A Different Kind of Deadly by Nicole Martinsen

but in the end... I will
lose."
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    17: In Loving
Memory

    Uhh had fought off four heavily armored skeletons. Diana, Leo
and I just narrowly missed the fight, catching the snippets of awe
as the crowd wondered who owned him.
    It made my heart swell with pride, pride that
quickly turned to worry as Uhh met us back in the lobby.
    Deep gashes tore across his chest cavity. He
was a golem, so naturally there wasn't any blood, but acid was
leaking out of him.
    "Uhh, mind telling me how I
can fix you?" I asked, surveying the damage with an appalled frown.
He cocked his head to the side, grabbed fistfuls of Krisenburg
rubble, and pressed them into the deepest of these cuts. We waited
while listening to a rumbling hiss as it melted and solidified back into place. My
eyebrows shot up in interest.
    "Undead are suited to the regions they're made
in," Diana reminded me. "Uhh is a powerful construct, thanks to
your rune recital; given enough time between fights to recover,
he's immortal in the Moor of Souls."
    "Wow." I had trouble coming to terms with the
fact that I created him. Golem making wasn't something I thought I
had a talent in; then again, neither was rune recital or necromancy
in general. Uhh was an example of those skills put to good use, but
Diana was a reminder of its follies.
    "Hold on," I heard Diana say. Leo, Uhh, and I
took a step back, watching as Diana approached a vulture-human
hybrid perched atop a high podium.
    "Diana Galatea wishes to withdraw her sum from
her two battles."
    The vulture released an astoundingly human
sigh, turned to face a giant abacus, and tallied the beads with his
beak.
    It leered over its shoulder, feathers raised
at the back of its neck in a sign of displeasure. The vulture
shifted his weight, stepping on some sort of pressure plate beneath
him. A moment later, coins dispensed into a stone collection dish
at the base of his stand. He make an irate squawk, as though to
say, "Take your money and scram!"
    Tully flapped his wings wildly, issuing a
silent challenge at his rude cousin. Leo waved a finger at him to
settle down.
    "Mind your manners."
    Tully looked between the vulture
and his master, scratched the money bag he was standing on, and
nestled himself in its folds like a petulant child.
    "Marvin," Diana called. "Now you do the same
for Uhh."
    "Me? I didn't fight."
    "He's your golem; it's the same thing in
Krisenburg."
    I stepped up the podium, where the
vulture-attendant narrowed his beady-eyes on my head of gray
hair.
    "Did you catch all that?" I asked
him.
    He squawked. It seemed he didn't need to
calculate my sum.
    "Deduct some coins for a sack!" Diana shouted
as an afterthought. I was almost certain that the vulture rolled
his eyes. He rummaged behind him and tossed a large cloth bag down
to us.
    The remainder of my winnings pooled together
with Diana's in the dispenser dish below.
    It was an impressive amount, the pale-green
coins reminiscent of oxidized copper.
    Diana swept our earnings into the bag,
effortlessly hoisting it over her shoulder.
    "First thing's first," she announced, "We're
getting you boys some armor."
    Leo laughed under his breath, "Armor? Not for
me. I'm built like a mountain."
    "Fall into an acid vat and the biggest
mountain will crumble all the same," she shot at him. "My strength
is in my mobility, but in the event Marvin needs protection, you
need heavy gear."
    Leo hissed in the back of his throat. "I hate
the sound of that."
    "I bet you'll like it better than being
dead."
    He raised a finger, poised with an
objection, but I held up my hand for him to stop. Leo squinted,
waiting until Diana was ahead of us.
    "Bit of a banshee, isn't she?"
    "I heard that," she interjected, not missing a
beat.
    "She can be," I admitted, still not the
happiest with Diana's attitude now that she had the ability to
speak. "But she's our best chance of surviving the
Moor."
    "Well if we want to be
technical, the quest, demon contract, and the