Saruta clicked her teeth together as she walked to her post tonight. There was a change in shift, and she was the replacement for the midnight crew.

  Truthfully, she’d much rather be on the outside patrols. Those had fresh air, the pretty moon, some nice warm graves to relax in. The only real thing that could be considered a negative were the wild wolves that had stopped being afraid of reanimated skeletons and enjoyed dragging them away to be eaten and crunched to bits.

  That was a sad state of affairs, and an all-too-real danger to skellies like Saruta and her friends.

  She could see the crew now, posted up in front of Mistress Amithaera’s door, standing guard like good skeletons.

  Grimmy and Erevin. They were technically the Old Guard, but they only had seniority over Saruta on a technicality. She’d been destroyed months ago and had only just been reanimated a week prior.

  Seniority was everything to minions. One month, one day, or even one hour, if a minion superseded another one, that meant that the older one was in higher standing on the hierarchy.

  The only one that was above all others was Lady Veratreez.

  Even without skin or muscle, the tired posture on Grimmy told her all she needed to know.

  “Took yer time, eh?” Grimmy muttered quietly as Saruta stood before him, a helmet much too big on his little head.

  That’s what happens when Mistress Amithaera has to pick her soldiers out of the slain skinny nobility. Ya get thin and weak boneheads like Grimmy that can barely hold a spear to save their unlife.

  "Anything to report tonight?" Saruta asked, her jaw clicking with each word.

  Grimmy put a finger up to his mouth… or rather, where his mouth would be, trying to shush the skeleton from being too loud. He shook his head, “No. Nothing happened… but…”

  Following his hushed lead, Saruta asked, “Buuut?”

  Grimmy hesitated, sneakily waving Saruta over to the door. She walked over and put her skull against the entrance, listening to…

  Sob.

  Saruta pulled away.

  "Did you... Have you ever heard the mistress make sounds like that?” Grimmy asked, still whispering.

  “Those are clearly her allergies acting up, fool,” Saruta chastised, standing up straight. “Is that all you've heard?”

  Grimmy's hand came up to scratch at his skull, a nervous habit from when he'd had skin, "No… She, I don't know how to describe it, was howling? Maybe crying? It's been going on for the last hour.”

  "The mistress doesn't cry," Saruta replied quickly. "She's a necromancer. The Terror of the Darklands. Crying is not in the realm of possibilities for someone like her.”

  "I know that," Grimmy said a bit defensively. "That's why it was so strange. I thought maybe I was imagining it, but then it kept going.”

  Saruta shook her head. Taking his place at the post, she warned, “Speak no more of this. If this gets out, you just know how far the others can take it.”

  With a nod that rattled his bones, Grimm chuckled to himself, “Maybe the mistress is turning into a werewolf with all that howling.”

  Saruta quietly giggled.

  And down the hall, a zombie shuffling past with a mop paused mid-stride, having heard the tail end of their conversation.

  “Mishtress turning into a werewolf,” Mopman declared in the kitchen, out of breath with his rotten lungs.

  In this room, Grayface the zombie cook, was in the middle of preparing a very early breakfast for the few minions who still had to eat: namely the goblins. His gloved hands, an insistence of Veratreez’s part, arranged turnips in a big pot, only stopping when Mopman made his insane declaration.

  “What?”

  Mopman stopped at the counter, his nasty little zombie hand touching the clean surface, much to Grayface’s annoyance, “Upshtairs! The shkeletons! They heard the Mishtress howling!”

  Grayface hummed to himself and shook his head, in complete disbelief, “If they heard her howling, then she has been cursed. That’s nothing a good turnip stew cannot fix!”

  That seemed to calm down Mopface, who wiped his brow and dropped an entire flab of rotten skin on the ground. Grayface gagged at the sight, and both zombies were unaware of the skittering fanged ghoul chittering on the ceiling right above them.

  Deep down in the dungeons, the ghoul nests that were erected in the dampest corners were abuzz with discussion. The little ghouls and spiders skittered up and down the walls, speaking amongst one another about what to do with the information presented earlier.

  “The Paladin! She imbibed the flesh and it has corrupted her body!”

  Another chuckled at that, “You fool. Blessed flesh or not, lycanthropy is a curse of the wolf, not the gods!”

  “The wolves! The wolves beyond the grove, merely ten furlongs to the east!” A ghoul hissed, his rage directed to the wild animals that continually haunt their patrols.

  A tiny bat flew past the discussion, stopping only when mention of the wolves had come up.

  “Is it true, Crayma? The wild wolves have a werewolf among them?” Petyr asked the goblin as he practiced his whipping on a zombie.

  Crayma, for his part, was trying hard to ignore the young man. His entire body was sore after the Paladin had nearly smited him to dust earlier, and this was the only time he had to decompress.

  “Crayma?” The vampire asked again.

