Chapter One: A Helping Hand

The ancient mechanisms thundered, the giant gears crushing boulder-sized rocks between their iron teeth and spitting out rubble in disdain. Beyond them, the furnaces set into the stone dwarf mouths glowed with Abyssal fury and spewed rivers of molten rock destined for the deeper bowels beneath Darkmoon Vale.

Darvin couldn’t concern himself with that, however. To his left, Fife—halfling, adopted brother, and friend—lay unmoving on the giant conveyor belt that ferried him closer to the hungry gears eager to gnash him into bloody pudding. To Darvin’s right, however, the beautiful Princess Miranna dangled from a metal chain, her once stunning gown in tatters and hanging only by the curve of her ample hips and shoulders. Inch by inch, the mad, twisted dwarves from beneath Darkmoon Vale, long forgotten by wind and sunlight, cackled monstrously and lowered Miranna closer to the vat of molten ore.

Darvin couldn’t save them both, he realized. Or could he? He glanced left at Fife (still unconscious as the belt carried him doomward), then right at Princess Miranna (screaming his name, the vat warming the pads of her naked feet). Then up at the dwarf king, Madbeard IV, who laughed maniacally at his evil cunning, the Necklace of Fortune’s Charms with its dozens of luck rings hanging from his neck. Finally, Darvin looked down at his hands, and at the only thing he hadn’t yet spent or broken in their quest to uncover the Vale’s secrets: a lockpick.

It would have to be enough.

“Too late!” Madbeard IV cried triumphantly, his half-burned face twisted in a sneer, the rings of his necklace jangling. “You cannot save them both!”

Darvin grit his teeth and steeled his jaw. His voice, low and dangerous, sliced through the clamor.

“I’m thirsty,” he said.

∗∗∗

“What?” an old man asked, leaning so far forward that he almost spilled from his chair.

“I’m thirsty,” Darvin repeated. He smacked his lips as though dismissing a bad taste. “Where’s that serving wench?”

Three of the men shouted for another barley stout from the kitchen. Fife pretended to annotate the ledger on his lap, but a sideways glance told him the story. Seven men and two women sat around their table, on the edge of their seats. They eyed the necklace hanging in Darvin’s languid grip, a handful of rings all that were left of its charms.

When the black-haired lass appeared from the kitchen carrying a serving tray, they motioned her over impatiently.

She set the drink down, at which point Darvin rolled his eyes. “Damn it all… Fife, old friend, I’ve forgotten my monies upstairs. Go fetch my purse?”

Fife nodded and jumped down from his large chair.

“This won’t take a moment,” Darvin said.

“Here,” one of the men said, slapping down coin on the serving tray and glancing at the necklace of lucky rings. “Go on with your story. The lockpick?”

Darvin nodded as Fife quietly took his seat again. The halfling tried not to smirk. Darvin had them wrapped around his finger.

It was only when Fife glanced again that he saw the two men seated away from them, in the shadows. Neither appeared to be smiling.

When the evening ended, Fife followed Darvin as he swept into their room. The human collapsed into the hay bed with a groan, his belly distended. “I may have eaten too much,” he admitted, draping an arm over his forehead.

“No no,” Fife said, closing the door, “you had to eat all that food before it threatened anyone else. You’re a hero.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Darvin said with a chuckle. He jangled the copper necklace, now bereft of its rings. “We need more charms for tomorrow night. I had them eating out of my hand.”

“Oh, so you did leave some food?” The halfling sat on the opposite bed and opened a leather-bound book that swallowed his entire lap. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Pff. You halflings eat like birds anyway.” Darvin glanced over to see if he’d hit a nerve, but Fife pretended to study the page.

“Now… you got the princess’s eyes wrong,” Fife said. “You called them blue when they’re supposed to be sea-green.”

“So?”

“It’s the reason why Madbeard IV decides to sacrifice her. Because of his promise to the Mage of Conqueror’s Bay.”

“So!” Darvin said.

Fife sighed. “The waters of Conqueror’s Bay are green!”

“Fife,” Darvin said, “nobody here’s been to Nidal. We haven’t been to Nidal—or Darkmoon Vale, or anywhere else for that matter. Nobody’s going to notice.”

“Authenticity is key. Speaking of which, it’s getting harder to keep track of your… embellishments.”

“I go with the moment,” Darvin said, closing his eyes.

“For example, I never described the princess as a ‘plump sausage.’”

“Some moments are better than others,” Darvin said, grinning. “Besides, I grow bored. Have you written something new?”

“I’m working on it,” Fife said, flipping through pages. The comment rankled him. Like it was that easy to create something worthwhile.

“You worry too much,” Darvin said. He sounded like he couldn’t fight the iron weights of sleep any longer.

“Darv… did you notice those two men seated away from everyone else?” Fife asked.

But Darvin was already asleep, and soon Fife was fast dreaming as well.

∗∗∗

It wasn’t the two new men in the room that awoke Fife that morning. It was Darvin’s deep snort that did the trick. For a moment, the halfling had forgotten where they’d taken shelter, then it slowly bubbled to the surface… the Andoren inn, the food and drink, another community entertained and bilked.

“Hello,” Fife said to the seated man. The intruder wore a grey tunic with a thick peppered mustache, and had shoulders wider than Fife was tall.

“Mmm… ‘ello,” Darvin muttered back and then turned over. He snored almost immediately.

The human who stood behind the seated one was black haired and balding, his arms thick with equal measures of muscle and fat, his face knotted in a disapproving scowl. Neither man appeared armed; Fife remembered them both from last night as the pair who had watched them from the shadows.

