Suggested Listening

An aura of flame still dancing around her, Juna looked around at her guards with a barely hidden disgust. She had fought, Elruin had fought, and this priestess had fought, while they stood and watched. When the adrenaline wore off, she would ensure each and every one of them considered death by undead fungus more desirable than the ire of their commander. "Is it dead for real this time?"

"I believe so." Elruin, too, remained in her ebon war mode. "It was an interesting trick, but one that I think can only work once. At least, to that extent."

"How did an undead taint sneak into the city?" Despite reassurances, she had no intention of lowering her guard a second time.

Elruin thanked whatever power it was that gave her power, for the calming effect of her own shielding was all that kept her from panicking at the risk of revealing the secret that was what she did with Cali. "It wasn't undead before it died. It's... it's as if the fungus was infused with magic. Like a living potion, if that makes sense. When it died, it set off a series of preconstructed enchantments. There was no taint until that moment."

"But how would one go about building an abomination spell into bloodmold?"

"I don't think it was." Lemia remained hiding behind Elruin. Unlike the others, she didn't trust her magical abilities to defend her from this thing. "I think it was inscribed into the bones of the victims. Uh, I'm a geometric revelation. We're sensitive to shape and positioning, and something about that child's body looks wrong. I mean, aside the obvious stuff."

Meanwhile, Cali was doing her best to inch away as well. If Garit had been here as well, she wouldn't have bothered, but Juna was far more impulsive and prone to distraction than her sibling.

"I'll check." Elruin brought up her hand and struck the bones with her power. They crackled with power, then began to move, for a half second before Elruin stripped the necromantic energies from the region. "I don't know how, but someone etched runic magic into their bones. I think it was a trap for me."

"Not you," Lemia said. "Remember, Lady Juna said these were happening all over the place. Considering necromancers are the best equipped to defeat other necromancers, I think this was meant as an opening strike. It didn't matter if the victims were alive when the necromancer purged the bloodmold, so long as their magic hit the bodies it would activate."

"I saw the scars on the boy's legs." Now that Calenda had managed to get to a safe distance, she was willing to add her own experience. "The maker of the enchantment would have had to have opened up his legs for hours, first."

"If I may, Lady Juna," Lemia said. "The royal scholars need to know of this. I think these... living timebombs... can be detected once they know how to look."

Suggested Listening

"I can find them, even subtle necromancy should cause a react... entek na! The cemeteries! They use necromancy!" Elruin dipped into her magic again, activating her sarite. "Warn the other cities! Lemia, scholars! Lady Juna, sorry, emergency!" With sarite empowerment, she got a solid head start before the others realized she was moving, with Calenda a half-heartbeat behind.

"Soldiers! Remain on guard. Nobody enters or leaves without my permission." She tossed a bronze disc at the ground near Lemia's feet. "Get whatever scholars you think you need to get. Anyone who has a problem can discuss it with me."

Calenda caught up with Elruin the moment they were out of eyesight from Juna; as much as the young necromancer had improved, she still wasn't a match for a battlemage like Calenda was when alive, let alone the enhanced abilities that came from her now familiar unliving status. "Please, tell me that was theater for my sake. They couldn't create undead through mortuary defenses, could they?"

"I don't know!" Elruin kept moving in the direction of the cemetery. "If one of those runes get there, they might!"

"Merat na!" Cali picked up pace. "If I get too close, the mortuary spells will notice me."

Elruin considered her options. "I can handle any fighting." She wasn't certain that she could, but she felt confident she could hold the line until help arrived. "Try to make contact with Scratch. If anyone's seen this before, it's him."

"Go to the poor section, first. Weakest defenses, fewest guards, most bodies." Cali turned around after giving her advice.

Elruin slowed right before reaching the mortuary, enough to make certain the guards saw the House crest emblazoned on her new armor. It didn't stop them from pointing their weapons at her, perhaps because she was wrapped in necromantic energy that made her look like an enemy rather than an ally.

"Official city business. Where do you put the bodies?" Healing magic was powerful, but it had limits, so one could expect several natural deaths per day in addition to the occasional murders, suicides, and accidents which were inevitable in a city the size of Arila.

The woman guard stepped forward, her weapon still at the ready. "My apologies, Lady, but we received no word of official business here, and you're not part of our command change."

"There was an attack by an abomination mage," Elruin said. She allowed her death-shell to melt away, revealing her face. "We stopped the attack, but it might come here next."

The guard hesitated, no doubt considering her position if something went wrong one way or the other. She settled on the argument that even were Elruin lying, there was nothing they could have done to stop the little necromancer who had better equipment and more raw power than they had. "This way, ma'am."

Due to the lack of space and perpetual risk of taint or other magical corruptions, cemeteries in Engewal were comprised of bricks made from the cremated remnants of the dead. A practice so common and widespread that nobody so much as considered the concept of burying whole bodies. The crematorium building itself was not far from the poor section of the cemetery, itself near the poor side of town.

How the brick was treated after depended upon the wealth and traditions of the survivors, but for the poor they were oft used in the construction of small, ornate memorial rooms as lined the open space of the cemetery while the wealthy took the bricks home with them, to be placed in small memorial shrines, or whatever decision was made. Sometimes, entire rooms were built of a family's long-forgotten dead.

Elruin felt the twisting distortion of death magic colliding with undeath in this sanctified place meant to deny any spell that might threaten the fractured remnants of souls that stayed with their bodies for some brief time. "We're too late." She returned to running toward the source of the distortion, only to slow when the two forces cracked against one another like a man breaking his hand by punching another's jaw hard enough to break it as well.

