In all the subterraria of the dead star Zeeble, all the caves and caverns, the tunnels, the mines, the majestic vaulted halls and grottos so solitary that not even a blind cave fish has ever smelt of it, from twilight jungles warmed by magma, across sunless seas full of terrifying leviathans, to sandstone deserts where pearlescent dragons devour the unwary, all across this ancient underground landscape, it is universally acknowledged that the greatest diggers have always been the molemen, and that nobody else comes close. Not the goblins, not the sheckwar, nor the vampires nor even the “noble” alfen with all their extraordinary technology can excavate with the speed, and more importantly, the confidence that a molemen has been gifted by nature.

Naturally, any race of people who go about living underground are going to get good at digging (that or make do do with the holes that nature provide), but the molemen take it to an extreme. Of course their large, clawed hands can carve stone like mashed potatoes, but it would be a grave disservice to regard them as primitive beasts—they use tools as well. It is said that an experienced moleman miner can, with a single precisely aimed strike of his handy pick-hammer, cause a fracture that reduces hundreds of tons of solid rock to cobble in an instant.

Keebo Finds a Dead Body

Keebo was an adolescent moleman boy from the tiny village of Gypsum-Fifteen.¹ Keebo stood four feet tall and two feet wide, which was average for his age and he still had some growing left to do (he hoped). He had short brown fur, a backpack full of tools and tasty snacks, and a leather skirt that was too big for him and only stayed up with the aid of two tightly cinched belts.

Keebo was on a very important errand. He’d been bragging about it for weeks to anybody willing to listen (or too slow to run away). Keebo’s momentous task was to hike the long, twisting path of fracture-caves that connected his remote frontier village with the greater High-and-Low-Way system.² There he was supposed to pay a visit to the wire station and send a message to the largest nearby city, Singing Caverns, to request a merchant. It was a difficult and sometimes confusing hike, one that took the better part of a day, but Keebo had made the journey several times before, albeit always in the company of an experienced adult. Keebo felt a great deal of pride that his community had acknowledged his maturity by allowing him to go on his own this time.³ So he was understandably pretty upset when he discovered the corpse of the wireminder.

The body lay at the base of the embankment, some one hundred feet below where the wire station perched, humming and occasionally lighting the cavern with sparks. The corpse was face down, with both arms folded over, so Keebo had to turn it over carefully with his bare foot to confirm that it was, in fact, the wireminder.

It was, in fact, the wireminder—at least as far as Keebo was concerned. It’d been a while since Keebo had seen him, and death has a way of making alien even the most familiar faces. Plus molemen all kind of look alike, what with all the fur covering everything up.

Still, The body had the wide shoulders and wider middle that Keebo remembered, and its fur was that same muddy brown color that both he and the wireminder shared. When Keebo looked closer, he could even see those faint gray streaks in the corpse’s chest tuft, underneath all the blood and dirt. The snout was roughly the right size, though it was pointing in an unusual direction. The thing that really sealed it for Keebo though was the white birthmark over the left eye. Now it is true that the wireminder Keebo remembered didn’t have quite so many small bloody holes around his face, neck and upper torso, but Keebo had deduced that these were probably new additions.

After his examination, Keebo came to the conclusion that 1.) this was probably the body of the wireminder, 2.) the wireminder’s death might not have been an accident, and therefore 3.) this whole “murder” business was going to make Keebo’s errand a lot more difficult.

Keebo was not so oblivious that he could ignore his responsibility to a corpse in need. But surely he had a responsibility to his community as well. His village needed that merchant. They had a great big stockpile of goods they had no need for, and they wanted to exchange it for a pile of goods that were equally unnecessary, but at least had some novelty. Sure, Gypsum-Fifteen was self-sufficient. But a merchant would bring exotic spices, fruits and vegetables; textiles woven, not by the filthy hands of a handicraftsman, but by a cold unerring machine; the latest gadgets and artifacts of pop culture from the capital (five years ago); and fantastic furniture that you assembled yourself from a box of loose wooden pieces. So Keebo was understandably conflicted.

Usually, when Keebo needed to make a decision like this, he would ask his elders what to do. That way he’d have someone to shift the blame to if things went wrong. But if Keebo went back to the village now, without completing his original task, would the elders praise him for being prudent? Or would they think he was an idiot? On the other hand, if Keebo was able to overcome this minor obstacle, and solve everything on his own, well that would be awfully mature of him, wouldn’t it?

Keebo gazed up at the wire station, a corrugated metal box with fat bundles of cables rising to the ceiling of the tunnel. It was so close. If Keebo could figure out the wire machine, he could send a message to the merchant guild in Singing Caverns and have a representative in Gypsum-Fifteen within a week.

While he was at it, he could report the murder to the proper authorities and have the body taken care of, which was also important, obviously. When Keebo thought it through, only one thing really stood in his way. There was light coming from the sole window of the shack. Could whoever killed the wireminder still be up there?

Surely not! A murderer has got to have better things to do than hang around a tiny shack in the middle of nowhere all day. Like seek out more victims, for example. Or skulking. Would a hot-blooded killer really waste his time loitering at the scene of the crime hoping that some stupid hick, practically begging to be killed, will wander into his waiting arms like a bugbeast to the slaughter? Really, what are the chances of that?

Just to be safe, Keebo took off his pack and retrieved his trusty pick-hammer, a gift given to him on occasion of his twelfth birthday. He gave a few practice swings, the same way he often did in private when he pretended to be one-armed Chuck, the brave moleman adventurer, slaying goblins two at a time.⁴ Keebo wedged his hammer under his belts and started climbing the winding trail up the embankment to the wire station.

At the top of the embankment, Keebo took a moment to steady his breath. The High-and-Low-Way (the “H&L” as it is called by all modern, impatient people) was as impressive as ever: an arched tunnel ten Keebos tall, cut straight through the rock, with thick cables running the length of the ceiling. Glowpods planted regularly along the walls kept the space illuminated with their faint amber light. Molish petroglyphs, a swirling script meant to be read by touch, described the precise location of this section of the H&L, and its relationship to prominent nearby settlements:

WIRE STATION 0-205-00109
GYPSUM-FIFTEEN↓
←KAOLIN 9 MILES
EGGERY 22 MILES→
←DOLLA FORTRESS 59 MILES
SINGING CAVERNS 70 MILES→

The road was so perfectly straight that it was said, if you had good enough eyesight, you could actually see the point where it disappeared over the horizon. Of course, a moleman was considered lucky if he only had “moderately poor” eyesight, which was probably for the best, because Keebo was already experiencing that specific strain of anxiety that all rural molemen felt when exposed to wide-open spaces.⁵ Something about the sensation of all that empty air made him feel uncertain and vulnerable, like an enormous bird was liable to swoop down and make a meal of him.

Slowly, carefully, Keebo stepped towards the wire station. Heel to toe, heel to toe, as quiet as a dead mouse. The gravel made that challenging. Finally, Keebo was able to reach out and place his palm against the flimsy metal door of the wire station. He closed his eyes and focused. An electric tickle danced down his spine and his fur stood on end.

Wyrmsight is a special ability, a sixth sense⁶ that all molemen possess. To explain wyrmsight to someone who doesn’t have it is something of a challenge, but to start it might be sufficient to view it as a kind of psychic, three hundred and sixty degree peripheral vision. A moleman climbing through a complicated cave system isn’t consciously perceiving every little corner and bump of every rock around him, but let’s say he has approximate awareness of the three dimensional space around him at all times.

Keebo was focusing his wyrmsight in the same way that a seasoned miner would to investigate the points of stress in a layer of rock. But wyrmsight is not “x-ray vision,” and the effectiveness of it varies depending on the skill of the user. So Keebo was lucky that he was even able to perceive that there was a room behind that door. As he stretched his limits beyond what he had ever practiced before, he sensed something else. There was something alive in there. A warm body, a heart pumping blood… Perhaps it pumped the villainous blood of a murderer!

A cold sensation spread across the back of Keebo’s neck. He then had a terrible realization: if he could sense the presence of the (maybe) murderer, then the (maybe) murderer could (maybe) sense him as well. And if Keebo just stood outside the front door without doing anything, that vicious killer might get suspicious. Without even consciously making the decision to do so, Keebo knocked on the door three times.

“Yes, ah, hello,” said Keebo, doing his best to keep his voice steady, his hand resting on his pick-hammer. “Is anyone there? I’ve come to send a message.”

There was a dreadful pause, and then a muffled, feminine voice said, “come in.”

Keebo immediately took his hand off the hammer. He brushed his skirt a few times, then combed the fur on the top of his head with his claws. He straightened his back (as much as a moleman can, anyway) and then opened the door in as nonchalant a manner as he was capable of.

