Suggested Listening

Calenda brushed her hand over the stained stone pillar, taking countless years of dust and dirt with her. Her sense of touch was sharper as well, or perhaps it was the same and the difference was a lack of distractions. Without the throb of a heartbeat in her ears, or the pressure of blood flowing through her veins, the whole world felt and sounded different. "What is this place?"

"A better question is: how do we keep the things down here from eating all of you?" Scratch said. With his current eight-limbed monster body, he was having quite the time scaling the ceiling. It wasn't quite the same mobility as not having a body to slow him down, but it was something. "Or, specifically, how do you keep them from eating Elruin?"

"I can protect us, they don't like fighting."

"One of them, in a tight corridor, doesn't like fighting." Scratch moved three of his borrowed hands to display to the girls. "These are the claws of a predator, the eyes of a predator, and the jaws of a predator. Out in the open, they'll overwhelm you. Together, we might be able to fight three at a time, but there's hundreds of these things in this place."

"Here, these can help," Elruin opened her sack of sarite crystals. "Lemia, this one will help protect you." She handed her nature shard to the girl, who could benefit from its boosting of strength and endurance. "Cali, have this shard. It shouldn't hurt you, since you're not alive."

"That's sweet of you, Ell, but..." Elruin pressed the crystal into Calenda's hands. "... I can use sarite?" She looked at the black crystal, oozing darkness and death between her fingers. "How can I use sarite? That's supposed to be impossible for the undead."

"You're not like the dollies," Elruin said. "I used my magic to shield you from the damage caused by death, sort of how Scratch shields his energy from being detected. You should even retain use of your magic. The tricky part is going to be finding ways to keep you healthy, since you can no longer recover from injury or exhaustion. The vampire shard should help." It was as good a description of the shard's power as anything she could imagine. "I tried to make sure you still liked hugs, too. You do, right?"

Cali smiled at her strange little necromancer. "From you? Anytime. Scratch tries it, and I'm going straight to the nearest exorcist now that I'm no longer bound by his accursed oathbinding magic." The threat was empty, the sentiment was not.

Lemia couldn't help but take interest in the theory. "Then you can just, what, transform anyone you want? That can't be right, if immortality was that easy everyone would have it."

"No, it has to be someone like Cali, who could come back on her own." Elruin kept silent about the nature of person it required to defy death, knowing Cali probably didn't want her to tell anyone those secrets. It did beg the question of what cruel history drove Scratch to remain. "Not everyone can do that. All I did was manipulate the process to stop it from driving her insane. And I have to stay connected to her, same as Scratch, to keep them protected in the long run."

"And I'm betting it won't last long past the death of the necromancer we're bonded to," Cali finished. "Forbidden magic requiring a rare bloodline that at best adds another few decades to your life and turns everyone against you? Wouldn't surprise me if some people use it, but it could never be common."

"Maybe we can find someone to take over for me, some day." Elruin would have to ask Scratch how rare people like her were, because she was convinced most necromancers couldn't do what she was doing. Life energy, including that which kept her alive, could not synchronize with death energy like her, same as air could not synchronize with earth, or fire with water. They should cancel, not merge, and the attempt should have killed her. "But first, I have another shard for you. It may not be as strong as your old shards, but it will help you see in the dark."

Now that she knew she could, Cali accepted the shard and dipped into the familiar energies of earth magic. It was a good shard, too, with power to bolster her strength and it could have boosted her toughness, too, if her own defensive power wasn't greater than the shard's. Her new sense echoed out through the caverns, the buried maze that was once a thriving metropolis.

"Scratch, I need you to go through that tunnel." Calenda still hadn't decided what she thought of her new lease on un-life, but she was a Scout, regardless of what some pompous conquerer with delusions of godhood did to her title, and she had a mission. "You'll find one of those hand monsters, it's alone. Carry this," she carved a slab of flesh from the side of the mork. It was dead, it didn't need tissue. "Try to look wounded, retreat back this way when it pursues you."

"You know what these things are?" Lemia asked.

"I've heard a few stories," Cali answered. "Nothing to suggest they were anywhere near this common, however. They're solitary hunters, cannibals. It'll go for Scratch, then we'll set up an ambush. If we pick them off one at a time, we can kill a path to the outside. And if it destroys your body, you can jump to the next one."

