18) This old secret lair

  The creature was nearly as large as Nictob back when he had been laid out on the floor, but it stood on four spindly limbs covered in thin wire like black hairs except for a few bright white patches here and there. Two sharp spikes tipped each of its legs and twisted, ridged horns shielded each side of its head before thrusting forward in a position to tear up into its prey.

  The worst was its incredibly unnatural eyes. No rounded pupils, or slits like a snake, but something that was stretched out and bent upwards on the bottom. It peered upwards to look at the window in the door with one of them with its head twisted around like a serpent as it made a horrible cry.

  Viola clasped her hands together “Ohhhhh. Nictob had a goat, and its teats are full. We got to milk it Fell. It’s probably in pain.”

  The information about what a teat was rose up from my God’s gift of knowledge and I realized how living creatures are innately disgusting beings. “How? Why? Can’t we just kill it and take it’s Core.”

  Then I could summon it up to horrify others.

  I had my Core smacked by a tiny purple hand. “It’s just a normal animal Fell, they don’t have Cores. We got to help it because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Trotting Caesar over to her, I had him give her a head tilted sideways stare. She looked off to the side, avoiding his gaze as she held her hands behind her back, and poked at the ground with the tip of her booted foot. “…and I like milk.”

  “...You’re a spirit, you don’t need to eat.”

  She threw her hand out and pleaded. “I still wanta! And it tastes nice. Saladmander can probably drink it. Then you can get to try it too.”

  Why am I arguing with her? She had let me see through her Gaze even after I had hurt her the first time. I had gotten to see the outside of the room, and now I knew I at least had an illusion hiding my dungeon from anyone coming to eat me.

  Let her have her milk. “Fine, we will get you your milk. Explain how.”

  She grinned and threw her hand up in the air before beginning to dance around. “I don’t know. But you’re smart Fell, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

  The skeleton was more than able to unbar the door to the creature's chamber, but the goat seemed alarmed to see a fleshless set of bones standing in its doorway and simply backed away into a corner while making horrible noises, at least until Viola came skipping around the corner of the hallway into the room. Holding a porcelain mug with a broken handle clutched in her arms, and softy warbling at it in a tuneless sort of song.

  The beast chuffed at her a bit but seemed to regard her as the least of its worries.

  As Caesar watched from the hall from between the skeleton’s leg I saw the fairy tug at the thing’s teats as they hung down from the goat, seemingly managing to be both ineffective at her task, and highly annoying to the goat. “Try chopping off the ends with your sword, that should get the milk out.”

  “What! No! Bad Core.”

  Just trying to help.

  After much coaxing of the animal, Viola settled the Skeleton to sit on a low stool, as the goat consented to being awkwardly milked, not by the skeleton, but by the Undine who stood between the undead creature’s folding up legs to fill first Viola’s mug, then a bucket that had hung from an iron nail driven in the wall.

  The Skeleton mainly just held the two containers in place with its larger hands.

  The goat seemed much relieved as it plopped down on a bed of dead plant fibers, and then let out a horrid scream before rising one more to begin pushing at a wooden trough with its nose and making more noises.

  Viola fluttered over to the air next to it before raising her hands outstretched in front of her, “Sprinkles!” A thin spray of water began flying from her hands to coat the inside of the shallow wooded box as the goat eagerly licked at the gathering water.

  I watched over several minutes as the water even began to pool as the fairy’s efforts got ahead of the goat's thirst before the water from her hand finally trailed off and she drifted to the ground seeming exhausted.

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  Wearily stalking over to her milk, the Fairy dipped her face over the edge of the mug filled with the white fluid before she began pulling up handfuls of the think fluid to her mouth and making horrid sucking sounds as well as lip smacks.

  I am so glad not to be biological. Fluids in, fluids out. The indignity of it. I’d rather die.

  Eventually, Viola staggered back into Nictob’s chamber, her chin and the front of her armor covered in white smears as she climbed up to the shelf I was hidden in, crawled underneath the tile with the fossil that largely concealed me from view, and curled up around me in the nook that had been made between the odes and notes, with her legs stuck sticking out beside tile until they hung off the shelf.

  “Sleepy now. I know I don’t needs sleep. Spirit. Don’t care. Sleeping is nice.”

  I would complain, but for the moment, she is quiet, still, and not causing me problems.

  Out in the hall, I set Caesar to watch as the Skeleton pulled at a loop of rope hanging out a hole in one of the two doors in the hall. From what my God’s gift tells me, the rope pulls the latch on the inside of the door allowing someone to open from the outside, then the rope is pulled inside to effectively lock the door when needed.

  And the unseen Sigil inscribed on the door shattered the hand of the skeleton when it tried to pull at the rope.

  Viola stirred for a moment at the sound of shattering bones but went still once more.

  The skeleton still had its other hand, and it was able to tug at the rope a second time to open the door. I had guessed that the Sigil might be drained after one use, and if I had been wrong, I could have just summoned the Skeleton again with a fresh set of hands.

  I wondered if the Sigil itself was still there waiting to be recharged with magic so it could be used again?

  Could I learn to make more of these Sigils, such as several of the exploding ones on each of the steps leading up the stairs? Learning how to do so might be written in one of these documents filling the shelves all around me.

  Later. Behind the first door was a cramped little room with a messy cot, scattered dirty clothing, as well as a scattered collection of empty bottles. A brazier that burned with a circle of low blue flame sat on a few blocks of stone in the corner. The inside of it had a rack resting in it that looked like it was meant to hold a copper teapot that sat on the floor next to it.

  Several wooded crates turned on their open side held more clothing, and the top of each crate was covered with stacks of various bowls, candles, books, and other odds and ends.

  It was difficult to see what was in the room from the perspective of a cat sized fire lizard on the floor, and it smelled rather horrid.

  Trotting Caesar outside with the Skeleton trailing behind it, the fire lizard saw the goat looking out from its room. The creature had worked the door open from the inside after I had led the skeleton into the hallway, since I had not bothered to secure the room with the bar. But no matter, the door to the room my core was in was closed once more, and guarded. The beast could not get inside to try to eat me.

  I ignored it as it trotted across the hall into Nictob’s bed chamber.

  The door to the other room did nothing to my Skeleton as it opened to reveal the Vile Arcanist’s larder and kitchen. Another brazier burned with open flames as it stood on a wooden, settled into a ceramic rimmed hole that seemed made to hold it in place. Pots and pans hung from iron hooks pounded into the walls, while shelves and more crate shelves held an array of grain and dried meat as unorganized as the rest of Nictob’s chambers.

  I guess the man had lived as he had died, messily.

  The goat looked into the larder for a moment, a shoe in its mouth as it chewed at it.

  ...Nictob had worn that on his foot...

  Living beings are just nasty.