I came back from a lengthy absence to find that all my creatu were kind of ... dead. Somewhat worryingly, my first response, as opposed to being something along the lines of 'Resurrections ahoy!' was more like, 'Ooh, I can totally write a story about this!'
So. Be warned - it's kind of long, and the pacing is even more eccentric than the rest of it. x3
Ill-Advised Executions
It was morning. Ish.
On any other planet, a chorus of birdsong would herald the sunrise, which would no doubt consist of lots of pretty oranges and reds and, all in all, look like a large, beautiful fried egg dripping light over the world. But this was Reiflem. The only birds were Aukira, and their song sounded more like a funeral dirge. There was no sunrise; the sky was grey and choked with smoke. And the landscape was pretty much made entirely of oranges and reds anyway.
A huge, ramshackle house – the word ‘mansion’ somehow came to mind – was the scene of a chorus of a different sort.
“Haunte? Did you do this?” This voice was high, piping, and, right now, accusatory.
“What?” This one was a lazy drawl, dripping innocence.
“This!”
“Thank you. That’s very specific.”
“Stop pretending. I know it was you.”
“Know what was me? Exactly?”
“You glued all my furniture to the ceiling!”
There was a pause.
“Maybe your attic has become the location of a rift in the Time/Space Continuum?” suggested the second voice.
The accusation leaked out of the piping voice, to be replaced mostly by confusion. “Eh? Look, you’re not going to get out of this that easy.”
“I wouldn’t take the furniture down if I were you.”
“I’m going to tell Rikku.” The first voice held a note of triumph, as though this would conclude the argument.
“This could be very important to science,” the second voice continued seriously.
“You’ll be sorry then.”
“Revolutionary to the way we view the world.”
“She’ll, she’ll, she’ll set you on fire. Or something.”
“Ghosts are inflammable,” said the second speaker smugly. “We don’t catch fire easy.”
“… ‘Inflammable’ means you do catch fire easy, halfwit.”
“If it does,” said the second voice, “it shouldn’t.”
“I’m going to tell Rikku,” said the first voice firmly.
On her narrow bed in the basement, a green-haired girl groaned and buried her head in the pillow.
“I really wouldn’t, if I were you. Hand me the milk.”
Rikku rolled over, slowly and laboriously. She got up, and, with eyes still closed, navigated her way to the basement stairs with practiced ease, automatically sidestepping various technomancer items and a large sheet-covered table. Beneath the sheet was something that made enough interesting bumps and dips to be quite gruesome if you looked at it closely. Rikku, of course, didn’t, because her eyes were closed. Even if they hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary, because nothing was out of the ordinary. You expected a necromancer’s workshop to contain a few peculiarities.
By the time she had lumbered up the stairs, the breakfast dispute had broken up, and the smaller arguer was nowhere to be seen. A lean Tesuri with a lot of silky white fur and a slash of grey across his muzzle was standing at the window in the kitchen, looking thoughtfully out the door and chewing on a doughnut. There was a sword slung across his back, and a fedora perched on his head in a rakish kind of way.
“Hey, Rikku,” Haunte said, without looking around.
“Sugar,” Rikku grated.
He looked out at the grey, permanently stormy, permanently scarred landscape. “Nice morning, isn’t it?” he said.
Rikku considered saying a lot of things, most of them along the lines of, “If you hate Reiflem so much, you’re welcome to go splash around in the Atquati mud – just don’t expect to get paid,” but eventually she settled for saying, “Sugar,” again, in a pointed kind of way.
“Regular orator in the mornings, aren’t you?” said Haunte, handing her a lump of unrefined sugar.
She glared at it. Sometimes she almost thought he misunderstood her deliberately. All the other times, she was certain of it. He was the Trickster, after all. It was just what he did.
A broad-winged, small-eared, narrow-muzzled Myotis with an unraveling scarf and loosely fastened goggles flew through the door, clutching a mug of hot chocolate in one hand. None of it spilled over the edge.
“Thirty-three point four five minutes,” she said, her voice tinged with professional pride. “And that’s the round trip, too.”
Rikku took the hot chocolate and tasted it. “Arsii,” she said wearily, “I have nothing but respect for your skills, and you are invaluable, but do you think you could, next time, sacrifice proving how quickly you can go to the Beverage Shop and back in favour of getting what I ask for from a local shop so it doesn’t get cold?”
Sii frowned. “It’s … it’s not that cold,” she muttered, dissatisfaction momentarily overcoming her instinctive obedience.
