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"No, it was great," Cadugan said, only slightly grudgingly. "I just wondered... well... you seemed like you really liked it." |
"I did," Lucas assured him. |
Cadugan looked up at him, his green eyes full of an unaccustomed uncertainty. "Would you rather I was a girl all the time? I know that you prefer girls, anyway..." |
Lucas's mouth fell open slightly in surprise. "No!" He took Cadugan's hands in his own and raised them to his lips to kiss them. "Cadugan... I love you, no matter what. Whether you're a man or a woman or neither or something in between. You're still you, and that's the person I want to spend the rest of my life with." |
Cadugan looked like he was going to say something else, but Lucas" final words distracted him. "You do?" |
"Yeah," said Lucas, realizing it was true, and then having a heart-stopping moment of doubt in case Cadugan didn't feel the same. "If you wanted to, that is," he said more softly. |
"Stupid, of course I do," Cadugan said, and threw himself into Lucas" arms to kiss him. |
"How did it go?" Wolf asked Arachne and Jais as they slipped into his room. Arachne pushed a pair of goggles up onto her head, mussing up her short, spiky hair. "Any luck?" |
"These people just leave stuff lying around," Arachne said with a shrug, her pockets jingling with whatever trinkets she had picked up along the way. "They're not nearly paranoid enough." |
"That's true," Wolf agreed. "But what about the ghosts? Did you manage to track them down?" |
"We had a little chat," she said with a sigh. "One of them had a song. It had twelve verses. One of them was about carrots." |
"Sounds great," said Wolf. "Was it useful?" |
"Somewhat," Arachne said. "Apparently to get a curse like that put on you, you need to really piss off some elves. This guy burned some at the stake and chopped down their woods." |
"I got his autograph!" Jais added brightly. |
"We're elves, technically," Wolf mused, tapping a finger on his chin. "So is there anyone we want to curse?" |
Arachne's smile widened. "So many people." |
"Well, we'll take that information to Nephilia and let her decide what to do with it," Wolf said firmly. "For now, get back in costume and guard my door." |
"Why, do you think they're coming back?" |
"I am amazingly skilled," Wolf said modestly. |
Arachne retrieved a pair of amulets from her over-full pockets and handed one to Jais. They put them on, instantly transforming into a pair of strapping drow men. "These work great, by the way," Arachne added, patting her own butt. |
"I don't imagine they'll be back tonight," said Wolf, stretching out on the bed. "But if they do return, feel free to let them in. They're adorable." |
Kravitz walked from the mist, the soul cradled in one hand with his scythe held low in the other. |
The mist trailed from him, lingering in long lazy fingers that spooled together and curled back into the mass that sulked in the highest tower of the Eternal Stockade. The restless souls collected there, stirring, sulking. On occasion one needed to be fetched, and Kravitz would have to take the stairs up into the tower... |
There had been a development on a long-standing stagnant case. It had climbed the ranks to the thickest case file on his desk, steadily growing fat with dead ends and red herrings. It regarded a trio that had died, collectively, more than eighty times. How? How had they possibly evaded capture for so long, evaded even ... |
"Taako Taaco - eight deaths |
Magnus Burnsides - nineteen deaths |
Merle Highchurch-" |
It got a little smudged there, a tell-tale blotch of a broken quill, and Kravitz had to squint to find the number. |
"Fifty seven deaths. |
A raven’s print at the bottom sealed the deal. Kravitz was bound by honour and duty to bring it to a close. He always drew great satisfaction in throwing the book at a necromancer who evaded death so blatantly. With a trail of destruction and a reawakening that blazing, surely there would be little difficulty in findin... |
Those fuckers were ghosts. And not even in the coy tee-hee I just made a lich joke way, there was nothing but scraps of information on them, the absolute bare minimum. Something about a cooking show, and something else about a commune and a revolution, but it seemed like nobody at all knew anything about them, as if th... |
Up until they got a body count. |
Kravitz was sat at his desk with his cloak hung up on the raven’s head coat stand, the black material trailing on the floor and spilling across the tiles. He was filling in paperwork. There was so damned much of it involved in condemning souls to the Eternal Stockade and helping other less damned individuals cross into... |
His eyes snagged on the cause of death. |
"Wizarding duel, killing blow by Taako Taaco, assisted by Magnus Burnsides." |
His eyes went wide, and he lurched for the scroll of paper that had been pinned to the wall above his desk (with a sharpened raven quill, yes, very dramatic madame, it didn’t escape his notice) and pulled it free with a sharp tug, pulling it up close as his eyes flickered between the names. No mention of a Merle Highch... |
He walked from the mist with it cupped in his freezing hand, watching it shiver, surface barely held together with the tension that cupped around it. Truly restless and excitable, this one would be easy to tempt into talking. |
A lingering thread of another soul was spooled up around a delicately pointed finger and cast back to the mass as he descended the stairs with it, brushing over it absently with the pads of his fingers. It was still warm. Kravitz’s mind spun with the details he would need to collect; what it could know, how it could po... |
