“No.” Ramsey’s voice was flat again.
They were both silent for a moment, then Garret sighed. “I’m really sorry, but without her corpse, there’s nothing we can do. We’ll keep her arm, of course, and if the rest of her turns up, bring her here right away.”
Aside from the fact that I had not, technically, paid for my policy, I had to agree. My little clearing was getting downright claustrophobic. Don’t panic. I told myself. Don’t panic…
“But, you said yourself she’s almost been dead too long already! It’s a Gold policy, there has to be something you can do! Some way to find her body!”
Garret took a breath, paused, and then shook his head. “Sorry man. Temple regs.”
Ramsey, who watched people closer than I would ever know how to, gave the tall cleric a level look. “There is something.” he said, evenly, unblinking. “A way to get her body back. Isn’t there?”
Garret met his eyes and said nothing.
“She didn’t just go off and die like, like… some noob adventurer who doesn’t know which end of a dragon to sneak up on.” Ramsey pleaded. “She was killed saving the city! That’s got to be worth something.”
The look on Garret’s face was slowly being replaced by something which might understatedly have been labeled Not Amused. “That vampire did this, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. “The one that came in here like he owned the place, right in the middle of my Cure Disease2.” There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘my’.
Ramsey nodded.
Garret sighed again, massaging his face with one broad-fingered hand. “There is a spell that might work…” he eventually conceded. “But it’s rare. We only have scrolls of it, and I’d have to dump a massive amount of mana into one to activate it. I can’t justify using Temple resources of that level, not with all of our divines tapped out daily trying to combat this current crisis. I cannot save one life at the cost of many.”
“What about… a trade?” Ramsey looked thoughtful, and I watched his face do its transformative trick again, going into full Bargaining Mode. “One life, for many?”
Garret no longer looked quite so tired. “And how would you promise that?”
Ramsey took a deep breath. “Do your locating spell, bring Sam back, and give me one potion of Cure Disease.” He absently touched the breast pocket with Keen’s illusi-frame in it. “And in… two weeks’ time, I’ll give you back as many Cure Disease potions as you want.”
Garret went over and opened the small window, which I now saw looked over the main Temple Square, with its long line of petitioners. “How many?” he asked, softly.
“Uh…” Ramsey groped for a number. “A, uh, hundred.”
Garret turned back, clearly trying to decide how seriously to take this offer. Ramsey gave him his most winning smile. It wasn’t even aimed at me, but I smiled back, hope fluttering in my chest. Ramsey didn’t dump Charisma, either.
It occurred to me that even if he hadn’t been at this job long, divines must hear every version of begging, pleading, threats, intimidation, and wild promises ever dreamt up by desperate and grieving loved ones. And what might I promise, if Ramsey’s life were on the line?
Finally Garret ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back. “What the hell.” he muttered to himself. And then to Ramsey: “Deal.”
The Forest wasn’t closing in anymore, it was here. Garret and Ramsey were just visible in my orbit; grey shapes, leached of color. Beyond them, barely seen shapes raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and once or twice, red eyes glinted amongst the trees, the only color in the land of the dead.
“Before we begin,” Garret said, pouring the salt circle around the altar in the bigger room, “there’s a few things you need to be aware of. For starters, your friend can only come back if her soul is both willing and able to return.”
“Yes!” I told them, excited and unheard. “That’s me! Check! Willing and able! Just hurry up already!”
“This spell I’m about to do will call her a new body. In layman’s terms, it will create one. Created bodies are a very valuable, ahh, commodity, among certain… entities. If Sam, if her spirit, doesn’t return, the body will need to be destroyed immediately. If it’s not, something else could move in; something that’s not Sam. Do you understand?”
“Wait, what?” I asked, indignant. “No way! No one else gets to go running around in my skin!” I looked nervously around the Forest, but was unable to pinpoint the vaguely felt presences.
Ramsey nodded, unhappily. “Will she still… will this new body still look like her?”
“Oh yeah, that won’t be a problem. We have her arm here as a pattern, and any physical piece of someone can be used as a template for their entire body. That’s what makes blood sigils so secure, and so dangerous. Anyway, the Resurrection wouldn’t work on her spirit if the body wasn’t hers, it wouldn’t have a matching morphic resonance. Think of it like, well, like a really custom tailored suit.”
“Or a bloodbound magic item?” Ramsey asked dryly.
“Yes… precisely.”
The preparation complete, Garret retrieved my arm and set it down on the altar with, if not ceremony, gentle respect. He composed himself, made a few passes over my arm with his hand, and then frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m detecting some not-so-faint traces of necromancy.” Garret sounded very disapproving about this. “You know if she has become an undead, or died of necromantic energies, she is un-resurrectable, right?”
“I am too resurrectable!” I shouted at them. “I’m super-resurrectable! I am so resurrectable I will come back as… as… a turnip and haunt you if you don’t stop arguing about it and get me out of this creepy forest already!”
