Anastacia couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard she tried. She had already gotten a warm drink from the kitchen, read some book that was lying around in the room and was now playing around with one of her daggers. The room didn’t have a window, so she had no idea what time it was, maybe it was almost morning already? Or maybe she had only messed around for a couple of hours?

Emilia was exhausted after a day of actually doing something priestess-like, so she was out like a light almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and Rosie was the type who could just will herself to sleep to kill time.

Anastacia considered going through Rosie’s stuff to find the note from Sylvia, but decided not to because it would probably end with some sort of divine punishment from both Sylvia and Rosie.

Every time she grew bored of something she was doing and started to get sleepy, she found her thoughts drifting towards the moment of her death, the bolt sticking out of her throat and the slow loss of consciousness. The thought of dying woke her right back up again and forced her to seek something to distract herself with.

She emptied out the pouch on her belt into her bed. Three rings, adventurer’s pearl and the token. The pearl and token weren’t really interesting, but maybe she could do something with the rings? No one was awake so the topaz one was useless right now. The emerald one, that was supposed to give the wearer clarity of mind, and the ruby one, that gave the wearer increased pain resistance, were untested so far.

The necromancer picked up both rings and compared them, the emerald ring was a lot lighter and the stone on it was cut flat and attached with a few claw-like spikes, whereas the ruby ring had a lot more metal on it and the gemstone was cut to form a small spike.

“Which one to try first...” She whispered while inspecting the gems.

The ruby one would be a pretty simple one to test out, so it should be the first. Anastacia grabbed one of her daggers and started to fit the ring on her fingers. It was a lot bigger than the topaz ring and her thumb was the only finger that was even close to the right size. Enchanted rings can’t be resized without messing up the enchantment, so maybe she should just give it to gilbert or Emilia to keep. They were more likely to be hit in combat anyway. Once the ring was on, she tapped the tip of her dagger with her finger but nothing happened. After taking a closer look at the dagger, she realized that the tip was dull and bent. No one had taught her how to take care of her weapons and she just assumed that the metal was kind of bad. Surely it had nothing to do with her shoving them between the stone “doors” at the machine fortress or the countless bottles she had opened with them as a bar trick.

The other one was in slightly better condition and she was able to make a cut in her fingertip. It still hurt, but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it would be without the ring. The necromancer was happy with her newfound immunity to papercuts and left the ring on.

The emerald ring fit Anastacia’s middle finger well enough, it was slightly loose but would probably fit perfectly in a year or two. Of course, that didn’t comfort her at all when she realized that there’s no way to prove that she wasn’t still dead. This could all be an act made by Sylvia to apologize that Anastacia died on her behalf, or maybe the whole meeting with the goddess and what happened after it was just her brain slowly shutting down and it was all going to end soon enough, perhaps when she fell asleep for the next time.

She let out a muffled scream as she threw the emerald ring into the corner of the room. The scream was about to turn into a full-blown panic attack as she stumbled out of the room. she needed some fresh air but the stairs proved to be a greater challenge than she expected. Somehow making it to the top and out of the inn’s door, she slumped against the wall, hoping it didn’t have blood in it.

“Having some trouble there?” A hooded man asked as he approached Anastacia, offering his hand to help the girl back up. “Let’s get you back up and find a proper place to rest.”

Anastacia took his hand, perhaps because it was still dark, she didn’t notice the blood red color of the man’s sleeve.

“Emilia! Wake up!” Rosie yelled as she kicked their room’s door open. “Do you know where Anna is?! I already checked upstairs and a few streets around the inn but found nothing. Ed hasn’t seen her either.”

Emilia shot up from the bed and begun strapping her armor as fast as she could.

“Calm down, momma-cat. It’s Anna we’re talking about, what’s the worst that can happen? She’s probably at the market, that’s why we came here after all.” Emilia said, trying to calm Rosie down a bit.

“There are murderous evil necromancers out there, that want nothing more than to drag Anna with them to that hellhole they call home! All of her stuff is here too. You think she’s gone to the market in her night wear, without boots or her fucking money?” Rosie pointed out and grabbed a dress from Anastacia’s backpack.

“Oh crap, you’re right. Take her daggers too, you can use them.” The priestess said as she tightened the last couple of straps of her chestplate. “Look, if it is a necromancer, the fight will go bad the second it starts, so focus on ending it immediately. Last time I messed up and got us almost killed in like 10 seconds.”

After getting Emilia’s armor on, they ran to the city’s gate. Some of the more able citizens had started a city watch to guard the gates while the local lord gathered resources to revive the defunct city guard. The gates were still kept shut to avoid bandit attacks in case they had heard that the paladins were gone.

The gate guard said he hadn’t let anyone out today, so Anastacia must still be in the city. Not that a wall would stop a necromancer with a city full of paladin corpses to work with, but that would draw attention. Knowing that, they returned to the inn and started their search. Rosie ran through the streets as fast as she could while Emilia asked around whether anyone had seen Anastacia.

“Aye, there was this red-hooded fellow dragging around a girl who wasn’t wearing much. The young folk have lost their sense of decency these days.” Explained a middle-aged man when Emilia questioned him. “Think they were headed that way.”

“Shitshitshit. Of course it had to be the worst case possible.” The priestess cursed as she ran off to the direction the man had pointed in.

Rosie was taking a breather, she had gone through all the major roads on that half of the city but hadn’t seen anything. As she was looking for a place that’d sell her something to drink, she spotted a familiar red robe. Roughly 10 meters from her, there was a man wearing the same outfit that Coquelicot wore when they had met. Remembering Emilia’s advice, she prepared one of the daggers and charged at the man from behind. Just as the blade was about to enter his back, Rosie stopped. Not because of her own will, but because her bones couldn’t move.

“You are the one called Rosie, aren’t you?” The man guessed as he turned around.