The morning was a bright and cheery one where we were, making it difficult to believe that there were swarms of mindless, murderous undead under that almost opaque cloud cover. We may as well have been in a different world. I mean, we could all see it, but we didn’t want to think about it.

  We all woke up well rested, which was a good thing, because we all knew we’d need our strength. We ate a breakfast of oatmeal and bacon, as usual, and chatted a bit about where we thought Kromwell’s army was by now. We weren’t really sure what day it was, but we came to the conclusion that it took two weeks to get here give or take a couple of days. Here at the edge of the world, it didn’t rain on both Threedays and Sixdays, which broke our internal clocks.

  We armed ourselves, then weighed anchor. Mira was at the rudder again, with Elle close by. In her mind, Mira seemed to take ownership of the ship, so it wasn’t surprising that she would want to be at the rudder. Bran and I raised the sail halfway, and we started moving. The wind was as treacherous today as it was yesterday. We navigated through the rest of the islands going west in the first two hours, always with the gloom south by southwest of us. Then we came to a place where I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Even though I saw this vista from the throne, that vision didn’t prepare me for the reality right in front of my face.

  A few hundred paces away the sea stopped. Just stopped. In the emptiness beyond the sea was, I guess, just a dark blue void. The sun was bright with a lot of reflected light off the water, so I really couldn’t see stars or anything, but it was really strange to see the world like this. Mira turned the ship to the south, making sure we didn’t sail off the edge. As we paralleled the edge of the world, I thought I saw glass. Yes, the waves lapped against glass that separated our world from the nothingness beyond.

  “Man, you don’t see that every day,” Bran said.

  “It’s like the stories say,” Elle said. “Like we really are in a giant crystal sphere floating through nothing.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it,” Mira said. “I didn’t believe it until now, but I didn’t have any other theories. I sure didn’t think we were riding around on a giant turtle, but seeing this is pretty incredible.”

  We continued south for another hour or two, and as we got closer to the gloomy area, the light slowly grew weaker. It was like the gloom was what kept the clouds over the island, and not the clouds causing the gloom. The whole place had a really creepy feeling to it, like that feeling you get when you think something is stalking you. Once I caught Bran rubbing his temples when he thought no one was looking. We all saw him, though.

  We finally came to a large, clear bay in the archipelago as the clouds loomed over us, almost blocking out the sun like an exceptionally thick thunder cloud. There in the distance was a single light on the beach. This was definitely the island we were looking for, just on the other side of the bay. Mira took us closer to it, angling southeast, away from the edge of the world and towards the light, which looked to be shining from a sandy beach in the center of the coastline. Mira must have seen it, as she was already heading right for it, but she had her eye on the clouds, too.

  Without warning, the boat suddenly slowed and lurched to the right as a horrendous crash caught us off guard. We hit something! We were all knocked off our feet except Mira, who had a tight grip on the rudder’s spokes. There was a loud scraping noise that ran all the way down the left side of the ship, and the ship tilted at an alarming angle while this was happening. After getting my feet under me with the help of the railing, I ran to the railing to see the damage. The ship righted itself a little and kept going forward. At least we weren’t stuck. With the amount Mira was swearing, she must have become a true sailor at that moment, baptized into a new profession by disaster.

  “What was that?!” Elle yelled, eyes wide.

  “Oh, God! I didn’t see it! I’m so sorry!” Mira shouted.

  I leaned over the rail, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even see what we hit. Bandit flew over the side, and gasped, her little hand over her mouth.

  “It’s bad!” Bandit said. “I can see under the water a little bit, and there are broken planks under the waterline!”

  “Head for the light!” Bran yelled.

  “I’m already doing that!” Mira yelled back at him.

  I ran into the hold to see if there was anything I could do. I could see water rushing in through a breach in the hull all along the left side, but it was definitely worse near the front. The hull must be made with two layers of wood, the heaviest of which was on the outside. The water was flooding the hold quickly and we were certainly going to sink. I focused my will and used my mending magic on the affected area. Though I couldn’t even see the planks on the outside of the hull, my magic stopped the flow of water to the interior, but I could hear water flowing inside the ship’s hull. I was just walking closer to get a better idea of what damage there was when the ship suddenly hit something else and came to a dead stop. I lost my feet and tumbled onto the deck, sliding to a stop near the fore in a flood of seawater. There was a hole punched right through the hull about a foot higher than the planks of the deck in the hold, and water was pouring in around a large, square edged stone that jutted in from the outside of the hull.

  I tried using my mending magic again but was only able to fix a small part of the damage. The damage was too bad. There had to be missing pieces of wood somewhere, or maybe the ship was driving itself against the rock. I didn’t know, and I was panicking. Just to do something, I focused my will and created a blast of freezing cold straight at the stone where the water was pouring in. The surrounding planks were covered in frost, and the water was suddenly frozen. The ship shifted in the wind, however, giving off a horrendous grinding noise and letting more water in. I froze it again, this time keeping the freezing blast going for a few seconds. Maybe I could freeze the water outside the ship so we might be fixed in place for a while. None of us knew how to swim, and we were wearing plate armor. If this ship went down, we were dead. Bran and Elle were frantically trying to adjust the sail as I came out of the hold. I had to brace myself on the doorway as the ship tilted a bit.

  “How bad is it?” Bran asked as he and Elle feverishly worked the ropes.

  “Bad! I can’t fix it!” I said. “We gotta get off this ship right now!”

  I ran to the rail in the fore of the cog and hurled a blast of withering cold down at the water in front of the ship, and I kept freezing everything until the ship was securely glued to the submerged spire of rock.

  “Hurry, Jeron!” Bran cried. “Help us get the sail down before we’re ground to powder!”

  The three of us worked as quickly as we could to lower the sail and left it heaped on the deck. I looked up to see Mira white-faced in shock, still gripping the rudder wheel. She looked horrified, and Elle had her hand on Mira’s shoulder, talking to her in low tones, trying to calm her.

