A Different Kind of Deadly

by Nicole Martinsen

"Duck has a discerning eye when it comes to men, s-still..." she mused, giving me the once-over. "It's uncanny."

  "What is?"

  Jiki froze, her arms dropping to her sides. "You mean, Diana never told you?" She looked away, the water droplets curiously resembling beads of sweat. "No, I guess s-she wouldn't."

  "Could you elaborate? What isn't Diana telling me?"

  "You're his s-spitting image," Jiki sighed. "Inval, I mean. But forget I s-said anything. It's all in the past now."

  Inval?

  I didn't hear a word after that, obediently moving as Jiki needed to get me into the armor.

  I thought of Diana and her lovelorn expression, and her reasons for entering a Doll Contract with me.

  I licked my lips nervously.

  "Jiki?"

  "Hmm?"

  "I take it that you met Inval?"

  "Oh yes," she replied heartily. "Many times."

  "What was he like?"

  What was wrong with me? Why was I so desperate to find something wrong with this guy?

  "C-Charismatic, witty, c-clever," she listed, and with every word of praise I felt a stinging lash against my pride. "But also a bit s-strange for a necromancer."

  My ears perked up. "Strange?"

  "Yes... you s-see, he s-said s-something once. Oh, what was it?" she fumed, scrambling to recall the exact words. "Ah yes, I think I have it now. He c-cringed during a trip to the butcher, and I joked that he was a necromancer who was afraid of the dead. And he told me, 'Jiki, I'm not afraid of dead things, only things that look dead.' S-see? S-strange."

  I felt my heart drop in my chest.

  The words Diana had used to comfort me back in Nethermountain... they were his words.

  Is this why you're so cold to me, Diana? Is that why you act like you care when it pleases you?

  Reality sunk in like a knife to the ribs.

  To Diana I was never 'Marvin'.

  I was just a sad echo of the man she wished I could be.

  18: Razitar The Blind

  Jiki had me wait in an antechamber, a loft high above her work space, while she brought Diana in for her fitting. I found Leo cheerfully rapping on a number of glass columns on the far end of the balcony.

  Tully was the one to alert Leo of my arrival by tugging sharply on his high collar. My friend snorted as his eyes fell on my armor-clad frame, telling me that I looked at least as ridiculous as I felt.

  "You look like someone stuffed you into a metal box."

  "No thanks to someone who told Jiki how weak I was," I shot back, glaring.

  "Woah now, was I lying?" Leo's chest plate doubled his stature; the benign question took an intimidating quality as a result. "I think your pride is a small price to pay for your life, Marv."

  The logic was solid enough to serve as a metaphysical slap to my senses. I looked down at myself, at a suit of leather and scale I had no business wearing, at a quest I had little chance of succeeding, and the people I had unwittingly dragged into my issues due to my incompetence.

  Leo didn't deserve my attitude, especially not for a problem that had already died centuries ago. I had a beef with Inval, and like a proper necromancer, he had an incredible knack for haunting others long after his demise.

  "I'm sorry, Leo. You're right."

  "Naturally, naturally," he repeated with vigorous nodding. Leo craned an arm around my shoulder, swiveling me towards one of the columns that had caught his attention earlier. "Now lookie here, Marv. We've gotta thank these beasties for saving our hides! Or is it, them saving their hides? For our hides to save later..." He began mumbling, one of the few people I knew who could land himself in a stupor in this fashion.

  Me? I was too disgusted as usual to care much more than that.

  It would seem that Leo's "beasties" were a number of menacing creatures from the Moor of Souls. They had been skinned by the hands of a skilled hunter, causing me to wonder whether there was more to Jiki than her talents as a smith.

  I studied the muscle tendons, which had been left largely intact. Most of the creatures floating in the glass columns looked to have the rough composition of dogs and wildcats. But there were two who reminded me of the Fleshy Uglies we'd encountered near the Ivory Arch at the start of our misadventures in the Moor.

  These specimens had no real shape, a conglomerate of limbs which made no evolutionary sense as far as I could see. While partially decomposed in some places, the flesh was human, and yet...

  "Marvin!" Leo shouted. "Look at this!"

  I steeled my queasy gut with a silent plea, expecting to find some oozing mass of putrid waste, but as per habit, I was mistaken.

