I looked around behind me; the clattering sound of running watchmen was spilling into the alleyway. And so the Forest closes in.
Smart Mouth crouched.
The guards rounded the corner.
And then, inspired, I reached out and grabbed the end of Smart Mouth’s tail.
Not much, it turned out, as we ascended the walls, me streaming along behind the goblin like a ragged ribbon attached to his tail. Smart Mouth gripped the stone window sills and keystones with claws as efficient as pitons, and bounded from wall to wall across the narrow alley while below us I heard the guards pounding on doors, warning the inhabitants of our invasion. All this fuss over one goblin?
“Probably they just don’t want a stray arrow going through someone’s window.” I grumbled as Smart Mouth finally scrambled past a chalked-on quarantine mark, over a projecting gargoyle and onto the roof. “Otherwise they might—” I trailed off as Smart Mouth’s arrival brought us face to face with a party of different goblins, arms loaded up with loot and food, who looked for a moment just as surprised as we were.
“Solo meat!” announced one of them with a hungry grin. I noticed this one was carrying jewelry and valuables, but had recent looking bloodstains around its mouth.
“Bone-licker tribe,” taunted another one with a mean gleam in its eye. “You outta your turf.”
“This day sucks!” Smart Mouth complained, and turned once again to run, eyes darting from side to side as he sought an escape route, but all of a sudden my overworked sense of direction kicked in and I knew where we were.
“Over here!” I called to him. At the very edge of the Forest was a softly glowing window, up under the eaves of a barbershop. Smart Mouth looked over the edge of the building to where I was pointing. This street was around the corner from where the guards were knocking, and it was a long leap across, but the downwards angle ought to make it possible for a determined jumper. He glanced back behind us at the advancing rival goblins, backed up two steps for a running start, and launched himself into the air across the street. Unlike a human, he didn’t wave his arms for balance or pinwheel his legs, just tucked in his limbs, pointed his nose, and flew straight and true right through the window of Ramsey’s apartment.
Glass shattered around us as we rolled to a stop amongst the crates that Ramsey stashed his yet-to-be-fenced goods in. Behind us, the loot-laden burglars called a few derisive comments but declined to pursue, just as I had hoped.
Ramsey, it turned out, was home. He came out of his bed in a sleepy-eyed explosion of flailing limbs, pillows, and enraged kitten, yelling a muffled version of what sounded like “Wait, wait, I can explain!” Smart Mouth shook his own head, dazed, and then we all froze at the sound that emerged from over by the bed.
It wasn’t just a growl. It was the kind of deep, primordial rumble designed to bypass thinking circuits and go straight to the hindbrain of all lesser creatures, politely informing them of their impending doom. It was the kind of growl that reminded you that no matter how tough you thought you were, your place at the top of the food chain was an illusion created only by the (temporary) reprieve of this growl, this creature, possessed of an authority to make giants quake and gods grovel. This sound did not just inspire mortal terror, it was the very reason for it: it was fear’s creator, its genesis.
And it was coming from a small, grey kitten with sea green eyes and fluffed up tail doing a good imitation of a lightning rod.
“It’s ok, Dragon, it’s a… wait, it’s a goblin!” Ramsey’s hand reached back between his mattress and the wall, groped for something, and came back holding a magic wand the wrong way around.
“Ramsey, don’t!” I cried, just in case he could hear me, but of course he couldn’t.
The kitten growled again, turning the rumble into a rising hiss and yowl at the end, while Ramsey fumbled the wand around so that the silver tip was now pointing at us. “This is a wand of Lightning Bolt!” Ramsey threatened. “It’ll blow you into the afterlife faster than you can blink! Don’t make me use it!”
“This is worst plan ever!” Smart Mouth wailed. “No more working for Dragon Boss! No more eating vegetables! I quit!”
And with that he heaved his stomach muscles, opened his jaws wide, and retched my arm up onto Ramsey’s floor.
“Eeew! Gross! I don’t want that! What did you do that for, you crazy…” Ramsey trailed off as something about my arm caught his attention. “No.” he whispered. “No, it’s not, it better not be… it can’t…”
Smart Mouth used this distraction to bolt again for the window, disappearing into the night, but my little clearing stayed here. It contained the open floor space, a cheap rug, Ramsey’s bed and clothes rack (including the incongruous three-piece suit), Ramsey himself, and of course my arm. The eaves of the roof sloped down and faded into the ever encroaching shadows.
With the goblin gone, Ramsey slowly approached my severed limb. He crouched down beside it, and, unmindful of its distasteful state, gently grasped the fingers to better look at my waterbreathing ring. The tiny aquamarine glittered in the lanternlight, and I only just now noticed his own unkempt state; his slept-in clothes, the lamp left on, the rumpled but still made bed. I thought he had been sleeping, but “passed out from exhaustion” might be a better way of putting it. Over by his hatch door I noticed a familiar looking package, wrapped in an advert and addressed to Ramsey in my own blood.
“Is it really…” he didn’t finish that sentence either. The expression on his face was horrible to watch as he carefully turned my arm over to examine the insurance tattoo on my forearm. “Sam.” His voice was perfectly expressionless.
