After fifteen minutes of searching, we came up almost entirely empty.

  We had stuck to the main room, since we hadn’t been able to open the thick metal door. It had absorbed the damage of the fight without any visible wear, and Cassie thought that it was enchanted.

  Unfortunately, our battle with the man had destroyed most of the room. Patches of stone were scorched from Cassie’s lightning and eroded by the necromancer’s withering magic, and the actual contents of the room hadn’t fared all that well.

  Cassie and Jenny did manage to work together long enough to figure out the purpose of the ritual circle. Apparently it was a multi-use ritual, which stored mana and then fed it into spells. That was how he had been fending us all off at once when he had been standing in it. It too had been damaged in the fight however, so there wasn’t much more to do with it.

  By the time we were done, we had managed to save a single unbroken specimen jar, a sheaf of half-burned notes and one corpse, which was perfectly preserved. Jenny was looking over the corpse and the specimen whilst the rest of us tried to decode the notes.

  “I’ve got something about a man called Ryker here, who the necromancer apparently worked for,” Cassie declared. “It seems like he was going to double cross him at some point during ‘the plan’.”

  “‘The plan’, really? Who writes like that in their personal notes?” I groaned, not for the first time. I was starting to see why the Revenant had named this guy ‘The One That Hides’, he was seriously paranoid.

  Despite living unknown in an abandoned sewer system he still wrote notes like he was talking around every other word. One of the pages was abruptly in another language, and I was starting to think that when things went bad he actively targetted some of his more important research. The most damage done to just about everything was from decaying bolts that ‘went wide’, after all.

  “I’ve found a name for our mystery necromancer,” Neil exclaimed. His leg was still healing slowly, so he limped over from the desk he’d set himself up at. “We just fought one Matthais… something. I Couldn’t find a last name, but it’s something.”

  Cassie raised an eyebrow. “What are you gonna do, look up his name in the registry? He lived in the sewers, I doubt he was up to date on his tax information.”

  Neil waggled his hand. “Sure, maybe not. But he can’t have lived in the sewers forever, right? If we can find who he was, then maybe we can find out what drove him down here in the first place. More information is always better, remember?”

  Cassie and I both rolled our eyes. “From five minutes ago? Yeah, I remember,” Cassie said.

  “Well it’s worth repeating,” Neil argued. “It’s only the best way to stay alive, maybe more people need to hear it.”

  “Guys,” Jenny called out from where she was sat cross legged on the floor. “I have some information for you, if you can quiet down for five seconds.”

  We quickly shut up and surrounded Jenny, who stood up and raised the preservation jar up to eye level. “Before I start, what do you all think this is?”

  I looked at the jar. The fluid that the specimen was suspended in was thick and murky, but I could still make out the general features of it. It looked a bit like a tongue, if you took a tongue and merged it with a tadpole.

  At a glance it was pretty normal, but the more I looked the more I saw strange features. It was definitely longer than a human tongue, and the tapered end had little flaps like the fins on a squid that seemed to fold in. It also seemed weirdly muscular.

  “...A tongue?” I tried.

  Jenny grinned. “Yep. More specifically, this is the tongue of a vampire. See those little flaps? Those are actually suckers, makes a vacuum seal for when they bite so no blood escapes. This is big.”

  “Why? He was a necromancer, of course he has weird body parts,” Neil pointed out.

  Jenny’s grin turned almost predatory. “Ah, ah. Not quite. See, I don’t imagine you guys know this but vampires and necromancers don’t exactly see eye to eye. Vampires like to hold themselves as the peak of undeath, necromancers specialise in proving them wrong. It’s a hate-hate relationship, is what I’m saying.”

  “So…” Cassie prompted.

  “So, if this necromancer has a vampire tongue then he has to know a vampire that likes him, right?” Jenny finished.

  “Uh, couldn’t he just kill one?” I asked. That seemed like the simplest way to get someone’s tongue to me. Not that it was knowledge I imagined myself needing, but still.

  Jenny shook her head, but Neil jumped in before she could explain. “Vampires turn to ash on death. The tongue would have needed to be taken from a living vampire.”

