Chapter Text
The next week, in the vague vicinity of six pm, Morgana answered Merlin’s knock dressed for a date. Her hair piled high and studded with gemstones, she wore sparklies in each ear that Merlin did not doubt were real diamond and her curve-hugging, decolletage-framing black dress was picked with chips of something subtle that caught the light as she opened the door. Merlin peered past her into her apartment to find it empty and unprepared for gaming. He checked his watch. If anything, he was late.
“Am I supposed to be here tonight?” Merlin asked. “Otherwise I’ll just leave you for whoever you were expecting.”
Morgana’s forehead furrowed briefly. “Arthur didn’t text you.”
“Pretty sure Arthur forgot my number.”
“Now I know that isn’t true. Arthur’s getting pizza,” Morgana said, gesturing him inside. “He’s probably just a coward. You’re only early. Feel welcome to sit as long as you don’t mind entertaining Aithusa while I’m in the shower. A last minute lunch came up for work and I couldn’t beg off on prior commitments.”
Merlin followed her in and tripped over her discarded stilettos. “You’re dressed to the nines for a work lunch? You are legitimately terrifying me away from ever wanting to graduate into the industry. You look like you’re ready to kill a man.”
“If only. The company is ready to try anything to land this particular client, and apparently someone asked for me specifically. It was almost an interrogation - to the point where I had to try and give them the two hour version of my Master’s thesis.” Morgana sighed and tilted her head to fiddle with the post on her earring. Gesturing, she had Merlin drop his backpack in the squashy chair he’d used last week hold out his hands while she systematically removed her battle armor.
Merlin ended up with a double handful of gemstones: Four earrings and a cartilage cuff, a necklace pricey enough to buy Merlin’s apartment with Will still in it, a pair of diamond-encrusted hair sticks that looked like they could be sharpened into points without too much trouble, and a bracelet that required a full thirty seconds to unwrap from her arm. She ruffled her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, and turned her back to Merlin. “Unzip.”
It took Merlin a good five seconds to sort out that she meant him to unzip the back of her dress for her. Juggling jewelry into one hand, Merlin braced his elbow on the bottom of the zipper to keep it taut and tugged the pull down. His grip slipped - not on the zipper, but on the jewelry. An earring escaped through his fingers and dropped to the floor to be pounced by a massive white Persian cat.
“Don’t eat that,” Morgana scolded, one arm wrapped around her upper torso to keep from flashing Merlin as she turned. She held her cat at bay with her toes while Merlin stooped to pick up the fallen earring. “Just dump that nonsense on the dresser. Let Arthur in when he shows up.”
Morgana swept from the room without a backward look and left Merlin with a disgruntled cat and a double handful of diamonds. Aithusa pawed at Merlin’s leg. When he looked down, she gave him the most pathetic mew he’d ever heard. “None of these are for you,” he told her.
The bedroom was across from the bathroom, and Merlin poked his head in first to make sure that Morgana was well and truly in the shower like the running water suggested. She had only faked him out the one time, but better cautious than trying to fight an adrenaline surge while Morgana shouted at him to lower his voice. That particular prank war had taught him many things about the Pendragons.
He dumped the jewelry on the top of her dresser among other scattered baubles and dusted his hands together. The scent of Morgana’s perfume clung to his fingers. Aithusa fuzzed his ankles with her chin, purring as loud as she could, and much to her dismay, he scooped her up, squeezed her, and buried his face in her fur. Incense combined with cat dander tickled his nose.
He took a moment just to breathe while he stood in the center of Morgana’s inner sanctum. Her room had color where the living room did not, all greens and golds and heirloom walnuts. Half-melted candles dotted every surface, and even though her altar in the corner had a cloth frayed by tiny kitty teeth, the dust of burnt offerings in the center bowl gave him the distinct feeling that he was trespassing on sacred ground. The heaviness of the room weighed on him comfortably, though, a warm blanket well loved, and he was grateful for a moment out of the way to pull himself together before everyone arrived.
The family pictures clustered together on the walls were the same as those in Arthur’s bedroom, and Morgana had a yellowed scrap of paper with her name spelled out in tropical birds just like Arthur did. Aithusa squeaked as Merlin tightened his grip on her. He turned in a slow circle.
Arthur had gotten the headboard of the same set that Morgana’s dresser came from, and the ugly hat studded with ridiculous buttons that they passed back and forth at birthdays and Christmasses hung from a hook besides her closet door. Arthur’s room was rough and utilitarian compared to Morgana’s, but there was enough sibling crossover that it made Merlin - for lack of a better word - homesick. The thought was enough to propel him from the room before the feeling grew any stronger.
Merlin shouldered out the door, cat in arms, and halted at the edge of the living room to breathe. They were meeting at Morgana’s flat because it was neutral space for both him and Arthur. He could survive seeing him once a week.
The door to the flat opened without a knock and Arthur shoved his way in arse-first carrying a stack of pizza boxes. “Morgana?” he called. “Do you just want me to put these in the kitchen?” He finished his turn and kicked the door shut before he spotted Merlin across the room.
Arthur halted and screwed his face into a perplexed frown. Lips pursed, he looked Merlin up and down with narrow eyes. Merlin could practically see the smoke coming out of his ears. Then Arthur swore, and the realization that cleared his expression brought an answering smile to Merlin’s.
“You forgot,” Merlin said, not bothering to hide his amusement.
“I might have forgotten to text you, yes,” Arthur replied. “Want to help me-”
Merlin cut him off by hefting Aithusa. She flicked the tip of her tail and purred loud enough to vibrate Merlin’s entire chest. “Cat.”
“Cat.” Arthur snorted. “Cat is spoiled. Come on then.”
Merlin followed Arthur to the kitchen and stood idly by with Aithusa sacked out in his arms while Arthur arranged the pizza boxes buffet style. He fumbled for something to say that wasn’t too inane or too much like an apology. Arthur had ordered him never to apologize, but the regret that had chased him from Morgana’s room weighed heavily in this thoughts. He knew better than to expect apologizing would fix anything, but if it could, if it did - he’d only know if he broke is promise and tried.
The clink of the plate stack on Morgana’s counter-top told him he’d wasted too much time thinking.
“Sorry about last week,” Arthur said into the silence. He turned to lean against the kitchen counter and fold his arms across his chest. On the other side of the apartment, the running shower shut off. “My only excuse is that it had been a long day.”
“Long day or not,” Merlin said, “You were rather rude.”
“I brought apology pizza, I hope to be forgiven.”
“You can’t just bribe everyone with food when you’re a prat. It’s a transparent ploy.”
“Worth a try.”
Despite the lingering anxiety of ‘I fucked this up’ and ‘I wish I could go back’ that had settled in his stomach, Merlin smiled over Aithusa’s head. “Well, I’m not going to complain.”
Arthur picked up a plate and began to fill it with slices of vegetable and spiced cheese. Merlin looked at him in askance. With a wedge of pesto, Arthur gestured at Merlin’s furry passenger. The motion flung an olive halfway across the kitchen.
They both followed it’s trajectory to where it hit the cupboards with a splorch and when Merlin looked up again to find Arthur watching him, Arthur said, “You can’t very well serve yourself while Aithusa’s taking a nap, can you?”
Merlin could only nod. Arthur led the way out to the living room with two plates full of pizza, and he followed without a word.
Aithusa aggressively refused to leave Merlin’s lap even after he sat. He had to eat his pizza around her head while she kneaded the center of his chest and made it hard to breathe. Plucking a long white hair from the slice of pesto, he offered it to Arthur a grin. “I want a cat.”
