A Strange Party: Chapter 2

“What do you mean you don’t have any horses?” Orion asked the stable owner.

The older woman blinked slowly at them, wearing her night gown and a bonnet. Standing in her doorway with the moon lighting her face she wasn’t amused. They woke her at an absurd hour of the night and all three of them looked out of place together let alone in the town itself.  Few lights were still on outside of a few homes and the local inn and even those were very dim. Even with the strangeness of Orion’s appearance she wasn’t budging.

“I said, we don’t got any more horses for sale,” she repeated. “They’re too young to be going on any sorta journeys. Especially not for a bunch of strangers like you.”

“What of the older horses,” Orion asked. “Surely they can handle simple journeys.”

“I’m not gonna hand them over to die. Or even more so to be used in whatever the heck that one’s into.” She pointed at Ryza.

Ryza narrowed her eyes and said, “You know, throwing accusations at someone can often time get you in trouble.”

“Now you’re making threats to hex me or something?” the woman glared at her and then waved her hand. “Leave my property or I’ll make you leave.”

Before Orion could make a motion toward the woman Gest thrust his hand out and waggled his finger. “We’ll be on our way, a suggestion friends, if I may?”

The woman looked at the trio of them before slamming the door shut. In the silence of the main street the three of them stuck out like a sore thumb. A man stumbled out of the bar, looking at them through the haze of too much drink, then continued on his way.

Orion turned onto the jester with contempt but Ryza asked, “What idea do you have?”

“We have the notebook but currently we have to make our way there on foot,” Gest said pointing into the distance. “That lass has given our offer a pass. So let’s broaden the method of our output.”

The pair stared at him and his mask continued to smile back at them. He spoke in rhyme and often it was like he was speaking in riddles. The jester began to reach for his lute but instead reached into his pocket and pulled out a harmonicon.

“You think there’ll be someone else that can sell us horses in the town?” Ryza asked. Looking around she was skeptical of that. It was a small place, almost as small as the village that she came from. 

“No there are no other stables here,” Orion said. “This back water village is lucky to have an inn with how out of the way it is.”

“You think too literally my friend. There’s more than one means to an end,” Gest started walking again playing the harmonica along the way with sharp notes and then into a slow whine of a song. He moved quickly doing a little bit of a dance as he walked and continued his song.

Ryza looked toward the blank faced construct and then looked at her shoulder. The tiny rat scampered up to her shoulder, twitched its tiny nose and then lay down. She pat its head then started walking after Gest, picking her shovel up so that it wouldn’t drag across the dirt. Orion watched them both for a long moment, pulled off their hat and followed them.

The jester led them to the edge of the town but before going all the way out he took a sharp right. Ryza started to follow him but as she walked she shivered. Gripping her shovel tighter she took a deep breath. “We’re going to a graveyard Gest. What’s your game?”

“When looking for our answer, look no further than our necromancer.”

She stopped suddenly and Orion ran into her almost knocking her over. She grunted looking at them and then folded her arms making a face. “I doubt that they bury their horses out here Gest. Who buries a horse with their grandma?”

“Maybe not in their cemeteries but perhaps out near the trees. Can you sense them? Finding a few will be quite the gem.”

“Can you do it?” Orion asked narrowing their eye at her but she barely registered it as she stared at the ground.

She could feel the dead beneath her feet like the crackling of a fire. Not loud but soothing, something she could focus on in a moment. She started walking forward and the cemetery was a simple place. A few tombstones but most spots were just mounds with flowers and maybe a couple of rocks. But to her it was like a library. Gest and Orion stopped at the edge of the cemetery and watched as Ryza continued to walk.

Touching her shovel, she took a deep breath and focused on them. Suddenly there were voices screaming in her ear and she winced funneling them out. She started with the voices that were above ground. Easiest to keep track of. The loudest voice came a few feet away from her and she knew it had to be Gest. But she couldn’t hear anything to sense where Orion was.

But as she dug down below ground she listened as closely as she could until she found it. Chuffing and whinnying. Walking toward it she lowered the shovel and let the tip drag against the ground. After walking a dozen or so steps, she stopped and dug the shovel into the ground. The moment it touched the soil it glowed to life, runes and designs alighting along the iron and tracing all the way down to the blade.

 The ground shook lightly beneath her feet and then the earth split and a skeleton dug its way out of the ground one hoof at a time. It climbed forward its flesh gone but the bones pristine and cleaned away. Throwing its head back to shake off the dirt, the undead horse stared at her with glowing green eyes.

