Plagued by wandering thoughts and a slowly subsiding headache, Anastacia had slept rather poorly on the night following the visit to the guild office. Spending as much time tossing and turning in her bed as she did asleep, until finally, barely rested and with her hair and clothes unkempt, she staggered down the stairs into the tavern well after the kitchen had started to prepare for the lunch rush. Without so much as a word to anyone, she wandered into the kitchen, stared at a coffee pot while struggling to stay awake until Yulia took it as a sign of her wanting a cup or six and prepared her some breakfast. Now with a cup of fresh coffee and a small bowl of oatmeal placed into her hands, she was directed into an empty table to sort herself out. Flickering in and out of consciousness, she sluggishly ate the oatmeal, finishing well after it had gone cold. She also downed at least two full cups of coffee, but was not mentally present whenever it was refilled, so she couldn’t even tell. She wasn’t the only functionally comatose adventurer in the room at the time, much less over the entire morning, so her antics went mostly unnoticed by everyone – all but one pair of glowing green eyes, excitedly observing the necromancer from among the rafters above.

“You have it with you!” Xamiliere finally exclaimed and slowly bounced off the ceiling to meet Anastacia’s vacant stare with her own, only a couple of centimeters away from her face.

“Mmmh…” Mumbled the necromancer.

“I can smell it on you, you have my letter!” The spriggan said excitedly and gently reoriented herself by holding on to Anastacia’s cheeks.

The very out of place scent of an autumn forest starkly contrasting with the smell of tobacco and food in the tavern was finally enough to somewhat bring Anastacia back to life and she instinctively flinched away from Xamiliere, nearly falling over with her chair. “What?... Quest?” She asked before remembering where she was, who she was or what had happened in the last day.

Xamiliere slowly moved her hand down Anastacia’s arm and laughed slyly. “Yes, the little adventure I have prepared for us!” She once more exclaimed and pulled the neatly folded letter out of the necromancer’s pocket to quickly refresh herself on what exactly she had written.

Anastacia very slowly took one more sip of coffee before joining the conversation. “Oh, right, I did accept that. So, what’s up?” She asked and took a better look at the spriggan. Like the letter had said, the winter hadn’t been kind to the nature spirit, her bark was dry and rough, the burning green energy emanating from within her had a considerably more yellowish hue, and pretty much all leaves typically sprouting from various places around her body had dried up and fallen. Obviously, Anastacia had already seen this not that long ago already, but the change had been gradual and before the letter, she hadn’t really paid that much attention to it as it seemed to have less of an impact on the spriggan’s mood than being stuck inside had.

Xamiliere frowned and put her hand on Anastacia’s hand. “A girl can get lonely, you know? You’ve spent an awful lot of time out there, running about saving who knows how many princes and princesses in peril, like the little weird one you brought here – meanwhile there has been one right here, and you just haven’t had time for little old me!” She clearly overdramatized her blight. “You even brought in another simulacrum! I don’t mind sharing but this crusty old body does make me feel inadequate, since I know how you get around smooth surfaces…”

“Sharing what?... Anyway, I cleared my calendar for now, even told King and Leggy to just hang around and help where they can. It’ll be just us, like you seemed to be asking…” Anastacia explained and grabbed the spriggan’s hand to get a better look at the dried and coarse bark. Xamiliere wasn’t wrong in that she preferred the smoother summer feel, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant either. “So, what did you have in mind? Like shopping or something?”

Visibly excited that she was being paid attention to, Xamiliere took a while to answer. “It’s like the letter said, darling, we’re embarking on an adventure to explore and learn about one another! You’ve made great strides over the last months, but there’s still great many things I can teach you about various things – honestly, though any room with a lock on the door and solid walls would do, I do think there’s a place I… we should go to, a place where I could finally shed bare and show you how you should see me.” She explained slowly creeping closer to the necromancer and lowering her voice, eventually whispering directly into her ear.

“It’s not going to be another brothel, is it?” The necromancer asked, fairly certain that it was going to be one by the sound of it.

