Cinder reached out and placed a hand on his bare chest. She closed her eyes. Her brow furrowed and Mercer felt the soft, tingling sensation of her healing touch flow through him.
It took three separate castings, but Cinder finally managed patch up the worst of the damage. When she finished, he pulled his armor back on and she helped him to his feet. While Cinder was busy tending Mercer’s wounds, Drake had made a circuit of the rooftop and scrambled onto the stone dais. He stumped over to them and said, “We have a problem.”
They both looked at him.
Drake said, “Where’s the money?”
“What?” said Cinder.
“I’ve been all around the tower,” Drake told them. “There’s no money.”
Cinder shook her head. “That can’t be.”
“It must be here somewhere,” Mercer said. He grabbed the edge of the dais and hauled himself up for a look. The platform was empty save for claw marks in the stone. He dropped back down.
Cinder said. “My calculations were good. The expansion, the castle, they prove I was right.”
Drake’s face worked into a snarl. “Then where in the hell is the money?”
“Calm down,” Mercer said. “It’s here somewhere.” He circled the dais and found a small stair cut into the edge, leading up to the top.
“I already looked,” Drake said.
Mercer ignored him and went up anyway, while Cinder inspected each of the pillars holding up the roof. Mercer walked across the platform, and in the very center, his boot heel made a hollow impact instead of a solid thump. A trapdoor was cleverly concealed in the stonework, and hidden beneath a layer of frost. Mercer scraped ice away with his boot and yelled, “I found something!”
Cinder and Drake hurried up the steps and across the platform.
“I knew it,” Cinder said. “I knew it. I was right!”
She hunkered down at the trapdoor with an eager expression on her face.
Mercer cautioned her back with an outstretched arm. “It may be booby trapped.”
Drake grunted. “And our traps expert is not here.”
Mercer frowned and nodded. “You two stand back.”
Cinder and Drake backed away. Mercer used his sword to hack at the ice until he found a slim crevice that served as a handhold. He set his jaw and strained with his muscular legs. The stone lid scraped open inch by inch to reveal a dark cavity beneath. Mercer pushed the lid aside with one final heave.
Cinder and Drake hurried forward for a peek. Inside the recess lay a large chest of banded iron. Mercer reached in and gripped the chest with both hands. His face turned red and veins stood out on his neck as he wrestled the wooden trunk out of the cubbyhole. It landed on the platform with a heavy thud and a musical jingle from inside.
A smile lit up Cinder’s face.
Mercer eased open the lid and, when he didn’t get a face full of poison, he threw it wide. The golden glow of ten million ByteCoin lit their faces.
“We found it.” Cinder drove a hand into the pile, lifted them out, and let them slip through her fingers.
Behind him, Mercer heard the soft rustle of a cloak and the whisper of steel. He grasped at his sword hilt, pulled the weapon from the sheath, and spun around. His blade flashed through the air and Drake recoiled with a shout of pain. The old sorcerer bent over double, clutching a severed wrist. Dark red blood pissed from the stump of his arm and landed on the stone dais in bright arterial sprays.
Cinder backed away, her hands covering her mouth. Her eyes were wide and her face went pale. “Oh my God! Mercer! What are you doing?”
Mercer calmly pointed to Drake’s severed hand. Cinder looked and saw a dagger clutched in the limp fingers. Realization dawned in her face.
Drake staggered backward, hugging the wounded arm to his chest, and tried in vain to stop the blood. His face twisted into a mask of naked hatred. “How did you know?”
“Trix told me,” said Mercer. “She whispered it in my ear before we left the Disciples encampment.”
“That money should be mine,” Drake snarled. “I earned it! You’d be nothing without me. You and Trix both think you’re so special. I’m the one who makes sure you don’t get your guts ripped out. I’m the one who stopped that dragon from turning you into confetti. You’d have died a hundred times without me. A thousand. All you do is swing an axe. I do all the work and you get all the reward. You get all the fame and all the attention.” He turned his burning eyes on Cinder. “You get all the women! What do I get?
“Nothing!” Drake screeched. “I get ignored. Women look at me like a leper! Everyone talks about Mercer and Trix. The big bad warrior and the sword-wielding maiden. No one ever talks about me!”
“Is that what this is about?” Mercer asked. “You want fame?”
“I want what’s rightfully mine!”
“You’ll get a third,” Mercer told him. “That’s what you’re entitled to.”
Drake shook his head. His face was pale and sweat gathered on his forehead, trailing down over his weathered cheeks into his white beard. His eyes bulged out of his skull. “No,” he yelled. “Not this time. This time I’m taking it all!”
The air around him came alive with the sparkle and crack of electricity.
Before he could cast, Mercer reared back and threw the sword like a javelin. The blade flashed across the platform and buried itself in Drake’s heart, cutting off his words and severing his connection to the Mystical Plane. He stumbled backwards, let out a strangled cry, and toppled over. A pool of dark blood spread around his body. He gave one last, feeble twitch, then lay still.
Cinder stood in stunned silence for several seconds and then said, “You knew? All this time you knew he was planning to betray you?”
Mercer nodded.
“And you trusted him to help you defeat the dragon?”
“I was hoping he’d have a change of heart.”
Cinder looked at the body of Drake and shook her head. He had wanted it all, and instead he’d get nothing. She turned to Mercer. “Should we give his share to Trix?”
“I don’t think she’d take it,” Mercer said.
Chapter Eighty-One
It was evening and the sun was setting by the time Mercer and Cinder lugged the heavy chest down from the tower and across the frozen town to the stone jetty. The snow had finally let up and a bright red sun threw their shadows long across the water. In the distance, they could see a transport ship cutting through the ice pack. They set the dragon’s hoard down with a heavy thump and Cinder perched on top of the chest, mopping sweat from her brow.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get back to the Real?” Mercer asked.
Cinder clutched her cloak tight and said, “I have no idea. It’s been so long, I’m not sure I’ll even recognize myself. In a way, it won’t feel, well, real. Waking up in the real world, realizing all of this was a computer simulation . . .”
She shook her head and repeated herself. “It won’t feel real.”
Mercer tapped his toe against the chest full of Byte. “This is real.”
Cinder laid a hand on the rough hewn wood and smiled, but the smile ran away from her face. Mercer started to ask what was wrong. Cinder silenced him with a finger. She stood, took his hands in hers and said, “So is this,” before pressing her lips against his.
Mercer gathered her in his arms and they held each other until the transport bumped up against the stone jetty. A bell rang on the castle deck. Rigging creaked overhead and waves lapped against the hull. They wrestled the chest up onto the ship. Once they were aboard, the vessel silently pulled away from the wharf, leaving the frozen north. They sailed east, into the gathering gloom, leaving behind the Realms for the real world.
The End
Afterword
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About the Author
Willard Black is the cantankerous author of the Savage Realm Adventures. He lives on six acres in southern Montana with a pair of mongrel dogs and his testy old biddy of a wife. He published the first Savage Realm story in the late 80’s during the height of the fantasy adventure craze. He’s been playing video games since Pac-Man and he’s still upset they turned the works of Robert E. Howard into an MMO and not the Savage Realms. When not writing, Willard can be found grinding in Conan Exiles.
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