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"Emmrich, I've got a bad feeling about this," Rook said, glancing nervously towards the necromancer.
The damp air of the Hossberg Wetlands seemed to thicken about him as his magic flared, his elegant fingers leaving green trails in their wake as his gestures over the skeleton grew more precise and intricately intense. Rook was used to watching the magic of others, but she'd observed a natural ease and refinement to Emmrich's spell casting, clearly the result of many years of patient practice. With spell in flight, his hands moved like a Maestro conducting an invisible orchestra in a complex symphony, audible only to him.
"Rook, please," Emmrich said, "there is no need for concern." His hands continued their weaving, not missing a beat as his eyes remained transfixed on the task. "I merely wish to determine who lies here so we may return them with dignity to their rightful rest."
The grim discovery of a human skeleton, half covered in the sucking mud and now aglow with emerald magic, was by no means the most unusual thing to occur on this venture into the Wetlands.
After setting out from Grey Hold, Rook, Emmrich and Taash had spent the morning battling through several darkspawn ambushes before forcibly removing mercenaries they'd found picking over the treasures of the Wardens' abandoned Cauldron. There were far too many very dangerous items left unattended here for Rook's liking, and she would definitely remind Evka about it when they returned to Lavendel. With each encounter today, she'd been far more nervous than usual, trying her hardest not to allow any unnecessary interaction between herself, her team and the extraordinarily large amount of Antoine's experimental explosives she was carrying.
"'Destroy the outbreak,' they said," Rook muttered under her breath grumpily, wiping her blade clean on the bottom hem of her cloak. "'Maybe don't bang the containers together,' they said." She reseated her sword into the scabbard fastened to her side. "Bloody Antoine."
Taash casually squashed a blight boil ahead, clearing the path of what they all hoped was the last obstacle between them and the origin of the pustulent, squelching blight tendrils around them. The ever-curious Emmrich went on ahead, ducking his head to pass through the new opening Taash had created.
Taash turned to Rook, flicking droplets of ichor from their axe. "What's up your ass today?" they asked.
"Oh, I don't know," said Rook with a roll of her eyes. "Maybe I'm just a bit concerned about being blown sky-high before we even get to the outbreak?"
"Well, maybe don't let the Hurlers get so frickin' close!" Taash said, a smirk curling the corners of their mouth. "I can't save your ass all the time."
"Yeah, well next time, before you 'save my ass'," said Rook with a sarcastic huff, "maybe read the label first?" Rook pointed to a bottle of the explosives where a bright yellow card had been attached with twine.
Taash began to read. "Don't. Expose."
Rook joined in to finish reading the label. "To. Naked. Flame. Yeah."
Taash looked at Rook in a way that might be interpreted as Qunari for puzzlement. "But I wasn't naked?!"
"Oh for Maker's Sake!" Rook exhaled, eyes looking to the heavens for divine intervention.
Emmrich cleared his throat, and they both abruptly turned towards the sound. The necromancer had returned and was standing, hunched over a little, in the small blight opening ahead.
"As much as I've no wish to interrupt your spirited discussion," he said, "there's something beyond which you may care to see."
Taash and Rook exchanged a glance before moving towards the opening. Taash followed Emmrich's retreating form first, ducking their head as they went. An increasingly cautious Rook followed, just hoping that what lay beyond was somewhere that she could finally divest herself of these volatile containers.
Don't slip, don't slip, don't slip, Rook intoned repeatedly to herself, watching every step as she gingerly crossed through the slimy opening in the blight. Looking up from her feet when they at last touched secure ground, she saw exactly what Emmrich had been talking about.
"Holy Andraste's Pointed Hat!" she breathed, coming to an abrupt halt, mouth falling open as she took in the sight on the other side of the opening.
A huge, red, roiling mass of blight, far larger than anything she'd ever seen before, took up the far side of the cleared courtyard. Taash was staring at the monstrosity, frozen alongside Emmrich, who glanced back towards Rook with a green glint in his eyes as he tried not to smirk. Apparently he'd heard her creative blasphemy.
"Grotesquely impressive, isn't it?" he said, voice filled with unabashed, cheery wonderment. "I've not encountered a single written reference to anything that comes even remotely close to this remarkable manifestation of the blight!"
