Thana Mourningjay

“So... what are you planning to do when you get out of here?” I asked.

We all three were taking turns trying to pry the door open, with hands until we remembered that Milo's previous sword was now pretty much useless. It didn't serve that well as a crowbar either, but it was worth trying at least.

“Seriously?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I have a finite number of small talk subjects here Milo,” I replied.

“Okay, fine, fine. Well, the first thing I'll do is probably go home.”

“Gonna rub that in aren't you?” I wasn't all that sour about it, but it did twinge a bit.

“I have a finite number of answers here Thana,” he joked as he pushed on the piece of metal.

“Fair.”

“I'll also probably look for a new job, since, well... What about you?”

“I'm going to find a way to eat candy until I get sick. After that... not sure, head for the border maybe.” He stopped pushing briefly to look at me. “I haven't had anything sweeter than the odd piece of fruit in years, don't give me that.”

“At least you have achievable goals, that don't involve hurting anyone.”

“Not gonna lie, I considered killing my parents for a long time, but I don't think I will.” Honesty seemed a risk, but there were reasons not to lie.

Now he did fully stop, turning towards me. He took my chin in his hand and made me look up at him. “Thana, don't even joke about that. That's not something you'll ever come back from.”

“Sorry, but it's the truth. I really hated them for a while there, but now I just have a hard time bringing myself to care. Not sure if that's worse or not,” I said.

“That's harsh kid. I don't know all of what went down between you, but you should try to forgive them. If for nothing else than the fact that it will lessen the burden on yourself.”

“Well, door first, then escape, forgiveness can come along when it does. Honestly I don't think the skeleton is helping much,” I observed.

“They're not very strong normally,” he replied.

“You're strangely relaxed about all of that, Mr. Bones being here and everything, you know?”

“I am not at all relaxed about it, and his name was Perry Redthorn, which I know you know. We had drinks together a few times after work. He had a wife and kids, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't disrespect his corpse. I just have bigger problems on my mind right now.”

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“Like the door,” I opined.

“Like the door, and the ooze monsters, and the actually evil spellcaster trying to murder his way to freedom. Also the guards who are almost as likely to attack us as help us, and the army nearby.”

“Those are fair points I guess,” I agreed. “Door first though, I think if I try to worry about all of that at once I'll just sit down and cry, and that won't be helpful at all.”

“You're right,” he said as the door finally popped itself open. “Let's go.”

Milo Greyson

We made our way carefully out into the floor proper. The door here had been sealed both magically and physically, only able to be pried away because the black goo monster had done so much damage in its passing. Following its path wasn't that hard, and something I wanted to do. It would be better to at least know where it was rather than it finding us.

We passed cells, some empty, some with bodies, some with the dissolved remains of whoever had been there. The trail led us down one of the side halls.

“All these people,” I said, shaking my head at the amount of death.

“They're gone now, these are just... shells,” my companion said.

“What?”

“These, these bodies, they're shells, like you find from bugs? The person isn't here, its gone, they're not people anymore, just shells. Look at them, look at their eyes, they're empty. Its sad, but they're not suffering here.”

“Is that why you don't care about Perry?” I asked, finally understanding her point on it a bit.

“Is Perry there? You knew him better than me, look at him. I don't see anything that looks like a person,” she responded.

So I did, I looked at the walking corpse of, well not a friend, but a coworker. There was light in the eyes, hate-filled and real, but... it wasn't a human light, more like a fire that just wanted to consume.

“No, Perry's not there. Are all undead like that?” I asked.

“No, some of them are definitely still themselves. I asked one of the priests, which made him really mad, but that's what he said. In the ones like zombies, skeletons, and stuff they're not the same person, even if they retain some of the same habits, the soul is gone. In some there's there sort of weird half-state, they're not the same person, but they remember a lot about their former existence and are you know, smart and have kind of a different soul or something. Some of the really scary ones like ghosts are still themselves though, just changed by the process. However, these aren't even undead, they're bodies.”

“That's an interesting perspective Thana, but I thought you'd barely done any magic.”

“I did, but I had a cat, Scritches. It... I killed it accidentally, the first bit of magic I ever did. Hurting my brother was also an accident, but that came later. The cat got back up, and I could control it. I could feel it wasn't the same cat though, Scritches was gone. He would come and cuddle with me, but that creature wouldn't. I sat there and wept for a bit, and the whole time it just stood there still, becuase I hadn't given it an order.” She frowned for a second. “Never told anyone about that before.”

“What did you do with it?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, I put it in an old wooden box and buried it in the woods near my house.”

“After you killed it again right?”

“...”

“After you killed it again, right?”

“Look, I was like ten...”

I rubbed my head. “There is a random undead cat buried out in the woods, just... just there.”

“What, you want to go and dig it up and do something about it?” She asked.

“I think we're obligated to. You can't just leave undead laying around. Of all people I think you would understand the consequenses of doing something like that. Do you want more kids to go through what you went through? More of them to get magic they can't control and end up somewhere like this?”

“No,” I was glad she sounded truly apologetic about that.

“Then after we get out, we go deal with Scritches,” I said.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Look at it this way, now you have a plan with what you want to do, you know, other than eat candy until you get sick.”

We'd come down one of the side halls as we followed the trail of the ooze. Unfortunatly it ended here. There was a small hole in the wall, probably belonging to a now melted mouse or rat, and the monster was gone. There'd been multiple trails earlier, but either the multiple oozes had merged back together, or were following the same path.

“I have a feeling this whole building is going to be infested by the time this is over.”

“I mean, it already had rats...”

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

She perked her ears, but remained pretty still, as did I. There was a loud noise of metal on metal and boots on stone as a troop of men came up the stairs. Had we beelined it there rather than following the ooze we'd have come face to face with them, but now there was a wall of cells between us. I could only hear them because of the wide halls and the fact that they were both loud, and nearby.

“Four more floors,” a voice said.

“Envy those guys who got the straight shot up,” replied one of the others.

The stairwells were intentionally on opposite sides of any floor, to keep anyone from quickly going from top to bottom or vise versa unless they were in the sealed staircase. Who could say how many floors this group had been running up.

“Both of you shut up, and keep your eyes peeled,” a final member of their group said.

We stood there until they'd gone up, and then kept still for awhile longer.

“What do we do?” Thana asked.

“Keep going down, and out of line of sight of the stairs until we get near. They know about the riot now, so we may end up coming face to face with a group of guards. Don't attack unless I do, just keep back and act like you're following my directions.”

“I am following your directions,” she pointed out.

“Good, then you've got plenty of practice.”