Muriel sighed softly as she rolled her staff in hand, its once sharp grooves soothed to a polish over dozens of years.

  “Disappointing…” She mumbled, kicking aside a shredded hand that had fallen near her. She did a double take at it before walking past.. Richard had good bone structure, and would have made fine components if left in fewer pieces. Looking over at the rest of what was left of the dwarf left more disappointment, not even a coin purse amount of skin remained.

  Muriel suddenly found herself pounced upon, a pack of Abyssal chickens ripping and gnawing through her flesh, teeth scraping her bones. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as she blinked out of the plane, watching in monochrome agony as the strange animals squabbled as their prey escaped. Muriel bit her tongue as she moved away, phasing through the fleshy friends. Upon blinking back she wrapped a small vine clipping around her pointer, the vine shivering as the grass rotted away, taking the pests with it. She let out a soft sigh as her skin knitted back together. Her breath labored momentarily before steadying, anger blooming in her chest.

  Muriel poked through the viscera, she eventually found his jaw, sneering annoyedly that most of Richards skull was cracked open and spilling its grey matter. She reached and grasped the lower jaw and skull in her hands. Upon pressing the two together she used mending to repair the muscle, making the skull mostly whole once more. Muriels magic glittered in the air as she casted Speak with dead, listening to the false breathing as it reawoke to its faux life.

  “I warned you not to listen to them. Does your soul burn knowing you died out of something as simple as Moral efficacy?” Muriel seethed, contained to a whisper.

  “I...” The skull stuttered “it does..”

  “Do you regret running off?” She asked

  “No.. Muriel those were children, I couldn't just sit by, I wanted to find help.”

  “Families actually” Muriel corrected

  The Facsimile remained unamused.

  “Do you want to live?”

  “Yes”

  “Why do you want to live?”

  “I want to see my family, my daughter is due in the winter”

  Muriel tossed the skull into the pile, the sound of it hitting what used to be a lung wheezed sickeningly. Even if she could bring him back, she wouldn’t a he’d wasted enough of her time, no need to put energy into him too.

  The skull of Richard’s breathing rang heavy as Muriel walked away, leaving the skull to wait for its rest until asked its final question, one that would likely never come.

  As Muriel walked back to town she pulled out her notebook, jotting down a couple quick notes in her specimen chart of her shredded companion. Her mind wandered to the breathing, was it reflexive, or was the choice conscious? She could never ask the lumps of meat and bones due to the spells limitation. How far would a body truly go on habit alone? Could a man go to work, come home, hug his wife, read his kids a bedtime story on habit? Her mind drifted to the Lich Acerack, and his own plans she had hear from the woodwork. Would his plans leave men to eventually become solely habit? A eventual entropy that one would fall into when unafraid? What a disgusting concept. Fear leads to change, change leads to discovery and strength. Only those who are strong deserve to live without fear, deserve to choose their end.

  Perhaps Acerack was terrified, but, no. Muriel hummed as she slowed to think, mind elsewhere as Andrew tugged on his skirt, slipping back from the Dimension Muriel had temporarily banished him to. Why did Acerack want to give the world immortality? While she was disgusted by it, she hadn't quite taken the time to consider it. True resurrection sure, everyone wanted that, thats the peak of it all, the apex of hundreds of years of study, but immortality? Muriel scoffed. Death was a foe to fight, but not euthanize entirely? Where do those ‘cursed marks’ fall when his goal is completed? Killing them after would contradict his own goals after all, and he wouldn’t be foolish enough to think they’d stop fighting him even if he did win. His goal was very juvenile, a child wanting to jump off the swing but having no plan for the landing.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  A heavy thwumping sound sounds out threw the woods, the birds already long scared off from the thrumming. It was sickeningly wet, fleshy sound, wheezing following each of the reverberations. Muriel's slippers were soft on the dirt as she reentered the village, slowly making her way to the middle of town, closer to the sound. WInd blew through the empty town, hearths still warm as smoke drifted lazily from some of the chimneys. It was peaceful, a nice place to live, to raise a family. A river bubbled calmly by it, perfect for trade, travel too. One could call it idyllic If an illness hadn't taken the town, it might still be nice

  Who could really blame Muriel if she happened to use what was left of the town for her studies. Andrew clutched her skirt, trembling a little as he hid behind her. She stopped as Andrew tugged on her skirt to stop, an action that was met with rolling eyes. She looked down at him disappointedly, and he let go, head dipping like a shamed child. Andrew still was scared of Muriel's work, even after all these years.

