Beyond the fence lacking a gate, there stood a small marble building. Doors ajar, leading to downward stairs, the structure concealed a path downward by appearing to be an ordinary small crypt, a house on a grave to mark a resting place. What it didn’t conceal was the giant hole burnt out of the ground beyond it, or the pillar of light that had caused it and brought the attentions of the necromancer and party.

Significantly less concerned about any kind of threat to the city than the human it accompanied, the experiment focuses its attention on matters that concern it more than the minor issue of explosions and earthquakes. It had eaten a sandwich, and enough time had passed from the event for it to consider the implications of certain actions. For instance, the human, no longer a disembodied spirit, had been befuddled slightly more than what it had come to expect from the being in question, and made reference to events it had no memory of. That implied the sort of unnecessary complexity that came from either the higher-ups, or the other.

If this location had been compromised, it was going to have to deal with that. If the human was compromised, it might have to deal with that, and the starting point for such an eventuality would be a distancing, combined with preparations to eliminate the variable. From the moment an agent interacted with reality, it was safe to assume that everything that flowed from that intersection point was to serve their eventual goals.

Unfortunately, it didn’t currently have the resources to purge everything and try again. They had to be frugal with energy expenditures at the moment.

Dragging its recently weighted tail behind it, the experiment silently walked down the stairs, not even stumbling with another seventeen and a half kilograms of meat stabilizing its pathing. Nine meters of tail, and enough musculature to absolutely crush the lower strengths of stone, like marble. Granite was right out though, that stuff was entirely too strong. There were probably exact figures it could quote but it neither had the time nor the inclination to do compression stress testing on various rocks to determine exactly how effective the forty-five had been in fulfilling its request.

Hopefully it wouldn’t have to find the limits for some time.

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

Following behind the not golem, Ham tries to draw as little attention as possible to himself. He had been thoroughly beaten, chased down, and was now stuck as the low level minion to the real bully. This kind of thing was pretty common among the orphans, and he wasn’t going to try and overturn the hastily constructed status quo of non violence immediately. He was definitely all out of energy bursting capacity, and somehow he doubted that the constant stream of darkness he had access to was enough to deal with both the sword that was about a match for him and the wielder.

The girl strode into the central chamber right before the stairway out, and Ham nearly ran into her as she came to a sudden stop. There was a weird looking small creature there in the atrium, and someone wearing wizard robes.

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

“Hey, what do you have to do with the giant explosion a few minutes ago?” demands Avery, “I was trying to eat a sandwich that was probably delicious, and the shockwave ruined it! I demand compensation for physical damages, emotional damages, and a new sandwich!”

Down the stairs into the creepy catacombs of presumable death, the necromancer stumbles into a room with actual crypts, a balcony, and some person with a glowing sword.

“If your person has been inflicted damages by the repercussions of our actions, we recommend that you take any such requests for recompensation to the court of your illustrious ruler, that the government coffers may rectify the issue at hand with all due haste,” states the girl haughtily.

“Reasonable,” states the invader. “We should go do that.”

“What, no!” Avery retorts. “She just told me to ‘go ask the government for money’, as though that’s a perfectly adeq uete deflection of personal responsibility in relation to the event that was almost certainly stemming directly from her involvement. That’s simply not acceptable in this interconnected world we live in, a person has to acknowledge their mistakes and make up for them.”

Pointing forward, the wizard continues.

“Who do you think you are, to be above the very social contract established between civilized beings, the only thing separating us from the monsters lurking in every wild place?”

“As the rightful heir and occupant to this mausoleum, we state that this is a privately owned plot of property, deeming incursion into the depths, or even beyond the sealed gate, to be in itself a breach of the social construct. Our response then is a demand to vacate the premises, before the obvious escalation can occur.”

In response to that, the creature’s tail suddenly shoots forward, stone spear flying out of its hidden position all the way up the stairway, out of the tail’s grip, and into the wall on the far side of the room, passing between the two people standing in the center of the chamber. It burrows itself deep into the stone wall, and stays completely still, thoroughly lodged into the smooth surface.

“I suggest you answer the question,” suggests the creature, tail still extended eight meters away from his body, nearly touching both of the people.

The girl responds with violence, slashing downward into the extended tail, slicing cleanly through and severing a meter of meat.

“Ffff,” breathes the creature, taking a step forward. Far faster than Avery would have guessed possible, the stumped tail draws back and thrusts forward, slamming into the swordswoman. Taking the full force of the blow in the chest, the girl flies backward, slamming into the wall.

Unchivalrously, the figure in black immediately abandoned their companion to flee for the relative safety of the upward stairs to the side of the spear throw. Below, the glowing blade grows even brighter.

“Our turn.”