Breaking the Rules Pt. 06

"Er... it was pretty close, there. Lemme check with the referee."

(Hey, who came first last night?) Nuru said, poking the shoulder demon.

/Me./

(Wait... what?)

/You've got chemistry. I have needs too, what can I say? I love to watch./

"Huh. I guess that means you won," Nuru said. "Didn't expect a succubus to be the one to lose that."

"Heehee. Score one for the half-human," she said, doing a silly dance.

"Hey, stop me if I'm crossing the line here, but you're with Samba's Spectrum, right?"

"Eh, so what?"

"So they accept all the weirdos out there, right? How are you still ashamed of your ancestry?"

"BeCAUSE, Nuru, I'm *not weird enough*. I'm fully half human, remember? Elf is like, human light. Nine-tenths human, or something, even closer than dwarves. Samba's got the half-orcs, and the vampires, and the lunar shifters, and the minotaurs, and everybody that's just humanoid enough not to be classed as a monster. Me? I'm a Home Towner, a coddled little girl who gets yelled at for being angsty that her ears are a little pointy. I never wanted to choose a faction, Nuru, but Samba is where all the rejects go. And I'm barely accepted even there. You've got to have some family pull to really get anywhere in the High Factions if you're not pure-blood, and I had nothing to show them, I'm just doing the best I could."

"If I ever start a new faction, you're welcome to join me."

"And when I'm empress of the known world, I'll be happy to keep you as a concubine."

"Fair. Shake on it?"

Furaha stopped and looked at him, slapped away the hand he held out, and hugged him.

"Sorry I'm so moody today, it's just been such an emotional week. I'm not trying to taking it out on you."

"It's alright. I'm asking a lot from you, and I know it."

"Also... I didn't eat dinner last night, and I had too much to drink. That didn't help either."

"Well that's your problem right there. Climb out of the bottle and get some work done," he stuck his tongue out at her.

She elbowed him in the ribs.

"Ow! You have really sharp elbows."

"And I fight dirty. You should know that already."

"Yeah, and I love that about you. Get some food in you, we'll talk later."

"You're the boss." She snorted, then giggled. "I wonder how that would go over. 'You're not my *real* boss, boss!' "

"Better than a few days ago when he stopped by?"

"Oh, no, that went fine actually. He was putting out the nice guy vibes, trying to make me afraid of what happens when the other shoe drops, as if he's got a worse hellhole to stick me in. I'm done with those entry-level head-games though. Come back this afternoon, I'll have the code book ready."

"OK. See you later. Oh, and if you hear from Tatenda - tell him when he's actually serious, he can let you know to tell me so."

"What...?" Furaha raised an eyebrow, but shook her head and turned away to let it go.

*****

Nuru bought a bottle of ink, and called Tusa.

"Let's go get a feather. Something colorful."

Nuru didn't try to keep up, he just followed far enough back he might not scare the prey animals, and worked on a hunting rhythm. Tusa killed several, and then remembered not to eat them before Nuru pulled his feather. It was, seemingly appropriately, a fine shade of blue to match his drum.

"Great. Now just send a message for me and you're done for the day."

He wrote a quick note to Dayo on his parchment, and rolled it up.

[Is it urgent?]

"No. Just, by the end of the day is fine."

[Good. I am courting a female. I can show off for her that we are helping each other. She thinks I am taking advantage and you will turn on me.]

"Oh, good for you. Just, uh, don't lose it please."

[It would be good for you to put a shell on it, else it might become soft and juicy in my mouth. I believe this diminishes the value.]

"Good point. One minute, let me scrounge something."

He walked along the beach, then looked behind the shops, and finally found a small box still intact. He tore off the unused parchment so that it was as small as he could get it, folded it up, and then put it in the box. The lid closed snugly, barely fitting the whole parchment. Tusa loped away, and that was that, for the day. Nuru watched the sun make its way across the sky, practiced his rhythms, and contemplated his next move. He wasn't getting much EXP, and that would change when Dayo arrived.

*****

Furaha had worked late, and had slipped into the bed without waking him. Nuru woke to find her getting up again early in the morning.

"Aw, not even going to kiss me good morning?" he said.

"Nope. I'd get carried away, and be late again. Later!" she slipped away, giggling.

(At least she's in a better mood today. Time for some new equipment.)

He settled in at the crossroads he'd indicated not far outside of town.