  A large mound obscured the sun for a moment as something arose. Muriel turned to look at it, it was a mess of limbs and bodies, shoddily stuffed with organs, groaning in a pain as it struggled and fought to breath, the many mouths and melded bodies gasping open and they inhaled. Muriel watched observantly, eyes open with glee as she trembled. Her excitement mixed with terror in a delightful concoction that left her heart thrumming like a rabbit in a trap. The body thumped back to the ground, the many minds of the many bodies all exerting control, and all unable to surface from the oceans of sentience. Until one mind arose, the creature, the very town that once occupied the homes around her, would not function. She watched for hours as the things hands grasped desperately at the dirt, some grasping their own faces, expressions contorted in terror, mouths agape as tears ran like rain down their faces. Muriel stayed uncannily still, years of experiments having taught her to watch extensively before considering anything else.

  Necromancy was a science sure, but a large amount of the time it is practiced like children running through the dark, trying to find a door. The question of why souls would not return correct buzzed in her mind most often. Muriel's current running theory was that souls couldn’t come back fully correct due to being mixed within a large primordial ‘cauldron’ of souls, that pulling one back was like grasping at water with a hand, drops will always leak out. Perhaps the way to true resurrection was to find the metaphorical ‘soup spoon’, or perhaps one could come back on sheer will alone. The latter was her current experiment. It did require some still living minds, but they were at deaths door, heaving and wheezing not unlike the creature did now.

  Muriel however, was not satisfied, the creature made little progress beyond garbled pleas for help. Muriel wanted to shout at them to save themselves, that no one was coming for them, but the anger was suppressed. Muriel knew her anger never got her closer to results. She approached the writhing mass, placing a hand on the back of one of the bodies, seeing if soothing it might help. The flesh was warm under her hand, the creature ceasing its pained writhing as it seemed to be processing input. The chest inflated and deflated as it breathed, one of the faces turning up to stare at Muriel. It was the face of a little girl, Eva, if Muriel recalled, one of the handful of living minds left in the towns.

  It whispered weakly, its words stuttered from exertion, “help”

  Muriel simply smiled hand moving to stroke her hair like a mother comforting a child “ I have helped” She said gently, like chiding a child. The worst part was that Muriel believe it, that this was better than death.

  Small arms grasped at her for comfort, and Muriel allowed it for a moment taking a look at the sky, if she wanted to return to croakers by the end of the week, she’d need to leave now. She pulled away, and the creature made a sound like a sob, weak fingers grasping for her like an infant, a building sized toddler. The sound wrung nothing in her heart, no remorse, no sadness, no maternal love for her creation, for one just borne and already so afraid.

  Muriel walked out of the town, not turning back to look at it and missing as it clutched at the ground, trying to follow her. Andrew toddled along, he glanced a look back at it, his paws stopping as he moved to grasped at his mothers skirt. He stopped as his mother kept walking pausing to stare at the sad amalgam before turning back to follow his mother, not moving to hold her hand as he trembled, his throat tight and eyes wet despite his inability to cry.

  As they approached the tavern, Muriel turned to Andrew curiously , holding out her hand before walking into the tavern. Andrew hesitated before taking it, causing Muriel's eyes to narrow momentarily before turning back to the tavern, hearing Zoltar and Markus speaking on their next goals to finding the phylacteries. She walked in, Andrew in toe as they made their way to the bar.