“No… I mean, yes, I know! But we have to try! I mean, there are other reasons for a lingering necromantic aura, right?”
“Well, technically, yes.” Garret conceded. “But if I burn this scroll for nothing, I’m going to have some serious explaining to do…”
“Nevermind turnips, I’m going to haunt you as a tree. A big, dark, looming tree, with scratchy branches and shadows. And see how you like it.”
“A hundred bottles of Cure Disease.” Ramsey reminded him, folding his arms over his chest.
“You drive a hard bargain, halfling.” Garret grinned. “Ok, let’s do this.”
Ramsey stepped back. Garret took a sparq potion of out his pocket, downed it in one gulp, opened the scroll, and began the ritual. On the altar, the chewed end of my arm began shimmering, and… repairing itself. The ragged ends of the skin began to flutter and mend, the muscle and bone wound outwards, trailed almost instantly by twining veins and arteries that snaked through and about like climbing vines. From the stub it grew outwards, making an elbow, and then an upper arm.
That’s the bicep. I identified proudly, as my spirit arm began to tingle in response. And the triceps, and the humerus…
My fascination with this process was interrupted by the gradual realization creeping up my spine that I was being watched. Slowly, I turned around, and met a pair of reflecting red eyes that did not back down. Instead the silhouette of… something… let out a low, menacing growl, and launched itself at me.
Instinctively, I ducked, shielding my neck and head with my arms, and the shadow thing went right over me.
My initial relief at having so easily dodged turned quickly to suspicion; I stood back up, looking for it, and saw it standing over my still-assembling form, which was complete to the shoulder. The thing reached out a nebulous, ill-defined limb, and like a dog rolling in its favorite smell, tried to wiggle its way into my arm.
“That is not a glove!” I yelled at the shadow creature, which gave no indication of understanding me. “That is MY arm and you can’t have it!”
My spirit hands reached for my daggers before my brain realized that of course they weren’t here.
I ignored Voice’s sniggering and jumped for the altar, grabbing at the shadow creature with my bare hands and trying to rip it out. It was like trying to grab something semi-liquid, it just dissolved in my hands, slid of out of my grasp, and reformed. Snarling, it turned and snapped at me; suddenly very solid black teeth missed me by inches as I let go and jerked back.
“Yes, I get it!” I growled at Voice. “Stop making stupid puns and tell me how to fight this thing!”
The shadow on the altar was having another go at worming back into my body. I kicked at it, but the black form shrugged one boneless shoulder, dodging like dark mist, and my kick went wide, almost sending me off balance. The thing bent its… arm? leg? backwards, against all laws of physiology, and swiped at my exposed leg. I dodged, too.
The creature had another go at wiggling back into my body, which was now almost finished, and this time I tried to stomp it. It pulled back out of my skin long enough to dodge, but it was becoming more determined as its would-be vessel neared completion. Off to my left, another pair of gleaming eyes appeared, and moved hungrily forward.
“Tell me something useful, Voice! How do I keep these things out?”
Voice wailed.
Of course! “Voice, you’re a genius!”
The shadow creatures congregated, crouched, eyes fixed on my body, over which my spirit self stood guard. Barely audible now, I heard Garret finish his spell. I held up my hand, palm facing the creatures, and spoke as powerfully as I knew.
“Shaziri.”
[Daily Mana6 Cast: 1/1 (-2 maximum mana due to Enervation)]
Light7 bloomed around me. The shadow creatures squealed, a horrible, high pitched noise like steam escaping a valve, and writhed back as if sprayed with something toxic. In the brief lull, I dove forward, twisting as I fell, and plunged into my own body.
It fit, like… a glove.
For a moment I was neither alive nor dead, and time itself was put on hold. My little Light spell blossomed and bloomed, multiplied, and unfolded to make room for a vast presence, something which felt like the polar opposite of the cold shadow creatures. The presence itself was huge beyond conceptualizing; books could be written of it, lifetimes spent in contemplation and pursuit of it, and yet the heart and essence of it would always remain a direction rather than a place; a perpetual horizon.
Out of consideration for our inadequate mortal senses, the presence shrank and presented to us a single facet of the whole: a blonde, golden skinned woman with a metallic, reptilian shadow. She nodded, once, to Garret, and he bowed in return.
“Thank you, my lady.”
[Spell effect: Resurrection8]
[Hit Points: 1/8]
[Debuffs: (Enervation) negative levels: 3]
[Current Level: 1 (of 4)]
It felt like falling awake, like the moment when you are weightless and dreaming and, suddenly, with a stomach-churning rush of sensation, you slip back into the grasp of gravity and color and light. Something else rode the Resurrection in, too, something that did not come all the way forward, into the light.
I sat up (convulsed into a sitting position, more like) and gasped in a breath of thick, sweet, real air. My blood churned in my ears, loud as a river, my palms rasped against the grain of the wooden altar, and my eyes fought for focus against the blaze of candles, the glint of stained glass windows, the white of the marble walls.
