Fabulosa and I stood still and listened to the crypt. We heard more faint rustling and movement inside the box.

  We braced ourselves for an attack that never came and relaxed.

  Fabulosa pointed to one end of the coffin. Squiggles covered one surface of the resin. “Can you read this?”

  “No. It’s like none of the languages I’ve seen in Miros. It might be an epitaph.”

  Charitybelle cast Detect Magic. “They’re not magical either.”

  Charitybelle nodded. “First, we need to figure out how to get by that magic aura. How did the gnoll die again?”

  I described what I’d seen in the stone vision. “When the gnoll touched the aura, it died of old age.”

  After inspecting the sides of the podium-shaped projection, I spotted a hole the size of the metallic cylinders we pulled from the worm’s lair.

  I removed one cylinder from my inventory and held it to the hole. It didn’t fit. The hollow wasn’t perfectly round, nor was the cylinder, but the shapes didn’t match.

  I sighed, settled down, and tried matching hundreds of cylinders in my inventory—one at a time. If we traded away the one we needed at Rowan’s magic shop, we’d be sunk. Some candidates fit into the hole but rattled and made imperfect fittings.

  Since I stored the cylinders in the void bag, Charitybelle and Fabulosa could do nothing but watch and soon grew bored.

  After an hour of trying hundreds of cylinders, I found a silver one that matched the hole.

  “Hey guys, I found one that fits.”

  We exchanged looks, grabbed our weapons, and stood up.

  I felt a slight resistance as I slid the oval solid into place. It reminded me of board game boxes that opened and closed with a hiss of air.

  When I inserted the cylinder, the glowing magical field disappeared without a sound. I prepared Magnetize to pull it out if Dracula suddenly sprang from the coffin.

  “I turned the magical field off. The good news is, I think these little cylinders have some use. Either they’re components of another magic system or magic keys. The bad news is, I don’t think we should spend them in case we need them for something.”

  Fabulosa shook her head. “That is bad news for anyone who wants to spend gold cylinders on anything other than cute outfits.”

  Charitybelle and Fabulosa shared a giggle.

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, you guys, let’s see what’s inside this thing.”

  Fabulosa moved next to the giant coffin. “Yeah. Let’s release whatever vampire has been resting here for the past 100 million years. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”

  Getting our fingers under the lid wasn’t easy. Once we did, our enhanced strength did the rest.

  Charitybelle spoke as we felt the lid move. “At least you can put your new strength bracers to use. Let’s move it just a crack.”

  Fabulosa’s eyes focused on the crack as she lifted. “I hope I’m at its feet.”

  Charitybelle grunted at the opposite end of the lid. “Yeah, me too.”

  We lifted the lid, turned it clockwise, and jumped back. Inside, something big shifted. At first, a putrid odor drove us away. With my weapons ready, I crept close and peered into the box.

  Fabulosa’s face contorted as she tried to comprehend the creature inside.

  I made a similar face and backed away again, coughing at the stench.

  A lobster creature I’d seen in the worm room months ago lay mummified before us. Unlike the afterimages of Mineral Communion, seeing this monster in real life gave me a sense of its size. The 10-foot-long crustacean sprouted rows of finlike paddles along its length instead of legs. Two chitinous tentacles sprouted from the creature’s mouth. True to its mummy nature, deteriorated strips of material wrapped around its body.

  The game ranked the monster’s difficulty as dangerous. It seemed suspiciously weak for a level 43 monster. Perhaps its inability to move reduced its threat level.

  “Ascended? What does that mean? You reckon that’s a lich of some kind?” Fabulosa looked at us with a sense of urgency. Her combat stance suggested a readiness to jump back at signs of danger. Charitybelle’s posture looked similar.

  Charitybelle turned to me. “Beats me—but this monster’s name is quite a mouthful. What’s an anomalocaris?”

  It became my turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s undead.” The bindings covered half of its eyeless eye sockets, which glowed blue. What flesh remained had shriveled like the rest of its body. It didn’t look like this thing could even see. I probably wouldn’t have located its eyes had I not seen the lobster creatures in visions and lizardfolk murals.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The weird lobsters had bookish appendages that fanned into the water—these pages sometimes fluttered as if the vibrations made sounds. If the pages worked like gills, its mouth had dried and fractured into pieces. What remained twitched soundlessly in the open air—blind and mute. And a muted creature couldn’t cast spells.

  While it appeared helpless, an unmistakable malevolence about the wretched thing made me grateful that it couldn’t see us. The air temperature dropped after we lifted the lid. Its chill touched me even under my mithril vest and robe, but no debuffs appeared.

  Charitybelle frowned. “Animal Communion doesn’t work on it. It’s definitely a monster.”

  “I don’t know what to say, guys. This thing is obviously evil, but I don’t think it’s wise to poke a level 43 monster with a stick.”

  Fabulosa shook her head. “That’s an awful lot of experience points to pass up.”

  Charitybelle couldn’t tear her eyes away from the mummy. “Should I try healing it? If it’s undead, light magic will cause damage—in which case. Let’s put it to rest.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any other ideas. Fab?”

  Fabulosa shrugged and urged Charitybelle to go for it. I imbued my spear in case things got ugly.

  When Charitybelle cast Rejuvenate, the thing twitched and smoked as if splattered with acid, but its bindings held. It made huffing sounds, and the gills in its “ripped-up books” fluttered. The creature’s health dropped by 50. We waited, but its weak thrashing never turned dangerous. The cold around the mummy increased.

  Fabulosa gave the command to fire. “Light it up.”

