by J. Stone
Wynonna heard something shift, but she couldn’t positively identify where it had come from. She paused, waiting for the creature to attack, but the naga still held back. Wynonna would have to poke harder then.
“She cried out your name as I cut her! She begged me to stop! Your sister was weak! Pathetic!”
Still nothing but the sound of rustling in the dark. Wynonna had one more idea. Using her own pain, she knew exactly what to say to draw out the naga.
“You should have been there! You couldn’t protect her! You abandoned her! It’s your fault she’s dead!”
Her hunch proved correct. This was finally enough to rile the naga. The serpent screeched and shot out from the darkness with a speed Wynonna couldn’t possibly match. All she could do was shift aside, dropping and rolling away. The naga’s hands barely missed her, but her tail swept along after her, and it struck the vespari, pushing her hard into the wall.
The hit knocked the air from her chest, but after a gasp, she managed to get back to her feet, while the naga turned about and slithered toward her. No time to waste, Wynonna ran from that room and moved toward her trap. Behind her, the naga hissed wildly and slithered so quickly that she skidded into the walls at each turn. Her unfocused frenzy was all that kept her from catching up with Wynonna, and the vespari knew this. She decided to capitalize further on it.
“You could have saved her if you weren't so pathetic!” she shouted back at the monster.
Another terrible hiss, and Wynonna ducked into the hall she’d trapped, while the naga only narrowly missed her and passed the turn completely. This gave the vespari enough time to get into position. She moved back behind the stone with all the incendiary shells and toward the little crawlspace. Meanwhile, the naga turned about and entered the hallway with Wynonna. She crept forward slowly, an expression of rage etched across every scale on her face.
“She was weak,” Wynonna said. “But, you… You are a coward.”
An angry sneer covered the naga’s face, as she hissed yet again. With amazing speed, the serpent lurched forward, while Wynonna tossed the torch to the ground at her feet, hitting the incendiary shells. The vespari then ducked down into the crawlspace, as the shells caught light and exploded, filling that tunnel with a hail of rocks, smoke, and fire.
***
When the dust cleared, Wynonna coughed, rising from the rubble left from her explosion. Her plan had worked a little too well, she thought. There was enough light from this adjacent chamber to see that the naga had been severely injured in the blast and captured in the subsequent collapse of the tunnel. Reaching around, she located her knife, and she crawled over to where the rocks had pinned the naga. Wasting no time, the vespari jammed her blade through the serpent’s flesh and started to carve the Linac rune.
The naga’s regrown scales were still thin, providing little to no protection from Wynonna’s runed blade. The creature was still conscious, but the rocks that had fallen on her held her in place as Wynonna worked, preventing her from fighting the vespari from carving her rune. All she could do was hiss and shout what had to be curses in a language Wynonna didn’t understand.
Her blade sliced through the naga’s flesh and then rose up. Only the accent mark remained. Wynonna had to kill the other serpent too quickly to gather any information, but this one was at her mercy. She had time to ask a few questions. Whether she would get an answer remained to be seen though.
“One more cut,” Wynonna began, “and you’re dead.”
The naga glared up at her, hissing and screeching, but saying nothing of substance.
“Someone wanted me dead,” the vespari continued. “Tell me who, and I might let you live.”
Still, the naga said nothing.
“I know you can understand me,” Wynonna told her. “I saw the note. I saw my sketch. Now, answer me! Who wants me dead?”
The serpent just smiled, a trickle of her dark blood dripping from her curled lips.
“Fine,” the vespari said. “Join your sister.”
Wynonna jammed the knife into the naga’s gut, completing the accent mark of the rune and killing the creature. She then felt the monster’s energy seep into her tattoos, confirming its death. Though she had the proof of her kill from the first naga, Wynonna wanted evidence that there had been two of them. If she brought that back, she could see if any of the elders reacted to the news in a way that would tell her who tried to have her killed. She now also had to suspect Spencer, the vespari librarian, as he had drawn the sketch that the nagas had in their lair. Wynonna couldn’t eliminate the possibility he had a role to play in everything despite how welcoming and helpful he’d been.
