The lid of the chest creaked open.
The problem was Nyan-Nyan hadn’t lifted it.
A scent of vile decay hit Gork only a moment before the chest sprang forward, the wood of the lid cutting itself into a jagged line of teeth as the possessed chest attempted to swallow Nyan-Nyan whole.
The freyjan warrior, with her exceptional reflexes, managed to catch the top and bottom of the lid with her gauntleted hands.
A rough red tongue lashed out of the chest, sliming Nyan-Nyan’s face as it flicked frantically, trying to pull her into its greedy, gaping maw.
Biter Booty.
Gork had encountered this sort of thing before. The darkness creeping through Crystalia corrupted everything, even ordinary objects, mixing the living and the dead—human, artifact, and animal.
The chest made a strangled cross between a gurgle and roar with undertones of jingling metal and grinding gears.
“Help!” Nyan-Nyan cried as the Biter Booty lashed at her face with its fervorous flicking tongue and blew its death-stink breath at her super-sensitive nose.
Gork was quite enjoying the predicament. He was getting up to the point of engaging when Terras slapped him across the back of the head.
“All right.” Gork raised his ax and, with a war cry, sent the perfectly honed edge crashing into the side of the Biter Booty. The force of his swing tipped the overweight chest over, and it landed on the floor with its jaws forced open against the ground. A second expert swing from the dwarf’s ax at a critical corner put the chest into no less than five wriggling pieces which bled bubbling green juice until they finally went still.
Nyan-Nyan shivered with rage. “You let it lick me!”
“I thought freyjans liked licking their fur.”
“I’m not a cat, you moron,” Nyan-Nyan started, but her head snapped in the direction of something shiny in the rubble of the ruined Biter Booty. Before Gork could grab for it himself, Nyan-Nyan pounced. She came up with what looked like a studded iron cup, except it was too narrow to hold enough cider to be useful and too rounded on the end to stand up.
Nyan-Nyan turned it over, stroking it excitedly as if it were solid gold.
“That’s the butt cap of a spear or a pike,” Gork noted. “To balance it and keep the end from—”
“I’m keeping it. It matches my gauntlets.”
It didn’t.
Nyan-Nyan whisked her tail around and inserted the end of her tiger-striped tail into the studded iron spear butt cap. She gave it a trial swish. “Can you stand right there?” Nyan-Nyan said to Gork. “I want to see if this hurts when I swing it.”
“No thanks.”
“Ooh, look at that.” Nyan-Nyan picked up an old wooden comb.
“Let’s get going,” Terras interrupted. “We’ve wasted enough time, and I can’t breathe in here.”
Gork turned to leave, but in the gore of the Biter Booty’s fragmented corpse he spotted something else—flat, steel, and slick. He kicked aside a piece of the Biter Booty’s jaw and gasped. “Light of the Goddess . . .” Carefully, he reached down and took hold of the handle of an ornate sword, the likes of which he had never before seen. He lifted the flawless steel weapon and felt its balance in his hand.
It was a hand-and-a-half sword, though he doubted it was ever intended for battle. Intricate runes scribed the length of a double-edged blade that met the handle at a gilded crossbar. Even after what he imagined must have been centuries of decay in the belly of the Biter Booty, the sword had no trace of rust. At the pommel was a large ruby—a very large ruby.
Gork swallowed twice. The gem was nearly the size of Nyan-Nyan’s fist.
Nyan-Nyan sidled alongside Gork. “Trade you.”
“Finders keepers.”
“That is no ordinary sword.” Terras covered his nose with his arm and climbed into the room for a better view. “Those are powerful runes. But the design, it must be as old as—”
“Look at this.” Gork pointed to the very tip where, unlike the rest of the sword, the darkness had taken hold. The fine cracks that a casual observer might have missed stood out to the blacksmithing prodigy. Darkness had somehow penetrated the sword, much like the orcs’ blades in the Dark Realm, but this sword was only corrupted along half its length. “How can only half a sword be touched by darkness?”
“Whatever cursed it just ran out of evil?” Nyan-Nyan wondered.
“That’s ridiculous. And no unenchanted weapon could have lasted in the belly of a Biter Booty without sharing its corruption. This sword must be from before the Dark Consul breached the Dark Realm. The last of the great Arcadian magicians died in the fall of Arcadia shortly afterward. I just don’t see how the darkness could have gotten into the metal if it was forged in Crystalia and not the Dark Realm.”
After a brief pause, Terras spoke. “There is a way.”
Gork looked up and noticed the Deeproot on the Druid’s wrist had a faint glowing red line curling through it, not unlike the orc blades.
