"Teleportation is certainly convenient."

The individual who had been given the name Mortem heard the man with the voice of a bard's comment. After reviewing the list of orders his master had given him, he deemed it necessary to issue a correction.

His voice deep and harsh, even to its own non-existent ears, he stated in a dull monotone, "Not teleportation. Teleportation pulls things apart and reassembles them elsewhere, and is harmful to living things. What I used was dimensional folding, using magic to force two separate points in space to overlap momentarily. Similar results, very different execution."

He held up a hand and conjured forth a blue flame. It hung suspended in the air, illuminating the room yet somehow accentuating the shadows around them at the same time. The chamber that it illuminated was exactly where they'd expected to arrive. The pair stood in an antechamber the dwarven catacombs, the air thick with dust and the overwhelming smell of decay.

Looking down the rows of tombs around the pair, the man seemed to wince slightly at the sound of Mortem's voice, then observed, "Really? I'd heard of wizards toying around with the idea, but never getting it to work."

"It requires immense power to perform," Mortem advised, going from tomb to tomb, searching for their intended target. "It is possible for me to do it twice in a single day, so long as there is very little else required of me."

Cautiously, the man asked, "Will you have enough power to get us back when you are done?" He started at a sudden noise, and then nearly jumped out of his skin when a trio of ghouls, their mouths agape and drooling, came into view. Their undead transformation had changed these former dwarves into grotesquely tall and horrendous creatures, the limbs of their scarecrow frame now stretched abnormally long and their mouths wide enough to fit a full-grown man's head inside with room to spare and teeth sharp enough to sever that head from the neck. Clad in dirty, torn rags, their skeletal frame spoke to the intense and ceaseless hunger that all ghouls felt, a hunger that consumed whoever or whatever that person once was, leaving only a monster behind.

However, upon seeing Mortem, they immediately ran back the way they came. There are things even ghouls fear...

Finding the tomb that was their intended target, Mortem gripped the lid and carefully pulled it away with a loud, echoing scrape of stone on stone. "This requires little actual power," he noted in his monotone voice as he began tracing sigils in the air. "It is a ritual spell, one that is set and then gathers necrotic energies from its environs to power it. As such, this spell is little more than planting a seed and letting it grow into full bloom over several days." He paused, then asked, "Are you certain that you wish to go through with this?"

"Not questioning orders, are you?" the man with a bard's voice asked, cautiously, still glancing around nervously and wrinkling his nose from the foul scent caused by their close encounter with the ghouls.

"I am not allowed to question your orders needlessly," Mortem replied, his hands still weaving a complex spell. "However, I was instructed to ensure that in all ways possible I would forward your plans. If a command seems as if it might ultimately be detrimental to your overall goal, I am allowed a certain level of leeway in how I am to proceed. In short, if I am commanded to do something that may endanger your plans, I am allowed to question your intentions and offer suggestions when possible, as I am now."

With a little chuckle, the man shrugged, then said, "Fair enough. Strictly speaking, this probably isn't necessary, but I'm taking precautions against the unexpected. I received a report that the Vulcan Manufactury Group has dispatched one of their top salesmen to try and start business relations with the Kingdom Under The Mountain. They've tried more than once in the past and never succeeded. While hardly likely to succeed now, on the off chance that a business relation starts now, the dwarves having access to golems could throw our plans to disrupt the iron market into disarray. So, better to take no chances and cut off the supply now rather than later."

Mortem continued his work, the corpse he was working on beginning to glow with threads of green and purple light. "I understand. However, be aware that what you have ordered is not a small thing, easily undone. The ritual you have commanded me to perform is eldritch and powerful, one that once started cannot be stopped. Depending upon how things unfold, it is likely that a great many will die. Within a few weeks, the Kingdom Under The Mountain could be eradicated in its entirety."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Admiring a small pile of funerary offerings atop one of the tombs, a fine gold ring, in particular, catching his eye, the man with the voice of a bard shrugged his shoulders, then said, "The dwarves are deeply tied to the fate of Exaul, whether they realize it or not. When our plans succeed, the Kingdom Under The Mountain is almost certainly going to fall, and fall spectacularly. This will just be moving the end of their kingdom up a few years, that's all."

