The blast was powerful enough that it rocked the entire foundation of the vault, sending stones tumbling downward and threatening to bring the entire tower down on top of them. Gell didn’t fare much better — hurled violently across the chamber, he plowed solidly into the quivering wall behind him. Dragging himself to his feet, clutching at Saturnine, he looked up at the towering beast lumbering toward him and cursed.
“For fuck’s sake,” the Puritan muttered, “why can’t anything ever just go easy?”
A few weeks prior, Gell was sleeping. Actually sleeping, this time. He’d been marching through scrublands and forests, through hills and swamps, just trying to stay a step ahead of the people who all suddenly found themselves very interested in his whereabouts, all the while waiting for some kind of coherent plan to come to him. Sarai had gone off to some other time or space or plane or who-knows-what — she hadn’t made herself very clear to Gell, and thinking about it too much made his head hurt, so he didn’t really ask. All he knew was that she was off looking for something, and he just hoped it would be something helpful for a change. The night prior he had taken shelter in a cave to avoid a pretty ferocious rainstorm, and that’s exactly where we join him now — sleeping in the cave, covered with a crude woolen blanket.
It was a peaceful morning, the storm having passed on the night before, and Gell was sleeping soundly. This made it all the more annoying when Sarai suddenly reappeared and shouted him awake.
“Gell! Gell, get up! I’ve found it!”
The big man blinked fiercely in annoyance, trying to invent some excuse to go back to sleep, and, in his half-awake state, sincerely believing that the wordling would be fooled if he simply rolled over and faked snoring.
The wordling was, of course, not at all fooled, and not at all amused. “Gell!” she screamed, “you get up this instant or I’ll see to it you never sleep again!”
It’s not wise to annoy the creator too much, and Gell sagely opened his eyes, rubbing them briskly, and sat up to look at Sarai. “Okay, okay, I’m up. What’s this now? You found somethin’?”
“I most certainly did!” she puffed with pride. “I found another wordling! It’s in a tower not too far from here, and if we hurry, we can get there in a week or so. Ready to go?”
“A tower? It’s an obvious trap, darlin’. Nothing this valuable would just be sittin’ around in a tower waiting to be found. The last one, if you remember right, we spent a few months diggin’ outta the ground, and even then nearly got creamed by a damn wizard. No, just hanging out in a tower, ripe for the snatchin’? Not too likely.”
Sarai huffed in exasperation. “Okay, okay, maybe I did omit one or two details that I didn’t consider especially important.”
“Such as?”
“Well, supposedly, the glade the tower’s in is cursed. And the wordling itself is guarded by a dragon. But that shouldn’t be any big deal, should it?”
Gell chuckled. “You got some idea of what is and ain’t important, Sarai, but your bullshit sense could use a little calibratin’. Everybody knows there ain’t no such thing as dragons.”
“Everybody knows there’s no such thing as wordlings, too, Gell,” came a new voice, melodic and feminine. “Who knows? Maybe there is a dragon. If Sarai says so, we shouldn’t just disregard it.”
Sarai beamed with pride at first, and then, realising that Katja had just crawled out from under the same blanket, and was currently hitching it up to her neck for modesty, turned beet red and whirled around angrily toward Gell.
“Gell! Just what do you think you’re doing? You’re on a mission from the creator! Don’t you have any conception of proper behaviour? Of decency? Decorum?”
Gell roared with laughter, and was unable to piece together enough coherent sounds to make a response. Undaunted, Sarai turned back to Katja. “And you! You… you hussy! Don’t you realise the importance of chastity? Of saving yourself for the right man? For marriage? Do you have a single thing to say for yourself?”
Katja’s eyes flashed with fire — she wasn’t about to be brow-beaten by anybody, creator or no. “We were cold and bored. You have any better ideas for recreation in a dark, cold, empty cave? Besides, we both enjoyed ourselves, so what’s the harm?”
Gell was still laughing uncontrollably. “What’s the harm?” Sarai shrieked, “You young people have so much to learn about the world! About propriety and decency and — Gell, would you mind telling me exactly what you find so funny about this whole situation?”
With extreme effort, the Puritan collected himself enough to croak out a response: “Honestly, darlin’, it’s just that it’s kinda strange being lectured about decency and decorum by a lady ain’t never been seen wearin’ even a scrap of clothing.”
Sarai flushed even deeper. “That… that… it’s completely different! It’s not… not at all like…” about halfway through this sputtering, she was suddenly clothed in a very slight green dress — backless and extremely low-cut with a skirt that didn’t get within striking distance of her knees, but it was clothing nonetheless.
