Being dead obviously hadn’t stopped either side completely, because there were definitely a bunch of them still moving in the room, although only one was obvious.

  He was sitting on a crude throne of bones and wood, with several carved wooden signs sticking out above him proclaiming that he was indeed ‘The Boss’. His off-white robe was in good shape and almost spotless, too.

  Well, he had a three-foot purple tongue lolling down his chest and sliming the cheap cotton cloth up, but that was a different thing.

  The Mick turned to look at me. “Eh, that’s Ketnan, by the Assess.”

  And naturally he was the Baron Ghoul, although he probably styled himself a Ghoul King, and had noticed us. He popped to his long-toed and taloned feet, pointing at us accusingly.

  “Now you come?!” he shrieked in contempt and outrage. “NOW YOU COME?! Puling adventurers, ready to claim the prizes after everyone else has died, like your greedy, thieving kind always do? Always taking, taking, taking, never giving or risking for others?” he shrilled at us, plainly working himself into a frenzy as he clawed at the air.

  “Do you still sell meat pies?” I shouted back at him, ignoring his diatribe.

  He actually stumbled on the edge of his robe and almost fell down at my question. “What?” he demanded, slitted yellow eyes blinking at me.

  “We would like to buy ten thousand meat pies, Master Ketnan!” I shouted back at him. “Oh, and your sister is finally free of that torturing bastard in Sanamar, you’re welcome!”

  He jerked reflexively. “Britana is free of Varicci?” he gasped, not quite processing that.

  “Yes, yes, we all watched the twat die. Now, are you still selling meat pies?”

  The reason being that he had a basically new robe on, something I could not imagine staying in good shape down here, especially with his tongue discoloring it like that.

  “What, what would you possibly need ten thousand meat pies for?” Ghoul Ketnan asked, clearly very off-centered.

  “We’re feeding a Tremendous Monuga and wanted a change of pace for him. If you’ve got a tun or so of wine, we’ll buy that, too!” I called back.

  He looked rather dazed at that. “I’ve, I’ve never sold ten thousand meat pies before…” he gasped. “T-Twenty pyreal apiece!” he yelled out. “Thirty-five for each serving of wine!”

  “Bulk rates!” I immediately parried. “14 and 27, and not a farthing higher!” Which was still way too bloody high, but the place WAS a tourist trap.

  “Deal!” he crowed in delight, bounding off his crude throne. “How are you paying, dear customer?”

  “In resurrections or M notes, which would you prefer?” I shot right back.

  He paused at the edge of the overhang, looking across at us on the other side of the room. He didn’t know I knew where every hidden ghoul, Isparian or tusker, was hidden up on the walls, behind corners, underneath the bones, on the ceiling, and everything, and so did everyone else with me. There was no way we were moving a foot into the room, not the least because there was a motionless Annihilator Ghast hanging from the wall right above the opening, somehow managing to control its stench and of course not breathing or tiring at all.

  “Rez, resurrections?” Ghoul Ketnan asked blankly.

  “Do you want to be restored to life?” I asked him coolly, and he twitched so hard he almost fell down.

  “Life! You can… restore me to life?!” he blurted out in shock, staring at me there behind the Mick and Hundig, just visible above their Shields.

  “I have restored over a hundred brave men and women who died in the massacres at Mayoi and Hebian-to back to living, breathing mortality, Master Ketnan. Your father and sister await you in Hebian-to, and even your drunkard of an uncle sent us after you, despite all the years that have passed. We came here because of you, and you alone.”

  The ghoul that had been Ulgrim’s nephew goggled at me. “Look at me!” he finally screeched, oversize claws hitting his chest and ripping his now-slimed robe immediately. “You think you can restore me to life!?” he shrieked.

  “No. You’d have to die first. THEN I can restore you to life. Going straight from undeath to life takes more power than I currently have.

  “So, we have to kill you, and all these ghouls and ghasts you have command of who are preying on the tuskers that killed you. Did any of your other minions manage to retain their sense of self, Master Ketnan? It does not seem like they did.”

  He stared at me for a long, cold moment, clearly thinking hard about this. “No, none of them,” he finally said, which basically matched what I was reading of their gluttonous, slimy Black Auras, and then his smile stretched in a predatory, hungry grin. “So, you came here to save me.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Pretty much the only reason we’re here,” I agreed, and under my breath said, “Be ready…”

  “So, if I have everyone attack you and kill you and eat you, I’ll still be here and I can go recruit some more tuskers to my cause. If you kill more, you’re just going to bring me back to real life. That sounds very much like I win either way, little miss!” he crowed cheerfully.

  “Well, once you sell us what you were going to.”

  “Oh, right! Right! My biggest sale ever!” He started waving his arms up and down in manic triumph. “Ten thousand meat pies and that volume of palm wine! Hahahahahaha, adventurers! You owe me four hundred and ten thousand pyreal!” he declared pompously.

