Logicing toward the wizard, the invader poses a rhetorical question.

“If there are guards preventing us from proceeding, that implies that they would also keep the other humans from entering the area as well, wouldn’t it?”

“You’d think that, but if there’s one thing that’s consistent about idiots, it’s that they are constantly doing things that people expect are completely unreasonable.”

“Oh yeah, the corollary to the law of inverse ninjitsu, wherein a sufficient number of undead will by sheer force of stupidity manage to bypass even the most advanced of security systems.”

“That sounds ridiculous and only vaguely applicable to this situation.”

“C'est la vie.”

“That’s not even common!”

“Oh, blame the translator on that one. This model is only able to lock onto one language at a time, and it takes a while to reset to another one. Fortunately, that means it’s much harder than it used to be to accidentally switch the output language without noticing and completely ruin all chances of communication.”

“Your magic is pretty garbage, not gonna lie. Comprehend language is like, a basic first level spell that has no limitations what so ever. A goblin could master that, and their species hasn’t even managed to figure out that you should defecate in a corner of a living space instead of everywhere.”

“That seems blatantly racist?”

“Adventurers get diseases from goblin dens all the time. It’s an established fact that they live in filth.”

“You know what, that has far too many troubling implications that I don’t want to get into right now, so what do you propose we do about the royal guards?”

“Ideally we don’t interact with them in any way.”

“A grand strategy.”

“Thank you. With some sort of distraction, I’m sure we could form a hole in their defensive line large enough to sneak through and see what they’re keeping from the public eye.”

“Fifty three, you heard the human. Our plan calls for a distraction, and you have the technology.”

Stomach growling loudly, the other creature discontentedly stalks away, disappearing into a bush in a manner that seemed somewhat less than deliberate, considering it involved the words ‘who put a plant here’ erupting from the foliage. While the other three crept up to approach from the opposite direction, the least sneaky spy possible aims the bit of metal toward the guards and pulls on the trigger device. With a loud crack, a red bloom appears on one of the royal guard’s chests, and he stumbles backward. A moment later, one of the other guards notices the blood, and the hole, on the man’s back, and yells out to the guards that they were under attack. With practiced coordination, the two nearest to the injured party pull their comrade backward into a defensible position, while the other nearby royal guard pull in to defend against the unseen threat.

“There’s our chance,” notes the invader, pulling the stunned necromancer through an unwatched section of alley before the lines of sight can completely readjust to the personal change.

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

“Halt,” comes the order from the golem.

Ham is not inclined to answer that kind of demand from a security system that had definitely been operating on the assumption that if the unauthorized person was in the area, they were unauthorized to be alive. Or maybe they were authorized for dead? Whatever, Ham wasn’t a golemologist. Or a lawyer.

What he was, was running. The mausoleum wasn’t that large, and once he managed to get out of it he should be outside of the security system aggression range. As soon as the golem forgot about him, he could just go back in and loot everything that wasn’t that room, then use all the loot from the various other raided tombs to deal with the golem and the laser sword.

That was a perfectly good plan, until the golem followed him out of the mausoleum, not even looking particularly hurried as it followed him sprinting at a full run.

The noise that came from his mouth was most definitely not a shriek, and Ham made the rational decision to flee around the mausoleum. A limited range was essential for guardians, and eventually he’d get far enough away that it would lose interest. Either that, or he could keep running until the charge ran down on the magical construct. Regardless, the first step was to get out of the-

There was a hole in the ground, directly above the secret chamber. Ham finds out about this quirk of the landscape several seconds after he’d already fallen into it. On the plus side, he was farther away from the golem. On the minus side, it was going to take precious seconds to heal his bones. Spending the least amount of time possible between blasting himself with dark energy and climbing to his feet, he prepares to dodge the golem falling into the same hole as it inexorably followed his path.

Those seconds tick over, and he starts to hope that the golem ran out of charge outside.

The noise that comes out of his mouth when he looks toward the secret entrance to the room and sees the statue standing there is most definitely not a shriek.