Xamiliere sighed and disappointedly pulled back after getting no response at all in the way she would have wanted. “I wish… No, we’re going to the mother grove.” She finally admitted without a heavy layer of suggestive language and tone.

Anastacia nodded. “Sure, I’ll go, but I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s where all spriggans once sprouted and the closest thing they call home.” Xamiliere explained while being very clear to exclude herself from the others of her kind. “The truth is that I am at my wits end and beyond with this weightlessness. I want to go out there with you and the others while you’re still around, but no one in this city is able to figure it out! Since it was done by a god and my kind does not think much of the deities, mother grove more than likely has a handful of ways to fix this – that, and I do actually want a fresh body. It’s downright embarrassing to let you see me like this.”

“Oh, okay.” Anastacia agreed immediately. She could only imagine how torturous it would be for her to be stuck indoors and would take absolutely no convincing at all to help her friend get rid of the curse. “But why wait this long in the first place if you’re pretty sure there’s a cure for it there?”

The spriggan had a noticeable amount of spite in her voice whenever speaking of her own kind. “How long would it take for you to admit defeat and go crawling back to Mournvalley for something? Trust me, your disagreement with necromancers is a fairly civil squabble compared to a spriggan abandoning our supposed purpose. It has been hundreds of years since I left and I still get some pretty venomous stuff coming down the literal grapevine when I’m in the woods.”

“Fair enough.” Anastacia knew there was some kind of a disagreement between Xamiliere and the nature spirits in general regarding her choice of living with people instead of watching over forests, but the two had never gone into detail about what exactly it entailed. Regardless, Anastacia certainly sympathized with anyone who decided to leave behind some predetermined life at the cost of severing all links to everyone they had ever known – but one thing was still unclear to her. “But how do I fit into any of this? I’ll gladly come along if you need someone to swing their weight around but I can’t help but to think there’s better options than a necromancer.”

The frown on Xamiliere’s face briefly turned into a wily grin once more. “First of all, I would take you everywhere I go if I could.” She said and reached out to caress the necromancer’s cheek. “But you being a necromancer is precisely why I need you to come along. You see, I wouldn’t even be let in on my own, but my kind has somewhat of an… adoration of sorts towards yours, and having a cute little thing like you with me to smooth things out will get me at least some traction with them.”

Anastacia found that very hard to believe. “Why would anyone ever think necromancers are anything but horrifying or gross?!”

“There’s actually a lot of historical reasons for it. I’m sure someone there will happily tell you all about it, but I’m not sure how much of it is based on reality and how much of it is just their peculiar image of necromancers from like thousands of years ago. I doubt anyone there has seen one up close ever since your kind huddled into that desolate wasteland they have no business in – certainly not one that didn’t try to attack them on sight.” Xamiliere briefly said in a tone that made it clear she found it all very boring to talk about, and so far removed from the mood she usually tried to foster between her and Anastacia, that she felt the need to maneuver herself between the table and the necromancer, onto Anastacia’s lap. “Of course, I care none for that. I’m frankly a shit spriggan and you’re a terrible necromancer, which is almost a fairytale on its own, is it not?” She whispered.

With a shaky hand, Anastacia took a sip of coffee and pretended to not mind the skinship, which really wasn’t all that unusual for the spriggan but did feel a bit awkward all of a sudden. “So the plan is for you to do what you need to while I get to chat with a bunch of spriggans? This seems like something I’d be interested in, yeah.”

“Hey now! Don’t get distracted. This is our little adventure.” The nature spirit was quick to remind. “Sure, there’ll be a sideshow but this is not about them at all. But first! You need a more… appropriate outfit for the job, so be a dear and carry me upstairs.”

Noticing the amused glances their rather questionable chat had started to gather form around the room and being the subject of enough rumors already, Anastacia decided the simply push the severely disappointed spriggan towards the stairs before calmly finishing her cup of coffee and soon following her upstairs. By the time she reached her room, Xamiliere was already waiting by the door with a neatly wrapped parcel with the name of a local tailor stamped onto the paper wrap.