  This body was unmistakably male, and (mercifully) had his hide in place. Golden skin and sylvan ears marked him as an Dune Elf, likely from the High City of Isoviel.

  He wore dark robes from the waist down, a deep indigo that had somehow resisted fading inside the liquid vat its wearer called his final resting place.

  Shimmering embroidery caught my eye like a fishing line, practically distorting the fluid around it. I shoved my face against the glass, straining to read the word it spelled.

  "Rûnalde'qar?" I scratched my head.

  "Don't ya mean Rûnaldes'sin?" asked Leo beside me. Tully hopped on the ground as he lowered himself to inspect the wording. "It's Runic for Sorceress."

  I raised an eyebrow at the body's broad shoulders and nonexistent breasts.

  "Either she's butch or the spelling is off. That's not a rank Isovelites give lightly."

  Isoviel is famous for a number of reasons: it's the oldest of the High Cities, it's the only one openly accepting and encouraging of magic, and it's fiercely matriarchal.

  The all-encompassing title for a mage in Runic was Alouthar for men, Alouthess for women, and Alouthrin for groups of either or both genders. While I'm not an expert in Isovelite culture, I did know that it was next to impossible to get into the highest echelons of society without being born into them. If a woman tried hard enough in her craft, and successfully managed to Awaken her power, she was automatically in the highest caste by grace of her strength of will and determination.

  While men weren't exactly discriminated against (again, I can't say as I haven't been there), I've never heard of one going through an Awakening by his own merit. Magic wasn't so different from other pursuits. Women were more likely to take to subtle branches, as they could detect minor nuances better. Men frequently dealt with flashier or material manipulations since it made more practical sense. Naturally, there were exceptions to the rule no matter where one came from, but there was an undeniable trend to these things.

  Rûnaldes'sin was a title of honor and status, belonging solely to the females who successfully Awaken their magic. Between Alouthess and Rûnaldes'sin, the difference was like calling someone a street-peddler versus a Grand Vizier. Penalties for using the title incorrectly, whether an honest mistake or genuine mocking, ranged from the loss of a limb to capital punishment.

  If this man was really a Rûnalde'qar, a Sorcerer, than he was as good as royalty anywhere else.

  "Who is he?" I wondered.

  Uhh clambered up the stairs to the loft; Jiki must've let him come back. He fixed his lime-green gaze on the column coffin.

  "Razitar, forty-first sssson of the Orchid Namufet," he intoned.

  Leo and I looked at one another. Again, Uhh was a font of information in the most curious way. I really want to know whose bones he was comprised of that he could summon this kind of knowledge on a whim.

  "Do you know why he's here, Uhh?"

  "Razitar issss dead, and cannnnot ssssurvive outssside of presservative compound."

  "I meant more along the lines of how he came to be in the Moor of Souls in the first place."

  Uhh raised his arm, pointing at Razitar's wrists. What I originally took for black bangles were lines of fine script.

  "What does it say?" I asked.

  "Nature's blesssssings are never owned, onnnly loaned. In the ennnnd all that we
puuull, in mortal greeeed, is paid in fuuull." Seeing that I was about to ask more, Uhh started on another explanation. "Razitar waaas born blind. It was saaaaid he spoke to spirits. One becaaaaame his eeeeyes, that he might seeeee as they do."

  "A spirit?" Leo took a step forward. I could see where he was going with this. "A nature spirit?"

  Uhh looked to me on whether or not he should reply. I nodded.

  "You caaaall them byyy a different name. A naturrrally occurring autooomaton. Razitar dissappeared in the desert saaands; the spirits took baaaack his eyes. But they, too, feeeell. Down, dooooown, down, to the Salamander Nesssst."

  "Marvin," said Leo. "Didn't Duck say something about that? The Eyes are found in the Salamander Nest?"

  The gears spun wildly in my head. I gaped at Razitar's body.

  "His eyes? His eyes are the Eyes of the Leviathan?"

  "And if they were made by a naturally occurring automaton..." His eyes turned into perfectly round saucers. "SAND WHALES! THERE ARE SAND WHALES, MARVIN!"

  I was terrified that the cavern would collapse at the sound of his yelling. I bunched my shoulders, waving him down.

