Someone let out a high-pitched scream. Later, Kellen realized to his embarrassment, it had been him. Regardless, all three of them ran for the tunnel… and right into a wall of solid rock that fell from the ceiling and trapped them in the hall.

Kellen whirled around, his terror-stricken mind racing. He sent a fizzling shot of sun mana at the walking, talking mummy. It jerked and twisted like a bad paper airplane through the air before striking the mummy in the chest where it faded and had no apparent effect.

“Hey now, little brother, will you —”

“Pah!” A blast of air burst from Vex’s opened mouth and struck the mummy, knocking its head clean off its body.

“Now look what you did!” The mummy’s head was still talking somewhere in the background. It fell into a coughing fit as the body stumbled backward to pick it up from the ground. “Calm down and listen a moment.”

Kellen, Vex and Shani stared as the mummy raised its head and settled back onto its spine with a loud click.

“Is… is this a normal thing?” Kellen asked Shani, never taking his eyes off the mummy.

“I have never seen or heard anything like it,” Shani said. She leveled her spear in front of her. “Knock its head off and I will stab it.”

The mummy threw up its hands in front of it. They were a pale gray, like all its dried skin stretched like a drum over the bones not covered by rotted clothing. “Hold on, little sister. Let’s not get excited.”

It smiled, revealing the rows of obsidian and jade teeth. Kellen got the feeling it was meant to be a friendly expression, but the leering skull with closed, sunken eyes didn’t look anything but ghastly.

“How does it see us without eyes?” Vex wondered out loud.

“Oh!” Raising a bony finger tipped with a yellowed, cracked fingernail, the mummy pried its eyes open with a motion similar to someone putting contacts in. Both eyes popped open, revealing glowing red stones.

“That definitely did not help,” Vex said. “I am still equal parts disgusted and terrified.”

“What do you want, ghost?” Shani shouted across the room. “You cannot have our souls!”

The ruby eyes widened. “Your souls? I don’t know how to take a soul, little sister. And I’m not a ghost. I’m as real as you two. I am just, ah, a little older and worse for the wear from being down here so long.”

Holding out his arms — the mummy’s voice was a man’s — the undead inspected himself, almost as if to see just how worse for the wear he was. He wasn’t a mummy in the traditional sense, in that he had no bandage wrappings — mummified might have been a better descriptor.

The mummy wore a faded blue poncho, almost gray from age. Its pants were frayed at the bottoms and a ended a few inches above knobbly ankles and a pair of carved wooden clogs. Its prune-like head had no facial hair. If any was on the top of its head, a knitted woolen hat with two long tassels covered it. The hat sat above two wrinkled ears that any dog would have prized as a chew toy. The strange ensemble reminded Kellen of some bizarre snowboarder, granola, cowboy mashup.

“Why did you lock us in then?” Shani demanded, her spear still poised at the mummy.

“What?” The mummy seemed to notice the blocked passage behind them for the first time. He cleared his throat again. “Sorry about that — the throat is a little rusty. Oh, that. I can move that out of our way, no problem. I’m afraid if I do that, you’re going to run away, though.”

“For a dead guy, he’s pretty smart,” Vex said.

“Wh-why don’t you want us to run away?” Kellen asked, through his breath catching in his throat. He recalled a movie he’d seen in his younger years of a mummy that regained its body parts by eating people. He didn’t have the courage to ask something that blatant and, if that were the case, preferred not to know that before the mummy killed him.

“Well, I haven’t had anyone to talk to in a long time, little brother,” the mummy said. It held up a finger, counting off the reasons. “And two, if you all will relax a moment, maybe I can help you.”

“In exchange for what?” Shani asked.

The mummy shrugged. “Not much, little sister. I only want to get out of here. Seems to me I’ve been here for quite a while without visitors, which means the tunnels have been abandoned or forgotten for a long time. I’m guessing you three are lost. I can show you the way out.”

For an undead being, the mummy’s voice sounded like a living person. The mummy had a relaxing, laid back tone, like a radio host or perhaps a jazz singer, though his clipped accent made everything it said feel like he was reading off a paper, not having a conversation.

“Why are you down here?” Shani asked.

Kellen thought that a smart question. If they were about to unleash a curse upon the world, they should at least do their due diligence first. At a glance, they weren’t getting out of the hall unless the mummy moved the stone in front of the door, which meant he could go wherever he wanted afterward.

The mummy spread its arms out wide. “This is a shrine to the Ancestors, the first beastcallers who learned to bond with beasts and bend mana to their will. When I was alive, it was a place of study and dreaming. In the long years since I have slept in stone but now I am awake once more.”

“And now what are you going to do?” The mummy exuded a certain charm in a morbid, graveyard fashion. Kellen still expected him to open his mouth and spray them with locusts or skin-melting sand or something.