“Besides, Sarai, ain’t you the creator? You must have seen all this before. Hell, way I reckon it, you must have created it, yeah?”
“That’s… I didn’t… it’s not… oooh!” she flitted rapidly out the entrance of the cave, trying her best to seem like she was stomping her feet and slamming the door in the process. Gell resumed laughing.
“Do you think you should go after her, Gell?” Katja asked. “After all, she did have a plan, and it’s more than we’ve come up with in weeks.”
“Ah, she’ll be back. Just gonna go have herself a sulk.”
“You sure about that?”
“Absolutely. She’s stuck with me — ’til death do us part and all that. ‘Sides, she ain’t really mad. She’s just hotheaded. When she cools down a bit, she’ll pop on back here and act like nothin’ ever happened, just you watch.”
“I don’t know, Gell. She seemed pretty upset.”
“Trust me, darlin’. Give her a few, and she’ll –”
“So, like I was saying, we should get moving. This tower’s to the southeast of here, and we can make it there in a week if we don’t waste any time!”
And there she was, floating there in front of them exactly where she had been, showing no sign of anger or frustration at all. No sign, anyhow, except that she was still wearing her green dress. Gell chuckled quietly and shot Katja a self-satisfied grin.
Ten days later, our heroes were still trudging through the forest in a vaguely southwesterly direction. The late spring at least wasn’t particularly hot, but it did have a tendency to rain rather often, and Gell and Katja frequently found themselves utterly drenched and entirely miserable.
“Hey Sarai, didn’t you say this would take about a week? It’s been well more’n that by any reckoning,” Gell finally complained.
“Hmm? Didn’t I what now?”
“Back at the cave, you said it’d be a week, and I’ll wager it’s been a week and then some, and I still don’t see no sign of a cursed grove with a cursed tower so we can find this cursed rock and maybe get the hell out of this cursed forest for a while.”
“Well, honestly, Gell, there’s no need for that kind of attitude. If you recall, what I said was that it would be about a week if we didn’t waste any time. And we’ve wasted positively loads of time!”
“What? What are you rabbitin’ on about? We’ve done nothing but march, and that exactly where you told us to.”
“Nothing? You’ve done nothing but that? Clearly you’re forgetting all the time you spend searching for food, eating food, sleeping, and various other biological things that are in no way expediting this trip.”
Gell just stared at her, then shook his head and began to chuckle. “Woman, you are off your chump.”
Katja, not in the mood to suffer uncomfortably through yet another fight between the Puritan and his other half, endeavoured to change the subject. “Say, Gell, what makes you so sure there aren’t any dragons? It’s a big world, you know. Maybe you just haven’t ever seen any dragons.”
Gell laughed heartily. “Size those things are meant to be, they’d be hard not to see. No, darlin’, there ain’t no dragons. Leastways, nobody’s ever found one.”
“Well, maybe people have found them, and they just didn’t… just didn’t live to tell about it.”
“Well alright, but answer me this: critter that size, what do you reckon it eats? You noticed any entire villages going missing on a weekly basis? Just ain’t any logic in it. There’s no way there are giant, flame-belching, killer flying lizards out there and somehow they just don’t leave no traces.”
“But Sarai said there’s a dragon guarding the wordling. She’s the creator, right? So, I mean, she would know if she created any dragons.”
This stopped Gell in his tracks. “Say now, that is a point. Sarai honey, you are the creator, right? So ain’t you supposed to be all-seein’ and all-knowin’ and all that jazz?”
Sarai puffed with pride. “Yes I am!”
“So how’s come you don’t really seem to see much or know much?”
And just like that, her pride switched to embarassment, and she fuddled and muddled and tried to spit out some type of response. What she eventually settled on was: “Well, see now, I… I am the creator, and I am all-powerful and all-knowing and all-everythinging, but just… it’s like… not right now.”
“Now honey, you know I don’t mean you no offense, but that don’t make any sense at all.”
“It’s like this,” Sarai explained, collecting herself. “Right now, I’m just a small part of me. That’s why we’re looking for the other parts; if I can just pull myself together, then I’ll be more like what you’re expecting in a creator. But right now, I’m pretty limited. I’m… sorry.” She seemed deflated; the sight was so pitiful that Gell immediately regretted having asked her in the first place.
“Aw, now, come on. Perk up! We’ll find the rest of you, and no mistake. Then you’ll be the all-singin’, all-dancin’, everythingest creator around.”
Oddly, that inanity seemed to cheer the wordling up.
“So, hang on,” Sarai suddenly switched gears, “this is the second time we’ve been through this, and you’re still only questioning the dragon bit. What about the other part? The cursed grove? You have no problems accepting that bit?”
