Ten
 
Kon watched as a hand encased in bronze reached out and wrapped six, long, skeletal, fingers around the edge of the stone sarcophagus. The lid tilted and fell with a booming crash and a head raised itself up and over the edge and Kon breathed out a sigh of relief.
Not a zombie.
“Still doesn't look very friendly.”
It had a triangular head with a thick helm of bronze that reached nearly all the way to its neck and a half mask of sculpted bronze over its face that looked like a bird's beak. Yellow eyes tracked him with octagonal white pupils. It kept rising up and a hissing came from behind the beak mask. What little flesh was showing didn’t look desiccated.
“Are you friendly?” Kon asked as he gripped the shattered spear tighter. There was no way this thing was friendly, but he still had to ask. It was only polite.
The armored creature revealed a thick, curved dagger with a nasty hook on the end. A huffing sound came from the beak and Kon tilted his head and shrugged.
“Not friendly, got it.” He lunged, throwing the bloody rock as he crossed the short distance toward the sarcophagus before it could get free. The figure twitched out of the way, but the rock still pinged off the helm, leaving a dent along the crown. It howled in outrage, but Kon was already there.
The tooth sank into a yellow eye and the creature went stiff for a moment before falling backward with a loud crash. Kon winced and looked around, but the other sarcophagi hadn’t budged and the monsters outside still hadn’t rushed in to rip him limb from limb.
Kon looked over the edge and down into the stone coffin and realized it was a gloomy staircase that led down and into the earth. The dead figure was sprawled out across a few stairs, short and compact frame limp in death.
“Creepy stairs or horde of monsters?” Kon debated with himself for a moment before throwing a leg over the edge of the sarcophagus and started walking down. He took the dagger that had been brandished at him and left his trusty rock on the ground. Now armed with a dagger and a half spear, he felt a bit better as he walked into the dark.
Cold, clean air was a welcome relief after the smoky haze above. Kon took several deep breaths, just to appreciate it, and kept his gaze fixed ahead as he walked deeper and deeper into the gloom. The tunnel had a slight slope to it, leading down at first, but then it leveled after a few minutes. Kon gripped his new dagger tighter as light began to creep against the darkness, the slightly undersized pommel uncomfortable in his palm.
“This is crazy, right? I’m not a Knight. Why am I clearing this rift by myself?” Kon talked to himself, the silence of the hall pressing too hard against his nerves. He didn’t really know too much about the Knights other than they were unstoppable weapons of war that everyone in the galaxy feared. Except when they were fighting themselves.
He did know that he wasn’t one. And that they didn’t clear rifts by themselves. What he was doing was stupid and suicidal.
“Suicidally stupid. That’s Alice’s teaching method,” Kon said with a chuckle to himself. He whirled suddenly as something sounded behind him, but even with the lightening of the tunnel’s gloom, he couldn’t make anything out. He worried that some of the monsters had finally mustered the courage to follow after him.
He peered into the dark for a minute and when nothing came charging to send him to the next life, he decided it was his own strained mind making the sounds. He laughed under his breath, a decidedly manic edge to it. His feet kept moving forward though, even with cold flop sweat coating his body.
Another set of stairs led upwards, lit up by the same yellow light that had been emanating from the barrows. Each of the steps was polished and clean and gleamed in the light. Kon kept his eyes locked ahead as he tried to silently make his way upwards as his heart beat a tattoo against his ribs.
The crest of the stairs revealed nothing more than another of the glowing orbs and a rotunda similar to the one he had been in. This one had no sarcophagi in them though, but a series of beds pressed against the walls, all empty. Kon stepped over to one and looked down at it and realized that it was a stuffed bag filled with some type of vegetation. All six beds looked rumpled and recently slept in.
“At least five more then. Maybe more. Got to keep an eye out.”
He kept his mouth shut and stalked forward toward the exit of the rotunda. More of the yellow orbs were posted about, beating back the eternal twilight of the shadowy sky, where no light pierced the heavens. Kon looked at that blank canvas of black and swallowed hard. Stolen story; please report.
He licked his lips and crouched down before he darted free and toward the only cover he saw. Another of the round hills of stone. A crevice had been cut into the stone or it had naturally eroded and Kon fit well against it as he looked about. Dozens of the stationary yellow orbs floated along paths between the small barrows, outlining paths between the hills.
Sounds came from the other side of the hill he was pressed against. Metal meeting flesh and screams of pain. Kon froze as he looked around the well laid out and illuminated paths. The barrows that actually looked a lot like small barracks and what sounded like fighting.