"Grotesque?" Rook's feet remembered how to move and she came to stand alongside Emmrich. "Yeah, I think we can agree on that." She shot a sideways glance towards him. "Just please tell me you're not suddenly thinking of writing a paper on it, Professor."
A thought appeared to cross the necromancer's face in response to the question Rook immediately regretted asking. "Now that you come to mention it…" he began, his gloved hand absently snaking around to the side of his pack to where he kept a box of watercolours.
"Uh uh uh!" tutted Rook, shooting a quick glare of rebuke towards his straying hand. "You know it's not a good time for art studies."
Emmrich lowered his hand, the brief flush of embarrassment at his transparency chased from his face as the gears of thought began visibly whirring again. "Perhaps we might collect a couple of samples?" he asked thoughtfully, craning his neck to get a better view of the writhing mass of blight. "For… research of course."
"Of course," said Rook with a grin. "Research. Well it sounds fine to me, as long as it's postmortem." She turned her attention to the courtyard to start looking for a location to place Antoine's explosives. "Just remember it's Rooklyn, spelled R-O-O-K-L-Y-N."
Emmrich shot her a questioning look with a raised eyebrow that Rook felt, but deliberately ignored, focused intently as she was on finding the perfect spot.
"For when you put our names in your… research," Rook said with a half smile. "Oh yeah, and that's Evataash with three A's." Before Emmrich could retort with a lecture on proper academic processes, Rook pointed to a stone ledge. It was close enough to be sure most of the blast would be directed to the outbreak, while still being solid enough they could trigger that blast safely. "Let's set the explosives over there. Very carefully."
With the explosives laid, the team retreated to a safe distance to detonate them.
"Fire in the hole!" Rook shouted, as she loosed an arrow towards the containers. She dropped down into cover beside her companions, who had already covered their heads for protection, hands firmly over their ears.
Abruptly, her vision blurred.
An enormous boom shook the ground as the explosives detonated, sending a shockwave outward followed by the shattering of stone on stone. It was quickly followed by a violent, roaring inrush of air feeding the fireball engulfing the entirety of the blight outbreak. Through half-closed eyes against the raised dust, Rook could see the nearby blight tendrils recoiling in pain.
Over the dull ringing in her ears, she could hear them shrieking, as if the whole world were a tea kettle left over a fire for too long, air squealing for escape from the rolling boil. The screaming blight reached a crescendo, then fell quiet, leaving only the sizzling and bubbling of seared flesh and the crackling of bursting pustules as the recoiling tendrils died, charred to ash and cinders.
"Well, that was something," said Taash, rising to their feet to check themselves over, covered from horns to foot in a thin film of dust.
"Most extraordinary!" exclaimed Emmrich, already frantically scrabbling around in his pack for a notebook and specimen jars.
"Maker's breath," Rook exhaled, her face a little pale, only partly due to the ash settling out of the air around them. "I was carrying that around?"
"You still got all your fingers, don't cha?" said Taash. "Quit complaining."
Rook scowled, hauling herself up to her feet and shaking the dust from her cloak which only made her sneeze. After checking she did indeed still have all her fingers, she walked the courtyard slowly, taking in the enormity of the destruction they'd wrought. Smoking, charred remains of the blight outburst surrounded a gaping crater left where the explosives and the stone beneath had been.
Emmrich was almost merrily scrambling over the debris, face shining like a child chasing butterflies in a field rather than a necromancer collecting and cataloguing lumps of blight.
"Are you nearly done, Professor?" Rook shouted in the direction she'd last seen him disappear behind a dead tendril.
"Just a couple more to collect!" he called back excitedly. "If you happen to see an unburned pustule, I'd be most eager to dissect it!"
Rook wasn't sure why, but there was something about that thought which churned her stomach.
She was by no means a lightweight, a competent swordswoman who'd seen enough of the insides of her foes to develop a strong constitution. But there was something about the thought of a delicately-wielded scalpel and the Professor's academic intensity being applied to such a disgusting task that made the bile rise in her throat.
She swallowed and regretted it immediately. "Ugh, sure. Sure thing. If I see one you'll, ugh, be the first to know." Reaching for her canteen, she took a mouthful of water, swished it around and spat it out to clear the taste of dust, ash and those thoughts from her mouth.
"Hey, Death Mage!" called Taash, pointing to a nearby rock. "Found one over here!"
