Like most substances, blood does have its appropriate setting. As much as its presence in, say, a fancy dining salon would be a decent setting scene for a mystery, in a butcher's shop, it is if not expected, at least unsurprising.
As such, Burmice's reaction was hardly different when she entered her shop, pleasantly exhausted after rehearsal of Three Steps up the Ladder (the role of the duke's scheming plenipotentiary might as well have been written for her) , only to happen to a shallow pool of it, with small, filthy feline footsteps leading away.
"Liothe's tits, Muri, what did you catch this time. I swear if I catch you eating it in my bed once again i'll hang you by the tail from the sausage rack." she cursed, but a small prideful smile crept upon her face all the same. After all, for all her faults, the cat was an impressive hunter, and lately increasingly prone to bringing her prey home to show.
Her gaze tracked the footprints, which carried on through the door to the living room, but instead of ending on the sofa as she had expected, they disappeared into her wardrobe, its right door slightly ajar.
"Oh, you little wretch."
Burmice rolled her eyes, and set off towards the closet at a brisk pace, her mind filled with the vision of an afternoon spent cleaning whatever clothes the webknot managed to soil.
She flipped the door open with a single forceful motion and threw off a handful of blood-stained clothes piled up at the bottom, and reach for the cat.
"Here you… Goddess."
Burmice's hand touched the cat's fur, matted and sticky with blood and kept there, while her mind finally began to grasp what had happened.
Iymmur'ss was barely alive - touching her, she could feel the accelerated, erratic breathing that came as a result of shock. Her pawpads were a lot colder than usual, and her eyes stared out, open, third eyelid drawn halfway across.
Muri, you stupid, stupid little… Goddess. Whoever did this I'll strangle her with her own guts, then do something her soul will remember while rotting in the filthiest demonweb. Fuck… I don't know, and I can't… Liothe's tits. Why does *everything* bloody go to the pits the moment I…
She kneeled, both hands gently set on the dying cat's fur, beset by an odd feeling of loss. By all rights, she shouldn't care - the vicinity of her shop hosted more than a few cats, and she'd be easily able to simply teach another one of them indoor.
But, she wouldn't be Muri. It was close to a year that the large, wild-looking tabby first appeared in her kitchen, courtesy of the broken window left by a burglar. Brought together by common misfortune involving Gel'thrael's webknot of a brother and an idiotic door-to-door salesman, the two had grown closer over time, the cat acted as her eyes, ears and a comfortable purring heatpack one could talk to. It was silly but Burmice became largely convinced the not so little feline could understand what she told her of her ambitions, plans and plots when the twenty-five words to Mal'ril twice a day limit of the sending stone was well and truly exhausted.
And now she was slipping away, perhaps the only thing her entire misadventure on the surface had brought so far, asides from a shop where she served lowborn surface scum for measly returns even after defrauding the crown of as much as she could, endless troubles in obtaining materials for her research, isolation, and all kinds of bother overall. There was little to be done - she was no cleric to heal with her powers, My bitch of a sister would. Fuck you, Phyrlara, and fuck our mother. Eh, you probably did. her house held no such potions either, and raising an empty husk of her companion, with an enchanted chunk of rock filling in the hole after a soul departed would be adding insult to injury.
Hole after a soul.
Her memory slipped back to an article in rather ancient proceeds of the Kaduan Necromantic Society. It spoke about the relative informational complexity of souls and its practical implications, specifically going through the process of binding a canine soul to a modified human skeleton to produce a creature especially suited to stalking, capturing and delivering individuals. At the time, it was frustratingly irrelevant… and now the frustrating part was her having skimmed the contents before slamming the journal shut and going off to grab a snack. On top of that, she plain out didn't have a soul jar ready, and the ritual would take far longer than her cat would live.
No. Doesn't matter. You aren't the best damn necromancer in Chel and the niece of Aun'isstra of Lazrien for nothing. Besides, Liothe blesses the strong.
Her mind spun into gear - the kind of focus you obtain when failure is no longer an issue because you can hardly make things worse. She stood up, looked at a somewhat dirty kitchen knife from a half-forgotten dinnerplate and with a single word, made it fly to her hand.