  “We have to abandon the ship!” I said loudly but calmly. “Get your gear together and get back up here fast!”

  I ran to the other sides of the cog, and blasted the seawater with searing cold, hoping to provide a buffer of ice to slow the sinking of our ship. The ship groaned and listed a little further to the right. I looked toward the shore and estimated we were still at least a quarter of a mile away. I was going to try to whoosh us over to the beach close to the light, but it was farther than I had ever travelled that way before. I had to dispel my doubts. If I came up short or messed this up, we would all die.

  The others had grabbed their packs, lids flapping. Bandit was hovering close to Mira. I held my arms out, making sure I had a clear view to the shore from where we were standing. I gathered more power from the source, as much as I could hold, just to be sure. I wrapped my arms around the group and focused my will. Suddenly we were standing on the white sand of the beach, which looked almost ghostly with the gloom and bright white light. The radiance was coming from a pillar twice the height of a man that had a clear sphere of glass on top of it. There was a glowing sigil of some kind that was etched into the stone pillar facing us, and it glowed brightly. I could see our ship a little way off the shore when I turned around.

  “You idiot!” Elle shouted at me. “You almost hit that flaming pillar!”

  “Don’t shout at him,” Bran shouted at Elle. “He got us to the beach, at least! Fat lot of good you’ve done!”

  “Yeah! At least I didn’t run us aground in our damned, flaming ship!” I yelled at Elle. I turned to Mira and raised a finger that I pointed right in her face. “How could you be so stupid?!”

  “Why are you so mad?” Bandit asked.

  “We’re all gonna die because of you!” Bran yelled at Mira.

  “Yeah! What are you, blind?!” Elle shouted at Mira. “And who made you captain of our ship, you moron!”

  “Hey!” Bandit yelled as loud as she could. She was only a foot tall, but she tried.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the sigil brightened. A little pebble of concern started rattling around in my head, but I was so angry I ignored it.

  Mira shouted a string of profanity at all of us, and we started shouting it right back at her, then each other. I was so angry I said things that had been lurking in the back of my mind for a long time. We all yelled the worst of our character flaws in each other’s faces as Bandit yelled at us where she hovered right in front of the sigil. Only, she wasn’t yelling at all of us, just me, and she was waving both hands at me, making obscene gestures.

  “You stupid, blockheaded, club footed, buck toothed, slack jawed, cross eyed, dung smelling, pimple faced, bow legged, knuckle dragging puddle of pig puke!” Bandit yelled at me.

  I’d had enough. How dare she? I snarled at her I was so angry. Summoning all the magic I could hold, I hurled it from my outstretched hand in the form of a blast of concussive force right between the faces of the others. When it hit Bandit, she suddenly disappeared like a mirage, and the blast went straight through the sigil and the pillar, blasting the top half of the pillar to pieces and knocking all of us down. The foliage behind the shattered pillar was shredded and the beach was plunged back into twilight. Suddenly all the anger I had just felt evaporated like a mist. The others paused in the middle of a swear word and blinked in confusion where they lay in the sand. Bran had halfway drawn Vengeance, and both Elle and Mira had their swords bared in their fists.

  “Oh, hell!” Mira said, dropping her weapon. “What was that?”

  “I was trying to tell you!” Bandit shouted. “You were bewitched!” Her face was red, and her chin twitched. She appeared to be on the edge of uncontrolled sobbing.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean those things,” Bran said gently to Elle, who took a step back and hugged herself.

  We each collected ourself, then we all began apologizing to each other at the same time, then we were all thanking Bandit for saving our worthless lives. I felt more uncomfortable than I ever had until then, and I didn’t know what to do. I had been a moment away from killing the people I loved the most in this world! Instead of actually dealing with the feelings I had, I decided to make myself useful. That usually kept people from being mad at me for too long. The ship hadn’t sunk yet, which was quite a blessing.

  “I’m gonna to get as much of our supplies as I can. We’ll need every bit of it,” I mumbled.

  Without looking at what the others were doing, I focused my will on the deck of the ship and used my power to take myself there. It worked. I was half thinking I would find myself stuck halfway into the deck or something. I quickly went down to the hold and grabbed my pack, put it on top of a random sack, then lifted all that onto a sack of beans. I made sure I had my mace in my belt loop, too. Then I hefted the whole pile, focused on the beach, and whooshed there directly from the hold. It was easier the third time, and it didn’t feel that much harder than the short jumps I was used to making. I dropped my stuff a couple paces away from where Bran had both Elle and Mira in his arms. Mira was crying uncontrollably with Bandit clinging to her neck, and Elle had her arms around Mira and Bran both.

  My eyes may have deceived me, but there appeared to be a pulse of greenish light around us for half a second. Bran snapped his head up and looked to the west, a confused look on his face. I was about to whoosh myself back to the ship when the sand all around us began shifting in small patches. We looked around in confusion.

  “Something bad just woke up,” Bran said. “And it knows we’re here!”

  Suddenly a skeletal hand reached up out of the ground from one of the piles of shifting sand. “Look out!” I shouted.

  Bran, Elle and Mira sprang apart, saw what was happening, and grabbed up their weapons and shields in the span of two seconds. I did the same, and we circled our meager belongings as the skeletons of sailors began climbing out of the beach. Some of the skeletons had tattered clothing and armor, and some had corroded weapons. All of them had green pinpoints of light in their empty eye sockets, which quickly locked onto us. Hollow, echoing cries of pain and loss came from all around.

  “Death,” said the voices.

  “Invaders!” said others.

  A pulse of green light came from the western part of the island. “Die!” they shouted.

