There was a terrible grinding sound as the ogrish war galley suddenly lurched to starboard. It was past midnight, and the pale light of the moon shone down on a calm sea. There was no wind to speak of, which was a bad thing for the slaves at the oars.
“[Stop rowin’!]” the ogrish captain roared as he ran to the fore of the galley. He leaned out over the railing and looked closely at the water, scratching his wart covered head.
Only a few moments passed before the Flayed Man, as he was known to the ogres, stepped out onto the deck, still wearing his demon-shaped plate armor. Raynold and four of his undead knights were only a few moments behind him.
“[What was that?]” the Flayed Man demanded, speaking in the captain’s native ogrish tongue.
“[Hit somethin’],” the captain said, still peering down.
“[You think?]” the Flayed Man asked sarcastically. The sarcasm was lost on the ogre. He concentrated briefly, and his eyes began to glow a dull, red color so he could see in the relative darkness. “[It’s a column of rock, fool.]”
“[In middle of water?]” the ogre grunted out.
Some of the goblins serving as deck hands had wandered to the railing without supervision. They looked over the side between the rails, some of them pointing at the submerged column of rock as the galley slowly drifted past. They were very fortunate they hadn’t hit it straight on, or they could have sunk, no matter how thick the planks were. The fact that the goblins could see well enough in the darkness of night with what little light the moon provided was enough for the Raynold to develop a plan. He stood there surrounded by his bodyguards, all five of them with glowing green embers in their eyes, something that always spooked the goblins. He decided to use that fear to his advantage now.
“Hang some goblins from ropes at the front of the ship,” Raynold said. “They’ll warn us when we get close to another rock.”
Kromwell glowered at him for a moment, a fearsome thing with his burning red eyes, but saw the wisdom in this. He relayed the instructions to the captain, who relayed it to his minions, and soon two goblins hung suspended a few feet above the water at the fore of the galley. The captain didn’t even think to check the hull for damage, but fortunately for them, ogrish war galleys were very heavily constructed. With the slowness with which they sailed and the thickness of the hull, they could probably hit every single rock on the way to the shore and never sink. Soon the order to row was bellowed out again, and they were under way.
They had sailed for weeks to find this place. The secluded bay stretched out before them, hidden on the far side of an archipelago on the southwestern edge of the world of Aldon. It would be a beautiful place in the daylight. The evergreen shrubs covered the islands they passed, sometimes interspersed with small, grassy pastures. Raynold felt sure that the island before them was the one he was directed to go to. As he had at each island they came to, Raynold stepped into the fore of the galley and cast a grim spell. He whispered the incantation and moved his hands in precise patterns, causing a ghostly eyeball formed out of mist to appear before him. He sent that eye speeding away and softly chanted as he directed it in the path it would fly. He always sent it to the eastern side of the islands first and did so again this time. He eventually found the foundation of the ruined villa that the spirit of Ithion had described to him. He scouted the area, including the best path to get up to that vista, then ended his spell.
“This is the place. Tell them to make landfall there,” Raynold said, pointing.
“Don’t presume to command me, you sniveling little worm,” the Flayed Man said cruelly.
Raynold had a flashback of some of Kromwell’s more cruel moments during their childhood, and suddenly he was a lot less sure of himself, despite his more recently acquired necromantic powers. The favor of King Karnas might not help him here against Kromwell, considering how unstable he’d become. Kromwell’s punishment had broken his mind in a way Raynold hadn’t quantified yet. He blinked rapidly but managed to keep his face blank.
“Apologies,” Raynold said.
Kromwell towered over Raynold by at least nine inches, and he used his height to intimidate his adversaries often. Raynold wasn’t intimidated for long, however. He hadn’t been truly afraid of his boyhood leader in a long time. He just stood there flanked by his undead knights and waited for his old friend to come to his senses. They both knew who had the most influence with King Karnas, so Raynold let him have his illusions of command as long as the expedition went where he wanted it to go. Kromwell turned his back on Raynold and looked out over the bay again for a few minutes, then called out to the ogre captain, ordering the ship rowed to the spot where Raynold wanted it. Raynold turned to Bermin, who had been standing at the rail nearby. Bermin had a way of sneaking about that was often very surprising to Raynold. He was always near, but rarely in anyone’s view.
