Interlude: Sear, Seer, Sea Captain
Tumultuous_Anxiety
It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird
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Bet you weren't expecting this so soon now did you?
The sharp click of heels sounds loud in the relatively moist hallway as I move down it. I can feel a smile that I struggle to keep from becoming too bright as I make my way past students and the things following them invisibly down the hall. Some of them even wave at me as I pass or give me a smile...
What a bunch of idiots...
I check to make sure that my form looks just the way I want it while I slide to a stop before the classroom.
Tan blazer, check!
Orange turtle neck, snazzy!
Black pencil skirt, just off the edge of distracting, so perfect!
Orange stilettos with black sheer tights, good, not great but just enough.
So, the cloths look good, now what about the rest? I hear the soft crackle of splintering bone as the smell of wonderful, choking smoke asks me if I got my transparency right. I look "down" to make sure. Okay so it looks good, or at least it looks like a human. My smile splits my face as I confirm that everything is ready to go. I quickly school it back down and walk through the door.
"Good morning class," I said as I quickly scan the room. It has maybe eleven living students, which is pretty good for Sawtooth even if we would have had twice the amount in my day. I also notice that several ghosts have decided to join the class, invisible to the other students. Some look nervous at seeing me, others look a bit less bored. I wave to a few of them nearest the living, don't want to give away the trick too soon. "I will be your professor today."
I step onto the podium in the circular class room filled with the living and the dead. The living look confused, and one raises her hand. "Yes," I say while pointing to her.
"Kitty Dole," she says her name...LIKE I ASKED... "Where is Professor Dunwich?"
I cool my internal fires as I try to keep my composure... Even if Mrs. Dole would look good in my fires, maybe later? I guess I should answer. "Professor Dunwich had an unfortunate accident with matches last night," I smile. The living all look uncomfortable, but the dead actually start to giggle. "Now I understand that he was teaching," I look down at the book on the podium and try to keep the giggles and screaming inside, "fundamentals of Anima formation." I want to roll my eye at the author's name, Amon Morgan. Sure, the man is one of the only living that is close but is nothing compared to what I know. "We won't be doing that."
The burnable girl who parts of me wishes to smother with smoke and the other parts want to hide in her flesh and consume her... slowly, speaks up, "what will you be teaching us?"
I look up slowly from the book and smile at bright and smoldering, "witchcraft..."
The look on their face as I burst into flames is priceless.
"AhAhAhahaAhahahahaha!"
I cringe as I walk down the hall to the facilities... dead room. The cackling burning form of Elain laughing at her "prank" on the morning class as she floats along besides me.
"You should have seen the looks on," she wheezes out a fog of smoke as she burst into more laughing, then screaming, "THEIR FACES! THEY WERE ALL, "Oh no please don't burn us Elain.""
I continue sloshing through the centimeters high water as the wrath next to me goes silent. Ignoring the undead as she gathers herself for more words.
"Then she started crying," the voice is the sound of extinguishing embers, as Elain becomes distressed, "I didn't mean to make her cry Amon."
I ignore that too. Considering that Elain was probably hoping for more screaming and possibly for one of the students to be set on fire, she will gain no sympathy from me. A few weeks ago, maybe, back when I still felt guilty for what happened to my former student, but after close to a month of being around her, no. Elain is a monster. I thankfully was told and arrived before she could do anything, it was Ms. Dole that was crying...
"Kitty is cute..."
I feel myself cringe again, my old bones aching and heart quickening at the thought of another undead becoming... attached to one of the staff or a student. I'd tell her no, but that might just encourage her... she likes to take things that hurt me. I don't need more guilt on my conscious, Kathrine is already in the building after all.
I stop by a set of double doors and turn to her. There is not much human about Elain besides shape. She looks like the burning sacrifice she was in her final moments, but I doubt that the "extra" stuff was present. Her body is a red angry mess of black scars and exposed burn tissues that make her sexless and lithe thin. The eyes in her skull are dark with a burning point of fire deep in the head like two twin stars. her hair is smoke rising endlessly behind her, great black plumes of dark soot and hot like volcanic clouds. Thankfully she is keeping that in mind as she hasn't seriously injured anyone yet after I told her not too.