Even without opening it, Anastacia could tell that the package was suspicious necromancy wise. “What’s that?” She asked as it was handed to her.

“Your costume. Trust me, it’s very tasteful and elegant.” The spriggan assured her with a voice that at least didn’t seem mischievous.

“Okay… why do I need a costume? I have enough clothes these days, I even have a guild uniform if I need something more formal.” The necromancer inquired, understandably suspicious.

“You do look cute in anything, but you don’t look particularly ‘necromancey’ at all. We’ll be spared from a lot of drama if you leave out the fact that you don’t want anything to do with Mournvalley these days and actually look the part. Remember, they haven’t seen a necromancer up close since forever, so if we blow their minds with the looks, they won’t question you at all.” Xamiliere explained, leaving out the fact that outside of the couple of inquisitors, she herself hadn’t seen a necromancer in about as long as the rest of her kind.

Accepting the reasoning, Anastacia headed into her room to change into the new clothes, half expecting them to be something wholly unsuitable to be worn in public. Xamiliere, of course, tried to follow her inside but was tossed out immediately. Even after shoving a sock into the keyhole to plug it, the necromancer could almost feel the excited gaze of her friend through the door itself. She carefully unwrapped the parcel and neatly organized its contents onto her unmade bed. While it wasn’t anywhere as bad as she had feared and could actually be worn outside of a private setting, it didn’t come without some questionable choices. The most glaring detail, which Anastacia had already noticed with her powers, was the fairly generous use of bones to decorate some parts of the costume – and it most definitely was a costume, as no necromancer would ever be caught wearing it. She took a while to inspect the bones, which for the most part appeared to be carved from some kind of ivory and luckily weren’t just random bits of animals the spriggan had found laying around. Even the more concerning parts, namely a necklace with three actual bird skulls, seemed to be professionally treated over what must have been weeks of preparation.

In total, the costume included five pieces: a long, pearly white coat with a lot of golden thread wasted on extremely detailed and extravagant skull imagery on both its collar, cuffs and hem as well as a pair of ridiculous shoulder guards in the shape of skulls; a pair of white trousers with small loops on them to hold onto ten thin bone spikes, all of which were covered in engravings but would work as a weapon at least briefly; a long-sleeved undershirt made from such a pointlessly thin material that it could be seen through even when it was folded over; a black leather vest to cover what the shirt most certainly didn’t, complete with a pair of skeletal hands copping a feel; and finally the aforementioned necklace.

While some skull motifs were a fairly common sight in the clothing made for Mournvalleyan nobility, and some bones were at times used as decorations, such an outfit was borderline insulting to any necromancer if they were told that it represented their usual sense of style. Even to someone who generally wanted to be as insulting as she could towards her own kind, Anastacia found the tacky outfit to be a bit much as she put it on and inspected it with the mirror on the door of her wardrobe. Granted, it fit on suspiciously well, was at least somewhat comfortable and warm, but she still would have vastly preferred her usual thrown together outfits and violet cloak if at all possible.

With her outfit changed, Anastacia was about to unlock the door to let Xamiliere inside to answer some of the many, many questions she had about the clothes, but at the last moment she realized the state of her room. Clothes, books, trinkets, shiny rocks, dirty dishes missing from the tavern, sticks and everything else she had collected over the months covered almost every inch of the floor and most of the other surfaces. She hastily hid what she could into the wardrobe and chest, and kicked everything else under the bed. She also tried her best to make the bed but that wasn’t a skill anyone had taught her, so it ended up looking like she was trying to hide something with her blanket. Somewhat content with the rushed tidying, she finally unlocked the door and let the excited spriggan float her way in.

Xamiliere did a couple of agonizingly slow and thorough rounds around the necromancer, inspecting everything with great interest. “Yes… This will do great!” She suddenly declared and stopped to comb Anastacia’s hair with her fingers.

