The furniture in the Pirate King’s home was all in perfect condition, which is not at all what I expected in a one-thousand-year-old hideout. We found that the great hall had a very long, polished table in it with padded wooden chairs that were reasonably comfortable, and the guest bedrooms he had directed us to all had comfortable beds, but had no sheets, pillows, or blankets. There were chairs, writing tables, and most importantly, there were functioning bathrooms with clean running water. They even had smaller basins and larger ones to bathe in like the Terrans of Kurgh Rhamot had. We didn’t have any of that in Stonekeep except in the castle itself. It was nice to clean up after our two-week long voyage, too. I could say with certainty that none of us smelled like roses on our arrival.

  After getting cleaned up, we went through the common area and the great hall to the kitchens. I found the Pirate King had provided basins with clean, fresh running water just like the guest bathrooms had. That was a huge relief because we hadn’t found a good supply of fresh water since we left Seacrown. The others were gathered here already, and were chatting as Bran and Elle made a meal for everyone. Every pot, pan and utensil was already provided here, and there was even a stove with some kind of hot rocks for cooking. Everyone was dressed in their casual clothes. I wouldn’t say the conversation was light, but at least it wasn’t fatalistic.

  My head was still spinning with the revelations of the day, and I was anxious about what we would face tomorrow. The implications of everything we learned sat heavily on me. Was I really the son of one of the most powerful Magi to ever live? When we got back to Stonekeep, what would we find there? What was in the rooms inhabited by Mordon and Ismaera? Or would the place be nothing but rubble already? The entire city could be put to the sword or carried off to slavery, solely based on a maniac’s whim.

  None of us said anything while we ate. Given the trauma of the day, we just weren’t in the mood for the usual light banter and teasing. After wolfing down his food, Bran excused himself and left the great hall. Elle was the next to get up. I didn’t see bandit anywhere in the hall, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Everyone knew pixies could turn invisible when they wanted to. That just left me and Mira alone. Despite wanting to be alone with her, my headache was killing me, and I was in a bit of pain everywhere else. It must have shown.

  “Does it really hurt to use magic?” Mira asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said a little tersely.

  “How bad?”

  “Sometimes it’s like having a nail shoved into a random body part, and sometimes it’s like a hot metal flake lands on my skin somewhere. And if I use as much magic as I did today, I’ll get a splitting headache.”

  “But it’s different every time?”

  “Yeah. Even if I cast the same spell twice in a row, I’ll feel it in two different places.”

  She thought about it. “That’s one way to ruin something really good. I thought you were using magic sparingly all this time just because you were hiding it.”

  “Isn’t that reason enough?”

  “Suppose so. No one ever really relaxes around you because they think you’ll mess up and expose your secret,” Mira blurted out rather unthinkingly. She saw by my face that those words had a greater effect than she realized. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said relaxing a little. “I worry about that too. All the time. And they’re not wrong. If the king or prince found out, they could put the whole family to death. That’s not something I want on my conscience, however briefly.”

  “Well, I mean, you don’t have to worry about yourself too much now. You’re powerful enough to take on an awful lot of soldiers by yourself now.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t defend against attacks I don’t see coming.”

  Mira was quiet for a minute, and head bobbed as I struggled to stay awake. While I was almost falling unconscious at the table, I didn’t notice the mischievous look she got. “Are you in pain right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I could… Make you feel better,” Mira said slyly.

  That woke me up. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? I looked closely. Yeah, that was an open invitation if I’d ever heard one. I hadn’t, but that’s beside the point. She wanted me. And I wanted her. We had private bedrooms a stone’s throw away for the first time ever, and the thought of lying with her was exhilarating.

  “I’d really like that.” That was the understatement of the year.

  “Give it a minute, the come to my room,” Mira said as she got up.

  My eyes were glued to her backside as she left. I didn’t care how much I hurt at the moment. I was not going to risk death another time without finally getting to know a woman. It was something I’d thought about a lot, and the time was finally here! I counted to sixty, and that was as long as I wanted to wait. I got up, crossed the common room, went into the guest area, and was just reaching for Mira’s door handle when the worst thing happened.

  “Where do you think you’re going, lover boy?” Bran asked. He was peering through his slightly opened door, and he opened it further to regard me squarely.

  I tried to play it tough. “I think you know where I’m going.”

  “Not in there, you’re not.”

  “You jerk.”

  Bran just stared.

  “We could all die tomorrow, and you’re concerned about propriety?” I asked.

  “There’s a reason they make us wait until marriage, Jeron.”

