The incredibly tense Gunther was angry until she registered what I had said. When she did, she became even more irate. Dinner with Cluse made her tense but silent.

  I stared to panic slightly as she stared at me, eyes too wide, not in surprise, but as if to intentionally intimidate me.

  I could see her eyes, slightly bloodshot, contrasting her bright green eyes, the pupils dilated like she was ready to pounce on me, and I was in the doorway.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  Bashful and now realizing that Gunther was clearly not in her right mind, I drew back, if not physically, in spirit.

  “Well… I just… Well, I just… I got home to probably say yes to our outing… But I told him you would talk it over?” I asked, though the increasing look on her face made me continue. “I also told him to help you out, though, and I told him you would handle any requests for information from the library! Think of the money, Gunther! Think about that! And the help you could get from Clause!”

  She stared at me, unmoved except for her eyebrow, which was beginning to twitch violently.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. This was, in retrospect, a bad idea. Her eyes held a quality like she was analyzing the best way to dispose of my body.

  “I can’t say that you put me in the hole… But you called this a date? Is that right? [Spill]!” She told me.

  Her skill shot out of her mouth as fast as the crack of a whip. A sudden feeling overcame me. I could have tried fighting it; it was not subtle after all, being both spoken out loud and very obvious in its effect as I spontaneously wanted to spill my guts.

  And I did; I didn’t even try. I was trying to explain it all anyway.

  She glared at me as I spilled my guts, observing me as I spilled my guts out, telling her the entire deal.

  I was surprisingly good at conveying answers when under skill. It was like I had points in charisma.

  It was honestly somewhat refreshing; I found my sudden glibness enjoyable. It was probably the only compelling skill I had ever felt like that. I did resent it somewhat, but I was going to cut Gunther a break, considering how she looked at the moment.

  “… And then I finished getting him to entreat you for help and stuff, so I got on my way here,” I told her, the effect coming to an end as I finished spilling it.

  I felt myself lose all the glibness and clarity in my words, and it saddened me somewhat.

  It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the easiest time talking I had in recent memory.

  I resolved, at that moment, that I was going to make my next class something with a charisma bonus. Not because I had all the ability of a misanthropic cave-dwelling cretin or because I wanted people to like me more, but because of just how easy it was to find my words, especially in another language. I wasn’t quite a good talker in my native tongue either, but the five stages I needed to go through to speak compared to just being able to speak was just that fantastic.

  “And?” Gunther asked.

  “That’s it,” I told her with a sigh, the weight of conversation already returned, a moment under a fleeting sun.

  Gunther sighed.

  “You know what. I’m slightly chuffed, Saphine,” she told me.

  “Oh? I get it if you’re not looking for extra stuff. I figured you would either agree or tell him to take it up with me. It’s not like I can force you,” I told her, sorry if I had caused her more headache.

  “Not you… Well, not entirely you. You’ve just gotten my hopes up, mostly.” She told me.

  That spun my head right around, taking me into the depths of confusion that I could not comprehend. After all, doing things with social knock-on effects was something akin to advanced magic fuckery to me.

  The fact that I somehow got Gunther’s hopes up was insane to me.

  Was one of the things I had said simply not as good as she had hoped? I would have thought that Gunther would have loved to have a lord willing to pull strings for her. Hell, she was probably going to make a killing as the middleman between Clause and me.

  “How?” I asked her.

  “You called it a date. You got my hopes up, is all.” She told me, her voice tired. I figured he might have finally picked up on everything.”

  I looked at her, confused, but replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve been trying to ingratiate myself with him for over a decade,” she told me, “He sees me as a worthwhile ally, but I wished to be more.”

  More? More how?

  “Gunther… Are you aware that Clause is not a creature of subtlety? I don’t know what you’re more is, but if you’re being subtle, you’re probably going to lose it,” I told her.

  “That’s amusing coming from you,” she told me.

  “Not as much as Clause being Arabelle's son. She freaks me out a little.” I told her.

  Gunther scowled at the name. However, she didn’t explain why she hated it. There was a look I could only call admirable hatred. Something like rivalry.

  “I won’t speak on her; our grievances are our own… But I do wish she had rubbed off on him more than she did. I suppose like father like son.” She said, rubbing her temples.

  I looked at her, still not quite understanding where this was going. I was less oblivious, probably, but it was above my head.

  “Have you ever thought about being less subtle? Or being subtle in a way that gets you closer to what you want? I can’t tell what you’re looking for, and I’ve figured out more about you than he probably has.” I told her.

  Gunther looked at me like one did a particularly problematic child, giving a terrible suggestion. But with a breath, she sagged from that to agreement.

  “It's because you’re not Human. They look at us and see that we are not human but predict others based on human conceptions. You could tell what was in my pants easily enough, but they couldn’t tell the difference. They see tiny humans, furry humans, green humans, etc.” She told me.

  “Green humans?” I asked her.

  “Not important.” She told me, “I’m trying to tell you subtlety is different between groups. Did you know that they can barely tell if you’re flirting with them as a stranger?”

  “I can barely tell if someone is flirting with me,” I told her.

