CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Uninvited Guests
Yak stood behind the bar, sleeves rolled, brow furrowed in deep, cocktail-based concentration.
“I’m calling this one ‘The Aftermath,’” he muttered, mostly to himself, as he dropped a sliver of something green and faintly glowing into a shaker. “It’s going to be sweet, sour, and slightly acidic. Hopefully it will make you question your life choices.”
Carrie fluttered to her usual perch at the bar and eyed the glowing green substance with suspicion. “Are you sure that’s edible?”
“Fairly sure,” Yak said cheerfully, shaking with enough force to dislodge a shelf. “If it isn’t, that’s where the questioning your life choices part comes in,” he added with a wink.
“If that’s true, I think it sounds pretty accurate,” I muttered to Trunch, who nodded sagely.
Behind him, Din wandered toward the corner window and inspected it quizzically.
“Didn’t we have all the windows repaired after the molotov incident?” he asked.
“We did,” Trunch replied. “I found and paid the glasswright myself.” He looked proud. The window did not.
“So this wasn’t broken when we left?” Din said, picking a large shard off the floor and peering into the alley.
“Oh, Az mentioned that before he left,” Day cut in from the table. “Said there was a party here last night. Apparently it got a little crazy.”
“The best parties always do,” Carrie murmured with a smile.
Din’s face went white as he looked toward the bar.
“The head!” he gasped. “Yak, is Dominic’s head still in the cupboard?”
Yak was carefully pouring ‘the aftermath’ into glasses, biting his tongue in concentration. “I don’t know,” he replied. “The cupboard door is broken though.”
“Shit!” Din dashed across the room, shoving Trunch aside and knocking over a stool in the process. He tore what remained of the cupboard door off its hinges and lunged forward to peer inside.
A moment later he placed a cloth-wrapped bundle on the bar with a resounding thud and carefully unwrapped the severed head of Dominic.
“It looks pretty good, considering,” Carrie observed.
“I put a little preservation spell on it to keep it from decomposing,” Din replied, wrapping it back up and carefully returning it to its dark hiding spot.
“Why, exactly, are you keeping it?” I asked, not really wanting an answer.
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Trunch added.
Din’s voice, muffled from within the cupboard, came back. “Answers.” As if that were a satisfying or well-explained reason. There was the sound of items being moved around. Din spoke again from inside the cupboard.
“Yak,” he said slowly. “Did you move the box?”
Yak paused, blinking.
“The box?”
The upper half of Din emerged from the cupboard. “Yes.” His tone was tight. “The box. With the egg thing. From the Whispering Crypts.”
Yak leaned over and squinted. “Oh. Huh.”
“What huh?” Din asked.
“Well the head’s still there,” Yak said. “And it looks like all our money is still there. But the box is definitely gone.”
“Did anyone move the box?” Din inquired to the room at large, meeting a chorus of shaking heads.
“Do you think the box and the window are… y’know, connected?” Carrie asked. The look on Din’s face implied he wasn’t okay with the amount of excitement in her voice.
A loud sigh of relief cut the tension as Umberto appeared on the stairs, adjusting his loincloth and tossing a mug down to Yak.
“Mr barkeep sir,” he bellowed cheerfully, “I’ll have another.”
“Umberto, did you move the eggbox?” Din pressed.
“No,” Umberto replied, snatching a now-full mug from Yak’s outstretched hand and walking over to the table in the center of the room. “Az said he and Iestyn moved it after the giant testicles came out of it.”
Drink came out of Carrie’s nose. “I’m sorry? The what came out of it?” she asked.
Wikis’ eyes narrowed as she glanced first at the cupboard behind the bar and then to the broken window in the corner.
Din, clearly disarmed and caught off guard, shook his head. “Giant testicles?”
Umberto threw himself onto a stool and picked up the coin markers. “That’s what Az said. Giant testicles came out of the box.”
Din and Trunch looked visibly confused.
“And, you didn’t ask for further clarification?” Trunch asked.
Umberto slapped a coin onto the table, “Nope. He looked pretty shaken up, thought it best not to press him on it until tomorrow.”
“Where, exactly, are they?” Din asked looking around, “Iestyn and Az, I mean.”