“Darvin, we have guests,” Fife said.

“Mmm… are they pretty?” Darvin muttered.

“Give him a moment,” Fife said, smiling nervously at the visitors. “His instincts are slow to start, but you’ll find none sharper.”

“I hope so,” the seated man said in a deep voice.

Darvin cheered softly. “Huzzah! Fife’s voice has finally broken.”

∗∗∗

“For an ordinary merchant, Cullins is exceptionally persuasive.”

“You don’t look like much,” the standing man said. He’d introduced himself as Harvander, Master-at-Arms for the Merchant Cullins. Cullins remained seated, his arms crossed as though daring someone to entertain him and certain they’d fail.

“It helps if people underestimate us,” Darvin said, splashing his face with cold water from the rinse bowl. The shock jolted him awake. Fife handed him the washcloth. “Lulls them into a false sense of security.”

“I assure you, it’s working,” Cullins replied.

“Good,” Darvin said, deciding to smile at the insult. “How may we be of service?” He already knew these two would be tough to charm or crack.

Harvander paused and stage-whispered in Cullins ear, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Cullins shrugged. “They die, we don’t pay them.”

“Die?” Fife said.

“Pay?” Darvin said at the same time.

“The village is cursed,” Cullins said. “For five years, we suffered under the rule of Malificar—”

“Who names their child Malificar?” Darvin whispered to Fife, but Fife shushed him with a motion.

“He blighted our crops,” Cullins continued. “He raised the dead and conducted foul, perverse experiments on our livestock.”

Fife elbow-jabbed Darvin in the ribs just as a snarky comment rose to the human’s lips.

“We killed him for it,” Harvander said flatly. “A year ago, in fact. And we destroyed his manse.”

“But the killings didn’t stop?” Fife asked.

Darvin noticed the halfling squirming eagerly in his seat, and realized he was in trouble.

“Foolish locals,” Harvander replied. “They looted his stead and awoke… something.”

“There’s been a death every week or two since,” Cullins said. “Their throats opened.”

Fife smiled up at Darvin. This is fantastic! his expression read, but Darvin tried to look indifferent.

“Over thirty deaths in total,” Harvander replied. “All farmers or travelers, their throats slit cleanly.”

“We’ve searched the ruins during the daytime, but at night, nobody dares approach the property.” Cullins studied them both and then tossed a leather pouch to Darvin. The pouch clinked when he caught it, and the weight felt solid. “Silver—not a copper piece among them. Yours if you help us.”

“If not,” Harvander continued. “Well, there’s no telling what the hard-working people of this town would do to the liars who sold them cheap trinkets as luck charms.”

∗∗∗

Harvander escorted them through the gray drizzle to the ruins of a manse outside of town, then left them to their business.

Only a shell remained of the main building, the wings of the manse upright except for a collapsed roof, the middle of the home burnt and in rubble. A mess of blackened timbers and shattered bricks reached plaintively for the dismal skies.

“We should run,” Darvin said.

“They need our help,” Fife replied. The halfling poked about with his walking stick, deftly jumping across patches of floor that would have collapsed under a human’s weight. Darvin envied him that grace.

“This isn’t one of your stories,” Darvin warned. He paused near a hole and peered down. Here, a fire-eaten grid of floor beams separated the main floor from the dark pit of the basement.

“This is better!” Fife replied. Grinning madly, he pulled his cloak over his head to ward off the rain, opened a small ledger, and began jotting something down.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Darvin asked. He tested one of the beams, but it groaned; Darvin backed away.

“Recording every detail,” Fife replied, and then read aloud, “The heroes stood over the black gulf, staring intently into the abyss.”

“All the while” Darvin continued, “Fife unaware that his partner was about to kick him over the edge.”

“Not in character,” Fife responded absently. “Let’s go down.”

Darvin peered over the edge. “How?”

The halfling looked around, and Darvin followed his gaze over to a debris slope of collapsed bricks, timber, and furniture mounded up on the floor below.

“Follow me,” Fife said, slapping the book shut and jumping from beam to beam, seemingly oblivious to their poor state. He reached a broken ledge, the remnant of the floor abutting an exterior wall, and from there jumped down to the slope. From beam to tabletop to broken wall, he reached the plank-floored basement in a series of deft hops, barely disturbing the slope.

“You next!”

“Not on your life, you malnourished hummingbird!” Darvin called down, then quietly cursed the easy grace of halflings. Darvin took looped rope from his bag and secured it to an exposed foundation stone. “You know,” he said, “I bought this rope strictly for show.” He swung his legs over the side and, inhaling, lowered himself into the darkness. His heart beat harder.

“Hey,” Fife chirped, peering at a hole in the floor. “There’s a level below this.”

Darvin concentrated on his descent. He spun gently and dropped in fits and jerks. He flailed his legs trying to steady himself and quickly found his world spinning even faster around the axle of the rope.

“Darv,” Fife said, with concern in his tone.

“I’ve got this,” Darvin said, but the taste of breakfast in his mouth told him perhaps not.

“Darv!” Fife shouted. “Above you! Spider!”

Darvin jerked his head up and saw it: a fist-sized spider descended down the rope.

No, he realized. Not a fist-sized spider, but—

“It’s a hand!” Darvin shrieked. “A fist-sized hand!”

Runes marked the amputated hand, the skin gray, wrist terminating at a bronze band. The knuckles were exposed to the bone, and the fingers sheathed in steel blades.

A rock careened through the air, missing the hand. Darvin swung around to find Fife aiming again.

“Don’t make it mad!” Darvin screamed.

