Private Redmond had been posted to Camp Miller two years ago, nearly halfway through his term of mandatory service to the Golden Kingdom army that every man and woman his age served. He had started the posting by being immediately assigned to pike duty, taking eight hour shifts to walk up and down the walled battlements and stare off into the distance until he nearly went mad with the boredom of it.
When he was reassigned to gate duty he was actually somewhat overjoyed with the decision, happy to have the chance to actually talk with another human being while on duty without getting yelled at for shirking their patrols like they were on the walls. Still, as the days turned into months of serving in the same position day in day off as he was, Redmond started to get complacent. It was at first interesting to meet all these new people and learn about what brought them to Camp Miller, but eventually he just couldn't bring himself to care about the four hundredth band of traveling merchants and performers that made its way through his gate.
Today was a particularly annoying day however as the weather had started to feel brisk as the seasons started to change, yet for some reason or another his commander had not yet chosen to let them wear gloves or jackets yet, despite the growing cold. He remembered his sergeant's short words that morning about how it hadn't yet met the book definition of ‘glove approved weather’, but that did little to make Redmund feel any better as his fingers started to ache as he rubbed them together for warmth. So after he had stood at the front of the gate for some eight hours a day without moving from his spot, Redmond craved just a little bit of warmth in his life.
On this particular day, Redmond happened to be getting a little bit loose with his duties as he started to near the six hour mark in his shift as he stared up into the sky, trying to guage how much time was left by measuring the ball of fire with his fingers.
“One, two, maybe three hours.”, he muttered to himself as his gaze returned to the line of people as the next group came up to him and he started his customary speech, marking the fact that none of them had the subdued badge of permanent residents.
“Alright there, welcome to Camp Miller. Please be aware that this area has strict prohibitions on violence of any sort and you will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law if you break the peace and order of this camp during your stay. If you have any trade goods you intend to sell here then you'll have to pull off to your left, my right, as you enter the gate. If you're only here for the night's stay you'll have to pay one royal gold per head for a visitors badge that will be pinned to your chest and must stay visible during your entire stay. Requests for permanent residence can be made at the requisitions office on the north side of town. Any questions?”
A rather large bearded man with long black hair shook his head as he palmed five gold coins and made to hand them to the guard. Redmond accepted the money quickly to drop into a coin hole with no obvious way to open it behind him, then reached over to grab five small yellow ribbons tied to sewing needles on the nearby desk. He handed one to the man, followed by a blond woman in a thin robe, a gruff looking man in light chain mail, and finally two strange looking individuals wearing wooden masks that didn't even look like they had eye holes.
Redmond stopped as he looked at the last two, not quite sure what to make of them even as he handed them their visitors passes. The sight of them stirred something in is mind, wasn't there someone who had been asking about some masked figures earlier that day? While they walked past the man with their strangely thin legs, he noted the fact that they looked like they could at least see just fine through the masks in some way, and he merely shrugged. The rules didn't expressly prohibit masks so who was he to stop them?
Still, even those masked weirdo's had the right to wear gloves whenever they wanted in the cold weather, and Redmond settled in for the last couple hours of his shift as he fantasized about getting back into a warm room at the end of his shift.
—
Dei wasn't quite sure what her expectations had been when she had heard that they were making their way to a place called Camp Miller, but it certainly would not have matched the small town she found waiting for her now. Merchants lined the main street in small wooden stands posted on wheels as their group made their way deeper into the town.
“Fresh crop of Emel rice!”
“Get your clothes straight from the Princedoms at my shop!”
“Five silver for a dozen eggs right here!”
“Adventurers, you look like you could use a new sword!”
A never ending stream of men and women called out to her group as they passed other shoppers stopped here and there trying to peruse the wares or haggle down a price. It all felt keenly familiar to the girl, like she had half remembered experiences of a similar event happening in her past, but the cacophony of human voices was still a press on her senses just the same.
