Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part One: Welcome to Greybend
The road to Greybend was quiet.
Too quiet, by the standards of Jandar, who sat backward in his saddle for dramatic effect, his coat flared open and his pirate hat tilted at a cavalier angle. He was tall, lean, charmingly scarred, and carried himself with the kind of confidence that suggested he'd once successfully bluffed a dragon. Maybe twice.
Behind him fluttered a red-lined black cape, caught in a wind no one else seemed to feel. And at his hip rested a gleaming, curved cutlass-rapier that hummed faintly with stored stormlight.
His name was Jandar the Adequate, former pirate captain, current legendary nuisance, and swashbuckler by trade, troublemaker by instinct.
“You ever notice,” he said to the man beside him, “how every village with a name like ‘Greybend’ is just asking for undead trouble?”
The man beside him grunted.
Deacon Bruce, older, broader, and far less interested in theatrics, walked alongside his horse rather than ride it. He wore scarred leather armor, carried a heavy hand crossbow slung across his back, and had the kind of no-nonsense face that said, I’ll shoot it once and keep walking.
He was a blacksmith before he was a legend. Now he was just someone who knew when to keep his mouth shut—and when to shoot first.
“You complain every time no one tries to kill us on the road,” Deacon said without looking up.
“I’m just saying, a little highwayman action wouldn’t kill the pacing.”
“It might kill you.”
Jandar smirked. “I thrive on risk.”
They crested the hill. The village came into view—Greybend, population maybe sixty-three, and all of them likely armed with pitchforks and nervous energy. The place looked like it had been built by tired people for other tired people. Smoke curled from a few chimneys. Sheep wandered without much direction.
Waiting at the edge of town was a guard barely old enough to have a scar, holding a spear like a broom and waving frantically.
“You—you’re the Hand of the Storm?” she stammered.
Jandar tipped his hat. “Half of it. The better-looking half.”
Deacon raised a brow. “We’re just passing through.”
The girl pointed. “The tomb. On the hill. It… opened.”
“Opened?” Jandar echoed.
“It wasn’t open yesterday.”
They looked up.
At the edge of the trees, a cracked stone path led toward an old crypt—half-buried, overgrown, and just ominous enough to merit a closer look.
An hour later, they stood at its entrance.
Jandar knelt, brushing his fingers over a faintly raised square just past the threshold.
“Pressure plate,” he muttered. “Classic ‘step here, get skewered.’”
Deacon pulled a metal wedge from his satchel and jammed it beneath the plate with a quiet click. “Safe.”
They exchanged a look.
Then descended.
The crypt was narrow, lined with alcoves and dust. Old torches hung in wrought iron brackets, unlit but ready. It smelled like stale air and something that wanted to wake up.
Jandar whispered, “You know what this feels like?”
Deacon didn’t answer.
Jandar said it anyway.
“Mini-boss room.”
Deacon rolled his eyes and pressed on.
At the far end of the passage, they reached a heavy stone door engraved with a wolf-headed man holding a lantern.
The door was slightly ajar.
Of course it was.
Inside, the chamber was circular, ringed with six sealed sarcophagi and a raised stone plinth in the center.
On that plinth: a long, slender box pulsing faintly with blue light.
They froze.
Jandar drew his blade—Moon-Lightning, crackling softly with elemental charge. “Ready?”
Deacon raised his crossbow. “I’m always ready.”
The nearest sarcophagus creaked.
Then another.
Stone scraped stone.
And from within, a figure rose.
A skeletal knight, armor dulled with age but posture sharp with purpose. Its eyes glowed faint violet. In one hand it held a rusted longsword. In the other—a horn bearing a crest neither of them recognized.
Then five more began to stir.
Jandar exhaled. “Yep. Mini-boss room.”
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Two: Tactical Regret
The first skeletal knight lunged forward—blade raised high, violet eyes burning.
