Lang would have preferred sending someone else to investigate this tomb, but he had never known Selanora to shy away from danger, even when they were kids. Selanora had been the first one to punch her way out of their mother’s womb, the first one to walk, and the first one to bruise their knee from tumbling down the rocky hills of their homeland. Their parents had loved them both equally, but he’d always felt like he was not enough when compared with her. She had better grades, more friends, and worst of all, she was blessed to be a mana user and potential Magical Girl. Not that he doubted she would be one of the chosen, it had simply been a matter of fact that it would happen.

When Selanora had graduated from North Windsora’s Academy, he had been prepared. Four years of night and day training with a blade. Their parents had been rich, so no expense was spared in finding Lang the best instructors and schools. Through the hours of sprinting until he vomited and practicing with the heavy practice swords, there was always a small pit of bitterness in Lang’s gut for the real reason his parents had poured so much time and money into his training. Just as it was simply a matter of fact that Selanora would be a Magical Girl, so was it that Lang would be her eternal second as a paladin.

[Are you ready, Lang?] Selanora’s question broke the swordsman out of his reverie.

[As ready, as I’ll ever be, sis.]

[Sis? Are you brooding again?]

[He’s always brooding, my lady.]

[And you’re always annoying.]

[It is part of the charm of being a golem, my lord.]

The party had just stepped out of their personal flight craft and increased their inner banter almost immediately. The setting almost demanded that they do so.

Karahatol, literally translated the planet of screams, was usually a dreary place. So much so that Lang could at least partially understand why his sister detested it, even if he thought she went too far degrading its people. Unlike Windsora, the sky was always yellow, not blue and cast everything in a hazy tint that made the mind start to fold into itself with either boredom or anxiety from the sense of wrongness hanging in the air. At the dig site, this feeling was doubly present.

Millions of credits worth of heavy equipment and instant alumidomes were scattered around them, but there was no bustle of workers to fill the empty spaces of dust and echoes. The pitched howling of the wind scattered sand as much as it did Lang’s nerves and every flutter of canvas and elongating shadow made his hand twitch towards his weapons. It did not help that the setting sun was warping half the sky into a twisted shade of purple, transforming the clouds into reaching claws of fluffy darkness.

They were only halfway through the abandoned dig site when the first wave of sand blasted them. Lang was glad he wearing his power armor or else he would have gotten a face full of the gritty stuff, but trapezing from death world to death world with Selanora had made the paladin take up the habit of almost never taking off his armor unless he had to. He even slept in it too.

Danford chirped in their minds. [I checked the weather reports before we came here. There shouldn’t be any winds like this today.]

[Definitely not coincidence.]

[No kidding. Both of you be on your toes, I’d be more surprised if we didn’t get jumped.]

[Either of you picking anything up?]

[Negative.]

[Same.]

Lang did not want to just rely on skills and Danford’s golem sensor upgrades, if there was one thing that his father had taught him in the few times he spared him any fatherly attention, it was that complacency kills.

When he saw it, he almost let his eyes drift over it as just another rock, but his mind quickly threw up a red flag since he realized that it was the first rock he’d seen jutting out so unnaturally. Without saying anything to the other’s, Lang lunged at the ‘rock’ and simultaneously pulled out one of his swords. Laying all his weight behind the strike, Lang drove his mana blade into the craggy surface and felt only an initial moment of hesitation before his blade slid in and met the familiar sensation of flesh parting before his sword.

The sand blew up in an explosion of flailing limbs and a spiderlike Yabanchi came out from where Lang had driven his sword. The wounded beast tried wrapping its tentacles around Lang and driving its dripping probiscis into his chest, but the swordsman gripped the flexible appendage like he would the handle of a sword and using that as an anchor, he ripped his sword out of the Yabanchi’s head along with a large chunk of green gore.

(Sand Crawler Slain) - 50 points

The notification for killing the monster popped in Lang’s head, but he did not waste time warning the others, since they had already engaged foes of their own. Selanora had drawn her secondary blade, not thinking that the situation warranted the power of her primary, and with a single horizontal slash, blasted a wave of air mana at the ground in front of them. A tsunami of sand was blown by her efforts, but it was rewarded with four more Sand Crawlers being revealed from the sand’s displacement. The rockheaded spiders sprang from their burrows and every one aimed for Selanora. Lang let his shoulders relax and did not step in between, not that he was afraid of being hurt from the Yabanchi, but more so he wanted to avoid a hit from his sister. Keeping one eye on their backs and another on his charge, Lang watched Selanora step towards the attacking Yabanchi.

