Free The Death of Yorik Mortwell by Stephen Messer Page A

pointed to a leonine skeleton with snapped and shattered bones.
    “Yes,” said Yorik. “The red lion.”
    Nearby were shovels, and fresh earth piled around a sloping pit. At the bottom of the pit, the rocky mouth of a cave appeared. As they descended,Yorik noticed a track where someone had slid down. There was blood too, as he imagined hands unaccustomed to labor might have bled from the punishing work of smashing and digging in the dark bowels of the earth.
    At last they emerged from the cave into an immense, vaulted cavern. Yorik gasped. “A mammoth graveyard!”
    Filling the cavern were the massive skeletons of creatures so large they could only have been mammoths. Yorik had heard legends of such things—mammoths burying, and mourning, their dead. This graveyard was ancient, the bones brittle. In some places the skeletons were piled atop each other, and some had fallen apart into mounds so high that their tips nearly reached the ceiling.
    “Yorik, dear Yorik,” sang a girl in a hollow voice.
    Yorik turned. Atop a mammoth spine sat a girl in a tattered dress, her bedraggled hair falling over her face.
    “Doris,” he said. “It’s really you.”
    Doris brushed her hair aside. She was gaunt and pale, her cheeks were sunken, and her eyes were empty pits. “Yes, dear Yorik,” she rasped. “But not for long.”

    “Ds!” shouted Thomas. He stumbled past Yorik.
    “Oh, Thomas,” moaned Doris. “You shouldn’t have come. Neither of you should be here. The Dark Ones will return at any moment. You have to flee.”
    Thomas kept toward her. “You mustn’t touch me,” Doris said, shrinking away. “I am filled with darkness.”
    “Doris,” said Yorik. “Tell me what happened. What did Thomas do? The Dark Ones made him open these passages, didn’t they?” Thomas stopped below his sister, moaning, ghostly tears streaking his face. “Mm s—”
    Doris spoke quietly, her voice weak. “I know you’re sorry, dear Thomas. I know it was hard. I saw things better after I died. I saw how Father expected of you things that you couldn’t give. I saw all your sadness and pain. I wish I had been kinder to you while I lived. But now there is nothing to be done. You must run.”
    Yorik did not see any Dark Ones in the high,arched cavern. But he did spy a blackness in its center. He walked closer. There was darkness here, a floating void that reminded him of a Dark One. Something was inside it. A scent wafted out, of rotting vegetation.
    “Yorik, no!” said Doris in alarm.
    Beside the void was an old stone tablet, broken in half. Beside the tablet was a sledgehammer.
    There were two runes carved into the tablet, carved so deeply that they would survive centuries, even millennia. The runes were dyed red with blood, and as Yorik studied them, he felt a warm thrill course through him. He could see that if the broken tablet were whole, it would completely cover the void.
    “This tablet,” Yorik said. “It blocked this portal. The Princess told me that there was only one Dark One here, until recently. Then the others found a way to come through. This is how they did it, isn’t it? The single Dark One made Thomas come here and break this seal.”
    “Perceptive, Yorik,” said Doris softly. “Our ancestors made this seal long ago, and our family hasguarded it for millennia. Over the long centuries, we forgot our duty. Now my father is the only thing holding back the horde, though he is unaware of the true depths of the struggle. But his will is fading. You have only moments left. Please take my brother and run.”
    “Can I repair the seal?” asked Yorik. His ghost hands passed through the stone, tingling as they did.
    “No, Yorik, you can’t,” replied Doris. “And your time is gone.” Behind Doris, Yorik could hear Thomas’s burbling cries.
    Yorik thrust his head into the portal. Doris screamed.
    A warm stench blew over him as he blinked in a sudden wash of raw blue light. Confused at first by what he saw, the