Neela

Please forgive me for making a brief detour in our story. Before we get into the wire station I want to tell you about the first time that Keebo discovered a corpse.

He was only eight years old. Her name was Neela, a molewoman in her forties, and Keebo stumbled upon her corpse in one of the village’s gardens. Her body was laying across a bed of talcroot, her head wreathed in the soft green glow of vitagrass. There was an expression of shock frozen on her face, her glassy eyes open, her mouth slightly agape. That face would return to Keebo’s thoughts many times, in quiet moments like when he was drifting off to sleep, or listening to the lectures of his elders.

After staring for a long while, and a few futile attempts at waking the deceased by shaking her body or screaming in her ears, Keebo ran to inform an adult of what had happened. The town “doctor,” Halene, was called. She came bringing with her a satchel full of fragrant herbs and unlabeled tinctures. She ran her hands over the body, used a sewing needle to poke it in a few different places, and then, just to be extra safe, she screamed in both ears. There was no reaction, and Halene had to declare Neela deceased. The cause of death was unknown, but that wasn’t entirely unusual. If a mole was not elderly, or visibly sick or injured before death, all you could do was chalk it up as “one of those things” and move on as a community. The community had lots of practice in moving on.

Some molewomen then came then to wrap Neela in cloth and carry her away as a bundle, a parcel, a piece of luggage. The body was carefully transported to the lowest part of the burrow, the charnel grounds, and placed upon the altar.

Gypsum-Fifteen was not a large community, so the charnel grounds were simple and unadorned. It was a large chamber with a very deep hole—the charnel pit—and its altar was just a conveniently flat slab of rock. Some inspired artisan had at some point carved a relief into the altar’s sides, a swirling and somewhat abstract (ugly) depiction of the Great Mother Wyrm chewing its way through the rock.

Somebody went to tell the flesher that his skills were required. The flesher in this case was an elderly moleman named Cathor. His main job was as a butcher, but in his old age he spent more time yelling at his apprentices than actually carving meat. Still. His skills were required, so he donned his white robe and gloves, collected his tools, and then set out on his long procession down.

There didn’t need to be a lot of talking. Moles saw him in his robe, so they dropped what they were doing and joined in the procession. By the time Cathor had reached the charnel grounds, the entire community was with him.

Cathor stood at the altar and spoke some Old Words that sounded like a snake trying to sing and doing a half-assed job of it. It didn’t really matter that nobody in the village could tell you what the words meant. The unpleasant sound of those syllables carried with them the weight of thousands of years of tradition.

And then, with his tools spread before him, Cathor the flesher began the solemn work of carving Neela the gardener into tiny pieces.

One by one. Each member of the community would step up to altar, pick up a piece of Neela wrapped in cloth, and eulogize her. Each speaker would begin with some variation of the phrase “I will always remember.” It was a promise, more than anything. And the things they’d say after weren’t necessarily the most important aspects of Neela’s personality or history.⁷ But all those mundane observations and anecdotes came together to form an image of the molewoman as she really was, day to day. The person that she was in the eyes of her community.

Their eulogy completed, the bereaved would drop their piece of Neela into the charnel pit. And then the next speaker would step up to the altar, and the process would continue. Fortunately, while Neela was a well-regarded resident of Gypsum-Fifteen, she was not extraordinarily sociable nor interesting. In larger towns, with bigger personalities, a funeral could last days with all the long-winded stories people would tell.

Meanwhile Cathor the flesher’s hands never stopped moving. His knives moved with the grace of a sheckwar sword dancer, or a teppanyaki chef from the capital. The larger bones were broken up with precise strikes from a small metal hammer. The smaller bones, like those in the hands and feet, were broken by a curved blade made for that purpose. ⁸

Keebo was at the back, with the other children, being minded by some elders. The other children were climbing over each other to try to get a better view of the proceedings. An old molewoman named Seena squeezed Keebo’s hand and gave him a faint smile.

Keebo had been feeling increasingly ill ever since the flesher had arrived. Was it because of the mincing? Surely not. The mincing was sacred. But why did his chest hurt? Why was his brain all foggy? Why did he feel so very… unsafe, even when surrounded by his entire community? Keebo wanted more than anything to tell the flesher to stop, if only for a moment, so that he could catch his breath.

But it was time for Keebo to speak. So he walked up there to the altar. He picked up a piece of Neela. He said, “I will always remember…” And then he lied his ass off.

He told a ridiculous story about Neela saving him from a ravenous spiderpede, cutting off both its heads with her gardening shears. It was an absurd, childish lie (spiderpedes don’t even have two heads!), but Keebo was lucky enough to live in the type of community where none of the adults would call bullshit on an eight-year-old’s story at a funeral. When Keebo dropped his piece of Neela into the pit, he felt the weight of his sin crash down on him all at once. He immediately regretted lying, and he knew he couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t even own up to his mistake, because admitting it would just shame Neela’s memory further.

Why did he do it? He had plenty of real memories of Neela. He spent more time with her than most moles, learning the different names of plants and how to care for them. She taught Keebo lots of things: knot-tying, whistling, even some bawdy old goblin limericks she’d picked up as a kid. It was because Keebo had been closer to Neela than most anybody else that Keebo felt a great deal of pressure to give her a good eulogy.

Who could know why the quiet solitary Neela, who seemed to like the company of vegetables more than that of other moles, took such an interest in young Keebo? She taught the plant stuff to other pups, but everything else was just for Keebo.

The Stranger in the Wire Station

The molewoman was sitting at a small dirty table snacking on a bag of assorted gravel⁹ and reading a ratty old book. There was a half-full mug of coffee forgotten off to the side, growing a film. She was a short, gray-furred molewoman with a long slender snout and small black eyes. She wore short black pants and a smart top with black-and-white stripes. It was plain as Keebo’s face that she was a “city mole.”¹⁰

Keebo took his time examining his surroundings. The smell of stale coffee and insulation oil hung in the air. There was a small iron stove with a dirty kettle still sitting on the warmer. Next to that was a utility sink with a cracked mirror hanging over it. At the back of the shack stood the enormous console for the wire system, decorated with numerous inscrutable dials and displays, switches and buttons.

Between the console and the rest of the room was a service counter littered with loose documents and some roughed-up looking parcels. Above the console was a loft with some dirty bedding where the wireminder must have slept, warmed by the heat of the cables. There were no signs of violence in the shack, no blood, no scattered teeth, no broken furniture.

The molewoman watched Keebo with half-lidded eyes. She cleared her throat at the stranger when he got on all fours to peer underneath the stove for clues.

Keebo scrambled to his feet so fast that he cracked his head against the stove. The molewoman sucked in air through her teeth at the sound of bone against cast iron, but Keebo kept his cool and didn’t acknowledge the agonizing pain he was in.

The more Keebo looked at the molewoman the more sure he was that she couldn’t possibly be a murderer. A murderer’s fur wouldn’t be so incredibly soft. A murderer wouldn’t have such an elegant snout, curving ever so slightly upwards. And a murderer wouldn’t smell faintly of some sweet exotic fruit Keebo didn’t know the name of. Keebo was confident that no murderer could smell that nice. It wouldn’t be fair to their victims.

“I’m sorry,” the molewoman said. “Is there something you need from me, pup?”

“My name of Keebo is… My name IS Keebo,” said Keebo. “I am from Gypsum-Fifteen, I am fourteen years old, and my favorite food is mud eel stew.”

“Mud eels, they’re quite oily aren’t they? I’m afraid my delicate stomach can’t handle them.” The molewoman loudly crunched a piece of gravel as if to punctuate her sentence.

“Opal.” Keebo put on what he considered his most gentle and charismatic smile.

“Before, there was a… a large moleman,” said Keebo. He described with his hands as well as his mouth. “Brown fur, like me, except for a white spot over his eye…”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Opal, waving her hand dismissively. “You must be speaking of the old wireminder. He was supposed to train me, but it seems like he wanted to start his retirement early. When I arrived on the omnibug¹¹ this morning he was nowhere to be found. I assume he’s off patronizing one of the charming little pubs in the area, if all those empty bottles behind the shack are anything to go by. And no, he didn’t leave a note behind. The only thing to read in this dump is old ledgers, other people’s mail, and this trashy water-damaged goblin romance.”

Opal’s story seemed hastily crafted, and she wasn’t offering any evidence that any of it was true. That made it all the more believable to Keebo, who figured that a murderer would work harder on coming up with an alibi.

