Suggested Listening

Elruin sang to the dead, spoke to them, forced them to speak back. Flashes of knowledge, families left behind. Calenda's prey spoke the truth, he had a young wife Lemia's age along with with twins that were just learning to walk. He had also not been lying about the 'stash', though he left out the series of traps and the small army which guarded it.

"We'll have to fight lots of people to get their treasure," she said. She left out the family; Cali would be sad if she knew. "They're all bad men, with prisoners."

Calenda hesitated for a moment, then pulled a small sarite crystal off the dead man. "Too much risk, too much time wasted on a small handful when the entire empire is at stake. We'll come back later to deal with this group."

"They'll move their camp by then," Lemia said. "These guys didn't last this long by being sloppy."

"I know, but there'll be some clues left behind." Calenda pulled a coin pouch off the body next.

"I believe that is where we come in." "Oh, yes, we would help so much."

"Morks!" Cali jumped back from the body, and took a combat stance. "Everyone, stand back to back. Elruin, blanket the area!"

"No need." "We're not here to fight." "Not you." "We watched." "You smell of blood. "And death." "And power." "You would slaughter us to the last." "Our pups would starve." "We make you an offer." "Then leave in peace."

"Watched?" Cali glanced around through the forest, but saw nothing. "They have a wind mage, scrying from outside our range." Scrying magic may have been disrupted in the region, but it hadn't been eliminated. Close range and targeting a known location was the simplest scrying spell.

"Smart and powerful." "Yes, we are wise to avoid fighting." "You would be wise to accept our offer." "We track your prey for you." "Leave trail for you." "We cannot slay them." "You can." "Take their treasures." "We need them not." "Leave their bodies." "You need them not." "You get your gold." "We get our feast."

"On one hand, I love the idea of creating more carnage." Scratch began climbing into the bandit leader, whose entire essence had been hollowed out by the constant barrage of death magic to the point that even if someone wanted to revive him, it would have been impossible. "On the other hand, morks will turn on us the moment they think they can kill us."

"Alas, our reputation precedes us." "It is true, most of our kind cannot be trusted." "Tis our lot in life." "But we are not fools." "To fight you costs everything." "To aid you costs nothing." "To aid us costs nothing." "Or do you plan to drag all their corpses home with you?"

"As ghoulish as the offer is, it's a good trade," Cali admitted.

Scratch's new body sat up. "We might be planning to take one or two of the corpses."

"We see." "But surely not all of them." "To drive them from the forest is still a boon." "They steal our prey." "No respect for our homes." "They would hunt us if they could." "Take what you need." "Leave us the rest."

"They're bad men. They hurt innocent people," Elruin said. "I know Claron's more important, but I want to stop them, too."

"If you want." Cali put her hand on Elruin's shoulder. "I can't promise we'll return soon, but we accept your offer."

"I knew you were wise." "Ours was a good bargain" "You win." "We win." "They lose." "We shall claw the trees." "Point you toward them." "The marks shall last all season." "But do not tarry too long." "We cannot know what the future holds."

"Is that a good idea?" Lemia had never encountered morks before, and had little to go on other than rumor. They were not flattering rumors. "Can they be trusted?"

"No further than I can throw them," Cali said. "But I can throw one pretty far if I have to. They're cowards who think with their stomachs, and we're much too dangerous for them to risk for two edible women. Even if we don't leave a trail of bodies behind for them, this is a win-win since the bandit presence has to be driving away their usual prey. I've made worse bargains with worse people, before."

"You flatter me." Scratch held out his hand, offering two shimmering crystals to Cali. "Here, I can't use them."

"Thanks. Start stripping the bodies, especially the sarite. The weapons and armor aren't worth the effort to carry. And keep the conversation to a minimum for a minute, I need to hide us." Cali took the time to focus on some of her more difficult spells, but soon the trees began to shimmer and sing as her magic infused them. "Whew, that took a lot more out of me than I'm accustomed to."