“This is a military camp.” Kon cursed Alice as he started to look for a way out. She had said it’d be easy to find the rift anchor, but he was beginning to think he wasn’t the first one to find it. He looked around and decided he needed to find out more of what was going on.
He slunk around the hill and spied on the other side to see a primitive wall and a line of the bronze armored warriors. They stood on the wall and fought with a fixed focus on what sounded like the monsters that populated the entrance of the rift. Eighteen fighters stood in view of where he could see, but the wall curved away and disappeared behind another hill.
Kon headed deeper into the camp with only an occasional glance over his shoulder at the line of warriors. No alarm rose as he worked his way toward the center, past more and more of the small barrack halls. As he cautiously passed the closest of the halls, he saw what he was sure was the anchor.
It was another glowing orb, ten times the size of the others, and had patrols of duos walking around the perimeter. This orb didn’t cast light, but pulsed in regular beats like a heart. Every fourth pulse, a ripple of red light ran through it and a small yellow orb broke free to float by it.
Another group of the warriors, these ones in much more ornate armor, grabbed these orbs and dragged them away. Kon counted the pulses and the time between them. Each pulse lasted about ten seconds with a two minute break between pulses. The orbs were being guarded and transported by a dozen heavily armored figures who took the lights to the largest hill home he had seen so far.
“How am I supposed to steal that?” Kon whispered to himself. There were dozens of guards walking around not including the special guard who moved around the orbs. The big building the guards were housing the orbs in wasn’t as well guarded. Kon began to move toward it.
It was a challenge to avoid the gaze of the roaming guards, but Kon stuck to the shadows of the hills and the regular intervals of the guards made it possible. It took the better part of an hour to sneak around the edge of the hill and toward the supply depot. A single guard stood a few feet away from the entrance, sitting on a rock with his short sword resting on his knee.
Kon waited until the next delivery happened and started working forward toward the long guard even as the courier retreated. He kept the stolen dagger close to his side as he kept in the guard’s blindspot. The wide frame of the helmets appeared to keep the guard from being able to easily see and Kon used that to his advantage as he got within a foot of the guard before it noticed his presence.
It rose up and spun, sword slashing toward Kon’s midsection. Kon lunged and cut the distance and stabbed the guard through the eye with the dagger and left it embedded there. The guards stiffened and Kon used his now free hand to grab the edge of the bronze armor and hold the guard up from falling to the ground.
The warrior was heavy and there was a strain as he held him up, but Kon was strong. If the instructors on the Dragon Maw had done one thing well, it was to ensure that all the cadets were physically fit. It was still awkward to hold the guard up with one hand, but Kon managed to drag the dead guard into the entrance of the building and set him down inside of the hill.
Dozens of the floating yellow orbs sat there without a single person watching them. When he had passed the others, they hadn’t seemed to emit anything other than light, but with nearly fifty of them in the room, there was a palpable increase to the temperature.
Kon dropped the body to the side and pulled free his knife while also grabbing the sword the guard had still kept clutched in its many fingered hand. None of the guards had seemed to have scabbards for anything, keeping their weapons in wide, bronze chain belts. They were noisy and jingled with every step and Kon had no desire to be heard as he tried to sneak, so he left the fallen with its belt.
The broken spear, dagger, and shortsword were now a problem. He didn’t have enough hands to hold all of them and without taking one of the noisy belts, nowhere to put it. He looked about and poked his head out the tunnel to see none of the couriers were coming. Four to five more minutes until the next orb was made and then another minute until the courier got here.
“If I kill the courier, then I have maybe seven minutes until someone notices what’s going on. Unless they notice the missing guard. Shit.”
He needed to retrieve the anchor. There were too many guards in place right now. A bit of blood ran over his foot from the leaking dead guard and Kon wanted to smack himself in the face as a plan was formulated. He turned back to look at the wall of floating orbs.
“If they’re missing, they’ll probably freak out. Might even leave the anchor alone for a minute.” Kon didn’t have time to dither, he needed to act. He grabbed the closest orb and the moment his skin touched the bioluminescent sphere, it stuck to him. There was no weight, but a very gentle warmth that felt good. The next one stuck to the orb he already had and then the one after that and the one after that. Dozens were sticking to him, covering his hands, arms, chest, legs, and back.
Under the influence of one the heat had been gentle. Under over fifty, he was starting to cook. He only had a minute or so before the next courier headed back and the minute they turned the corner of the nearest barrack hill, they’d see the missing watchman. He had to be gone by then.
Kon started to run.