The Professor stood up, his head appearing over the blight tendril he'd been working behind, eyes glinting emerald sparks below a furrowed brow, lips thinned in frustration. "It's Emmrich, Taash! Emmrich! How many times must we go over this?"
"Okay, keep your skin on, Emmrich," Taash replied, adding a quiet, "bonehead," under their breath, just loud enough for Rook to hear.
Placated but still flustered, the necromancer recovered his composure as he strode over to where the Qunari was standing. "Thank you, Taash," he said with a curt nod, before glancing over to where they were pointing.
"Oh this is perfect!" He pressed his hands together unable to mask his excitement, all frustration forgotten. He crouched down to make a closer inspection, starting to pull out a scalpel from a toolkit. "Precisely what I was looking for!"
Rook turned away quickly, finding sudden interest in the remains of a sculpture on the far side of the courtyard. "When you're done," she called over her shoulder, "let's please get the hell out of here?"
As they walked through the Wetlands heading back towards Lavendel, the change in the landscape was remarkable. The destruction of the outbreak had caused many areas of blight in the vicinity to recede and die, leaving behind areas of freshly exposed ground. Some resilient plants, grasses and even the odd wildflower that had survived beneath the blight were finally kissed by what passed for sunlight in this dreary, gloomy part of Thedas.
Emmrich walked alongside Rook for company, his observations about the changed Wetlands as they travelled flowing into a near-continuous stream of commentary. Every surviving plant or creature, each discovery of a newly revealed area seemed more remarkable to him than the last. The Professor's curiosity was as boundless as his desire to share it, and Rook had to concede that it was a relief to just walk companionably with him, listening as he spoke animatedly about anything, however small.
"I still can't believe we found a whole patch of bellflowers!" Emmrich sighed, wistfully. "How in Thedas could they have possibly survived?" He'd been unable to resist picking one as they'd passed and was idly twirling the stem between the fingers of his bare hand. He held the flower up towards the sky. "They're just so delicate, the petals so thin that even the light may pass through them." Lowering his hand, he then extended the flower towards Rook, offering it with two fingers and an elegant flourish he was unable to suppress.
Surprised, Rook carefully took the offered flower with a smile, holding it up to catch the light as Emmrich had so she could see the phenomenon for herself.
"You're absolutely right," she said, and with the flower lit from behind, she could just make out a tiny web of darker-coloured lines in the delicate, blue petals. "I think I can even see its veins." She then brought the flower to her nose, searching hopefully for a scent, but disappointingly her nose found nothing.
Emmrich noticed Rook's attempt to inhale the bloom, and smiled warmly. "Perhaps Taash's keener sense of smell would have better luck."
Rook removed her nose from the flower. "Perhaps," she said, with a glance back towards Taash who was trailing a little behind them, lost in their own thoughts. Rather than intrude, she gently wedged the stem of the bellflower through one of the fasteners on her cloak near her shoulder, wearing it like a delicate brooch.
"Still, even without a scent, I think it's a beautiful thing," Rook said, with one last touch of a petal before she raised her eyes again to the world around them. "Especially in the midst of all this, this…"—she made a dramatic, expansive gesture at the landscape—"brown!"
Emmrich laughed, and for a blissful instant Rook was so absorbed in something so small she was no longer thinking about the blight, the Elven gods and the almost insurmountable task lying ahead.
From behind they heard Taash's shout. "I smell darkspawn!" The Qunari sprinted past them in a blur of blue with glints of gold and steel as they drew their axes.
A blight boil beside the road ahead had burst into a pool, and the rushing slash of claws and teeth crawling out of it was on them almost before Rook had time to draw her weapon. Taash dispatched the first with one mighty swing, while Rook's sword bit deep into the second. A flash of silver steel and purple veilfire, black fountains erupting in its wake. Emmrich's staff flared green, and with a burst of necrotic energy he delivered the last rites to a Hurler who seemed insistent on spearing Rook from afar.
The battle was violent, bloody and over almost as soon as it had begun, leaving a scattering of bodies around them to crumble and vaporise into the ether as the darkness that fuelled their rage faded.
Darkspawn dispatched, the companions took a moment to catch their breath and recover before continuing. Taash was meticulously adjusting the scales of their plumed mail back into position while Rook set about cleaning her weapons as she'd always done. It'd been a busy day, and the bottom hem of her cloak was running out of clean edges to wipe her blades upon.
