“You are a fool, Vance Chauzec,” hissed Isu. “And you do not deserve the gifts I have bestowed upon you. But I am a generous goddess… I will give you time to think on this foolish decision before I retract them.”
With a final powerful swirl of wind around me, Isu’s presence vanished, and the air settled down.
“Were you just talking to someone?” asked Elyse as she stepped out from behind the bush with her things. “I thought I heard voices.”
I figured it probably wasn’t the best idea to tell a bishop of the Lord of Light that I’d just been having a casual conversation with the Goddess of Death.
“Um, I was just talking to him,” I answered, pointing at my skeletal companion. “Seeing if I could get a few words out of him. Not surprisingly, it turns out that he’s not the most talkative fellow around.”
He looked at me and cocked his head as if to say, “What the hell, bro?” but of course, he kept his silence. Elyse chuckled at my admittedly weak attempt at humor. She looked especially stunning when she smiled; mirth suited her like a tight-fitting catsuit.
“It would seem that it lacks a tongue,” she said, her smile quickly fading. Her pretty face crumpled into an expression of distaste as she stared at the skeleton. “And even if it did have one, I don’t think such a foul thing would have much to say worth listening to.”
“Whatever,” I grunted. “Come on, let’s move. We’re losing daylight, and it’s much easier to set up a camp in the woods before it gets dark.”
“Agreed. Let’s go.”
We walked for some time in silence, with the skeleton trailing a couple of yards behind me. Every so often, I would practice “throwing” a part of my soul into his bones and get used to controlling him, getting the feel of the whole puppet master thing.
As I was doing this, an interesting thought crossed my mind: if I resurrected another skeleton alongside this guy, would I be able to control them both like this? And not with them simply mirroring each other’s—my—actions but using each of them individually, their movements independent of one another? That would involve some serious multitasking, and I wasn’t even sure it was possible, but if I could somehow manage to do this, it would make me pretty damn invincible. I made a mental note to try this out next time I came across a resurrectable corpse.
When we got closer to the woods, Elyse started steaming on ahead of me. I didn’t blame her eagerness to set up camp; the woods would be cloaked in pitch darkness once the sun set completely.
An upside to her worry was that it gave me the opportunity to stare at her ass. It shifted tantalizingly beneath her cleric’s robe as she walked, her ass cheeks’ smooth round shapes protruding slightly more left and right in turn, showcasing their toned perfection—and she swayed her hips in a manner that no holy woman should. It was a pleasing end to our hike, so much so that I wouldn’t have minded going on for another couple of miles.
I noticed something else, too, something beyond her walk having a lot more in common with an exotic dancer’s than a bishop’s: she seemed to be getting afraid. As it got darker, she became more hasty, almost to the point of panicky jittering. She was struggling to keep her cool.
I didn’t get what she could be afraid of. I, for one, preferred the darkness and took comfort in being in the woods at night. I guessed that for church people, with all their fairytale nonsense, there was plenty to “fear” in the shadows. I could have teased her about it, but I decided not to. Not for the moment, anyway—maybe later, around the campfire. I had to admit, for a woman of her radiant beauty, there were more reasons to be nervous in the woods after dark—bears, dire wolves, possibly trolls, and vampires too, but not likely in this region.
I didn’t need to worry about any of those things, though—not with a skeletal sentry who didn’t need sleep, who wouldn’t drink too much and doze off in the small hours of the night. He didn’t even need light to see potential threats; I suspected he could simply sense the presence of enemies.
Elyse and I set up a simple camp and managed to get a small fire going. I went to fill up our water bottles at a nearby stream.
When I returned, the fire was already burning strongly. Elyse was sitting on a log quite close to it, holding a bottle of wine. She offered me some when I joined her. It seemed like she would have wanted nothing more than to cuddle up to me but instead made a show of scooting over. I was eager to get a look under her cleric’s robes, but I wasn’t going to push things now.
I took a swig of wine and leaned across the gap to hand the bottle back to her.
“Good stuff,” I remarked.
“It’s from the vineyards of Erst,” she said bitterly, “which should, by rights, be mine. Instead, that scum Nabu is reaping the profits and drinking himself into a stupor on the produce every night.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “So, in addition to being a liar, a thief, and a murderer, he’s a glutton and a wine-sot too?”
“All of that and more.”
“I look forward to sucking his soul into Grave Oath.”
“Grave Oath?”
“My dagger.”
“Ah… well, then I look forward to seeing you do that.”
Her hatred for Bishop Nabu was almost palpable.a The more I got to know Elyse, the more I was sure she was hiding something. She had a depth belied by the simple robes and her innocent face. What was lurking there?
I’d find out soon enough. Maybe far sooner than I imagined.
“Another of sip of wine?” she asked, suddenly meek and pleasant again.
“Sure.”
I took the bottle and brought it up
