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Glen
Arguen Garth
Hardir O’ Fardor
Lord of Morn Taras
Monarch of Sinya Goras
A Witch’s resting place
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[https://i.postimg.cc/SxkMPkwz/Nesande-s-Garden.jpg]
There were almond and fig trees, bright citrus and flashy apricots hanging from laden branches, neatly arranged rows of cherry trees and elderberries, the latter poisonous unless boiled. The different lines of fruits expanding outwards from a center, carefully measured and arranged, the space left between them flattened and pruned, with crushed marble powder turning the soil grey instead of a rich black, where the outer layer of limestone tiles had crumbled away.
Tall weeds and wildflowers had slowly filled the gaps, climbing roots and thin vines had crossed the empty spaces and had fashioned a thick mesh overhead, a surprising low-slung green canopy in comparison to the forty meters tall sycamore trees forest they had left behind teeming with native fauna. ‘You’ll know when you enter the garden proper’ Folen had said and he was right in a sense for once.
Glen slotted a lemon sized cherry grape in his mouth and chewed on it slowly, the sweet juices refreshing his dry throat. He turned his eyes on Soren, the giant Nord working his battleaxe as a cleaning tool, hacking down saplings, branches and wayward birch trees blocking their path. Doing the work of five men on a half-a-man’s wages.
With a sigh the elevated ‘former’ crook climbed down from Outlaw, grimacing when he landed awkwardly on his missing toe and walked towards the bearded Soren.
“Want a grape?” Glen queried and tossed him a couple of big ones first, then another dozen he had stuffed in his well-used satchel.
“Got any bigger ones?” A sweaty Soren griped afore pouring everything in his mouth one after the other. Half a bucket of fruit.
“Biggest of the bunch I managed to pilfer out of the pile friend,” Glen replied with a smile and wiped his own moist forehead. Aenymriel had tasked Marlo with gathering them.
“Uhm,” Soren murmured chewing.
“What you found there?” Glen asked and looked about them. The rest of their group busy clearing the terrain to locate the stone tiled road they were following the previous day. This was day number three, since they had crossed the bridge. A week into their journey.
“Some broken tiles,” Soren grimacing when he crunched at the bitter cores. “You might have to call on the wyvern. Burn the forest away.”
“The locals might riot at that,” Glen chuckled, giving his swollen, massive shoulder a slap. Soren turned his head and looked at the spot unsure on what he’d felt touching him there. Glen cleared his throat and caught Wylinor calling on Folen to approach. The ranger worked some distance from them.
“What did you find Wyl?” Glen asked and stepped back for Soren to swing his large battleaxe again.
“Someone cleared a path, heading westwards,” Maeriel’s former pupil reported.
“On the old road?” Glen asked and strolled that way, clicking his tongue for Outlaw to follow after him. Kirk was keeping the rest of the animals and their supplies safe about fifty meters to their rear.
“At spots it touches the edges of the road, but they weren’t looking to reopen the path,” Wylinor said and showed him the narrow and slowly fading away route.
Abarat kept everything rather clear, especially the old stone paved road from Elas Bridge to the springs near the mountain slopes under Turlas Peak, following Marionel River. They had crossed the small bridge over Marionel trying to find the vaunted ‘Greenhouse inside the Orchard’, but it was clear Abarat couldn’t maintain this part of Nesande’s Garden as well, either due to a lack of resources, or manpower.
Despite its expansive building plan –Marlo thought the Zilan occupied enough land to fit Issir’s Eagle inside- Abarat was town-sized at best by Jelin’s standards. Then again the three cities/districts back in Goras had the size of the Duchy of Asturia with barely over ten thousand inhabitants. In the same vein this wilderness was huge and could easily support a couple of Duchies at least, or a small country, as it didn’t lack on anything. Wetull, at least at this point in time and a couple of centuries after the destruction it had suffered, had recovered as well.
This part of Wetull has that is, Glen thought and followed after the ranger inside the path.
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Glen returned to their group an hour later after having walked at least a couple of kilometers deep inside the progressively more untamed jungle. The recently cut path had turned north after a while according to Wylinor and it kept on towards the slopes that led to Desert’s Watch mountains.
“Anything? Aenymriel asked, her large black-leather bag over her shoulder, used as prop to rest her head under an old oak’s shade.
