A knight engulfed Attar’s body. One of his ghosts surrounded him entirely. He wasn’t taking any chances. The scar about his arm wasn’t going to fade any time time soon.

  “Can you see in there?”

  “No. I am following a spirit placed on you. Warn me if there are any holes in the floor.”

  I peeked through the remnant of the door where my swords waited. The room was empty of foes.

  “I think we should risk the ring. Blindness may be a bigger vulnerability than bare flesh.”

  I held it out to him.

  The knight stood their impassively.

  “Attar, I am proffering the ring.”

  “Oh, sorry, perhaps you are right,” the knight vanished in a blink, revealing Attar’s sheepish face. He glanced down with a frown, a shiver passed over him, and then the knight reappeared, face down, with Attar’s feet in his back, “I think I’ve developed a fear of floors.”

  “The ring should give you a warning even of creatures swimming through the stone. Here.”

  I placed it in his palm.

  Attar took the ring and put it on the index finger of his left hand, not the hand which had been severed, I noticed.

  My stomach felt strange a moment later, and twisted, as though under the influence of my... I flipped through my spellbook, my ?EliminateII?spell had been cast.

  Attar’s eyes were distant, his face slack. Is that how I’d appeared when the runes had overwhelmed my mind? These runes weren’t even in his mind, but he wasn’t a Magus.

  I gently took the ring from his finger.

  “It was worth a try.”

  Attar straightened his jaw and rubbed his eyes, “Is it like that all time?”

  “No, not unless I...”

  Fast Teleport swam to the front of my mind. It had been a long time since I’d lost control with the mental spells, but the constant vigilance was so tiring. It was nice to rest. There was no hurry. I could get lost in the lines for—

  Listen to me, lest I open the gates!

  I shook myself. Half my gear was on the floor, my face was stinging, and Attar was standing above me holding the stone I’d taken from Dave. He had a look of concentration on his face.

  His shoulders slumped in relief when he saw me looking at him, “I thought I’d lost you. Nearly broke my hand on your face, you’re a lot tougher than you look.”

  I raised a hand to the mark, “So are you, if you could injure me.”

  He turned away sheepishly, “After I nearly broke my hand I used the flat of my sword instead. Still barely did anything.”

  I laughed, then remembered myself and my spells, “You must never strike me again. Not because I don’t believe you had good reason, but because I’m occasionally ensorceled such that those who injure me severely enough die. As I told you in my story of the ogre. What I may have failed to mention is I do not have complete control over my spells. Not here in the Bleak Fort dungeons. The spell may be upon me without my will or knowledge.”

  Attar paled, “Turned out this stone was the solution anyway, once I figured out how to use it.”

  I took it from him, “What does it do?”

  “It seems to allow me to speak to your mind. Control it, maybe.”

  That was how Dave had disabled Erin so quickly. Normally a warlock’s mind control was slow and subtle. If one without warlock training could use the stone, it was potent indeed.

  I started refilling my pockets. I noticed many of my potions were free from their holster, “Did you consider trying the potions as well?”

  “I was going to, but none of the labels seemed to correspond with anything that would help and I didn’t want to risk the unlabelled ones. They might have been poison for all I knew. I’d have waited a few hours at least to try them.”

  If the blazing inferno hadn’t already demonstrated it, I’d have begun suspecting Attar was a slightly impatient person.

  “The stone served. Use it again if you must to save me. I’ll keep it near the top of my pouch for easy removal.”

  We finished loading my pouch.

  “I’ll lead the way,” I said, “Your armour can protect your feet from gnomes and I’ll handle the rest.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The room was one we’d spent five hours now trying to enter, and was fairly unassuming for it. A rusty gauntlet lay against the left hand wall—whatever direction that was—and a series of fuzzy plates lay at the room’s centre.

  Spiky plates, as I got closer. Each was a mass of needles arranged into images.

  The top was an old man with a drooping face. Peeking out beneath it was an ogre, then a slightly different kind of ugly ogre. The next few were obscured, followed by spiders, a frog’s cartoon head peaked out at the bottom.

  When Attar approached the needles rearranged themselves—suddenly, not subtly as the mosaic had done—now bearing a woman’s face on every last one. He paled.

  I recognized her. The woman he had killed.

  So then, the plates had been of everyone I’d killed. Or at least my most fearsome foes. There wasn’t enough plates for all of them.

  “What is this?”

  “Plates of murder it would seem. Fear not, and do not be ashamed. I know the woman’s story. You did the best you could.”

