Daisy and Rose in a jail cell

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Perin
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Joined: Tue Apr 24, 2018 7:16 am

Daisy and Rose in a jail cell

Post by Perin » Wed May 09, 2018 10:01 pm

[Daisy, a ghostwise halfling cleric, finds herself in jail on suspicion of intentionally spreading a deadly plague.]

The jail door clinked shut, and Daisy allowed herself to smile.

She turned to face the back of her torch-lit cell. A skeleton lay in a nook at the back. Tempting, but one of the leg bones was missing and the rest were crumbling from age and moisture damage.

A rusty metal mortuary slab took the place of a bed. Shadows flickered with the drafts that wuthered through the cracks in the walls.

“They said ‘countless’. D’ye think they didna bother, or were there too many t’keep track of?” She giggled. “Ah wonder ‘ow many fell t’rise undead, like the grave digger. By the looks o’ their faces, more’n ‘nough.”

Silence.

“Ye kin come out, Rosie. The winged guard be gone, an’ ah dinna think there b’other prisoners here just now. Save fer dearly departed bones o’er there, an’ ‘e’ll naye mind.”

The dark on the side wall opened a pair of red eyes and stepped forward in humanoid form.

“You’ll hang for this, my love,” said the shadow. “Too much and too soon.” Her voice was like marbles dropped onto floorboards.

“I dinna think I will,” replied Daisy. “For one, I think th’use a greatsword here. Maybe magic.”

The berry-red eyes narrowed. “Don’t joke.”

The priestess raised her hand, palm-up.

“It won’t come t’that. We’ve earned too much favour.”

“The Revenancer’s not known for her kindness.”

“We need it anyhow.” Daisy reached for the shadow’s cheek, but stopped short. “Right,” she remembered. “Naye wards.”

It’d been over a year since Rose’s death and return. There were some benefits to her shadow form. No more limping, canes or coughs. No need for Rose to stay in bed while Daisy made her priestly rounds.

There were negatives, too. Daisy’s priestly duties now held more vengeance than healing, and she missed the feel of her wife’s head in her hand. Negative Plane Protection could only do so much, and it wouldn’t bring back Rose’s curled, flowing hair.

“What happens to me if you… end?” asked the shadow.

“Din think about that,” answered Daisy. “Let’s try the sewin’ again. I’ve a good piece of hide i’m’pack to test it on.” She rummaged in her backpack and found a scrap of bear hide beneath the drow skull she carried. Needle and thread were in the side pocket.

“It didn’t work last time.”

“Last time, the flesh were weak an’too long dead. This b’a fresh kill.” Rose was about to complain, but Daisy shushed the shadow and set to work infusing the thread with positive energy.

It was a theory she had, and she was proud of it. It was her mind-child, and no child of hers could ever be a disappointment. It had come to her when adventuring with Shia, a dancer who could detach her own shadow and have it fight with a mind of its own.

If a shadow could be detached from a living being, and given independence, what of the reverse? Why couldn’t a living shadow be joined to a body, and take over its function?

The question was HOW to attach a shadow to a body. Daisy’s first experiments had been with animated corpses in the sewers. They had not gone well. When Rose tried to walk into the zombies so that their forms overlapped, they fe on her energy and made her feel faint. There was no connection, no merging, just a mindless absorption of nourishment.

The next trials had been on immobilized, but living subjects. Daisy had hit on the idea of using thread humming with positive energy to stitch her undead wife to the screaming prisoners. The good news was that the stitches worked, though not without a lot of hissing and complaining on Rose’s part. The bad news was that the shadow’s negative energy sizzled and fried the intended hosts' flesh. They screamed in agony and bled out once their feet had melted off.

(Of course the stitching was done on the soles of the feet - that’s where shadows were connected to every-day bodies.)

Reanimated corpses didn’t work, neither did the living. Meat from the butcher shop had proved promising; it held up better than the prisoners had. Unfortunately, there was no sign of merging and control. It was, Rose had said, like trying to climb a ladder made of ice.

The bear hide was a compromise. The animal had been killed a day ago, compared to the butcher meat’s two weeks or more.

“Show m’yer foot.” The shadow extended what looked more like a tendril towards Daisy, who picked up her materials and started to sew. Rose hissed with each puncture by the charged needle, but the task was finished in minutes. “D’ye feel anythin’?”

Rose moved her leg tentatively. The hide moved with it.

“Pain,” said the shadow. “Aching feet. And an anchor. It’s heavy.”

“Heavy…” Daisy considered this, then nodded her head. “Heavy’s good. Better’n we’ve seen saye far. An’ th’edge o’the ’hide barely be singed.”

“Can you cut it off now? Please.” Daisy obliged. “I don’t think I could live with permanent stitches.”

“Techni’c’lly, yer not livin’, e’en w’out ‘em,” said the priestess as she snipped the threads and cut Rose loose.