His shoes clicked in the endless echoes of the main hall, a long table stretching down the middle made of the darkest ebony wood, cloaked in a long dark throw like an oil slick and set about with empty candelabras and chairs tucked in, stoic and imposing. It was a quiet and intimidating place to hold an investigation, ... |
Pulling out a chair and setting it opposite him as he sat down, Kravitz cupped the soul in both hands and blew onto it softly, sending ripples over the surface of the mist and waking the consciousness inside it. He set it down on the surface of the chair opposite him. Well used to the process of the soul growing into a... |
A ragged breath was drawn next to him. He kept his eyes down on the paper, signing off the revival and drawing a firm line under it. Then he cast his eyes to the bounty he was hunting, memorising the details he’d scrawled on it, the scant information he’d gathered on the three of them. |
With his eyes still on the bounty, he said, "You are summoned here today at the mercy of the Raven Queen, long may she reign, to assist in the capture and sentencing of three beings accused of the heinous practice of lichdom and necromancy. Your assistance will grant you levity when being sentenced, and your cooperatio... |
"All business, darling?" |
Kravitz felt something stutter and ignite at the back of his mind. Something he’d worked through and buried under piles of parchment and bounties he’d chased for years... an accent that dreadful was really unmistakeable. He raised his gaze. |
Brian looked far worse for wear. Thinner. Gaunt. His cheekbones cast shadows down to his jaw, his clothes were in tatters, hanging off him strangely, and his arms curled in around himself. His eyes were... dull. |
Kravitz looked again to the certificate and back up to Brian, eyes wide. |
"...So. Magic Brian isn’t your birth name?" |
Brian paused. He choked out a wheezy laugh, covering his mouth and coughing into it, then pressing his hand back through his hair, trying to slick it out of his face. He shook his head. |
"No, no darling. My parents had better taste than that, I am afraid." He was shaking slightly. |
Damage from your life before followed you into the astral plane. Enough that you could function with it. But a reminder nonetheless. Dirt was left behind; he was as clean as the day his deity spawned him out into the world for the first time. But bits of him were broken. And not all the damage was from the duel that ha... |
His bones cast shadows, collar showing sharply under the tunic, and his voice was soft and coarse. Shivering in the cool air of the dining room, he tugged at his clothing. With only the undead living in its halls there was no need for heating here, though a cavernous empty fireplace stretched twenty paces long behind t... |
Kravitz found himself shrugging off his cloak before he fully realised what he was doing. He stood and swung the cloak around Brian’s shoulders, fastening the raven’s head clasp at his throat. Brian pulled the heavy ink-black fabric closer around himself and tucked his legs up under it, eyes darting over the shirt and ... |
"You must be freezing," Kravitz said. "My apologies. I didn’t anticipate..." He trailed off and nodded to the fireplace. It flickered to life with a long plume of heat, engulfing the air above it and lighting up the room with dancing shadows, the cold emptiness of the hall chased away in an instant. |
The manufactured unfriendliness needed to be gone, and Kravitz swallowed hard as he looked at the imposing high backed chairs and empty places. It seemed wrong, having someone he knew there at their table, looking so lost and out of place. After all the vibrancy of the last time they’d met, to see Brian looking so smal... |
"It is quite alright," Brian said, a few grey fingers on show, playing with the edge of the cloak. His hair spilled out over the collar, straggly and twisted. "I didn’t plan to swing by. It was quite rude of me, really, showing up unannounced." He looked about ready to disappear into the cloak entirely, and Kravitz fou... |
Although he did dress a lot better than some of the guests her Majesty invited around. Whoever Pan rolled up with tended to show up in worse repair than some of the undead they had to resurrect just to put back together. |
"What a wonderful dining room," Brian said. "I love the fireplace, dear, it’s very striking." He gestured, even through the cloak and dampened by the heavy fabric, but with two slender grey hands poking out the front, adorned with rings that slipped about. |
He hadn’t been that thin when they’d last talked, surely. |
"Is this about that necromancy misunderstanding?" Brian said, arching an eyebrow incredibly well. "I thought we cleared that up, darling, although I’ll tell you it was tempting to learn to get you to drop by again. You completely disregarded my dinner invitation. So rude." |
"I... I’ve been busy. My apologies," Kravitz said, running a hand back over his hair, trying to tame it away from his face. "The number of unfilled bounties are unprecedented. We really should hire another reaper but the qualifications are... specific." He cleared his throat, glancing back at the papers he was meant to... |
Kravitz was in the very fortunate position of not remembering a lot of what had happened in his prior life. So he did not recognise many of the people he escorted into the afterlife, and so far nobody he’d questioned had been someone he’d met before. It was wildly different to have met them in person, and known how vib... |
"I suppose the death industry is busy, hmm? That is to say..." Brian glanced down at his hand. "I am dead, am I not?" He ran a finger over a deep cut in the side of his hand. It no longer bled or hurt. He felt only what the Raven Queen (and by extension, Kravitz) deemed him to feel, and in this room he felt a mild chil... |