  Jenny shot the adventurer a dirty look. “...Correct. Something about the way vampirism reacts to the removal of the soul from the body just disintegrates it. However, there’s another reason that this is significant.”

  When she paused for dramatic effect, Cassie was forced to wave her along. It was fun to see her on the other side of this situation for once.

  “Well,” Jenny continued. “A vampire’s tongue is significant because vampire saliva is integral to their lifestyle. They actually have multiple different kinds, but I’ll condense it all into one for the sake of explanation. Essentially, their saliva is simultaneously the vector of the disease, an anticoagulant and a recreational drug.”

  Neil coughed. “Why do you know so much about vampires?”

  Jenny frowned. “Why don’t you? They’re really cool. Anyway, that’s the wrong question. Who knows the right one, class?”

  Silence fell over the group.

  “Ugh, why do I even bother,” Jenny moaned. “The right question is ‘why is that so significant, mistress?’”

  “‘Mistress’?” Cassie muttered as Jenny continued to ramble.

  “Why, what excellent question, class.” She was completely talking to herself at this point. “If a vampire was willing to go through the effort of briefly losing their tongue, then there had to be a goal, right? So what was that goal? I have a theory, but you all won’t like it very much.”

  “Go on then,” Neil requested. “What’s this theory?”

  “Why, I’m so glad you asked. I think that this charming fellow,” she gestured to the corpse of Matthais. “Was trying to make a plague. A vampiric plague, specifically. Gods know why, though.”

  A chill settled over the room.

  “Did he succeed?” Neil demanded. “Does anything here tell you if he finished his work.”

  Jenny chuckled. “That’s the best part. I have no idea! If only we could have asked him…” She shot a pointed glance at me.

  “What, you wanted him alive? You’re a necromancer, do some necromancy on him.” I pointed out.

  She arched an eyebrow. “To do what? You tore his throat out, he’s not talking any time soon.”

  Cassie leapt to my defence. “Hey, lay off her. It was an intense situation. Besides, you saw what he did to her.” Another glance at my old body. Neither of us would be forgetting that one soon.

  Jenny smirked. “Oh, and I wonder why you’re so invested in her decisions, hm?”

  Cassie said nothing, but a faint blush dusted her cheeks.

  “That’s what I thought. Now, can we please go already? I’ve done my job twice over here, I want to go home.”

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Neil sighed. “How, exactly? You yourself asked how we were leaving earlier.”

  “Well, I’ve since come into new information.” She moved the jar into one hand and used the other to click her fingers. After a few seconds of waiting, I saw something move from behind a wall.

  From the stone emerged a small skeletal hand, which scuttled towards us like a pet running towards its owner. It bounded into Jenny’s now waiting arm, who proceeded to massage its bleached bones.

  “This is Hansen. He comes with me everywhere, and I had him scouting out the room while you lot were killing our late friend there. It took him a while to figure it out, but we reckon that there’s another illusion, like the way in,” Jenny explained.

  “Oh,” I said. I had been expecting some big reveal, like a big room of prototypes for this theorised plague or a horde of zombies or something. Still, it did seem in line with Matthias’ MO. “That’s it?”

  Jenny shrugged. “Probably. Hansen didn’t mention anything else, but his priorities aren’t always the same as everybody else’s. Isn’t that right, little guy? Yeah it is.” She started tickling Hansen’s palm, to which he started rolling around in her hand like a small dog.

  “...Putting aside how you got that information, I think that we’re done here. Unless there was anything on Matthais?” He turned to me, which prompted me to shrug.

  “I didn’t check when I… you know.” I said.

  Neil glanced uneasily at Jenny and her pet one last time before turning and limping confidently towards Matthais’ body. Without any hesitation he began rifling through the man’s pockets, although he clearly wasn’t finding much.

  Cassie sidled up to me. “Hey,” she said. She spoke completely normally, like we were about to start a normal conversation. Even putting aside what had happened between us, the environment alone made that unlikely.

