Integration
Sarah: Hello? Is this thing on? Clarence, can you tell if it’s on?
Clarence: How would I know?
Jacqueline: I’m pretty sure it’s on. What are you doing?
Sarah: Thanks, Jacqueline! How did you know that anyway, I thought you didn’t remember anything? I’m recording what we’ve found out so far. What with all the memory loss we’ve had it seems like a good idea. I’ve been writing before, but Doctor Mila back at the village gave me this voice recorder so I can do it while we walk.
Jacqueline: That does seem like a good idea. A recording of what you think you know now is slightly more information than nothing.
Sarah: Such optimism! That was sarcastic. Hey, you can tell I was being sarcastic from my tone of voice, I love this voice recorder! Anyway. Three days ago, we set off in the direction we’d seen April going. This was after Doctor Mila said that she’d summoned the flesh worker, and it—he? I really don’t know, I think Doctor Mila said it—would be here in a few days. She said she’d keep feeding Lara like I instructed her until then, so we went looking for April. We got to the mountains in the later afternoon. It’s about half a day’s journey on foot, and Aaron was out of energy and couldn’t turn into a dragon.
There were these block-things sticking out of the mountain. Like giant concrete cubes had grown out of the sides of it. We climbed up to one and tried getting into it but the doorish section wouldn’t open. There wasn’t a keycard slot or anything, we checked. Would’ve been typical of Lily.
These do have Lily’s fingerprints all over them, though. We found that out later, when some people came out of one. The door opened and three people came scrambling down the mountain, looking like they were running away from something. One was holding a sword, which didn’t seem to be helping very much. They didn’t seem to have much idea what to do once they reached the bottom of the mountain, so we approached them. Carefully.
They had Steve-spirals. Only not like the flesh-spirals we once had. They were metallic, and coiled around their right arms instead of the left. But still unmistakably Steve-spirals. I feel like this is somehow April’s fault, we followed her here.
Clarence: That would kind of make sense. She’s the only other person that we know of who knew about Steve-spirals. Besides Lara’s colleagues, I mean, if any of them made it out of the boat. She might be trying to replicate them. But she knows physical engineering and electricity, of course she’d be working with metal. Just like you’d go for the biological ones, Sarah.
Sarah: Fair enough.
Clarence: And we know she was there, we saw her taunting us from the mountain on the other side of the chasm.
Sarah: Typical! She’s gotten way more annoying since she turned into a Tall Man. She never used to do finger waves. Wait! This all makes sense—she’s an agent of Steve. Her flesh-spiral was all knarly, like Ace’s was. And the dungeons are absolutely Steve and Lily’s work, they feel just like our facility did when we woke up in the lockers.
That sure was a tangent, where was I? Right, the dungeons! Those first people who came out—they were called Mary, Alfred, and Steve (unfortunate name)—told us they’d woken up inside these big stone tombs with no memories, then had to solve bizarre puzzles, learn how to use their mediums to summon mons and perform spells, and fight a giant squishy green lightning thing that sounded like an Ooziel before they could get out. Sounds familiar, right? Oh, and there were zombies. I’m not sure what that was about. They were in some of the tombs that didn’t contain confused victims.
I removed their metallic spirals. Lara told me about how they’d done it while we were waiting for the rain to stop back in the ruined city. It took some convincing, but they eventually gave in. I’m kind of surprised, I wouldn’t trust a random stranger to do surgery on my arm and take away this cool gadget that protects me from monsters. But we promised them we’d find them mediums when we got back the village. I figured Doctor Mila would oblige, she’s been super helpful. I’m not sure if removing the spirals was actually necessary, since they’re not the original flesh ones, and they don’t have the weird juice Ace found in the basement. At least I don’t think they do. Better safe than sorry! We should definitely study these when we get back, though. We’ve got some flesh-spiral samples we could compare against, maybe we can figure out what causes the murderous rampages!
Clarence: Sarah, we don’t need to do that, they already developed a bunch of kinds of mediums that are perfectly safe.
Sarah: Yeah, but… Anyway! The people we’d found didn’t need to eat or sleep or breathe—it took a bit of convincing on that last one—so we took them with us to wander around the mountains. Aaron figured there would be a way across to the other mountains where we’d seen April waving. But we walked all night and there wasn’t anything! Just a super super deep chasm that we couldn’t see the bottom of. Too bad Aaron couldn’t turn into a dragon. We should really figure out a way to transfer energy, then we can all farm it and have a dragon every other day. Leave us completely defenseless the rest of the time though, so maybe not the best plan.
