Rowan, undisputed lord of Norport and all of Andesty, descended the stairs into the royal catacombs. The air was rank with mildew, mold, and the hint of bodies long since decayed. He’d avoided this place at first, not caring for the husks of his discarded forms, nor for the many spouses and children he’d acquired over the many years of walking the mortal plane. Eventually he’d felt something stir within him and he finally relented, visiting the many tombs of past family members.

  Feelings? Things that should be a foreign concept to his kind, yet they had begun to manifest all the same. A strange side effect of his form obviously. Did the others feel as he did, or was this something only he was dealing with?

  To his left stood the gated entrance to the royal tombs. Only members of his family were interred within those hallowed halls, and despite the unknown forces beckoning him to visit, he turned away continuing down the path. To the right was the door to the halls of honor, a section of tombs reserved for heroes and nobles of utmost standing. Ahead of him a foreboding wooden door stood on massive iron hinges, flecks of light peering from around the cracks.

  He swiftly undid the lock and proceeded inside, temporarily blinded by the light within. “Pimm, I take it you’ve gotten all the magelights you needed, or all that were available by the looks of it.”

  A gaunt looking older man, pale of skin with sunken eyes almost resembling a corpse, looked up from an alchemical station. “I’ve gotten what I need, Lord Rowan. At least all I need for the moment.”

  “Excellent.” Rowan looked over to the corner at the two bodies laying on the floor. “Your associates appear somewhat dead.”

  Edward Pimm shook his head and went back to his work. “Not quite yet. Simply paralyzed and probably in unimaginable pain. Local trash I’d picked up out of the dungeon. Promised them a pardon and plenty of coin for a job well done. There was no way I'd be capable of carrying all this down here myself. Job finished, I made sure they’d not speak a word of what was down here.”

  Rowan looked at their twisted faces of agony and the spilled cups nearby. He’d seen people poisoned before, but nothing quite like that. “What did you use?”

  “Powdered Spinefish toxin. It attacks the skeletal muscles and severely damages the nerves. They’d recover in about a year or so.” Pimm added a few drops of liquid to a steaming flask, stirring it gently. “What news of your man?”

  “My scryer put him about a week out still,” Rowan said, looking around the rest of the room. “Where is the body at?”

  Pimm frowned for a moment before nodding. “A week. I’ll see what I can do in that time.” He pulled the steaming flask off the candled holder and added another fluid to it. “He’s in the next room.”

  They opened the door and walked into the adjacent room, the stench of decaying flesh instantly assailing them. There on a stone slab, wrapped in stained linen sheets, a body rested quietly upon it. Rowan clenched his teeth, trying not to show any sign of weakness to the horrid smell in the air. Had it bothered Pimm, the man showed no sign of it. He seemed as unfazed by the odor of death as one would be walking outside their home.

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  “The body is badly decayed as you can imagine, but putting it in the deepest parts of the crypt slowed degradation considerably. If those texts you provided to me are telling the truth, we should be able to pump fresh blood into his body and a healer can use that to restore the flesh and organs to some extent.” Pimm emptied the vile into a device and began to pump slowly, injecting the mysterious concoction through a hose and into the body. “This mixture should harden the veins and arteries enough to accept the blood.”

  A sickly black liquid poured out of a tube attached to the chest of the corpse, and into the bucket placed below. Rowan watched it for a moment, curious at the whole process. Despite the many years of his existence, he’d never quite taken to the alchemical sciences. The basics were easy enough, but the alchemists he employed were on another level completely ahead of anything he could comprehend.

  Rowan looked back at Pimm. “I’ve secured a healer, one I believe I can trust. She joined the monastery with grandiose dreams that quickly faded. She wants out and Mordin wants a new apprentice. I believe that both wants can be conveniently arranged at the same time.”

  “Have you told her she’d be working with a necromancer?” Pimm asked nonchalantly, focusing on his work at hand.

  “No, but she’ll do it. Joining with the Red Suns is a lifelong commitment. Her only way out is to go underground with her new master. If Talos discovered she entertained the idea of leaving, he’d leave nothing but ashes as a reminder to anyone else who entertained such ideas.” Rowan reached out to remove the cloth covering the face of the body, but suddenly found a hand holding him back. His anger rose momentarily, but was then quickly abated. “You have a reason for stopping me?”

  Pimm nodded. He pulled the stopper off a nearby flask and poured it into the dirty white linen, soaking it completely through. “The cloth is stuck to the skin. If you pulled it off dry, it might take his entire face with it. You may remove the shroud now if you wish, my lord”

  Rowan reached forward again and slowly removed the burial shroud, knowing who was underneath, yet still feeling some amount of trepidations. Finally getting to the last layer, he pulled it aside and stared at the blackened face of the man he had known well for many years. The man he had trusted to do the job and performed it exceptionally well.

  Marshall Landon. The former captain of the Norport city guardsman.

  “His neck is badly damaged,” Pimm said, interrupting Rowan's thoughts of the past. “It’s beyond anything I’ve learned so far. Perhaps your necromancer can repair it.”

  “Perhaps,” Rowan nodded. “He did come highly recommended for his talents though, so I suspect he’ll make do.”

  Rowan walked away without another word, leaving Pimm to his gruesome work. Danica would be back, of that he was certain. He’d make sure her homecoming was something special to remember. Still, every fiber of his being wanted to order his entire army to find and capture the wayward girl, but the threads of fate held him back. Had he the power of the gods at his command, it would be a trivial matter to squeeze the life from her in a very violent manner on a whim.

  He stopped in front of the stairs. That feeling returned again, even stronger this time. He clenched his fist and took a right, through the door, and into the royal crypt. A few moments remembering the past times and the people he used to be wouldn’t hurt anything. He was the ruler of this entire kingdom and could do as he pleased, when he pleased.

  He had all the time in the world after all.