Falling off the bone (Imogen)

[Lyra]

50th of Ash, 122 AS

It was a slow thing, but over time the rubble that was Zaichaer was steadily being rebuilt. The construction seemed centered around the territory of that man, Franky, yet now when she walked the streets Lyra did not have to walk around large chunks of stone in the road nor worry about stepping in the rotting flesh of a corpse trapped beneath a beam. Thus far in her journey Lyra's black and gold robes remained unmarred and unsoiled, a blessing of sorts considering the things that now traveled the streets.

After nearly a full season Lyra had almost entirely abandoned her human appearance. She felt some sentimentality toward it of course, but the act of changing her features was tiresome. If she wished to look like a human she could use her body once again... though that was rare for her now. Today she let her long silver hair flow freely around her shoulders, a light breeze catching it from time to time to reveal her elven features but Lyra did not mind. She was content to simply be able to walk again. It still felt unreal to her that she could stroll about as she did. Part of her expected the next strong breeze to disperse her form to the winds, but that would not happen. There was a giddiness in her heart when she turned the next corner, and not even the appearance of a wandering zombie could dampen her mood.

The creature turned its sunken eyes on Lyra, growling like some feral beast before shuffling in her direction using its one good foot. With an absent-minded wave of her hand, the rune of Vitalis flared as she took control of the thick, coagulated blood inside the creature, bringing it to a halt.

"Oh?" Lyra mused as she stepped closer, "The blood has not all turned to ichor? Curious..."

The zombie gnashed its rotting teeth and struggled to bite at Lyra when she drew close. Raising a hand a series of glyphs appeared etched into her skin, and when she was close enough she plunged her fingers into the corpse's chest. It shuddered as she withdrew a light made of grey mist, and composed in a heap when she released her hold on its blood.

"Still intact... Though frayed at the edges." She examined the small soul in her hand for a moment before opening her mouth and swallowing it whole. The symbols on her skin dissipated and she continued her walk. "Perhaps it is preserved in these creatures, but the connection is too weak to exert conscious control over their body?"

Since the undead had begun to wander Zaichaer Lyra had taken some of her spare time to observe them. She was unfamiliar with their makeup, and the creatures were not altogether common in the ages she was from. As she walked Lyra hummed a pleasant tune, eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness as the sun dipped over the horizon.

[Imogen]

A witch of Zaichaer in the modern day lived a life strongly defined by forces of opposition.

The state, of course, had long sought the registration or extermination of all rune-marked Zaichaeri, and a monopoly even upon the practice of world magic. This drove practicing witches into particular habits to survive and continue their arts unmolested, but it also had knock-on effects down every line of life. Most covens were suspicious, their precious arts hoarded and shared only with family. Every witch had to treat each prospective caller with great caution, as any client whose child was saved in Ash might turn around and report you to the authorities by next Frost.

Still, even in the face of crushing pressures, there were certain positive traditions associated with witchcraft in the region. The long pre-state presence of the Kindred created an expectation in the populace that witches would know certain arts of healing or spiritualism. The Myrshalai’s ancient, unspoken history stained the pages of Zaichaeri storybooks, filling the cradles of children with stories of mirror-assassins or shadowy spirit guardians. In the popular zeitgeist, witches of south and central Karnor were widely seen as sinister-but-wise nexuses of every dark and strange occult secret.

The beating heart of all these curses and illusions, of course, was necromancy. In the telling of the people of the plains, a witch could call up any number of ghosts and treat with them. The mountain-dwellers speak of the wraiths they set upon the innocents, and spread folk wards against their evil influence. Even the better-educated and cosmopolitan people of the High City recognized the role of the witches in ending the threat of the Graveplague.

In a lot of ways, Imogen Ward represented an abject failure to live up to these rumors and visions of witchcraft. She knew plenty of curses, but none which did anything. She had no particular affinity for the spirits of the forests or plains. She had gotten better at speaking with animals and using them as minions, but her methods relied heavily on bribery rather than commanding them like some sorcerer of eld.