  “For the love of Sulfur, little boy, yes! Yes, there is a werewolf amongst them. The tribe has spotted him several times and we’ve prepared a plan of attack to rid ourselves of it within the fortnight,” the goblin muttered, turning to face the vampire. “Does that satisfy you?”

  Petyr shook his head, “There is talk that the mistress is stalking the grounds as a werewolf. One of the ghouls below swears that she saw her tear Grimmy the skeleton apart in her washroom.”

  Crayma guffawed. The thought of other minions being torn to bits was a fun thought for the sadistic goblin, but he supposed that was still quite a problem to have. After all, he was a minion.

  “Okay, okay,” the older goblin took a deep breath, turning his head to address another little goblin standing around. “Urura, go and gather the patrols. Have them meet me at the grove.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Urura, a small goblin with a chipped undertooth, nodded happily and squeaked, “Yes, Uncle!”

  Petyr watched the messenger run away giggling, jolting in surprise when the door slammed. He was on edge. Werewolves and vampires had never gotten along, and if the mistress was a lycan…

  “What are you going to do, Crayma?”

  Crayma stood with a grunt, popping his back with a bend forward, “I’m getting Hilfrey.”

  “Miss Tress howl? Miss Tress wolf?!” The bone behemoth growled, his giant hands closing into fists, upset at this news.

  “Yep, ‘fraid so, Hilfrey,” Crayma confirmed, looking up at the towering monster. “That means you and I are gonna go and crush the one responsible.”

  With a pound of the ground, leaving a crater so deep that the tombstones around them cracked, Hilfrey grunted in the affirmative. Crayma climbed up the behemoth’s arm and settled onto his shoulder before pointing towards the treeline.

  “That way, Hilly.”

  “Hilfrey crush bad wolves! Save Miss Tress!”

  “That’s the spirit… or spirits?”

  Crayma stood before twenty goblins.

  Every single of them was armed to the teeth with swords and clubs, adorned in bone armor and wearing skull helmets of their many kills. These were the cream of the crop, the elite warriors in Amithaera’s army, sworn to destroy her enemies.

  “Listen up, ya ugly worms!” Crayma shouted out, his back turned against the distant gathering of a pack of wolves, “Mother’s sick up in her tower, and it’s because of these damned wolves and their leader! It’s our job to keep her safe! Tonight we do just that!”

  The goblins cheered in Gukliash, whooping and hollering and stabbing at the sky. Howls erupted from across the grove, the wolves readying themselves for a battle.

  Among them, stepping forward to look upon his foes, a lumbering werewolf walked forward on its hind legs and growled. The creature howled angrily, its warcry being echoed by the vicious wolves around it.

  Hilfrey stomped to the front and bellowed his monstrous battle cry. It was a terrible and loud thing, making many of the wolves whimper and back away in fear, even from the distance they were at. The behemoth lifted Crayma up and on his shoulder once more.

  “CHARGE!” The goblin screamed, leading the charge into the fray. A small army of goblins against the bloodthirsty, “KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THESE DOGS!”

  “Cedric the Hero held Aeylinth close to him as the fires faded away. She could feel his heartbeat against her ear, her head pressed to his impossibly hard chest, tense muscles sheen with sweat and a scent that made Aeylinth's head fuzzy with lust and want for the human warrior.”

  “She looked up at her savior: this powerful man of honor and strength, her turquoise eyes shimmering as they beheld his heroic appearance.”

  “It was wrong. She knew it was. He was a human commoner and she was Elven royalty… but that only made her want him more.”

  “Slowly, tenderly, she leaned up toward the man. Seconds felt like hours, his breath on her face calling to her, and their lips m-”

  “Auntie.”

  Veratreez yelped in surprise at the sudden scare, dropping the novel on the ground and trying to hold still her heart. She’d been sitting cross-legged on a pile of dead adventurer gear that she had finished scrubbing clean and valuing, as her duties would include selling it off in the underground markets of Krainport.

  The goblin’s cheeks were flushed red on her pale green skin: not just from the material but from the sight of Urura looking down at the novel and reading the title.

  “‘My Com’lidyar, The Human’?” Urura giggled, picking the book up, “What is this? Smut?”

  “No. Not smut,” Veratreez grumbled, quickly snatching the book from Urura's hands. “It's historical-romantasy.”

  “So, smut,” Urura made a disgusted sound and scrubbed her hands on her tunic. The little goblin, smaller than Veratreez, was starting to get on her nerves.

  “What is it, Urura? Did Crayma give you leave for the night?” Veratreez asked, still salty about being interrupted, flustered to the hells.

  The younger goblin shook her head, taking a deep breath, “Mm… No… Uncle had me return all the patrols with the sending stones.”

  Veratreez raised an eyebrow. That wasn't in the itinerary.