"A kingdom falling is not the same thing as an entire people being driven to extinction," Mortem retorted, a slight edge of anger breaking through his monotone and betraying emotion for the first time. "If the Kingdom Under The Mountain falls, the dwarves may yet survive. If this cascades out of control, it could turn the entire Kingdom Under The Mountain into a necropolis, wiping the dwarves from this world forever." Despite his anger, Mortem's hands never wavered, continuing their wicked work.

"It's even possible that over the years and decades to come," Mortem continued, regaining a small measure of control over his voice, "that these many legions of undead will spill out, and slowly overtake the entire continent. A century from now, all that may remain of the once-great kingdom of Exaul will be ruins and thousands upon thousands of undead.

The man with the voice of a bard shrugged. It was a little shrug, one that spoke very eloquently without words, saying 'Who cares? It won't affect me in any way.'

In the afterlife that the gods granted mortalkind, there was a special place for those who attempted or succeeded at genocide, either intentionally or accidentally. Mortem knew this, as he'd spent a couple of centuries there before his master had hauled him violently back from that hell to the far worse one that was his current state of servitude. He wished that he could have warned this man that his actions just now were damning him and his compatriots to an eternity of anguish the likes of which none of them could ever imagine. Even if things did not escalate out of control, they'd all be eternally damned because they'd been warned of what might happen, and went through with it anyway.

The intent had mattered far more to the gods than the success or failure. Trying to murder someone and failing was a sin equal to succeeding in it.

Mortem wished he could warn this man, but his orders forbade him. There were many things he wished he could warn others of, but orders from his master were absolute. He could no more violate those commands than he could swim through stone or pluck the moon from the heavens. Beneath the shroud that his undeath placed upon his emotions, Mortem felt his impotent fury, the rage of one who possessed immense power but was ultimately impotent in regards to how it was used...

Instead, Mortem finished the spell and slid the lid of the tomb back into place, then said, "The deed is done, as ordered. The consequences of whatever happens next are on your head. I will not bear the weight of your sins, as my own are far too heavy on their own."

The man with the voice of a bard scoffed at that, then picked up the gold ring from the pile of funeral offerings, sliding it onto his finger and saying, "Whatever. I'll just have to comfort myself with all of the money I'll be making off of this."

Mortem considered warning the man about the ring he'd just put on. The ring was centuries old, and it had spent that time soaking in the deep necrotic energies of a tomb that regularly spawned the undead, energies profoundly harmful to living things. Just putting on the ring had shortened the man's maximum lifespan by decades even if he didn't feel it right now. Wearing it continuously would no doubt cause him to sicken and die within two or three years in a manner most horrendous and painful. Even if he took it off now, only a blessing from the gods could undo the damage done, and there was no chance of that happening in this era.

However, Mortem's orders were to prevent anything that would hinder the Ashen Stag's immediate plan to take Remus, which would take a year. This man wouldn't experience any truly debilitating symptoms for at least two years, barring any other foolish moves involving necrotic energies. As such, his inevitable painful demise wasn't a hindrance to that plan. In fact, that untimely death would serve Mortem's true master in the long run, given what other orders he'd been given.

"I suspect that one day you will find," Mortem advised, a slight tone of satisfaction coloring his monotone, "that in the end, the one thing that money cannot buy you is freedom from the consequences of your actions. Let's be off. This place will not be safe for you soon."

A few moments later, the pair were gone, which was just in time, as scratching noises began to come from the tomb that Mortem had been working on. And then more scratching began to come from the tomb next to it... and then the tomb next to it... and then the tomb next to it...