Things got really interesting the next night. I was about ready to head back, but it was cloudy and none of us can see in the dark. Alfred, Mary, and Steve had headed off in the afternoon since they didn’t really care about finding April and were anxious to explore this new world they’d landed in. Since we couldn’t really do anything, we built a fire and were sitting around it, trying not to be bored. I kind of miss dreaming. My dreams weren’t always pleasant, but they were usually interesting. But maybe I’ve got enough adventure now, and I don’t need to have any hallucinations of it.
Jacqueline: How can you be sure this isn’t a hallucination?
Sarah: Come on, Jacqueline! [Silence.] It makes a lot more sense than my dreams usually do, for one. But no, I don’t know for sure. But back to a couple nights ago. We were sitting around the fire when this thing come creeping up on us. It was like a mon, but it didn’t have hit points and was human-shaped. I don’t know what you were thinking, creeping up on us like that, Otto—
Otto: It was a good strategy. We walked close enough you could see me and Mark and Edmund, so we obviously weren’t sneaking up on you, then sent in my double to see if you were hostile. It was perfect! If you killed him, I think I’d get the memories of what happened.
Jacqueline: Did you try that?
Otto: Hmm, no, I haven’t. I do get the memories back when I transfer the spell to another medium after dismissing my double. That would have been a good chance to test that out, though. In any case, my double is just as good at negotiating as I am, making a much better probe than sending a mon, which would have been unable to talk as well as being perceived as a threat.
Sarah: You were perceived as a threat, there was obviously something weird about you! And you’d brought a giant lizard and you had somehow stolen Aaron’s can opener!
Otto: Look, I don’t know why Mark even had a can opener. He kept threatening to hit me with it when we were trying to convince him to get out of his tomb. And anyway, some of the other people had can openers as well, maybe it’s just a thing with these dungeons.
Sarah: Yeah, maybe Steve has a thing for them. And okay, the doubling spell is pretty great. It got us the key, after all. In these dungeons there were keys, but they’d get sucked up by the keyhole every time they opened a door. But Otto is paranoid, and therefore made his double open the door to the monster room in case it was a trap. So the door ate the key Otto’s double had, and Otto got to keep the key.
Otto: And since someone was certain that their key-eating mechanism was foolproof, it turns out that all the big doors in the dungeons use the same key. Ha! We foiled them! We emerged victorious!
Sarah: I think you’d already won before you duplicated the key, Mark told me about the thing you pulled with the tomb lid and the spikes. But yes, the key duplicating thing was super useful. We got what, fifty? people out of various dungeons and removed their Steve-spirals. Much less deadly for them, what with all the spikes and lasers and whatnot in those dungeons, and much less deadly for the countryside if it turns out that metallic spirals have the same problems as flesh-spirals do. But we avoided that! Great!
Jacqueline: Thanks, by the way, I’m glad I probably won’t be going on murderous rampages. Hmm. I could be a rampaging murder sort of person even without a Steve-spiral. I’m not sure how I would tell that I wasn’t, it might just be that I hadn’t found the right opportunity yet.
Clarence: Do you think going on a murderous rampage would be fun?
[Long pause.]
Jacqueline: No, that doesn’t sound very enjoyable.
Clarence: You’re probably fine then.
Sarah (whispering): Jacqueline is always like this, ever since we found her. She doesn’t take anything for granted, keeps asking how we know things. It’s really annoying. But… maybe it’s good. We’ve been operating off of instinct and partial memories and things that people told us, and we’re taking everything in stride. At least Aaron, Clarence and I seem to be, after that first day when we woke up in the lockers. Lara was pretty resigned to her confinement in a closet full of beans. And I really don’t know what to think about Otto, he seems to think that we’re dead. Or that it doesn’t matter if we’re dead, only if we win? I don’t really get his philosophy but it works for him I guess. Taking things in stride makes them easier to deal with. It feels like a good strategy for staying sane when everything keeps changing. Except that Jacqueline isn’t doing that, and maybe that makes her the sane one. While we’ve been quietly trying to assemble the puzzle pieces we’ve found into a coherent picture, she’s tearing around demanding all the pieces and then questioning their validity and tossing some of them into the fire. That’s how she knows she’s going to get the right picture instead of just a picture she can work with. It sounds exhausting. But at least I know that if Lara was wrong about removing the flesh-spirals solving the murderous rampage thing and there’s lingering effects, Jacqueline is going to notice them and she’s not going to let it go. Don’t know what she could actually do about it, but at least there’s someone watching us who probably isn’t going to get fooled.
