Hope you think it was worth the wait:)

:::EDIT::: I don’t know how it got unnoticed for so long but there was a layer missing from the published strip — the three colored mist! That is now corrected. Sorry!

-JG

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Her visor rising, Alice gulped. Her nerves were already unsettled by their previous encounter with the three ghost pigs. Now this!

Oh, she saw a second shard alright… “Wh-why is it moving?”

Goldie didn’t hear. Her sole focus was picking the rather tricky final lock in front of her. At last, her skills prevailed. With a pop and a click, the sarcophagus cover was finally freed. The assassin smirked at her unparalleled ability. “Got it.”

Goldie tossed the lock aside. As it left her hand, it took on an aqua glow which receded the closer it got to the ground.

Alice’s teeth chattered. Something was creeping in the stillness. She glanced up, saw Miss Muffet hanging from the ceiling without a care. She called to her two other companions, hoping they weren’t too far to hear her quavering voice. It felt like… like something was coming. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and the same fear she felt around the ghosts assailed her once more.

Goldie, assaulted by a growing sense of ‘not right’, froze in place. Why was there always something bad associated with things that were ‘just right’, were her grumbling thoughts as her muscles tensed, ready for a quick defensive stance.

The loud clang! of the lock striking the stone floor rang in the silence, its parting glow snuffed out. With that small warding beacon extinguished, the lid of the sarcophagus shifted with a grating, scraping whine. A creepy, three-colored mist flowed out, puffing out the single lamp in the room. With the magical glow of Goldie’s cursed hair the only light in the room, it set the terrifying stage for a new sound to emerge from the bowels of the sarcophagus; a sound reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard wrapped around an evil laugh. It trickled out, echoed in the stone antechamber, and froze Alice with renewed fear.

When an elongated, shriveled hand emerged to pry the sarcophagus lid further away, Alice let loose a blood-curdling scream.