Examining the corpse that her own talisman had brought back to her temple, Fairheart frowned. There were minor signs of physical harm to the body, but what concerned her more was the more likely cause of death—poison.

Poisons were a problem for her profession. It wasn't a good look if you resurrected someone with divine magic only for them to get immediately poisoned again and die. The faiths definitely didn't earn donations for such things, she thought.

One aspect that had annoyed Fairheart about temple work was accepting donations. It had been quite freeing to have Travis simply offer to donate any amount required to ensure everyone in the city was protected. She had thought it would be a stiff argument to get him to agree to her being included in the deal when Rupert's temple had aligned itself sooner, but in the end they both got what they wanted.

"And you want to live." She carefully used a little glass vial to collect the bloody spittle, noting the tiny black dots in it. A second specimen was taken before she set both to the side and attended upon her task of preparing the corpse for its resurrection.

First, she had to clean the poison out. Normally, on a living being, all kinds of careful remove poison spells could be employed. Corpses had no risk of suffocation and lacked any inherent resistance to magic, however, so Fairheart simply used a regular cleaning spell.

After letting the spell work its literal magic for several minutes, she dismissed it and set about accomplishing the task of reuniting the man's soul and his body, while imbuing the latter with life once more.

The drain on her faith, amplified even as it was by Travis' presence within the city, failed to accomplish the task. It was the oddest thing. Normally, if something were too much for her, it was because of excessive damage to the body or, in stranger cases, because the soul was unwilling to inhabit its former body. Now, though, it felt like her magic was digging through lead to reunite the body and its former soul.

Fairheart did what any good professional would when encountering such a problem for the first time, she tried again. Her goddess bestowed power upon her and she used it to bind soul back to body—and it failed again. "I think I need a second opinion."

Casting a general protective blessing over her altar and the body upon it, Fairheart left the inner sanctum. Spotting her newest assistant, she bade the young girl, "Please let any visitors know I will return shortly."

The city of Northridge was growing daily. Fairheart had noticed a flood of people coming into the city and had celebrated the burgeoning life with joy in her heart. What had surprised her most about the growing city was how active Breeze was. What had been a small dungeon that had begged them for sanctuary was now an essential part of the city with a wide entrance to let wagons and workers in and out. Her goddess was fond of Verdant dungeons, after all, and one becoming so large so fast was a wonder to behold.

Her musings carried her the distance to another temple, one as large as her own but somehow far more imposing. Stopping at the entrance, she set her palm on the door and whispered a prayer, asking permission from the resident priest. The door opened not a moment later.

"You don't need to beg entrance, Farah. The scales don't harm or hinder unless you bring intent to unbalance." When she made no move to enter, Rupert raised an eyebrow.

"I have a problem. Try as I might, I cannot resurrect a man whose body arrived earlier via talisman." Fairheart was relieved when Rupert dropped the pretense and stepped through the door and out into the street. "He arrived with poison suspended in blood staining his lips. There was minor physical damage, but I followed procedure. I took two samples of the blood so we can identify the poison, cleaned the body thoroughly, and tried to bring him back."

Listening, Rupert returned to Fairheart's temple with her and shivered a little as the goddess that partly resided there greeted him. Dipping his head, he acknowledged the goddess and entered the holy place, eventually reaching the resurrection altar.

Approaching the body, he reached out with his faith and felt for the condition of the corpse. It was intact, there was some internal damage, but it was nothing he hadn't encountered before. "May I?"

"I welcome your assistance. Please, go ahead."

With that, Rupert focused his mind on the task of reversing entropy. There was a corpse before him, and he could sense the soul that belonged to it, so he called on his faith to restore their bond and invest the soul back into the body.

Feeling something in the way, Rupert stopped before expending his full power. "There is something blocking this. If you'll pardon me, I will call more power." Rupert did so once he had a nod from Fairheart. Offering his faith up and wrenching on the soul and body to combine them, he expended a measure of faith that would have restored a body if given just a head—and failed.

Taking his time to recover from the expenditure, Rupert ran through the process to examine where the failure had occurred. It was definitely not something in the body—he could feel how clean it was and expertly prepared. "Where is this poison?"

Fetching one of the vials, Fairheart passed it to Rupert. "I have not seen its like, but I have had limited experience with poison."

Uncorking the vial, Rupert smelled it carefully, then let his magic play over it. "It feels inert now, but there is the slightest hint of a curse about it." With that, he bent his power toward identifying the contents. The moment his faith touched it, the curse jumped out and tried to flee. Grabbing at it, Rupert pinned it down and then speared the metaphysical horror to the altar while giving a silent apology to the goddess.

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Staring in shock, Fairheart called her goddess' power to reinforce Rupert's work. The air crackled with power as two gods bent to the task of aiding their priests in dealing with a new foe. "Is that a soul poison?"

Nodding, Rupert began taking the curse apart with techniques far more advanced than mere cleaning. "Someone with a horrible amount of skill made this. Even a Rot dungeon wouldn't make something this malicious." There were distractions and parts that the poison would use to evade detection, but Rupert stripped them free with the expertise of a butcher seeking an expensive, lean cut. When he was done, he'd stripped the curse of all misdirection and revealed its purpose—and he didn't like what he saw. "At the moment of death, it consumes and destroys the link between body and soul, leaving the person impossible to resurrect. It appears to be trying to conceal itself and what it did."