Opal was sharpening her already razor-sharp claws with a metal file and then scrutinizing her work. Keebo figured that was just how big city molewomen were. They were all about fashion.

Keebo sat down across from Opal. She glared at him. Keebo took a deep breath and collected his thoughts.

“The city?” Opal had a faint smile on her mouth. “Am I from THE city? There’s more than one, you know.”

“Right, well I figured, because of the…” Keebo gestured to his own torso while glancing at Opal’s blouse. He’d never found a torso so intriguing until he saw one covered up. “…Top clothes, that you wear. And also, because of the color of your—” Keebo stopped himself. He realized that what he was saying might be impolite. “Because you’re a Sandstone mole. There aren’t many folk from the Sandstone tribe out here. “

“Yes, well, if I see one, I’ll be sure to inform you,” said Opal. “Seeing as I am a Crystal Forest mole, as anyone with eyes could tell. See how fine my fur is?”

“A Sandstone mole’s fur is like tangled nagaweed compared to…” Opal caught herself. “Ah, that is to say, it’s… fluffier, than mine.”

“Well, I figured because you’re from the big city, you probably know a lot about… crime and stuff.”

“Pup, I’m not from your ‘big city,’ I’m from the capital,” said Opal, her snout lifting ever so slightly into the air. “Katybus, have you heard of it? But why is it, that just because I’m a modern, metropolitan mole, I should know all about crime?”

“The elders of my village,” said Keebo, “taught me that cities are dens of debauchery and violence where life has no value and moles wallow in senseless hedonism until they die painful sex-and-drug-related deaths.”

“Oh yes, they’re terrified!” said Keebo, nodding his head vigorously. “Nothing in history has destroyed more lives than progress!”

“So, you do know about crimes,” said Keebo. “Crimes like, for example… murder?”

Opal’s expression darkened. Keebo wondered if he had offended her, but then she smiled with all those sharp white teeth of hers. “I can’t say it’s happened to me personally, but I understand the theory.”

“Oh that’s such a relief!” exclaimed Keebo. “Because you see, the wireminder is dead. Murdered, I’m pretty sure.”

Opal’s tiny black eyes widened maybe a millimeter. She leaned back in her chair, and through a tight mouth she said, “Pup, you shouldn’t joke about things like that.”

“His body is at the bottom of the embankment,” said Keebo, “riddled with holes. I can show you, if you want…?”

“Well because you’re a city mole, like I said,” said Keebo. “I was hoping you’d know what we should do.”

“You’re the new wireminder, but you don’t know how to operate the wire?”

Opal smacked the table so hard that it made Keebo flinch. “The previous wireminder was supposed to train me!”

Keebo felt the instinct to apologize, but he didn’t know why. So he did what he always did in that situation and apologized anyway. “Sorry, I’m sorry!”

Opal began tapping the table with one of those razor-sharp claws of hers. “Just please be quiet for a moment and… let me think.”

Keebo shut his mouth tight. He was used to people telling him to shut up. Usually they weren’t as polite about it as Opal was, which was why Keebo put another mental checkmark under the heading “not a murderer” for Opal. While he waited for her to gather her thoughts, he picked up the coffee cup and examined its contents. It was cold, half empty, and the film on top looked like an oil spill. Opal stopped tapping. Keebo looked up and she was staring right at him.

It then occurred to Keebo that it might look to Opal that he was considering stealing an “indirect kiss” from her used coffee cup, and that wasn’t at all what he was thinking of doing, mostly. Flustered, Keebo put the cup back down. Opal clicked her tongue and stood up. “I can fix you up a fresh cup, if you want.”

“Alright,” said Opal. She slumped back in her chair. “Well… I suppose one of us can just hike the H&L in the morning, try and reach the next wire station. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to hitch a ride.”

“We can’t wait that long!” said Keebo. “If he wasn’t here when you arrived this morning, that means he’s already been dead for, what, twelve hours? Which means that by the time we get back he’ll have gone almost two days without being put to rest!”

“Wait, you’re worried about the funeral?” asked Opal. “While I’m sure the old bastard would appreciate your piety, it’s 7 PM, and I’m not about to give up my beauty rest for this.”

“…That seems unlikely, but in that case he could send your message, right?”

“No! I mean…” Keebo covered his mouth and whispered. “What if he comes back as a bone demon?”

Opal let out a hard bark of a laugh. “Oh, don’t tell me, you still believe in skellymen? How old are you, pup? Do you also believe in Sandclaw, the presents monster?”¹²

“I apologize, it was never my intention to come all this way just to,” Opal stretched out a slender claw to tap Keebo on the forehead, “bully a local out of his folksy little belief system, but to any modern, educated person, it’s plainly obvious that most religious rituals are simple superstition, an ad hoc rationalization for practices, the real meaning of which have been long since forgotten.”

Keebo cocked his head like a confused hound lizard. He was trying to count the number of foreign words Opal had spoken when she interrupted him by snapping her fingers in his face. She continued her lecture.

“Certainly, mincing is the most logical and sanitary way to dispose of the dead, but it takes a great deal of energy and skill to do so effectively. So in ancient times, our wisest ancestors—” Opal gestured to herself “—made up something to scare the normal, stupid people—” Opal gestured to Keebo “—into not being lazy. ‘If you don’t chop the body up into tiny pieces first it’ll come back as a skellyman and kill you!’ It’s simple, but it works. Really the fleshers are no more than skilled garbagemen. That said, like garbagemen, fleshers provide a vital role in maintaining community hygiene, so I suppose they deserve some respect for that. Hm.”

“Anyway,” said Opal, “In Katybus, in the capital? We’ve a great big machine full of blades that does the flesher’s job for him.” The pride in Opal’s voice made it sound like she had invented it.

“Well. I don’t understand any of that,” said Keebo. “But I do know that bone demons, uh, ‘skellymen,’ are real.”

“Yes, but, sixty years ago, a pack of hundred or more passed through my village. All the elders from that time swear on it.”

“Oh really,” scoffed Opal. “There should be a limit to naïveté. Your elders were just making it up! To scare you into behaving, or just for an easy laugh. Old people love to do that, you know. Especially to credulous. Little. Pups. Like. You.”

Keebo couldn’t think of a counterargument so he just shook his head. He knew there was no way he could win a debate against someone who casually tossed out words like “naïveté” and “credulous.”

“Think about it,” said Opal. “If an army of skellymen passed through a dinky little village like yours, how could anyone survive to tell the tale?”

“Well, that’s just how bone demons work,” said Keebo, thrilled to finally know something that the molewoman didn’t. “Large groups don’t actually go out of their way to attack folk. It’s the lone ones you have to watch out for. They’ll attack anything with bones in it. You know, to make more friends.”

Keebo was extremely familiar with the tone of voice Opal was using, so he knew that she was being condescending. It didn’t bother him too much, through. For one, it was nice to be condescended to by someone new for a change. For another, he was starting to think that maybe this Opal lady was “not all there,” a euphemism Keebo had heard quite a few times, usually when leaving a room.

Everything Opal said, at least the parts Keebo understood, sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. She denied the sacred rites of death, and the very existence of bone demons. She’d even called the honored fleshers “garbage men,” whatever that meant. Whatever that was it certainly sounded like an insult. So instead of feeling foolish or embarrassed, Keebo felt pity for this poor angry molewoman who had clearly been driven insane by her hedonistic urban lifestyle.

“I’m actually doing you a favor right now,” said Opal. “It seems to me that you’ve spent your whole life being tricked due to your… ‘innocent,’ nature. It’s a bitter medicine, I know, but for your own sake it’d be good to drop these childish fantasies now before they do you real harm. There’s no such thing as skellymen. The dead are just inert matter, moldering chemicals decomposing into the stinking earth. They can’t do anything but rot. And they certainly can’t stand up and attack the living.”

The metal front door to the shack crashed open. Wobbling in the doorframe was the old wireminder.

The Return of the Wireminder

The acrid scent of mushroom wine preceded the moleman into the room, a smell like the stinging vapors that hung over a poison swamp on a hot afternoon. One could be forgiven for assuming that the source of the smell was the clay jug tied to his belt, but once you got up close to him it was clear that it was coming from his body. It seemed that he’d been so thoroughly pickled that the smell of cheap booze was leaking out of his pores.

“Who’re you?” slurred the wireminder, letting the door snap shut behind him. “Who let you in?”

Keebo leapt from his chair and placed himself between the wireminder and Opal. He held his pick-hammer out in front of him like it was a protective talisman. “Opal, watch out! That’s the wireminder!”

“What?” said Opal. “You said you saw his body, stabbed to death at the bottom of the ditch!”