Deacon didn’t wait. He rolled left, took a knee, and fired a bolt straight through the knight’s neck. The head snapped back with a crack but didn’t fall. Instead, the knight stumbled and let out a low, dry snarl.
“That should’ve dropped it,” Deacon muttered.
From behind him, a second knight stepped off its slab, sword dragging against stone.
Jandar moved fast.
He vaulted the plinth, cloak catching the torchlight, Moon-Lightning arcing out with a flash of silver-and-storm.
He struck the first knight in the side—blade biting deep, lightning coursing through ancient armor. It staggered.
And then three more were moving.
“Bit much for a local tomb,” Jandar said.
Deacon fired another bolt—this one striking the second knight in the knee. The joint locked, and the knight collapsed sideways into the third, who promptly stumbled off-balance and fell into an open brazier, knocking it over.
The oil ignited.
Fire spilled across the floor, cutting the room in half.
Deacon winced. “Oops.”
“You set the crypt on fire?”
“Improved visibility.”
Jandar grinned. “I’ll allow it.”
He pivoted and ducked a swinging sword, swept the legs out from under the burning knight with a flash of his cutlass, and kicked it into the fourth knight.
The undead toppled like dominoes.
But one reached the wall-mounted horn beside the plinth.
And blew it.
The sound was a low, broken tone. Warped. Almost hollow.
And then… the room began to shake.
Deacon glanced at the walls. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Stone cracked. Dust fell. One of the statues in the corner turned slightly—its headless body rotating to face them.
Jandar backpedaled toward Deacon. “New rule. Don’t let dead things play music.”
“Already written that one.”
More knights rose—eight now, maybe more, but the room was too full of smoke and fire to be sure.
“We fall back,” Deacon said. “Doorway’s narrow. Makes them come to us.”
“Smart.”
They sprinted back through the archway, Jandar slashing at any skeleton dumb enough to follow. Once they reached the corridor, Deacon slammed the side lever he’d noticed on the way in.
A hidden portcullis dropped, trapping three knights inside the burning chamber.
“You saw that?” Jandar asked.
“I always check for exits.”
A sudden impact cracked the arch above them.
Then… silence.
Just the hiss of burning oil and the pop of ancient wood.
Jandar lowered his sword. “That’s one way to clear a tomb.”
Then the floor beneath their feet lurched.
A hiss of gas. A grinding of stone.
And without warning, a hidden spiral collapsed open behind the far statue.
A deep stairwell yawned downward—jagged, narrow, lit by faint green glowstones embedded in the wall.
Jandar and Deacon exchanged a look.
Deacon: tired.
Jandar: delighted.
“I’m gonna regret this, aren’t I?” Deacon said.
Jandar sheathed his sword with flair. “Absolutely.”
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Three: Deeper Still
The stairs spiraled downward for far too long.
Jandar ran a gloved hand along the moss-covered wall. “Either this tomb has a basement, or we’re trespassing in someone’s weird bachelor pad.”
Deacon didn’t answer.
He was listening.
Below, the air changed—denser, colder, humming faintly.
Finally, they reached a landing: a rectangular chamber carved from smooth black stone. Strange sigils lined the walls—not arcane, not divine. Just… wrong. Uneven. Too clean in places. Warped in others.
“I don’t like this,” Deacon muttered.
“That’s how you know it’s good.”
Jandar stepped forward—and triggered a pressure plate.
The floor dropped out from under him.
He twisted midair, grabbed a low ledge with one hand, and barely stopped his fall.
From the shadows below came the hiss of metal scraping stone.
Deacon cursed, dropped flat, and fired a bolt downward.
It pinged off something unseen.
“Trap pit?” Jandar called.
“No. Something in the pit.”
A shape emerged—like a twisted spider with a single arm and one glassy eye-stalk. It crawled with unnatural rhythm, metal fused into its limbs. A grafted sentry.
Deacon reloaded. “Help you up, or kill the thing first?”
Jandar grinned. “Why not both?”