He had Tusa sitting just past the treeline in case something weird happened, and was completely surprised when a man with some animal skeleton tattoos approached him early in the morning and bowed, addressing him directly.

"Ah, the venerable Nuru. My name is Chibale, and I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Ready for your necromancy demonstration?" he said.

Nuru looked him over. "You are... not who I was expecting," he said finally.

"Ah yes, Dayo would love to be here of course, but she's been called away on urgent business. I'm filling in today, but don't fret, I'm sure you'll enjoy this even more. I'm a full Puppetmaster, second degree in fact."

The man held up an amulet, and whispered something. A symbol appeared, much like Dayo's, and rearranged itself into the image of a skeleton which moved about in a circle, fervently chasing after its skull rolling around the edge of the coin, never quite able to become whole.

"Puppetmaster, eh? How does that fit into the heirarchy, exactly?"

"The entry level is that of Valkyrie, collecting souls for the use of the higher ranks. From there one can become a Puppetmaster such as myself, a Blackguard, or a Specter Seeker. Puppetmasters have the highest unit number control capability and the most diverse command set. Blackguard are those empowered with the souls of humanoids to gain physical protection and increased resistance auras, think paladin but way cooler, and a Specter Seeker specializes in the collection of those most powerful souls which elude the average Valkyrie, and which pose the most unique benefit. Onyekachi tells me it's sometimes known as 'Soul Siren' and that you would be most suited to that role, but one thing at a time. Are you ready to venture forth?"

"Are we forming a party?"

"I'll be happy to do so, at favorable terms even. I've been instructed to extend every courtesy."

"Where's Dayo?"

"I've not been given the details. She sends her regards, however."

Nuru frowned inwardly. Something was off about this whole thing - but the man had known to meet Nuru here. He decided to play along for now, carefully. He did not introduce Tusa, and hoped the lyena would know to keep his distance.

"Alright. Let's see this demonstration. Show me what you can do to a tough guy."

"Gladly. Is there a creature in particular which you find problematic? We have limited daylight, but I'll be glad to show you my preferred strategy."

"Mm... griffins."

Anything flying would do, really. Nuru wanted some idea of how to protect himself from Katlego on her swooping mount.

"A formidable opponent. Yes, this will be informative, I think. First, let's go collect some harpies."

"After you," Nuru said.

The man offered Nuru a party agreement for the day, very generously splitting loot and EXP evenly despite being significantly higher level. After Nuru looked it over and signed he strode away, somewhat unhurried, which confused Nuru until they reached a small graveyard. The man waved his hands, and skeletons dug themselves up out of the ground, and linked hands to form a strange sort of jumbled seat made of their own bones.

"Have a seat, take a load off," Chibale said.

He himself sat down in one, and waited.

"This is just... really weird," Nuru said.

"The first few times, you do worry about it. But after awhile you come to have faith in the little guys. They're really bending over backwards for us."

(And forwards, and every other strange contortion,) Nuru thought, but he didn't say anything. Wasn't this disrespectful of the dead? Also, the smell was unnerving, if faint.

He sat down and with a shiver-inducing chorus of creaks, they started off.

"So, Nuru, you ever think you might want to live forever?"

"Well, that depends. I don't think I'd want to live as a ghoul."

"Did you know, they're actually vampires over a hundred?"

"Yes, I actually did know that."

"You're remarkably well-informed then; I didn't find out for many years when I started adventuring. Clearly, Low Faction life suits you. Have you been approached by any of the others?"

"Not really. Well, there was this one time a Seal Clubber thought I was one of theirs, but that... didn't turn out well. For him."

"Your party took him out?"

"More like, I lured him over to the city gates and let him break the rules and get taken out by the paladin guards."

"Ah, pitting one enemy against another, a favorite strategy of mine, and a strength of the Way of the Necromancer. Speaking of which, we should be arriving presently; once we do, I'll be conscripting some harpies as cannon fodder, which we'll then use to keep your griffin grounded where I can do the real damage. We Chosen form parties less often than we build them literally from the ground up."

Nuru pondered that for a bit.

(You got a read on this guy?)

/Bad news, Nuru. It doesn't bother me personally, but this guy's a necrophile, and a few other things. Don't ask him about his sex life, you really don't want to know. I can tell you aren't compatible./

(I knew there was something off about him. Are you sure though?)

