Suggested Listening

The sick-sweet stench of tainted necromancy hung in the aether like the stink of cheap bordello perfume and the odors it failed to hide. It was choking, oppressive, magic which clung to all surfaces of the physical and spiritual world. "Got hand it to you, you old hag, you sure know how to set a scene."

"Why, Scratch, I do believe that is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me." Aether-space twisted as it was violated into a form it was never meant to be by forces that did not belong in this universe. An ancient woman, far older than even her bent and gnarled figure suggested, stepped without moving into a place where flesh was never meant to exist. "But I'm afraid Kalla deserves all of the credit. She has quite the formidable mind."

"Coming in person?" Scratch continued drifting, watching the mortal side of the metaphysical coin. Besides, there was no point in pretending he needed to look in order to see with the likes of her, they'd known one another far too long. "That isn't like you."

"Ah, but why wouldn't an old woman want to visit her dear friends as she nears the end of her long life?"

"Hmph, old friend she says. I've spent my entire afterlife with the sole purpose of seeing you join me in death." He allowed himself a cold, cruel chuckle. "But now that I think about it, perhaps I am the closest thing you've got to true friendship. But for the sake of 'friendship', what do you mean the end of your life? You never believed any of the others could kill you, and I know you don't think this one can."

"Not a ghost of a chance." Uewatsu cackled at her pun. "Kiara fought death itself, and it was death who died at her hand. I am every bit my ancestor's equal, well outside the power of some silly farmgirl playing with dolls. But what I know doesn't interest me so much as what you believe. You think she'll break the cycle, don't you?"

"It's a cycle that needs broken. You should never have been."

"Ah, old friend, I see you still avoid the subject when someone touches a nerve." Uewatsu laughed some more. "I'm not like all those children you've manipulated to their deaths and beyond. Your tricks don't work on me."

"I don't know." Scratch gave up on the possibility of getting away without answering. That didn't mean he had to tell Uewatsu more than the absolute minimum. "But I think she has a better chance than anyone has had in a long time. She's accomplished quite a bit for someone so young."

"The creation of that half-undead freak of hers, you mean."

"You tip your hand, crone." Scratch faked confidence, not because he thought it would fool her, but because it was expected of him. They all had their roles to play in this charade of a universe. "You've been watching quite close if you recognized Calenda for what it is. Which means Elruin's surprised you, too."

"Oh, it's not so difficult to spot if you know how to look." Uewatsu's grin exposed gums without teeth. "And while her trick is new to you, It's not so special. I bet most of them could accomplish it if they thought to try and had a suitable volunteer. Maybe I should kill off her other allies, see if she's close enough to do the same for them."

"You wouldn't dare. Now leave Elruin alone until she brings the fight to you."

"Relax, old friend, I know the rules to this farce." Uewatsu never stopped smiling. "My puppets play with empires, your puppet plays with dolls. So has it been for a thousand years, so shall it be for another thousand. But I sense that Adageyudi will involve herself soon. You know how she feels about rules."

Scratch faded into the background for a moment as he lost concentration. Adageyudi was worse than Uewatsu, if only because Uewatsu could be trusted to pretend she had a scrap of sanity remaining. The others were far less reliable. "It... has been quite some time since Ada made an appearance." He didn't dare ask Uewatsu more information on the topic, for fear of provoking the half-crazed hag into doing something everyone else would regret. "Have a message you want to relay to your counterpart?"

Uewatsu flexed her magic, twisting reality so that she could untwist it and return herself to the physical world. "Let her know that if I see her, I will kill her myself."

"I'm surprised at myself for expecting anything else." Now alone, Scratch returned to observing the world of the living as it brushed against the world of the dead.

Suggested Listening

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Elruin watched the thing retreat, then looked at the death which surrounded her. She counted thirty-seven victims of this battle, but only nine survivors. Most of them were killed by her power, because she had no other way to fight off the swarm of people while trying to save the city from the abomination.

Lemia sat in a corner staring out at the carnage, cheeks soaked in tears. "I'm sorry," she muttered to herself over and over, a frantic prayer from the closest thing their world could have to an atheist. "I'm so sorry."

Elruin drew up her violin, playing a song to the dead, to death itself. She found the flickers of taint and dismantled them note by dissonant note, until she hoped she had cleansed the alleyway of the risk of undeath. This thing, whatever it was, shared Scratch's ability to cloak its taint. As she played, she dove deeper into the complexities of the necromancy involved. It was miasma magic, of that she was certain, but it went even deeper still into forms and structure she had not so much as considered before.

