These are excerpts from Death and Devotion which is the second book in the Mishap’s Heroes series, a DnD inspired comedic fantasy. Originally published 2021.
Chapter 10
“Your date gave you a list of graveyards?” Sorrel said, walking backward so she could wiggle her eyebrows at Vola.
Vola sighed. “And burial sites and tombs. There’s a necropolis somewhere outside the city, too, in case Myron gets really ambitious.”
“Uh huh,” Sorrel said, and without looking, she dodged a farmer bringing his cow to market. “What happened after that…”
“After that, nothing,” Vola said with a glare. “We talked. Mostly about work. We shared a piece of chocolate cake and traded the best ways to sharpen a blade.”
“Sounds like he could have been more lively.” Sorrel nudged Talon, who walked beside her. “Get it? Cause they talked about dead guys.”
Talon didn’t respond.
“But did you enjoy yourself?” Lillie asked, eyebrows scrunched. “Isn’t that what people do on dates? I don’t think they’re supposed to talk about work so much.”
“Honestly, it was kind of nice to talk to another orc who recognizes that it doesn’t always have to be ‘smash your enemies’ and ‘mount their heads on our spikes.’ I get enough of that from complete strangers. This was very pleasant and civil.”
“Pleasant and civil is not going to get you any action from your boyfriend,” Sorrel said.
“You’re one to talk,” Vola said with a snort. “Aren’t you celibate?”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t make fun of everyone else’s love life. That’s the best part.”
“I didn’t know Maxim required celibacy,” Lillie said. “Is that a specific of your order?”
“I follow Maxim, not the order,” Sorrel said with a frown. “Not anymore. And I’m celibate because I choose to be celibate. Mostly, I just don’t want to mess with all that love and sex stuff. I’m just not interested. But for some reason, when you try to explain that, people get all weird and try to convince you otherwise. ‘Oh, you just haven’t met the right person’ or ‘you’ll get there one day.’ Right, and how’s that tenth husband working out for you, Martha?” Sorrel shook her head. “It’s easier to just say I’m celibate and then everyone assumes it’s a vow or a geas and I don’t have a choice in the matter. People accept it much more readily if they think it’s not my choice.”
“Huh,” Lillie said, smooth forehead creased in thought.
Vola passed a wrought-iron fence and stopped before the gate. Sorrel leaped to the top of the fence where she balanced with one hand, covering her eyes.
The morning light speared through the clouds illuminating the graveyard nearest the inn. There wasn’t any sort of signage or official gravekeeper’s shack. There was just this empty green space between two ramshackle houses, crowded with headstones nestled in the grass. More sunlight made it to the ground here where the buildings stepped back, illuminating the morning dew and making individual blades of grass shine.
It would have been picturesque except for the black gouges in the earth where someone had dug up the graves.
“So, what’s creepier than a graveyard?” Sorrel said, tilting her head.
“A graveyard with no bodies,” Lillie responded with a shudder.
“I don’t know,” Talon said. “I think it’s kind of peaceful.”
“All right, so Myron’s been here,” Vola said. “Let’s see if he left us anything to work with.”
Talon sent Gruff along the edges to sniff out any traces of Myron while the rest of them minced their way between dug up graves.
Vola stopped beside a hole. The dark soil mounded beside them smelled wet and loamy. Not altogether unpleasant as long as you ignored the half-rotten casket in the bottom of the hole.
“Lovely,” Sorrel said, stopping beside her. “It makes this spot so much more pleasant. Hey Vola, maybe you should bring your boyfriend here next time.”
Vola reached out and pushed Sorrel.
She fell in the hole with a whumph as Vola turned to survey the rest of the graveyard.
“I’m fine,” Sorrel called up. “Ew. Worms.”
Talon prowled the ground between the graves, hooded head down as if studying the dirt while Gruff ranged outside the fence. Three graves down from Vola, Lillie pursed her lips and then knelt very carefully in the loose soil. She pulled out her notebook and started scribbling, pausing now and then to read the tombstones.