"Elain I told you to not teach a class," I sigh as she stares molten daggers into me, "don't make me attempt to get rid of you."
The threat makes her laugh, the sound of burning bodies and snapping bones. "You may think that knowing something would help, but there are too many undead here now for you to do much of anything."
I open the door for her and gesture inside, "Oh and how many exactly are here?" She looks at the opened doorway and rolls her starlight eyes as she walks through the closed door, searing the metal and wood black. I sigh and walk inside.
"Twenty Thousssand sseven hundred ssixty-three."
The room is packed. I can see skeletons quietly chattering their teeth based language in the corner, a pair of them were playing some dice game and trading animal teeth. Near the back I could see a truly old draugr tuning an instrument while over a dozen zombies stare with blank eyes in all directions. Just next to them I can see twenty ghouls stare hungrily at each other, their arms and fingers twitching as they fight their instincts to fight and eat one another, Moryt is near them looking completely relaxed next to them, he has lived longer after all. I can see Kathrine next to a ramshackle forge sharpening her broadsword, her head in her lap a she works. At the back are a pile of bodies, revenants still asleep before the night when they reanimate, although I do see a few vampires lying down in the pile.
In the center of the room is a table, the undead at it are a little more abnormal. Dracula, or Leech as her real name appears to be... never let old vampires watch capes it gives them weird ideas. She stands next to Alexander, a wispy thin vampire that the society here had briefly contacted when it was still limited to Europe for its studies. Leech is his master, and while we did meet with her before, she pretended to be a he and only call herself Dracula. Her current form's age exemplifies her immature nature. Next to the vampire lord is a very old wight. He is a grayish purple, a long white beard and it looks like he is missing most of his body with how full of holes he is. He is also laughing like the pirate he is dressed as. The final one is where the voice came from.
She is turned from me, but her backless dress shows off the sliver snake scales forming two large patches on her lightly tanned flesh. They extend up from beyond the backless dress to wrap around up her throat and end around her eyes. Her hair is light brown and very curly, she keeps her eyes covered by a white blindfold. She is displaying a two pronged mark on her shoulder, it weeps green and black.
Iris is... interesting. The seer has most of the properties of a banshee, oraculum suspendium, and an elder vampire, vampiris sanguis. The fact that she was apparently some sort of soothsayer, or seerer as many of the undead call her, in life just adds to the mystery. Hybridization of undead doesn't occur as far as research goes, so what is she, how does she see the future with the afterlife? I don't need to see her face to know that she is talking to me, that snake-like voice always sounds like it is right next to your ear when it is speaking to you...
"That is a bit more than I expected," honestly the presence of numbers doesn't matter really, twenty undead in the facility is too much to handle for the staff. Undead are just designed to hunt the living, and there aren't enough tools on hand to fight them, there is only so much I can do without tools either. You can't put the dead down with your fists alone after all.
"It is mosstly incorporealss," she responds to me, a turn and smile of her huge mouth given shows her two nine inch long fangs folded back like a snake. If she bites you your dead, the wounds are simply too deep. Elain floats over to the table which gets Leech to perk up.
"So how did the prank go," Leech says excitedly with red gleaming eyes. I can see Alexander paling before looking at me with pity. I appreciate an undead that isn't insane, but I don't need his pity. I scowl back. Some excited chattering and exchanging of teeth goes on in the corner of my eyes as I walk up near the table. I don't dare step closer, to them I'm not a friend... or even an equal, really.
"I met someone..." Oh no, I think as I hear Elain's voice become dreamy.
"See I told you, you would." The sound of more excited chattering and more teeth changing hands. It also looks like a few are holding each other's ribs, skulls close as they trade them. Sometimes skeletons give me hope for the world, but I've seen what they do to people when angered and it isn't pretty. "Sorry for interrupting dear."
A few soft hisses from Iris as she blindly looks at Leech, a green flush on her neck. God this is uncomfortable, why don't you guys just act evil all the time it makes you very confusing when you act like this. "It'ss okay dear you can make it up to me later," I ignore that, "anywayss, The Captain'ss ship will be arriving by the river Thamess in twelve dayss, thirteen hourss, twenty-two minutess, and ssecondss you can guesss at later."
"That is awfully accurate," I say, "aren't future readings a little vaguer?"
