Nick planned their jailbreak from that point on. They continued to accumulate resources and build the tools which they would need to facilitate their escape.

  The elf could craft many things, including explosives and other consumables. The boy could shapeshift and infiltrate. And Nick could plan and lead. Of course, if the other two realized Nick’s limited tactical value, then Nick would lose some of his leverage within the team. This led to Nick keeping the plan to himself, at least as much as possible. Unfortunately, as the elf’s skills were required in preparation of the plan, Nick was forced to share at least some of it.

  Even more unfortunate, as the team only saw a small portion of the grander plan, they had doubts as to the efficacy of the escape plan as a whole. It did not help that they were already dubious of the team’s capabilities, as the wardens had performed an adequate job of pushing an image of an indomitable force to the populace. Likely some feat of social engineering.

  But pointing out that feat to the others to raise the team’s spirits returned less than stellar results.

  The doubts remained, and it was these that came front and center one day as the team gathered in the elf’s workshop to both review their inventory and watch Frostlight work. They would be testing several of the newer designs later on in the dungeon.

  Kirk was running a delicate hand over the workbench, near where several of the grenades were resting on their sides upon a raw fur hide. Kirk poked one of the grenades–a piece of gut had been twisted around the body of it, connecting two ovoid objects together–two triggers had been jury-rigged to the same lever.

  Nick remained silent, content to monitor the boy and the elf. He had been waiting for someone to finally say something, and he had been preparing to dole out additional bits of his plan–but he did not want to give away such for free, and so he waited for another to speak first.

  Kirk, being the impatient lad that he was, broke the silence first.

  “Assumin’ this works,” Kirk said. “Are we sure this is gonna be enough to get outta this hole?”

  To the side of the workbench there were several shelves stacked with other improvised explosives. Nick nodded to them. “These certainly seem potent. Frostlight has been industrious of late.”

  “Ya, ya…” Frostlight agreed in a distracted fashion, only half listening since he was currently working on a grenade.

  “Enough?” Nick said, making a show of inspecting the stacks of explosives off to the side. “It seems there’s enough to me… and if not, Frostlight will make some more, I’m sure.”

  The grenade Frostlight currently was building was one of his earlier designs: there was a large Dungeon Stone sitting in an osseous chamber along with grounded glowing dust and shrapnel. The shrapnel was something new to the design. After the elf slid the chamber closed, he held it out to Nick, and Nick merged the container and compacted everything as tight as he could, leaving no room for air. The only ingress to the chamber was filled with a metal pin which connected to another glowing charge which would activate upon a pulled trigger.

  “Alright, so point…” Kirk admitted, as there was a substantial amount of devices already made, and as doing otherwise would invalidate some of Frostlight’s work while the elf was within the same room. But Kirk continued to aire his complaints and doubts, which was what Nick had been waiting for. “... because, you know, people’ve tried blasting their way out before…”

  As Kirk spoke, he selected one of the grenades from off the bench, one of the newer models that combined two triggers.

  “I had wondered this myself,” Nick said, re-routing Kirk’s question to fall along something more relevant. “If escapes aren’t happening today, then either those capable have left already, or they died trying.”

  “Mmmaybe?” Kirk said with a shrug. He casually began tossing the grenade from hand to hand. Nick wanted to cringe away from such a careless act, but he did not want to distract from the dialogue, as he was the one that initiated it. Doing so would be granting an implicit consent to change tracks discussion-wise.

  Fortunately, Frostlight was not far from them, and was also listening to the discussion. While the grenade was in transit between hands, Kirk snatched it from mid-air and pulled it away. He scowled at Kirk as a reprimand.

  Kirk coughed and looked away from the elf, instead focusing on Nick.

  “Or… maybe they gave up?” Kirk continued. “Or lost the capability… but, yeah. If getting out were just as simple as exploding something, a lot fewer people would be down here.”

  The elf scoffed in offence.

  “As though crafting these were simple,” Frostlight said.

  “Hey, you know I didn’t mean it like that, yeah?” Kirk said apologetically.

  Frostlight stared at the boy for a moment as Nick’s patience eroded. Fortunately, the elf got on with it.

  “Good, because these–” Frostlight tapped one of the larger bombs, “-they require bone shaping–” Frostlight gestured with a slender tool towards Nick, which Nick acknowledged with a small nod “-and the best and biggest stones from below, and that’s besides my skills, ya?”

  “Yes, as the elf said.” Nick cut back in before the conversation could devolve further. “These devices are moderately difficult to source. It is likely any group capable of crafting such explosives have since already escaped or were otherwise removed.”

  At that point, Nick began to lose control of the dialogue. When Nick mentioned some of the possible negative consequences that their predecessors may have experienced, the elf had winced, and the boy looked on the verge of blurting some inanity or other. Fortunately, Nick had the rhetorical skill to retain control. He briefly increased both volume and pitch. “Regardless!” Nick bursted, before smoothing back out to a more conversational tone. “Regardless, our plans do not culminate with a mere explosion. We have several advantages within our party, advantages which I mean to use. And, as I stated previously, our plans contain several contingencies.”

  Kirk smirked as Nick finished. Nick chose that time to blurt, “What you’re saying is your plans better than ‘wardens go boom?’”

  Neither the elf nor Nick thought much of the joke.

  Kirk groaned at the dead atmosphere. “I been meaning to ask ya,” Kirk said. “Mind telling us the plan? I know you don’t think much of our intellectual stuff, but maybe we can help with throwing ideas around?” He finished on a hopeful note, after disparaging his own capabilities.

  “You said this, not me,” Nick added as soon as he could, uncomfortable with these allegations regarding what Nick thought of his team. Especially as those allegations were factually untrue. Nick refrained from sharing his plan as he feared he would become redundant, lose negotiation leverage, or otherwise lose control. It had nothing to do with the boy’s mental astuteness.

  “Yeah?” Kirk asked, prompting Nick to continue sharing.

  Nick decided he might share the barebones of the plan. And Kirk was necessary for some of the more immediate parts of it which were coming up.

  “Alright, as a matter of fact, I do need your help with a few things.”

  “Mind taking this outta my den?” Frostlight asked, seemingly fed up with Nick and Kirk holding a conference in the workshop while the elf was working.

  However, that irritation caused Nick some pause. So, while Kirk acted abashed and made his way towards the exit, Nick asked, “Do you not want to hear our next steps?”

  “Nien,” the elf said.

  It was a peculiarity that Nick had discovered between this world and his last. Several words had carried over, and he was uncertain what this meant, if it meant anything at all. However, Nick suspected that his comprehension of language had been altered along the way, and that that altered comprehension had made false correlations within his memory. As such, he paid the peculiarity all of the attention it deserved.

  “Very well then,” Nick said, making his way to follow Kirk out. “Ensure that our newest model is tested.”

  “Ya ya…” Frostlight agreed, before muttering something else as Nick left.

  As Nick followed Kirk up the ramp towards the mega-cavern and the penal-colony therein, Nick began discussing what Kirk would need to do.

  “Any war is won on information, and business is not different,” Nick began.

  “But… this isn’t either of those, we’re trying to escape.”

  Nick chuckled at the boy’s naivety.

  “Everything is business.”

  The team was in a surly mood as they ascended once more from the dungeon.

  They had tested several of the thermal detonators, which produced a high yield in terms of heat and a low yield in everything else. These ‘thermites’ as Nick dubbed them, would be vital for bypassing heavy armor and blast resistant doors and mechanism.

  Unfortunately, of the four thermites tested, one was a dud.

  “Do you think we can go back tomorrow and retrieve the dud?” Nick asked. He had wanted to bring the dud back with them so that Frostlight could perform an immediate dissection to determine what had failed.

  Frostlight scowled and grumbled and made his disagreement known.

  Nick decided to try again. “I agreed with you earlier, that examining the dud would have been dangerous, but surely, after–”

  “Not just dangerous, plain suicidal, ya?!” Frostlight snapped. “Doesn’t matter if we wait till tomorrow either. I’m not doing it.”

  Nick sighed, wearily. He understood where the elf was coming from, he truly did. But without a post-mortem on the failed device, they would never know why the device failed or if the dud was a once-off or if the problem was systemic.

  They continued trudging upwards, weaving their way along the byzantine tunnel path, following the signs towards the most common route taken when entering or leaving the dungeon. They passed another party of delvers and passed the other group warily, neither group speaking while within earshot of the other.