He might have been talking to Dragon (and now I know how he got THAT name), but the kitten was paying him no attention whatsoever. Instead, lambent green eyes looked directly at me.
“Can you see me?” I asked, unmindful of how silly I probably sounded. “Can you tell Ramsey I’m still here?”
In response, Dragon sat down, erected his hind leg into the air, and proceeded to lick his private parts, which, in total defiance of all civilized customs, he was not ashamed of at all.
Ramsey, however, didn’t need telling. As if suddenly come to a conclusion, he rummaged around in his boxes until he found a waxed rain poncho which he used to wrap up my arm, and in no time at all he had tucked it into a messenger bag.
“Hold on, don’t leave yet!” I cried to the empty air. “You need this…” but Ramsey couldn’t hear me.
I looked back over at Dragon, who was still waiting to see if I did any tricks.
“Here, kitty kitty!” I called, and made scratching motions at the package. “Here kitty kitty! What’s this?”
The kitten crouched, pointed his tail straight out, and pounced at my incorporeal fingers. His paws went through me and landed on the package string, which was an acceptably distracting substitute, judging by the way he attempted to savage the paper.
“No, dummy.” Ramsey picked him up and deposited the kitten on the bed, relieving him of Keen’s stolen illusi-frame, which absentmindedly disappeared into a pocket. He eyed the broken glass all over the floor and his hands twitched towards his broom like he hated to leave such a mess, but he wasted no time in grabbing his coat instead. “Be good, Dragon.” he told the kitten. “Stay off the floor, ok?”
Obedient or indifferent, Dragon wrapped his tail around his toes, and watched us out the door.
Chapter Five
R
amsey skipped the line at the Temple, talked his way past the first level of functionaries, and finally came to an important looking cleric at a desk, to whom he showed my arm and the all important tattoo. I dogged his steps; unseen, unfelt, impatient.
“Hmm.” said the grey haired cleric ominously. “Is this all you’ve got?” At Ramsey’s hesitant nod, she directed him down a level into a cold, windowless room. “You can leave it here. We have a waiting room upstairs for relatives.”
“Oh, she’s not my... uh, she’s…” Ramsey started blushing. “Definitely not a relative. Nevermind. I’ll, uh, just wait here.”
“We take our policies very seriously, you know. We’ll see what we can do, just as soon as one of our res-capable divines is woken—um, available.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Ramsey gave the lady one of his the-sun-just-came-out smiles, which made her smile in return, but then his face fell again. “I just don’t want Sam to be alone.”
The lady left it at that, and then it was just Ramsey and I, in the crypts. The occasional flickering divine Light spell did little more than accentuate the shadows.
“Thanks.” I told him. The Forest was only a few paces away now.
My arm lay on a cold stone slab that had a regular, one-of-many look about it, suggesting there were probably rows more just like it. From the expression on Ramsey’s face, quite a few were occupied, obscured from my vision by the Forest. After a moment of staring, he shook his head, rubbed his hands together, and then tucked them up to his mouth and blew on them for warmth. His breath steamed in the cold, dry air.
“I looked for you, you know.” For a moment my heart leapt into my throat, but he was only looking at my severed arm. “I took the evidence you found all the way up the High Priest himself, with whom I did not have an appointment, by the way, and who is now officially very annoyed with me… but I showed them the broken leycrystal and the altar and everything, and it still took one of the officers of the Black Bladesmen themselves showing up before they believed me and took the pictures seriously.”
“We saved a lot of lives.” I told him. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“After, I tried to file a kidnapping complaint against that vampire bastard.” Ramsey looked like he wanted to spit, but didn’t dare here on holy ground. “But he, or someone, drummed up some witnesses saying that you’d challenged him to a duel, and you went willingly. A duel!” he looked like he wanted to either break into cheers or else pull out all of his hair, if only he could decide which. “I mean, of course you did. I swear you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘afraid’.” Ramsey swallowed, hard, and then went on, quietly, “Not like the rest of us.”
I wished more than anything right then that I could just reach out and take his hand. “Yes, I do.” I whispered back. “I’m afraid right now. Ramsey, I—”
It seemed completely unfair for me to have a lump in my throat when I didn’t even have a throat, but there it was.
“Sam, what happened to you?” he continued, softly, not expecting an answer.
And I couldn’t give him one. Might never give him one, if they weren’t able to resurrect me. Of course, he might eventually get around to opening the illusi-frame I sent him, assuming he didn’t just throw away a package wrapped in a hastily grabbed piece of junk mail and addressed in some rather suspicions red-brown ink. It belatedly occurred to me that I maybe ought to have signed it.
Red-brown ink which is in fact my own blood. I blinked. I wonder…
I reached out for Ramsey’s vest pocket; my hand went through the fabric, but I concentrated, closing my eyes, trying hard to make a connection. Cummon, there must be something. If I was bound to my arm, I was surely also bound to my own blood, which had once been part of me…
There!