  “That’s because you’re a moron.” She said, not taking my point for even a moment.

  That kind of hurt, but then again, she wasn’t wrong.

  “Ouch,” I told her. “Still, you’re the thoughtful one. I’m just suggesting that you should be more obvious about what you want. I can’t tell, so he certainly can’t tell. You know what he’s going to do, so make sure to play it straighter with him to get what you want.”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  She looked at me and taught me a moron; clear as day, she believed that I should have known what was going on.

  “What, exactly, do you think I am complaining about, if you need to guess?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Some kind of trust thing?” I asked.

  I looked at her, and she looked at me, and then, very slowly, she began to laugh a short cackling laugh.

  “It’s not that funny,” I told her.

  “HA! Hahaha! You- You think I- Hahaha! Moron! Get out! I’ll go. We can talk about the rest when we get the books! He, He, Hahaha!” She said, the look on her face falling somewhere between genuine humour and some kind of fit.

  I decided then that I didn’t want to know what she was thinking or talking about. There was too much of Gunther, which I didn’t know. She was old at that moment, like elves. In the way where, they remembered a joke from a hundred years ago and just got it, and that was a very, very uncomfortable feeling to look at.

  “Oh- Okay then. I’ll… I’ll be on my way. Lots of… Stuff to do, he, hehe.” I told her, backing out of the room, one footstep at a time.

  The second I was out, I closed the door, smothering the maniacal laughter, leaving it where it belonged.

  I could still hear it, so I retreated to the desk, apologized for any interruption, got a scowl, and fled off into the night a few moments later.

  Luckily, they couldn’t catch me. The upside of having legs almost as long as Gunther was tall was that I could move around fast.

  And I did get my moving done with admirable speed. Running my long-legged ass all the way to the square that was starting to get.

  The roads were empty and cold. Burnt-down buildings were left behind only phantom husks; their stone feet were left behind where they once stood, and blackened char dust lined their bases.

  Much of the burnt buildings that were still up this morning had been pulled down, and the beams that had been burnt were no doubt being stockpiled for fuel.

  The only thing left in stock for burnt wood was to replace coal.

  At least a number of homes would be warm in the winter… However, keeping the rest of the city out of the cold would be Clause’s problem.

  It wasn’t like they lacked trees around here. Perhaps they could dry the timber with the char if they didn’t have the skills. He had options.

  Me, on the other hand… Well, I did, too, but not real options.

  When I got to the square, a number of burners lit the edges, each contained in a tent not too dissimilar to an open-wall workhouse. Stacks of bodies were in carts, their forms covered in shrouds of tough fabric.

  The moments of taking it in showed me just how grimy it was. The water is padding down into the figures, leaving a horrid muck beneath the shrouded forms of the fallen.

  I approached the closest person who looked like they were in charge of something: a scribe huddled under a tent flap. He wrote on a ledger, copying words off scraps onto a large ream of parchment.

  I tapped on his shoulder, his robes swaying slightly as the repeating motion of his quill stilled in a jerking motion. Drops of ink dripped free before he spun his head toward me, face going white.

  “Uh, hi?” I said.

  He screamed loudly and with all the shrill quality of a teenage girl before falling over unconscious. The sudden scream and the noise of his body thumping forward onto the table drew the attention of half a dozen other people, each of whom, in shock and sudden panic, let out shouts, screams and general noises of panic, driven by the characteristic human panic.

  There was also one male Beastkin who, in a panic driven by the shouts, turned, fur rising, before he took me in, dressed in my robes, and made a canine noise of confusion.

  Two men drew short blades, one woman drew a walking stick free, and another revealed a rock standing from a body and hafted it at me. Her arm was weak, and it thudded all of a yard from her feet.

  “Undead! Un-” “Revenant!” “One got up!” “Kill it-” they shouted, words wheeling in on one another.

  “Whow! Hold-” I started to say, my words drowned out by the shouts of alarm and cut off by the tossing of a second stone. Why these people had stones at all concerned and confused me, driving a spike of panic in me that went above whatever they were doing.

  One of the men with swords, naked, blade-free, ran at me, forcing my shovel to come up from next to me to fend him off. He was no [Guard] or [Man-at-Arms], movements open and unprotected.

  He swung at me, the short blade coming for my flesh with a shout to drive back a monster from the dark… Only for him to come up short when I took one long step back and fraught the flat of the shovel across the side of his head, the metallic Thong of the spade comical as he dropped the sword, stumbling back before falling on his ass flat and silent.

  The rest of them took that in, taking the shovel. Those without arms became hesitant, and those with, namely the other man with a sword, eyed me up.

  I eyed them up. The frightened woman who threw the rock began to pray; the man stepped back and forth, and the beast kin held back a second man, who took it as him holding him back.

  It came to a head when the man with the sword called out, “Begone spirit! Leave your body and return to your slumber!”

  I looked at him and realized what was going on here, at least in part.

  “I’m not a fucking ghost, you moron. I’m here to help with the dead! I’m not one of them. Now, what have you been doing with them?” I told him, punctuating my words with a smack of my shovel against the paving stones.