  “I don’t give a damn about any of that.”

  “Clearly.”

  I reached for Mira’s door handle again. “See you in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell dad.”

  That stopped me. “You wouldn’t.”

  Except that he would, and we both knew it. Curses flooded through my mind, all of them targeting Bran. Even then, I knew better than to confront Dortham. Most boys had a healthy fear of their father’s anger, but it was a little different for us Smiths. Sure, Dortham had once been a vigilante and had been very good at dealing out violence, but that wasn’t it. I had acted out as a kid and had gotten my backside whipped by his belt, but that wasn’t it, either. It was that he’d be disappointed in me. That was the reason, and my brother knew it was the one thing that would work.

  I turned towards my own room and went to bed alone. Again. And again, I had to wonder what could have been.

  -----

  When I woke, I was incredibly thirsty. The first thing I did was to open the spigot and drink my fill of fresh, clean water. It was nice and cold, too. The best I could remember drinking. I washed again, then got dressed and went out to the common room. Elle, Mira, Bandit and Bran were all playing a card game of some sort. They looked up when I entered.

  “Finally!” Bandit said. “If you were trying to get some beauty rest, you could use a lot more.”

  Mira didn’t meet my eyes, and I knew things were different. Not in a good way, too.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, your highness.” I crossed the room to go to the kitchen.

  “Well, you did! A really, really long time, too!” Bandit said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been sleeping for at least a day or day and a half,” Bran said. “It’s hard to tell down here.”

  “We’ve been worried,” Elle said. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

  “Well, you were worried. I was just bored,” Bandit said.

  “A day and a half?” I asked. I felt great. My headache and all the phantom nails were gone. No sign of the bed rot you can get by laying around in bed for an hour or two after you wake up. Not that I’d had a lot of experience with that, but there was one time I faked an illness to get out of doing chores when I was a kid. Nora made me stay in bed all day, and it was definitely not everything I wished it would be.

  “Yeah. It’s got to be some kind of a record or something. You even slept through Bran slapping you in the face!” Bandit said.

  I looked over at Bran, who shrugged.

  “Twice,” Bandit said mischievously.

  “Ah. Well, whatever. Who’s hungry?” I said.

  “It’s about lunchtime,” Bran said, getting up from his chair.

  We ate lunch in peace. It was the same old beans, bread and beef jerky, but at least we still had food. I was in a very hopeful mindset. Sure, there were lots of things we could be worried about. We had maybe a couple of weeks of food. Our boat had sunk. We were stuck on an island full of hostile undead. Things were definitely not going according to plan. But we had Vengeance. We also had shelter. We were hidden. And we had the promise of help from the one and only Pirate King. I could see the way out.

  “Has the Pirate king given any more insight?” I asked.

  “Hasn’t come back.” Bran mumbled around a mouthful of food.

  I looked directly at Mira, then Bandit. “And no one’s gone through the door he left by?”

  “Are you crazy? He specifically mentioned a horrible death. I’m not going in there,” Bandit said. “Not even Mira’s that dumb.”

  “Thanks for that,” Mira said.

  “You know what I mean,” Bandit said defensively.

  “Are they still patrolling outside?” I asked Bran.

  “Not since this morning. It feels like they’ve all withdrawn to the western side of the island. They couldn’t find us, so I think they’ve drawn close to the focus. They know we have to come to them.”

  “So, they’re not mindless, then,” I said.

  “Seems not,” Bran said. “Or maybe they are, and they’re being directed by something that isn’t mindless. Either way, we’ll be up to our eyeballs in ‘em soon enough.”

  “We have no idea how many undead we’re going to run into, but we can be sure that however many there are will all concentrate on us when we approach the focus. It’s a thousand years’ worth of dead sailors and soldiers, and they could come at us from all directions,” I said. “I think we need to approach in a circle and get a system in place to call out how many are coming from each direction.”

  “So, call out something like ‘five, far away’ or something like that?” Mira asked.

  “Yeah, exactly,” I said. “I can blow up a lot of stuff at once, but they’ll keep getting back up until we destroy the focus.”

  “We need to be quick,” Bran said.

  “I also think I’ll have to change between concussive blasts to keep them away and fire spells to try to destroy them, but I won’t know where the biggest concentrations of undead are if something’s in my face.”

  “Callouts. That’ll work,” Bran said. “So short range is what? Something like twenty paces?”

  “I think that’ll be about right,” I said. “Short range is like calling for a concussive blast to throw them back. Medium can be around eighty feet, a good range for a spray of fire, and long range is a hundred feet or more, which I can hit with a more powerful explosion. Sound good?”

