Death Is Not The End

[Cobalt]

An involuntary shiver went through Zea, hard as she tried to hold onto her annoyance at being shouted at by an overemotional specter shouting into her mind. Yes, she was afraid of something else taking a body. The elf's would be fine. It wasn't the elf Zea was worried for.

It was no small thing Avery was offering her, whether he knew it or not. It was not a small thing to accept. She hadn't relied on anybody else in that capacity in... a lot of years, not since she was a kid. That had been different. That had... well, Avery's intentions probably weren't the same. It would undoubtedly cost Zea far less.

"Stop shouting, elf. Frock up and quit embarrassing yourself. Use your inside voice, since you are inside my mind. You said you want to go get revenge on the demons that killed you?"

[Ethereal-Star]

Demons. Of course it had been demons. The memories came flooding back in such a rush that if Elowen had been in her body, she could keeled over from the sheer force of it.

Biting her lip hard enough that if she were alive would've drawn blood, the sun elf shuddered at it all. They had been powerful. Much too powerful even for her. After all, didn't her current situation glaringly point that out ever so clearly?

Elowen recalled the one with the bigger horns had a weapon forged out of cold iron, and that had served to slow her down enough, weakening her so that the other one took advantage of that opportunity to bash her head in. While it wasn't unusual for their kind to wield such weaponry, the sun elf couldn't help but feel that there had been purpose in the choice of weapon. And that was to finish her off for good.

Cursing her weakness to such, she swore none too quietly, and tightened her fists in rage. Whatever the case was, Elowen couldn't face them alone and survive. She may be reckless but she wasn't outright stupid either, even if her actions a lot of the time indicated that. She would need help when it came to standing against them a second time.

In any event, the knowledge sobered her enough to calm down and speak more quietly. The woman in her own way was trying to help, and Elowen feared if she angered her too much the priestess might refuse to help her anymore and just leave her there to rot. That was not acceptable by any stretch. "Please..." Stating this in a quieter tone of voice. "What do I have to do to convince you?"

[Cobalt]

So many feelings. Ghosts were gross. The elf had some reason left, and that was a relief and a half, but it was still a little disquieting to experience this kind of leakage from another mind. The only thing better about live people was that she couldn't feel what they felt.

Ghosts?

Ghosts made it weird.

"I can feel I hit the mark there. So here's what I want you to do." Was she really going to do this? It wasn't the worst idea. It was just potentially risky and ultimately a waste of everybody's time. Having a proxy for a murder or two wouldn't be the worst, though, right?

"I am going to do my best. You are going to cooperate. And when you are well enough, you will kill demons. But not my assistant," she added hastily. "I will forcibly throw you over the last divide myself if you so much as speak rudely to him and I will not be sorry. All I'm doing is buying you time. Use it to track down body-stealers, sister, and you have yourself a deal."

[Ethereal-Star]

Elowen froze at that. Her assistant was a demon? What in all hells? Was she mad? "How can you work with such an abomination! A demon, no less?!"

Taking a 'breath', well as much as a ghost could breathe that is, she continued. "You should worry about yourself, that thing is using you. For what purpose I know not. But it will betray you and then it will kill you. Don't you see? They cannot be trusted! Ever! I would be doing you a favor!"

Whether she angered the woman to the extreme was not first and foremost on her mind right now but the thought was there nonetheless. Still, Elowen couldn't be wrong. Demon kind was a plague upon the world. They always were and always would be a plague! Why should her assistant be any different? It wasn't something the sun elf could comprehend at all. "You are in grave danger as long as that vile being sticks around! I don't know what it told you, but it's lying! It's what they do!"

[Cobalt]

Zea let out a pft so sharp she all but spat her bitter amusement on the corpse in front of her. She couldn't even imagine Avery mustering an ulterior motive, which was a fortunate thing; she had found in herself a vague preference for his existence over his non-existence. His existence would last longer the more he was what he seemed.

Probably he was, though. Most people were. Most people just... didn't seem quite like Avery.