  While still wary, this action stood in contrast to when Nick had first started to delve, as he would have hidden away from any other group that he came across. Most delvers behaved predatorily.

  Even now, from a position of strength, Nick still advised his team to remain cautious, keeping their ears sharp, listening for any sign of approaching footsteps from the rear. Nick did not permit any distractions until they were passing the toll-takers.

  The gruff woman was standing guard there, alongside her companion. The two of them were the usual toll-takers that Nick’s team passed.

  Ordinarily, Nick would toss over several of the larger Dungeon Stones to the woman and she would wave his group through the bottleneck, allowing Nick to enter the mega-cavern where the penal colony was located. This time, however, due to an incident involving a dud, Nick’s team had decided to cut their delve short. Their returns were minimal that day.

  Taking an embarrassed tone, Nick said, “We were less successful today than normal…” He held the satchel of stones up, showing its pathetically limp and empty form.

  “Still don’t know why we couldn’t keep going,” Kirk complained. “It was only a few bites.”

  Kirk was of course referring to the swarm of rat-things that had broken through when the thermite had failed to blow. Kirk was forgetting that while both the boy and Nick would regenerate from wounds, the elf could not, and it had been Frostlight that had been bitten. Those wounds needed to be disinfected and treated.

  “Not now,” Nick said, reprimanding the boy for speaking out of turn as they were passing the toll-takers. Of course the reprimand was for show, as was the boy’s belly-aching. It was meant to convince the toll-takers of the team’s authenticity.

  “Bah,” the woman responded. “Just pay a few stones and yer good.”

  Nick reached deep within his satchel to withdraw a handful of small glowing bits of rock, harvested from some of the larger rats they had killed that time. This was unfortunately most of what the team had harvested this trip, but it was still such a paltry sum that Nick was happy to pay it. Besides, Nick thought, they had all the resources they needed already. The purpose of the trip was largely to test the grenades in action.

  When the paltry sum was handed over, the stones fitting easily on the palm of the woman’s hand, she snorted a laugh.

  Nick did not need to pretend to be embarrassed after that and he was glad for a change in subject as the team entered the mega-cavern. They were heading towards the town in the distance, visible by the glowing lanterns of various shapes, colors, and luminosity. The entire place seemed more like a shanty-ville than anything else, with the exception being the tower at the center and a few other notable exceptions.

  “It was just one dud,” Kirk said, slapping Frostlight on the back to try and cheer the elf up. “The rest of them worked fine.”

  “But was it a one-off?” Nick asked. “Or do we need to revise our plans to account for the fact that maybe a quarter of our gear won’t work…”

  Frostlight, of course, received such feedback negatively.

  As they were approaching the elf’s hovel and workshop, Kirk sniffed the air, akin to a dog.

  “That’s strange,” Kirk said.

  Nick waved the boy off. Likely, this was a lead-up to one of the boy’s jokes, meant to lighten the team’s spirits. However, it would not be appropriate at the moment.

  When they were nearly to the hovel’s entrance, Kirk froze.

  “That’s not right at all…”

  Nick frowned and considered for a second before striding forward, taking advantage of his longer legs to overtake the elf. “Wait a moment here,” Nick said behind him.

  Down the ramp to the tarp that served as a door, Nick began noticing oddities that left a deep and uncomfortable sense of foreboding building in his gut. The tarp hung listlessly to one side, torn from one of its anchoring points.

  “Fuck.”

  Nick readied his bone spear and strained his sixth sense, his ability to detect osseous tissue.

  Several items felt out of place from within, but nothing was moving… and there was a lot less material than normal. Particularly where the storage racks were located, where bone casings should have been lined up, where the stock of grenades should have been.

  Nick swore again.

  Even the workbench was missing material. The tools that Nick had helped to craft were gone.

  Nick stormed into the hovel, hoping to find the guilty party lingering at the scene of the crime, but of course there was no one there.

  The rest of the team followed behind him.

  “Nien…”

  Kirk’s eyes became cold and glinty as he began running his fingers along the floor, likely looking for evidence of who had robbed them.

  Frostlight rushed over to his tool bench and continued swearing. He held up a broken soldering wand, snapped in two, the part containing the charge gone.

  “Iced balls and thrice damned Odin!” Frostlight shouted, throwing the broken tool down. “I’ll kill them! No, I’ll Charm ‘em and make them kill themselves!”

  Nick felt ill at the loss but he knew that this was exactly the sort of moment that he needed to take charge, before the team splintered into unproductive courses of action.

  “Before you do that,” Nick said with a bold and calming tone. “Let us first determine who did this.”

  “Ya, ya, of course.”

  “Kirk,” Nick continued, ignoring the elf’s comment. “Figure out who’s behind this and where they took our things.”

  Kirk stood up, holding some dried gunk that had fallen to the ground. He snorted and looked at Nick.

  “That all?” Kirk asked.

  Nick paused, reconsidering the elf’s anger and some of the other threats to the team’s plan to escape.

  “We need to know who did this, where they’re storing our stock, and if whoever did this was working with the wardens…”

  Kirk spat, “nobody’s working with the wardens.”

  “You’re sure?” Nick asked. “Because if whoever robbed us wanted to knock us off before we could retaliate, they could certainly point the wardens in our direction.”

  Kirk frowned in silence before spitting again and cursing,

  “Exactly,” Nick said. “And while you do that, Frostlight and I will find a new position to relocate to.”

  Not too long after, Kirk found the two of them as they were scouting out a promising hole outside the town and near the edge of the mega-cavern.

  Kirk had apparently followed his nose, which was only now beginning to shrink back to a normal size. The boy carried himself with a worn but pleased aire.

  “Good news, I take it?” Nick asked.

  The boy nodded. “Yeah, found ‘em.”

  Nick exchanged glances with the elf before saying, “then lead the way.”

  The boy led Nick and the elf back into town, along the backside of the main thoroughfare, and towards one of the larger buildings, excepting the tower.

  The boy stopped them at the building’s back, giving the trio a chance to look over the place. There were three floors to the building. It was largely made of stone, with elements of beast-flesh stretched between. The only sentry they could see was a mannish woman leaning against a porch. The woman was smoking from a pipe.

  “How we doin’ this?” Kirk asked.

  The elf, frowning at the building, expressed doubt and worry.

  “Ordinarily I would want to plan this out further,” Nick spoke slowly. “But in this instance, time is of the essence…”

  “They do not appear to be going anywhere,” Frostlight pointed out.

  Nick ignored that, and instead nodded to the boy. “You head in first. We have a debt to reclaim.”

  “You mean repay, ya?”

  Nick scoffed.

  Not much time was required for their rushed operation to begin.

  The boy, Kirk, snuck past the woman keeping watch.

  As they could not verify that there was not a secondary watch within the building keeping eyes upon the lackadaisical woman, Nick had told the boy to avoid her.

  Nick, watching on from the shadows beyond the porch-light, felt some manner of praise was due to the boy’s abilities. Afterall, Nick knew his own limitations, Nick would never have been able to sneak so adroitly.

  Instead, Nick watched the boy’s performance, ready to intervene should he be discovered prematurely.

  As Kirk went in, he was hugging the wall of the building, moving silently as a proper help should. More than just a hired help, Nick corrected himself.

  The boy climbed the porch without making a sound or vibrating the structure, coming within a foot of the woman.

  The woman should have been able to feel a breeze, or some nature of displacement from the boy. But, no, the woman showed no signs of having noticed anything of the sort.

  Kirk then slipped inside the building, disappearing from sight.

  Nick and the elf began to wait, giving the boy a chance to sow confusion and dissent and to ensure no traps or ambushes or ill-timed encounters awaited the rest of the team.

  But as they waited, the elf apparently began to have second thoughts.

  “Maybe we should give him a big longer, ya?” Frostlight said, trepidation still clear in his voice.

  Nick wanted to sigh, scoff, or some other way express exasperation, for Nick had already explained the plan, and they had already invested Kirk, sending the boy in. However, Nick could spin this as a way to demonstrate his own loyalty to the team, although it would not serve him to push too far, considering he only had an audience of one, currently.

  “Would you have us abandon the boy?” Nick answered with a question. “Because that is really what you’re asking, is it not? To leave Kirk hanging in the wind, on his own, in hostile territory.”

