Vampire Mist: Ballad of the B-Team, Book One

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Vampire Mist: Ballad of the B-Team, Book One Page 20

by Adam Thomas

The Crossroads stood in the middle of the endless flat miles of central Arillon, due south of Thousand Spires. The two major roads of Sularil met there, the Kelenday March, which ran north to south from Thousand Spires to Kelentir, and the Arillon March, which ran east to west from Torniel-by-the-Sea to Anvilcairn. The Crossroads was a town of inns and eateries. The inhabitants either worked in these establishments or farmed the surrounding land to provide hungry travelers’ their fare. Indeed, lush farmland surrounded the Crossroads – all except for the patch of land due west of town, just south of the Arillon March.

  A burial mound rose there. Sickly brown moss covered it, but nothing else grew on its hump, nor in a perfect circle extending out a stone’s throw from the top of the mound. The B-Team stood just outside the circle and assessed their options.

  “If we step inside, will we go all brown and shrivelly, too?” Emric wondered aloud.

  “Might only be plants that are affected,” Alurel said, and she tapped her toe into the circle. “Seems safe enough.”

  “So you don’t feel like all the moisture is getting sucked from your body?”

  “My lips are a bit chapped, but they felt like that before.” Alurel strode forward and the others followed.

  They scaled the mound and stood at its center. Turning a slow circle, they took in the surrounding land. “There’s definitely something magical below us,” Shonasir said. “What else would kill the ground in such a regular shape?”

  “The question is, how do we get in?” Sorvek asked.

  Rhys pulled a folded piece of parchment from his belt. “The brochure from the inn says that this mound is haunted. Every new moon, the people of the Crossroads hear a moaning sound coming across the fields. It says that a few years ago, a band of grave robbers went in and never came out.”

  “A likely story,” Emric said. “What did they say? ‘Hey, we’re a bunch of grave robbers. Mind if we go rob that ancient burial mound that is an important source of your town’s tourism revenue?’ Come on, Rhys, the inn is just trying to entertain its customers.”

  Rhys tapped the page. “It says here the entrance is on the western side, a heavy boulder that the townspeople put back after the grave robbers moved it.”

  Emric peered down the slope. “All right, so that part of the brochure is accurate. Let’s go.”

  They scrambled down the mound and regarded the boulder. “You’re up, Mr. Tourist,” Emric said to Rhys.

  The big Kelenite slipped the brochure back in his belt, spit on his hands, and grabbed the boulder. It was a solid mass of fieldstone as big as Rhys and many times as heavy. From the front he could not get the purchase he needed to shift it, so he climbed on top of the boulder and planted his feet against the mound. He dug the heels of his hands into the boulder and pushed with his legs. The boulder shifted all at once and rolled away. Rhys fell down hard on his belly and lay there groaning.

  Sorvek helped him up and brushed him off. “Good work,” he said. “For a minute there, I thought I might have had to help.”

  Rhys raised an eyebrow as he retied his locs, which had come undone in his fall. “Your willingness is most appreciated,” he said, his voice flat with sarcasm.

  The B-Team lit torches and crept into the dark tunnel. The packed earthen ceiling was higher than they expected. Even Rhys had no problem standing tall. The tunnel spiraled downward, and soon they were below ground level. The narrow passage opened into a wide chamber, the walls of which were made of stacked stones, like the old stone fences of Tornellan farmlands.

  Shonasir ventured forward, but after a dozen steps they stumbled over something. They knelt down and passed their torch in front of them. “Uh, I think I found the grave robbers,” they said.

  Half a dozen bodies, desiccated but not yet skeletal, lay on the ground, all facing the tunnel’s entrance. The B-Team crouched over them, pooling their light.

  “Stab wounds,” Alurel said.

  “Ugh, this one’s head is turned all the way around,” Sorvek said.

  “Perhaps the mound is haunted after all,” Emric said, looking over at Rhys. “What else does the brochure say?”

  Rhys slipped the brochure from his belt and squinted at it in the dim light. “‘The burial mounds of Arillon belong to the goliath people, who inhabited the vast plains before the Tornellans arrived in Torniel.’ It says here the Tornellans who moved west into Arillon encountered the last of the goliaths. This was a long time ago. Scholars estimate over 1,500 years.”

