Christabel's guide to necromancy and world domination

Do they even know what security is here?

Crouching and shivering in the shadows of a small stone hut, I waited for Delindemin to come back from her scouting around the tower. Because sneaking into an Evil Overlord's fortress to steal a flying machine was stupid enough without going in through the main door passing in front of the trenches full of life-sucking wraiths.

The plan was simple. Find a better entrance, wait until we were sure that there was nobody around, make a mad run to the tower and hope that there were not sentinels, and then improvise our way to the top where, with some luck, the flying machines were. Then hope that they were easy to pilot. It was the kind of plan that was based on sheer luck and desperation, of course.

There was a movement on my side, and I turned, a small shriek caught in my throat. It was just my favorite undead elf (also known as the only one of them who had done something more useful than trying to sacrifice me in a weird ritual) slipping in the shadows with a small smile on her face.

"You were right, of course, Mistress. There is another smaller door on the other side of the tower, and I didn't see any sentinels."

"Yeah, they are probably not expecting to get attacked." I whispered back. I had been trying to stop her from calling me "mistress" for a while, before we started our trek to the tower, but I had almost given up. If she could not get in her head that I had no awesome magical powers despite me, well, not demonstrating any kind of magical power, I was not going to insist.

I followed her in a wide circle that took us between the small improvised homes, and then in front of the tower again. I would have missed the small, dark door hiding in a corner, almost invisible in the dark stone wall, if she had not pointed it out.

"It's not locked." she added.

"Wow. It's like he wants to be robbed." I considered. The idea froze me for a second, maybe it was all just a trap? I mean, nobody could be that stupid, right? Then I considered the kind of world I had found myself in and decided that yes, they could be that stupid.

"Okay, let's go."

We crossed the empty space in a hurry, and I was expecting to get attacked any moment, or that a trap was going to open under our feet and swallow us whole, but nothing happened. We reached the darkness of the wall in an anti-climatic but very welcome lack of troubles.

The small door opened creaking, revealing a narrow corridor, where conveniently placed torches cast a dim light over wet stones and large, ghostly spiderwebs. I could not decide if they were there for the atmosphere or if the cleaning services were as lacking as security. Going with the architecture outside, probably the first.

"Why would they leave torches on in an empty corridor?" I wondered, frowning. Coming closer, I realized they were not normal torches. The flame did not have any warmness in it, and its color was subtly wrong, a bright red that was more like a child's drawing of a flame than a real one. Of course they were magical torches, so probably they just kept them on with no need for anyone to swap them.

The floor was dusty, but there were a lot of large Orc footprints on it, and smaller ones too, maybe from children, so it was not likely that they could immediately deduce there were intruders around just from those. We made our way in the corridor, Delindemin in front of me. It was going slightly uphill, and it was not straight, it had a slight curve, so I estimated it was probably following the exterior wall of the tower. It took a while to find the first door, a wooden door with a small window closed by metal bars on it.

The elf peeked inside, and then she jumped back, her hands on her mouth. For a seasoned warrior she was quite jumpy. I followed her example, and found myself staring at the shape of a giant worm, just like the one that had exploded out of the ground, dead, some hours earlier. The one in front of me now was smaller, and there was an open patch on his pinkish gray skin, revealing a bubbly jelly-like inside. No muscles or meat, just dark gray jelly. Well, the Orcs had mentioned that their master was building those things, so it made sense that they were different. It was only weird that I had not noticed it when I was hiding under one of their corpses, but to be honest I had tried not to pay too much attention to my surrounding, and to focus on not getting caught by Orcs.

Well, if that Evil Overlord was stupid enough to make his giant worms in his tower, it reinforced my hopes that he kept his flying machines there too.

"Come on, let's find a way upstairs." I said.

We kept walking. The corridor was eerily silent, and the only movement was the flickering light of the torches, creating weird shadows around us. I could feel my nerves becoming more and more tense, I was expecting something to happen any moment now.

The second door we found looked exactly like the first, but on the other side there was just an empty room, with large chains attacked to the stone walls. The third door led to a small spiral staircase, which was exactly what we were looking for, and once again a bit too convenient. Also, it was so narrow that if something came from the other side there was no way it was going to miss us, and my plan to ninja- sneak our way out would fail horribly.

But we had no choice. Delindemin went first, once again, and I followed her, turning every few moments to keep an eye on the door behind us. The stair was dimly illuminated by the same kind of torches there were in the corridor, but the angles made impossible to see what was on top. We found a door, and after a glance at me and a quick nod from my part, the elf pushed it open just enough to see what was on the other side. Another corridor, this time covered in a dark red carpet, with large windows that let the moonlight in, and I could spot the silhouette of a gargoyle outside.

"This is the first floor. Let's keep going up." I whispered. If every different part that I had seen outside was a different floor, I calculated trying to remember everything that I had seen, the roof was at least fifteen floors up. It would be a long trek, even if we met nobody. Judging from the curfew they had mentioned, and the two Orcs I had seen going away, the working day was probably over, so there would be less people to worry about.

We managed to arrive to the sixth floor before anything happened. There were voices coming from the door, and we stopped dead in our track. Luckily, the door was closed, and the voices soon faded away in the distance.

"Any idea what they were talking about?" I whispered to my companion.

"They were cursing something that had bit them." she replied.

I had an idea:"They may be talking about Night- on- the- River."

"Who?"

"The little fairy. You met her for a few minutes just before a giant worm exploded under our feet, remember?" I reminded her.

"Oh, right. The little one. What do we do?"

I thought about it. On the one hand, the small fairy and her friends had technically tried to kill me by throwing me off a tree, though she claimed that they just did it to test my magical powers. Which were non-existent, despite a curious series of coincidences I was still not sure about that had ended with me raising a small army of skeleton dwarves from death. I wondered if they were worried that I had disappeared, they were all so nice.

Okay, no getting distracted, Chris. Annoying fairy. Save her or not?

"Oh, they also said something about things from another world. Is that useful?"

I sighed, steeled myself against the Powers of Irony that ruled that universe, and declared:

"Change of plans. We need to know what they are talking about, so... we are going out there."