  Frostlight winced and glanced aside. He muttered, “The boy would be fine… ya?”

  “We hope,” Nick responded.

  At that moment, from within the building, a man’s voice was heard. While not in panic, there was certainly some concern. A second shout soon followed. Likely, either the boy was discovered or some evidence of his passing was discovered.

  Nick rose and hefted his spear, slapped the elf upon the back, and said, “It is for you we’re doing this. Prepare yourself, and follow after me.”

  “But–” the elf began, but Nick was already running forward.

  Nick lacked the boy’s stealth, but thanks to the noises from within the building, the woman was distracted, turning her attention inwards, away from the direction Nick was charging from.

  His feet thudded against the ground. He held his spear forward, considered throwing it as a javelin, but instead decided to make the most of the woman’s distraction. By the time the woman was alerted to his presence, the tip of his spear was piercing her throat.

  As the life left her eyes, something potent took its place. Whatever it was, it lingered cloyingly in Nick’s senses, enough so for him to ignore the burning lines crawling up his right arm and shoulder. Rather than freeing his spear from its lodging, he paused, watching the death rattle and futile scrabbling that she made, grasping at her throat.

  The presence felt reminiscent to Nick’s osseous sense, but far richer in every way possible. He had never realized that sensing plain skeletal systems was lacking, but now that he felt this… emanating, wondrous, trappings of civilization, he knew, deep within the core of his being, a missing pit within the center of his chest, that he could be so much more.

  No, he would be so much more.

  Just as he was reaching towards this spiritual enrichment, he caught a look of disgust from the elf.

  The elf was glaring pointedly at Nick, and Nick returned to his senses.

  This was perhaps not the best time to experiment.

  From within the building, a cry of alarm had rung out.

  Nick freed his spear from the woman, noting that he could still feel the corpse, similar to an arm that had fallen asleep while he had slept. Rather than prodding this new sensation, he barged into the building.

  In the first room, he found another corpse, a torn throat and slashes across its face.

  He pushed past this atrium and into the central room of this floor.

  There, he found two thugs in hurried conversation. The one facing in Nick’s direction turned their attention towards him, but by then he was already across the room, piercing both with his spear, reminiscent of a shish kabob, a humorous portion of him noted. As both thugs had been pierced through their lower backs and stomachs, they were incredibly lively. Nick had not intention of sticking around, so with a mental twist, he caused several thorns to lift along his still embedded spear.

  As Nick left the two behind with his spear, heading up the stairway, he heard the elf enter the room and utter a curse involving Odin’s reproductive organs. It was crass.

  On the second floor, Nick found the boy rising from a slashed body, lengths of flesh dangling from his claws. Nick ignored the red smears about the boy’s mouth.

  “Bout time,” Kirk said, almost as though he were complaining.

  “It does not appear as though you were put out,” Nick noted, glancing at the corpse and noting that the potent sense was largely missing from it. “Is that the last of them? I had thought there were more.”

  The boy nodded towards the stairway. “A few of ‘em up the way.”

  “Ah. Ambush then?”

  The boy shrugged. “They know we’re here and haven’t come down.”

  Nick nodded while he thought. His regeneration was great enough that there were few things he needed to worry about, although a direct blow to his head was one of them. And it was not as though this gang of miscreants would lack knowledge of how to put liches down. With them await in ambush, the risk to Nick and his team was not negligible.

  “Have you found our wares yet?” Nick asked Kirk.

  The boy shook his head. “Think they’re locked up somewhere.”

  As they spoke, two new sources of wealth opened up in his mind’s eye, on the floor below. Nick’s sense twisted under Nick’s attention, his right arm burned as his tattoo updated, and the two thugs’ corpses stumbled about his still embedded spear.

  “Undead?!” the elf squawked from below, almost sounding panicked.

  The boy scoffed, amused, even as he said, “Gross.”

  Nick rolled his eyes, already in the process of extracting the bodies. The sense was not so different from that of the bones he could control. His influence was still light, a gentle guiding of his will, a nudge of a mouse… but the leverage was great, as the small direction led to an entire body shambling its way up the stairs.

  With the two walking corpses, Nick had enough of this newfound seventh sense that he felt no need to visually inspect them or otherwise. In fact, just glancing at the zombies and the trailing innards leaking from their midsections left Nick uneasy. Especially when that seventh sense felt hungry, for lack of a better word. He put it aside and instead focused on his next steps.

  Regaining the tools requisite for escape and verifying that none of the louts upstairs had informed the wardens of Nick’s plans.

  There was also a third point that he could now consider, one that had only made itself known with Nick’s newfound abilities.

  The shambling dead were trudging past Nick and Kirk, on the way towards the stairs up.

  Nick, remaining behind with the lad, turned and asked, “Think the elf can outfit them?”

  “I dunno?” Kirk shrugged. As the zombies trudged past, Kirk winced and coughed, “Uh, I mean maybe? Sure.”

  Nick nodded as he mused. His zombies reached the thugs hiding upstairs and he soon found several more assets under his purview.

  Absorption 2.6.6.X.2.11

  Nick and his team recovered most of the stolen artificed gear. Most, but not all of it. Several of the wands were missing from where the thugs had carelessly dumped their haul. It was Nick’s belief that several of the thugs had sticky fingers, embezzling from their corporate pot, so to speak. There were also fewer grenades recovered than had gone missing, although this was indeterminate as the fool elf had never thought to do a proper inventory.

  It was not this foolishness that was bothering the elf, at least not completely. It was tough to tell though, for certain, especially as Nick preferred to avoid listening to the elf’s bellyaching.

  “-and I say you’re giving up to easy!” Frostlight was protesting Nick’s decision to retreat from the thugs’ base. “The good stuff is still missing an’ I spent good hours putting each of these together, ya? It is not as though we’ve searched everywhere–they’re still hidden somewhere, I feel it!”

  “You don’t know that they are, though,” Nick pointed out. “And we have already spent the better part of an hour combing through everything here. Should we spend any longer here, we would be jeopardizing ourselves and the remainder of our stock. There is a fallacy regarding your proposed action, afterall.”

  “Well I dunno about no fallacy,” Kirk added in, “But I also can’t think of anywhere left to search. And like the big guy said, we don’t know when their friends’ll be back.”

  “Exactly,” Nick said, nodding thankfully towards the boy. “You know, Frostlight… for how worried you were before our raid, it is somewhat surprising that you would so willingly wait here to contest the remainder of this gang. Afterall, it would be foolish to assume we ambushed their group in its entirety.”

  “Yep,” Kirk said, before gauging the elf with a sly sort of grin. “And that’s if the wardens don’t come knockin’ first. Not that I think they necessarily would, but it’s been known to happen, and we were a bit rowdy.”

  Having been teamed up upon, the elf stood little chance in resisting Nick’s good sense for long. But even then, as he was beginning to oblige reason, Frostlight uttered with a glower one last petulant complaint.

  “You both don’t know how hard it is to build any of this…”

  He could have let that last statement be, but Nick decided against it. Perhaps he was feeling indulgent as well.

  “That is true,” Nick said with a hint of a patronizing tone. “But we all contributed in our own ways, and the boy is right about the risks that continuing our search of this building would entail. All manner of company might arrive unexpectedly, and I have little in the way of ideas to avoid an unfavorable confrontation. Besides, we have turned every loose stone within this building. Should the thugs still retain possession of what is ours, it is unlikely that they stored it here.”

  “Probably sold it already,” Kirk added. “All kinds a’ ways to use that kinda stuff.”

  “And you know,” Nick said, sparing some attention to a new mental twist. “It is not as though we are leaving with empty hands.”

  It was then that the last of Nick’s zombies left the building, shambling through the back-door. He had collected several of these minions, and while he had done some limit testing upon this ability, there were still too many questions. For example, he had found he could only raise some of the corpses. And each raising felt different, at least from his limited population size.

  He continued musing as he followed his new minions out. Already, he was considering their potential. However, unbeknownst to Nick, as he stepped past where Kirk and Frostlight stood, the boy gave the elf a queasy glance.

  “The smile, ya?” Frostlight asked, knowingly, also uncomfortable.

  “The smile,” Kirk agreed with a shudder.

