“It is so good to have the talents of the Tano family close by. Master Tano has this amazing talent to find souls no matter where they are. My newborn son died over twenty years ago in my arms. There was nothing to stop his soul from meeting Botathora and moving on to the next stage of death.”

  “That’s when a soul is finally safe from the prying hands of you wicked necromancers!”

  “That is what I thought, too. And yet, Master Tano plucked him from Botathora’s special place in the underworld and brought him to me. And now he is here with me, strong and healthy as ever! I guarantee you, Bone Priestess…” he rubbed his hands together, “... you did not bring enough bullets to bring him down.”

  “And this one’s soul?” Cadence moved out of the path of the body pile. It was slow and didn’t have the ability to do anything but feebly wave the limbs awkwardly sticking out of it. The worst it could do to her was make her vomit.

  “My first wife,” Lord Deloren said. “She fell ill shortly after giving birth. Admittedly, my grief for our dead son quickly turned to rage and I didn’t have it in me to give her a proper death ceremony. She didn’t properly nurture our baby while it was inside of her, and I have always held her responsible for his death. Therefore, I didn’t think she deserved a proper death, herself.”

  Cadence’s stomach turned again. She couldn’t find anything to say and continued backing away as the creatures pursued her. Her fingers went to the bullets along her belt and she tried to reload her pistol.

  Lord Deloren went back to his tome, reading it from the small table, and started removing his gloves. The sleek brown goatskin was fit for a noble but hid something vile beneath his left hand. Cadence watched him reveal his Anzharian Maw—the undeniable mark of a necromancer.

  The parasite was given to mages when they were ready to fully dedicate themselves to the practice. It could never be removed. No matter how much of the arm was amputated, the Maw would be there. It was used to siphon life energy out of mortal beings. Once they began reanimating the dead, a necromancer relied on life energy to keep themselves sustained, but it was also the very life force that brought bodies back from the dead for them to use.

  Next time, she told herself, she’d just start investigations with an extremely thorough handshake.

  She was much faster than Lord Deloren’s monstrosities, but she had no idea how to take them down with what little she had. Besides, she knew she was in for a whole lot more.

  “I’m surprised you came down here,” he mused, opening his hand wide. The Maw embedded in his palm had rows of sharp, needle-like teeth. It snapped hungrily at the air. “Took a lot of guts to come down pathways lined with an army in stasis. All for me?”

  With a silver bullet loaded, she turned her pistol on him. The flesh construct’s speed increased and swung its arm to stop her. Cadence felt the impact of over four feet and eighty pounds of flesh. It was like getting hit by a whole other person. She fell back, hard, and the construct loomed over her, getting ready to swing his fist down on her face. She rolled away. The construct’s attack connected with the ground.

  For all the work put into it, Cadence saw that it was an unstable creature. Flesh split along the construct’s hand as it hit solid ground with a splat. Dark, coagulating blood seeped out from the wound, and the dark stitching along the pinky and the wrist started to come undone.

  “You wouldn’t dare wake all those corpses in the catacombs,” Cadence said, getting to her feet. “All that moving earth would cave in this whole place. We’d all die.”

  “I would absolutely dare it, Bone Priestess. I fortified this place long before I started storing bodies.” He smirked. “The earth would rumble a bit, yes. And the neighbors would just shrug it off as feuding faeries or the goddess Rosamar moving beneath the ground. They will have no idea of my creations.”

  “Then why do it?” Cadence was careful to move far away from the construct before aiming her pistol at Lord Deloren again. “That’s what you all want, isn’t it? Necromancers are all the same, Lord Deloren. You all want to control your armies so that you can terrorize those who have wronged you and take over the land.”

  “Trust that those who have wronged me have already been terrorized, Bone Priestess. We are not all the same.”

  The pistol was shaking in her hand. She needed answers before she ended him. She needed to understand. The construct’s speed spiked once again as soon as it saw the threat she posed to Lord Deloren, and it raced toward her.