No, that won't do.
Over the years, her skin was made far too resilient to pierce with a simple blade. She would need some help. It had to be somewhere…there. She stepped towards the library, and brushed asides the books from the second shelf to reveal a host of bottles, vials and flagons. She picked up a dust-covered clear flask, lifted the glass plug, and dipped the tip of the knife into the holy water within, but not before wiping it into her dress. She held her breath, and dragged the tip across the first ridge of her left index finger.
"Orbbassarath." There was a sizzle as the edge bit into her skin and flesh, a momentary intense burning followed by numbness to half her palm, and moments later, the wound welled with thick, vividly red blood.
Burmice stood up and shook her left hand, attempting to get some feeling back into it as she stepped back to the wardrobe, realizing slightly too late that this also spread droplets of her blood all over the room.
"Fuck." And this was the more pleasant part. Screw it. I need to grab Gel by his filthy neck and shake him until he gets me a soul jar. Maybe literally.
She bent down once again, slid her hand under the cat, and lifted her up into her arms. She couldn't feel much of a breath anymore, but she wasn't going hard, either.
Goddess, let it not… eh. She's probably pretty amused by what I'm trying to do for a stupid cat. She gently touched the cat's eyeball. The pupil contracted. Good. The necromancer brought her still bleeding finger into contact with one of her companion's wounds, uttered an incantation, and then, for the first time without any joy or satisfaction to it in her nearly two centuries, snuffed out her life.
Changing from body to body is a stressful experience at the best of times. Changing to a body of incompatible make is worse, doing all of it on the verge of death even more so, and having to share the new body with who you can't but perceive as your killer gets ridiculously confusing. With desperate resolve, the cat wrested control from the unexpecting witch, and tried to do what scared cats do best - dash away.
*Crash*
Letting out an inarticulate shriek, their body half-jumped, half-fell forwards into the wardrobe, the wildly and uselessly swinging hands tossing the cat husk down into its path and contributing to the mayhem. Once in, Iymmur'ss attempted to turn around, upsetting the necromancer's back and hitting the wardrobe's door with her knee.
ENOUGH
Much like water seeping into cracks in a rock, then shattering it by freezing over and filling the void, Burmice's essence forced itself back into her mind, then ripped the terrified cat away from the interface. Just in time to have a share in experiencing all the pain her physical body had accrued in the few brief moments. The momentary loss of concentration was all that the cat spirit needed to attempt to seize the reins again, but this time, Burmice was smarter.
You will not. The rules of the game became apparent. As long as Burmice hasn't turned her metaphoric, ethereal back, she could keep in control of her body easily. However, slipping meant…
She forcefully seized the control of her right hand, picked up Iymmur'ss's remains, and stepped through the kitchen to the main workroom, pushing asides a butcher's block and laying the cadaver onto the greasy table underneath. From a pouch underneath her sash, she dug out a short pencil, sharpened it, and began to scribble on the filthy surface.
Calculating Quates transforms was something the necromancer could probably do in her sleep - after all, her long career has led to her assembling a host of shortcuts and workarounds that made the process simpler. However, it is one thing to calculate ritual coefficients seated comfortably near a warm fireplace, drinking tea and pecking from a sack of candied purple mushrooms, and quite another standing hurt, angry, hungry and exhausted, scribbling around bloodstains and trying to keep the spirit of a terrified beast from stealing your body. In the end, she had to recalculate twice - once because of messing up the arithmetic, and once because the cat seized control of her hand unexpectedly, wiping her work with her own sleeve by accident.
Finally, it was done. She drew a circle with chalk, set candles at five equidistant points, measured the the precise amount of tallow, mushroom spores, ground quartz and finely chopped spidersilk, and finally, grabbed a round-ish shard of onyx the size of an unshelled large hazelnut, and jammed it into the corpse's nasopharynx.