  “Hey yourself,” I replied in my best attempt to act naturally. Now that the moment had passed I suddenly felt a little lost when it came to conversation with her. It was an odd feeling, being uncomfortable about anything when it came to Cassie. I wasn’t sure how to take it.

  She, of course, picked it up immediately. “Yeah, I thought this might happen. Look, I know it was sudden, but I don’t regret it. Do you?”

  “No!” I blurted in an attempt to assuage that particular idea. “It’s just…”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s fine. As I said, we’ll talk about it soon. This isn’t exactly the environment I had envisioned for it, is all.”

  I caught onto the potential meaning in her sentence. “You've been… envisioning this a lot?”

  She grinned. “Oh, you have no idea. We’ll get there, trust me. For now though, we have work to do. Let’s do it properly, yeah?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the idea that Cassie had been waiting for something like this to happen. It kind of felt me feel foolish for not seeing it, but that was outweighed a hundred times by the fact itself. “Sure. What did you need?”

  Cassie’s grin came off as more of a smirk this time. “Nothing at all. Just wanted to see how uncomfortable you would get.”

  I should have seen this coming. “Oh, I see how it is. I’m just here for your entertainment now, am I?”

  “Yep!” She chirped. I was about to retort when Neil finally returned with a defeated look on his face.

  “Nothing?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “Not unless you count one of his own fingers. I have no idea why he was carrying it in his pocket, but I have it now.”

  Jenny looked up from Hansen, who was now dancing on her hand for some reason. “Pass it here. Could be useful.”

  Neil shrugged and tossed her the finger, which was the same grey tone as Matthais’ desiccated skin. Rather than reach for it herself, Hansen leapt from her hand and grabbed the digit in mid-air, rolling to the floor as a fist before he grabbed it between two of his own fingers and presented it proudly to his creator.

  Jenny shot us an apologetic look. “Sorry, he’s a bit of a show-off.”

  “I wonder where he got that from?” Cassie muttered sarcastically.

  “What was that?” Jenny asked.

  Cassie straightened up a little. “Nothing.”

  Jenny eyed her suspiciously. “Sure…. Anyway, are we leaving or not?”

  I looked to Neil. “You think we’ve found everything?”

  He sighed. “Probably. We really should report this as soon as possible, so we should probably get going. We can send some people down here to get that door open later, so we’ll probably be fine.”

  Jenny smiled as she took the finger from Hansen and tucked it away… somewhere in her robes, which really couldn’t be sanitary. Then she picked him up and gingerly placed him on her shoulder, patting him once before straightening up and striding over to the wall.

  “Okay, so if these aren’t real then I should be able to just…” she continued walking without hesitation, passing directly through the wall like it simply wasn’t there.

  “Huh,” Cassie said. “I was sort of hoping that she would just walk into the wall like normal.”

  I chuckled and walked up next. Once I reached the wall, however, things got difficult. No matter how much I wanted to I simply couldn’t convince my body that I wasn’t about to walk into a solid wall.

  Unable to get through all at once, I started slow. I pressed a hand up against the wall, surprised to find that it felt solid, a flat plane of solid stone wall. I pushed harder, to no give. I couldn’t help but remember Almon’s little display at our Festival performance over a year ago now, when he had caught my spear in a force spell disguised by his illusion.

  I considered what I knew about my own illusions, but came up empty. This guy had been a wizard, not a sorcerer. According to Almon, wizardly illusions were far easier to create and maintain but relied heavily on the belief of their target. If you convinced yourself a wizard’s illusion wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be. Not for you, anyway.

  I suppose he would know.

  In all of the training and excitement, Almon’s potential secret identity had kind of fallen to the wayside. I suppose it was just another thing to consider when I found the time.

  Shaking my head to clear it, I tried to think of a way to convince myself that this wall wasn’t real. Sure, I had seen Jenny walk through it seconds before but I hadn’t experienced that. For all I knew, she had simply cast another spell and left us here.

  No, I needed to do something myself. I pressed against the wall again to no avail. My body was clocking something about it that my conscious mind wasn’t noticing, to my frustration. I pressed my whole body into the bricks before sliding to the floor in irritation, the force that I knew was fake but still believed in repelling me. For a fake wall, it was surprisingly perfect.