"Oh, we only do that to make the living usse their brainss," she smiles small as a few of the undead chuckle, "pluss they don't believe you unlesss you phrasse it as a riddle."
"Aye it be more fun when they be annoyed too," the old wight interjects, "got ta get our enjoyment out of ta living somes way."
I feel left out as most of the heads, even the ones not at the table (even one of the revenants who should be a still corpse!), start nodding in agreement. I place my head in my hands as I process that, "is that why asking about how undead anima and ethereal work is like pulling teeth?"
"No," he scoffs, and I look up just in time to watch a worm out fly out of his mouth and onto the table. Moryt casually walks up to the table and eats it. No one is shocked or disturbed by that at all, my stomach is twisting. "Yer still alive, yer kind don't get it when us explain it to ya bilge-sucking sea urchins," his hand smacks the table as he finishes at the same time a bang from behind me sounds.
I turn as I hear the door get kicked in and a... "MORYT!"... woman's angry shout from behind me. I see a fuming Heather Dixon stomp though and right towards the eager ghoul. Heather is a guard, or more importantly, Moryt's handler. She is a hundred seventy something centimeters of red headed fury, the scar on her face from where Moryt bit her cheek off is not healing closed so you can see the bright white of her teeth through the hole.
Moryt, casually walks towards her with open arms, "yes honey?"
I watch, with no small amount of satisfaction, as Heather decks him into the wet dirt of the floor. The skeletons chatter excitedly as they smack their claws together, as Heather straddles the ghoul and starts wailing on his head. Elain starts yelling out suggestions as she cackles and screams her support of the ghoul's, likely deserved, punishment. I think Moryt's happy laughter as he is getting beat up just makes Heather angrier.
The people at the table just chuckle before ignoring the entertainment. I decide to do the same, interpersonal relationship counseling is not my problem after all. "Do you have any more information on the wail we heard," I ask as the sounds of impacts become the crack of bones behind me, "or maybe who is calling all of the undead?"
"A Queen!"
"A General..."
"An Admiral, lad!"
"A goddesss..."
The simultaneous answers are all different, but they don't look like any of them care all that much. Two of them, Leech and Iris, claim that they are a ruler and female. The other two, Alexander and The Captain, further explain some form of military leader. So at least that is something since they didn't give me titles when I've asked about the caller before.
"As for the wailss," Iris hisses, "She iss ssaying she iss ready, we will need to meet her ssoon as she hass reached a new age."
"She is growing up quick if she is a vampire," I frown, "or maybe a wendigo, union, amalgam, or one of the dozens of other undead." I frown harder as most of the undead just shake their heads or roll their eyes.
"She iss none of thesse thingss, and your sspeciess lisstss are jusst to help you undersstand," a cold scale covered claw of a hand rests on my shoulder, "you're not going to undersstand anymore until you ssee."
I sigh and hear the sound of metal boots walking up. "Trust me Amon," Kathryn says walking up to the table, her head in her arms as hair made of fire spills out from the helm, "I may of had an advanced education from my life, but I knew next to nothing about undeath compared to now, and I've only been dead for a few decades!" I frown as she comes near.
Dullahans are rare, like most undeads that are regionally locked. Kathrine doesn't look like any of them, but it is probably her armor that is the strangest. It is bright blue with paint and is a mix of old full plate and cape-like tinker crap in design. I grumble internally about how capes have even infected their ideas into the undead. I can't really blame her for the strangeness of her armor, every dullahan makes their own armor after all, and she has made it work in full function. Doesn't make me any less tiffed that it is so... modern. Probably just trying to distract myself from looking her in the eye, makes it easier that it is waist height. "These old farts have been around since the dark ages, some even longer."
"Hey are you calling me old?" I watch as Leech's voice cause a pained look cross Alexander's face.
"Master you arose at the dawn of humanity, you are old."
"Oh, no Alexander how could you," a mocking tone in her voice as she fakes a look of betrayal, "your master feels so dejected, I think I might go take a walk." I watch as the already pale vampire turn ghost white at her words. I make sure to give him a look of pity, enjoying the schadenfreude at his clear dread.
"So, you mentioned a ship."