“Anything?” Vola called.
Talon’s hood came up, but they shook it back and forth.
“Lillie?”
Lillie held up a finger but didn’t look up. “Maybe. But I’m not sure yet.”
Sorrel clambered out of the hole at Vola’s feet and hopped up to sit on the smooth crest of a tombstone.
“I’m not really sure what I’m looking for,” Vola confessed to the halfling who swung her legs back and forth.
Sorrel shrugged. “Neither am I, but then we’re not really the ones on point for this.”
Vola gave her a look. “What do you mean?”
Sorrel pointed at Vola’s chest. “You’re our tactics and healer.” She pointed to Talon then Lillie. “There’s our tracker. And our brains. Tracker and brains are what we need for this. Don’t worry, we’ll be on point again soon.”
Vola gave Sorrel a lopsided grin. “And what are you, then?”
Sorrel gave Vola a look like that was a silly question. “I’m the muscle. Duh.”
“Right,” Vola said as the halfling hopped off the tombstone.
Chapter 12
The dead guy’s head thunked up each step to their room in the inn, despite the care Vola took to keep him from dragging.
“Shh,” Sorrel whispered. “Don’t wake anyone up.”
“Probably too late for that,” Talon muttered.
“There must be some people in this part of town who aren’t familiar with the sounds of a dead guy getting dragged up the stairs,” Vola huffed. “So long as no one pokes their head out their door, we should be fine.” Theoretically. Vola herself had decided she’d need a much stronger tea after this.
Sorrel darted ahead of them on the creaky stairs to open their door while Talon stooped to pick up the guy’s head.
Vola ducked into their tiny rented room and winced when there was a meaty clunk behind her.
“He’s okay,” Talon said and kicked the door shut behind them.
“He’s dead,” Sorrel said. “He’s a little far past okay.”
“That’s my point,” Talon said.
Vola didn’t bother with niceties. She dumped the corpse in the middle of their floor. He wasn’t leaking any fluids yet, but she wasn’t going to take any chances on not getting their deposit back.
There weren’t a whole lot of other options, anyway. The room they’d rented had one bed that wasn’t exactly big enough for two but they’d made work anyway, and there was a rickety chair in the corner. They’d been taking turns sleeping in the bed while the other two slept on the floor. Vola still wasn’t sure that it was worth the money they’d spent on it. They could have just camped outside the city if they hadn’t had to trek in every morning.
“All right, what exactly are we going to do with him?” Vola asked.
Lillie had rushed to her pack on the floor at the foot of the bed, and she rummaged through it. “You wanted to question him, right?”
Vola narrowed her eyes. “Yes. But I recall you saying something about this being very, very illegal.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to reanimate him.” Lillie pulled out three books Vola didn’t know she’d had. “We’re just going to talk to him.”
“So, this isn’t necromancy?”
“It falls in that gray area right before you actually get to illegal. There are plenty of law-abiding citizens who contact their dead loved ones through seances.”
“The only difference here is that we stole him,” Sorrel said. “Great. Now we’re body thieves, too.”
Vola rubbed her forehead and wondered how thin the walls were. It was the middle of the night but in a place like this, it was just as likely their neighbors were still awake as well.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You have a spell for this.”
“Yes, of course,” Lillie said, lifting a book in each hand and squinting at their covers. “My father believed in being prepared for anything.”
The wizard flinched, and Vola carefully looked at the wall and pretended she hadn’t heard anything. Lillie very rarely mentioned anything that had happened to her before they’d met. And she’d never slipped up far enough to mention a family.
“I just have to find it,” Lillie continued with only the slightest hitch. “And make the preparations. Spells for speaking to the dead aren’t usually simple. But it shouldn’t take long.” She cracked open one of the books there on her lap as she knelt on the floor.
Vola’s eyes slid to the dead guy taking up much of their floor space and then flicked away.
