Verys cursed when he saw Annette begin to bleed out. He dropped Jagster and rushed to Annette. Jagster plopped onto a stone step, wobbling for a second to keep his footing and avoid falling down the stairwell.

“Keep pressure on the wound,” Jagster said urgently, as he found his balance. “I need to get somethin’.”

“Can’t you just magic it better?” Annette grumbled listlessly, still having her faculties but steadily fading into unconsciousness.

“Maybe. Possibly. Not sure. I have somethin’ that’d work, though. Hold on.”

“Should I start bandaging the wound?” Verys asked, not knowing anything about medicine or healing but having a shred of common sense. He held his hands on Annette’s shoulder, making a panicked face as blood leaked between his fingers.

“No need,” Jagster said, digging in his bag. “I got somethin' that’ll—” He trailed off has he began to frantically climb into his bag. Soon he was nearly fully submerged in the tiny goblin backpack. “Now where the hell did I— Ah!”

He climbed back out, holding a bottle of golden liquid that emitted a faint glow. He handed it over to Annette and said “Drink this.”

Annette took the bottle and, not bothering to ask any questions, chugged the contents in its entirety. After she was done, she skewed her face, clearly offended by the taste. “Bah,” she exclaimed. “Gross!”

“Yeah, well,” Jagster began. “Pure divine healin' energy isn’t typically meant to be drunk.”

Like with Verys not too long before, the blood flow stopped, and the wound began to scab over. Unlike Verys, once the wound scabbed, the healing seemed to slow until it eventually stopped. Annette eyed her shoulder curiously.

“It stopped workin',” she said with mild concern. “Is that bad?”

“Potions aren’t as potent as spells,” Daphine said, finally feeling safe enough to come down the steps. “After all, you can only put so much distilled magical energy into a bottle.”

She turned to Jagster and eyed him curiously. “Potion brewing isn’t typical alchemy,” she said, slowly, as if in mid-thought. “Nor is it something inherently easy for spell-casters. Where did you learn that?”

“Same way I learned magic,” he said, shrugging. “I just figured it out at some point. I can teach you, if ya like. It’s time consumin' and kind of a pain but—” He paused to gesture to Annette. “Clearly the effort is worth it.”

“Can you teach me divine magic?” Daphine asked.

Jagster frowned and shook his head. “No, sorry. Divine magic isn’t really somethin' you can be taught. You have to become attuned to it. It’s— Ah… How do I explain this? It's like how sorcerers tap into their internal magical stores, except it is their god’s instead of their own.”

Daphine raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to speak. Annette, feeling better and putting less thought into her words, said what Daphine was thinking. “But ya don’t worship no gods? Ya said so before.”

“Yeah… I—” Jagster trailed off, scratching his head and searching for the words. “I kind of cheat, I guess. It's hard to explain, and I don’t think it’ll work for anyone else.”

Tiph started heading down the stairs, no longer considering the established marching order. “We should keep moving,” she said, indifferently. “It is probably getting late.”

Daphine pulled out a golden pocket watch and glanced at it. “Yes,” she said, coolly. “We need to finish soon if we intend to be properly rested for tomorrow morning’s expedition.”

“What is this expedition of yours supposed to be lookin' for anyways?” Jagster asked, eyeing Daphine suspiciously. “I’m not very clear on it and, from what I gather, neither is anyone else here.”

Daphine followed Tiphone down the steps, ignoring Jagster. “Come now, people,” she said in a sing-song voice. “We haven’t all night.”

Jagster huffed and crossed his arms in displeasure. Annette pat him on the head. “There, there, lil friend,” she said softly. “No need to get worked up.”

“That haughty woman gets on my nerves,” Jagster grunted. Annette, not completely sure what “haughty” meant, simply patted the goblin again. “There, there.”

As Verys pushed his way past them, Annette asked, “Would a piggy-back ride make ya feel better?”

“Absolutely,” Jagster replied, with a grin. In response, Annette scooped the goblin up and threw him onto her shoulders. Then, once Jagster was secured, she made her way down the stairs with the others.