“Iestyn is upstairs, I’m not sure about Az. They both looked exhausted – Iestyn could barely stand.” Day barely looked up as he spoke. “I told both of them to get some rest.”
Umberto pointed to Day then tapped his own head and wordlessly raised a glass in agreement.
Din looked toward the stairs. “I think we should wake him.”
“No,” Carrie said quickly.
“He’s just a kid,” Wikis added. “Let him sleep.”
Yak walked over to the table with a tray of his latest creation.
“If he survived the kind of party that breaks windows and has boxes with giant testicles, I say we let the boy rest,” he said, placing a glass of faintly glowing green liquid in front of each of us.
“We can ask them more later,” Umberto continued, reaching for Yak’s creation without hesitation. “But for now, let’s get back to telling Klept how I kicked more vampire ass.”
“The box might-” Din started before Day laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I think it’ll be fine,” he said reassuringly. “There’s not much we can do now, we all need rest. Az and Iestyn can fill us in later. Let’s just finish telling Klept what happened so he can record it.”
Din reluctantly took a seat at the table, his eyes kept flicking back to the broken cupboard. He absent-mindedly raised his glass while mouthing the word ‘testicles’ to himself, as if pondering the veracity of the statement. Wikis muttered something about ‘bad lines of sight,’ stood, and repositioned herself. Her stool gave a low creak as she dragged it slightly closer to the broken window. She nocked an arrow, drew it halfway, then let it rest, still taut, at her side. One hand held the bow steady, the other cradled her drink with practiced ease.
“All right,” I said, holding my glass at arm’s length and examining the swirling, glowing liquid inside. “So the vampires were dead, the kitchen hands were still prepping radish swans, and the butler had just informed you that you were late for the resurrection of a long-dead tyrant.” I sniffed the contents and cast a cautious glance across to Yak. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“I think we were at Mathers,” Carrie chirped. “Umberto had pissed on the floor to trap the vampires and Din had used a spell to destroy them.”
“Sounds right,” I said, opening my journal and readying my quill. “Who was Mathers again, was he one of the kitchen hands?”
As it turns out, Mathers was the head butler. He had just returned from delivering tea to the ritual guests and mistook the party for Dan’del’ion members. Trunch suspected it was because of a combination of their poorly fitting, stolen garb and Mathers’ own poor eyesight. A curmudgeonly gentleman of what Day called ‘indiscernible age’, Mathers introduced himself, apologised for the current state of the castle and ushered the group upstairs via the servant’s access – a dark and dimly lit passage of stairs barely wide enough for Din to fit through, all while mumbling about late arrivals and the need to make yet more tea.
At the top of the stairs, Mathers ushered them into what he referred to as a ceremonial preparation room, although Carrie said it looked more like a cocktail party that had wandered into the wrong building and decided to stay. Guests stood in small clusters, drinks in hand, their voices low but animated. There was an unmistakable air of anticipation, the kind that comes from people waiting for something important and believing themselves safely removed from the consequences of it.
According to Yak, one of the guests mentioned, quite casually, that they were simply waiting on the writer’s return and the ritual to begin. The way it was said suggested this was a minor inconvenience rather than the last step in a resurrection ritual involving a long-dead tyrant.
“They were talking about Barbara,” Carrie said in excited animation, as if she had uncovered a secret conspiracy. “Barbara was the writer they were waiting for.”
At the mention of Barbara’s name, Umberto grunted and returned to his earlier, darker demeanor. He rose silently from the table and returned to brood over by the hearth.
Trunch said that by mingling and asking questions, they discovered that Barbara had used her position and status as a writer to gain access to restricted sections in various libraries and archives around the continent. The Dan’del’ion Court had discovered the ritual to bring back Ieyoch but lacked knowledge of the final glyph. Barbara had apparently discovered it, and recreated it at the base of the crystal. She had accompanied Eric down to the basement to reproduce it on Ieyoch’s sarcophagus so that the connection could be completed. The guests were awaiting her return.
Of course, by this point, we had already intercepted and captured Barbara and Bot and I had been in the process of delivering her to the Dawnsheart City Watch.
