Bobby, Mcgunkin, Gary and Michaela were sitting in a circle in their cell (for lack of a better word) playing cards. Gary had produced a deck from somewhere, the cards were glossy and had little dogs printed on them, getting up to various assorted mischiefs.

The game they were playing was go fish because it was the one game they all seemed to know, including Michaela. Bobby glanced down at his hand, he had three threes and two kings left. Slowly he looked round the table, he would try to go for the kings first, and wait for someone to reveal the threes.

“Bobby, do you have a king?” asked Gary.

Bobby huffed in frustration and passed him the card, then Gary asked him another question, “By any chance do you also have the threes?”

“How are you doing this, have you memorised these cards?" he asked incredulously, as the man added the two completed sets to the already quite large pile in front of him.

Then their game was interrupted by a scratching noise and they all looked round to find Fluff trying to chew one of the iron bars. “That’s not gonna work you silly creature.” Bobby told it, immediately ignoring the game. He’d no cards left to play with anyway.

Fluff pawed at the bar and then curled up in a ball outside the door to the cell. Bobby reached through and stroked the creature's fur, it had developed a slightly glossy texture as of late, no longer looking like the probably diseased creature he’d originally run over.

Michaela chose that moment to ask him a question, which Gary promptly translated. “She’s wondering if it would be possible for you to give her a voice again. Apparently it's been really frustrating this card game.”

Bobby shrugged and instructed the skeleton to lie down, he opened his third eye and began examining the aetheric imprint of the voice box. He hadn’t originally done anything about it, mostly for two reasons, the first being that he didn’t really know much about how it worked, but that was rectified by the knowledge of anatomy that he’d been slowly absorbing over the past few days, in fact he now realised he could name every bone and muscle in the human body.

The other reason was that a voice box needed air pushed through it to vibrate the vocal cords, and seeing as she had no respiratory system, for the structure to work he’d need to completely deviate from the aetheric imprint. Seeing as he’d only resurrected the one skeleton thus far he hadn’t had much experience in this area.

But experimenting shouldn’t hurt her, so he carefully began sketching his magic out into something like the original flesh. Bobby carefully examined the voice box as he completed it, it wouldn’t work currently, but it could work in the right conditions, such as a wind tunnel. So long as he found a way to vibrate the cords it would be fine.

He experimented a bit more, eventually figuring out how to structure the magical construct so it could use its own magic to vibrate, then he set out trying to finish the rest of the system, after all one needed more than a voice box to speak; you also needed a tunnel to direct the sound through, so it came out of the mouth and then a tongue appendage to create the alveolar sounds.

[Dexterity 14 → 15]

Bobby carefully threaded the magic nerves from the bones into the newly created constructs. Then he began directing Michaela, “Can you try speaking for me?”

The first few noises she made were gibberish, but eventually something clicked and she was finally able to produce something coherent.

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“Thank you?” she boomed in a comically deep voice.

Bobby continued changing the system, as he got her to just speak randomly, tuning the voice by changing the length and thickness of the vocal cords until it sounded quite feminine. It still had a slight rough quality to it, but Bobby couldn’t get rid of that, so he decided to fix it more in the future when he had the know-how. The voice did fit her grandmotherly disguise though.

Roadkill Necromancer - Human[Bobby]

Magic[101] Soul[105]

Magic Capacity

11

Magic Density

10

Regeneration

11

Perception

16

Dexterity

15

Warning: If soul drops below 80 death will occur

He opened his status to check the changes and realised his magic point capacity had increased, and somehow his soul too? Bobby scratched his head, he hadn’t been tearing his soul much lately, but it seemed odd that he’d somehow have more than before, perhaps this was a side effect of regeneration?

He closed his third eye and found the others were waiting for him and Michaela to start a new round of Go-Fish. They repositioned themselves in a circle and continued playing, though they did make Gary sit backwards so that he couldn't read anyone cards based on the backs, which he seemed to be far too skilled at.

After that the rounds were a lot more fair, Bobby even managed to almost win once, though in a spout of irony the game was snatched by Michaela, using the new voice that Bobby had given her.

When the group finally began to get tired of cards all of a sudden Fluff began growling (well not exactly, it was more hissing) at something. The group couldn’t make out what at first, but soon they could see some shapes coming towards them in the darkness.

“Who goes there?” Bobby asked.

For a moment he heard nothing, but then a very quiet squeaky voice said “We beseech you saviour…” before trailing off awkwardly.

“Pardon?” Bobby asked, “I can’t quite hear you.”

“It’s just some rats,” said Gary.

“You sure? I swear I can hear one of them talking.”

“Do your wizard powers let you talk to animals?” Michaela asked.

“I don’t know,” then Bobby remembered something, he opened his status and pressed on the name.

Cursed Title - Roadkill Necromancer - Forcefully Equipped

An incomprehensibly powerful deity granted you unholy powers, but instead of respectfully enslaving the most powerful creature you could find as your first thrall, you decided to enslave a filthy rat-like thing that you didn’t even intentionally kill.

Title Effect - Vermin Divinity

Vermin see you as a god and will seek you out to awaken you, worship you and sacrifice others to you, maybe you will eventually learn the proper reverence you should have towards a god from them.

Hmm, well I guess the side effects of this are finally revealing themselves. Bobby sighed.

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