‘So, Adriana, you cast yer light spell or whitever it’s called on a stain an ah’ll open the doors. Once the doors open yie throw it in tae gie us an idea o whit’s in there. Oybody else, keep back an have yer weapons drawn.’

Adriana picked up a fist sized stone out of the mud that wasn’t stained by the reeking blood of the slain pack animals. She held it in both of her hands and whispered some words that Delde couldn’t quite make out, she assumed it was some prayer or benediction towards Sarenrae. It seemed to her that the spell she was casting was similar in power towards one of her own cantrips. That was good, she didn’t want her to use up potentially powerful spells before they entered the crypt.

It occurred to Delde that she had failed to ask Adriana about what sort of spells she had in her repertoire. Although they did use different forms of magic there were still some universal constants of magic that remained the same regardless of the source, the tiers of spells were one example. Delde would have liked to know what sort of spells Adriana had access to and perhaps advise her on the most effective use of them.

It took only a few moments for the stone to begin to glow with a warm, white light that while bright, never became blinding. Igmar meanwhile had been heaving the great swollen door of the crypt open. There was no lighting inside, only darkness and a smell of rot hanging in the air. Adriana took that as her que to throw the glowing stone inside where it flew for about ten feet or so before hitting the ground and bouncing another five or so feet. There was no response to the thrown missile other than the echoes of its clattering stop. The glow from the enchanted stone, combined with the faint light from outside leaking into the chamber revealed to the group what lay behind the doors.

The entrance to the crypt seemed to be a long chamber, perhaps sixty feet long by Delde’s estimations. It was stonework in the same style as the exterior, although there were no more ruins here. There were risen platforms on both the right and lefthand sides of the room, along with four pillars close to the centre of it.

All of that was insignificant compared to what the contents of the chamber were though. It seemed to have been the site of a terrible battle at some point, as the stone had landed close to the middle of the room, in-between the stone pillars where its light revealed two human corpses that had been piled there. All along the sides of the cold stone room there were piles of detritus that Delde could tell were human bones thanks to her low light vision.

She had half expected Adriana to go rushing into the room at the sight of this, but she remained at the entranceway with the rest of them. The hard look on her face though made it clear that she was far from unaffected by the sight before them.

‘Onybody see onythin’ that looks hostile?’

Igmar said that with the ease of a man asking about the weather, but he was already drawing his sword.

‘I don’t see anything moving, but there are an awful lot of bones in here. I can’t say for certain, but they appear similar to the ones we found by the pack animal corpses.’

Delde told Igmar what she saw without turning her head from the entranceway, not wanting to miss a sudden attack or potential clue. Then she felt foolish for telling him. He was a dwarf, he had dark vision, he had more than likely seen the bones himself.

‘Dis yer magic sight tell yie onythin’ aboot them. Can yie tell if they’ll get up an attack us?’

‘It’s not a visual based sense, it’s more of a… never mind. The entire crypt is saturated with necromantic magics. Everything looks like it could either rise and attack us or be some sort of necromancy-based trap. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to give us much of a warning about potential undead ambushes.’

‘I’m just going to assume that everything dead that I see in there is going to try and kill me, then allow myself to be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t’.

Dal quipped in what sounded like a light-hearted tone, but Delde could see out the corner of her eye that he also wasn’t turning his gaze away from the doorway. He had also drawn his dagger as well.

Igmar slowly walked inside the dank crypt with Adriana by his side. Dal followed a few meters after them, with Delde and Baye taking up the rear of the formation. As they entered Delde could make out two exits from the room other than the door they had come through. One was in the bottom right corner of the chamber, the other was in the top lefthand side and seemed to be the source of the wailing, which while still faint was louder now that they had entered.

‘No movement yet, that gid. Let’s see who dinnie make it afore we head deeper in’.

Nobody protested as they walked further inside towards the centre of the chamber to identify the remains lying there. Adriana gave an audible gasp as she approached, but to her credit she didn’t rush forward. Delde looked at the corpses, a tall heavyset man with red hair and a scraggly beard, and a scrawny looking man who was cleanshaven with shaggy brown hair. They were both dressed in good quality clothes by Kassen’s standards, merchants or talented craftspeople perhaps. Their original colour was lost though, so stained they were by blood and grime. Their arms and torsos bore the same deep gouging wounds that had been on the animals outside and their pallid faces were contorted in grimaces of horror and pain. She didn’t recognise them at all. It felt surreal to her, that she had lived in the same town as these men for most of her life, she’d probably walked past them on the street on her way to Holgasts tower. Seen them but never really noticed them. Now they were dead.