  She turned and fired the shot into the construct, hitting it in the shoulder. It reared back and the wound hissed. Threads holding the shoulder and the arm together loosened.

  “Bone Priestess, all this effort was merely a means to protect myself. Once I had convinced myself of what I’d do with my son’s soul, I knew it’d take a long time and I’d be breaking a lot of laws.” Lord Deloren’s hand pulsed with black energy that arced like lightning between his fingers. “I will not be stopped. Even if I wanted to, it’s too late to stop. The Maw is already a part of me. I will be feeding from mortal energy till the day the Rot consumes me.”

  Cadence backed away from the construct, putting as much distance between them while she reloaded.

  “And it was all so you could turn your son’s soul into this thing?”

  Lord Deloren shrugged. “It was also so I could turn my first wife into that thing.”

  The body pile had reached Cadence and swung its several arms at her, knocking her to the ground. Hands clawed and pulled, but the pile’s chaotic movements couldn’t overwhelm Cadence. She shoved them away and crawled out of reach, tucking stray wisps of hair behind her ear.

  The rumble she had been dreading arrived. Lord Deloren summoned his army from the catacombs around them.

  “Tillie! Tillie, wake up!”

  Tillie could feel her body shaking, but there was only darkness. The fatigue consuming her was unfathomable. Her eyelids were so heavy, she didn’t think she’d ever have the strength to open them.

  But strong hands shook her shoulders and wouldn’t relent. Her mind slowly rose from the depths of unconsciousness. After a groan, her dark eyes fluttered open.

  Dane breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank gods! How do you feel?”

  Tillie shivered though she was still half covered by canvas. The air was thick and nauseating, and something smelled vile. She sat up from the ground and looked at the two dead bodies behind her.

  “Like I’m going to vomit. We have to get out of here! Something about this place is wrong—”

  “You’re sensing the Forbidden,” Dane told her. “And under any other circumstance, I’d say you’re right about leaving. But…” he took her hand and slapped the hilt of a silver dagger in her palm, “... but Cadence is here. I bet she came to get us.”

  Tillie’s heartbeat quickened. “Where are we?”

  “Not a clue. But we’re underground. Got here on that platform I bet.” He gestured to the dais with the two bodies. “Do you remember what happened before? It’s a blur for me.”

  Tillie pushed the rest of the canvas off and got to her feet. Dane rose with her.

  “We went to Tano Manor to ask about Lord Deloren. We were invited in by the woman at the door, and then she must have used some kind of magic on us to make us fall asleep. That’s all I remember. Did we even get to ask our question?”

  “Does it matter? Seems like the answer is a very positive yes at this point. Come on, let’s see if we can find Cadence. She left us some of her weapons, so be careful. She knew there would be danger.”

  Before they had taken two steps toward the catacomb pathways, the ground beneath them rumbled. The earthen walls of the pathways cracked and crumbled and dust filled the air.

  Tillie glanced at Dane. “Still Forbidden?”

  He nodded. “Guess we found all those bodies you were worried about.” One by one, corpses in varying states of decay burst forth from the rubble.

  Tillie could not be so calm. Her insides quaked as she watched the bodies twist and reanimate, jerking around aimlessly. She had worried about desecration of bodies, but only at the level Cadence first spoke to her of. Only of the casual mistreatment of the dead, the dissection without permission, the lack of proper death ceremonies…

  She never imagined she’d witness necromancy with her own eyes. She lurched forward and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Hey now, keep it together!” Dane grabbed her shoulder. “Keep it together or we’re never going to get out of this!”

  “Dane—” she willed herself not to dry heave, “—how? How do we get out of this? And how are you so okay?”

  “It’s how I got the grave warden job,” he said. “The only thing stronger than my sense for the Forbidden is my resolve for it. Come on,” he took her hand and led her away from the catacombs, “before they find us.”

  “What are we going to do? What’s our plan?”

  Dane looked around the dimly lit room while the undead hobbled around on the other end. Most of the light came from candles on a desk overseeing the dais.