Talon sat in the corner by the door, knees pulled to their chest.
“You all right?” Vola asked them. They didn’t seem to be bouncing back from the fight in the graveyard as quickly as Vola had been expecting.
“Fine,” Talon grated out. But the hood was ducked as if to avoid Vola’s gaze.
After the healing, there couldn’t be anything wrong physically, Vola thought. But there were plenty of other things that could be wrong inside Talon’s head. They didn’t seem to mind the dead guy on the floor, so that wasn’t it.
Sorrel paced between the corpse and the window in the wall opposite the door. Her movements were frenetic and jerky, like a puppet with an inexpert handler.
Vola glanced between the two of them. Talon noticed and waved her toward Sorrel. “Go,” they grated. “You can do something about her.”
Vola sighed and stepped over the dead body to plop down on the bed. She watched Sorrel pace, making her regard clear.
On the fifth pass beside the bed, Sorrel glanced at Vola, noticed her gaze, and flushed. Finally, the halfling hopped up onto the cheap straw mattress. Then she scooted until her back pressed against the wall.
“The monks want that staff pretty bad,” Vola said.
Sorrel stiffened. “For all the same reasons we do,” Sorrel said, chin in the air.
Vola examined her profile. “Maybe not all the same reasons,” she said. Sorrel clearly had something to prove by getting to the staff first. “Hazel doesn’t seem so bad.”
Sorrel snorted, but it didn’t sound like mirth. It sounded like resignation. Or just a weary acceptance. “You know, we were friends because we were both short. But it’s the ones that aren’t that bad that end up being the worst. They convince themselves that what they’re doing is for the best and then end up turning a blind eye on everything that might be wrong with it.”
Vola’s lips twisted. Sorrel’s hurt stank of betrayed friendship. From the way they interacted, Vola would put all their meager savings on it being related to Tallah. Hazel had chosen Tallah over Sorrel somehow.
Lillie cleared her throat quietly. “This is ready.”
Talon stood from their place in the corner and stalked to the dead guy. They huffed and bent to haul the man upright before setting him in the chair by the window.
Lillie examined him.
“Was that really necessary?” Sorrel asked.
Talon glanced between them and the corpse and then shrugged. “It seemed more polite than leaving him on the floor.”
Vola nodded, conceding the point.
Sorrel and Vola slipped off the bed to stand. That seemed more polite, too.
“How’s this work?” Vola asked Lillie. “Should we tie him down?”
Lillie shook her head. “I’m not doing anything except letting him talk. He won’t be able to move. I don’t think he’ll even be aware of his body. Although that part is just an assumption since I’ve never actually been dead before.” Lillie tapped her lips as if in thought. “I’ll have to concentrate on this, though.”
“All right, you cast,” Vola said. “I’ll ask questions.”
With whatever preparations Lillie had made, the actual spell only took a few minutes. A glow emanated from the grave robber’s head where it lolled against the back of the chair.
Vola glanced from the steady light to the door, chewing her lip.
Talon followed her look and went to stuff a towel in the crack under the door. At least now, no one would come to investigate any strange lights.
Then the man’s lips began to move and air seeped out in a hiss.
Sorrel’s mouth screwed up. “Oh, ew, ew, ew.”
Lillie closed her eyes to concentrate.
“Do you want to know where Myron and the staff are or not?” Vola whispered to Sorrel.
Sorrel shut up, but the disgust on her face didn’t abate.
“Is it working?” Vola asked Lillie.
“Ask your questions,” Lille said, sweat popping out on her brow.
Right, quickly then. For Lillie’s sake and not just to get it over with. “Um, can you hear me?” Vola said.
A pause, then a voice that could have been a man’s but with an echo-y quality behind it said, “I hear.”
“Hello,” Sorrel said, voice forced in the quiet room, then she gulped.
“Are you the grave robber we—I mean are you the grave robber who was—” Bleh, how did you ask someone if they knew how they’d died? “Were you a grave robber in life?”