“None whatsoever,” Gell grinned. “Dealt with many a curse in my day. Oh, those things are real, make no never mind — and right nasty to boot.”
“So where do curses come from?” Katja was genuinely intrigued, but mainly just glad that Gell and Sarai weren’t fighting for once.
“Wizards, darlin’. Same as most awful things. Turns out it’s possible for magical spirit — ‘animus,’ they call it — to attach itself to places or things too. When animus is attached to a person, it’s a wizard. When it attaches to a place or a thing, it’s a curse.”
“But how does that happen? How does this animus get attached to something?”
“Wizards, love, like I said. Wizards themselves get started by performing lots of weird rituals to bind the animus to themselves — I don’t really get the whole procedure myself, mind, but I’m given to think it’s somethin’ pretty serious. Then, once they have command of the animus, they can transfer it to somethin’ else instead, which results in a curse. Now, they don’t do this on purpose too often — since they lose animus themselves, it reduces their power, and if there’s one thing a wizard just will not abide, it’s bein’ less powerful. But sometimes, if it’s important, they will. And sometimes it happens by accident — when there’s a big fight, maybe, and the wizard uses a lot of magic all at once. Or occasionally when a wizard dies. But make no mistake: if you see a curse, there’s no doubt but a wizard did it.”
“They never occur naturally?”
“Never.”
“And is there any way to get rid of a curse?”
“Sure is. You need a certified curse-buster — such as your humble servant here.” Gell made a ridiculous, theatrical bow, causing his hat to fall off into the underbrush. He spent a few minutes digging it back out, jammed it back onto his head, and continued. “Using the power of Nullification, I can drain the animus from the curse just like I can from a mage — the only trick is to find the actual concentration of power. Not that that’s any challenge for me, ‘course.”
“So if wizards can create a curse… could they create a dragon?”
Gell was silent for a long time, pondering the question. “You know,” he said at last, “they just maybe could at that. I hadn’t really thought about that.”
Oddly, neither Katja nor Sarai found this very reassuring. The party trudged onward through the woods in silence, suddenly much more apprehensive. Katja almost wished she had just let Gell and Sarai fight.
Some days later, our heroes found themselves standing on the edge of a large, circular clearing. The whole clearing was filled with a volume of loose fog — not particularly thick or oppressive fog, but just enough fog to prevent them from seeing clearly what is was they were looking at. It appeared, as near as they could tell, to be a tower; Gell, ever mindful of the situation despite his happy-go-lucky dimwit demeanor, was searching the ground and the fog for any sign of a curse. The flow felt relatively undisturbed — if there were a curse, it was either a mighty weak one or else a mighty subtle one. And the subtle curses are the worst curses.
The most significant thing Gell noticed in the scene was that nothing in the glade appeared to be moving. He saw no birds, no wildlife, not even any wind — the mass of fog hung in place like a giant grey blanket, insulating them from the world above and the world beyond, but not at all swirling as fog is wont to do. Cautiously, Gell picked up a stone from the forest floor and tossed it into the glade. It came to a soft landing in the grass several yards in front of them, and otherwise seemed entirely unmolested by the experience. It wasn’t on fire, it wasn’t crumbling, it didn’t suddenly halt in mid-air — those were the things most on Gell’s mind when he performed the experiment. He detected no quiver in the flow at all.
“Wait here,” he said to his companions. “I’ll see if it’s safe.”
Drawing Saturnine from its sheath, taking a deep breath to steel his nerves, and muttering every prayer he could think of to any deity he thought might have a sudden change of heart, Gell stepped forward into the glade. Nothing happened in particular. He took a few more cautious steps — still nothing. Relieved, he turned to his companions and waved. “Hey, looks like everything’s fine. I guess there isn’t much of –”
Then it hit him. The flow suddenly bucked wildly, nearly causing him to lose his footing on the stable earth. Whirling around, he caught sight of several piles of bones rising up from the ground of the glade, forming themselves into man-like shapes, and advancing toward him, their eyes glowing with the light of the dead. But where had the bones come from? That’s when he noticed it — the entire floor of the clearing was covered with human bones, and they were eager to add his to their collection. Cursing himself for not seeing through the illusion, he retreated swiftly to the edge of the clearing and chopped down two hefty looking tree branches, swiftly shearing them of twigs and leaves. He hurled one to Katja.
“Got no choice,” he called, “we’re gonna have to bash through them.”
“Can’t you do something, Gell? Use your Puritan powers and nullify this curse!”
“Centre’s not here, darlin’. And it’ll be simpler to bash through skeletons than to dispel them — never gonna beat this curse that way.”