  “... Why, Urura?”

  “Lemme read your smut and I'll tell ya,” the little goblin negotiated.

  With a hard pinch of her pointy ear, Veratreez had Urura whimpering and crying out for mercy, making the smaller goblin try to pull away in pain.

  “Why, Ura?” Veratreez asked again.

  “Okay, okay! I'll tell ya!” Urura cried out, and the older girl let her go.

  Veratreez put a small heart-shaped bookmark into her progress and stashed the novel into a chest as Urura sniffled and recounted what she'd heard from Petyr's visit.

  “Petyr said that the ghouls heard from Grayface that Grayface heard from Mopman that Mopman heard from Grimmy and Saruta they heard that the Mistress was turning into a werewolf…”

  Mouth half ajar with disbelief, trying to make sense of what she'd just heard, Veratreez had to ask, “They saw her turn into a werewolf?”

  Urura shrugged, “They heard her howling?”

  Veratreez palmed her face, sighing out. She had a feeling that she knew what the issue was.

  “She's not a werewolf… but I'll go and check on Mistress. You go and get your uncle before he does something stupid, okay, little yit'zha?”

  “Okay, auntie!”

  Wolves lay dead everywhere, monstrous beasts that ate and tore apart goblins, skeletons, and adventurers alike, littering the ground like morbid flora on this blood-fed field of battle.

  Hilfrey sat resting on his haunches while the other goblins prepared to take their cuts of meat and pelts from the pack.

  Only one goblin was occupied with a different task.

  Crayma panted in fatigue as he approached the bleeding werewolf trying to drag himself away from the incoming death blow from the goblin. Blood and gore clung to his form like the spoils of a violent battle, but not a scratch lay on his body.

  Veratreez was a master of numbers, but Crayma was a master of combat. Before Amithaera, he was his tribe's greatest warrior, felling heroes by the dozens with only his sharp piece of iron. A werewolf was child's play.

  “You’ll make a good stew, dog,” Crayma growled, raising his axe high. The werewolf whined out and shut its eyes.

  “Uuuncle.”

  He paused mid-swing, groaning aloud as he reached into his pouch to produce the sending stone.

  “One second. It’s my niece.” The goblin muttered to the werewolf, turning to bring the sending stone to his face and asking sweetly, “Yes, Ura? Uncle’s busy, my little goat, so out with it.”

  The voice coming from the sending stone was distant and crackled with every other syllable, a symptom of being just barely inside the range of the spell, but he could make out the words coming from Urura, “Uncle! Aunty Treez says to come back to the tower. She says -ot a werewolf. Come b-... Okay?”

  Crayma cleared his throat, “She’s not a werewolf? What am I doing here then?”

  No response came but the muffled sounds of pages being turned. The goblin warrior sighed tiredly and called out to the others, “We’re done here! Get your trophies and continue your patrols!”

  Turning to look at the werewolf, he continued, “Sorry ‘bout that, dog, we…”

  The werewolf was long gone. Fur and blood was their trail, the distant form of a naked woman sprinting into the forest was the last thing he saw of his foe.

  “Agh… Next time.”

  The upper floors of the tower were quiet as the crypt below. Thick stone walls would muffle the sounds of a war below if one were to erupt. It was a necessity, a costly one, to ensure Amithaera got her beauty sleep, according to the Necromancer.

  Veratreez climbed the spiral staircase slowly, her small feet making soft padding sounds against the steps.

  She'd been up here hundreds of times before. Thousands, probably. She knew every polished stone, every scrubbed sconce, every artful portrait that the Necromancer herself had painted decades ago during her art phase. This was as much Veratreez’s home as it was Amithaera’s.

  The two skeleton guards flanking the entrance watched her approach. Saruta straightened up when she saw the goblin, speaking quietly, “My lady… What brings you up here?”

  Veratreez pursed her lips at the title. She was no lady. Still, it was fun to be referred to as such.

  “I heard tale of a disturbance with our mistress. Just wanted to verify it,” she answered.

  Saruta closed her non-existent mouth and bowed once, moving out of the goblin’s way. Veratreez approached cautiously and put her pointy ear to the door, listening in through the keyhole at the sound.

  Sob…

  “Oh, Ami…” Veratreez whispered to herself, pulling away and looking at the skeleton guards.

  Saruta kept her head looking straight down the hallway as Veratreez began to walk away, trying to think of ways to cheer up her mistress. It was the letter, she was sure of it. The contents had been heartbreaking.

  Perhaps she’d have Grayface whip up the pear tarts for the morning. The Necromancer had always loved sweet treats.

  That would do the trick.

  She returned to the loot room quickly to grab her not-smut novel, intent on reading it in her own room after speaking to Grayface, only to find it completely gone from where she’d left it. That little thief must’ve taken it.

  “URURA!”