“How do you make a hand mad?” Fife screamed back.

The hand twirled around the rope once, and then the line creaked. Darvin realized too late that the creature had just cut halfway through the rope with its fingers. Braiding frayed with a snapping sound, and before Darvin could drop down, the rope broke completely.

Darvin fell ten feet, the planks of the basement floor shattering under his weight. Then both he and Fife were falling once more, down into the darkness that yawned below the basement.

Chapter Two: Idle Hands

“Ohhh,” Fife groaned. He tried moving, but the world refused to comply, spinning underneath him the way it did. His bones ached and his skin felt like someone had rubbed it with the uncomfortable side of a bar of pumice. He opened his eyes and stared up at the sky—specifically, at the distant hole in the ceiling that revealed the wet gray skies of Andoran.

“That’s right…” Memories began to fall back into place for the halfling. The desperate townsfolk who bought their fake luck charms. The murder of farmers. The ruined necromancer’s manse. And…

“The hand!” Fife sat up from his throne of rubble, looking for the amputated hand that had sheared Darvin’s rope and sent them both tumbling through the weakened floor into the darkness below the manse’s basement. He saw no sign of the hand in the brick-lined cistern, but dark waters and shadows lapped at the islands of debris and ribs of shattered timber. Darvin lay atop one of the mounds, eyes closed and body utterly still.

“Darvin!” Fife scrambled over to his compatriot. Darvin didn’t respond, even after Fife pulled at the lapels of his beaten leather coat. Left with little recourse, Fife drew back his arm and slapped Darvin hard enough for the sound to echo through the cistern.

“OW!” Darvin shrieked, his eyes flying open. Fife, however, did not let go. “Fife! What in—?

“You know those moments in the story when one hero thinks the other dead, begs him not to die and shares some deep personal truth?”

“Vaguely,” Darvin said.

“And then it turns out the other one was only faking his injuries?”

“Oh, yeah?” Darvin said, this time a touch sheepishly.

“This is not one of those moments,” Fife said, shaking his brother.

Darvin did nothing to stop him. “But I love those moments.”

Fife let go of Darvin’s coat and stood. “You weren’t unconscious.”

“Fife is rarely the hero of his own stories.”

“I’m hurt you’d think that,” Darvin responded, propping himself up on an elbow and cradling his aggrieved cheek.

“Darvin,” Fife warned, looking around. They were well and deep under the manse, the walls too sheer to scale. He leapt to another small island to get a look at a nearby passageway.

“I just want to be held!” Darvin called after him.

Fife ignored his brother. “The hand…?” he asked.

“Somewhere up there, no?” Darvin stood and dusted himself off. Fife could tell he was trying to act unworried, but it was still an act.

“Let’s hope so,” Fife said; a shiver tore through him.

“It’s not really a spider, y’know.” Darvin said gently.

Fife waved away his friend’s concern. They weren’t supposed to talk about the incident—before Darvin’s mother adopted Fife as her own and the pair became siblings. He had never told Darvin how his own mother died, but his brother knew it involved a… a….

“It’s close enough,” Fife said, his voice cracking. He sniffed the air, smelling the earthy stench, and pointed down the rounded corridor. “There’s a breeze coming from that direction.”

“You mean the breeze with the slightly pungent aroma of rotting meat?” Darvin grabbed the collar of Fife’s jerkin and spun him in the direction of another corridor. “That’s why we’re going down the one that doesn’t smell like Death’s warm armpit”

“Darvin—”

But Darvin made his way, rather awkwardly, along the small islands to the other corridor. He jumped into the cold water at the head of the corridor and tried not to grimace as the brackish liquid sloshed around his waist. “Oh look!” he said. “I can stand here.” He grinned back at the halfling.

Fife glanced at the other corridor. Something scrapped against rock with a light echo, the sound dying quickly. Darvin seemed not to notice, but the halfling suddenly doubted the wisdom of his own choice. Fife turned, took a few quick strides, and launched himself onto his brother’s back.

“Changed your—” Darvin began.

“I’m keeping the books dry, you oaf,” Fife grumbled.

“Of course.” Darvin said as they waded into the waterlogged corridor with its irregular bricks.

The corridor eventually ended at a brick wall with a sluice gate at one end and a moss-covered brick platform with a door to the right. The water reeked of stagnation and decaying sewage. The door bulged out, the wood splintered and cracked under weight.

They stood well to the side as Darvin struggled to pull the wedged door open. When it finally gave, it popped with a rumbling force that slammed Darvin into the wall. The stone and wood spine of a collapsed ceiling tumbled out.

The pair examined the landslide a moment, noting the gaps between timber beams and under larger rocks.

“You can crawl through there,” Darvin said, pointing to one of the larger rabbit holes.

“What?!” Fife shouted, barely stopping his voice from squeaking. “Why me? It’s large enough for you, too.”

“Because you’re tiny,” Darvin announced.

Fife glared at him. “The gods curse you for that.”

“Are they tiny gods?” Darvin asked, grinning.

Fife didn’t bother bruising his already soiled dignity, and instead removed his backpack, shoving his cloak inside. “Remember, if I die, it’ll be on your head.”

“It’ll be a tiny funeral,” Darvin said cheerfully.

The tunnel was small. Not so tight that Fife felt pressed in, but not so wide that his breathing didn’t rabbit faster. Darvin would have a hell of a fit inside, and that made Fife smile.

Obstructions jutted out at sharp angles. Fife crawled over and under them, elbow over elbow, pulling and scraping skin, snagging clothing and tearing fabric in small nicks. Every foot deeper into the burrow tightened a fist around his chest, and panicked thoughts butterflied in his head. He stopped, almost gasping, wanting to crawl back out before the tunnel snapped its teeth around him.