“I did,” said Keebo, never taking his eyes off the wireminder. “He had a broken snout and stab wounds all around his neck and chest, I’m certain of it. He must be a demon.”

The wireminder let out a great wet glottal laugh. He lifted his chin and made a show of spreading the fur around his neck and chest, making it clear that he had no wounds. He then traced his snout with his two forefingers, to show that it was straight and unbroken. Keebo had to admit, he certainly looked like the wireminder. He had the same gut, same gray streaks in his fur, same white patch over his left eye. And underneath the overwhelming stench of alcohol, Keebo could smell the faint odor of spoiled milk and sawdust that he associated with the wireminder.

“Was this all some kind of sick joke?” said Opal. “That’s not funny. You really scared me!”

“Opal, no! I would never…” said Keebo. “I guess I just don’t understand what’s happening.”

Even if Keebo had never seen a bone demon in person, he knew they couldn’t speak. He’d never heard of one trying to impersonate the dead, either. And what about those wounds? Bone demons couldn’t heal wounds, quite the opposite, in fact. A bone demon would scrape away whatever flesh remained on their body until they were a nice clean skeleton. They were called bone demons and not corpse demons for a reason. Why the very idea is absurd: corpse demons! Ridiculous.

Opal crossed in front of the uncertain Keebo to offer a handshake to the Wireminder.

“Hello,” Opal said. “We haven’t spoken previously, but I’m the replacement wireminder sent from the capital. I arrived just this morning but you weren’t in. Sorry but I helped myself to some of your coffee.”

The wireminder shook the young lady’s hand and showed his copper-colored teeth. “Is that so…” he said. He turned his eyes to young Keebo. “And you pup? You said you found… my corpse?”

Keebo still clutched his pick-hammer in front of him, though he felt less confident in his combat abilities now that the wireminder was up and walking around with all his blood in his body. The wireminder had seemed much less formidable when he was a crumpled up corpe at the bottom of an embankment.

Keebo vigilantly watched as the old moleman made his way behind the counter. Keebo was so narrowly focused on paying attention to the wireminder that his wymsight started to seep out. The wireminder shot Keebo a glance that put a stop to that real quick. Then he balanced his half-empty jug on the console of the wire machine and flipped a few switches. There was a pleasant hum as the console came to life.

“We’ll get back to talking about your corpse—or rather, MY corpse, if I understand correctly—in a minute. Before that, I assume you didn’t come all this way just to scare some city grub with fantasies of my gruesome death.”

“Oh. Uh… I’m Keebo, from Gypsum-Fifteen. We wanted to send a message to the merchant guild up in Singing Caverns. We had a better than average harvest this year, over a thousand catties of oilflesh, and, uh… we need someone to buy it?”

After a brief hesitation, Keebo walked to the desk and placed the folded-up piece of well-worn parchment that had the message details written on it. The wireminder picked it off the desk with two claws instead his fingers, as if it was something disgusting.¹³

The wireminder read the note and turned back to his machine. After clicking away at the keys for a minute in silence, he stopped, glanced at a few different instruments, and pulled a red switch back and forth once. His swift confident movements left no doubt about it, this man was a true expert as his occupation.

Blue lightning sparked above their heads as Keebo’s message raced off to the city of Singing Caverns.

The wireminder stood up and picked up a heavy wrench in one hand and his jug of mushroom wine in the other. “Alright boy. We’re gonna go investigate your mysterious handsome corpse.”

“Eh?” exclaimed Opal. “Surely you’re not taking his story seriously? He claimed it was YOUR corpse!”

“True,” the wireminder said. “But. Maybe the body was real and he just mistook it for me. Like I said, maybe the corpse was just a really handsome fella. Or maybe it was just big ol’ cave boar!” The wireminder slapped his belly several times as he laughed at his own joke.

“That’s right,” the wireminder said. “Oh, before I forget, I need payment for the message you sent. Five silver, please.”

“Five silver?” Keebo had already started taking his coin purse from the front pocket of his skirt. “But elder Lou said it should be three and fifty?

“Yeah, well… Usually I give you folks from Gypsum a discount, since you don’t have much. But I don’t like the fact that you haven’t put away your pick-hammer the entire time I’ve been here.”

Keebo thought for a moment, and then put his pick-hammer back into his belt. Then he spread some silver and bronze coins out on the counter. “I only have what elder Lou gave me.”

“Ahh… Alright. You’ll owe me.” The wireminder collected his coins and shoved them in a pants pocket.

Opal watched the molemen leave the shack with a complicated expression on her face.

The Phantom Corpse

Keebo led the way down the embankment slowly, to accommodate the much older and drunker moleman who followed behind him. The light of the glowpods from the H&L got fainter and fainter as they descended, until they crossed into that band of shadow just short of absolute darkness, where all but the most well-adapted deep dwellers would find it difficult to navigate. A moleman’s eyes weren’t good for much, but they were good at seeing in that type of darkness.

So Keebo should have been able to find the body easily. It just wasn’t there. Sure, there was some disturbed earth and some crushed weeds where the body had been, but the body was gone, and not so much as a speck of blood remained as proof.

“So. You find it yet?” asked the wireminder, in a tone that indicated he didn’t expect the answer to be “yes.”

“It was here. Right here, where the dirt is disturbed, see?” said Keebo, pointing. “You can even see my footprints, right there.”

“Yeah. Look, kid. I’m not really that mad.” The wireminder put one of his big hands on Keebo’s shoulder. “I saw that city girl. If I was a few decades younger, I might start making up stories too.”

“But my patience?” said the wireminder, firmly squeezing Keebo’s shoulder. “It’s not infinite. So why don’t you just head on home. A merchant should be by your village in two weeks. Next time it comes for you to use the wire service, miss city girl will be working, and you can flirt to your heart’s content.”

Keebo ignored the pain in his shoulder and stared at the wireminder’s face. It was the wireminder’s face, it had the white spot and everything! Whatever Keebo had seen earlier, he must’ve been mistaken. “Alright. If you’re not going to believe me then, well… that’s all there is to it.”

“That’s right,” the old wiremaster said. Again he showed off his mouth full of copper-colored teeth.

The Princess and the Knight

When the older moleman came back without the boy, the young molewoman stared at him silently.

“What’s wrong, princess?” asked the older moleman. His voice no longer carried any hint of drunkenness. Instead it took on a warm, melodic quality. The voice of an orator, an actor or politician.

The moleman named Zarl smiled sadly. “Wherever did my sweet princess Upa go, and who is this vicious murderer who replaced her? Ah, I forget, it was ‘Opal,’ right?”

“So you didn’t kill him?” The young molewoman (whose name was apparently Upa) seemed genuinely surprised. “Of course, I didn’t want him to die, but I thought…”

“I apologize for acting first without consulting you.” Zarl bowed. “I judged that, since he couldn’t find the body, he wasn’t really a threat to us. After my ‘performance’ he probably doubts what he saw himself. We’ll be long gone before anyone from his village comes here to investigate. Maybe in a few weeks, when that merchant doesn’t arrive.”

“Oh I was going to ask about that,” said Upa. “So you don’t really know how to operate a wire machine, then?”

Zarl chuckled. “Certainly not. I just pressed buttons until something happened. As in most things, the most important part of any deception is confidence. You must BELIEVE that you really are the person you pretend to be.” Zarl went to the stove, reached for the kettle, then paused. “Did you put the poison in the mug or the kettle?”

“Both. If you want coffee, I’d recommend rinsing them very thoroughly first.”

Zarl poured the contents of both kettle and mug down the drain and then thought better of chancing it and left them both in the sink.

“Are you sure you don’t want a cup? Or twelve?” Upa’s snout was scrunched up in disgust. “You smell like a goblin distillery.”

“My lady, you wound me. I’m as sober as a flesher, I promise you.” Zarl took a rag and soaked it under the faucet. As he wiped the stench of bootleg hooch from his fur, his gray streaks in his tuft also melted away, as did the distinctive white spot over his eye. Once he’d finished drying and brushing his fur out, he took on a completely different appearance from the drunken old mess that he was before. Now he seemed like a dignified moleman of a mature vintage, one who only drank occasionally, in socially acceptable situations. It even seemed that, by a simple adjustment of posture, his liquor-gut had disappeared.

“While I was down in Kaolin, I doused myself in mushroom wine and pretended to be dead drunk in order to convince some acquaintances of our dear departed friend that I wasn’t an impostor,” said Zarl.

“Stop calling me that,” said Upa, turning her face away. “You know I hate it. Besides I haven’t been a princess of anything for a long time now.”