  I opened myself to the source and took in as much power as I could hold, then conjured a blast of fire across the beach, burning the skeletons to ash on the eastern side. I could hear fighting behind me as I rotated the flame around us in a circle, blasting everything I could see. When I finally made it all the way around to where Bran had fought, there was nothing but the shards of skeletons before Elle and Mira. Bran wasn’t wearing his helm, and his forehead was lit from underneath the skin by the miniature sword he was given. Vengeance blazed in his hand. As I watched, he swung Vengeance through the last of the skeletons, and it burst into sparkling ash, leaving no trace of it on the ground.

  There was another flash of unwholesome green light, and the ashes and bones of our foes began to swirl and move towards other pieces, then bodies began reforming.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Elle said.

  “The ones I struck stayed dead,” Bran said as he hurriedly put on his helmet.

  “There are more coming!” Mira yelled, pointing at the beach to the west.

  Then we all heard cracking sounds coming from our cog and turned to look. I swore.

  Bran had a look around also as the newcomers rapidly advanced on us and the ones I had blasted with fire reformed. He began hacking the sand where skeletons reformed, obliterating them before they could completely regain intact bones. Bran was making a difference, but there were an awful lot of skeletons being reanimated.

  “I’ll slow them down!” I yelled. It was a hard thing to do, to embrace the pain, but when death and then undeath was the price of failure, I was powerfully motivated. I took as much power from the source as I could hold, and blasted outwards into the thickest part of the charging horde. I couldn’t hit all the ones coming at us from the sides, but there were few enough that the others could fend them off. The undead fought like living men would, with tactics and ferocity, but Bran killed one after another.

  “The final death!” a corpse shouted, pointing at Bran.

  That proclamation sparked a frenzy of activity from the skeletons. They attacked with abandon, clearly prioritizing Bran as their target. They shouted a conflicting myriad of things.

  “Die!”

  “Release me!”

  “Kill the paladin first!”

  “Free me!”

  “Curse you!”

  Golden sparks swirled on the breeze around Bran as he fought ferociously, with each undead he struck down bursting into glittering fragments. Another pulse of green light flashed, and the undead I had destroyed began reforming again. There were a lot fewer that would get to us this time, and that gave me hope. The undead were freakishly strong. Despite not having muscles, they were as strong as men were in life, it seemed. Their weapons clanged off our shields, and those without weapons clawed and punched the best they could. I hit them again with the biggest inferno I could summon.

  “Watch the cliff!” Mira shouted. There were probably a dozen more that were jumping off the top of the cliff, landing lightly in a spray of sand.

  The boat shifted with a loud groan, obviously taking on more water.

  “We’ll finish these off, Jeron! Get our supplies!”

  Bran was hacking at everything around him, whether it was actively fighting him or whether it was a skeleton that Mira or Elle had struck down, but the ones from the cliff would get to us in the next couple of seconds. It was time to use one of the things I learned on the cruise here. Cramming every bit of magical fire and force I could focus into a little ball, I hurled the spell into their midst as they charged, destroying most of them before they closed in.

  “Hurry up!” Bran shouted at me.

  “All right!” I yelled. I thought the others could hold their own until the next pulse. I wasn’t sure where to transport myself to or from. I quickly drew a line in the sand in a circle next to where our stuff was laying in the sand, then threw my mace and shield down in the sand next to those bags of beans. “Protect the circle! I’ll whoosh into this spot!”

  Though I hated the thought of leaving my friends in peril, I transported myself into the hold of the cog. The deck was listing noticeably more. When I had my balance, I grabbed the closest sack, threw it onto a crate, and whooshed myself to shore. It was chaos. The others were fighting the undead that came bounding down the cliff, and more of the ones charging us from the west were almost upon us. I let loose a wide blast of concussive force, scattering bones and stopping the charge instantly. I wanted to do more in the fight, but without the supplies, we’d die for sure. I had to trust my friends. I left them.

  During each of my trips, I would whoosh back to find my friends aglow with divine power, slashing through undead attackers left and right. On the fourth trip to the ship, the hold was halfway filled with seawater, and with a great, grinding, cracking sound, the boat slipped off the rock. The cog slowly tipped to the right, and I lost my footing as I was reaching for the drinking water. The barrel tipped over and rolled down and into the seawater. Without that water we were as good as dead, so I got to my knees and leapt towards the barrel, falling on top of it. As soon as I touched it, I whooshed it back to the beach. When I appeared, I steadied it while on my knees and found that the others were destroying the last few undead. Bran began hacking at bones in the sand in a widening circle, creating puffs of golden sparkles for another minute or two. When the green light flashed again, only three skeletons started to reform, which Bran hastily destroyed. Nothing moved on the beach but us.

  The others were all breathing heavily, slowly walking in circles, alert for more attacks. As I stood, I saw that the ship was shifting in the water, sinking rapidly, and I knew I would have to leave the rest. I surveyed the pile of boxes, barrels, and sacks as the others caught their breath. It looked like we still had almost all the food, one water barrel, one coil of rope, a couple pickaxes and shovels, and a lantern. The oil flasks had all been rolling around the hull or were swirling around in the water, so I was only able to grab one of them. We probably had enough lantern oil for half a night’s rest, which was bad, considering what was on this island. We needed to find a hidden, defensible place to occupy before another attack came. Thankfully, no one felt the need to say what we were all thinking.

  “I’m so sorry!” Mira was still the most upset I’d ever seen her. “I was looking at the beach and didn’t see it. God, I’ve killed us all.” She was back to agonizing over the shipwreck, but at least it seemed everyone had gotten past the magical trap. Judging from the number of corpses in the area, it had been a potent defense.

  “Easy, now, Mira,” Bran said reassuringly. “None of us saw the rock. It was barely under the surface of a very deep body of water.”

