Empirical Gnollage: Installment 89 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment089.png]
The room was quiet as Al, Bote, and Wikwocket watched the coccooned shape webbed to the ceiling. It struggled fitfully a few more times, then went still. Gruntle, on the other hand, had gone to the front of the spider and was amusing himself by standing just out of range of the reaching fangs, watching the thing's ruined legs jiggle as its unnaturally persisting reflexes continued to urge it to leap on him.
"So, there's probably another angry dead guy in there?" Wikwocket finally asked.
"Probably," Al agreed.
"Do you think there's any way to calm them down? Without actually killing them, I mean."
"I don't really know, but they're just soulless things with a false magical vitality sustaining an animating spirit. At least the stories describe nercromantic magic being able to control them," Al speculated. Then he gave Wikwocket a hard look. "No," he said insistently.
"No, what?" Wikwocket asked with a amazingly authentic simulation of innocence.
"No, we are not going to try to keep a zombie as a pet!"
"No fair! If you can have a pet demon, why can't I have a pet dead-guy!"
"It won't be a pet! The spiritual binding of a familiar-spirit is a whole different matter from waking up a dead body and having some way to keep it under control!"
Wikwocket ignored Al's protests. "What do you feed the walking dead, anyway? Do they like food? Maybe we could train it like a dog, with some kind of treat."
"Please tell me you're joking, necromancy doesn't seem like something to play with. There are reasons most cultures consider it morally wrong," Al pleaded.
"Well...mostly joking," Wikwocket admitted, "but you have to admit, having a dead guy begging for treats would be pretty funny."
"Yeah, until it goes crazy and beats you to death."
"It might not!"
"Tell you what, if you can learn enough magic to make and control your own animated dead bodies, I might go along with it."
"Maybe I will!"
"You know, we've already got one monster among us already."
"And it's been great!"
Al looked over to the monster in question. The gnoll was softly bark-chuckling to himself as he teased the undead immobilized spider by slapping the top of the spider's fangs and pulling away before it could reach up to bite into him.
"Hey, Gruntle, I don't think the venom in that thing is natural. Please stop doing that."
"He's right," Bote agreed. They were buckling their badly abused breastplate back on, having apparently taken it off while Al had been watching the ceiling. Al saw lightly bloodied cloth bandages through the holes punched in the breastplate by the spider's fangs. "My people are less bothered by most poisons, venoms, and drugs than most, but it felt to me that this spider's venom is both potent and unusual. I do not think I am substantially harmed but much of my chest and arm are still numb and I experience some mild muscular spasms. The symptoms seem to be subsiding, so I am hopeful there will be no lasting harm for me."
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"Keep an eye on the ceiling for now, I want to take a look at the zombies we were just fighting," Al requested.
"I'll help!" Wikwocket offered, "If they've got anything interesting on them that might tell us something about how they got here, it might make for an interesting story!"
The three crushed, sliced, and punctured zombies all seemed to be wearing very dated clothing of a sort that well-off merchants or minor nobles might have worn more than half a century ago. They seemed to still have whatever possessions they'd died with. All three had daggers of some variety on their belts, and one had a short saber in a sheathe. They even still had their coinpurses, to Wikwocket's joy.
"We're taking these from the dead guys, not from this place!" she insisted, counting out the handful of old gold and silver coins.
"We should at least tell our employer about it and see what they say. It's not as if they're not paying us a lot more than that already," Al countered, leaving her to her greed while he continued examining the corpses.
Their clothing and flesh were both stained with mildew. All three of their bodies seemed stiff and dry like leather, and all three had a faint, fading violet glow visible where the fight had torn their flesh. All three also had paired puncture wounds somewhere on their bodies.
Al looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling again.
"Were they already undead when they got here, or were they alive when they came in? Does the spider eat zombie fluids or something? Or...," Al speculated aloud, then sighed. "I hope this isn't a stupid thing to do. I think we should get that thing down off of the ceiling so I can test something."
The intact coccoon was too high up to reach directly, so Al had to convince Gruntle to come stand nearby so Al could climb up on his shoulders. Al was relieved that Gruntle didn't seem to object to this as he clambered up and had his invisible spirit servant bring him the torch. The flame melted away the spiderwebs above his head easily, so he applied them to the strands that held the coccoon up. It began to struggle again when enough of the webs had been destroyed that it tore free and thudded dully to the floor. Al leapt down, handing the torch back to the obedient spirit and drawing Purgatio. Fortunately, whatever was inside the coccoon was still wrapped tightly enough to prevent it from escaping, at least for the moment. Al resheathed his sword and watched the wriggling lump of silk.
"Okay, help me shove this in front of the spider," Al requested. As strong as it was, the silk was dry and not sticky. It was still uncomfortable pushing the struggling thing across the floor. Al did his best to suppress his reluctance in the name of scientific curiosity. At Al's direction, he and Gruntle were able push the coccoon directly up against the dead spider's face while Bote and Wikwocket watched to make sure it didn't get loose. The spider ignored the sruggling silk-wrapped presumptive zombie, the spider's fangs continuing to reach instead for the living.
"Does this horrible thing make zombies?" Al considered. He gave Bote a concerned look.
"Healthy people do not become undead directly," Bote reassured him, "I do not believe it will be necessary to worry about me at this time. Should I happen to lose my soul and rise as a member of the restless dead abominations, you have my blessing and encouragement to destroy whatever is left of me."
"That doesn't reassure me as much as you might hope," Al said, "so please warn us if you start, I don't know, craving people-meat or whatever."
"That is a reasonable request."
"I do. Tastes good," Gruntle helpfully offered.
"Okay, right, thanks for warning us, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be abnormal for you. So, now that that's about as settled as it's going to be right now - we've got to get rid of both of these," Al reminded them, pointing to the huge spider and the coccooned figure. "Didn't Cyrus say this cause, whatever it is, was going to send someone to fetch this thing? Maybe they can take the silk-wrapped thing with them, too."
"Oh, yeah!" Wikwocket said, reaching into a pocket. She retrieved the metal disk engraved with the housefly. "He said once we found what they were looking for, we can use this to let them know and they'll come and get it. I wonder how it works, and how long it'll take them to get here?"
She ran her thumb around the outside of the coin-like disk. It began to vibrate as she continued. After the fifth pass around the edge, it tore itself from her grasp and shot across the room, smacking flat against the wall and sticking there.
The metal disk pressed itself into the stone of the wall, which deformed like a soft flabby belly being jabbed with a finger.