PBEM Game: Yarnspinners 2 (Running)

[puffyn]

(Sorry it's a little late... don't get much time for yarning during the week these days.)

--- C'tis, Turn 27

Deep in the rock, there is a crypt. The paths to it are tortured and misleading, and few each generation are inducted in their secrets. It is said that no invader could find them without a traitor's help; but no invader has threatened C'tis in the oldest lizards' dimmest recollections of the stories of their grandsires. It holds the remains of the past, and perhaps the future as well.

Hema wonders if dropping the bones of Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Simith (so the tag reads) is sacrilege. She decides that if the council had wanted the bones retrieved perfectly intact, they might have hid them someplace a little more easy to reach. "Or else assigned some hatchlings to help me carry them," she mutters. But the hatchlings are all training for war, and the other sauromancers are too busy with mysteriously vague tasks to assist Hema with the heavy lifting.

"You are so much more knowledgeable in the ways of the dead than I," one of them had the nerve to tell her, as he begged off. Bodimmud, that was his name, and he was even younger than she was. But Bodimmud was marching off to war in a few days, and there was so much to pack, so many incantations to review... Hema treacherously hoped something heavy fell on him in battle, as karmic recompense.

Finally, she reaches the opening to a large, well-lit cavern. She places the box containing Simith next to Great-to-the-somethingth Grandfather Uvatha, and dozens more, some whose names are still familiar to the city, others who died so long ago they are nearly dust. So long as the skull remains, she recalls from the scroll that lies open on a table, worn from heavy use. Not all of the wise can return as revenants, but so long as the skull remains, their wisdom is not lost.

Larch is putting the finished touches on Kurgarru when Hema walks into the lab. "Guild's been keeping you busy with their backlog, I see," says Hema. But then, it's easier to bring back the newly dead, and the Guild is a good source of bright young minds. Too good, sometimes.

Larch nods, looks up, stares inquiringly. He makes as if to speak, then reaches for a tablet. "DID YU FIND HER??" he scrawls. It is ironic; most revenants can speak, after a fashion, but the former masterful spinner of yarns lost his vocal cords to the illness that also claimed his life. And he never bothered to learn to write; let others take down his masterful words.

Larch is learning now. Mother Lalek even says the hatchlings are over their initial terror of his shriveled, bony form in her classes. Mostly.

"Yeah, right where you said she'd be," says Hema. "But, um, her bones were too cracked... when I found her, I mean..." and dropping them while trying to wedge the box out of its hiding hole hadn't helped matters, but Hema wasn't bringing that up. Simith had been pretty far gone when she found her.

Larch nods again. She can tell he is disappointed; he clearly remembers the wise elder from his youth fondly, and is sad that she will not be joining him as a revenant. But all is not lost. Larch points to Kurgarru, who is starting to twitch randomly; in a few days, perhaps he will be able to lower his arm-stump from where it lies locked above his head, vainly trying to ward off a cavalry captain's looming lance.

Larch points again, nods toward the other room. His meaning is clear. He has found someone for his old mentor to teach. Or her skull, at any rate.

Now that that's been decided, Larch turns to his next task. Leaning heavily on his skull staff, he shuffles over to the workbench containing former Guildmaster Nanugal, who lived, and died, for his experimental strong poisons. There is little that can harm a revenant, but Larch is taking no chances with this one. He reaches for his thickest dragon-hide gloves, the ones Cole will never know exist, if he can help it.

Hema descends back into the crypt for another long journey. C'tis needs its dead now, their knowledge, their secrets. Every bone helps, in the war with Pythium.