Christabel's guide to necromancy and world domination

Is this supposed to be an evil lab?

Delindemin, to her credit, was taking everything in a very chill way. I was not sure how much was her, and how much was her head being still scrambled from the whole "I used to be a mindless undead creature and now I am lucid again" thing. Anyway, she was not protesting to me changing our plan from "find the flying machines this super-cliched Evil Overlord should be hiding in his tacky dark tower and escape" to "find out what his servants were talking about when they mentioned things from another world, save the annoying fairy who got herself kidnapped if we can, and then find the flying machines and escape".

No, she did not protest. She just immediately decided that was my plan from the beginning, as expected from a powerful sorceress like yours truly, and that I just waited to share it with me until she had proved her value. Because I was obviously the one that had given her back her lucidity with the clear, obvious intent of making her my servant, so now she had to obey all my orders and call me "mistress". I am sure that would be an interesting arrangement for somebody else, especially considering she was a red-haired beauty, but I was not really into that. I was just wondering if all the elves were like that, if it was an after-effect of being undead, or if it was just... well, her.

And so here we were, sneaking in a corridor. Our steps were silenced by the thick black carpet over the floor, and there were no windows, just narrow slits on the stone walls that created small puddles of moonlight on the carpet. There was a larger, warmer light coming out under a door, and a few voices chatting on the other side, but we were going in the opposite direction, the one the voices had come from a few minutes earlier. I had no idea what I could find there, but they mentioned things from another world, so right now it was my best bet at finding a way home, or at least an explanation about how I had arrived in that fantasy world.

Luckily the corridor was empty, and the people in the other room did not seem in any hurry to come out. I was not sure we could win a fight against them, and if they sounded an alarm we would be in big trouble. Really, that entire plan was based on luck.

There was another door around a corner, wide open, a puddle of light in front of it. There was noise coming from inside the room, a sound like a bird chirping, and when we stopped in front of it I recognized Night- on- the- River's voice. The small fairy was probably not hurt too much if she could swear and insult whoever was with her that much, and wow, I had no idea fairies could get that inventive or graphic about death threats. Though to be honest she had already revealed to be far less innocent than a butterfly-winged hummingbird-sized creature had any right to be.

Delindemin sneaked to the other side of the door with all the silent grace of an undead ninja elf, and peaked inside, then she made a gesture for me to come forward. I followed, and looked inside. The room looked like somebody had seen a picture of a mad scientist's lab, and decided to remake it in a fantasy fashion. There were tables covered in glittering colored vials, candles and scrolls of ancient-looking paper. In the empty space in the middle of the room there was a circle engraved in the stone floor, mysterious rune-like symbols and candles surrounding it. The wall was covered in black tapestries with golden embroidery creating abstract patterns on them, and there was just one large window in front of us, large purple curtains around it, its red glass filtering the moonlight, giving it a blood-like hue that was just enhanced by the warm light of the candles. I had a feeling these were normal flames, not the magic light from the torches that had lightened our exploration so far.

Which was just stupid in my opinion, because all those scrolls and tapestries had to be highly inflammable, and whatever was in those vials could very well be explosive. So, standard mad scientist's approach to job security. Seriously, this guy was looking less and less competent any moment I spent in his lair.

There was a small cage on the table too, and the angry chirping was coming from there. The room looked empty of any other person, which was very good for our chances of survival.

"Wait here and keep watch for anybody coming in." I instructed my self-proclaimed minion, then I went inside the room. I could not shake the feeling that everything was too easy, and that I was walking into a trap. Must be all those fantasy books and movies I enjoyed in the other world where the very same situation applied.

Night- on- the- River stopped chirping death threats and squealed in delight:

"You came to save me! That's great!"

Well, I had been unsure about the whole saving her, but let's go with that. I inspected the simple iron cage, and noticed a small lock.

"Any chance the key is just laying around somewhere here?" I asked.

"That monster brought them with him when he left." she complained, pouting.

"You mean the Orcs or the overlord?"

"The overlord. I had never seen him before... not in person, I mean. He is creepy."

"Another good reason not to wait for him to come back." I muttered, looking around. Okay, I'll be honest, a small part of me wanted to wait and see how an evil overlord looked like in real life, but I was not that idiot yet. Also, this one had been disappointing me with his attitude to security and evil lair style, he would probably disappoint me in person too.

I could not see anything that I could use to pick the lock... scratch that, I had no idea how to pick a lock. And there was another reason I was there.

"Have you seen anything that looked from another world? Or heard anything about it?" I investigated, examining the table. I had hoped in something obvious like a mobile phone or a gun, but there was nothing that looked out of place. Maybe Delindemin had misunderstood what the orcs had said, or maybe all these things came from my world, just from one of those New age shop whose stuff doubled as great Harry Potter's merchandise.

"The overlord said something about meeting an emissary from another world tonight, and then he would be back to..." she stopped, shivered, and continued: "... experiment on me. Did I mention he is creepy?"

"Yeah, you did. Did he say anything else about this emissary?" I asked, wondering if maybe he had been talking about me. I had already been mistaken for a sorceress and a necromancer, there was a trend from people in this world to exaggerate my role in the weird coincidences happening around me.

"Just that he would be here soon, like always."

Okay. Either this evil overlord suffered from gender confusion, or he was not talking about me. Also, like always suggested that this emissary had been here for a long time. Well, then I could stop wasting time in that room and get on with it.

"Any idea how to open that cage?"

"Can't you use your magic?"

Right. Talking about exaggerating my role. I was going to explain, but she went first:

"Oh, of course not, how silly of me. Using magic in this place could start a dangerous chain reaction, and alert everybody about your presence."

"Let's go with that." I sighed, then I made an operative decision. "I'm bringing the cage, we'll figure a way out when we are safer."

She started something that sounded like a protest, but I ignored her. The cage was very small, but heavier than it looked like, but working at a delivery service in my old world had thankfully taught me how to handle items. On second thought, I also grabbed as many of the scrolls lying on the table that I could take. If we managed to escape, maybe I could get some useful information out of them, and it was not like the Evil Overlord needed them. He had others.

"Back to the stairs." I hissed to Delindemin, when I was out. "The plan is back to finding the flying machines and getting the hell out of here."

The elf nodded, and we made our way to the stairs. I wished I had more time to explore the evil magical lab, but I did not want to rely on my dumb luck too much. Our super-secret infiltration mission so far had been so anti-climatic it would have been disappointing, if it were not the best thing happening to me in the last hours.

So of course, when we arrived back to the spiral staircase and we started going up, we came face to face with a hooded figure coming down from the opposite direction.