He vaulted upward, Deacon grabbed his wrist, and as he came over the ledge, he twisted Moon-Lightning behind him in a crescent arc—
—and severed the eye-stalk clean.
The creature collapsed in a flash of sparking sinew.
Jandar dusted off. “That… wasn’t undead.”
“Nope.”
“Wasn’t natural either.”
“Nope.”
They moved on.
The next room was worse.
A long hallway, flanked by mirrored panels and cold lantern light. At first glance, nothing moved.
Then the lights shifted.
Not flickered—shifted.
They changed position. Refracted at angles that made no physical sense.
Jandar blinked. “This room’s trying to make me dizzy.”
Then he saw it.
Not a creature. Not a trap.
Just a single eye, embedded in the wall. Watching.
It blinked.
And the lights turned violent.
A beam of raw kinetic force blasted the floor in front of them, sending shattered stone in every direction.
Deacon tackled Jandar to cover.
“It’s aiming!” he barked.
“Where from?!”
“Doesn’t matter!”
Jandar popped up, dashed right, and hurled a dagger into the nearest mirrored panel. It shattered—
—revealing a twitching mass of flesh with an eye stalk and metal crown fused to its skull.
Deacon followed up with a bolt that struck the creature square in its core. It let out a distorted shriek and collapsed, leaking brackish fluid across the floor.
The lights returned to normal.
The room fell still.
They stood in silence, breathing heavy.
Jandar looked at the wall. “That thing aimed through the room like it owned it.”
Deacon’s brow furrowed. “Because it does.”
The next corridor bent wrong.
Not magical—constructed.
The doorframes were slanted. The hall spiraled upward for no reason, only to return to the same level. Gravity shifted slightly as they walked.
They didn’t speak.
Not until they reached a circular chamber with no ceiling—just a shaft of darkness above—and a pedestal in the center holding a severed hand, petrified and clawed.
It clutched a key.
Just before Jandar could grab it, Deacon stopped him.
“Pressure plate,” he said. “Everywhere.”
“I could disarm it.”
“You’ll try.”
Then the walls moved.
From the stone, shapes emerged. Gazers—small floating eyes with tiny mouths and twitching stalks.
Four of them.
All smiling.
They attacked.
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Four: Eyes in the Walls
The Gazers dropped from the walls like fruit gone rotten.
Four of them. Floating. Grinning. Each one no bigger than a melon—but twitching with unnatural energy, their little eyestalks writhing like worms in heat.
Jandar raised his cutlass-rapier. “I hate when monsters smile first.”
The first gazer struck.
A green beam blasted past his shoulder and curled around the room’s unnatural curve—striking the floor and instantly frosting the stone over with slick ice.
“Cover!” Deacon shouted, ducking behind a half-crumbled pillar just before a purple beam disintegrated a two-foot section of the pedestal.
Jandar backflipped off the iced-over floor, landed in a skid, and slashed upward as a second gazer flew low. The blade cut deep—but the creature didn’t fall.
Instead, it laughed.
And that’s when he noticed: its eye wasn’t glowing randomly.
It was tracking him.
“Deacon! They’re coordinated!”
“I see it!”
Another beam fired—this one yellow, sharp, angled.
Deacon dove aside just in time. It struck the key-clutching hand in the center of the room—blasting it loose. The key skittered across the slick stone floor toward the far wall.
Two gazers turned—eye stalks pointing at the key.
“No you don’t,” Deacon growled.
He stepped out of cover and fired two bolts in rapid succession.
The first missed.
The second slammed directly into the lead gazer’s eye—rupturing it in a flash of bile and smoke. The creature spun, let out a shriek, and dropped.
Jandar caught the rebound.
Literally.
He slid across the iced floor, grabbed the key mid-motion, and slammed his boots against the wall to stop himself.
One of the remaining gazers hit him with a red beam.
He flinched—but the cape took the brunt of it, flaring with a puff of smoke.
“Still billowing,” Jandar muttered.
Deacon reloaded. “How’s the key?”
