Lult the skeleton warrior sits on the raft and stares at me with empty eyesockets. He’s holding the cursed sword of Zarath the evil necromancer. The curse of the sword turned him into a living skeleton. But I’m a skeleton too. What worse could a curse do to me?
My travelling companions, Jenna the herbalist and Synt the hunter guy hang back nervously at the sight of Lult and the cursed sword.
“Lult, from one skeleton warrior to another, give me the sword so that I can finish your great work and kill Zarath, the evil necromancer.”
Lult reaches out his bony hand, still clutching the hilt of the sword. His jaw opens slowly. “Take…”
His voice sounds old and creaky.
I grip the hilt in my bony hand and Lult releases his grip on it.
“Lult, you’ve beaten Zarath once. There’s so much you can teach me,” I begin.
But Lult gives a great sigh and his bones crumble to dust that disappears between the logs of the raft and into the lake.
I stand still.
Jenna touches my bony arm. “I’m so sorry, Seren. You did all you could for him. He was happy to be released from Zarath’s curse.”
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“Keep that sword away from me,” says Synt. “I know that it once belonged to Zarath himself.”
I put the dreaded sword in my belt.
At that moment a white dove comes fluttering down from the sky and drops a rolled up scroll which I catch.
“Hello, what’s this?”
I read the scroll.
“Dear Friend,
I hope this message finds you. To truly kill Zarath you will need not only Zarath’s own sword, but the horn of a slythoris beast. You must kill him with the sword and then drive a slythoris horn through his heart to make sure he never comes back ever again. I must warn you also, after you kill Zarath get out of his crypt immediately. Zarath will have rigged the place to collapse if he is killed. The crypt is in the fissure in the starstone hills. The only slythoris beast I know of is in the howling tunnels in the copper plane.
Good luck!
Oleus.”
“I know where the copper plane is,” says Synt. “You should be grateful you found me.”
We travel west to the copper plane. The entrance to the tunnels is in a small hill on the edge of the plane.
Synt has a torch which he lights as we enter.
“I wonder why they are called the howling tunnels?” I say looking around. The torchlight casts weird shadows on the walls.
“I would suggest that you might start howling when you see the slythoris beast, but honestly, I’m not sure who would be more frightened of who,” says Synt.
Jenna’s green face looks strange in the torchlight. “Seren is a great warrior, you’ve seen,” she says.
There’s a clanking sound up ahead and six armoured skeletons march into view. Their eyesockets glow with a red light. Their armour is made of metal plates with spikes.
“Intruders,” says the leader skeleton, his jaw clacking as he talks. “You stand no chance against the skeleton warriors!”