A pair of ancient eyes watched as the restless soul she had found paused for just a moment as the two fluffy humans came into view. They were talking to Iris in hurried voices which turned into a broken string of words as they sped up. She had learned the baby language from Iris but it surprised her how her understanding of it diminished with changes in pitch and speed.
"Why do you need so many lang-" Before the ancient could finish grumbling she felt her body pulled upwards as she got whisked away from the corner the spirit was huddled in.
A pleasant warmth permeated into the girl's frigid body cutting short any would-be protest she could manage to squeak out. The ancient felt relief resting her increasingly tired head against Iris's chest without needing to utter a single order. The conversation grew in intensity but it barely reached the mage who closed her eyes and listed to the quiet hum of mana fluctuating inside Iris's chest. In her domain, it would take a long moment, a lot of it for a single thin layer of dust to build up. Nothing ever happened without her giving an order and so when the ancient necromancer suddenly felt being pulled away from Iris, her entire body jerked violently as if she had fallen out of the bed.
Mana rushed into her limbs, ready to spring into combat against whoever had pulled her of her throne but a pair of amethysts stared back at her when she felt her bottom rest against stone. Air filled Kia's cheeks while her brow dipped in dissatisfaction as she was seated on top of the alchemist's table. Above her, Iris gave her a small smile before running her finger along the side of her neck and hooking her fingers under Kia's chin before raising the ancient's face toward herself and pausing seemingly taking in the sight for later use.
"So fierce," Her throne said wearing a smile, accidentally flashing her pointy pearl white teeth. The mage felt like Iris didn't truly mean what she said causing her expression to an even fiercer pout.
Without saying anything the risen pinched Kia's cheek, looking very much proud of herself before crossing her arms in front of her chest and turning toward the demi-humans behind her. Kia continued to pout, drilling her gaze into Iris's back not really knowing why, feeling some sort of anger toward the spirit Iris turned toward. She huffed and puffed with exaggerated anger before letting out a loud and prolonged sigh as the elf didn't turn her attention back on the petite ancient.
The pale almost ghostly girl began to swing her legs before crossing her arms in front of her modest chest to watch the restless spirit in the corner, doing it so completely differently from the currently favourless risen.
She had encountered occasionally spirits which fought being put to rest but at first, they became very annoying toward her after a short time spent with her. Later on, she found out that those delirious souls started to become less and less responsive to her. She still controlled them but forcing a soul into rest isn't really putting it into its deserved rest. Thankfully she found out that putting a super annoying soul from the recently arrived dead with the stubborn soul, solved the issue perfectly. Occasionally the people living above her home would put a very old dead into the stone sarcophaguses her constructs cycled between upper and lower floors, because of this she had to ask if they could put the date of death of the person inside on the lids since the bigger the difference in their age was the longer restless soul took to put to rest.
In those times when she was tasked with housing newly arriving dead inside her city and putting them to rest she was very busy and didn't have any time to look into why some souls were like that or what caused them to be like that.
Regardless of the fact that her timeless body got worn out by the mountain of paperwork put on her tiny shoulders, the ancient viewed these equally old days with nostalgia as after the city above Necropolis turned to ruin and she was left with nothing to do causing The Great Boredom era of her life to begun. At first, she had read all the books she located anywhere in her domain before moving on to the thousands of murals usually depicting her or the noble deeds of the person buried in the chamber she found it in. Her backlog of things to do quickly vanished though as she was left with only rereading books she had read a million times already and playing with magic.
Kia held her head in both hands as she felt her head hurt as she struggled to look further into her past. Her frown disappeared as she leaned on Iris's side and quietly watched as the demi-humans calmed down the restless spirit by simply talking to it. Nakatei was standing over the spirit with her arms strangely held in front of her, the curious necromancer rolled her eyes at the strange way putting a soul to rest reminding her of pre-Iris days before she hopped off the table, bored of watching the fluffy red tail swaying from side to side.
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The pale sapphirine eye overtaken by fear and anger gleamed brighter for a fraction of a moment as the petite necromancer waved her hand at the corner of the room. She issued multiple orders for the proto-banshee to begin using its mana to fuel the magical projection letting the demi-humans interact with it, before leaving a forceful yet hopeful order forcing the spirit to rest regardless if the soul liked it or not.