  “He’s right, Mira. I don’t think anyone ever sees those rocks, and I’ll bet the bay’s full of ‘em,” I said. “Remember who we’re dealing with here. The Pirate King was a devilishly tricky little Seeker. I’m sure he put the light there to distract pilots from the rocks, then when their ships ran aground and the sailors swam ashore, they’d kill each other when they got to the light.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for this,” Elle said. “Why, I’ll bet the bottom of that bay is littered with shipwrecks. The undead had to have come from somewhere, right?”

  Mira slowly pulled away from Bran. She wiped her eyes, then her nose on the inside of her gauntlet. She wouldn’t meet any of our eyes. Bran turned to the west.

  “I’m sensing a lot more evil on this island, and most of it’s concentrated on the western side,” Bran said. “But more’s coming this way.”

  “All right. We’re going to get through this,” Elle said. “We may have to build another boat or something, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. We need a defensible place to hole up with our supplies. If the undead are mostly in the west, that means we go east.”

  “That’s the way to the foundation of the house anyway, right?” Bran asked. I nodded.

  “I saw a way up the cliff right over there behind those bushes,” Bandit said, pointing.

  “All right, so we get our packs, grab something and carry it up there. Maybe there’s enough of the foundation of the ruined villa left that we could take shelter there, or maybe there’s a cave nearby,” Bran said.

  We did just that. Bran hefted one of the bigger items onto his shoulder, a sack of beans, then started walking through the sand in the direction Bandit had indicated. I grabbed the barrel of fresh water since I knew that was the heaviest thing there. Elle seemed surprised that I could lift it by myself. It took two men to load it on the boat, I remembered. It wasn’t so heavy with all the power I held at the moment. Even though I had my shield on my left arm, I could steady the barrel with my left and lift it with my right arm. I started after Bran. Elle and Mira each picked up a couple of items and followed. Mira had a last look at all the things we had to leave behind on the beach as she walked.

  Though the cliff was steep and the path treacherous, we made it to the top, and I looked out over the bay. It would’ve been beautiful here if it weren’t for the supernatural gloom. The water would be bright blue and almost crystal clear. It made me wish I knew how to swim. From the top of the hill, I could see that the area on top of the cliffs was not so flat as I imagined it to be. Even so, the hills up here were gentle compared to the first one we had to climb. The foliage up here was mostly made up of grass and shrubs. The shrubs had small, flexible, green needles for leaves and were about five to fifteen feet tall. Bran led us through them confidently, angling to the southeast and going mostly uphill.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “We’re being watched,” Bran said as he marched.

  “I don’t see it,” Mira said, scanning around.

  “It’s a scout, and I doubt we could catch it,” Bran said. He pointed to the southwest. It’s just over there somewhere, always a bowshot or two away. I’ll tell you if it gets closer.”

  There was nothing we could do but soldier on. An hour or two later we crested a little rise and spread out before us was the easternmost part of the island. We were on the top of a gentle slope that went down to the ruins we were seeking. There was no fresh water that I could see. We hadn’t found a place to camp yet, but I still hoped we could find shelter near the ruins. I should have scouted this place better, but I was a blockhead. There was another pulse of greenish light from the west, and we knew trouble was coming.

  Bran turned his head to the right. “There’s more of them over there coming our way,” Bran said, pointing at a thicker grouping of shrubs. “A lot of them this time, but they’re a long way off.”

  “More than last time?” Mira asked.

  “A lot more. They’re pacing us, like an army.”

  “The ruins won’t be defensible,” I said. I had a knack for saying unnecessary things back then, but it helped me to think.

  “Maybe there’s a root cellar or a basement we didn’t see before,” Mira said.

  “At least we’ll have a wall at our backs,” Bran said.

  “Sorry, everyone,” I said. “I should have scouted better. Planned better.”

  “We planned to put up tents on a deserted island, which was a fine plan with what we saw earlier. Don’t beat yourself up,” Bran said.

  We kept up the pace, despite our fatigue, and fast marched down the gentle hill to the ruins. It looked like this was once a one-story dwelling, and the ceilings were low for a human before they had completely collapsed. There was a place near an exterior wall that had a little bit of an overhang of roof tiles that were still intact, but it offered only a very meager shelter. It looked like it was barely enough to stand under, but at least there were three very thick walls here. The wall in the center was completely intact, too. It had some rubble and roof tiles that were scattered about the place, particularly against the walls.

  When we got closer, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My higher senses could detect a very powerful magic in the area.

  “Stop!” I said. “There’s some really strong magic inside the ruins, and it feels dangerous.”

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” Mira said, dropping her burden.

  I set the barrel down. I slowly approached, trying to get a better feel for what was going on. When I was about twenty feet away, I was certain. “There’s a ward in the stone floor. It’s really dangerous, but you should be able to see the stones that trigger it. You see how there’s a circle of stones taking up almost the whole space where the room used to be? It leaves a space of about four or five feet between it and the walls.”

  The others came up to where I stood, peering at the stonework.

  “Yeah, I see it,” Mira said. “Maybe we can use this.”

  “To protect our flank?” Bran asked.

  “It would keep anything from attacking from the side, and you’d be able to fight off a whole bunch of them if they could only get to us one or two at a time,” Mira said.

  “That looks like it’ll blow up in our faces,” I said.

  Without thinking, Mira picked up a rock and threw it into the circle. We all stiffened with fear, but the damage was done. The rock bounced to a stop against the wall without any kind of effect.

  I was about to ask if she was trying to kill us, but I thought better of it before those words left my mouth. It was a rare moment for me. She really wouldn’t have taken that well at all in light of how she was feeling about running the ship aground. She turned to look at me and saw the look in my eye, though, and that was confirmation enough.

  “I didn’t think,” Mira said to me. “Really sorry.”

  I put up a placating hand. “It’s all right. We’re all alive, and that told us something. Our stuff will be safe in that corner there.”

  “Speaking of our stuff,” Bran said, “I’m guessing we have about a half an hour or an hour before they get here. You think you can ferry our supplies here from the beach?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Is the scout still here?” I was thinking I’d do something about it.