Mathew and the rest of the group seemed to be casually ignoring the merchant's calling out their wares, even though Charity eyed some of the food stands with a certain excitement in her eyes. While the merchant stands were numerous, they eventually faded behind them as the hundred meters of open market made way into a quieter section of town. Here, Dei was more focused on the many houses around them that seemed to be made of dried mud and roofed with swamp reeds laid over the ceilings.
Instead of market stalls, small groups of children ran along the hard packed dirt streets and in between individual men and women that were making their way in and out of different buildings with a sense of purpose. Dei was caught staring into some of the opened doorways trying to place just what kind of shop was within, when their group found what they were looking for and made their way into a large building that had a sign with a picture of a bed hanging from the front doorway. She hurried to catch up as they shuffled through the door.
A thick man greeted them from behind the bar as they entered the dimly lit interior with a softly lit fire in the corner of the room allongside several pots of food hanging from a metal wire lining the edges of the brazier. A pair of armored men sat at a table near the fire, casually talking to one another as Matthew took the lead with the barkeep and paid for a night's stay at the inn for the group.
John and Charity took their seats at one of the empty tables as the disguised skeletons were led up the stairs behind the bar by Matthew as they tried to find their rooms. It seems that Matthew had gotten three rooms for the group, one double room each for both the living men and the skeletons, and then a single bedroom for Charity, as they tested the keys the inkeep had given them.
Finally alone in the room that Dei and Xei would be sharing, Matthew turned around to address the two of them in confidence.
“Let's be honest here. I might joke that you both are my kids to keep you out of trouble, but the two of you have enough power stored in your heart that you could easily tear through the majority of this town if you really wanted to. The thing about that is, we don't really know for sure if there's anyone, or anything, strong enough to stop you in this town yet. And we probably don't want to find out. So while you both go out exploring tonight, at least try to stay out of trouble until we get to the capital, will ya?”
The skeletons nodded together, both understanding what Matthew was getting at, even though it felt a bit like they had a chaperone trying to tell them what to do.
“Alright, and last word of warning. Don't mess with the arcanists in the area. If you see a man or woman wearing a metal chain around their throats with a fancy gem hanging from it, just stay away from them as best as you can.”
If Dei didn't know any better this felt like it was going to be an awkward premonition of things to come, but even still the two of them nodded in understanding. Matthew might be unexplainable at times, but it didn't mean he wasn't worth listening to whenever he opened his mouth, and the two of them really did take his words to heart. Or perhaps whatever was left of their hearts.
—
After Matthew and the ‘twins’ returned downstairs to rejoin the rest of the group, they settled into a casual night of fun as they shared a variety of dishes served from the boiling pots in the corner. The main dish had been a liquidy risotto of rice and steamed vegetables toped with an unplaceable spice that none of them could pin down. Next they had been treated to some sort of warmed cider like drink that had left the majority of the group talking animatedly between themselves across the table.
Charity laughed heartily into John's shoulder as Matthew recounted one of his more unfortunate nights out on the town in the country’s capital, drawing some curious looks from the pair still seated in the back corner. Regardless, all three of the mortals within their group quickly retired to their rooms with smiles on their faces soon after the sun had set on the day.
The skeletal duo had then waited inside their room for an hour as Dei finally decided to play with her new toy. The small bird shuddered awake after a softly spoken order to ‘RISE’ given to the ball of feathers situated on the bedside table. it felt strangely heavy in Dei's mind, like it took up more mental effort to raise the bird than it had for all of the seven human skeletons currently tied to her soul combined. Still, she had managed it, and after a few sickening crunches of broken bones, the ember’s within her reformed the bird into a more sturdy shape using their customary method that was tried and true at this point.
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‘FLY’, Dei bid the bird to do as she said, prompting the small skeletal mound to quickly spread its thin wings and make a small jump from the side of the table top. The ball of feathers immediately fell to the floor in an awkward thud as the wings caught a whole lot of nothing between the tattered remains of the feathers still clinging to its outstretched arms.
The two skeletons stared down at the small beast judgingly as it continued flapping its thin appendages over and over as it toppled onto the ground repeatedly with an awkward lack of balance.