She stroked its jaw and the bones were cracked here and there but the animal twitched its head and stamped the ground. “How long can you keep this thing alive?” Orion asked.

“Not sure. Animals are always different. Free spirited even in death.”

Orion stared at her then turned, “I’ll find a saddle for two.”

“For two? What will you do?” Gest asked.

But Orion was already walking back toward the village and pulled their hat over their head. Ryza started to follow but so did the horse and she figured that she would have to stay with it out here in the cemetery.

Ryza dug her shovel into the ground and sat beside GEst and pulled the notebook out. The maps in the latter part paled in comparison to the notes on the amulet. There weren’t notes on what it did but there were many on where it came from. A magical item hundreds of years old, taken, won, traded and fought over. Powerful magicians had used it and now she had it.

If she were lucky she’d find out what secrets it had in store at the next location. Maybe even another amulet. She was starting to get excited and nearly jumped to her feet when she saw Orion returning with something large over their shoulder. They approached the horse and tossed the saddle across its empty back. Tying it was difficult but they forced it to work.

“Where did you get a saddle?”

“Don’t worry about that. Get on.”

She almost argued but something in her told her it wasn’t worth it. She looked at the undead horse and struggled to swing her leg over but did just that after a moment of struggle. Adjusting her shovel across her back she settled in comfortably. Stroking its bony head, it seemed to enjoy that.

The horse stepped forward slowly and let out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a hiss. Gest got to his feet and climbed onto its back as well. The size of the saddle fit them perfectly.

Orion made sure they were both in place before turning toward the moon. Measuring its distance and thinking they turned a few feet left and pointed. “This way.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” They started walking and Ryza huffed watching them go but nodded. Touching the horses head it made a noise and then trotted after him. They ran out of the village, whatever look out on duty seeing them probably thought that the end times were coming. A few feet out of the city Orion leaned forward and broke out into a proper run.

They were fast, faster than she knew a normal human could run and she grinned before touching the horse as it spurred to unlife and broke into a sprint. Kicking off matching clouds of dirt they followed the main road though Orion was definitely in the lead.

Ryza leaned into the horse and felt the wind whipping through her hair and across her face and laughed. A high pitch laugh that was stolen away by the wind left her lips. She had never imagined that she would be racing through the night on a horse that she resurrected when she caught about the rumor of the chest.

The dirt cloud they kicked up settled as they replaced the ground with grass. Unlike her former home which had been near a forest this was sparse with trees and some tall grass. She wondered what kind of animals grazed out here, if they had predators and what the food chain was like. Watching the cycle of life and death out here be different than home. Shaking her head, she was getting ahead of herself. Keeping her hands on either side of the horse she found herself gripping it by the exposed ribcage to keep her balance.

She could feel her magic coursing through it, keeping it moving and functioning. Each limb moved at her command, each step because of her magic. She smiled at that as well. It never stopped making her smile knowing that she could bring the dead back to life. She could only imagine what her father would think seeing her now. Or her brother. Even her mother.

Orion started to slow down as they crested a large hill and then stopped entirely and narrowed their eye. Ryza commanded the horse to do the same and trotted around in a circle. Ryza sat up slowly and groaned feeling her back crack and then glanced at Gest. The jester bounced on the horses back but he seemed no worse for wear.

“You alright?”

“Never better. But where are we to the letter?”

“That’s a good question. Orion?”

Orion was looking out over the hill into more hills and more grasslands. Ryza wasn’t sure but she thought she could see a herd of some sort of deer out there. But they weren’t looking ahead at them. They were looking at a range of mountains in the distance. “If its what I think, and they’re still working the way I remember, it’ll be buried out there. If we get closer you can sense it.”

“Speaking of sensing,” Ryza glanced over at Orion and tried to smile but it came off like a grimace. “You. You’re not alive. A construct that a powerful mage built right? Pretty sure at least.”

They stared at her and blinked their eye slowly. “I thought that were obvious?”

Grinning she pointed. “So you admit it! I didn’t think it would be that easy. Who made you?”

“I do not know,” they said. “My original creator made me a very long time ago.”

“How long ago is a very long time? And you’ve just been wandering since then? How’d you learn to do the magic that you’ve done? How have you been self repairing? Are there more like you out there?”

Their head jerked toward her and the way their eye narrowed it was like they were scowling. “Is there a point to all of this?”

