"That's interesting." Iris's voice rose above the early morning silence as she sat down on the bed, her feet firmly planted on the floor.
The crimson light of the still-to-be-born sun leaked through the gap between the curtains into the room and onto her legs. Dark shadows appeared on her leg as the light penetrated her pasty skin. The shadows meandered up through her calf toward her knee like vines on a tree before disappearing from sight where the light didn't reach.
Iris ran her clawed nails on her left leg causing the shades inside to stir like a living being that puppeted the flesh around it. The disturbance made the concentrated yarns of the strange blackness begin to dilute and mix with its surroundings appearing like tea in a cup of hot water. On short notice, her leg transformed into a whirlwind of the ever-familiar mist appearing around Kia's feet when casting spells.
The elf was reminded of the inky black waters of the Southern Strait separating Edor from Kia's homeland as her gaze was transfixed on her long leg and the slow process of gathering the scattered darkness into a cohesive mass once more. Iris turned her head toward her dearest kitten, finding her lying uncouthly on the bed, her feet having ascended far above her head as they climbed the bed rest and half covered by the thick wool blanket, as the girl didn't know if she was too cold or too hot.
"Am I doing the right thing?" The elf felt a sting where her heart should be while she leaned toward her saviour, gently grasping at her soft body and settling her down in a less wild and humiliating position.
The tall undead stood up from the bed in one smooth leap and began to organise the room. With efficiency and speed only acquired from many years of practice, the risen found herself neatly folding Kia's black robe over the chair near the bed, its silvery trim glimmering in the mute sunlight.
Unlike the day before she wasn't wearing her new servant's uniform but rather her usual greyish brown jacket with Adventurer Guild's symbol dangling on her chest. The elf wanted to wait for the girl to wake up but by then she wouldn't be sure she could come back to this room before Kia did and she didn't want to wake the peacefully sleeping mage. She had seen her ever-delicate necromancer simply doze off randomly through the day when she was woken up before she did and in addition, Iris knew that she might not be able to muster enough strength to leave once her Sun and Star gazes at her. With one last look, Iris set a letter, with all the instructions she had for the girl before she would leave the room.
Cold air filled Iris's ears as she stepped outside, the snow must have fallen down on the city during the night as the gardens around her disappeared completely replaced with a uniform white blanket.
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The elf turned her head to the side and saw a woman who looked to be from the southern part of Edor shoveling snow. She wasn't sure if the woman was being punished or the Oriripoli mages were simply this callous with human life but the woman worked in the harsh cold wearing a thin linen shirt more suited to the scorching heat of summer noon.
The woman's clothes were soaked with sweat from the hard labour as she de-snowed the many small paths meandering between various gardens. Iris's amethyst eyes panned the white expanse around herself finding an older man in the same predicament as the woman holding a spade beside her.
Iris found it strange that spending only a few nights in Oriripol had already made the sight of enslaved humans barely register with her as she went about her daily business and the only reason her eyes lingered on the two for longer than a moment was the notion that she was watching corpses who didn't yet know who or what they were. The risen still couldn't bear the sight of the mindless puppets the mages created, filling with a revulsion she had never felt before. Even the hate and disgust she felt toward the human hero paled in comparison to what she felt now. Yet, watching the two humans who did something she could easily imagine herself doing before turning undead Iris couldn't muster much compassion.
The undead hoplite pondered on what would she think about the picture in front of her before her monstrification... and her thoughts brought strange results as she couldn't put herself in the same mindset of a scared malnourished and beaten slave she once was.
Would she pity the humans? Find a strange sense of enjoyment in seeing someone else than her be punished or would she feel nothing?
The questions and her inability to answer them made the elf think that either she simply didn't change or her inability to find a satisfying new answer to her apathetic response was due to her simply not being an old self to return to and she was always this heartless person. The other possibility the risen came up with was that her transformation into an undead wasn't so unintrusive to her as a person. She found it odd that her transformation into a horrific undead monster resulted only in her body changing and the loss of most of her sense of touch and it would make sense to her that she was slowly being influenced by her new undead race.
The risen wanted to turn on her heel and return to her saviour seeking answers to her question before remembering that her creator would most likely find her sudden worry illogical. To a true undead like Kia with a mindset alien to her, the change in her character would most likely appear like the difference between the height of two needles far in the distance or in other words the girl couldn't tell the difference between a millimetre and a centimetre.
The elf's body jerked as if wanting her to finally move which freed the poor confused woman from herself as she took a step forward pushing any and all thoughts to the side.
The woman who seemed to only now notice the tall elf quickly glanced in the direction from where the elf came from and quickly backed away, stopping her work as if afraid of disturbing the thoughtless elf. The man who seemed to be from Flinter on the other hand stared at Iris's ears, his grey eyes filled with both fear and hate. Regardless of which emotion won over he too distanced himself from Iris, causing him to stop the work which would kill them two if they didn't finish quickly.
The sound of the city came over the risen as soon as she left the Academy. It was still very early in the day, before the first bell even rang but from the crimson hue painted on the sky above her, the sunrise was only moments away.
The walk through the main streets was a pleasant one with barely any people on their feet at such a time and even fewer who decided to go outside into the chilly wind. The smell of fish and mud began to fill the air eventually as the wind changed direction and began to blow from the direction of the port, a bell chime rang inside Iris's ear.