Litarn’s eyes snapped open the moment he felt the unmistakable sensation of small hands rummaging about his person. How the evil sorcerer knew this sensation was best left unexplored. With a groan he wriggled, squirmed, and generally did his best impression of an eel that had recently discovered it was also a contortionist. Fortunately it was Gella who was responsible for the binding, and not Denor, to whom knots were a mystic and unattainable art. As a result, this accomplished nothing more than a few strained muscles and a renewed appreciation for the tightness of ropes. Litarn decided to switch to his next best strategy: diplomacy.

"Oh, for the love of all things unholy, untie me! Release me! I’ll reward you handsomely! Shower you with thanks! Possibly even in gems! Pretty, beautiful gems! My finest gems from my most prized collection!" He lamented, escalating the reward with each exclamation like a game show host.

"I’ve no doubt you’ll try," Gella muttered, with the wariness of someone who had dealt with the man before when he had the upper hand and hadn’t magically forgotten about it.

Denor had turned the old sorcerer onto his stomach and was eyeing the rings on Litarn’s gnarled fingers with the enthusiasm of a magpie. No matter how he tugged and twisted though, the knobbly, swollen joints stubbornly refused to part with their glittering prizes.

"Well, that’s inconvenient," Denor grumbled, a stubbornness creeping into his voice that usually ended in either a hero's victory or the need for a mop. "I’ll just have to slice them off, fingers and all!"

"No, no, not the knife, my good lad!" Litarn wailed, writhing with theatrics worthy of the stage—if not for the persistence of a malicious gleam in his eyes. "Can’t you see? None of these rings are the magic one you’re after. The one that could unlock your chains and free you from my service—oh, it’s not among them!"

"Then where is it?" Denor demanded, already tiring of the sorcerer's melodramatics. Anyone who used ‘oh’ with sincerity was not to be trusted.

"I swear on my life, I’ll give it to you! Oh please just untie me first!"

But Denor was already reaching for the knife, a tool that promised to solve problems both immediate and inconvenient.

"Hold on, Denor!" Gella said, her tone a mix of caution and something resembling the tiny voice of common sense that occasionally spoke up in moments like these. "From what I’ve heard of his stories, the real magic ring is different. It exists, but he keeps it hidden."

"It’s true, true!" Litarn groaned with the conviction of a man who had just realized that agreeing repetitively might actually save his fingers.

Denor flipped Litarn onto his back again and, closing his eyes as if this might somehow make him more magical, began swaying his finger in what he must have thought was a mystic fashion. "Tamet wills it!" he declared, with all the gravitas of someone who was still learning what gravitas actually meant. It turns out that words have power, especially prophetic words invoking gods. In Denor’s case, words spilled out of his mouth before he had a chance to stop them, so it was a statistical inevitability that he’d say the right ones from time to time.

“What’s this?” Gella asked, pulling at a hidden pocket in Litarn’s robes, her voice tinged with the thrill of discovery.

“It’s Litarn, haven’t you been paying attention?” Denor replied with a dead pan expression, waving her off before realizing, belatedly, that she might actually have found something important.

In the hidden pocket lay a ring, dark red stones set in a black cord, glistening with a malevolent gleam that spoke of ill tidings. Denor, displaying all the dexterity of someone who was not to be trusted with anything more delicate than a potato, fumbled it twice before Gella took it upon herself to place the ring in his hand.

“Looks like this is what we need,” Denor announced, brimming with the sort of confidence that only youth and inexperience could muster. He didn’t know what the ring did, how it worked, or how it would solve their immediate dilemma, but it most certainly was the thing that they needed.

Litarn’s teeth ground together audibly, but his lips remained sealed, the malice in his eyes simmering just below the surface.

“Careful, Denor,” Gella cautioned, her voice soft but urgent. “This ring—there’s something about it. It could be dangerous!”

Denor’s hand hovered over the ring, and as his finger neared the red-hot stones, a sharp pain shot through him, blistering his skin.

“Ow!” he yelped, as the crimson glow of the ring intensified, like it was feeding off his pain.

Litarn, meanwhile, cackled with glee, as if the entire situation had been designed for his personal amusement. “Yes, yes! Put something else in there, why don’t you?”

Denor’s and Gella’s eyes widened, and the sorcerer quickly backtracked. “Your tongue, perhaps? My stones know only hate, and they are glorious in their rage! Without me, you’ll never master them! You’ll die foolishly or end up maimed beyond recognition!”