She flowed in between the monsters like a lotus flower flourishing on the surface of a raging river. The springing spiders jumped faster than a man’s blink, but Selanora moved so smoothly that their inhuman quickness seemed like lumbering in comparison. Only his practiced eye let him catch the movements, the three quick swipes made so efficiently that one of them caught two Sand Crawlers at once. The end result was four bisected Yabanchi twitching on the ground and Selanora posing with a hand on her hip at the end of a line of bodies.

[Enough showing off, we need to get back to the ship.]

[I hardly think a handful of Yabanchi warrants a retreat.]

[They were waiting for us.]

[It’s Karahatol, it’s their home planet.]

Lang looked around, though his vision was getting more obscured with each passing second as the sand storm picked up in intensity. No Yabanchi came screaming from the dunes or from behind the abandoned buildings to assault them, but the wind made an eerie howling sound that made his teeth clench and hairs stand on end.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

[We need to go.]

[Go then. Wait for me in the shuttle, I’m exploring this site even if it kills me, L.]

Lang grunted at his sister’s use of his childhood nickname. She knew that he hated it just as much as she knew that he would not let her explore those ruins without him. Selanora was as quick with her tongue as she was with a blade, a deadly combination made the moreso with her mana enhanced powers.

[Fine, but I’m taking the lead.]

Selanora made an exaggerated hand gesture and bow and let Lang stalk ahead. Lang kept his hand on his sword hilt, ready to spring and slash at whatever may come, yet the rest of the walk through the dig site was uneventful, save when they finally reached the doors to the ostentatious prison tomb.

[These savages sure do like fancy black doors, eh?]

[Selanora, we should go back.]

[Still with that? You’ve gone tomb raiding with me before.]

[I don’t have a good feeling about this.]

[Listen, L, I love you, I respect you, but you need to stop questioning big sis. Do you have my back?]

[That’s a stupid question, Sal.]

[Do you have my back?]

[You know I do.]

Selanora did not say anything else, except to brush past him with a shoulder nudge, she did not have to say anything because she once again had him where she wanted.

Once they were inside the prison tomb, the interior was a lot less impressive than the exterior door hinted. Instead of the expensive imported stone carved out of the earth from half a planet away, the architects had simply made the mountainside structure as reinforced as possible with support beams and ancient concrete. The only thing of note was a hole in the ground where presumably the dig site crew had dug through concrete to get to a small sarcophagus. Lang at least thought it was small for its length, barely enough for a child, but the lid probably weighed at least half a ton from looking at it.

“Well, let’s crack it open.” Selanora spoke out loud for the first time since they had touched down at the site.

Lang gave her the most dead pan stare he could muster, but his helmet completely covered that look. Despite that, she must have known from being his partner for so long, since she shrugged and said, “Come on, we’ve come this far.”

“It’s a lich’s prison, Sal.”

“Yeah, I know, but look, the seal’s broken.” Selanora pointed at the sarcophagus and upon closer inspection, it did appear like it had been opened recently. “So, bad news big guy, the lich is probably long gone and causing havoc somewhere, but I need to confirm it with my own eyes before I write a report to Queen Megan.”

Lang did not make a move, so Selanora pressed further. “Real quick peek, in, out, and then we can go.”

“Fine.” Lang hopped into the divet by the sarcophagus and pressed his hands against the lid. “But you still don’t detect anything?”

“Nothing, it’s totally safe.”

“You missed those Sand Crawlers back there.”

Danford materialized by Selanora’s shoulder and piqued, “Sand Crawlers have an innate ability to hide their presence when underground!”

“Sure.” Lang was outnumbered, so he decided to just vent his frustration on the task at hand. Moving that lid over the sarcophagus probably took many men to do so when it was first put on, but Selanora had spent tens of thousands of points upgrading Lang’s stats over the years to the point where his strength was inhuman.

Inch by inch, the lid moved, and with it came the sound of something moving within. Lang jumped back from the partially opened sarcophagus and drew his sword.

“There’s something there!”