  "There's no guarantee that they're Sand Whales, Leo. We have evidence that the automatons are real, but we don't know what they look like."

  "I don't care!" He picked me up (it didn't even faze me at this point). "Don't you see, Marvin? It's proof, proof that great-great-great-great-great grandpa Leeroy wasn't crazy!" Leo's face twisted into a knot. "Well there was that one time with the donkey and the three-legged race, but never mind. He wasn't totally off his rocker."

  "Donkey and the three-legged race?"

  "He was on stilts, and the donkey was a paraplegic... then again there was that other time when he excavated into a haunted dwarven mineshaft."

  "Leo, I get it."

  "But Marvi-"

  "No, seriously, I get it."

  I'd be ecstatic as well if I could redeem a family line like that. Gods, Leo was practically normal by comparison. The thought was scarier than half the things I'd seen since leaving Nethermount.

  "But something isn't right," I muttered. "Uhh, you said something a while ago. Something about a universal soul?"

  "Ssspirits arrre unique. Borrrn to siiiingular purrrpose. Eyes arre, Eyes arrrrre..." His head lolled, snapping back to attention as though he were losing energy. "Not bound to sssource material. Can brrrring life to any medium."

  "By the Gods," I gasped.

  "What is it, Marv?"

  "Leo... I think the Eyes can bring Undead back to life."

  19: Jiki's Lament

  "It s-seems they found Razitar," Jiki commented lightly, shifting the lantern above her workstation.

  "You still keep that elf around?" Diana asked, glancing at her chest cavity, which was now hinged open. It was luck that enabled Jiki to do repairs in this fashion; if she had to break the Doll open then Marvin would be torn apart in a similar manner due to the symbiotic nature of their Contract.

  The Rusalka scowled deeply at the cracks that had formed on the insides of Diana's joints, with many rusting from years of foregone maintenance.

  "Blame s-s-sentimentality," she stuttered. "It was c-common, where I'm from, for women to keep tokens of their old pas-s-sions."

  "Tokens I understand," Diana joked, "but you take it a step further by keeping the man altogether."

  Jiki paused from her labor to crane her dripping face over the Doll, plain in its displeasure.

  "Marvin is not Inval."

  Diana blinked. It took a moment to make the connection between their lighthearted banter to this sudden statement -which sounded a lot more like an accusation in the Doll's ears.

  "I know that."

  "Do you?" Jiki grabbed a wrench from her toolbox, swiveling back to the problem area. "S-seems pretty obvious from the look on your face when he is-s-sn't watching."

  "And what would that look be?"

  "Dis-s-sappointment." Jiki cranked a bolt tight. "Res-sentment, too. S-still a child, Diana. Hating men for being who they are and not what you want them to be."

  Diana tried to summon her anger, but found it a futile attempt. Any ire she could muster was immediately redirected at herself.

  "That isn't true," she denied. Jiki saw right through this feeble rejection. She didn't look at Diana, but she made certain that the Doll could see her eyebrow raised in all its skeptical glory.

  "Where Razitar is c-c-concerned," Jiki continued, "There is only rage now. It s-sustains me, and binds my s-spirit to the Moor."

  "You never did tell me what happened between the two of you... beyond the obvious," said Diana, motioning to Jiki's undead state. "How in the world did you get involved with a Rûnalde'qar?"

  Jiki didn't mind the question on the surface, but Diana felt a tremor beneath her clammy fingers as she continued reinforcing the mechanisms that made up her body. It was as deceiving as a hurricane lurking beneath a stagnant pool; the furious emotion acting as the Rusalka's reason for existence.

  "A c-common tale, at the time," she began. "I lived in the northern plains with my tribe, but during the Feshoun Urah, the trading fes-s-stival during the autumnal equinox, s-slavers raided our c-camp."

  "Slavers in the northern plains? I didn't realize you had them there."

  "We don't," she replied flatly. "The Feshoun Urah takes place on the outskirts of the Howling Desert, where we meet with our desert-dwelling brother and s-s-sister c-clans. Isoviel s-s-started its infamous priestess c-candidacy that year. I was among the first of those honorably s-selected for training."

  Isoviel, despite being a beacon of culture and civility on the surface, was a place not so different from the Moor of Souls. Cruelty was administered in near-imperceptible doses upon those with few means, like poison slowly killing its weary victims.