“It goes on,” Glen murmured tiredly and used a dirty cloth to wipe the back of his neck. He wanted to remove his cuirass, as his undershirt had been drenched and felt glued on his skin, but it didn’t seem prudent at this point. “Where’s Soren?”
“He kept on chopping down trees,” she replied and cracked a small vile open to sip a taste, before reaching back to return it in her satchel.
“What’s that?” Glen asked.
“An elixir, to better see,” she teased. Nym’s humor had a creepy undertone in it, Glen just couldn’t place.
“See what?”
“Through illusions,” Aenymriel replied.
“Give me some.”
“It’s toxic… Glen. You need to imbibe it bit by bit over several years. You’ll either grow accustomed to it, or your bones will melt before your skin,” Aenymriel explained.
“I could start now,” Glen argued, not buying the threat.
“Seriously, I can’t risk you falling ill, or worse,” she insisted. “This is highly concentrated, you need a lesser potion to start. This is not the time for that.”
“We’ll revisit the matter,” Glen warned her and she stepped forward, well into his personal space, all but touched her small nose on his. Far as Zilan went, she was on the short side. Her proportions closer to that of a normal young woman. Her dark indigo eyes examined his face with interest. “Do you mind?” Glen grunted and Aenymriel whispered barely opening her lips, hint of malice in her voice.
“Soren is gone for a while.”
Undersized bitch.
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“Soren!” a worried Glen yelled moving through the opening the Nord had created. It was moving west at an arc away from the path, but five strides in a toppled tree’s roots revealed broken tiles. The Nord had turned again and followed the hidden road towards a less vegetated area of the garden. A very large meadow with tall yellow grass and short sickly looking saplings.
“Fuck are the trees?” Marlo asked and stopped next to a frowning Glen.
“Shit,” Folen said standing behind them and a troubled Soren appeared, twin-bladed battleaxe over his right shoulder coming from the center of the field.
Damnit big guy.
“What’s over there?” Glen asked and hurried towards him. His boots hitting the hardened, but brittle ground. The grass crumpling and breaking in his path.
“Bad land,” Soren replied, a crease on his wide forehead. “Not much else.”
Glen reached the place himself moments later and looked about with interest. He knelt with a grimace and scooped some of the soil with his hand. Fine dirt, with tiny bits of grit in it. He reached for one of the sickly-weeds and uprooted it with ease. There was barely a finger of good soft soil for its thin twine like roots to dig into. Glen shoved his own finger inside the small hole in the ground and felt the hardness of the soil underneath.
“What is this?” He murmured. “This is like the ground at Hellfort.”
“Aye,” Soren agreed. “There’s solid rock underneath it, nothing goes through. Basalt, or granite. Can’t dig it out.”
“Who builds a greenhouse over solid rock terrain?” Glen wondered and stared at Aenymriel, then at Folen.
“It’s better now than it was then,” Folen told him. “We were shocked the moment we reached this emptiness inside the jungle.”
Glen stared at the expansive circular field and the edges of the trees all around them, about fifty or sixty meters away. Some smaller trees are creeping towards the opening though, he noticed. Right at the imaginary circumference. He stabbed his boot down once just in case and when that didn’t work, Glen walked towards the more desolate part of the field. The barren ground there colored a washed out brown, where it wasn’t covered in wild flowers. A stride and his boot stumbled on a hard protrusion, rock-like. Glen caught himself and turned around to examine the terrain again.
“Folen bring a pickaxe here, or a shovel,” Glen ordered.
“Garth I’ve never dabbled in digging—”
Glen stopped him raising his left arm.
“Now that… is a big lie,” he scolded him. “If you came here afore nature blanketed everything then yer friends and you looked under the ground. Bring the tool here so we can look again.”
“What did you find Glen?” Sam asked. He’d brought the horses with Kirk as the opening was excellent for grazing, or camping.
“Either a very long protruding rock,” Glen murmured thoughtfully, using his fingers to trace the outile of the protrusion. He kept cleaning the dirt and digging more of the foot-thick obstacle out, but it kept on going, until it angled sharply right and continued seemingly forever. Hmm. “Or the outline of a building with weird concrete-like walls.”
Leveled.
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The Greenhouse had a perfect square base. Each side measured at fifty meters, but for the east one that was broken in two, twenty-four meters in length smaller parts, leaving a couple of meters at its center for a door-like opening. Glen wiped his forehead and glanced at the bright sun moving over their heads towards noon.
