With a well-placed kick, the final door caved inwards. Maddison’s hands were fully occupied by a sword in his right, raised above his shoulder and resting on his left bracer to point forwards. In his left he held the enchanted dagger, the blade pointed downwards as he gripped the hilt in his palm to let the blade rest against his forearm.

  He hoped the blade would stave off the creature from seizing his mind again, and so far, it had worked. Regardless, separating himself from Sariel and the rest of the party was an additional precaution.

  He looked into the dark room, his eyes darting around the empty bedroom. The bed was tightly fitted with a red duvet, the softer cotton fabric still screaming money. The two plump, white pillows were free of guests, and the dark wooden nightstand next to it only boasted a candle on a bronze plate that had barely burned past brand new. The room was perfectly cleaned to await guests, just like the last two he had busted into.

  Maddison left the room, frustrated at his lack of success. The last room was barricaded shut by his own fault, the heavy table shaking once in a while as the shrieking corpse tried and tried again to break through the office door.

  Something else was controlling it, and Maddison hoped it wasn’t hiding in that room either. His mind wandered to Maynard, as it often did, teetering on if he had a magical affinity. But regardless of the fiery warlock's words, even if he was wrong and Maynard did posses the capacity for spell work, it was unlikely that he was committed enough to have an undead crush his hand and maul his shoulder to sell the lie. If not a sorcerer that lost control of his spell work, there was now room to wonder what had caused the curse on the town and given false life to a dragon. The creature had denied being a demon to Maynard, but deceit was not beyond infernal beings when their food source was threatened.

  Their control over death also left room for the boon of a more nefarious being. The Witch of the Westlock had revived many cults with its onslaught of undeath, and many gods of bone and blood had found themselves blessed with worshippers.

  But the statue outside did not look like the gods Maddison knew to support necromancy.

  He sighed. For how showy the creature was, it had kept its identity hidden well.

  So there was only one way to go.

  Maddison turned to check the other side of the hall. From the outside, the mansion had looked to normally be three levels, but he had remembered the white stone tower that had been stuck on afterwards. There was no telling how that space had changed the layout of the house, but it certainly wasn’t solid, else it would have come through the roof shortly after being built.

  He sheathed his sword, eyeing the plain end of the hall. The wall was bare of decorations, with the only object being an old folding step ladder made of cheap wood.

  It was all Maddison needed to reach the handle of the trimmed square cut into the ceiling. First, he would check the attic, and if there was nothing he would hope there was a way up the tower.

  And that the culprit was something a nullifying blade could handle.

  He dragged down the ladder, resting his first step at its base but stopping when the sound of another footstep played off-tune to his own. He shuffled his feet, moving to take the next step up the ladder but stopping himself before his foot met the wood.

  And yet, another step sounded all the same.

  The guest behind him seemed to notice it had given itself away, and before Maddison could prepare for battle a small and pitiful voice met his ears.

  “Are you leaving?” The small voice squeaked. Curious, sad, and hauntingly familiar. It should not have been a noise that met Maddison’s ears in this place, and so he already greeted it with hostility.

  “Nice try,” Maddison growled, back still turned to the entity as he secured the ladder for a climb. Be it a spell or creature, it had chosen the form of his daughter to grab his attention, and he was not going to give it that. He did not want to test the nullifying blade’s strength.

  The voice behind him changed as soon as he gripped the next bar. Older now, and in a deliberate line of words that stabbed his heart.

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  “You’re leaving? Again?”

  He remained silent, his shoulders dropping as he fought the urge to look.

  “Why can’t you just stay a few more days? We’re almost done!”

  Maddison’s heart sank as the sound mimicked her voice perfectly. The stern growl her mother always had in a pout, trailing off to the slight squeak she could never pull out of her voice when she had raised it too loud.

  She was nineteen when she said those exact words.

  And they were the last ones Maddison ever heard.

