King found the rest of the party at the spot they had escaped to earlier during the night. Emilia lied on the grass with her arm covering her face and Yulia sat next to her, staring emotionlessly into the void. Gilbert was taking a break from ordering around the remaining goblins and looking for survivors among the ruins of Ebonywatch. The entire town had been razed into a pile of rubble and soggy bread, and not a single house was left standing in the mud that the drained flood had left behind. When the old adventurer saw King walking through the town, carrying Anastacia, he ran over to make sure everything was okay.

“Is she alright?!” He asked worryingly and tried to take the necromancer from King to get a better look at her.

King nodded but refused to hand her over.

“That’s great, we really needed some good news for a change. Take her over there so Emilia can try to get her awake, and I need you to help me here. There might be people trapped in the ruins.” Gilbert explained and gestured towards the girls before gathering a group of goblins and resuming the search.

With the excessive amounts of bread lying around, many of the goblins had already overeaten themselves to a point of uselessness and were now just lying in the mud. A few of them noticed the sleeping necromancer on King’s arms and began to slowly crawl after them.

The simulacrum laid Anastacia carefully on the grass next to the resting priestess and ran off to join Gilbert.

Emilia took one glance at the necromancer and poked her in the side with her mace. “You’re awake, aren’t you? Can you please stop doing this?” She pleaded with an annoyed tone in her voice.

“I’ll stop it when it stops working.” The necromancer said and opened her eyes. “What have you guys been up to? Feeling better yet?”

Emilia sighed and pointed at the destroyed town. “Fucking up mostly. The cultists are dead, but so is everyone else… Well, aside from her and us I suppose. And no, I still feel like trash, but thanks for asking.” She answered with a gloomy look in her eyes, looking even more spent than in the evening.

“Wow, we’re shit at this. That’s one fewer innocent person killed compared to what the bad guys would have done…” Anastacia laughed dryly. How to react to the deaths of people she didn’t know or even really care about was something she struggled with. Her necromancer side would have her rejoice so that was probably the insane thing to do, but she didn’t feel sad about it either. So for the millionth time, Anastacia avoided having to deal with the situation by not taking it seriously.

“I fear it’s less than one. People like her are meant for happier lives and she’s probably messed up for good now. Even if I suddenly regained the connection to My Lady, her hand is gone for good too.” Emilia explained and got up to check on Yulia, just in case she had become more responsive.

Still in daze, the lamb showed no sign of being aware of anything that was going on around her. Emilia tried snapping her fingers to get Yulia’s attention but that achieved nothing and neither did lightly slapping the stunned girl’s cheeks. She considered being a bit rougher but figured it could wait until Gilbert got back and they decided what to do with her. With Sylvia’s help, she could probably snap Yulia back to reality, but Emilia wasn’t sure if that would even be a good idea; in all likelihood, they would just end up getting kicked again.

While Emilia was tending to Yulia, Anastacia closed her eyes and moved some dead goblins that were scattered around the area because they were starting to smell – even more than the living ones. She didn’t know why they were there, but they most likely had something to do with Vilja. Their shared affinity for the little buggers was one of the things she had bonded over with the goddess while waiting, so perhaps they had been dragged in by Vilja to help the party. While not exactly careful, Anastacia did treat the bodies with some degree of respect and neatly piled them against each other, so they could be burned later.

One of the goblins that had followed King and Anastacia from the town crawled up from the mud and sniffed the necromancer. “Sleeping child smells like god!” It croaked excitedly.

“Yeah, I met her. Think she might have stolen one of my arm socks…” Anastacia said and picked up the muddy, overfed critter, who seemed happy about being held. “She told me to thank you guys for whatever you did here.”

“You did what?!” Emilia suddenly yelled. She had overheard the conversation and couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first thing Anastacia had told her. “Only you can just gloss over the fact that you met an actual god… Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

The necromancer recounted the entire meeting to Emilia, who found herself to be a tad jealous about how Sylvia hadn’t told her about the existence of such a god that was so close to her but chalked it up to her current weakness and tiredness. She wasn’t going to bother the goddess about it whenever they regained their connection either. Sylvia would tell her about it when she deemed it to be necessary, and that was the end of it – or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.

“You were right to be suspicious of her, you’re a prime candidate for dishonest gods to mess with; but maybe stop being so liberal about using fire magic? You’ll hurt someone with it sooner or later – probably sooner and more than likely yourself.” The priestess scolded Anastacia.

“Prime candidate for dishonest gods to mess with? That just sounds like you’re calling me stupid in a polite way…” The necromancer scowled.

Emilia forced out a smile and gave the necromancer a pat on the head. “I’m saying you’re young, inexperienced and far too powerful for your own good, but at least you know it and know that you can always rely on us.” She lied back down on the grass and covered her eyes from the sunlight. “You should probably go help Gil, finding people seems like something you’d be good at. I’m going to stay extremely still and keep an eye on her.”

It seemed like a decent idea: for once necromancy could be used to help people, or at least to find their remains if there were no survivors. So she took the goblin and headed back into the town to find King and Gilbert. Even before she reached the pile of debris that used to be the gates to the town square, she could feel dozens of goblins in the town, both alive and dead. It would certainly make finding anything a little more challenging, but there was a noticeable size difference between goblins and humans, so that was one of the things she could use to differentiate between the two. While looking at the destroyed buildings that were covered in bread, she realized that she had forgotten to ask what had happened to the town, because right now it looked like it had been attacked by bread.

She spotted King and Gilbert on the other side of the square and jogged to them. The ground was slippery with mud, and Anastacia was barely able to keep her balance but had to slow down back to a walk soon enough anyhow. “Finding anything?” She greeted the pair.

“Dead goblins. I swear there’s even more now than when we started looking…” Gilbert said and peered into one of the collapsed houses. “Can you feel anything?”

“Just goblins.” The necromancer shrugged. Trying to keep count on either the dead or living ones seemed impossible, as every now and then a few goblins died from what could only be described as stupidity. “Sooo… did you guys get attacked by bread?”

“Not quite. It’s a bit of a long story so I’ll tell you the details over lunch, but basically, we got attacked by meat that destroyed the town in the process and then turned into bread for whatever reason. This whole thing is such a fucking mess that I don’t think we’ll ever figure out the full story.” Gilbert explained and shook his head. “So how about we send King out to get us something to eat and make one more round around the town? If you say there’s nothing living in the rubble, it’s good enough for me.”