  “There’s lore about them in Anvilcairn,” Emric said. “Some were warlike, some peaceful. They were shepherds, ranchers, farmers, traders. But they died out before my grandmother’s grandmother’s time. In the songs, we call them giants, not goliaths. They were twice as tall as us dwarves.”

  “That explains the ceilings in here,” Shonasir said.

  Rhys pointed to the brochure. “This mound is the only haunted mound in Arillon. There are seventy-one total spread across the land. Some have been excavated by archaeologists. But not this one.”

  “I can see why,” Sorvek said, nudging one of the unfortunate grave robbers with his foot. “Looks like they were fleeing when they were killed.”

  “How about we make it a little less haunted,” Shonasir said as they manifested their bow.

  The elf led the way, their superior vision a boon in the darkness of the next tunnel. Behind them, Sorvek stage-whispered, “Why do we always end up in tombs?”

  No one answered, so Sorvek kept up his whispered patter. “First Verinurel’s tomb where we got the kaerest. Then the ossuary in the Thousand Spires, the mausoleum in Miresedge, the grave –”

  Sorvek ceased his listing at a sharp hiss from Shonasir. “Up ahead,” they whispered. “They’re just milling about.”

  Half a dozen skeletons filled the next chamber. All of them stood at least a foot taller than Rhys. They held ancient, rusted weapons in their bony hands.

  “Fire?” Emric suggested.

  Alurel put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Not the mansion-burning kind. We don’t want to cook ourselves.”

  Emric nodded and signaled to Rhys and Shonasir. A ball of fire gathered in the dwarf’s hand. Rhys’s yellow karest glowed with inner heat. The arrowhead drawn against Shonasir’s bow went flame-red, like a live coal.

  “Now,” Alurel said, and the three fire-wielders went to work. Alurel added a searing moonbeam and Sorvek peppered the skeletons with blasts of pure energy. Three of the skeletons broke apart before any of them could react. Only one reached the party, and Rhys dissected it with his swords.

  Even with only small fires, smoke filled the chamber. “We can’t do that again,” Shonasir said. “The further down we go, the less circulation. We’ll suffocate for sure if we use fire.”

  Alurel cast a gust of wind that sent the smoke up the tunnel to the entrance. “That will do for now, but you’re right. My wind won’t have anywhere to go further down.”

  The party collected the thigh bones from the six skeletons. Rhys placed them in his bag and lugged it onto his back. “These goliaths must have weighed four or five hundred pounds,” he said.

  They pressed on, spiraling down again. The air grew close and stale. The only sounds were their breathing and their scuffling feet.

  “Hello, what’s this?” Alurel stopped and examined a large rectangular stone set into the wall of stacked stones.

  “A door?” Shonasir offered.

  “Without a handle or hinges. I wonder what’s on the other side. Rhys?”

  The big swordsman ran his hand along the stone. “It’s no good. There’s nothing to grab for purchase. And I don’t fancy pounding on it. That might cause a cave in.”

  Emric slipped off his instruments and joined Rhys at the smooth stone. “You’re sure it’s a door, Alurel?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure what else it could
be.”

  “Then here goes nothing,” the dwarf said, as he ripped a gash in Ethereality and stepped through.

  A moment later they heard Emric’s voice, muffled from the other side of the stone. “It’s a closet of some sort. An armory. Wait a moment.”

  Rhys felt the stone tremble beneath his hand, and then it swung outward silently.

  “Looks like it can only be opened from within,” Emric said.

  “What kind of storage space can’t be accessed?” Sorvek asked.

  “The ceremonial kind,” Shonasir said. “This must be where the weapons of the deceased were kept.”

  The narrow chamber held several highly polished gray weapons along racks on the wall. Rhys picked up a round shield and tapped it with his finger. Rather than ringing like steel, the tapping made a dull thudding sound. “What kind of metal is this?” he wondered aloud.

  Sorvek hefted a maul, and Alurel ran her hand along the length of a quarterstaff. “I don’t think it’s metal at all,” she said. “This is wood.”