  “It’s gone for now,” Bran said.

  “But it knew we’re here.” Elle said.

  “They know. Jeron, we’ll keep that spot by the end of the wall clear for you. While you’re our pack mule, Elle, you scout that way, and Mira, you scout that way. I’ll search over there. If you see any kind of shelter or hiding place, shout out.”

  With that, we all fell to our tasks. I didn’t say anything to the others, but I definitely had the worst of it. They had no idea how it felt to use the kind of magic I did, and I was using a lot of it. If the magic didn’t kill me, the undead sure as hell would, and then it would be my corpse stumbling around here for eternity. It was more motivation than I needed.

  When I appeared from my second trip, Mira was standing on the outside of the ruins, peering closely at the rear wall. She quickly ran around the side wall to look inside at the ceiling, what little remained.

  “I’m telling you, the roof inside doesn’t match the roof outside!” Mira said to Bandit, who was hovering close by.

  “Oh, yeah, I see it now,” Bandit said. “But where’d the roof go?”

  “It’s not…” Mira began. “The wall is too thick! There must be a hidden space inside!”

  “Oh! Maybe we can hide!” Bandit said, clapping her little hands.

  I didn’t stay, no matter how curious I was. Mira certainly didn’t need my help to find something hidden. Not that I could provide any useful help anyway. I knew my duty, so I got back to it. When I got back with another load, everyone was peering, poking, prodding, and pounding on the real wall, inside and out. I set the supplies down, and Bran turned to me.

  “How much is left?” Bran asked.

  “Another trip should get it.”

  “Well, hurry up! They’re almost here!”

  I got back to it, whooshing as far as I felt I could with each jump. It was really awkward, but I managed to grab the remainder of our supplies. When I got back to the ruin, I slipped a little, and one of the crates fell. The crate warped, but it held its contents. The others were gathered around Mira, who was working at a very narrow slot in the stone about two feet off the ground and about five feet from the left hand side of the rear wall with her knife.

  “I think… Aha!”

  A section of the rear wall swung open smoothly, with only a little grinding noise, revealing a small, dark passage. We couldn’t help but give a triumphant cheer.

  “Elle! Watch it!” I said, pointing at the stone floor.

  She was within about six inches of the ward, and she pressed her back against the wall with a clang of her armor. “I’m all right. I’m all right.” She looked a little shaken, but smiled again.

  “There’s a stairway going down!” Mira said as she peeked inside.

  Bran moved to the corner where all our supplies were piled. “Form a line! Quickly!”

  “Let me get the water first!” I said. It was the heaviest thing, and should go on the bottom.

  Once I wrestled that barrel inside, we didn’t need any other instructions. We rapidly passed sacks, crates, and all our other stuff inside the wall, stacking things all the way to the ceiling, and lining the far wall all the way to the first step down. When we were done, there was barely enough room to shuffle sideways from the secret doorway to the stairs, where I waited with my mace held high and fire channeled into it. It made a pretty good light source. Mira did something near the doorway once everyone was inside, and the door swung shut. She made her way to where we stood on the stairs.

  Bran looked westward, like he was seeing through the wall. “Whoa, man was that close. They’re coming over the hill now.”

  “Can they see the light through the cracks around the door?” I asked, concerned.

  “I couldn’t even see sunlight through those cracks, so I think we’re fine,” Mira said.

  Bandit hugged Mira’s neck armor. “You saved us!”

  The mood shifted. We all had smiles inside our helms, and we all gave her a pat on the pauldrons to signal our thanks.

  “Hey, that’s really loud,” Bandit said in a stage whisper.

  “Yeah, good point,” Elle said softly with a glance to the doorway.

  “Let’s see if we can find someplace more comfortable than a stairway to rest,” Bran said.

  “Whoa, whoa! Remember who we’re dealing with here,” I said. “The stairs and everything down there could be booby trapped.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Mira said. “Whizzbang taught me about locks and common traps that criminals might use.” She set her shield down and leaned it against the water barrel, then turned to inspect the walls and stairs carefully. The task was made more difficult by the cobwebs, but they were thicker near the doorway. The way down was clear of them about ten steps down from the landing.

  “Why don’t you let me go first to check it out as we go,” Mira said. “You can all help me find traps and things, though. We’ll need some long poles to help us poke around from wherever we determine it to be safe.”

  Bran grabbed our two shovels. I kept the burning mace held high so Mira could see.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about wall or ceiling traps until we get a little way underground. There’s no room for them until then,” Mira reasoned. She slowly and carefully moved a few steps down below us, then began inspecting every bit of mortar and every stone.

  “All right,” Mira began. “Traps have to have a trigger. In places like this, where there are no objects laying around, the triggers are probably in the floor somewhere. Anyone notice that there’s very little dust in there beyond the area immediately around the secret door? That means there’s no decay in living matter or slowly deteriorating walls and ceilings, which worries me. Everything makes dust, so it must be magic that slows or halts that process, and that means that the traps would be in perfect working order despite the centuries they’ve been here. The traps may be magical in nature, and it means that magic may trigger the traps. We may not walk out of here alive, guys. I think we should have our shields out at all times, and that we should use the shovels to bang against every single floor, wall and ceiling block in the entire place, and that’s just for starters.”

  “This is going to take a while,” Bran said. “And we have to do it quietly enough that nothing outside hears us.”

  “Yeah. Fun times. The passageway gets wider after the first landing on the stairway. Elle, you’re on the left side on floor duty and the left wall. Bran, you’re on the right side on ceiling duty plus the blocks on the right side. I’ll be on my knees double checking and looking for anything weird. Jeron, you’ll be just behind or above me with the mace for light and a shield to cover us both. Sound like a plan?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” I said, picking up my shield.