Gell was out of time. He didn’t wait for Katja to reply, instead swinging the makeshift club in a massive swipe through the advancing mass of bones and evil. Katja attempted to stick close to the big man, but not too close — she had no desire to become the object of one of those brutal swings. She lacked Gell’s power, but her time as an artifacter had clearly left an impression upon her, and she was able to handle the club without very much difficulty, though she had a pronounced tendency to swing overhand, like a mining pick, instead of Gell’s more efficient lateral sweeps. Sarai, for her part, flitted about above the melee, making punching gestures with her tiny fists and shouting words of encouragement that went mostly unheard over the sound of crunching bones and screaming Puritan.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they were making progress — the wave of skeletons seemed neverending, though, and Katja was beginning to grow tired. “Gell, we need to do something! I can’t keep this up forever!”
“I know, darlin’ — I’m tryin’ to find the focus, but it ain’t easy. There’s too much activity around here, and the flow’s a right mess!”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t be any problem for you.”
“You really think this is the right time to be gettin’ all smug and sarcastic like?”
Just then, Sarai cried down to them: “Gell! The focus is in the tower!”
“You sure?”
“I can see the flow more clearly from up here. I’m positive! You need to get to the tower!”
“Shoot, that’s easier said than done. Can barely see the thing from here!”
Gell, deprived of his hope that the focus would be near at hand, redoubled his skeleton-smashing efforts. The animated dead clouded around him, their hollow eyes mocking his efforts, and their infuriating silence seeming to win every argument against his forceful battle cries. The tower never seemed to draw any closer, no matter how far he pushed; Gell convinced himself this was an illusion caused by the cursed fog. He was in too deep to care now, anyhow — it would be just as hard to get back out as it was to go farther in. So still he fought on, rank after rank of bone soldiers falling back to the earth in a sadly temporary victory, as they would soon be swept back up by the curse and set against him again.
Katja fought on as well, but she lacked the big warrior’s stamina. She began to get gradually separated from him, and soon found herself entirely surrounded by skeletons. Panicking, she hacked at them with her club, but it was no use — she couldn’t clear them quickly enough to get to Gell, and she was swept up in the tide of bones.
From her vantage point above the fight, Sarai noticed this as it was happening. “Gell!” she hollared, “Turn around! Katja’s in trouble!”
Gell’s attention was instantly swept backward, and he saw no sign of his companion in the sea of horrors. “Sarai, I can’t find her! Show me!”
The wordling bolted over to the location where Katja was overwhelmed and hovered just above the dead tide. Gell roared with anger, and summoned every bit of strength he had — he knew he had very little time before Katja would be ground into the soil and lost. Reaching Sarai’s location, he saw a huge mound of disjointed bones — the skeletons were entombing her! Fruitlessly, he bashed on the shell with his club, but it was too thick and too solid, and he made no progress. Meanwhile, the tide was beginning to press in on him, and he needed to act quickly or he would suffer a similar fate. He glanced over his shoulder — the tower was not far now, maybe thirty or forty yards. Alone, he could make it. But probably not in time.
“Shit shit shit!” he cursed, flexed his powerful legs, and launched himself high into the air. He rose up above the dead sea, aimed his club downward like a lance, and drove it hard into the top of the obscene hecatomb. He succeeded in smashing a small number of bones out of the way, creating a divot in the top of the dome — it wasn’t much, but it was exactly enough. He threw himself into the project with abandon, digging a shaft down the centre of the bone pile, and using the bones he ejected as a makeshift barrier to keep the horde of skeletons at bay. It wouldn’t work for long, he knew, but he didn’t need it to work for very long — he only needed to dig two yards by his estimation to get to Katja.
Feverishly excavating bones, mindful of every second, he lowered the centre of the mound farther and farther, until finally he reached his destination — a hand with the proper amount of flesh still attached to it! He grabbed the hand and pulled hard, secretly afraid that nothing would be attached to the other end — but his fears were allayed, as the entire body of his lady companion soon emerged from the grave. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing, and there was no time to find out, as the bones were even now attempting to close up around him again. He threw Katja over his shoulder and leapt clear of the collapsing shaft, bringing his club around to the ready to resume his culling. He would have to do the rest of the work one-handed, and exhausted — oddly, he found himself enjoying the test of his limits.
Gell dove from the top of the mound, sweeping out a group of skeletons as a landing zone. They mobbed in tightly around him — all the time he had spent digging was time he spent not driving back the horde, and now it had grown almost impossibly thick. Gell had his work cut out for him just keeping his arm mobile enough to keep fighting.