He stared ahead and squinted; did the passage open up, or was that the illusion of desperation? Fife wanted to push forward, but as he watched, a shadow moved against shadow, pebbles clattering in its wake.

Something waited for him just past the opening. He froze.

∗∗∗

Darvin considered lighting a torch to see better; Fife had vanished up ahead, the darkness swallowing him up.

“You okay up there?” Darvin shouted down the throat of the tunnel.

“Shh!” came the response.

“You ‘shh!’” Darvin cried back.

“SHHH!” Fife hissed more urgently.

Darvin almost shouted back at his companion, but a splash caught his attention. He spun around as more splashes followed, echoes that danced along the walls of the tunnel and up his spine… then nothing.

Darvin tiptoed to the edge of the platform. The dying ebb of waves lapped against the stone. Something coursed under the water, casting ripples, heading straight for him.

Unbidden, his memory suddenly offered up a crystal-clear image of the severed hand dancing on the fraying rope, finger-blades flickering.

Darvin bolted for the small hole, shoving Fife’s bag in first and crawling after it. Rocks and the tips of broken timbers poked and jabbed him. The bag snagged and he struggled to push it forward despite the tearing sound that followed. The tunnel pressed against him, and he wrenched his shoulder pushing himself through.

“Fife!” Darvin shouted.

“Shh!”

“Move!”

“For the love of our mother, shh!” Fife cried back.

“Stop telling me to shush! The hand’s behind me!”

“No it’s not,” Fife shouted, far closer than Darvin would have thought. “It’s in front of us.”

“Behind!” Darvin insisted. The bag hit resistance, and Darvin looked up at the blackened soles of Fife’s feet. Something scampered in the tunnel behind Darvin, and more stones tumbled from their perch. He couldn’t see past his own body, however, and opted to push instead.

∗∗∗

Fife felt something press against his feet and almost shrieked in terror. He raised his head to see Darvin shoving his bag—shoving Fife—toward the opening a handful of feet away and the noise that had turned into an impatient clicking, like the tapping of metal fingers.

“No, Darvin!” Fife shouted. He pressed his hands against the rocks and kicked at the bag.

“Stop that, you lout! Something’s behind me!”

Before Fife could protest, Darvin gave another shove, sending the halfling toward the hole and pinning his hands under his body, squashed tight against rock.

The mummified hand leapt into the opening, its tensing fingers covered in blades. Fife screamed. Darvin screamed in response, though unlikely for the same reason. Or maybe it was. Fife didn’t care.

The hand scampered forward on its fingers, and Fife struggled to free his arms. Darvin pushed him another inch closer. The hand was, for the lack of better measurements, only a handful of feet away.

Fife rolled to his side, pressing his back painfully against the rubble until his arms popped free, his fingers aching and bruised. The hand sprang toward him, fingers propelling it forward. Naturally, Darvin pushed him again, screaming something about the thing at his feet and life having failed his expectations. Fife couldn’t reach the dirk at his belt, but in the attempt his hand rubbed against the bamboo quill in his breast pocket. He grabbed it and swung hard, stabbing the amputated hand as it came within an inch of shaving his eyebrows.

Fife stabbed the hand again with the sharp quill, his vision red pinpricks of focus and flushed hot with blood. Suddenly, the lip of the tunnel loomed and he found popping free like a cork, shoved out by a panicking Darvin. He barely had time to roll nimbly away before his human companion came crashing down as well, almost crushing him.

∗∗∗

Darvin pushed to his feet quickly, pulling on his sheathed dagger to defend himself, the stuck weapon flopping uselessly against his leg. The skittering in the tunnel grew louder.

Darvin glanced up just in time to catch a scurry of movement and the gleam of red eyes. It took him a second to register that second part before several large and frightened brown rats tore out of the tunnel, screeching in protest. They ran past Darvin and a prone Fife, who pulled away from the rodents, before scrabbling through cracks in the wall.

“Rats!” Darvin exclaimed, laughing in relief. “All that nonsense for rats!” He noticed the amputated hand, its fingers curled up like the legs of a dead spider. “When did I do that?”

“You?” Fife stood and drew himself up to his full three-foot height. “That was me!”

“Really?” Darvin said. “That sounds more like something I’d do.”

“I killed it!” Fife said, then seemed to startle as he realized what he’d said. “Me! I did that! I killed it! I’m the hero of the village.” He held his bamboo quill aloft like a champion wielding a blade, or at least a really big turkey leg. “The quill is mightier than the sword!”

“Now that’s just silly,” Darvin said. “Hyperbole will get you killed. Especially in a sword-versus-quill fight.” He looked around the chamber.

The world seemed to slow, dread flowing back into him like cold water into an empty cup. “Fife,” Darvin said quietly, “don’t turn around.”

Of course Fife turned around. As soon as he said it, Darvin realized how foolish the statement was. Turning is precisely the first thing one does when told “don’t turn around.” It was an inherent contradiction, much like when someone says, “This tastes horrible… here, try it.”

They stood in a circular domed chamber, a door against the curve of the opposite wall. In the center rested a huge table with its sides flanked by drawers and the top covered in beakers, jars, books, powder packets, measuring tools, and innumerable other instruments. Above the worktable hung a wood-wheel chandelier crusted in wax.

Twenty tables lined the curving walls, and upon each lay a corpse in some advanced state of decay.

“Darvin,” Fife whispered.

