image [https://i.imgur.com/wco4wWt.jpg]

Walking through Heaven’s Falls with an artisan zombie in tow didn’t surprise as many people as I expected. Some pointed and whispered to their companions, but no one objected to our passing.

Following the roads to the city’s street level took us past shops, markets, and storefronts. My estimation about gnomes eating less was correct, as the only restaurants serving food chiefly catered to human, dwarf, and deep elf clientele.

Fabulosa interrupted our search for an inn with a tap on the shoulder. “It looks like Duchess reached Oxum. Check the group chat.”

Duchess’s dot moved to the northwest as we entered Heaven’s Falls.

Audigger stood midway between Hawkhurst and Basilborough. Once she reached the river, she’d move quicker, although I doubted she wanted to catch up with Toadkiller.

Duchess Hey Audigger, when you reach Basilborough, check your mail.

Audigger Will do.

The brief message didn’t ignite a conversation for a change. Everyone seemed to have their game face on and avoided idle chatter as if Toadkiller and Audigger coming north instigated an endgame mindset.

We found a mailbox near an inn called The Saltmarsh Tavern. Its seven-foot ceilings and hot stew silenced thoughts of looking further for a room. While Fabulosa rented two of their finest apartments, I retrieved Darkstep’s letter from a mailbox by a small desk at the foot of the stairway.

After retrieving the letter, I noticed Oliver’s absence. “He’s gone.”

“He’ll come back. I’ll get some food. Go, read your letter.” She went inside the inn to give me space.

From Darkstep, sent 24 days ago in Susa Postal Box #3

To Apache, received 0 days ago in Heaven’s Falls Postal Box #8

Subject Onward

Greetings,

I hope you can forgive my untoward candor over the group chat. Let me first say that I do not wish to direct your hand. If knocking Flagboi out of the contest first suits you, I’ll raise no objections, but time is pressing. The zombie will lead you there. Please play your game the way you see fit, but understand that our interests align with defeating Toadkiller.

You are the only player capable of removing him, but you must reach Oxum first. I feel like I should say more, but doing so might spoil the outcome of the battle royale.

Ipix, Narol, and Toadkiller cleared a dungeon on the central mesa of the Gray Manors over a year ago. Toadkiller hid a vulnerability at its base. Use Mineral Communion to bypass his traps and whatever leavings he’s prepared to guard the key to his undoing. It lies in the ruins overlooking the mesa’s northwest bluff. You’ll know when you’re in the right place.

Good luck,

Darkstep

It wasn’t long, and I finished it before spotting Fabulosa at a corner table with two bowls of food and a plate of crackers. She waved when I looked up from the letter. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What did he say—anything about me?”

I handed her the letter and sat in front of my stew.

Fabulosa frowned as she skimmed over it. When she finished, she pushed it back to me and pointed to the crackers. “He didn’t even mention me. Oh! Don’t forget to try these—they call them flatcakes up here. They’re good.” She sold her statement by taking a piece from the tray between us.

“You didn’t see what was wrong with the letter?”

Fabulosa spoke with food in her mouth. “He knows everything about us and comes off a little snobby, but it’s what we expected, right?”

“Yeah, but did you see the date? He sent this over three weeks ago. That was well before I left Hawkhurst. How did he know we were going to go after Flagboi?”

“What?” Fabulosa grabbed the letter out of my hands and read the time stamp. “This is 24 days ago. That’s before I even reached the coast. How did he do this?”

“He sent it weeks before I left Hawkhurst.”

Fabulosa reread the letter more carefully. “Who says ‘untoward candor’? He talks like Greenie.”

Darkstep sounded more like Mr. Fergus or my sword, but Fabulosa was right. The tone felt wrong. I tried to remember all the contestants in the keynote address. None of them looked more than a year or two older than me. Could this be one of the adults sitting along the sidelines? Were devs or executives playing the game? It seemed implausible Crimson would violate their contest’s integrity. I knew from personal experience that students with wide vocabularies didn’t flex them unless they were trying to impress someone. Teenagers typically wanted to fit in and avoided phrases like untoward candor.