It was time. She grabbed her mortar and pestle and mashed the components into a fine paste. She carefully weighed out what came down to about half the oddly sweet-smelling brownish substance and rubbed it into the late feline's fur, passing over each and every laceration, then mixed the rest with a dash more grease. At a single word's command (again, courtesy of her ring), a quill with mottled feathers of unrecognizable original colour flew into her palm. Hands slightly trembling, and cheeks burning with excitement, Burmice of Lazrien, magistra arcanae, began inscribing numbers and symbols representing the boundary conditions of the planar breach she was about to create inside the circle, dictating the intensity and variation for the flow of energy to and from the corpse (so as to match it with the thaumaturgic impedance of the flesh as it changed with time), all to ensure a thorough and complete transmogrification. There is beauty in power, and the power to manipulate death and decay itself through sheer ingenuity, reflected in every line, every column, every sigil (if read by someone who understood) of the work was something she wouldn't give up for all the riches of Tonash.
The time came for the final stroke. A design within a design, reforging the very physical form of the onyx to something that would accept her companion's soul. Here came the catch - she hadn't done this before, and didn't remember the procedure. Just as well. A dog is not a cat, anyway, and I have everything at hand to work it out. Even the soul.
She uttered an incantation and closed her eyes, delving inwards, and taking a measure of the feline essence within her. What remained of the cat was concentrated at the boundary of their body's astral presence, exuding fear, confusion and discomfort. Little wonder, too - time passes differently when one has no brain to call upon, and trauma can lead to falling apart with the world's rhythm further. She briefly gave thought to trying to calm the spirit, but rejected the idea. For one, she had never dealt with them other than by force, and besides, the sooner the ritual was over, the better for everyone involved. It will be better. I promise.
With a clear idea of the shape and intensity of what mattered in her companion, she began to work. Swirls, spirals and sigils describing the shape of the interfaces needed to replace her by now useless brain appeared on the wooden surface, one by one.
No. Wait, A cat's eye needs added filtering because…
A small error crept into her work. She noticed, erased it with the feathers, and began to think about the new shape…
The feline spirit seized control of her upper body. The wrong way, too. The world slowed down. She could see her erratically moving arms attempting to pounce off the table, threatening to smear everything she had spent the last hour creating.
Shit. She flung herself backwards, hoping her carefully improved physical shell would easily take the brunt of anything that might lie behind, on the messy shop floor, and tried to wrest back the control of her body. Once again, she enveloped it and pulled. The impact came, loosening the cat's focus, and she succeeded… only to feel a wave of power slam into her, almost dislodging her. Goddess. How the fuck does a cat own myself better than, well, me.
Burmice forced herself to her feet, the back of her head throbbing from hitting a bucket on the way. There was no time to lose. She finished the last few glyphs - Goddess damn it, it has to work as it is - lit the candles, and poured power from her own link with the negative plane into the schematic.
Two things happened simultaneously. The outer designs began to discolour and blacken, releasing acrid smoke while the corpse dried, withered and swelled again as waves of energy ebbed and flowed through it. Soon afterwards, the inner design melted and the room began to stink of burning flesh. The corpse's eyes lit red and the candles went out, one by one.
Now. She pushed her left hand into the circle, grabbed the dead cat's forehead, closed her eyes, and ejected her unwilling cohabitant back into her own restored body using strands of her own essence as guides.
She opened her eyes. The table ahead was clear, except for a couple burn marks and the semi-molten candles. The feline corpse in the middle looked just as dead as when she had started. However, she knew better.
I give it about.. ten seconds.
Moments later, the cat began to rise. Slow, uncoordinated movements, trying to find her footing, the blinking of clouded eyes, twisting tail…
"You need a bit of a patchup, dear, but now it's easy."
She reached forwards, a smile on her face, her good eye leaking tears of joy. Her fingers and the matted fur made contact.
*Whoosh*
*Crash*
"Oh dear. Again?"
The cat dashed off, panicked at the unexpected stimulus, leapt off the table and crashed into the trough below the window.
Burmice chuckled, and two steps later, she was there. She fished the protesting cat out, brought her to her chest Eh, it's not like my dress can get any filthier tonight. and gave her a little hug, caressing her head.
"It's all fine, Muri, dear, don't be stupid. It's all done."
Done…what..my body…?