“Right, so I have a couple of questions.” Anastacia said while trying her best to hide that she actually rather liked having her hair combed by someone else, usually King. “First of all, why is it that you’re able to order tailor-made clothes that fit me and also what the fuck is this costume. No necromancer ever has worn anything this over the top.”

“There’s no answer to that which would sound good said out loud.” The nature spirit freely admitted but didn’t answer the first question at all. “As for the clothes, is that not what you would think a necromancer would wear if you didn’t know them? Maybe I added some things here and there that might seem questionable, but the tailor seemed to agree with my ideas – or at least didn’t say anything against them.”

Xamiliere kept cheerily listening to the well-earned critique for the outfit while tidying the tangled and messy hairdo the necromancer had done nothing to after waking up. Though she seemed excited and cheerful as ever, Anastacia could easily tell there was something she wasn’t being told, something that bothered the spriggan and took her grin down a notch. She figured that for once the spriggan was actually nervous over having to return to a place she had either abandoned or been exiled from, but didn’t know how to approach the subject to ease her friend’s mind.

“Well, if what you say is true, with this costume and my dazzling personality, I’ll charm them no problem. So, you just need to worry about getting uncursed while I keep them busy.” Anastacia tried to encourage her friend by being clear that she was in on the quest despite all the complaining.

The spriggan gave a halfhearted smile in response as she finished making sure the necromancer’s looks were up to snuff and ushered her to sit down on the bed while she continued to nervously float around. “There are still a few things we need to talk about before we leave.” She admitted with none of the playfulness or jest in her voice and sighed. “As much as I want this to be a fun little trip with obvious romantic undertones and no distractions, and it can be that depending on how things go, but I need you to understand something about Spriggans. I’ve lived with people for hundreds of years and have learned to abide by your laws and boundaries even if they don’t make much sense to me – the others have not.”

“So they’re a bit unruly or something? I don’t think that’s a problem, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the goblins.” Anastacia smugly stated.

“NEVER MENTION THE GOBLINS!” Xamiliere immediately screamed and grabbed the necromancer by the shoulders, almost damaging the brand-new shoulder guards with her grasp. “Never! The others will tear you apart if they ever learn you have anything to do with those gross green buggers! I didn’t even think of that… Fuck, maybe this was a bad idea after all…”

The necromancer calmly placed her hands on her friend’s cheeks and tried to squeeze them, but the wood wouldn’t budge so easily. “Relax, I’m not going to mention the goblins. Half the time we’re out there I have to lie about who I am for convenience’s sake. It’s nothing I haven’t done a dozen times before. Besides, if the weightlessness is bothering you so much, obviously I’m going to do this no matter how bad of an idea this might be. Now, what were you going to say about the spriggans?”

Relishing the moment of being held, Xamiliere waited for a while before continuing. “They’re not unruly, they’re pretty much feral. They’re not really violent, so I doubt they will just outright attack us, but don’t let your guard down around them. Only laws they abide by are the ones set by nature, might makes right and all that. So do not expect courtesy, decency or even basic manners from them. If they try something, ALWAYS make sure to show it has consequences and that you’re not afraid of them, ALWAYS stand your ground or they will walk all over you. Assume they will lie to you if they can’t force their will on you.” She explained slowly and clearly, making sure Anastacia would remember every bit of advice she was able to give.

“You’re kind of making them seem like bad people…” Even Anastacia started to worry, she had been looking forwards to what she expected to be slightly mischievous nature spirits like the one she knew.

Xamiliere frowned and pondered for few seconds. “They aren’t exactly bad either, just not civil… Once they know you’re a necromancer, I don’t think any of them would go out of their way to cause you harm, but understand that if you don’t set the rules, there will be no rules. Throw a bit of fire at them or something if they do something you don’t like.”

The suggestion surprised Anastacia. “Throw fire? That seems a bit much if they’re made of wood like you.”