“Ugly. Ancient. Probably cursed.”
“Great. We’re keeping it.”
The final gazer screamed—not in rage. In triumph.
“The Master sees you!”
Then it exploded in a blast of radiant force, slamming both men into the stone.
When the smoke cleared, only scorch marks and the smell of burnt metal remained.
Silence.
The room tilted ever so slightly—none of the walls quite aligned anymore. The archway behind them now curved.
The architecture was shifting.
Reacting.
Watching.
Deacon stood first, slow, jaw tight. “We’re not just in a tomb.”
“No,” Jandar agreed, eyes narrowed. “We’re in someone’s lair.”
He held up the key.
It was shaped like an eye.
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Five: The Vault of Teeth
The final corridor wasn’t a corridor.
It was a spine.
A long, arching tunnel of fused bone and stone, rib-like supports twisting overhead, the floor a rough spiral of steps and flat plateaus. Gravity tilted every few paces, forcing Jandar and Deacon to adjust with every step.
The key, still gripped in Jandar’s hand, pulsed in rhythm with the walls.
Deacon loaded another bolt without a word.
They didn’t talk much now.
Every breath felt watched.
Every move echoed just slightly wrong.
At the far end of the tunnel stood a massive stone vault door, its surface rippled with etchings of fanged mouths—hundreds of them, each whispering silently, their words lost to time.
And before it—
Antechamber traps.
Of course.
The first trap triggered when Jandar stepped forward.
The air shimmered—and a gravity well snapped into existence, pulling him sideways toward a pit filled with jagged bone shards.
“Field! Left side!” Deacon barked.
Jandar dropped to a slide, boots scraping stone, cape snapping taut behind him, and jammed Moon-Lightning into a crack to stop himself just inches from the drop.
“Ten outta ten for presentation,” he muttered, hauling himself back up.
Deacon fired a bolt into the shimmer—the gravity field shattered, collapsing into itself with a muted pop.
They pressed on.
A second hazard.
The floor tiles shifted constantly now, tilting and snapping like jaws. Each step became a gamble.
Deacon picked up a broken piece of shield from the ground, tossed it ahead—and it was crushed instantly between two slabs of snapping stone.
“No pressure,” he said.
“On three?” Jandar asked.
“On two.”
They moved together.
Duck. Leap. Skid. Vault.
The floor tried to kill them.
Jandar flipped through a narrow gap, planting Moon-Lightning like a pole vault, spinning up to a safer ledge.
Deacon dove through a closing set of teeth, rolling into cover behind a broken pillar.
Breathing hard, both men regrouped near the massive vault door.
Then the guardians arrived.
Two massive constructs—part stone, part living flesh, stitched with ancient magic—lumbered into view from hidden alcoves.
Not golems.
Not undead.
Somewhere in between.
They had no faces—only mouths. Slavering, fanged, whispering things too soft to hear clearly.
And they moved fast.
Faster than anything that big should.
Jandar cursed. “Big ugly twins at twelve o'clock.”
Deacon checked his belt. “Running low on bolts.”
“Then don’t miss.”
The first guardian slammed its arm into the ground—sending a shockwave that cracked the stone. Jandar leapt clear, spinning to land a glancing blow against its side.
Sparks flew.
No real damage.
Deacon circled wide, planting three quick bolts into the second guardian’s knee joint. It staggered but didn’t fall.
Jandar ducked a crushing swipe, rolled beneath the monster, and carved an arc of lightning across its belly.
A shallow wound. Too shallow.
The second guardian charged Deacon—shoulder low, maw snapping open along its chest.
Deacon fired one last bolt—not at the creature, but at the ceiling.
The impact triggered a shower of broken stone, raining debris onto the creature’s head, staggering it just long enough for Deacon to dodge aside.
“Thanks for the assist,” Deacon muttered.
Jandar shouted back, “Just returning the favor for all the times you didn’t let me die!”
They regrouped by the vault door, breathing hard, the guardians circling.