At the bottom of the stairwell were several large sarcophagi lined next to each other. Sprawled next to them were the remains of the zombies that the party had sent down there to die a second death. The sarcophagi, unlike the coffins above, were built in an ornate fashion. They appeared to be made of thick gold and had the likenesses of their residents carved on the front in exquisite detail.

“Wooo boy,” Jagster said from atop Annette. “I bet those suckers are worth a lotta money.”

“We should leave them alone though,” Annette said. “To respect the dead an’ all that. Don’t want no ghosts hauntin’ me.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Verys said, stabbing the remains of the zombies just to be sure they were completely dispatched. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

Tiph looked at Verys as if he said the twin moons were optical illusions. “So, zombies can be real, but ghosts cannot?” she asked, perplexed. “Are you stupid?”

Verys shook his head. “I believe in what I can see. I’ve never seen a god or soul and definitely haven’t seen a ghost.”

“You also haven’t seen a dragon, but those sure as hell exist, I can tell ya that,” Jagster said. Despite being a skeptic himself, he found Verys’ logic unsound at best. Plus, he knew for a fact that ghosts existed because goblins were as spiteful as they were violent. It was not uncommon to be haunted by recently slain foes.

Daphine shrugged. “I don’t know if ghosts are real,” she confessed. “But before today I didn’t know zombies were real either. And I have absolutely no idea what a dragon is.”

It was now Annette’s turn to be flabbergasted. “How do ya not know—?”

Daphine waved her off and continued. “Anyways, none of that matters. We have no way of moving these and they likely belong to the town. We are not here to loot and pillage.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jagster grumbled. Annette grabbed his foot and squeezed hard. “Ow ow ow! Okay! Okay!” The goblin conceded. “We’ll leave these be.”

“Uh, guys,” Verys said, largely ignoring the discussion as he searched the room. “This one is open… And empty.”

“What?!” Jagster declared in surprise. He quickly climbed off Annette’s shoulders and scurried over to where Verys was. The sarcophagus was on a pedestal, forcing Jagster to stand on his toes to see inside. Verys was right. The sarcophagus was empty, besides a few scraps of what appeared to be bandages.

Jagster attempted to reach in to grab the scraps of cloth but was too short. Seeing the goblin struggling, Verys reached in and handed it to him.

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“Thanks, bud,” Jagster said as he eyed the cloth. “Wow,” he said after a moment with a raised eyebrow. “These corpses are old as hell. Definitely out-date this town.”

“What makes you say that?” Tiph asked, being mildly curious about this place and its circumstances.

“This is a scrap of mummification cloth,” Jagster said. “We’ve had both magical and mundane embalming for more than a century now, so, unless someone was feeling retro when they wrote their will, these bodies have gotta be over a hundred years old.”

“Why is this one missin'?” Annette asked, eyeing the other sarcophagi. “Did grave robbers take it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Verys said, rolling his eyes. “Because grave robbers would take a corpse and not the caskets made of solid gold.”

“Not gold,” Tiph mumbled, more to herself than Verys. “Luminstone. Exclusive to this continent. Reflects sunlight. Really neat stuff.”

“Riiiggghht,” Jagster said with doubt. After all, if it looks like gold, smells like gold and tastes like gold, it was probably gold. “Anyways, I reckon necroboy is trying to raise these babies cause they’re the most well preserved corpses in this place.”

“Marvelous,” Daphine said, clearly not thinking it was marvelous at all. “We should probably interrupt him. I have little interest in having to fight a walking pile of rags.”

The group all nodded in agreement and pressed on.

At the end of the chamber holding the sarcophagi was a tunnel moving deeper into the earth. This tunnel, like the rest of the catacombs, was lined with torches. Unlike the other passage-ways the group went through, these torches were lit.

“Finally,” Daphine said. “We can actually see now.”

“You,” Tiph said.

“What?”

“You can actually see now.”

“What’re you—”

“The rest of us could see just fine before.”