Zarl slid into the chair across from Upa. “I suppose it’s just… hard for me to see you, all bitter and cold, and not think back to that cheerful little girl my lord tasked me with protecting all those years ago”

“Those days are long gone,” said Upa, locking eyes with Zarl, her gaze resolute. “Speaking of which, did you get it?”

Zarl and Upa walked around the back of the wire station to where Zarl’s cave skipper was still watering itself at a trough. If you’ve never seen a cave skipper, it’s like a cross between a beetle and a unicorn, with six legs. This specimen was named Calypso, and was not especially intimidating, with its crooked antennae and ashy carapace. But it was a loyal old beast, and Zarl gave it a few affectionate pats on the neck before retrieving a pale wooden box from its saddlebag.

The box, obviously the handiwork of a skilled craftsman, seemed valuable all on its own. When Zarl opened it up, Upa’s breath hitched in her chest. Inside, upon a red velvet lining, was an envelope with the seal broken and eight glassy black spiral shells, with symbols imprinted along their edges.

“Eight? Only eight?” said Upa. “He was given thirty Republican War bonds for his betrayal, was he not? How could a man spend that much money and still live such an impoverished life?”

“Well, creating a new identity and getting this swell job out on the frontier probably cost him,” said Zarl. “And from what I’ve gathered he probably spent the rest on drink and gambling. But that’s not the important part, is it?”

“No, of course you’re right,” said Upa. She reached out with trembling hands, opened the envelope, and began to read the letter inside. As she continued to read, tears gathered in her eyes.

“My lady!” said Zarl. “Is it not what we had hoped? I’m sorry, I should have read it first, to soften the blow, but I thought you would want the honor of—”

“No, Zarl,” said Upa in a small voice, just above a whisper. “It’s everything. I finally have proof that my father wasn’t a traitor to the Republic, that the annihilation of our house was unjust, that we were framed by one of our own in a shameless act of betrayal motivated by greed and envy.”

Upa showed her sharp white teeth. “Most importantly, it’s proof that all of it was orchestrated by Glotta Zanthum and the Zanthum corporation. I mean, it’s practically a confession. Why would she write this, let alone sign it with her own bloodprint?”

“It seems our traitor was rather paranoid,” said Zarl. “So he insisted upon the letter as a bit of insurance. Glotta on the other hand… well she probably figured she could just kill him and steal it back, anyway. She would never think a lowly servant could outwit her. I imagine she was quite perturbed when the only man with proof of her misdeeds ‘died’ before she could retrieve the letter.”

Zarl made a weak smile. “I’m really not enjoying this vicious streak, princess.” His face got serious. “You do know, the letter isn’t enough, right?”

Upa sighed. “Yes, of course. Zanthum is one of the most powerful companies in the Republic. It doesn’t matter how much proof we have, unless we have the strength to back it up they’ll crush us before we can even make it to court.”

Upa stroked one of the black revolution bonds. “These will be the foundation of our glorious revenge. We’ll rebuild our clan as a trading company, and once we’ve built up enough power, we’ll crush Glotta Zanthum and everything she cares about! And when she’s weeping in the ruins of her once great business empire, that’s when I’ll tell her: This is what happens when you mess with the house of Amethystus!”

Zarl gazed warmly at the young lady. In her tiny frame, trembling with incandescent rage, he could see the noble figure of the long-dead patriarch who had first recruited him into the family. In that moment, he could truly believe that all of what Upa had said would come to pass exactly as she had said. “Your parents would be so proud of you, Upa.”

Upa wiped the spittle from her mouth and smiled at Zarl. “Thank you Zarl. Thank you for standing by me, through all of this. None of this would be possible without you.”

“Where else would an old soldier like me go?” Zarl retrieved from the saddlebag a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine. “Why don’t I fix us some supper?”

Fifteen years before, a little girl stood in the gloom of the execution grounds wearing a cloak that was too big for her. She watched with tiny black eyes as her daddy was lead to the platform in chains. He stood tall and proud even as he endured the jeers of the crowd who had come to watch him die.

Above him, held aloft by dozens of chains with links thicker than a moleman’s thigh, was a massive weight with a “footprint” the size of the execution platform. When noon was announced by the song of the city bells, the executioner started to lower the weight. With each turn of the executioner’s wheel, the massive weight would drop another foot. Eventually it hung just a few inches above the prisoner’s head.

A sweet, light, fruity smell filled the wire station. Zarl turned over the grubs in the frying pan. They were each about the size of Upa’s fist, transluscent green, and they were getting a nice crust from their own secretions caramelizing in the pan. The stove’s heating element glowed red hot.

“We can leave early tomorrow morning,” said Zarl. “We’ll ride to Singing Caverns and plan our next steps there.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Upa, engrossed in reading and re-reading the letter she had spent so much time and energy to acquire.

Zarl plated grubs for both himself and Upa and then sat down at the table to eat.

“Shining Jade Grubs?” said Upa. “Zarl, I know we’re celebrating, but we can’t afford to be spending this kind of money on luxuries right now. All of our resources have to go towards the resurrection of our house.”

“Actually, they were quite cheap. I paid five silvers for six of the freshest grubs you’ll ever taste.”

“I swear on my life.” Zarl speared a grub with his fork and held it up. “This right here is why so many molemen come out to the frontier. There’s treasure lying about everywhere, just waiting for someone with the wisdom to come harvest it.”

Zarl crunched the delicate crystalline exterior and the savory-sweet juices within spilled into his mouth. He couldn’t help but smile, and a drip of juice escaped his mouth and fell to the floor.

“Manners, Zarl!” said Upa. She took a tiny, delicate bite and immediately understood why the usually composed Zarl couldn’t help himself. As a child of means, Upa had enjoyed the taste of shining jade grubs before, but even under the preparation of the most skilled chefs of the capital, it had never tasted so delicious. The bouquet of the meat was mild, floral, with a hint of citrus. And the juices were sweet, though not cloyingly so—it was a wholesome sweetness. And then, as the impossibly tender meat dissolved in her stomach, a warmth flowed out to her extremities, until she was wrapped in a pleasant buzzing aura that seemed to be enriching every ounce of flesh in her body with vital energy.

“Wyrm’s teats…” muttered Upa. “If that’s a shining jade grub, what the hell was it that I had before?”

“At best,” said Zarl, swallowing between words, “two weeks since harvest, packed in ice, bathed in Palebleu¹⁴ to keep it ‘fresh’ for the journey. Our modern world has many wonders but still the supply chain has its limitations.”

“I feel like I could fight a thundering bolder brute right now!” Upa swung her claws through the air dramatically.

“Well that’s a holy food for you. Strengthens your muscles, hardens your bones… Although I don’t think you’re ready for a thundering boulder brute QUITE yet.”

“You know that pup who was here earlier? He actually still believes in them! Skellymen I mean.”

Zarl swallowed another bite of grub. “What do you mean, he ‘believes’ in skellymen?”

Zarl leaned back in his chair and took a long hard look at Upa. “My lady, are you saying… That you think bone demons are a myth?“

“Oh, that’s right,” said Zarl, more to himself than Upa. “You’ve never spent time outside of the city before…”

“You’re teasing me!” Upa crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not going to convince me that skellymen are—”

“No, no, no. No. Look,” Zarl placed both hands on the table. “This isn’t like the Albino Goat Dragon or the Devil’s Uncle, some incredibly rare cryptid that’s only ever seen by drunken hicks and has never been properly documented. Bone demons roam all over the lesser-trafficked cracks of the world. You ask anyone in these rural villages, and they’ll have either seen one or know someone who has.”

“Upa, I’VE seen them. Not just once, either! I’ve seen them killed. I’ve seen them kill.”

“About what? Oh, the guy we killed? No, don’t worry about that. It doesn’t happen with every dead body. I think one has to be ‘infected’ first. Otherwise there’d be more of them than anything else!”

“But…” said Upa. “You said that the pup wasn’t able to find the body.”

“Oh, that’s what you’re worried about.” said Zarl. “Upa, my dear, these caves aren’t like the leisure trails back in the city. Once you leave the safety of the good old H&L, these caves are filled with all kinds of vicious beasties. Wormshivers, mole-eating rabbits, lizardwulfs… lizardwulves? What’s the plural? Well anyway that’s why I told you not to leave the shack while I was away.”

“Trust me,” said Zarl. “There’s practically zero chance that our old ‘friend’ will turn into a bone demon.”

There was a rattling sound outside the shack. It sounded an awful lot like a bunch of sticks or something similar knocking together.

A Presence at the Door

The two moles could sense the presence of someone, or something, standing before the door to the wire station.