BOOM.
One of the constructs lunged—and Jandar didn’t dodge.
He ran straight at it.
At the last second, he skidded low, Moon-Lightning in both hands, and cut through its Achilles, if stone horrors could have one.
The leg folded inward with a wet crunch.
Deacon seized the moment.
He sprinted up the fallen guardian’s slumped form and vaulted off it—firing two rune-marked bolts mid-air into the second guardian’s gaping mouth.
They hit.
The creature convulsed—backwards, grotesque—then slammed into the wall and went still.
The room finally stopped moving.
Jandar leaned against the vault door, chest heaving.
Deacon dropped to one knee, reloading carefully.
Neither spoke for a long moment.
Finally, Jandar muttered, “When we get back to the ship, I’m putting in a formal complaint.”
“To who?”
“Me.”
Deacon grunted, wiped blood from his chin, and stood.
They looked at the door.
The key pulsed.
The mouths carved into the stone seemed to grin wider.
And somewhere beyond it…
Something stirred.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Six: The Door That Bites Back
The moment Jandar inserted the key into the vault door, the world changed.
The mouths carved into the stone didn’t open.
The floor did.
Without warning, the ground dropped out beneath them—only chunks of it, not all. What had been stable, cracked stone was now a floating maze of shifting platforms, each barely big enough for a man to stand on.
The air grew heavy, thick with unseen force.
Gravity pulled at odd angles.
And from the mist below, projectiles began firing upward.
Not bolts.
Not spells.
Chunks of the floor, launched like siege stones—each glowing faintly green and aimed for blood.
Deacon barely dodged the first.
He landed on a platform and immediately slid sideways, boots scrabbling for purchase.
“New rule,” he grunted. “No opening doors without knocking first.”
Jandar laughed, leaping from one floating stone to another with his usual reckless grace, Moon-Lightning flashing in his hand.
“How was I supposed to know it bites?!”
Another stone whistled up from the mist—narrowly missing Jandar’s head—and obliterated a platform beside him.
He landed on the next slab of stone, turned, and flicked a hand outward.
Tempest’s Whisper—his elemental longbow—appeared in his grip with a crackle of stormlight.
He nocked a spectral arrow and fired straight into the mist.
The mist shivered where he hit—briefly revealing small, floating orbs far below. Eyes. Watching. Coordinating the attacks.
Deacon spotted it too.
“They’re aiming these at us!”
“Good to know!” Jandar fired again, striking another orb.
The attacks slowed—but didn’t stop.
Deacon leapt three platforms across—closing in on a floating archway marked by violet runes.
The "safe zone."
Jandar followed—but his next platform tilted midair, throwing him off balance.
He flailed.
Deacon didn’t hesitate.
He dropped to one knee, braced himself, and fired a grappling line from his wrist crossbow—a new upgrade he hadn’t even tested yet.
The line snagged Jandar around the waist just as he fell.
The strain pulled Deacon halfway off his own platform.
Jandar dangled.
Deacon grunted. "You’re heavier than you look."
"It's the charm," Jandar shouted back. "It's dense!"
Deacon growled, dug his boots in, and hauled.
Jandar flipped up onto the platform beside him, grinning, bleeding from one eyebrow but otherwise intact.
They sprinted together—jumping two more unstable platforms—and reached the archway.
The moment they crossed through, the mist collapsed inward with a howl of frustration.
The floor sealed shut behind them.
The vault door now loomed—silent. Waiting. Daring them to open it.
Deacon wiped sweat from his brow. Jandar straightened his hat.
They exchanged a long, tired look.
"Final boss room?" Jandar asked.
Deacon loaded a bolt. "Final boss room."
They shoved the door open.
And the world beyond... was wrong.
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Seven: The Eye at the Center
The vault door swung open with a groan like a dying titan.
Beyond lay a vast chamber.
It had once been a cathedral—columns of marble rising toward a ceiling lost in mist, shattered stained glass littering the floor like frozen rain. An altar stood cracked at the far end, its sacred symbols long eroded into gibberish.