She knew he could hear the nasty things being said, though, and she held out a hand to forestall him. His disquietingly tender heart might get him in trouble without someone nastier looking out for it. Zea was willing to consider that her job for as long as she could put off thinking about why.

"I'm not some giddy young girl who's never had her soul used for a scratching post so you put away your worries over me. He can't help what he was made any more than you can help being some kind of mainland barbarian. If I put you back in your body, you're going to go after our bigger problems, or I'm gonna rip out and punt your soul to the great beyond personally. Do I make myself clear?"

[Ethereal-Star]

Mainland barbarian? Elowen's temper returned, and she too spat out her words. "How dare you call me some kind of savage?! I am only doing what needs to be done!"

Elowen had to take several deep calming breaths, so she wouldn't go completely berserk. In her situation she couldn't afford that. Not to mention she knew the woman meant each and every single word of that warning. The warrior had no doubt that she would do exactly as she threatened. And the fear of that happening dominated her consciousness even over that of her shaking anger, for the sun elf was afraid of that coming to pass.

"You are making a deadly mistake." she tried yet again, yet didn't press the issue any further, swallowing her righteous pride then was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do. And it hurt in its own way, that.

"Please do what you are able to. I'll forever be in your debt." Trying to placate the priestess to the best of her efforts. Now all she could do was sit back and wait. Her life was ultimately in this woman's hands no matter what her disposition may be.

[Cobalt]

An Iniman priestess was within her rights to dare quite a bit, in Zea's opinion, when talking to a ghost who didn't even know the kind of basic cosmic truths a Thanati child could rattle off before their age hit double digits.

"Nyeh," Zea said, more dismissively than she might have with a ghost who hadn't just argued at her like she was a young speck of an initiate. "I have a grudge against the body thief types. Being able to throw you at them is worth some effort."

The priestess levered herself back up on her knees to look down at the elf's discarded skull. There was a nice soft place there, definitely, but it didn't seem like anybody'd been eating or even chewing on this body. Thank Inima for small favors.

"Feel free to follow my voice to whatever extent you can. I'm going to need your full cooperation because your body doesn't particularly want you in it. You've got a connection still but it's going to be up to me to spruce it up a little before it's ready for use again."

Zea walked the couple of paces necessary to sit above the corpse's head, crossing her legs despite her mode of dress with her typical modesty.

"Looks like it's just a skull smash. Avery?" she looked up from the body. "Would you be a lamb and check around for any bits of scalp or brain that might've gotten scattered in the grass? I can probably reuse them."

[Ethereal-Star]

Ghost Elowen gritted her teeth at the comment about body thieves, but forced herself to not snap back at the woman. She would likely lose any chance at being resurrected if she did.

"You have my full cooperation." the sun elf promised the Thanati priestess. "I am listening."

At the mention of her assistant being tasked with finding any last bits of brain and skull of hers though, she shuddered in complete revulsion of such a thing touching any part of her and really wanted to protest against such a thing. She really, really did. Yet, she bit her tongue so hard that if she were alive she could bitten clean through the soft tissue there. But in her ghostly form that didn't happen.

Elowen could barely get the words out, she was so completely disgusted at this. "Is....that....rea....really..neces...neces....necessary?" she griped, complained and protested all in one upset package of emotions. "It better not do anything vile if there is..."

By the gods, was she really agreeing to this? To let that monster touch parts of her skull? Elowen could have thrown up if she were able to. Being a ghost though made that impossible. Yet the will to live burned ever strong within her, and so she relented finally. Still clenching her teeth in aggravation. "Fine then."

[Cobalt]

Zea stuck her fingers down into the messy scalp, pulling strands of hair away from the breach in the elf's skull. Any hair that didn't appear to actually be attached to anything anymore, she set aside by laying it across her knee. She could just stick that back in later, probably.

"He's not going to hurt it. I just want to be able to reuse anything that was already part of your body. Otherwise I'm going to need to get creative."

This was so much easier with a corpse. She could pull bone from wherever and as long as it wasn't part of the surface structure nobody would ever know what was really holding up the ribs. Ah, well. Without challenges, how could she grow?