  “Can’t be,” Rhys said. “It’s too hard.”

  Emric wasn’t listening to the conversation. He was captivated by a thin piece of the strange gray material which rested horizontal on two nails driven into the far wall. He had to stand on his tiptoes and stretch to reach it. His fingers closed around the wand, and he knew immediately that this was a powerfully magical item.

  “Look at this,” he said. “Fifteen hundred years and still humming with magic.”

  “You hum with magic, too,” Alurel said. “It suits you.”

  “And that staff suits you,” Emric said.

  “Don’t you all feel a little bad about taking these items,” Shonasir said. “We’re not like those robbers upstairs.”

  “Exactly,” Sorvek said, giving the maul an experimental swing. “We’re still alive.”

  “Let’s at least use them in here,” Alurel said. “Perhaps they will be strong against any more skeletons we meet.”

  “Fine,” Shonasir said, relenting. “But we should respect the burial practices of these people.”

  “If they stayed dead, I’d respect them,” Sorvek said.

  Again they moved forward, this time clustered around Emric’s conjured light, as their torches threw off too much smoke in the narrow tunnel. The ground sloped down beneath their feet until they came to a dead end. Another piece of smooth stone blocked their way.

  “I’d rather not waste my magical energy this time,” Emric said.

  “Allow me.” Sorvek gripped the maul from the armory in both hands and swung it at the barrier. The stone shattered with a single blow, sending broken rock tumbling down the passage.

  “Good thing that wasn’t loud,” Alurel said over the din.

  Sorvek hefted the maul onto his shoulder and winked at her. “Good thing skeletons don’t have ears.”

  “Hush, you two,” Shonasir whispered. “We don’t know what else is down here.”

  The five adventurers passed through the broken barrier and found out. A sickly green glow lit the circular chamber from above. Shonasir glanced up along their arrow and spied the source, a small gem embedded in the earthen ceiling. The gem shone on a stone sarcophagus in the center of the room, which was surrounded by eight more sarcophagi. The one in the middle was adorned by relief carvings of meticulous detail, while the others were plain yet skillfully wrought.

  The moment Shonasir stepped into the green glow, skeletal hands began gripping the lips of the outer sarcophagi. Shonasir tightened their grip on their bow and scanned the chamber. The stone lids of the sarcophagi were all in pieces on the ground, victims of some powerful force long ago. And now the elf saw what must have broken the stone covers. All the skeletons rising from the coffins were tall, but the one rising from the central coffin towered over the rest. It held a gleaming long sword in its hand. The metal shone in the sickly light, untarnished through age or use. Purple veins of magical energy threaded across the metal of the blade, and they pulsed like a heartbeat.

  Rhys dropped his bag to the ground and unsheathed his twin swords. “Spread out, take down the smaller ones.”

  “Are there any small ones?” Sorvek said, and his question ended with a small whimper.

  But Rhys didn’t hear him. The burly swordsman was rushing forward to engage the central skeleton before the undead menace freed its legs from the sarcophagus. The purple-veined sword crashed into both of Rhys’s blades. Rhys matched the strength of the creature for a moment, but then found his feet sliding backwards on the dusty stone floor. All around him, he saw flashes of magic and arrows flying, but he kept his eyes fixed on the big skeleton.

  The behemoth clambered out of the tomb and bore down on Rhys. Their swords clashed, and again Rhys needed both of his blades to deflect the power of the skeleton. Emric’s voice rose over the noise of the blades, adding a melody to their percussive battle. Two of the smaller skeletons exploded as Emric’s song hit a piercing falsetto note. A third fell at Rhys’s side as Alurel, in panther form, rode it to the ground.

  Rhys fought grimly on. He was usually the strongest one in the fight, but this time he relied on his speed. He ducked and dodged and spun, keeping the big skeleton at bay. But the blows kept raining down, and soon multiple wounds were open and bleeding across Rhys’s shoulders and arms. He could not take his eyes off his foe to see how his friends were faring, but if it were anything like he was, the battle would not be ending in their favor.