‘STILL’, Dei commanded, as she strung thin bands of hollow bone between the outstretched prongs of the bird's arms, hoping to herself that this might be able to solve the problem. But upon giving the bird another ‘FLY’ command, this time it could only hop awkwardly to hover in the air for half a second, only to crash back down into a pile every time.
After a few more minutes of testing between the two skeletons, they eventually stole back the presence they had imbued into the bird and tossed the piled of bones into the back of Dei's pack for testing at a later time. The mental heaviness on Dei's mind immediately vanished with the dismissal of the animal figure, granting her some measure of relief that they could in fact render skeletons inert with only a bit of effort. At least that meant she didn't have to worry about getting burdened down with anything too big for her to handle quite yet.
Regardless of this small disappointment, the night was still young and the skeletons decided to make the most of it by going out on the town to explore it. Thin steps echoed into the dinning room as more travelers had come in for dinner while the two boney creatures escaped into the open night air. Little did they know that two pairs of eyes had trailed the duo from a small table at the back of the inn by the fire. A few seconds later, the armored pair stood up to follow them out of the inn.
—
Dei had hardly made it down the first alley way since leaving the inn before she realized what her goal was that night. Immersed in bone vision as Fei leaded their body along, Dei watched around her as several hundred animated sets of bones walked the city streets, ate their dinners, and generally settled down for the night. Then, out of the corner of her eye she finally noticed the grand beacon of white light that shone like a calling card to her from the northern edge of the city.
With some inaudible commands to Fei and Xei, the skeletons changed direction to start heading north towards that bright light. If she had cared to look around at the people to the left and right of their path of travel, she might have noticed the large number of stares that people shot at her and Xei whenever they passed. Muttered grumblings about masked cults and religious zealots could be heard in the background, but no one really put in the effort to stop them as the wraith-like figures continued their way through the city.
As the alleyways opened up into more open tracts of cobblestone road, it was evident that they had reached something resembling a higher class district of the town. Dei was almost surprised by this, considering it was hard to believe that any nobles would willingly live in the middle of a swamp, but she was far too intent on merely following the sizable glow that they were approaching. The two did their best to actively avoid the groups of guards that could be seen patrolling this section of the city, dipping into side alleys and crossing the street at opportune times to avoid the accusatory glares the city guards shot at them whenever they noticed the masked and hooded figures.
At one point the trio were almost certain a group on patrol had taken to following them for a bit until they eventually lost them as they did a full loop back and around a larger stone building before continuing on their way. Then, finally close to their destination, Dei stared straight down through the ground ahead of them to take in the sight of what must have been a thousand or more bodies suspended in even rows one atop the other far below the buildings around them. Dei finally released her attention from her prize as she looked up at a massive stone building that seemed to be placed directly over the mass of corpses.
A stained glass window shone with light from the inside of the temple, portraying a four sided star with circles of red, blue, brown, and green allong the outside tips, and a bright yellow circle in the middle. Below it a pair of tall red wooden doors were set into the solid stone wall, permanently left open as several people shuffled in and out of the building in any given moment.
The two skeletons took the chance to follow the crowd into what turned out to be a massive stone building large enough for several hundred pews to line the thin walkways up and down the center aisle that ended in a large dias. There, a lone man stood at the front of a large group of seated church goers as his words droned out to echo their way to the back of the room where Dei and Xei stood near the wall.
“-the god's have thus saved us from our turmoil at the hand of the elements. Giving man the keys to their own destiny in this time of strife so that we might take for oursel-”
Dei had started to shuffle along the outside wall towards a smaller set of doors that lined the outside edges of the room after she had seen someone go down stairs after opening one for a brief moment. Soon enough she had reached one of the doorways and opened it to reveal that there were indeed a set of stairs winding downward on the other side which she happily started to make her way down, letting the echoed voices disapear in the background.
She passed the first door at the bottom of the pathway as she continued down another flight for two or three levels until they were starting to come to an even height with the mass of bones she had seen through the ground. The doors had become far less ornate as they went deeper and deeper into the building, eventually turning from the brilliant looking redwood gates into simple brown barricades that marked the next stop in their journey.
