Suggested Listening

The duo returned to the gate, with Clackybones left behind to keep an eye on the bodies. Calenda didn't think anyone would be coming for the group, or that they'd get back up any time soon, but it was a good excuse to keep the gore-slathered horse monster away from the farm.

"It's safe!" She shouted at the gate. "Turns out, they weren't as tough as they thought they were!" Her bravado belied the fact that had it been her alone, she would be dead right now. While they weren't strong, their weapons and tactics were built around countering her abilities. She looked down at the twitching, drooling mess of the man at the gate. Well, he's alive, I hope that's enough.

"You're certain?"

"Blue. Catfish. Diamond." Three random words agreed upon beforehand.

The gate slid open, with both Sanel and Leyli waiting for them when it was cleared. Now that the emergency was over, it fell on Aunt Leyli to represent the farm for the priestess. She couldn't help but glance at the man laying in the dirt.

"Aunt Leyli?" Elruin trotted up, stepping around the catatonic man. She held her hands over her chest in gratitude. "Thank you again for the dress. Sorry I ruined it. May I please have a new one?"

Leyli looked Elruin over. "What happened to you, child? You were only gone a matter of minutes."

Elruin ran through the events in her head. "First we beat up the bad guys, then one of the bad guys exploded, then Cali interrogated him."

Cali choked a little, but covered it by clearing her throat. "Don't worry about the dress, it'll hold up for now, and the road won't be kind to anything you put her in, anyway. I'll get her some traveler's leathers when we get to Engewal, right after getting a midwife and an escort for you."

"Does that mean this... terrible business is over?" Other concerns aside, she had Lena to worry about. The health of her daughter-in-law and grandchildren meant more to her than a mountain of strangers' corpses.

"For the most part," Calenda said. "I'll need to deputize two of you. Pay's twelve billon each. One to look after this-" she took the time to give a light side-kick to the brain damaged man still at her feet.

Leyli frowned, considering all the work they had to do on the farm. "I'm afraid our only healer is Jena, and you're far stronger than she is. If you can't help him, I can't imagine what we can do." The coin was good, more than most of them made in a week, but putting food on the table and the rest of their roof back over their heads was a greater priority than the money.

"She doesn't have to be," Cali said. "Tie him up, toss him in a barn, and make sure the rats don't chew on him too much in the night. Break his arms and legs if you're worried he'll wake up. I don't care about his wellbeing, just that he's alive long enough for the Inquisitor to read his memories." If there's anything left to read. "Then they'll execute him for banditry and crimes against the empire."

One of the younger girls in the crowd stepped forward. "I can do it, Mother. I'll keep eye on the chickens, too."

"Very well, Maris." Leyli had to admit the money was too good to pass up, now that she was confident it wouldn't distract from the priority tasks. "And the other deputy?"

Cali looked over at the men for a moment. "I'll need to borrow four of your men for an hour at the most. I'd offer to deputize all of them, but my boss would skin me alive if I made them pay that kind of money. So the deputy will have to pay the other three out of his wages. All I need you to do is carry some stuff and lock it in a dry shed."

One of the men took the offer. "If it's alright with you, I can take the Belis boys with me." Even split four ways, twelve billon for an hour of work was the easiest money any of them had made in their lives.

"I better not find you slacking your other work. In fact, take something to eat with you. This is your lunch break. Everyone else? We're wasting daylight."

The matriarch had spoken, and so the women scattered for their jobs. The men waited just a moment longer, for the nod from Sanel that confirmed his wife's orders. Only the five volunteers remained at the gate.

Cali pulled a pair of diamond shaped pieces of metal from a pouch, handing one to each of the volunteers. "Thank you for your service. Congratulations, these badges represent the honor and trust being given to you by the crown. If you abuse that trust, you'll envy that guy's fate." She pointed to the comatose man that the girl would be watching. "Be sure to give those to the Inquisitor when he arrives. That's when you'll receive your pay. But first, you have to earn it."

Cali knelt by the insensate victim of Elruin's power. A quick burst of regenerative magic to ensure he'd survive until the morning unless something actively ended his life, but healing the damage inflicted on his brain went well beyond her power. She suspected nothing less than resurrection magic could undo what happened to his mind.

She used her own sensory magic, then regretted it now that she knew he had soiled himself. One of those unfortunate hazards of her career. She ignored that and pulled a pendant with a sarite shard from under his shirt. She kept the shard, set the pendant itself aside. It was soon followed by taking several throwing knives from the concealed strap along his hip. The strap came off next, and she tossed the weapons on that. Five minutes of prodding and taking items off the man followed.