Maker, I need to stop doing this, she chided herself. Such a filthy habit. The lazy voice in her head chimed in, Or you could just get a bigger cloak.
Emmrich was exploring a nearby patch of muddy ground, freshly exposed by the receding blight.
"Well hello there!" he exclaimed brightly, before crouching down on one knee to examine something whitish, yellowish and roundish on the ground.
Rook looked over at Taash who was closer to the necromancer than she was. "What's he found now?" she asked.
"More like who's he found," Taash said, with an incline of their head.
Rook looked more closely, gradually becoming aware that Emmrich was talking to a human skull. "Oh yeah, that's a skull alright." She paused, then smirked at the Qunari. "No bones about it."
Taash rolled their eyes. "You're not funny."
Rook and Taash had moved to stand closer to where Emmrich had begun his necromantic whispering over the skeleton. Taash, untrusting as ever of 'death magic', placed one hand on the hilt of their most vicious axe, just in case the skeleton wasn't happy about being woken from its slumber.
The muddy silt around the skeleton had liquefacted slightly with the recession of the blight, leaving the remains half-exposed. Even to an untrained eye, it had all the expected anatomy of a human, and judging by the proportions of the clavicles, most likely had once been a man. It was enveloped completely by the eerie green of Emmrich's magic, the necromancer's face lit a matching shade with reflected light.
Despite Emmrich's reassurances that this was just an everyday standard corpse whispering and nothing to worry about, Rook was still uneasy. A knot in her stomach refused to untie.
"By the flame that stoked you," chanted Emmrich. "By the light that rises. Return and speak!"
The skeleton's hollowed eye sockets began to blaze with emerald fire, accompanied by a chittering sound and a small movement of its head and jaw.
"Tell us!" Emmrich continued. "Who were you?"
Its spine began to arch back, as if it was testing the connection between each of its vertebrae, yet the skeleton remained mute.
Emmrich continued to weave his hands, his eyes narrowing with effort, flashing green sparks of veilfire. "Who. Were. You!" he commanded.
The skeleton ignored his demands. Its head snapped forward, arms and hands pressing down into the mud, looking for leverage as it pulled and pushed itself up out of the mire. The mud sucked against its pelvis until it came free with a muddy pop. Skeletal hands scrabbling for purchase in the muck, it began to drag itself forwards.
"EmmRICH!" said Rook, her voice rising along with her anxiety. "What the hell is going on?"
The necromancer was still covering the skeleton in his magic, hands still weaving but Rook could see his eyes were studiously transfixed, absorbing every movement the skeleton made. Clearly, he'd pushed right past his earlier reassurances that this was just going to be a simple questioning, into the academic pursuit of the unknown. If she wasn't so anxious, she'd be feeling smugly justified right now.
"This is extraordinary!" said Emmrich. "Postmortem skeletal animation via a non-summoned wisp that seems to have some kind of… symbiotic connection? Directly linked to these specific corporeal remains!"
The skeleton's clawing pulled it far enough across the mud to free its legs and feet, then as if a puppet pulled by invisible strings, it stood. Emmrich rose to his feet alongside the skeleton, the green fading from his eyes, hands falling still, his magic no longer needed as the skeleton started to move under the control of the wisp occupying it.
"With completely autonomous ambulation!" Emmrich clapped his hands in excitement. "Marvellous!"
"Oh, that's not right," said Taash with disgust, gripping their axe more tightly.
"Professor!" snapped Rook, hands moving instinctively to the sword sheathed at her side, preparing to draw. Bracing the scabbard, it gave a click which she felt more than heard as she loosened the blade in the scabbard's throat. "Do we have a situation here?"
The use of his honorific caused Emmrich's attention to sharply return to his body, and it was only then he felt Rook and Taash's concerned looks, weapons gripped tightly at the ready and both increasingly on edge as they waited for his response.
"Oh."
The look of scholarly delight on his face evaporated into contrition.
"Rook, Taash, while I do believe that the situation is safe and well in hand"—he clasped his hands nervously together—"I must apologise most profusely. I allowed myself to be distracted by the remarkable behaviour of our friend here." He waved to the skeleton, which seemed to be progressively more comfortable with its new upright state. "Forgive me for causing you both such undue concern," he said, making a small bow as if to underline his sincerity.