Several of the bodies began to move in a slow, halting process that was the weakest of any undead spawn she had ever seen. Slow enough that the morticians working with the bodies managed to undo the taint with their own talents without need for Elruin. These were professionals, educated in the tasks they were assigned to a degree which exceeded Elruin's.

Given time, perhaps a matter of days, the taint might have grown to be a threat to the cemetery, and then the city, but she had no doubt that everyone of merit within the city felt what happened here, and those tasked with defending the city were en route, expecting a much greater threat than what was born here.

So Elruin began to sing, helping to purge the taint, while doing what she could to mend the damaged enchantments of the cemetery. Whomever was tasked with fixing this mess would be at work for a long time dealing with magic far more complex than that which she was accustomed to.

As soon as the immediate calamity was dealt with, one of the church exorcists approached her. A man, but under the circumstances social decorum mattered less than making certain a disaster had been averted. He looked at her emblem, then gave the polite nod of one noble greeting another. "Lady necromancer. I am Exorcist Kale ne Mer."

"I am Elruin na Cali." She had no specific title to go by, which put her at the social disadvantage on all notable levels.

"Lady Elruin, I find it unlikely your arrival here was coincidental." The tone was calm, the choice of words stilted by a need to choose neutral words, asking nothing of the other while seeking to trade information.

Elruin chose to make things easier by speaking to the woman soldier who had followed behind her. As an assigned defender of the cemetery, she was every bit as entitled to the warning, and without the social barricades. If a man just so happened to overhear the conversation, so be it.

"I'm sorry I didn't arrive in time to prevent this. I also didn't expect a result like this one. The magic we encountered was... complex, and new. Lady Juna is warning other cities, and we're already seeking to pull together the city's scholars to study the technique used. All we know for certain is that it used runic magic carved into the bones of still-living people, which will then convert any standard necromancy into taint."

"I'm no scholar." The guard looked at the Exorcist, as if seeking an opinion before speaking further. "Please, tell me what I can do."

"First, separate all bodies, and make certain none are exposed to any necromancy. It might be wise to chain them down or lock them in cages." The ability to break through steel bars was beyond most undead. Even Calenda would have great difficulty doing so. "Second, be especially wary of those with diseases, the ones we faced were infected with bloodmold, perhaps to trick a necromancer into cleansing the bodies and trigger the runes." She decided not to mention it worked.

"What will you do?" The guard asked.

"I need to check the body which carried runes first, then other incoming bodies. I'm certain Lady Juna will have more specific instructions for everyone later, once we know how the magic works. It's not my place to assume what she'll command."

"As you wish, Lady Elruin. I'll lead you to the morgue."

Suggested Listening

"The good news is that the attacks failed, and we know why," Lady Juna stated for the assembled group of nobility and officers. "The bad news is best explained by my brother."

"To start with, the techniques used are sophisticated, third-generation enchantments." Garit paused to let the audience consider what this meant, which left Elruin to sit and guess. "Fortunately, they were designed using different magical traditions than our own. It means the enemy's magic is unfamiliar to us, but also that our magic is unfamiliar to the enemy."

"In short," Lady Juna added. "We have the same disadvantage, and now it's a matter of us learning their techniques faster than they can can learn ours. With the failure of their sneak attacks, we're in the stronger position."

"Our scholars are already hard at work redesigning our protective wards to detect and counter the living-weapon techniques shown." As much as Garit liked his sister's enthusiasm, he was less fond that he was always the one to deliver the bad news. "Until then, however, all cities will have to close their gates until we can adapt our defenses. The entire nation is to be treated as if it's under siege."

"Against the undead?" High Priest Rodar stood, as the only person in the city of equal rank to the Duchess, he had the right to question them. "If we allow the taint to fester, it will reach the point where there's nothing left for us to protect!"

"Correct, and we won't," Garit said. "We know the enemy infects victims with bloodmold because it absorbs creation energies, which the necromantic runes are vulnerable to, and need only the time to design a form of creation spell that can bypass the mold. We will not spend some indeterminate time hidden while the enemy grows. In a matter of days, we will be ready for our counterattack, and until then we will help prepare your Houses as we can for the war against an abomination threat."

Plans were discussed, revolving around a twin strategy of adjusting the sarite shields and preparing magic to counterattack the undead. Elruin bit her tongue, for she knew not how to explain what they were facing without admitting to knowledge of undead which could hide themselves from detection. More, it meant a real threat to Cali and Scratch as the magic was changed.

Once she had some privacy, she asked Lemia the question which had plagued her this entire time. "Umm, when Garit said Third-Generation enchantments, what did he mean?"

Lemia looked down at the ground. "It means, this magic has been used in war, already."

"What? How can you tell something like that?"

"The basic theory is this: whenever you design an enchantment, or any spell, you're building it in a safe box, like at the College. Then you use it, and discover it doesn't perform quite how you expected, so you redesign it with failsafes and tricks to protect it from failure, that's a second-generation design, and most mages stop there. Third generation designs are when an enemy counters your design, so you redesign it again to stop the enemy's magic from stopping your magic. Combining taint runes with bloodmold, for example."

"So whatever is behind this has won a war using it, before."

"Or were driven out after failing," Lemia suggested. She didn't have the heart to make herself believe it, however.

The pair spent the rest of their walk home in silence.