“Shutup!”
He stoodto his feet and examined the corpse from a distance, his heart pounding.It hada human face, with the same sigil of parasitic control carved into itsforehead—unlike the corpse above, this thrall’s life force had been suckedclean to the marrow.All his muscles and organs had deflated down to a set ofwrinkled folds, and the skin around his bones gave the eerierimpression of fabric stretched over furniture.It was impossible to determineany sort of identity.
Whatwas possible to discern, however, was the last expression on the man’s face,which was locked into a rictus of terror.His eyes were shriveled and wide, hislipless mouth opened like a hollow in a tree.Isaac thought, briefly, that ifhe had managed to make that expression, the sigilcontrolling his brain had failed just as the necromantic magic sucked away hisessence.He had woken only a moment before death.
“We’renot alone down here,” Isaac said.
“Healthierlooking, though.”
“No.”He pointed at the parasite sigil.“There’s another sorcerer who entered thistomb before us.I found a body like this at the surface.They have multiplehuman thralls under their command.”
“Youonly mentioning this now?”
“I’vebeen distracted.”
Zariaglanced behind her.“What happened to him?”
“Necromancy.The sorceress attacked whoever controlled this man.Clearly, she emptied one ofhis thralls like a skin of wine.”
“Lovely.”
“We’llmeet the same fate, if we’re careless.”
Shegrunted.
“Idon’t know,” Isaac said, almost to himself.“This is very surprising.No oneshould’ve come here but me.It’s a strict Diet mandate.Although, consideringthe use of parasitism, I can’t imagine this sorcerer cares for the moralityof—”
“Quiet.”
Herears swiveled back and forth.Slowly, beginning to feel a chill on his skin,Isaac grabbed the torch back into hand.
Itbegan as a soft chittering sound.
For amoment, Isaac thought he was hearing a swarming cloud of insects, rustlingtheir way through grass.It seemed to bleed from the walls, coming from everydirection at once.Slowly, the noise shifted, the quiet shuffling growingsharper with its susurration, sounding now like the clattering of chimes.
“Untieme,” Isaac said, fighting down panic.“Untie me right now.”
A moantrembled out from the darkness, rasping and thin.Behind it, the chitteringgrew louder, building up into a wave of shuffling cracks, like dry reedsscraping across stone.
“Zaria!”
Sheplaced a hand on his chest, nudging him behind her.“Keep the torch steady.”
Thepirate stepped forward, poleaxe grazing the edge of the darkness.The growingcacophony reacted, churning around them like a shifting swarm of flies.Arattling gasp echoed down the halls.
Zariagrowled from deep in her chest.
All atonce, a skeletal arm emerged from the darkness, missing most of its fingers.Soon, another arm joined it, far above at the ceiling, angled down, lurchingunsteadily.A third arm came above the first, pointed the wrong way, the ballof its elbow rolling toward the wrist.From there, several more limbs camethrough in rapid succession, each of their bones sliding unobstructed betweenthe other, and now there were dozens of arms, grasping and bending and wavinglike the limbs of a centipede.
Belowthe arms, a writhing mass of bone shuffled into the torchlight, blocking thenarrow hall.There were rib bones connected to femurs, arms jutting frompelvises, skulls braced into knees, vertebrae studding the rims of shoulderblades, and all of it was encased in a porcupine shell of arms, all the bonessliding and crackling against each other, as if seeking some undefinedstructure.He saw human bones, canine bones, feline and bird and reptile,binding together with no more thought of unity than one would chop down aforest, saw the different trees into planks, and use them to build a house.
Atopthis swirling mound of bodies, there sat a skull, the head of a rhino with twooverlapping jaws, one inside the other, moaning with a chorus of voices.
Zariaraised her weapon overhead, scraping the spear tip along the ceiling, andsmashed the axe blade down into the rhino skull.It split in half, the two jawsstill biting as they separated from their joints, and the mass below surgedforward in two parallel waves, forming a pseudopod of bones.She stepped back,tried to swing, clanged her axeblade against the tight stone walls, tookanother frightened step, and decided to stab with the spear again, reachingright for the belly.The impact scattered arms and ribs like leaves from atree.She yanked the blade back, the cavalry hook ripping out an entireskeleton’s worth of bones, and began an awkward series of chops, half of herswings abated by the confines of the hall.
Whennothing was standing higher than her ankles, she stopped, leaning on her weaponand breathing heavily.At her feet, the bones were still moving, stillshuffling and sliding, already forming connections again.Around them, thesounds of chittering only grew louder.
Somethingfell on Isaac’s shoulder.When he looked, he saw a human finger wriggling likea maggot.He jerked back into the wall of loculi, flailing it off, and therapid wave of his torch illuminated the area behind him.A sea of bones nowcrawled in his direction, scapulas and jaws and kneecaps scuttling along dirtand stone, covering every surface like writhing films of moss.They rained fromthe ceiling and leaped at him from the floor, flinging themselves in bouncingarcs.He stumbled back, shielding himself with his arms, feeling sharpened boneslice through his skin.