Her mind tugged on the strings chaining the adorably ugly goblin to her and letting him know he was to bring others to her if they started asking about her. With a skip, the mage left the others and entered the main hall again. Instead of looking at her feet, watching out to not trip over a brick the girl had her face pointed upward. If anyone had seen the pale girl at this moment they would see an image ripped straight through a book retelling the adventurers of a beyond beautiful princess radiating her delicate beauty to anyone whose eyes rested on her small figure walking mesmerised through a goblin palace with a pale white light hovering above her shoulder. She looked so out of place in this palace fit only for a king of vermin but that didn't trouble the ancient with limited knowledge of such things, rather her gem-like eyes followed the faint scars invisible to anyone else but people gifted with Mana-Sight.
Red and dirty yellow strokes of mana pierced the grey stone and led the ancient into a secluded part of the stronghold. Her boot walked through a doorway leading to a large rectangular room with many chairs around it, all of them fallen over. She might have not known it but these rooms were quite common, a room for the sovereign to meet his advisors in private, to talk over dealings with foreign diplomats or plan wars. To the sole absolute monarch of Necropolis creating such a room seemed unthinkable.
With an unworried step, Kia's black boots left footprints in the thin layer of dust as she got closer to the table the hum of magic rose into an audible whisper.
On the stone table there lay the source of the brimstone smell burning through the mage's nose. A gem larger than Kia's head lay broken inside a golden housing in the shape of a five-pointed star. The deep red gem was shattered into multiple large pieces, its centre was caved in the pulverised remains glittering inside the hollow space inside the ancient's large eyes.
"Is it safe for you to touch it?" A familiar voice unexpectedly came from behind Kiayicu causing her body to freeze before she turned toward the voice. A guilty scene reflected in Iris's watchful eyes, the scene depicted the porcelain doll balancing on one leg as she was reaching toward the crystal, which looked far more sinister inside the elf's purple eyes then in hers. "It smells of sulphur and suffering."
The undead girl tilted her head in the way she always did when she found something odd with the world she had stepped into. Firstly she was very sure that emotions didn't produce a smell any of the risen's senses could detect. Secondly...
"Brimstone." A cyclopean word left the girl's lips before it was quickly swallowed by the walls around her which seemed hungry to hear language from ages they were trying their best to replicate.
"Sulphur." Iris uncrossed her arms as her Common bounced off the walls.
"Made up word." The ancient puffed up her body like a peacock ready to fight with the towering elf.
"Any idea what this is?" Iris conceded the argument to the necromancer as she walked to her side and stopped at an awkward angle wary of the crystal or what remained of it.
A rare feeling of triumph over Iris filled the comet's petite body before having to be vented out in the form of a victorious purr. Unbeknownst to her Iris's face darkened for a split moment as she looked down on Kia and began to pet her as her gaze lingered for a little bit too long.
"I don't know, but it's leaking trace amounts of mana. I would need more time to look at what types of spells it might have had before."
"Whatever this is, it must have been the cause of the goblin's downfall." Iris's voice tickled the still victorious feeling mage as she pointed at something under her foot that explained her awkward stance to the ancient. In front of the elf's boots, goblin silhouettes were forever sketched into the scorched floor.
"Ohh."
The folds appeared on the leather jacket as Iris crouched and felt the stone with her fingers. Of course, the mage quickly copied the elf but by the time her heels lifted off the ground and balanced on the balls of her feet, Iris was already standing up.
"This doesn't look like they had much time to react," Iris offered Kia her hand and pulled her up. "If it's safe, put that thing into your inventory and let us get out of here." For some reason, the elf emphasised her first three words as she pointed her finger up and moved it up and down as her eyes studied the ancient's face. After passing the unknown test her throne stepped back making space for her to reach the crystal.
The necromancer quickly swiped her open palm at the artefact laying on the table causing it to disappear, seemingly by an incredible act of sleight of hand instead of simple magic.
With a tug of a mental chain, Kia caused the undead goblin to begin to head toward the exit. It didn't take long for her and Iris to find the demis again. They were all standing in a room with the undead goblin pointing toward the ground. Iris's shoe pressed against a stone which was popping out a little and looked loose and flipped it, exposing a tunnel leading into the darkness.
"Kia, do we need him?" Nakatei's face darted away from the small void and toward the ugly undead.
"...No." She took a long look at the goblin, asking the small soul all the questions which came to her mind but the undead didn't have any useful things to say.
"Can I smash his head open?" Nakatei asked bringing everyone's attention onto her.
"Sure." The ancient cut loose the chains holding the soul in its old body causing the goblin's empty husk to burn with blue fire before going limp as she ordered the soul to rest.
Before the goblin's body could fall down, the fluffy human with big orange ears had smashed the sharp club axe thing on Glob's skull, spraying dried-up goop on the wall behind them.
"Now we can go." Nakatei said before Iris and Shiro began to widen the passage.