"First of all, Sis, I don't work for you. I work for Elruin." Scratch took the time to peek out of his host body. "Second, and this is important, I have limits. Jumping bodies is hard, and all that necromantic residue left behind needs cleaning, which takes time we don't have and power Elruin can't afford to spend. Oh, right, and she'll be singing out here with all these things that hunt by sense of hearing. Or do we abandon tainted flesh here, with monsters you just said are cannibals?"

Calenda adapted to the new information in a metaphorical eyeblink. "Fine, plan remains the same but we're less cavalier about it. I'll hide here, beneath this overhang. You can stick the mork in that corner, it should blend in. We have no heartbeat, I don't think they'll take notice of us except as carrion. Ell, you and Lemia stay back, near where the path branches again. The two of you can hide behind Scratch, let the dead do the fighting while you do the magic."

"I can see why Ell wanted to bring you with so bad," Lemia said. "Don't worry, I'll stay out of your way."

The plan worked well, with the limping and 'wounded' grabber-corpse moving through the tunnel path. Soon, the other approached, at first curious; the troupe could not know, but dragging meat near another's nest was courtship behavior for this species. It never would have worked out, however, since Scratch's host was in too sickly a condition to draw attraction from a mate. In addition, both of them were female.

A rival near her nest was unacceptable. A wounded rival with food near her nest was an opportunity. The grabber gave chase the moment her new prey began to run, never stopping to question all the things wrong with this scenario. For all its power, it resembled a crocodile in intelligence and temperament.

She was surprised when two live-foods stood in the tunnel. She had never seen such a bounty in one place before. She was confused when the rival stopped, twisting herself in the cavern to a combat position. She was startled the two dead-foods she smelled moved behind her. She was afraid and enraged when the larger dead-food bit her leg as if she was a food-thing.

She kicked out, gripped the dead-food by its throat as was instinct. The spine snapped, but the jaw remained clenched as strong as ever. She didn't understand, for this had always stopped food from struggling before.

The living food hummed, then it felt pain and numbness. The other live-food did the same. Then the rival attacked, instead of trying to claim a food and run away. Why did the rival help the food? This was her last thought before the final food jumped on her back, then she knew nothing but pain, fear, and darkness before the pain vanished, along with everything else.

"That was-" Lemia shouted, before stopping herself. "Sorry, that was incredible!" She did her best shout while whispering. "I was terrified, but the way you handled yourselves, and it dropped so easy I can't believe I was ever afraid..." She braced herself against the wall. "Sorry, dizzy spell. Too much excitement."

"That and you were burning through mana fast," Cali said. "You need to pace yourself better."

Lemia looked down. "Sorry."

"Don't be, you did just fine." Tear them down, then build them back up again. She'd had to do that for enough women over the years, though usually in training rather than the field. "But don't expect it to go like this often. These are nothing more than animals. Tough animals, but animals. Intelligent monsters are the really scary ones. Hey, Scratch, I need to borrow your claws. Cut right here."

"Back when I was alive, I would have found you absurdly attractive." Scratch used his talons to carve a gash in the dead monster. "I was a moron back then."

Cali kept her attention on Lemia. "But, this is a learning experience for me, too." She shoved her hand into the guts of the monster, seeking out the crystalized magic within. "First time I've ever been in a fight where I could ignore all the friendly fire. It's tough on the front line when you have to coordinate with your blasters to keep them from hitting you."

Elruin dipped her fingers in the small bucket of necromantic water she had with her, to siphon off just a little energy. Her energy had to supply both her spells and Lemia's imitation of her spells, so she made certain she was capped at all times.

They worked their way deeper into the cavern, in order to escape from it somewhere far away from Arila, which sat above them. Three more monsters slain, three more sarite crystals acquired, but they seemed no closer to an escape.

Suggested Listening

"Gah!" She looked around at the others, realizing that once again she made too loud a noise when in a tunnel full of monsters that hunted by sound. "Sorry. I just. Look." She pointed to the building which was near them "It's a demon!" The creature was dead, mummified and broken in the street. It had the body of a horse to the neck, then that of a man above.

Elruin, as all children, knew tales of these horse-demons who would come in the night to take children away to torture for all eternity. She was never too frightened by the stories, for she always had walls to hide behind. Now, the body just made her lonesome for Mister Clackybones.

"It's a long-dead corpse," Calenda responded. "And not one like me. This is also a good place to rest for the night. The whole building's solid stone. Looks like it was a temple, back when these people used this city."

Lemia watched the body as they entered the building, as if expecting it to jump up at any moment. Inside, she looked around at the art, numerous statues, all of them demons like the one outside. Several other mummified demon corpses lined the stone floors, some smaller as if they were women, and others smaller still which must have been children, dead in the arms of the adults.