/Look, you can ask him, but don't blame me when you get angry. You remember how Dayo said something about a meat puppet? This guy has no problem finding a woman who's unwilling, having his minions hold her down, ending her life, and then reanimating her for anything he can imagine. If he's in a hurry, he'll skip the last two steps. I don't know how often he might do it, but he's capable./

(Are you sure he's a Chosen? I can't believe Dayo would associate with somebody like that.)

/Faction ID's not a big strength of mine. Did he have the badge?/

(He's got the pendant, yeah. Looks legit.)

/Your guess is better than mine, then./

(He's pacted for today, at least. Shit, what am I gonna do if he comes back tomorrow though?)

/Travel with him anyway? And then politely decline to join him for a fuck break? It's not like either of us is equipped to fight him. You probably couldn't take even his minions./

(Decline to join him for a... fuck, is he into guys?)

/Seems to me he's not picky./

(Dayo, you and I are going to have words. Sanaa, keep an eye out for me please - if you can spare it. Let me know if anything weird is happening I might not be aware of.)

/I'll see what I can do./

Nuru realized he was panicking, and tried to figure out why. The man wasn't an immediate threat - so he could relax and wait for the answer to appear. It was hard, though, with something clawing at the back of his head, clamoring for an answer. They arrived at the place, and Chibale dismounted, materialized a heavy hammer with a wicked hooked spike on the back, and strode forward confidently. A couple of the skeletons followed him, slinking low in his wake. The harpies caught sight of him and swarmed from the big rock they were sunning on and hiding under; he took a few swings at them, getting a few hits in, but they seemed to be too light for him to really get a good impact. However, when one of them swooped low at him, one of the skeletons grappled on and brought it to the ground, where his hammer finished it in one hit. The other harpies entered a frenzy, dive-bombing him and snatching at his head and shoulders, but only got hammered in the chest for their trouble. The hook on the back snagged one of them, and down it went; and the other skeleton snagged another.

Smash. Crunch. Three down, now. The rest of the skeleton mob had snuck onto the rock, and leaped dramatically into the air, snagging the majority of the remaining harpies, and only a few managed to fly away, screaming in protest. These captives he treated more carefully, choking until they lay still before moving on to the next. Finally the ground was strewn with over a dozen corpses, and he set about preparing them.

"!Rai Magudana Taron Jama'a!" he cast, summoning what looked like a mace with a lantern instead of a blunt striking head, which glowed purple and absorbed all the souls of the fallen at once.

Nuru stared in shock. Dayo had to claim souls individually; this was a whole new level of strength.

"Pretty cool, eh?" Chibale smirked. "Watch this."

He set the mace down, shoving the spike-ended handle into the ground so that the lantern stuck up in the air. He walked over and picked up two harpies by the head.

"!Biyu Ba Da Rai!"

The lantern spat two purple globs, which hit the heads he was holding. He dropped them, and walked to two more.

"!Biyu Ba Da Rai!"

The four harpies rose shakily to their feet and followed him mindlessly; the skeletons collected into the awkward-looking carriage on many feet, the lantern-mace vanished in a puff of smoke, and away they went again.

"So, uh... three times the number of kills as the number of followers, is that it?"

"Right. Three souls per body, on average, keeps them in balance. One or two will start to get ideas of individuality, and some kind of struggle starts to happen and you risk losing control. Three together and they become a kind of collective soul, easily to lead. You can add more, and they're stronger in each body that way, but we need as many bodies as possible for what we're about to do."

"And what about just the souls, by themselves?"

"As a spectral creature, they project themselves physically into the world based loosely on what they remember of their bodies, and use their ethereal strength to cause physical interaction until they are completely drained. And yes, the rule of three remains; they'll do basically what you want without trouble if you've got three of them to a cast. It's more efficient if you've got a body for them to inhabit, and the fresher it is the better its stats are."

"And now we kill a griffin with them."

"Yep. You can take down just about anything, if you've got a necro-horde big and strong enough."

"How come you guys haven't taken over then? Why aren't you big on the world stage?"

"Oh, we don't need to be too flashy. I mean, it's fun to be grand, sure, but sometimes it's just as well nobody knows what we're up to. Our high archon's got some things planned, you'll be hearing about it soon enough. Better get in on the ground floor, or you'll miss a big opportunity."

"I don't suppose you can say what that is."

"It's need-to-know right now. And if you're not participating - you don't need to know. Heck, I don't even need to know yet. So, no. Sorry."

"I hear maybe you can help me get around the prohibition to returning to the Home Town gated area."

"Yes, we're doing something rather unusual - we're moving the entrance to HQ. There are other reasons, but your situation prompted us to consider it again, and the decision was made to proceed with it."

