Page 19 of Level Up for Love

Moss presses her palms together and offers a tentative, anxious smile. “We came to help.”

Antoni looses a derisive snort, and a new voice joins the conversation.

“To help!” There’s a high-pitched hoot of a laugh. “Your skull must be as empty as these if you came all this way just to help.” A bald halfling dressed in dark clothing approaches, shaking a skull teasingly in Moss and Sindra’s direction. There are two more tucked in the crook of his elbow.

“Mortimer…” Vera sighs, her tone one of resigned amusement.

The halfling—the last member of our rescue party, Sindra assumes—waves her off and fixes his stare on Sindra and Moss, his violet eyes wide with interest behind the thick lenses of his glasses. The dark leather spellbook holstered at his hip marks him immediately as a wizard, while his black-and-gray robes and the skulls hint at his specialty: necromancy. His sardonic grin is bright against his immaculately styled black mustache and goatee. “Come, now. Why are you really here?” he huffs. “You don’t look the altruistic sort.”

Sindra pauses, and her fingers toy with Brightmorn’s hilt. If you’ve something to say, now would be a good time. Shall we trust them with your quest? Do you even care, or was it all a dream?

The blade’s silence rings in her ears.

Moss’s eyes flash to the sword, then to Sindra. Sindra quickly shakes her head, but internally, she sighs. She’s not about to try to persuade this group of strangers about the sword’s chatter when she can’t even convince herself she didn’t imagine it. The broken magic sword hardly matters, anyway—it’s not the only reason she and Moss have journeyed this far. It’s not even the most important one.

“Honestly, I would love nothing more than to go back,” Sindra says. “But whatever is sucking the life from your kingdom is beginning to do the same to ours.”

Vera inhales sharply, and Antoni’s eyes go wide. Mortimer looks up with undisguised interest.

“We slayed a dragon yesterday that came back to life after we killed it,” Moss says, her voice tight with emotion. “And on our journey here, we saw how the borders are changing. Morphing. My enclave—our home—sits not a day’s journey from the edges of Moros. I will not let it spread, and I will not leave until I’ve figured out what’s going on.”

“Let us help,” Sindra insists. “Maybe we can fix what happened here.”

Silence settles around the party. Vera is the first to break it. “Not what,” she says quietly. “Who.”

“Who?” Sindra snaps. “Someone did this?”

Vera licks her lips. “Prince Vadrien Ashe,” she spits, her tone acidic with hatred. “He killed our king and stole the throne for himself. We tried to fight back, but the dark magic he wields is too powerful. The land withers, and the sun itself hides from him. Every soldier we lose rises again to fight for his cause. He drains the life from our kingdom to fuel his power and cement his control. A few more years of this, and I fear nothing living will be left.”

“How?” Moss asks. “I’ve never met anyone with enough power to affect so much in so short a time. What is he? A devil? A lich?”

“Worse,” Vera says bitterly. “A vampire.”