View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
The building is old, and not in great repair. But it's not abandoned either; the floor is steady enough to walk on, the ceiling whole enough to keep most of the pouring rain out. Deep green vines cling to dead vines which cling to dead vines which once clung to the cracked marble, now forming their own structure which in places cover up holes in the wall and in other places fall away from them. Cables run across the floor: modern amenities installed haphazardly and carelessly, pasted over the ancient wreck.
Sitting at one of the long wooden tables is a black cloaked figure wearing mirrored glasses, her face painted black and white to mimic a skull, eating in silence.
The only other figures in the room are two skeletons: one clearing dishes from another table, the other, placing buckets beneath the dozen or so holes in the vaulted glass ceiling.
None of them react to the sudden visitor.
"Uh!" That's a lot to process in just a few seconds. This whole place's shtick is necromancy, she really shouldn't be surprised by people who look ready to be buried deciding to get up. She's already tried to be cautious about their capacity to damage her, but thinking of them as being similar to Monsters in terms of durability might be smart too. "Fair enough. Any idea who the 'he' who never came back was?"
"Her cavalier, presumably. He's been helping her around, if he never came back that would be why she's been lying here."
Camilla catches sight of Mo's face.
"Not all necromancers are this frail. She's got a degenerative genetic disorder that will probably kill her before she's 25."
"Ah! Okay. I, uh...thought she was dead, I guess. Though if this 'Lord Undying' guy is special I shouldn't be expecting people to be coming back regularly. Anyway, hopefully someone can find that cavalier."
Camilla grimaces at the last part.
"Someone found a cremated body recently. I don't think it's been identified yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's him."
To Gideon: "Come on, let's take her to her rooms and then go get help."
Back to Mo, once Gideon starts walking: "The Lord Undying is actually the only one who has ever managed resurrection. It's considered impossible, none of the theorists have any idea how he did it. She was probably just—very close to death. It's not that hard to bring people back from very close to death, if their thalergy hasn't been converted into thanergy yet."
Mo nods. That tracks, mostly, if this is a place where 'life energy' and 'death energy' are concretely measurable things. She's pretty sure that she's seen some Monsters bring back dead people, but the Outfit certainly can't, at least not as far as it's shared with her, so she'll hold her tongue on that front.Instead, she'll just follow them all to wherever this lady's rooms are. Along the way, she'll ask, "So, any chance that having someone who can fly will help with the investigation?"
"A lot of the exploration of Canaan House has been limited by which parts of it we can safely get to. Although you'll need a necromancer with you for some things—how much can you carry while flying? and we should ask Teacher whether or not flying to unreachable places is allowed under the rules...
"Sorry, that was from the perspective of helping with the original challenge we are here for, not the mysterious deaths. Hopefully your flight and durability will let you survive whatever is causing it. If you're attacked, run and gather more support. Right now we have no idea what is causing it and that's rather hampering our ability to combat it."
"I don't actually know exactly how much I can lift?If it's with just my hands..." She thinks back to the various times she's lifted her friends over her shoulders as a show of strength, before she found the Outfit and had more interesting ways to show off, "Maybe like a couple hundred pounds at most, for just a few seconds? But if we can set up a harness around my shoulder I genuinely don't know what my upper limit is."
She'll not along at the suggestion to run and gather support, even if both she and the Outfit are kind of dying to know how well they'd do in a fight against whoever, or whatever, is going around killing people.
"We should test that, but none of the necromancers here weigh more than 150 pounds, so you should be good. Maybe even a necromancer and their cav, if we're lucky. Let's plan on getting Septimus to her room and then go get my necromancer. Then we can plan next steps. Any objections?"
The Outfit is getting kind of bored, but not bored enough to start picking fights for no reason. Not yet at least.