Rikku mutely held the mug upside down. The hot chocolate began to ooze down the sides - but very, very slowly. It had congealed to the consistency of sludge.
“Er,” said Sii. “I blame wind resistance.”
“On the bright side,” said Haunte cheerfully, “the marshmallows are just as liquid as the hot chocolate.”
Rikku groaned, walked over to the table and slumped into a chair.
At that moment a voice from the general direction of the attic called, “Look out!”
The three exchanged glances.
“Haunte,” said Rikku carefully, “what did Ross say he was going to do after you two had finished arguing?”
Haunte shrugged. “Something about a radish. Oh, and he might have said something like ‘fools, I’ll show them all’.” He paused. “Or ‘Joules, my toaster’s shawl’. Anyone’s guess.”
Rikku sighed. Her youngest employee was sliding more and more down the slope that led to midnight experiments involving dramatic thunderstorms and a lot of manic cackling. The fact that he lived in the attic Did Not Help.
A number of loud, ominous thumps drifted from the direction of the rickety, spiraling staircase, getting louder and louder until the thing that made them stumped around the last corner into a view.
It staggered around, arms outstretched, moaning, “Braaaaains …”
This was quite impressive, seeing it didn’t have a mouth. Or arms. Or legs.
It was, in fact, a radish.
“Haunte?” said Rikku tiredly.
Haunte looked at her. “You’re kidding, yes? I’m not in any particular hurry to get undead root vegetable juice all over my sword.”
“Haunte.”
“It’s not exactly dignified, either,” he continued, completely ignoring her. “I mean, think about it: ‘Brave Hero Makes A Mean Radish Salad’. I have a sword, not a kitchen knife. And I just polished it.”
“Haunte.”
He rolled his eyes, grabbed the zombie radish, walked over to the still-open door and tossed the undead root vegetable out into the scorching Reiflem landscape. “Knowing this wretched planet,” he said, returning to them and wiping his hands together in distaste, “it’ll—”
There was a ‘fwoom’, and a pillar of flame shot up from the scarred ground, incinerating the radish completely.
‘—do that,” he finished, and finished off his doughnut.
Rikku sighed. This was obviously not her day.
A runty black Myotis hurried down the stairs, pushing his spiky golden fur-tufts out of his eyes. “Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “See, what happened was—”
Rikku was not in the mood for explanations. “Just don’t let it happen again, Ross.”
Roster looked a little insulted. “It won’t!” he protested. “You know that! I don’t take on anything I can’t handle. I would’ve had everything under control if my power source” – he shot a glare at Haunte – “wasn’t mysteriously glued to my ceiling by person or persons unknown.”
Haunte brushed crumbs off his furry muzzle with great dignity.
“I’ve had enough,” said Rikku, in great frustration. “I’m going back to bed.” She got up, somehow managing to slam her chair, and stormed down the stairs into the basement.
*
When she woke, the house was silent.
No plesant background sound of Tesuri and Myotis bickering over breakfast. No errand-runner dashing through the door to tell excitedly of her exploits in distant Scria.
The creak of the stairs sounded very loud in the emptiness. Rikku ascended more slowly than was her custom, gripping the rail so tightly her knuckles turned white.
No Haunte in the kitchen.
No Sii in the lounge.
No Ross in the attic.
“This is beginning to sound horribly like a game of Cluedo,” she said, trying to inject false cheer into her voice. “‘Rikku in the kitchen with a frying pan’.” She sighed. “Talking to herself.”
Well, she wasn’t the kind to sit around moping all day. A check of her profile showed none of her employees in the module. And there was only one thing that could mean.
“Graveyard,” she growled, and got to her feet purposefully.
It was a long walk across rugged terrain, but Reiflem was her favourite planet, and it was second nature to sidestep the fissures, dodge the geysers and steer clear of any area which smelled strongly of sulphur. Eventually, she was there: the Graveyard, with its rich dirt, uncharacteristic of Reiflem, and the tidy little rows of tombstones. Some of them had names; some, the older, were blank. A tree that looked at least as dead as any of the creatu dipped its black-leafed branches in some unfelt breeze. An eerie mist dampened her skin and made her shiver. If she strained, she could almost hear whispers
All in all, it was incredibly chilling. But the creepy effect was utterly ruined when a fluffy pink unicorn appeared in front of her.