Day said everything had been going smoothly until another guest began to pay them a little too much attention. Wikis described him as sharp-eyed and unpleasantly observant. He noted their lack of proper ceremonial robes, leading the group to realize everyone else in the room was wearing a large ceremonial robe over the top of whatever else they were wearing. The guest pressed further, asking which of them had memorized the secret of the fourth floor maze. Apparently this was said with the expectation of an immediate answer. Wikis said that several of the guests had begun to pay them closer attention at that point, including several whom the group recognised as Dawnsheart citizens.
Thinking quickly, the group claimed their robes were still downstairs. A simple oversight, they explained. Mathers, in his haste, had forgotten to direct them to the cloakroom, distracted by their late arrival and his insistence they not be late for the ritual. This explanation was met with a scoff and a dismissive remark about Mathers’ advancing age and legendary forgetfulness. Trunch recalled the man adding that if Mathers didn’t make such extraordinary tea, he would have been dismissed years ago.
At that point, discretion prevailed. With forced apologies and downcast eyes, careful not to draw further attention, the group excused themselves and retreated down the servant stairs. As they turned to leave, another guest, several drinks into what was clearly a very enjoyable evening, casually mentioned they should change quickly. Naida was about to return and usher everyone through, writer present or not.
“They were beginning to get too suspicious,” Trunch said. “The robes gave us a temporary cause to regather and rethink our approach, but we were quickly running out of time.”
Din, who moments earlier had been panicking about the missing eggbox, now seemed almost grateful for a different crisis. “We couldn’t really tell if they were armed or not,” he said wearily. “And there were too many of them for a direct assault – despite what Umberto might think.”
“I could have taken them all,” Umberto grunted from the hearth. He was scowling at a piece of parchment, crumpled slightly in his grip, the personalized and signed Barbara Dongswallower message.
Carrie began to flutter in Umberto’s direction, but Trunch put a hand on her shoulder and softly shook his head. She turned back to the table, casting a sad frown in Umberto’s direction before rejoining the conversation.
“You’re sure some of the guests were Dawnsheart citizens?” I asked, concerned. “You’ve only been here a short time.”
“I’m sure,” Wikis said through gritted teeth. Her eyes darted toward the broken window.
“I recognised the guy from ‘Write of Passage’,” Day said.
I blinked. “Ferrin?” I asked.
“Halfling. Sandy hair, crooked nose,” Day replied. “Sold me some ink a couple of days ago.”
“But… but I buy parchment from him regularly.” I stammered.
“Dan’del’ion.” Wikis practically spat the word.
I regathered myself. “And there were others?” I asked, “could you name them, identify them? We need to tell Tufulla.”
“You can tell him,” Yak said softly, “but I don’t think they’ll be a problem anymore.”
“Why?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. The thought of Ferrin standing in that room made something in my stomach turn.
They said Day had lingered in the doorway as the rest started to retreat down the servant stairs.
They had been outnumbered. He had made a calculation.
Last to leave the ceremonial room, he turned back, raised a hand, and cast fireball.
Then he closed the door.
He held the handle while the blast went off.
Trunch said it was over quickly. For most of them.
A couple had to be finished with a blade afterward. To silence the muffled screaming.
For a beat, no one at the table spoke. I stared at the surface of my drink and watched the green glow swirl. I glanced up to see Day doing the same, his jaw set, his gaze fixed on the glass in front of him.
They told me that as Yak and Wikis dealt with the last of the screams, the rest of the group encountered Mathers halfway down the servant stair. He carried a tray of tea and carefully arranged sandwiches, balanced with immaculate precision. He seemed completely oblivious to the smoke beginning to drift along the ceiling. He was muttering about punctuality and the impossibility of maintaining standards when one insisted on hosting rituals in half-finished buildings. There was, he added bitterly to himself, the matter of cleaning the drawing room, where someone had recently set fire to a tapestry and soiled themselves on the floor.
Carrie informed him, with calm efficiency, that Naida had just ushered the guests through and that an unfortunate incident involving one of the tapestries had necessitated a brief delay. When Mathers raised an eyebrow at the mention of tapestries, Din explained that one of the guests had held his cigar too close to the fabric, and another had attempted to douse the flames with alcohol. The explanation, according to Trunch, was delivered with such authority that Mathers accepted it without protest, though he did close his eyes for a long moment and let out a deep sigh as if adding yet another grievance to an already substantial ledger.