Unless she starts asking how we know that going on murderous rampages is bad. Typical. [laughter]
[Silence.]
Sarah: I really hope Lara was right and we’re cured. I’m so, so tired of memory loss and blackouts and waking up next to piles of bodies.
[Silence.]
[Silence.]
Sarah: Anyway, that’s how we wound up with Otto and Jacqueline, they came out of the dungeons. I think they’ll take to adventuring. We managed to scrounge them some proper gear once we replaced their mediums with gauntlet launchers, so I think they’ll do fine if we run into any more trouble. Jacqueline’s got a sword and a Monitor, and of course her endless curiosity. And Otto’s got a spell that turns him into a bear—he got this in the dungeon, so maybe it proves that Steve has a sense of humor— as well as an Ooziel. It’s purple. Turns out they can be purple, black, or green, and the color depends on the summoner. Black seems absolutely typical for Terrence, but I’m not sure what purple is supposed to say about Otto’s personality. I don’t know him that well yet.
On a different topic, I’ve also learned some stuff about future biology. Is that a real field? I guess it’s the present now. In any case, human biology here is super weird. First there’s the not needing food or water thing. How does this even work? Are we photosynthetic or something? No, we can’t be, we spent a month and half locked up in Lara’s boat facility and weren’t even a little hungry afterwards. Not needing sleep seems pretty reasonable when we apparently get energy from nowhere.
But not needing to breathe still feels kind of insane. Lungs are useless, and blood is oxygenated in the heart. What kind of ridiculous system is that? At least blood still carries oxygen. Even if there are twenty liters of it. Seriously, how do they fit all the blood in there? Even if you take out the organs that people apparently just don’t have and the ones that have shrunk down into nonfunctional vestigial blobs, why isn’t everyone extremely sloshy? And what happens to the ecosystem when humans suddenly breathe out oxygen? I guess all the other animals are still kind of normal, so it doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m sure Terrence was joking when he said that there was a worry that all the exhaling oxygen would cause the plants to die or something.
What’s kind of strange, then, is that we do get tired. Not sleepy-tired. My muscles get tired when I use them a lot. We noticed this on the walk to the mountains and back. I don’t need my breath for walking (which is great for recording this). But I do get tired and need to rest. Is this a lactic acid buildup like it would normally be? This would indicate that we still have cell respiration, but where are we getting the glucose??? We’re not eating it, we’re not photosynthesizing it, we’re just appearing it out of nowhere! Just like our hearts mysteriously produce oxygen. This makes no sense and nobody here has any idea how completely bizarre this is, or any interest in looking at how our bodies work when basically all medical problems can be solved with a heal spell.
Jacqueline: You’re probably not going to take this well, but how do you know that breathing is normal? I mean, it feels kind of like you’re supposed to breathe, but it’s pretty well established that you don’t. So how can you be so sure?
Sarah: I remember needing to breathe. I remember learning how the respiratory system works. I was surprised when I realized I didn’t need to anymore. You don’t really have any memories to work off of, but we remember this is how the world used to be.
Jacqueline: I have some. I remember a war.
Sarah: A war?
Jacqueline: I think it’s the same one Otto talks about. The one with the star people? I remember people being worried about it when I was a kid. [Pause.] Maybe I made that up. I can’t trust my memories.
Sarah: When we get back to the village, we can use Doctor Mila’s scanner and I can show you how my organs are different from all the people there. Yours probably are, too. Is that good enough evidence?
Jacqueline: I don’t know.
Sarah: Well that’s all you’re going to get, unless you go track down the Flesh Worker again. But please don’t it’s super creepy. I don’t like all those knives it’s got.
It did a good job with Lara, though. I watched to make sure. I kind of had to after it arrived and looked at her and said “Oh, you have brought me a rare treat: such lovely, plentiful organs!”