The song was more than metaphor or Elruin's Requiem. Every leaf in the forest shook, brushed against the others, cumulating with the others in a cacophony that made it hard for them to hear one another, and extended into the ether to disrupt magic.

"Not the most subtle spell, but we won't have to worry about spying morks now." Calenda took a moment to steady herself, took a deep breath out of habit rather than utility. She was now adapting to the downside of no longer experiencing exhaustion; she could no longer rely upon her body to tell her when she was reaching her limits. Objectively, if she tried to go this long without food, water, or sleep, then took a beating like she'd taken in this fight, she might have died from exhaustion. Being an abomination made her more resilient, but it didn't make her unstoppable.

She squeezed her fingers around the crystals, sampling them one after another. "Oh, these shards are nice." One water, the other plant, both ideal for wilderness survival and combat. "I'm keeping the one that grants combat skills and hides my magic from detection. It's best on a front-liner like me, anyway. Hmm. Lemia, you should have this one. I think it'll help with your alchemy, and it will also help us avoid monsters."

"Uh, sure," Lemia accepted the shard. "Oh, I see what you mean. While we're here, there's a thunder-bloom by that tree. How do I know that? I've never seen thunder-bloom that hadn't been ground into powder already."

"Botanical magic's funny like that, you'll get used to it," Cali said. "Ell, do you think that hand-monster can pull a cart? The bandits have one hidden up ahead."

"Yes." She didn't see why not. A quick bark of music that was only possible thanks to her resonance with Calenda and the monster responded to her orders. She could imagine that other mages with this type of spell could stop her from giving orders to her dollies. Nearby, the dessicated corpse started to climb to its feet as well.

"I think, maybe, the essence drain magic leaves a little of your essence behind." Elruin stared at the newly minted walking corpse. With concentration, she looked deep within it, seeking out the seed of undeath that she'd awoken when she sang. "We need to be careful about how you use that magic."

Cali looked at the results of her actions. She hated to imagine what might have happened if the morks ate a tainted corpse. The things were bad enough when they were alive. "Nevermind the monster, I have a better idea."

She found the cart, and the two beasts which pulled it. She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, mules." A mean thought that they couldn't possibly smell any worse dead crossed her mind. Focusing all her remaining power into upper body strength, she grabbed both animals by their throats and began the parasitic theft of their life force. Being animals, they didn't replenish her magical reserves much, but they had what it took to mend her back to physical peak.

It would be enough for now, and in the worst case scenario they were collecting a fair amount of sarite she could use to recover magic. She looked in the back of the cart, finding a great deal of raw animal meat, some fresh hides, and some cooked and salted meat in a barrel.

"Well, that'll make the damn coyotes happy." She began to slide the raw flesh out of the cart, in part because it'd slow them down, and in part because she knew how nasty this would get over the next few days of travel.

Elruin came to help as well, scouring the blood from the back of the cart and forcing the mules to climb to their feet. "I can't control any more dollies," she told Cali as they worked. "Not unless I drop control of others, or stop shielding you."

Entek na. "That's fine, we should limit the number anyway." Life, such as it was, could only get worse for her if she had to continue leaving a string of corpses behind for Elruin to clean up after.

Suggested Listening

For all her bravado in the church earlier, Lemia hesitated to pick at the bodies for sarite, or to empty their pouches. The weapons were easier, if only because they were nearby rather than

"Don't tell me you suddenly got squeamish around corpses, Spook. You were diggin' through those centaurs like a fatty who smelled bacon." The former leader of the bandits, now Scratch's new host, smirked at her, then returned to dragging two bodies to the nearby pile. "And I saw you pawing the un-scout earlier. She ain't into you. More's the pity."

"Hey, I can handle long-dead demons, and Calenda is..." Lemia shuddered as Elruin's new 'dolly', the man Calenda had stripped of life, walked by. Chunks of skin and flesh sloughed off like caked mud and dried leaves. "I'm having the world's longest hot bath when this is over. Three weeks, minimum."