“That’s enough Soren,” he decided.
“I’ve broken a part out Glen,” the determined Nord yielding their last pickaxe grunted. He’d broken the other two already, the second iron blade wrapping and turning unusable.
“Let me see it,” Glen murmured and stooped to pick up the part he’d dug out. A very heavy and sharp piece of shining quartz apparently.
Not bedrock then.
“Is that… a diamond?” Marlo gasped taking it out of his hands. Glen glared at him frustrated.
“It’s not,” he griped. Glen had thought the same thing initially, but then he remembered where he’d seen this type of rock again. “It’s quartz. Glass rock.”
Eikenport. The fused buildings.
“Shit,” Marlo cursed and hurled it away angry. “We’re down to our last pickaxe Garth,” the adventurer hissed. “We might need to dig with our hands soon and I ain’t losing another finger lad!”
“Dig what?” Sam queried.
“Aren’t we looking for a tomb? We might need tools for that. This ain’t it clearly,” Marlo reminded him.
No it isn’t, Glen thought. Whatever happened here is a whole other story. Or is it?
“You know what happened here?” He asked the silent Aenymriel.
“Not all quests,” she replied cryptically, her face blank. “Are successful, even when all tasks are fulfilled.”
“Milady wit all the respect,” Marlo intervened. “You’re not making any god darn sense!”
“Is it important to you that I do?” Aenymriel calmly probed out of the blue.
Oops, Glen thought.
Marlo scratched his head taken aback and looked at Sam. “See what I told ye? Do you know what the more dangerous, but rewarding answer here is?”
Aenymriel chuckled and Glen rolled his eyes and went to stop the stubborn Soren from swinging the pickaxe again.
“No,” Sam admitted and Marlo sighed, eyed the aloof Zilan and replied gruffly.
“It plaguing is!”
“Then I shall remedy that adventurer,” she replied and winked at him afore twirling away following the path that had brought them there.
“That’s such bullshit!” A livid Folen protested.
“Alright,” a bemused Sam Mathews said, pulling at his earlobe. “What the allhells just happened?”
Glen tapped him on the shoulder going past him and after the strolling away, fine… medium-sized and fit Zilan. Glen was in a forgiving mood.
“Some queries have double meaning Sam,” he told him knowingly and Sam rumbled after his back frustrated.
“Where are you going?”
“If that’s the greenhouse,” Glen yelled without looking back reaching the fast moving Aenymriel and gesturing for Kirk to bring the animals. “Then the other path leads to the tomb for sure!”
Cut either by the witch, or the fools that got her out.
Onas thought it impossible without a sorceress at hand, but Glen knew that magic could be wielded by all kinds of folk.
With varying results, but notable successes.
“What did you mean earlier?” he asked the Zilan Elderblood.
“The killer had motive,” Aenymriel replied and paused to look at him under the shade of the trees. They had catapulted there in no time. Glen frowned and glanced back at the meadow after stopping next to her. “It’s a bubble,” she explained with a chuckle. “Stand near a ‘friendly’ caster, or ‘allowed in’, depending on the school and you’ll partake in the benefits.”
“The second part, I didn’t get,” Glen admitted. “But you don’t need motive. You’re an assassin.”
“No one is one thing only Hardir,” she hissed.
“Who else had motive, Nym?” Glen asked. He assumed they were talking about the King’s killer.
Nym licked her lips.
“Don’t use that name,” she cautioned him. “You are horrible at keeping secrets.”
Well, everyone thinks that, which is why I’m so good.
“Eh, you’re way wrong there. Tis not even close,” Glen taunted. “Who else?”
“The King’s adversaries.”
“Why did they suspect you?” Glen asked taking the opportunity to learn more with the others away.
“I was the easy target.”
Uh, nah… there must have been a solid reason.
“Come on, those guys don’t look like fools to me!”
She sighed and glanced over his shoulder. “We’re not alone,” she finally whispered so only he could hear.
“What…? Of course we…” Glen paused and looked about them in alarm.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What happened to your suspects?” He asked not seeing anyone and feeling silly. “Is the culprit dead?”
“The first I have already answered,” Nym replied her eyes glowing and raised her palm, a small coal burning hot in it. She blew the aromatic smoke on his face and then dissolved into the shadow pooling under her legs.
