It was clear enough that the guards believed that I was the actor; getting in would be no problem at all.
“Well, you big meanies obviously need your disgusting ears cleaned out,” I said. I hadn’t intended to say those exact words, but my intended meaning was the same. I figured this was the mirror’s magic at work. I was also surprised at how high-pitched my voice had become. “Because m’lord told me to meet him tonight. It was about something important, he said. So, unless thou doth wish to incur m’lord’s wrath, thou should open the gates for me.”
“By the gods, I’d like to punch your teeth out, with that way you talk,” said the second guard.
“Ugh,” the other one muttered. “Well, I don’t know why we weren’t told about this. Fuck it, come on then.”
He unlocked the chains, and I walked casually over to the gate as he started to open it, quietly pulling Grave Oath out it its sheath amd keeping it hidden behind my back. As soon as I was within striking distance, however, the game was over.
“Thanks for opening up for me, assholes,” I said, my own voice returning. “And for your troubles, you get a one-way ticket to the Cosmic Sea.”
Before the first guard could react, I stabbed Grave Oath through his ear, burying the blade up to the hilt in his skull. The second guard’s eyes bulged with surprise, and he opened his mouth to yell, but I was already hurtling through the air in a somersault over his head. As I came down for the landing, I hooked my arm around his throat, locking it in the crook of my elbow, and broke his neck as I landed.
As he flopped to the ground, lifeless, the other guard writhed in silent agony on the floor, rasping and gasping, his head shriveling as Grave Oath sucked out his soul. When I felt the buzz of another soul adding to my power, I plucked the dagger out of his ear and ventured into the darkness of the tunnel.
The actor hadn’t been lying about the size of the tunnel. It really was only just large enough for a single person to pass through. I figured Drok would have considerable difficulty getting through.
According to the actor, the tunnel, which was lit up with burning torches on the stone walls all the way, was around two miles long, and there were three more guards I’d encounter before getting to the end of it. I headed on at a brisk pace. With the Beauty Mirror, I didn’t need to worry about stealth. I encountered the next guard at a corner about 500 yards in.
“Hey, why are you here?” he asked. “I wasn’t told—”
I didn’t even bother speaking to him. I simply walked up to him with Grave Oath hidden behind my back and whipped it out as I came to him, slamming it into his left eye socket before he even knew what was happening. He gasped and shuddered, sinking to the floor as Grave Oath sucked out his soul and turned his head into something that looked like a blood-oozing raisin.
As I approached the next guard, I figured I’d try a bit of target practice; it had been a while since I’d killed anyone with a dagger throw.
“Well, well,” the guard sneered, “if it isn’t the pretty boy butt-fu—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Grave Oath, flung from a distance of 10 yards, had transfixed his throat. He reached up with desperate hands, staggering and grasping futilely at his throat for a few seconds, then collapsed, convulsing and rasping in agony as his soul was sucked out.
When I came to the last guard, I didn’t even give him the chance to speak. I’d been wanting to try out the Tree God’s wrist crossbow on a human target for a while, and now I had my chance. I hid in the shadows before he saw me, aimed at his throat, and let the bolt fly.
It zipped through the air and slammed into his throat. He stumbled back , grasping at the bolt, his eyes bulging in terrible agony and his tongue almost popping out of his mouth. The skin around the wound began to turn brown and take on the texture of tree bark. Then, leaves and limbs started sprouting from his body as the magic spread. Roots shot out from his toes, burying themselves in the ground, and his armor ripped and burst as his body was transformed from that of a man into a tree. In less than a minute, there was a small tree growing where the guard had just been standing.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself, “I sure as fuck wasn’t expecting that!”
So, the crossbow could transform dead things into wood and living things into trees. It was a far more powerful weapon than its size made it out to be. I could put this little thing to some good use and was grateful for having found it.
I squeezed past the tree that had once been a man and saw a door, the one that would lead into the crypt of the castle. The castle that was, by all rights, mine. The castle that my asshole uncle had stolen from me.
“Well, uncle,” I whispered as I prepared to enter my boyhood home, “the joke’s on you now. I can’t wait to see the look on your face when I waltz right into your private chambers and cut your fucking limbs off one by one.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped into the crypt, Grave Oath at the ready. I’d been expecting to run into a bunch of guards, but there was nobody here. What there was, however, was the presence of death. A lot of it.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I knew these crypts like the back of my hand and figured I needed to do a bit