"Aye, a ghost ship," the wight spits a rotting tooth out like it is chewing tobacco, "We'll be knock'n all the bridges out too, fun it'll be, eh?"
It's not like half of them aren't already gone, London bridges don't really get much use here behind the wall. I nod, "is it safe for the living?"
"Yer coming with eh," I watch his hollow gray eyes twist up as he thinks, "yer people can come, but best bring food and ain't gonna haff living stuff either."
"Are you sure Amon," I look up at Kathrine as she straps her head back into place, we both ignore the skeletons exchanging teeth behind me. "We are headed a long ways overseas, to meet up with potentially millions of undead."
"It's fine, most of the students and staff are interested to get out of the Simurgh containment since Iris told us the thing's dead," I say, "plus it will be good for the society to maybe interview some more undead, I also want to see this general too." I turn to The Captain eager to stop looking into the black slit of Kathrine's helm, I shudder to see what is inside, "I request the right to bring weapons, both physical and spiritual."
That gets a few of the undead to give me a nasty look, mostly the old ones, but I am not going to give my people up to a ghost ship without any defense. The Captain gives me a look more serious than I've seen on his face for this entire conversation. He finally nods, "I don't know who the Admiral is, but they be important, don't be making mistakes wit the world lad."
I nod and turn to leave, "come on Ms. Dixon we have some work to do."
I walk by Heather just as she pulls Moryt in for a last solid punch, "yes sir." The hit is loud, but Moryt stands up before we leave.
"Amon," he hisses through broken reforming teeth, "you can't just walk off with my partner, without consequences." The ghoul lunges for me, but I dodge quicker than him. The half man lands into my knee striking upwards with as much force as I got. The hardened spine of a ghoul three-hundred years my senior cracks in half as my kneecap punches into his sternum. He falls to the ground reeling as I stomp my foot hard into his femur snapping it like a twig.
The ghoul doesn't get up, "Heather take him to his room, I'll work on getting people together for supplies." I stare dispassionately at the ghoul as the broken kneecap in my leg fuses back together, scared no doubt, just like all my other ones. I shake my head and continue to walk out, the eyes of the undead on my back, unfriendly...
Hope you enjoyed, Worm characters next time I promise... maybe.
The sharp click of heels sounds loud in the relatively moist hallway as I move down it. I can feel a smile that I struggle to keep from becoming too bright as I make my way past students and the things following them invisibly down the hall. Some of them even wave at me as I pass or give me a smile...
What a bunch of idiots...
I check to make sure that my form looks just the way I want it while I slide to a stop before the classroom.
Tan blazer, check!
Orange turtle neck, snazzy!
Black pencil skirt, just off the edge of distracting, so perfect!
Orange stilettos with black sheer tights, good, not great but just enough.
So, the cloths look good, now what about the rest? I hear the soft crackle of splintering bone as the smell of wonderful, choking smoke asks me if I got my transparency right. I look "down" to make sure. Okay so it looks good, or at least it looks like a human. My smile splits my face as I confirm that everything is ready to go. I quickly school it back down and walk through the door.
"Good morning class," I said as I quickly scan the room. It has maybe eleven living students, which is pretty good for Sawtooth even if we would have had twice the amount in my day. I also notice that several ghosts have decided to join the class, invisible to the other students. Some look nervous at seeing me, others look a bit less bored. I wave to a few of them nearest the living, don't want to give away the trick too soon. "I will be your professor today."
I step onto the podium in the circular class room filled with the living and the dead. The living look confused, and one raises her hand. "Yes," I say while pointing to her.
"Kitty Dole," she says her name...LIKE I ASKED... "Where is Professor Dunwich?"
I cool my internal fires as I try to keep my composure... Even if Mrs. Dole would look good in my fires, maybe later? I guess I should answer. "Professor Dunwich had an unfortunate accident with matches last night," I smile. The living all look uncomfortable, but the dead actually start to giggle. "Now I understand that he was teaching," I look down at the book on the podium and try to keep the giggles and screaming inside, "fundamentals of Anima formation." I want to roll my eye at the author's name, Amon Morgan. Sure, the man is one of the only living that is close but is nothing compared to what I know. "We won't be doing that."
