— Mesalin Featherstone —

After finishing their role in the village tier advancement, the newly christened Chthonic Council met up in the common room of the Root and Bough. They hadn’t so much planned to meet there, as simply confirmed amongst themselves that they would do so.

Those who hadn’t done so before arriving at the village hall, split off as they got near their homes to go find some better clothes. That was what led to Lin standing off to the side of the Bar observing the majority of the newly defined Chthonic Council as they waited for Lindel and Ismini.

Unlike their normal routine after a council meeting they hadn’t all gathered together at their usual barstools with Lin behind the bar and Dair occasionally grabbing snacks from the kitchen. Instead they had almost immediately drifted away from each other. Lin wasn’t sure if the others felt the same way, but without an immediate threat or clear task she was torn between wanting to check on her friends and avoiding having to talk about her own feelings.

Even thinking about trying not to think about how she was feeling was uncomfortable. Just existing in that moment made her feel like a buzzing ball of manic energy wrapped in thick cold layers of feelings she wasn’t ready to shine a light on all stuffed into her suddenly far to small skin.

She wanted to scream, to rage, to fight, to fix her home, to hold her friends or husband tight, to break down and sob, to pace, to curl up in a ball, and a hundred other conflicting things all at once. Most of all she just wanted to wake up and find the world was back the way it was before the snakes. Instead she simply stood by her bar and stared at the dusty tankard still sitting knocked over and abandoned on one of the tables, as seconds turned to minutes unnoticed.

At some point during her mini breakdown, Dair had apparently given up on sitting and was busy examining the condition of the furniture.

Antheia must have slipped over to her home for a bit as there was a small stack of books on the table she was sitting at, clearly trying to focus on the thick tome laying open before her.

Ahti seemed to be either staring off into the middle distance or possibly examining the Village Interface.

Lindel had returned at some point and was apparently doing her best to keep up a conversation with Celylia.

Fortunately before Lin could start to go back down her emotional rabbit hole Ismini completed their group.

As everyone gathered together and started paying attention, Lin was about to speak when Antheia said “Do you think we should have invited Keira? Or Maybe we should have just had this conversation back in the village hall.”

It took Lin a second to switch tracks mentally before saying “We probably should invite her next time, though who knows if she will want to join us. For now we just need to quickly figure out what the most pressing issues we can actually do something about immediately. From what I saw when gathering everyone, the farmers that woke up will definitely still need a room and I’m sure they aren’t the only ones, so I plan on trying to get this place at least somewhat functional.”

Ahti shook his head slightly, clearly trying to gather his thoughts, before saying “I suspect that the most useful thing I could be doing is to gather up what potions I have and see what state my ingredients are in. I don’t know much about the undead but I do know people are inevitably going to need healing.”

Antheia brightened a bit and said “I rather suspect you are correct. For my part, while I am by no means well informed regarding undeath and the issues that may come with it, I plan on doing what I can to correct that. For now I will go over what books I have and hope there is something pertinent.”

Lindel apparently decided they were going around the room clockwise as she said “The adventurer, uh Keir wasn’t it, said she would look into unlocking useful food for us so I’m going to help the farmers get ready to start planting some. We will likely need food sooner rather than later.”

Ismini chimed in saying “I think it’s Keira, but we can check later. For the moment, I also need to start by preparing then move forward from there. I need to see what is broken and how badly before I can start trying to fix things. If you stumble across any of my workers, tell them to start surveying if they aren’t already.”

With obvious reluctance Celylia said “It may seem silly but I think I will go and open my store to start giving people clothes or repair what they still have. Plenty of people are going to be feeling hopeless and or a bit monstrous. I think having some clean, intact clothes will make them feel a bit more like people.”

“I think that’s a good idea. I certainly feel better after changing.” Lindel said as she rubbed the back of her neck.

Lin found a small smile on her face. Watching the way Lindel thought she was subtle always elicited that reaction from her. From the behavior of a few of the others, she wasn’t the only one.

After a few seconds Dair spoke up and said “There’s nay use fer a cook at the moment. I will jus help out where’n I can.”

From there the meeting didn’t last long before they all split up and went about their self appointed tasks.

Lin looked around at the room she was in trying to decide where to start. Broken glass was scattered behind the bar and several pieces of broken furniture lay scattered about with a thick layer of dust over everything.

None of that felt as pressing in that moment as the fact there were also several half mummified half skeletal viper corpses spread across the room. She couldn’t move them far alone but she could at least chuck them out back so people didn’t have to see them when they came in. With something useful to do she pulled one of her daggers and set about dismantling the nearest carcass.

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— Antheia of Stone Lilly Cove —

Antheia hurried back to her house as soon as the second meeting ended, her arms full of books. She was eager to really get stuck into her research. She was certainly no specialist in either the undead or Mortis but she was a scholar. In fact, according to her status, her class was now an Arcane Scholar of the Veil.

Once inside of her home Antheia did her best to ignore the clear signs of damage and neglect through most of it and went straight to the largest room in the house.