Apparently this was not the first ritual of late. Nor the second. Nor even the third. Mathers complained bitterly about the frequency of “blasted ceremonies” and the increasing lack of regard for staff. When he had accepted the post, he had expected tasteful gatherings, controlled environments, and perhaps the occasional ceremony. What he had not expected was a weekly assault on drapery.
It was during this tirade that Trunch suggested that a change of employment might better suit a gentleman of Mathers’ evident standards. The Goblin’s Grin, he explained, was a growing establishment in Dawnsheart. Chaotic at times, certainly. Combustible on occasion. But mercifully short on dark cultist rituals and, more importantly, a tapestry-free establishment.
Yak, seizing the moment, added that any kitchen hands capable of carving radishes into swans would be warmly received.
“I’m sorry,” I cut in. “I don’t quite follow.”
Trunch smiled. “I offered him a job here,” he said. “We could use more help.”
The group nodded in unison.
“He makes really good tea,” Wikis added upon seeing my confusion.
Apparently, Mathers hesitated only long enough to glance once more up the stairwell, where the smoke was now impossible to ignore. Then, with the composure of a man who had decided he had endured quite enough ritual-based nonsense for one lifetime, he agreed to collect his coat. The group lingered long enough to watch him and the two kitchen hands pass through the great dark doors, descend into the foyer, and step out into the courtyard beyond.
The group was now forced to find an alternate route to the upper floors, where they believed the crystal was kept. A problem compounded by the fact that the main staircase was under construction and the servant stairs were structurally questionable following Day’s fireball.
Carrie, apparently, had inadvertently stumbled on a solution. In a rare moment of clarity, she reminded the group that she possessed the ability to fly.
“She remembered she could fly.” Yak deadpanned.
The pout and subsequent scowl from Carrie would have made a gnoll cower.
According to Carrie, she slipped out through a kitchen window and flew upward until she caught sight of the crystal glowing through an upper window. She secured a rope to a balcony rail, descended, and informed the others that this was now the plan.
According to Wikis, the climb was straightforward.
Din disagreed with conviction.
They told me they had just started their ascent when the courtyard below erupted into motion.
Doors burst open. Figures poured out — not living men, but dozens of undead, moving with terrible purpose. They flooded the courtyard and converged on the portal lamps. One by one the lamps flared, and the creatures vanished in pulses of sickly light.
They were not gathering.
They were deploying.
The scale of the preceding weeks’ events settled over the group like a weight. This was not a ritual confined to a castle. This was an invasion already underway.
How they managed to complete the climb without being seen was in Din’s view, a miracle. He suspected that the undead were singular in their focus. Had just one looked up and back toward the castle things might have turned out differently.
Day said that halfway up, they passed a fourth-floor window. Inside, the air shimmered. Hallways bent and re-formed. A doorway dissolved as they watched. Trunch recognised it immediately. The maze. A Dan’del’ion security measure designed to prevent exactly the sort of intrusion they were currently attempting. Had they entered through the main corridors, the maze would likely have scattered them across four floors and three dimensions.
Instead, they bypassed it with a rope and stubbornness.
Once they reached Carrie’s balcony anchor and had hauled Din over the railing, they took Yak’s preferred route into the room – directly through the window – and found themselves face to face with the resurrection crystal.
“There was a perfectly serviceable door.” Trunch muttered
“My way is more … intimidating.” Yak claimed with a grin.
“There was nobody in there to intimidate.” Trunch replied.
Yak just shrugged.
Once inside, they found the resurrection crystal filling the chamber — a jagged pink-and-purple mass that pulsed steadily, light bleeding through its fractures and casting warped shadows across the walls.
A column of light shot from its apex, piercing the ceiling and continuing upward into the night sky.
Around its base, glyphs burned across the floor. Some had been etched carefully into the stone. Others carved in deep furrows. A few painted in thick, deliberate strokes. One drawn in salt.
From each glyph, a line of pulsing energy fed directly into the crystal’s core.