“Of course you want a cat,” Arthur said. He relieved Merlin of the hair and dropped it to the side of his chair with a disdainful flick of his fingers. “You can have Aithusa.”
“Giving my baby away again? What have I told you about that?” Morgana came out of her bedroom in jeans and a t-shirt, rubbing at her hair with a towel.
Arthur turned in his seat and saluted Morgana with a slice of pepperoni. “I wouldn’t have to if she didn’t come back.”
Ruffling Merlin’s hair as she passed, Morgana carried on past to the shelves built into the wall and pulled her gaming books. “Aithusa’s just mad at him for petsitting the last time I was out of town.”
“Easy to blame Arthur,” Merlin agreed. “He makes a good scapegoat.”
Around a mouthful of pizza, Arthur protested, “That was once and she was fine. And you two are not allowed to gang up on me.”
“Of course we are,” Morgana said. A book stack thumped down on the table. A moment later, she dropped her stuffed dragon on top of them with a flourish. “It’s practically tradition at this point, the last few months notwithstanding, isn’t it boys?”
Arthur blanched at the question. Merlin shot Morgana a frown.
She gave both him and Arthur a raised-eyebrow look of ‘what are you going to do about it’ and left for the kitchen.
Merlin smushed Aithusa’s face away from his pizza with an open palm and said, “Sorry about making you petsit. I were out of my mind with stress over a build demo.”
“Oh, no, it was nothing,” Arthur said, tone light, but Merlin could still hear the strain from Morgana’s comment. “Aithusa just, you know, signalled her displeasure at it being me to give her tinned fish by shitting halfway across the flat.”
“Aithusa,” Merlin scolded. Her ears flicked forward at the sound of his voice and she gave him a slow blink of contentment. Morgana’s dig only called attention to the elephant playing with itself in the corner, but so far tonight Arthur had been… pleasant. Careful to keep their banter superficial, sure, but pleasant for all of that, almost like they were starting all over again. If that was going to be Arthur’s tactic to repair what Merlin had broken, he was going to go along with it whether Morgana thought it was a good idea or not. “She didn’t.”
“Of course she did. She left a streak across the carpet that I had to get steamed out. Are you questioning my word?”
Merlin had every intention of doing just that, but he was interrupted sharp rap at the door that was quickly followed by Lance and Gwen. They called their greetings as they hung their coats and kicked off their shoes. Arthur’s announcement that there was pizza met with a cheerful ‘huzzah’ and they disappeared kitchen-ward. Gwaine waltzed in not a minute later wearing a piratical silk shirt and smelling of roast meat and rum.
With varying levels of enthusiasm, everyone curled up in their chairs with a slice of peace offering. Gwaine reclaimed the single across from Arthur and Merlin, and Lance escorted Gwen to the sette across from Morgana with two plates piled high. Gwen set a beer in front of everyone and sprawled out on the sette like she’s just finished a marathon. She only grudgingly let Lance shove her legs over so he could sit.
“You look right beat,” Gwaine told Gwen. “What happened?”
Gwen took a bottle-opener to her beer and rewarded herself with a swig before she answered. “Just a customer from hell. Bloody entitled arsehole demanding I valet the inside of his shite car when we’ve never - ever - offered those kind of services. I told him that, politely and repeatedly, until eventually I just had to say I wasn’t his maid and he was just going to have to vacuum his own mats.” She let her head fall back against the arm of the sette. “It was a nightmare. After the first ten minutes of him just blatantly ignoring everything I said about what the shop was actually capable of, I started to think I was going crazy.” Half-startled, she sat up and clutched at Lance’s arm. “We don’t valet, do we?”
“You don’t valet,” Lance reassured her. He passed over her pizza.
“Thank god,” Gwen said. Plate in hand, she flopped back again in relief. “An hour of my life I will never get back. It set the mood for my whole day.”
Merlin added his commiserating noises in with the others, but was distracted by Aithusa’s bulk finally became a legitimate obstacle for fairly important things like finishing his pizza and setting up for game. Merlin wrinkled his nose at her as she batted at his fingers, trying to tug down the last slice of spiced cheese for her own. “Aithusa, sweetheart, I think you’ve just earned your exile.”
Leaving Arthur to chuckle at his back, Merlin levered himself out of his chair with Aithusa still clinging to his torso and carted her off. Lance was mid-story by the time Merlin disentangled Aithusa’s claws from from his shirt and returned. The bedroom door muted Aithusa’s yowled objections to being locked away from all the tasty cheese and dice. Merlin listened to Lance with half an ear as he fished Will’s dicebag out of his pack.
“The call didn’t do him justice, I swear. He’s an old tom that’s just absolutely massive, and he’s missing fur in great big patches,” Lance said. He made exaggerated ‘ripping fur out’ gestures from his shoulders and side. “He honestly looks like he has the mange, but it’s just battle scarring. He is probably the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen, and he’s just barely friendly enough to make our adoption criteria.”
Gwen made a small noise around a mouthful of cheese, though whether it was for the story or her pizza, Merlin couldn’t be sure. She swallowed and said, “You think he has a chance?”
“Not if there’s a kitten anywhere within ten kilometers.” Lance systematically opened the rest of everyone’s beers for them and sat back with a sigh. “We’ll keep him as long as we can at the shelter, though, just in case.”
“Good luck on that,” Gwaine said. He rolled his eyes over to where Morgana was setting out the crisps and her mug full of pencils and her GM dice. “I’m more interested in speculating what Morgana got up to today that had us start game late.”
“Work,” Morgana said, dropping into her chair. “I thought I mentioned.”
“If work means you spend several hundred pounds monopolizing one of my mates the entire afternoon. Why didn’t you ask for me?”
Morgana flipped open her folder and began to pass out everyone’s character sheet. Merlin handed Arthur his, and Morgana pulled out another sheet that she frowned at and returned to her folder. “Because you’d ask questions, and I can’t answer questions. Everyone grab a pencil.”
The rustle of books and the rattle of dice against Morgana’s tabletop did not deter Gwaine in the least. “The suits you were with were dressed awful sharp for a work event. You had on diamonds. Like, a shittonne of diamonds.”
“They wanted to impress.” Morgana flashed Gwaine a sharp smile. “So did I.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t some sort of BDSM date? Toward the end they all had those pained looks on their faces like they were thinking too hard, or like you were indulging in a little CBT under the table.” Morgana laughed and threw a pencil at him. He deflected it with a smooth motion that ended with his fingers curled around the neck of his beer. “I’m just saying. They looked pretty pleased and a bit sore when everyone filed out.” Gwaine gave her a suggestive, knowing look over the lip of his beer bottle and knocked back a long swallow.
“Gwaine,” Morgana said, exasperated, “I can’t tell you anything.”
“Oh, come on, you were at my restaurant for hours and hours torturing me with the mystery of it all and now I can’t even-” Gwaine cut himself off mid-whinge as Merlin chuckled more loudly than he intended. The collective attention of the room swung in Merlin’s direction, interrupted only by Morgana passing Lance and Gwen’s sheets across the table.
Merlin held up his hands in innocence. “She’s under an NDA, and if I’m right about the kind of research-” Morgana sat up in alarm. “-I’m not going to say Morgana, I know better than that, I do. I just mean that if my guesses are anywhere in the ballpark, then whenever she teases about getting shot if she tells…”
Gwaine drew out his ‘oh’ of understanding to the point of parody. There was a too-loose quality to his movements that Merlin narrowed his eyes at, something that the half-beer he’d put away already wouldn’t account for. With a solemn nod and a wink, Gwaine pointed at Morgana with the hand still wrapped around the bottle and said, “Gotcher. Not teasing about getting shot. Hush hush.” He flicked his cuffs open at the wrists with a practiced hook of his thumb as he swung knees over the arm of his chair to let his feet dangle. “I certainly don’t want to lose the only one willing to GM me. Where would we be then?”