  “If the necromancer raising the army is smart,” he started, “they’ll have a backup plan for if things go wrong. Magic can be faulty, especially when you’re breaking the rules with it.” He went to the desk and started opening drawers. “There’s got to be something around here somewhere.”

  “If they’re smart,” Tillie reminded him.

  “It’s Lord Deloren.” Dane’s look was a glare. “We both know that’s who we’re going to find if we keep looking, Tillie.”

  She shook her head, still shivering. “I can’t believe that, Dane. No. Not until I see it with my own eyes. He would never do something like this! We were brought to a lair unconscious and rolled up like dead bodies!”

  “We saw him walk inside Tano Manor!” he yelled. “Hell, Tillie, I bet someone’s been shadowing him since before Cadence’s investigation even started! I bet that whole attack at the Plaid Bonnet was staged to get him away from her!”

  “B-but he’s been working on my husband’s case for years, he’s been studying the ailment for me, looking for a—”

  “It was the perfect thing to cover up what he was actually doing!”

  “So what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say I’m stupid? Naïve? Blind?”

  Dane finally yanked open a drawer with something inside. He picked up a key. “Where is there something to open? Something with a lock?”

  “Oh hells, Dane!” Tillie picked up the desk chair and smashed it over the top of the desk. “There’s no time for this!” The desktop splintered away. Directly beneath it was an iron sword with an arrow-shaped tip.

  The corpses took notice of the noise and started creaking their way over. Dane broke away pieces of the shattered desktop and grabbed the sword’s hilt.

  “How the hell did you know there’d be a compartment there?”

  “Have you never owned a desk before, you idiot? There’s tons of places to hide something and you come up with a key? We don’t have time for that!”

  He shrugged. “Alright. Smash first, ask questions later. That’s the Tillie Way.”

  He kept Cadence’s backup pistol at his hip and brandished the sword as they approached the catacombs. Tillie held out her dagger with shaking hands.

  “What’s our plan?” she asked. “And what is that sword? Will it do us any good?”

  “Don’t know what the sword is, but the plan is to start hacking and figure it out on the way. It was there for a reason.”

  Tillie watched him race forward to the corpses and start swinging. The iron blade cut through them smooth like butter. Each corpse was felled with only one strike, but she was still scared for him and his recklessness. The undead were numerous and didn’t cease coming.

  “Dane, there’s too many!”

  “We have to find Cadence!” he yelled back. “Besides, this is good experience. Imagine how prepared I’ll be if all the dead in the cemetery wake up!”

  She stared down at Cadence’s dagger in her hand. The Bone Priestess wouldn’t falter. The Bone Priestess would run in with abandon, pressing forward, using her bullish ways to win. Tillie fancied herself a little more cautious but realized how bullish she herself had been when Cadence tried to keep her out of the investigation.

  “I couldn’t take no for an answer.” She swallowed hard. It was time to fight the fight she had earned.

  She ran, taking her place behind Dane to fend off any corpses that snuck in through the range of the mysterious sword. One lunged forward and dug its bony fingers into Dane’s shoulder, and Tillie sprang to action. She sank the dagger into the rotting corpse’s skull. Her blood rushed and excitement filled her core as it fell to the ground.

  “Shit,” Dane said, “I didn’t think you were really going to do it. Come on, let’s do this!”

  They hacked their way through the catacombs. Dane had noticed that some of the undead did not engage them, but walked away, down another path. They were all going to the same place. Dane knew that’s where they would find what they were looking for.

  Some of the dead were too far decomposed to pose a threat. The reanimation spell was not strong enough to keep them pieced together, and after several steps they clattered to the ground in a heap of bones and dust.

  “He tried to do too much,” Dane mumbled. “The scope of his spell was too big. Spread too thin.”

  Tillie’s adrenaline had abolished her fear and she came out from behind Dane, shoving an oncoming corpse to the ground. It tried to push back for only a second, but all its strength had gone to staying together. It fell like the others.

