Death hung over the town of Ulysses and conspired to fill it with bodies rather than citizens. It was an undertaker's dream, but Sophia was far from happy. The occasional death due to a tavern brawl that got out of hand, less often a duel, or even a bandit robbery were hardly causes for notice or alarm. These were wild parts after all, the beginnings of
Terra incognita, the very edge of the maps where monsters still dwelled unannounced, and darkness rested in the hearts of every man.
However, nine bodies in less than a week...
Well, that was something.
It had been a long while since she'd had a morgue full of bodies on her hands. Her supply of arcane ingredients was plentiful, overflowing even, and she had all the necromantic ingredients she could have desired. However, with the lack of supplies, she was running out of wood, and thick canvas bags would have to do as coffins if things did not improve soon. She preferred working with living patients. The recently murdered were a sorrowful and often angry. She assumed it was the dying violently part. Few people died peacefully or willingly, but unnatural deaths were another matter entirely. Dealing with the unhappily dead required extra precautions...
A
couple of travelers, carts stripped, horses stolen, and bodies left to rot.
She'd buried them quickly, and without ceremony, the Sheriff had paid her the standard fee. Paupers and unnamed strangers were never profitable to bury, even when they were buried in their own grave.
The
Jefferson family, strung up, and left swaying in the wind.
She'd buried them in a nice plot at a generous discount, it was the least she could do, the townsfolk had scrounged together to pay for the service. Normally, she'd have excused herself from any religious event, but it was hard to find an excuse for the undertaker to miss a public funeral, so she politely listened to Father George's sorrowful sermon over the coffins and awaiting graves. Life was cruel, especially in the badlands. Senseless murder, murder for the sake of murder was however rare, and it left the undertaker with a bad taste in her mouth.
And the
nameless rider, the wounded man who died before Sophia even had a chance to try and treat him.
She'd buried him on the outskirts of the town with only a date on this tombstone, the Sheriff had paid her, once again. Something about the dead man dressed in the tatters of a uniform was off. Something wasn't quite right. Magic. Sophia had felt it—
"You felt it too," Balthazar piped in, interrupting the undertakers tired musings. She'd barely had a chance to sleep. Few people recognized or appreciated how much work it took to prepare almost ten bodies for a burial, especially once the decomposition had begun to set in. Everyone was a critique at a funeral.
"Yes," Sophia said out loud. In the privacy of her own practice she didn't have to worry about being overheard conversing with a ghost. "I did. Magic. Not more than the faintest trace, but it was there."
"It wasn't proper magic, not our sort of studied magic," Balthazar continued, sounding like a professor lecturing from his podium.
"It was wilder, rustic even. You know, it tasted like the red-earthed magic of this continent. Perhaps, there is a shaman active in these territories again?""It wouldn't be the first time," Sophia agreed.
She heard the loud thud of the solid oak door, the only piece of good wood to be found in the building was the front door. Susanne, the neighborhood girl that Sophia paid to sweep the floors and to do the cleaning, burst through the door to nercomancer's study in a whirlwind of motion that threatened at least one empty vase that decorated the room. A reoccurring danger that the necromancer had long ago accepted as unavoidable. The young girl, no, almost woman, seemed to be excited by the most mundane of things, and like a puppy powered by coffee she was impossible to calm for very long. Still, she kept the place clean enough, and she didn't ask for much in the way of wages. Chief concerns for the entrepreneurial wizard.
Clearly excited, alarmingly so, the young girl excitedly waved her hands, the flicker of a smile on her thin lips. Sophia suspected gossip, idle town gossip was the cause of her animation...as it usually was. Sometimes she regretted not simply being able to summon a bone golem to do maintain her practice. It would have been so much quieter.
"Sophia!"
Sophia could feel Balthazar recoil with anger in her mind, returning to wherever it was he resided when he didn't want to interact with the natural world. He always said that she was too soft on the young woman, he disliked teenagers, and he hated loud teenagers.
"The Sheriff is organizing a posse!"
"To do what?"
"To go to the Jefferson's place. To find and capture the bad guys!"
"I see. And what business is this of mine? I'm a doctor...not a bounty hunter."
"Well, someone might get hurt! And there will probably be more bodies! Besides, Sooophiaaaa! You're a hero right? You help people! Doctors can't turn down heroic quests. It's the Hippocratic Oath!"
"The girl is right. The townsfolk can manage few things without someone getting shot," Balthazar interjected with a palatable irritation.
"Besides, there is something wonderfully wrong with that place. Magical, perhaps not. But there is a mystery to solve, and these simple fools will need guidance if anything is to be accomplished."Closing her eyes, Sophia slowly massaged her temples in a feeble attempt to drive the long dead wizard away. Susanne was a lost cause. The young woman read too many fantasy novels, and her head was full of heroic notions that Sophia did her best to dispel. "Suzie, how many times do I have to tell you—"
"I know, I know, real life isn't a dime novel...but you'll do it right?"
Sophia opened her eyes, anger flashing across her azure eyes for a fraction of a moment.
"...It pays twenty-five dollars."
Sophia hated to admit it, but Balthazar was right. She felt a morbid curiosity to see the homestead of the late Jefferson family. And given her particular talents, arcane as well as medical, she'd likely be of use to the Sheriff, and his rag tag posse. It was better than just sitting around in town and waiting for the bodies to continue to pile up. She had no desire for more work as long as it meant more bodies to bury.
At the end of the day, twenty-five dollars was still twenty-five dollars.
She'd be able to afford something good to drink, for once.
Fading Memory