“Down one pushy player who tries the GM’s patience just by sitting in the room,” Morgana replied. She flourished Gwaine’s character sheet in his direction. “I hope that wasn’t a rhetorical question.”
Arthur sat up and stretched. He flicked his dicebag onto the table and said, “You know what’s not rhetorical? When are we going to start? Some of us have day jobs and can’t stay out until the wee hours of the morning.”
The distraction of Arthur’s torso as he flexed and re-situated himself in his chair shorted out Merlin’s thought-processes. Merlin froze with one hand in his backpack, ostensibly trying to find the metal miniature figurine Will had given him just-in-case once he’d found out that Merlin was playing a half-orc barbarian. Will had painted him. Morgana would want to see. Merlin’s thoughts tried to scrabble onto any train that would carry him away from how Arthur looked in profile.
Arthur, though…
Merlin hadn’t been this close to Arthur in months (Not counting last week, but last week Arthur had been exhausted and subdued), and Merlin had carefully packed all of his reasons for wanting to be close to Arthur somewhere away out of self-preservation. But here Arthur was, reaching past Merlin with his t-shirt clinging to the curve of his shoulders, his body relaxed. Like nothing was wrong. Like Merlin’s heart wasn’t an ugly bundle of shards held together by wishful thinking and shoddy self-control. There had been a very good reason why Merlin had avoided Arthur just as much as Arthur had avoided him and damn Morgana’s stupid room and Arthur’s stupid apology pizza but he was dangerously maudlin tonight.
Merlin dropped his eyes to his backpack, not quite sure what he was looking for anymore, and concentrated on quelling the flutter of emotion in his chest. Last week Merlin had been able to handle the proximity without nearly as much trouble. Last week wasn’t this week. This week he wasn’t over anything at all.
Morgana’s toes hit his backpack and rattled both the contents and his wits, startling him out of his reverie. Because she was psychic, she flicked her gaze to where Arthur was settling back in his chair again with his feet stretched out in front of him and shook her head. He swallowed the urge to - well, he didn’t know what exactly. Apologize for the last few months. Kiss Arthur. Run from the room. All excellent choices - and gave her a wan smile. She passed him his character sheet.
“Now. There we go. I don’t care if you are all ready, because you’ve had more than enough time.” Morgana said, catching each of their eyes for a moment. Gwaine saluted her with his beer. “Let’s begin.”
**
Today on ‘last week on’, to recap, you lot are the Exterminators, of sorts. Your adventuring party, we have learned, consists of Gwaine’s Chastity, a paladin of justice, valor, and honor. Give or take a few virtues, I suppose. There is also Gwen’s Nymeria, a necromancer of some skill who is a little bit too enthusiastic about coming across new dead things. Or old dead things. Or just generally dead things.
Arthur’s got Derezrel, a silly-hat-wearing, poncy elf wizard who is less bookish than Arthur thinks a wizard should be, Lance has a ginger halfling named Maxim, who is both a rogue as well as possibly kinky, and Merlin has Kronk - an absolutely massive half-orc wearing a spiked wig and carrying an ice-skate around on a pole.
Did I miss anything? No?
(Arthur coughed into his hands and raised his eyes at Morgana. He mouthed the word ‘raven’.)
And Arthur’s got his wizard carrying around a familiar raven named Caliburn. Bird familiars, always rough. I’m sure you’ll be fine, Arthur.
(Arthur rolled his eyes.)
Regardless - last time the five of you had a lovely breakfast of steak at the Sloshed Gazelle, a reputable little tavern-inn-pub place whose innkeep was kind enough to point you in the direction of rat-killing. Despite some dissension in the ranks, you agreed to follow the plot hook to the Spire and Waffle, only to find out that the bait had already been nibbled by some other adventuring party. So very sad. After what was apparently a meteor strike of some sort, you raced back to the Sloshed Gazelle to discover a crater guarded by what turned out to be Kobolds.
You killed them all and dug out what appeared to be half a tablet that summons something large, evil, and necromantic that - if the ritual is completed and the minor deity they’re trying to summon is let loose - will eat the whole town of Leespire. The tablet, according to spectators, fell from the sky somewhere in the direction of the Spire. So. It’s up to you to supply yourselves and head on out.
Any of you need supplies?
(Morgana looked around the room to be met by head shakes of varying confidence.)
None of you do - which is fine because this is your first run with these characters and I kitted you out to start with - so let’s take you to the Spire.
The crater you’re leaving behind is on one of the main thoroughfares out of the city, and following the road out of town to the east gets you a good ways towards the foot of the Spire. The massive geological feature towers deceptively over the town, and it takes you all about an hour or so to get there. By the time you do, it’s midmorning and approaching noon. The sun is right up overhead and your shadows are shrinking.
Luckily, you’re not exactly wandering aimlessly out here. While the grassy hills surrounding you are otherwise featureless, your goal is huge and straight ahead, and you arrive at the base of the Spire to find a wide ring of bare dirt surrounding the Spire. The thirty-foot wide ring is empty but for scattered bits of armor and a few melodramatic bones sticking up here and there from the windswept earth. Something flutters - a scrap of fabric that used to be red and is now a dull brown. Here, the beating sun seems somehow hotter.
The Spire, up close, is an impossible sort of thing. It stretches upwards into the haze and is, perhaps, only about eighty or a hundred feet in diameter. It does not widen appreciably at the base and it tapers only with distance as it towers above you.
None of the stories you heard in town mention the no-man’s land before you, where other adventurers have died for no obvious reason. Common sense prevents you from stepping out onto suspect dirt.
So, now you’re at the Spire, about thirty feet from the base, and now what?
**
Gwaine, Arthur, and Gwen sat forward in their chairs and looked at each other.
“Well-” Gwen said slowly, “That’s unexpected. What’s the dirt like?”
Morgana tapped her pencil on the top of her folder with a repetitive click-click and said, “Like dirt. Brown and red, no obvious corruption. Just devoid of greenery and vermin and anything else that might live in the tall grasses that otherwise surround you.”
Gwaine hrmed to himself. “Pally power activate? Anything evil within range?”
“Not evil.”
Arthur tried his hand next. “Alright, not evil, no obvious corruption beyond the fact that everything is dead. So… handful of grass, tossed in the ring.”
“Ah, it begins to wither very slowly once it hits the ground,” Morgana said. “It’s not a rapid kill, but it does wither bit by bit as the green leeches out of the blades.”
**
Nymeria, friendly neighborhood necromancer, squints at the circle and up at the spire. “It’s a sort of lifedrain thing,” she says, “But a slow one. And it’s not evil, so it’s not a curse. In my estimation, it would take around-”
(Gwen cut off, rolled her d20, and looked to Morgana. “Fourteen knowledge arcana?”)
“-roughly three hours to kill us. If we’re not in the ring for more than a couple of minutes, the effects will probably be something like a bit of hair loss. I’m puzzled as to the source, though.” Nymeria looks around at the others for help, eyebrows raised. “If I had to guess, these poor sots probably wandered around until they were too weak to walk away, victims more of their stubborn pride than anything.”
“We hope,” adds Derezrel, somewhat dour for a poncy elf. He crouches down next to the dirt circle and now that Nymeria has declared it at least a tiny bit safe, lets a handful of the stuff filter through his fingers. He squints and, using his wizard skills, says, “Necromancy for sure, but only low-grade necromancy.” Behind him, Nymeria nods in satisfaction - or perhaps confirmation, her eyes flashing a bit lighter purple for half a moment.