Darvin touched his brother’s shoulder. “I told you not to turn around.” In retrospect, though, Darvin wasn’t sure how he expected Fife to continue without turning around.

“No,” Fife said, nodding to the bodies; all manacled, Darvin now noticed. And all missing their hands.

“Oh,” Darvin said.

And from all the dark places in the room and the large cracks in the floor came a scurrying of movement.

Chapter Three: Hands Off

Darvin cursed himself for not thinking, for not realizing how Fife would react. He’d raced halfway across the circular chamber, running for the door, when he realized something was amiss. He couldn’t feel Fife’s familiar presence, that steady pressure by his side. Darvin turned to see Fife frozen near the collapsed passageway. All around them, from the shadows of the laboratory, a legion of amputated hands rushed forward on blade-sheathed fingers, skittering like spiders in a mad dash for the intruders.

“Spider,” Fife said breathlessly as Darvin ran back to him, scooped him up, and dropped the halfling over his shoulder.

“Not spiders!” Darvin said, hoping to cut his friend free from his terror.

“Spider!” Fife yelled, and batted at Darvin’s back.

“Ah!” Darvin cried, surprised, and a hand dropped away from his backpack. He booted it away quickly, before it could spring back up onto its fingers.

“Runrunrun!” Fife screamed.

Darvin hesitated. The hands converged on them the same way water flows down the slope, their fingers blurs of galloping motion and the opportunity for escape gone in an instant. Two more hands appeared from the hole through which they’d entered the room.

Darvin leapt into action, taking long strides, hurdling amputated hands that leapt and grabbed for them. He spun this way and that, clumsily avoiding attackers as his companion’s weight threatened to topple his balance. Fife protected his back, wildly swinging his bag of notebooks at the hands lunging at them from behind. One such assault thwacked Darvin on the backside.

“Ow!” Darvin yelped. “That was a corner!”

“Run!” Fife replied.

The hands closed in, barely heeding or pausing at the blows that sent them careening back. They outnumbered the pair, and Darvin could only react, not make any real progress. He threw Fife on the high workshop table, breaking vials and scattering jars and books, before leaping atop it himself. The hands scrambled up the sides of the table.

We’re surrounded, Darvin realized.

∗∗∗

Fife swung his bag like a mace, shattering glass and dislodging metal fingers that crested the lip of the table. Behind him, Darvin stomped digits and booted away hands, but the crawling horrors possessed a heedless relentlessness. They landed a few feet away on the stone floor, recovered almost instantly, and scrambled back for the table.

“We’re dead!” Darvin screamed. “We are so very much dead!”

Fife wanted to respond, but hearing his brother’s panic only tightened its grip around his own throat, stopping him from speaking. The hands had them trapped, a dozen feet away from the other door and under the relentless assault of their diminutive foes. This is all my fault. He had dragged them into this misadventure. “I’m sorry,” he managed.

A pair of hands grabbed Fife’s waist, and before he realized what was happening, Darvin had hoisted him up, toward the wagon-wheel chandelier above their heads. Fife barely had time to grab it before Darvin let go.

“Save yourself!” Darvin said.

The wheel swung on a rusted chain, creaking and groaning. Particles of dust trickled down from the chain’s anchor in the ceiling. Fife managed to slip upward through the spokes and atop the wheel before he looked down. The table looked like an island in a relentless sea of moving hands. The smell of rotten eggs and decaying flesh drifted up from the mess.

“Darvin! Climb!” Fife extended his arm down to pull up his brother. Darvin busied himself kicking the hands away, trying to keep track of the table’s four sides. His movements grew frantic and wilder as exhaustion weighed more heavily upon him.

When Darvin didn’t respond, Fife stretched down and grabbed for his brother in desperation, catching only a handful of the man’s long, sandy hair.

“Ah!” Darvin cried, trying to kick the hands, maintain his balance, and not have a halfling-sized fistful of hair torn out by the roots.

“Jump up!” Fife ordered.

“My hair!”

“Damn your hair! Jump!”

One of the amputated hands grabbed Darvin’s ankle, and he kicked it away before jumping up. He grabbed the spokes. The wheel creaked, the chain groaned, and the pair swung ponderously to and fro. The hands jumped up on the tabletop and jockeyed for position. A few of them tried springing up to grab Darvin’s feet, but he pulled his legs up quickly and threaded them through the spokes.

“Now what?” Darvin asked, whispering and looking at Fife through the gap.

“I have a plan,” Fife whispered back.

“Why are we whispering? They don’t have ears… do they?” He craned his neck to look back down at the hands.

“Climb up,” Fife said, even as something in the ceiling creaked loudly.

“It won’t take my weight!” Darvin hissed.

“Exactly,” Fife said, grinning. “Now climb!”

∗∗∗

Darvin remained dubious as only an older sibling could. Now atop the wheel, he froze and grimaced as more dust poured through the ceiling bolts and the wood complained beneath them.

They would fall. That much he knew, looking down at the table with all the hands jumping up, trying to grab at them.

“Now what?”

Fife grinned in response and pushed himself up from his belly before thrusting himself down. The chain screeched in complaint and the wheel wobbled.

“Wait!” Darvin said. “What’re you—”

Fife pushed again. “Help me!” he said.

Darvin suddenly understood. “The gods save us from your lunacy!” he said, and braced against the ceiling, pressing down against the wheel with his legs.

“Are they tiny gods?” Fife asked.

The chain didn’t snap, but instead broke from the ceiling anchors and dropped them, heavy wheel, unspooled chain, and all. The chandelier struck the tabletop with a crash of falling mortar, breaking glass, and the squish-thud-crack of pulped hands. The impact hammered the air from the brothers’ lungs.