“How are our supplies holding out?” Raynold asked Bermin.
“We’ll have enough to get to Kraken’s Rock, but we may have to ration it out at the end,” Bermin said.
“I doubt it’ll come to that,” Raynold said with a secretive smile.
“If you say so,” Bermin said.
It took them another hour to slowly row across the bay and run the galley partially aground on the beach. The ram at the fore of the galley parted the sand like water, then it became stuck when the ship ran out of inertia. The goblins threw a webbing of ropes over the side, then looked to the ogres for direction as they tried to slink back into the protective darkness of the galley. They knew dawn was coming, and goblins hated the light.
“I’ll need an ogre overseer and twenty goblins,” Raynold said to Kromwell.
“Of course, you do,” Kromwell said. He turned to the ogrish captain. “[A bull and twenty scavengers will answer to him],” the Flayed Man said, pointing at Raynold.
The captain singled out a particularly ugly ogre that he hated, charged over, and threw him bodily off the boat. He held up both hands with fingers out twice while shouting in his guttural language at a group of goblins, some of which began moving towards the nets. There were a couple who didn’t move fast enough, and the captain booted their backsides off the boat. After that, roughly two dozen goblins swarmed over to the railing with the netting and climbed down to the beach.
Raynold moved forward with six of his thirteen undead knights and climbed down the netting with difficulty. The knights simply jumped over the side, landing lightly in the sand. As soon as Raynold was on solid ground, he began moving toward a small trail behind some trees that led up the steep hill to the top of the island’s plateau. The ogre and goblins followed resentfully. After a couple of hours of walking, the raiders stood before the formerly secret door worked into the wall of the villa. There was only this one wall left intact with a little bit of the two other walls stubbornly holding on at the corners, and Raynold could see very clearly that boot prints went into and out of this section of the wall.
Raynold simply pointed at the wall, then at the ogre’s maul, and the ogre went to work. In a few blows, the secret door was destroyed. The pieces scattered across a narrow landing inside the wall about four feet deep that accessed a stairway going down into darkness. Raynold pointed at the pieces and made a sweeping motion with his hand. The goblins understood easily enough, and cleared the pieces away, throwing them among the rubble strewn about the ruins. He then pointed at the goblins and then pointed inside. The goblins, who were very uncomfortable in the bright light of the new dawn, eagerly rushed into the darkness of the hidden stairway and down they went. The ogre squeezed in, then Raynold and his six knights went in last.
When Raynold got to a section of the stairway well underground that changed to a ten-foot-wide and tall staircase going down into the depths, there was a series of grinding, screeching, and banging sounds from ahead, but he couldn’t see what happened with the ogre in the way. Many of the goblins were huddled against the wall of the stairway whimpering to themselves, clearly afraid to go further, but the ogre kept them from running away with a series of snarls and growls while brandishing a large axe. Eager to know what happened, Raynold peered around the ogre and saw dark goblin blood splashed on the walls and running in streaks that disappeared at the stones ten feet from the end of the stairs. Strange, he thought. Raynold pointed at a nearby goblin, then pointed down the hallway. The ogre scratched his head stupidly, so Raynold repeated the gestures. He got the idea on the second try.
The ogre grabbed the nearby goblin and tossed its evil backside down the hallway like a child’s ball. The goblin flailed about and skidded for several feet, then hit a hidden pressure plate in the floor. Circular blades suddenly sprang from the walls at various heights and sliced the hapless goblin to pieces before retracting into the wall with a squeal of metal. Then the entire hallway pivoted down at the place where the blood disappeared and pivoted up at the far end, which formed a ramp and dumped the goblin’s body down a long, sloped chute that ran directly under the stairs Raynold stood on. The hallway pivoted back into place in a level position like nothing had ever happened. Raynold was impressed.
Prepared for something like this, Raynold turned to one of his knights. “Take this chalk and mark the outlines of the trigger for this trap on the floor,” he commanded.
The knight did as Raynold commanded. When the knight returned, Raynold pointed at one of the goblins, who immediately began quaking in fear, and then pointed down the hallway. A snarl from the ogre was all the persuading the goblin needed. It slowly walked down the hallway and carefully stepped over the outlined pressure plate. It kept on going down the hallway but hit another pressure plate and died in the same grisly way as its companion. Raynold looked over to the knight with the chalk.