The man’s mouth moved. “Yes.”
“Were you hired by Myron Vidal?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing in the graveyard?”
“Digging.”
Vola rolled her eyes. Ghosts weren’t that talkative, apparently. “Digging for what?”
“Bodies.”
“Okay,” Vola said. “Do you know where Myron is now?”
“No.”
Vola blew out her breath. “Do you know who might know how to find him?”
“His mother.”
“Do you know his mother?” Sorrel said, perking up.
“No.”
She sagged again. “Oh.”
“He’s pretty literal,” Vola said.
“What’s your name?” Talon said unexpectedly.
A pause. “Bruno.”
Vola rubbed the back of her neck. “Bruno, who hired you to dig up bodies?”
“Mister Vidal.”
“Where did he find you?” Vola said.
Another pause. “He said he was looking for gravediggers.”
“Aren’t gravediggers supposed to put bodies in the ground, not take them back out again?”
“We do both. Who else would know the best place to dig them up but the men who put them there?”
“Well that makes a weird sort of sense,” Sorrel said.
“Bruno, do you know where Mister Vidal takes the bodies?” Vola asked.
“No. That was my boss’s job.”
“And where’s your boss?”
“Dead. The monks killed him before they got me.”
Vola rubbed her eyes. Wonderful. She glanced at Sorrel.
“Bruno, do you know anything about the staff Mister Vidal uses?”
“No.”
Before Vola could think of another question, Bruno’s head snapped up.
“Whoa.” Vola skipped back a pace, her hand going to her sword hilt.
“Creepy, creepy, creepy,” Sorrel whispered.
“Who are you?” Bruno’s voice had changed. It wasn’t as deep, and it had lost some of the echo. “What are you doing with this man?”
“Uhh,” Vola glanced between Lillie and Bruno’s corpse.
Bruno turned his head to survey the room, and his whole body sat forward with a slump as if it was trying to remember what muscles were.
“I thought it wasn’t supposed to do that?” Sorrel hissed at Lillie.
“It’s not,” Lillie hissed back. The blood had drained from her face, leaving her pale with the sweat standing out on her brow. “I’m not doing this.”
“Oh, no,” Vola said.
Then Bruno stood up, spine unfolding in a series of twitches.
Someone gulped. Vola was pretty sure it was Talon.
“You!” Bruno said, then pointed to Lillie with a finger that wavered back and forth.
“It’s Myron,” Talon said.
“You think?” Vola said and jumped back as the dead puppet took a swing at her.
Bruno windmilled his arms, lunging in for the attack and the four of them tried to scatter. Which was difficult in a room no bigger than an outhouse.
“Ouch!”
“Oof.”
“This room is not big enough for this fight. Just jump on him.”
“I told you we should have tied him down.”
“You did not! That was my idea.”
Vola couldn’t draw her sword in the space, it was too tight. She had a three in four chance of hitting one of her friends instead of the enemy. But her shield was still strapped to her back, so she swung it down onto her arm and bashed Bruno across the face with it.
The walking corpse didn’t even pause. He didn’t seem to feel pain or even notice that his head hung at a funny angle, his nose pointed at the ceiling now.
“Lillie, how do you kill zombies?” she called.
“Fire,” Lillie said. “But I can’t in here. I’ll just burn down the inn.”
Sorrel leaped to the bed and used it as a springboard to plant both feet in Bruno’s chest.
The zombie stumbled back into Talon, who spun him around and stabbed their knife through his arm. Anchoring him to the wall. Whatever funk they’d been in before didn’t keep them from fighting back now.
“Great,” Vola said. “Now we can just figure out how to break Myron’s connection…” Vola trailed off as Bruno looked down at his pinned arm and then casually ripped himself free at the shoulder, leaving his stump leaking all over the floor.
“Well, we’re not getting our deposit back,” Sorrel said.
Then Bruno reached back, pulled the knife from the wall, and then swung his severed arm around like a club.
