Bound Evil

Emily was warm and comfortable when something grabbed her shoulder and violently shook her.

She snapped awake and reached for the nearest throat, but just before she choked the person out, Nox’s excited face came into view.

“Emily come look what I found! No wait I’ll just tell you. It’s like a secret vault in the wall! I felt this strange pattern of air flowing nearby and managed to sniff it out.” he said proudly.

Emily fell back lazily as Nox laughed, still pulling Emily by the hand to get her to rise.

“Alright, I’m coming now,” Emily said as she stood and dusted herself off, taping Cupcake's flank.

While she was doing this, she called to her stars and had them slot Performer.

It was show time.

As they stepped into the back room she saw the door to the treasury was already opened. Kael was half a step inside, with Alex and Oscar right behind him.

Not wanting to be left out, Nox chased after them. Emily arrived last and glanced into the room. Alex was busy making a show of releasing the glass cylinders while Nox was poking the runes with the refined source in them.

“As it stands, I’ll be claiming this sword as my one item,” Alex said pointing to the specter’s weapon.

Kael looked at it lovingly but nodded slowly.

“I understand, if you’re sure, then it is yours by right or contract.”

Alex nodded but Emily raised her hand.

“Actually, I’m laying claim to that metal stick in there. I almost died to that creature several times over and I’d like to be compensated.”

Oscar scowled now.

“If anyone is getting that scepter, it's me. I too have taken a great deal of risk here.”

Emily squinted at him.

“It looks magical, you don’t even use magic.”

“Yeah? Well, it’ll sell for a lot as soon as I find out what it does.”

Kael made a silencing gesture towards Oscar and turned his frown on Emily.

“We agreed on one item.”

“That’s true, but that was before we knew how heavily we would have to rely on Alex and myself. Neither of you can use it, so why not let me take it? In the end, there’s plenty in here that you can make a profit off. Hell, you might not even be able to carry everything out of her even with everyone else’s help.”

Nox was starting at the scepter with worry but he didn’t speak.

Kael on the other hand was searching Emily’s face. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision.

“I’ll give it to you. If you do me a favor.”

Emily narrowed her eyes at the man, she was not a fan of his ‘favors’.

“Just say what you want.”

Kael smiled.

“It’s not much. To start, I want you to allow Svent to have a look at it and inform me of its abilities. Secondly, I want you to have a look at a particular item for me. I’ve already had many magic users investigate it but I haven’t let a Blood Mage look at it before.”

Emily narrowed her eyes at the man but it wasn’t a hard favor. She could just have a look at it and when she couldn’t figure it out, she could tell him as much. Emily reasoned that this was probably his original intent when he found out she could use magic.

“Fine, I’ll have a look once we’re out of here.”

“Boss, how is this fair? I want the armor then.”

Kael rolled his eyes.

“I’m going to have Svent check that out too, but if it's useful I’ll be wearing it. Don’t whine. I’ll make sure you’re compensated well for your part in this.”

Oscar still looked unhappy but he seemed mollified by the idea of a big payout.

“Now, all of you help me pry this refined source out of the wall. And don’t even think of stealing any. Or I’ll dock your pay from a year.” Kael said.

Oscar shot Emily and Alex withering glares but Kael didn’t seem to care he was showing obvious favor toward them.

If anything he seemed amused by Oscar's reaction.

Emily went over to the now-open case and plucked the item from its pedestal.

She shoved it into her pack before taking out a knife and gouging at the runes in the room to get at the shiny metal tiles.

Now that she was closer the refined source reminded her of a shard of blue mirror. It reflected the light beautifully and as she pried out her first one she felt a distinct humming coming from the metal.

What she didn’t expect was for her internal source to respond to the metal in the same manner it did with runes.

She didn’t want to test it down here, but something was special about this metal.

They all worked in relative silence and by the time they were done they had over two hundred tiles.

“Okay wait we need to leave a single on in the wall to power the lights,” Alex said.

Kael pursed his lips, but getting out of here in the dark would be far harder especially if they wanted to loot the rest of the tomb.

So when they had picked the place clean, they all headed out of the final chamber and began climbing the stairs.

Kael was happily inspecting his spoils as they continued to ascend.

“So, Alexander, you said you know where another one of these Lay lines is?”

The greed was evident in his eyes but he didn’t try to restrain it.

Alex nodded carefully.

“I do…but. If I’m right, it's entrance is across the grey sands”

Kael's face immediately fell.

“Ah well, then I’ll just have to contain myself. I told you already. I’m not crossing those blasted dunes for anything. I’ll get you to Lorehil but that's where our contract ends.”

Alex nodded a concerned look coming over his features. He glanced at Emily but then continued navigating them down the halls.

Emily wouldn't have understood that look just hours prior, but now it held meaning to her. Alex knew something about this but he didn’t want to say it to Kael directly. Emily frowned, constantly worrying about future events must be aggravating. Alex was probably always stressing about the order of events. Emily was glad she didn’t know what was going to happen every second of every day. Regardless she made a note to ask him the next time they got a moment alone.

