'Living one!' thundered a disembodied voice. 'Know your doom for disturbing the repose of the sleeping!'
Aliree spun around, but the kings closed in from all sides. 'It's me they want, Muragh! I'm the living one. You've got to get out of here!' She cocked her arm, ready to toss me toward the doorway.
Her words sparked an idea in the empty space where my brain used to be. 'Wait, Aliree!' I said. 'I have a plan! Put me on top of your head, cover yourself with your cloak, and grab that rusty crown by your foot.'
She hesitated. The kings shambled closer.
'Please, just do it!'
Aliree snatched up the crown, stuck it atop my cranium, then set me on her head. She gathered her cloak around herself, hiding her face and body as the kings raised their swords.
At that moment I spoke in my deepest voice, which wasn't very deep at all, but I could only hope it would do. 'Halt, brothers! There is no need to stir! Can you not see I am one of your own?'
The undead kings hesitated. The flames in their empty orbits flickered in uncertainty. Below me, Aliree shivered, and the crown tilted precariously on my head. The skeletons advanced a step. I tried again.
'It is I! King… uh… King Hardnoggin from… er… from Castle Skulltop! There are none of those pesky living ones here. So why don't we all just head back to our comfy little thrones and catch some more shut-eye?'
For a moment the kings stared in undead befuddlement. Then, all at once, they turned and shuffled back to their thrones.
'It's working, Muragh!' Aliree whispered.
'I think nine centuries of death left their minds a little on the dull side,' I whispered back. 'Now come on. Let's blow this creepy little slumber party.'
Nothing makes a body-or a skull, for that matter- hurry like a good scare. While I navigated from the crook of her arm, Aliree moved with frail but urgent speed through countless twists and turns. Soon her breath rattled in her thin chest, and sweat misted her face. Her steps were uneven. I wanted to tell her to stop, to rest, to let the fire in her blood cool for a moment. But I bit the memory of my tongue. I think she knew what I had just learned from the map.
'We're almost there,' I said. 'Just make this next left.'
Aliree gave a jerky nod and stumbled around the corner. She limped down the corridor, and then, after a dozen paces, we came upon-
— a dead end.
I let out a groan of annoyance. 'The wall must have shifted, Aliree. We're going to have to backtrack and come at it from another direction.'
'All right,' she gasped.
With valiant effort, she turned around, moved back down the corridor… and struck a dead end.
'But that's impossible!' I said. 'We just came this way a moment ago!'
The rough stone wall smugly hulked there in front of us, blocking the way.
Aliree leaned against the wall and struggled to regain her breath. 'The wall must have… shifted right after we… passed by here.'
Aliree was right. This had to be a place where Under-mountain was actively reforming itself. Despair filled my hollow insides. I had tried to lead her to the Grotto of Dreams, but instead I had gotten her trapped here, in this hole far underground. A fine grave I had dug for her, had dug for us both.
She sank to the floor and sat, cradling me in her lap.
'I'm sorry, Aliree,' I said in a wavering voice. 'I'm so sorry I let you down.'
I don't know how she smiled then, but she did. It was a good thing I didn't have a heart, because at that moment it would have broken.
Her voice was soft now. 'You didn't let me down, Muragh. You gave me a chance when I would have had none. For that, I'm so grateful.' She lifted me up and, upon my bony forehead, bestowed a gentle kiss.
A strange tingling passed through me. I opened my jaw to say something, anything, I didn't know what. I never made it that far. There was an odd sucking sound. Then the square of floor beneath us vanished.
I realized the truth as we fell. Undermountain had reshaped itself right out from under us. After that, I couldn't think about it anymore. I was too busy screaming.
Floof!
I wobbled in confusion. That was not the sound I had expected to make when we landed. Thunk, more likely. Or splat, or maybe even blort. But notfloof.
I tried to get a look around, but everything was white. Then something tickled the pit where my nose used to be, and all at once I sneezed. Yes, skulls can sneeze, and this sneeze nearly blew my cranium apart. A thousand bits of white went flying in every direction, then settled gently back down to the floor.
Feathers.
Then I saw Aliree, a mischievous smile on her lips. I gaped in surprise.
'Aliree… you did this?'
She gave a modest shrug. 'Maybe I was just a dabbler in magic, but I did learn a thing or two.'
I was not about to complain. However she had managed to cast the spell, it had saved us from a nasty end here in…
… here in where?
Aliree brushed away the feathers, picked me up, and stood. We were in a cavern so large her magical light did not reach the ceiling. But we didn't need her light to see the thing both of us stared at. In one wall of the cavern was a round opening: the mouth of a cave. Green-gold light swirled inside the cave, beautiful and beckoning.
I didn't even bother to look at the map. 'The Grotto of Dreams,' I whispered.
I thought Aliree would have dashed to the grotto now that we were finally here. Instead she gripped me tightly. 'I'm afraid, Muragh.'
'Don't be, Aliree. It's your dream waiting in there.'
She smiled then. Strange, but there was a sorrow to it. 'No, you're right, I'm not afraid. Not with you here, Muragh. I'm happy. Happier than I've ever been in my life. Thank you.'
Then, holding me in her arms, she walked to the mouth of the grotto and stepped into the green-gold light beyond.
Somehow, here far beneath the ground, it was a garden. Warm sunlight filtered down through a canopy of fluttering green. From somewhere not far away came the bright sound of water. Birdsong and thistledown drifted on the air. For a time, I was motionless, entranced by the beauty of the place. Then all at once, memory rushed back to me. I turned around.
'Aliree?'
But all I saw were vine-covered stone walls and flowers nodding lazy heads. The half-elf was nowhere to be seen. I walked forward and breathed the sweet, scented air.
Walked forward? Breathed sweet air?
I didn't dare look; it couldn't be. But I had to know. Slowly, I glanced down. I saw him then, reflected in a clear pool of water: a man clad in green, his face boyish, kindly if not so very handsome, and framed by unruly brown hair. I blinked in shock, and so did he, and at that moment I knew we were one and the same. I lifted my hands-real hands, covered with warm flesh-and brought them to my face. Not hard bones, but soft, smooth skin.
'I'm alive,' I whispered. Then all at once laughter took me, welling up like the clear water in the spring. 'I'm alive!'
I did a dance, a foolish caper, but I didn't care. It felt so good to move legs, to swing arms, to feel a heart thump in my chest. Alive! I knelt by the pool and splashed water on my face, gulped some down. It was sweet, and so icy it hurt, but I relished both taste and sensation. Alive! I plucked a flower, held it to my nose, breathed its heady fragrance. The sunlight was so warm on my skin. Alive! Truly this place was the Grotto of Dreams. Lliira's joyous magic did dwell here. Aliree had been right.
Aliree…
The flower slipped from my fingers. Certainly she was here, somewhere in the grotto. Certainly she had discovered her dream as had 1.1 had to find her, to show her my new self, to hug her tight in jubilation with living arms.