‘That’s Gerol’

Adriana pointed towards the tall man.

‘And Vark’

She pointed at the scrawny man.

‘They’re friends of my father, of my family… I’ve been to parties with them and their families. Vark’s wife gave birth to their third child just three months ago. Gerol was preparing to expand his business to the city. Their families… their going to be devastated’.

‘I always liked Gerol. He was a good tipper and always a good sport about pranks, man never had a bad word to say about anybody. He-’.

At that moment most of the bones around the chamber started to rattle in unison and began to slowly rise up. Delde gripped her staff tighter even as she hoped she wouldn’t wind up in a situation where she would be required to use it in this fight.

‘MOVEMENT! Stay n formation!’

Igmar bellowed in a voice that echoed throughout the chamber and likely beyond it. If whatever in the crypt didn’t know about their arrival, they did now.

Three skeletons assembled themselves before Igmar and Adriana, two more to the left of Delde and Baye, and one was up on one of the raised sections of the chamber to the right of them. Delde noticed that there were still bones scattered throughout the chamber that had rattled but failed to assemble into anything. They seemed to be at a glance broken or damaged in some way which made her hope that the skeletons could be destroyed in a permanent manner. If they could reassemble themselves constantly then they would never be able to win this fight.

Dal was the first to move, rushing past Adriana and going to stab one in the chest. At least that was what Delde assumed he had attempted, but the skeleton looked to have some sense of self preservation and pulled back just enough for the dagger to whiz harmlessly beneath its ribcage. Had it been a living person it would have been gutted, something that was probably going through his mind when he cursed his failed attack.

Igmar moved almost as soon as Dal did and went in for an overhead strike from his longsword to hit the skeleton on its collarbone. The attack was true but the skeleton itself seemed to take comparatively little damage compared to the power that Igmar had put behind his blow. If it bothered him though he didn’t let it show. Instead, he twisted his sword mid strike and slashed his opponent across its chest, fracturing a couple of its ribs in the process. The damage that the skeleton had taken showed no effect in stopping its aggression though, as it swung a rusted short sword at Igmar. He dodged the blow to his head easily enough, but another skeleton went in to attack him straight after and managed a glancing hit to his chest. It didn’t get past his armour, but the clang of the rusted sword against his chest plate was loud enough to convince Delde that the skeleton had bruised Igmar’s chest at the very least.

Baye fired off an arrow at the skeleton that was up on the raised section of the chamber to the right. But while the arrow hit it seemed to do little more than alert it to her presence.

‘Bugger!’

She cried out in frustration. The skeleton began to head in her direction in a steady unwavering pace. None of the skeletons appeared to have any kind of ranged attack weapon so that meant they would have a little before it reached them. Delde though was more concerned with the two skeletons that were close to her. She could have started to run, try to find a more defensible position and attack from there. But she had another plan in mind, riskier perhaps, but if it worked, she could quickly even the odds of the fight int her groups favour. She calmed her mind. Focused it, focused the magic around her. She had never actually cast this spell before; it did have a good chance of creating a great deal of collateral damage if it hit the wrong thing and she didn’t have many places to practice it. But she did know it, she understood the principles behind it and how to cast it. She stretched out her right hand before her, her left still clenching her staff and let forth a great gout of fire, one that engulfed the two approaching skeletons like dead trees in a forest fire. Delde smiled at her realised power and her grip on her staff relaxed for a moment.

It tightened again when the fire dissipated though, and the two skeletons remained standing, continued approaching, scorched, singed but not destroyed. The blackened skulls of the two oncoming monsters seemed to grin as they got closer.

‘You creatures… you are a perversion of the natural order of the world, a defilement of this sacred place. You exist only to hurt, to kill, to destroy the lives and works of others and you are utterly incapable of even realising this let alone repenting for it! Hear me now! I am Adriana Uptal, cleric of Sarenrae and your presence here shall be tolerated no longer! Let the light of the Dawnflower give succour to the merciful and scourge the wicked! FOR SARENRAE! FOR KASSEN!’