It’s Chastity who rocks back on her heels and stares up the Spire. “It’s a barrow.” Silence descends after her announcement, and she shrugs. “I know a thing or two about burying the dead. Religious knowledge and all that. It’s a barrow. Let’s say something or other’s buried in there and, over time, the influence of so many dead things seeps out into its surroundings. Don’t tell me some of those bodies don’t look like they’ve been here for ages and ages.”
Heads swivel toward one unfortunate fellow whose shield has been reduced to a rotted wooden board, all traces of the painted standard well and truly gone.
Kronk says, “That means what?” He leans on his greataxe, interested in the proceedings but not quite sure how he’s supposed to contribute during the factfinding stage of things.
Maxim beats the others to their answers. His voice filters up through the grasses that are taller than his head. “It means we have a way to get to the top. Witnesses pointed out the Spire as where this half-tablet came from and I really don’t want to climb up the outside.”
“And inside is a barrow,” Nymeria finishes, delighted, and fumbles around in her pack for a moment. The result of her search is a slender wooden wand carved with sigils and runes. “Detect Undead!”
The others stare at her.
“I have a wand of detect undead,” she says. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for a necromancer to have.”
(Gwen grinned at them, her cheeks dimpling. “The GM loves me best. That and I emailed Morgana about my character. I obviously I should be able to detect undead, and Morgana likes my level one spells as-is, so voila.”)
“How’s it work?” Maxim asks, squinting up at her.
Flustered, Nymeria says, “Oh, well, point and click, really.” She levels the wand at the barrow and speaks the activation word in a low guttural.
Nothing happens.
Maxim looks disappointed. “That’s it?”
“There’s a door,” Nymeria says, turning to the rest of the group. Her eyes glow a brilliant white for several seconds before the light fades.
“Detect undead is diviniation, isn’t it?” Derezrel asks.
Nymeria clutches her wand to her chest, “Don’t even think about stealing.”
“Can’t very well use it, can I?”
(Morgana cut in after Arthur’s statement, jabbing her GM pencil in his direction. “It’s possible you can, you’re just not going to be very happy about it.”)
“Absolutely not.” Nymeria glowers at the world in general and Derezrel in particular.
“Door?” Kronk prompts.
“Oh!” Nymeria tucks her wand away with one last suspicious look around before she answers. “Yes, door. Well- detect undead is blocked by thick enough stone. That thing over there, if it’s hollow, the walls have to at least be thick enough to block the spell if they expect to support the weight of the Spire whether or not magic was involved in its construction. The spell, however, needs more wood to be blocked, and nobody but nobody designs doors more than three feet thick. So, because I can feel a couple of faint undead auras sort of over there-”
Nymeria points toward the Spire and off to the right.
Everyone speaks at the same time.
“Hidden door?” Maxim asks.
“Barrow’s occupied?” Chastity asks. “Great.”
“Who builds a Barrow visible from halfway across the continent?” asks Derezrel.
Kronk, keeping everyone on track with the really important questions, asks, “If it’s already dead, how do I kill it?”
Nymeria answers them all: “I’d be more worried if it wasn’t occupied. Hit it until it stops moving. People who are full of themselves, and yes, hidden door. There’s always a hidden door.”
“How long until our hair starts to fall out?” Chastity asks, lifting Maxim from his feet and putting him on her shoulders. Maxim flails in surprise, but Chastity’s armoured shoulders are a broad enough platform that Maxim could stand if he wanted to.
“Ask first next time,” Maxim protests. “I may be half-sized, but I’m not a kid.”
Nymeria says, “Two or three minutes.”
“Then stick here for two or three minutes and pull us out if it gets hairy or we look like we’re dying,” Chastity says. She takes off across the bare dirt toward the wall of the Spire while Nymeria calls ‘left more!’ and ‘no, no, to your right!’. It takes thirty seconds or so, but Chastity and Maxim line up with where Nymeria says the door is.
(”Pulling in to Lance and Gwaine on the door, the other three of you let me know if you’re doing anything other than biting your nails while this happens,” Morgana said. She tugged a paper free from her folder. “So-”)
There is no door.
Both Maxim and Chastity lean in toward the wall. It appears to be unworked stone, but the whole Spire seems to be one massive stone and - at least within sight of the two investigators - there do not appear to be any cracks or suspicious divots. Chastity pokes at Spire, but her concentration is somewhat compromised by the odd, itchy and cold feeling that begins to creep into her boots.
Maxim, however, is having completely rubbish luck. “Are you sure it’s here?” he calls over his shoulder at the rest of the group waiting impatiently outside of the ring. “Because I’m getting nothing.”
“Oh, for Pharasma’s sake,” Nymeria says. She marches forward across the bare earth, hands up, and casts under her breath. The surface of the stone turns purple in a roughly door-shaped rectangle. Hands still out as she holds the simple prestidigitation spell, she says, “It’s right here. Just find the lock.”
(Lance winced and rolled. “My dice hate me. Let’s see… four perception plus eleven on the die. Fifteen?” Morgana, amused, finally nodded.)
With Nymeria’s help on the fantasy equivalent of a big blinking neon sign pointing to hidden door here, Maxim finds the locking mechanism in short order and fumbles out his kit. He looks down at Chastity as if she’s going to be able to help him sort out what to do with the combination of a locked door and a lockpicking kit.
“Don’t look at me, mate,” Chastity says. “You’re the rogue.”
Nymeria stands on her tiptoes to whisper in Maxim’s ear where he’s still perched on Chastity’s shoulders and says, “Disable device.”
Maxim, pointed in the right direction, takes approximately three seconds to pop the lock. Nymeria drops her spell and the stone returns to reddish-gray.
At Maxim’s success, Kronk and Derezrel cross the ring to join the rest of their group. “Good idea having a rogue along,” Derezrel announces to the world at large.
(”Don’t you start, Arthur. Cleric or no, I know how to design a group and a dungeon for them,” Morgana said, unimpressed. “Think outside your bloody box.”)
After a round of back-pats for Maxim, they now have an unlocked door and at least two confirmed undead prowling about inside. The decision becomes to crack open the door and shove Maxim in alone to be sneaky.
The door, now that it is being opened, proves to be a thin layer of stone over solid oak several inches thick. It is a surprise it has stood however-long. Maxim eases the door open as quietly as possible and tiptoes into the room. After a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark, he discovers several piles of bones that don’t appear to be doing much of anything. He stealths forward a few steps, doesn’t see anything more interesting, and straightens to call back through the door, “Gwen? You said Nymeria found undead in here?”
“What do you see?” Nymeria asks, shouldering Chastity out of the way and poking her head inside the Spire. The inside smells like wood varnish and wet stone. It’s dark except for a stripe of sunlight cast through the cracked door.
“Piles of bones. A staircase. Flickers of blue light from somewhere above. Nothing undead here, only dead.”
Nymeria makes a small thinking sound. “How many?”
“How many what?” Maxim asks on his way back to the door.
“How many piles of bones?”
“Oh, uh, three?” Maxim says.
“Distinct piles of bones?” At Maxim’s affirmative, Nymeria winces. “Can you, uh, can you sneak right back on out now?”
Maxim reaches for the skull perched on top of one of the piles. “Why?”
(”Roll initiative,” Morgana said with a laugh. “You need to listen to your party.”)
The skull Maxim reaches for shudders at his touch, and the whole pile begins to rattle. With no more reason to be stealthy, the rest of the group flings open the door and thunders inside. As they do, the two other piled skeletons rattle as well and clamber to their bony feet. Maxim scrambles back from the warrior skeleton that rises before him, though not before the creature can take a half-formed swipe and draw the first blood of the encounter.