The burnable girl who parts of me wishes to smother with smoke and the other parts want to hide in her flesh and consume her... slowly, speaks up, "what will you be teaching us?"
I look up slowly from the book and smile at bright and smoldering, "witchcraft..."
The look on their face as I burst into flames is priceless.
"AhAhAhahaAhahahahaha!"
I cringe as I walk down the hall to the facilities... dead room. The cackling burning form of Elain laughing at her "prank" on the morning class as she floats along besides me.
"You should have seen the looks on," she wheezes out a fog of smoke as she burst into more laughing, then screaming, "THEIR FACES! THEY WERE ALL, "Oh no please don't burn us Elain.""
I continue sloshing through the centimeters high water as the wrath next to me goes silent. Ignoring the undead as she gathers herself for more words.
"Then she started crying," the voice is the sound of extinguishing embers, as Elain becomes distressed, "I didn't mean to make her cry Amon."
I ignore that too. Considering that Elain was probably hoping for more screaming and possibly for one of the students to be set on fire, she will gain no sympathy from me. A few weeks ago, maybe, back when I still felt guilty for what happened to my former student, but after close to a month of being around her, no. Elain is a monster. I thankfully was told and arrived before she could do anything, it was Ms. Dole that was crying...
"Kitty is cute..."
I feel myself cringe again, my old bones aching and heart quickening at the thought of another undead becoming... attached to one of the staff or a student. I'd tell her no, but that might just encourage her... she likes to take things that hurt me. I don't need more guilt on my conscious, Kathrine is already in the building after all.
I stop by a set of double doors and turn to her. There is not much human about Elain besides shape. She looks like the burning sacrifice she was in her final moments, but I doubt that the "extra" stuff was present. Her body is a red angry mess of black scars and exposed burn tissues that make her sexless and lithe thin. The eyes in her skull are dark with a burning point of fire deep in the head like two twin stars. her hair is smoke rising endlessly behind her, great black plumes of dark soot and hot like volcanic clouds. Thankfully she is keeping that in mind as she hasn't seriously injured anyone yet after I told her not too.
"Elain I told you to not teach a class," I sigh as she stares molten daggers into me, "don't make me attempt to get rid of you."
The threat makes her laugh, the sound of burning bodies and snapping bones. "You may think that knowing something would help, but there are too many undead here now for you to do much of anything."
I open the door for her and gesture inside, "Oh and how many exactly are here?" She looks at the opened doorway and rolls her starlight eyes as she walks through the closed door, searing the metal and wood black. I sigh and walk inside.
"Twenty Thousssand sseven hundred ssixty-three."
The room is packed. I can see skeletons quietly chattering their teeth based language in the corner, a pair of them were playing some dice game and trading animal teeth. Near the back I could see a truly old draugr tuning an instrument while over a dozen zombies stare with blank eyes in all directions. Just next to them I can see twenty ghouls stare hungrily at each other, their arms and fingers twitching as they fight their instincts to fight and eat one another, Moryt is near them looking completely relaxed next to them, he has lived longer after all. I can see Kathrine next to a ramshackle forge sharpening her broadsword, her head in her lap a she works. At the back are a pile of bodies, revenants still asleep before the night when they reanimate, although I do see a few vampires lying down in the pile.
In the center of the room is a table, the undead at it are a little more abnormal. Dracula, or Leech as her real name appears to be... never let old vampires watch capes it gives them weird ideas. She stands next to Alexander, a wispy thin vampire that the society here had briefly contacted when it was still limited to Europe for its studies. Leech is his master, and while we did meet with her before, she pretended to be a he and only call herself Dracula. Her current form's age exemplifies her immature nature. Next to the vampire lord is a very old wight. He is a grayish purple, a long white beard and it looks like he is missing most of his body with how full of holes he is. He is also laughing like the pirate he is dressed as. The final one is where the voice came from.
She is turned from me, but her backless dress shows off the sliver snake scales forming two large patches on her lightly tanned flesh. They extend up from beyond the backless dress to wrap around up her throat and end around her eyes. Her hair is light brown and very curly, she keeps her eyes covered by a white blindfold. She is displaying a two pronged mark on her shoulder, it weeps green and black.