“What fell force created and compels the bladed hands?”

Hands crawled away, their fingers snapped, small bones exposed. Some lay dead like curled-up spiders. Others rolled away to safety.

“We killed them,” Fife whispered, but Darvin pulled him away.

“C’mon! Let’s go!”

They bolted for the door even as the surviving hands sprang or wobbled to their digits. Ignoring whatever shock or injury the intruders had meted out, the hands immediately set after them in hot pursuit.

Darvin pulled at the door and sighed gratefully when he realized it wasn’t locked. In fact, the passageway angled upward. The two brothers ducked through and Darvin slammed the door shut behind them, laughed despite himself—a desperate, exhausted bark of triumph and relief.

Then he caught Fife’s expression. Following his brother’s gaze, Darvin looked down and saw the small square at the bottom of the door, crowned by a hinge. Darvin knew he should understand what it meant, but his adrenaline-addled brain wasn’t quite up to the challenge.

“What is—?” he began, but Fife interrupted him.

“It’s a dog door!” the halfling cried.

That’s silly, Darvin thought. “But I didn’t see a—”

The first hand barreled through the swinging door, and Fife stamped desperately on it. The door shuddered as multiple thuds struck it, and several hands wedged at the small access as they all struggled to get through next.

Darvin acted, kicking the hinged flap and scattering the hands back into the room. He turned to find Fife no longer kicking the hand in question, but instead jumping up and down with both feet, knees as high as his chest, vigorously stomping the amputated monstrosity into the ground.

“Die, spider!” Fife screamed. “Die, die, die!”

“It’s already dead, dead, dead,” Darvin said, and grabbed Fife, pulling him along the passageway. The human did pause, however, and stomp heavily on the hand one last time before the pair bolted.

They ran hard, past shadowed corners and down strange passageways. Fife glanced through doorways, almost distracting himself once when he spied ancient tomes lining long bookshelves in one study. Darvin, however, grabbed Fife and pulled him along; he knew well how the halfling’s natural curiosity overcame his survival instincts.

Finally, the corridor dead-ended at a doorway, the wood etched with strange arcane patterns of sweeping, curving meridian designs. Darvin glanced back behind them, but the stampede of hands was nowhere to be seen. He raised a foot to kick open the rune-marked door.

“No!” Fife screamed, and tackled Darvin’s thigh.

Darvin grabbed the wall for balance and tried to shake his friend loose. “Do you mind?” Darvin asked, calmly.

“You don’t know what those markings mean!” Fife said, arms wrapped tight around Darvin’s leg. “It could be trapped!”

Darvin sighed. He just wanted to get away from here, from the village, from this entire ordeal as soon as possible. “Why would anyone trap their home?”

“Why would he lop off hands and animate them?” Fife asked, letting go.

“Maybe he couldn’t afford a full staff?” Darvin offered.

“The point is, who knows what he was thinking?” Fife said. “Remember the Tale of the Moaning Virgin’s Ghost?”

“You mean the one you wrote?”

“Yes.”

“Actually,” Darvin said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that one. I don’t think you thought the title through.”

“Darvin!” Fife said, eyeing the door. “What I mean is, I research my material for authenticity. The wizard in that story trapped the door to keep something inside. It’s based on a real spell!”

Darvin thought for a moment. “Alright,” he said. “In that story, how did I open that door?”

“You…” To Darvin’s satisfaction, Fife hesitated.

“I kicked it open, didn’t I?” Darvin demanded.

“Yes,” Fife said. “But that was a story. And you got cursed in it.”

“Right,” Darvin said, and kicked open the door.

The runes splintered under the breaking wood, glowing brightly for a moment before fading from the frame. Fife groaned in worry, but Darvin shoved his way through.

Fresh air swept across them, driving away the pungent, earthy smell of decay and replacing it with the dewy wetness of night and grassy hills and wind-ruffled trees. Moonlight filtered through the branches and the pair pushed forward, thrashing their way through the bush that hid the doorway and its rocky outcropping. The air felt infinitely better than the stink of death behind them.

Darvin collapsed on the grass, staring up at the night sky and laughed gratefully. Fife did not join him. Instead, the halfling peered back through the shrubs, checking the passageway they’d left.

“We lost them,” Darvin said. “Stop worrying.”

“They’re tireless,” Fife said thoughtfully. “Single-minded. Why’d they stop?”

“Maybe they can’t leave the ruins.”

“They’ve killed local farmers. They go out.”

Darvin sighed and struggled to sit up. “Then why, oh great storyteller?”

Fife shook his head. Darvin could tell he didn’t know, but the halfling examined their surroundings. Darvin glanced around as well.

They rested on the side of a great hill, one wave in a sea of green rolling dunes that stretched out in all directions. The clouds had rolled away, the face of the moon showing at full light this evening. Even Darvin could see clearly, though he trusted Fife’s eyes more in the darkness. He peered into the countryside, noting the green and rocky landscape, this cluster of stones one of many among the companion hills.

Further south, below them, lay the dotted lights of the village, silent and tranquil in the distance. Then something caught Fife’s attention and he waved frantically, pointing down the valley.

Between them and the village, the tall grass rustled and small dark things scrambled over the rocks, some slower than others.

“The hands,” Fife said, horrified.

Darvin followed the line of movement, projecting their path until his eyes came to rest on the sleepy collection of buildings in the distance.

“We have to go,” Fife said. “They’re going after the village!”

Chapter Four: Caught Red-Handed

“We let them out!” Fife said, his voice edged with panic. They dashed through the tall grass, Fife following in Darvin’s wake.

