Coldbridge Pt. 4
Coldbridge’s knuckles cracked through his gloves as he strained to pry a skull-sized rock from the black mud with his shovel. It came loose with a sucking noise. He set the shovel aside and bent down to roll it into a basket connected via a heavy rope to a hoist. His boots left pockmarks in the mud. The rain filled the pockmarks with its patter and flattened his hair against his skull. His overcoat was drenched and he was caked with dirt in all the places the rain did not strike.
“A sorceress so powerful they buried her twelve feet deep,” he grunted, and paused in his efforts, calling up to the top of his hole that framed a crescent moon. “I think eight or nine would have been sufficient, eh Longskull?” Longskull came to the edge and looked down. The green flames of her eyes set the droplets upon her bones alight; a constellation. Coldbridge set back to work but continued the conversation. “This is the place, right? Your nose is sure? I want this the first and last mineshaft I have to dig.” She wagged her tail vertebrae. “You’re right. If I didn’t want to dig up skeletons, I should have gotten into another business. Could have been a baker. Raise bread instead of the dead.” He continued to sling shovelfuls of mud into the basket. “Ah, but then…but then, all those mysteries, all that power. Right now somebody else would be about to acquire La Voisin’s amulet, and I’d be getting up and preparing to knead dough. No thanks.” When he filled the basket, he climbed the ladder to work the winch, weaving through wooden bracing he had installed to prevent the walls collapsing. At ground level, his steps and Longskull’s had trampled the tall grass around La Voisin’s grave, marked only by two standing stones. Iron meteorites whose dimpled surfaces caught pockets of light from Coldbridge’s lanterns.
“No geists in those.” He threw a thumb in the direction of the stones while working the winch on the hoist. “La Voisin keeps them away.” The basketful of dirt emerged from the hole. He swung the arm of the hoist around and dumped it onto the pile, then returned it to the bottom. Longskull sniffed the fresh soil and gave a low growl. “Getting warmer, aye? Marvellous.” He rushed back down the ladder and returned to digging.
Two basketfuls later, he struck stone. Some probing with the shovel revealed it to be the elongated shape of a sarcophagus, wrapped in chains. Longskull hopped down into the hole and began excitedly barking and helping him dig. After another 3 basketfuls, the top of the sarcophagus was revealed. The sarcophagus was roughly hewn granite. The chains heavy cast iron. It sat crooked, as though it had been haphazardly dumped down the hole. “Not going to be able to lift this with the hoist. Something tells me this arrangement was not according to her last will and testament,” Coldbridge mused while he stroked his pale jawline, smearing it with mud. Longskull was pacing the sarcophagus’s lid. Her carpals ticked impatiently on the stone. “I’m going to need your help with this, Longskull. Whoever interred her expected her to be displeased by the arrangement.
“We’ll have to use the charm. You keep clear of it, alright? Up you come.” Longskull hopped up into his arms. He climbed one handed up the ladder, and set Longskull at the end of the hole opposite the hoist. “You stay.” Longskull sat and vibrated in anticipation. Then he went to the hoist and retrieved an ornate copperwood box. It was affixed with a hastily applied label, reading “ABRAXAS” in Coldbridge’s chicken scratch. He opened it. Inside was a golden pendant, shaped like a sun, on a heavy gold chain. Coldbridge’s glove smoked when he picked it up, and he winced in pain. He placed it around his neck, and gave a sigh of relief when he was able to release it.
He dropped a pry bar and a sledge into the grave. The charm of Abraxas thumped heavy against his chest as he descended back into the hole. He popped the brittle cast iron links of the chains around the sarcophagus with the sledge, and then pounded the pry bar into the seam of the lid. “Steady Longskull.” He called up the hole. He heaved, and the lid eased up, over, and then against the side of the hole. Fresh air drew into the stone cavity like an inhalation. Dull green cobwebs filled the sarcophagus. They softly crackled as they stretched and swayed in the new air. “Ew,” Coldbridge said. “How does a spider slip in there?” Longskull continued to sit, but began to keen softly. Coldbridge probed the mess of cobwebs with the bar. The dull clonk of bones was interrupted by a metallic tinkle. “Aha!” He held the bar in place with one hand, and reached alongside it with the other. This forced him to plunge his head and shoulders into the mass of cobwebs. He could feel surprisingly warm air moving across his face as he groped for La Voisin’s amulet. He clutched the handful of stuff at the end of the bar, and withdrew it. He emerged with three ribs, and a silver amulet. He chucked the bones aside and inspected the amulet. It was a heavily tarnished silver egg, set with blood garnets, encircled with an inscription.