He knew we would follow Oliver almost a month ago.

“How long has the zombie been following you?”

“I found him outside of Mains.” Fabulosa’s eyes narrowed after she mentally retraced her steps. “But that was days after he’s sent this letter. Is this guy seeing into the future?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I leaned on the table. “He also knew when Toadkiller cleared the dungeon and with whom. I’ll admit, the Improved Eyes might give him CCTV cams around the continent, but there’s no way he’s getting all this information from floating eyeballs.”

“He said nothing about Flagboi’s surprise.”

I grimaced. “Eh, maybe it’s not important. Especially if Flagboi isn’t ready to fight.”

Fabulosa crossed her arms. “Darkstep told you to go Oxum, but we came here instead. Now, he’s telling us to follow Oliver to find Flagboi.”

“Except ‘now’ is 24 days ago when he wrote this letter before he told me to go to Oxum.”

“Dancing to someone else’s tune bothers me. It’s a little…”

“Presumptuous?”

“Yeah. It’s like telling someone to sit moments before they do. It’s rude. We would have figured out to follow the zombie to Flagboi. It’s obvious that Oliver wants his eye back.”

“Oliver disappeared before I retrieved the letter. How are we supposed to follow him?”

Fabulosa waved her hand. “Oh, he’ll come back. He does that—comes and goes as he pleases. I bet he’s outside right now. But that’s beside my point. Now that he tells us to follow Oliver, I don’t want to do it.”

“And why doesn’t he say anything about you?”

Fabulosa snorted. “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me a little nervous. Even Oliver got a mention.”

“If he can see the future—”

“I’m not getting knocked out by someone named Flagboi.”

I turned to my stew before it got cold.

As Fabulosa predicted, Oliver stood sentry in front of The Saltmarsh Tavern in his usual slumped posture. Fabulosa addressed the zombie without expecting a reply. “Hey, Big O, you feel like hunting down an eye thief?”

Without acknowledging her, the artisan zombie turned and walked away from us, heading away from the waterfall, which we both wanted to see and toward the town’s outskirts.

Fabulosa turned to me. “Aww. He’s heading into the mountain. The views won’t be as good in there.”

As Heaven’s Falls cut into the mountain, more limestone encased the inner pillars than the free-standing shafts on the opposite side of the city. With less exposed basalt, fewer facades lined the streets, and fewer people traveled them. In a hundred years, gnomes might expand and develop these columns, but for now, many remained intact.

Oliver stopped on a deserted street. Great limestone walls stood between the towers of basalt—some of which bore architectural features. It seemed to be the edge of town. Planters filled with dead flowers stood out as a red flag, making many apartments look neglected. The street wasn’t the only dead thing nearby. Our artisan zombie had led us to a necromancer’s neighborhood.

Oliver entered a porch that tunneled into a basalt wall surrounded by limestone. A few crude windows opened above our heads a hundred feet above us, but the basalt pillar stood lower than other apartment buildings elsewhere. It looked to be under construction.

Fabulosa cast Heavenly Favor. “I reckon this is the place. Oliver rarely goes inside buildings.”

I did the same and added Presence to give us some light.

The doorway was crude and unadorned by decorative frames and niches for pictures. Someone had stacked deep elf-sized buckets, picks, and shovels on the stairwell’s lower level, but the stairs only rose three levels.

Fabulosa led the way with her Phantom Blade, reaching her fingers to graze the ceiling. “At least we don’t have to hunch over.”

I followed and drew Gladius Cognitus, who left behind a blue squiggle of light. The place looked deserted, so there didn’t seem to be much chance anyone would follow. Without lights, wall torches, chandeliers, or sconces, whoever used this place either carried a light source or didn’t need one.

At the top of the stairwell, we reached a locked metal door.