  He dashed to the opposite side of the central sarcophagus and tried to catch his breath, which was coming in ragged gasps. He could hear the footfalls of the skeleton clacking on the stone floor as it stalked him. At least he was keeping its attention away from his less protected friends. Rhys sucked down a lungful of the stale air and stood up. Immediately, the skeleton slashed its sword at him, neck high. Rhys met the swing with one of his swords and ducked at the same time. The purple-veined blade sheared one of Rhys’s blades in two, and Rhys struck low with his other sword. He clipped the skeleton across the torso, breaking off a pair of ribs. The skeleton reared back and brought its sword to a guard position.

  “Not invincible after all,” Rhys said through clenched teeth.

  Just then a green flash filled the burial chamber, and Rhys looked up just in time to see the gem in the ceiling shatter. Shonasir lowered their bow as the room went dark. A moment later, the elf’s Awakened Flame flared to life next to them and filled the space with a flickering orange-red glow.

  “Take them down now,” Shonasir called. “I think they’re weaker.”

  Around him, Rhys heard the clacking sound of skeletons collapsing to the ground. He kept the big one occupied until his friends could turn their attention to it. Shonasir’s Flame glided across the floor and lit up the skeleton. Magical blasts from Sorvek, Alurel, and Emric took it apart. Rhys leapt from the top of the central sarcophagus and decapitated the skeleton. Its large skull flew through the air and cracked in half when it hit the stone wall.

  twenty-four

  The Ironwood Seed

  The members of the B-Team caught their breath in a circle around Shonasir’s Flame. “I thought you said no fire,” Emric said.

  “I realized my elemental only gives off smoke if it sets something else alight.” Shonasir looked around the chamber of stone and dirt. “There’s not much to burn here.”

  “Why’d you shoot the gem?”

  “Did you not notice the shafts of light connecting the skeletons to it?”

  “I didn’t exactly have time to study the thing while a bunch of undead were trying to kill me, no.”

  Shonasir pointed to the ceiling where the gem had been. “I theorized that the gem was giving the skeletons some sort of extra strength or vitality. By destroying it, they became easier to destroy. I think I was right.”

  Rhys looked around at his companions. “Thanks for you
r help with the big one there at the end. All I could do was defend. It was too strong for me.”

  He glanced over to where its body had fallen. The purple-veined sword was still clutched in its bony hand. Rhys had never seen its equal. It was longer than either of his blades, definitely sized for a goliath. Many would have trouble wielding it one-handed, but Rhys suspected he could. The big skeleton had done so with ease. What would it feel like to hold such a perfectly forged magical sword? Rhys staggered over to the fallen body, his wounds making him walk with deliberate motions. He peeled the skeleton’s finger bones off the grip and lifted the blade. It was heavy, but balanced to perfection. Rhys gave it a few experimental slashes. It felt like an extension of his right arm. What an unexpected prize, and who else among them could wield such a weapon? He ran his fingers along the veins of purple that adorned the steel. A thrill of long-dormant excitement flooded through him.

  As Rhys examined his prize, the rest of the B-Team searched the chamber. Sorvek and Emric gathered the femurs of the skeletons, while Shonasir pulled a pair of cloaks from two of them. The fabric was perfectly preserved – not threadbare, nor moth-eaten, nor marred with mold.

  “What’s that you have there?” Emric asked.

  Shonasir held up the fabric. “The beginnings of my magical cloak collection.”

  For her part, Alurel stood by the central sarcophagus and peered inside. Another skeleton lay there, but this one showed no signs of undead animation. It lay flat with its arms on its chest and its hands holding one another as if cradling a baby bird. Alurel marveled that a skeleton could appear peaceful, almost gentle. She bent down and brushed her fingers across its finger bones.

  And a swirl of sparkling light began spiraling up from where Alurel’s living flesh touched the ancient bone. She backed away, calling out, “Something’s happening!”

  The rest of the B-Team silently encircled the sarcophagus, weapons and magic at the ready. The swirling light gathered in the air above the open coffin and formed a glowing body. The spirit sat cross-legged in midair with her cupped hands resting in her lap. Her long, dark hair floated around her, shining like polished onyx. She opened her eyes, which were pupil-less and burning blue-white, the hottest part of a fire.

 

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