Gripping her knife, the vespari dug her blade into the naga’s mouth and pried out the first of venom-tipped fangs. She repeated the action on the second, and then she dropped the teeth into her pocket with the other pair. Feeling exhausted but pleased with herself for accomplishing what three other vespari had died attempting, she got to her feet and looked around the room in which she now found herself. Both the nagas were dead. Now, Wynonna just had to find her way out of those ancient depths.
***
Having no idea where she was or how to get back to that entrance marked with a message about Queen Keqet, Wynonna just wandered through those halls. Each path she chose looked the same, but she could easily mark which ones she’d traveled, at least for a while. Dust covered the floors, so her footsteps marked her previous paths. After a while though, the stones on the ground showed footfalls that were not hers. Someone else was down there with her, and based on the size of the tracks, more than just one person.
None of this was a comfort, since she had decided that place had to be Queen Keqet’s tomb. Nothing should have been alive down there but her after all this time, but she could clearly see how wrong that assumption was.
Traveling on and keeping an eye out for whoever it was that was down there with her, Wynonna stumbled upon another mural. This one looked much the same as the first she’d discovered, depicting the golden queen, Keqet, as well. This new mural seemed to continue exactly where the other had left off - where the whole story should have simply ended.
After her people placed Queen Keqet, her lover, and the advisor inside the tomb, the golden queen rose once again. The people welcomed her and her lover’s resurrection with open arms. They freed the advisor as well, forgiving him of presumed transgressions, and the kingdom returned to normal. At least for a while.
Keqet began to spend more time within the tomb that her people had once buried her in. She held court there instead of her former capitol building. Her decisions became darker over time. She seemed tainted by her death, by time spent in her grave. The people turned to her advisor for answers, but he had disappeared following the queen’s resurrection. None knew where to find him, and it became clear that their kingdom needed help.
Punishments for even minor transgressions grew severe. People were tortured for agitating or questioning Keqet. The queen isolated herself with her lover in the tomb. People went missing, never to be found either living or dead again. After a time, when the kingdom had suffered enough, they illustrated the very mural Wynonna now read, and they then sealed Queen Keqet within. It was abandoned, forgotten, and buried. Another hand had painted this final portion of the mural, however. One less capable with artistic endeavors. The final image depicted the golden queen and her wolf-man lover, united and trapped in their burial chamber.
That’s where the story in the mural ended, but Wynonna had a sinking feeling in her gut that the golden queen’s story wasn’t finished. She and her lover had conquered death. Given the footprints in the dust, she knew that Keqet and her half wolf-depicted lover still lingered in that tomb, refusing to return to their deaths.
Fearing what such a creature as Keqet would do to her for disturbing her tomb, Wynonna pulled her revolver from its holster. Though she wasn’t certain it would even fire, she needed something to make her feel a sense of control. Corrigan had never m
entioned anything like Keqet in his journal. She had no idea what she was or how to kill her if she stumbled across her.
Wynonna knew she wasn’t a revenant, and she couldn’t have been something so simple as a ghoul. None of the images depicted her as having a thirst for blood, so any form of vampirism was out. The golden queen didn’t seem to have any magic in her, as it had been the advisor that performed the ritual. Grimacing at the possibilities, the vespari continued forward.
After roaming for some time, she eventually crept into a large, open, and circular room. Just as the others, the same green burning torches illuminated this area, but the chamber was much different in content. This room had occupants. Wynonna found herself standing in the middle of a circle of thrones situated atop pedestals. The seats of the chairs stood some distance above her own height, and she had to lean her head back to see up to them. In each of these thrones sat a decrepit skeleton, chained by both their ankles and their wrists to the spot.
