On the second day after their return, Anastacia felt like she had finally rested properly and gotten rid of the fatigue caused by the quest. With Yulia still sharing a room with her, she was woken up alongside the sheep when Rosie decided it was time to prepare breakfast. The necromancer could have kept on sleeping, but felt like the empty, quiet tavern was a good place to start digging into the book Coquelicot had sent. Especially since she didn’t have anything else to do, as King didn’t seem to be too bothered about his missing friend.

The lamb nervously brought out a cup of coffee for her and kept staring at Anastacia when she took the first sip.

“Oh!... This tastes slightly different. Did you make this?” Anastacia asked and took a second sip.

“I… is it bad?” Yulia panicked and tried to take the cup away, almost like she was worried that Rosie would appear from somewhere to push it off the table.

“Nope, just different. Somehow I didn’t think you’d be the kind to brew stronger coffee than Rosie.” The necromancer pointed out and moved her cup away from Yulia. “Ah! But there is something you need to work on!”

Yulia went pale and tried to grab the cup again. “So it was bad?!”

“Besides the coffee, damn it! The coffee was great, really, but how come you don’t wobble anymore? I liked you better when you jiggled and wobbled.” Anastacia explained while protecting her cup like an animal that was worried about someone stealing their prey. “I just feel like it’d improve the overall experience. Not that you’d have to fake it or anything, just find your inner wobble and work from there.”

The extremely confused looking lamb slowly backed off and returned to the kitchen only to run back with a tray of cookies she had forgotten to bring out.

Anastacia inspected the worn tome carefully: it looked like it had been gathering dust in some back corner of Alizarin’s study without ever receiving much love from its previous owner. The dark blue leather covers had some cracks in it and it looked like something had tried to chew on one of its corners. The reason for the negligence was pretty obvious however, as something with a title like ‘Gentle Necromancy’ probably didn’t interest the red inquisition all that much. It probably didn’t help that the author was called ‘Ivory the Mad’. The binding of the book was also badly damaged and few of the pages fell out when Anastacia opened it for the first time.

“Chapter one: The usage of skeletons in gardening…” She repeated the title of the first chapter out loud and hoped it’d make more sense that way - it did not. “Chapter two: Making sausages without the mess… What exactly is this book?” She kept going through the chapter names one by one and found it quite clear that the writer was losing their mind as they kept writing. “Chapter twenty-four: How to force someone to be alive - Uhh… How many chapters are there?” She asked and kept flipping through the pages, and to her horror, found that she wasn’t even one fifth of the way to the last chapter and that it did indeed keep getting worse and worse. The only comforting thing about the book was that it didn’t have illustrations. “Chapter thirty-three: Friends forever…”

“Well that sounds nice. Is that the new book?” Rosie interrupted Anastacia’s monologue. She sat down next to the necromancer, refilled her cup and placed the coffee pot on the table for Anastacia.

“Yeah, but you need to remember that a necromancer wrote this. So ‘Friends forever’ is probably not a good thing.” Anastacia pointed out and closed the book, so she’d have an excuse to not read what the later chapters were about. “Aren’t you busy? Or is Yulia handling everything already?”

Rosie sighed. “No… It’s just that I made her peel apples for a laugh. She actually figured out a way to do it, but it’s really pathetic to look at and they don’t need to be peeled for an apple pie anyway. It’s pretty hilarious and I can’t keep watching with a straight face, so I’ll just hang out with you until she gets a few done.” She explained, took the book from Anastacia and began flipping through the pages. “Is there anything useful in here?”

“Chapter thirty.” Anastacia said before cramming three cookies in her mouth at once.

“Chapter thirty… thirty… Ah, found it! Chapter thirty: Making friends – I’m just going to assume it’s not about social skills.” Rosie joked and started mouthing the first few sentences. “Yup! it’s about grave robbery. I really like the positive attitude of this author though. Listen to this: The benefit of befriending the recently deceased is that you can choose what your friends look like. Found someone with a nice face but could use a bit more muscle? Just switch the body!” She laughed dryly. “If you read further, they just seem to get more and more lonely… Now is there anything actually useful in this book?”

Anastacia still had her mouth full and couldn’t answer, but it really seemed like Coquelicot hadn’t even opened the book and just deemed it useless based on the title. Either that, or the whole book was just a thinly veiled insult aimed at Anastacia. But it really seemed like the author shared Anastacia’s rare and relatively pacifistic attitude towards the lives of others and really just needed a hug, badly, so potentially there could be something she could actually use.

Rosie kept flipping through the pages while Anastacia worked on emptying the tray of cookies before others woke up, so she wouldn’t have to share.

“Can you go check if Gil’s in his room or has he wondered to the brothel again?” The tigress asked and lifted her feet onto the table. “He needs take the girl out for some shopping before the lunch rush. She needs clothes and stuff and has no money.”

“I can just check it from here.” The necromancer shrugged and closed her eyes to get a clearer picture of the surrounding area. “Huh… Well he’s in his room, but why is there someone in yours? I think it might be Emilia…”

Without missing a beat, the innkeeper half-lied. “She’s pretty much just one big bruise under that armor and cloth after your little trip, so we arranged a special rent payment contract where I allow her to sleep in my far, far comfier bed.”