Above them were dark alcoves that might once have been windows to the sky once. Now they displayed only the rock and dirt between them and the surface.

Calenda saw it, too. "Hmm, maybe we could use this as a way to the surface? If the steeple tower was anything near as grandiose this interior, it might extend all the way up. Scratch, think you can go up there, see how far to the surface?"

"I'll think about it in the morning," Scratch said. "Right now, we don't want to be on the surface without our full strength, and our literal lifeline is at her limits."

It was true, Elruin had exhausted much of her magic on the trek through these winding tunnels that were once streets. "I don't think I can control both dollies while Scratch is searching. I need sleep."

Lemia held her hand up, increasing the glow of magic she'd been using to see in this cave darkness. "Is that the Ring of Enge?" A large circular band with three smaller circles near the top was the symbol of Enge's church, meant to represent the whole of the Engeval and the three volcanoes that made up his true heart.

"Looks like it," Cali said. "It even uses the the same colors. A large band of white, made of marble. Two bands of gray granite, and a single band of red sandstone when depicted in a statue. Silver, steel, and a ruby when worn."

"Why would demons have a temple to Enge? He drove them out, cast them into the sea." Lemia hesitated for a moment. "Or so the legends go."

Elruin looked at the bodies, then hummed a tune to them. It was ancient, lost to time, but echoes of the past remained in these long-dead corpses. Flashes of fire, cries of agony in a language she did not know. Flesh caught fire, lungs boiled, eyes melted, and those that survived would be suffocated by a poison so powerful that even those protected by magic fell. Here, in this temple, some few survivors hid behind the magic of the priests and prayed for a salvation that did not come. A single tear, the first drop of moisture in this building for centuries, fell from her cheek.

"They called him Ciron, before they all died."

"They were known as centaurs, long before Engeval became an empire," Scratch said. "Once, they ruled all of the plains to the north, this valley, and all the way to the jungle."

"So the demons I thought were myth turned out to be real monsters," Lemia moved to the corner of the room furthest from the corpses. "But that doesn't explain why they worshiped the same god we do."

"What else would they worship?" Scratch asked. "Centaurs found this valley before humans, but the being you call Enge has been here since before centaurs or humans ever existed on this world. They worshiped Ciron for the same reason you do."

"But the same symbols? The same color? Did Enge give an order that he have that particular symbol?"

"Not to my knowledge," Calenda answered. "We've never used any other symbol for Enge."

"Fine, if you children need a bedtime story that bad." Scratch moved his gangly corpse near the center of the room. "A long, long time ago in a kingdom right beneath your feet, the centaurs ruled. They lived as... the word is 'nomads', which means those who travel with their whole families, and don't settle down in any one place in their life. It's not something you see these days. Anyway, they settled this valley, trading with harpies and mer, who I believe are also extinct. They tried to build cities of their own, but you try working on ladders or weeding crops when your lower half is a horse. So they took slaves. Not your kind of slavery, real slavery."

"Real slavery?" Calenda thought their version was bad enough, she could only imagine what Scratch was speaking of if it got worse.

"Chattel slavery. The kind where the slaves aren't considered people," Scratch said. "Centaurs kidnapped children, force them to serve as labor their whole lives, forced them to breed to create more slaves. Tortured and mutilated the old to scare the young into working harder. Used them to... satisfy their baser desires, so to speak. Whatever stories you may have heard about your demons, I promise the real thing was worse than your legends."

"And then what happened?" Lemia asked.

"Couldn't say for certain." Scratch began walking his slave back to the entrance of the cathedral. "If I had to guess, they began losing numbers to the monsters, until they were weak enough that their former slaves could rise up and overthrow them. Then I imagine those people, your distant ancestors, began to erase all record of the centaurs. Gave credit for their buildings to the dwarves, or claimed it for themselves. Which is fair, they did most of the work."

"Then came the question of the god the centaurs worshiped. A god they would have to worship as well, if they wanted to remain in this nice, safe, valley. Don't ask me where they got the name 'Enge' from. The rest, you can probably figure out on your own. Then they all died horribly ever after, but not before firing out enough crotch-spawn to create everyone you know, the end. Now go to bed."

Elruin looked at the bodies, trying to imagine how the echoes she saw from her magic, and the dead mothers trying to shield their children, matched with Scratch's claims of torture and treating other people as nothing but animals. She fell asleep unable to find an answer.