“You know what to do,” he said.
“Yes, master,” the knight said in his otherworldly voice. His muscles and soft tissues had not all decayed yet, so his voice was a combination of a normal man’s voice and the voice of the grave.
The knight marked the second pressure plate, then returned. The next goblin they sent across made it all the way to the door on the far side. It smiled back at them in triumph, then got a calculating look in its eye. It quickly turned back to the door and opened it, thinking to get whatever treasure was hidden behind the door to itself. As soon as it opened the door, a wooden sculpture in the shape of a hand making an obscene gesture sprang forward, slamming into the goblin and knocking it back into the trapped hallway, where it was sliced and diced and dumped down into the chute to the unfathomable abyss below. The goblins all laughed, pointing and hooting and giving each other the obscene gesture. Raynold couldn’t help but smile himself, but then was reminded that he only had the ogre and nine goblins left to spring whatever other traps the Pirate King had left for them.
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“Go open the door from the side, giving me a clear view of the hand,” Raynold commanded his knight.
“Yes, master,” it said.
The knight strode down the hallway, avoiding the pressure plates, and opened the door while standing as close to the right-hand wall as it could. Raynold was ready and performed a powerful magical spell that focused entropic magic into a green ray. That ray struck the obscene hand, creating cracks through it immediately that glowed with green light, then the entire mechanism quickly crumbled into dust. The goblins reacted with fear and relief for obvious reasons, gibbering to each other softly.
Raynold gestured with shooing motions and pointed at the doorway. The entire party advanced down the hallway and through the trapped door, but Raynold, being no idiot, waited until the ogre and all goblins had crossed over first. The hallway beyond the door went to the right for around thirty feet and ended at another door with a welcome mat in front of it. Knowing a trap when he saw one, Raynold concentrated and used the same spell he used on the previous door, causing the door to crumble to dust on the floor. He then looked at the ogre, held up one finger, and pointed down the hallway. The ogre grabbed another goblin and roughly shoved it forward. Terrified for good reason, the goblin slowly walked down the hallway that was now illuminated by some warm light coming from the room beyond. Now that he could see through the dust, Raynold could see a study with a desk surrounded by bookcases on the far side of the room. There was a section of floor about thirty feet squared before the desk that Raynold would bet anything was part of another trap.
The goblin stalked carefully to the welcome mat and carefully stepped around it and into the room beyond. It looked around, ten gave a thumbs up sign to the rest of the party. Everyone began moving forward, eager to find some loot. The goblin in the room was moving to the desk when suddenly the floor split in the middle, dumping the screaming goblin into a thirty-foot-wide shaft that was fifty feet deep. It hit the bottom with an audible snapping of at least one limb and groaned. The walls at the bottom of the pit suddenly slammed together, squashing the goblin flat, then retracted. Then a section of the wall under the desk began moving forward, pushing what was left of the goblin down a long chute, never to be seen again. The wall retracted itself, then the floor, which was suspended from gigantic hinges at the left- and right-hand walls of the study swung back up and into place with a loud clang, leaving the room looking exactly like it did before the goblin intruded.
The goblins all looked back at Raynold and the ogre with wide eyes, then tried their best to hide in the shadows cast by the doorway. Raynold was unconcerned. He lifted his arms and chanted in the language of death. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but after a minute of chanting, bone chips and powdery dust began to flow up through the gaps in the floor. It swirled in midair in the center of the study, then began to coalesce into a bridge going across the treacherous floor. The bridge formed a cross with one stretch of it going from the doorway to the desk, and another span of the bridge going between the two doors on the sides of the room that were not readily visible from the hallway. The goblins all wiped their sweaty brows.
Raynold had the feeling that this wasn’t the end of the traps and pointed into the room. The ogre growled menacingly and shook his axe, and the remaining goblins streamed into the study. A goblin went to the right to check the door at the end of the bone bridge, and with a loud noise, sprung the floor trap again. No one was hurt, and it gibbered and pointed at the blank wall behind the door. The goblin on the left side of the bridge tried the door with the same results. The remaining goblins were clustered near the desk, afraid to touch anything. Raynold could see that one was hiding under the desk and decided to ignore it. Maybe there would be one survivor after all.
