Autumn fidgeted nervously as she ascended the stairs to the first floor of the tower of bone and black-iron, rechecking that she had everything with her for the third time. Her new armor weighed heavily upon her, tucked away beneath the billowing warmth of her tattered black robes. Upon her waist sat a trio of charms made of dragon bone, and in her hands she held both her new knife and wand. 

She felt ready for whatever the tower could throw at her. 

Her friends too bore upon them a trio of charms, for today was the day; the day they’d ascend the dread tower and see what further horrors it held.

Yesterday, after they’d finished helping Autumn, Edwyn had gone back up to work upon the barrier preventing them from rising higher and after a few more hours, they finally broke through. 

Wisely, they’d all agreed to postpone the ascent until the others returned from their respective searches. And after a brief, but terse, discussion, they settled on ascending the next day.

Autumn glanced up from checking over her gear for the umpteenth time and took in the group’s formation.

Liddie led the way, wary of traps even here as she scouted the previously cleared sections. Just behind her came the frontline formed by the shielded pair of Nelva and Roland, followed closely by Evrard with his spear’s longer reach and Edwyn who was looking for anything magical the pirate might’ve missed. Once more, Autumn found herself sandwiched in the center of the formation, only this time alongside a nervous-looking Eme, the catgirl practically bouncing up the stairs. And behind her, trailed Nizana and Illiamtree at the rear, keeping an eye out backwards for any ambushes.

As the stairs ended, Autumn got her first look at the first floor. 

A long hallway twisted out before her like a broken spine, full of statues illuminated by a cruel teal light. Necromancers and horrors cast in black-iron peered out hatefully from recessed alcoves in the walls. From their expressions, Autumn couldn’t tell whether they were friends or foes of the tower’s owner. 

Signs of fighting were abundant here; cuts and cracks marred the walls, flecks of dismembered undead had collected in the corners, and beneath a thin, almost invisible line in the wall was a red pool.

Looking closer, Autumn saw that someone had jammed up the trap with a few black-iron blades, preventing the dull saw blade within from resetting.

The group passed by the trap somberly. 

To their left, a series of doors led off to the tower’s servants’ quarters, kitchen, and pantry, while to their right a single door led to a large, once opulent dining hall.

While Autumn only peeked her head into the servants’ quarter slightly, it looked disappointingly mundane to her; if you excused the materials, that was. 

Conversely, the dining hall was designed to showcase an immense wealth through its paintings, frescos, banners, and the multitude of menacing beast skulls adorning the walls. However, the ravages of time and the adventurers surrounding her had rendered it into little more than bone dust and rotten cloth.

Swiftly, they moved on and soon arrived at the base of the next stairs. 

Liddie turned towards the rest of them, looking for once utterly serious. 

“Alright, everyone ready?” she asked, getting nods back. “Ok, time to get our arena faces on. Remember: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Autumn, Eme, Edwyn, you lot keep an eye out for any magical fuckery while I check for physical traps. We didn’t encounter any traps on the first floor stairs, so it’s almost guaranteed now: it’s what I’d do if I owned a creepy necro-tower.”

When Liddie finished, Autumn whispered to Eme. 

“Can you watch the ceiling while I watch the floor?”

Eme nodded, saluting with her new arm as she found her confidence. “Can do!”

As Liddie had promised them, the ascent up the stairs was ponderously slow, and as she had also promised them, filled with traps. More than once, they’d stopped precariously on the steps as either Liddie or Edwyn dismantled or dispelled something that’d immediately kill them, if they were lucky. 

And if they were not…well, necromancers were certainly creative. 

Autumn shivered.

Just as they reached the top of the staircase, Eme yelled out as her cat-like eyes caught something dimly glowing above.

“Stop!” 

Liddie instantly halted in place, her foot hovering a millimeter above the last step as everyone else tensed up. Autumn turned her gaze upward to where a pale-faced Eme was looking. She squinted as she peered into the shadows and saw the glyph hidden amongst the bones.

“Edwyn, there are runes above.” Autumn called out. 

“Aye, I see them.” 

Liddie looked towards the spellcasters questioningly, still standing on a single, quivering leg, but remarkably keeping her balance, “can I move, or will that set it off? I can’t hold this position for long—I knew I should’ve exercised more.”

Edwyn squinted as they strained their neck to look so high up. “Ach, gimme some more light!”

“Hurry!” Liddie urged. 

Taking one of the few magical lanterns they had left in hand, Autumn clambered up Nelva’s back with the others’ support to sit upon her shoulders and cast the glow into the dark recess, revealing more of the wicked-looking runes; their jagged points wholly unlike Edwyn’s bolder and blocker style.

“Hey, I can read some of these!” Autumn remarked in surprise, although she couldn’t understand what they’d do. “This one says blade, I think!”

“That’s not reassuring!” Liddie cried out, her calf twitching violently. “Find the trigger, please! And quickly!”

“Does the rune that looks kinda like an F say bind or bound tae you?” Edwyn calmly asked Autumn, professionally ignoring Liddie’s dramatics.

“Bind, it looks like!”

Edwyn grunted before turning back to Liddie. “Ye can move; it’ll only activate if’n ye step oan the last step, nae into its space. Sloppy work if ye ask me.” They shook their head disappointedly. 