The brain was a little mushed. Probably most of it was blood loss, though? Zea needed to... wait. Yes. There was blood everywhere, obviously. She'd never actually tried to sculpt liquid before but most of it looked like it was starting to clot, so sure! Why not. She raked her fingers through the grass, combing it clean by sticking the only matter she could control onto her skin: Elowen's blood.

"Ha!" She laughed, delighted, at her gory hand. "Learn something new every day! I can reuse your blood!"

[Ethereal-Star]

At Zea's nearly fanatical exclamation of "I can reuse your blood!", made the dead sun elf wonder for a moment about the woman's sanity. It might just be her line of work though, but whatever the case, Elowen was a tad unnerved by her blatant statements of her own body parts being nothing more than tools and materials to study and learn from.

Still she kept her ghostly mouth shut, hoping that the process of reviving her wouldn't take too long. She had demons to hunt after all, more specifically her attackers took the highest priority for her. Not just out of revenge but powerful fiends like that would surely not stop with her death. Who knew just how many others those malicious pieces of shit had killed after they had killed her? It was a horrible thought to be reminded of, and once again she cursed her own weakness and that of her untimely death. If only she had been faster, none of this would have happened. Not to mention Elowen did not trust this demon assistant of Zea's either. It had to be no different than all the other vermin she had offed in the past. Hopefully the woman would realize this too, before anything untoward occurred.

"Why do you work with a demon? It is only using you." And of course Elowen wanted to kill it as well, but remembering the flesh sculptor's words, she tried to curb that thought as best she could. "Everyone knows that their filth are never up to any good, they care nothing for the lives of people!"

Quieting a little, Elowen thought about the situation a little more. "I would stay by your side to protect you from it if you will not let me slay it." Then snorting in derision at her own words, she wondered why the woman would go to such lengths to protect something so dangerous. The woman herself was not evil, so why would she align herself with that thing to begin with? And of course, the moment it decided to take hostile action against anyone, which Elowen was certain it would eventually, biding its time for whatever, she was then going to send it off to a fiery hell where it belonged. The whole problem of not doing so right away was because of the priestess. It was only a matter of time before she would see the error of her ways, Elowen had no doubt of this simple fact.

While Elowen could not see the woman, she could definitely hear and sense her. As a ghost, she had a certain sort of 'sixth sense' that she didn't possess while in a body. And it was a strange feeling, that. But at the same time, it almost felt natural too, as even more bizarre as that sounded. Still she didn't belong in the Realm of the Dead or anywhere that gray river led to at this time. While her kind were long-lived, they weren't necessarily immortal either so death would eventually come. But it was much too soon for her own to have happened. A mistake is what it is, a cursed, vile mistake! The sun elf seethed again inwardly.

As the woman worked, Elowen continued listening to her voice to the best of her ability, also trying to get a sense of where her assistant was as well. She was going to keep aware of that thing as much as she could, for both her and the priestess's sake. It didn't seem that far away though and once again, a stern frown was present on her see-through features.

Once this were all over with, Elowen had a debt to pay. A debt to herself and all innocents, and by the gods of heaven and earth and everywhere else she would follow through on that this time and NOT die again. Those demons would get what was coming to them and she would make them suffer just like they had done to her. Sweet justice, she could almost taste it.

[Cobalt]

What a nosy elf. Zea had never in her life met a ghost so interested in anybody's affairs but its own. Even when she'd had something latched onto her personally... it had still been about him. It had always been about him, no matter what he said. Live people were no different. They just had more shame about it. Nobody had ever decided to protect Zea just for herself, and a revenge-maddened spirit was not going to butt in to be first in line.

At least they were talking. It kept a connection, and a connection made it harder to fail. Zea wouldn't lose the spirit this way, not with it so ardently engaged in the process.

She chose to ignore the continuing incessant nagging about Avery's intrinsic untrustworthiness, his inevitable lack of concern for her wellbeing. None of that was new information. He was almost certainly the same as anyone else; he just hadn't shown it yet. For once things were nice before they inevitably went to shit. It was remarkable enough for Zea. No mere mainland zealot would understand that.