“How did that happen?” Gork said, pointing to the Deeproot vine wrapped on Terras’s wrist.
“The same way that sword was altered,” Terras said. “It crossed into the Dark Realm.”
“How?” Gork wondered, shaking his head in confusion.
“I reached into a spawning point,” Terras said.
Nyan-Nyan choked on a cry of surprise. “You’re insane!”
“That is the source of my powers of transformation. It is the same mingled magic that created the chimeric races such as freyjans.”
“Question,” Nyan-Nyan said. “Where can I wash my face?”
“Not now,” Gork said.
“Another question,” Nyan-Nyan repeated, raising her paw-like hand.
“What?”
“Potty?”
“Find some sand; dig a hole.”
“Question,” Terras interrupted. He leaned back against the wall. “If that sword was forged before the opening of the rift to the Dark Realm, that would explain the rune marks.”
“Yes,” Gork said. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“Then how did its tip reach into the Dark Realm? There were no spawning points before the Dark Consul created the first breach.”
Gork pointed a finger at Terras. “That is a very good question.”
“May I?” Terras said, stepping forward and stooping so that his head did not hit the low ceiling. He reached out to hold the sword.
“I want it back,” Gork warned.
“Of course,” Terras breathed, his eyes not moving from the royal artifact.
Gork turned the sword sideways, laying it across his hands in the traditional Hearthsworn manner for safely handing over swords.
Terras reached out a trembling hand and wrapped his fingers around the handle. As he lifted the sword, his focus drifted. Terras screamed and fell to his knees. His arm holding the sword shook violently.
Nyan-Nyan quickly grabbed Terras’s arm and Gork wrenched the sword out of the Druid’s grip.
Terras wobbled, his eyes unable to focus as he grabbed at his wrist where the vivid green Deeproot had shriveled into a thin, withered brown vine. He took a ragged breath that sounded like a metal file being run over a sheet of metal.
Nyan-Nyan held Terras’s hand against her cheek. She looked up at Gork. “He’s freezing.”
Gork turned the sword over in his grip. It was cool and unchanged save the ruby which now seemed to swirl with iridescence. “It hoards magic,” Gork realized.
“. . . would have killed me,” Terras whispered between chattering teeth. “It took everything.” His head bowed, and the Druid slumped to one side.
Nyan-Nyan tugged at his ear. “He’s unconscious. Should we give him his potion?”
“No. We may need that potion later. I can treat him with herbs.” Gork tucked the royal sword under his belt and climbed out of the hole. Nyan-Nyan passed the limp body of the unconscious Druid down. After wrapping him in a wool blanket from his pack, Gork retrieved another coal stone and boiled water in his dwindling canteen, adding copious amounts of pungent herbs.
“What do those do?” Nyan-Nyan asked.
“No idea. I just got some free samples from the apothecary when he couldn’t pay for his mended cauldron.”
Nyan-Nyan snickered as Gork brought the steaming liquid to Terras’s lips.
“He’s gonna have the runs for days.”
Terras coughed, sputtering the obscene liquid. “What is that? Are you trying to kill me?”
“He’s awake,” Gork said, a smug expression crossing his features.
“Ok, let’s move.” Nyan-Nyan helped Terras to his feet. “How much time do we have before the oil lamp runs out?”
“Not long,” Gork said. “How good is your night vision?”
“Pretty good,” Nyan-Nyan said with a shrug, “but pitch black is pitch black. Once it goes dark, that’s the last light we’ll ever see.”
Gork held the oil lamp steady as its light flickered uneasily, threatening to go out.
“Thanks to that sword, the darkness I had stored to allow me to do a blood transformation is gone. All my magic is gone.” Terras gestured to the dried root on his wrist. “We have no choice. I have to commune with the Deeproot.”
“Are you sure we have time for that?” Gork gestured to the lamp. “We have to get going.”
Terras sat down on the dusty floor of the ancient aqueduct and crossed his legs, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.
“Oh, great. How long is this going to take?”
“Shh,” Nyan-Nyan reached out to wave her hand in front of Terras’s face. “He’s doing something mystical.”
Terras swatted at Nyan-Nyan’s hand but the swift freyjan dodged. “Knock it off. I need to focus.”
Gork blew out a breath of frustration and dropped his pack. “Might as well save some oil if everyone is going to close their eyes.” He pinched the lantern wick and smothered the faint light, then lay back and closed his eyes.
When he next opened his eyes, the world was green.
It’s a dream, he thought.
No, it’s alive.