The rattling continued. Zarl started to go to the door, but Upa grabbed his wrist.

“What the hell is this brat doing?” whispered Upa. “Didn’t you send him home already?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” said Zarl, rushing to reapply his disguise at the mirror sink. Hastily he applied the cosmetics to his eye and chest tuft. It wasn’t as good a facsimile as the first time he did it, but he doubted the young hayseed would notice the difference. After getting confirmation from Upa that he looked alright, Zarl threw open the door to reveal Keebo standing there, holding a bundle of coarse wet cloth in his arms.

Keebo didn’t wait to be invited in, he strode right past Zarl and dropped his bundle on the table with a great wet slap. Looking closer, the bundle seemed to be an article of clothing, burlap perhaps, and it was soaked through with some kind of dark fluid.

“I know you folks didn’t believe me about the body,” said Keebo, unfolding the wet cloth. “But when I was making my way home I saw this stuck to the side of a bolder.”

Keebo finished unfolding the bundle, revealing the gory face of the old wireminder, peeled from his skull. Upa and Zarl both winced and looked away, but Keebo hadn’t noticed their reactions.

Keebo addressed Zarl: “You can see the resemblance, right? I mean your snout is a little longer and your eyes are spaced further apart, but he has your birthmark and everything!”

“Yes, yes, an uncanny resemblance,” said Upa. “Could you please cover it up again? We were just eating, you see.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Keebo, folding the bundle back up. “You know what this means, though.”

“It means there’s a bone demon. We need to contact the authorities!” Keebo said. “Everybody needs to know that there’s a bone demon in the area, and that it’s already killed one person!”

Keebo scoffed. “What kind wild beast kills somebody and leaves the face behind? The face is the tastiest part of the body, everybody knows that!”

They were. At first it wasn’t obvious what Zarl was talking about. But then one sound rose above the background noise of electrical humming and cave echoes. It was the rattling noise from earlier, which Upa and Zarl had both thoughtlessly attributed to Keebo. It had never left. In fact now it was getting louder and… more insistent.

“A lone bone demon is extremely dangerous,” said Keebo. “They’ll attack anything with bones. And we all have bones.”

The rattling sound got quieter. The three moles stood still, focused their hearing.

A horrible baying sound broke through the quiet, an animal sound of panic and dread.

“Wait—!” Upa shouted, but both molemen had already rushed outside. Preferring to not be alone, Upa took up the frying pan from the stove and ran out after them.

Blood

The cave skipper was barely holding on to life. It was making plaintive, wheezing cries as the last spurts of its blood dampened the earth. The bone demon had tightly wrapped its entire body around the poor beast’s neck, and was both clawing and biting at the soft spots where hard chitin couldn’t protect.

There was a sound echoing in the tunnel, like a swarm of some horrible clicking, chittering insect. A truly hateful noise.

The bone demon’s skull lifted from the neck of the skipper and rotated to face the three molemen. It regarded them with eyeless sockets and made more clicking noises.

The skeleton of a moleman was a fearsome thing, much more intimidating without all the fur covering it up. Razor sharp teeth, great big hands with claws that could hew stone, and up top, a sagittal crest so pronounced that it looked like a mohawk made of bone—the moleman skeleton was a proper monster if ever there was one.

Its face and claws were stained red with blood, but the rest was bone white. Which makes sense. Because it was made of bones.

The demon regarded the three living molemen with curiosity for but a moment, and then it leapt into furious action.

It went for the boy first. Keebo was holding his pick-hammer in both hands, but he had never killed anything scarier than a softbellied bull slug. His clumsy swing missed the bone demon entirely, and then it was upon him. It tackled him to the ground and then started slashing at his face and neck with its terrible clawed hands. The boy at least had the sense to curl up and guard his vitals with his arms, but the creature was relentless, its claws a blur of blood and bone.

Zarl leapt to Keebo’s aid. With his heavy wrench he bashed the demon with all his strength. But the bone demon’s movement was so erratic that Zarl missed the skull and bounced his hammer off the much tougher back bones instead. With mechanical swiftness the bone demon’s head spun to face Zarl. Without a moment’s hesitation its teeth latched onto Zarl’s weapon-arm.

Zarl let out a surprised yelp and fell backwards, dragging the bone demon on top of him. Right away the demon was savaging him with the same ferocity with which he had attacked the younger moleman. Claws tore through flesh and teeth ground against bone. The solitary bone demon was a creature guided by instinct. What piloted that monster as it savaged Zarl was nothing less than the primeval urge to slaughter.

Keebo was still on the ground, shaking his head to try and find his senses. Upa clutched the frying pan in her hands and approached carefully. She stood over the entangled forms of the bone demon and Zarl, raised the pan high above her head, and brought it down with all her might.

Twang! The pan hit! What’s more it left a crack on the bone demon’s skull. Upa readied her pan for another attack, but she no longer had the element of surprise. Just as she brought it down for a second strike, the bone demon tumbled backwards, pulling Zarl’s head into the path of the strike. Twang!

“Shit!” cried Upa. Flustered, she hesitated. In that moment of hesitation, the bone demon rolled off the now-concussed Zarl and leapt at Upa, claws outstretched. In her panic to dodge out of the way Upa dropped the heavy pan.

The bone demon kept coming after her with one big swing after another. Upa kept retreating, her mind racing. Zarl and Keebo wouldn’t be able to help her for the time being. Her claws curled. They weren’t the best weapons against a creature made of solid bone, but they were the only weapon she had left. She stiffened her fingers into a pair of grasping claws, took a breath, and tried to deflect one of the wild strikes of the bone demon.

Upa was as surprised as anyone when it worked, and her claws didn’t immediately chip or crack. She thought back to the jade grub she had eaten earlier, but she didn’t have the time to reflect. She deflected a second attack, and then a third, a fourth. It seemed to frustrate the bone demon. It had attacked three different molemen so far and had failed to finish any of them off. With a burst of strength it launched itself at Upa like a missile.

Upa deftly dodged the attack, and as the bone demon passed by her she used its own momentum against it. With all her strength she drove the bone demon’s right arm into the hard earth, locking it temporarily in place. As she came back up she swung her leg back as far as she could and then, using all the leverage her body could afford her, she smashed a kick right into the bone demon’s skull. It spun around a couple dozen times before just falling off.

Upa’s foot hurt. What was worse, the bone demon hadn’t stopped moving when its skull came off. It was still struggling to pull out its arm. On the ground the skull was bouncing around snapping at the air like a small stupid dog. Upa didn’t much like the idea of letting her limbs go anywhere near it.

“I could use some help!” Upa shouted. Fortunately Keebo was already coming with his pick hammer. With a running start, he walloped the skull with the flat of his pick, launching it into the wall of the tunnel so hard that it shattered on impact. There was an awful hissing noise as a splotch of something black boiled away.

“Look out!” said Keebo, as the bone demon finally loosed its arm from the earth. With a viscous swipe of its claws, Upa’s tunic was shredded, and four bloody lines were carved into her back. She couldn’t tell how bad the wounds were, only that her back felt hot and wet. She could feel her body threatening to pass out. Upa stumbled forward. The fear of death was ice inside her heart. She bit her tongue, hard, in a last-ditch effort to keep herself awake. Blood dripped from between her lips, but Upa was able to stumble away, shaken but conscious.

Meanwhile what remained of the bone demon was going crazy, flipping around, swinging its limbs in every which-way. Zarl was up now, wrench in hand. Both he and Keebo were warily approaching the bone demon.

“Good,” said Zarl, giving Keebo a friendly slap on the back. “So you go get its attention, and I’ll look for an opening while it’s distracted.”

It was hours later when the two molemen stumbled into the wire station, their fur matted with blood and sweat. It’d taken forty-five minutes and a whole new set of wounds to bring the bone demon down. Then another hour to find and break every little bone in its body. With each new break there was that awful hissing as a black something boiled away, leaving behind a noxious vapor that was probably none too good for their health. By the end of it both molemen had a newfound appreciation for the skill and necessity of the professional flesher.

What was worse was when they were making their way back to the shack, they remembered that they also had a cave skipper corpse to deal with. Even though they had practice at that point, the process of butchering and breaking up the skipper took several times longer than with the comparatively smaller demon. It was especially frustrating when, after the poor old bug had finally been put to rest, Keebo pointed out that they’d never actually found any bones during the process.

Meanwhile, Upa spent that time “recovering” from her wounds in the shack. As the hours went by and the boys were still busily laboring, she felt a twinge of guilt—not enough to actually go out and risk getting covered in bug slime, of course—so she decided that the thing to do would be to show her gratitude in another way.