Iris is... interesting. The seer has most of the properties of a banshee, oraculum suspendium, and an elder vampire, vampiris sanguis. The fact that she was apparently some sort of soothsayer, or seerer as many of the undead call her, in life just adds to the mystery. Hybridization of undead doesn't occur as far as research goes, so what is she, how does she see the future with the afterlife? I don't need to see her face to know that she is talking to me, that snake-like voice always sounds like it is right next to your ear when it is speaking to you...
"That is a bit more than I expected," honestly the presence of numbers doesn't matter really, twenty undead in the facility is too much to handle for the staff. Undead are just designed to hunt the living, and there aren't enough tools on hand to fight them, there is only so much I can do without tools either. You can't put the dead down with your fists alone after all.
"It is mosstly incorporealss," she responds to me, a turn and smile of her huge mouth given shows her two nine inch long fangs folded back like a snake. If she bites you your dead, the wounds are simply too deep. Elain floats over to the table which gets Leech to perk up.
"So how did the prank go," Leech says excitedly with red gleaming eyes. I can see Alexander paling before looking at me with pity. I appreciate an undead that isn't insane, but I don't need his pity. I scowl back. Some excited chattering and exchanging of teeth goes on in the corner of my eyes as I walk up near the table. I don't dare step closer, to them I'm not a friend... or even an equal, really.
"I met someone..." Oh no, I think as I hear Elain's voice become dreamy.
"See I told you, you would." The sound of more excited chattering and more teeth changing hands. It also looks like a few are holding each other's ribs, skulls close as they trade them. Sometimes skeletons give me hope for the world, but I've seen what they do to people when angered and it isn't pretty. "Sorry for interrupting dear."
A few soft hisses from Iris as she blindly looks at Leech, a green flush on her neck. God this is uncomfortable, why don't you guys just act evil all the time it makes you very confusing when you act like this. "It'ss okay dear you can make it up to me later," I ignore that, "anywayss, The Captain'ss ship will be arriving by the river Thamess in twelve dayss, thirteen hourss, twenty-two minutess, and ssecondss you can guesss at later."
"That is awfully accurate," I say, "aren't future readings a little vaguer?"
"Oh, we only do that to make the living usse their brainss," she smiles small as a few of the undead chuckle, "pluss they don't believe you unlesss you phrasse it as a riddle."
"Aye it be more fun when they be annoyed too," the old wight interjects, "got ta get our enjoyment out of ta living somes way."
I feel left out as most of the heads, even the ones not at the table (even one of the revenants who should be a still corpse!), start nodding in agreement. I place my head in my hands as I process that, "is that why asking about how undead anima and ethereal work is like pulling teeth?"
"No," he scoffs, and I look up just in time to watch a worm out fly out of his mouth and onto the table. Moryt casually walks up to the table and eats it. No one is shocked or disturbed by that at all, my stomach is twisting. "Yer still alive, yer kind don't get it when us explain it to ya bilge-sucking sea urchins," his hand smacks the table as he finishes at the same time a bang from behind me sounds.
I turn as I hear the door get kicked in and a... "MORYT!"... woman's angry shout from behind me. I see a fuming Heather Dixon stomp though and right towards the eager ghoul. Heather is a guard, or more importantly, Moryt's handler. She is a hundred seventy something centimeters of red headed fury, the scar on her face from where Moryt bit her cheek off is not healing closed so you can see the bright white of her teeth through the hole.
Moryt, casually walks towards her with open arms, "yes honey?"
I watch, with no small amount of satisfaction, as Heather decks him into the wet dirt of the floor. The skeletons chatter excitedly as they smack their claws together, as Heather straddles the ghoul and starts wailing on his head. Elain starts yelling out suggestions as she cackles and screams her support of the ghoul's, likely deserved, punishment. I think Moryt's happy laughter as he is getting beat up just makes Heather angrier.
The people at the table just chuckle before ignoring the entertainment. I decide to do the same, interpersonal relationship counseling is not my problem after all. "Do you have any more information on the wail we heard," I ask as the sounds of impacts become the crack of bones behind me, "or maybe who is calling all of the undead?"
"A Queen!"
"A General..."
"An Admiral, lad!"
"A goddesss..."