Words and concepts leaked into the necromancer's mind. Prowling for mice in the shop, a fight with another alley cat, a rat, a large dog, pain, flight, the safety of underneath a cart, someone's hand snagging her tail from behind, the face of a street urchin and laughter of his filthy friends, wire, a stick, and things Burmice refused to perceive. Alongside with a voice with somehow a strong feline accent.
"You.. you can speak now? How in the webbed pits did that happen?"
I don't know. What…
"I brought you back to life, Muri, that's what. Now stop struggling you silly webknot."
The cat tensed for a moment yet, then calmed down, ears shifting forwards and began to gently, carefully purr.
"That's right. Now, be a good kitty…"
I need to go… Once again, images of the large stray dog, and the human youth filled Burmice's mind.
"Revenge, huh? A cat after my own heart. You'll get your chance, sweetie. But now, we have some business to handle together. You and aunt Burmy."
- * *
By and large, mages, asides from the odd warmage fancying the military lifestyle or sorcerer eager to draw the power of sun itself into his spells, tend to be nightly creatures. Still, at half past midnight, Ebonwood Curiosity Shop had long closed its doors, and its proprietor, the esteemed Rusal Ebonwood himself (or Zairith of Aelanyl, or Gel'thrael of Claddani, if you so wish) had shed the half-elven appearance of his figurehead, sitting behind his oak desk and working the day's sales numbers into his books, a mug of mint tea at hand. Tedious, yes (asides from the mint tea) , but a little work day by day kept a major headache away every quarter and customers greatly appreciated the lack of "Uh, I was *sure* I had some in stock, sorry." so common in other arcane suppliers and curio stores all about the kingdom.
"Time to ressst, misssster."
He felt a gentle, somewhat cold hand slide across his cheek and the back of his head. He smiled.
"A pinch more, Lethirisss. Last page… unless you want to do the inventory yoursssself?"
"I sssee the great and powerful arcanissst isss not to be trifled with, for he repaysss with sssarcasm." She leaned closer to him, passing her thin, forked tongue across his neck and root of his pointed ear, before curling her hand across and pulling him away from the desk. Gel smiled, and in a flash, reached backwards, pulling her to himself.
"It seems the sinuous snake has fallen into the spider's snare… and once the spider seizes, he doesn't. let. go." Smiling, Zairith brought Lethiriss's face to his and….
*BANG*
*BANG*
*BANG*
…their foreheads collided with an unpleasant thunk, startling LiNeer, his one-eyed tortoiseshell familiar from her resting place on top of the mail pile..
"Who at this hour…"
In a moment, he was Rusal Ebonwood once again, and with a grim expression, his fingernails crackling with electrical dicharge, stepped towards the door to teach whatever ruffian put a dent in his pleasant evening a shocking lesson in manners.
He barely pressed the handle before the door flew ajar at another impact, revealing a familiar figure whose appearance didn't make him any happier.
"Wh-"
"Goddess. What took you so bloody long?! I need the mirror."
"What. Mirror. Have you any sense left, woman? It's past midnight and-"
"Goddess-damned scrying mirror you soup-guzzling peasant, what else."
"What in the nine hells of Baator do you need to scry on in the middle-"
"The sack of surface filth who…" The words seized in her throat for a moment. "Just look, you utter webknot."
Zairith only now took in the full state of his acquaintance. Soaked like a rag from the rain outside, her dress torn and bloody, in her true form - her disheveled hair lacked the usual enchanted headband serving as a disguise - face sallow and baggy, except for the feverish flames in her thoroughly dissimilar eyes.
Her cat, sitting on her shoulder, was a far worse sight. Wet fur, yes, but wet fur doesn't give the sickly sweet stench of her art. When he saw the clouded eyes with the echo of an otherworldly glow behind and noticed a loose patch of fur revealing flesh reformed, he understood.
"Come in. I'll have it ready in five minutes. Lethiriss, make her some tea. Do you have anything to do the trace? Cloth? Skin?"
The tortoiseshell cat crept closer to the not-so-rare visitor, giving her old foe a look like two platters (or one, to be more accurate) on a wooden desk.