[Focus1 check: Success. -4 penalty due to untrained skill]
My palms encountered the faintest bit of resistance, fragile as cobwebs. As delicately as a spider, I wrapped my fingers around my own handwriting, and pulled. The package rustled in Ramsey’s vest.
“What the…?” Ramsey jumped, eyes spooked, but he put his hand to his pocket, frowned, and took out the package. He unwrapped it, fastidiously refolding and saving the paper, and then flipped on the illusi-frame.
His frown froze into something hard-edged and frightening as he stared at my last message, and even dead, I took a step back from the pure, cold murder in his eyes.
“I’m going to kill him.” Ramsey announced to no one in particular. “I don’t care what guild he’s in, I’m going to stake that undead son of a bitch outside, at a crossroads, at noon, and I’m going to watch him burn. I’m going to watch the flames eat that pasty white skin of his until he begs to be pissed on, and then I’m going to—”
His hand tightened on the illusi-frame, and the wooden frame began to make tiny noises of distress under the strain. Recalled to himself, Ramsey took a deep breath, forcibly relaxed his hand, and (possibly as an alternative to pitching the illusi-frame into the wall) began to flip through the pictures. I moved around behind him to look over his shoulder. He said “hmm” a few times, turned the frame sideways to peer in puzzlement at the duping machine, and gave a low whistle at the chests full of gold.
We were interrupted by the sound of a wheeled cart, and two people talking. I recognized one of the voices.
“…do this one, but then I’m out of mana. It’s been a long day.”
“Garret!” Ramsey greeted the tall cleric.
“Hey, I know you!” Garret managed a welcoming smile in spite of his fatigue. “You’re the halfling that was with all the ladies who came in for some fever-breaking. Ramsey, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“And how are your ladies doing? Recovering well?”
“From the fever, yeah. But…” Ramsey stepped aside and swept an inarticulate hand over my arm, the stone slab, and the situation in general. “Can you… I mean, you’ve got to help her!”
“Well, that’s more than a rat bite, isn’t it?” Garret waved the clerk with the cart onwards, and we were soon alone in the dimly lit morgue.
“It’s murder, is what it is.” Ramsey replied darkly.
Garret shot him a sharp glance, and then nonchalantly picked up my severed arm, just as if handling gross pieces of dead people was all in a day’s work. “We should discuss this in my office.”
He led the way up, out of the morgue, into better lit corridors, and eventually into a small but beautifully appointed space high up in one of the temple’s spires. The hexagonal room sported windows on three of its walls which would make brilliant rainbows of the day, but their colors were dark and muted in the moonlight. A polished altar, much like the one in the main hall downstairs, but made of gem-inlaid wood, sat serenely in the center.
Garret led the way to one of the discreet doors opposite the windows, unlocked it with a key produced from a ring on his belt, and ushered Ramsey inside.
“Wow, nice digs!” Ramsey looked duly impressed. “I thought only stodgy old farts that had been on a waiting list for like a century ever made it this high.”
“A recent promotion.” Garret admitted, neither modest nor boasting. “It’s one of the perks of the job. Bring people back from the dead, get a corner office with a view.”
Voice mused, still on some other track.
The little office did have a view, through a small, plain glassed window in the back. The decor in here was also finely made, but had a much more used and practical appearance, without the ostentation of a public space. Tucked behind the desk, under the window, was a portable folding cot, the hastily acquired linens unmade.
Ramsey gave the cot a raised eyebrow. “Is that a perk, too?”
“Ha, sort of. It beats passing out at my desk, anyway. This damn rabies plague… But nevermind that right now.” Garret set my arm down on the polished desk. “So, where’s the rest of your friend?”
“Um, well, that’s the problem. I don’t know.”
Garret raised his own eyebrow. “Where did you find this, then?”
“A goblin barfed it up on my floor.”
Garret’s other eyebrow went up.
“I thought...” Ramsey took a breath. “That’s a Gold level insurance policy, right? Which includes body retrieval? So, now you have her arm, the Temple can get the rest of her, right?”
“For a civilian, you’re well versed in Temple policy.” Garret temporized, examining my arm closer, re-reading the tattoo and carefully feeling the firmness of the flesh. “And yes, Gold levels usually include corpse retrieval.”
“What do you mean, ‘usually’?”
Garret sighed, and leaned back in the chair. “Usually, when we receive word that someone has died, we would activate a locating spell and notify the Purpleton Detective Agency, who then put a bounty out on the corpse. One of their Dread Reapers almost always delivers the body to us within a day or two.”
“Do the locating spell, then! Heck, if the Reapers don’t want to go find her, I will!”
Garret held up a restraining hand. “The problem is, the locating spell is tied to the policy tattoo.” He looked down at my arm.
Ramsey looked over at my arm, too. “Oh.”
“The other problem is that in order for the Resurrection to take, the body must be fresh, and the spirit willing and able to return. This is not usually possible after about a week. I’m guessing, by the state of her arm, Samiel has been dead for about six days. Unless…” Here he sat up and looked hopeful. “…you have seen her more recently than that?”
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