Musty winds carried a miasma of death and decay up the slope of the cave from a stiff breeze, and a reeking stench of bile and rusted copper assaulted Qolmador and Sangna.

  “Ugh,” they complained in unison, casting annoyed looks at each other as they slid into the cave.

  Cold, wet stone floor met Qolmador’s feet as he slid deeper into the cave; he pulled his thick robes closer to stave off the chill in the air. Dying golden light from the afternoon sun vanished behind the horizon of trees and shrubbery; any light offered from its warmth evaporated. A flicker of light caught something in the cave as it dipped below the forest.

  Qolmador clawed his hands, lifting the remains of a coffin’s crown.

  Nomad trained his rifle in the corner of the cave.

  Sangna gripped his gunblade, praying to the holy symbol in the pommel stock.

  The Trio stood, waiting for another brute to crash out of the darkness and rip them to shreds; their strained breathing was the only thing signaling they were alive. After a few more painfully long breaths, Qolmador let his chunks of rock drop to the stone floor with a clatter. All of them, including Qolmador, spun to see the noise’s source, weapons in defensive stances and ready for anything.

  “I think zat was me,” Qolmador admitted.

  A strained sigh escaped the group at the same time.

  “I’m scouting ahead this time, Qol,” Nomad said. “Your mental… thing ain’t doin’ a lot of good against these zombies.”

  “It’s not easy to find a mindless zombie….” Qolmador bristled.

  Holding his rifle at the ready, Nomad gave the room a cursory scan. “Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Sangna, you good in the dark?”

  “Aye.” Sangna confirmed.

  “Alright, I’ll search the right; you pull up the left. Quietly,” Nomad instructed. “Qol, take a peek at these sarcophagi; see iffen you don’t see anything useful.”

  “Oh sure, let me do exactly what you tell me,” Qolmador said, rolling his eyes.

  “Good man,” Nomad said, stepping into the void before Qolmador could argue.

  Qolmador grunted, feeling his scaly feet grate against the rough, unworked stone floor. Sangna threw his shoulder into Qolmador, causing him to stumble headfirst into a marble sarcophagus over its lip.

  “You did zat on purpose!” Qolmador whined.

  Nomad shushed him harshly with a: “Quiet!”

  “Aye, lizard, quiet.” Sangna purred. “Don’t want to wake the dead.”

  Qolmador shot daggers into the dwarf until he vanished deeper into the cave, plodding his fat feet along the cave floor. Sparing a glance at Nomad, he saw him move past the limits of his vision but never heard his feet hit the cave floor.

  “Show-off,” Qolmador muttered.

  From his vantage point in the vast round chamber, he could see a pattern that the caskets made. At the north end, one stone casket was turned head first toward the center; on either side of the cave, the other four fanned out similarly in a semi-circle.

  This resting ground would have been magnificent once, but now all the crowns were destroyed from the inside. With a grunt, he pushed himself off the dark marble coffin; he felt an indention he hadn’t noticed before. A line of text describing the body that once resided within ran along the perimeter of the coffin; he felt his curiosity peak as he read.

  “Here lies Eilinn the Saint of Caden, one of the Five high-born elves noble enough to lay down their lives to end the first Demon Lord’s reign. She allowed the sacred holy flames of the Soul Plane to burn through her to purify the corpse of the Demon Lord. The flames engulfed her as the evil writhing inside the corpse required much energy; no mortal, no matter how powerful, was meant to channel it. So she was buried with….”

  Qolmador spat as some words were too faded to read, but the tale’s end read:

  “Now, her soul rests with her Deity, leaving her body to guard the most precious of artifacts.” He muttered. “Let’s see what you were buried with.”

  Peering over the edge into the empty box to search for hidden treasure enthralled him so much that he didn’t notice the dark hand reaching out to him. It grabbed his shoulder in a tight grip.

  “No!” He yelled while hurling a piece of the stone lid, with his mind, at his assailant.

  His assailant ducked low, avoiding the rocketing chunk of stone.

  “You are jumpier than a fairy in an iron factory,” Nomad said, still holding Qolmador. “I found a door about one hundred yards in.”

  He narrowed his artificially green eyes at the kobold. “Your heart rate is higher than it should be. Did ya find something?”

  “First, don’t look at my vitals. It’s weird.

  Second, if it’s high, it’s because of you.

  Third, I think zis is the tomb of zee Five Lights.” He responded.

  Nomad stared blankly at him for a few seconds, shaking his head.

  “Zee tomb of zee Five Lights? Zee five heroes that gave their lives to sacrifice the first Demon Lord several thousand years ago.” Qolmador said, searching Nomad’s blank face. “Seriously? Nothing? Okay, it all started…. No, there is too much to explain; know these are no normal brutes, und I suggest caution.”

  Nomad nodded. “Makes sense,” he paused and looked up into the darkness, raising his rifle to look down the scope. “Where’s the dwarf?” Qolmador scanned as far as his vision would allow in the pitch of darkness; neither made a sound.

  Steady drips all around the cave splashed into dark puddles, and the stench of death still hung in the air.

  “Maybe he ran aw—” Qolmador started.

  Krackooooom!