When it had finished doing perfectly valid (but still pretty gross) medical procedures to Lara’s leg, Jacqueline started asking questions.
“What’s your name?”
“I am the Flesh Worker.”
“What does being a Flesh Worker mean?”
“I am the Flesh Worker,” corrected the seven-foot-tall being. “And it means exactly that: I work with flesh instead of using more indirect means such as spells. It does not always make me welcome, but I go where I am needed.”
“What’s with all the knives?” I asked. It would probably have been rude to ask “what are you?” flat out.
The Flesh Worker looked puzzled. It did so with body language alone; we couldn’t see its face due to the hooded cloak it wore. Which was kind of odd considering it was so much taller than us, even hunched over, we really should have been able to see its face from that angle. “They’re useful,” it said like this should be obvious. “I wouldn’t want to be without my knives.” It wiggled its fingers, blades rippling in and out of the fingertips in precise control.
“What did you want with Lara’s organs?”
“I didn’t do anything to them this time, did I? You watched me. Don’t you trust me at all?” Knives clicked together as the Flesh Worker waved a hand in a dramatic flourish.
“No.”
Lou didn’t like the Flesh Worker, either. Which isn’t surprising, since Lou doesn’t seem to like much of anyone, and especially not anyone he thinks is weird. Lou looks like he’s about fifteen, but has the air of a crotchety old man who’s going to yell at you to get off his lawn. I think people don’t age the same as we’re used to. Anyway, Clarence immediately spotted him as the talkative villager who could help with some exposition. Lou was happy to oblige.
He started by talking about the region. As we already knew, the region of Lluvia is periodically ravaged by rainstorms caused by an enormous mon they call the Rain Bird. There’s a few other villages scattered around, but the former central city is in ruins. Nobody wants to go near the mountains, because there’s vampires, and it’s not like they can get across the chasm anyway.
“It’s many kilometer deep,” Lou informed us. “None of the exploration teams ever came back, but that’s what they estimated.”
Clarence: Are you mocking Lou’s accent?
Sarah: I am imitating Lou’s accent. I’ve been doing voices for all of you to keep who said what straight.
Clarence: Your Flesh Worker imitation was pretty good. But I still think you’re mocking Lou’s accent.
Sarah: Hmph. Anyway, Lou was telling us about the chasm between the mountain ranges, which is kilometers and kilometers deep.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Aaron protested. “It couldn’t be that deep, it would reach the mantle. There isn’t a massive amount of heat coming out of it.”
“You’ve been there? Huh! You’re a bunch of fools. I’d stay away from that place if I were you.”
“It’s worked out pretty well so far, we got Otto and Jacqueline. Out of the dungeons on the mountain.”
“Dungeons?” Lou seemed very confused. “I haven’t heard about any dungeons.”
Oh, dear. So they were new. And of course people started coming out of them just when we show up. I should have known—we know that Steve and Lily are about so why should anything ever be convenient?
Clarence: It is kind of convenient that we showed up, though. If the metal spirals were dangerous, we’re the best people to deal with them since we know to remove them.
Sarah: I suppose. So Lou also told us about some of the neighbors: a cult residing in a nearby village called Penitencia.
“They’re awful,” he complained. “They think that everything is your fault, and you need to repent. And any problems that exist? They’re probably because you haven’t repented hard enough, so you need to be punished. They’re always punishing themselves, and they try to force it on everyone else as well.”
“How so?” I asked. This sounded rather worrying. Were we going to get attacked by them?
“They don’t attack very much, mostly they yell a lot. Their missionaries are super annoying, they stop by and ask if you think you’ve repented enough, and no matter what you say they tell you to repent better, this is all your fault. How can it all be everyone’s fault individually? There’s not enough fault to go around for that.”
Before he could go on, Lou got distracted by the Flesh Worker, who was passing by. “Hey!” he chased after the looming figure. “You! Give back my pinky!”
“What?” asked Otto as we dashed after him.
“The bastard stole my pinky!” raged Lou, waving his left hand to show a stump of a pinky. “He was in town a few weeks back and he asked for shelter from the bad weather. I let him stay in my house, and the traitorous bastard knocked me out and stole my pinky! When I woke up it was gone!”
“Seriously?” asked Clarence.