“Hello Dear,” it said, smiling sweetly, “it seems that you have come looking for a lost soul—”
“Too right I have!” yelled Rikku. She paused. “And why in Otroe’s name did you just give ‘dear’ a capital ‘D’?”
The unicorn blinked. “… Is that relevant?”
“Yes,” Rikku said. “Because, personally, I would love to add bad grammar to your already lengthy list of crimes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the unicorn, too quickly.
Rikku snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said sarcastically. “I don’t suppose you’d know who I am, either? Let me inform you. I’m Rikku, and I’m a real necromancer. And I’ve ignored the goings-on here because I didn’t want to seem intrusive, but it stops, here and now. You’ve gone too far this time, ‘Quest Giver’. If that is your real name.”
Quest Giver took a step backward. “Get out,” it said sharply. “You’re not welcome here. The … um, the, the spirits don’t like you. Yes.”
Rikku smirked. “You’ve gone too far,” she repeated, her voice dangerously quiet. “Not my employees. Not them. I won’t let you steal their names. I can see why you’d want me out of business; I’m a rival competitor. But leave them out of it. They have nothing to do with this.”
“They’re your employees,” the unicorn pointed out mildly. “I’d say they have everything to do with your business.”
Rikku rested her hand on the handle of her frying pan. “So you admit you killed them?”
Quest Giver narrowed its huge, vacant blue eyes. “Of course not, Dear,” it hissed ungrammatically. “Creatu die if you don’t feed them.”
“Whuh?” Rikku blinked. “Is … is that new?”
The unicorn took an ominous step forward. Its sharp horn gleamed. “You,” it hissed menacingly, “should read the Updates more often.”
“But my pets – my employees eat plenty!”
The Quest Giver shrugged. “They starved. That’s how things work. It’s only natural.”
“But Haunte was eating a doughnut just half an hour ago!”
The Quest Giver smirked. “Guess you should have fed them more.”
“But I did feed them!”
“Yes,” said Quest Giver. “But you didn’t.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Neither,” snapped the unicorn, “does your face.”
Rikku snorted. “I’m not listening to more of this. Bring them back, and we’ll say no more about it.” She attempted a peaceful, not-threatening smile.
The unicorn eyed it and edged away. “I think not.”
Rikku drew her frying pan. “Bring them back,” she said, her voice so sharp it was almost in italics.
Quest Giver shifted from hoof to hoof.
“Bring them back,” whispered Rikku, and her smile was like a knife.
The unicorn swallowed nervously.
*
Rikku made it so they remembered nothing of it. Because she was a real necromancer, and that was what she did.
*
Haunte was in the kitchen, making peanut butter sandwiches. With his long, silken fur falling over his eyes, he looked almost innocent, though of course she knew perfectly well that he wasn’t. He turned around when she entered. “Feeling less stereotypically angsty yet?” he asked.
Rikku grinned and tossed something at him. Extremely good reflexes taking over, he snatched it out of the air, and only then did he look at it. “… I love cheesecake,” he said, staring at it. Amazingly, not a crumb of it had fallen from the plate. “It’s … it’s my favourite food.”
“I know,” sung Rikku cheerfully.
The surprised delight on his face had gone almost as soon as it appeared, but it had been there, and that was enough. “Why did you—?” he began to ask suspiciously, but by then she was already past him, patting him on the shoulder as she went.
Sii was in the lounge. Rikku dropped a wrapped parcel onto her lap, ruffling her ears as she went by. The Myotis’s delighted cry of, “A new scarf! Yes!” followed her as she climbed up the rickety spiraling staircase.
Ross was in the attic. He was tinkering with some vast mechanical contraption. He looked up when she entered and immediately straightened, a look of panic replacing his look of concentration.
“Um – I’m nearly done, boss!” he said, attempting a salute. His wings got a little tangled, but he managed it. “Just a few more tweaks here and there and you can use this to help power—”
Rikku lifted up the little bat and hugged him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, scratching him behind the ears. “There’s no hurry.”
He clawed her way up her arm and perched on her shoulder. “What’s the special occasion?” he asked curiously, smiling for the first time in what seemed like aeons.
She began to go back down the stairs, walking carefully so as to not dislodge him. “No special occasion,” she told him. “Just awareness, is all.”
“Awareness of what?”
“The things I have.”
He grinned. “Obnoxiously bright hair?”
“Shush, you.”
They headed into the kitchen. Haunte surely couldn’t eat all that cheesecake by himself.
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I love you Omena. <3