  Nick found himself distracted over the course of the week. Instead of focusing completely on the final preparations for their escape, he shifted his attention towards his newest assets. Justifiable, yes. But perhaps not the wisest. However, he doubted any from his old boardroom would dispute that these new assets were a game-changer, a force-multiplier, a cheap and disposable labor force.

  So of course, he focused upon discovering the best means to integrate his minions. And it was not as though he was playing with toys. No, he was performing science, testing limitations, learning capabilities. He was only missing the white lab-coat and waiver for malpractice and liabilities.

  His efforts were not in vain, considering his findings.

  He learned there was a limit to the number he could keep powered at any single time. The closer he came to this limit, the longer and more tiring each subsequent reanimation became. There were also a subtler strain upon what he considered his mental resources.

  When he had just one reanimated corpse, the body almost seemed alive, aping at breathing, a pulsing heart if it was able, and some amount of regeneration.

  From when a single asset was raised, Nick would gain a second set of senses, though not as sharp as his own. When he raised additional assets, these senses grew muddled together. These decreased senses likely explained why their performance began to suffer, leaving them stumbling and losing fine motor control.

  It became the classic question of value-proposition, quantity or quality.

  He chose a mixture of both, having several mid-quality minions as opposed to a single high quality servant or a horde of embarrassing automatons.

  However, besides his own abilities, there was another variable he was forced to consider, the so-called ‘Sacred Arts.’ While it was not so clean, he was able to form some generalizations. A man who could throw flame in life, would lose that ability as a raised asset, but a man that could shatter stone with a punch, that man kept most of that strength and sturdiness.

  It was only natural that he wondered just what a new tattoo would provide to an already reanimated dead. When he inquired about this from his contacts, he was rebuffed with a sense of contempt and disgust. This common perception seemed untoward and unearned. Nick comforted himself by comparing himself to a genius leading the herd with a revolutionary paradigm.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He did encounter one slight impediment besides this. He found that he could only raise humans, and he found that he himself had to be personally involved in the human’s death. He found that directly participating in the killing would reduce the strain of raising the body.

  He likened it to a numbers game.

  Given his newfound ability, and now with the confidence of knowing how that ability worked, he revised some of his plans.

  Kirk began scouting out the wardens and their schedule, particularly the comings and goings between the fortress and the tower within the town.

  Frostlight continued his crafting, but now Frostlight was also producing gear that Nick’s minions could use to further their force multiplier.

  Nick continued hunting and building his labor-pool, selecting only the most optimal of assets for the upcoming conflict.

  After the week was out, Kirk returned from scouting early.

  It seemed that the period of waiting and of trial and discovery had come to an end. The time to implement his plan had come.

  “You confirmed that this is the full guard rotation?” Nick prompted Kirk.

  As they spoke, Nick was tugging at the invisible and intangible threads which connected him to his minions. Most of his assets were spread throughout the mega-cavern, hunting to bolster their forces, as it were. The timing of the wardens’ transfer came as unfortunate.

  “Yeah, pretty sure. They were fresh faced an’ ready for duty, heavy kit and supplies ‘n all. But you sure about this? I mean, I knew the plan, but now that I’m seeing all them together… it seems a bit much.”

  “Ah,” Nick said in understanding, although before speaking, he paused and considered both Kirk and Frostlight.

  They were all in the dugout that led to the elf’s shop, and Nick supposed, the team’s shared lair. The location had become something of a base for them to stage their operations from. Having a place to come together had initially been a boon for the spirit of teamwork as they entered the performing stage of the dynamic. However, now that Nick was watching the boy interact with the elf, he was beginning to feel that he might be the odd-man out. Especially with the furtive glances that the both of them kept exchanging. Nick decided that he would need to treat this issue of cowardice with a delicate hand.

  “Do you worry that their force is too great, or that our preparations are too little?”

  “I mean, yeah?” Kirk said. “I just don’t see how this is gonna work. Someone must’ve thought of this sort of thing before…”

  Kirk glanced towards the elf for support, but instead of finding it, he found the elf drinking from a flask. Since the team’s raid to recover all of their assets, the elf had picked up the habit of drinking questionable distilled spirits during working hours.

  After finishing his drink, the elf offered the flask to Nick, which Nick obviously declined. However, while the flask was still held out, Kirk glared at it in irritation, before seizing the flask and then taking a deep draught from it, seeming to finish it off. The elf, seeing this, frowned before scoffing and shaking his head.

  Ignoring the byplay, and hoping that both of them were sober enough to pull the plan off, Nick smoothed over the boy’s doubts.

  “The danger would only be mitigated by gear or enhanced constitutions specifically for what Frostlight has so skillfully crafted.”

  “Ya,” Frostlight said over his shoulder as he went to the side of the dugout and began refilling his flask from a small cask. “It will work. Given enough time, for the lot of them. But exposure needs to be sustained.”

  Kirk furrowed his brow at the cask that Frostlight had apparently squirreled away, before groaning. “Fine, whatever, yeah? It’ll work, and if it doesn’t…” the boy finished with a shrug.

  “Our plan is adaptable enough for that,” Nick answered with confidence. “But even then, need I remind you that we all agreed on this, strove for this, spent our efforts, sweat, and blood, to achieve this? And now, on the cusp of freedom, would you give up and forfeit our victory?”

  “Ugh. Nah, I guess I’m inspired and stuff. But…”

  “But?”

  “Only one of us is immune to death,” the elf answered on behalf of the boy, stoppering the flask and hiding it once more within the folds of his poorly tanned and stitched jacket.

  Nick’s eye twitched. He wanted to refute that statement, as he was very much not immune to death, and the experience was far from pleasant. In fact, a part of Nick viewed that so-called ‘immunity’ as a detriment. However, Nick knew better than to argue this fact. He shifted the team’s attention back on track.

  “It won’t matter since we will succeed, and as we agreed on, I am taking the bulk of the risk.”

  Kirk scoffed, “Yeah, at this leg of it.”

  “We each play to our strengths,” Nick reminded.

  “Yeah…” Kirk trailed off, before firming his stance and adding, “I suppose we do at that.”

  By the time that they left, three of Nick’s minions had returned, with several others still scattered about the mega-cavern. The number would suffice, as he only needed to bring one with him. The one to escort him personally, he handed an overly stuffed sack of goods. Of the other two, one would follow along with Kirk and Frostlight, and the last would hide at a vantage point, in a position to reinforce if required.

  Nick then parted ways from the others, heading towards town, and specifically, the tower.

  As he kept a minion with the boy and elf, Nick was able to keep watch as they began planting devices along the cavern floor between the fortress and the town.

  To Nick’s ire, his own nerves began acting up, despite the fact that he had taken worse risks before, and that his current task was fairly well planned out, with possible variances accounted for. But emotions were seldom rational, and he was feeling a fluttering of nervous energy within the pit of his stomach.

  He supposed this was him having second thoughts. It would fail to affect him in any material way, but the sensation was still unpleasant. He did find some dark humor though. Even if the plan failed, the elf had been somewhat correct in saying that Nick was immune to death. The worst that the wardens could do was kill him. It got a chuckle from him as he crossed into the poorly defined edge of town.

  All the while, Nick was monitoring what he could through his minions. In particular, Nick focused upon Kirk and Frostlight as they buried the devices. While the senses through the minion were not the best, Nick did catch pieces of the conversation happening between the two.

  “You uh–” Kirk had just received one of the devices from the elf and was handling it with great care as he inserted it into a prepared hole, “-you sure about this?”

  “Nien,” the elf spat, or so Nick assumed, given what he knew of the elf.

  Nick still had yet to solve why in this foreign land, while clearly speaking a foreign tongue, the homonyms came across to Nick as German. He had even questioned the elf on the etymology of it, but the elf had been worthless in that regard. Rather than digging into the mystery, Nick shelved it for a later time. Just as he was now shelving the portion of him monitoring the two. Other than sending the minion to accompany them for moral support, Nick was unable to really do anything more, unless he wanted to violently assert himself. He had considered it as an option, but he doubted that the team’s dynamic would be improved. Instead, he found himself more passive than he would have liked, ordinarily.

  But now, Nick was reaching the large open square which surrounded the tower, and he chose to focus upon his own task at hand. He and his personal assistant pushed through the flea-market that had been setup about the square.

