After shaking awake Cassie and thrusting a cup of coffee into her hands, the three of us settled back down to hear out what Neil had to say.

  “Okay, so I believe I said that there had been a development, right?” Neil reminded us.

  Cassie nodded, still a little groggy. She kept making faces every time she took a sip of her coffee, but she also kept going back for more, so I decided to try it.

  With a slow movement, more to savour the ability than anything else, I opened my mouth. From my practice in the mirror I knew how it would look, and if I was honest I did kind of want to spook Neil with it.

  The bottom of my mask-face unhooked, a previously well hidden seam splitting it in two as my mouth was revealed. Before taking a sip of my coffee I yawned, stretching my mouth wide open to reveal a row of sharp teeth, each of which really just jutting chitin rather than enamel, since I was more practised at using it.

  With my fun had, I mostly closed my mouth and brought the cup to my face, tipping the drink in. It was pretty good. Bitter, but at least it was flavourful. Finally I raised my gaze to drink in Neil’s reaction.

  He was just staring at me flatly. “Done?” He asked wearily.

  I guess I pushed him too far. Oh well.

  I nodded and gestured for him to continue, taking another gulp of my coffee.

  “Thank you. Now, I assume you remember our friend the Revenant? Specifically, how it said that we were to meet it a month from when it spoke to us, which would be in a little under three weeks from now.”

  At our affirmations, he continued. “Well, when I said that there had ‘been a development’, I had been using the Revenant’s words. Something related to it’s purpose happened recently, and it somehow knew to look for us at the Guild. Raised a whole commotion, let me tell you.”

  “When was this?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “About two hours ago. Half of that was spent calming everyone down. The other half was spent looking into the Revenant, questioning it, that kind of thing. It is wild, by the way,” Neil added.

  Cassie waved a hand, placing her now empty cup down before she spoke. “Wait, let me get this straight. We had a month, but now we have to do it now??”

  Neil nodded. “Yeah, I’m not happy about it either. I had to postpone meeting up with my team for this, none of them will be happy.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, neither of us are really in the best condition here.” Cassie gestured vaguely at the both of us. It was less noticeable on me, but she was clearly still suffering a bit from staying up late last night.

  “Sorry Cass,” I started.

  She interrupted me. “No, none of that. We were supposed to have today off. Looking great, by the way. No, I blame the Revenant.”

  Neil chuckled. “Regardless of blame, our timescale just got shortened significantly. Unless you want an upset Revenant of unknown power after the lot of us, we need to help it. So get ready, we told the Revenant that I’d be back in twenty minutes.”

  Cassie scowled as she stood. “Oh, I’ll get ready alright. Ready to have words with the damn thing.”

  Neil and I watched as Cassie collected up the bundle of her clothes and stormed into the other room to dress.

  “Think she’ll be alright?” Neil asked me.

  I shrugged. “Fifty-fifty that she’s fine when she leaves the door or she tries to kill the Revenant. She’s very passionate about her leisure time.”

  Neil chuckled. “I see that.”

  Silence hung between us for a short while until Neil spoke up again.

  “You… may want to change back once we get outside. This city may see a lot of Changed adventurers, but there’s a difference between magic people and… that.”

  I glanced at him. “Not a bug fan?”

  He simply stared at me. “You know, it’s so much harder to tell when you’re joking when your face doesn’t move.”

  I shrugged. “Sounds like a you problem. Besides, half the benefit of this form is the anonymity. It sounds like we’re about to get up to some weird stuff, so…”

  Neil didn’t seem to agree. “You expect to be anonymous? Looking like that?”

  I turned fully to him. “Yep. Sure I’ll get noticed, but who’s going to link this,” I gestured to my body. “To human me?”

  For clarification I swapped back, to which Neil arched an eyebrow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You, um. You missed a spot.” He pointed at my forehead, where I had missed my spare eyes.

  “Whoops,” I muttered as I removed them. “Still, as long as I don’t mess up, I should be good. Like having an identity to do dangerous and or public things with, and one for just kind of existing.”