A little taken aback by this sight, Wynonna stopped, just looking around at the skeletal figures in their thrones. Most slouched down but still held together somehow. Cobwebs and dust covered what remained of them, but they held some semblance of life in their decrepit bones. Wynonna almost felt like she stood in some ancient court with a group of judges looking down on her to provide some verdict. Her skin crawled along with this sensation, and just as she was about to keep walking and move on from that room, a voice bellowed.
“Trespasser!” it roared.
Wynonna looked behind her to see that one of the dusty and web covered skeletons sat upright. A flickering green light similar to the torches throughout the crypt glowed in its eye sockets. The voice was strange as well. Emanating not from the skeleton’s mouth but rather some unseen origin point, the sound diffused throughout the room rather than directed from or toward any point.
“What the--?” Wynonna muttered, stumbling back.
Another of the bony creatures sat up in its throne. “We are Queen Keqet’s royal council,” the skeletal figure told her in a feminine, echoing voice. Pointing its finger at the vespari, it added, “And, you are trespassing here.”
The remaining skeletons rose from their slouching positions in a wave around the room. The same green light appeared in their skulls, and each stared at Wynonna in the center of their throne room. They all started to speak to or about her, their words fusing together and making little sense in the chaos. She heard the words, ‘trespass,’ ‘guilty,’ ‘kill,’ and ‘Keqet’ among much more that she couldn’t isolate among the noise.
Wynonna raised her revolver toward the skeletons, but they didn’t move, bound in their thrones by their chains. They did silence themselves though, when one started to laugh.
It pointed its finger at her, rattling the chains on its wrist. “You cannot harm us, child!”
“We’ll see about that when I put a bullet in your skulls,” Wynonna replied, aiming the revolver at this particular skeleton.
“We must decide her fate,” another of this undead council said. “Any who disturb Queen Keqet’s slumber shall suffer a thorn in their soul!”
“Death!” one shouted.
“Torture!”
“The pit!”
The suggestions continued, until one of the skeletons held its hand up to silence the others. “Ah,” it said, turning its skull toward an entrance behind Wynonna. “It seems Queen Keqet deigns to decide her fate personally.”
Hearing a wet, growling sound behind her, Wynonna slowly turned around to see what had snuck into that strange council room. She spotted two figures standing there in the doorway, one of them greatly overshadowing the other. The taller and much more muscular figure looked similar to the wolf form of a lycanthrope, or perhaps even the frenzied vargulf version. She couldn’t say for certain, but she leaned toward the latter. This beast, however, looked different from the depictions Corrigan had drawn in his journal in that this creature seemed diseased.
Yellowed bandages wrapped around the figure, covering and concealing much of its body, though tufts of gray fur slipped out regardless. The beast’s claws, feet, and head were void of any of this paper, and patches of diseased skin peaked out through some of the looser sections of bandages. Bandages, however, wasn’t the right word for these strips of paper. Though Wynonna couldn’t tell what they said, there was writing on the paper. This had to be the wolf-headed figure the mural had depicted. This was Queen Keqet’s bodyguard and lover. That made the figure beside him clear. Queen Keqet.
The beast growled at her, eyes glinting and reflecting the green light of the torches illuminating the room, and beads of saliva dripped from its agape mouth, but the creature remained in check. The figure beside it held up one of its hands.
She was much smaller than her vargulf lover, and Wynonna was unable to see her face. She hid it under a golden and ebony mask aged with time and sculpted to presumably look like the face underneath, while the sides and top portion of this mask extended out and upward similar to the flattened hood of a cobra. Deep creviced ridges ran along these extra portions of the mask and formed what looked like an ornamental crown and headdress. In her free hand, Keqet held a golden staff, tarnished only a little by time. At its tip, a strange oval hoop around a blue orb adorned the staff. Whether this served any purpose beyond aesthetics, Wynonna couldn’t guess.
This woman wore a tattered but elaborate looking dress that shimmered in the green torchlight, but concealed underneath it, Wynonna saw the same scrawled on paper as the creature by her side. The dress was not the only thing that shimmered, however, as the woman’s skin, all of it that could be seen anyway, had been coated in a gold paint. The golden queen, indeed, she thought.