  One of the merchants, if an overly generous term, was attempting to hawk some nature of finery to Nick. At the same time, several sticky hands accosted him and his minion. Nick stopped all of the theft from happening, and when the attempts grew to be too onerous, Nick’s assistant growled loud enough to be heard over the din. That, combined with Nick taking an aggressive stance with his spear, led to the trash backing off. This repeated itself several times until Nick reached the actual tower itself, which was thankfully surrounded by a clear space in its immediate vicinity.

  The tower itself was made of stone and iron in its entirety, missing the typical rotting building materials found in nearly every other structure within the town. The tower offered evidence that this rotten world had something approaching civilization, not that that bar had been set particularly high by what he saw. Still, though, something was better than nothing.

  That was uncharitable, Nick chided himself. The first floor of the tower offered the most critical edifice to any society, that of banking. As such, this floor was supposed to be open to the public, and as such, Nick expected little difficulty in entering the tower itself, at least the first floor of it.

  But what was less than typical was the group of wardens loitering about the tower’s entrance. This group had the sort of bored expression that appeared to be scaring off much of the business that the tower might have had.

  As Nick approached the tower’s entrance, an open double wide doorway, the wardens were largely distracting themselves by playing a game reminiscent of bloody knuckles. However, at least one of them was watching the crowded marketplace, and the wardens’ attention was quickly brought to bear upon Nick.

  He planned on ignoring them, beelining his way into the tower, but before he crossed the threshold, one of the guards thrust out their arm and blocked the way forward.

  “It’s a bad time to come by,” the warden obstructing Nick said.

  “That is unfortunate,” Nick said. “Especially as this is a significant haul from the dungeon. Were this exchange to be delayed, there is an increasing probability of mishap…”

  “Heh, you mean some guttersnipe’ll rob ye?” One of the wardens who had been playing bloody knuckles spat with a low rumble.

  Nick and the warden obstructing him both ignored the brute’s comment.

  “Even so,” the obstructing warden said. “We remain the only ones buying them. They’ll make their way here sooner or later, regardless of who has them.”

  The ambivalence made sense, unfortunately. But Nick had planned around this. Especially as rumors of the few devices which had escaped his team’s recovery efforts had entered circulation within the cavern. It worked well enough for his purposes now.

  “Perhaps that is true,” Nick admitted with a slow nod of understanding, acting as though the warden had won the exchange. When the warden’s arm slackened just slightly, Nick finished his conversational feint. “But I would be surprised if you had not already heard of this, which means either you have dealt with them, or my own intelligence of them is faulty.”

  A moment of silence as the words sank in, and then the wardens’ suspicion rose and their eyes narrowed.

  “... Who is them?” The obstructing warden asked.

  “Surely you already know?” Nick said, now sounding a touch concerned. After the guard shook his head, Nick gave a furtive check to his surroundings, as though checking for eavesdroppers. “There is a gang–”

  One of the brutes scoffed, almost interrupting Nick’s flow.

  “-Yes, I admit, there are rather many of those, aren’t there?” Nick added, acted chastened. “But how many of those other gangs have an artificer fabricating weapons and explosives?”

  Several of the wardens grimaced, but the one obstructing Nick’s path remained stoic.

  “You know where this gang is?” the warden asked.

  “Ah, I am afraid not. This is merely known by rumor and a few devices being sold at the market.”

  The obstructing warden kept his arm in place for several heartbeats. Finally, the warden relented, as Nick knew they would, eventually.

  “You’ve come to exchange stones then?” the obstructing warden asked.

  Nick nodded, “Quite a many of them, yes.”

  The warden exhaled heavily. “Fine. Go on in… but your zombie stays out here.”

  Nick cocked his head. “It is carrying the stones though.” Nick gestured to the large sack held by the zombie in both its hands. “I told you it was a great many stones. Hence my concerns…”

  One of the brutes groaned, “Just let him in already.”

  The obstructing warden spat to the side, huffed, and then made room for both Nick and his minion to pass.

  Hence, Nick and his minion and his sack mostly filled with stones entered the public section of the tower.

  He glanced around the wide hall, taking note of the shadows and the decorative alcoves before he led his way towards the bank, which was on the left side of the hall. His zombie delayed just slightly, visiting one of the further back alcoves first.

  He entered the bank, mostly an exchange counter manned by a single cashier with a vault door laying open behind the cashier. The cashier himself was a ruddy fellow that Nick had gotten to know somewhat from Nick’s many visits.

  The cashier’s current attention seemed to be on filling an armored cart, meant for carrying the stones from the vault to the fortress, which would be hauled by the garrison switching out from the tower at the same time.

  Nick’s confident entrance drew the cashier’s attention, however.

  The man’s eyes widened upon looking up at Nick, both in surprise at having a non-warden visitor, but also in recognition.

  “Glad to see you back with the living,” the cashier said, after exchanging an amicable greeting. “Since I hadn't seen you in a bit. Thought you might have bit it.”

  Nick approached the counter after verifying that the cashier was the only one present in the room. With the cashier distracted by Nick, the minion entered, following Nick belatedly. The minion had made only a quick stop to the side of the bank, in a corner behind a pillar.

  With his minion delayed, Nick continued the friendly tones of the discussion.

  “Well, even should the worst have come to be,” Nick said with a boisterous laugh,” Even then, I would have gotten better.”

  The minion finished during this delay, and Nick let the overly energetic display drop near immediately after.

  The cashier coughed and broke eye-contact. “I suppose that’s true enough,” the cashier said, before following up with a prompt, “You here to make a deposit, or an exchange?”

  Nick hummed and waggled his hand back and forth, before elaborating. “An exchange actually… and perhaps a withdrawal, depending. I was hoping to get a Mark.”

  The cashier’s eyebrows rose up. “Well it’s about time. What made you decide?”

  Nick gave his best approximation of a harrowed face. “As I told the wardens keeping guard, there is a band of thugs causing trouble.”

  “Sounds about right–” the cashier chuffed as Nick gestured his zombie forward, along with the still mostly full bag, now filled exclusively with dungeon stones. “-But then again, there’s always gonna be someone making trouble down here. What makes this group different? And yeah, now that I think about it, I thought you were some sorta luddite, never getting any sorta Sacred Arts at all?”

  Nick tilted his head slightly in confusion, surprised that the wardens had taken note of his abstinence. Especially as he had never told any of the wardens or their dogs of his suspicions and his disdain for their so-called ‘Sacred Arts.’ Although, perhaps the warden’s inference was not so surprising. Afterall, Nick was one of the few with the means to afford the empowering Marks and yet who had not. That this was noted was an unfortunate happening, but not one that would cause much issue if it had not done so yet already.

  “That is true,” Nick admitted. “I have been somewhat leery regarding these Marks. However, it’s not for me that I’m thinking of having them done on.”

  “Then who?”

  Nick gestured towards the zombie. “Having more powerful minions should improve my abilities while farming the dungeon down below. More so than if I were to empower myself directly, with force multipliers of labor being what they are.

  “Uh-huh,” the man said, looking somewhat confused and shaking his head as though to clear it. “Well, it sounds good and all. Not sure the artist will do it though. Something about spirit and whatnot.”

  Minutes later, Nick left the bank with several tablets of chits, now held by his minion, and he crossed the foyer and entered the waiting parlor of the artist.

  Nick had of course been to this side of the tower before. He had visited it while investigating these Lesser Marks of empowerment. He did have to compliment the business sense of it, with the options provided and with the fact that it was next door to the only officially recognized location that exchanged stones for chits. But even with that prior experience, he still felt the hairs rise up on the back of his neck upon entering.

  It just seemed too similar to a tattoo parlor, and he was still haunted by a memory from his younger days… just the thought of that horrible buzzing needle… he shuddered and shoved the thought aside.

  This was not back home. This was a place of dubious sterility and backwater practices, mixed with a hint of mysticism to provide a sense of legitimacy to the service. It was a business, and one that was guarded at that.

  He stepped into the waiting parlor without issue. It was largely empty, except for a single lone guard. The artist was currently busy fiddling in the back. But that was fine. He had verified that the artist was here. He still had to make a show of this though, so he continued forward, as though he were to request a service.

  When his zombie followed Nick into the parlor, the warden standing guard accosted them.

  “Keep yer pets outta here, yeah?” the warden said, his gruff tone steeped with irritation.

