— Keira —
As the early morning sunlight filtered through the dense forest canopy Keir couldn’t quite push down the memories of her final moments of life. Since she’d first returned to the living world every morning had carried with it the same feelings and memories. She could almost feel the warmth of a campfire in the occasional shafts of sun that made its way through the thinning fall foliage. Every rustling leaf seemed to carry with it the sound of scales scraping just behind her. The strange sound dampening effect of the forest felt like a thick oppressive shroud weighing her down like a thousand eyes staring at her from just out of view.
As the oppressive feelings built she almost wished she could hear the rush of blood in her ears. Steel Coast Tide Carvers were expected to spend decades charging deep into enemy lines with little to no support aside from the Tide Carvers beside them.
With the Steel Coast Archipelago situated along the border between the shallow and relatively safe Coral Sea and the unfathomably deep Ferin Ocean, they faced frequent attacks from everything from massive sea monsters to hordes of abyssal spawn that at times numbered in the millions and poured forth from the sea for months on end in a single continuous tide.
In the face of that stress Tide Carvers used a number of meditative exercises to cope. Almost all of the techniques started with focusing on the blood rushing in their ears like the surging tide before moving on to the method best suited to the individual and their circumstances to calm their heart and mind.
She could feel herself starting to spiral in a way that she was growing unfortunately familiar with as she tried to fall back on her mental training. She was almost startled out of her growing dread as she felt a distant tide deep inside of her soul. As the sound of waves grew more distinct and the smells of the forest were slowly replaced by the scent of blood and salt she managed to focus on her training and her mind stilled.
“Hey, Are you alright?” Lovisa’s voice broke through the last of her reactions to the morning in the forest.
Keir’s hand ached slightly from how hard she’d been gripping the handle of her sword. Despite that her voice was surprisingly level as she said “I’m fine. This time of day in the forest just brings up some unpleasant memories.”
Keir wasn’t surprised to see the spark of understanding in Lovisa’s eyes as she shifted to a conversation about weak points of a rock wolf pack leader. Between thoughts of the strange feeling of the tide in her soul and the conversation Keir was mostly able to put her reaction behind her for, at least until the next morning she spent under the trees.
When they walked out of the trees into the cleared area around Still-Leaf Village it was her turn to distract Lovisa as the elven guard froze in mid step for a moment when she got her first clear look at the village in the daylight.
Keir’s vision wasn’t hampered by the darkness but seeing things in the dark of the night still wasn't the same as seeing them in the light of day. From the way Lovisa was reacting Keir suspected the same was true for her as well.
The damaged and neglected buildings and the overgrown streets strewn with rubble and bones had been unpleasant in her odd night vision. Despite that, it didn’t seem out of place, just sad.
In the light of mid morning it looked extremely out of place. It felt, somehow, like the difference between walking into a crypt full of laid out skeletons and looking at an uncovered mass grave. The open gaps in the buildings and the gaps in the rubble piles that had been walls revealed deep dark shadows that lent a sinister edge to the tragic scene.
Perhaps the most out of place, but strangely the least upsetting element of the scene were the myriad of undead visible throughout. From what little Keir knew about such things the strangest to see in the sunlight were the spectral undead. A few of which were clearly in the process of coming to grips with the fact gravity no longer bound them as they moved awkwardly through the air. Few undead liked being out in open sunlight but for those not bound to physical remains the sun might as well be an inferno spell for the effect it would have on them. A few physical undead like vampires had a similar reaction but most of them were harder to identify at a glance.
For some reason the thing she’d gravitated towards to distract Lovisa was talking about the Coral Sea. Wood elves were a vanishingly rare sight on or around the Coral Sea so she suspected Lovisa had never seen it. Keir was in the middle of talking about the coral forests in the deepest parts of that shallow sea when she noticed the village proper wasn’t the only place near it with undead moving about. Most of the farms had at least a few undead moving about, especially the ones near the village that were the most intact.
Keir was by no means a farmer but she could tell that some of them were harvesting what wild crops there were and others were in the early stages clearing the fields closest to town. After a few seconds she noticed that Lindel was working with one of the groups clearing farm land.
She was all but certain no village had ever bothered to plan for the exact situation the villagers found themselves in. by contrast all villages built so close to truly wild regions like the The Great Beast Steppes were tight knit enough to come together and help each other recover from major community wide problems as well as more person issues; well the ones that manage to survive their first harsh season be that summer or winter depending on the region. The more time that passed since their resurrection the more obvious it was that Still-Leaf was no exception to that rule.
As Keir and Lovisa got close to the edge of the village Keir found a decent point to shift from talking about coral and the creatures that lived within them to thank Lovisa for going with her and state her intent to seek out Ismini to discuss what they found.
As they were about to go their separate ways, with Lovisa going to guard and help the farmers and Keir entering the village, Keir said “Make sure you're not too hard to locate later.”
Lovisa froze for a second but was out of sight before she could respond. It wasn’t until Keir had walked a few blocks that it occurred to her she hadn’t said she was thinking that Lovisa would likely make an excellent replacement for the permanently deceased guard captain. She almost turned around to make sure Lovisa would be prepared to be called to join the council meeting she was planning to have that evening or night. After a moment she decided it would be better to wait for the council members to weigh in.
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With almost all or perhaps all of the trapped villagers recovered there was a bit less of a frantic edge to the groups and individuals working in the street. There were consequently more people who approached or at least greeted her as she sought out the headless cyclops. It never happened but she couldn’t help but expect that each person who spoke to her would spew vitriol over her failure to prevent their deaths. Instead they were either curious to see a new face or thanked her for avenging and or resurrecting them. Fortunately, aside from the awkwardness it also gave her a good chance to ask around to see if anyone could help point her towards Ismini.