After examining Wynonna for a moment, this woman, the apparent Queen Keqet, looked up at the vargulf by her side. He leaned down toward her, as she whispered something to the vargulf. Then Keqet released his hand, the vargulf’s growl intensified, and Wynonna knew things weren’t about to go her way.
The vespari didn’t wait a second longer. She raised her revolver and shot at the vargulf. Luckily, the bullet she’d loaded into the chamber was dry enough to fire. The runed bullet lodged in the vargulf’s chest, and the beast lumbered backward for a second before looking down at the wound. When it raised its head back up, the fiercest growl she’d ever heard emanated out of this monstrous beast. Wynonna did all that was left to her. She fled.
***
With the bandage wrapped vargulf behind her, Wynonna ran like she’d never run before. She found her feet moving faster than she ever would’ve thought possible, but it still wasn’t enough. This monstrosity of a beast dropped to all fours and raced after her, drool slavering from its open mouth while panting and growling all at the same time. If she didn’t do something, the vargulf would catch her in short order, and what’s more, she didn’t even know where she should run. That didn’t stop her though, and Wynonna sprinted through those halls with the vargulf closing in on her.
When the beast grew too close for comfort, the vespari twisted part way about and fired her revolver at the vargulf. A simple click was all that emanated from the weapon and nothing more. A misfire. The powder was too wet.
“Damnit,” she muttered through gritted teeth.
Having no better choice, she pulled the trigger again. She found no more success on the second pull. That was one spent cartridge and two failed. Only three remained in the barrel. Wynonna didn’t think she had time for another attempt, as the vargulf was nearly on her. She could actually feel the heat from his panting breath. The vespari did have one more idea that didn’t involve her revolver though.
All that paper hanging off his body looked flammable, and she’d already proven that the green burning torches could produce intense heat. With this in mind, Wynonna veered closer to the wall of the hallway she fled down and grabbed one of the torches. In one fluid movement, she removed it from the wall, twisted about, and flung the torch at the vargulf behind her.
The
green flames hit the beast right in the snout, and Wynonna saw sparks and embers fly off from that point. Her efforts were enough that the vargulf stopped running, skidding forward a bit, before standing upright and stamping the resulting flames out.
“Stupid mutt!” she yelled back at it, seeing how quickly it recovered. “Just die already!”
Following her verbal assault, the vespari had continued forward, removed the two dud bullets, and replaced them and the empty slot with new ones. Though, she still had no way of knowing whether these cartridges would fare any better than the former ones, it at least gave her more options.
Wynonna continued picking hallways at random, as the vargulf once again continued its chase. As the beast was once more catching up to her, she spotted some familiar territory. She saw where the naga had slithered through the dusty hallways, and so she knew she had to be getting close to the entrance and her only chance for salvation. That said, the vargulf wasn’t going to just let her leave. She had to do something to get him off her back.
Continuing down the tunnel and the path the naga had left, Wynonna neared the exit, but the vargulf had nearly caught back up with her. Reaching the final hallway, the vespari turned around and pulled the trigger again. This time, she didn’t stop between pulls. Whatever the case, she was going to determine the state of all six bullets currently in the chamber of that revolver.
The first was a dud. The second and third exploded from the barrel, both hitting the vargulf in its hunched forward shoulder as it ran on all fours toward her. Bullet four and five proved worthless, and she took a deep breath on the last bullet. No luck with it either, and the vargulf was still charging straight at her, unconcerned with the runed bullets now lodged in its body.
With no other choice left to her, Wynonna had to try Autumn’s incendiary shotgun once again. Sliding the revolver back into the holster at her hip, she grabbed the spitfire and took aim at the vargulf’s chest. Pulling the trigger, Wynonna hoped the shell within it had enough time to dry, especially after the three failures in a row for her revolver. She wasn’t that lucky. Another dud.