“So, does this happen often?” the invader asks the necromancer, leaning back casually in the chair it had taken for itself, hands behind its head as the sandwich hung obligingly in the air next to its mouth.

“No, this is the capital! Things aren’t supposed to happen here at all,” replies the somewhat frazzled wizard, egg on her face.

“Sounds like a problem of some sort,” continues the eating creature, ignoring the plight of every being that wasn’t itself, “think we should get involved in some way?”

“Nah, there are adventurers, royal guards, and wizards for that. There’s a reason we pay taxes, and that reason is the government services that take care of random explosions and giant monsters,” Avery points out, wiping the food from her skin with a random rag.

“Aren’t those guys adventurers,” the invader supplies, gesturing with its tail in the general direction of outside.

“Oh dang it, yes they are. Augh, they’re stupid enough that they’d charge in trying to fix things too, and let me assure you that I have even less of an inclination than ‘Shooty’ to deal with all the political underpinnings of officially introducing a race to the crown,” Avery gripes. “We’re going to have to track them down so I can have a buffer of fighters between me and having to do anything.”

“But my sandwich,” complains the hungry creature.

“No,” states the first invader, finishing its sandwich and standing up. “There’s no time to spare.”

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Before the shattered bones of the previously human skeleton manage to succumb to gravity and hit the floor, Ham is already charging forward toward the sword. He had at least a few seconds before the next explosive beam was due, and the closer he was to the source, the less he’d need to move in order to dodge it. Plus, if he managed to get possession of the blade, he’d be pretty much safe.

Even when a magical weapon had an ego, it wasn’t able to unilaterally act against the person wielding it. A powerful artifact would still have to directly contest the will of the wielder, and Ham was pretty sure he could impose his will on a random bit of metal once he got his hands on it. That was a bit weird though, usually even a magic item that was enchanted to move by itself couldn’t act on its own without being activated by the user. Dancing enchantments would only work for less than a half a minute at a time, enough for the average mage to cast four spells. It had already used three probably. If Ham could get through one more attack, he’d be in the clear.

What most likely happened was that he’d set off a trap when touching the statue, and that activated the sword. Things like magical traps were exactly why it was a bad idea to touch random things in tombs, particularly when that tomb was obviously made by people with way too much money. People with way too much money were the best source of easy money though, which was the eternal conundrum.

Regardless, the sword made its move when Ham was almost upon it again.

Rather than only fire red, green, and blue beams, the blade splits its laser into seven distinct colors. A different color blasts out at every fifty degrees or so, the magical effect of each ray flowing up behind each focal point. Toward Ham, the blue beam leads a path of erupting stone, as everything it contacts is petrified. Figuring that a shield would work perfectly here, he summons another zombified kobold. Those things were incredibly plentiful, and easy to get a hold of. Unlike human skeletons, Ham had a practically unlimited supply of kobold bodies to conjure up and use to soak up magical blasts.

It probably would have been a good idea to have one of them start doing the looting and set off all the traps.

To his immediate left, a bloom of deadly poison erupts from the green beam’s path, and to his right a good amount of definitely not looking at that from the trail of the two purple rays. Honestly, Ham would have preferred to have been on the opposite side of the sword from where he was right now, because he was pretty sure that any of the four beams that were nearest to him would have completely obliterated him with no chance of survival. At least there were spells that would resist the standard blasts of fire, electricity, and acid that were coming from the red through yellow parts of the visible light spectrum. With that last hurrah of destructive energy though, it looked like the sword was finally running out of steam. Ham forcibly restrains himself from channelling darkness into himself to heal, lest he reactivate the trap just as the pillar of light was starting to fade away.

White petals start to descend from on high as the sky begins to clear, which was a bit offensive to Ham’s aesthetic sensibilities, but it was not exactly that important. At this point his cover was probably completely blown, so it would behove him to grab the sword and run before the local authorities noticed the hole in the ground and the guy trying to loot noble graves. Grabbing the handle of the light attuned weapon, he feels the weakening effect grip his body, followed shortly by a pain in the face when the statue punches him.