Within a few minutes, the spectral uchigatana and I cleared enough space for Warcry to join the party. Time passed in the crash of shields, the clang of weapons, baseball bat pings, the rattle and crunch of bones, and the whispers of the angry dead.
I barely noticed the sun going down and the shadows lengthening around us. We were so close to finishing this. I wanted it done with tonight. Luckily, plenty of light was coming from the gouts of flame left burning by fallen skelebuddies.
Full dark had fallen outside the temple by the time Warcry and I finished off the final pairs of skeleton warriors.
As the last one crumbled to dust, it sounded like the temple itself let out a rattling exhale and sank into oblivion.
A massive blast of Dead Reckoning showed me only Valthorpe in the temple.
I sheathed Wrathblade. “Temple cleared.”
“’Bout bleedin’ time.” Warcry let his flames drop.
A squat stone pedestal sat at the northern edge of the floor, looking out over the treetops. On top, a circle of stone spikes held up a metal bracelet.
Maybe being around Kest’s metalwork all the time had given me an unfair idea of what an invaluable metal relic should look like. I’d been expecting something more refined, I guess, shiny and elaborately built, but smithing must have been pretty crude back when the bracelet was made. It was just a wide cuff of dull iron that wasn’t even uniformly thick, with barbed spikes coming off both sides.
“Oh, wow,” Valthorpe whispered. He slipped around my side, eyes shining with awe as he headed for the pedestal.
I grabbed his shoulder.
“Hang on.” Every Indiana Jones movie I’d ever watched said that picking up an ancient artifact without a backup plan is a bad idea. “There might be a trap.”
The hairy academic blinked, then looked around at the geysering fire fountains and triggered spear tiles.
“Ah, yes.” He shrank back a little. “Good thinking.”
“What’s our play?” Warcry asked.
“Let me try something.” Three Corpse Sickness stepped out of me. With the extra Miasma boost from the life points, they glowed like turquoise supernovas, almost solid, and each one a perfect replica of me, down to the sweat-matted hair and cuts and injuries the script tattoo was still working to repair. Absently, I wondered whether they could feel that mess in my left side, too.
Bring me that bracelet, I commanded them.
They strode toward the pedestal in sync, moving slowly for the first time I’d ever seen, and reached for the artifact.
Poison sprayed from nearly invisible holes in the stone spikes holding up the bracelet. The poison blasted the Corpses harmlessly in the face, while from the floor, thick crescent blades the size of dinner tables sliced upward, bisecting them. At the contact, the Corpses shattered.
I let them go and pulled in the leftover Miasma with Reclaiming the Dead.
Valthorpe stared, lips pouched out in a shocked O like a surprised monkey. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and into his dark sideburn. He scratched at it.
“Well, that could’ve been bad.” He looked from me to Warcry. “So, what do we do? Who’s got a way to retrieve it?”
“Let me try one more thing.” I reached my hand to the side and summoned the Lunar Scythe. The black blade tore through my muscle and coalesced into the massive anime-sized weapon in my fist. I hefted it in both hands, and the rest of my skin and muscle melted away, leaving behind nothing but skeleton and scraps of moldering fabric.
Valthorpe yelped and backpedaled, tripping over an urumi and stacking it onto a fire tile. He yelped and scuttled off the burning fountain, slapping the flames eating at his backside. The fire didn’t seem to bother him as much as seeing my grim reaper form staring down at him.
“If this is a betrayal, just take it,” he yelled, raising his hands. “I’m not looking to die!”
I didn’t have a voice box to answer him right then, so ignored him.
Warcry picked up the slack for me. “If this were a betrayal, you’d be well dead already, wouldn’t you? Reel your neck in and give me lad a minute.”
I stopped several feet away from the pedestal, then upended the scythe and threaded the butt of the handle through the iron bracelet.
The crescent blades sliced up out of the stone floor again, this time narrowly missing taking a slice of bone off my chin. Poison sprayed onto the scythe, the breeze up there at the top of the temple carrying a little of the mist to my hand and arm bones. Those attacks I’d been waiting for, so when they happened, I didn’t flinch.
What caught me off guard was the bracelet’s reaction to being touched. Its barbed spikes lashed out like teeth, biting into the scythe handle, then retracted, tearing off black splinters. I jumped, and if I’d had lungs, I probably would’ve gasped. The scythe jumped in my hand bones, and the bracelet clinked against the handle. It was a miracle I didn’t fling the bracelet off the edge of the temple and lose it in the jungle.
Behind me, Valthorpe yelped again, and Warcry let out an appreciative curse.
Slowly, I raised the bracelet off its pedestal and tilted the scythe so the artifact would slide a secure distance onto the handle. I waited a second, but after that initial attack, the bracelet didn’t chomp down again.
Carefully, I brought it back over to Warcry and Valthorpe.
The hairy academic’s leathery hands clasped in front of him like he could just barely stop himself from clapping.
Warcry stood back like he couldn’t care less, eyes half lidded, shoulders and hands relaxed. If you didn’t know him, you