"Sounds nice," Scratch said. "Been forever since I took possession of a bath."

Lemia almost complained that Scratch never stopped, but that would have encouraged him further. "So, while you're feeling talkative, what is the story with Calenda? The real story."

"Couldn't tell ya, Spook. On one hand, I know she's not into women. On the other hand, she literally chose to die, rather than marry a handsome, wealthy, and powerful man. You'll have to ask her."

"She has no idea what she is, but you do." Lemia hesitated for a moment. "No. You don't know, either, do you?"

"I play my cards close to my chest, Spook. You ain't gonna trick me into revealing anything."

"You already have. I know your tell!" Lemia laughed, though it wouldn't carry far through the rustling leaves. "You were terrified of Ell bringing Cali back. Cali was halfway between death and what she is now, Elruin was... well, Elruin's just oblivious in general... but there's something going on here and you don't know what it is, do you?"

"My secrets are mine, not yours," Scratch said. "Maybe I'll share some of them with Elruin, but not you."

Now Lemia was certain; Scratch didn't joke about important stuff. He'd been avoiding Cali for a while, and even now wasn't as enthusiastic as he had been in the short time she'd known him before. "Then I'll tell you what I know. First of all, Cali's not undead."

"Then what is she, if you're such an expert?"

"Not a clue. I had my hands and magic all over her, her body is definitely dead, the same as all the rest of these corpses. And it's undead, loaded with the same taint you are. But her mind and soul didn't experience the same ravages as her body. She's intact, she's alive whatever the status of her body. And everything I know about death, revival, and undeath screams that this should be impossible."

The more she spoke, the quieter Scratch got. "I'm sure you know the little secret those with resurrection magic don't like to talk about... they don't bring the soul back. What they do is pull together the remnants of life force that haven't been consumed, then they use their magic to fill in the gaps, like mortar and bricks to make a wall. That's why resurrections are so messy. What comes back is not the same being that went in. Same face, same memories, similar enough personality that friends and family can fool themselves into believing the trauma is to blame for the inconsistencies, but not the same."

"Sounds like a bigger abomination than they call me."

"I'd love to see you standing next to someone who's been revived, to compare how similar you actually are, but that's not important right now. What Elruin did was something different, neither revival nor enslavement, something that kept the soul in one piece. I can't explain it, and neither can you."

"Can not, will not, impossible for the outside observer to tell the difference."

"But I know better because I watched how you panicked when Ell told us what she had planned. I thought it was suspicious then, and now I know why. You thought Cali was going to come back an abomination."

"So?" Scratch stuck his head out of the chest of his puppet. "I've created four abominations in the time I've been working with Elruin, thousands more over the course of my existence. Other than what are admittedly the nicest legs I've ever seen on a dead woman, Calenda's no different than the rest. Unless if, as you say, her soul's still in one piece."

"True." She had no counter-argument that it wouldn't matter to Scratch what happened to Cali. Then she started to smile as the last piece fell into place. "But Cali was never your concern, except maybe as a curiosity. It's Elruin you were worried about!"

"Shoulda possessed you when I had the chance." Scratch muttered. "Fine, you win. Creating undead, true undead, not whatever it is that Cali happens to be, leaves spiritual marks on the soul. It's pretty much the same taint that is the undead, eventually drives the necromancer to the same madness that normal undead experience. An undead soul in a living body, the opposite of Calenda. Do I need to explain to you how bad that would be for Elruin?"

"Which is as good as admitting you have no idea what she did to make Cali," Lemia said. "Other than that it avoided this taint. My only remaining question is what makes you care so much about the status of Elruin's soul? I don't think you need soul to continue this con you're running on death."

"Who said it's death I'm trying to con?" Scratch returned to dragging bodies. He'd be keeping a close eye on her, she was much too dangerous.

Fine, keep your secrets for now. Lemia returned to scavenging the corpses. She'd be keeping a close eye on him, he was much too dangerous.