I took a last look at the pumpkin, or rather, what was on it. The arcane rune of the spark, depicting a singular flame with an infinity sign—the very magic sigil representing the eternal soul, also associated with soul magic. It was burned into the front of the massive vegetable as if it were a branded cow.

Shaking my head at the sight, I approached the boy as he looked at me with furrowed eyebrows.

"Hello," I greeted.

"Hi?"

"One of them is your family, I imagine?" I asked, pointing at the two bickering over the trophy.

"Yes," he said, and became even redder with embarrassment.

"So, which side of the conflict are you on?"

"My grandfather's, although I don't think I have a side."

His eyes drifted to the fight, which had devolved back into a screaming match as the man in the suit wrestled back the trophy.

"I wanted to ask about the sign on the pumpkin," I said, pointing at the largest vegetable on the stage. "I didn't know people branded pumpkins. Is it in case they stumble into another farmer's herd?"

The boy just groaned. "It's like my family… um… sign, you could say."

After saying that, he looked back at the scene, clearly not wanting to talk about the vegetable.

Well, too bad for him, because I needed him to talk about the vegetable. I rummaged through my trousers before realizing I hadn't taken my wallet with me for the fight.

"Wait here," I shouted to the confused teenager and ran to my car.

Once there, I took my wallet and came back. The argument had stopped, but now the farmer apparently decided to wait for the judges to return, as he sat in the middle of the stage.

The boy was at the side, doing something on his phone.

"Hey," I shouted to get his attention.

He raised his eyes from the phone and rolled them as he saw me approach.

"Look, dude, I don't want to talk—"

I pulled out a hundred dollars from my wallet and shoved it into his hands. I was in no mood for mind games or interrogations.

"I need you to answer all my questions. I'll give you another hundred once I'm satisfied. Deal?"

The teen gazed at me with a scrunched face, but then looked at the money.

"Okay? What do you need to know?"

"The origin of that sign. I assume your family didn't come up with it themselves?"

The boy hesitated. "Well… It's kind of a family story."

"Oh, a secret? I'm sorry," I said as I started to put my wallet back in my trousers.

"Okay, okay. It was my great-great-grandfather, Ernest, who came up with that. It's just a bizarre story. He was a miner back when the copper mine was operational."

The boy started explaining the origin, and it quickly became clear that I had missed the mark with my initial theory by quite a bit. I assumed that it was something that came up in some family documents or books, something they didn't understand but were told was important and had power. It would make sense if they were the Butcher's descendants, unaware of their true origin. Didn't think that the story would start as recently as his great-great-grandfather.

"He worked in the mine when the copper beds were slowly running dry. They were made to dig deeper and deeper, cutting costs as much as possible, until finally there was a collapse. Ernest was caught in it, alone, deep underground. The rock's shift opened up a passage to a tunnel system. He crawled for hours in complete darkness with barely any fuel left in the lantern. And when he was losing hope, he said that…"

The teen stopped, cringing slightly.

"Go on…" I said.

"He said that he finally came to a larger tunnel that opened into a massive cave. One where he felt some air movement and one where he could finally stand. So he decided, for the first time in hours, to turn on the lantern he had with him, burning the last of the fuel. And then he saw it—the… the sign from God. A pumpkin chiseled into the rock…"

The kid stopped, looking at me weirdly.

I blinked a couple of times. That was nowhere near my guess.

"A pumpkin? Deep underground? Wait…" I pointed at the sigil burned into the vegetable. "That?"

"Yes, a pumpkin. I know it's weird, but that's the story, okay? A pumpkin etched into the wall deep underground."

"How the fuck…" I stopped myself.

Pumpkin, my ass—that was a sign of the eternal spark of the soul. I mean, sure, if you draw the infinity sign slightly rounder, then maybe...

Here is my attempt at drawing what I imagined, also an AI version of the pumpkin:

AI:

I sighed. "Finish the story, please."

"So he saw the pumpkin and decided it was a sign. He followed the corridor to freedom. He then sued the mining company and won the case, using the settlement money to buy the land where the cave entrance was. It was supposed to be just a dense forest, not good farmland, but to everyone's surprise, he grew the biggest, best pumpkins in the town, eventually amassing a fortune with the massive harvest we got every year. It is said that the pumpkin sigil brings us luck, so each year we burn it into the pumpkin that will be used in the competition. It's supposed to make it grow larger," the kid sighed before finishing the story. "So anyway, my family is kinda responsible for the pumpkin craze in the town. And pumpkins are a weird point of honor for us."