Yet keep fighting he did. Gell silently thanked providence for not surrounding him with monsters that could actually fight — the only chance the skeletons had was to overbear him as they had done to Katja, and his sheer size made that difficult. He bashed through group after group, slowly inching to the tower, and suddenly, upon reaching the door, was confronted with the terrifying realisation that he had no idea what was in the damn tower in the first place, except that it might be a dragon. He hesitated for only a second, then decided that whatever dragon was in there couldn’t be more hopeless than survival against endless skeletons, and he pushed the door open forcefully.
It was fairly bright inside the tower thanks to a burning torch ensconced upon the wall, and there was no sign of any dragon. In fact, there didn’t appear to be anything at all except torch and staircase; this was clearly a middle level, and the meat of the tower was above and below. But Gell wasn’t worried about that right now — he slammed the door shut, cutting off the advancing skeleton horde, and braced the club against it. Then he turned his attentions to Katja.
“Is she going to be alright, Gell?” Sarai hovered nearby, looking even more pale than usual. “She’s not dead, is she? Tell me she’s not dead.”
Gell pulled his head away from her mouth, and flopped back on his haunches. He sighed heavily. “She’s not dead. Somehow, some way, she’s not dead. Though we’re both a bit worse for wear after that.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a relief. So what do you think? Should we go up or down?”
“Hold on now, Sarai. Give a man a minute to catch his breath. Then we’ll figure out where to go.”
The conversation paused for the moment, but the room was far from silent — Gell’s coarse breathing echoed in the chamber, but was itself nearly eclipsed by the sounds of rattling and straining coming from outside. The skeletons were swarming around the tower, and, though they hadn’t breached its walls yet, they were causing an unnerving shaking. There wasn’t much time for sitting and thinking! Gell looked up the stairs, and he looked down, trying to get some idea of which way the focus was. In both directions, the staircase simply spiraled out of sight, revealing nothing. The flow was almost entirely overwhelmed by the undead army piled around him on all sides, and all he could make out was a faint disturbance both up and down — nothing concrete. He would just have to pick something and hope he was right.
Just then, Katja began to stir. Gell’s attention was snapped over to her, as, slowly, she lifted up her head and began to look around. “Gell?” she croaked. “Is that you? Where… what’s going on?”
“Relax, darlin’. We’re safe… ish.”
“Thank god.”
“Sarai, any ideas? Up-ways or down-ways?”
“Hmm,” the wordling puzzled, “well… basements are a good place to hide secrets, right? And what would be more secret than a cursed focus? So I say we go down.”
“Good enough for me,” Gell conceded, and began to head down the staircase.
“Wait!” Katja interrupted. “We should… I think we should go up.”
“Why’s that now?”
“It’s… if we go down, and those horrid things break in, we’ll be done for. If we go up, at least maybe we can still climb out, right? I just, well… I can’t handle the thought of being buried under them again.”
She seemed so sad and so frightened that even the hardened warrior was moved. “Okay, then, up it is,” he replied, trying to seem more confident and jovial than he really was. “But whatever it is, we gotta move. That thumpin’ ain’t a dance party.”
Katja pulled herself up, and the heroes ascended the long, spiraling stair. Gell had grabbed the torch from its sconce, which proved to be a wise move, as the way ahead was shrouded in darkness. Onward and onward they climbed, not really aware of what distance they had traveled, but all thinking the tower hadn’t seemed nearly this tall from outside. The sound of the rattling horde slowly faded out beneath them, though the shaking of their foundations only intensified. Their moods were not improved by the occasional plaster or piece of masonry that would shake loose from the walls and tumble down the dark shaft below — Gell was well aware that the tower wouldn’t hold together much longer.
Presently, the staircase opened into a small loft in the top of the tower. The room was opulently decorated with tapestries and rugs in a deep burgundy colour, but it was entirely unfurnished except for a large chest sitting on a raised portion in the centre of the floor.
“Just like in the stories!” Sarai giggled. Gell was less amused. The big man strode briskly over to the chest and tried the lid; the chest was locked. Irritated, and low on time, he yanked Saturnine out of its scabbard and hefted it over his head, intending to smash in the lid — whetever it was that was disturbing the flow was within that chest, and it was his only chance. But Katja stopped him before he could strike.
“Wait, Gell! It could be dangerous. Let me take a look.” She boldly pushed her way past the sword-hefting Puritan, and began examining the chest. She ran her hands over its hinges, and its latch, and then bent down to look underneath it, finally settling on staring into the keyhole.
“Katja, I don’t mean to be rude, now, but we ain’t really got the time. Unless you’re seein’ somethin’ I don’t –”
Katja softly shushed him. “Small eyes see more than large eyes, Gell.” She stared into the aperture for a further moment and then turned to the wordling. “Sarai, are you invulnerable? I mean, right now?”
