Date: Twenty Seventh of February, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

… --- …

Job Arseoth set the spoon down on a clean rock and left the stew to simmer away. Sitting and stewing (in both senses of the word) wasn’t doing his friends any favors. He stood up quietly and moved to listen in on Enra and Sly’s conversation.

“... Prancer, this isn’t your castle anymore.”

“It’s never been my castle.”

“Not the point. This is the wilds, people do dumb shit and win dumber rewards.”

“I could have cast Sleep again…”

“And left them for ghost-food? That’d’ve been crueler.”

“We killed the ghosts!”

“Only one. Baar’Miin scared the other one off. It’d’ve been back at some point.”

“By then the kobolds would have woken up and not been there.”

“Yeah, they’d be chasing after us again.”

Job cleared his throat, “I hate to butt in, but Sly is in the right on that one. Those kobolds have been tracking us ever since Varr Barak. If we’d let them get away again, they would have simply tracked us down at a later date and tried again. And they had a target in mind too. Every rock they slung was aimed at Baar’Miin.”

Enra shook her head, “classic skirmish tactic: kill the healer and the rest will fall.”

Job shook his head, “nah, there’s a higher priority. To use the street phrase, ‘geek the mage first.’ And you proved why. Six seconds into the fight, you had six of them disabled. And you killed five of them before they could recover. You single-handedly took care of an entire flanking force.”

Sly nodded, “they were shooting at Baar’Miin like a hit-squad at a mark. Opportunistic fuckers.”

Enra frowned, “so you’re thinking that the kobolds were some sort of assassination force?”

Job nodded, “exactly. Six to one, as soon as Baar’Miin went down they would have withdrawn and come back later to confirm the kill. No way they would have stuck around to finish the rest of us and the ghosts off.”

Enra rubbed her brow, “but why the Urd? Why not the Princess?”

Job shrugged, “we’d need one of them alive to ask that question.”

Enra shook out her sun-yellow hair, “we can ask Baar’Miin instead. She must know something about those kobolds, she recognised them. ‘Black-scales’ she called them.”

“Feeling better?”

“Not exactly. Now that I know that there was a reason for the attack, a reason that those assassins had to die, I can cope with it. I may not be in the palace anymore, but it seems that Assassins are just refined murderers for hire after all.”

In the blackness of the tunnel, a fell wind blew across the sight of a skirmish. It carried the stench of rotting flesh and the stink of fear. Two dots of black flame, slitted eyes of shadow, looked down at the corpses.

“Worthless, most of you. But this one…”

A hand of skeletal shadow reached down into the flesh of one head and pulled forth the skull from within.

“This one held such promise. Perhaps it holds it still…”

Two more pinpricks of black flame shed shadows in the darkness. They settled within the eye sockets of the skull, flared in confusion, dwindled in realization, then drew into two diamond slits, assessing the situation.

“Tell me little one, what was your name?”

The jaw of the skull bobbed up and down, snapping shut on the stale air.

“Oh, how foolish of me. Here, a small gift, that we might converse.”

A second hand drew a sigil on the back of the skull.

“Now, lock your eyes on who you want to hear you ‘speak’ and they will hear you. Now, What was your name?”

+ +

“Foul Dog? Such an unbefitting name for such a promising soul, but it will serve for now. Tell me, my hound, what would you do if given another chance upon this plane?”

Index stopped trying to explain herself to Baar’Miin and focused inwards upon the questions she was trying to ask herself. What right did she have to take those two lives? She could come up with no answer of her own that satisfied her. Thoughts died half-born, the philosophies of others set to scroll and tome incapable of helping her in the moment.

“Wooden ears not hearing anymore? I’ll stir stew then.”

Index raised one finer, bidding Baar’Miin to wait.

“What, exactly, did the kobolds of the Black-scales do to you and your egg mother to deserve death?”

“First, they made egg mother pregnant with my egg sisters and me.”

“She did not consent to this?”

“No.”

“This is typical of the kobolds of the Black-scales?”

“No, it is kinder than their usual treatment of others.”

“The torture and killing you mentioned before?”

“Yes.”

“I have much to think over.”

“Black-scales tried to kill us. We killed them. What is there to think over?”

“In this, Blue Eyes, we are very different.”

Baar’Miin frowned, “how so?”

“We are both in the early half of our second decade of ‘life’, but you are flesh and blood and emotion. I am… not.”

“Deck could change that, if you wanted.”

“Do you think that would help me to understand...?”

“Understand being alive?”

“Things come over me, these overpowering sensations… at times, I want to hug others close and make these meaningless noises. Other times, it feels like weness wants to separate from my gemstone eyes and a great lack of energy comes over me. Books call theses things emotions, happiness and sadness, but…”

“They just words, not real to you.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know, but doing nothing always worst thing to do.”

“Get the SiDiabolo Deck.”

“My hound, I sense great potential in you. There is only one last question I would ask of you.”

+ +

“Will you serve me in undeath as one of my Deathknights on this plane?”

+ +

Shadowed hands slipped into rotting flesh and pulled forth bones, assembling them into a complete skeleton, its joints held together by wires of shadow. Other hands scavenged rags from about the tunnel to clad the bones in a semblance of the clothes it wore in life. At last the skull was placed atop the skeleton.

“Arise my Deathknight! Arise, the Black Bones! Arise!”

Index gripped the small box tightly and eyed the cards that it held.

“Such a small thing, and yet…”

Index’s fingers settled on the topmost card. They trembled for a moment, then steadied. Index pulled the card and flipped it over to stare at its face. ‘Numeral Two. The High Priestess’ was writ across the bottom in gilded scrollwork below the image of a woman with her hands upraised, a veil and thin robe of white cloth obscuring her features. Index’s eyes grew wide as the card pulsed with white light and dissolved into complex concentric circles of miniscule runes. Index’s eyes went wide. She had forgotten to count the number of cards in the SiDiabolo Deck, to check which mode it was in. And she had dawn one of the SiDiabolo Suite.

A wave of arcane energy slammed the senses of the party. Enra cried out in shock as Sly tackled her to the ground. Job stacked Baar’Miin to his chest and curled his larger body around hers. Index rose into the air surrounded by the rings of runes and began to change.

On the outside the changes appeared to be largely cosmetic. Silver hinge-jointed fingers smoothed into knuckled digits with delicate silver wire tracery. Elbows and knees smoothed out from doll-like to anatomically correct. The magical ‘living’ Ionian oak wood of Index’s skin smoothed flat, the striped grains vanishing into a consistent skin tone. Wine-light hair sprouted and spilled from her head down to her shoulders.

Internally, Index could feel much more intricate changes taking place. What before was solid wood split and reformed. Heartwood became bones and sapwood the muscles wrapped about them. Index’s throat rippled and split into two, a windpipe and lungs forming in the cavities inside her chest. And as the other changes proceeded apace, Index felt that same shift within; from thing to woman, from enchantment with a body to enchanted person. From magical automaton to warforged emissary.