She had designed the house with Ismini to eventually use the ground floor as an enchanting shop when the village could officially house one. The second floor was intended to remain her home. The exception to both of those rules was her library. Fully half of each floor was combined into a single two story tall room filled with thousands of books, scrolls and even a few tablets.

Also unlike the rest of her house, aside from her workshop, the room was heavily warded and despite the years since her death, the library was as pristine as the night before the snakes attacked.

She had modeled the room on the The Library of Stone and Tide where she was both raised and trained. The floor and shelves were polished dark wood with inlays of pale silver blue marble. The walls were dark blue and the roof was lined with ornate brass tiles.

Even as she walked into the room and deposited the books in her arms onto her favorite table she tapped into one of her simplest but most useful skills. As Reference Search flowed out from her and along the shelves the location of books with references to either undead or Mortis lit up in her mind’s eye. There weren’t as many hits as she might have hopped but there were several dozen.

After some debate she decided to start with Mortis. The goddess had apparently been the one to allow them to resurrect so it was a good place to start with.

Antheia wasn’t exactly a theologian or religious scholar. In fact the only deity she had ever worshiped was Syliantha, the goddess of magic and scholars. Regardless, she was somewhat familiar with Mortis.

Over the next few hours of using her skills to accomplish days worth of study she found much of what she knew was correct and only learned a few new things.

Mortis was one of the oldest and most powerful deities. Despite in some ways being very limited in terms of aspects. She was very specifically the goddess of death and the veil. Her domain was death, not the dead, decay, or entropy as were occasionally attributed to her. It wasn’t stated in any of the books but given recent events it seemed likely she was now also the goddess of the undead assuming she wasn’t always.

Antheia was a bit surprised to find that Mortis did actually have a very small number of active worshipers and even a few small cults and clergies. The prevailing understanding was that while everyone knew about her they only offered prayers to her when on the verge of death or after the death of a loved one.

The only gift she was known to give the living was passage across the veil to the afterlife their actions and worship granted them.

Antheia’s research was primarily focused on what gifts, if any, she may have given undead in the past.

Unfortunately, none of the books she had gave any useful information on the subject. After returning the books that didn’t also ping for undead she settled back into her research.

She had just cracked open a bestiary published by the adventurers’ guild when a System wide announcement chimed in her mind. She almost ignored it and focused on her research but she was interested. Years or even decades often passed between events significant enough for a notification like that.

System wide notifications were announced to every person with a direct link to the System. Every council member, village leader, and royal in the entire world received them.

Lovisa Silverthorn of Still-Leaf Village has discovered the Hematic Grape Progenitor Node.

Village Achievement gained: Reward (50 Advancement Points)

After reading the screen in front of her, Antheia sat back in her peculiar chair, her research temporarily forgotten. Not even a full night since they were resurrected and their existence had already been announced to the world.

— King Dalthorian Stonesheild —

The sweltering hot air of the royal forge swirled in time with the steady clash of Dalthorian’s hammer and the war pick he was forging. With each swing sparks scattered bouncing ineffective against his bare arms and at times his ornately braided and decorated beard. Suddenly his harmer stopped its rhythmic pounding as he detected the almost imperceptible point when the temperature of the glowing steel had cooled beyond the range he needed.

With a casual flick of the wrist he deposited the weapon head into the forge. Such weapons were useful to keep his basic skills sharp and pass the time while his current project heated in the much more specialized forge on the other side of the room. He set aside his unenchanted masterwork hammer before he walked across to the other forge.

The black glass like forge was large enough to heat any weapon or armor he might want to but it was clearly sized for a single blacksmith to work on a single piece at a time.

After staring into the pale violet flames for a few seconds he tapped into a skill to fine tune the temperature slightly. While that took effect he scattered a pale blue-green powder across the violet tinted black surface of the anvil.

When he was satisfied with both his workspace and the temperature of the metal, he reached into the flames with his bare hands and removed a double bladed ax head the size of a shield.

Between his Temperature Immunity skill and several Path passive skills his skin transferred less heat than any tongs. As a result Dalthorian could work with the temperamental metal for quite a bit longer. Just as he picked the heavily enchanted mithril alloy hammer he felt a System wide announcement ring in the back of his mind. He didn’t even pause as he began hammering.

He likewise barely seemed to notice as one of his most trusted advisers entered the room some minutes later.

Minira made her presence clear though she was careful to stand well back from the violet flame forge. The many protective runes lining her mage robes would likely withstand the heat but she hadn’t reached over eight centuries in age by being careless.

A few minutes later when the metal had cooled too much, Dalthorian returned it to the forge and gave his full attention to the archmagi who’d patiently waited for her liege to finish his work. “It’s nay often ya come ta my smithy. Is this about the notification?”

Minira sighed softly and said “I take it ya dinnay even read it did ya.”

Dalthorian chuckled, his voice like a rock slide, as he opened the notification. That chuckle was cut off abruptly as he saw the name of the village, his face taking on a hard edge. “Correct me if I'm wrong but isn’t Still-Leaf village dead?” Minira nodded gravely so he continued “Gather the council. Apparently some fools feel they can claim and loot the graves of our honored dead allies.”