"So he's—?"

"He is beyond anyone's ability to…" As he said it, Rupert trailed off in thought. He was definitely beyond his own ability to bring back, and any priest he knew, but it wasn't just priests that could put a soul back in a body. "Do you have a cart for moving bodies?"

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Travis knew the two priests were more supportive of each other since the siege, but the pair looking so determined as they wheeled a cart across town toward him was new. When they reached his entrance, he had Brayden meeting them.

Feeling drained still, from having roused his god to war for the kingdom, Brayden gestured deeper into the dungeon. He could feel the somber determination around the pair. "What can we help you with?"

Fairheart, seeing the man's life as being her responsibility first and foremost, replied, "A resurrection. We have a man who had one of my talismans who appeared to have died of poison. That poison attacked his body and severed the connection to his soul."

"That's Harrow, the King's bodyguard," Brayden said after they'd rolled the cart into the timber mill room where he could get a good look at him. "Trav, what can you make from this?"

"I can tell he's dead. I'm a dungeon, Brayden. I can only see what you see. Is there something I can try, though?" Travis asked, making sure to speak to everyone present.

"We cannot bring him back like this. I thought that we could try to, at the very least, use your methods to try to restore him. His soul feels willing to return, but we cannot unite it with his body." Rupert remembered the curse and couldn't suppress a shiver.

"Oh. Uh, I'll have to talk to Felna about that. Felna?" Travis could see her sitting in her own temple, eyes closed, meditating. "If it's not a bad time—?"

Opening her eyes, Felna eased her mind back from the relaxed state and then slapped the floor three times to banish the trance completely. "It's never a bad time, Trav. What can I assist with?"

Explaining what he knew, Travis moved to the guts of it. "I'd like to see if you can cast your communication spell on him, and if not, if I could try making him my minion in place of you, so that I can resurrect him."

"Oh. Hrmm." As she walked out of her temple, Felna found her tail twitching in curiosity. "Where am I going?"

Travis struggled not to stammer in his reply. "Up. Uh, the entrance. They're using the timber mill up there that no one uses anymore. If it's too much, I could get Axel to—"

"I'll do it. Even though it will greatly inconvenience me and leave me feeling alone and distraught." Smiling, Felna shifted her walk from the hippy sway she normally affected to something a little more professional as she ascended the stairs to the first floor. She nodded to the guards present and made her way into the room Travis had told her about. Dipping her head to both priests, she asked, "Anything I can help with?"

"We have a problematic case here. This man was returned to Priestess Fairheart's temple of the Sisters of Grace." Rupert went on to describe the situation in full, ending on the last discussion he'd had with Travis about attempting to use the dungeon methods for resurrection.

It was a tall order. Felna considered her bond to Travis to be one of the more stimulating things—apart from becoming a priestess—in her life. Giving it up, even for a moment, made her fur stand up. "We can but try. Without Lady Penelope present, we can't use the normal methods for bonding someone to the dungeon. He might not be amenable to that, given last time I saw him he was guarding the king."

"I would ask that neither of you share this spell or attempt to cast it yourself; this is magic unique to my faith." After waiting a moment for both to nod, she took a deep breath and worked her spell. "This is the first stage. It allows a person to commune with a dungeon. It will almost certainly fail to do anything, because Travis can commune with anyone now, but here goes."

When the spell resolved and nothing happened, Felna frowned a little. "Travis, anything?"

"I can't… Um…" Travis scrambled to look through his interfaces, trying to find if he had a new minion like Felna had first been. "He's not here."

"I expected as much. Let me try to take it to the next step. I'll be back soon, Travis." While she'd normally go a bit further with her flirting, Felna felt it was a bit too somber a moment for her usual shenanigans.

Part of Felna wanted to scream and demand he restore the link immediately. She would burn everything until she got her way. Thankfully for those present, she had a firm grip on her kitten-self and maintained her casting without more of a tell than a lashing tail. She could feel the magic extend from her, wrap around the body.

"Still nothing," Travis said after she'd cast it. Part of him felt a little lost without Felna's connection. He wanted to talk to her about that, but put it aside for when there weren't a bunch of priests and a corpse decorating his workroom. "No. He's not in any of my systems."

"It cannot find him. His soul is unbound and unreachable." No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Felna felt the probe of dungeon magic. She didn't resist, even welcomed the link as Travis' presence rushed back into her.

"You're purring," Travis told Felna—and only Felna.

"I'm sorry, but this magic cannot help him." Felna tried her very best to be outwardly respectful of the situation, while inside she wanted to dance. "If you'll excuse me, the other aspects of resurrection are not my forte."

Leaving the two talking of preserving the corpse for later efforts, Felna made it as far as the stairs down before she let her purr out at full volume. With one hand stretched to the wall, she sashayed her way to the bottom floor, never stopping from touching the side. "Thank you for not leaving a lady waiting."

Travis would have liked to spend more time focused on Felna, but he had a meeting starting with the council, Northridge itself, and Breath of Spring—to whom he would have to explain that the kingdom was now at war.

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