But while Imogen’s education had included very little in the way of the traditional folk elements of witchcraft, she had quite a bit of personal experience with the undead. She had spent years intermittently haunted by a truly obnoxious elven ghost. She had visited the hidden necropolis of the Grymalka, though she had done so as infrequently as she could manage. And she had one more tool in her toolkit, one to be envied by many a master necromancer:

She could turn into a skeleton.

~~~

Great Detective Skelegen Ward stalked the outskirts of Zaichaer late in the day, growing progressively more annoyed. She was girt in light clothing, her past experiences having helped her design a wardrobe which would be effective for a skeleton but sufficiently comfortable when she eventually regenerated her muscles, flesh and blood. She carried no open weapons, for it was her experience that the mostly-mindless zombies haunting the alleyways of the outer city would pay a skeleton no mind until she openly aggressed upon them- instead, she had a large notebook to hand, and a rough charcoal pencil for note-taking.

Her mission: figure out where the hell all the walking corpses were coming from.

It wasn't off to a good start. Her method was simple; she would corner one or two of the walking dead, pin them down, expose their bones, and question them about their circumstances. In another context, she might have been charged with assault, but thankfully the zombies seemed to have no organized constabulary.

This was the circumstance of her latest... victim? It wasn't clear to her if the constructs maintained a presence of self enough to be victimized, but she didn't really mind either way. She'd tracked two of the shambling things down into a very small alleyway, little more than a dimple between two abandoned houses, and pinned one of the things to the wall on her eight-foot-long golden spear. Even disabled thus, the corpse clawed wildly at the shaft, trying to drag itself up towards its captor- but the shining aura of silver fire limning the spear burnt its fingers, the fire more noxious to the zombies than anything else.

It took her only a moment, using claws, to peel away the zombie's flesh so that it could hear her.

"Good afternoon," she began. Imogen tried to be polite, even to undead horrors- it didn't seem as though this state was their fault. In any event, it wasn't really the zombie she was addressing. "Sorry about this inconvenience, but I'll be setting you free for good shortly. Could I have the name your flesh was called in life, please?"

...Adrien Derwalt...

Skeletons weren't actually very well-informed about the life they had once lived, it turned out, as it was difficult to hear things while within a layer of meat and skin, and what with all the endless pumping of the heart. She hadn't run into one yet which didn't know its former name, though, and she dutifully jotted that information down. Even if nothing else came of it, she'd be able to give the Sunsinger administration those names, and perhaps they could provide it to... someone? Someone ought to be keeping track of the dead.

"Thank you, Mr. Derwalt. Do you remember why you started moving around after you died?"

...the words....the song...the motion...

Well, it was obvious that this was some species of necromancy, but unfortunately not one of the skeletons she'd questioned thus far had known enough of magic to provide useful details about the casting. Was it a power spreading from corpse to corpse, like the Graveplague? Were Menders finding their ways to the charnel pits and performing rites at night?

"Did you see anyone there? Did you hear anyone singing those words? Anything at all?"

...saw...nothing...nobody...

Typical. This one had even less in the way of useful witness than the last.

"Well, thanks anyway, Mr. Derwalt. You can go now."

Imogen twisted her skeletal hand, and the golden spear which pinned the zombie rotated, cracking bones and tearing sinew. A roar of silver fire washed over the weapon, incinerating the monster, and obliterating the necrotic spell which kept it shambling and mobile. The Orkhan Sunsinger-cum-skeleton allowed it to burn until the bones had been washed clean by the light, then dematerialized the spear, letting the blackened ribs and femur and skull clatter to the filthy paving-stones.

The skeleton turned and took a few hobbled steps (walking without sinew or soles was a truly annoying procedure) to the alleyway's opening, looking for the second zombie she had chased this way.

But it wasn't there. Instead, the corpse was lying spread-eagle on the ground in front of of the most ethereally beautiful elven woman which Imogen had ever laid eyes on. She might, in ordinary circumstances, have gasped, or gulped, or blinked in surprise at such a sight amidst the mundane ruin of the street- but these were foibles which a skeleton could not really indulge, even if she wanted.

Instead, Imogen called out to the woman, indulging in a slight expenditure of aether through her Animus to replicate the spirit of her larynx and lungs, and speak with her ordinary voice instead of a skeletal rasp:

"Excuse me, Madam, are you lost? Only, this street's a little too close to the inner city for safe travels, you see. I can show you back to a refuge, if you need."

[Lyra]

The sudden voice caused Lyra to pause in her stroll, and she turned fully expecting to see a person standing just outside the next alleyway. To her surprise, however, it was not a person, but rather a... skeleton? For a time Lyra simply stared at the creature, befuddlement clear in her expression as she creased her brows in obvious confusion.