  We didn’t feel heroic, but euthanizing it closed a book of an untold story—and killing undead seemed like the right thing to do.

  Rejuvenate proved twice as efficient on mana as Restore, so we restricted our casting. Waiting for the spell’s cooldowns involved a test of willpower. Since we engaged in a state of combat for almost 20 minutes, our mana regeneration rate moved at a glacial pace. The mummy wriggled in torment throughout the encounter, unable to even lift its limbs. Killing it at such a slow rate seemed cruel. We exhausted our mana when it reached 30 percent of its health pool, so we downed mana potions for enough juice to finish the task.

  When Rejuvenate’s ticks brought the anomalocaris to zero health, we braced ourselves for a death rattle—but nothing unusual happened.

  From the gamer’s perspective, Fabulosa wasn’t wrong about the experience. Still, such an ugly kill felt anticlimactic and left a bad taste in my mouth.

  With the meager experience from the fungal crawler and sundew plant-thing, the 97 points from the anomalocaris helped us level up. If rags hadn’t bound it into a cocoon, I’m confident we would have earned more experience—but I felt equally sure that a monster of its level would have smeared us like meat crayons in a fair fight.

  None of us cheered or searched the body. We collapsed on the floor and performed Rest and Mend.

  Fabulosa broke the silence. “I’ll admit, that kill felt like Cheesetown Central, but it makes up for the golem and chimera, and there’s a good chance it has some sweet loot.”

  Charitybelle looked at me. “Do you think the monster had something to do with what the gnolls, orcs, and kobolds were after?”

  I nodded. “Judging by its rarity, yeah. It explains why the orcs paid off the kobolds. Maybe this critter was too hot to handle for the ratfolk, and the orcs thought they could put it to use. By the way, thanks for coming. That wasn’t exactly an epic battle, but at least I learned something about runes.”

  Charitybelle looked warily at the sarcophagus. “This is a fun dungeon, and I’m glad the boss wasn’t dangerous. It’s better than the demon temple or the spider maze, that’s for sure. Getting shot up the tube was fun.”

  Fabulosa furrowed her brow. “Do you reckon the lizard people worshiped or guarded the mummy?”

  Charitybelle shrugged. “It could be both or neither.”

  We scrutinized the crypt’s grisly contents.

  I pulled away wrappings from a bulge in the mummy’s side. It looked like a crown or helmet with an opalescent sphere inset into its frame. It glowed when I cast Detect Magic.

  The three of us looked at one another as if we had stumbled upon a suitcase of drug money. This item held the same mystique as a gold nugget found on someone else’s land. We felt like grandchildren discovered a winning lottery ticket in our grandfather’s ashtray. Who would take it? The crown involved moral consideration. What kind of players were we?

  I broke the long silence. “It’s a cursed item. It’s important that no one touches it.”

  Charitybelle shook her head. “I’m not taking it.”

  Fabulosa pantomimed unchecked avarice and jokingly reached for it. She pulled her hand back and laughed at our reactions. “Come on now. I’m not crazy. Look at what it did to the last owner. Besides, flying and arcane magic isn’t my thing. If the relic affected primal spells—then maybe.”

  We nervously laughed, easing some of the tension.

  I exhaled. “Seriously, though, this item could mean winning the contest outright. The range for Detect Magic would be ten times greater. A tenfold Mana Shield would be pretty tough to beat.”

  Fabulosa rolled her eyes. “Forget Mana Shield—you could cast Imbue Weapon for ten times extra damage.”

  I chased down Fabulosa’s thought and wondered out loud. “And it could cost a tenth of the mana and take a tenth of the time to channel.” With every strike of my spear or arrow, I could hit opponents with Imbue Weapon for over 200 points of extra damage. Every combat scenario I ran in my head ended with a relic bearer winning.

  Charitybelle shook me out of my daze. “Taking it means the other two of us will probably die. I can’t imagine anyone mind-melding with a demon lord would want companions—or competitors.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Fabulosa. “You could use me as a minion.”

  “I have a mind to take it and do just that.”

  Charitybelle elbowed Fabulosa. “Behave, you guys. This is too dangerous. There’s always free cheese in a mousetrap.”

  Joking about such a temptation felt like playing with fire, so I stopped kidding around. What if the demon’s influence forced the relic’s owner to perform unspeakable acts? Was this a trap placed by Crimson Software to create reality show villains? What mental toll would the contest winner pay?

  The crown contained a pearl with a proper name, the Artilith, which seemed to be its source of its power.

  I raised my hands in surrender. “Okay, so it’s verboten. What do we do with it, then? Therein lays the problem—if we wouldn’t take it, someone else might.”

  Charitybelle raised her finger in a Eureka gesture. “Oh! I know—you could take that cylinder out. Without it, the magical barrier could still zap or kill anyone touching it.”

  That wasn’t a bad idea. What better way to deter grave robbers?

  No other magic glow or wealth emanated from the casket besides the relic. A broken core from the anomalocaris rested beside it, but we left it alone. Broken cores held no value, and we weren’t sure if residual evil lay in its essence.

  We shut the lid, and I used Magnetize to pull the silver cylinder out of its hollow.

  I tossed a copper coin onto the coffin. After it landed on the lid, a green patina covered it. “Watch yourselves. The aging field is online again.”

  Fabulosa twirled her new Returning Arrow in one hand and hugged me with her other. “Are you happy you finally discovered what the orcs, kobolds, and gnolls fought over?”

  We solved a mystery, but doing so didn’t overflow my bags with loot. But I knew when to call it quits and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”