The door they chose to open was conveniently left unlocked, and on the other side of it Dei found herself in a new type of room as she looked down a hallway lined with hundreds of stone hewn cubbies cut into the wall. Each opening was approximately two feet wide by a foot tall, and blocked off with a simple wooden piece of wood that fit perfectly into the cutout with a small handle on the edge of it.
Dei started to wander further into the room, practically hopping from step to step as she avoided the large cracks of interlocking stones that made up the floor while she bounced deeper into the room. Xei followed after her solemnly as they both took in what waited for them in the walls of the room with otherworldly sight, as it revealed body after body arranged in perfect fashion in each of the cubbies.
‘Is this what heaven feels like?’ Fei asked.
‘I think we're about the least capable dead people to actually answer that question.’ Xei responded almost wistfully as he continued to stare at all the bodies around them.
‘Sure, that's true, but damn isn't this the motherload!’ Fei quickly shot back.
Dei had nothing to add as her look of awe started to waver when she thought about the situation they were in. With a thousand undead soldiers, what could she really do? Sure, she and Xei had been feeling almost unstoppable at this point compared to the likes of John, but they had still failed to best Matthew up until this point in a fight. And if Matthew had told them that they should be careful of these arcanist people in the city, then what else was waiting for them out there? Would a thousand bodies be enough? Even when she knew that they weren't even close to as durable as she could be herself.
Dei was dragged out of her thoughts as she started to hear footsteps approaching them from the other direction as a robed human turned the corner in the distant torchlight. The skeletons shared a glance before Xei suddenly kneeled to the side of the passageway, reaching out to place his hand against the wooden barricade between him and the cubby. Dei realized what he was doing and she quickly turned her back from the approaching man and bent over to place her hand on Xei's shoulder, rubbing in circles in what she hoped looked like a comforting motion.
They heard rather than saw the man's footsteps falter for a half step before continuing on, evidently surprised to see them. As the footsteps grew closer, Xei bowed his head and started to lurch his shoulders back and forth, making him look like he was taking inaudible sobs under his massive hood and mask.
The footsteps had just reached them and started to pass by when they stopped for a moment to address the pair of them.
“Acolyte, I wasn't aware that our visiting hours had gone this late into the evenings.” The man said.
Dei realized that he was talking to her, and she quickly shrugged her shoulders, further turning her face to the man but bowing so low he wouldn't even be able to make out the mask under her hood.
“I don't think that-” Xei cut the man off by thrusting his head forward in a quick motion until he was downright heaving in sobs against the wall with his forehead pressed into the cubby.
The man behind them went silent as Dei turned back around to continue silently comforting Xei as he cried silent tears into the wooden coffin.
“Uh…I suppose we can forgive this one's late visit considering the…” he trailed off as he started walking past them once again in silence.
Both the skeletons stayed in position for another five seconds, hoping against all hope that their little charade had gotten them out of things before the man stopped walking down the hall once again.
As he turned around to look at them, Dei looked up just high enough to make out a thin metal necklace that hung from his neck, with a small brown stone hanging from the very bottom of it.
“I'm sorry Acolyte, but I can't just let this go. You know that visitors aren't allowed to bring their weapons down here, even during the proper hours. He will have to just come back during tomorrow’s visiting period like the rest of them, and without his sword.”
The two of them almost shared a look, but Xei stood silently as Dei relayed to him what she had just seen on their guest's neck. They both kept their heads bowed as if in mourning as the duo slowly started walking towards the man, but he then chose that moment to finally get annoyed with their behavior.
“Acolyte! I'm talking to you! You will address a superior arcanist with respect when you are spoken to!” the man started to raise his voice as the two of them continued to walk towards him.
Together, they started to raise their heads, knowing that the game was pretty much over at this point, and twin masks carved to resemble the skeletal face beneath them raised up to take in the arcanist waiting for them.
“Y-you aren't an acolyte!” The man yelled even as Xei unsheathed his sword and ran down the hall towards him.