So when the boys returned they were greeted by a sumptuous feast of canned eel and mustard on crackers, which was the best that Upa could muster with the meager supplies and even more meager cooking talent available. The boys did not complain, ignoring the smell of ammonia as they shoveled their food down as fast as they could. Zarl noticed that the holy jade grubs from earlier were conspicuously absent from the feast, and he wondered if Upa was just hiding them from Keebo or if in the intervening time she had managed to eat them all herself.¹⁵

Upa was pretending to sleep on a makeshift bed made of blankets piled on a couple boxes in a corner. She’d replaced her torn blouse with a heavy gray shirt two sizes too large for her. She kept one eye just barely open, just a sliver.

Keebo looked across the table at Zarl, the moleman he knew only as “the wireminder.” He’d grown to respect the older moleman over the last few hours. The wireminder was strong, confident, and it seemed like he had a stable career. In fact, “the wireminder” was looking more and more like the ideal male role model for Keebo. There was just one thing that confused Keebo.

The “Truth” Revealed

Zarl froze. Upa froze as well, but she was pretending to sleep so that went unnoticed. Zarl reached unconsciously for his left eye, and before his fingers even touched fur he realized his mistake. When Keebo had returned, Zarl had reapplied his makeup in such a hurry that he had forgotten how mirrors work.

Zarl stood up. He walked across the room without speaking. Upa watched him through her one eye. Zarl picked up his wine jug and brought it back to the table, slamming it down in an impressively masculine gesture.

Keebo hesitated. He knew that good boys didn’t drink shroomshine before they were of age. Keebo looked very thoughtful.

“Oh screw off!” shouted Upa, jumping up from her sleeping position. “You cannot possibly be this dense! I refuse to believe it!”

Keebo was confused, but that was a common pattern in his life. Zarl just pushed the jug closer. “Drink,” he repeated.

Keebo took a glance inside the jug. Inside was a semi-opaque brown liquid with a layer of either foam or scum on top. The smell burned his nose and seeded¹⁶ a whole range of fungal infections in the depths of his sinuses.

The taste of mushroom wine has been described as earthy, smoky, with complex umami flavors. That might very well be true, depending on who brews it,¹⁷ but for Keebo, it mostly registered as the flavor of a harsh chemical solvent.

“I haven’t poisoned you. We’re going to have a grown-up conversation, so I figured I should give you a grown-up drink. That’s you, right? You did a grown mole’s share of the work today, so I thought…”

“So you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not actually the wireminder.”

Upa gasped at that line. “What are you—?” she started to say, only to be interrupted by Zarl waving her off.

Keebo stumbled out of his chair and pressed his back against the wall. His pick-hammer trembled in his outstretched hand. He was pretty worn out, between the hiking, the fighting, and the disposal of the bodies. But he was resolved to go down swinging if Zarl decided to turn on him.

“Sit down, Keebo,” said Zarl. “I’m not going to kill you. I wouldn’t be telling you this if I hadn’t come to respect you so much. You really showed me something out there.”

Keebo tried to keep his elation at Zarl’s praise out of his expression. Stone-faced, he sat back down at the table and crossed his arms. “So, what is it.” Keebo’s voice had dropped a full octave. “Why’d you kill him? And how’d you pull off that amazing impersonation? Are you twins?”

“When I was a young moleman, not much older than you, Keebo, I was lured away, as so many young molemen are, by tales of adventure, heroism and glory, to that awful place we call ‘War.’”

“Yes, I know. I look too young to be a grizzled veteran of that war. But it’s true. And I brought along my best friend, Tamun. We were closer than brothers. Yes, Tamun, Violetta and I, we spent every moment together in our hometown of… Feldspar-Eleven.”

“Oh, a more lovely molewoman you’d never seen—present company excluded of course—” Upa snorted derisively. Zarl continued. “And we were engaged to be married upon my triumphant return from the war. Little did I suspect that Tamun also had eyes for Violetta, and that he would take the opportunity the war afforded him to stab me in the back.”

“I just told you: he stabbed me in the back! It was the eve of the war’s conclusion, the last house was readying to capitulate, and that bastard Tamun stabbed me six times with his combat knife. As I lay there, bleeding to death, my consciousness turning to vapor, I had to listen to him unload all these private resentments that he had towards me and his plans for stealing Violetta. He was gonna use my death and their mutual grief over it to bring them closer together. The idea of this awful lunatic manipulating Violetta into bed with him and the rage that image inspired was the only thing that kept my heart beating. And then the bastard tossed me into the Gnea river!”

“Yes! I do not know how for how long I was carried by that mighty river, my lifeblood staining its waters as I bobbed up and down out of consciousness, but by Gnea’s generosity I survived. When I awoke, I found myself in the humble dwelling of an elderly Leatherback molewoman who had nursed me back to health. After thanking her profusely I wanted to travel with haste to my home, to prevent Tamun from touching sweet Violetta. But alas, Gnea gives and she takes away. For not only did the river take me from the core to the very edge of moleman territory, it dropped me on the side opposite of my hometown. And this was before the High-and-Low-Way had been built. Travel was not such a simple thing back then.

“Of my many adventures, companions met and lost, and near-death experiences, I will not elaborate here, for I am tired and disillusioned with adventure. It is suffice to say that it took me three long years to get home. And the whole time my thoughts never left Violetta and the danger that she was in. Had Tamun succeeded in seducing her? Was she… happy with him?”

“When I arrived home, none of my old neighbors recognized me. My scent had changed and my many trials had left their marks upon my face. After some tedious investigation I discovered the whereabouts of Violetta.

“The charnel pits. She had died a few months after the conclusion of the war. The local hens called it ‘death of a broken heart’: it seemed her fiancé had died in the war. The implication was that she had taken her own life out of despair, but I knew better. It was Tamun who brought news of my supposed ‘death.’ It was Tamun who left the village shortly after Violetta’s funeral, without even leaving a forwarding address. I was reasonably confident that it was also Tamun who cleaned Violetta’s home of anything of financial value. I had to conclude that Violetta had seen through Tamun’s lies, or otherwise refused his advances, and in anger Tamun killed her and made it look like a suicide.”

“You can’t know that,” said Upa, with a barely disguised smirk. “How do you know she didn’t actually kill herself? Or maybe she had an accident.”

“...He confessed!” said Zarl. “Under interrogation. I was getting to that part, thank you.”

Zarl recollected his thoughts. “It took me many years, and a great deal of money changing hands, but I was finally able to track Tamun to this little wire station in the middle of nowhere—oh, no offense, Keebo—where Tamun was living under a fake identity.

“So I killed him. Not before interrogating him about exactly what happened with Violetta, of course,” Zarl shot a look at Upa, who gestured for him to continue. “Then I altered my appearance and scent to match his. If you were wondering why all the body’s major scent glands were removed, that’s why.”

“He had a box in a vault down in the village of Kaolin. I was hoping that something of Violetta’s remained—not to satisfy my greed, you understand, but just something to remember her by. Alas, he pawned it all and spent his ill-gotten wealth on liquor and prostitutes.” Zarl reached into his pocket, and pulled out a bronze “Octo” coin, worth ten regular bronze coins and featuring the image of the legendary Magma Octopus on one side. “This is all that remained. I’m sure it never actually belonged to her, but the value of whatever of hers Tamun hocked is contained in it. I like to think that this coin represents the necklace I gave her right before leaving for the war.”

“You’ve suffered so much!” said Keebo, reaching across the table to grasp one of Zarl’s big hands.

“All I ask from you—from both of you!” Zarl looked over Upa, who was watching all of this with her mouth ajar. “—Is that you would please hold off on reporting what happened for at least a few days. A week would be amazing. I couldn’t ask for more than that.”

Upa/Opal/Whoever smirked. “I’m not sure, it seems to me that you’ve caused us, both of us, a great deal of inconvenience. And now you’re asking us to lie to the authorities for you?”

Zarl groaned. This wasn’t the first time that Upa had courted trouble with one of her “jokes.” If only Keebo didn’t have that certain, undefinable quality which made him particularly fun to tease.¹⁸

“Certainly, I’ve caused you both so much trouble, putting you in danger with the bone demon and all, and then enlisting your help in disposing of the bodies.”

Upa addressed Keebo directly. “Think about it. Since he’s a filthy murderer and not a real wireminder, obviously he couldn’t send your message.”

“I promise I’ll take your message with me and have it sent at the first wire station I pass,” said Zarl. He looked to Upa. “Is that good enough for you?”