  “Sure. How are we going to deal with Talros and his magical shield?” Elle asked.

  We all thought about that for a moment.

  “Maybe if Jeron could get him in the blast radius of one of his fire spells it would hurt him without it rebounding,” Mira suggested.

  “That could work,” Bran said. “Or maybe we could just have one person grab the shield and another guy chop his arm off. I doubt he has any armor left to protect him after a thousand years.”

  “Either one would probably work,” I said. “We’ll have to see how it plays out. So, with your senses attuned to evil, you could probably guide us to the focus, couldn’t you?”

  “You know it. I have a good idea of where it is even from here,” Bran said. “I think it’s aware of us, too.”

  “All right, then. Anyone think of anything else?” I asked.

  There wasn’t anything left to discuss. We finished our meal with each of us lost in our own thoughts. Then we went to our rooms to retrieve our armor and met in the hallway to help arm each other. We left the hideout without fanfare, nor did we see the Pirate King. I guess since we were trespassers anyway, he didn’t feel beholden to give us a cheery sendoff. I couldn’t begrudge him that. It was an unimaginably long time that he’d been here, and that sort of thing had to have had an effect on his mind.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Once we were ready, I tried to transport us all outside the secret entrance, on the other side of the glyph, but it didn’t work. I really wasn’t surprised that the Pirate King would have thought of that and defended against it. We walked out the hard way, being very careful of the traps. Outside, the skeletons were nowhere to be found except for the ones that Bran killed with Vengeance. There were pieces of mail and a broken sword blade still lying there in the trampled grass, but nothing of the owners of the relics. I kept my eyes open for them, but ultimately, I trusted Bran to warn us before they got close. We marched in a diamond pattern with Bran leading. I was behind Bran and to the left, Elle was to my right, and Mira was in the center in the rear. The oppressive gloom encompassed all, weighing our spirits down.

  “I still don’t feel any of the undead are close right now, in case you all are wondering,” Bran said. “They’ve marshaled their forces close to the focus.”

  The island had many low hills with a gentle ridge line in the center. We didn’t think the undead would have missile weapons, so we took to the ridge line to keep the advantages of sight and the high ground. With the trees as sparse as they were, it was still possible that they could try to sneak up on us, but not with Bran here. He would definitely sense them coming. We walked for three hours when Bran started to slow the march. Ahead of us was the end of the ridge. From there, the hillside went down to the west in a gentle slope to the edge of the island, which should be a cliff straight down. Bran was focused on his left, the south, and started walking down that way on the easiest path he could find. He drew his holy sword, so the rest of us drew weapons as we followed.

  “The greatest concentration of evil is down that way,” Bran said. “I can feel it in this whole area, though. I think they’re buried, so let’s be quick and careful.”

  Close to halfway down the hill, there seemed to be a crevasse in the hillside. As we watched, there was a flash of green light that came from within the crevasse. It was a concentrated and evil magical power that washed over the entire area. The invisible globe of magic protection generated by Bran’s holy sword seemed to keep it from washing through us, thankfully. Somewhat less thankfully, an undead army come swarming out of the crevasse by the dozens. Clearly, there was a cave in that crevasse that was chock full of the malignant undead. Most of them had no weapons, armor, or clothes, and were nothing but skeletons. A few of them had rusted bits of chainmail on and still clutched a rusted weapon of some kind. All of them had baleful green lights in their eye sockets that were fixed on us. They knew we were here. As they charged, they shouted battle cries that sounded like they came from beyond the grave. Though I should not have been surprised, I was still a bit shocked as the ground turned up in piles here and there on the hillside, each one revealing a skeletal corpse clawing its way out of the ground.

  “Steady,” Bran said calmly. “Remember why we’re here. For hearth and for home. For family. For Stonekeep!” Bran set himself and brought his shield up. “Lord God, please strengthen us for this ordeal.” A golden glow surrounded all four of us, and I felt more strength flow into me.

  “Lord God, please protect us in this dark time,” Elle prayed fervently. The golden glow around us intensified, spreading a warm feeling through my limbs.

  I opened myself to the source, seizing as much power as I could hold. I channeled fire into my mace. I raised my weapon and created a blast of concussive force to radiate around us in all directions, which took care of the most imminent threat. Then I focused my will and hurled a small ball of fire into the midst of the horde that was even now running up the hill at us at full speed. The blast exploded with power, hurling flaming bone fragments in all directions. I focused again and hurled another ball of fiery destruction at the frontrunners of the horde. The explosion rocked the hillside, and we could feel the heat from where we advanced down the hill.