Before Daphine could express her incredible indignation at Tiph’s implication, Jagster lifted his hand. “Shut up, nerds. I hear something.”

The group went quiet as the goblin listened. He could hear someone humming a tune from down the cavern. He could also smell the musty odor of worn cloth and an assortment of chemicals he couldn’t pinpoint.

Jagster lowered his voice to a whisper. “Somebody is over there. Doing somethin' to the mummy. I think they’re our guy.”

“Ya think?” Annette said, uncharacteristically mocking. Her brush with death was putting a damper on her usual upbeat attitude.

Jagster ignored Annette’s retort. “I say we move in silently. Take him by surprise to avoid—”

Before Jagster could finish his sentence, Verys called down the cavern. “Sir, please come out with your hands up. You are under arrest.”

The humming stopped. Everyone looked at him, completely aghast. “Under arrest,” Jagster said. “Are you an idiot?”

“Well, we are acting as the town guard right now,” Verys said, defensively.

Suddenly, a there was the sound of an explosion and a ball of fire hurtled towards Verys. It slammed into him with incredible force, knocking him onto the ground. He screamed as the flame spread all over his body.

“I cannot believe Verys is fucking dead,” Tiph said coldly, apparently disinterested in the danger Verys was in.

Annette ran over to Verys and began trying to put him out by patting him down, to no success. Daphine pulled out her water skin and hurried over to the burning man, as he continued to scream in agony and terror. She splashed water on him until the fire was put out.

The fire finally extinguished, Verys breathed heavily for a few moments and then blackout out. Meanwhile, cruel laughter came down the hall. Jagster growled in frustration and then turned to Daphine.

“O’Dora, get ready to do a light show at my signal,” he said, quietly so as to not be overheard. He, then, whipped over to Annette. “You, shut yer eyes and cover yer ears. Then, when the ringing stops, do what ya do.”

The group had several questions for Jagster, but before any of them could make them known, he charged down the hall towards the room in which the necromancer made his presence known. The only person who could say anything that the goblin heard was Tiphone, who muttered “What about me?”

Jagster burst into the room, taking full advantage of the lack of doors, and skid to a halt, almost falling over from the momentum. Had he the time to look around, which he did not, he would have seen that this was an improvised laboratory.

There were sparsely populated shelves strewn about covered in odd vials. In the center of the room was the missing mummy strapped to a table. Standing next to that was an old human man in tattered robes. He looked taken aback and was opening his mouth to prepare to cast a spell.

Not letting himself be dispatched as easily as Verys, Jagster let out a high pitched scream that the sheer force of shook the entire room and knocked the wizard over. The sonic scream continued as the wizard, now with bleeding ears, struggled to get up while being buffeted by a wall of sound.

The rest of the group moved in somewhat slowly, themselves struggling to function with the incredible noise echoing around them. Annette, following Jagster’s command, squeezed her eyes shut and held her ears. Tiph, not knowing what else to do, followed suit. Daphine, covering her throbbing ears, prepared to cast a spell, having assumed that this awful bellowing was the goblin’s signal.

The wizard found his footing and glared at Jagster, who was occupied with maintaining the screech and squeezing his eyes as tight as possible. He began to speak a few words and lifted his hand to point at Jagster when, suddenly, everything exploded in a burst of radiant light.

The old man howled in pain from his eyes being suddenly blinded by over-stimulation and blasted a ball of flame from his hand in a random direction. The fireball slammed into the stone ceiling and dissipated harmlessly.

The timing was perfect as the burst of light happened just as Jagster’s breath gave out. The sound stopped as he gulped down as much air as his little lungs could hold, panting almost dog-like in his attempt to catch his breath. Additionally, he felt woozy and ill, having burnt through his magical stores.

With the end of Jagster’s scream, Annette leapt into action. She wasn’t quite sure what Jagster meant by “do what you do”, so she let her instincts take over. She quickly scanned the room and spotted the blinded and deafened wizard. She, correctly assuming that he was the necromancer, dashed over to him and tacked him to the ground.