The skeleton began to closely examine one of its own hands, turning the forearm and wrist over and over. Emmrich watched the skeleton closely, eyebrow arched, his fingers unconsciously smoothing the edges of his moustache. "However, I'm afraid that the question lingers still," he said, stroking down to his chin with the thought, "and we've made little progress towards ascertaining the identity of the deceased."
In a shallow muddy silt pond, small air bubbles rose to the surface and popped, followed by two nostrils and then a pair of beady eyes which blinked. With the mud cleared from its eyes, a third eyelid became briefly visible as the creature looked above the surface of the mud where it had burrowed up. With no immediate threats in the vicinity, it snorted to clear its nostrils and drew a breath. Then it began to wriggle, from head to tail, side to side, its stumpy legs digging quickly as it hauled its scaly body up to bask on the bank of the pond, where it closed its eyes.
Tadpoles were a common sight in the wetter parts of Thedas, particularly in the middle of the day when these reptiles would surface to warm their bodies. For farmers in the Hossberg Wetlands though, they were a special kind of menace, digging holes and burrowing beneath struggling crops whenever it rained, and that was all too often here.
Whenever their numbers grew too great, if they could not be moved on, or if they grew brave enough, as they did on rare occasions, to threaten livestock or children, farmers would call the Tadpole Hunter. He would arrive with his apprentice, both dressed in practical khaki-coloured clothing for camouflage and mud-proof ankle-length boots. The hunter's hair would be wiry with mud and as wild as his eyes, and he needed no weapons save his wits and strength.
Word would spread of his arrival, and folks would be drawn from miles around to see the Tadpole Hunter in action. The spectacle of a wild madman wrestling the largest of tadpoles into submission, would have the crowd cheering from a safe distance, and more than a few ghoulish souls in the crowd would secretly hope that today was the day the tadpole won.
Opening one eye, the basking tadpole flicked its tail, then belched loudly with a rumble before settling back to sleep.
The skeleton's head swivelled straight towards the rumbling sound in recognition, the wisp-filled hollows of its eyes seeking out the tadpole basking on the banks of the pond. Its jaw moved tentatively, as if it was trying to relearn how to articulate a mouth with neither lips nor tongue. The jaw fell open in a skeletal grin as a sound escaped from its mouth.
"Ccccccrrrrrkkyyy!"
Before any of them could react, the skeleton had launched itself straight into a sprint, hurtling towards the tadpole it had spotted. Its bony toes clattering and scraping in the dirt as it ran, arms a blur, windmilling the air as the wisp struggled to keep its new body upright and under control.
"Shit!" said Rook with a start, before immediately running off in pursuit.
"Stop, you bony bastard!" shouted Taash, thundering along behind Rook.
A flash of green fizzled overhead, but Emmrich missed the fleeing skeleton as it launched itself horizontally through the air at the tadpole's basking form in the hopes of catching it. But it was too late. The tadpole reacted first, leaping into a twist and plunging back down into the oozing mud, leaving the skeleton grasping only at empty air before crashing down to the ground.
Rook and Taash caught up to the skeleton just as it fell.
"Maker," panted Rook, doubled over, palms on her thighs trying to catch her breath. "That. Bastard. Fast!"
Taash leaned a hand on Rook's back, breathing just as hard. "Telling. Me!"
Emmrich came jogging up behind them both, barely breaking a sweat having let his magic do the sprinting for him.
Rook slowly straightened up. "What… now… Emmrich?" Rook asked between breaths.
Before Emmrich could answer Rook's question, another tadpole burrowed up on the far side of the clearing, landing on the muddy ground with a loud plop. From amid the jumbled pile of bones where the skeleton had collapsed to the ground, the skeleton's head turned to the sound of the tadpole, eyes still ablaze with wisp light.
Its mouth moved. "Cccrrrrriiikkeeeeyyy!"
In a blink, the skeleton seemed to untangle, reorganising itself upright then bolted off again in the unsuspecting tadpole's direction.
"Not again," groaned Taash, still catching their breath.
"Maker!" breathed Rook, setting off in pursuit as fast as she could.