This salt, this chalk, this iron, this coal Forms a cage that binds this soul Reforge these bars into a shape From which this soul cannot escape
“Poetry. Classy! I must say, La Voisin, I am a trifle disappointed. Thought you’d have made it more difficult.” There was a fluttering gasp from the hole he had made in the cobwebs. Coldbridge started, jamming the amulet into his pants pocket. The cobwebs had begun to breathe, inflating and deflating with a steady rhythm. “Spoke too soon.” He jammed the bar behind the lid and tried to flip it back down. The angle was poor. He was leaned over the open sarcophagus pulling toward himself. Veins began to pop out in his brow and the raspy breathing grew stronger. A faint light began to pulse from within. Something stirred and scraped along the dusty stone. An appendage composed of splintered bones and cobweb ligaments reached through the hole in the cobwebs. A bony tentacle ending in a barbed, three-pronged claw. It got hold of Coldbridge’s boot, sinking deep into the leather. He lifted his free leg over the lid and strained against the bar. The lid slowly began to lean towards him. As it crossed the tipping point a second appendage came snaking out towards his very vulnerable crotch. Coldbridge shrieked unmanfully and leapt away. The lid crashed down, severing both appendages. Something screamed. However, the lid had not lined up with the base, and through the gap another three appendages emerged, and began prying it open.
The claw clutching Coldbridge’s boot regained its senses and began stabbing Coldbridge in the calf with its severed end like a scorpion. The other severed claw began scuttling towards him. He hollered and kicked off his compromised boot, then turned for the ladder. He climbed, listening to the slow drag of stone on stone as the lid began to move, and the clicking of the severed claws as they climbed after him. He scrabbled to the surface and limped away from the hole. The scuttling claws emerged after him.
“Longskull. Attack!” He cried. With an excited bark Longskull bounded around the pit. Her eyes flared, igniting her mouth, and liquid flame dripped from her fangs. She streaked after the first claw like a comet. She was on it in a heartbeat, and shook it mercilessly. Charred bone flew as her fiery saliva consumed the cobwebbed ligaments that held it together. Then she was after the second and had picked it off and shredded it before it could close with the limping Coldbridge’s now filthy stocking foot. He tucked the charm of Abraxas into his jacked and squatted down next to her. “Good girl. Stay.” He patted her hot skull. She wagged and panted. The steam of evaporated rain rose around her.
From down in the hole there was a crash as the lid flew open. “Necromancer!” La Voisin called. “You dare to steal my amulet?!” Bones clicked and crunched as she clambered up the bracing in the hole. She was preceded by a pair of batlike wings made from armbones and cobweb. Her skull and ribcage hung below them. From her ribs dangled numerous bone shard tentacles. She tucked her wings behind her and perched on the bracing across the top of the excavation like a vulture. A pair of shrewd brown eyes peered from her sockets, the only preserved soft tissue in her corpse.
“La Voisin.” Coldbridge stated formally as he rose and began walking towards her. “My apologies. Had I realized you were still using the amulet, I would not have disturbed your rest.” He withdrew the silver egg from his pocket with his right hand. “I beg you forgive my trespass, and consider my freeing you atonement for the affront.” He reached what he deemed a safe distance from her perch, and gave a low bow.
“Speak your name, necromancer,” her dusty voicebox grated.
“Coldbridge, madam.”
“Coldbridge, why do you seek La Voisin’s amulet?”
“For the study and harnessing of the powers masterfully bound within.”
“Harnessed to what end?”
“Um well, that’s private…” Coldbridge crossed his arms nervously, tucking a hand into his overcoat.
“Private! The graverobber speaks to me of privacy!” She reared up and unfurled her wings. Multiple claws stretched towards him. “Speak of your motive now, or I will claim your carcass.”
“Reanimating a ‘friend’.” He blushed.
“A ‘friend’, you say?” She rasped wistfully. “A lost love. A weakness I once knew but have long since expunged.” Her menacing pose relaxed. “Very well, necromancer, you will have La Voisin’s mercy. Return my amulet.” She outstretched a claw.