  “Pay the man, Lord Mick,” I whispered, and in front of us, the floor burst into vivus, rapidly consuming all of the bones there and clearing the space out to pristine whiteness. The stone receded immediately down into the floor, while a cloth swirled into the air and fell to the bottom of the growing pit. “Put the spare change in the bottom of the pit first, Master Ketnan.”

  The Mick took out five M notes, the next smaller denomination than the largest MMD notes, and flicked them out towards the ghoul. The limp papers spun through the air like flying shuriken, and the ghoul nabbed them nimbly out of the air.

  “Money! Money!” he crowed, dancing in place. “I can finally pay that asshole off and get out of debt to him!” he shouted, while we ignored the grit falling down from above as the nervous tusker ghast just above the entry shifted uncomfortably at vivus Burning so close below it.

  Ghoul Ketnan looked back and forth between us and the money in his hands, obviously considering just taking the money and not delivering, but plainly he was also wondering if we might not buy more stuff in the future, and he couldn’t stop himself.

  Besides, they could always eat the meat pies and wine if we died, right? He wasn’t losing out on anything!

  There was a ching of falling metal as ninety thousand pyreal coins fell out of nowhere and down into the pit, coating the cloth at the bottom. I immediately drew a line of stone over them.

  “The wine next,” I told him, and he waved his hand again.

  The barrels materialized in midair, but that was fine, Featherweight and Zeks’ Telekinesis handled them instantly, directing hundreds of gallons of wine down in precise rows and stacks, instead of falling and shattering.

  He stared at the casual display of power foiling his entertainment, and before I said anything, triggered the meat pies.

  I could Shape a whole lot of stone very precisely, and the Featherweight gave me the time to do it. Hundreds of meat pies lined up with incredible speed and precision into multiple levels, stacking up into twenty-foot squares and levels in midair and falling gracefully down into the pit in formation.

  Thin sheets of stone slid across the pit and up from the bottom, catching and preserving every single pie seamlessly. The final cover slid across them, the Tapestry activated, and vwoop, the whole pit was suddenly empty of everything, Ghoul Ketnan staring down into it in disbelief.

  “Send them, Master Ketnan,” I smiled. “The Land is hungry today.”

  With a roar and a burst of ungodly stench, the Annihilator Ghast above us let go and slammed down directly in front of us.

  The Triadspell of the Imperil and the Fire Vuln went off on it instantly, and then a whole lot of flaming death blew into it, ripping through the ragged remnants of its copper breastplate and molding fur, and set the bastard on fire with a whole bunch of crits.

  Darts smashed into it as it howled in pain, shoving it backwards and into the pit behind it, on fire with a whole lot of Kickers and not going to survive the second volley of shots that caught it in midair.

  Tusker ghasts and human ghouls were rising from piles of bones, leaping from the ledges at the far side of the room, dropping from the walls and ceilings, and they were coming for us in a howling, shrieking, screaming, slavering horde that had all the OMFG wall of odor preceding them, trying to get at us.

  The Mick and Hundig had the front, Camwise and Rogar were backing them, and the girls slammed flaming arrows into the undead. I Vulned everything two and three at a time, and in between I blew Shards into them with Toppling and knocked them all over the place.

  It was a lot of fast and furious action, undead with paralyzing claws trying to scramble over and past our guys and receivingFirephasing Weapons to the face, then hurtling through the air as Shards detonated against them and sent them flying. Zeks was quite artistic about guiding them into the empty pit over there and soon filling it with Burning, vivifying undead howling in pain as so many different kinds of flames consumed them.

  Happily, the Devastator and Annihilator Ghasts were so big they got in one another’s way, and were so hungry they didn’t even think about giving way to one another.

  We didn’t try to kill Ketnan, even though he was up there in front of his throne of sales signs proclaiming two for one shirts with purchase of a coconut, yelling at his undead minions and forcing them to fight us to the death while standing back and appreciating the show.

  I could see the magical ties to his minions. Any attacks on him would be sent out to his servants and kill them before he took any real harm at all, so killing these fellows was a requirement, not just being thorough.

  The Ketnan Ghoul thought it was Ketnan, and the System was sure treating it like it was, to the point of giving it his merchant stuff.

  But to become a ghoul you actually had to die. What was left behind was a negative energy mirror image of your soul, inhabiting your body as it was infiltrated by massive amounts of necroic power, warping, altering, and changing it to something that was powered by the energies of death, not those of life.

  Or, if you wanted to be scientific about it, powered by directly consuming the energies of life, not those of dead matter, even if it was just residual energies from once-living, rotting flesh.

  Still, his reaction as we tore into and through his servants became more and more frantic and extreme, as he really wasn’t expecting us to be able to fight his minions. Their paralytic touches had probably won them constant kills against the tuskers and the Summons here, who had no real defense against it save natural resistance and ‘saving’ against the effect with vitality and will.

  Free Action meant we weren’t susceptible to that stuff at all, and even if they pierced the armor of our guys and drew blood, we didn’t stiffen up and go down like their foes had before, nor were we reacting to their horrific stench in the slightest.

  That was probably about when he realized we really were going to clean them all off, and he really was going to die.

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