Necromancy. Illegal everywhere there were laws and the slightest pretence of civilisation. Loathed as a relic of the Dread Lords, and the target of repeated attempts to fully exterminate the knowledge required. And yet the practice kept popping up here and there.

It was certainly the sort of thing someone would kill to keep a secret. So there was a motive, on top of names and a location. And Anduron wouldn’t have known if this attempt hadn’t been made. Evil had a tendency to destroy itself, as the elders liked to say.

Pondering how an apparent small-timer had gotten his hands on necromantic secrets wasn’t going to get Anduron anywhere, so instead he spent the ride mentally going over distances. Most prominently, how long it would take the corpse to catch up with him, but there were others too. He would need to make a certain stop if he was to survive this kind of attention.

With such immediate concerns settled as the train came to a stop, Anduron had time for one more: Namely, how the corpse had been made to hunt him. Spoken instructions were of limited use for something that had only a bit of magic where a mind would have been, so from what Anduron understood, a sending had to be directed with an object belonging to the target. And Frank Becker and his men were, supposedly, only after him due to information that had supposedly been imparted on him earlier this night.

For this to have been kicked off by someone else, who had their eye on Kenton’s supposed reward money, was technically possible, but the timing seemed far too coincidental.

There were still unknowns, and so it was time to turn where one typically started a murder investigation: With the victim.

The Velvet was a sleek panther to The Mineshaft’s mean alleycat; a lounge carefully curated to appeal to every single one of the senses. It started with sight; the beautiful neon sign above the door, stating its name in elegant cursive. As he got closer Anduron then picked up the music; the sort of slow, lazy instrumentals meant to appeal to couples and lonely romantics, partnered up with sweet voices. The smell of scented candles and subtle perfumes hit him before he even opened the door, and as he did he walked into a world of warm reds, browns and purples. The floor was thickly carpeted, a welcome relief from the city’s constant concrete and asphalt, and Anduron dragged a fingertip along a couch back in passing, just to enjoy the feel of it.

The house band were doing their job up on the stage, familiar faces all, and an assortment of well-dressed guests sat, most of them enraptured by the elven singer’s gentle crooning.

All in all, it was a fine place to relax, but Anduron was on a job, and so he went directly to the bar and got the tender’s attention with a raised hand.

“Hello, Ted. Is the lady of the house in?”

“Yes, she is,” Ted replied, as he worked on an elaborate cocktail. “She’s going through some paperwork in the back.”

“Please tell her I need to talk. It’s urgent.”

“Alright. Just take your seat.”

Malea absolutely refused to see anyone other than her employees in the backrooms. It was an odd but very firm eccentricity of hers, and one Anduron knew better than to defy. That wasn’t how one asked for favours.

Instead he went and found himself the most isolated seat he could; a nice, cushy semicircle couch around a table. For the first time since he’d heard Marcus’s approaching footsteps, he allowed himself to unwind. The cushions cradled his dead weight wonderfully, and he was almost sorry when he saw Malea coming his way.

Much like the lounge itself, she was the ideal of elven grace and beauty; tall, fine-boned, clad in a red dress, with a head of flowing hair which she tended to as a mother would a baby.

Yes, she was pretty, and had done very well for herself by capitalising on what the other species saw in the elven people. But Anduron had often wondered why they never seemed to consider that elves themselves might not be as impressed with elven looks.

While Malea remained out of speaking distance, Anduron’s eyes drifted to the dwarven woman who sat by herself, transfixed by the singers on stage. Now there was a form of beauty that was alien to him, or at least had been before he saw a dwarf almost every day. There was something different. But he was very much in a time crunch, and Malea now sat down to join him.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Still alive, I see,” was her greeting, as well as a mildly mocking smile.

“Still alive, he replied.

“You reek,” she added, and crinkled her perfect nose slightly. His aversion to tobacco wasn’t a personal eccentricity.

“I had to make a stop at a place that could do with your touch. But Malea…”

Her teasing manner drained away as she saw something serious was coming.

“... Marcus is dead,” he said, in a voice low enough to not be overheard by the other elves in the lounge.

She absorbed this for a couple of moments, looked away at nothing, downwards, then back at him.

“So,” she said at the same low volume. “The thread is ended. And now only the tally remains. The good and bad of a life, and which outweighed the other.”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“He was the one who arrived when we were talking. He was afraid, I think, and wanted my help with something. But he couldn’t quite spit it out, and left without actually telling me anything. As he did so, a hit squad rolled up to the building and gunned him down. He knew something dangerous, and now they think I know it.”

“Well, this is a real mess. And you are here instead of speaking to the police?”

“Oh, I wasn’t at the office,” Anduron said. “Only the killers know I was there, and they will keep quiet. And there may not even have been a murder at all; they packed the body up and drove off with it, so all that is left is some blood.”

“So you are handling this yourself?”

“That is how things used to be done. This is personal, after all.”

There might have been some part of her that disagreed with him. But her face stiffened, and she gave a quick, firm nod.

“I have made progress already. But I am being targeted. Malea: Someone put a sending on my tail. I lost it by getting on a train, but it will be coming right for me, until one of us is destroyed.”

That got a strong reaction out of her. That is to say, a pair of raised eyebrows.

“That is not something I need in my lounge, Anduron,” she told him firmly.

“I estimate it would need at least twenty minutes to reach us here, so we have a bit of time. I need two things from you. The first is what you know about Marcus’s recent life. He mentioned having a new job, and the implication was that it had to do with whatever got him killed. And I think he was talking to you more than me, in recent days.”

“He was,” Malea told him. “He got a job at a funeral home. Just a general assistant, I believe.”

“A funeral home,” Anduron echoed meaningfully.

“Indeed,” she said, matching his tone.

Someone had sent a dead body after him. And here, entering the picture, was a place that handled the dead. It wasn’t a complicated puzzle. But a few pieces were still missing.

“Do you know the name and location?”

“Hayes Funeral Home,” she told him. “No, I don’t know the location, but you can look it up. Now what was that other thing?”

“I need you to put in a good word for me to the priestesses.”

“Hm.”

She sat back a bit, and crossed her arms.

“And I need it to happen tonight. As fast as you can. I am betting that my life means something to you.”

“Oh, it does,” Malea said in a businesslike voice. “But so does my relationship with them.”

“Have faith, Malea. In me. Come now; this will be a blow against evil. How would that reflect poorly on you?”

“You do not have faith of your own, Anduron. For all that you pine for the past, and yes, I know you still do, you do little to honour it.”

The words stung. He didn’t get angry. They just stung.

“We all adjusted in different ways,” he told her after a breath’s hesitation. “I am not as lost as you seem to think, Malea. I still respect the virtues. Come now.”

He thought he detected a hint of doubt in his own voice. And if he did, then Malea certainly did as well.

“Well, those twenty minutes of yours are counting down,” she said. “And while I may have doubts about your virtues, you are not wicked either. Just remember that you will be reflecting on both of us.”

“I will, Malea. Thank you.”

“Sure.”

She stood up.

“We both have somewhere to be, Anduron, and people to talk to. So we had best get to it. Get…”

She looked away, and sighed.

“Get some justice for Marcus, the closing of the thread.”

“I intend to, Malea.”