  We took our positions on the staircase. Bran and Elle started tapping, and we slowly made our way down. It wasn’t wide enough for Mira to check things out at first, but when we got to the first landing, Mira crouched down to get a Seeker’s eye view. We advanced down the second stairway to the bottom without incident. The passageway continued straight into the bedrock of the island in a westerly direction and was around ten feet wide. I guessed we were around fifty feet below the surface now. The corridor was of worked stone and only went around sixty or seventy feet straight ahead to end at a wide wooden door with iron bands at the top and bottom.

  Mira signaled a halt, thinking. “This looks entirely too innocent to me. Hey, Bran, can you get something heavy and disposable, please? I want to roll it down the passageway.”

  “Sure.” Bran came back a minute later with the lid of the broken crate. “Just slide it all the way to the door?” Bran asked.

  “Yes, please. Make sure you hit lots of floor stones,” Mira said.

  We crowded back to the stairs as Bran readied the lid, crouched low, then flung it with a backhand, side-armed throw across the floor as hard as he could. It got about halfway down the corridor when there was a ticking sound, and circular saw blades suddenly came scything out of the walls on both sides at various heights, covering the entire floor space, spun there for a couple seconds, then retracted. Then, to our further surprise, the floor at the end of the passage tipped up, and the floor five feet in front of us dropped away like the whole passage was on an axle in the center. It dumped the lid down a chute that was hidden under our stairway. We could hear it slide along a long passage, then nothing. The floor pivoted back into place horizontally, leaving the corridor as if nothing had just happened.

  “Holy flyspecks,” I said. “I was expecting something like some flimsy little darts to shoot out of the walls or something. I sure wasn’t expecting that.”

  “That would’ve been the end of us for sure, armor or not,” Elle said with wide eyes. “Good call, Mira.”

  “How are we getting around that?’ Bran asked.

  “Good question,” Mira said, thinking. “There must be a switch somewhere to deactivate the trap, otherwise the Pirate King couldn’t use it, either. Since he was a Seeker, the switch is probably somewhere under four feet in height. Let’s look for gaps in the mortar back up the staircase.”

  Sure enough, Mira found a little gap at the first landing on the north wall. She felt around with a slim knife, then pried the block out. It was on a hinge and was only an inch thick, and it concealed a little lever inside the block which was in the down position. Mira raised the lever up, which made a little clicking noise in the wall. The lever slowly started sliding down into its normal position, whereupon we heard another click as it settled in place.

  “I think we have thirty seconds to get down the stairway and across the corridor to the door. The last twenty feet before the door didn’t pivot, if I recall,” Mira said. “I’ll bet there’s another disarm switch on the other side of the trap, too. He would have to put one there if he wanted to come out from the inside. I’ll go check out the other side.”

  “I’ll go with you for light,” I said.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Bandit said, suddenly popping back into visibility on my pauldron. I didn’t even know she was there.

  “Ready, Jeron?” Mira asked.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  Mira pulled the lever up until she heard the click, then we went quickly down the stairs and down the corridor until we were around ten feet from the wooden door. There we stopped so Mira could have a look around. While we were paused there, we heard a little click to our right. Mira searched carefully until she found the same sort of gap between blocks where the lever was on the landing. She pried it open and found the lever inside. It was in the down position currently. Knowing what to look for, Mira searched the whole twenty-foot area again, focusing her attention near the door.

  “Jeron, stay to the side of that doorway, please. You’ll want to stay flat against the wall to the left,” Mira suggested. “I have a bad feeling about that door.”

  I did as she said and stood flat against the left-hand wall, my shield held in front of me, ready to deflect anything coming from the door. Mira was looking closely at the stones on the floor, then at the doorknob, then at the left side of the door. The knob was on the left side and the hinges were on the right.

  “I have the feeling that this door springs open suddenly, and hurls people back into the saw blade corridor. See the scratches on the wood? The chips on the sides of the stones closest to the door? I think this is a fast, efficient mechanism,” Mira observed. “There must be another disarm switch around here somewhere.”

  Mira checked the area all around the door, focusing on the left side. “Aha!” Mira said in triumph. She pried open a block about a foot from the floor to expose another lever. It was in the down position. Mira pushed the lever up, and the wide door opened slowly. As it opened, something retracted that must have been resting against the door from the inside. I held the mace closer and peered around the door frame to get a better look. It looked like a giant hand in the shape of an obscene gesture that was carved from one piece of hardwood of some kind. I had to laugh.

  “I’ll bet that door swings open fast and the hand pops out, bashing people into the saw blades just like you said. A final gesture of goodwill from the Pirate King,” I said with a chuckle.

  “This guy was full of rude surprises,” Mira said with a laugh. As that realization sank in, we both suddenly stopped laughing and swallowed nervously.

  “Have you guys found out if it’s safe or not?” Bran called out from the staircase.

  “Yeah, we’re all right,” Mira said. “There’s another disarm switch over there for the sawblades, and right there for the door trap. When you’re ready, I’ll pull the lever from this side, so you have longer to get across. Don’t touch the door handle, though.”

  “All right. We’re ready,” Bran called out.

  Mira threw the switch, and they joined us quickly. “I’m going to check out the next corridor with Jeron. Stay here but see if you can keep the lever in the up position to keep the door open. That way we’ll all have light,” Mira said.

  She pushed up the lever and we both went through the doorway as Elle moved closer to the disarm switch to keep the area safe. Beyond the door, the corridor immediately turned to the right, going north. It was only a thirty-foot-long corridor that ended at a normally sized wooden door with a welcome mat in front of it. A welcome mat? It’s got to be a trap. Mira and I looked at each other with nearly identical crooked smiles, both of us thinking the same thing. Mira methodically checked the floor and walls around the obscene doorway. Finding nothing, she waved Bran and Elle forward to where we were standing, and the door closed behind them with the hand sculpture sliding on metal poles from the wall to rest against the door. Bran and Elle still had their shovels, and with a nod from Mira, they started tapping every single block one at a time. We found no pressure plates anywhere, and the welcome mat moved around just like a normal mat would. I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought the whole place would explode or something when they poked the mat, and I was relieved to still be in one piece.