“You know what I mean.” Rose rubbed at her sore feet. It looked like a child’s shadow puppet play of a shark attacking a seal. “You’re not powerful enough.”

“Naye yet,” admitted Daisy. “B’I will be, once Kiaransalee gets wind o’m’doin’s. Did ye SEE the look on the Chancellor’s face? This be big.”

“Too big. It won’t end well. Did you HAVE to tell the healers everything?”

“Aye, well. R’venge an’ all that. Ye saw ‘ow the boy spoke to me. ‘Ow h’ignored all words ah said.”

“You tainted the healing kits in front of them. You told them you’d tainted shared meals and the fountains.”

“Only as ah knew they’d do naught ‘bout it. Knew they’d ignore’t, same’s they’d ignored all else I’d said ‘bout the plague an’ undead, an’ bout th’families i’the farmlands.”

“I don’t think the plague has anything to do with the farmlands.”

Daisy brushed the objection aside.

“Aye, well. Th’all be Cordorians, yeah? The ones as dinna respect or heed me.” She shuffled her feet while looking at them. “Now their not listenin’ll be the city’s undoin’. I gave ‘em every chance to stop me. Hid nothin’ from them. An’ yet I walked free, an’ drank free, an’ spread ill’s far as I wished.”

“I hope it was worth it,” whispered the shadow, sounding like a mouse rustling through a bush.

Daisy nodded but refused to look Rose in the eye.

“Ye saw what ‘appened t’the gravedigger. Vomited ‘imself to death an’were instantly turned t’a spectre. So long’s the plague ‘as SOME chance o’making undead of its victims… Ah kinna think o’a surer way t’earn Kiaransalee’s favour in a short time. An’ with th’extra power, maybe we kin… fix things.” Daisy blinked. “D’ye think I’ll make Yathrinshee?” These were the Vengeful Banshee’s elite servants, with great power over undeath and vengeance.

Despite this, most whispers about them dealt with their more private habits.

“Well,” admitted Rose, blushing as close to pink as negative energy allowed, “you certainly have the ‘lich-loved’ requirement down pat.”

Daisy glanced at the last vial of warding potion left in her pack.

“There b’a bed right there… An’ if this drags to mornin’, we could…

An awkward silence, broken by the shadow.

“I miss Damara. And the old temple. And the plants, and the children. And the weddings and handfasts.”

“Th’dinna miss us. ’Tis their fault we’re ‘ere i’the first place. Sheela turned away when w’needed ‘er most. ’Tis only th’Lady o’th’Dead that welcomed us.”

“Daisy. Love. You turned away from Her. She’s ever been with us. With me. Even now. The Watchful Mother does not end her watch because her children go astray.”

“T’other Green Children were set t’destroy you!”

“Maybe it was time. You should have let me die.”

“Naye like that!” Daisy wiped a fresh tear from her eye. “You're family. M’only family. You're m’love. An’ what’s more important t’the Watchful Mother than love an’ family?”

“Growth.”

“Shadows grow, i’the right light.”

“You know what I mean. I… lengthen. Warp. But plants… plants grow. Do you remember our flower-beds?”

“How could I forget?”

“And how we cared for them?”

“Mulch ’n water, talk an’ sun.”

“Mulch is made of dead things. They fed on them, and grew. To foster growth, you need to allow death. Natural death. And a return to the cycle.”

“M’love kinna die like that. O willna return m’love t’any cycle. You're th’only spouse I’ll ever have. You're…” Daisy giggled through more tears. “You're a lousy writer is what y’are.”

“Do you mean…”

The priestess put down her sewing materials, and took a stick of charcoal and a stack of papers from her pack.

“Ah’m ready t’take dictation. ’S’ been enough dire talk for one day, an’ ah dinna know how long w’ave b’fore th’come back ‘ere with m’fate.”

The sides of the shadow’s face jerked up in what might have been a smile.

“Where did we finish last?”

“It were that Melm story.”

“You mean Hystra.”

“Naye, I mean Melm. Mystra/Helm. Hystra sounds l’a child havin’ a tantrum.” She flipped through the papers. “It were th’staircase scene. Th’last words were, ‘tongues like a missile storm’.”

The shadow cleared its throat. It sounded like a badger screaming.

“Helm’s tumescent trousers…”

“Let m’stop ye right there.” Daisy set her charcoal down. “There b’naye way in th’Abyss or th’Hells that I’ll b’responsible for a sentence like that. I may be a plague spreader, b’ ‘tumescent’ an’ ‘Helm’ dinna belong in th’same sentence.” Before Rose could reply, the priestess waved her into silence. “Shush, someone comes. Hide yourself, love.”

Daisy watched her wife melt back into the room’s shadows, then smoothed her vesture and smiled at the incoming guard.

“How kin I help ye?” she asked.


[Daisy of Kiaransalee, once Daisy of Sheela Peryroyl, was banished from Cordor for ten years. She and Rose (from the Dead) have every hope of a return to domestic bliss as residents of Bendir.]

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