“I don’t have a bed right now so can I sleep there too? I’m really small so it won’t even be that crowded.” Anastacia suggested.

Rosie laughed. “You lack the right currency. You seemed perfectly happy sleeping on King too, and I’m sure he doesn’t mind.” Suddenly she seemed to spot something interesting in the tome and put it on the table. “What about this? Chapter forty-two: Mannequins – Necromancers of my time rarely care about fashion, but I have discovered something that might aid them in presenting their creations to passers-by! While I was gathering materials for a few of my projects in the town market, I happened upon the group of heroes I had admired some weeks ago, but alas, the mighty stallion of a warrior was no longer with them! I overheard them talking about him succumbing to a poisoned arrow and immediately realized that this was my chance. It did not take long to find the burial site and get my hands on his rather impressive body. Though I fear it might have clouded my judgement somewhat, as I started preparing him right then and there instead of taking him to my workbench, where I could have studied him more closely. This lapse in judgement did not go unpunished, as his still living friends happened upon our little operation. I tried my very best to explain that I only wanted to make sure his exquisite looks would not go to waste and that they were more than free to come see him whenever they wanted to, but the heroes couldn’t see past the admittedly messy looking situation, and I was forced to dispose of them to protect myself. The whole situation was terrible and extremely unfortunate. Perhaps they were just too grief-stricken to understand my side of the story? Hopefully the nightmares won’t last as long this time. On a side note: They aren’t to my tastes and the elf will more than likely present some troubles later on, but I have nonetheless stored them for preparation on a later date, since I believe my warrior would be happy if his friends were to stay by his side, even now.

But now to the part that is probably more interesting to whoever reads my notes after I have passed. Because I was so rudely interrupted, the control patterns were left unfinished, causing some curious effects on the soon-to-be thrall: his body only utilized the will given to it to stay still! With completed patterns, it would work to achieve its goal almost autonomously, but now he simply stayed in whatever position I arranged him to! Oh the possibilities! Since it has nothing to achieve, it requires no further instructions to function seemingly endlessly, meaning anyone could possess one of their loved ones as a mannequin that simply had to be moved by hand. I have to assume the control diminishes over time or upon the necromancer’s demise, but this simply means the mannequin has to be near the necromancer every now and then. I am certain that this will improve the villagers’ opinion of me once I reveal it to them! I can already hear their compliments: ‘Ivory is such a helpful guy, he really made me change my opinion on necromancy! Maybe we should allow him to use the well again.’

I have since optimized the process to allow for the owner to fully lock the joints of the mannequin (Handy for imitating grabbing or hugging!). As always, the patterns are detailed below using High Necromancer Alabaster’s traditional notation for them.” She slowly read from it. “Can you do this?”

Anastacia took a quick look at the notation for the control patterns to make sure it was the same that had been taught to her. “Yeah… But I’m not going to half animate a corpse for you. Honestly I had no idea you were into that…”

“Oh fuck you for even thinking that. The guy’s a total nutcase, but what if you were to do this with only a hand from like a skeleton or something?” The tigress suggested and made grabbing motions with her hand.

“Oh! OH! For her!” Anastacia realized and grabbed the book to take a better look at the chapter. “Yeah! I think I can make this work. It’s meant for fleshier bits, but I don’t see why they couldn’t be engraved in bone. Then I need to just figure out a way to hold them together and put like a glove over it… Give me a couple of days to figure this out.” She said and ran off to get some paper and drawing tools.

Rosie figured it was time to return to the kitchen to make sure Yulia wasn’t slacking and give the necromancer some peace so she could concentrate.

After almost falling over while running down the stairs, Anastacia returned to her seat and started tracing her hand on a sheet of paper. Hours passed as she deciphered the patterns needed and tweaked them to suit bone in a coffee and cookie fueled euphoria. But the planning was only the first part of the building process: she’d still need to make sure it worked by scribbling it on a random hand from the mass grave around the city and then acquire a fresh one that could be prepared so it wouldn’t decay as badly. Once that was done, she’d have to rely on the blacksmith once more to fit the whole thing together and make it so Yulia could strap it on and actually use it.

While it wouldn’t completely replace the missing hand, Anastacia was confident that it was infinitely better than the other types of prosthetics that were available. A regular one would be quick to wear out and clumsy in comparison, whereas one that used magic to work would have slightly more control but only really be useable by mages - on top of being insanely expensive even by adventurer’s standards and eventually draining the wearer’s stamina.

As she worked, Anastacia briefly wondered why something like this hadn't been done before, but ultimately realized that it came down to necromancers not really caring for the troubles of regular people. What's more, in cases like Coquelicot's arms, she could control them directly by herself, making the situation far less complicated. Maybe it really did require a well-meaning but batshit insane person like Ivory to come up with the idea in the first place and then a less deranged necromancer to make it useable.

Slightly past noon, Anastacia’s work was completed, and she proudly presented it to Rosie. The two had chosen to keep quiet about the whole thing - just in case it didn’t work out.

“That’s great, kitten! Now do the right hand…” Rosie whispered and patted Anastacia’s head.

“The right… WHAT?!” The exhausted necromancer yelled, looked at her plan, then at Rosie and then at the plan again before just quietly returning to her seat, tearing the paper and starting over.