I slowly circled over the site of Ridel’s demise. A quick cycle through my {Detect …} Perks indicated three undead near the ring, off the road by a kilometer or so. There weren’t any signs of recent travel through the road and I was sure I arrived in less than a couple of hours from the moment he died. Did the undead kill Ridel? Why did he leave the road to go there? I feared the logical answer.
Approaching the site, I noticed the three undead, frost ghouls by the looks of it, lying in ambush. I used {Song of Peace} with {Spectral Diplomacy}, which allowed me to use social effects on the undead. The System let me know I’d successfully lowered their hostility and I touched down on the ground next to the dropped ring. I picked it up and slid the ring in my finger, as I couldn’t put non-empty storage items in my item box. A quick check told me that Ridel’s body and soul were safely kept in the magical item.
“Come out here. I won’t harm you,” I told the three ghouls. They obliged and my heart sank. A woman and two children, one boy and one girl. Both kids had vulpine heads and a bushy orange tail with no signs of decay. Their skin was cold and frozen but the sub-zero environment preserved their flesh. An eerie red light shone in their eyes and their fangs and claws oozed a viscous paralytic venom.
My blood siblings. That explains what Ridel was doing here. They seemed unharmed so the [Bard] didn’t fight back. I couldn’t even describe what I felt. Grief, anger, sadness, I don’t know. Their clothes were obviously not enough for this harsh climate. A few cuts on the mother’s back told me they were chased off the road by someone wielding a weapon and eventually froze to death. I couldn’t sense any luggage or supplies anywhere. A bag, a wicker basket, food, nothing. Just a torn blanket. I fell on my knees.
The fairy was right. The souls were still trapped in the undead bodies, reliving the agony of death by frostbite over and over.
“Come over here,” I commanded them with a Necromantic spell. Using sorcery, I silently removed the snow around me, revealing the resilient grass hiding underneath. A Force barrier enclosed this bubble and placed the microclimate inside it under my control. “Stand still,” I commanded them. Frost ghouls loathed warmth as much as they instinctively sought it. I heated the environment and prepared for the next step.
Using {Soul Shepherd}, I extracted the tormented spirits from their unliving husks. While the process was traumatic for a living creature, they were already under eternal torture so it was an act of kindness. The undead corpses crumbled on the ground, releasing plenty of fluids as they thawed unnaturally fast, no longer kept frozen by the powers of undeath. I collected a small flesh fragment from each one of them before destroying the rest.
Next was the delicate part. I held the two children's souls in stasis and worked on the mother. As she had more time alive, the margin for errors was wider with her. I slowly sifted through the layers of her soul, the accumulated experience and memories that surrounded the indestructible spark of life. With Bundeus and the Fourth Demon Lord, I peeled, no, shredded, these layers without regard for their contents but this time it was different.
I focused only on the outermost part. The memories of their time as undead. I knew they must’ve laid here inert for a long time, hoping to ambush someone as there was no blight around here. It was characteristic of semi-intelligent undead. While spreading blight would heal and empower them, it would also be a tell-tale sign of their presence and would probably scare away any potential prey.
I peeled away the memories of undeath. The years they spent buried under the snow, hungering for the flesh and warmth of the living. The envy and resentment she had were enormous. The sorrow and guilt because she wasn’t strong enough to protect her children. I removed that, forcing her to forget these feelings. Most of them. Such strong emotions carved deep roots and gashes into the inner layers of the soul, corrupting and tarnishing the memories from before.
If such corruption was allowed to fester for too long, it would be impossible to restore the undead back to the world of the living. At least not as a sane person. Short of a miracle or some serious therapy. But they were lucky. They stayed hidden for years without many stimuli. The memories from these years blurred and caused little impact as the repetitions were discarded and not committed to long-term memory. It was the same mechanism that made people forget where they put their keys every day.
They were here for years now. First as just frozen corpses before rising as undead. Fortunately more of the former than the latter.
I didn’t know how long I spent on the mother’s soul. What I knew was that I did a pretty good job of restoring her to the point before their deaths. What I could glimpse of her surface memories was a bandit attack on the caravan transporting them. I didn’t remove all the metaphysical roots, the scars undeath left in her psyche. It would help her understand what happened. It was a controlled risk. I could see that she, as most sane mothers, loved her children. The joy of rejoining them and the support I would certainly provide them would be more than enough to overcome the sorrows and pain from these roots.