The three skeletons are humanoid, though beyond that their appearance differs enough for identification. One appears to have vestigial tusks set into its skull, another to have a series of bony ridges down its forehead, and the last to be more heavy-set than an average human. It is the thick-boned human that menaces Maxim, and Chastity wastes no time in interposing herself between him and the creature.
Nymeria squints at each of the other skeletons in the semi-dark and calls to Kronk, “You take the orc skeleton, I’ll take the Klingon.”
“Are Klingon’s part of… whatever world we’re in?” asks Kronk, but he charges face-first into the hulking skeleton with his greataxe drawn. There’s a crunch and a thud as his axehead connects, but chopping at the creature seems to be somewhat ineffective.
“No, Klingons are not-” Derezrel says. He raises his hands and stays as far back from the skeletons as possible. A brilliant dart of pure energy zips from his fingertips to splash against the Klingon skeleton that Nymeria approaches. Following him, Nymeria herself wiggles her fingers and and tosses off a casual word and the creature crumbles to dust.
Nymeria does not halt her forward progress. The ground is rocky and treacherous, full of broken stone and chunks of rotting wood. She marches right over the scattered remains of skeleton, halts at the center of the great round room, and pulls a glowing stone from an inner pocket of her robes. The room illuminates and shadows dance on the far walls as she raises her stone.
To either side, Kronk has his hands busy trying to keep the orc skeleton from pounding his face in and Chastity is trying to keep Maxim from damage as he pulls out a tiny morningstar and proceeds to blundgeon the heavy-set human skeleton, striking it hard in the hip and throwing it off balance. While Nymeria squints at the ceiling suspiciously, it takes Derezrel’s help to finish off the one skeleton while Kronk finally takes down the other.
All but Nymeria stand panting and regathering their wits as blood seeps from a few small minor wounds. Nymeria points up at the ceiling with her wand. “There’s at least three more up there, but they’re just sort of wandering around in a big circle. Not very powerful undead, sure, but we might want to be a bit careful about taking them on.”
“We, Miss Necromancer?” Derezrel says, dusting off his hat and perching it back on top of his head. “You’re the one who fired off a shot and then just stopped to stare at our surroundings. What were you up to while we were all busy?”
Nymeria gives the others a cheerful grin and gestures at the room they’re in. Now that there’s time to stop and take a look around, the room is a big open space with curving walls the shape of the spire. Inside, it’s more readily apparent just how slender the spire really is. The interior is appreciably smaller than the exterior, the stone a good dozen feet thick, and the inner cylinder is about sixty feet across at best. “This,” she says, “used to be a mass grave.”
The others have nothing to say to that. Kronk holds up a hand and waits until someone calls on him. At a nod from Nymeria, he asks, “What?”
“Bottom of the Spire? Easiest access for some value of easy? Mass grave. That’s half the reason why all the necromantic energy is leaking all out the sides.”
“You’re not just making that up?” Kronk is suspicious and isn’t afraid to admit it. The room, however, now that they’re looking, does have what appear to be rotted out frames and a whole lot of dust that they’ve kicked up during their combat.
Maxim makes a face. “We’re breathing dead people?”
“Well-” Nymeria says. She wobbles her hand back and forth. “Yes and no? Half of it is probably just wood particulate, and there’s a good amount of stone dust down here for some reason.”
Rotted and fallen wooden partitions that look like they might have once been walls lay scattered, painted with signs and sigils. There is little to find but decomposing clues as to the previous use of the lower Spire.
“Do you think-” ventures Maxim as he sits down into the dust next to the orc skeleton, “-that if this is a mass grave here at the bottom of the barrow, that if the whole thing is a barrow…”
“We’ll be getting into more interesting undead the further up we go?” Nymeria finishes. She’s happy, even if no-one else seems to think that’s good news.
(”Nobody in their right mind thinks that ‘more interesting undead’ is good news, Gwen,” Arthur said drily.
Morgana snorted and directed her words very pointedly toward Gwen. ”You enjoy your character and don’t listen to him.”)
“Hey, Gwen, have Nym bring the light over,” Chastity says from where she’s poking about near the stairs that lead along the curve of the wall up to another level. “Here be kobolds.”
Derezrel whips around, hands out, and looks jumpy.
(Gwen snickered and raised her beer in salute. “Feeling squishy, Arthur? Playing a wizard getting to you already?”
”One good backstab and I’m toast,” Arthur said. “Don’t you dare laugh.”)
“Easy, princess,” Chastity says. With Nymeria’s light-stone held close, the charred bit of wood that she holds up doesn’t resemble anything like an actual kobold. The jagged concave star, when laid flat in in Chastity’s palm, appears more like the remnants of a bowl. “Just saying that it looks like kobolds have the run of the Spire. I’m not all Man-versus-Wild here, but I know a burnt offering when I see it, and I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark, but what bitty bits of spellwork left over from the offering ritual on this thing share an awful lot with that half tablet we found.”
Nymeria holds her stone aloft again. The skeletons they’ve killed clink and crumble as the magic that held them together slowly dissipates. “There’s nothing here to loot, so I vote we head upstairs, halfling first.”
Marching order established, they start up the stairs with Maxim in the lead. He peeps his head above floor level and halts. “Not three undead,” he whispers back at the others. Chastity is right behind him, with Nymeria and Derezrel in the center and Kronk still on the first floor. Flickers of blue light play across the wall as they ascend, and Nymeria pockets her stone, plunging them into the dark but for the noon sunlight from the open door.
“How many?” Chastity asks, holding up her hand to halt the others where they stand.
Maxim flashes three and three and one and Nymeria’s eyes go huge. “Three hundred and thirty one?!” Derezrel clamps a hand over her mouth and the others hush her. Whatever’s up there doesn’t seem to have heard when Maxim checks, though, so he ducks back down and shakes his head. “Three and three and one. Three skeletons of some sort, three spooky dripping ghost things, and one floating skull. On fire. Blue fire.”
“Explains the blue,” Kronk says from the bottom of the stone steps, not particularly concerned with whispering.
Nymeria tugs Derezrel’s hand from her mouth and says, “We need a plan, or they’re going to come at us all at once.”
Maxim and Derezrel share a look. “Chokepoint,” Derezrel says. “Basic numbers game. Use the stairs, it’s only wide enough for one of the beasties to get to us at a time, and set Chastity up front. Swap her out for Kronk if it gets hairy, and the rest of us shoot zappy things past their heads.”
Maxim nods in agreement. “I’m not the only one who notices that throwing me on the other side of whatever we’re attacking so I can flank will get me dead in a hurry?”
“As much as I want you somewhere dealing out the miracle that is Pathfinder’s sneak attack damage against undead,” Derezrel says. “I want you to hang back, just in case, and try to figure out something clever.”
“Those are my combat instructions?” Maxim raises his eyebrows, incredulous.
“Work with me, Lance,” Derezrel says. “We’re, like, level one.”
“Clever?” Maxim repeats.
(Lance frowned down at his character sheet. “I can do anything, right?”)
The plan is quickly hashed out and Maxim’s grappling hook is secured to the floor above. With the railing long since rotted away, the steps have a wall on one side and a sheer drop to the floor on the other. Maxim’s rope hangs off the edge of the stairway.
When at last everyone’s in place, Nymeria prods Derezrel to get the attention of the undead. He sounds out the others for the go-ahead.
Maxim hops on the rope hanging next to the stairs and tucks his foot into a loop. “Rope swing ready. Fire away.”