  Attar took a step back regardless, and the needles retracted and extended to form my pile once more.

  “Did you really kill all those?”

  “All those and more. It seems not to have accounted for the multiples I killed, even though it doesn’t care about the chronology of time.”

  “What are they?”

  I studied the black needles slightly more closely. I couldn’t make leaf nor root of the whole thing.

  “No idea.”

  Attar spent a few minutes murmuring quietly to his spirits, but none of them had seen such a thing before.

  “Brace and her party came this way. Perhaps they will have answers for us when we ascend. For now, let us leave it be.”

  Attar agreed.

  Two doors proved egress to the room. One might have lead north east, or north, or east, but we couldn’t remember which direction that had been after the excitement with the gnomes. Another hour’s work saw us returned to the ogre’s lair, reorient, then we shuffled back down the halls, always facing forward as to not lose our direction, meaning the return took twice as long as the retreat.

  But finally it was done. The path straight out the smashed entrance led due north, the one to our right was east.

  Magic Swords III

  “One of you scratch an x on that wall,” I pointed, “so we can find north once more.”

  The sword moved to obey, causing a horrible racket. While it worked I directed the other three swords at the eastern door, “Tear it down.”

  Attar and I retreated while the sword got to work.

  The door held under the assault, but the architects failures were overcome. Once more the door was unlocked, and merely wedged in place by an ill fitting frame.

  A roar came from the resulting portal. A horribly familiar roar.

  ***

  The ogres were so fast neither Attar nor I had reacted before they were nearly upon us even though they had to cover nearly thirty feet of distance.

  These ogres were not nearly naked savages as the first two had been, this pair—also a man and a woman—were armoured from head to toe in banded armour and wielding long shining spears. Spears which thrust equally at myself and Attar, one a piece.

  Attar’s armour was around him in an instant whereas I tried to dodge as I cast a spell at the female targeting Attar.

  Sword Storm III

  Blood spouted from her unprotected thigh. The ogress let out a howl of pain and stumbled, her spear went wide, scraping the wall and twisting off to the side before it reached Attar.

  The male’s thrust was true and fast, but I was faster. The spear past by my waist as I threw my hips to the side like a dancer.

  Lightstep II

  He’d regret any strike which landed.

  The ogress swept her spear sideways like a club, but six mercenaries with swords and armour rose from the ground to block the blow as one. The line shuddered, but held. Strong as the ogress was, she did not have the supernatural strength of that first dread ogre.

  The mercenaries wrapped themselves around the spear and pulled, disarming the ogress with superior strength and numbers, then they charged her, heedless of their own safety.

  Before I or my own ogre could react, a knight thundered through the wall between me and the ogre at an angle and struck the ogre with such force in the hip I could swear I heard tendons tearing. The ogre howled as the ogress had before him, but in fear rather than pain. The force of the blow spun him about and flat on his face, striking the flagstones so hard I could hear teeth crack.

  Unfortunately that also meant his spear crashed down at the same speed, and the tip slapped against my arm holding my spellbook and scored a deep cut along the forearm.

  The ogre dropped limp at once.

  I directed my sword down back and then straight up, thrusting up once more under the ogress’s armoured skirts. Iron scraped and a hole appeared in her armour just below her waist; I’d missed.

  But the ogress was flagging. The first wound was still bleeding heavily. I’d struck an artery or something similar. Then the mercenaries closed in.

  The ogress performed admirably. She deflected three of the attacks, stopped a fourth at the cost of a finger. The fifth crushed her throat and the sixth opened the artery on her other leg.

  She was unconscious a moment later.

  I held up a hand and then directed my sword ahead to the room where the ogres had dwelt. If a third waited, I wanted to be the one to face them, though admittedly, Attar had proven his own competence a dozen times over in the last minute.

  The room was empty of foes.

  Greater Heal II

  The bleeding on my arm stopped almost instantly, but the wound remained. The spell was much slower than the regenerates I’d used on Attar.

  “Are you alright?” I asked him. The mercenaries had already disappeared.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes.” He was staring at a point I couldn’t see, somewhere above the ogress, “could you keep an eye out for a few minutes? The ogres’ ghosts remain.”

  He dropped his(my) cutlass and withdrew his bell, manacles, and skull. From the lining of his robes he then worked free a dozen white needles.

  He’d just nearly single handy defeated two ogres and was now more concerned with their souls than his victory. I didn’t care what anyone said about me, necromancers were scary.