Lou waved his hand at him with a sour expression, aggressively waggling his partial pinky, then went back to glaring at the Flesh Worker.
“What would I want with your pinky?” it asked unconvincingly.
“No.” I glared at it, too. “You got super excited about Lara’s organs and I’m pretty sure you would have stolen some if I hadn’t been watching you. I don’t know what you want with any of them, but it seems totally in character for you to steal Lou’s pinky.”
“Are you sure I stole your pinky?” it tried. “Maybe you misplaced it. Or it wandered off.”
“That’s not how fingers work!” I yelled at it.
“Really? Mine do.”
“Your fingers are knives,” Clarence pointed out. “And I don’t believe you.”
The Flesh Worker somehow gave the impression it was rolling its eyes, despite not having a visible face. “Oh all right, you can have this if you insist.” It pulled something out of its pocket and handed it to Lou.
Lou turned it over in his hand. “I think this is my pinky,” he said uncertainly, but he didn’t look very happy.
“And you don’t even like it,” huffed the Flesh Worker. “At least I appreciated it properly when I had it!”
“Regarding Penitencia,” I announced, trying to distract Lou, “I propose that we either stay way the heck away from them, or we fight them. I don’t think a casual visit is an option here.”
“Very true,” said Lou, distracted from his awkwardly detached pinky. “And I would not recommend fighting them. They have power armor.”
“Power armor?” Clarence repeated eagerly.
“Yes. Very fancy stuff. They usually strut out in it, scream a lot, and then kill themselves.”
“What?” That didn’t make any sense.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Lou echoed my thoughts. “They don’t use it for attacking us though they obviously want to. Instead they come out one by one in the armor, and end up stabbing themselves. It might not be that good in an attack, come to think of it, it’s pretty decorative. Ornate.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Oh, yeah.” Lou shrugged. “They’ve got a load of it in the village nearest Penitencia. That’s usually where the Penitent go to die dramatically. Nobody from Penitencia comes back for the bodies, so they take the armor and bury the corpses in the graveyard. None of it works, though. It’s old technology, nobody knows what to do with it. Except the Penitent apparently.”
“I bet I could fix it!” Clarence was grinning. “I know old technology. Do you think they’d let me try?”
Lou shrugged again. “Probably. It’s not like we’ve got a use for any of it when it’s broken.”
So we walked to the village which got the most frequent visits from suicidal Penitent, about an hour away. Aaron stayed behind, trying to convince Doctor Mila to let him take some of her equipment apart to see how it worked. He also wanted to practice flying more, since there’s a medium-recharging thingy in some villages. Approaching the village, we passed a field where someone was directing a bunch of skeletons to dig a hole. The skeletons were connected by a chain made of bones, and each had one hit point.
“Skeleton labor!” exclaimed Jacqueline in astonishment. “How do you feel about this?” she asked one of the skeletons.
The skeleton didn’t answer; instead it kept digging. Its director looked at her bemusedly. “It’s a mon, dear. A multilich. Very useful to help around the house or yard but pretty fragile.”
“But… are they sentient?”
“No,” the man repeated slowly, “they’re mons. One mon with a lot of bodies.”
“How do you know that?” Jacqueline asked suspiciously.
“Be my guest, try to talk to them,” the man offered.
“Hello, skeletons! How do you feel about working for this guy?”
The skeletons ignored her.
“Do you know how to talk?”
Still no response from the skeletons.
“How do you feel about skeleton labor?” she asked the rest of us.
“It’s a mon,” Clarence explained. “You can see the hit points. As far as I can tell, mons don’t communicate with us—”
“Except for that Tall Man,” I added.
“Who then tried to kill you when you stupidly hugged him. Which brings me to the second thing, which is that the only two ways we’ve seen to interact with mons is to summon them, or have them try to kill you. You’re not going to make friends with the skeletons.”
Jacqueline looked thoughtful rather than particularly convinced. We continued to the main square, where we found the mayor. After a quick chat with him, he led us to the graveyard and power armor storage shed on the edge of town.
“If I fix them up, I can keep one of them?” Clarence confirmed, then started wandering around the piles of armor, inspecting them. A lot were pretty beat up, but using some of them for parts, Clarence figured he could get maybe three functional suits. There was one problem, though: “We’re missing a piece.”