Looking at the books in the cases around the three walls closest to the desk, Raynold made beckoning motions while looking at the books. The goblins knew what that meant but hesitated to touch any of the books. The ogre yelled something at them, and they all ran in separate directions to whatever bookcase was closest to them, then began tearing at the books. None of them were able to remove any of the books, however hard they tried. One of the goblins was suddenly skewered by a sword or spear blade that thrust straight out of the bookcase to the left of the desk, close to the corner of the room. It shrieked in pain, laying on the stone floor amidst a pool of its own blood. The other goblins backed away from the fake books to watch their comrade die. Tired of the Pirate King’s lethal tricks, and in a rage, Raynold cast one of the most destructive spells he knew into the corner of the room where the goblin had just died. A ball of force sprang from his finger and slammed into the bookshelves, exploding with great power. The false books were blown to splinters along with the bookcases in a twenty-foot radius. Wood chips and goblin bodies were hurled against the walls. For a few minutes nothing could be seen through the cloud of dust. Slowly the dust settled, which left just one goblin poking its ugly face up from behind the desk. It pointed at something in the midst of the wreckage.
Then Raynold saw it. There was a secret door hidden behind the bookcase behind and to the left of the desk. He looked at the ogre and pointed. Even the ogre knew what to do with that command, and he moved across the room and began smashing away at the door with his maul. In a minute it had the entire doorway exposed so Raynold could walk through. Not being a complete fool, Raynold wordlessly ordered the goblin through first.
What they found behind the door was a complex of rooms that had survived the ravages of time very well for the most part. There were almost no pieces of furniture left in it, however, even though there were marks on the floor showing that furniture had recently been there. The six knights, the ogre and the one remaining goblin then searched the entire complex and found no bone staff. Raynold was not a happy necromancer. Not by a long shot. He fumed in the center of a real common area with real, but empty, bookshelves and cursed bitterly. He then removed a pouch from his belt.
Holding the pouch open, Raynold began speaking in the language of death, casting a spell he had only performed once before. White powder flew from the open pouch and formed a circle on the floor three feet in diameter. He spoke smoothly in that whispery language as the circle of white dust began burning with a green flame. As before, a tiny green light appeared in the air above the circle, which grew until the spirit caught within fully manifested.
“Ithion, son of Mordon!” Raynold shouted. “You have led me astray!”
Raynold said a fell word, and the spirit caught in the circle screamed in agony.
“I answered every question truthfully, you bastard!” Ithion screamed.
“Then why isn’t your staff here?!” Raynold demanded.
“I told you it was near the Pirate King’s lair! I told you the truth, you ignorant child!” the spirit of Ithion shouted.
In no mood to play word games with a powerful spirit, Raynold chanted, causing greenish flames to appear below the sphere of Ithion’s spirit. It screamed in agony as if the flames were really burning it. Raynold let the spiritual torture go on and on.
Finally, Raynold asked, “Where now is the staff of necromantic power you wielded? I warn you! Deceive me again and I will rend your soul!”
All the spirit’s will for resistance had broken. “It is broken in twelve pieces, all of which are in a cave on the western part of the island you now stand on,” the spirit of Ithion said sorrowfully. “Why do you run to your own doom? Don’t you know that anyone using the Codex of Death is cursed to be consumed by necromancy?”
“I know of no such curse,” Raynold said with less than his full confidence.
“I spat in the faces of those who warned me, and look at where I am,” Ithion said bluntly.
“I will master the Codex!” Raynold shouted. “The mysteries of life and death will all be revealed to me! I will never die!”
“I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think, wizard,” Ithion said spitefully.
“Be gone, fool!” Raynold shouted at the spirit.
Raynold spoke another word of power, rending and gravely wounding the soul of Ithion, but not destroying it completely. With a scream of pain and malice that made everyone’s head feel like it split in two, the spirit of Ithion was banished back to the hells in a burst of eldritch green fire. The strain of his labors today was too great, and Raynold collapsed into a heap on the spot.
-----
When Raynold awoke some time later, he was still laying the way he had fallen. His entire body ached, and sharp pains came from his back and neck. He groaned and slowly straightened himself out on the stone floor. His back popped in several places. He looked to the side and saw the ogre snoring loudly a few feet from the lone surviving goblin. The six knights he had brought with him still stood guard over him. Raynold was glad he had the forethought to leave the other seven knights on the ship with orders to make sure the rest of the expedition didn’t leave him on this island to die. He slowly got up, holding his head, which hurt almost as bad as his back.