Detect Magic showed no hexes or curses, so I fired up Mineral Communion to see who lived here. I sensed the area was much newer than other interiors I’d explored, so the stonework’s memory banks were far shorter. Scenes of deep elves casting spells and removing rock appeared before me. Their carving magic produced jagged outcroppings and rubble, which other deep elves chipped down and carried away, but the process seemed much easier using muscles.

The metal door wasn’t thick, and it hung in a wall of limestome. “Did you notice they carved the stairs out of limestone and not basalt?”

Fabulosa hummed. “But the other buildings carved the limestone away.”

“That’s why the stairs are rounded. They won’t last as long as the basalt buildings.”

Fabulosa shrugged. “If limestone is easier to carve, this might have been a rushed job.”

After they finished construction, I saw other deep elves carrying dead gnomes. Blood on their clothes broadcasted their recent demise. A human with idealized looks appeared to direct both the interior construction and reception of bodies. He carried surgical tools instead of weapons and wore an apron covered in gore over an impressive set of leather armor. “Flagboi is definitely a necromancer—either that or he’s practicing medicine on cadavers.”

Fabulosa shook her head and whitened her knuckles on her hilt. “I’m glad no one in Belden used dark magic. It’s gross.”

Using Magnetize, I studied the door’s mechanisms and unlocked it.

The door opened to a precipice of an open shaft surrounding a central basalt cylinder. It looked like the inside of a missile silo.

A heavy wooden plank connected the ledge we stood upon to a hatch in the basalt cylinder with rounded corners. It was closed and featured no handle or unlocking mechanism. Was Flagboi building a stone rocket ship?

Presence provided illumination, but some daylight also filtered from above.

But the basalt cylinder wasn’t the only object in this vertical chamber. Large structural shapes blocked our view of the sky. Irregularities in the basalt blocked my view of the shaft’s bottom.

Fabulosa walked across the wooden plank, tried to pry open the hatch with her fingers, and turned to me. “Someone fortified this from the inside. Do you know what that means?”

“It’s designed to keep something in, not out.”

Fabulosa nodded and caressed the roughly hewn basalt cylinder. “And this inner wall is heavier, too. It’s a more ambitious project than Hawkhurst, that’s for sure.” She pointed to iron bands wrapping around the basalt. Iron studs punctured the stone, presumably from the inside.

“I don’t know. You haven’t seen our castle in all its glory.”

Fabulosa returned across the plank to give me access.

I used Magnetize to study the door and noticed irregularities with the iron bands wrapping around the giant cylinder. “Those iron bands are hollow.”

“Maybe to make them stronger?”

“No, there’s gold inside.”

“Isn’t gold soft?”

I nodded. “It’s malleable. This place must have cost a fortune. But it’s not strong enough to keep me out.” Using Mineral Mutation, I created a fist-sized hole in the hatch by turning its metal into cotton. I pulled out the fluff and peered inside.

My recoil from the odor of putrified flesh was so sudden that I almost fell off the wooden plank. Fabulosa, who stayed on the ledge, jumped. “What? What was inside?”

“Ugh. I don’t know, but it smells awful. I think we found a necromancer’s workshop.”

Fabulosa waved at her nose and made a pained expression. “Oh! This is worse than Ul Itor.”

I backed away and applied Mineral Mutation to the mechanism that barred the hatch. When pieces of metal fell, they clanked, rattled, and clattered inside the hollow basalt tower for several seconds.

Scoping the tower’s insides with Magnetize revealed an interior mesh of latticework, but the bars and beams spanning its interior tilted at odd angles. Nothing inside used perpendicular joints. Whatever awaited us used the entire space inside. We would not enjoy the comfort of floors.

By the time I’d finished, Fabulosa handed me a scarf to cover my face. She wore one similar, like a scarf, and spoke in muffled syllables. “Trust me, this helps.”

As we accustomed ourselves to the stench, I noticed the empty stairwell. “Oliver’s disappeared again.”

Fabulosa shrugged. “Yeah, he does that.”