The absence of guards did not feel like oversight.
It felt like confidence.
Nothing the group did to the crystal or the glyphs disrupted the energy feeding into it. Wikis scattered the salt glyph beneath her boot, but the tether continued to pulse as if nothing had changed. Carrie attempted to wash away the painted markings using Umberto’s “running water vampire tactic.” It made a mess. It accomplished nothing.
“I badly needed to go,” she said matter-of-factly.
I raised an eyebrow in her direction.
The sound of boots outside the chamber answered for them. Their efforts had not gone unnoticed.
Umberto, Yak, and Day ran to the door as the first heavy impact rattled the frame. Day wedged his sword between the handles to bar it. Wood splintered under the next blow.
But Umberto had other ideas.
He pulled at the door from the inside, determined to meet the guards head-on. Yak swore and grabbed him by the shoulder. Day had to split his focus between bracing the door and preventing Umberto from opening it himself.
Behind them, Din raised his hammer. Trunch lifted a hand.
The first strike left a shallow fracture in the crystal’s surface.
The second widened it.
Wikis loosed an arrow into the crack and Din drove it deeper with a brutal swing. The fracture spidered outward, lines racing through the stone.
“I still think it was my witty insults,” Carrie muttered, “not the physical attacks.”
“You insulted the crystal?” I queried.
Din just shook his head.
Meanwhile, the door buckled. Day’s sword bent visibly between the handles. Yak yelled for support and Din joined them, bracing the door with his hammer and grabbing Umberto around the legs.
Another eldritch blast tore into the widening fissure. This time the crystal answered.
The sound was a thunderous rupture – a concussive roar that split the chamber. The force hurled them to the floor as the door burst inward and the crystal exploded into thousands of shards, cascading down like violent glass rain.
The guards had expected a sealed chamber and a ritual underway. They had followed orders to the letter, posting themselves outside the only entrance.
Instead they found a shattered crystal, falling shards, and a group of very determined intruders who had chosen the window.
The fight did not last long.
Umberto was on his feet first. He crashed into the nearest guard with a barrage of strikes that drove the man backward, continuing the assault even after the man had fallen.
Din seized another and slammed him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster.
Yak’s daggers flashed in tight, economical arcs. A third guard collapsed before he seemed to understand what room he had entered.
Trunch staggered as a blade caught him in the ribs. Wikis hissed as steel grazed her upper arm.
“We hadn’t planned to shatter the crystal,” Trunch said quietly. “We just couldn’t find any other way to stop the process.”
He reached into his pouch and placed something on the table. When he withdrew his hand, a large shard remained – rough and jagged at the edges, faintly pink, but dull and lifeless.
“This was one of the larger pieces,” he continued. “I grabbed it after we took down the guards. I thought we should keep a fragment. To study. Just in case.”
He slipped it carefully back into his pouch.
Wikis said that after the crystal shattered and the guards had been dispatched, a commotion in the courtyard below caught her attention. From the balcony, she saw a small group of Dawnsheart guards moving toward the castle, Captain Rynn at their head. They advanced cautiously, cutting down undead that continued to stream in the opposite direction.
Day said the active glyphs at the base of the crystal unsettled them more than the fight. If the ritual had completed before the crystal shattered, then destroying it might have been too late. The basement quickly became the priority.
Unwilling to waste time navigating the fourth-floor maze, they returned to Carrie’s rope and descended the way they had come.
“Tell him about Naida.” Umberto growled as he rejoined the table.
“Naida, you met her again?” I said, looking around, quill at the ready.
“When we got back down the rope,” Day said nodding. “I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t happy to see us.”
Yak theatrically rose from his stool. His face shifted, his voice trembling with fury. “You… did you burn my guests? Where is Barbara? What have you done with Eric? Where is Mathers?” He shook as he became Naida.
“She was so angry.” Carrie said looking away from Yak and raising a hand as if to protect herself. “I almost feel sorry for what happened.”
“We did kind of ruin her party,” Trunch stated. “I think she had a right to be annoyed.”
“She turned Barbara against us,” Umberto muttered flatly. “She deserved everything she got, even if it was…” he trailed off, looking at Trunch.