“Great!” Vola said while ducking. “We gave him a weapon.”
Bruno lurched for Lillie.
The wizard squeaked and threw out her arms. A thunderclap sounded and a wall of air shoved Bruno back. He staggered into the opposite wall.
And crashed straight through the crumbling plaster.
A family of gnomes on the other side, popped up, eyes wide over the edge of their blankets.
“Sorry,” Lillie called. “I’m so sorry.”
Talon followed Bruno and spun him to crash through the gnomes’ door into the hallway.
Vola groaned. So much for being quiet.
Gnomish curses filled the air as she and Sorrel and Lillie clambered through their own door to see Talon racing down the steps. Bruno followed, tripped on the first step, and tumbled down the rest.
“Sleep tight,” Lillie called over her shoulder to the gnome family.
They staggered to a halt at the bottom of the steps to see Talon facing off against Bruno as he lurched to his feet in the common room.
Ah, now Vola had room to work. She drew her sword and charged.
The bartender stuck his head out his door. He surveyed the fight with a sigh.
Lillie whispered a cantrip, and the arm Bruno held caught fire. The zombie dropped it with a wordless cry.
Sorrel used a table as a springboard and leaped onto the zombie’s back. He staggered in a circle, moaning as Sorrel pummeled the top of his head.
“Bring him down,” Talon shouted. “Take his head off.”
Vola got close enough and stuck out her leg. Bruno went down with a wet smack, and Sorrel rolled free. Vola brought her blade down on the zombie’s neck, severing its head.
Finally, the body lay still.
After a moment’s hesitation, Sorrel climbed up a barstool and raised her finger at the bartender still gawking in the doorway.
“A lager, please.”
Chapter 23
Tallah collected herself and then chuckled. “That’s why you’ll never be allowed back in the monastery, Sorrel. You’ll never make a good monk until you learn that Maxim doesn’t value pride. He values loyalty. Above all, loyalty. Good followers know that and don’t seek recognition above the others.” Tallah gestured to the other monks before her gaze settled on Vola. “I wonder how long she’ll follow you before her pride makes her break another oath.”
“I wonder just how strong this barrier is,” Vola said, voice calm and calculating. She threw a punch at Tallah’s face, just as Sorrel had done.
The barrier crackled and spluttered but held strong. Vola clenched her teeth tight on the pain and didn’t let any of it show as Tallah glanced worriedly at the barrier.
Finally, the abbess scoffed. “You think it’s an insult, but it’s the truth. Sorrel swore an oath to follow me, but when it came time to fulfill that oath, she chose to lie. She undermined my authority and left. She’ll eventually do the same thing to you.”
Tallah raised her hand to call Hazel and the other monk to her side. “We’re not letting you come back,” she told Sorrel. “Maybe if you’d gotten to the Warhammer first. But that’s what we’re doing.”
They flowed down the hall in perfect unison, leaving Sorrel, Vola, Lillie, and Talon behind the barrier.
As soon as they were out of sight, Vola bent over her hand, grimacing in pain.
“That was stupid,” Rilla said, behind her.
Vola took a few deep breaths and straightened. “No. It was necessary.” It had been necessary to rattle Tallah. And it had been necessary to stand with Sorrel, show her they weren’t going to be moved by words.
But Sorrel stalked back over to the wall and flung herself on the floor without meeting Vola’s eyes.
Lillie gave a fake little laugh. “Well, it’s not like you wanted to return to the monastery, anyway. So really, they haven’t taken anything away from you.”
A muscle jumped in Sorrel’s jaw and she hung her head, her hands clenched on her knees. “Actually…”
Lillie’s shoulders drooped. “Oh.”
Vola rubbed the back of her neck. She’d rather be doing anything else right now, but it wasn’t like they had a way out of this place.
She leaned back against the wall next to Sorrel.