“Yes!” Sarai puffed. “Or, well, I think so. Nothing’s ever hurt me yet, anyhow. And… it doesn’t really make sense that I could be killed. So… yes. Probably.”
“Good. I need you to give me a hand.” Sarai proudly flitted over to the kneeling Katja, as Gell glanced nervously from wall to wall, noticing the increasing rocking of the tower. He ran over to one of the narrow windows and looked down, and all he could see was a writhing mass of bones, heaping upon itself and stretching all the way to the fog line. It was no longer clear to Gell if the mass was individual skeletons or merely a giant surge of disconnected bones, held together by the evil strength of the curse, bending all its will to destroying them. He knew it wasn’t much longer before the tower would come down, and them along with it. At least one of us will make it, he thought sarcastically, recalling Sarai’s bluster about her own invincibility.
“I know how to open this lock, Sarai, but I don’t have the right tools with me. So here’s what I need you to do.” Katja, oblivious to Gell’s thoughts, was calmly instructing the excited wordling on proper lockpicking procedures. “I need you to reach your hand in there. Above you will be five pins, one for each finger — one at a time, push the pins upward, slowly, until you feel a very faint clicking. Then keep all those pins right like that, and turn your hand clockwise. Got it?”
Sarai nodded, and boldly jammed her hand into the opening of the lock. Gell and Katja watched her, nervously, not wanting to rush her work but agonising over every spent second.
Sarai seemed oblivious to the peril, as, perhaps, befits one who can’t be killed anyhow. “So… I’m not really feeling any clicks here. I’m pushing them up and down, up and down. No clicks.”
“Slower!” Katja hissed. “It’s very faint.”
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing. Up and down, up and down –”
“Slower!”
“Look, stop yelling at me! I’m doing — ooh, wait, what was that? It clicked! Is that what it does? Oh, this is so exciting!”
The tower had begun to lurch dangerously now, and Katja and Gell gripped onto the edges of the stonework to keep from being thrown about the room. Sarai didn’t seem to notice.
“There’s two, and three… and… come on, where are you? Oh, come on…”
Serious pieces of wood and stone were beginning to fall from the ceiling at this point. Still, Sarai was focused on her task, and seemed completely unperturbed.
“Got it! Four! Four… fooooour…”
The walls now began to disintegrate, and their footing was almost entirely lost. Gell and Katja were clinging to the edges of anything they could find that was still properly part of a tower.
“Fooooooour… and… fooooour… come on, you bastard, where are — aha! Five! And now we turn, and — aah!” Sarai screamed — a piercing, ear-splitting scream — and then she vanished. The top of the chest popped open, and Gell leapt suddenly from his position on the wall straight toward the open box, whirling Saturnine through the Nullification sign in the process. He reached the box in half the blink of an eye, and, glancing down into it, noticed an object — his mind, focused on the present danger, registered only that it was a hard object, and he modified his swing to lay the flat of Saturnine’s blade against it. There was a clang of steel on steel, followed by a terrifying rush of wind, and a tremendous sucking howl; a maelstrom of malevolence and power swirled around Gell, drawing with it the cover of fog and no small amount of masonry from the tower. The whirl of energy continued to drill into the black blade, and Gell began to scream — a scream of terror, of pain, and of power. And then, just like that, all was silent. Gell and Katja fell heavily to the tower floor, and lay there for a moment, reveling in the silence and stability. The menace had been put to rest.
Their bliss was to be short-lived, however, as it was soon interrupted by a very loud, very angry wordling, who suddenly reappeared above them and began emptying her lungs at Katja. “How could you do that? That bleeding hurt! You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you! Didn’t you!”
“I’m sorry, Sarai, but it was the only way. And you were right — it didn’t kill you.”
“That’s hardly an excuse! I happen to be your creator! I am not here just to be the guinea pig in your weird experiments.”
“Would either of you ladies mind terribly fillin’ in a poor, uncultured fightin’-type on what exactly this ruckus is all about?” Gell sat next to the chest, looking highly amused, and secretly finding it very funny indeed to see Sarai fighting with Katja for a change.
“There was a trap on the chest,” Katja explained. “Poison needle. That’s why I needed to know if Sarai could be killed. When she released the tumbler, it stabbed forward, and drove itself into her hand. Probably would have ended up in your shin if I’d let you break the thing open, Gell.”
“And it hurt like blue blazes,” Sarai added. “The least you could have done was warn me.”