  Mira checked the place more closely as we stayed where we were. She found a block against the left wall about three feet up that she pried open and found a lever in. Mira flipped the lever up, which clicked, and the obscene hand carving retracted to the wall on the long metal poles it was mounted on with the door opening before it. She left the block open so the lever could be easily used should it become necessary.

  “I can’t find anything strange about this door at all,” Mira said. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but the lack of a trap is freaking me out.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Maybe that one passageway was all he needed.”

  Mira tried the handle gingerly and found it to be locked. She took a couple of small, slim tools out of her belt pouch and inserted them into the keyhole. In a few moments, we heard a click. She put the tools back in her pouch, then opened the door. The door swung into the room away from us to reveal a very comfortable looking study which was brightly lit by a light source we couldn’t see. It was thirty feet wide and I guessed around fifty feet deep into the room. The floor was stone like everywhere else. There were doors to the left and right about twenty feet in, and full bookshelves surrounded a low desk with a small, comfortable looking chair on the far side of the room. There were some shiny objects on the desk that drew my eye, which I saw were a golden pen and ink set and a golden bookrest. It looked like we were in the Pirate King’s actual abode now.

  Mira held us back. “We should proceed cautiously. The Pirate King was a devilishly tricky little blighter, you know.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. His devilish cunning and panache was what made him my childhood hero. Mira signaled to Bran and Elle to start tapping everything with the shovels as Mira stayed on her hands and knees on the floor. We stayed within five feet of the doorway until we got the thumbs up from Mira. I hung back, just inside the doorway, but Bran and Elle stepped to the left and right sides to tap everything in an expanding circle.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” Mira mused. “Why would he leave this area of the floor open? No rug, no furniture, just a thirty-foot square of nothing but stone floor. It feels like a trap.”

  Mira paused to consider. “All right, so someone walking in would focus first on the shiny stuff on the desk and ignore the room because nothing’s here. I’m guessing there’s a trap in the center of this room between the door and the desk. Let’s work our way to the sides of the room first.”

  Bran and Elle tapped every block in the wall, ceiling, and floor that they could reach with their shovels, then waited for Mira. For her part, Mira was checking all the mortar between the stones from five feet high on down to the floor. When she finally got to the corner in the right side of the room, she cheered when she found a block with a switch hidden inside like the others. It was in the down position currently. Mira flicked it up, and a loud grinding noise of metal on metal was heard coming from under the floor in the center of the empty space in the room. Mira flicked the switch back down again, and the sound was made in reverse.

  “I think there’s a pit trap in the middle of the floor,” Mira said. “Putting the lever in the up-position sounds like metal bars are sliding to lock it in place somehow. We need to spring the trap to know how it works so we don’t fall into it. Any ideas?”

  “We could tie our rope to someone to keep them from falling all the way down,” Bran suggested.

  “Or we could toss a shovel into the center of the room,” Elle suggested.

  “We may need that shovel. What about the rest of that broken crate?” Bran asked.

  “That’s worth a shot,” Mira said.

  It took a little while for Bran to safely retrieve the now-empty crate. He held the lopsided crate with both hands to keep it intact until the moment of truth.

  “Make sure it lands with force.”

  Bran threw the crate high enough that it hit the ceiling, and then it crashed down onto the floor and broke into a few pieces. The floor suddenly split in half in a line from the door to the desk and dropped away, hanging on gigantic hinges by the two doors on the left and right. The debris fell into a pit under the floor that went down about fifty feet to a dirty stone floor. After a five second delay, the walls on the left and right, again, just under the two exits from the room, suddenly came apart from the shaft in ten feet high sections to slam together in the middle with a great deal of force, crushing the pieces of the crate into splinters like it was a twig. The walls retracted after five seconds to form a sheer pit again, and then the wall under the desk broke loose and moved all the way across the pit to the section under the entrance, which pushed the debris into a chute. The wall stopped, then retracted back into the wall under the desk again. Then the sound of heavy gears turning was heard in the walls, and the floor lifted back up and settled into place as if nothing had happened.

  “Another prize winner,” I said.

  “You know, I’m thinking the Pirate King was a lot more than just a pirate. It takes considerable talent to make something like this,” Bran said.

  “Yeah. I think it’s time to check the doors. Elle, can you keep the lever in the up position, please?” Mira asked.

  “Sure. It’ll give my arms a rest. That shovel was getting heavy,” Elle said.

  Elle moved over to the disarm switch and pushed the lever up, which caused that metallic grinding noise again. Mira tested the floor with a foot, just in case, but even though nothing happened, she thought better of it. Somehow, Mira stepped onto the wall like it was the floor, standing perpendicular to the way we were all standing, and walked parallel to the floor over to the door on the right-hand wall. I must have been goggling a bit, the same as the others were.

  Bandit giggled loudly. “You should see your faces!” Bandit said as she had a good laugh.

  Mira looked over at us and said, “What? Never seen a girl walk on walls before?”

  “It’s a first for me,” I said. “Cool trick.” How did she do that? I didn’t see her cast a spell, but I could sense magic on her person somehow. “How’d you do that?”

  Mira ignored me and checked out the door from every angle, then from the side, she drew her shortsword and tapped the circular handle with the point. Nothing happened. She put her sword away and gave the handle a twist. It turned something beyond the door that made the floor shudder a bit, but the door didn’t open. She looked around the door at all the gaps, then nodded to herself.

  “This is a false door. There are no hinges in the gaps of the door that I can see, and the handle triggers the trap. It doesn’t release the door at all. Let me check the other one,” Mira said.