“What, in all of them?”
“Yeah. There’s a piece that connects to your brain so you can control the armor. None of these have it. Did you take it out?”
We went to check with the mayor, who had been in charge of organizing Penitent disposal. He seemed confused at the question, but then brightened. “Connects to the head, you say? It might have still attached when we took the corpses out of the armor. They’d be in the coffins.”
“In that case,” suggested Otto, “we’ll just have to dig some of them up to check.”
“Oh alright,” said the mayor amiably, “I’ll just write you a grave-robbing permit then.”
A grave-robbing permit? Oh whatever. I took the paper he handed me, which entitled the bearer and their companions to two hours of robbing graves to their heart’s content.
“Aren’t you worried about attaching strange technology to your brain?” Otto asked Clarence as we walked back to the graveyard.
“Well….” Clarence looked contemplative.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” added the mayor, who was following us. “The Penitent who come in the armor, they don’t act like the others who come to harass—er, convert—us.”
“What do you mean by that?”
[Thump!]
[Crunching leaves.]
Clarence: Sarah! You walked into a tree!
Sarah: Yes, I am aware of that.
Clarence: You’re distracted. You’ve been talking this whole time and your mind isn’t really here. That’s why you walked into the tree.
Sarah: It’s important! I’m recording what we’ve learned so far.
Clarence: No, you’re having a great time putting on voices for all of us and spouting fanciful descriptions.
[Silence.]
Clarence: Just please try to pay more attention to your surroundings, okay?
Sarah: Fine. Now where was I? Or right, The Penitent in power armor are weird. Weirder than normal Penitent. They sound really angry, and get more and more angry until they stab themselves. They’re not trying to convince anyone of anything, just…. being angry? And there’s this red mist around them, which gets thicker as they get angrier.
“Hmm,” said Clarence. “That does sound worrying. But I don’t think that’s due to the power armor. Even with the brain connector, that doesn’t at all explain the red mist. Or the anger, really.”
And so we dug up some graves. As we took turns with the shovel, Lou was muttering to himself.
“What’s that?” Otto asked him, taking a break from shoveling.
“I’m trying to figure out the best profanity. The most potent word.”
“Why?”
“So I’ll know what to say when they show up to destroy everything,”
Lou hadn’t struck me as the paranoid type, but I played along to see where it would go. “Who will?”
“There’s just so many options, is the problem. The Rain Bird is bad enough, but there might be something even worse. And there’s the whole mess that is Penitencia. And the Nazgoth! They’re up to something, I’m sure!”
“The Nazgoth?”
“The vampires. They’re always plotting something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know! They’re very good plotters. They live in the chasm, but they could be anywhere on a day like this.” He pointed at the overcast sky.
“Anyone?” Jacqueline was looking worried. “Like me? Could I be a vampire?”
“Jacqueline, you’re not a vampire.”
“How do you know? He just said anyone could be, and it’s really hard to be sure of anything.”
She had a point…
“But it’s daylight?”
“Nah,” said Lou. “Daylight doesn’t stop vampires, only direct sunlight.”
I wonder if the direct sunlight thing has to do with the sun being Steve’s. Maybe the vampires are avoiding being seen by Steve. If so, I can’t blame them. Steve has already caused more than enough trouble for me.
“How can we check?” Jacqueline glanced at the sky, probably checking for holes in the clouds that might let in a deadly ray of sunlight. “I haven’t actually seen the sun since I woke up, it was overcast yesterday as well.”
“Ooh, holy symbols?” suggested Clarence. “They’re all over the armor, it’s ridiculously ornate.”
Lou laughed derisively. “Holy symbols don’t work on vampires! I heard they did back before the gods went silent, but not anymore. There might be symbols on the armor but it sure isn’t vampire protection.” He wandered off towards a nearby clump of trees, shaking his head at the Penitent’s folly at not protecting themselves adequately.
“There’s got to be a way to figure out if I’m a vampire! If I am, we’ve got to figure out sun protection, fast!” Jacqueline frantically scanned the area.
Otto looked around. “Well, you could try raising the dead. I think vampires can do that.”
“Perfect! And we’ve got a skeleton right here I can try on!”