  Neil gave me a strange look, but said nothing. I changed back to my new body (I really needed a name for it) as Cassie walked back into the room, now in full adventuring garb and still with a stormy expression on her face.

  Oh yeah, that Revenant is in for a talking to.

  --------------------------------------

  By the time we had made it to the Adventurer’s Guild, Cassie had cooled down a little. Not enough, however, that when we entered to find the main lobby empty except for the Revenant, she didn’t march up to them and slap them right in the hood before either of us could stop her.

  “That’s for taking up my day off,” she hissed.

  To my surprise, the Revenant barely reacted. Aside from bringing their head back to a forward facing position, they didn’t really do anything. After a moment I felt that same pressure in my head that I had felt the first time we met, although this time it barely lasted a moment before vanishing.

  “Apologies. There Has Been A Development.”

  “Yes, that has been established,” Cassie muttered as she walked back over to Neil and I.

  “We Require Aid In Our Task. You Will Provide It.”

  Neil jumped in. “Hold on, what are we actually doing? You keep refusing to answer.”

  The Revenant turned their head directly to Neil, their movement uncanny against the total stillness that they displayed everywhere else. Whatever they said to him wasn’t for us to know, because while Neil grew a little paler I heard nothing. I judged that Cassie was also blocked out, since she looked pretty confused.

  I took the time to really look at the Revenant. This close, I could make out details that I hadn’t been able to before. They seemed to have some aversion to showing skin, since even when their heavy sleeves rode up beyond their gloves all I could make out of their arms was that they were bandaged.

  Notably, this close I could also tell that they simply didn’t have any vitae. It was rather disturbing, seeing a being that lacked something I had seen in everything for so long now. It was like walking around and suddenly spotting somebody that simply didn’t have any colour. Not monochrome or black and white, like the concept of colour didn’t apply to them. It was a bit uncomfortable, honestly.

  It didn’t take long for Neil’s private chat with the Revenant to finish. Neil remained silent for a moment, but when he did speak it was with conviction. “We’re helping.”

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  “What did it say?” I asked. It had to be something good, considering I knew how sceptical Neil could be.

  Neil shook his head. “Nothing. It showed me… a lot. Nothing good, though.”

  “Wow, how specific and helpful. Thank you, Neil.” I said drily.

  Neil looked as though he was about to respond, but he was interrupted by the doors bursting open to reveal a tiny woman in dark robes, grinning triumphantly as she held a pose in the doorway. She swept her gaze across our group.

  “Hello all! I hear that you folks are in ne- OH DEAR GODS!” She yelled. “What is that?!” She pointed at me, which was rude.

  The Revenant had gone from stock still to completely animate, swiftly dashing towards the woman. They reached out and grasped her by the neck, lifting her and pushing her up against the wall.

  “Begone, Necromancer,” the Revenant hissed, their many voices hissing and dissonant in my mind and accompanied by a harsh ringing. With their spare hand they reached into their heavy robes and took out a thick, rusted dagger which they immediately used to stab the woman they called a necromancer in the chest. Immediately after they let go of her, their hand steaming and spitting with teal sparks.

  “Shit,” I muttered as I sprinted across the room and began the process of healing her. The Revenant’s aim was incredibly precise, which meant the wound was deadly but small. I pulled out the dagger and flooded the tiny woman’s body with vitae so that I could patch the wound, although properly healing it would take some time.

  I stitched the external cut closed to stem the bleeding, repairing the poor woman’s heart just enough to keep it beating. As I worked, I kept half an ear on the conversation.

  “Hey! What in the hells was that?!” Neil yelled.

  “That Was A Necromancer. Necromancers Are Dangerous. We Have Eliminated The Threat.”

  Neil reached the Revenant and grabbed it by the shoulders, staring into its deep hood. “You can’t just try and kill people for their profession. She’s here to help,” Neil intoned, not breaking eye contact with whatever he saw under that hood.

  “Yeah,” the necromancer sputtered. “Here to-” she broke into wet coughing. “Here to help.”

  “Shh,” I hushed her. “Give me a few seconds, then you can talk.” The knife had a lot of potential hazards for her on its quest to reach her heart, which meant that there wasn’t nearly as much harm done as there could have been. Still, I imagined this hurt quite a lot, and it was also a drain on my vitae I didn’t need.