“And what about me?” asked Upa. She stood up and rubbed her face with the back of her hand. “I was supposed to start a new career and new life here in this… charming place. That wireminder may have been a scoundrel—if we’re to believe you—but he was supposed to teach me how to operate that machine over there, and now I have to… what, wait for the head office to transfer someone new over? How long would that even take? Furthermore—”

“Awful strange, to say you don’t know how to run a wire console,” said Zarl, using a “warning” tone. “I thought you had to go to school for two whole years to even apply for a job like this. It’s not like one console should differ all that much from any other, since they’re all manufactured in the same factory. But you would know that, wouldn’t you, Opal?”

Upa clicked her tongue in annoyance. Keebo looked back and forth between Zarl and Upa. He was completely oblivious to the content of their feud so the tone of hostility between them seemed bizarre. “Please,” he implored Upa, “Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive mister… mister…?”

“Zamboni,” said Zarl, giving a theatrical bow. “Zamboni Ristorante, at your service.”

“Please forgive Mr. Ristorante. You heard his story; you know why he did what he did.”

“Is it really that easy?” asked Upa. “Do you think petty revenge is a good enough reason to endanger the lives of uninvolved people? You almost died today, Keebo.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far… You got the worst of it, with those awful wounds on your back.”

“No, trust me,” said Upa, smiling. “You came very close.” Zarl snorted. Upa shot him a glare and continued. “But still, knowing all that, you’re willing to forgive him?”

“Well, I just think… I think he’s a good person. I’ve always been a good judge of character. It’s like a special skill, a seventh sense. It’s the same way I know you’re a good person, Opal.”

Upa sighed. “This pup!” she yelled in exasperation. Zarl chuckled. Keebo laughed as well, even though he didn’t know what was funny.

Keebo went home after a nap and a hero’s feast of crackers and tinned eel, which, combined with the mushroom wine, would provide a great deal of digestive entertainment for his long hike back.

Zarl watched the boy disappear into the dark from the window. And then finally he turned to Upa and said “you think you’re real funny, don’t you?”

Zarl looked far away for a moment. “When you fight alongside another mole, drink with another mole, labor until your backs are both broke and your fur is matted with sweat and blood and gristle… Well that’s a bond not unlike that between brothers, in a sense. Yes. That’s right, I see young Keebo as like an… annoying younger brother. Or a cousin perhaps, one that you see once or twice a year at family functions.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Upa. “I was asking why you used that specific story. That was, verbatim, the plot to A Humpo’s Revenge 3: A Humpo Goes To War,¹⁹ right? With Vix Victrollo’s character working as a wireminder instead of a barista?”

“Oh, sue me. Or better yet Amberlight Studios can sue me, if they’re offended by my plagiarism. It’s been a long day, and I’ll be damned if that pup has heard a broadcast of any type, let alone that specific one.”

“Oh, sure,” said Upa, snickering. “And even if he did, the chances of him figuring out that it isn’t just a crazy coincidence are pretty slim.”

“Stop it. The kid wasn’t… stupid, per se. Just naïve. No crime in that.”

Epilogue

Hours later, Keebo was hunched over a cliff, praying to the Great Mother Wyrm to not perish from dehydration.

Upa and Zarl were walking north-northwest on the 0-205, towards the town of Eggery. Upa was complaining about her feet being sore despite only being a fourth of the way there.

And there was one last character whose story needs resolving. I’m talking about the dead wireminder. “But didn’t our three molemen protagonists(?) dispatch and dismantle that awful creature?”

That’s what Keebo, Upa, and Zarl thought. They made an obvious connection between a corpse that they’d all seen with a skeleton monster that attacked them. But not all dead things become bone demons. As Zarl speculated, they have to be seeded first, by another bone demon. It was that previously existing bone demon that first carried away the dead wireminder’s body to peel away its flesh and sow its “seed” in the bone. It then went on to attack the cave skipper and our molemen. But the wireminder’s bone demon had not been “born” at that point.

The bone demon born of the wireminder’s corpse was shambling down a long path, still dripping blood and viscera like a calf covered in its mother’s afterbirth. It could not see, but through minute vibrations in the air it could navigate well enough.

The bone demon’s most important sense was its ability to perceive bones, no matter how covered in soil or meat they were. And while shambling, the wireminder bone demon sensed a fine set of bones some 500 feet or so down the path. Those handsome bones might as well have been glowing red hot to its nonexistent eyes. Moleman skeletons just like itself! Oh, they’d make fine friends. So the wireminder bone demon ambled forward more quickly, with purpose. That being insufficient, it dropped to all fours, running all-out like a wild animal. Which depending on what taxonomy you subscribe to, might be the case.

The bone demon closed in on its targets. Four hundred feet. Three hundred fifty. Three hundred. Really moving now. The ancient instinct to tear flesh and liberate bone was roaring inside the bone demon’s soul. Tear! Infect! Propagate! Two hundred feet! One-fifty! One hundred! Free those bones from their fleshy prison! Fifty—!

A momentary disorientation. The bone demon realized that it had stopped moving. Hard to focus. Where was it? TEAR! Why wasn’t its body moving the way it wanted it to? BITE! Why did it feel like its limbs were too far apart? KILL!

Sheriff Utisol handed her emptied spring rifle to Gia, the wireminder in charge of station 0-205-00110.

“Haven’t seen a bone demon on the H&L in a while,” said the Sheriff, a middle-aged molewoman with fur the color of iron-rich clay. She nudged a broken, smoking femur with her foot. “I wonder if this has anything to do with this report of a triple homicide up in Kaolin.”

“Why, you blew that sucker to heck and back, Sheriff!” said Gia. She handed the rewound rifle back to Utisol.

“Yeah, spring rifle’s good for that,” said the Sheriff. “You think you can handle the cleanup? I need to be in Kaolin four hours ago.”

The bone demon, what remained of its simple consciousness anyway, found itself floating in the warm waters of a vast dark sea. It could feel its limbs rocking up and down with the gentle waves. It was confused. Disoriented. It couldn’t remember how it got there, or who it was, if it ever was a “who” to begin with. A lone bone demon’s soul, that is, the soul of a bone demon outside of its pack, is not an especially impressive thing. It is small and insubstantial. A fart in a hurricane. So it didn’t take long for the bone demon’s soul to dissipate, leaving nothing more substantial than a greasy foam on the waters. And soon even that was gone.

1The fifteenth municipality named “Gypsum.” Molemen are extraordinarily talented at digging burrows, but not at naming them.

2Officially titled “The Dominus Wyrmson National System of High, Middle, and Low Roads, to Better Facilitate Commerce and Emigration.” Legend has it that President Wyrmson took a drawing of the newly completed capital, Katybus, and used a straightedge to draw lines extending from it in every direction—some at such steep inclines as to make them almost entirely vertical—and ordered his engineer corps to complete it within five years. The efforts of the bureaucracy to relocate existing settlements so that they would actually connect to the High-and-Low-Way, though valiant, ultimately required numerous compromises. Fortunately by that point President Wyrmson was dead.

4Read from the perspective of the goblins, a lot of one-armed Chuck’s “adventures” sound more like the gleeful confessions of a serial murderer/grave-robber.

6Or fifth sense, as the case may be—roughly fifteen percent of all molemen are born without functioning eyes. Good vision is considered more of a “luxury” among molemen, who probably wouldn’t bother lighting their cities at all except for the benefit of guests.

7One mole thought that Neela’s carrots were sweeter than other carrots. Another mentioned a time when Neela had helped him pick up some rocks that had fallen out of his basket. Not exactly the kind of stories people write down in books, is what I’m saying.

8Cathor the butcher/flesher would go to great pains to emphasize to his customers that he didn’t use the same tools for both of his occupations. That said, they were very similar tools, and if he ever accidentally mixed them up, well, he could hardly be blamed.

9There’s a lot of myths when it comes to the moleman diet. While it’s true that they do love eating rocks, particularly precious stones such as sapphires and rubies, it’s more about the taste than it is about nutrition. A healthy moleman diet incorporates many different kinds of vegetables, insects, dairy, whole grains, and semi-intelligent lichens. Rocks are a treat, not their primary source of nutrition.

10Rural molemen tend to be more utilitarian when it comes to clothing. Sure, in colder regions they’ll bundle up, but for the most part they only wear a lower garment to cover up “the shameful bits.” City molemen, through their many interactions with other cultures, have learned a great deal more to be ashamed of.

13It was a well-worn scrap of animal skin that had been used, scraped and re-used dozens of times before it arrived on the wireminder’s counter. It didn’t exactly smell like a field of flowers.

17Most shroomshiners have a utilitarian approach to distilling. The first and often only priority is to eliminate consciousness as quickly as possible.

Preface