“We told her about the crystal,” Din said. “She wasn’t happy.”
“We told her we killed Eric,” Wikis added. “She hated that. Said we were ruining everything.”
The memory seemed to settle over the table like ash.
“We told her she’d broken Svaang’s heart.” Trunch added sadly.
“She actually laughed at that, the bitch.” Carrie sighed.
“You should have heard the scream when we told her about Dominic,” Umberto grunted. “Then she lunged.”
Carrie glanced at Trunch before speaking. “She lost it. Completely. The crystal was gone, Eric and Dominic were dead, Barbara was gone… she just snapped.”
“No plan. Just fury.” Din added.
“We took her down easily,” Wikis said. “Too easily.”
Yak gave a small shrug. “She was angry. Anger makes people predictable.”
I scribbled quickly. “You killed her?” I asked.
There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.
“We were going to leave her,” Day said, glancing at Trunch. “She was beaten. Finished.”
I watched them all cast glances at Trunch. He looked like he didn’t understand what was going on.
Carrie shifted uncomfortably. “She said something.” She said softly. “Something about fate.”
The room went still.
I looked up.
“And?” I prompted.
Wikis spoke carefully. “The shadows changed. They got darker.”
No one laughed.
“They stretched,” Carrie said bluntly. “Across the floor. Toward Trunch.”
Din nodded once. “I saw it.”
“So did I,” Day said quietly.
Yak did not joke.
I turned to Trunch.
He was frowning.
Not defensive. Not angry.
Just… thinking.
“That’s not how I remember it,” he said gently.
The words hung in the air.
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked.
“She was on the ground,” Trunch said. “We were leaving.”
His brow creased slightly.
“She said something. I couldn’t hear it.”
He glanced down at his hands, as if checking them for something.
“So, I leaned in closer.”
Silence.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then she was dead.”
No one spoke.
“You hit her,” Wikis said. Not accusing. Just certain.
“With an eldritch blast,” Din added.
Trunch blinked.
“I don’t… remember that.”
A faint crease formed between his brows.
“I remember leaning in,” he repeated. “She was trying to say something. It sounded like —”
“Like what?” Carrie whispered.
Trunch shook his head slowly.
“I don’t know.”
The fire popped in the hearth.
Wikis’ eyes drifted briefly toward the corners of the room.
The shadows there were entirely ordinary.
“You told her,” Day said at last, voice low, “she’d die like Dominic.”
“I did?” Trunch asked.
No one answered immediately.
Day met his eyes. Steady. Measuring.
“You did,” he said.
“And then you fired an eldritch blast into her, like you did with Dominic out there, in the alley” Din said, nodding toward the door.
Trunch leaned back in his chair.
He did not look frightened.
He did not look guilty.
He looked confused.
“That seems… unlikely,” he said mildly. “I wouldn’t have said that.”
“You did,” Yak replied.
“I remember she was trying to say something,” Trunch said. “I leaned in because I thought she was about to reveal something useful.”
Wikis’ jaw tightened. “You leaned in and told her she’d die face down in the gutter.”
Trunch blinked at her.
“That’s… unnecessarily theatrical.”
No one smiled.
“You said she’d die exactly like Dominic,” Day said quietly.
A beat.
“In the gutter,” Din added. “With a bolt in the back.”
Trunch’s brow furrowed deeper now. He turned slightly in his chair, as though testing the memory from different angles.
“I don’t recall saying that,” he murmured.
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Finally, Trunch cleared his throat. He offered a polite, almost apologetic smile.
“Well,” he said, smoothing an invisible crease from his sleeve, “if I did, I imagine she had earned it.” And just like that, the gentleman returned.
Wikis’ eyes drifted once more toward the corners of the room.
The shadows did not move.
For a long moment, no one reached for their drink.
Then Day exhaled quietly.
“We didn’t have time to think about it,” he said. “The glyphs were active. The ritual might have already completed.”
That seemed to settle it.
The basement became the priority. They had shattered the crystal. They had broken the ceremony. They had killed Naida.
But none of them yet knew whether they had arrived in time.I dipped my quill again.
“What did you find,” I asked softly, “when you reached the basement?”
The Chronicles of Klept 