Page 55 of Astarion

“Arf, arf. Wait, do foxes go arf?”

“Hedgehogs certainly don’t.” Astarion took a firestarter out of his pouch and lit the mummy’s corpse on fire. It ignited so violently that he jumped back to avoid singeing his eyebrows. The flame settled after a moment, the wax melting and sliding off the bones beneath. It smelled strongly of pork tallow.

“Uck.” Den Suriel waved his hand in front of his face. “Let’s get out of here.”

The heavy door to the jail had no windows. Astarion slid his polished knife blade underneath and turned it back and forth.

“Two skeletons on either side,” he reported. “I can’t see any others ahead, but I can’t swear they aren’t there.”

Den Suriel nodded. “Stay back.”

“There’s probably—”

The paladin wrenched the door open, grabbed a skeleton around the neck, and yanked it back into the guardroom. It barely had time to flail before he bashed it against the wall and followed up with a sword pommel to the skull.

“—another way,” Astarion finished. “Or not.”

“Would you like to get the door this time?”

“Of course. Always happy to contribute to the mayhem.” Astarion pulled the door open. Den Suriel grabbed one of the confused skeletons milling around and pulled it inside to dispatch it.

By the third one, the skeletons had figured out that something was going on. When Astarion opened the door, there was a sword waiting. Den Suriel stepped aside as the skeleton tried to skewer him, caught its bony forearm, and pulled it inside. Astarion slammed the door again.

The fourth one just stood there, apparently resigned to its fate, and den Suriel knocked it down and stomped on its head.

“Right,” Astarion said. “Now, which side of the cavern did you come in on?”

The paladin had come in on the side opposite Astarion, but his directions on how to return were perhaps not as clear as they could be, since they relied on landmarks like “about twenty skeletons here” and “two mummies over there” that were presumably no longer in place. Astarion eventually decided to just follow the trail of bodies and hope the priest hadn’t gotten around to raising the bones again.

They made it to the cavern wall and a good five yards down the road before the army of skeletons arrived.

That is a lot of skeletons. Even Cazador doesn’t keep that many around. Each individual one might be a minimal threat, but dozens together? Astarion looked around for somewhere to bolt. No point going back to the prison. Could I get my boots off and go up the wall? The wall on the right was living rock, but the wall on the left was mortared and only went up about fifteen feet, probably another chunk of ruin that had been repurposed by the cult.

Astarion opened his mouth to say something about the better part of valor, but then den Suriel lifted his hand and shouted, in a ringing voice, “The earth holds no place for such as you! By the gods above, by Lathander’s light, by the Badger’s wrath, I abjure you!”

He did not just say that.

He did.

If I weren’t undead, I would die of sympathetic embarrassment.

Bare skulls were incapable of expression, but Astarion could swear they looked appalled. He cleared his throat and said, “Just so you know, I’m not actually with—”

The paladin’s hand began to glow.

Terror engulfed Astarion, sudden and shocking, as if his heart had been plunged into ice. Den Suriel’s hand burned like a miniature sun, but this had none of the kindness of his earlier touch. This was the sun that beat down on deserts, relentless, scouring every shadow clean. This was a sun that would strip Astarion’s flesh and burn his bones to char. Light blazed in Astarion’s vision, and all he could do was run from it, knowing even as he did that the light would pursue him wherever he fled, endless, implacable, blazing through the darkness until—

“What on earth are you doing up there?” den Suriel asked.

Astarion wiped his watering eyes and peered over the edge of the building. The corridor was filled with lifeless bones. The paladin was no longer glowing. As Astarion watched, he tucked his holy symbol away, then looked back up with a puzzled expression.

Ah. Apparently, I do not actually need to take my boots off. “I’ve got daggers,” Astarion said. “Not terribly useful for fighting skeletons. I thought if I got up here, I could pry some rocks loose and drop them from above.”

“Oh, good thinking.”

“You handled it, though.”

Den Suriel smiled modestly. “It’s what I do.”