“Thank you, La Voisin.” Coldbridge leaned out over the hole to hand her the egg. As she leaned in to take it, he dropped it. He grabbed her outstretched tentacle and yanked her towards him. She gave a surprised squawk and tottered towards him. He jerked his left hand out from inside his overcoat, clutching the charm of Abraxas in a smoking glove. He slammed the charm against her ribcage. It arced and sputtered yellow sparks. She screamed and clawed at him desperately, an angered horror. She flapped her wings and began to drag Coldbridge into the air. “Longskull! Attack!” He bellowed as his feet left the earth.
Longskull flared and sped towards them, but La Voisin’s wings were powerful. Coldbridge’s feet were coming parallel with the top of the winch, too high for her to jump. The tangled combatants flapped over the great mound of dirt, and Longskull tore up it, launching herself into the screaming mess of sparking bone and cobweb. She chomped down on a pair of claws, setting them alight. La Voisin shrieked and flung Coldbridge down into the mound. He landed with a grunt and rolled down the side. She flapped higher and attempted to dislodge the animated terrier skeleton latched onto her appendages, whipping Longskull around like a snarling torch. Longskull was tenacious. Her bones bound with powerful magics. The flames from her jaws were breaking down La Voisin’s cobweb tendons.
La Voisin got hold of Longskull’s tail, and with a vicious wrench, tore her loose by snapping off the pair of her weakened tentacles the bone dog clenched.
“Voisin, STOP! You let her go!” Coldbridge pleaded. “I’ll give you the amulet.”
“Whelp! It was never yours to give! You betrayed La Voisin’s mercy. Now you and your pet shall have neither her amulet nor her mercy!” La Voisin hurled Longskull at the standing stones. Longskull yipped and hit the stone with a crunch and her bones scattered in a greenish flare. Coldbridge staggered. He dropped to his knees in the mud. La Voisin pounced upon him, bending him backward into the mud. His arms struggled numbly against the tentacles, his face pushed back into a puddle.
As mud flowed into his eyes and nose he thought of a puppy, reared up on her hind legs, pawing insistently at his lap. Her clever eyes seeking simple fun. Fetch, stocking tug of war, hunting a pest, digging a hole. A play bow, tail high and whirling. Sprinting in tall fields and feeling the whip of the stalks. Sometimes sacrifice comes too easy.
Coldbridge groped through the wet earth as La Voisin’s tentacles encircled his throat. His hands blind worms seeking the heat of the charm of Abraxas. The crone’s cackle was muffled by dirty water as she plunged a claw into his gut. As his hands probed for the charm so she searched for his vitals. It didn’t matter. Everything vital to him was in a pile at the base of the standing stones. The pressure of the horror on his chest, his bent back, the stabbing in his belly, the noose on his neck, his nose clogged with sludge, all this was secondary. He was two hands in the groping dark. When he felt the burn of the charm the triumph of his warcry burst from the mud like cannonfire. He swung it in a golden arc. It smashed into La Voisin’s face, scorching her in a golden shower of sparks and splashing mud into her lidless eyes. Her grip on his throat loosened. She shrieked and lurched away from the pain, dragging him on top of her with the fishhook she had lodged in his abdomen. Coldbridge reared out of the puddle sucking wind, choking, and swinging the charm in his smoking hand like a heavyweight.
He pounded through the flailing tentacles against her sternum, cracking ribs while he bellowed a galaxy of pain and fury through the shards and sparks rebounding off his face. When La Voisin went limp, he dropped the charm from his burned hand and paused to wipe the mud from his eyes.
“You killed my dog.”
“You deserve no better than you received, thief.”
“That’s true, but she deserved better.”
La Voisin gave a clattering chuckle, “bested by a necromancer that cries over a lost dog. Not what I foresaw as I lay dreaming in my sarcophagus.”
“You were great. I wouldn’t dig through all that mud to steal a piss-poor sorceress’ amulet.”
“Small consolation, Coldbridge.”
Coldbridge removed the glove from his left hand and pulled back his sleeve. His forearm was intact, but the hand was fleshless bone, and missing its pinky. The index finger bore the geist ring. He bent over and clasped her skull in his palm.
“That’s the only consolation you’ll get.”