself from her surroundings. Her brain had kept her moving in a sort of autopilot. She found herself on the spiral staircase that led down to this area of the crypt. Instead of climbing the winding staircase and wasting precious seconds, she used a teleportation gemstone, a very valuable thing, to instantly reach the top of the stairwell nearly twenty metres above. Stealing a glance, she couldn’t see the corpses of her two comrades but she could hear their feet. Instead of the violent and inhumanly fast footsteps she expected to be following her, she heard calm, ordered steps, like a brigade marching for some illustrious occasion. If not for the clang of steel every time the knight’s feet hit the floor, she wouldn’t even be able to tell them apart. Instead of calming her, their inexplicable slowness aggravated her anxiety. It meant one of two things, the enemy was so confident in victory that it was taking its time or the monster had a trick up its sleeve. Regular undead were bad enough but intelligent ones were little different from being sentenced to the gallows. She quickened her pace, turning stone corridors expecting to be stabbed each time but surviving. She ran up flights of stairs composed of books and ran past gleaming windows with a gorgeous view of the night sky even though they were underground. She grew bolder as the marching of her comrades could no longer be heard and she was only two or three flights from the surface. She fought her emotions as hope began to well up inside her heart, the higher her hopes the harder the fall. She was still in enemy territory, she could be happy when she was back at camp. Anything could happen in the few minutes it would take to reach the surface, the enemy could pop up anywhere. Through that window, from a secret entrance or straight of that wall! She glared at the end of a T-intersection while thinking so.
And indeed, the wall popped open, splitting into two halves that separated to create an opening which revealed the skeleton from before, standing alone in a small room. A small ding emanated from inside the room as the doors separated fully. The almost casual tone of the sound clashed terribly with the atmosphere.
A deep, rumbling, rolling voice emanated from the skeletal figure. “Your comrade has abandoned you?”, it asked in an almost mocking, piteous tone.
Not bothering with a response, Ealea hastily began waving a spell. Her haste cursed it with a crude, half-formed nature, like a cripple. Despite its lack of eyes, she could feel the skeletal creature judging her spell and in turn, judging her. Stomping down the various emotions that rose up at this, she focused on adding the finishing touches to the spell and began to release it, when from behind her, she heard a single metallic thud. Too close, far too close. Faster than the eye could blink, she turned around and released the spell at the knight standing behind her.
It was supposed to be a streak of electricity but the hasty construction of the spell instead shot out something like a streak of explosions as the energy contained within it struggled to obey her commands. In a flash, the spell had descended upon her target and hit it right in the chest.
Lera’s corpse exploded into dozens of chunks. The dull beige corridor was now redecorated with the organs and tissues of a full human being.
As the ringing in her ears subsided, once again, from behind her she heard sprinting footsteps, then the ‘woosh’ of a blade cleaving the atmosphere.
She was on the floor, and felt somewhat lighter than before. Beyond that, she couldn’t feel much. Her head throbbed like it was being chewed and then spat out by a giant, and then being put back into its mouth in a never-ending cycle. The floor hogged half her vision, the other half discerned two pairs of feet. One skeletal pair, nearly covered by a silken robe, the other was barefoot and all of the leg that could be seen was covered in plate armour.
She felt someone grip her left foot and drag her along the floor. Her other foot…still felt numb, it throbbed slightly. As she was turned around by her captors, she saw the other end of the corridor, the one she had been facing. Limbs and organs strewed the ground. A few too many limbs and organs. She counted again just to make sure.
There were three legs in the corridor. Two wore, on their feet, coverings of plate mail, and were fairly small. Besides the shoes, they wore no other armour, just plain trousers, all scratched up now. The other was larger, around the same size as her legs, it also had a little scar on the calf, just where she had one on her right leg. She’d got it while playing ‘knight’ with her friends, the sticks they used were a bit too sharp. The coincidences didn’t stop there, it also wore the same leather slippers she did. What are the chances of that, she thought, almost mirthful.
Her pleasure was quickly culled as the dull throbbing in her right foot rapidly grew stronger until pain was all that constituted her being. She could feel herself scream but no sound reached her ears, just the rapid thumping of her heart as she slowly lost consciousness.