“You can’t be sure of that,” Darvin said, though he suspected the truth of it.

“We’ve as good as killed that village!”

“Fife,” Darvin said, spinning around to grab his brother by the shoulders, but the halfling ran a good dozen paces behind the longer-legged human. Darvin dropped his hands. “By the Gods, your voice carries.”

“Darvin!” Fife protested.

“Fife,” Darvin warned, and kept pace with the halfling as he whipped by. “As you said, the creatures had already venturing out to slit the throats of farmers. They could leave the manse.”

“Then why not kill everyone?” Fife said, “I’ll tell you why. Because they only murdered those who stole from their master. But once you broke the seal on the door…”

“So it’s my fault?” Darvin demanded.

“You just had to kick down the door.”

“It was in the way!”

“It had a handle!”

“Oh.” Darvin slowed down a touch. “That part won’t be in the tales, will it?”

“Come on, you egomaniacal yak!”

The pair had reached the stables on the edge of the village, the Andoren draft horses within snorting and tramping the ground in their anxiety. All around them, shouts and cries of terror sounded from villagers driven out of their homes by the things that crawled through their windows. Villagers gripped pitchforks and sickles tightly, a few hefting rusting blades of a more martial nature.

Too much, Darvin thought. He slowed and stopped, the horror of it driving stakes through his feet. He watched numbly as Fife ran to people, trying to get them to move, to act, to do something to pierce the same fear that poisoned Darvin. Nobody heard the halfling, however; to them all he was a child to be set aside with both hands, even when he kicked and pulled the crawling thing off a terrified farmer who rolled around in the dirt.

Fife looked to Darvin for help, but Darvin backed away—one step, then two before he forced himself to stop. Only one thing mattered, he forced his fear-addled brain to concede. Only one person.

Darvin grabbed Fife by the shoulder.

“We have to go,” Darvin whispered, and began pulling Fife along as the halfling bucked and screamed…

∗∗∗

“No, Darv!” Fife said, trying to free himself from his brother’s iron grip.

“Come on,” Darvin said, hoarsely, pulling the struggling halfling against his will.

“No! Stop!”

“We have to go!” Darvin shouted, dragging Fife off his feet, but the halfling managed to jerk away, ripping his shirt in the process.

“We have to save them,” Fife said, staring up into his brother’s eyes.

“We can’t!” Darvin said, looking around.

Fife hesitated a moment. “Darvin, the hero of the Mad Necromancer’s Wars, pulled his trusted blade from its sheath.”

“What?” Darvin said, blinking.

“He set his eyes upon the imperiled village, ready to leap into—”

“What are you doing?” Darvin said.

“In—into the fray,” Fife continued staring all around him as cries shot from the shadows like arrows.

“Stop it! That’s just make-believe,” Darvin shouted. “This isn’t one of your blasted stories!”

“Everything’s a story!” Fife shouted back with a voice that felt ready to tear itself apart. “Who says my stories aren’t the ones we haven’t lived yet?”

Darvin stared down at the halfling as though studying an alien, unfathomable thing. Then suddenly, he shook his head, his eyes focusing. “By the gods, you are mad.”

“Only a little,” Fife said, smiling sadly. Then he continued. “Darvin, hero of the Mad Necromancer’s Wars and champion of plump maidens, princesses, and swordswomen everywhere, unsheathed his trusted blade and leapt into the fray….”

A small smile flickered on Darvin’s lips. He inhaled sharply. “Right. Hero. Just make sure it’s a suitably epic recounting.” Then he darted into the crowd, forcibly pulling the men and women into fighting circles around the children.

Fife nodded gratefully and then set to kicking and stabbing at the hands that scrabbled after them. A handful of villagers fought to remove a hand about the throat of another man—the merchant Cullins, Fife realized. Harvander was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was already dead, or fled.

The halfling gripped his small dirk tighter and ran toward the men. He jostled for place and edged the blade for the hand about Cullins’ throat. The bladed fingers were squirming for the merchant’s jugular.

“No, you’ll hurt him!” someone yelled, but Fife ignored him. He deftly sliced the first dorsal tendon between the thumb and forefinger, and the hand came loose easily. The men stamped it into the ground as Cullins coughed for breath. He rose to his feet with a heavy hand on Fife’s shoulder and checked his neck with the other. It bled, but not so fiercely that he’d die.

Fife looked around, desperate for a solution as they ran for the nearest circle of armed farmers. The hands darted in and out of the shadows of the buildings, nicking and slicing with their blades before vanishing again. Several bodies lay where they had fallen, still and no longer bleeding. Others crawled or were dragged to safety, and yet the hands galloped fearlessly on the tips of their sometimes broken digits, eager for mayhem, unfeeling of pain.

The realization thundered inside Fife like a storm overtaking the plains. He grabbed Cullins’ arm just as they reached the circle of men and women.

“Is the temple sanctified?” Fife asked.

“Well, the priest diddled Farmer Hoskin’s daughter there,” one of the men added helpfully.

“Once!” a slender, bearded farmer (who Fife could only assume was Hoskins) replied.

Cullins ignored the other. “It should be,” he said.

“Get everyone there. Go! It should protect you!”

Cullins nodded and shouted at the others to join him as they ran for the simple stone building at the crest of a small hill. Fife let them go and turned back into the town to find his brother.

∗∗∗

Darvin knew he was no hero, but argue that with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He noticed the villagers running for the hill, the cry carrying through the crowd to “Fight your way to the temple!” Though instinct screamed at him to run, Darvin helped with the retreating stragglers, fending off the hands that leapt and flew at them.