“I kept…imagining it in my head,” Sorrel said. “I’d have the Warhammer, and I’d bring it back and everyone would all be lined up. Everyone who ever believed Tallah. They’d all look at me and know. They’d know she was wrong and it would be so…so good.”
Sorrel looked up at them, blinking rapidly. “That makes her right? Doesn’t it? I wanted the Warhammer to prove myself. To get them to admit they’d made a mistake. And that’s just pride. Another way of betraying my people.”
“Bullshit,” Vola said and a little crack of lightning struck the tile in front of them. Vola glared at the ceiling. “Can you think of a better word for it?”
The ceiling stayed silent, and Vola assumed she’d proved her point. She turned her scowl on Sorrel, who was staring up at her. “No, a good teammate doesn’t need to constantly be proving their worth,” she said. “But that’s because recognition is given freely.”
Lillie dragged the stool over to them with a screech and perched atop it. Talon’s hood swung like she was weighing her options, then she crouched on the floor just far enough away to feel comfortable but close enough to be one of them.
“You shouldn’t have to prove yourself to your family,” Vola said, deliberately using that word. “Because your family should already recognize your skill. And we do.” She added the last part quietly. “A team that refuses to recognize the contributions of its members isn’t worth defending.”
Vola bent her neck, looking down at Sorrel. The halfling chewed her lip, tracing the edge of a tile with her fingertip.
“You said it yourself,” Vola said. “Back in the graveyard when all this was starting.”
Sorrel glanced up. “I said what?”
Vola pointed to Talon. “Talon’s our tracker. Sh-They find ways to come at our enemies sideways. They’re the unexpected arrow in the dark. I don’t have to check that they’re there, because I trust—no, I know that they will be.”
Talon ducked, her hood hiding her face.
“Lillie’s our brains. She figures out our enemies’ weaknesses. She thinks and writes and plans, and when those things fail, she makes sure everything explodes.”
Lillie went a bright, painful red, but she gave Vola a beatific smile. “And Vola is the one who keeps us together with her wisdom,” Lillie said. “She says she’d prefer to swing a sword, and she’s very good at it. But it’s her words that hold us to one another. Her words, her strength, her dedication. She is a bulwark. A shield. And a sanctuary.”
Vola shrugged as if to let the praise roll off of her, but she buried the words deep down where she could remember them later.
“Sorrel, you’re our heart,” Vola said.
Sorrel pulled a face.
“You’re our passion.” Vola ignored her reaction. “You’re our muscle. You walk ahead of us and clear a path so we have a place to stand. So Talon has a place to appear, so Lillie has a place to think, so I have a place to defend.”
Vola lowered her chin and didn’t continue until Sorrel met her eyes. “We want you to be proud of what you do for us. We want you to be proud of who you are. Because that’s where your strength is. And we’ll keep telling you as long as you need to hear it.”
The princess watched them from her place propped against one of the tables.
Sorrel let her knees drop, so she sat cross-legged on the tile. She scrubbed her hands over her face, holding them there for a second as if composing herself. When she finally looked up at them, her familiar grin wreathed her features.
“I suppose that means we’d better get out of here, then.”
Vola nodded and stood. She walked to the door and examined the barrier without touching it. Unfortunately, Myron had sealed them in with magic so there wasn’t even a lock to pick.
“You say that like it’s as easy as walking out of here,” Rilla said with a snort. “You’ve taken a look around, right?”
Vola raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes, but would you rather just sit there?”
Lillie stepped up to the barrier and held her hands out palms up as if testing it. “We’re going to get out of here,” she said. “And we’re going to find a way to get Sorrel back into her monastery. With or without Maxim’s Warhammer.”
Sorrel chuckled under her breath. “It would be better with; otherwise, why did I snatch it?” She stood and used her toe to flip her quarterstaff into her hand.
The rest of them stared as the halfling spun the staff fast enough to make it blur, then struck the floor with one end. As they watched, the smooth wood under her hands writhed, forming intricately carved knots that glowed from the inside.
Maxim’s Warhammer.