  She repeated the same process with the door on the opposite side of the room, which had the same results. It was another false door that triggered the trap.

  “There must be a secret passage somewhere on the desk’s side of the room. Bran, can I borrow your shovel, please?” Mira asked.

  “Sure.” Bran said, handing it to Mira.

  Tapping all the ceiling blocks, Mira crossed the ceiling upside down like she was walking across the floor. She tested all the ceiling blocks in the whole room first, then the floor blocks in the part of the room by the desk, chair and bookcases. The bookcases were all as tall as the ceiling, but there was no ladder anywhere. I thought that was a significant fact.

  “Are those real books?” I asked. “There’s no ladder there to get to them.”

  Mira walked across the ceiling to the closest bookshelf, bent over, and tugged on a book. It didn’t budge.

  “Feels like painted wood,” Mira reported. “Let me check the rest of this out before you guys come across. If the pattern holds true, there’ll be another disarm switch somewhere over here behind the desk.”

  We waited patiently as Mira tapped all the floor stones, then the golden ink set on the desk, the desk itself, then the chair. Nothing else triggered a trap.

  “All right, then. Come on over,” Mira said.

  Elle let the switch go, which slowly dropped into the armed position as we walked across the room. The metallic rumbling sound was heard from the floor when the switch stopped in the down position.

  “Give me a hand,” Mira said. “See if any of the books move. Softly! If one moves a little bit, tell me right away. Pulling it out may set off a trap or something.”

  “Lovely,” I said.

  We spread out and started gently tugging. It wasn’t long before Mira found a hidden switch behind a fake book directly behind the desk. It was entitled “A Guide to a Thinner You.” There was a switch in the down position, which Mira flipped up, and we heard the rumbling of metal bars under the floor again. It was definitely the disarm switch to the pit trap. She left the fake book on the floor.

  “I found something here,” Elle said.

  Elle was in a corner of the room to the left of the desk, and she indicated some books on the shelf close to the corner on the second shelf from the bottom.

  “All of the books on this shelf move a little,” Elle said.

  “Let me take a look at that,” Mira said, walking over.

  Mira looked at the whole shelf very carefully. All of the books on the shelf were red with gold painted titles and were the same size and shape. They all had hinges on the bottom corners of the books that were very well hidden. There were twenty-one books on the shelf.

  “It’s probably a trap of some kind, but it may be a mechanism to open a secret door, too,” Mira was saying.

  Mira knelt down and pulled the first book out at the top corner. A sword blade suddenly sprang out from between the books, slicing Mira’s palm open through the glove, then hitting her breastplate hard enough to knock her on her backside. Mira held her hand as she lay on her back and shouted a string of curses that even a shipwrecked sailor would have found offensive. The sword blade retracted into the wall. Elle knelt down next to Mira to take a look at her hand, which was bleeding a lot. Elle said a prayer of healing, and the flesh came back together without a scar like it had never happened.

  “Thanks, Elle,” Mira said with obvious relief, flexing her hand, then shaking it off.

  Mira concentrated for a moment, and the blood was cleaned off of her gauntlet. I helped Mira up and focused on mending her gauntlet. In a moment, it was as good as new. I did the same with her breastplate.

  “So, maybe we have to pull the books out in order,” Bran said.

  “Anyone have any ideas? See anything that can help us puzzle this out?” Mira asked.

  We gathered around and concentrated on the books. They each had a title painted on them, and they each had a little picture painted on the spine that depicted some aspect or action associated with the title. I looked closer at the pictures, and I noticed one that didn’t match up with the title.

  “This one has a painting of an oak tree, but the title is “Almost Missed the Boat, by Justin Time,” I said. “The picture doesn’t match.”

  “There’s one entitled “Beans, the Musical Fruit,” but the painting’s of a carrot,” Mira said.

  “Here’s one that says, “Cats and Their Plan to Control the Cosmos,” but the painting is of a dog,” Elle pointed out. “Those are the only ones I see that don’t match up.”

  “Hmmm, an oak, a carrot and a dog. O, C, D. It doesn’t spell anything compelling,” Mira said. “The titles start with an A, then a B, then a C. Maybe if we pull them in that order, something good will happen.”

  “Maybe we should use the tip of a sword to do that, and reach from the side,” I suggested.

  “Sure. Have at it, oh mighty wise one,” Mira said.

  “My hands are full,” I said, holding out the shield and mace. “Why don’t you trigger the trap? I mean, see if it works?”

  Mira gestured obscenely at me, which only caused me to laugh, drew her shortsword and flipped down the book with the title starting with A. It clicked, and nothing shot out of the wall. She flipped down the book about beans with the same result, then the one about cats. The books flipped back into their normal positions and the bookcase to the right of us in the corner started pulling back into the wall, then pivoted out of the way. Beyond was a brightly lit passage that was ten feet wide and disappeared around a corner to the left after a dozen feet or so. There was a small lever jutting out from the wall about three feet up from the floor.

  “It’s all yours, oh most sneaky one,” I said, with a bow.

  “Yeah, now he has manners,” Mira muttered.

  Mira took her time checking the corridor for traps as she went slowly along. The corridor only went about twenty feet around the left corner before it ended at another wooden door. Once again, Mira took her time in examining the door. Not seeing anything amiss, she tried the handle. The door opened into a brightly lit room around fifty feet deep and fifty feet wide, lined with bookshelves with the occasional ladder that could glide along the wall on a metal track of some kind above the shelves. The room was filled with comfortable chairs and sofas of various different sizes with end tables next to them. In the center of each wall, there was a doorway leading out. It looked like twenty people would be able to find a comfortable spot to read a book here.

  “This is nice,” Mira said. “I’ll bet everything is trapped, though.”

  An eerie, higher pitched male voice responded, “Nope. There are definitely no traps in here.”