"It moves?"

"HQ's in a whole other dimension. Onyekachi's getting it attached to the nearby neutral area past the gate; we previously had it only in Home Town, because we wanted the fresh blood and the potential recruits to be able to talk to everybody - we're not one of those stuffy factions where you never meet the highest officers until you're Level Thirty and already years into membership. We wanted people to be able to sit down, with any of us, and be neighborly. We're not known for being the most socially inclined... but the option's there, is the point, for anybody that hears about us. When you've just got those burning questions, we can direct you to the Elders for their ancient wisdom. It's integral to who we are."

"Say, how old is Onyekachi, anyway?"

Chibale shrugged. "Older than me. He's been high archon since before anybody else I know has been a member."

"Huh. Well, so my understanding of dimensions is that there's spacial overlap. Even if there's an entrance out in the neutral zone, I won't be able to reach the altar because, uhmmmm, I'm forbidden back past the gate even if I'm frequency-shifted. Technically."

(Never mind that I can't go in with this ring, currently.)

"True. The space is being moved to fit the new entrance, though. It's slow, takes a few days, and nobody goes in or out until it's done to minimize damage and other disruption. We're also negotiating with the Rules Lawyers to get you allowed back in, although they're pushing back hard. We'll figure something out for you, don't worry."

"I'm not too worried, I wanted nothing more than to get out of that place, I'm not actually in a hurry to go back. Although it'd be nice to see some friends of mine that still live there."

He did miss playing his drum for Mesi while she danced, and spending time with her and Dayo. Those had been some good times, if very brief.

"Yeah, be good to get some decent equipment with that new deal the armorer's got there. What was his name?"

"Makena."

"Right. Great idea, that whole quest for specific armor thing, it's gonna show which armor's good and what needs rebalancing for the next Expansion. Other places are getting in on it too; now that it's been officially approved, people won't have to come back to Home Town for it much longer."

"Yeah that would be nice, I've been scrounging in the junk piles mostly, on account of having no money."

"Well let's fix that, shall we? I caught the latest monster reports and they said griffins often show up here. Let's have a look."

They climbed down from the bone parade and made their way to the edge of a clearing. There was a big pool, and some deer were at the water, standing and looking around uneasily.

Chibale pointed, and the harpies waddled out into the tall grass. "!Bi Kalma Kai Griffin Cikin Mutuwa! Now we wait."

The deer shied away, but didn't run, and after a few minutes they went back to the water.

"So are we going to-" Nuru started.

"Ssh! Griffins have exceptional hearing, and they avoid humans, for good reason."

Nuru huffed, but remained quiet. His thoughts wandered to Zula, the girl, now woman, that he'd had a crush on in Home Town growing up. Only later had he discovered that she'd like him too, and the smiles and greetings and occasional shared meal were more than the pity on a poor orphan he'd taken them to be. But her parents had been wealthy, and so he'd been far too intimidated to come forward about his feelings at the time. She'd been very socially confident as well, which hadn't helped him - she was always flanked by a friend or two, and always had something to say, and at the time his dreams had been full of nightmares which had dulled his quick wit with the shadows of past fears and traumas following his parents' deaths. She'd been pursuing the healer path, and by now must have discovered the trap that the god Adisa had laid, forcing all healers to choose a faction before gaining access to the higher-level healing skills and supplies. Had she given in, and taken her path, or was she still in Home Town trying to find another way?

(A woman like her- she'd be angry, but she would choose,) Nuru reflected.

She would not be held back by arbitrary Rules laid down by a man; she would accept what she needed to do, and do her best to forge her own path, sacrificing the option of one unavailable freedom for achievable progress in another. She may not have hit Level Eleven yet, but it was just a matter of time. The question that bothered Nuru, now that he had followed the meandering path of his thoughts, was: what would she think of him now? She had the heart of a paladin - always speaking up about the wrongs she percieved around her, standing up to bullies. She chose the path of healing and reconciliation, in spite of her parents' forceful wishes, but she had also embraced many of their moral attitudes about faction politics. Promiscuity and lewd behavior were decried by the all the factions, even if they contradicted themselves by depicting women as sexual creatures desirable for their good looks and ability to produce large families of more adventurers. Would she, perhaps, try to "save" him by tying him down in marriage, and never letting him look at another woman again? Or would she be able to accept him as he was, hopelessly attracted to women of all shapes and sizes?