Clarence jumped in front of the freshly disinterred coffin he’d just hoisted out of the hole. “Hey, wait, I need to check for the missing part.” He opened the coffin, poked around in the skull and pulled something out. “Aw,” he lamented after a quick examination, putting the small metal object in his pocket. “Some of the circuits are damaged. I’m not sure I can repair this.” He picked up the shovel resolutely. “But maybe it’ll be intact in another one.” He started digging another hole.
“Okay, here goes,” announced Jacqueline, raising her arms in the direction of the skeleton. “Rise, skeleton!” she intoned dramatically.
A bolt of energy shot from her medium to the skeleton, which began slowly picking itself up off the ground. It stood, swaying slightly, purple light shining from its eyes.
There was silence as we all processed the completely unexpected development.
“Huh,” said Jacqueline like something mildly unexpected had happened. “Looks like I am a vampire.”
Lou came back from the trees and stopped at the sight of the skeleton. “Come on,” he muttered. “Didn’t you all know better than to raise the dead without a permit?”
A permit?
“This is normal!?” I asked incredulously. “You can get a permit for it and everything?”
“Well, yeah, everyone tries raising the dead at some point or another. It usually doesn’t work. And when it does it’s not good. People usually don’t try it more than once.”
“You’ve done this?”
Lou nodded with a sigh and an air of tragedy. “When my dog died I was inconsolable. I tried raising him back to life but it didn’t work. Now there you go making me think about my dead dog! I’m going to go check on a permit for you all, don’t raise any more dead until I get back.” He walked down the road, obviously sniffling about the sad loss of his beloved dog.
Wait, that also doesn’t make sense. We can still cry, which removes water and salt from our bodies. But we don’t get dehydrated or anything, and we never replenish it. Aaaagh! This makes no sense!
Ahem.
Back in the graveyard, we were still staring at Jacqueline’s skeleton.
“How do you feel about skeleton labor?” she asked it.
The skeleton clacked its jaw a bit but didn’t say anything.
“Of course it can’t talk, it doesn’t have vocal cords or lungs or anything. But,” I added, “this doesn’t mean you’re a vampire. You heard Lou. This is just a thing that happens sometimes, I guess you’re one of those people who can raise the dead and it works.”
“Can you command the skeleton?” Otto asked with interest.
“Skeleton, please jump up and down,” Jacqueline ordered politely. The skeleton hopped a few times, bones clacking disconcertingly.
“I wonder if the rest of us can do that,” I mused.
“Don’t try it!” protested Clarence. “We don’t have any more skeletons anyway.”
“You’re digging one up,” Jacqueline pointed out.
“Yes, but it’s my skeleton. You can’t have it, I’m scrounging it for parts.”
“That doesn’t sound creepy at all!” I commented, giving Clarence a grin with lots of teeth.
“Mechanical parts! You know what I mean! Aha!” his shovel struck something solid.
“Come on, come on,” I hurried him out of the hole then jumped in myself and started excavating the coffin. Once it was out of the hole, he extracted another small metal and plastic object from the skull and started examining it. “You’ve got what you needed, now we can try raising this skeleton.” I shoved the coffin out and gestured dramatically at the waiting skeleton. “Alright, who wants to go first?”
“Not me!” Clarence said quickly, a look of disgust on his face. “This is a terrible plan.”
“I’ll do it,” offered Otto. He stood up straight and glared at the skeleton. “Rise!” he ordered. “Death is no obstacle to our true measure of success. Rise, skeleton, if you just try you may still be victorious!”
The skeleton remained unmoved. It obviously didn’t share Otto’s strange preoccupation with victory over all else, even apparently death.
I gave it a try. “Rise!” I cried, waving my arms dramatically like I was doing some kind of dance. “Come on, skeleton! Get up! No? Don’t get up?”
The skeleton didn’t get up.
“You want to try?” I asked Clarence.
“No.”
“Maybe this skeleton’s a dud. You want to try again?”
“Sure,” said Jacqueline, and waved at the skeleton. “Hi, skeleton, want to get up?”
Another bolt of purple lightning shot from Jacqueline’s medium and the skeleton got up.
“I guess you really are a vampire,” I said with a shrug. “Or at least a necromancer. Hmm, better put these away before Lou gets back, I don’t think he likes reanimated skeletons.”
“I can’t just abandon them!” Jacqueline protested. “Oh, I can put them in my box. We can figure out what to do with them later.”