Danford flew over their heads and increased the luminosity of his eyes. The increased light let Lang peek inside the coffin and get a better view of its occupant. It was a decomposing man, his eye sockets sunken from days of ripening and teeth pulled back in an eternal snarl of hate. The light lit up his worker’s uniform glow strips and he would have undoubtably tried grabbing Lang and pulling him in with him, but the undead creature had neither arms nor legs. Lang knew right away who it was, but it was Selanora who voiced that discovery.

“It’s the foreman…”

Clapping from the tomb entrance broke the somber discovery and caused Lang to scuttle out of the hole as fast as he could. A pale man in an obsidian crown was applauding them, but from his twitching smile, it was clear that he was not there to make friends.

“Ah, my dear, have you not learned that the dead are better left alone? They do so much love their sleep.”

Selanora and Lang drew their swords and the Magical Girl said, “Identify yourself or be destroyed.”

[Danford, do a scan of this guy and call backup.]

Selanora’s mental command was never obeyed, since the little golem started screaming and shuddering in the air next to them. After a moment, the little spark in his eyes faded with the sound of his wails and Danford sailed in the air and into the intruders palm as if here were merely some kind of ball.

“Tsk, that won’t do. Can’t have your little spy tattling on us.” The man inspected Danford’s inert form in his hand and smiled even wider. “As for spies, oh Bibitz, where are you?”

Selanora’s contact on this planet waltzed into the tomb, along with three other figures. One of them appeared to be little more than a smirking child, but the other two were recognizable from the attack on Apophyllion, especially the decaying and aged face of the Lich who had orchestrated the affair. Turlock the Immortal and the black power armored assassin.

The air swelled with power and Lang had to catch his breath as Selanora stepped forward. He had felt this sensation before, when she went all out on a single attack. The last time he had seen it, Selanora had accidently leveled a building that had been behind her target. Yet this time they were inside an ancient tomb that might collapse from a strong wind. Lang would have cautioned her, but his sister stopped mid stride and the heaviness he felt evaporated into thin air.

“Can’t have you doing anything you’ll regret dearie.” The man holding Danford was pointing a finger at Selanora and from it extended an unnatural shadow that speared into hers. Lang drew his sword and prepared a ranged skill, but the man simply extended a second finger and he felt his own body seize in paralysis too.

“Oh my, General, you were right. This one is resistant to the touch.” The man with the obsidian crown had extended a third and fourth finger and was focused almost entirely on Lang. The swordsman felt like a thousand hands were gripping his body and wrenching him to stillness, but with all the effort he could bear, he took a slow step forward and tried inching his way toward the villains. He did not have to expend all that effort, since Turlock closed the gap and stood in front of him.

Even without eyes, Lang could feel the Lich’s gaze boring into him. The raspy voice of the undead lord came out slow and with effort. “Remember me?”

Lang replied with the turn of his blade, twisting it and aiming for a blow at the Lich’s neck. Unlike last time, this swipe moved like he was underwater and weighed down by a boulder. The lich mockingly ducked under the blade and twisted it out of Lang’s grasp. Then, with a deft hand, he found the catches on Lang’s helmet and took it off.

“Well, I remember you.” He examined the blade while a slow snarl ridiculously came out of Lang. “And this blade too. I’ve been thinking a lot about you. What you did, how you did it. Well, I wanted to repay the favor.” Lang almost closed his eyes in fear when Turlock raised his own sword, but rather than cower from death, Lang decided he wanted to look it in the face.

He wished he hadn’t.

[L!]

Turlock brought the sword down, but not on Lang’s neck. Selanora’s blond head met the floor before Lang could register what happened, but when he realized that his sister and best friend was dead, he did not even have control over his own voice to properly scream.

[######################] Selanora's death scream echoed in Lang's mind and with her death he felt his paladin bond sever. It was like hearing the worst noise imaginable coupled with the feeling that someone was driving an icepick up through his groin and spiking into his chest with needlelike pain. It was so bad that Lang acutally passed out for a moment and was only brought back by the rough feeling of a hand grabbing his face and shaking him.

“You fool!” Bibitz darted toward Turlock and both he and the rat on his shoulder spoke at the same time. “I need her body intact!”

“It’s intact enough for our purposes,” Turlock did not spare the little man even a glance. He was too focused on relishing the pain in Lang’s eyes. Turlock stepped closer to Lang, shoving his face in his and obscuring the grotesque image of Selanora’s headless body still standing, held aloft by the shadow puppetry of the other lich. “As for this one, I have something special planned for him.”