Adriana held forth her holy symbol of her goddess with pride and the utmost certainty that it would not only protect her, not only protect the rest of the group, but avenge the poor souls who lost their lives at the blades and claws of the approaching undead. It was a faith that Delde had never been able to muster for any deity, not even Nethys the god of magic could evoke such absolute conviction in her heart. Delde had always looked upon such faith dismissively, feeling that such belief should be reserved for what you could do yourself, not given to other outside forces. But looking at Adriana in that moment, surrounded by foes yet utterly unflinching, she understood the power that such faith could give a person.

But Adriana had not just called out a battle cry, nor an empty prayer to her goddess. The polished wooden ankh in her hands began to glow with a golden light that struck a balance of being both soft yet powerful. The light spread out through the chamber and as Delde felt it touch her all the aches and pains she had faded, healed by the grace of Sarenrae, just as it had been when Adriana had healed her for the first time. But the light was not solely beneficent. As it washed over the skeletons there was a sharp hiss as their bones began to emit a pale white smoke as they shook. The effect reminded Delde of her experiments with acids, though without the chemical smell and the ruined desk.

The damage that Adriana’s holy invocation inflicted seemed to overwhelm the skeleton that Igmar had been fighting alongside the two that Delde had managed to char, to her immense relief. All the other skeletons seemed to have been harmed from the attack as well, even if they didn’t show any sign of stopping their attack. But with one move Adriana had managed to turn the battle from five on six, to five on three, much better odds for Delde’s liking. She had to admit that while she still felt that the arcane magics that she practiced were still somewhat superior in most regards, divine magic did have certain advantages when fighting against the undead.

Igmar, Dal and Baye gave a short rousing cheer at the defeat of so many opponents in a matter of seconds, followed shortly by Delde. She had never been one to join in on such things before, but she felt it might have been seen as rude if she didn’t join in with the cheering. It felt silly of her to be thinking of such things in the middle of a battle of life and death, quite literally as well as philosophically she supposed, but she reasoned that adrenalin did odd things to people.

Fortunately, nobody seemed to take the fight any less seriously even with half of their opponents defeated. Igmar turned from the falling pile of bones before him and before the last of them clattered to the floor he was already swinging his sword at the one closest to Adriana. His sword struck it straight in the skull and split the brittle thing in two making it the fourth skeleton defeated. Dal continued to fight against the one he had tried to put down before and was able to land a hit on it this time, now targeting its legs either to force it to the ground or because it was an easier blow for him to make. His dagger managed to fracture the bone with a loud crack, but the undead monster continued to attack, undeterred by the damage.

Baye fired off another arrow towards the skeleton approaching from the risen righthand section of the chamber and was able to hit its skull this time. But the blow was only glancing and did nothing to stop it from getting within melee range to her and Delde, forcing them to retreat to the lefthand side to keep it away from them. Delde though was not worried, feeling emboldened by Adriana’s display of power she cast her acidic splash cantrip at the skeleton, acid being on her mind from witnessing the effects the holy power had on the animated bones before them. The summoned acidic substance landed squarely on the skeletons ribcage and promptly began eating through it in a much louder and more foul-smelling display than Adriana’s spell. It collapsed before the wizard and the ranger before it could even strike them with its sword.

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Adriana meanwhile attacked the skeleton that Dal was fighting with her scimitar, slashing it across its chest. This attack for her seemed to do little more than scratch its ribs though and made the undead creature attack her in response, stabbing her in the chest with its rusted shorts word. Delde thought that she could see the tip of it fall to the floor, due to the poor condition of the weapon and the power behind the attack. There didn’t seem to be blood from the wound though, so she hoped that the armour had taken the worst of it.

Igmar positioned himself behind the skeleton and swept at its knees with his sword, doing little damage, but unbalancing the monster to the point it looked like a strong wind would have blown it over. It would have looked amusing Delde thought, had it not been for the seriousness of the situation. She was well aware of the fact the creature had probably brutally murdered the visiting villagers only a few days beforehand. In a final, vicious strike Dal stabbed the skeleton in its pelvis with such might that it shattered, causing the creature to finally fall apart along with the others. Delde thought she saw Igmar flinch at the attack and a part of her couldn’t blame him, had the skeleton been alive it would likely have been castrated by the blow.