  Hideous peels of laughter rushed through the air from where Sangna was supposed to be; a dark slate aura spewed from a wall in ribbons of light whipping wildly. Qolmador swore he saw stretched, wailing faces outlined in the burst of light; he looked to Nomad, who was already sprinting deeper into the cave.

  “Scheisse.” Qolmador cursed, taking off after him. As they passed the sarcophagi, he noticed the one at the center still had its crown firmly attached, holding whatever was inside captive. Storing the observation for later, he focused on Nomad’s quiet footsteps racing further ahead of him. In half a breath, he saw a narrow tunnel that Nomad was halfway down.

  Krackooooom!

  Another flash of slate light followed by pained, nightmarish howls filled the narrow tunnel; Nomad slid to a doorway, propping up his leg on the frame, aiming the scope in one motion to fire a blustering shot. The noise ricocheted off the walls in a dissonant roar that nearly toppled Qolmador, dazing him for a moment. Staggering to catch up to Nomad, he got a horrific look into the room beyond the door.

  Two brute zombies held onto the dwarf’s arms and legs, trying to pull him apart; he knew if this weren’t a dwarf, the job would be done already. One of the brutes was missing an arm and half its torso, but it didn’t seem to notice, while the other had a massive hole in its chest, leaking rivulets of slate light and gory viscera. Their faces were in varying stages of decomposition, revealing a shadow of their once glorious lives.

  The dwarf grimaced from the struggle, trying to slash at the brutes with his free arm; Nomad chambered another round; Qolmador prepared this time as he squeezed the trigger. A fiery slug cracked out of the rifle, slamming into the one-armed brute’s knee, causing it to stagger and fall. It hit with a sickening thud, crumpling under its own weight but maintained its hold on Sangna. Having saved his ears, Qolmador ran into the room with an outstretched hand.

  Ripples of psychic energy pulsed through the air, pounding into the one-armed, one-legged brute who turned to Qolmador with a curious look. Using the distraction, Sangna wrenched his wrist free in its moment of confusion. The brute let him go smashing into the hard cold stone floor with a grunt and sickening crack. Qolmador saw the light go out of Sangna’s eyes the moment his head slapped the cave floor but breathed easier when his chest rose. The brute, Qolmador dominated, stared at him, waiting for instructions.

  The other brute hoisted Sangna into the air by his ankles and began to pull; its decrepit muscles strained from the effort. Crunchy popping sounds echoed around the cave as the brute roared in a burst of zombified rage. Qolmador saw Sangna’s leg stretch further than it should have been able to, feeling his stomach threaten to empty its contents onto the floor.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Another muzzle flash, followed by a deafening rupture of gunpowder, lit up the brute’s face right before its brain painted the cave wall. Both it and Sangna dropped to the floor, unmoving. Qolmador wrapped his mind around the gunblade, swinging it at the remaining brute, separating his head from his shoulders.

  “Huh,” Nomad grunted. “Not so useless after all.”

  “These circumstances are not ideal for me!” He complained, walking up to the cleric.

  Nomad scanned the rest of the room for more zombies but only saw the two dead brutes. He watched the kobold approach the cleric and whisper something in his ear, to which the dwarf coughed and spit blood onto the cave floor. Qolmador placed a hand on the dwarf’s head, closing his eyes and muttering something Nomad couldn’t read on Qol’s dragon-like lips. As soon as he stopped muttering, a blurred mixture of broken reality and nightmarish voices danced around his head.

  “Come hold his leg into place,” Qol said, not opening his eyes.

  Nomad affixed his gun to his back, rushed to Sangna, and set his leg back into the socket with a wet snap, hanging loosely in his hand. He looked at Qol and the distorted reality around his head, waiting for something to happen. Sangna’s skin looked clammy, and his breaths were shallow; patches of his blond beard clung to his sweaty skin. He looked to Qolmador with a worried glance.

  “Good, hold zat steady,” Qol said.

  He watched reality bend and break over Qol’s head to move toward Sangna; it twisted and writhed like some slimy eel with no form. The distortion slid down his body coiling its way to his recently set leg when he felt the strength return to the joint, holding itself in place. With a deep sigh, Nomad watched reality return to normal, evening out around the edges.

  “Why…” He found himself starting to ask.

  “Because we cannot go back with half our team dead!” Qol said. “Nein, we need to show zat we are capable even if it’s really you und me.” He stood, kicking the cleric on the way up.

  “No. Why didn’t you heal Bythorin?” Nomad asked.

  “Who?” Qolmador asked.

  “The elf!”

  “Oh. Because his head was ripped off, I can only trick a body into healing itself; zat guy was really dead.” Qol said without malice. “Shall we continue zee killing?”

  Qolmador stepped into the tunnel leading to the room with the sarcophagi turning to wait for Nomad, who pointed to the now-breathing dwarf.

  “Leave him, zere are no doors here,” Qolmador urged.

  “Damn, kid, you really are a cold lizard.” Nomad chuckled, earning a grunt from the kobold.

