“Pardon me,” I said, ducking beneath a collapsed beam.
Inside, there was a woman with black hair. She was a little rough around the edges but quite a looker. According to what the Maretto sisters had told me, her name was Esther. Esther Latimer.
“You’re the witch.”
“How did you find me?”
The town had eyes and ears. And a nose, of course.
“I asked the gentlemen of the street back there. ‘You seen anyone who smells funny lately?’ They all told me where to find you.” I pointed at the man sleeping on the bed in the back. “This is all because of your sleeping beauty over there, isn’t it?”
A dark figure was stretched out on the bed. It was clear from the exposed bone of the face, slack skin, and putrid smell that the person was no longer alive. I’d also investigated his identity. Based on his appearance, I took this to be Damian: Esther’s companion and lover, and an adventurer who had died in the dungeon. Souls who died in the dungeon were fated to wander around it in near perpetuity. During the stampede, he had probably been hurled out into the town.
Thanks to Arwin, the stampede was quelled, at which point he should have returned to the dungeon, but Esther did not want her lover to go back to that cramped darkness.
So she had used her magic to manipulate Damian’s corpse, keeping it in town. This was an unforgivable act, of course. All she could do was hide him away, until something went wrong: the stench. She’d been buying perfumes and herbs to hide the smell of his decomposition, but she’d run out of money. So she went across town, stealing strong-smelling herbs and ransacking the perfume shop.
“I’m going to be honest with you. He’s already dead. You should put him to rest.”
“No!” Esther wailed, throwing herself onto the man. “Damian came back! He came back to me!”
“I understand how you feel. But just look at him. That’s not the Damian you loved.”
His eyes were cloudy and white. His skin was peeling away in patches. It was a decomposing corpse.
“The Latimers’ strongest medicine can bring him back to how he was in life! I’ll complete that mixture, no matter how many years it takes.”
Esther had been exiled from the school and didn’t know how to make the elixir. Meaning she’d just have to keep trying and experimenting. That was why she’d been attacking people who had medicinal herbs.
“Begone!” she screamed, tossing her hair wildly as she leveled a staff at me.
That headache-inducing spell again? Sorry, but it won’t work twice. You caught me off-guard in the morning, but I’d fought mages in my adventuring days. There was always a way to deal with them. Rule number one for fighting magic? Make the first move.
“Irradiation,” I said, causing the translucent temporary sun to shine. It exuded all the solar energy it stored, filling me with strength. “Sorry, little lady.”
I yanked out the wooden pillar serving as a support beam, ropes and all. The ceiling promptly sagged. I swung the beam down at Esther like an ax. Her expression contorted into one of fear. She held up her arms to block it, but that was wasted effort.
The wood crushed both of Esther’s arms and her skull, sending her straight through the wall. The entire structure shook with the impact. It wobbled a few times but held up. Relieved, I examined Esther. Her head was caved in, exposing the white of her skull.
Just in case, I riffled through Esther’s stock of herbs and found a familiar handkerchief. The contents were still there, too.
All that was left was Damian. He was still writhing on the bed.
It would be an act of mercy to put him at ease.
I picked up a nearby stick and instantly felt a terrible pain in my head.
“O Demonic Crown.”
I dropped the stick.
“Die, you maggot. Do not get in the way of our life together!” Esther roared, rising to her feet.
Impossible. No human could have survived that.
Yet despite having her head caved in, Esther had shed almost no blood. Her arms were broken, and so were her legs, but she attempted to stand anyway, her movements awkward and grotesque. Ultimately, she couldn’t stand up straight and had one of her legs bent at a horrific angle. It should have been blindingly painful, but she was unbothered.
“Oh,” I said. “So it was you, too.”
That was what they meant by the whole party wiping out. It was the Latimers’ necromancy at work. She had already cast the spell to raise the dead on herself. It wasn’t just a zombie I was dealing with. It was a lich, an undead sorcerer who had conquered death itself.
“All right, you know what? Sorry. I overstepped my bounds,” I said earnestly. “You deserve your privacy. I just want this handkerchief back. It’s very important to me. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Silence!”
The pain got even worse.
My head was squeezed so tightly, it brought me to my knees. I could handle blows, but I wasn’t able to shrug off the feeling of my very mind being compressed like that. I fought as hard as I could to maintain consciousness.
Eventually, the light of the temporary sun went away, and I collapsed. Esther ripped the handkerchief with the pills inside from my hand.
“It didn’t work. But this time, Damian will be made whole…”
She crawled toward her lover.
“How romantic.” I grunted, getting up slowly. “Except for the part where it just looks like two zombies cannibalizing each other.”
“Stay back!”
Esther’s staff flashed white, and a translucent wall appeared between us.
“I guess I’m not wanted here.”
I knew I was transgressing into their personal problem. I didn’t like the thievery, but beyond that, I wasn’t going to stop them if they wanted to live peacefully in some far-off, preferably cold and preserving country. But this was Gray Neighbor, in the middle of the wasteland, and I had my own problems to solve.
Arwin’s medicine was coming back with me.
I steadied my breathing. It had been a while since I’d done this, but I had a feeling it would work out. Within my mind, I severed the chains that bound my body. This was my brute force method. For just a short period of time, I could use my true strength. In essence, it was the ability to go beyond my ordinary limits in an emergency. But after I used it, I would be unable to move for a good long while due to the physical agony. It would only work for a few moments, but it would be long enough to put a period on this touching but tragic tale of love.
I jammed my fingers into the gap between some floorboards and wrenched them loose. By yanking the other end of the floorboard up, I threw Esther’s footing off balance and made her topple face-forward with a thud.
Her clouded eyes rolled; she was uncertain of what had happened to her. She tried to get up again. The magical wall was still intact. Now was her chance.
She was near Damian. Her supposedly dead eyes flashed with hope, I could see. As long as the medicine was finished, she could give it to him and save him. It was an impossible delusion.
I reached over and grabbed her arm. Esther looked up in wonderment. How could I be next to her when I was supposedly kept at bay by her magic? Her rotted-out brains simply couldn’t fathom the concept that if I tore up the floorboards, I could easily crawl beneath the floor.
“Sorry.”
I grabbed Esther’s head with both hands and wrenched it off. She flopped over; I reached down to grab the handkerchief and pills from her hand.
“Ahk…gah.”
Esther’s severed head was still moving. This was enough to kill normal zombies, but she was tougher than that. I was worried she might come back even after being burned. The best way to ensure she was dead would be a purification spell from a cleric, but that was a trick beyond my abilities in numerous ways. I didn’t want her chanting spells, either, so I shoved some rubble into her mouth.
Damian was still groaning on the bed. I could see a droplet roll down his cheek—probably just the night dew.
A terrible pain ran through my chest, and not from something admirable like guilt. It was the blowback from using brute force. I dragged my body out of the ruined building. Just before I crossed the threshold, I tossed a stone at the thickest beam. The cracks spread throughout it, causing the entire structure to tremble.
I was pulling my agonized body toward the alley when I heard the rumbling collapse behind me. A mountain of rubble then plummeted down below the surface. There were many natural caverns beneath the town. The weight of the collapse must have caved one in. The witch and her lover were now far below the ground. I didn’t feel the need to worry about her. She would rest in the same grave as her lover forevermore.
I got home in the dead of night, due to the rebound of using my brute force method. I dragged myself through the door. Arwin looked ready to scream in rage until she got a good look at me.
“What happened to you?”
I was filthy after my battle with Esther.