If that was what was needed to get answers, Kravitz would use it. He had before. But that wouldn’t be necessary. Not with this one, he was sure. |
From what he could remember, Brian was very talkative. |
"Yes. You died," Kravitz said, smoothing his hands over the scrolls, trying to think. "Do you... remember how?" |
Brian was inspecting his nails. "Hmm?" he said. "Oh, yes, that tacky elf and his entourage. It was a whole series of misunderstandings, I’m sure. Killian is lovely but she is quite headstrong." |
"Killian?" Kravitz pressed gently. "Is that the elf?" |
"Oh, no no no, Killian is half-orc, she brought them with her, I assume. Or they were hired muscle. Very entry-level individuals." His hand was shaking, and he tucked it inside the cloak again. "She came to collect an artefact I was protecting. And now, I believe, they have it. So you may be about to get a lot busier, ... |
There was a moment of silence backed by the crackling of the fire, the warmth soaking into their bones. Brian smiled up at Kravitz, weakly, and it didn’t last long. |
"What were you protecting?" Kravitz asked. |
"A gauntlet. I was not told what it could do. And it was shut in a vault with a very specific locking mechanism." Brian rubbed his eyes, found a cut on his forehead, and followed it with his fingers into his hairline. Kravitz reached out and took his wrist, guiding his hand back down. Their eyes met for a moment as Bri... |
There was a moment of stillness that stretched until Kravitz looked away, clearing his throat and releasing Brian’s wrist. |
"I need to ask you about the tacky elf," he said. |
"Ask away, darling, I’m an open book." |
Brian was leaning forwards, wearing an odd smile and resting his chin on the palm of his hand. Kravitz shook himself and turned his attention back to the scroll, picking up his quill again. |
"Can you describe him for me?" |
"Mmm. He had a very large hat." |
Kravitz paused, waiting for more, but nothing came. So he wrote it down. "Anything else?" |
"A cloak. And a wand, sad little thing. Very fond of magic missile." Brian examined his nails again, chewing at his lip briefly. "I didn’t spend much time with them, you know." |
"No. Of course. And who was with him?" |
"A human and a dwarf. The human was... tall, wide, obviously a fighter. The dwarf was bald. Didn’t do much." |
Kravitz wrote down whatever he could get, quill scratching at the parchment. |
"The dwarf had a farmers tan," Brian added, playing with a strand of his hair, winding it delicately around one finger with a broken nail. |
Kravitz dutifully added this to the list, frowning, trying to put together a mental image of this unlikely trio. Four of them, if you counted the woman who had no more description than "half-orc". |
"I know this must be... painful, for you." Kravitz said, trying to adopt an understanding demeanour. He paused for a second and then reached towards Brian, setting his hand on the table halfway between their chairs. Empathy had never been Kravitz’s strong suit, especially not in this job. "But if you can think of any m... |
Brian shifted in his seat, eyeing up the hand between them. "They are not that powerful." |
"Well... I mean... They were powerful enough to kill you." |
It took him a moment to realise he’d messed up. Brian’s stare froze over in increments. His jaw set, hands stopping their restless shift in his hair or along the seam of the cloak. Kravitz could have sworn he could hear his own heartbeat in his eardrums, had he possessed one. |
"He had an eighteen inch velvet wizard’s hat in cobalt blue with aquamarine detailing and dwarven-forged gold trim. Ten inch brim. The shaping was buckram, lining was Underdark spider silk. Exterior was crushed velvet and nine fragments of soul sapphire." Brian didn’t take his eyes off Kravitz. He didn’t blink. He didn... |
When Kravitz looked up from some scrawled approximation of "Underdark hat shop???" with his jaw hanging open, Brian was still staring at him, unblinking, mouth set in a firm line. |
"Not from someone so foolish to be killed by the likes of them?" Brian said. |
Kravitz’s mouth worked like a fish out of water. He looked at his notes, which had spiralled away from the lines, webbing over the page with the exact specifications of Taako the Wizard’s hat, and the one shop it could be bought at. |
"Brian, I... Where? Where did he get it?" |
"Oh, you know, that might have slipped my mind." Brian looked at his nails, though his hands were shaking more than ever. "My memory just isn’t what it used to be, nowadays. Such a shame. I wish I could be more useful, Mr Kravitz. I suppose you’ll have to send me back now." |
Brian’s gaze read like a dare. It burned, and Kravitz was the first to look away. |
"...I’m sorry," Kravitz said. "I didn’t think." |
"I really appreciate your help. Truly." Kravitz set his quill aside and placed a hand on the arm of Brian’s chair. "This is a very difficult case, and any information you can give me is invaluable." |
"Of course it is. That’s why I was resurrected, is it not? You want something from me and I give it to you, and then I go and die again. That’s my lot. Because I was stupid enough to be killed by... by a tacky wizard and his friends. A bald dwarf and some jock." He looked off into the fire, brooding. He suited brooding... |
But it didn’t sit right. |
Kravitz swallowed, noticing the way Brian’s eyes glistened in the light of the fire. How his brows were pinched together, and how he trembled slightly, despite the warmth. Kravitz guessed that Brian was about one emotionally invested notion away from breaking to pieces. |
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