  “Do you think he just wanted to scare us?” Tillie asked.

  “It’s not a bad plan if you consider most people are terrified at the prospect of the Forbidden. Especially necromancy. If I was anyone else, I’m sure I would have shit myself and tried to get out of here. You did pretty well, yourself, Til.”

  The pathways leading to the main room were easy to clear. The silver dagger and the strange iron sword had an advantage against the undead, but it mattered more that Lord Deloren’s magic was losing its power. They reached the main room headstrong and confident, but what they saw stopped them cold.

  The horrific flesh construct and the moving pile of bodies and viscera was much worse than the ragged army of bones and rot wobbling throughout the catacombs. The construct had Cadence in its grasp. It had wrapped its arms around her tight. She coughed as the air left her and could not find its way back in.

  Tillie’s eyes brimmed with tears when she saw Lord Deloren approaching Cadence and the construct with his Maw.

  “You monster!” Her white-knuckled grasp on the dagger quivered. “How could you do this? How could you betray the trust of all the people you’ve helped? I thought the people, your community, I thought we all meant something to you!”

  “Tillie Boyce.” Lord Deloren turned his gaze to her. “I would never expect a pitiful young mother to understand the world around her. You are no exception.”

  Cadence coughed. “Stitches…”

  Lord Deloren brought the Maw to Cadence’s face. He stroked her chin with his fingertips and the Maw snapped at her, so close to the life inside of her.

  “Tillie,” he said, “most of us scholars and doctors have no interest in people and their wellbeing. No, we do what we do because the mysteries of life and of the body pull us into study. All we want is knowledge. We want to understand. Finding the answer to a question like Galen Boyce’s condition was an exciting prospect.”

  Dane drew the pistol and fired it at Lord Deloren. The construct dropped Cadence immediately and raced toward the new threat, its footsteps thundering as it stomped through the room.

  Lord Deloren took the bullet in his arm and roared in pain. The bullet sparked and spit smoke as it stayed embedded in him.

  Cadence gasped for air and locked eyes with him. “Necromancer filth. You commit the highest offense to Botathora. The pain of her sacred weapons will be eternal.”

  Tillie rushed to her side and helped her to her feet. “Are you alright?”

  “Dane’s sword. The Minute Hand. That’s an artifact from the Sanctum!” Cadence said. “Where did he get it?”

  “Ah, the little item I thefted with the help of Brin Colt,” Lord Deloren answered for her, gritting his teeth through the pain. “The Sanctum was such a fan of him. Absolutely incredible how much he was able to get away with.” With his right hand, he materialized a slender black metal staff. Akashic energy crackled at its tip.

  “Gods damned Brin Colt.” Cadence spat. “Tillie, you two take care of the giant. I’ll take this wretch.”

  Tillie stepped away and Lord Deloren turned his magic on her, firing a stream of akasha that looked like lightning. It missed her except for small singe on her cheek. The akashic bruising spread across her skin like a web.

  “Keep your magic on me, necromancer!” Cadence shouted. “Though that was a pitiful Cold Bolt. Clearly you didn’t master your general magic enough before moving on to the Forbidden.”

  Lord Deloren growled and prepared another Cold Bolt. “You and your team will not get out of here, Bone Priestess. I have invested too much time to let you ruin my efforts.”

  She closed the distance between them and threw her fist into his face. He was in good enough health to stand and move without his cane—Cadence guessed he had indulged in someone’s life energy with the Maw before the encounter—but he was still an old man at the end of the day. The impact of Cadence’s fist knocked him back.

  The flesh construct sensed the danger to Lord Deloren and turned back around, heading for Cadence. Tillie stared as it stormed by oblivious to her presence. Her eyes followed the trail of black stitches holding the grotesque beast together. Dane came to her side, holding the Minute Hand out to defend her.

  “Forget attacking it,” she said. “I’m going to take it apart! You kill that other thing!”

  Dane wrinkled up his nose and stared at the mass of body parts pulling itself along the ground. “I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing.”

 

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