As for the other, lately I’m not as sure, Nym’s childish voice told him, a soft breeze taking the shades away and through the trees, the smell of incense left behind, along the hint of the putrid sweaty tang emanating out of a predator’s thick pelt.
Nesande’s Garden,
Edlenn’s Orchard northern edges,
Near Desert’s Watch mountain range
Late summer of 3398IC (192NC)
Third Era
Three hours of traversing the narrow route through the jungle brought them near the Desert Watch’s slopes. With the light dwindling, despite the trees now sparser and the wilderness retreating, Glen decided they should make camp and examine the rocky dark rises again in the morning. The looming mountain blocking the view north, but to their east and beyond the huge hundred meter tall sequoias of the coast, lay Serpent’s Canal. They had looped back in a sense towards it.
“If there’s climbing involved,” Marlo commented sourly. “I’m out lads.”
“There are more fingers coming yer way, if you stick it out,” Glen assured him.
“Milord wit all the respect, I find the topic disturbing.”
“How about a gold forearm?” Glen haggled.
“Say, as big as Soren’s?” Marlo asked willing to explore the option.
Glen smacked his lips. “You’re not that valuable friend,” he countered.
“But is it a tall person?”
“No, but thickly built,” Glen replied.
“Can I see it?”
“Don’t have it on me,” Glen dodged, though he had it in his saddlebags.
“What do you say Sam?” Marlo asked.
“We’ve come this far Marlo. We ought to see this through.”
“Lad, this kind of logic shall get you killed.”
“Alright that’s enough,” Glen grunted. Seeing valuable time wasted, he had reconsidered his plan. “Kirk take first watch. The rest of you catch a bit of sleep. Marlo stay with Jingo. Sam, Folen, with me.”
“Ahm,” Folen cleared his throat and put his lute down. “In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a better top Garth—”
Glen stopped him with a manic roar.
“What in the slovenly fuck are ye talking about?” He blasted him spittle flying out of his mouth in copious amounts. “Stop! Don’t even think of going there ye lecherous buffoon!”
“Am I to come with you?” Aenymriel asked coming back from wherever the allfucks she had disappeared to.
Glen was too frustrated to talk with her at that moment, so the Ruler of Morn Taras just nodded after he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
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Ooh.
Ooh-ooh.
Ah-ah!
The monkey mocked them from a lone ancient fig tree and hurled a rock that rattled on the cobblestone, clearly visible now that the thickest part of the jungle had been left behind. Glen glared at the little devil and paused to examine the modest drop caused by rain water, next to the path. He had spotted Aenymriel’s weak light returning. She probably used it to avoid startling them, or as a warning, Glen supposed, looking at the abrupt crack-like decline thoughtfully.
Everything now dry and brittle, the ground soil chockfull with small rocks and gravel all the way to the boulders at the base of the limestone mountain.
“The path continues north probably following the rises around Desert’s Watch and the river banks Glen,” Sam said stooping to see what he was looking for. Glen had moved near the three meter wide trunk of the tree sprouting at the edge of the path and eyed the darkness of the slope.
“Heading for the Torn Earth according to their maps,” Glen murmured and flinched when a fig bounced off his shoulder pad. “Darn monkeys,” he lowered his feet over the lip, a hand on the trunk of the tree and the other reaching into his satchel. “Let’s see how far down this goes,” Glen said and dropped a lightstone down, after he kept it in his hand for long enough to ignite.
“Folen we might need a rope,” Sam said to the Zilan bringing up the mule.
“Tie a line around the trunk and someone get rid of that monkey,” Glen grunted and jumped down. “It’s less than a two meters drop.”
“What’s that way?” Sam asked looking down.
“The east side of the mountain. A couple of kilometers at the most. There’s no reason to bring the road all the way here, only to turn out of the blue and round the whole darn thing to reach the sea,” Glen replied. “This is a fake path. The real road is back that way, near the river banks, if there is one. But we are not looking for that. Alert the others.”
“Are you sure?” the adventurer asked.
“If the way was correct she wouldn’t be back so soon,” Glen replied and glanced at the mass of the mountain, a black wall contrasting at the starlit night sky. A bit of solid moonlight would’ve been nice, but this wall of stone is blocking it. “Plus have you ever seen a Zilan building facing the west?”
“Under the mountain’s shade and in the garden’s dark,” Folen hummed. “Where the path strayed, looking for the witch’s mark.”
