I’m not sure who will find this, but I feel I have to write this down. I’ve worked in sites the builders of must have thought would never be opened, and yet they wrote. So I will write too. My lantern is fading. The oil always burns quicker than I’d expect, no matter how many days I’ve worked underground. 

I digress.

My name is Alexei Mauk. I have worked in excavations, translations, and not always with the most savory of employers. A year ago I was approached by an associate. He went by Mr. N and I knew not to ask for more. He told me about a site he heard of in southern France, not too far from Nice. He believed the site was a burial site, a tomb. An ancient Frankish chieftain had controlled the area and had amassed quite a large collection of gold jewelry. 

Mr. N also had heard of some of my work, both the legitimate museum pieces I’d excavated, and some of the work I did to help make ends meet. He never directly stated it but his comments had a ring of a threat to them. But he didn’t just offer the stick, he also offered a carrot. He said he had a buyer already set up for whatever we found deep in the earth, and he was willing to give me 50% of the fee. Of course he could have always lied about the fee, said he only took 50% when he really gave me something like 10%, but even that claim was impressive from someone like him. To even pretend to offer that much money. I should have seen it as a warning.

Throughout the year we had many false leads and dead ends, and a particularly harsh winter, rare for the region, made the prospect of digging out of the question. But, then, in March, we found a cave north of Nice. He visited the site before me and I thought that would be the end. I was only supposed to be there to find the place, he and his men would excavate it.

But he came back. His men had found no gold. And the threat became more clear. He demanded I come translate the runes.

Or else.

Well, I entered with Mr. N in early April. His nervousness made me uncomfortable. Hadn’t he been in places like this before? Or was this his first job of this variety? If it was his first black market artifact, where did he get so much money to flash around? Set me on edge.

He took me to what we thought at the time was the burial chamber itself. The room was carved into the stone, not just dug, and in the center was the stone sarcophagus. Set into the walls of the chamber were an intricate series of runes telling tales of this long dead king: his many exploits, his conquests, his treasures. But what really caught my interest, written in the runes, was a myth that I thought I had heard before but could never quite find as much information on as I’d like. 

These people believed that there was a second death, after dying. Your body dies first, and that releases your spirit, but your spirit will eventually wither away without the body nourishing it. The walls said the chieftain was buried with a necklace he had specially made to prevent this second death. The necklace was said to keep the spirit in the body until the last bone had been reduced to dust.

But the body in the sarcophagus had no such necklace. If he found it so important, if he was so afraid of this second death, why not wear it in his grave?

I inspected the coffin and found that what we thought was the base was actually loose. We removed the body and lifted the base, which revealed a stone ladder deeper into the structure.

I was told to go first.

This room, it had the gold that we were looking for. And at the center was another corpse, sitting in a throne carved into the wall itself. 

The corpse’s fist was tightly clenched around the necklace of myth. When I went to take a closer look I saw that the grip had warped the gold.

Mr. N saw the necklace and tried to pull it from the corpse’s grasp. The chieftain lurched forward and they both fell to the floor.

He screamed.

Demanded that I help him against the attacker.

I laughed as I pulled the body off of him, nothing more than a corpse. 

Mr. N shot me a dirty look, grabbed the necklace again, and then pulled out a pistol.

I was startled at first, but he simply shot the wrist of the corpse, and took the necklace with him, hand and all.

“My buyer visited last night. He’s back at camp. Let me confirm this is what he wants. Can you catalog the remaining gold?”

With his pistol out I was loathe to object, and besides, this was a dream come true. So much history between these walls. I’m embarrassed to say it took me far too long to realize that I didn’t remember anyone arriving at the camp last night. So I went to the ladder to confirm with him. 

I heard the grinding of stone upon stone above me. The light from my lantern quickly became the only light down here. I climbed up the ladder and tried to remove the cover, but I couldn’t find the leverage, or maybe he laid something heavy on top.

I accepted my fate. For a man in my field, it could have been worse. At least I could spend my final moments doing what I loved.

So I began to read these runes, carved around the throne. They detailed not only the chieftain’s accomplishments and his death, but also two small codas at the end.

Now, some of the words I had not seen before, at least not in these forms, but if I read them right, they predicted everything. The arrival of me and Mr. N. The lurching of the chieftain’s corpse. The betrayal. And my own flickering lantern.

But after that.

There was a plea from the chieftain himself. This carving looked much fresher than the rest. 

He demanded that the necklace not leave the tomb. As whoever disturbs his grave would be followed to the ends of the earth.

My light is flickering, fading fast, but I swear the corpse was still down here. 

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