  “I will not be fooled, spirit! I will not be fooled! You have killed a man tonight but no other! I will stop you and put your body to rest!” He called out.

  I looked at the man, then looked down at the man I had hit, who was clearly not dead and asked, “Are you blind? He’s still rolling around? Are you a bit slow? Look, can one of you explain slowly to this guy what being dead is? You, the kin, could you? Because this guy is very much alive.”

  “I’m not talking about him! You killed [Scribe] Daniels!” he shouted.

  “Uhh,” the second man groaned before I kicked him in the leg.

  “Keep quiet down there,” I hissed quietly down at the moron, “Listen. If the [Scribe] is dead, why does he have a heartbeat? Just shake the guy? He’s not dead, that’s for sure; he probably just shat himself into unconsciousness. Gave him a scare is all. Didn’t even mean to, honestly.”

  They stared at me, and a lot of them did.

  “You expect us,” the second rock-wielding woman asked, “To take the word of a spirit that came out of the darkness and killed the [Scribe] before attacking Jeff?”

  “Well… To be fair, he attacked me first,” I told her.

  “You hit my husband over the head with a shovel,” She countered.

  “And he tried to kill me. Your stupid husband, doing something stupid, is not my concern, lady; now put that rock down before I figure out what you’re doing with it...” I told her, thinking for a second before I continued, “Because I’m starting to think you’re desecrating bodies, and that’s not going to fucking fly sweat heart. You guys need to start fucking talking before I match my ass over to a [Priest] and get them riding heard on your ass so hard you start thinking you’re a donkey.”

  They looked at me, and the second dumb ass with a sword was weighing what I had to say and finding it wanting. Luckily for me, the Beastkin wasn’t a hopeless moron, and after holding the human next to him back, he quickly stalked over to the [Scribe], ears flattening as I mentioned desecration.

  “He has a heartbeat… One moment,” he said, voice falling into what I felt was characteristic of Beastkin, rumbly like a big dog.

  Wolf-adjacent vocals aside. He woke the man, shaking him before slipping something beneath his nose.

  It woke him with a start. The [Scribe] quickly shot up in shock, his body rising swiftly as if woken from a dream into the land of the living.

  “Wah… Oh. I must have fallen asleep… I had the strangest dream. Somewhat embarrassing, but I had a dream that I was jumped by a… What are you… Oh, dear heavens!” He said.

  “Hello, Mr. [Scribe]. Why are you desecrating the dead? That’s not supposed to happen, a big no-no even.” I asked him.

  The praying woman looked up at the man and stopped praying. Looking up, teary eyes cleared slightly from confused panic to far less confused panic. She asked, so clearly that it stood out, “You’re not one of the restless dead?”

  “Are there a lot of those?” I asked in reply.

  It certainly didn’t look like there were; none of the bodies looked like they were ready to get back up, and there was not enough stagnant mana in them to get them moving.

  “Only constant ghosts. It’s been eerie all night.” She said shakily.

  “It’s still eerie; there’s a walking corpse complaining about us stopping the dead from haunting us!” the second man shouted.

  “She doesn’t seem like a ghost to me,” the man on the ground said before coughing and groaning a second. “Ow.”

  “Dear, are you alright?” the rock wielder asked.

  “He’s fine… Or he will be. I did hit him over the head with a shovel… Kind of surprised he’s not more hurt, honestly.” I told her, murmuring the second half. “You bounced back quickly.”

  “That’s my husband, always bouncing back, fell down as well as a kid he did,” she said.

  I looked at him and asked, “Is his name Tim?”

  “Tommy Carpenter,” He said.

  I sighed in relief. Thank the gods, it was starting to wear thin.

  “Ok, then… Good to know. Now, I came here to help out, but I feel I need to ask… What in the hells are you lot doing?”

  They looked a little ashamed at my questioning, looking around at what was going on and whatever they had been doing, and realized they might have been doing something questionable.

  Of all the people, it was the Beastkin man who spoke up, unwavering in his beliefs and actions, and said, “There have been ghosts around all night, so we’ve been placing stones in their mouths so they won’t get up after their buried and return to haunt the living as revenants.”

  “What kind of superstitious nonsense is this?” I thought to myself before asking, “So… You don’t want them to come back… So you’re desecrating their bodies… To get them to not come back to their bodies? What got that idea in you’re head?”

  They looked between themselves, and while they were a little shy about answering, they didn’t seem to see the issue here.

  “How else are we to keep the ghosts from returning? They’ve been making themselves a nuisance all night,” the Beastkin man told me.

  I looked at the hesitant lot, at the [Scribe], at the jumpy people willing to desecrate the dead, at the mass of dead.

  Perhaps there was something going on besides just superstition.

  Discord where I'm currently working on getting decent notifications on your phone, and you can even poke me when I'm late. While you're here, I would appreciate if you leave a comment, I always read them, and almost always reply. If you like the story so far, consider leaving a review, it helps with getting people to see the story, and it tells me that I'm doing something right.

  Patreon and become an early reader by clicking the link or the yellow button.