  “What’s so bad about necromancers, big guy? I thought you’d like them, being dead and all,” Cassie chimed in.

  “The Necromancer Will Control Us. Keep Us From Our Task. This Must Not Happen.” The voices of the Revenant were once again in complete harmony as they mentioned their task, a far cry from the discordant hiss of before.”

  By this point I had healed the necromancer enough for her to weigh in without coughing up blood, so she got her say.

  “The necromancer couldn’t control you if she tried,” she wheezed. “You’re a big boy, and I’m not exactly an expert.” Her grin was wry as she spoke, drawing the whole of the Revenant’s attention.

  They stood there for several tense seconds, staring motionlessly at the necromancer as I finished healing her wound. Unfortunately I couldn’t do anything about the bloodstains, although that damage was mitigated somewhat by the darkness of her robes.

  The Revenant must have said something to the necromancer, because her eyes widened for a moment before she nodded slowly. The revenant held out a single hand and ran through a series of complicated gestures, causing the hand burst aflame with teal fire. The hand remained outstretched for a few moments before the necromancer reached up and took it.

  The fire snaked up her arm before dissolving into the air, leaving a turquoise brand on the back of her hand. The brand took the shape of a single line with three intersecting lines, each piercing the original line at three different angles like arrows in a target. After a few moments the brand faded, but didn’t quite disappear.

  “...What did you just do?” Cassie asked slowly.

  The necromancer shrugged. “Made a deal. Couldn’t control my new friend here even if I did know how.”

  Neil sighed. “Sure, why not. Do you plan on introducing yourself, or are you just part of the team now?”

  The necromancer’s face split into a huge lopsided grin, appearing far too happy for somebody who had been seconds away from death not too long ago. “Jenny Lincoln, adept of the necromantic arts and quite distinctly here to help, at your service.” She lifted her robes slightly and curtsied, and although the movement was flawless it still somehow felt mocking.

  “We Waste Time. The Necromancer Has Joined Our Cause. We Are Leaving Now. Prepare.”

  The Revenant raised their hands and began running through a series of increasingly complicated gestures, many of which I couldn’t even begin to understand. Only a few seconds in did I realise exactly what they meant by ‘leaving now’.

  Oh shit, they’re teleporting us.

  In a panic, I basically detached my brain from every signal my body was sending, which was a much less elegant method of cutting myself off than methodically shutting down my nerves. Still, it worked just as well, and I soon found myself back in the void of sensory deprivation. The only thing I could feel was the slowly ramping tingle spreading across the surface of my body, which apparently felt exactly the same through chitin as it did through skin.

  I guess I’ll just wait for it to die down again.

  Without much to do, I found myself thinking about my new form. I had been finding it surprisingly easy to adapt to, but Jenny’s reaction to me had me thinking that it may be harder for other people. People who got far enough in the Changing to be unrecognisable from a human were normally known about, after all.

  Then again, maybe that was something I could just let them deal with for once. It was a lot easier to be confident when I looked completely different than usual and had the ability to sprout ten deadly weapons from my fingers at any given time. Plus I looked great, but I may have been biased in that regard.

  I was torn from my thoughts by a sudden spike in the tingling of my mana sensitivity, followed by an even bigger drop. After waiting a few more seconds for safety, I reconnected my brain to the signals of my body.

  Those signals were going absolutely crazy. Apparently the body freaked out a bit when its control centre violently disconnected, and I had just about every hormone my body thought would be even remotely useful flooding my veins.

  After several more seconds taken to flush those hormones and do what I could to still my beating heart, I examined the situation. We appeared to be in a tunnel, just tall enough for a person to stand up straight in. It was made entirely of grey brick, and vanished off around corners in either direction.

  Neil and Cassie were arguing with the Revenant, with Cassie holding her Minor Flame cantrip for use as a light source. Jenny was just standing awkwardly, and as such was the first to notice I was back.

  “Hey, everyone. Bug Guy’s back.” She announced, which paused the argument unfolding before us.