  “Twelve mid-range on the right!” Elle called out. I hurled a blast of fire at them in response, burning their bones away to ash.

  “Twenty, close behind!” Mira called out. I pivoted beside Mira and focused my will, sending a wave of concussive force in an arc behind us. It was powerful enough to strip the trees of branches and smash skeletons to fragments.

  The undead could run very quickly, and the first ones to get close were about twenty feet away when I focused my will to send out a powerful concussive blast, hurling their bones back down the hillside. I followed that with a cone of fire that turned the fragments left over into ash. Still, we advanced, and still the undead came swarming out of the cave. Green light flashed from the cave, and around us, pieces of skeletons started skittering around and knitting themselves together in an alarming and repulsive manner that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

  I hurled fiery explosive power down the mountainside, always on the lookout for a shiny shield among the skeletons. I had not seen it yet, but I knew I would soon, and I didn’t want my own spells to rebound on me. I had to be careful. Once again, I hurled a fiery ball at a concentration of the undead and once again blew them to pieces, scattering bones and ashes in all directions. Still the skeletons poured out of the cave. I seized more power from the source, focused my will, and blew the frontrunners of the horde back down the hillside in smoking fragments. I followed up with a cone of fire as hot as I could summon and held it on as many pieces as I could.

  Undead came at us from all sides now, though the majority of them still came from the crevasse. Bran met their charge with shield upraised and a mighty slash with his holy sword. Four of the skeletons were struck down with his first swing. The others were clawing at the shields of both me and Elle, trying to drag us down or claw at us with their bony fingers. Their blows were stronger than I thought would be possible, but we held firm. With the divine strength we now had, Elle and Mira were able to strike one down with each swing, but Bran was able to slash through three or four at a time. His holy sword blazed with a fierce golden glare, and when he struck them down, the undead did not rise again.

  “We’ve got dozens coming down behind us!” Mira shouted.

  I smashed the skeletons in front of me with a concussive blast in a wide arc, which gave me time to hurl a ball of fire at the skeletons coming over the hill behind us. It blew many of them apart, but they kept coming. Bran was taking on more of the skeletons in the front, and Elle was doing the same but with less strength. The undead were starting to press closer on the front side. The green light pulsed again from the cave, and once again, bones started to knit together in a macabre dance. The ones Bran struck down stayed down, though there was no way he could kill all of them by himself. There were too many.

  I held my fist up and channeled a blast of concussive force in a complete circle. The force of the blast hurled dozens of skeletons away from us in all directions. This did not look like a winning battle, however. They kept reforming slowly, then rejoining the fight, and now we were surrounded. I noticed that there was a lull in the number of skeletons coming from the cave, and I had an idea.

  “Everyone on me!” I shouted.

  Bran, Elle and Mira must have guessed what I was doing, and each laid their sword arms on my arms or shoulders, shields still held outwards. I focused my will and whooshed us all to the cave entrance. As quickly as I could, I hurled a blast of concussive force in all directions, blasting the skeletons every which way. Bran advanced into a dark cave made lighter by holy light, followed closely by the rest of us. I had to be careful with my blasting, I knew, or the cave could collapse on us. Before I entered the cave, I felt some magic released and saw that above us there was a large group of skeletons that looked to be rooted in place by the shrubs and grass. I made a mental note to thank Bandit later for that.

  More skeletons came up from the depths of the cave as those on the outside shouted in their otherworldly voices and charged into the cave after us. I focused my will and a cone of fire leapt from my fist, engulfing the skeletons that charged us from behind. I kept the fire going, and it filled the tunnel. None of the undead could get through the inferno waiting for them.

  In the fore, Bran, Mira and Elle cut through skeleton after skeleton as we advanced step by step down into the earth. Another pulse of greenish light flashed around us from deep in the cave, and the skeletons that Bran didn’t kill started reforming again. The undead on the outside swarmed into the tunnel with war cries that echoed weirdly in their unearthly voices, heedless of the flames. I could see them bursting apart in the heat. I had to keep my fire spell going or the hundreds of skeletons still outside would easily swarm over us, but the pain was intense. I could feel a strong aura of fear coming from deeper inside, and I continually had to steel my resolve to keep fighting. My other three companions didn’t seem to be struggling with that irrational fear inside Bran’s protective aura. My head ached fiercely, and I started to sweat with the effort of holding my fire spell active, but I seized more power, nonetheless.