Thus far Lyra had seen only two forms of the undead. The shambling zombies like the one she just dispatched, and the ethereal Spector like creatures that seemed confused and afraid as to their current situation. This was the first the outsider had seen a full skeleton walking about, clothed as it was. Its features were unreadable, but Lyra thought its voice sounded feminine, though not in the way a human or elves might. She then parsed the words it had spoken, and found herself smiling in amusement at the thought of this creature asking after her safety. Were undead skeletons perhaps more prone to niceties than their fleshed brothers and sisters?

"What a curiosity." Lyra said to herself, turning to face the skeleton fully now, "You are quite polite for an undead, are you not? Do you not wish to eat me as this one did?"

She motioned to the still corpse behind her and took a few steps forward, "Do you have a name?"

This one was different from the other undead. Looking past the bones, Lyra studied the things soul directly. What she saw made her smile waver slightly. The soul was in no way decayed, and she saw no signs of trauma like the ghost. It looked to be the soul of a living creature, yet its appearance was clearly not. Her interest grew more as she drew closer and realized how large the skeleton was as well, and in the runes that made up its core Lyra saw the signs of magic.

A complex creature. Lyra thought, Perhaps I should take this one back with me to study.

As she thought this Lyra began her humming once more, thin streams of black smoke flowing from beneath her robes and trailing her finger tips before quickly spreading out at ankle level in all directions. The faint sounds of whispers could be heard, and Lyra could not hide the desire in her golden eyes as she began to reach for the skeleton.

[Imogen]

Ah! Well, naturally she wasn't going to get anywhere in polite society looking like she'd just been stolen from one of the Zaichaeri Institute for Medicine's ravaged classrooms. True, the elf woman seemed less frightened and more... well, Imogen couldn't really identify the emotion in the woman's eyes, but it was certainly disturbing. She supposed now was as good a time as any to take a break from her interviews with the various walking corpses.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not undead." she assured the woman, "Just in costume, as it were. One moment, please."

The witch focused, not that it was visible on the featureless skull, and then poured her energy through the Rune of Animus, quickening her spirit until it burgeoned within her bones. The skeleton swelled, then shattered as Aedrin's gift transformed spirit to flesh, regrowing Imogen's flesh through chrysalistry in the span of moments. The robed skeleton seemed to scrunch in on itself, bones expanding until they burst, allowing light-green flesh to erupt outwards. The entire process lasted only a couple of seconds, and left the road covered in smoking fragments of calcium.

When it was done, an Orkhan woman stood in the skeleton's place, even taller than it had been, shaking bits of bone residue out of her clothes. She was barefoot, but otherwise the grey cloth she'd chosen worked as modest attire even while enfleshed. Lines of tiny opal scales ran down her arms, legs and neck, glimmering like the skin of a rainbow fish.

"Ach, that's better." Back in her natural form, Imogen's Zaichaeri accent was much more detectable, even coming from the deeper voice of an Orkhan. "Corporal Imogen Ward, at your service, ma'am."

True to her reputation for obliviousness, at no point in this sequence did Imogen notice the tendrils of black mist reaching from Lyra's extremities. She did, however, fix her gaze on the corpse at Lyra's feet. She couldn't see exactly how the elven woman had returned it to death, but that certainly spoke to some defensive capability. The plodding zombies were hardly dangerous by the standards of the monsters which she'd run across escorting Mr. Kavafis through the city, but she'd neither seen nor heard any signs of struggle at all.

"Now, I see you took care of this one fine- do you mind if I take a moment to ask its bones a few questions? I'm trying to track down exactly where all these things are coming from, y'see."

[Lyra]

For the second time that day Lyra found herself pausing in surprise. Before her eyes the skeleton seemed to inflate, before finally exploding in a spectacular fashion. Lyra stared with incredulity at the Orkhan that stood in the undead's place, and as was a rare occurrence found herself at a loss for what to say. She had watched as the transformation took place, but despite this she could discern little of the mechanics beyond that it seemed linked to a magic of some form. A rune of magic most like, for the fluctuations in the soul seemed internal rather than external in nature.

The woman's voice was similar, but now with proper vocal cords and a working tongue the clear Zaichari accent shown through. Slowly Lyra lowered her hand, though her smoke continued to circle at their feet despite the light breeze. From the words and manerisms Lyra suspected this woman was military of some form, though she had not known the Zaichaer people allowed witches to serve their armed forces? The thought of such would likely cause the late Brenner Dornkirk to roll in his grave.