For a moment nobody said anything, uncertain if the bones would simply reanimate again. There were only the echoes of their own panting from the intense physical exertion of combat. No skeletons rose again, and nothing came from deeper within the crypt for them. As it dawned on them that they had managed to best the threats of this room at least Adriana held aloft her scimitar and cried out.

‘Victory!’

All of them cheered in joy and relief at having defeated the undead and in some small way avenging Gerol and Vark. Even Delde was surprised to find herself throwing her hands in the air in jubilation. It seemed a primal happiness to her, the utter delight of having gone from fearing for her life to feeling pride in her victory over her enemies. She had never experienced anything like it before, she had never expected to feel anything like it ever.

‘Aw right, let aw calm doon noo. Onybody hurt?’

‘I think the only ones who got injured in the fight were you and Adriana’.

Delde replied to him as she, along with Baye went over to the rest of them in the centre of the chamber.

‘I can heal you of your wounds, I still possess some healing magic after that last use’.

Adriana moved to place her hands on Igmar, but Delde raised her hand to stop her.

‘Adriana, that magic you used to harm the undead just now, was that the same kind of magic that you use to heal others?’

‘Yes. I put more focus and devotion into my invocation that I typically do but the spell is essentially the same, why?’

‘Perhaps it would be better for us all if you kept that magic in reserve for the time being. While we aren’t being attacked by anymore undead at the moment, I wouldn’t want us to be caught off guard and not be able to call upon your magic. I think it was the most effective weapon in that fight we just had, if not for it we would all be in a much worse off position’.

‘Oh, eh, yes you raise a fair point, I will try to be more economic with my magic for the time being. I can still use more mundane medicines to help heal you all though if you need it, I have been told by Father Prasst that I am a fairly competent healer even without calling upon Sarenrae’s power’.

Adriana looked slightly abashed that she hadn’t realised that she should be more economic in her use of her magic, but she still seemed to be enthusiastic to help Igmar. He waved her off though.

‘Dinnie worry yerself aboot me hen. The undead beastie didnie hurt me that bad, an yer magic patched up the wee bit o damage that it did dae tae me’.

‘Out of curiosity, are you alright? It looked like that skeleton you were fighting hit you quite hard from what I could see. Do you maybe need some medical attention?’

Delde asked her, not wanting their most effective weapon against the undead, not to mention the person in their group most adept at healing to fall due to putting herself before the rest of them. She did appreciate Adriana’s dedication to helping others, but she would need to learn that if she didn’t take care of herself, she couldn’t look after the rest of them.

Adriana put her hand over her lower stomach, which now that she was closer Delde could see that the skeletons blade had pierced her armour, and she was bleeding a little. But the wound seemed minor to her amateur eye.

‘If I may I would then like to take a moment to bandage myself up. I did not bring with me a professional healers kit, but I do have some bandages and some minor medicines that might lessen my injury. Please pay me no mind, I, eh… would like to do this in some privacy’.

Delde wondered what she was talking about and then it dawned on her. If Adriana was wearing robes, then to see to a wound on the lower half of her chest she would need to roll up her robes to get to it. And she suspected that a young woman such as herself would feel especially uncomfortable doing so in the presence of Igmar and Dal. Baye appeared to have been looking through the remains of the skeletons with Dal to see if there was anything worth salvaging but looked up at her. She seemed to have reached the same conclusion as she did and gave an uncharacteristic smirk towards the bashful cleric.

‘Don’t worry I’ll make sure Dal doesn’t bother you. Don’t think you’d need to worry too much about Igmar but we’ll keep them both occupied over here. You head over to one of the darker corners and see to fixin’ yourself up. Dal! Igmar! Over here!’.

Adriana scuttled off to a darkened corner to attend to her injury while the rest of them huddled up in the middle of the room. Delde noticed that Baye had positioned things so that Dal and Igmar had their backs to the corner Adriana was in.

‘What are you shouting for? And where’s Adriana going?’

‘Never you mind! Did you find anything useful off the skeletons?’

‘No. Their weapons were half rust and pretty much worthless. Honestly, they probably could have done more damage to us if they dropped them and just started hitting us with rocks. How in the nine hells were they so strong anyway, they’re just bones weren’t they?! Literally no muscle on them but they hit like a sack of bricks, that’s just not fair’.

Dal grinned his usual irreverent grin. Delde couldn’t tell if he really wasn’t that shaken up by their fight or if he was just putting on an air of bravado.