Gell, losing interest in the bickering, and consumed with curiosity about the item he had just disenchanted, elected to examine the chest. What he found was a large, ornate sword of exquisite manufacture, and apparently previously enchanted to create fog and a whole lot of goddamn skeletons. He picked it up and proceeded to carve up the air with it, getting a feel for its weight and balance.
“That’s not a bad haul, Gell,” Katja cooed approvingly, “it’ll make a nice upgrade over that beat-up old thing you’ve been carrying around.”
Gell laughed. “Nah, too fancy for me, darlin’. I’ll stick with trusty ol’ Saturnine — she’s never let me down yet!” He patted his sword lovingly, and then began to lash the new one across his back. “But I reckon I will take this with me — should fetch a pretty penny once we get back from our little escapade. Well, Katja, looks like you guessed right! And not a moment too quick, neither. So let’s hustle ourselves down and see if we can’t dig up a wordling.”
The party descended the stairs, and found that the torch was now entirely unnecessary — the absence of the fog, along with meaningful pieces of the walls, allowed ample light to make it into the shaft of the tower. Their descent was more perilous than the ascent had been, however, as large chunks of staircase had fallen into the chamber below, and still more were highly unstable, leaving our heroes — Gell, really, as his size, which had been so valuable against the skeleton horde, now worked against him — having to test their footing very carefully. But they did make it back down, and the lobby, which had been almost eerily pristine before, now looked like a proper ruin.
“Well, that’s more befittin’ a tower out here in the middle of noplace, anyhow,” Gell joked. He could not resist a peek out the door before they continued down, and he pulled it open, nearly getting himself buried under an avalanche of bones.
Katja found this highly amusing — the curse dissipated, the bones were now just normal old bones, and no longer seemed quite so threatening. The field was utterly strewn with them, and the brunt of them were piled around the base of the tower. “My god,” Katja exclaimed, “these people… are they all people the curse has claimed over the years?”
“Couldn’t be all of ’em — curse had to have a few to get started, I reckon. But, yeah, darlin’, curses are a bad business. I dealt with many of ’em over the years myself, and still this one nearly had me for lunch.”
Katja paled. “Let’s… let’s go downstairs. I don’t want to look at this anymore.”
The descent to the basement was much shorter than the climb to the loft had been; the stairs only turned three or four times before depositing them in a large, dark vault. The light coming in from above was very limited, and the torch seemed to penetrate only a short distance in the oppressive gloom. Gell strained to make out any details about the chamber they were in, but the darkness was overwhelming; it seemed to be a large storage chamber of some sort, and the floor was littered with scattered and rotted debris of various sorts — the remnants of ruined books, clothing, and furniture, from the look of it. Peering into the flow, Gell found it eerily quiet; there was a faint ripple coming from somewhere around, but he couldn’t place it exactly.
“Sarai, you feel anything?”
“Very faintly. There’s some kind of energy here, unless that’s just left over from the curse.”
“I mean wordling-wise. Any sign?”
Sarai’s brow furrowed imperceptibly. “Nothing. But when I checked earlier, I mean, before we left, there was definitely something here.”
“Could be somebody got here a bit quicker.”
“I guess it’s possible, but –” Sarai trailed off, as she noticed what Gell’s keener hearing had picked up a moment earlier — what appeared to be a faint sound of breathing. Faint, but growing in intensity. “Gell,” she whispered, “hey Gell — what do you suppose that is?”
Gell wouldn’t have needed to answer even if he’d had time, for the breathing suddenly spiked into a huge, gasping intake, and then a flash of flame roared across the room. Gell barely had time to leap clear of it, and the debris had no chance at all, rapidly combusting in the sudden intense heat. The spreading fire provided a new source of light, however, and suddenly their antagonist became visible — and hell if it wasn’t the biggest, meanest looking dragon right out of the story books.
Thirty feet from head to tail if it was an inch, its scales a dark red hue, and its eyes burning with a wholly different fire from the all-too-familiar animating force behind the skeletons, the dragon slowly stomped toward Gell. Uncertainly, he drew Saturnine from its sheath, and began searching frantically for an opening, an opportunity — something. How do you fight something this size? Damn thing ain’t even supposed to exist! he thought, deciding with what little time he had remaining that probably the neck would be his best target — eyes are too hard to hit, and the neck has to be flexible, so it would probably be less armoured than the rest of the body.
But the time it took Gell to formulate his plan was also enough time for the dragon to recover from its last blast and begin the intake process to create another. Gell looked quickly to either side, and decided he would dodge away from the remainder of the party, and he took a quick leap and roll right about the same time the dragon released its next jet of flame.
