The walls thickened with mortar.
The bone underfoot was no longer loose. It had been set, pressed, layered.
Our breath fogged as we advanced, and it got cold enough that Anabeth had to fish a scarf from somewhere within her satchel and wrap it around her neck (I had no idea she had two scarves). A few paces ahead, she stopped so abruptly I nearly walked into her.
“Oh,” she said softly.
That alone set me on edge.
She crouched, fingers hovering just above the floor without touching it. The bones here had fused: marrow-glossed seams had bound femur to femur, while the vertebrae had compressed into load-bearing columns.
“This section achieved cohesion,” she said, reverent. “These look like multiple burials from the same epoch.”
I demanded, “Speak plainly.”
A sound came from ahead. Then from the side passage we’d just passed. Then from behind us.
I turned. The corridor we’d come through was still empty, but the bones lining its walls had… rotated.
Anabeth was practically vibrating. “My lord. If we linger, the loose interments will begin migrating. This chamber has the ability to call forth all the interments from nearby chambers! Such a wonderful sight to see.”
Excellent…
On the floor, bones slid across one another with the sound of careful masonry. Vertebrae stacked and femurs locked, then the walls breathed, audibly.
A section of fused bone bulged, then another, then another. Each of them shuddered as buried interments were drawn toward a central mass. At the center of the convergence held a nucleus, or at least that was the best word I could find for it.
From it, four thicker growths extended into the chamber walls, half-formed columns anchoring it in place.
Are those limbs?
“Oh!” Anabeth clasped her hands together. “Lovely-looking abutments.”
Abutments. I had never heard this word used outside of architecture.
I focused on the center.
Ceralis answered.
Architecture that had learned to hate intrusion. Yeah… I wasn’t slaying this one.
Now, for skill composition. It was interesting to see how the core of this thing and its ‘abutments’ essentially possessed different skills.
Fighting the mass of incoming monsters was useless. Targeting the core was useless. There was only one option: dispatching the nodes.
I looked around.
I drew myself up and let the aura build anyway. Habit, if nothing else.
“I will unmake you so completely that even your burial will forget you.”
The failure might as well have been a signal flare.
Loose interments levered themselves free from seams, rolling their skulls until their empty sockets all faced inward. From fissures in the mortar, hands emerged, then forearms, then whole torsos dragging themselves out. The Sumpwardens had emerged. It was a horrific sight to see.
They crawled, herded by invisible gradients, always angling toward the abutments and the core beyond them.
I glanced at my interface.
… Right. Guess I’d apply the valorous strategy of tactical leadership.
“My reverent follower Anabeth!” I declared. “This unsightly aggregation of improperly catalogued remains offends not only my senses, but the very principles of orderly burial. To sully my hands with such architectural malpractice would be beneath the dignity of my station. Therefore, I entrust you with its correction. Educate its core on the consequences of aspiring above its structural purpose.”
“Why, yes of course, my lord.” She paused. “But I must note that I have never personally engaged a gravebound macro-construct of this classification.”
“Novelty is irrelevant,” I declared. “Attend closely, for I shall now dispense knowledge drawn from the unfathomably deep well of my strategic acumen.” I angled myself so the worst of the crawling things would continue past me toward the core rather than at me. “Leadership required positioning. You must dismantle the nodes first, in an order that minimizes suffering and maximizes efficiency.”
Anabeth’s eyes shone. “Oh! A priority puzzle! Which node first, my lord?” A Sumpwarden crawled by her without notifying her of its intrusion, and she dropped a boulder on it, killing it instantly. “Bad manners!”
A wet grinding sound came from the wall to our left. The mortar there puckered, then split. Then two Sumpwardens crawled out of the wall.
I gestured imperiously toward the nearby node, “That one: The Interment Channel Node. Silence the mouth before it embarrasses the rest of the structure.”
“Of course, my lord!”
The boulder she summoned crushed straight through the Interment Channel Node.
Then the core pulsed.
Thirty or so Sumpwardens immediately converged on her position.
I took five very careful steps backward.
Rule Forty-Four of the Saint Merin Code: A valiant knight should never interfere with another person’s duly assigned business. Yes. This was neither cowardice nor self-preservation. This was respect for delegated authority.
The Sumpwardens closed in, dragging themselves over one another in a tide of bone and mortar. Soon, she found herself surrounded on all sides.
“My lord!” Anabeth declared proudly, turning just enough for me to see the joy on her face. “I shall demonstrate a technique worthy of a follower of the Overlord! You will have never seen this before!”
The choker unraveled into a length of an ionized air whip. Anabeth lifted her chin and began to chant,
“Bind the breath, refine the seam—
Let hollow break to ordered gleam.”
Her pupils and iris erased themselves in a flood of aetheric brilliance, and the whip flared to match. For a moment, I could only see white. The pressure in the chamber spiked so violently that the hair on my arms stood straight up and my teeth ached.
I took five more steps back.
Then Anabeth spun.
Which node should be destroyed first?