She blinked slowly and shook her head. “I mean. No? I just. I’ve never seen something magical like you before. I want to know what makes you tick. Get it?.”

She stared at them intently and they walked past the horse and motioned for her to follow. “You seek immortality. You think something about me can help you.”

“Yes. But not like you are. Somehow there’s a life in you, a soul, and it didn’t exist before. I want to know how.”

“To call my existence a form of life is something your kind enjoys believing.”

“I mean you are alive. You walk. You exist.”

“Correct.”

“And when you fight you protect yourself despite how tough you are.”

“I have a core. I believe the closest thig for you is the heart.”

“The place that powers you. And let’s you use magic,” she said thoughtfully. “But the way you act. I’d gamble your core isn’t in your chest. It’s in your stomach?”

“Correct. Everyone aims for the chest and the head. If someone makes that mistake I can kill them in return.”.”

“You speak from experience,” Ryza asked arcing her eyebrow and the construct nodded. “What are you?”

“A bounty hunter,” they told her sim[ply. “Ask your questions on the go. Come on.”

In silence she watched Orion go ahead and then jolted forward with the horse chasing afterwards and she opened up with a barrage of questions. Gest chuckled and got out his harmonica playing it gently as they ran. Orion never missed a beat as they answered all of them the best they could. Her questions continued all the way to the base of the mountain and the sun was beginning to rise.

“We’re here. Or rather we’re getting close enough. Get rid of the horse. We’re walking now.”

Ryza stared up at the mountain base and could see a place where a path had slowly been carved out but she couldn’t figure out where it was going. The grass did try to grow up here though, patches and strips here and there. A few times there were flowers within the grass and one or two bare trees with birds housed in the branches.

Sliding down the side of the horse, she waited for Gest to jump off before clasping her hands together. The horse stiffened and look at her with its glowing eyes. Moments later it collapsed to the ground in a heap of bones. Feeling it go made her shoulders sag and she stumbled to the side and fought to stay upright.

Orion put their hand against her back and she glanced at them surprised but nodded her thanks. She took a step forward and pressed her hand to her head with a frown. “Can you keep going?”

“I think I need a moment.” There was at least half a foot of distance between the two of them. She took a shaky step forward and then shoved her shovel into the ground like a walking stick.

“You’re in no condition to be trying to do anything.”

Gest pulled his lute off his back and strummed it a few times but unlike his casual tuning this one had some sort of magic behind it. Orion took a step back but Ryza shuddered as the warmth washed off her. “I believe that I can help. I doubt this is something you’ve ever felt.”

And he began to play a gentle tune like the whistling of a bird. He whistled along with his playing but it was hard to hear where the instrument ended and the whistling began. Ryza smiled bobbing her head to the tune and found herself moving to it. And suddenly she was swaying and dancing with it.

Gest laughed and played a bit faster and the pair moved together, dancing loosely around each other. Orion watched the two of them curiously  and even loosely tapped their foot.  Ryza spun around and then stopped and stared at her feet. “Wow. Whatever you did I feel great! Like really good. Was that another spell. Is it you that’s doing it or is it the lute? How are you making this happen?”

Gest dipped his head and danced back a few steps before slinging it across his back. “Now that we’re all feeling rejuvenated, let’s go to the cave where the chest is located.”

Strolling toward the path Gest walked forward it whistling to himself with both hands behind his back. Ryza followed him holding her shovel against her chest. As the sun rose and bathed them in golden light. The birds left their branches and circled around them overhead. Gest whistled to them above and they chirped back at him.

The walk up the path was simple enough, only winding here and there. Aside from the birds there weren’t many other animals hanging around. It was when they rounded the third bend that they discovered the entrance to the cave. A large black void, the sunlight barely reaching inside.

Orion went in first his eye adjusting to the gloom. It smelt moldy and loosely like rodents. The entry was wide enough to fit about a dozen people within it but there was a tunnel further within that was narrower. It was in that tunnel that they spotted the symbol of the snake. It was scratched away by claws but it wasn’t hard to miss.

Ryza came afterwards and her eyes were at the ground along with her rat. They saw the collection of bones against the ground and knew the sight of animals that brought the prey home. But some skulls were more than animal. Humans had made this their home.

“Stay close you two,” Orion said and pulled out a gun. “No idea what we’re going to find through there.”

Gest chuckled whistling gently, “Even without maps, I’m sensing there will be traps.”