"Okay, he's safe. Put him wherever you think is best. Someone else, bundle all this stuff together and store it somewhere safe. I'll need all of you to go do the same for all the other piles near the bodies out there. Be very careful not to mix anything from one pile with anything from another pile, and wherever you put them, do not let any pile touch any other pile. When you're done, there's a camp about a hundred yards that way." Cali pointed toward one corner of the woods, off the main path. "You can put all of that in a single bundle, separate from the others. Oh, and whatever you do, don't touch any of the bodies. I'm safe, but they might kill you."

The deputized man whispered to his sister, then she spoke. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing with all of this stuff?"

"Investigation and scrying," Cali answered. It was common procedure, though not too much of a surprise that farmers wouldn't know. "The mages can get clues off their possessions, and track down their allies and accomplices from them. Stolen goods might be returned to their rightful owners, but I doubt this group has anything that can be traced that far. When the Inquisitor's satisfied, the rest is considered abandoned. Then, it belongs to the landowner. Or first come, first serve in the wilderness."

The group took the moment to appreciate what that meant. The sickles and some of the knives could be useful on the farm, new boots and jackets did not come cheap, and the spare handfuls of coins would help just fine. It was just a question of if the shame of robbing the dead applied under these strange circumstances.

"Elruin, I'll need you to help me bury the warped bodies." Calenda moved on, with the little necromancer behind her. "We can't risk touching them or their stuff, not until an Archmage disables the corrupted shards, but only the living can connect to sarite."

"Clackybones will be happy to help!" A handful of soft notes sang to the horse instructed him to bite one of the warped bandits by the wrist and drag him along.

"Uh, right. Oh, and while we're away from prying ears, I feel like I owe you a couple of these." Calenda handed off a pair of Sarite shards to the girl. "Got a really nice lightning shard there. If I could use it, I'd be tempted to keep it. It has a lightning bolt, a major speed boost, and a prescient ability to help guide your aim. In short, a perfect counter for my abilities. The other's a generic cloak; good for hiding magic auras to some extent, which should keep others from being able to tell your a necromancer from ten feet away. The rest are basic regeneration and ability enhancers. They're good, but you're not compatible, and I've got better. Give me some time and I might be able to trade around for something you can use."

"Thank you for the gifts," Elruin said. She let herself slide into the now-familiar experience of joining with a sarite's essence. It didn't take her long to realize her problem; she wasn't skilled enough to handle all three shards at once. It was the lightning shard that was the problem. She could handle three shards of the other two's strength, but the lightning was strong enough that she could only hold one more shard alongside it.

She chose to keep connected to the lightning shard, since it was stronger than the other two combined, but now she'd have to decide whether she wanted the shadow shard's stealth, or the mork shard's boosted senses.

"You've more than earned them." Calenda kept walking into the forest, before deciding her spot. "Okay, this is good." She began her dance, tapping the ground in a few places as she spread her influence in a balanced way. Elruin watched in fascination, listening to the discordant magic of someone who operated by touch instead of sound. A whining howl signaled the earth to open before them, into a wide but shallow pit. "Dump the warped corpses here. I'll go bury the others."

Elruin, however, had other plans. Clackybones didn't need her for this, save perhaps the instruction to not kill the tree rats. She walked toward one of the dead bandits; a normal one, because she didn't want to be twisted into whatever those former people were. She began to sing in earnest, as she had during the battle.

Her power reached into the body, forced it to some semblance of wakefulness; it would speak to her, as Clackybones had when she learned of what killed him. "Why did you attack Cali?" The question was spoken in no language she knew, no language spoken by any living being. It was the language of the dead and the dead alone.

What answered back was not word, but concept unfiltered by the limitations of a living form. Hate. Traitor. Stranger. For a moment, Elruin was confused; how could one hate someone who they never met that much. She dug deeper still, until concept became images, experiences, the memories of a child screaming as a city burned. The buildings of the memory shuddered around here, cracked, split as the very Earth beneath her feet rose up as a weapon in this battle between titans.

Overwhelmed by emotions and memories not her own, Elruin lost connection to the dead spirit. She collapsed to the ground, with the last memories of the experience burned into her mind. A young woman with the same red hair as Calenda, and the word 'sorvel', which had no meaning to her.

It takes her a moment to realize that Cali knelt beside her, and was holding her shoulders. "Ell? What happened? Are you okay?"