This time the wisp had far greater control of its body and making better use of instinct, approaching the tadpole from behind rather than running headlong at it. Rook had no chance of keeping up this time, and a flash of Emmrich's magic sizzled past her ear just a little too close for comfort as it homed in on the skeleton, causing her to flinch.
"Sorry!" shouted Emmrich, as the skeleton dived at the last minute, somehow still managing to avoid Emmrich's bolt, but also again missing the tadpole. The reptile, alerted by Emmrich's shout, quickly panic-burrowed away before it could be clasped by the grasping bony arms.
Chest heaving, Rook doubled over again alongside the skeleton, where it had once again crumpled in a jumble of bones on the ground. Taash and Emmrich sauntered up moments later, as she was still gasping from the repeated chase.
Emmrich began to apologise. "Rook, I'm so—"
As soon as the words started to tumble out, Rook turned a palm towards him, glaring over her sternly-raised index finger. It was a wordless invitation to stop speaking, with an added 'or else' in her eyes that underlined it. She pointed at the skeleton and gasped out the syllables, "Bind. It."
Emmrich nodded, then started to draw in his magic, hands starting to make the necessary gestures of a complex binding spell that should suffice to hold the skeleton in place. Taash stepped around the necromancer, then with no warning or hesitation sat down on the skeleton, pinning its pelvis to the ground beneath them.
Emmrich's hands stopped moving and he just stared blankly at the Qunari, who blinked back at him.
"What?" Taash asked.
"Taash. Really. Please!" said Emmrich indignantly, one hand coming to his hip. "Show some respect for the dead."
Taash shrugged. "Only if you can actually stop it with your"—they wiggled their fingers—"corpse stuff, 'cause there's no way I'm chasing it again."
Another tadpole had burrowed up out of the mud, causing the skeleton to start to struggle more vigorously beneath Taash's firmly planted bulk. Taash ignored the squirming, as a bony arm flailed and failed to push them off. Taash rolled to the side a little, casually leaning across onto one elbow and completely pinning the offending hand to the ground.
Emmrich's moustache twitched a little as he clamped his mouth shut tightly, refusing to dignify Taash's commentary on his expertise with a response. With a lifetime of dealing with the prejudices of others towards necromancy, he generally preferred to let his work speak for itself. He simply inclined his head with a nod and tightened his grip on his staff as he closed his eyes for a moment in preparation.
With his free hand, he made an upwards gesture sweeping past his face, causing it to shift into the semblance of a glowing skull. While not strictly necessary, for some interactions with the more stubborn undead he believed it lent him a certain authority. Atop his staff, the eyes of the skull began to glow as Emmrich rapped the base of the staff sharply onto the ground to get the misbehaving wisp's attention.
Fingers splayed, he gestured towards the skeleton and a whip-like tendril of vivid green lashed out from his fingertips, completely engulfing its skull.
"By breath and shadow," chanted Emmrich. "By endless night. I ask you to rest now, to cease your struggle!" The skull turned towards the necromancer. "Rest!" Emmrich commanded, sending another jolt of mana along the tether towards the skull.
The skeleton's body stopped moving immediately, bones falling passively to the ground, inert. Only the skull's emerald eye sockets remained alive and burning brightly, staring intently into Emmrich's matched visage.
"I have him now," said Emmrich, his voice firm and quietly self-assured.
Taash stood up hesitantly, expecting at any moment that the bones would rise up and bolt. But it did seem that Emmrich had the skull's attention. It was calmer and compliant beneath the necromancer's control.
Emmrich's face was unreadable behind his glamour. He seemed to stare at the skull unblinking for a few moments, before the flames in his eyes flared. "Of course!" he exclaimed. "That explains everything!" With a downwards wave past his face, he dropped his glamour as a courtesy before continuing. "Rook, Taash, if you'll indulge me, I have a hypothesis I would like to test."
"Is it going to get weirder?" Rook asked.
"Is that even possible?" Taash asked.
"Perhaps," Emmrich said, "but quite unlikely. It is my belief that while we may have been asking the right questions, we have been asking them to the wrong individual all along."
"Wait," said Rook as realisation dawned, "are you saying there's more than one wisp in there?"
"That is what I wish to determine, yes!" he said brightly with a nod, the tether between the necromancer and the skeleton glowing to match his excitement at the prospect. "May I proceed?" he asked.
Rook looked over to Taash, and the Qunari shrugged then nodded.