"Your brain is in one piece now. Obviously has had all the blood drained out of it, but I can put it back in." Probably? Zea kept it congealed into a single great clot gummed to the back of one hand while she began accepting bone fragments from Avery and rubbing them back into the edges of the hole in the elf's skull. "And he didn't hurt any of the pieces I'm using to put your skull back to rights. You can live with a hole in it, obviously; I'm living proof of that. But I won't need to leave one. I've reassembled a cranium or two in my time, so that won't be anywhere near the hard part."

Zea blew upward, sending a stray blade of grass flying off of her cheek to drift down into the elf corpse's hair.

"There we go. See? Not even hard." Zea smoothed the skull nearly closed, leaving a tiny opening through which she sent the clotted blood snaking in. With her thumb hovering over that point of cranial ingress, she sent the blood to liquify and quickly stopped up the hole with neighboring bone. Skin was nothing. Hair was a little more fiddly, but Zea just glued the roots of the hair onto the smooth bare scalp.

"Now I need something from you. I'm not going to try and work with a ghost I can't even tack down with a name, so I need you to give it to me. Your real name. The whole thing."

Zea privately bet herself a shiny silver coin that it was at least twelve syllables. Wouldn't that just figure.

[Ethereal-Star]

Trying to ignore the aggravating sense that the priestess thought she was nosy and a zealot, Elowen continued to listen to her voice, as that seemed to be key in keeping the connection going in order to resurrect her. While the sun elf could not see her body being put back together, she knew that was what the priestess was doing and not simply because she told her so.

The Thanati woman had then asked for her name, which Elowen would gladly give if it would help things along. "My name is Elowen Red-Leaf." she told the flesh sculptor sincerely. A moment passed before the sun elf asked her the same question. "I would know the name of my rescuer as well. If she will give it."

While Elowen was anxious for this process to finish so she could return to a living state, she was not exactly impatient, but still anticipation and hope was brimming through the very core of her being, and she wondered how much longer it would take but didn't voice her question out loud. As long as she could return and live her life again, that was more than enough for her. And so Elowen waited for the woman to finish her reconstruction and everything else that would be involved.

[Cobalt]

Zea looked up from her work, more a startle reflex than out of any expectation of seeing Elowen in front of her.

"Oh! How rude. Apologies. My name is Zea Misra. Nice to meet you."

Introductions. Great. Done.

"Avery."

She looked back down at the corpse. It seemed about ready to be juiced back up again.

"I, uh." Zea sucked her teeth. "I would appreciate you scaring off any curious ghosts or demons or whatever shows up to get in the way." She grimaced down at her hands. "But I just want them kept out. I don't want them destroyed and I don't want them bound or compelled in any other way. Just the one thing, no others." She should probably look up. See what his face did. Difficult. "Can you?"

Oh well. It was Avery. He had an honest face.

[Ethereal-Star]

Well, that part was out of the way. Introductions that is. "It is nice to meet you too." Elowen added in a voice mixed with both congeniality and the sense that this all seemed rather surreal. Them giving introductions over her corpse while she talked to the priestess in spirit form. But however unreal or surreal it was, she at least could now put a name to the voice of the woman she was speaking to. "I owe you after all this is through." she finished, sighing.

And indeed she would because without Zea's help, Elowen would have had no choice but to go down the river of death onwards to the afterlife, while saying goodbye to her life altogether. It was a terrifying thought, and Elowen thanked every good god she could think of for doing her this favor and sparing her that awful fate. Because she truly had not been ready to die. It would be an eye-opener for Elowen from then on, to take more precautions from now on. While it wouldn't "cure" her recklessness, the sun elf would at least exercise a bit more caution in her future dealings.

Her second chance at life was so precious near now, and with it a newfound sense of anticipation filled her being. She would not fail this time. She couldn't. While Elowen wasn't sure what the next part would involve, she wasn't too worried about it either. She just wanted it to be over and done with as soon as possible. Then all would be right again.