As they pushed through the tomb, Emily got a chance to see everything in a less threatening light. The traps in all the rooms were inactive and whatever Alex had done had put all the specters to sleep. He insisted it would only last a couple of weeks, but it made collecting title stones as easy as opening a coffin and desecrating a corpse.

As time moved on they backtracked, taking a couple hours to reach the second level again. When they did Emily noticed several green markings on the walls. Kael smiled and they began to follow the breadcrumbs. It wasn’t long before they found Vivan, and after that, he led them to the rest of the wandering fangs.

As luck would have it, when Alex shut down the wards, everyone noticed the tomb’s lighting and wards went out for about an hour.

That was probably when Emily and Alex had been recovering. So when the light had come back on, but not the traps they carefully began exploring the floor.

They had almost entirely mapped the second floor by the time their group found them again.

The wandering fangs had been in low spirits, but by the time Kael returned, sharing the word of a big payout everyone cheered.

Gerade and Atticus came over to see Kael, while Marth checked up on Oscar.

Emily was just finding a space to avoid the crowds when she was tackled from the side.

Ashe was not a large woman but it was like getting hit by a sack of rocks and Emily went down with her in her arms.

“Oh thank the Source you okay!”

At first, Emily just froze in place. No one had ever shown this kind of reaction before, and quite frankly she didn't know what to do.

When Ashe never got a response, her concern morphed into annoyance.

“What in the world were you thinking? I bet it was yours or Alex’s idea to go down there, wasn’t it?”

Emily had scarcely got her bearings before the questions were rapid-fired one after another. Where had they gone? Had she been safe? How was her source?

All Emily could do was answer them to the best of her ability.

She completely skirted around the topic of whose idea it was, lest the woman feel vindicated by the answer.

“Ashe, I’m all good. How was it for you guys here?”

Ashe furrowed her brow as Emily stared up at her. From the ground, Emily could make out Selia talking to Kale, but she momentarily glanced down at Emily with a smirk.

From the looks of things, Kael was getting his own dress down.

Appeasing the bristling woman was not easy and it was only after Emily described what had befallen them over the last few days that she relented. Emily kept the more sensitive details to herself, yet she felt surprisingly good once she had told Ashe everything.

After the reunion came what Kael termed the ‘fun’ part, which was a complete lie, as it entailed mapping out the remainder of the tomb and cleaning it until not a single scrap of value was left.

Kale even had them bundle up the weathered antiques in the throne room. Some of which the right collector might buy.

By the time Kael allowed them to leave, two more days had passed. Meantime they had been underground for an entire week.

Fortunately, there was no trouble leaving the tomb, as Alex used the control ward to open the front door and keep it that way. He even had the wards lock in the scent to avoid another carrion beetle disaster, but as they left some did show up as the smell clung to their clothes.

A fact Emily wanted to rectify as soon as she could.

The carrion beetles numbers were high, but they were manageable this time. All it took to scare the scavenger off was a couple of well-placed stomps.

Their group was soon climbing the main tunnel toward ground level.

When they got to the top Ashe spent the next couple hours showing them where to dig to get out of this place.

The sky finally came into sight again hours later and Emily happily vowed never to set foot in another dank, dark tunnel if she could help it.

Of course, there was still one big problem to address.

The Blightstingers.

Atticus was the first to head out and scout around, when he returned he shook his head.

“I don’t see any movement in the area. In all likelihood, the queen probably escaped to find a new nest now that so many of her hive are dead.”

It made sense and Emily wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They gathered everyone up and moved into the nearby forest.

After being surrounded by stone and stale air on all sides for the last week, Emily welcomed the chilly wind as she took lungfuls of fresh air.

Snow crunched underfoot once more, and she could happily say she had missed the forest. Which, unless she was not imagining looked even further thawed from winter's grasp. The tufts of grass were sprouting up all over, and she saw fresh buds in the treetops, even a few leaves.

The journey was altogether pleasant as the wandering fangs made their way back to the village. Cupcake was rearing to go, finally free of the restraining walls of the tomb, she wanted to run wild, and Emily didn’t mind so they weaved in and out of the convoy until the old she-wolf had gotten her fill.

Leaning forward Emily fed her another globul of blood and Cupcake was only too happy to oblige. It wasn’t only Emily who was glad to be out of there. The others also showed signs of relief from being out of that death trap of a tomb. What's more, everyone was riding high on the huge payout they were going to receive soon

Unfortunately, the carefree atmosphere was short-lived.

When they crested a hill and arrived at Frosthaven they spotted thin trails of smoke issued up from the village itself.

Emily could just make out long extinguished fires and collapsed structures. The perimeter of blackened posts remained intact save for one glaring change, where it looked like something massive had broken down an outer post and forced its way inside.

From the looks of things everything was quiet now, but there still looked to be signs of life in the village.

Kael cursed and directed the collum towards the gap in the fence. As they neared Emily could just make out people coming out to meet them.

They were bloodied and bruised but a firey anger resided in their eyes.

Emily realized why a second later. There, cut cleanly in two was the corpse of the queen Blightstiger, its drones lying dead nearby.

Blood points: 157