  Until it wasn’t.

  I stood again and pressed just a single hand to the wall, slowly dragging it across the bricks. I grinned as I abruptly fell through the air where the wall had been, revealing a giggling Jenny and a dancing Hansen waiting for me.

  Once I recovered from my tumble and dusted myself off, I quickly examined the area I had broken into. I was mainly quick because there really wasn’t much to examine, since this tunnel was just like the one that we had entered the room from, which was in turn like every tunnel down here.

  I turned back to see that it was Neil begin making his attempt at the wall. Cassie was looking around, not even paying attention to Neil as he ran his hands along the wall. He was muttering something, but I couldn’t hear it from this side of the illusion for some reason.

  “Nice fall,” Jenny said. “You looked really dumb slapping the air, but at least you got through eventually.”

  I turned to face her, discovering that she had sat down on the floor while she was waiting. “Wow, thank you so much,” I said flatly.

  She smirked. “You’re welcome. So, you gonna tell me what your deal is or not?”

  “Pardon?” Jenny was certainly blunt, when she actually wanted something more than entertainment. I’d only known her for about forty minutes and I was already a bit tired of her, but I needed to get used to her. It seemed like the Revenant had adopted her with the weird rune thing, so she would probably be around for a bit.

  “You know, your whole… you know,” she waved a hand at my entire body. “Weirdness.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You have a pet skeleton hand and I’m the weird one?”

  She scoffed. “Oh please. You were a steak with legs twenty minutes ago. Besides, whatever you did to me during that whole kerfuffle wasn’t particularly pleasant, so you owe me answers big time.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’m not human.”

  She made a face. “Really? Well, colour me bored. I know that, bug girl, I don’t want to hear what you aren’t. I want to hear what you are!” Despite her sarcasm there was a hint of the intense interest of before in her expression.

  “I’m a changeling. Happy?”

  She beamed. “Ecstatic. You won’t hear of the subject again. Promise.”

  I huffed. “Good.” It was still a bit weird to admit. I may have known for a year, but up until a few weeks ago I had basically just been a human with innate magic and the ability to resist disease and disfigurement. These days I was a lot less… internally consistent. A lot less externally consistent too, for that matter.

  “So,” Jenny tried next. “What’s with you and the storm mage?”

  I blinked at the suddenness of her question before turning to her. “Seriously?”

  She raised her hands. “What? Just making conversation.”

  Her interrogation was cut off by Neil stumbling through the illusory wall, barely catching himself.

  “Finally. Took you almost as long as it took her,” she jammed a thumb at me, which caused Hansen to copy the gesture.

  Neil stared at her for a second. “You seem more belligerent all of a sudden.”

  “I told you, I want to go home. This was pretty short notice, you know.”

  “Well, unlike the rest of us you could have just not come. The Revenant didn’t pick you until you involved yourself.” I chimed in.

  Jenny just rolled her eyes. “Sure, because when you’re asked by the branch manager of the Guild to do something you get to just ignore it.”

  That information was interesting. I suppose it made sense that Ren would link us up with a necromancer, given that two of our group were completely new.

  “Regardless, how was that not engaging for you?” Neil asked. “A fight to the death and the reveal of a potential plague?”

  Jenny shook her head. “I didn’t say it wasn’t interesting, just that I wanted to go home. The interesting stuff is done now, right?”

  “Probably,” Cassie chimed in. “I kind of agree with you, to be fair. I want out of here too.”

  I turned around in surprise. “How did you make it through so fast?”

  She grinned. “The illusion was powered by the ritual same as everything else.” She pointed to a point in the ritual circle that had been deformed and covered in scorch marks.

  I couldn’t help but laugh a bit at her explanation. I was glad she had taken on some theory after all, if she had managed to identify the ritual so quickly. I reached over and gave her a very quick hug, doing my very best not to be awkward.

  “Well,” Jenny announced. “Now that you’ve all conquered an illusion you knew was fake, shall we be off?”

  Patreon!