“You better not touch that lute,” Glen growled looking at them from under the ridge.
“It’s a befitting song of yer adventures Garth,” Folen protested weakly.
“Let me hear it after dis is over,” Glen snapped, not really intending to give him the time. “Now get yer arse down here, I need more light!”
“How deep is it?” Soren asked looking over the rim. He’d just arrived with the others. A barely rested but livid Marlo cutting in afore Glen could reply.
“Galloping fuckin’ Goblins,” he griped and then sucked on his unshaven cheeks hard. “That’s too blasted ominous a query! Ye know what this means lads?”
“It’s either dangerous up ahead, or a whole lot of nothing wrapped in folly?” Aenymriel queried leaping over the rim. She landed lithely next to a scanning the branches for the monkey Glen.
“Lass, ye took the gist of it out of me mouth, somehow mixed it up and made it better,” Marlo replied, sounding moved. “Yer going to get me in trouble.”
“Hmm,” Aenymriel said and hurled a lemon-sized lightstone over her left shoulder abruptly. It smacked the hiding over them monkey right in the neck. The little animal gurgled, grabbing at his throat and hit the ground a moment later. The female Zilan made two quick steps, raised her right leg and crashed the writhing monkey’s head with the heel of her light leather boot.
Splashing its brains over the rocks and the Fig tree’s roots.
Shit.
Glen hadn’t exactly meant for her to kill it.
“Good grief,” Marlo blurted out half-impressed half-scared, a collective gasp escaping from the group. “Now that be something ye ain’t seeing every day!”
It wasn’t meant as a compliment but Nym grinned a gnarly smile.
“He’s married,” a dejected Folen ratted him out a moment later. “Twice.”
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Glen licked the front of his teeth, his tongue finding the fake one and spat down with a frustrated grunt. He watched a silent Aenymriel getting out of one of the caves under the flat ridge, a couple of tall Sycamore trees sprouting on the giant step-like plateau at the sides of the mountain. The trees visible though more than a hundred meters above their heads due to the increased moonlight, the vines and foliage covering the sharp wall like a green blanket. Several cave entrances gaping at the limestone wall like the black mouths of some petrified beast.
“How the fuck do trees grow up there?” Marlo cursed, blade in one hand, a lightstone in the other and an extra lightstone hanging from his neck. “Isn’t this shite pure stone?”
“Ancient trees grow over stones,” Folen hummed. “Black roots wrapped on bones.”
“Shut it,” Glen admonished him. “Sam what have you found there?” he asked the returning adventurer. Wylinor’s light appeared coming out of another of the many caves in the area.
“Debris and plenty of old webs,” Sam replied tiredly.
“How far inside you went?” Glen asked perking up.
“There’re a lot of debris in there Glen, all over the floor,” Sam said. “Looked like a collapse of sorts.”
“No collapse in the other cave,” Aenymriel reported. “Lots of bats though, if anyone fancies a stress relieving potion.”
“Mmm,” Folen droned.
“Nothing came out,” Kirk noted instead and she shrugged her shoulders.
“I was quiet?”
“Right,” Glen decided. “Sam let me see your cave for myself,” he said and followed after the adventurer, his light creating elongated shadows on the rocks and the hanging vines coming alive eerily.
“There,” Sam said and pointed at the debris scattered on the rather flat floor. The cave entrance standing at a meter in width and two in height, deceptively small as the inside of the cave was like a large hall extending far beyond the big pile of debris that had stopped the adventurer. “Lots of cracks on them walls.”
“Hmm,” Glen murmured and stepped on the broken rocks to cross over the other side. “Only this part was affected.”
“You don’t know that,” Sam warned him standing back. “Can you see in this fucking dark?”
“No,” Glen rustled feeling a light draft on his face and pointed the light right and left, then upwards. He dragged his boot on the ground and felt soft dirt. “But this shit is even bigger in the inside. There’re roots hanging from the top, sink right into the soil here.”
“What soil?” Sam asked and went over the pile of debris to approach him. “Why… you’re right.”
I built a wall, Gimoss had bragged to him back in Lebesos. From one side of the canyon to the other. Filled the gap and turned it back into one solid mountain.
Can you build with magic? He wondered.
Glen started walking down the large cavern that narrowed again twenty meters in, the sides turning a polished white that bounced the light off of it, straightly cut and the ceiling lowering over his head. The cave turned into a familiar tunnel and soon enough he spotted a wall-torch. Then another.
