Demon Funerary Rites, Or Lack Thereof

  "This is good work, m'dy," said Saoirse, inspecting Marci's test attempt to create a skeletal soldier raised and augmented by heavy pte armour that the Kobolds had started churning out at her direction.

  From the outside, it wasn't really possible to tell it was a skeleton, with bones wrapped in heavy metal and then padding, and just the burning blue-white eyes that shone through the rough helmet betraying its unholy nature.

  It still looked a bit rickety to Marci, but with a rough shield and a spear, and in a formation, hopefully it would be able to hold crucial chokepoints during her attack upon Saxmoor prison. At least for long enough to get in, rescue her friends, and then get out again. After that? Well, she wasn't entirely sure, beyond 'get to safety,' and 'figure out how to disentangle soul from the Dreadfort.'

  "I think I can get the tertiary binding tighter," said Marci, stroking her chin.

  "You could, but that wouldn't…" said Saoirse, trailing off as the hulking pit fiend, Rafferty, made his way into the dedicated necromancy b that Marci had discovered on one of the upper levels.

  "Dark Mistress," he said, giving her a salute as other demons moved in behind him, dragging pallets with the bodies of those demons who had died defending the fortress behind them. "We have collected the dead, as you asked."

  "Oh, thank-you," said Marci, forcing herself to look at the thirteen demons who had perished defending her.

  It was silly, she knew, they were just demons, monsters who had signed up with her because they'd wanted to win riches and glory razing the Southnds, her home. But all the same, she felt a deep sense of both sorrow, and shame when she looked at the still forms. These demons, these… people, had put their faith in her to lead them. Mispced faith, to be sure, but faith all the same. And she had failed to foresee the possibility of heroes showing up out of nowhere on gryphons. And they had paid the price.

  Shame wasn't a feeling she liked, and the part of her mind that itched for a drink immediately went to the bottle in the drawer in her desk. She'd randomised the locking spell, but she could probably just brute force it by disintegrating the desk…

  She shook herself. No, now wasn't the time to drink. They were already on their way to Saxmoor. She could get blind drunk after she saved Of and the others.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't know… I don't know what demon funeral rites are," said Marci, tearing her gaze from the wrath-demon who had been the first to fall.

  "Funeral… Rites?" said Rafferty slowly. He gnced back at the bodies. "You mean… I assumed you wanted them for necromancy?"

  "What? No!" said Marci, appalled. "These demons- they fell in defence the fortress! I can't just- I can't just use their bodies like that!"

  "Why not?" said Saoirse, looking at Marci as if she were a little touched in the head. "Demon bodies typically make stronger skeletal servants than surfacers. And this close to death, there will be little to no loss of potency and strength-"

  "No," said Marci firmly.

  She wasn't sure why, but this felt like a red line in the way that breaking into a sacred temple and looting the holy remains of exalted priests of yore had not, in a way that triggering an avanche to bury her old mentor had not. This was- this was wrong.

  "Can't we return them to their families?" said Marci. "You know… won't they want the bodies?"

  "Why?" said Saoirse. "They're dead, m'dy. We should use the parts."

  Marci stared back down at the wrath demon. Could she do that? Could she take the bones, perhaps even the flesh of a creature who had died for her, no matter what that creature was, and treat it like a bunch of random bones from centuries past to whom no one living had the slightest connection?

  It would give her an advantage, perhaps one she rather needed...

  She ran a hand through her blue hair and closed her eyes. An advantage. She wanted an advantage. She wanted an advantage so badly that she had committed what most humans would regard as sacrilege. She had already crossed taboo lines beyond which there was no recovery—consorting with demons, practicing necromancy—so why did this feel so much worse? These were demons…

  But now that she had met demons, she'd learnt that despite their generalised bloodthirstiness, there were elements within them that she recognised—enough that she felt uneasy defiling the remains of those she had known. Saoirse clearly didn't see any problem with using her dead fellows' bodies as spell components, but in most other ways she was remarkably likeable. Rafferty was a maniac, but he clearly took pride in his work, and had a kind of twisted sense of honour to him. She'd been taught her whole life that demons were inherently evil, but now that she knew a few of them, what evil they had seemed garden variety, something that wouldn't have been too out of pce in an enforcer like the ones she had seen shaking down that random homeless man in the streets of Saxmoor.

  Was that why she couldn't do it? Because she was finding it difficult to see the difference between a demon that was an awful person, and a human or elf or fairy that was an awful person. Was there actually a difference? Or was it all just down to the lives they'd led up to that point?

