Nay felt like she was inside of a tank, or hell, even a mecha suit out of some anime. The skeletons of Norneshire Graveyard assaulted her, unable to breach through the suit of portable armor of artificer design. They battered against the steel and iron and stone armor, trying to reach her soft body inside.

She watched her Damage Absorption meter slowly tick up as her and the crew from Lucerna’s End stood their ground against the waves of skeletons, Gideon’s last parting gift before his escape. The necromancer and his healer, Bianca, had disappeared down one of the tunnel minutes ago, which was enough time to be long again.

Nay, frantic, watched the blinking green dot of the Delicacy disappear out of range on her mini-map.

Mishell.

She cursed into Ilyawraith’s Whispering Wind party line. “The Delicacy! It’s gone!”

Ilyawraith twirled into the mass of skeletons, spinning Hoarfrost. Blue vigor energy radiated off her body and skeletons spilled into the air as she cleared a large patch of them. “What do you mean it’s gone?” she said.

Quincy split the skull of a skeleton with his axe, Gertrude. He activated his Blight area of effect ability and the rot spread in veins down the blade and into the skull. He shoved the infected skeleton into the others behind it, and the Blight began to spread. Skeletons began falling apart, weak minions not immune to his poison, succumbing to his devastating power. “Gideon fled with it?”

“Not Gideon,” Nay said. “Mishell.”

Quincy glanced back at her. “Mishell?”

“She’s been changed,” Nay said. “But it’s her. She’s a thrall of the Nether Sister.”

“How can you be sure?” Ilyawraith said.

“Because I fought her and she has new and strange abilities,” Nay said. “Not Marrow Eater, but more in line with what I’ve seen with the Nether Sister and Martygan.”

Fluxwell churned through a layer of skeletons with his rocket mace, then he stepped back and pulled a circular metallic disc from the center of his dented and worn back plate. There was a central grip on one side. He pressed a button with his thumb and a circular ridge ejected out of the disc, expanding it.

The central grip bulged out so he could wrap his fist around it. More discs of metal emerged, shifting around and adding to the sturdiness until it revealed its true form.

It was a shield of spinning concentric rings. An umbo formed from the center of the shield, tapering into a spinning grooved spike. A drill. The outer rim spun like a buzz saw.

The maugrim crouched behind the deadly shield and pressed into the horde of skeletons. It was like watching a combine harvester entering a field of grain. The spinning shield churned through the skeletons. They were either dragged into the spinning disc or thrashed by the spiked drill like they were being pulled into an industrial lathe. Bones and debris filled the air as Fluxwell literally harvested the skeletons.

Tuk-Tuk, in human form, was guarding Lain, who was unconscious. He was tending to the wound the Reaper’s Toll left on the small of her back. He knelt next to her, preparing a poultice of herbs. “This will help her flesh wound, but she will need a purification. I don’t know how long she has.”

“We fight our way to the surface,” Ilyawraith said.

“What about the Delicacy?” Nay said.

“There’s nothing we can do about that now,” Quincy said. “We fight our way out and then get Lain to the Twelve Tribes.”

“I’ll fly her there if I must,” Ilyawraith said.

Nay clenched her jaw and nodded. She could mourn the loss of the Delicacy later. For now, they had to help Lain. If one of them got seriously injured on their way out of the necropolis, it would be bad news without a healer.

#

Mishell was almost back to the surface and out of the necropolis. Soon, she would be back at camp and would reunite with Gideon and Bianca. She wondered how they fared and part of her hoped Nay had escaped her master. The odds were slim.

But she wanted to be the one who ended the cook’s life.

Or maybe, Gideon had captured her and would reward Mishell for retrieving and escaping with the Delicacy. She could only yearn for such good fortune. She fantasized about slowly torturing the cook to pay for what she did to her and her brother. She would start with her eyes.

Her interest in the Delicacy was vague. As being of the Nether, she had no use for Marrows and Delicacies. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t of great interest to Gideon. By the way he talked about the Fruit of Norne and the importance he put on retrieving the Delicacy, Mishell knew it was rare and special.

She supposed she would find out just how special when they passed it on to Umbra, Gideon’s Epicurist chef. She was to prepare it for Gideon and Bianca’s consumption.

She had stored the Delicacy in her leather bag, where it would be safe until she handed it off to Umbra, who had stayed at the camp in her carriage. Mishell didn’t like the Epicurist. The frail girl thought she was too good to get her boots dirty and she was always complaining about the condition of their camps.

Mishell wasn’t sure how much of her hatred for chefs was because of Nay. Certainly this loathing carried over to Umbra, but she didn’t deny that she looked down on the profession after she lost her eye to the blade of a cook. In her mind they were all arrogant just because they knew how to spruce up a trout and make it look pretty.

Why should people care about that? Fish was to be eaten for nourishment and nothing more.

Umbra was probably fussing over her spices while Mishell was out here doing the real work. She was venturing into ancient places and fighting monsters and helping Gideon with something that he couldn’t do himself. Now, that was the type of work that mattered.