“This looks like Quiceran’s Road, only smaller,” Sam murmured following after him.
“Get the others,” Glen ordered seeing the twin open doors at the end of the underground corridor and the stairs leading down. “Leave some to guard the cave and bring a lot of light. Get those wall-torches working Sam.”
There you are, he thought and pushed on.
The soft breeze blowing sweaty curls off his face.
The left open doors leading to a small staircase. Twenty steps out of flat, finely cut stone and then an elongated high ceiling open area, part of it showing signs of collapse with roots penetrating the tiles and spreading out inside the dark room.
That’s a vault alright, Glen decided spotting the open sarcophagus near the west wall still covered in vines and piles of spider webs. A lot of severed roots and snapped branches tossed over the tiled floor. His boots thudding as he approached and the sound reverberating inside the sinister dark tomb.
Glen stepped on something that cracked audibly and he recoiled, his boot kicking a metallic object away. He heard it clattering on the tiles across the room and stopping with a bang, after disappearing under another silvery curtain of spider-webs concealing that part of the hall. The netting covered everything really, meshing with the hanging vines and the night flowers, but for the disturbed part around the open sarcophagus.
“Well?” Aenymriel asked standing over him when he stooped to pick up a shattered skeleton arm from the floor. The hand bones missing, but the scapula still attached with rotting bug infested ligaments. The rest of it disturbingly clean.
“She’s not here,” Glen replied and the assassin nodded agreeing, her gleaming eyes examining the still dark tomb, despite the many lights the others had brought in. Nobody in the mood to comment, or crack a joke yet.
“You knew that,” Nym murmured thoughtfully.
Or was it spooked?
Glen felt that breeze on his skin again and glanced at the ceiling. Was there a draft coming down from above them?
Ah, the dagger said reminiscing.
There you are old girl. What happened to you?
What in the slovenly fuck? Glen cursed, not expecting the weapon’s input. The hell are you talking about?
“Shit is emptier than an old harlot’s purse,” Marlo commented peeking inside the sarcophagus and impressively jumping away in the same motion.
“Best we leave,” Aenymriel cautioned them sounding spooked.
Hmm, Glen thought pressing his mouth tight and looking about the disturbed vault. A light humming coming from its darkest shadow covered parts.
Sam standing apart from them and near the east wall busy burning the extra webbings away with a torch to reveal more of the interior.
Lirue ni o linn, the shadows crooned.
The burn netting dancing away from the flames and the lightstones flickering, their light dying for a moment afore coming back. The vault heard breathing. A breath held for long and then let out.
“There’s another sarcophagus here,” Sam rustled.
“Where?” Glen grunted clenching his jaw. Everyone had turned skittish all of sudden, what with all the humming and weirdness inside the vault.
“Behind the spider webs,” Sam replied. Glen walked there determined to get some answers. “Lid is closed shut.”
“Bring the tools here,” Glen growled to snap everyone out of their jitters. “We’ll crack it open.”
“Leave it be,” Aenymriel pleaded.
“Kirk, get moving!” Glen barked and glared at her. “Who’s in the tomb?”
“You have what you came here for,” she replied tensely.
“I don’t have shit!” Glen snapped at her angry. “That witch is out there and it gnaws at me she might do something!”
“She can’t harm you from afar,” Aenymriel insisted. “That’s not how it works. But this is sacrilegious.”
“I don’t care,” Glen retorted and grabbed the pickaxe from Kirk. “I won’t take moral lessons from you.”
He worked the blade into the seam of the heavy granite lid and looked to find some purchase to pry it open. “Kirk, Sam work on the other edge!” Glen grunted, the lights flickering again.
“Hardir,” Nym hissed, her voice caught and reverberating inside the tomb.
Hardir O’ Fardor, the shadows whispered.
“Who is it?” Glen bellowed wrenching the pickaxe hard, once, twice and then lifting the lid with a loud crack.
“The Night’s Moon,” Nym whispered and the sarcophagus’ heavy cover was pushed aside with the help of Sam and Kirk. “Apologies Goddess.”
Ah, Glen thought and knelt to look inside the stone coffin. A gold mask looking back at him, the crumbling remains of a mummified body, blackened thin fingers clasping at a long intricately engraved ivory staff with a sparkling silvery curved end, a large milky crystal attached there. The gold mask shining in turn when their lights illuminated the interior of the sarcophagus fully, two grape sized diamonds where her eye-openings were sparkling with uncanny brilliance.