“Why didn’t you make me comfortable?” Raynold asked.
“You only commanded us to guard you,” Kevic said in his gravelly voice.
“Wake them up, then bring them with me,” he said to his knights.
He tried to stretch out his back a bit, but it was too sore. He began walking out of the complex, carefully avoiding all the traps as his knights followed. The ogre and goblin brought up the rear. Outside, the moon was a couple of hours above the eastern horizon, shedding its pale light. It took them hours of walking across the plateau of this island, but they eventually reached the western coast of the island.
“Split up and search this part of the island for the cave,” Raynold snapped. “Return to me when it is found.”
The ogre scratched its head stupidly but began walking around in circles with the goblin when the knights left to search. They didn’t have long to wait before one of the knights came back.
“There, master,” a knight said, pointing.
“Show me.”
Raynold sent a mental summons to the other five knights, then followed. When he approached the place the knight was pointing, he saw that the knight had found a crevasse on the southern side of a hill. He picked up his pace, knowing how close he was. Ithion’s power focus was almost in his grasp. The much-diminished party converged on the base of the crevasse. Raynold waited until all his knights were present and ready in case something had taken up residence in this cave. Satisfied, he waved everyone forward.
The cave had seen a magical battle here recently, Raynold knew. There were scorch marks and signs of stone being superheated all around. There were a lot of skeletal fragments strewn about, also. Many of the pieces were almost ash. Raynold entered the complete darkness of the cave, and his magically enhanced sight showed him the chamber as if the sun itself shined there.
“Find the twelve pieces of the staff. It will look like bone fragments that have runes carved into them,” Raynold commanded.
Once again, the ogre and goblin stupidly walked around in circles, kicking rocks and bones on the ground. Because of their stupidity, their usefulness had ended once there were no more traps to find, so Raynold didn’t expect much from them. After a time, one of his knights found a piece of the staff partially imbedded into the wall of the cave. Whatever destroyed the staff was powerful, but it was of no concern. Now that he had one piece of it in his hands, the missing pieces were as good as his. Raynold began whispering a seeking spell. Holding the fragment up high, he chanted louder, putting more of his strength and concentration into the casting. A small piece flew from the ground close to his feet and hovered in midair near to the fragment he held. Zip! Another piece joined them. Encouraged, he put more power into his casting. Two more pieces zipped over and hovered above his head. Raynold began to circle the room while chanting in that fell language. There was another piece! And another! He chanted louder, and the last few pieces joined the others, hovering close to his hand. That was twelve.
Raynold changed the chant and planted his feet. Holding his hand with the largest piece of the staff out before him, he chanted a spell that repaired broken things. It was a very difficult enchantment for him to employ, as most of his power centered around death, decay and entropy. Amidst a dark haze that occasionally flared with greenish lightning, the pieces began to fuse back together. His chanting reaching a crescendo, the last piece slipped into place and fused with the rest. The darkened haze collected around the staff, and with a last greenish flare of lightning that moved across the entire surface of the rune covered bone, the staff was whole again.
The power of the necromantic staff remained dormant, however. Raynold knew that to connect the staff to the powers of death required life energy. Raynold’s eyes scanned the room until he saw the hulking ogre and cowering goblin. He focused his concentration on one of his most potent spells, held the staff vertically before him, and used his other hand to unleash the magic he focused on with a clawed, ripping motion as he pronounced the words of power. Blackness coalesced around both the ogre and terrified goblin as their life force was ripped away from them. Their bodies collapsed, and their life essence was sucked into the bone staff, which seethed with that same darkness as its magic was awakened, making the runes on the staff glow with green light. The runes glowed dimly at first but grew brighter as more of the victims’ life energy was forced into the staff.
Finally, it was done. Raynold felt the power now contained within the staff, power he could now wield, and he laughed. Though it had been difficult to master, he had indeed mastered the power of undeath, and he allowed himself a few moments to exult in it. He had powerful servants surrounding him, and he could make more. He thought of all the things it was now possible to accomplish, and he laughed again with a malignant delight.
Soon, he would find a way to get out of King Karnas’ clutches, and the world would be his.