The simultaneous answers are all different, but they don't look like any of them care all that much. Two of them, Leech and Iris, claim that they are a ruler and female. The other two, Alexander and The Captain, further explain some form of military leader. So at least that is something since they didn't give me titles when I've asked about the caller before.
"As for the wailss," Iris hisses, "She iss ssaying she iss ready, we will need to meet her ssoon as she hass reached a new age."
"She is growing up quick if she is a vampire," I frown, "or maybe a wendigo, union, amalgam, or one of the dozens of other undead." I frown harder as most of the undead just shake their heads or roll their eyes.
"She iss none of thesse thingss, and your sspeciess lisstss are jusst to help you undersstand," a cold scale covered claw of a hand rests on my shoulder, "you're not going to undersstand anymore until you ssee."
I sigh and hear the sound of metal boots walking up. "Trust me Amon," Kathryn says walking up to the table, her head in her arms as hair made of fire spills out from the helm, "I may of had an advanced education from my life, but I knew next to nothing about undeath compared to now, and I've only been dead for a few decades!" I frown as she comes near.
Dullahans are rare, like most undeads that are regionally locked. Kathrine doesn't look like any of them, but it is probably her armor that is the strangest. It is bright blue with paint and is a mix of old full plate and cape-like tinker crap in design. I grumble internally about how capes have even infected their ideas into the undead. I can't really blame her for the strangeness of her armor, every dullahan makes their own armor after all, and she has made it work in full function. Doesn't make me any less tiffed that it is so... modern. Probably just trying to distract myself from looking her in the eye, makes it easier that it is waist height. "These old farts have been around since the dark ages, some even longer."
"Hey are you calling me old?" I watch as Leech's voice cause a pained look cross Alexander's face.
"Master you arose at the dawn of humanity, you are old."
"Oh, no Alexander how could you," a mocking tone in her voice as she fakes a look of betrayal, "your master feels so dejected, I think I might go take a walk." I watch as the already pale vampire turn ghost white at her words. I make sure to give him a look of pity, enjoying the schadenfreude at his clear dread.
"So, you mentioned a ship."
"Aye, a ghost ship," the wight spits a rotting tooth out like it is chewing tobacco, "We'll be knock'n all the bridges out too, fun it'll be, eh?"
It's not like half of them aren't already gone, London bridges don't really get much use here behind the wall. I nod, "is it safe for the living?"
"Yer coming with eh," I watch his hollow gray eyes twist up as he thinks, "yer people can come, but best bring food and ain't gonna haff living stuff either."
"Are you sure Amon," I look up at Kathrine as she straps her head back into place, we both ignore the skeletons exchanging teeth behind me. "We are headed a long ways overseas, to meet up with potentially millions of undead."
"It's fine, most of the students and staff are interested to get out of the Simurgh containment since Iris told us the thing's dead," I say, "plus it will be good for the society to maybe interview some more undead, I also want to see this general too." I turn to The Captain eager to stop looking into the black slit of Kathrine's helm, I shudder to see what is inside, "I request the right to bring weapons, both physical and spiritual."
That gets a few of the undead to give me a nasty look, mostly the old ones, but I am not going to give my people up to a ghost ship without any defense. The Captain gives me a look more serious than I've seen on his face for this entire conversation. He finally nods, "I don't know who the Admiral is, but they be important, don't be making mistakes wit the world lad."
I nod and turn to leave, "come on Ms. Dixon we have some work to do."
I walk by Heather just as she pulls Moryt in for a last solid punch, "yes sir." The hit is loud, but Moryt stands up before we leave.
"Amon," he hisses through broken reforming teeth, "you can't just walk off with my partner, without consequences." The ghoul lunges for me, but I dodge quicker than him. The half man lands into my knee striking upwards with as much force as I got. The hardened spine of a ghoul three-hundred years my senior cracks in half as my kneecap punches into his sternum. He falls to the ground reeling as I stomp my foot hard into his femur snapping it like a twig.
The ghoul doesn't get up, "Heather take him to his room, I'll work on getting people together for supplies." I stare dispassionately at the ghoul as the broken kneecap in my leg fuses back together, scared no doubt, just like all my other ones. I shake my head and continue to walk out, the eyes of the undead on my back, unfriendly...
Hope you enjoyed, Worm characters next time I promise... maybe.