What caught her by surprise was the discovery of the song beneath the other songs, whispered echoes of the void portal she had used as a weapon against Claron over a year prior. Scratch called the undead wounds upon the universe, and this more than any other thing confirmed that belief. While she still knew nothing about how the two were related, there was no longer a doubt in her mind that they were related.

With little left she could accomplish in that regard, she turned her attention to the dead which littered this cramped and dark alleyway. She slowed her singing and relied upon her bleak sight to reveal what it could. As her song faded, the sobbing and vocalizations from the victims took its place.

It was clear from first glance that there were those who could recover on their own, and those who were beyond saving by any means, not a single emergency case to worry about. How they would deal with explaining the bodies was a question for another time.

A woman and two children who were still in real danger took precedence. "They have runebones."

"How do you know?" Lemia's question was guided by reflex. All parts of her higher reasoning was occupied by the innocent lives who had died by her magic. She imagined their life energy clinging to her, bolstering her strength the way all those monsters she killed had. She choked down the urge to vomit

"I know what to look for, now that I saw the monster."

Lemia forced herself to stand. "W-what do we do, now?" She worked her magic into a sphere of light, then a moment later willed said light from existence. She was happier when the bodies were part of her imagination and assumptions, rather than seeing the dead around her.

Elruin looked over at Lemia, then generated a light sphere of her own. It wasn't the simplest of fundamental spells, but it was well within her skill range, as long as she didn't need to perform any combat magic at the same time. Now that people could see, the crying began anew. These were their friends, family, and neighbors laying amongst the dead. Some fled the moment they could see an escape route, while others stayed because they feared the thing in the dark which this terrifying girl seemed to have the power to drive it off.

"You have runebones in you." Elruin approached the three people, while the woman did her best to hide her children behind her. It was a touching gesture of a life that Elruin had never experienced.

"R-runebones?" This dark-toned woman glanced around at the others, uncertain of what to do. It was difficult enough for her to remember what had happened not long ago.

"I don't know what your people call it, but it's how the necromancer has been attacking the city." Lemia still couldn't take her eyes of the corpses. It seemed insane to her that she could still speak, let alone answer questions. The last two years of explaining magic to Elruin must have ingrained the behavior into her.

The children cried and pulled themselves closer to their mother, who struggled to hold herself together for her children. "Don't tell them!" She looked around at the others, begging all of them for silence. "They'll... do you know what that spell does?"

"Yes, it agitates the necromantic runes, and sets off a chain reaction-"

"Ell, she didn't mean the particulars." Lemia cut in, reminded of the other reason it was always her doing the explanation. "We know that it kills, and it can't be a pleasant way to go, but it can't be worse than what happens if the runes activate in a normal situation. That's what she means."

"Oh." Elruin thought about it for a moment, while observing the runes. "I can stop that."

"You... you can break the curse?" It was more than she had dared hope, that these young people could remove the curse, but they were the ones who found the monster and drove it away.

"Not remove, but I can prevent it from activating as long as I remain nearby." In that regard, it was much the same as what she did with Cali, but much simpler and less complex, yet also less stable. "Maybe with time, we could find a way to stop it."

"But... but, aren't you hunting that monster?" She clutched her children tighter. "We can't follow you."

Lemia shuddered, still watching the corpses. Perhaps she could make some step toward atonement by helping this family? "We could set something up, so that you'll be safe even when she's not nearby. It won't be much, but it's the best anyone can do right now. We... have to go back to the inn, anyway. We need Cali and Ketak if we want to destroy that... thing..."

The poor woman's smile was forced, but genuine. "If- if you can save my daughters, then I'll do anything."

"We should go now," Elruin said. "Before anyone finds you." She began walking away, stepping over bodies as was needed.

As they made their retreat from that place of gore and terrible memories, Lemia searched for some way to apologize for her failure. There were no words she could find that didn't sound like they'd make things worse, but still she tried. "I'm... I am so sorry we couldn't save your husband."

"I never saw that man before in my life." She looked back at the bodies, one being that of her not-husband, then turned her attention to the backs of her daughters' heads. "Their father died long ago, but that... thing..." she trailed off, unable to finish her train of thought.

They walked for several minutes before she found what she wanted to say. "I don't know how much was its lies, but he seemed like a good man."