The air stank of ozone and old blood.
And at the center—floating effortlessly above the wreckage—was the nightmare.
A Beholder.
Monstrous and grotesque, its spherical body bulged with scars. Ten writhing eyestalks twitched and flexed, each one crackling with contained power. Its massive central eye opened slowly, revealing a pupil like a black sun.
It smiled.
Not physically.
In the mind.
“Welcome... thieves.”
Deacon instantly dropped into a ready stance, bolts already primed.
Jandar drew Moon-Lightning, the blade hissing with restrained fury.
The Beholder didn’t wait.
It attacked.
The first blast was a disintegration ray—green and sizzling—lancing out from the leftmost eyestalk.
Deacon dove right, rolling behind a broken column. The marble vaporized where he’d been standing.
Jandar sprinted forward, zigzagging unpredictably. He fired Tempest’s Whisper mid-run, sending a lightning-charged arrow slamming into the Beholder’s side.
The creature grunted—but barely flinched.
Several eyestalks tracked Jandar immediately.
"Split!" Deacon barked.
They broke opposite directions, forcing the Beholder to divide its fire.
A fear ray swept past Jandar.
He gritted his teeth, forced down the rising terror clawing at his mind, and kept running.
A slowing ray clipped Deacon’s boot—he staggered, cursed, and launched a bolt toward one of the overhead support chains.
The bolt struck true—and a section of ceiling collapsed, raining debris across the Beholder’s right side.
For the first time, it roared—and the world shifted.
The floor broke apart.
Not physically—spatially.
Platforms of stone ripped free, floating and spinning slowly through the mist.
Gravity twisted sideways.
Deacon swore under his breath. "New rules."
Jandar grinned. "I love new rules."
They adapted.
Leaping from platform to platform.
Firing upward at sharp angles.
Using the rubble for cover.
The Beholder moved as well, gliding lazily through the air, eyestalks firing in a constant barrage.
Jandar slashed with Moon-Lightning, sending arcs of lightning between floating stones, forcing the Beholder to back off.
Deacon lined up shots between swirling debris, bolts striking eyestalks with brutal precision, trying to blind as many as possible.
Each successful hit made the creature twitch, but each eyestalk lost only seemed to make the rest more desperate.
“You cannot win,” the Beholder whispered into their minds. “I have shaped this place. I am its memory. I am its end.”
"Yeah?" Jandar shouted back. "You're about to be its bad memory."
Another disintegration ray fired—this one hit a platform behind Deacon, disintegrating it completely and sending him falling.
At the last second, he caught a dangling chain.
Hung there, teeth gritted.
Loaded another bolt one-handed.
And shot it straight into the Beholder’s main eye.
The creature reeled backward, screeching.
The room twisted harder—gravity flipping entirely for a second, throwing Jandar across a platform he barely caught with a blade-stab into the stone.
Panting, battered, the two men locked eyes across the shattered battlefield.
No more jokes.
No more plans.
Just grit.
Jandar slammed Moon-Lightning against his vambrace, charging it with all the stormlight it could hold.
Deacon drew out a special bolt—carved with runes, humming faintly with radiant power.
They moved.
One last push.
Together.
Jandar and Deacon in: The Tomb That Didn’t Lock Itself
Part Eight: The Last Eye Blinks
The battlefield was broken sky.
Chunks of stone spun in lazy orbits through a misty void.
Below them: nothing but the deep hum of the Beholder's will, warping gravity, space, and fate itself.
Deacon Bruce gritted his teeth, bleeding from a dozen cuts, dangling from a jagged ledge of stone with one hand. His other hand held a heavy crossbow, and in it—the last rune bolt he had left.
Across the swirling gap, Jandar the Adequate crouched low on a tilting slab, Moon-Lightning alive with crackling stormlight, his cape whipped straight above him by gravity that no longer obeyed anything.
