Unidentified

"I wanted to be a wizard, once," said Agamemnon, staring down at the bones of another Agamemnon.  This one had the unmistakable markings of spell misfires down one arm, the sort of wounding all wizards carried, if they lived long enough, or faced danger often enough.

"Just to fuck with people?"  There was an elf standing in the corner of the small mausoleum, with his hands in his pockets, leaning casually against the wall.  He was a fairly average-looking elf, shorter than Agamemnon, with blonde hair and grey eyes, dressed in simple yet very finely crafted linens.

"To prove I could."  The priest grinned. "Although the thought of my fellow apprentices having to share rooms with an orc, the looks of horror on their faces at the indignity of it all ..."  He laughed.

"You would have made a good wizard."  His second companion, a short, human woman in a black robe, who stood in the doorway to the crypt, looking out at the trees.

"Absolutely," said he elf.  "I would have been fine with wizard."  He thought for a moment, chewing on his lip.  "It would have been less trouble, that's for damn sure."  He stepped up beside Agamemnon, peering into the simple stone casket at the cloth-wrapped skeleton that lay within.  "Not thinking of resurrecting him, are you?" the elf whispered confidentially.  "Only we've talked about that."

"Fuck off, you," laughed Agamemnon.  The elf lightly skipped out of the way of the punch aimed at him and bowed in mock politeness, spinning and, in one fluid motion, taking a swig from a hip flask before making his way to the open doorway, alongside the woman, offering her a drink.  She declined, but the two entered into quiet conversation.  Agamemnon didn't bother trying to listen in - it wouldn't have worked anyway, but he had other things on his mind.  So the mausoleum bore his name, true, a very uncommon name, shared by only four people in history, so far as he could tell: himself, first and foremost; the Agamemnon who was a soldier in the Righteous March; the portrait of the man he found in the historical text; and now this fellow, dead in a crypt that he probably fabricated for himself using arcane power.  What was the connection?  One Agamemnon was his namesake, a man he had named himself after deliberately, and the one in the book looked a lot like him.  But this wizard?  Clearly this man was not him - he was only a quarter orc, for starters, and had a very different face.  And yet here he was, buried a thousand years in the Stoneheart Valley and still here.  What were the chances that Mortimer and Fairweather would stumble across this tomb when falling onto the prime material?  Did something draw them here?

"It will be dark, soon."  It was the woman speaking.  Agamemnon hadn't heard her approaching but she was standing beside him, her porcelain fingers tapping him on the arm.

"It's only just past noon, isn't it?"

"That's not what she means, friend," said the elf, sounding more solemn than the priest had ever heard him.  He cleared his throat, rocking on his feet like he was eager to get going.

"If you're worried," the half-orc said, "why don't you help me?"

The elf reached up and patted him on the shoulder.  "You think I haven't?"

Agamemnon shrugged it off.  "Do you know who this is?" he asked, pointing at the bones.  The elf looked out the door at a bird flying past, not answering.  "What, do you need me to cast a divination?  Am I not pursuing the proper channels?"

The man looked across at the woman.  Some understanding passed between them, and he looked at the floor.  "I'm really not the person you should be asking."

"You mean you don't know?"

"It's ... more complicated than that."

"It's always more complicated than that," said Agamemnon.

"Yes," the elf said, angrily.  "It is always more complicated than that."

The half-orc felt he should be angry too, but he just couldn't find it in himself.  The puzzle was too intriguing, and he knew that if his friend could help him further he would already have done so.

The three spent some time - maybe hours, maybe less, maybe more - in the crypt, Agamemnon studying the bones for any missed clue, waiting for them to talk to him, to tell him who they were; the elf, sitting cross-legged in the corner, drawing spirals in the dust; the woman, standing in the doorway, watching as the sun moved across the sky.

Their reverie was broken when a small boy, playing too far from his parents' passing caravan, chased a lost ball into the crypt, tripping on the woman's dress and tumbling across the stonework until he crashed into Agamemnon's legs.  He rubbed his head, then looked up, terrified.  The elf reached out, picked up the ball, smiled to the child and tossed it to him.  The ball glowed golden in the air as it fell to be caught by the boy, who muttered a thank you and darted back out into the trees as quickly as he could.

Agamemnon grinned, then burst out laughing, and the elf joined in.  Even the woman smiled.  The poor boy had no idea with whom he had just shared a room.