With a long, low sound like a firework whistling up into the air, Derezrel fires off a spell that zips up the stairs. A beat later, the second floor room above fills with brilliant light. It flicks out after a moment, leaving only afterimages and the sound of rattling bones coming their way.
The plan to make the stairway a chokepoint works for the first skeleton. Chastity meets the creature’s spear lunge with a laugh as the spearhead rings from her chestplate.
The moment the second skeleton and the first floating, dripping ghost arrives, however, everything goes to shit.
Nymeria’s eyes widen in the middle of casting a spell to disrupt undead energies. “That’s not a floaty, drippy ghostie,” she says the instant it comes into view. “That’s an ectoplasmic… something.”
“So precise-” Chastity snips back at her as she jabs the butt of her sword-grip into the skeleton’s face. “That means what?”
“That means,” Nymeria says, dipping in place so Derezrel can loose another volley over her head. “Shit, um, shortversion. Tortured soul so they’re not quite as mindless, nasty ooze from the Etherial Plane, um, filled with burning hate, either died in the vicinity or some asshole put them here, and-”
The ectoplasm creature takes one look at the stareway and decides it’s not worth it. It takes a long, slow step through the ceiling next to the stairway and floats into view level with Maxim on his rope swing.
“-and they can walk through walls,” Nymeria finishes.
“So much for the chokepoint,” Derezrel says. “Merlin, the bardiche has reach. Take Kronk down and play pinata. Don’t hit the halfling.” Kronk hops off the stairs from about halfway up the wall and switches weapons to take a swipe at the creature. It’s a wild swing and Kronk hits a whole lot of nothing.
“There are three of those things.” Nymeria reaches out to steady Maxim when he ducks away from the ectoplasm creature’s first swipe and the rope swings a great deal wider than he anticipates. “Take out the skellies.”
“Where’s the floaty blue skull?” asks Chastity. Her sword swing lands solidly on the skeleton at the top of the stairs. It falters and collapses and provides a brand new tripping hazard as the bones cascade down the steps.
With great dignity, the flaming blue skull passes over the group on the stair’s heads and settles down at the back behind Derezrel. Whipping around, Derezrel’s fingers light up with a crackle of blue-white energy and he makes a grab for the menace. His fingers close on nothing, the skull dodging at the last moment, flesh sloughing off to fall with a wet noise and a flicker of guttering blue flame.
Derezrel tries to step back out of range, but ‘back’ is Nymeria, ‘left’ is the wall, and ‘right’ is a ten-foot drop that would let the skull have a chance to attack him anyhow. “Change of plan! Have Kronk get the skull!”
Leaving Maxim on the rope swing to deal with the second ectoplasm creature that joins the first, Kronk thunders up the stairs and swings his bardiche hard.
**
Merlin rolled his attack. “Twenty on the dice?” he asked, looking up at Morgana. “Will told me to keep track of twenties on the dice.”
“Threaten critical,” Arthur said. He leaned over the arm of the chair and into Merlin’s space. “Roll again, pretend like you’re attacking, and then tell us what the result is.” The expression he turned on Merlin was a mixture of boyish enthusiasm and raw charm, and Merlin couldn’t help but grin back at him. Words came out of Arthur’s mouth, his lips moving, distracting, and it took Merlin a few seconds to parse what he was saying. “You hit for sure, we just need to see if you knock the thing silly.”
As instructed, Merlin peeled his thoughts away from how close Aurthur was leaning, rolled and gave basic addition a go.
The result - a solid seventeen - made Morgana grin. She dipped her head in confirmation. “You, my dear, have had your very first critical hit. Damage times two for your bardiche.”
Gwaine whooped from across the table, a little bit loud for how close he was sitting to the rest of them.
“Thank you for your enthusiasm,” Morgana said as she wiggled her pinky into her ear as if he had deafened her. “I’m sure Merlin’s very proud of his dice.”
“Will’s dice,” Merlin corrected. His d10 felt like being nice and rolled max damage. “Uh, damage, sixteen, double, thirty-two?”
Morgana drew a line through something in her folder and smiled up at him. “Thing never stood a chance.”
“I have six hitpoints,” Arthur reminded him. “Six. You just killed me twice over. More than.”
“But I wasn’t hitting you?” Merlin said, “I hit the flamey blue skull.”
“Which is good,” Morgana said with a reassuring smile. “Arthur was next up, and this thing does fire damage. Did fire damage.” Her nails flashed as she drummed them on the arm of her chair. “Still two skeletons and two ectoplasmic beasties.”
“Oh, I got the first ectoplasm?” Gwen asked. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Merlin crit before I could give you your result.” Morgana stretched in her chair. “Anyone want any more pizza? You’ve a bit of combat left and then some poking around, but we’ve been sitting for a while.”
Gwaine pulled of his chair and wobbled on his feet. “Pizza for me. Was a long day, let me tell you.” He headed off for the kitchen with enough waver in his step that Merlin glanced at Arthur for explanation.
Arthur shrugged, a gesture directed at the group as a whole. The others were looking to him for answers as well. “Bet you money that that’s not beer,” Arthur said, dipping his chin in the direction of the beer-bottle in front of Gwaine’s spot. “At least, not any more. He always carries a flask.”
“News to me,” Lance said. He shifted on the sette to stare over the back toward the kitchen. Gwen leaned against his legs and finished off the last of her beer, conspicuously silent. Lance raised an eyebrow at her that she couldn’t see and asked, “Has he always done that?”
“Long as I’ve known him.” Arthur followed Lance’s gaze. “Anyone want something to drink besides beer?”
A chorus of ‘yes’ from everyone except Arthur prompted him up out of his chair and toward the kitchen. “You can all stay there, I’ll get Gwaine to help.”
With Arthur gone as well, the rest of them stretched out. Gwen kicked her feet up over the arm of the sette and tipped her head toward Merlin. “So, what do you think?”
“I think I’ve not seen Arthur as… relaxed in ages.” Merlin picked up a handful of his dice and rattled it around in his hand. “If relaxed is the right word.”
“It’s a word, that’s for sure,” Gwen said with a bob of her head. “He’s pleased, I think. Plans and counter-plans, and Morgana knows how to give him a puzzle.”
“You flatter me,” Morgana said, but she was smiling.
“He just- there’s something orderly about this sort of combat, and it’s the kind of thing that someone like him, or someone like me, who has been doing it for ages and ages just finds comforting.” Gwen offered him a sweet smile. “The last time I was in a game with Arthur, he played a fighter, just a straight-up ‘hit things a lot until they die’ sort of character. He wasn’t a fancy character, and he didn’t even take a prestige class, so he stayed just a basic fighter, but one time-”
Morgana interrupted Gwen. “Gaming stories?”
“Who else is going to tell them?” Gwen asked. “The others who actually have gaming stories are elsewhere. Merlin and Lance don’t know what they’re in for.”
With a laugh, Morgana just waved a hand at Gwen to continue.
Gwen nudged Lance’s legs out from behind her and resettled herself. “Anyway, Arthur is playing this fighter, Arcturus, and we’re nigh on epic levels and in the belly of this labyrinth and we’ve long since lost our string telling us how to get back out again. I’m running on empty, no heals left to my name, and half the party is walking wounded, barely limping along. We’re trying to find somewhere safe to sleep, because we need it, desperately, and a dragon prances up and starts taking swipes. Arthur doesn’t hesitate, he just says ‘prepare true rez tomorrow’, and flings himself out of hiding.
