In the halls of the great king of the Fifty Fiefs of Farning-Fenton...
Niklas, realizing his objective is probably more trouble than it's worth, decides to immediately lose sight of it and look for something more interesting instead, like his offices. He assumes he has offices, anyway. And so he moves into the hallways, about to look for them, only to be interrupted by the king, who looks slightly miffed and entirely unaccompanied.
"There you are!" he says, tapping his foot impatiently. "I heard about your adventures thus far, and I must say, I really expected better of a Black Circle representative. It's about time we put an end to this foolishness, clearly. Will you head back to the Mystery Forge and fix yourself, or should I just do it for you?"
In the wilderness outside Eckledun...
Sigmund, supposing that the previous focus he just made is likely someone else's problem now, decides to locate a currently dead object in the area. Fortunately, there seems to be what he suspects to be an ancient tree only about a hundred meters away, so that's all taken care of, he thinks. Now, he's going to have to be smart about this. Clearly none of that business with self-awareness and all that other nonsense will be allowed to slide, so he might as well forget it for the moment. Besides, the object's already got definitions for souls and that other business in it, so the only problem is its potential set of ethics, and that ought to be easy to fix by simply letting it transport Sigmund's soul rather than doing anything else. And also presumably freeing the soul in the chosen body before transporting his soul into it, obviously. So, murder-transport. Should be simple to arrange, with only one target, a time delay, then putting in a soul with the appropriate number. Should be easy to arrange, plus he needs to add a Sigmund-triggered switch to make it do what he (and only he) wants, when he wants it. Just need to rewrite some numbers and set a trigger plus a method to accept a single set of targeting parameters, in short.
So, with all that appropriately figured out, Sigmund manages to effortlessly make a nearby tree into a Sigmund-activated focus that murders a target and sets its body's inhabiting soul to be Sigmund's. He assumes it ought to work perfectly well, judging by the way it doesn't seem like it's about to unravel in any significant way. Not to mention that it precludes any possibility of Sigmund getting the number wrong in the process of activating it due to the high degree of automation, so it's just a matter of picking the target and setting the process in motion. He even thought to include a failsafe for if the first attempt at murdering the creature in question didn't work - it just keeps on murdering in that event, checking for whether there is a soul in the creature, and if not, retrying the blanking of the body's ownership until it works.
Outside the Purging Crab...
Introductions done, Mark wastes no time and takes Wilma and the one beast band into the... tavern or inn, who knows, that is the Purging Crab, propping himself up by the bar next to the woman of the hour and ordering up a round of drinks, which the crabby-looking bartender readily serves.
"Um, I'm afraid to say I don't actually drink," Wilma says, and Mark looks at her. More for him, then! Splendid. He grabs the first mug, and is slightly disappointed when it bounces off at his touch, spilling fine ale all over the chitinous man behind the counter. Though his expression is unreadable, he seems quite bewildered if one judges from the body language.
"Does that happen a lot here?" Wilma asks, and the bartender shakes its head. The ale on its head seems to be, oddly enough, dripping sideways.
Morton, meanwhile, attends to his mission! He may have ascertained Mark's location and fate, but now the better question is likely what the others are up to, since they seem much more injury-prone as a rule.
"I suppose our task hasn't differed, onward to finding our wayward compatriots," says he, and Tailor Craig agrees readily, so the two of them move off to find concerned and/or informed citizens to question on the whereabouts of their companions. They manage to take about three steps (well, step-equivalents, considering both of them generally tend to glide rather than walk) before coming face to face with something terribly unusual, namely a bush coming their way. It's not a large bush, and appears to have thick, blue-green leaves and very light red berries - looks like an oversized, off-colored lingonberry bush. An incredibly oversized lingonberry bush, in fact, in that it seems to actually be a bush. A nearby pedestrian seems about to stop and take a good look at it before beginning to fall upwards unexpectedly rapidly.
"Aha! There you two are," the bush says after making a dim grunting acknowledgement of the upwards falling man. "Craig, you ingenious bugger! It worked like a charm! I'm less conspicuous now than I've ever been!"
"Granted, such a state is not very difficult to achieve, is it?" Tailor Craig points out.
"True indeed. It's a shame that such an opportunity came along when it was least likely to be useful, don't you think?"
The falling man seems to be moving very quickly indeed, now but a mere dot in the sky.
In a mysteriously strange house...
Scott, clearly in over his head, tries to adopt a less confrontational mode of conversation.
"Sir... I don't know if you are learned in biology...but I am undead and an incorporeal soul to be particular, for me to be drunk it is to be a state of mind, not a state of drug induced stupidity... though the presence helps the induced delusion. Though I do have one last question before I make my leave, was what I experienced an illusion itself upon entering your abode, or are you truly a being beyond human perception? In either case are you free to tutor out your knowledge?"
"Oh, there are two steps to putting yourself beyond human perception if you are a ghost. The first it that you hide in a wall. The second involves you using the powers of ventriloquism to sound as if you are not hiding in a wall. By no means you should reveal to the unsuspecting public that you can do either," the voice explains. "In addition, make sure to peek out once in a while to make sure you're not flying blind here. And that's pretty much it. Granted, I cannot guarantee that's what I'm presently doing, but I'm not going to reveal much more than that without at least some sort of compensation."
In the chamber of the Crown of Flowers...
Darren is not quite reassured by all this business.
"Yeah, but I mean, the chance of HIM forgiving me?"
"Insignificant unless he forgets who you are. And if you fail this quest, I don't think it's likely that he's going to quite forget who you are before you are at the very least dead. Especially if I manage to turn you away with rational argument rather than the excessive force I am hoping I will need to use." the elder ghost explains. "It's been a while since I've had cause to turn someone inside out and then flay their insides inch by inch until I feel vaguely pleased with myself. I'm not even sure that's possible anymore, since I may have fabricated that particular memory, so I suppose it'll be a learning experience as well."
In the dining room of Ms. Klemm...
Kevin, itching to see sunlight that isn't this strange lamp light again, follows Ms. Klemm out of the dining hall back into the main necropolis walkway, and is a little surprised when she immediately stops there and turns to face him.
"It's not that we're about to go anywhere, Ms. Cooker, I just wanted to be out of the room before we teleported. It spooks the little ones, you see. They become nervous for the entire day, no matter what I tell them afterwards," she smiles at him.
She snaps her fingers and everything around her falls to dust, then seemingly reconstitutes itself in the shape of a rather bare room in what appears to be a rather dilapidated home. Light comes in through the windows, hitting the damp, moldy, insect-eaten walls. This place seems like it could fall apart any time now, and Kevin's not quite sure what's keeping it together, really. There appear to be two adjoining rooms, just as empty as this one. A set of double doors is set into one of the walls, apparently leading outside.
"And we're here. So convenient, teleportation. Any quick questions before you go, or may I just skip on back before anyone notices me gone?"
Author
Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 563964 times)