Satisfied, I set the mother’s soul aside and forced her to hibernate. Souls enraptured by my {Soul Shepherd} Perk usually retained some semblance of awareness but it was a trance. In her case, I basically blocked her perceptions, including the perception of time. While the mother was the first soul to be cleansed, I intended to raise her from the dead last. I wanted her first sight to be of her children’s gleaming eyes. It would jumpstart the healing process by a large amount.
Now that I knew what to look for, I worked on the kids with double the confidence and triple the care. They had too few layers of memories but the roots dove deeply into their psyches. I needed to make incisions with the precision of a neurosurgeon to remove them and cause the least amount of damage to their precious and scarce life experiences. What I counted on was the malleability of youth, to relearn, grow and get over this dreary ordeal.
I also intended to grant them several Perks to strengthen their psyche and willpower by abusing {Fairy Godmother} and spoiling the two tykes with my blessings.
They were twins, four years old by the time they died although they looked a bit older. Beast-kin had a growth spurt in their tender years followed by a lull in the pre-teens when the humans, Eleons, and other species with similar lifespans caught up. With a flash of inspiration, I contracted their souls and healed the wounds caused by the roots as I excised them. It slowed down the process but greatly reduced the scarring. This epiphany would surely allow me to better help other poor souls afflicted with the curse of undeath in the future.
I knew a couple of days or more had passed while I healed the three souls. The grass around me grew quickly, greedily absorbing sunlight and blooming as if it were early Spring. Time held little sway over my choices. I could’ve spent a year there if it meant my siblings and their mother would return to life as good as new. Alas, it was beyond my skills to revert the damage completely.
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I summoned the pieces of flesh I stored before. Using Pandora’s stores of Divinity, I “cured” the undeath and revived the flesh before regrowing their bodies. It cost less than creating a body from scratch but it was still expensive. I could’ve ordained five or six priests with the Divinity needed for each one of them.
I cared not a bit. My priesthood was stronger than the average and while my flock wasn’t as numerous as the other deities, my presence among them sparked borderline fanaticism among the kin and Windemere’s population. The events of the last half-decade also helped a lot. Windemere almost doubled in size and got out of its lich-created gauntlet stronger than ever.
As I finished restoring the mother’s body, I couldn’t help but admire Ridel’s taste in women. She was gorgeous and probably lower nobility from some northern Auvanini country. Her complexion was almost as white as the snow surrounding my magical greenhouse bubble. I dressed her in clothes befitting her station and the weather, going as far as doing her hair and light makeup. Then I did the same for the two kids. A quick Fire cantrip warmed the bodies to a comfortable and cozy temperature. I placed the three bodies on comfortable bedrolls and set the mother on her side as if she was sleeping.
All that was left was to rejoin the souls to their mortal shells. This part couldn’t have happened more easily. Their HP pools were so small the expenditure was minimal. As planned, I raised the kids first. Their large beady puppy eyes opened and their button noses twitched as they picked the smell of fresh grass.
“What? Mom? Sis?” The boy croaked as his voice cracked from disuse.
“Shh. How are you, little brother?” I asked as I caressed his head. “I’m Haru, your older sister. Your little sis is right next to you,” I pointed.
Startled, he jumped around and shook her sister awake. She yawned, showing her delightful rows of perfectly pearly puppy fangs. “Nolan?” She asked as she rubbed her eyes. Nolan squealed “Sis!” and caught the girl in a bear hug. His tail wagged ferociously behind him.
Then he caught her mother sleeping behind her and screeched, “MOM!”
I held him back before he could touch her. I turned both kitsune pups to look at me. “Shh. Your mother was wounded by the bandits. She’s sleeping and healing. Let me cast a few more spells to make sure she’s healthy. Don’t disturb her. Can you do that for me?”
Nolan nodded but the girl glared at me, suspicious. “Who are you?”
“I’m Haru, consort of [Queen] Lorna of Windemere. I’m a [Queen] myself but my kingdom was absorbed by Windemere. But that’s not important. I’m your big sister.”
She didn’t buy it. “You don’t look like a bandit. Why should I--”
Nolan tugged her coat sleeve. “Sis, look how many tails she has!” He gasp-whispered too loudly. The girl tilted her head to the side and her jaw dropped. I made a show of moving them around in a kaleidoscope of colors.
With a hand over her chest, she bowed. “I’m sorry. I’m Minette, granddaughter of Baron Ephrain of Lebrante to the south. This is Nolan and our mother Constance back there.”
I smiled and nodded back, “Pleased to meet you, Mizette and Nolan. May I finish healing your mom?”