‘They were animated with negative energy, the anathema to the positive energy that helps fuel living creatures. You can’t see it, but it gives them strength beyond what their physical forms would suggest’.

‘An does this… negative energy protect them an aw? Acause if felt I should’ve shattered those bony bastards, but they didnie fall when I felt they should’ve’.

‘I’m not an expert on the undead or monster hunting’ Delde prefaced herself as she mentally went over her old studies in Holgast’s library. ‘But I think that has more to do with the type of undead they are, rather than them being undead’.

Blank stares surrounded her as she tried to properly articulate her thoughts to the rest of the group.

‘What I mean is that it has more to do with them being skeletons rather than them being undead. They don’t have any flesh to cut or any blood to lose so any weapons intended to slash, or pierce aren’t as effect on them as they would be. This also means that they are more resistant to intense heat or cold and are outright immune to things like poison and disease’.

‘Would’ve been nice to have been told that before we started fighting them’.

Dal muttered in a tone that was quiet but still clearly audible.

‘Well, I’m sorry, I was facing down a small force of undead in a literal tomb! I didn’t have the luxury of time to go through all my old studies to remember what the best ways to kill the undead were’.

Frustration well up within her, but it was just as much directed at herself as it was at Dal. The truth was that she annoyed that she had gotten so caught up in the panic and excitement over the attack that she had completely blanked on what she knew about skeletons. If she had just taken a moment to think she would have known not to waste her only remaining spell of the first level attacking the skeletons. Even her using an effective element like her acidic splash spell was pure luck on her part, she hadn’t thought about if it would be more effective or not, she just needed an offensive spell and that was the first one that sprung to her mind. Delde had been frivolous with her magic and proved her lack of experience, if not for Adriana’s divine magic, then the fight could have quickly turned against them.

‘S-sorry’ she took a deep breath and tried to calm down. ‘I’ll try to keep my composure next time we enter combat; I won’t let myself get distracted again’.

‘Hey, no worries I was just messing with you, I think we were all pretty stressed out there. Hells, I’m just glad that I remembered what end of my dagger to hold!’

Dal laughed off his prior gripe and despite herself Delde felt a little better about her performance in the fight.

‘Well, we’ll need tae remember whit yie just said aboot the skeletons. We’ve no got much in the way o bludgeonin’ weapons, but we’ll need tae use whit we’ve got. Baye, yie’d better switch oot yer arrows wae the blunt ones we foond earlier. Yie’ll need tae avoid usin’ spells that depend on cold an fire an aw Delde. Yie might want tae think aboot giein Adriana a wee loan o yer staff an aw. Think it’ll be more use in her hand’s fir just noo’.

As he directed them Igmar sheathed his longsword and brought his wooden club off his belt, giving it a couple of light practice swings. Baye silently followed his instructions and began to place her regular arrows in her backpack, filling her quiver with the blunt ended ones they had recovered from outside. Delde meanwhile examined her own pack to see how Onyx was coping with the situation. He appeared to have wormed his way deeper into her pack from his previous spot at the top of it, but he seemed to be quite content otherwise. This was a small relief to her, although she felt bad for thinking it, Delde felt she would be more devastated by his death than she was upset by the discovery of the two dead bodies of the townsfolk they just made.

‘Oh, before I forget!’ Dal said just as they were about to end their small meeting. ‘I found a couple of backpacks that Gerol and Vark… that they brought with them. They had another giant pillow, a couple of quivers full of those blunt arrows for you Baye, a few days’ worth of rations, a full waterskin, and a couple of smokesticks’.

He gestured at the two bags in question that had been half hidden behind one of the pillars when they entered the room. Delde was rather confounded by the items that they had brought with them to the crypt. The need for food and water were obvious enough, but were the cushions for comfort while sleeping outdoors and in the crypt or were they part of one of the traps they were setting up? The same could be asked of the blunted arrows, were they trying to do some hunting while they were in the Fangwoods or were they all going to be dealing with some sort of arrow trap later? Then there was the matter of the smokesticks, they were alchemical creations that with a simple twist would emit a thick cloud of smoke that would last for around a minute or so. What possible use could the townspeople have had for them? It was starting to dawn on Delde how difficult their rescue mission was going to be with them having to contend with whatever traps the townspeople had managed to finish along with the undead.