The Beholder floated in the center of it all.
Massive.
Bleeding.
Rage flickering in all its terrible eyes.
It spun, eyestalks twitching, rays firing in desperate, wide arcs.
And still, the heroes moved.
Deacon heaved himself up onto the ledge, took a knee, aimed carefully across the churning mess of flying stone.
Jandar tensed, waiting for the opening.
It came.
The Beholder’s central eye blinked.
Just for a moment.
Deacon fired.
The bolt flew—a flash of silver and blue—striking an eyestalk just as it twisted to fire.
There was a burst of radiant light—and the ray misfired, blasting harmlessly into empty air.
The Beholder roared in frustration, its attention snapping toward Deacon.
That's when Jandar moved.
He launched from his platform—kicking off a spinning slab, cape snapping wildly—and soared straight at the creature, Moon-Lightning raised high.
The Beholder fired.
A green ray cut across Jandar's path.
He twisted midair, letting the ray graze his armor—charring the leather but not stopping him.
He landed hard on the creature’s upper side, driving Moon-Lightning deep between two pulsing eyes.
The blade flared.
Stormlight exploded outward.
The Beholder convulsed.
Veins of crackling light spread across its body like spiderwebs.
It spun wildly, screeching, beams lashing out in panic—but Jandar hung on, blade buried deep, teeth bared.
Deacon reloaded.
One last bolt.
One last shot.
He aimed—slowly, methodically—through the chaos.
He found the true target:
The Beholder's central eye, wide open, wild with rage.
Deacon pulled the trigger.
The bolt flew.
And struck dead center.
The creature jerked once—silent—and then collapsed.
The warping of the room ceased.
Gravity crashed back to normal.
Stone rained down like tired hail.
Jandar rolled clear, landing hard, coughing blood into the dust.
Deacon staggered forward, crossbow lowered, every step heavy.
The Beholder's body hit the stone floor with a wet, final thud.
Still.
Gone.
Dead.
Silence.
Real silence.
No mist.
No hum.
Just two battered men standing over the corpse of something no man should ever have faced alone.
Deacon lowered himself onto a chunk of rubble and just... sat there.
Breathing.
Alive.
Jandar limped over, Moon-Lightning dragging behind him like an exhausted standard.
He flopped onto the floor beside Deacon with a grunt.
They sat there for a long time.
Finally, Jandar said, voice hoarse:
"I vote we leave any ancient cursed tombs locked next time."
Deacon snorted. "Seconded."
They stared at the dead Beholder.
Then at the ruined cathedral.
Then back at each other.
Jandar sighed. "Think there’s anything worth stealing?"
Deacon laughed once—sharp and pained—and said:
"If you stand up right now, you're carrying me back to the ship."
Jandar grinned through a cracked lip.
"Deal."
Epilogue: Same Table, Same Mistakes
The Welcoming Hand was half-empty when they limped through the door.
The hearth was low. The regulars nodded without surprise. Another night, another scar, another story the bards wouldn't believe.
At their usual corner booth, Deacon collapsed into the chair with the sound of leather and pain.
Jandar eased in across from him, boots on the table, hat tilted low, a bruised grin playing across his face.
Talia, passing by with a mug in each hand, arched an eyebrow. "You boys look like hammered dog meat."
"Feel like it too," Deacon muttered.
She dropped two mugs on the table—strong and hot—and wandered off without waiting for thanks.
They drank in silence for a long minute.
Finally, Deacon said, "You’re gonna tell me you didn’t take anything from that tomb."
Jandar stared at him innocently over the rim of his mug.
Deacon sighed. "What was it this time?"
Jandar reached into his coat, very slowly, and produced a small, round stone—carved with what looked like dozens of tiny, staring eyes.
It pulsed faintly.
Deacon just shook his head. "You're an idiot."
Jandar grinned wider.
"An alive idiot," he said, and toasted the fire.
And somehow, that made it all okay.
THE END (Until the next dumb idea at the Hand.)