“…what the heck? She’s glowing. Is that normal?”
A shape resolved itself: a freckled face, a pair of worried hazel eyes, and a long green coat full of pockets. Ramsey was holding a thick, jewel encrusted book in both hands, raised as a weapon.
“Sam?” he asked, his voice heroically steady, “is it really you?”
I gaped at him, working my jaw, trying to remember how to speak. The shadows in the corner bulged precariously, misshapen limbs pressed against a thin and insubstantial membrane that looked just about to tear... but garnets embedded in the altar flared to life, and a web of emeralds sent green flickers into the membrane, strengthening it. The shadow creatures redoubled their efforts and tried again; mad things, hungry things, insatiable. Semi-solid claws and teeth gnashed and tore at the material world.
“Behind you!” I finally got out. Ramsey and Garret spun around. Ramsey’s eyes went wide with horror, but Garret hooked a thumb under his chain of office worn around his neck and pulled out the huge golden coin pendant on the end of it. He brandished it, dragon-side out, and spoke a word of power.
Pure, divine energy pulsed out from him in a shockwave. I felt it rush through me, wafting my hair, and then through the altar I was sitting on and through Ramsey and the fancy candelabras. The candle flames burned brighter for a moment, and when the shockwave hit the shadows the things in them did not squeal or flee but simply disintegrated into the finest ash, undone as if they had never been, and there were no more shadow creatures. The Forest was gone. Or at least I can’t see it anymore.
The thought was not as comforting as I wanted it to be.
I swallowed, flexed my jaw, and finally managed, “Yes, I’m here.”
On my left there was a swish of long velvet sleeves, embroidered with golden dragons. “Well," Garret observed, with his usual unrufflable calm, “that was close.” He murmured something else, then put down his holy symbol back in his robes. “It’s really her, but she’s still… hurt.”
With an effort, Ramsey wrenched his attention back from the corners of the room, and I got to watch his face do its transformation trick again, this one like a sunrise, like someone coming awake from a nightmare. For a moment it looked like he wanted to rush forward and hug me, and then his gaze dropped from my face, downward one notch, his eyes went huge, and he had his own jaw dropping, tongue tied moment.
“Sam, you’re naked! I mean, I… you’re… I wasn’t…!” Ramsey spun around, trying to hide his eyes, or maybe the blush that was creeping up around his ears. “Here!” he said, shrugging out of his coat and handing it back to me while still staring determinedly elsewhere.
Suddenly embarrassed, I hugged at the green fabric, recalling that this was civilization and it had its rules. I folded the long wool around me, covering myself and hiding the lingering otherworldly glow. I would not be something shameful, not for you.
“How are you feeling?” Garret asked, once I tied the coat in place.
I rubbed at my face, and then pushed my hair up and back. It was still metallic gold. I guess the spell saved that, anyway.
“About half dead, still, to tell you the truth.” I had felt worse before, but not by much, and not in any situation not involving asshole vampires.
Garret nodded. “I thought as much. Looks like you got hit by, what, an Enervation?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Whatever it was, it looks like most of your body’s vital force is drained away. Luckily for you,” Garret rolled up his long sleeves, “you’ve got the best ins
urance policy we offer, and I’ve got some mana left. Lay back down here and we’ll take care of it.”
I did, and Garret began yet another incantation, this one from memory, but much more involved than the simple healing I remembered from… had it only been a week ago?
[Restoration9 bestowed: 3 levels]
[Levels: 4/4]
[Hit Points: 20/20]
I felt my confidence come back like a vessel being filled with water. The mana poured into me, warming me from the inside, creating a density at the seat of my diaphragm; a reservoir of the memory of victory.
Yes. This is who I was. How had I ever forgotten?
As soon as the spell finished I hopped off the altar, unable to sit still. I stretched all the way down to my toes and up to the invisible sky, then recentered myself, grinning. I wanted to run around the room. I wanted to bounce off the walls, I wanted to climb things.
I took Ramsey’s hands instead.
“Thank you.” I told him. “I—"
The door behind me burst open. I spun around, arms out by instinct to shield my friends, and went for my daggers which still weren’t there, to protect us from…
<…a trio of little old men?>
No, one of the beardless ones was a woman, though you could hardly tell them apart under the masses of embroidered vestments and bejeweled holy symbols and flowing headscarves. The old priests wasted no time, but immediately spread out, brandishing holy symbols as if prepared for an attack.
When none was forthcoming, the woman eventually dropped the oversized golden coin, which hung on a great beaded chain around her neck.
“Garret Gaborenlich!” she snapped. “Would you care to explain the very potent and completely unauthorized Summoning spell that just disturbed us from our rest?”
Now that I looked closer, I saw the sumptuous garments did look rather hastily donned. The smaller man, a stooped, pale elf, appeared to have actually put his chasuble on inside out. He was peering through a thick monocle and muttering to himself, rather like Garret had just before he brought up concerns over “lingering necromantic auras”.
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