"Ask the bones..." Lyra repeated the woman's words slowly, raising an eyebrow at the peculiarity of them and the situation as a whole. Was this thing a mutation of some form? Or perhaps a particularly crafty undead? It was far too nonchalant thus far to be just an ordinary person, given how she knew how others such as the pup reacted to Lyra's appearance despite seemingly mortal. This one did not seem to take note of her at all, a fact that would have been insulting were Lyra not preoccupied with the odd woman's actions.

Glancing down at the corpse at her feet Lyra considered the request, and eventually shrugged, "Do as you wish."

Stepping aside, Lyra followed the orks motions with her eyes, curious to see what this creature would do next. It said it was investigating the source of the undead, but for what purpose? And how would she make bones speak? Necromancy perhaps? Of course it would not be possible now that Lyra had consumed its soul, but perhaps it had other methods.

"What are you?" Lyra finally asked, bending down to look at what the woman was doing. The smoke around the corpse that begun to engulf its rotting flesh drew back, creating a perfect circle that was free of the smoke that would obscure the Ork's work.

[Imogen]

As soon as Lyra backed off the corpse, Imogen got to work. It wasn't really a pleasant process, and she preferred to spend as little time on it as possible.

"The preparation is a little unsettling- you may wish to look away."

Having said her piece, Imogen focused on her right hand. The digits on it swelled, growing long and boney, sharpening at the end, and the fish-like opal scales proliferated rapidly across the appendage until it had morphed into a miniature replica of a dragon's claw. This was an ability common to her race, though few of them were quite so adept at manipulating the internal processes which controlled the scaling and clawing, and so took little toll on her personal store of aether.

Once that was done, the Ork lowered herself to one knee in front of the corpse, and began to carefully remove its scalp. Even with a sharp claw, it took the better part of a minute just to inscribe the incision, and then peel away the flesh to expose the blood and ichor-encrusted skull beneath. To ensure a better connection to the exposed bone, Imogen pressed a finger from her other hand into the center of the erstwhile victim's head, and released a momentary burst of nova-fire from the Animus-conjured cat's claw sheathed therein. For the span of several seconds, a minute flare of silver flame engulfed the top of the skull, searing away the blood and tissue, and leaving a clean white circle.

"Alright, could I have the name your flesh was called in life, please?"

...don't know...

Imogen blinked, shocked by the response. "You don't know?" Well, there was no use arguing with the victim's skeleton; it wasn't as though bones were capable of deceit. "First time for everything, I suppose. Do you remember why you got up and started moving?"

...the words...the song...the motion...

"Same as the rest, then. And where were you when you were made to start moving?"

...underground...

That was a pretty typical answer. Skeletons weren't great recorders of location (though not as poor as you might think- after all, people do feel some places in their bones). But it was helpful, after a fashion. In the wake of the catastrophe, a lot of bodies had been left lying about, impossible to properly dispose of. If someone had buried this one...

...well, Imogen wasn't really sure what that implied. Perhaps a connection to the Grymalka, who felt secure enough in their necromantic arts to inter fresh bodies without fear? She hoped that wasn't the case. This would all be a lot easier to deal with if it were some rogue Menders wrecking havoc rather than the oldest and most secret of the Covens gone mad.

It was at this point, low to the ground as she was, that the woman finally noticed the black wisps of smoke pervading the air around the corpse, and leading back to Lyra. Imogen looked back up at the other woman, who was watching the proceedings with that same unnerving intensity.

"What am I? I'm with the Sunsingers, Ma'am. I could show you a sword if you need proof, but I wouldn't want to damage-" Imogen waved at the black smoke, "This working you have here." The smoke even looked like Grymalka magic, but if the woman was clearly not a native witch.

"And yourself? One of the Circle mages sent down by Kalzasi?"

[Lyra]

What followed was a curious series of actions on the part of the ork. The display of transfiguration the woman showed was at first discounted by Lyra, for she knew of the Orkhan's natural abilities from before she was imprisoned, but the level of control displayed was at the edge of what she would have expected typical. She then openly watched as the Ork carved away the flesh to reveal the white bone beneath. The gore mattered little to her, but she did pay attention to the silver flames which were conjured to sear away the remaining tissue on the skull. A clever method, Lyra admitted, though it left more questions than answers in the end.

Lyra leaned closer when Imogen began her questioning but found she heard nothing beyond the sound of the taller woman's voice. She looked between the skull and Imogen, subtly shifting back into a standing position with her hands folded at her waist. Perhaps this one was sick of mind? Or was playing some form of prank? Lyra pursed her lips in thought, but in the end, dismissed the thoughts as pointless. She would simply ask once the Ork was finished, and from the line of questioning Lyra suspected Imogen was receiving some form of reply... even if it were just her own stream of consciousness.