  “Pardon?” Nick asked, though more to buy time and put up a show than anything else. Especially as the reaction had been expected. Even still, Nick tilted his head in an act of confusion, glancing from the warden towards the back, where the artist was grinding some manner of arcanite-like mineral, likely for ink.

  “You daft? No zombies allowed in. How you even made it past the idiots out front, I dunno, but I sure as the Crown spills blood won’t stand for it. Out!”

  The warden took a step towards Nick. The small space meant that the guard quickly arrived, a threatening intent made bare.

  “My apologies, then,” Nick said cautiously. He had already achieved what he had come for anyways. Leaving now would not impede him.

  “Then get!” the warden growled, giving Nick a shove out the door.

  “And I’m leaving!” Nick called back, irritated by the entire ordeal. This alone would have justified any doubts he may have had regarding his next steps, if he had needed that sort of feeling in the first place. But still… “It’s the principle of it all,” Nick said under his breath, still fuming. He had not appreciated that disrespectful tone or act at all. It had been both unwarranted and unwelcome.

  There was some advantage though. As Nick stumbled through the foyer, with the noise of the entrance, he would have drawn any attention from anyone remaining in the foyer. However, it seemed empty, with all the wardens either loitering out front or upstairs in the garrison.

  This meant that nobody noticed when his zombie slipped inside a decorative alcove while he himself hurried out from the tower, acting chastened.

  With his hasty exit, none of the wardens he passed out front thought to ask where his minion was or why it was not accompanying him currently. In fact, one of the wardens did call out, but Nick acted frightened and he hurried away, disappearing into the crowd of the bazar.

  One of the merchants hawking wares caught his eye, and as he needed to remain in the vicinity for some minutes still, he thought to make a helpful purchase. He pointed at a large brown blanket of crude weaving. “That one, how much ma’am?”

  “Not a ma’am anything,” the merchant said in a deep voice. Nick noticed that there was some shadow along the face, and realized he may have been in error.

  “Then sir?” Nick tentatively corrected.

  The merchant scoffed. “For that? A hundred.”

  Nick hissed through his teeth. It was a paltry sum for him, but it would have been expensive for the bulk of the town’s residents, and he had to put on a show as he killed time anyways.

  “For that threadbare thing? I think I see mold growing…” Nick continued bartering, while reaching within his vest and pressing a trigger.

  At the same time, he signalled to Kirk and Frostlight via the minion he had left with them. They finished their last installation and then retreated.

  With his zombie inside the tower, he confirmed that the first device had gone off, producing an invisible vapor that was largely odorless, at least compared to the town itself. This vapor was now filling the first floor of the tower, with more produced besides that which is necessary. If it could have been seen, it would have been a veritable fogbank, more akin to soup, or so Nick imagined.

  His zombie remained, along with an odorless and invisible vapor emanating from the bank.

  While he finished haggling and purchasing the tarp, the first of the diversionary explosions from out within the cavern went off. The booms echoed throughout the mega-cavern, gaining a surreal quality that shook one’s bones.

  Despite this noise, only some within the crowd took notice. The explosion had been far enough away that most figured this was not their problem. That was not true for the wardens stationed around the tower. These wardens expressed some concern, with several of those who stood out front glancing off in the direction the original blast had come from. After they discussed the event in a hushed tone, one of the loitering wardens darted inside the tower, heading towards the back where a closed stairway was.

  His zombie had hidden itself as well as it could in a recess of the foyer, and it was through that zombie’s eyes that Nick watched the warden head across the room. Exposed for only a handful of seconds, already the warden had begun to veer off course, faltering into a stumble, although still pushing through the effect, if the warden had even realized there was an effect to begin with.

  The warden reached the stairs, and the iron door which sealed the way up. After a brief discussion, an exchange of codes, the door was unbarred and opened, allowing the warden to hurry up.

  Nick’s zombie was already in motion when the door began to shut. His minion reached the entry upwards and bodily blocked the doorway, stopping its motion.

  From within, a warden shouted in confusion, and then alarm.

  Nick pressed a second trigger.

  The bank exploded with a wave of concussive pressure, sending dust and irritants flying out into the rest of the floor, pushing the vapors which had already been infiltrating the space out further, out the front exit where it escaped into the atmosphere, but more importantly, up the now unsealed stairway.

  The wardens began shouting in both alarm and a confused babble of conflicting orders. Those who had loitered now were hastily taking action, rushing into the tower to see what aid might be given. Foolish of them.

  Another trigger pressed, this, the last of them.

  Another device exploded, this one with more odious, stinging and venomous powder which would disable long before it killed.

  From the floors above, where the garrison had been housed, a great racket rang out as the officers called their lessers to arms. It would make little difference.

  Nick was already assisting his minion with more direct oversight, aiding it in rising from where it had been tangled up with the splayed limbs of the doorman.

  The zombie would be immune to the vapors, but the stinging powders obstructed its vision somewhat. It was still enough for the remaining portion of the plan, especially when Nick granted it a sliver of his regeneration. That fact, when accompanied by the fact that percussion damage was more of a hindrance to sensitive tissue than that which the zombie had, meant that the wardens within the tower were affected much more strongly.

  As the zombie picked its way up, the warden it had slammed into was kicked aside.

  They were now on a timer. For the devices and their payloads, Nick had never gotten a clear answer in regards to their efficacy. Frostlight had been too queasy at the thought of rushing human trials, nevermind the fact that there was no shortage of scum with which to test upon. But judging from the wardens who had rushed inside, who were now largely disabled by painful irritants, it would be enough.

  Under Nick’s direction, the zombie once more entered the hall.

  This time, there were several wardens present, and several of them were still able to travel under their own power, although they stumbled into walls and each other, similar to drunks. Even then, with the wardens weakened and in dissara, Nick did not think the zombie would win in a straight out encounter.

  Thankfully, the zombie’s win condition was not that.

  The zombie hurried towards the side of the foyer and one of the wardens saw it, gave a shout of warning, some drivel regarding the artist, and then attempted to chase after the zombie.

  The door to the tattoo parlor had remained open all this time, and the occupants were long since unconscious.

  The last obstacle was the warden giving chase, but just as this warden entered after the zombie, the warden tripped upon the threshold and fell face first, just barely catching himself with his arms. Nick turned the zombie about and set it upon him. It was grisly and mostly quick. Nick began the process of reanimating the warden while the zombie once more went about its original task.

  From the distance, as Nick was still out within the market surrounding the tower, the reanimation took longer than the process ordinarily would. He was unsure if it was even worthwhile to do. He was still in the process of doing so when his zombie found and seized upon the target.

  The zombie picked the target up, slung the burden over its shoulders, then began extricating itself alongside the bundle.

  Nick gave up on reanimating the dead warden, he had only made it around halfway through the effort by the time his zombie exited the tower.

  Then, blanket from the flea-market in hand, Nick joined the zombie and tossed the poorly died and rough fabric over.

  Nick and his zombie were in clear view of all the market as the zombie unceremoniously dropped the burden and then wrapped it within the blanket, offering some degree of anonymity, or at least the pretense of it.

  From above them, at the top of the tower, several of the wardens had peered over the side. One of them raised a device akin to a rifle, but when they saw the man being bundled up, they refrained from firing.

  Nick grinned and made his way back out, his zombie in between him and the tower all the while, with the now wrapped package over its shoulders.

  The wardens were likely attempting to pass through the stairway to descend and reach him, undoubtedly so. He wondered how long it would take them to realize that the very air was poisoning them before they could hope to reach him.

  Not that he cared, really. In fact, let them try. The more he dealt with now, the better his position would be later.

  Despite the risk, he could not help but feel the corners of his lips curl just slightly, although he resisted the impulse. When another string of explosions went off along the path stretching between the fortress and the town, Nick gave in and grinned.

  Several passersby were disturbed.

  ***

  Reprisal came swiftly with much violence.

  Nick observed the market through the eyes of a spying minion, hidden among the shadows of the rooftops where lanterns never lit.

  A squad of thirty wardens wearing heavy armor and bearing falchions and arcbows marched towards the tower; they had received the distress call or had noted the chaos from their posting in the fortress, either or, it did not matter. The squad had come, sudden enough that the market vendors were unable to move their rickety stalls aside before sabatons came crushing down, ruining the livelihood of these desparate merchants.