  Without the divine strength granted to us, Bran, Elle and Mira could not have hacked their way down the tunnel. I followed slowly, concentrating on what I was doing and trying to keep from running away from the source of that evil aura. I could see a dim, green light reflected on the rock beside me, and I knew we were finally getting close.

  “There he is!” Elle shouted.

  Risking a glance behind me, I saw we were at the edge of a large chamber carved out of the rock. On the far side of the chamber was a sculpture of black rock that looked like a man’s face screaming at the heavens. There was a greenish fire burning in its mouth, and though I wasn’t a paladin, even I could feel the incredible evil radiating from it. Standing in front of the hideous sculpture was a skeleton that held a staff that looked like it was carved from the bone of some great beast, covered in runes and generating a fell, green mist. There were still dozens of undead formed up in a shield wall. There was one notable shield bearer who had an obviously adamantium shield, and they all had remnants of armor and corroded weapons in their bony fists. I turned back to the tunnel and refocused my will on filling that tunnel with fire. The skeletons were relentless in their attempts to overtake us, running into the flames with abandon. The skeleton with the bone staff raised that weapon over its head with both hands and I could see and feel an almost invisible magical shield spring into being around the necromancer and focus. My heart sank as I thought of the grievous harm a necromancer could do to us.

  “Wait for me!” I shouted as I backpedaled towards the others. “I need a clear view of the tunnel!”

  “Die! Die! Die!” the necromancer shouted. It raised a hand and hurled a bolt of ebon power that was highlighted in sickly green that slammed against the sphere of protection granted by Bran’s sword and dissipated harmlessly.

  To his credit, Bran didn’t leave me unprotected to charge into the fray, but waited for me, keeping Vengeance’s shield against magic between the necromancer and me. I turned back towards the entrance of the cave. Ghostly battle shouts sounded behind me as I slowly backed towards the place the others were waiting. The skeletal warriors in the shield wall didn’t attack immediately, but waited with the ones in the center of the formation safe inside the necromancer’s magic shield.

  The stress of keeping the cone of fire burning this long was wearing me down quickly. I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer, but behind me, the greenish flames on the focus grew brighter, then pulsed again. By this time, there was a huge, long pile of blackened bones piled up in the tunnel, and when the pulse hit it, it started generating skeletons like a pile of excrement popping out some grotesque fungus. The worst were the Seeker skeletons. It was like killing children.

  The necromancer raised its staff, which flared with green light, and animal bones from the periphery of the chamber quickly massed together like a swarm of locusts being sucked into a tornado. Formed from that torrent were four giant tentacle-like things rooted to the floor between us and the undead guarding the focus. They began flailing around, then suddenly lashed downward at us. Though we had sturdy shields and divine strength, the bony tentacles struck hard and scattered us easily. We each knew we had to do something, and formations and shield walls were worthless.

  Mira disappeared into the darkness and confusion. I was knocked aside by a powerful blow to my right shoulder, which made me lose concentration on my magic. The flames in the tunnel went out. Elle had been knocked down and was now praying from one knee while Bran stood firm with his shield above them both. As I was getting to my feet, there was a pulse of golden light radiating out from Elle, which washed through me and took all my pain away. I looked into the tunnel entrance, and even now undead were charging towards us, screaming their war cries. I hurled a ball of fire into the midst of the tunnel and blew everything in there to pieces.

  Elle was getting to her feet with Bran still shielding her from the lashing bone constructs. I only had a little bit of time before that focus would pulse again, and Bran with his shield against magic was between me and everything else. I decided to take a risk. I transported myself to the far chamber wall to the right, then hurled a ball of fire into the base of the bone tentacles, blowing them into tiny pieces. The necromancer turned it head and saw me, then shot a bolt of necromantic energy at me. Knowing it was coming, I whooshed myself away to the other side of the cavern, behind the necromancer’s gaze. When I reappeared, I saw it hit the wall with great force. Bran and Elle were advancing towards the shield wall, and would be there in seconds. They needed my help.

  From a few feet away, Mira spoke from the shadows, startling me. “They can’t do this themselves! Make some room!”

  Knowing Mira the way I did, I thought what she needed was a way to get at either the necromancer or the shield bearer from stealth. Fire wasn’t the way to do it, though. They’d just get up again, and the necromancer and the core of the wall were protected from my magic. I had just the thing. I conjured a blast of pure cold in a cone shape, which froze the entire left side of the shield wall under a couple inches of ice.