  “Bug Girl,” Cassie corrected as she rushed over.

  “Julie,” I rectified as I stood up.

  Everyone except Cassie and the Revenant had paused to stare at me. The Revenant wasn’t doing much of anything, and Cassie was still looking me over. “What?”

  “Why, by all that could possibly be sacred, do you move like that?” Neil asked.

  I turned to Cassie. “What did I do?” I asked her under my breath.

  “Your arms and legs moved weird,” she answered just as softly.

  Of course, omni-directional limbs. “It’s easier to stand up that way,” I justified, causing Neil to mutter something under his breath. Jenny seemed to take the complete opposite stance, however.

  “That. Was. So cool!” She exclaimed, shuffling a little closer to me and grabbing one of my arms. I tore it out of her grip immediately, less than pleased that she just grabbed me for no reason. “What are you?” She asked, her eyes wide and her voice breathy.

  “I’m starting to get tired of that question,” I grumbled before looking Jenny in the eye. “Look, and watch closely because I’m sleep deprived and this is the only explanation you’re getting, got it?”

  Jenny watched me raptly as I shifted into my human form and back again. “Any questions? Good, we’re here for a reason.” Before she could respond I moved on.

  I turned to the Revenant, who was still just staring blankly into the wall. “Hey,” I said, walking over and waving a hand in front of their face. “You good?”

  Their head suddenly snapped to me. “We Are Functional. We Were Awaiting A Conclusion To Your Slumber. We Can Now Proceed. This Way.”

  The Revenant abruptly turned and began marching away from the group, quickly striding into the darkness. I supposed they could probably see, given that they operated fine from behind a thick hood. Still, it wasn’t helpful for us.

  We all hurried to follow the Revenant, which didn’t slow down once as it followed seemingly arbitrary paths through the strange tunnel system.

  “So… where are we?” Cassie asked.

  “A Disused Sewer System. We Seek The One That Hides.”

  “Great. At least it’s clean,” Cassie responded.

  Jenny sped up to walk beside me. “Hey, so why did you collapse before?”

  I shrugged. “Turned my nerves off.”

  “...Why?” She asked.

  “I believe I told you about the only explanation you were getting, didn’t I?”

  “Hey, I’m just curious. There’s no need to be rude.”

  I glanced at her as we walked. “When you walked in you pointed at me and yelled ‘What is that?’. I think I get to be rude for a bit.”

  Jenny pouted. “Okay, fine. But you’re done with that now, right?”

  I sighed. “Fine.”

  She beamed. “Great! So, why d-”

  “No questions though. My one condition.” I interrupted.

  Jenny shook her head. “Fiiiiine.” She sped up further to go and bug Neil, for which I was grateful. Cassie soon took her place.

  “She seems like a lot.” She remarked.

  I glanced at Jenny, then back at Cassie. “Well, it took me almost fifteen years of knowing you to have to heal you. Took her less than a minute. I have a feeling she’ll be a handful.”

  Cassie laughed, cutting herself off when the sound echoed through the tunnel. “Yeah, that’s not a great sign. I wonder why she’s here.”

  I shrugged. “Guild probably sent her. I mean, we are dealing with an undead, makes sense to send a necromancer.”

  “A necromancer who can’t control that very undead?” Cassie questioned.

  “I mean, she can probably do other things. I hope.”

  Just then the Revenant stopped right before another bend. This one was guarded by a thick iron grate. “Beyond This Point We Are At Risk. We Enter The Lair Of The One That Hides From Us.”

  “Who’s lair?” Neil asked. “I for one would like to know what we’re up against. Would have liked to know before we got here, but you work with what you have.”

  “The One Who Hides Is A Necromancer. One Who Works With The Enemy. He Will Attempt To Seize Control Of Us. You Will Stop Him. Prepare.”

  Without any further warning, the Revenant turned to the grate and cast a spell, as silent as always, to transmute the iron to wood, before striking the wood with a bare fist and shattering it. They stepped through without a word and disappeared, leaving the rest of us to follow.

  I turned to the others and shrugged before stepping through.

  next chapter.

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