Hearing that, Liddie fell back with a groan before sitting down upon a lower step to massage her aching calf. 

Nelva looked up, her eyes reflecting red in the lantern light. “Can I put you down now?”

“No. Now hold still; your armor is poking me!” Autumn lightly slapped the helm between her thighs as she turned her attention back to the runes above.

Behind her, Eme looked on with jealousy. 

Autumn hummed as she examined the sharp symbols. “Hmm, it says blade here, but blade what? If it connects here and here, then it’d say…blade wind? No. Blade storm? A storm of blades? Does it conjure a storm of blades on triggering? That doesn’t seem right; there’s no…Ah ha!” 

Sitting atop Nelva’s shoulders, Autumn turned excitedly towards the group, causing the poor knight keeping her up to groan at the sudden shift. 

“I figured it out! It’s got a sympathetic link to an active storm blade spell—I don’t know how that’s possible, but it means that if Liddie triggered it, she’d be instantly diced up! No dodging as there isn’t anything to see, you see?! And if you touched her, it’d transfer right to you!”

Her excitement at figuring it out died as the words sunk in and she took in Liddie’s pale face.

“...oh, you almost died.”

Liddie shrugged, feigning disregard at her narrow miss. “It’s not the first time.”

“Happy as I am for you, Autumn, can you please work out how to disable it soon? I’d quite like to put you down now.” Nelva asked as she shifted, trying to keep Autumn’s weight from digging into her armored shoulders.

Autumn narrowed her eyes. ‘Was she calling me heavy?’

“Verily, tis a wise mistress thee did crush between thy thunder thighs.” 

‘Hush you!’ Autumn snarled in her mind. 

“Hmm? Och, I worked it oot already; I juist thought she might like tae work it oot as well. She was daein’ well!” Edwyn laughed before pointing to a few runic lines, “juist cut those sections off; it won’t stop the trigger from connecting as it’s tae warded up in failsafes, but whoever made it forgot tae reinforce the connection with the spell. You can juist disconnect it.”

Taking a chisel from the Manus, Autumn followed their instruction and carved away at the runes. When she finally cut the connection, it flared up once before returning to its previous dull glow.

“Did it work?” Eme asked. 

Everyone turned to look at the step.

“Umm, who’ll volunteer?” Liddie asked, trying to shy away from the frontline on her butt. 

Edwyn rolled their eyes at the pirate. Using their steel mace, they smashed a few bones free from the stair’s railing and chucked them onto the last step. And when they failed to be blended, they gestured with a “there, happy?” look. 

“What if it only triggers for the living; this is a necromancer's home after all. I doubt they’d like to keep getting their puppets destroyed.” Evrard chimed in. 

Edwyn gave the rabbit-man who doubted him a foul look, their accent coming out even thicker as they yelled. “Are ye ah Runemaster naw tae?! Wou’ ye lik’ tae disabl’ th’ ne’t oown tae?!” 

Grumpily, the big-bearded Manus stormed past the others to stand atop the last step, holding their arms out wide to showcase a lack of rending flesh. 

“Can we shift oan now!”

The group swiftly fell back into formation; Autumn almost being dumped off of Nelva’s shoulders.

Grumbling slightly at the treatment, she sidled up to Eme, patting the catgirl on the shoulder as she smiled at her. 

“Good job.”

Eme blushed, smiling in turn. “Thank you.” 

Autumn turned her attention back to the frontline and peeked over the shield wall to take in the room that the group slowly crept into. Unlike the floor below, this one bore no hallway and instead opened up right into the Necromancer’s grim laboratory. 

Ever-burning tallow candles dotted the room with no apparent order, filling the room with disparate, overlapping arcs of haunting candlelight and the smell of burning fat. However, most of the light that filled the room came from a tormented green flame, burning away with a terrible hunger as it lay bound beneath a cauldron of black-iron. 

Over its lip bubbled the foul remnants of a long forgotten brew. 

Dominating the left-hand side of the room sat a strange alchemical contraption, so large as to stretch from floor to ceiling, running the entire length of the room. Ageless copper bound glass orbs, cylinders, tubes, and peculiar vials; some even floating untethered.

A few stations nearby held intricate bottled potions, none of which Autumn recognised.

Pyre would be so mad if she knew what she’d missed. 

Autumn vowed to steal it all for her, if possible. 

The right-hand side of the room was the strangest by far. Similar to the alchemical array, a series of equally spaced glass cylinders full of murky liquid ran down the entire length of the room. However, unlike the array, these contraptions housed far more dire contents. Floating in what Autumn assumed to be some kind of formaldehyde were bodies, or parts of ones, at least.

It looked like a collection to Autumn. Each but the last held a body of a different race, posed in death; a human, a demon, a rabbit-folk, elves of all kinds, and many more she could not name.

The last was empty; its glass shattered and laying on the ground before it. 

Judging by the smoothed-down pathways worn into the floor that stretched between each station, this laboratory of nightmares and sin had seen much use by its well-practiced practitioner.

Coming to a stop just inside the door, everyone held their breath as their eyes darted around the room, looking for threats.

Perhaps it was the recent call they’d just had, or perhaps it was the tingle that ran down her spine that prompted it, but Autumn looked up. 

And a pair of eyes met hers.