  Battle was joined with the elite group at the focus. The shield bearer tried to engage Bran directly, but Bran blocked his attacks with his shield struck at the warriors to the side. Elle was with him every step of the way defending his back and flank. With the divine light surrounding them, they fought resolutely to reach the focus, but a second, the undead in the shield wall surrounded them and rained blows down on them from all sides. Mira wasn’t beside me anymore and with the gloom of the chamber, I couldn’t see her. The undead mage saw me and hurled another blast of necromantic power at me just as I transported myself to a spot outside his shielding and behind the undead. The focus pulsed again just before I began attacking the undead. I swore.

  Out of nowhere, Mira appeared behind the necromancer and sheared his head off. She didn’t even interrupt her stride as she ran up behind the shield bearer and lopped his head off. In the span of that single second, the battle had completely shifted. I hurled a ball of fire into the tunnel mouth, then it was complete chaos as the four of us fought the remaining undead near the focus.

  The focus began to brighten again as we fought. Bran destroyed one more warrior, which gave him a small avenue to the focus. He took a couple of blows as he charged, then chopped down into the focus with all his strength. There was a moment where the greenish light retracted almost faster than we could see from the cave and into the focus, which glowed intensely, and then the focus exploded outward in all directions. Bran was blown backwards ten feet to land on his back with a great clang of armor. The rest of us were knocked prone by flying debris. I lay there for a moment listening. There were no more ghostly battle cries, no more rattling of bones, and most importantly, no more irrational fears trying to overwhelm me.

  “Is it dead yet?” I asked.

  “Gone,” Bran replied with a groan.

  “Is everyone all right?” I asked.

  “No, definitely not,” Mira replied where she lay.

  “Elle?” Bran asked, holding his shield over his torso. He coughed up some blood.

  Elle was sprawled out on the floor, face down. Bran, in obvious pain, crawled over to her and shook her a little. A groan escaped Elle.

  “Elle, wake up,” Bran said, shaking her gently.

  I could see the big dents in all of our armor and knew that the blunt force trauma would be extensive even if the steel didn’t have rents all the way through. For my part, I thought my left arm was dislocated and breathing was painful. The others looked worse off than me, though.

  Elle stirred and raised her head a little. She groaned. “Bran? Are you all right?”

  “Not really. Heal yourself, then you can worry about me.” Bran said.

  Elle had rolled halfway over and placed her gauntleted hand on Bran’s thigh cuisses and whispered a healing prayer through bloody lips. Bran breathed easier as the healing magic sank into him. Elle prayed again and laid a hand on her own breastplate. She started breathing without the rasp she just had. Collecting herself, Elle then got onto her knees and tended to Mira where she lay, then to me with her healing prayers. I felt a lot better after that.

  “Thanks, Elle,” I said.

  For a long moment we all just sat there amidst the bones and collected ourselves.

  “Hey, are you guys all right in there?” A little voice asked from the dust filled tunnel.

  “Yeah, all clear here,” Mira said. “Glad you’re all right, too.”

  Between the two of us, Mira cleaned all of us up after I repaired the dents and scratches gouged into our armor. The broken top of the necromancer’s staff was laying close by, but the rest of the staff was indistinguishable from the rest of the bones scattered everywhere. It was already destroyed, so I wasted no more thought on it. Talros’ shield looked as good as the day it was forged, however, including the straps on the inside. Adamantium looked a lot like steel, except it had a bluish cast to it. This shield had no wooden backing, and given its large rectangular size, it should have weighed more than a person could handle for any length of time. Somehow it was a lot lighter than it should be, though. The outer face of the shield was still polished and didn’t have a scratch on it. After I inspected it, admiring the craftsmanship, I handed it to Elle.

  “I think Elle’s the best person to use this shield, don’t you guys?” I asked.

  Everyone wholeheartedly agreed. The whole group would suffer if Elle fell, and not just suffer physically. I noticed that Bran was especially happy that Elle had better protection now. I could see Mira looking around the cave a bit, looking disappointed.

  “What, no money lying around?’ I teased.

  “Not even a copper coin,” Mira replied. She pretended to be extremely disappointed and wiped away a fake tear.

  I laughed. “Let’s go back and check out the Pirate King’s lair. Maybe he left some treasure for us. More importantly, he promised us a way off this rock,” I reminded them.

  “I’m just glad to not feel like I’m surrounded by supernatural evil anymore,” Bran said. “It was like ants were crawling all over my skin.”

  We almost ran out of the cave, we were so glad to be leaving, and we were greeted by a beautiful, sunny day. The gloom was gone.