"Okay, Professor," Rook said, concern again written clearly upon her face. "But for Maker's sake, please be careful?"
Emmrich gave her a reassuring smile as his hazel eyes met hers. "Dear Rook," he said, his voice dropping low, steeled with the confidence of a man very much in his element. "Your concern is touching,"—one corner of Rook's mouth curled up, almost imperceptibly, at this remark—"but I assure you, this time he's definitely not going anywhere unless I ask him to."
Before Rook could look away, Emmrich turned back to the skeleton, raising his glamour once more with an upwards flourish. He drew himself up to his full height, gripping his staff more firmly as the veilfire around his skull visage burned brightly.
"By the flame that stoked you," Emmrich declared, as another surge of mana sent green embers rising and swirling around the skull. "I call this body's true owner to light. Return to us and speak!"
A frantic chittering came from the skull, wisp light pulsing and flickering within for a few moments before it stilled back to a calmer, steady glow of duller, almost khaki-green.
"G'daaaaay," the skull whispered, the words more intelligible but spoken in a broad, strange accent they couldn't quite place.
"Who are you!" commanded Emmrich, with a wave of his hand towards the skull causing the mana tether to writhe.
"Taaaaadpole Hunterrrrr," the skull breathed. At that moment, the tadpole which had been sunning itself opened one eye and gave a loud rumble.
"Criiiiikeeeeey!" hissed the skull excitedly. "Wouldya look at the ssssize of that taaadpole!"
Back in Grey Hold, the companions sat comfortably, relaxing around the hearth as Rook retold the story of the destruction of the blight and their encounter with the Tadpole Hunter for Antoine and Evka. Boots off, teacup in hand and feet warmed by the fire, Rook's tales always seemed to grow taller in the telling than the firelight's shadows cast upon the walls around them.
"You know, Professor," teased Rook, "you never did apologise properly for nearly burning my hair off." She wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. In the retelling, the utter ridiculousness of their frantic pursuit of the skeleton had left her with sore ribs from laughter rather than the day's exertions.
"I said I was sorry at the time!" Emmrich replied, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. "But I'm beginning to rethink that position in retrospect! I'm feeling just a little well-roasted myself by your retelling of this tale, Rook."
Rook's eyes twinkled with mischief and firelight. "I'm sure that just like my hair, your reputation will survive a couple of singe marks." Needling him was all too enjoyable, and when he responded in kind, doubly so. "Besides, you got him in the end, didn't you?" she said. "That's what counts."
"I still say I loosened the lid for ya," Taash said, draining their tankard to the bottom.
"Yeah, with your ass," Rook added, smirking into her teacup.
More laughter spilled out into the Wardens' encampment around them. As the afternoon's shadows began to lengthen it would soon be time to return home through the Lighthouse Eluvian.
The story of their encounter with the Tadpole Hunter had been the source of much interest in Lavendel. In life, he had been a legend that petered out in silence. It had been many years since he'd been seen in the region, even before he'd vanished without a trace. His finding instead gave his tale a proper ending, yet it was overshadowed somewhat by the unconventional way he'd been returned to Lavendel for burial.
While commonplace in Nevarra, the sight of a skeleton ambling into the outskirts of Lavendel tethered by magic to a tall necromancer had caused quite the stir that day. Fortunately, Emmrich had the presence of mind to dismiss his skeletal glamour in favour of propriety as they'd approached the town, but still heads turned, mouths gawped and whispered, fingers pointed as they walked into Lavendel.
"So, Emmrich," said Rook, flanking him as they walked under the stares of the townsfolk, "you said something about a 'dignified' return to their rightful rest?"
"Indeed I did," replied Emmrich. "Although I'm aware that this is definitely not quite as dignified as I'd hoped." The necromancer caught Rook's sidewards glance.
"Well, what kind of Watcher would I be if I'd just left them out there?" Emmrich's voice took on a tone of quiet indignation, as he adjusted his skull pin. "Besides, they'd both have been lonely."
The skeleton and its wisps didn't seem to mind the attention, however it was intended.
To them, once again the whole town had gathered to watch as the legendary Tadpole Hunter and his curious new apprentice strolled one final time into Lavendel answering their call.
"Criiiiikeeeeey!" he hissed, to no one in particular but his memory.