After most of an hour that mostly consisted of speaking to random villagers she found Ismini standing at a long table covered in papers and an in progress map covered in notations. She was in the middle of adding another building and notations regarding it, her head propped up on the table in a position where she could see the map clearly. She was clearly basing her addition on the reports of the trio standing or in one case floating on the other side of the long table.
One of the individuals was a female dwarf with the same partially petrified flesh as Alasdair, her shoulder length black hair ornately braided, her sturdy work clothes weighed down by a large number of tools that were all in surprisingly good shape.
The second was a skeletal ork. From the size of the tusks Keir thought the orc was likely a male but she was not an expert at identifying the gender of skeletal remains. The thick growths of gray green lichen and colorful fungi coating the bones made any determination even more difficult.
The final person was a fairly androgynous elf floating between a few inches and a foot off the ground as they bobbed slowly in the air. Between their pearlescent silver transparent form and the visible waver in the air as they spoke Keir suspected the ghostly elf was some variant of banshee.
Keir stood off to the side waiting for the trio to finish giving their report and turn to leave before approaching.
Ismini’s strange campfire mixed with howling wind, voice rang out as she approached saying “Are you bringing the report from the market?”
Keir stepped into Ismin’s line of sight and said “Unfortunately no. We should go over the condition of the quarry and the lumber mill, however. I just came back from there.”
Ismini frowned apparently expecting bad news and said “How bad are they?”
“The quarry is a bit rough but it could be a lot worse. A lot of the tools are in decent shape and there is plenty of at least partially ready stone still sitting there.”
Ismini sighed with a sharp cracking hiss, clearly noticing Keir pause rather than immediately moving on to the lumber mill. “I take it the same can’t be said of the lumber mill.” she said.
Keir nodded and continued “Technically speaking there is no lumber mill anymore. All of the mechanisms along with the main saw blade are entirely nonfunctional and I suspect irreparable. I reclaimed it like I did the quarry but it is so deteriorated it’s just a logging camp. Apparently the axes are somewhere in town but aside from some tools in the bunkhouse the rest are ruined. Also I doubt any of the lumber or logs that were left there are salvageable.”
Ismini let out a long string of expletives in Irisian before saying “Our blacksmith might have been able to at least fix some of the tools or hammer out a few hand saws. He definitely couldn’t replace the lumber mill mechanism. None of that really matters now considering the smithy almost entirely collapsed and as far as I can tell neither he nor his apprentice returned from the grave.”
It was mostly her upbringing that kept Keir from joining Ismini in letting out a stream of expletives. Instead she said “You're the expert in this field. Do you think we should be focusing on trying to repair the smithy or the lumber mill? We should probably hash that out before calling a council session later.”
Ismini agreed so they began talking over the potential benefits and pitfalls between dealing with more reports about the state of the village.
— Lindel —
Lindel couldn’t help but frown as she walked around the long neglected field nearest the remains of the village wall. From her perspective she had last visited the farm less than two weeks prior and it was the middle of the growing season. The fields belonged to a pair of dryads. Their trees were still standing near the unusually large porch of the small farm house; A pair of sturdy oak trees. In place of their normally year round lush green leaves their foliage was a strange purple bruise color and the bark was several shades lighter.
There was no sign of the dryads themselves so Lindel had initially assumed they had remained dead like a fair number of others. Likely as a result of her new race being a Dryas Heart Minotaur she could feel the pair was currently within their trees. She didn’t know what their condition was or if they would ever return to humanoid forms.
Lindel couldn’t actually understand the plants around but she found she had more insight into their condition than her grocer specialized merchant class would normally provide. At a glance she could tell which of the wild patches of the crops that remained were worth actually harvesting and which just needed to be cleared out like the surrounding weeds.
She wasn’t at all sure there was a need for the crops in the village. She remembered what Keir had said about them, maybe being useful even to the undead. Even if that turned out to not be the case they would probably be worth trading to the nearer dwarven clan.
Before the fall of Still-Leaf they had grown almost twice the amount of food the village required. Aside from some of the longer lasting food saved for an emergency the rest of the excess was sold to their dwarven allies.
It was while she was thinking about that as she gathered a wild patch of sweet potatoes that her new racial instincts blared. She could feel the presence of something that held at least twice the energy as both of the slumbering dryads combined buried in the ground below the last plant she’d dug from the ground.
She wanted to immediately find the source of the energy but she decided to finish gathering the last of the nearby sweet potatoes before doing so. As soon as she’d pulled out the last of the potatoes she called over one of the nearby villagers to carry them to where they were gathering the salvageable produce.
That done, she began digging into the ground above the energy source. Around the point she was only visible from the eyes up she was starting to gather the attention of the surrounding villagers. She didn’t really have a good explanation for why finding the buried thing was so important but the villagers trusted her judgment and they started moving the surrounding dirt away to make room for more. By the point she could feel it was just below the remaining dirt the tips of her horns were well over three feet beneath the ground level.
Something told Lindel that she didn’t want to risk damaging the thing she sought with her shovel so she brushed away the remaining soil with her hand. Within the minute she had revealed a strange bone-like spheroid a bit larger than her fist. The surface of the thing was covered in strange ripple like ridges with almost serrated peaks.
She tapped into her appraise skill but it failed to return any useful information. The only thing she could determine was that its value was incalculable. Whether that was because it was priceless or worthless she couldn’t tell. The only useful information regarding the object was from her new race. The strange powerful object was a seed and so much death magic was wafting off of it Lindel was surprised she couldn’t see it.