Among the items recovered from Jacqueline’s dungeon was a Box of Containing. It was a cubic meter of box, which she could store in her medium. The contents appeared unharmed when taken out again, although we still hadn’t tried it with anything living. The undead skeletons would probably be fine in there, and if they weren’t it was no big loss, Jacqueline could probably just raise them again.
Lou got back just as we were filling in the now empty graves. “Looks like permits just grow on trees around you guys,” he said as he approached. “Hey, where’d the skeleton go?”
“We put it away. We’ve been filling in the holes,” I replied, technically not lying. I figured Lou would be happier if he didn’t know we’d raised another skeleton and then stolen them both. But I didn’t feel too bad. It’s not like the skeletons belonged to someone Lou knew; they were the unwelcome bodies of hostile strangers who’d come screaming into the village and left someone else to clean up their mess.
Actually, I wonder what’s up with the skeletons. Hey Jacqueline!
Jacqueline: What?
Sarah: Can you take out the skeletons? I want to check how they’re doing.
Jacqueline: Sure, here they… huh. Aren’t their eyes a little smaller than they used to be?
Sarah: It’s like the skull is growing over their eyeholes. But bone really doesn’t grow that fast. We shouldn’t be able to see any change in this amount of time. Oh, well, these are magical skeletons, their eyes are still glowing purple in a super creepy way.
Jacqueline: Skeletons, wave please! Oh good, they’re still animate. Are you okay in the box, skeletons? I really wish I could communicate with them better.
Otto: Maybe try morse code? Or semaphore?
Sarah: You think the Penitent knew semaphore?
Otto: Well, maybe not…
Jacqueline: Mind if I put the skeletons away?
Sarah: Oh, sure, I just wanted to see if they were still alive. Not dead. Undead. Whatever. They waved at you, so they haven’t completely fallen apart yet even though it’s been a couple hours
I should probably explain why we’ve been walking through the woods the past couple hours. The devices Clarence pulled out of the Penitent skulls weren’t quite functional. Some of the chips were broken, and the circuitry had melted in places. He said he knew how to fix them, but he didn’t have the tools for the job. So he asked Lou if he knew where to find them.
“Nobody round here has tools like that,” replied Lou, shaking his head regretfully. “They might’ve had some like that down at the factory.”
“The factory?” prompted Clarence.
“An old factory from before the cataclysm. You said this looks like pre-cataclysm technology so I figured that might be what you need. But I wouldn’t recommend it, the factory is haunted.”
“Haunted? Seriously? What does that even mean?”
Lou looked exasperated with my apparently insolent questions. “We’re not sure what it means, but a lot of people die there when they try exploring. The ones that come back have really weird stories. Ghosts. New kinds of mons they’ve never seen before. Undead. Undead mons. I don’t know what to believe besides that it’s dangerous.”
“I see. Anywhere else we might find tools or parts?” Clarence prompted.
“The power plant, maybe. That one’s dangerous, too, it’s run by mons.”
“What?”
“A power plant run by mons? Why??”
Lou shrugged. “It’s a power plant run by mons,” he repeated. “We still have no idea why they do it, we just siphon off some of the power to use ourselves.”
“Is that a good idea?” Clarence asked with a worried glance at the streetlights like they might suddenly sprout wings and start biting.
“They haven’t caught us yet.” Lou shrugged again. “Maybe they don’t care. I don’t know what they could want the power for, they’re mons. Anyway there are probably tools in there somewhere. A power plant’s fiddly business, they’ve got to have something to make the intricate parts of it work. I wouldn’t really recommend breaking into the power plant, either, but if you’re going to you’ll want to leave now. It’s a couple hours journey and we’ve noticed they’re least active during the evening and early part of the night.”
So we started walking. Night has fallen, which makes it slower going, but we’re right in the window for safest break-ins. The plan is to check out the power plant, then decide if it seemed safe to go in. Ah, who am I kidding, there’s no way we’re sensible enough to not go in. We’re a bunch of idiots with no caution who blew up a dragon. The power armor had better be worth it.
Clarence: Sarah, be quiet! I can see lights over there, I think it’s the power plant.
Sarah: Okay, time to start sneaking. Bye for now, recorder. Hopefully we’ll be alive to report more later. Wow, this is a terrible plan….