The outsider waited patiently while the Ork finished her work. In time the Ork addressed her once more and offered something in the way of an explanation. Lyra was certain she knew of the Sunsingers... A coven in Zaichaer were they not? She had not dealt with them in the stages leading up to her revelation and change into what she was now, but Venetia Childs did mention them in passing. Perhaps they were not on the best of terms with Venetia and her ilk?

To Imogen's question of her origin Lyra slowly smiled, amusement in her eyes as she said, "Of a sort, I suppose."

Leaving the answer in an ambiguous state Lyra focused back on the corpse. As if in reply to Sunsinger's concern Lyra raised a hand, the smoke spinning and flowing back into her palm until not a trace was left. She then studied Imogen with as much intensity as she had the corpse.

"A witch of Zaichaer who can turn undead and use silver fire. Odd indeed... What is it you wish to learn from these... bones?"

[Imogen]

Strangely enough, Lyra's diffident reply seemed to raise Imogen's hackles more than anything else. She gave the woman a strange look, squinting slightly as though trying to process it.

"'Of a sort'... means no, I suppose, yet you're no witch."

Passing strange, to be sure. She'd very much hoped that the elf was a Grymalka, either a living witch or one of their spirits, as Imogen had been hoping to hear some news about the elder coven. She'd come up empty for nigh-on two seasons now, since shortly after the disasterous eruption. Her look, demeanor, the evident necromancy- it all seemed Grymalkan to her, but no witch of Zaichaeri origin would have asked her why she was hunting for the source of this infestation. Telling them she was a Sunsinger would have sufficed.

"Well your business is your business, I suppose." Imogen conceded. She'd found it was best not to pry much into the affairs of others unless she was getting paid for it. "My commanding officer dispatched me to verify the source of all these corpses and specters and the like, on account of my power to speak with skeletons. Unfortunately, none of these..." Imogen nearly called the corpses 'schmucks', but remembered her sense of decorum just in time; "...unfortunate folks seem to really understand what happened to them."

It was to be expected, in this city. If she could find some deceased witch's bones, that might be one thing, but the Sunsingers and Railrunners had--unfortunately--done a commendable job in their early efforts to evacuate the lesser Covens. The ordinary people of the land weren't equipped with more than a half-remembered list of fables, most of them very poor representations of magic to begin with, and none of them deeply-versed enough to penetrate unto their bones.

(The truth of it, Imogen was convinced, was in how a thing resonated. She had frankly no idea how the skeletal magic worked, divorced as it was from any Cardinal Rune, but it seemed to her that skeletons only really knew things which had shaken their possessors in life, the vibrations making it through the layers of flesh and muscle and penetrating into the skeletal system. Thus, skeletons seemed to know their former possessor's names and homes and so forth, but little in the way of day-to-day affairs.)

"So I thought," Imogen continued, her tone growing increasingly conversational as her mind successfully wandered away from the radiating oddity of the other woman, "Probably just some rogue witches stirring up trouble, or perhaps one of those shades out of the Warrens who used to avoid the HIgh City for fear of the Grymalka. At the worst, just some Mist-touched thing." The Ork was casual about this list, but she had reason to be. There were very few things which could withstand a Sunsinger's blade, and Imogen was pretty confident that she could kill most of those, too.

"But I've been at it for two days now, and all I've got to show for it is one long obituary. Spent my life avoiding paperwork, but they make me do it in death, you know?" The Ork held up her little book of names, looking a little depressed.

If she didn't come up with any leads soon, she was going to have to recommend that they send out a squad to start thinning the herds- and if she did that, she'd be on that squad, and no mistake, and that was not really how she wanted to spend the next month. Chopping through a thousand animate corpses was much less appealing than just finding the fuckers doing it and smashing their spell to bits.

[Lyra]

"I see..." Lyra said with a musing tone. It was true, she wasn't a member of the circle, but her words had not been a lie. Many seasons now Lyra had worked closely with the circle and its mages, and her work was quite well known among their inner folds. She provided consultation services on projects, and even produced the grimoire given to those acolytes who had achieved high enough regard to be gifted one as a form of reward for reaching exceptional heights. To say she wasn't one was not wrong, but neither was it completely correct.