  After dragging Sangna to a darker corner and resting him comfortably, Nomad followed the annoyed kobold back into the sarcophagus room. It remained unchanged from the last encounter, and Nomad walked past Qol to quietly examine the door across the chamber. He peered through a space between the wooden frame into another long dark tunnel similar to the one across the chamber. Checking the door’s hinges, he pulled out a vial of gun oil, dripping it on the old rusted metal to push it open without a sound.

  Looking down the tunnel caused him to turn back to Qol and start making several hand gestures; he chopped down his hand and then swiped it across his neck. Followed by walking his forefinger and middle finger across his palm ending him in a downward motion, then he brought his finger to his mouth in the universal shushing motion. Qol gave him a blank expression, curling up his lip.

  “Would it be easier to talk like zis?” Qolmador asked into Nomad’s mind.

  Jolting from the sudden speech in his mind, he dropped his gun oil to the ground in an explosion of glass and liquid. The sound echoed throughout the cavern, bouncing off of every wall; Nomad heard it fade deeper down the tunnel. Neither of them moved in the ensuing silence; after what seemed like hours, they each took a breath.

  “What was zat f—?” Qolmador started to in his mind.

  An all too familiar roar from deep within the tunnel thundered toward them; Qolmador and Nomad ducked away from the door in time to see an enormous brute slam through, splintering the wood. Chunks of wood flew all over the stone floor and clung to a massive disfigured form; it took deep, ragged breaths. Pieces of its face sloughed off from years in a coffin and having ripped through the wooden door. Its crooked jaw hung to one side; a golden eye glared out from under a heavy brow; Its once lush and beautiful beard barely clinging to rotting flesh now dripping from his face. A bulbous broken nose sat in the middle of its square head and wore a rusted helmet with a flat top and gold trim.

  “Is zat a giant dwarf?” Qolmador yelled in his head.

  Nomad, having just rolled away, slipped out his rifle and started lining up his shot but hesitated to see Qol seemingly transform. Qol brought his clawed hands to either side of his head; in a practiced motion and unleashed a dreamlike substance out of his head, blurring what was real. Reality cracked and bent into geometric shapes out of Qol’s head; the pupils of his eyes shattered into mandalas focused on the giant dwarf. Thrusting his hands forward, the geometric shapes slammed into the brute’s joints, halting it in place.

  Nomad saw it struggle against the strange new reality wrapped around its body, and its head jerked around unnaturally as its jaw flopped around. Qol’s mandala eyes flared to life in an array of blues and gold locked on the brute; beads of sweat poured from his horns down his snout; Nomad stared in awe with his mouth slightly agape.

  “Shoot, zee damn thing!” Qolmador yelled.

  Shaking himself back into focus and looking down the sight, he flipped a switch on the side of his gun and squeezed. A flash of the muzzle lit up the wide cave opening, followed by a streak of burning white ripping through the air. The white line struck the brute’s head, snapping it to one side with a painful crackle echoing through the cave. Its head hung limply to one side, dead eyes glaring at Qolmador.

  “Zat did nothing!” He cried as the brute broke free from the geometric reality.

  Qolmador felt waves of exhaustion wash over him; his mind felt empty, and he staggered back from the coming onslaught. The brute stumbled forward, its jaw and head swung in opposite directions; Qolmador scrambled back hard into a stone coffin.

  “Fitting.” His addled mind thought seconds before the brute descended on him.

  As lurched forward, a muffled explosion ruptured from somewhere in its head, causing its eyes to pop out onto the stone cave floor; Qolmador gasped from the eyes falling in his lap. Then the brute toppled on top of him and the coffin.

  Flipping the hulking mass off of Qol, Nomad saw the small blue kobold and let out a sigh of relief. “You doin’ alright, Qol?” He asked, surprised by the roughness of his voice. The little kobold stirred but strained to open his eyes.

  “I’ll live,” He groaned. “What kind of bullet was zat?”

  “I’ll tell you later; right now, I think we have another problem,” He said. “This coffin’s still sealed.” He patted the sealed crown of the coffin Qol rested on; the kobold looked up at it, the mandala in his eyes no longer there.

  “Ja, I saw zat earlier,” he confirmed groggily. “I think we need to open it and finish zis.” He pushed himself up on wobbly legs to face the coffin.

  “You sure yer up to it? I just watched you collapse,” Nomad pointed out.

  “It happens.” He said dismissively. “Get ready; I’m going to take off the lid und hold zee beast within. Don’t hesitate this time.”

  Nomad considered Qol for a long moment before nodding and taking a few steps back to brace himself against a wall. Rifle at the ready, he thought to Qol: “Okay, go,” Qol looked at him expectantly, then threw his hands into the air with an annoyed grimace. “I thought: ‘Go’ to you.” He said out loud.

  “I’m not always reading your mind, jeez,” Qolmador said. “Now we are linked. I’m going.”

  With that thought sent, he bent reality again, this time around the coffin’s crown, geometric shapes wrapped around the edges. Taking a deep breath, he thrust his hands away from Nomad, throwing the lid with less effort than he thought. It clattered to the floor but didn’t break; he refocused the distorted reality into the coffin, grabbing… nothing. Keeping his focus, he inched closer to the coffin peering over the edge.

  “It’s empty.”