“I’m left standing there shouting ‘where am I supposed to get a diamond big enough to bring your ass back from the dead?’ and trying to figure out where to shove the rest of the party so as not to get eaten, and Arthur is bound and determined to test the limits of the swallowed whole mechanics.” Gwen shook her head, “It’s… well, it was actually kind of hilarious. This dragon is all prepared to bite-”
Movement from the kitchen was the only warning that Merlin had before Arthur leaned over his shoulder and spoke into his ear. “Best death any of my characters ever had,” Arthur said, picking up the story from Gwen as she accepted her glass from him. “You telling him about Arcturus?”
Merlin cradled the glass of water Arthur handed him and nodded, trying to will his heartbeat to calm. “Eaten by a dragon?”
“Not just any dragon,” Arthur said. The glasses Gwaine brought out found their ways to Lance and Morgana. “A big fuckoff huge red dragon with a nasty temper and not a small bit of pissed off because of the last time we tried to take him down. Bedivere’s character’s a sorcerer and at the last minute he shouts ‘catch’ and lobs something at me. I manage to snag it, it’s a chilly ball of ice the size of a marble, and I slip-and-slide my way down a surprised dragon’s throat.”
“Delayed fireball,” Gwen said. “The spell that Arthur took with him. Nobody wants Arcturus to just straight-up die, of course, because even if I did prep true rez, there’s no telling when we’d scrape up enough gold for the materials. Nineteen straight levels is over two years of running with the same crew, and if Arthur has to reroll, losing Arcturus would be like losing a limb, so as he’s running forward, everyone just lobs everything that does any damage at all at the bloody big lizard. One of us even crits, but it’s still a nightmare. The thing is sucking breath, preparing to breathe ridiculous mounts of fire at us that we barely survived the last time, and we have no way of knowing if we’ve even made a dent in the thing’s hitpoints. Probably not, because this thing is huge.”
Arthur lifted his beer. “Now, I’d been just trying to distract the thing while everyone ran, because that was the sensible thing to do.”
“Don’t you even,” Gwen warned. “Since when does any group of ours do the sensible thing?”
“I held out hope for just once.”
Gwen snorted lightly. “I hope it was a faint, realistic hope.”
As an aside to Merlin, Arthur said, “I thought they’d run. It was supposed to be a noble sacrifice.”
With a roll of her eyes, Gwen continued, “So Arthur hits this thing’s open jaws on its inhale and the dragon starts choking, because hello - what kind of crazy is it to jump in, right? We’re all relieved that there’s significantly less burning happening, shoot a couple more arrows into it’s face while it’s trying to either spit out or swallow Arcturus. Arcturus, though, he’s getting ground up, hitpoints dropping like a rock and he was already wounded when we went in.”
Arthur held up a hand to stop Gwen. “Except I was carrying this delayed fireball that Bedivere had converted to do cold damage instead, and fire dragons hate the cold.” He grinned. “After the delay, the iceball blew up inside the thing’s throat, killed me twice over again. But it slammed through spell resistance, half of the damage dice maxed out, and add onto that a red dragon’s vulnerability to cold. With the crits and throwing everything everyone had left, it was just barely enough, but it was enough.
“This stupid dragon that we couldn’t manage to kill before died in two rounds. Pop. Just like that. It was fucking brilliant,” Arthur finished. “Best death any of my characters ever had.”
Gwen twisted in her seat and put her chin on Lance’s knees. “See what you’ve been missing? That kind of amazingness. It’s addictive after a while.” Lance shrugged, but a small smile played across his lips.
Merlin blinked at Arthur and Gwen by turns. “But then what happened?”
Pausing, Arthur raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean ‘then what happened’?”
“Did Arcturus get un-deaded?”
“Oh,” said Arthur, nonplussed, “Yes.”
“Yes, yes he did,” Gwen said, “I made sure of that. It just took us another session or two to con someone into letting us have the right mats, but we got him back. The game only went on a couple more months after that, though. We hit level twenty and real life slammed everyone right into the ground. Group dissolved. That was years ago, though.”
Lance leaned over the arm of his chair toward Gwaine and indicated his beer bottle. “Any chance of having what you’re having?”
“How do you feel about straight whiskey?” Gwaine said, producing a a flask from who-knows-where and passing it over. His gaze flicked to Arthur briefly.
The rapid tap of a pencil brought the everyone’s attention back to Morgana. “We do still have a handful of menacing undead for your current characters to fight, if you want. Not that they can really compete with a great red wyrm, but they do their best.”
Arthur checked his watch. “We should probably finish up, fussing around with the lower room ate up more time than I thought it would.”
“So glad you approve,” Morgana told him. “Now, to pick back up where we left off, Merlin’s crit bites right into the fleshy bits still stuck on the floating skull and knocks it straight to the steps. It bounces-”
**
The skull, now inert, bounces down the steps and off into a pool of darkness, but there are still a handful of enemies left. Maxim, dangling on his rope to the side, slashes with his dagger at the ectoplasm floating mid-air and trying to murder him where he swings. The creature retaliates with one goopy tendril that may be an attempt to give the thing arms and the attack hits Maxim square in the face. He shudders, the effect of the attack more than simple damage, and his next attack is almost tentative.
Chastity, up on the stairs, works methodically to hack down the skeletons trying to get past her. There is a long drag of seconds, with wizard and necromancer trying to focus on one of the undead for long enough for it to fall before moving onto the next.
The third ectoplasm drops from the ceiling a moment after its fellow dies a messy death, goo raining down on Kronk where he stand trying to flail upward at his target. For all that the whole group had minor wounds and scrapes, they manage to avoid all but Chastity and Maxim from taking too much damage until, at last, the final skeleton falls.
The sound of combat is replaced by the heavy breathing of the victorious combatants and the steady drip-drip of water from somewhere above. The flickers of blue fire are long gone, and the steady light of Nymeria’s stone illuminates the staircase in stark lines and shadows. After a moment, Nymeria asks, “Loot the room?”
The creatures themselves aren’t carrying much, dead and restless as they are, but a damp, innocuous chest in the corner of the upper room proves to hold some small treasures. There’s a handful of silver for each of them, a pair of small bottles that look enough like the ones they already have that Maxim and Chastity both receive one to heal some of their wounds. After downing his, Maxim looks appreciably better.
Kronk picks up the skull that had tried to go after Derezrel and examines it. The thing has splotch of bright red in the center of the forehead about the size of quarter. Leaving a gap of about an inch, a slender line encircles the dot. The red cuts across the top of the cranial case, loops down along the cheekbone, skips the blackened hole where the nose would be, and travels back up the other cheekbone. It’s distinctive, to say the least, and the fact that the skull’s orbital sockets are lined with gold doesn’t hurt.
“An objet d’art,” Nymeria declares it before tucking it hurriedly into her satchel. “We can sell it when we get back to down. I’ve a few collectors of the macabre that would pay good money for genuine decorative former-undead, especially if it came with my assurances.”
“I can’t tell if it’s magic,” Derezrel complains. “I’m a wizard, I should be able to tell if it’s magic. If I examine it, could I?”
Nymeria raises her eyebrows and clutches her satchel protectively. “I’m not going to let you examine it.”
“I’m not going to break it.” Derezrel holds out his hands in exasperation. “Come on.”
“You might.”
Eyes narrowing, Derezrel gives Nymeria good look up and down. He’s not the one who knew her to begin with, after all. “It could be important. What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Nymeria says a bit too quickly.
“Then hand it over.”
“Hey-” Chastity broke in. The healing potion she’d chugged has done a little, but not nearly enough to make more than a dent in her wounds. She looks a bit ragged. “Is it just me or is it getting wetter?” The drip of distant water reinforces her words.
Now that they’re on the second level, ranged around the chest, water trickles past their boots through grooves barely visible in the limited light of Nymeria’s stone.