  “Idiots,” Nick muttered, nevermind he was paying little attention to his current surroundings and would have been mortified had he mumbled to himself in such a way in a boardroom. He was still practicing adding his minion’s perspectives to his own.

  “Say somethin?” the elf had asked.

  “It was nothing,” Nick had the wherewithal to respond, before focusing once more through the eyes of his minion.

  The squad reached the tower. The invisible vapors had long since dispersed, and the tower’s garrison had somewhat recovered. They had stacked their dead within their morgue, at least a dozen wardens slain by exposure to the fumes.

  Nick only knew this as he could feel the corpses, although he was nowhere near enough to attempt raising them, and even if he were, he suspected that the wardens had countermeasures in place for any overly ambitious lich.

  “Ya? Do you know what is happening then? This trap of yours has been set, but…” Frostlight trailed off, once again voicing his doubts.

  Nick tried tuning the elf out, as the nattering was distracting him and controlling so many minions while heavily relying upon one took all his attention, and then some. His head already ached in a manner that defied his biological brain-matter, as his regeneration would have resolved the issue otherwise.

  “Quiet,” Nick said, letting the elf know that Nick was done with the conversation.

  When the squad reached the tower, several wardens came out, one being an officer. The captain of the squad stepped forward. Heated words were exchanged. The captain’s face reddened in anger. The captain backhanded the officer, then sent one of the officer’s men scurrying back in to the tower. While the corporal nature of the punishment was surprising, the captain’s anger expected, considering how the officer had failed to secure a fortified base and had lost multiple assets.

  Minutes later, the captain’s forces grew to be half again in size, and the officer was sent back into the tower with shame obvious in bearings.

  Nick was wondering if another opportunity was presenting itself, one he had not originally planned for. Would the wardens be so foolish as to leave the tower undefended? Nick imagined that there were plenty of resources within, the reanimateable material just one example of the profits he may find. But before he could alter his plans or find a catspaw to strike with, a metal grate came thundering down, sealing the entrance to the tower.

  “A gate?” Nick said, almost a sputter. The elf responded, but Nick failed to catch it. He was struggling with a sudden bout of vertigo, on top of the strain of everything else. He had not realized such a defence mechanism existed. A portion of his confidence rallied, as there had always been risk. Another portion of him suffered under post-action doubts, and he had to wonder, just how close had he come to being trapped within the tower when he had executed his heist, and just how near had his plans come to ruiniation, just because his intelligence had been lacking?

  His shoulder was moving. A hot breath, stinking of liquor in his face.

  His true eyes blinked open as his focus shifted from the minion to his own body.

  The elf was looming as far as a knee high man could. Nick had been sitting against a wall, leaving the elf more or less at Nick’s head height.

  “What,” Nick said, unamused. His doubts forgotten as he slipped back into a more regular role.

  “Well?” Frostlight asked. “Do we need to wrap him in bindings yet?”

  From further away, Kirk was issuing complaints in a contralto voice not his own. “Do we gotta?” Kirk asked. “Figure we could lean into me fightin’ my way out, y’know?”

  Nick narrowed his eyes at the unfamiliar face. “Stick to the plan,” Nick said coldly, standing up and brushing himself off.

  “And yes, they are on their way,” Nick said. “Ready yourself, and the two of us must be off.”

  Kirk groaned. “You’re leaving me to it then? What if they don’t buy it?”

  Frostlight nodded in comiseration. “I would leave my flask, but that would break the story.”

  “The narrative, yes. Regardless, you will not be completely alone,” Nick said.

  He sent a minion carrying rope and cable into the room with Kirk. Two other minions took up a guardian position.

  Meanwhile, a portion of his attention, a fragment really, watched the wardens by the tower.

  The captain had pointed towards the direction Nick had been seen leaving, and a group of five split off, before splitting off again near the street where vendors were frantically stuffing their wares into transportable bundles or hastening to push their carts away. The wardens grabbed several of these merchants, roughly dragging them back to the captain.

  “They will be arriving soon,” Nick said, pulling Frostlight along behind him. “Remember your part and we’ll perform ours.”

  “Yeah,” Kirk said, uncomfortable and grunting as the minions turned him about, wrapping him tightly. “Still though, what if they don’t buy it?”

  Nick scoffed, “Trust me, they will. Just remember the plan.”

  “Right…”

  Kirk sounded less than confident.

  A door was kicked in.

  A man was drug out by his hair, kicking and screaming before being tossed to the stone of the cavern floor.

  A boot stamped down upon the man’s back.

  “Where are they?” A warden demanded of the man.

  The wardens had fanned out amongst the town, trending towards the inevitable trap. Nick continued to monitor the wardens’ progress, at least when he could. His coverage was spotty, limited to several minions throughout the region.

  Meanwhile, the poor man stammered. “W-who? I-I don’t–”

  “-worthless,” the warden said, spitting on the man and giving him a kick for his trouble.

  The warden’s paired mate grunted. “Well, c’mon. Let’s try the next one.”

  The first warden gave the local a farewell kick before leaving, heading the the next hovel.

  Considering the scenes that Nick was seeing play out throughout the town, the man had gotten off easy.

  Nick struggled to understand how the wardens’ were so willing to squander their resources. Surely, they recognized that they could find what they were after without hampering their long-term profits? The wardens were behaving irrationally, and this was disturbing. Nick’s plan was based upon rational actors, afterall.

  Eventually, the wardens converged, with runners sent off to grab the rest of their number. The wardens gathered around the very same hideout which Nick’s team had raided the week previous.

  Smartly, a perimeter was set loosely about the structure, to prevent escape.

  The captain sent in a brute of a warden carrying a heavy slab of metal. The brute began with a trudging walk towards the hideout, then a trot, then a sprint. Hundreds of pounds of flesh and metal crashed through the front wall of the hideout.

  Wardens poured in.

  A man’s muted struggles and thumping could be heard from the ceiling above the entrance.

  There was a crash.

  The wardens fanned out.

  One of Nick’s zombies lunged from where it hid, grappling a warden and carrying it down, taloned fingers slashing exposed flesh.

  Metal came piercing down.

  Hot pink actinic flashes sounded.

  Just before Nick lost his connection, he had the minion trigger an explosive.

  The room exploded, visible from Nick’s observer across the road and down several buildings.

  Without any further assets on the ground floor, he was unable to watch the wardens progress through the building, until they reached the top-most floor, where his last surprise was waiting.

  Rather than sending that zombie out immediately, Nick kept it hidden in a hastily concealed corner of the room, a false wall made of tarp and mud.

  The wardens entered the room and sighted the man bound tightly with cords and ropes.

  The wardens wasted not time in speaking.

  There was another man in the room, one carrying a wand, held in a shaky hand towards the tied bundle.

  “W-wait!” the trembling man shouted.

  The wardens fired their arcbows, pink flashes striking the criminal. Before the man could be called dead, Nick sent his final zombie out, crashing through the false wall, in the best act of madness that Nick could emulate. The zombie was never able to trigger any of its devices, by plan. It was quickly put down, cutting off Nick’s sight completely.

  From where Nick and Frostlight hid in a nearby bunker, Frostlight groaned, rubbing his temples.

  “Lost it,” Frostlight complained. “What of you?”

  Nick nodded. “Indeed. Now, we must wait and see.”

  Nick and Frostlight then waited several tense minutes. Nick was growing concerned as the wardens continued streaming into the building, in and out, but never with what he was watching for.

  Tens of minutes passed, and Nick was beginning to consider his back-up plan. Afterall, they still had the artist, and Nick felt confident that between the elf and the artist that some very interesting vectors could be opened. It would be a shame though, as the boy had been a potent asset.

  The current situation would not be terrible, although a net gain overall.

  Nick turned to Frostlight, “You have the detonators clearly marked?”

  “It is not looking like they have our friend?” Frostlight asked grimly.

  “Just a precaution,” Nick said with some visible sadness. “But Kirk would not want this to be in vain, and if we can further reduce his killers? I think he would have wanted that.”

  Frostlight’s brows pinched together; he opened his mouth, scowled, then closed it and pulled his flask from his jacket.

  It was not as though Nick could protest the elf drinking, all things considered. It came as a surprise for Nick, when instead of drinking it personally, the elf poured it out upon the floor.