  Marci groaned. She was probably overthinking this.

  "We don't need them," she said, going with her gut, if for no other reason than so she could stop overthinking things. "Rafferty, please see that the bodies are returned to their retives in Pandemonium."

  "As you command," said Rafferty in a slow, clearly confused voice. He signalled to the other demons, who began to drag the bodies towards the portal room.

  "Alright, that's enough for now," said Marci. "Thank-you for your help, Saoirse. Go have something to eat, let's say… an hour's break? Then I want to keep on going."

  "Yes, m'dy, thank-you, m'dy," said the demoness, bowing her head and striding off, tail flicking from beneath her very baggy red cardigan and loose, rolled up trousers.

  Marci fluttered over to a chair with plush, red-velvet cushions. She was a little tired from the events of the day, but it wasn't a sleepy kind of tiredness. She hadn't actually had any of that since waking up, or perhaps 'reforming' next to the Shard two days earlier. At first, she had thought it was just adrenaline and stress, but she didn't think that was it. She needed to rest her body, yes, but just sitting quietly for a while was fine, whereas her mental fatigue seemed almost… unreted to what she did.

  She stared at her hand. Was this body, what she thought of as 'herself' just a puppet of meat? She could always feel the Shard, and through it everything else. Was it possible that that was where her mind y? Certainly, she'd been able to possess Jonda without difficulty back during the battle of the gcier, and her pain and dazed state had left her when she had done so. And if that was the case, was it even possible to disentangle herself from the Shard if it was her now?

  Marci shuddered and forced her mind away. These were questions without answers, at least at the moment, and she had more important things to do — like pn out her attack on the prison. She could leave philosophising to another day.

  "Your Dark Malevolence, I thought perhaps you were hungry?"

  Marci knew who it was without looking up. Jonda, carrying with her a tray full of steaming food that must have come from the recently finished kitchens, which were being run by a kobold called 'Slices and Dices Cleanly,' a very enthusiastic chef.

  "Oh, thank-you," said Marci, accepting the tray which had grilled fish, some sad, and an excellent looking creamy desert which… she assume was from food purchased from Pandemonium. Did the Kobolds handle all that? Likes Hammers had talked to her about buying materials, but she'd told him to 'buy whatever he needed.' She still had a colossal amount of money in her treasury and…

  Actually, was there more?

  Marci focused, frowning, then sighed as with her 'Shardsense' she recognised what were clearly pilfered gold, jewellery, and church tableaux that had been looted and put there by eager to please demons. So, she could add 'grand rceny' to her ever-growing list of crimes, it seemed.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you, your unholy emminence?" said Jonda.

  Marci furrowed her brow, her mind casting back to how angry the elf had gotten with the heroes' party.

  "Jonda, why did you become a demon cultist?" asked Marci.

  The elf seemed surprised by the question, taken aback even. "I… I desire to serve the Underworld," she said after a moment.

  "Yes, but why?" said Marci. "You said the surfacers were hypocrites?"

  Jonda fidgeted, and though their link Marci felt extreme negative emotions surface. The deep, dark, smothered kind that most people tried very hard to ignore.

  "If you don't want to say-"

  "My parents were killed," said Jonda, cutting Marci off. "Accused of colborating with demons. Even though they weren't, the local, rich elf just wanted their farm, and they were poor, so that was all that mattered." She gestured vaguely. "People- people say demons are evil. I say at least demons are honest."

  Marci frowned. That made a disturbing amount of sense, actually. She'd always been vaguely aware that accusations of demonic colboration were thrown around pretty wildly sometimes, and if you didn't have the means to defend yourself in court, or if the magistrate didn't like you, or liked your accuser more, then you'd probably hang.

  "Also, they're hot," said Jonda, her face flushing and far less despairing thoughts bubbling to the surface. "The horns, and- and- the fashion, and the idea of a big, strong demon just- just picking you up and-"

  "Ok!" said Marci, holding up a hand. "That- well, err… you do you, I guess. I, um, don't need anything else."

  The elf bowed her head and beat a swift retreat, her mind still swirling with very, very twisted desire.

  Marci sighed and forced herself not to pry too deeply into the clearly unhinged elf's psyche. Maybe, once this was all over, Marci could get Jonda some counselling…

  "And at least I'm keeping her out of trouble," she muttered to herself, before popping a piece of excellently cooked fish into her mouth.