“We need to break this thing,” Denor declared with the kind of confidence you only get when you’re an expert at breaking things, intentionally or otherwise.

After a frantic search of the floor, he settled on a hammer that looked like it could flatten a small house. He gave the cursed ring three good whacks, each one echoing around the chamber with the hopeful clang of a plan that hasn’t yet gone entirely wrong. But the ring didn’t even flinch. The hammer, on the other hand, let out a hiss, cracked into pieces, and promptly crumbled into a pile of regretful dust.

Denor held up the broken handle and looked mournfully at his companion. “Gella, it happened again.”

Gella rubbed her temples as if her head was about to explode. “Can’t you go five minutes without something breaking?”

The slab table that our hero’s head had impacted with earlier promptly collapsed with a groan.

“How long was that?” Denor asked.

The old man, still tied up and very much enjoying himself, almost choked with laughter. “Oh, you idiots! Trying to destroy hatred with hatred! You might as well try to put out a fire with a bucket of petrol! Untie me, you nincompoops! You’ll never manage this without me!”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Will this bag of bones ever shut up?” Denor muttered.

Litarn glared at him.

“It was Gella who said that,” he replied to the stare, pointing at his companion, who had raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Maybe we should untie him,” Gella suggested, her eyes flitting nervously to the sorcerer who was twitching like someone who’d had too much coffee and not enough freedom. “I mean, without him, we’re like chickens in a thunderstorm—pecking about and hoping for the best. And we’re running out of time. His henchmen could be here any minute…”

“Henchmen?” Denor asked.

“You know, all those men who were chasing you earlier?”

Denor’s glazed eyes squinted. “Oh! Right! Harg and his buddies!”

Gella began to think her chances of getting out of here alive were approaching zero.

“Alright,” Denor grumbled, then fixed his gaze on the wriggling sorcerer. “Tell us how to release the sparks of life, and then, maybe, we’ll untie you.”

“Oh, you’ll deceive me, you’ll deceive me!” the old man wailed, now laying on the pity thick enough to spread on toast. “Let me go first! I swear, I’ll release the sparks myself! I’ll reward you beyond your wildest dreams! You’ll be rich! Famous! People will write songs about you, and not the kind you can’t play in polite company!”

“I’ll become great without your help!” Denor retorted. “Without any of your rewards!”

Meanwhile, Gella wandered over to a table covered in a pile of gems that sparkled with the sort of intensity only found in things that want to be picked up. “What are you looking for, Gella?” Denor asked, doing his best to stagger over casually while still peering at the shiny objects.

“He treats these stones like they’ve got minds of their own,” she said thoughtfully. “Let them sort it out themselves. There’s got to be one here that can deal with those nasty red garnets.”

A moment later, she triumphantly held up a dazzling blue crystal. In the center, a golden six-pointed star twinkled like it knew something they didn’t. “This one,” she breathed. “This one could do the job, don’t you think?”

Denor took the stone from her, eyes wide with awe as he examined it. It was the kind of beautiful that made you feel like everything was going to be alright, even when it clearly wasn’t.

“Can I keep it, Denor?” Gella whispered, the way people do when they’re asking for a particularly expensive present.

“You can,” he replied, “but first, let’s see if it’s willing to help out.”

Denor carefully slid the sapphire into the fiery gap between the ring’s malevolent teeth. The lights blazed brighter, and the ring grew so hot he nearly dropped it. But there was no time for second thoughts—only for hoping they wouldn’t be necessary.

“Oh, Denor!” Gella gasped, her voice tinged with sorrow. “The ring will destroy it! Such a wondrous stone… gone!”

Denor braced himself, waiting for the inevitable explosion of shattered dreams. But instead, there was a loud crash and a smell so sharp it made his nose tingle.

“Denor!” shouted Gella.

Her cry wasn’t filled with fear but with a joy that could only mean something had gone right. Denor opened his eyes to see the blue stone still intact, shining even brighter, while the ring lay in pieces—nine narrow, smoking shards.

“That’s it,” Denor breathed, hardly daring to believe it.

But before they could celebrate, footsteps echoed from the corridor. They spun around in panic—they’d been discovered!

“Denor! It’s Denor!” came the voice. “You destroyed the sorcerer’s ring!”

Rough, calloused hands clapped against his back and shoulders in disbelief. It was as if the men were trying to confirm he wasn’t some specter conjured from their fevered dreams of freedom. Around him, grinning faces glowed like lanterns, and voices boomed out in a chaotic chorus, each one determined to be louder than the last.