"Muri knows his likeness quite well, and I can see it too."
The drow mage turned on his step and gave his own familiar a swift caress along her arched back.
"Damn it. I'll throw in a couple curse scrolls. Consumption works wonders in…"
"No need to, dear. What I shall do requires, after all, a very personal touch."
"Fucking kad." Ivar spat through the gap in his teeth once the inquisitor was well out of sight.
"And fuck this shit. Take the stuff, Tom, and we'll-"
"Fuck this shit indeed." A taller boy, his shirt somewhat less torn than Ivar's (though no less stained), took a step forwards, ostentatiously toying with his dagger. "We'll divvy up here. I'm not giving yer band a chance to fuck me over."
"And when did I fuck you over, Jonas?" If he thinks this is how a man goes about doing business, he should take his head out of his arse and his nose out of those three-copper novels. Granny said books make you stupid, and there it is. Sambel's boot, if only he wasn't the only good lockpick. Besides, he did tip them off to the house, too.
"You didn't, but we never hit on solid gold before. Lotsa fellows get itchy feet when that happens."
Ivar had to admit he wasn't completely wrong. Their old band leader would definitely have done it the moment he saw the shine of gold, but hey, that's why he was rotting in the sewers and why Ivar was the boss, even if just of six ragged boys mostly making do with picking pockets. Eh. Everything big starts out small, and this job might as well have been the turning point.
"Well, suggest something better and I'm all for. And not another fucking blind alley - you said kads don't patrol this one, didn't he, Herb?" A tall and lanky boy to their side nodded, and took his hands out of his pockets. "No use proppin' the crown up by our hard work, there ain't." he muttered.
"Yeah, I din't get chewed up just to get 'sported." Dan grunted, spreading his hands wide. He was always the first one in through a window or chute, opening the way for the rest of them, and this evening, it cost him his trousers and half an arse worth of bites when it turned out there was a guard dog. Varied noises of agreement came from the rest of the band, except for Joe and Hornhead who were watching out for trouble at the end, and Ivar gleefully noted that his… trade partner quickly wisened up to the fact he's alone in his concerns.
"Allright." he didn't lay off the knife, but his voice was far less belligerent. "I figure, just gimme that pot and divvy up the rest wherever."
"Hmm." A larger silver pot with ornate designs, it wasn't cheap, but no way the priciest thing they had happened upon in that merchant's house. Not a bad choice, and one Ivar couldn't really reject without all but admitting foul play. He rubbed his chin, then gestured to the beefy fellow holding their loot. "Give it to him, To-"
Words died in his throat. He tried speaking out again, but no sound came out of his jaws. In a flash, he drew his daggers - most of his fellows had done the same, and looked around the dark alley. Nobody.
Then, the choking started.
In the blink of an eye, the cul-de-sac filled with something noxious, burning eyes, noss and throat like living fire. Through tears, he saw Dan and Tom tumble over, clutching at their throats, while Jonas retched and Herb clawed at his own eyes with a desperate expression, all in bizarre silence.
Run.
He dashed out, slammed into a wall, turned left and ran, hoping, out of the alley. A few paces, a few seconds, and the air was clear. His lungs still hurt,
he could barely see, and he realized he must have dropped his daggers, but that wasn't important. Just run and don't stop, and you'll be ali-.
He tripped, fell, and landed into something soft and warm.
It was Hornhead, or rather, what remained of the half-orc youth. Head, arms and chest - his entire midsection had turned into something sloshy and noxious. He pushed himself up on his arms and stood-
"Goddess, how wonderfully polite. And here I thought I'll have to go and pick you out from the pile. By the sigil of Aun'isstra and my own blood I bind your strength."
He lifted his head. The sneering voice came from a short, cloaked figure standing just around the corner, a large, filthy-looking cat sitting on her shoulder.
"Who are-"
Something hot and sticky slammed into Ivar, and he splayed on the floor, face into his late friend's chest. His entire body had given out, like a limb fallen well and truly asleep, but such limbs do not feel. He felt a hand grab him and pull him up.
"You will have all the time to find that out, dear. All the time you'll wish you hadn't."