“That can’t be good,” Maxim says. “Was it doing that before?”
**
“That’s where we’re going to stop tonight,” Morgana said. “Arthur, what’d you roll?”
“A thirteen perception to tell me whether or not it was this wet while we were fighting or whether it’s a new thing.” Arthur scooped up his dice.
“And I’m going to leave that question for next week.” The yawn Morgana gave as she stretched up and out of her chair set off a chain reaction. Merlin smothered his own yawn with his fist. “Combat’s still somewhat slow. That was technically a single encounter that I split into two and it still took us three hours. After the day I’ve had, I’m done.”
“We’ll get more efficient.” Arthur rolled his shoulders in a lazy shrug.
Morgana gathered the beer bottles - including Gwaine’s, despite his protests. “I know you will. I’m just saying that that’s more than enough of an adventure for tonight. You’ve got a couple of mysteries to deal with for next time. Gwaine, are you-?”
“Sober enough to go anywhere?” Gwaine finished for her. His diction was crisp with minimal slurring, but he made a face and wobbled his hand back and forth. “I wouldn’t say no to an alternative.”
“You’re staying on my couch, you lush.”
Gwaine kicked his legs up over the arm of his chair and grinned. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.” Morgana took a whiff of the stuff Gwaine had been refilling his bottle with and made a face. “Definitely not.”
Gwen asked, “Is everything okay, really?”
The quiet sincerity in Gwen’s question caught Merlin’s attention. Not the only one worried, at Merlin’s side Arthur shifted in his chair and Morgana growned at Gwen with an expression more than three parts irritation. Morgana shifted from foot to foot and her armful of bottles clinked.
With all eyes on him, Gwaine hesitated for long enough that Merlin didn’t believe it for a moment when he finally said yes.
Lance and Gwen traded looks from where Gwen was curled up against his legs. She ventured, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Hey, look at the time. I should be in the kitchen drinking water to stave off my inevitable hangover right about now.” Gwaine sounded so much his usual self, all brash confidence, that it was almost enough for a proper misdirection. He shoved himself to his feet and tried to dodge past the sette and its occupants, but Lance put out a hand and halted him before he went more than a step.
“Is it really nothing?” Lance asked, his fingers light on Gwaine’s pantleg.
Gwaine shot his usual smile at Lance, then tilted his chin up to shine it around at the whole group. “For now, yeah. Nothing. Maybe later it’ll be something.”
“Alright then.” Lance released him. Gwaine disappeared into the kitchen. The sound of the tap drifted out a handful of seconds later.
“That’s not good,” Gwen said. “You can’t tell me that was good.”
Morgana, standing at the edge of the cluster of her guests with her armful of bottles, shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”
Arthur started to tidy the gaming table, his movements abrupt as he leaned forward to stack the books. The clear, neutral expression on Arthur’s face gave nothing away and he kept his eyes carefully off the kitchen.
“You’re going to talk to him?” Gwen pried herself up off the sette and onto her feet. She reached a hand back to help Lance up.
“I am,” Morgana lingered, her head cocked to the side so she could listen. “But for tonight I’m just going to let him sleep it off. He doesn’t need me prying into his affairs any more than I need him prying into mine. A lesson for the rest of you, if I’m not mistaken.”
Gwen held up her hands in innocence. “I won’t touch it, then. I’ll change the subject to Lance and Merlin. Lance. Merlin. How was game for you tonight?”
Lance wrapped his arm around Gwen’s shoulders from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I got down to one hit point. Is that supposed to happen often?”
“One?” Gwen half-turned in Lance’s hold. “How’d I miss that?”
“No healer,” Morgana said. “Makes a difference.” She started toward the kitchen.
“You almost died,” Gwen exclaimed. She turned in placed and put a hand on either side of Lance’s face. “Tell someone when you’re about to be finished off and we’ll try and help you. Just because you’re still functional at one hit point doesn’t mean we want you there for long.”
Lance chuckled and planted a kiss on her nose. “Duly noted.”
Wrapped up in each-other, the pair moved toward the kitchen and left Merlin alone with Arthur. Voices and laughter drifted from the other room, but neither of them moved to stand.
The neutral expression on Arthur’s face softened. Merlin leaned in, “You know what’s going on with Gwaine, don’t you?”
Arthur startled and dropped his dice bag to the floor with a clatter. A moment later, he laughed to himself and scrubbed his hands down his face. “I forgot that you’d need to ask.” He waved that comment away and said, “Whatever it is is Gwaine’s business.”
“That’s not a no.”
“I can’t give you a yes,” Arthur said.
Merlin’s heart sank - not because of Gwaine, but because of Arthur’s unintentional echo of words he’d already used with Merlin. “I know,” he said. Pursing the topic to to find out what was wrong with Gwaine seemed suddenly harder than before. “I should go.”
The chair creaked and Arthur shifted to face him. “Come with me to lunch this weekend.”
The question out of the blue threw Merlin off balance. He halted packing up and stared at Arthur. “You’re serious?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got a thank-you lunch with some of the other teachers from the school. One of the student’s parents is hosting.”
Merlin relaxed and loosened his grip on his bag so that the buckles weren’t digging into his palms. “I’m moral support, is it?”
“You’re something, all right.” Arthur tipped his chin up and looked down his nose. “You’ll do, though.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Always am. The hosts are posh, so dress nice.”
“I didn’t agree to go yet.”
“But you’re going to.”
Merlin’s tried not to smile and failed, “Of course I am. I have to keep you from stealing the silver.”
“Rude. I would never.”
“I dunno, Morgana’s the only one here with the kind of job that keeps her in the life to which she has become accustomed.” Merlin made a show of looking around the flat, with its glittery chandeliers and chic modern furniture. “You can’t compete with this, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t think I can provide for you?” Arthur’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse you, I cut my teeth on quarterly earning reports.”
Merlin choked on his own tongue and it took him a couple of tries to find his words. He was willing to start over, though, he was, and starting over meant getting used to the ridiculous way Arthur slipped innuendo into their conversation on the assumption that Merlin was in on the joke.
Now, without the tiny lurch of hope his heart used to give, Merlin had nothing to hide. It was almost a relief to have an answer to the ‘what-if’ question.
Almost.
Teasing back, Merlin tried to soften his tone, but it still came out harder than he’d intended. “That’d be a trick. Somehow I don’t see Uther saying ‘my kid ate my presentation.’”
“Oi, low blow. Don’t bring my father into this.”
“You’re the one kipping silver from our posh hosts.”
“I’m not going to do anything with anyone’s silver, Merlin. That’s an utter fabrication and I shan’t listen to you any longer.”
“Oh, I struck a nerve, didn’t I?”
Morgana, at the entrance to the kitchen, let out her breath in a loud, exasperated huff to let them know she was there. “For the love of- stop flirting and get out of my house, both of you. Get.”
Laughing, Arthur found his feet and offered a hand to help Merlin out of his chair. Merlin couldn’t help but hesitate to grab hold, but Arthur was offering and Merlin was starting over. He clasped Arthur’s hand and was yanked to his feet. As he caught his balance and surreptitiously wiped his hand off on his trousers, he caught Morgana’s eye over Arthur’s shoulder. He shrugged at the query in her gaze. She shook her head slowly, disapproval written all over her expression.
‘Not my fault,’ Merlin mouthed at her and her frown grew more severe.
Ten minutes later, after the evening’s farewells, Merlin stood on the pavement on the street outside of Morgana’s flat looking up at the lit window. He could start over. He could. It was going to take some doing, but if the original confession had taught him anything - he could do things a whole lot harder and survive.