The two huddled to the side but Mizette kept a raptor’s gaze over me, watching my every move. I cast some showy cantrips over the mother, making the body glow, and some pretty magical sparkles and ribbons to fly everywhere. The twins gasped at my illusionary magical display. Then I rejoined the mother’s soul to her body. Immediately after, I hit her with a powerful {Calm Emotions} spell.
Constance still stood at once, with a silent gasp of horror as she filled her lungs with fresh air for the first time in years. Moments later, she was tackled by the two bawling tykes. I stood up and gave them some space as I set my title to [Queen] and my true level and species on display.
* [Queen] – Level 184 half-dwarf-kitsune
After their heartwarming reunion and making sure each of them was hale and alive, Constance finally noticed my presence. I could feel the ping of an uncloaked {Appraise} hit me and she went pale.
“Your Majesty! I’m sorry I didn’t notice you,” She lowered her head until it almost touched the blankets. Minette looked surprised, her head swiveling back and forth as if she couldn’t believe I was right. “Sorry!” She ducked down her head and pushed Nolan to do the same, her ears flat against her forehead.
“Stand, all of you. Be at ease,” I commanded. “We are family.”
Constance held her breath as she raised her head. “Family, Your Majesty?”
I beamed a friendly and calming smile. “I have strong cause to believe these two children are my blood siblings.”
Her face scrunched for a moment before she regained her composure. “It might be possible,” she bitterly admitted.
“Do you remember how you got here?”
She closed her eyes and shuddered as the memories erupted as if summoned by my question. Constance’s arms tightened around my siblings. “We were attacked by bandits hired by my father. I… fell from grace because of...”
I knelt in front of her and touched her shoulder, “Say no more, I understand.”
“We owe you our lives,” she said with moist eyes. “I thought we were going to die.”
“No, not me. A traveling [Bard] looking to reunite with his children found you here. I’m afraid you didn’t make it. Does the name Ridel Lilac ring any bells?”
It did. Her face went from hope to longing to sorrow to despair, finally settling as just a bit of anger.
“Where is he now?” She asked with a bit of sharp steel implied in her voice.
“Hello! I’m Nenandil, a water fairy. Minette, Nolan, would you want to go play with me in the snow? {Major Resist Cold}! Come and catch me!”
The two squealing kids went running after the fairy and out of my climatized bubble. We watched them leave and I raised a privacy ward.
“Now we can talk about Ridel Lilac,” I ruefully stated.
“Where is he?” She angrily inquired.
“Dead. You three killed him when he found you frozen away from the road. I fear you escaped the bandits only to succumb to the cold.”
“We… died?” Her words carried the chill and dread of the undead.
“You three became frost ghouls. Ridel… Let me start by the beginning. He was captured by Leondirac and...”
I explained how I found Ridel, a bit about the circumstances of my birth and how I sent him to find his children and bring them to safety if they needed it. Five of my siblings were safely entrusted to the church of the Matriarch before he ventured north looking for them. The shock of killing someone struck the noblewoman and she cried.
“Not your fault, Constance. You were dead. I removed the memories of the time you spent as undead, from both you and my siblings. You carry no sin.”
I closed my eyes and flared my golden tail. Channeling divine magic, I cast a priest spell, “{Absolution}!”
Golden light washed over her, judging the woman for her sins. She was found not wanting.
Surprised, she asked, “You’re a [Priestess}? Sorry to ask, I don’t see a holy symbol on you.”
“I’m not a [Priestess]. I’m the kin Matriarch, a new deity. No, enough groveling for the day. Now, I’ll bring Mr. Lilac back to life. Do you still resent him? He’s really trying to make up for his romantic escapades.”
She shook her head. “No. We didn’t know I was pregnant before he left my father’s fief.”
We talked a bit and after checking the dates, we learned they were dead for almost a decade.
“Then, allow me to bring him back.”
I brought Ridel’s body out and fixed the damage from the ghouls’ claws and teeth on both his body and clothes. Then I raised him. The kitsune [Bard] leaped like a startled animal, standing on all fours and glaring at us.
“It’s okay, Ridel,” I calmed him.
“Haru. I… The kids...”
“They’re out there, playing with Nenandil. Everyone is okay now.” I lifted the sound barrier and the sound of children squealing reached us.
He shifted his gaze on the woman. “Constance. I’m sorry for what happened. I visited your father’s fief and learned of your demise. But my ring, he told me how to find you. You… died.”
Still sitting on her bedroll, Constance offered Ridel a hand and he took it. She pulled him on the bedroll, forcing the bard to kneel on his digitigrade legs as she threatened to crush his ribcage. I double-checked for threats near us and left the two alone as I went to spend some time with my reborn siblings.