Umbra couldn’t dress up the Delicacy without Mishell stealing it from The Bjorbane and an entire party of adventurers, which happened to include her mortal enemy, first.

These were the thoughts she was immersed in when the blast of red light burned her face and sent her sprawling. When her vision cleared a coiling serpentine figure lashed out towards her. She rolled and dodged the figure’s whipping strike.

It was a monster of some kind and she caught a glint of its purple hide. It coiled around her leg and she saw the green fins that cut her across the inside of her knee.

She knew exactly what it was. It was that creature that had come to the cook’s aid. The tentacle that tried to choke her unconscious. The thing that got into her mind and showed her everything about Krill’s death.

The tentacle was just as responsible for her brother’s death as the cook was. She didn’t know what their connection was, but they were bonded somehow.

She ripped Fleshbane from her belt, where he was attached with a hook, and smashed its deadly flower-like head into the tentacle. She could feel its spikes pierce the tentacle’s flesh as a shudder ran down the handle of the weapon.

An unholy and rabid voice, driven crazy by the taste of the monster’s flesh, came from the weapon, “Let me kill it! Then you can strip its hide and turn it into a sheath for me!”

The tentacle retracted from her leg quickly and slithered away from her, dodging her mace swing. She jumped to her feet and unhooked her other mace and came after the tentacle.

“Don’t let it get away!” Fleshbane said, screaming.

She hammered the diabolical mace into the tentacle, but instead of hitting flesh. The head of the mace bit the ground. Fleshbane screamed in rage. Mishell didn’t understand. It looked like that hit should have landed.

As she swung her normal mace after it, she suddenly felt a wave of nausea and dizziness wash over her. She stumbled, dropping her steel mace. She tried to pick it up but something was wrong.

“What are you hesitating for?!” Fleshbane said, frantic. “It’s getting away! I must have it! I must feed on the tentacle and make its skin mine!”

Mishell felt drool running down her chin. As much as she tried to command her limbs to move, they wouldn’t. She felt violated in some way, as if something was sucking a part of her inner core away.

“Swing me!” Fleshbane said. “Swing me! Swing me! Swing me!”

The mace jumped out of Mishell’s hand and fell to the dirt with a thunk. She stumbled against the wall and leaned there, willing her body to move.

She drew upon her connection to the Nether Realm and called for the Flame of the Nether Sister to aid her. She saw the violent flame in her mind and she pleaded for its aid. There was a shift in the atmosphere, as if she was passing through a wall of liquid.

Then she found herself in the comfort of the Nether Realm. She could move again and clarity replaced her dizziness. She took a moment to catch her breath.

She realized the tentacle had done something to her, had attacked her mind in some way. She cursed and re-entered the world that gave birth to her flesh.

Fleshbane was rolling back and forth in the dirt, shrieking.

She picked it up and one of the tongues from its deadly flower head sprayed her with ichor. “It got away! I told you it would! I told you! It’s gone!”

Mishell grabbed the tongue and squeezed, shutting the weapon up. “Silence!”

Fleshbane obeyed. He shifted to whimpering and slobbering.

She looked down the hallway both ways. There was no sign of the tentacle. She figured Fleshbane had wounded it and it retreated.

She felt her leather bag. The weight of the Delicacy was still present. She reached the exit reaching the mausoleum and reentered the surface, resolved to get back to camp. She couldn’t risk losing the Delicacy. The consequences could be life-ending.

But as the chill air of the surface world touched her face, she cursed her obligations to Gideon and the Nether Sister. The next time she met the cook and the tentacle, she promised Fleshbane the sweetest feast he would ever experience.

#

Nom traveled back to the central chamber, but much slower this time. He didn’t have the Nether Portals to jump through, and the injury from the talking mace had done a number on him.

He felt sluggish, and the wound on his flesh didn’t seem to be healing. His green blood slowly trickled out of the wound like a leaking of honey.

By the time he entered the chamber he was weak and out of breath, but the place was covered in bones and dust. He saw Nay and the others finishing off the rest of the skeletons.

“Nom!” Nay said, ecstatic to see him again.

He had talked to her via the Whispering Wind party line, informing her that he had pursued one of Gideon’s party.

Nom was concerned to see that Lain was unconscious, Tuk-Tuk sitting near her. He was hoping to have her heal his injury, but now it looked like she had a bad injury of her own.

His side stung from the bite of Mishell’s strange and sentient mace. A dull ache that seemed to be getting worse. He realized there was venom on those teeth that pierced his skin. If not venom, then some type of enzyme that helped the mace feed. The trace of it in the wound might be responsible for the amplification of the pain. If he wasn’t treated, then it could probably turn into an infection.

But first he needed to put the group at ease and show them what he had promised. What he had taken off Mishell, pulling it out of her bag and replacing it with fragments of one of the many clay jars in the crypts.

He pulled the Pomegranate of the Norn Arborist out of the slit pocket on his body. Relief softened Ilyawraith and Quincy’s faces, relieving some of their worry.

“The Delicacy!” Nay said.