"Gella! Look, it's Gella!" they cried, hands reaching out as if the girl might disappear into thin air at any moment. But before they could turn her into a communal cushion of pats and hugs, Charan stepped in, shouldering his way between them and Gella, his not-exactly-broad shoulders doing their best impression of a wall.

“How did you manage to defeat that beast?” Denor inquired, his gaze flicking nervously toward the tunnel's exit where the ant—though now, decidedly not an ant—had been lurking.

“Can’t say we understand it ourselves, Denor!” Harg replied with the sort of cheerfulness that came from not fully grasping what had just happened. He flexed his muscles in that way that people do when they want to remind you they have them. “One moment, we’re dodging for our lives, the next, it’s like we’ve got a front-row seat to a bizarre transformation. The beast chases us, we duck into a side passage, and then—poof!—it’s a woman, saying ‘sod this’ and striding off like she had lost all interest in us.”

“Tamet be praised!” Denor said, nodding sagely despite clearly missing that he was responsible for lifting the curse.

“It’s like we’ve seen the light, brothers. Our light may be flickering, but at least we can return to our families and say goodbye to them properly,” Simon added, eyeing Denor apologetically and hoping he’d forgive him for the whole shooting him incident.

“Shame, really,” Denor continued, musing aloud and completely missing the implications of what the men were saying. “Would’ve been grand to have that ant as a steed! Imagine the terror on the faces of those red-skinned Temrit devils! They’d jump back into their drop ships in sheer fright, and their black dogs would be yelping off into the distance with their tails tucked!”

“Not a bad thought, lad,” Harg said, a sympathetic twinkle in his eye as he patted Denor’s shoulder with all the gentleness of a falling brick and peered worriedly into his glazed eyes. The others joined in, nodding and muttering, “Great idea! Pity you didn’t bag it yourself, Denor! You’d have looked quite dashing, if a bit mad.”

Denor grinned, clearly as pleased with himself as he was concussed. “I liked that steed!”

Gella, who had looked away from the celebrations and had began surveying the room suddenly asked, “Where’s Litarn?”

The laughter and jests evaporated as the men crowded around the spot where Litarn should’ve been. Unsurprisingly, the sorcerer had vanished, much like the sense of calm in the room.

The collective mood turned impatient, the kind that made even the simplest task seem unbearable. Denor, stubborn as an aurox with a rigid to-do list, refused to leave the dungeon until he found the woman who had been an ant—now, an ex-ant. They fanned out, torches flickering as they bickered their way through dead-end passages, each one more convinced than the last that they were going in the right direction.

But just like Litarn, the woman was nowhere to be found.

***

Back in the village, even the oldest residents—who had seen everything from plagues to unusually large turnips—couldn’t recall a day with a bigger shock. The dead, a full fifteen of them, half-naked and with the fresh dirt of their graves still clinging to them, came marching in like a particularly rowdy parade. They were loud, boisterous, and so full of life that it was almost offensive.

The boys playing on the outskirts were the first to spot them, and their squeals of terror rang out in alarm. The women, peering through their windows, added their own high-pitched notes, amplifying the cacophony until it was a village-wide symphony of fear. Doors slammed shut, cattle were hastily herded into barns, and the men—sensing that this was no ordinary problem—drew their weapons or pointed their hands, ready to unleash bolts from behind the safety of tree trunks and corners.

Denor led the pack, his audacity in life evidently carrying over into death, clearly he had returned from the grave to take revenge for the whipping! He hadn’t even made it past the first house before someone, acting on reflex or perhaps a deep-seated grudge against the boy and his irritating ways, sent a bolt of energy straight into his chest.

“Denor!” Gella screamed.

“Yes?” Denor turned around, as though he’d just been asked what was for dinner and not like there was a smoking hole where his chest used to be.

“Denor!” Gella screamed again, because one can never be too sure if someone’s heard you the first time, especially when they’re looking a bit… well, holy.

“Hello?” Denor said, with the sort of confusion usually reserved for someone trying to remember if they left the stove on, wondering what sort of hysterics his companion had fallen into this time.

“Well, that looks painful,” Simon observed, because when someone’s got a hole in their chest, you tend to start making observations on such things.

Denor finally looked down at his chest, which had apparently decided to have a giant hole in it. “Oh,” he said with the tone of someone who’s just discovered they’ve run out of tea, “I’m dead.”