The blast was powerful enough that it rocked the entire foundation of the vault, sending stones tumbling downward and threatening to bring the entire tower down on top of them. Gell didn’t fare much better — hurled violently across the chamber, he plowed solidly into the quivering wall behind him. Dragging himself to his feet, clutching at Saturnine, he looked up at the towering beast lumbering toward him and cursed.
“For fuck’s sake,” the Puritan muttered, “why can’t anything ever just go easy?”
But the dragon, he judged, had made a mistake — a fatal one, if he’d have anything to say about it. It had drawn close enough to him that he’d be able to close the distance before it could recover and fire again. Granted, he was hardly sure he’d be able to handle it in close combat, but he figured he may as well die fighting. Swirling Saturnine over his head, he signed for Deflection and charged, screaming out his best war cry, at the beast. It swiped at him with a foreclaw, but he was prepared, and leapt off to the side. The dragon was determined to outsmart him, though, and snapped with its jaws toward his only landing spot.
But Gell knew this was coming also, and leapt straight up as soon as he landed. The dragon’s jaws snapped shut on nothing, and the Puritan swiftly switched his sign to Blasting, sweeping the orange blade down through the neck of the impossible creature. He hated using the Blasting sign; the kickback was ferocious, and always left him disoriented for his followup. This time he needn’t have worried, as the sign never had the opportunity to trigger — his blade passed ineffectually through the neck of the dragon, and he along with it, tumbling onto the ground in a heap.
“The hell kind of dragon is this?” he exclaimed, understanding even as he was saying it. As the dragon roared and prepared for another flaming geyser, Gell sought desperately through the flow for the small eddy he had noticed earlier. He found it exactly where he expected — under the dragon’s haunches — and swiftly darted under and through the lizard, Saturnine glowing a reassuring blue, the Deflection sign being his last line of defense if he had guessed wrong and found himself in the path of a dragon attack.
This was not the move the dragon had anticipated, and it ceased its flame attack for the time being, attempting to reorient itself to the intruder. But the moment of hesitation cost it, and Gell’s blade found a home right in the centre of the dragon’s being — in the centre, as it turned out, of a crafty young woman in a startling red bodysuit.
The dragon immediately vanished, the room grew calm, and Gell took stock of the situation. He drew Saturnine back from the torso of the woman, and she gasped and slumped to the ground, the blood from her wound mingling with the red of her attire and her flowing red hair. For all this, she was not yet dead, and she slowly turned her head toward Gell and cast out what was probably a defiant laugh.
“You haven’t… accomplished anything. The Word belongs to… to us now.”
“To who now? Who are you, anyways?”
“I am called… Crimson. I am of the Hand. My sisters… will… avenge me.”
“Hand? Sisters?”
“Sisters… will… avenge…” she gasped out the final syllable, and her eyes dimmed and grew cold. Gell wasted no time in signing Nullification, and swept Saturnine through the woman’s corpse. The familiar sound played itself again, but only very faintly. And then there was silence.
Gell stood over the body of the woman, staring down at her. Then a curious expression came over his face, and he suddenly bent down, holding his face very close to her, tracing up and down along her body.
“Gell?” Katja whispered, almost afraid to break the silence, “are you okay? What are you looking for?”
For a moment, Gell did not respond. Then, suddenly, he looked over to her and stood back up again. “Looking for? Not a thing, darlin’. Not a thing.”
“So,” Sarai interjected, “there was a dragon… right? I mean, for a while?”
“Yeah,” Gell replied, “there was a dragon. Might not be the last one, at that.”
“What’s this Hand thing she was talking about, anyway? Because that’s where this piece of me went, and we need to go get it.”
“I don’t rightly know. But for now, how’s about we just clear out of this place once and for all? I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen all of it I want to see.”
“Gell…” Katja asked softly, “why did you attack her again when she was already dead?”
The Puritan looked at her sadly. “I know, darlin’. Seems pretty senseless, don’t it. Had to, though — girl was a mage. Not much of one, but, still, it was there. Kinda my job to make sure she don’t come back to haunt anybody.”
“But when…” Katja looked confused. “Doesn’t make sense. Gell… are mages really that bad?”
Gell was very quiet for a moment, and then finally answered her. “For my sake, darlin’, I sure hope to god they are.”
Nobody spoke for a moment, everyone just contemplating the ruin that once was a spirited young woman called Crimson. Gell, unable to bear the pathos any longer, attempted once more to lift the mood and (hopefully) get them out of that damned tower.
“Well, come on, ladies — I don’t reckon you want to be here much longer neither. We can make Port Penrod in a few days if we head south of here — get us a nice few days sleepin’ in real beds and eatin’ real food. Should be able to fence this sword for a fair bit of coin, after all!”