I nodded.

"Okay," I said and handed the surprised boy the money before pulling out another bill. "I like the story, so how about this? Meet me here tomorrow morning, and you will show me the cave, and I will pay you…" I checked my wallet. "Two hundred and twenty-six dollars for the effort, eh?"

The teen looked at me like I was a moron, but then eagerly nodded his head.

"Great. Tomorrow at 8 a.m., don't be late or I'll pay you only half," I said and waved at the kid.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

But then I turned around and asked, "Oh, and did you ever see a gray cat around your property? Older one, well taken care of. Brown collar?"

"Yes, he shows up from time to time. Why? Is he yours?"

I shook my head. "Just out of curiosity."

Then I turned around and walked back to my car.

So it was as I suspected. The story was slightly different from what I had expected, but the butcher was there.

I went back to the motel and collapsed onto the bed. I downed one more potion, this time to help with magic and stamina expended from casting. I put a 4th-circle mana crystal into the bed with me so that I could draw in the energy on instinct and went to sleep.

As always, I dreamed about the strange things of the abyss. This time, I walked through an old apartment, strange music accompanying me as I dreamed. It was clearly produced by instruments, but the rhythm was strange, twisting, and otherworldly. There was something to it that distinguished it from any other sound I ever heard. It came from the attic. I tried to get to the source, but the staircase went on and on, endlessly. And there was something else on the staircase with me, always one set of stairs lower. All I could hear of the creature was countless hooves clicking against the wood.

I don't know how long I climbed, as the creature got closer and closer, yet always out of sight.

I finally saw doors to the attic, with the otherworldly music coming through them. I opened them only to see a window, and all of the nonexistence behind it.

I woke up.

I was standing up, looking through the closed window of my motel.

I'm not sure at what point I got up, but it was pretty early, considering the sucking sensation of my magic still present.

I picked up the crystal, pocketed it, and then went to get some breakfast before driving to the meeting point.

The kid was early, already waiting for me.

We drove farther from the town, finally taking a road through a sizable field of pumpkins. I wasn't a farmer, but it was an impressive sight. I also noticed one more thing: we were relatively close to the forest with the slaughterhouse.

Once we parked by a small hill at the edge of the fields, I thanked the boy and paid him, telling him not to wait for me.

The first thing I checked was the ground. I once saw the alchemical art of English witches, and I was sure—this was once an alchemical garden. The earth would need mana to achieve its full potential, but its properties were still excellent for any crops. No wonder the pumpkins ripened so quickly and grew to such sizes—they were planted in a once-alchemical garden.

I then squeezed into the small cave entrance. After about half an hour of a slow descent, I saw the first sign that something was wrong with the place. It was a cut made into the stone. It looked like a deep crevice, but the edges were too straight and even, as if it were made by a sword.

I then focused on my senses and finally picked up some mana while going deeper. Not a vein, but it was residual energy from an inefficient casting process. It was relatively fresh, too.

"I thought I would find you here!" I said idly into the cave.

No answer came.

"You know, it was kind of suspicious. The bodies arrived in the morgue nine days before I got here. It took you a whole week to give Q'Shar confirmation. I wonder what took you so long, huh?" I continued as I slowly walked forward.

I wasn't sure if he was an enemy or a friend yet. But the cat was around the first circle, so it shouldn't be a significant threat.

"I saw the sigil on the pumpkin, my feline friend," I continued. "You supposedly lived here for the past five years while in retirement, so there's no way you didn't know that. I don't think you chose your retirement place randomly. You were after the butcher from the very start, weren't you?"

This elicited a reaction, as a barely perceptible shift was audible.

"So here is my theory," I continued. "I think you got info that the cats would be looking around your area and 'came out of retirement' so that no other agents were sent here. I think you spent the following week, when you were 'looking for confirmation,' trying to reach whatever is here in this cave, knowing the key had been awakened. But then you tried looking for that key and found its current owner instead." I felt some more air movement as the corridor's ceiling rose. "After you realized how over your head you were, you got scared that the bodies in the morgue would mutate. You were the one who ordered the cremation, weren't you? Faking the doctor's signatures and paperwork?"

Now that got a reaction, as something moved in the deeper part of the cave.