“Being set on fire is a bad time for sure.” Shrugged Xamiliere. “But you can’t hurt us in any way that truly matters. At least not without much more effort. Once they know you can’t be fucked with, they’ll be easier to work with anyway, probably wouldn’t hurt if you claimed to be some Mournvalleyan bigwig and acted a bit high and mighty. Generally, titles don’t mean anything to them, but it won’t hurt either.”

During her life in Mournvalley, Anastacia had seen every self-important noble necromancer there had been at the time, so channeling some of that attitude was easy enough – and she actually had something to back it up with. “So don’t mention the goblins, be confident, stand your ground, don’t take shit from them and throw hands if need be. Got it! Anything else?” She asked after making a short mental list.

“There’s also a chance none of this will matter. This is not something that really happens at all, so in reality there’s no telling what they’ll do when they meet you. Maybe they’ve forgotten everything about necromancers and will just ignore you, maybe they’ll treat you like the princess you are, maybe they’ll fight over you – who knows!” The spriggan added and threw her arms up in resignation.

“Obviously.” Chuckled the necromancer. Saying that any initial planning remained meaningful through even half of the quests any adventurer ever had taken a part of would have been an utter lie, and even the ones made in jest were no exception. “Should I be taking along supplies or something? If even you don’t know how long this will take, a change of clothes or food or something?”

“Food or water won’t be a problem…” Xamiliere said dismissively while pulling herself close enough to whisper into Anastacia’s ear. “…and ideally even those won’t stay on all too much, so I don’t see why you would bring any more clothes either.”

The intense scent of roses imprinted on the letter quickly filled the room as the glowing yellowish green eyes of the spriggan locked with Anastacia’s bright turquoise ones for a moment that could have been a single second or several minutes as far as either of them could tell – time may as well have stopped. What was going through Xamiliere’s mind wasn’t secret or news to anyone, least of all Anastacia, who often chose to play dumb to avoid the topic entirely. In the past months there had been a lot going on in Anastacia’s life, and a friend had been what she needed at the time – and when she was needed, the spriggan was an excellent friend to have. In fact, Anastacia knew for sure she could have safely ended the risqué little game they were playing by simply giving a clear ‘no’ as an answer, but for some reason she had never done that. Without a doubt, some level of intrigue had always been there, but after only a brief taste of free life after years if living in a cell, it had not been the time for such developments in her life – something on which both she and Emilia had agreed on during their little talk in Crescent. But now was the time for Anastacia to find out that Iris’ unhelpful comment on the night before had clearly thrown a wrench into the works of the situation and it may have been the time to start figuring out things that had been easier to brush aside before.

“You’re trying awfully hard today…” The necromancer whispered back, acknowledging what her friend was trying to do for the first time in a good while.

Actually getting a response must have caught Xamiliere off guard as her hand stopped halfway towards the topmost button of Anastacia’s vest and she backed off a bit with a startled look on her face, as if she was being blamed for something. “I… Sorry. I just… damnit. You know how it is, right? I figured I still have a horse in the race and that eventually it’ll work as long as I keep trying…”

Realizing that she for once had the upper hand, Anastacia hid her embarrassment as well as she could and pressed her finger on the spriggan’s lips to shut her up. “It’s not going to work today, or tomorrow – but if I were you, I’d focus less on trying harder and more on actually being ready when- if it finally works, because this is an embarrassing look for you after so much effort.” She smirked while staring directly into Xamiliere’s eyes before finally pushing the spriggan away with her finger. She then stood up, straightened her ridiculous outfit once more with the aid of her mirror and turned back to her friend with her usual cheeky smile. “Now then, we have a quest to do, and now that I think about it, the location was listed as 'Valor' and I sure as shit aren’t going to go out there wearing this nonsense and risk being seen by people I have to face again. So how exactly are we going to get into this mother grove of yours?”

Xamiliere slowly floated across the room and slammed into the opposite wall without doing anything to stop it. “Hold on… give me a second, I’m blacking out here… I… What the fuck just happened? I think my mind touched the void for a bit there.” She uttered with a voice full of confusion, glee and a bit of hope.