Kellen’s question gave the mummy pause. He rubbed his fingers on his chin. “I haven’t thought about it, little brother. I didn’t plan on walking this world ever again. The mana within the Panel of the First must have preserved my mind and spirit.”

“Then how about you let us out?” Shani asked. It seemed she’d decided the mummy was no threat and was growing impatient to leave.

“Sure, sure,” the mummy gave an absent nod and started pacing back and forth. “What is my purpose? Why would the Wild Mother preserve me all this time?”

“Maybe you can think about it on the way out?” Vex suggested.

The mummy continued to pace, his rambling thoughts only interrupted by occasional hacking coughs. “Perhaps my knowledge is needed once more?” He looked up, ruby eyes sparking. “What age is it?”

Kellen looked at Shani. He had no clue how anyone in Oras recorded history.

“It is the Third Noctun,” Shani said.

The mummy’s eyes widened. “The Third Noctun! Have I slept so long?”

He rushed toward them, and Kellen prepared for an attack. Halfway across the hall, the mummy raised his hands and Kellen felt the stone behind him grind and scrape as it raised, revealing the tunnel and a path of escape. Kellen twisted around and found it already high enough for them to crawl under. He shot Shani a look, and they both rushed forward. They made it less than three steps when the stone slammed back down. Whirling, they found the mummy standing behind them with his arms folded.

“Are you going to run away as soon as I lift that rock, new friends? Because I feel like you are going to run away as soon as I lift that rock and my feelings are — or were — usually correct.”

“We are most definitely going to run away as soon as you lift that rock,” Vex said. “No doubt, my man.”

“Vex!” Shani and Kellen shouted at the same time.

To their surprise, the mummy laughed. At least, he got a couple chuckles out before he bent over in another coughing fit. Kellen and Shani waited for him to recover, since they were trapped in the hall and could do nothing else. When the mummy finally stood back up, he sighed and shook his head.

“I forgot how entertaining young Mana Beasts can be. Let’s make a deal, then. I lift the rock and you don’t run away.”

“That’s it?” Shani asked. Kellen agreed that there had to be some kind of catch.

The mummy held up a finger and tapped an eyeball gem with a cracked, yellowed fingernail. “I don’t see so good in the dark and you’ve got a way to make a light. My guess is you’re not from around here and wandered down to my shrine by accident. You give me a light and I’ll give you a way out. And don’t think you can run away as soon as the rock is out of the way.” He paused to stretch and limber up his legs, like a marathon runner warning up. The actions made an awful crunching sound. “I’m faster than I look. Ha!”

Kellen shared a look with Shani. Neither of them knew the way out. Well, they technically did, but just because the mummy was friendly didn’t mean Kellen wanted to show him to a dead end. It didn’t seem wise to trick an undead guy who could somehow move a giant slab of stone without a Mana Beast. Kellen started to explain that they didn’t know of a way out when Shani cut him off.

“Deal.” She shot him a glance, warning him not to say anything.

“O-kay!” The mummy grinned again and rubbed his hands together. The sound was worse than his stretches, like sandpaper rubbing together. “Let me gather a few of my belongings and we’ll be ready. My memory isn’t so good, but I have something that should do the trick.”

Once more, Kellen stiffened. He hoped the mummy wouldn’t be offended that they’d looted all the chambers. What had started off as a mission to gather supplies now felt almost sacrilegious. If the mummy was bothered by it, he didn’t mention it. Upon exiting the weapons room, he’d outfitted himself with one of the spear staffs. When he crossed over to the small chamber where they’d found the discs, Kellen held his breath. He heard the mummy talking to himself while he rummaged around, occasionally tossing something back out into the hall where it crashed on the floor and shattered or bounced away.

“Now where did that get to?”

“Can we help you find something?” Kellen offered. He had a sick feeling that he knew just what the mummy was looking for. He hoped he was wrong.

“Sure can, little brother,” the mummy said. “I’m looking for a mana stone, about the size of a fist, with lots of shiny lines running through it. Seen one?”

“Here it is!” While the mummy had described the mana stone Kellen had set off minutes before, Vex searched the room in his bat form. He hovered over the stone, which had been blown into the far corner of the hallway, hidden in the shadows of the torchlight. He picked it up in his paws and met the mummy in the middle of the room to drop it in the undead’s jerkied hands. “Seems empty to me. No idea how that happened, though.”

“Aha! Good spot, little beast,” the mummy said. To Kellen’s disgust, the mummy stretched his mouth open, popping his jaw loose, and swallowed the rock. He gulped, yet Kellen swore he sensed the stone pop up into the mummy’s skull instead of being swallowed. “That’s more like it. Any moment now. It’s all coming back to me.”

They waited. After a long minute passed, the mummy tapped the toe of a wooden clog against the stone floor. Another minute passed.

“Well, friends, as the crows puts it, I have good news and I have bad news,” the mummy said. “Good news is I can still move that rock out of our way. Bad news is I have no idea how we get out of here.”