So it seemed the covens were interested in the undead that had begun to spring up all around Zaichaer. There did seem to be an overabundance of them, but Lyra herself had given it little thought as she knew the undead tended to propagate where mass death was had occurred. Add this fact to the presence of the mists which spilled out across the city like waterfalls not long past and it seemed the perfect breeding ground for the unsavory sort of creatures that undead were. She could not quite fathom the interest, for while a curiosity the undead were rather simple to manage unless they were left unculled for too long.

"The non initiated tend to be lacking in useful information." Lyra agreed with the other woman's words, looking down at the book as it was extended and offering a pitying smile, "I suspect you will find little of use if you continue on as you have been."

Examining the zombie Lyra considered her next words carefully, "If bones give you little, why not seek answers elsewhere?"

As they were talking the sound of more shuffling feet grew steadily louder and another of the undead creatures stepped around a building that was little more than rubble. With wave of her hand a trail of smoke flew across the distance and invaded the zombies body through any means, and the creature came to a halt where it stood.

"Perhaps if we spoke to this one directly..." In a few steps Lyra crossed the distance and pressed her hand against the zombie's chest, and her fingers sank into its flesh which rippled like water. When she withdrew her hand she clutched a faintly glowing orb that gave off a grey mist, and the zombie beside her grew limp.

Lyra extended the orb toward Imogen, black smoke flowing around it like a cage to keep it from fleeing, though it also formed small pictographs that kept it from dissipating as well.

"Ask the soul itself what became of it while it was alive. At the very least it should be more articulate, or so I would imagine."

[Imogen]

Well that was bone-chilling, to be sure.

Imogen had guessed that the woman was a necromancer, right enough, and she hadn't denied the implication- but to simply pluck the soul out of a corpse like that? Whatever this smoke working was, it seemed phenomenally dangerous. There were no shards in evidence, to be certain, so how was she holding it so? Some form of scrivening upon the smoke?

An unpleasant notion entered the Sunsinger's mind for the first time since she'd approached the elven figure. Was it possible that this was the hypothetical cultist mage she'd been seeking? Or perhaps some new thing spun up by the mists? It hardly seemed likely. Yet she had not provided any answers to Imogen's casual questions which might put the witch at ease. And there was something about her...

Well, fine. She would stay wary, then, but the woman had just unknowingly offered her a very particular opportunity upon which she could hardly afford to pass.

"...very well." she replied, "Keep hold, they may grow agitated."

The Orkhan woman approached the proffered soul, locking her eyes on it. She was silent for a moment, considering- or rather, remembering, as best she could, the things she'd been taught before her first trip to the dark Coven's lands, shortly after her ill-fated venture into the Warrens. She'd believed then, foolishly, that the ghost she'd inadvertently freed could be easily caught and re-bound by the First masters. It had been neither a pleasant nor profitable mistake.

"Vagrant spirit, unbound to the flesh- who are you, and how did you die?" Imogen's tone was formal now. It was all very well to treat bones casually, they couldn't take offense. Spirits were a wholly separate affair, and lack of respect for the departed was a serious crime.

"..."

She hadn't really expected her demand to receive an immediate answer. Probably, the ghost was traumatized by... well, whatever was happening to it now, certainly, and the time it had spent before that. "Listen, I bear no evil intent. Look-"

Imogen extended a hand, and then manifested her first Pact weapon. It appeared without fanfare, a greatsword as long or longer than the Ork was tall, devoid of any marking or decoration except for a single inscription in Ecithian on the hilt. The Sunsinger grasped the blade by the hilt in her right hand, resting the flat upon her left. The blade of her sword shone uncomfortably with repressed energies, but she wasn't willing to let the spellbreaker fire erupt, as she could not gauge how fragile the necromancer's working was.

Slowly, the Sunsinger lowered a knee, kneeling enough to lay her weapon on the ground, where it continued to shine fitfully. She stood, exhaling, and said:

"I am disarmed, spirit. Please, answer without fear."

"...Milla." the spirit said, "Milla Koch. Dead by the touch of the mists."

Imogen nodded, encouragingly. "Thank you, Milla. Do you know who I am?"

The soul did not reply, but there was a sense as though Milla were in some way indicating the fallen greatsword. The Sunsinger nodded again. The common folk of the city knew mostly legends and lies about the Covens, but the tales of men with blades of reaved sunlight who drove away the Order were too fresh to have been twisted much by time.

"And do you remember why your body began moving once again?" The spirit seemed about to answer in the negative, when Imogen unexpectedly cut it off. "Is it the song below the paving-stones?"

"..."

"I pray you be honest with me, Milla. Is this the Grymalka?"

"...I know not." the soul whispered, sounding frightened, "I do not hear their song. I do not."

The Ork stood back, frowning. "Dangerous." she muttered to herself, forgetting Lyra's presence for a moment, "What is going on? Why haven't they stopped this?"