  He almost turned, his grip tight on his sheathed sword as anger bubbled in his stomach. Be it a specter or spell, it had successfully dug its claws in and wormed them right under his skin. He wanted to look. Wanted to make sure the hall was empty, and what stood behind him hadn’t stolen more than his daughter’s voice.

  More than that, if something stood there he wanted to cleave the mockery in two with his blade.

  He took in a deep breath, resting his forehead against a bar on the ladder. Nothing would come from it. It wouldn’t change the past that he had set, nor vanquish the one responsible.

  “If you’re playing games like that I must be going the right way,” Maddison growled, forcing his hand away from the hilt of his sword to start his ascent into the attic. “You’d better pray I don’t find you.”

  He climbed the ladder, cautiously peeking up into the attic that held a surprising amount of light.

  The swept wooden floor looked well taken care of, with a few tools and discarded boxes stashed against the darker walls. The white stone of a tower had encroached upon what would have been a very spacious room, nestled into the center of the attic with a single stunted wooden door to provide entry. The flooring that was left still provided a lot of space to move around, at least three bedrooms long and lit by a circular stained glass window at the end.

  But Maddison wasn’t the only guest in the space.

  A man stood before the stain glass window, the bright orange haze from the burning town cast upon his form and spilling across the floor. His back was turned to Maddison, a billowing white cloak kissing the floor with a golden bird embroidered across the back.

  The sixth. The commander.

  The commander held his sword in the open, the silver blade rested upon the stone ground and lightly scraping it whenever his rigid body swayed. From the back, Maddison could not make out any restraints on the man. His cloak was immaculate, and the few pieces of leather armour that peeked from behind it glossy and clean.

  Aside from his occasional sway, he did not show signs of being wounded either.

  Maddison deftly lifted himself onto the floor, body low as he quietly drew his dagger. His sword would make far too much noise to unsheath, and while the man had been friendly on the road, there was no telling if he had been bewitched like the rest of the town.

  As he came closer, he could hear a sound from the commander, a quiet hum in tune to the song Cindy’s corpse had sung to Maynard, and that Sariel had belted for three hours straight. It was getting old, but in the setting he had found himself in, it was equally creepy.

  He came upon his side, keeping the dagger out of sight in case it startled him. But as he came into the commander’s field of view, no reaction followed. He still faced the window humming, body rigid and eyes closed.

  Maddison swallowed his doubts, readying his dagger as he paid the man a sharp whisper. “Hey.”

  The man did not flinch.

  Maddison gripped his shoulder, trying to shake the man awake, and still falling short of any sort of response.

  With a sigh, he left him in his daze, approaching the wooden door that had nestled itself inside of the white stone wall. The door held no locks, but stuck as he tried to push it open. He threw his shoulder into the obstacle to force it inwards, the object relenting some as it pushed inwards with a strange crumpling noise. Maddison did not need to look far to find the source of the sound, a sticky film of white webbing stretching and tearing the more he pushed at the door, until it sat wide open to show him the room beyond.

  The entire base of the white tower was filled with globs of sticky cobwebs, plastered to stone, metal, and bodies alike.

  And there were a lot of bodies.

  They were piled at the edges of the walls mostly, tightly packed into webbed cocoons with a stray limb or rotted face peeking out to confirm the contents. He gagged as the smell assaulted him, the moisture in the air immediately sticking to his face and choking his throat.

  Maddison plugged his nose, scouring the room for any means to climb the tower further. But there wasn’t a stairwell nor rope built in, the stone walls sticky with condensation and bulbous web-coated sacks. He hoped they were bodies too, but their shape alluded to something far worse. Further up, the webbing zigzagged across the tower walls, creating a sticky web for the creature that sat on it.

  Wide enough for its toes to touch either side of the tower’s inner walls, it sat. Eight-legged, with ebony legs that pointed like blades, and a deep blue underside to its thorax that was covered in a hard and bony shell.

  It was, by far, the biggest damn spider Maddison had ever seen.

  With a deep breath, Maddison excused himself from the room.