It was a woman’s face. A Zilan’s that is, a beautiful, serene-looking death mask.
“Grab the mask,” Marlo said looking over the side. “That shite is worth a lot of gold fingers milord.”
Kirk reached inside and worked on dislodging the stuck with a keratinous substance burial artifact and he managed it, while Glen looked to take the fine staff off of the long dead Zilan. He had to break most of the fingers to do it, which was an ugly job, but grave-robbing was paying good coin for that very reason. Not many had the guts to do it.
“What are you?” Aenymriel wondered seeing Glen prying the long staff away, but Sam’s gasp of horror stopped him from replying. Kirk had removed the golden, diamond adorned mask from the mummified corpse, but under the fine-looking mask was a grotesquely mauled and disfigured head. Most of the face missing but for the lower part of her jaw, the top part of her skull gone and the bones angling outwards as if they had exploded. The few crystalized pieces of skin remaining full of fissures and as blackened as her now broken fingers.
“Galloping fuckin’ Goblins,” Marlo uttered shook. “Guess we know how she went out right?”
“What did this?” Glen asked Nym and the sober-looking assassin grimaced afore answering.
“An out of control fire spell,” she hissed and licked her lips apprehensively.
Glen thought of the ground turning to glass, meters deep back at the destroyed Greenhouse.
“Why out of control?” He asked and moved the staff about curious.
“The caster died shortly after starting it,” Nym replied and with a last glance at the corpse inside the sarcophagus walked out of the vault.
“You want to look for other caskets?” Marlo asked.
“Not at this time,” Glen replied. “Close it back up,” he ordered Kirk. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Do you know who the dead witch is?” Sam asked coming to stand next to him, the voices still whispering inside tomb. But they were mindless echoes probably, he thought.
“Not really, though I believe I might have met her daughter,” Glen replied and stared at the staff in his hands.
“It might be for the better to keep this shit from her milord,” a disheveled Kirk said.
“Goes without saying,” Marlo agreed and grabbed the gold mask to look at it.
“Give it here,” Glen grunted. “We shall not talk about this gents,” he warned them. “What happens in the garden stays in the garden.”
“Isn’t that what they say about Valeria?” Marlo wondered aloud sparking a flurry of replies from the others, but Glen was already heading out of the witch’s final resting place and didn’t hear the rest of their conversation.
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Nym was at the horses already, a sullen version of her, all that playfulness gone. Glen secured the staff and mask on Outlaw in awkward silence, before speaking.
“You don’t know me,” he told her. “I don’t trust you enough for that to happen.”
“Yet you do enough to bring me here,” Nym replied through her teeth.
“How do we kill the witch?”
“Have you considered, she might be dead already?” Nym suggested. “Your ranger got her pretty good. He swears on it. Is he lying?”
He had. It wasn’t enough though.
“I can’t take that chance,” Glen retorted stubbornly. “Was she an adversary?”
The witch in the tomb was his meaning.
“A much younger version of me thought so,” she replied and climbed on her horse with ease.
“You’ll ride?”
“I’m tired,” Nym admitted. “Worn out. You’re not?”
“I’ll rest later,” Glen replied and climbed on Outlaw with a pained grimace. “Fulfilling all the tasks can still fail you the quest right?” he asked seeing her lost in thought.
She nodded. “Only if you miss the real culprit Hardir,” Nym sighed deeply, reached for the reins and added in a whisper. “But settling the score will. Then all the past’s faults can be wiped clean.”
Glen didn’t believe that was the case and he didn’t think the assassin believed it either, but decided to leave the matter be at that point. He turned his eyes on the entrance of the tomb, a bitter taste in his mouth a little uncommon after a fruitful job, the soft breeze still circling him and the gentle humming ever comforting.
Kind and loving.
Forgiving.
I’m sorry, Glen told the lingering spirits. You didn’t deserve this. I’ll make it up to you one way or another.
The spirits answer coming full of understanding and a touch of sadness.
No, Hardir.
You won’t.
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read it at Royalroad : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46739/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms
& https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47919/lure-o-war-the-old-realms
Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/series/542002/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms/
& https://www.scribblehub.com/series/547709/the-old-realms/