  While Diana knew little about the nuances of its culture, she did know that it was a theocratic society built upon the Goddess Korosuth. At the heart of power was the High Priestess. While she was to remain impartial in nearly every way, the four Orchids, her handmaidens, acted as the true expression of power in Isoviel.

  Despite elves never dying of old age, the High Priestesses had a habit of falling to all sorts of fatal tragedies, resulting in the increasing need for replacements.

  Priestess candidates were highly respected, but Diana couldn't determine whether it was due to the divine aspect of their position, or out of pity. There was a saying in Isoviel that it was better to be born an animal for slaughter than to be a priestess potential. While Diana could never determine the conditions that would warrant such an extreme phrase, it was universally understood that it was there for a reason.

  "I s-s-survived on s-skills I learned in the plains," said Jiki. "Razitar aided me more than once. In c-childish youth, I believed his flirtations c-came from love." She sighed -it was the sound of a woman gargling underwater.

  "He was playing with your feelings?"

  "He was too s-systematic for that," Jiki corrected her. "Razitar needed knowledge exclusive to priestesses in order to further his res-search. And he benefited from my influence in the higher cas-s-stes... until he became a Rûnalde'qar," she finished simply. "Eventually my harping exc-ceeded my usefulness. He s-strangled me to death at an oasis, and dumped my c-corpse at the Pit in Nethermountain."

  "So how did you wind up in Krisenburg?"

  "I wasn't a Rusalka initially," she explained. "The necromancers animated me in a number of fashions, until I was too rotten to be useful. Spirit-based undead s-s-seldom form quickly. It took me decades to get my bearings. I visited Nethermountain often in those days," she mused, closing Diana back up again. "Imagine my s-s-surprise when Razitar, eyes freshly plucked from his head, fell into the Pit. Just like that, my rage, which had been fueling me all that time, finally found its s-s-source."

  Jiki's was a complicated expression, a smile made terrifying by the murder in her bloodshot eyes. Despite her pleasant manner, a Rusalka was a vindictive and evil spirit; Diana took it
as a silent reminder to never get on her bad side.

  "But he was dead." Jiki closed her eyes, slamming a clenched fist on her work station. "He had the nerve to let himself get killed before I could repay the favor. S-so I took his body, just so I c-c-could s-stew over it. Hatred keeps me young, after all. Without his c-carcass I would've faded into that pesky white tunnel c-c-centuries ago."

  "It's amazing what a grudge can do for a woman," Diana muttered, eliciting a bubbly laugh from her friend.

  "My hatred pales to yours, Diana," she beamed, helping her sit up. Jiki handed Diana a metal hauberk to try on. "I c-c-can't imagine the things you'd do to K-Koronos if you ever got your hands on him."

  "I doubt there are punishments worse than anything a demon could whip up."

  "Oh, I'm s-s-sure you'll try."

  "You know me so well, Jiki." Diana fastened the hauberk shut. "And everything fits perfectly, as usual."

  "It helps that your s-size never c-c-changes."

  "So what'll it cost me?"

  "Your life."

  Diana took an immediate step back, grabbing a wrench as her nearest weapon. Jiki snorted at the response.

  "As in: c-come back alive, Diana," she clarified. If it were possible for a Doll to look sheepish, then Diana did at that moment, rubbing her arm awkwardly. "Leo already told me what kind of mess you're in. C-consider making a fool out of K-Koronos payment enough."

  "SAND WHALES! THERE ARE SAND WHALES, MARVIN!"

  Leo's unmistakable voice boomed throughout the cavern. Diana and Jiki exchanged bewildered stares, rushing up the perimeter of the room to see what all the fuss was about. The women caught snippets of an absurd conversation about paraplegic donkeys and a haunted mineshaft until Uhh's droning voice queued them in on the real matter.

  "Ssspirits arrre unique. Borrrn to siiiingular purrrpose. Eyes arre, Eyes arrrrre... Not bound to sssource material. Can brrrring life to any medium."

  Seconds of silence trickled by. On instinct, all eyes centered on Marvin. He gaped into the glass of Razitar's coffin.

  "By the Gods."

  "What is it, Marv?"