"The doctor had to cover it up. If those bodies were ruled as murders, he would face consequences for destroying evidence in an investigation, but cremating overdoses by mistake? That's just a suspension at worst. And then you gave Q'Shar a call to send someone to fix this shitshow." I stopped my descent as I felt something approach. "But greed is a funny thing. It hides from fear only to pick its head back up the moment that fear is gone. When you noticed the mutant was after the teens, you came back here, hoping something had changed. Or maybe even prepared an ambush for me when I would come here with the hook? Huh?"

I saw a simple light spell light up the corridor as I closed my irises. The cat slowly made his way from the stony corridor, his head hanging low, with his tail dragging over the ground. He flinched once he met my eyes.

"I didn't want to ambush you," he said weakly. "I'm not that stupid. I studied this seal for the past five years and still hadn't made any progress, just a change, a new clue—all I wanted. I never meant to get the doctor in trouble. He was a good man. Took good care of me," said the animal, guilt written all over its face.

"Well, it doesn't matter what you wanted. The outcome is what's important."

The cat sighed.

"So did you kill it? Do you have the hook?" he tried to change the subject.

"No." I saw surprise on its face. "I need to know more about the creature and the artifact. I imagine you can help me with that."

The cat looked at the ground for some time, clearly considering something.

"Come. I'll show you something," he finally said.

I slowly made my way behind the animal, looking out for any traps, but didn't sense an ambush.

We made our way toward a large cave where some more magic could be felt. The cat must have tried casting here many times. There was an entrance to a smaller cave system, the one the miner crawled out of, I imagine. What was also interesting were the obvious signs of an ancient battle. The places where powerful spells had shattered stone were still visible.

But my attention was on something else. A sigil of the Eternal Soul, scratched into the stone. It was just a simple rune etched over a hole in the rock. A hole where the hook could be inserted, judging by the size. I could also sense an extremely complicated seal behind it.

So it really was here, the legacy of one of the most powerful soul mages in history, right under my nose, in a goddamn pumpkin field.

I then turned back to the cat.

"Is there something more here?"

"Yes," said the animal, and then pushed on a stone, powering a hidden rune as the wall moved.

No—it wasn't true to say it moved. It almost disappeared, jumping upwards. I knew what it was.

An ambush point.

But before I could ready my magic, I realized that it wasn't for me. There was no one in the room.

I looked curiously into the hidden place.

The cat had obviously been there for some time, as the old furniture and some remains of an ancient camp were neatly stacked to the side. There were also some newer additions, a source of light and something I would describe as a research station.

There were also bones lying to the side.

"I found it during my research into the hook," said the cat, inviting me in with his tail. "The builders of this hidden room. I used their journals, books, and other items to try to understand the tomb."

The cat spoke as he jumped onto a sizable old desk in the room.

"They observed the butcher when he was building his resting place. They researched him and his artifact, and when they thought they had the upper hand, they attacked, only to end up here as nothing but bones."

I walked into the place. The room was quite big but also empty, and I could see the source of that emptiness as I looked at a spatial pouch sitting on the desk.

"I found it with the corpses," the cat said, noticing my gaze. "Not sealed, meant to be found, with a note inside asking to take revenge for the seven people killed. Aside from that, there was their research inside—if you can call it that."

I looked at him, curious. "If you can call it that?"

"It's based on a lot of assumptions and illogical conclusions. But some info about the tomb did check out."

"Do you mind?" I asked as I pointed at the pouch.

"Be my guest."

I spent the next hour rummaging through the notes, journals, and Mr. Cuddles's own writing that was also in the pouch. And the conclusion he reached was correct. There was a lot of what-ifs and confusion in the research about the butcher. The mechanism for awakening the tomb was described roughly, so it was most likely Cuddles who awakened the key.

"Did you put the hook in the slaughterhouse?" I asked, slightly confused.

"No." The cat shook his head. "I shattered some crystals to mimic ambient mana as the journals described, but didn't think anything happened. Only then, after some time, I heard about the hook."

I nodded, so someone, or something else, carried it there.

"Anything useful you can point me to?"

The cat came over and started going over the writings with me, pointing out the parts that weren't just rambling or jumping to conclusions. And as I read more and more, I saw a pattern emerging.

"Oh yeah, that could work," I said to myself, looking at the papers.

I didn't have time for any fancy ambush, but if the information was correct, then I finally had a proper plan for tonight.

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