Holding him down as he shouted and cursed, she drew out the rope she always had prepared for such occasions. She, quickly and efficiently, immobilized the old man. Then, after a moment’s thought, she gagged him with an old sweat rag. She wasn’t sure if people could do magic with their hands tied up but didn’t want to risk it.

“Well,” Daphine said as she stepped into the room and looked around. “That was a good deal easier than anticipated.”

“Uh, I don’t know about that,” Tiph said as she peered into the room from behind Daphine’s form. “Verys almost died. Twice.”

“Almost being the key word there,” Daphine replied with a smile and a gentle pat to Tiph’s head. Tiph grunted unhappily in response.

During this exchange, Jagster waved his hands at Annette, trying to get her attention. After a few moments of failure at this, he grabbed a small pebble and threw it at her. The stone clonked onto Annette’s head, causing her to flinch but leaving not even a bruise.

“Hey,” Annette whined, as if greatly insulted. “What was that for?!”

Jagster mimicked opening and closing a book with his hands and then pointed at the necromancer. Annette stared at him blankly. He did the motions again, more forcefully this time.

“Ah donno what ya want, Jags,” Annette said. “Why don’t ya just tell me?”

Jagster opened his mouth, tapped his throat, and then shook his head.

Annette furrowed her brow and shrugged.

Jagster rolled his eyes and then tugged at Daphine’s dress. Daphine looked down at the goblin as he did another opening and closing motion. Daphine nodded and walked over to where Annette was holding down the necromancer.

“Hold the wizard still, please,” Daphine said to Annette. She, then, snapped her fingers, which caused a glowing hand to form out of thin air. The hand proceeded to pat down the wizard, as if searching for something.

“Oh,” Annette said, recognizing this ability. “It’s yer magic hand! But… Why don’t you just… Use your actual hands?”

Daphine scoffed at this. “Annette, dear, why in the heavens would I ever touch someone that spends time playing with corpses? I can’t even imagine how much bacteria this man is covered in.”

“Back-what?”

Daphine blinked in confusion for a second. “Right,” she grumbled to herself. “Dirt-Water still hasn’t worked that one out yet…”

Daphine, then, turned her attentions to her task. She stood in silence for a moment as the hand did its work. “Oh,” she suddenly said. “It doesn’t seem to be on him. Odd.”

“What’cha lookin’ for?” Annette asked as she stood up, having decided the old man was secured well enough.

“His spell-book,” Daphine said as the glowing hand vanished. “All wizards keep one, but his isn’t on him.”

Annette looked around for a second and then gestured to a small bookshelf nestled into a corner. “Maybe it’s mixed up with all the other books.”

Daphine frowned and closed her eyes, concentrating. After a few seconds she began to sense the magical energies in the room. She felt the familiar pulse of energy coming from Jagster’s bag and minor trickles of magic from the various containers scattered about, but nothing else.

“No,” Daphine said with certainty. “It isn’t here. A magician’s spell-book should ooze magic, but I don’t feel anything in here.”

The necromancer began to grumble something, but whatever he was trying to say was made unintelligible by the rag in his mouth. He continued for a few moments, trying to get his point across with nothing more than grunts, moans, and the occasional bit of drooling. Everyone in the room watched him with interest, almost awed by his stubborn resiliency in the face of a disgusting tasting chunk of cloth.

Eventually, Annette, taking pity on the man, took the rag out of his mouth. “Okay. Try that again… What?”

“It is too late,” the necromancer sneered. “I have already passed on my spell-book and all my research into the undead to my master! You will rue the day you meddled in our affairs! You will be destroyed—”

Annette shoved the rag back into the old man’s mouth. “That’s enough outta you.”

“Well,” Daphine said, slowly. “That sounds awfully—” She paused as she tried to think of the word.

“Dangerous?” Annette offered.

“Ominous?” Tiph chimed in.

Jagster grunted something and then shrugged.

“I was going to say ‘inconvenient’,” Daphine responded. “But those are more apt descriptions."