He heard a cry from a nearby house—a woman’s voice, or perhaps a child’s. Two men glanced at the home, but continued retreating. Darvin wanted to join them, but forced himself to remember Fife’s words.

“Darvin, hero of the Mad Necromancer’s Wars…” he muttered. The phrase was oddly comforting. He ran for the doorway, crushing a hand that scampered near—far too near—under a hard boot.

The unlit, one-room, wood-and-mud home lay disheveled. Straw bedding was scattered underfoot, the stone hearth gasping out its last ember warmth. Backed into the far corner, a young woman grabbed whatever lay in reach—wood figurines, serving plates, clay cups—and lobbed them at the three hands that advanced on her like a pack of jackals.

Darvin acted before he could talk himself out of it, stabbing the closest hand perched on the small table through with his blade. The impaled hand wriggled and jerked on the end of his dagger, and the other pair turned on him instantly.

Furiously trying to whip the dying hand off his dagger, Darvion grabbed the table and flipped it over between him and the advancing monstrosities. It barely slowed the pair down as they sprang over the wood.

One hand leapt for Darvin’s shin, nicking it as he tried to sidestep. Hot pain flared up his body and his pant leg grew wet; he fell backward as the other hand tried to run between his splayed legs.

Darvin slammed his foot down again and again on the nearest hand, trying to crush it, then settled for pressing it down into the floor with his heel. The impaled hand continued to jerk at the end of his blade, and Darvin slammed the dagger into the ground, pinning the monster to the irregular slats of the wooden floor. But he’d lost track of the third hand that had drawn blood while the one under heel struggled to free itself.

Darvin couldn’t move. He heard something behind him and craned his head around as a shadow moved in the corner of his eye. Fife materialized into view like a ghost, stabbing the third hand through with his dagger, continuing to slam his tiny blade home until it stopped moving.

“Help me,” Darvin said as he struggled to kick the trapped hand under heel with his other boot, pain shooting along his wounded leg. Fife set about helping Darvin dispatch the two pinned creatures before both men had a chance to stop, breathe, and finally stare at the wide-shouldered, wide-hipped woman huddling in the corner.

“A plump maiden,” Fife whispered to him. “I told you my stories just hadn’t happened yet.”

“Indeed,” Darvin said, grinning at the woman and straightening his clothing.

∗∗∗

“Perhaps Darvin might one day prove a hero after all.”

As Fife suspected, the hands couldn’t cross the temple’s threshold. And slowly, the men and women of the village dispatched the single-minded hands, with rocks, pitchforks, and scythes.

When Darvin and Fife approached the temple gate with the woman, however, Cullins stepped in the way and whispered, “You two best be going.”

Fife, full of heroic charge and heart thundering with nervous excitement, said, “But we just saved you!”

Cullins studied the halfling, his eyes hard. “You brought those creatures here, did you not?”

Fife and Darvin exchanged quick glances. “Not deliberately,” Fife said. “And they were already escaping before, weren’t they? Because the townsfolk looted the manor.”

“You sent us there,” Darvin said quietly, a dangerous new note in his voice. “You have equal guilt in this.”

Cullins nodded. “Perhaps,” he said, looking at the bewildered villagers. “But you’re outsiders here. This is the only courtesy I can give you. Go, before they regain their senses enough to blame you for this mess. Frightened people do that.”

Fife wanted to argue more, but he felt Darvin’s hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” Darvin said.

∗∗∗

Dawn touched the horizon, a passing glimpse of what the day could be, and Darvin watched his brother carefully. The halfling had a tendency to brood, weighed down by his thoughts and crushed by self-criticism. Unlike most people with his disposition, however, Fife had turned that brooding into a fine art, and Darvin could see the parables of disappointment in his brother’s stories, the roads of regret for paths not taken except, perhaps, in longing dreams and sidelong glances. The business of the village weighed even heavier on him for that.

Darvin nudged Fife.

“What?” the halfling demanded sourly.

“Are you getting shorter?” Darvin said.

“What?”

“Isn’t that how it works with halflings? The older you are, the shorter you get?”

“Are you mad, you self-involved moose?”

Darvin shrugged. “Then maybe it’s just you,” he said cheerfully, and continued onward despite the pain in his bandaged leg.

∗∗∗

They walked in silence a bit further, Fife glaring up at Darvin. The human’s chirpy attitude and perpetual grin suggested that all trouble was destined to flow off his back. But Fife knew better. His brother needed anchors in this world, an emotional connection to guide his feet along the path. Darvin tended to hurdle obstacles, attracted by bright shiny things, almost entirely self-involved. The number of times Darvin nearly got himself killed staggered and frightened Fife. If Fife hadn’t been there, to give Darvin pause, to remind his brother that they shared in the repercussions of Darvin’s actions, then Darvin would have suffered for his enthusiasms. For that alone, Fife was glad to be a burden that only brothers shared.

Still, it didn’t mean that his brother didn’t get on his nerves occasionally.

A wicked thought occurred to him.

“Say, Darvin,” Fife asked casually, “do you know what the word ‘incontinent’ means?”

“Sure,” Darvin replied. “It means spanning multiple continents, right?”

“Absolutely. I was thinking that my next story of your adventures might involve some jungle exploration in Garund.”

Darvin grinned broadly and gripped the halfling about the shoulders. “See, that’s why you’re the writer!”

Fife nodded. “And you the hero,” he said. “Oops—I meant the incontinent hero.”

Darvin accepted the title with a bow and a flourish, and the pair continued on toward the next town, the rehearsing of another tall tale under way.