  The elf had just begun to speak some funerary nonsense when Nick spotted several wardens exiting the building in a formation, with a weary and shell-shocked man walking between them.

  “Hold that thought,” Nick said. “It looks like they have him.”

  “Now?!” Frostlight whisper shouted angrily. “Now you tell me?”

  The wardens did not immediately depart the hide-out.

  They first secured their dead, and they brought the captain to see the sight of the brief battle in person.

  They also tended to the Sacred Artist, to ensure that the man was stable and in good health. During this time, Nick continued to watch through the eyes of a hidden minion, and he belatedly relayed what he saw to the elf.

  After what felt like half a day, the wardens gathered themselves up and began to travel in force, back towards the town’s center.

  When Nick relayed this, the elf swore.

  “Odin’s flaming eye!” Frostlight said. “That was not part of your plan, Nick. No, it was not.”

  Nick took a moment to calm himself, taking a deep breath and feeling where his pulse should have been. The lack of one helped him keep things in perspective.

  “They may be rejoining their colleagues,” Nick said, cautioning patience. “Or perhaps they’re taking the most central path to return, or any number of other reasons. What remains important is that Kirk is with them. Eventually, they will bring him in.”

  “Unless they discover the ruse,” Frostlight said under his breath.

  “Just… wait.”

  Although, Nick himself was growing concerned as well. All along, the wardens had been deviating from what he thought they would have done, should have done, what any sensible person would choose to have done, given the circumstances. But, that belief had already been shaken.

  And yet, as he watched the wardens continue towards the town’s center where the tower stood, he checked his assumptions. Surely, the wardens would not choose to stay within the tower, not without going through the entire structure with a fine-toothed comb. Doing otherwise would be madness.

  And yet, to the tower the wardens went.

  Of course, Nick thought of keeping this ill news to himself, but that would have been counterproductive. So, Nick told the elf.

  Frostlight sucked a breath through his teeth.

  “Did they enter?” Frostlight asked. “Did they bring him in?”

  In fact, the wardens had entered the tower, although not all of them. Around half of the captain’s force remained outside while the rest went in, including their rescued member.

  “It appears so, although it appears that they might not be planning on staying.”

  After a few minutes, when there was not any change within the tower, Frostlight grew somewhat forlorn.

  Nick thought it was overdramatic. He remained confident in the boy’s abilities to either escape or fool the wardens. But, just in case the wardens needed a helpful shove to get them moving, Nick turned to the elf and asked, “Did you keep the shaped charges?”

  The elf frowned, “Ya, but I do not think these can bring down that tower, and even if they did, that seems harmful to the lad.”

  Nick shrugged, “Even if they just gave the tower a shake, it would be enough to shake the last of their confidence in the place. Enough to get them moving.”

  The elf glanced to a corner within the bunker where junk had been pushed up against the wall in a pile. “Might have some still, but it is not the best of what was made.”

  “And that’s fine,” Nick said. “It just needs to be enough to get the their attention.”

  “One of your unquiet dead will carry it?” Frostlight asked.

  “Of course,” Nick said with a confident smile and a charisma honed by years of practice before a mirror.

  However, before this plan could be more than made, the wardens began moving once more, with several of their number exiting the tower, the artist among their number, along with the loaded cart full of stones and the captain.

  “Put a pin in that,” Nick said, waving Frostlight away from where he had been modifying one of his grenades. “Like we thought, they’re moving back to the fortress.”

  “This is somewhat vexing,” Frostlight muttered.

  Nick ignored it otherwise, instead directing his minions to carry several sacks of gear. If all continued going according to plan, they would not be returning to any of their boltholes.

  In the end, despite the sense of urgency, so much of the plan came down to waiting.

  Nick and Frostlight arrived at a natural carved cleft in the cavern floor, as near to the fortress’s gates as they could get, without triggering those watching from within the walls.

  As before, the immediate surroundings were flattened and lit, with a clearly demarcated boundary of where the prisoners could not tread, at least not without drawing fire from the wardens.

  He still thought the entire installation was ridiculous.

  “Their efficiency is abysmal,” Nick complained from where he leaned against the jagged stone.

  “It is not the point of contention most of us have with them, ya?”

  Nick scoffed, wondering if it was worth arguing about, considering that there was a very real chance that the elf would cut and run once the team escaped to the surface. But as he and the elf remained there, waiting in what was essentially a long and narrow hole in the cavern’s floor, there was little else to do. And, Nick justified, even if the elf did go his own way, if Nick could instill some lesson, then the elf in turn might impart it again to someone else. Nick Delaney rather enjoyed the idea of kicking off a movement.

  “It really should be,” Nick said.

  The elf seemed slightly surprised, eyes widening a fraction in Nick’s direction, before the elf shrugged. “Then you will share these lessons from this home far-away of yours?” Frostlight asked.

  Nick dithered a moment, an intentional power-play in this instance as he was withholding something from the elf. Before the elf changed course, though, Nick answered.

  “You could say that, although it’s called good business practices, and before you argue against it, these wardens of ours are operating a business of sorts. They recruit, they out-source resource acquisition, and presumably they sell that which is acquired. Whether they sell directly, or outsource to some other organization is besides the point.

  “Is this a point you can agree with me on?”

  Frostlight made a strangeled noise and patted down his vest pocket where his flask would ordinarily have been. When his groping hands returned empty, he scowled at some invisible point before nodding. “It is not a point of view most would have, as it implies the lords above are separated from some other sort of lord of coin… so you could say I agree.”

  Nick had to frown at the fact he had failed to consider that these people had never achieved a separation between church and state and commerce. It was all considered a single morass to begin with. He shook it off, as he was really just ensuring a common starting point, anyways.

  “Indeed. Now, why would we, the labor, want the operating margin to improve?”

  On seeing the elf’s slightly confused expression, Nick explained the term, “That is to say, why would we want the wardens to earn more while spending less on keeping the business going.”

  “That is what was the start of all this,” Frostlight said. During the conversation, he had used a device similar to a periscope to watch the fortress gate for any sign of Kirk’s success. “We cannot be certain to have such a long time to discuss such things, ya?”

  “It is taking longer than anticipated,” Nick said with a frown. “But some delays are expected. They likely will debrief the man and get settled in before Kirk can move.”

  Frostlight shrugged, settling back down to his haunches while they waited. Nick took this as a sign to continue.

  “First, if the wardens spent less on maintaining their operations, then it would be easier to escape, but that is not the point I want to make here. If the wardens improved their efficiency, then they could reduce recruitment, which in this case means false imprisonments or even just ones. Less prisoners means–”

  “-more executions–”

  “-well, that’s not where I was going to go with that, but I suppose it remains a possibility. However, even with less recruitment, improving their margins would mean increasing our yield from the dungeon below. This could mean better gear, better support, or even better healthcare. An incentivised workforce gives better yields, and nothing incentivises like shared profits.”

  The elf regarded Nick dryly. “The wardens would not be so willing to share, I think.”

  Nick grinned smugly, “They will when they see their slice of the pie getting bigger.”

  The elf tilted his head, looking confused. Nick waved it off.

  “Besides, their wastefulness results in a lot of the misery we see in town. Or can you honestly say that having a place three-quarters filled with wastes of space is necessary? Incising would improve it all, no?”

  The elf cringed, but never said why.

  The conversation continued for some time, until finally, from within the fortress, there came a great ‘whoomph’ of an explosion, shaking the cavern and sending rocks falling loose.

  “Finally,” the elf said, breathing a sigh of relieve.

  The gates to the fortress fell outwards, opening like a maw. From within, sounds of alarm rang out, including an actual klaxon bell. Several smaller explosions began detonating from further within the fortress. A flare was thrown from one of the windows above, shining a magnesium blue as it fell.

  “And that is our signal,” Nick said, limbering himself and his minions. He hopped up and over the lip of their hole before crouching down and reaching a hand to the elf to give help in climbing up and out. As the elf clasped Nick’s hand, Nick grinned. “I told you it would work.”

  Frostlight smacked his lips and passed a finger over several of his holstered wands.

  The shouts from within the fortress were not abating, but they remained full of chaos and competing orders for status checks. It was another result of a poorly run organization, Nick thought.

  “It is not finished yet,” Frostlight said.

  The two of them with Nick’s minions then hastened into the fortress.