The undead were also a mystery that she couldn’t work out. The shear amount of necromantic magic that was within the crypt should have produced far more undead than a few skeletons. It was entirely possible that there were more undead deeper in the crypt that lacked the intelligence to understand they were under assault explaining why they hadn’t rushed out to attack them. But even then, the bodies of the two townspeople, this Gerol and Vark, should have been animated along with the older skeletons. Delde had a distinct feeling that she was operating with only a fraction of the facts available to her and she didn’t like it. To be more specific she didn’t like the idea of blundering through the crypt only to come up against a major threat or problem that could have been dealt with had she only been paying attention.

‘Err… excuse me, but has anyone noticed that the wailing from earlier seems to have died down somewhat since we had our battle?’

Delde was stirred from her ruminations by Adriana who had apparently finished bandaging herself up. She also seemed to have cleaned herself as well as Delde couldn’t see any sign of the blood that stained her robes before. But as she listened carefully, she realised that she was correct. Even though they were closer to the source of the wailing it had quietened dramatically, now she could only hear what sounded like muffled sobbing.

‘Think that it is a trap then? Somethin to draw us in?’

Baye hadn’t put her bow down and had a blunt arrow in her other hand, ready to draw.

‘First things first, let get some rocks or a log or somthin’ tae wedge the doors open. We dinnie need tae be locked in here’.

After some brief searching outside they were able to recover some large rocks and a large log that they wedged between the doors to jam them open. It wouldn’t be that difficult to move it to force the doors shut but it would hopefully stymie any mindless undead who tried it. With their exit as secured as it could be they all headed towards the far left of the entrance chamber, the source of the noise that had convinced them to enter the crypt.

As they walked over Delde examined the walls of the chamber as she grew closer to them, better able to make them out as Adriana carried the glowing stone she had enchanted like a torch. She could see that all the walls were covered in a painted mural depicting the battle between the founder Kassen and the villagers that followed him and the bandit army. Stoic men and women wearing farming outfits or simple armour fought with basic weapons and farming equipment against ugly, cruel looking men and beasts, all in dark spiked armour and wicked looking weapons. Delde noticed that while all the bandits looked more or less the same great care had been taken to make each villager look unique. It occurred to her that all the villagers in the mural may have been based off real people who had fought in that old battle, their names forgotten by all but their descendants, the mural, final evidence of their contribution in the battle for the town of Kassen. It was probably of good quality when it was first painted, but dampness and lichen had damaged much of it, leaving it a tarnished testament to a victory that was long past.

Delde had considered listening to Igmar’s suggestion about giving her staff to Adriana for the duration of their expedition into the crypt. Strictly speaking he was correct, Adriana was far more likely to be engaged in melee combat than herself, and if they faced more skeletons then she would be better served wielding Delde’s staff than her own scimitar. However, Delde felt reluctant to surrender her weapon, even if it was the most logical resource. Part of it stemmed from feeling rather vulnerable after finding herself much closer to entering melee combat than she had intended to in their last fight. Add to that the fact that she had used up all her available higher-level magic for the day and Delde was very aware of how bad of a position she would be in if she had no weapon to defend herself with. There was another element to it though, one that she was less willing to acknowledge even to herself. The staff she wielded was a gift from her mentor, it was a reward, an acknowledgement of how far she had come and proof of her status as a fully-fledged wizard. At least to her it was. To give it up to somebody else, even if it was the objectively smart move to make, it still felt wrong to her.

In the end she kept a tight hold of her staff. She considered offering it to Adriana once she had a chance to recuperate and rememorise her spells, but she privately hoped that they would come across something else that Adriana could use as her primary weapon to let her keep her staff. Igmar for his part made no comment about Delde not offering her staff to Adriana, to which she was grateful to him for. She had no desire to create an argument when they were still in a perilous environment. Perhaps that was why he said nothing, or maybe he recognised that he had little in the way of actual authority over the rest of them and didn’t want to push any of them too far.

Igmar gripped the door handle for the next room. Neither Dal nor Baye could detect any sounds from within it other than the muffled sobs from before so they hoped that they would not be walking into an ambush. None of them were naïve enough to think that wasn’t a possibility though. The dwarf looked back at the rest of them all.

‘Right. We aw ready?’

Everyone gave a solemn nod.

‘Ah’ll open it on three. One. Two. Three!’