Chapter 277 -13

[Recall] does not work well when mixed with alcohol. There was also a tipping point between needing the strong drink and overdoing it, one that became a tripping point Harmon stumbled over. Groaning in bed, the reflection on the night's events hurt almost as much as her body ached. Her normal refreshment and hangover cure was not working, and it still left a deep fire in her bones and a pounding headache. Like the magic, as if to say there was only so much it could do.

“Good morning! Would you like to know five surefire ways to start your day off fabulously?” The wards in the room flashed blue, and the manically sweet voice hit like a bone icepick stabbing into her skull.

“Gah! Marci, no wake-ups.” Harmony snapped at the worst thing to come out of the festivities.

She’d wanted to get away from Marci Winters. End it with prejudice when its usefulness ran out. And passing on the soulless to Bantz should have washed her bloody hands clean of the undead creation. But, no, Mr. Mayor Bell ensured that the hallucinating creation would follow her and everyone else everywhere.

“First, a healthy breakfast of grains, fruit, and meat.” Marci continued.

Harmony rolled out of bed and pressed her hand to the ground. She had no true skills for manipulating mana, outside of the ambient bits in corpses and the injured, or herself. But what she could do was mute the sounds it made. [Final Silence] flowed with [Renew Spirit] as [Mana Rotation] gave her a vision of what she needed to suppress. “Shut up!”  She was able to coat the wards with quiet, hitting the flashes of Marci as the undead sparked in a game of whack-a-gnome.

“Se-con-d-ly set-ting- goal-ack!”  Silence covered the last node able to project sound.

The blessed silence was temporary. Ricort would be the third city outside of the Broken Isles to have a legendary language source integrated for citizens to use. In this case, shoved down people's throats, whether they wanted it or not. Mayor Zeddiah Bell spent the night demonstrating how it could be used to send messages, perform simple tasks, create magical projections as decorations or art through the city’s ward system, with other functionalities yet to be explored.

Small flaws and errors were frequent enough, almost always minor. Mishapen hands on images of people. Facts that were made up. A misplaced message. Things Bell assured the crowd would be resolved as Marci learned more of the city and people’s wants and needs. For his invention could learn and adapt like the others that came before it.

The implementation had seemed to solve at least some of the initial issues. Tubed in liquid, Marci had no access to living gnomes to hatify. While she'd been boosted, the soulless still had to manage interacting with a whole city rather than the necromancer trapped in the workspace with it, meaning there would be processing lags based on what she’d designed. How could she have imagined that the dumb creature who sang of her imaginary grandchildren would be able to spread over such a large city and be useful.

“Message from Xera incoming.” Marci chimed.

“Harmony! This is amazing. I can send you a message whenever I want now. Adric no longer needs to run messages for us.”

Except Adric liked to run messages and catch one of the Chase maids for time in their closet. He wasn’t even a messenger or letter carrier, who, with one fell swoop, found their profession made useless. How will they gain experience and levels now?

People would find their paths stalled or broken; children, when they gain their choice, would now shy away from the option, or not earn the opportunity to gain it altogether. The aristocratic part of her that cared about societal changes saw the very predictable tragedies if this was allowed to continue. The survivor in her reminded her people would adapt. That didn't mean she liked it.

“Response? RE-sponse? Ra-spoons?” Marci nagged, glitching.

“Tell Xera I'll still send Adric most of the time.”  

[Could Touch] couldn’t smooth the sting of using the resource, but she could picture Xera waiting in her room for an answer. Messages were currently confined to people’s rooms, because no one wanted voices following them around all day as a public nuisance, or to have private conversations aired. The soulless apparently judged who was acceptable to send and receive messages between people until you blocked or gave permission to specific people.

The booze at the party had made her a bit more socially guarded. The normal mask of pleasant social skills failed, causing her to slip up and make a biting remark at Cezna, then stumble over to Professor Chastain and gloat unsubtly about how being the golden keyholder was wonderful. Disjointed as the memory was, now that she was past the major effects, extra embarrassment settled in. How could she act like some of the sloppy aristocratic drunks she’d served at the Coodly Manor?

“Thirdly, if you exercise…” Marci started

“Bloody Bones.” Harmony fled her room, dashing down the stairs past immortalist members excitedly chatting with the wards, as they explored the novel changes to the city of Ricort. In a very real way, Marci’s voice both chased her and barred her way ahead.  Even powered up by whatever Bantz did, the frequency of use couldn’t be good for the undead construct. Perhaps it would burn itself out or, better yet, explode.  

In the city and on the campus, Harmony found no refuge.  Marci talked students through body-type potions in Verus’s lab. “Eureka!” One cried as they succeeded under her guidance, saving themselves a failure. She caught one student using the crazy being’s advice to write a school paper.  One man used the magical projection function to map out the quickest path. It hadn’t even been a day, and they were using it to think for them!  

Inside the one quiet place she could find, the royal eraser stood over the corpse of three Tomb guards, panting at the physical effort and violence it took to carve them up.

“Do you feel better now?” Randy asked.

“Meh, meh, meh, heh.” Hyacinth chuckled from the porter’s shoulder, already knowing the answer.

“No. It will still be out there when I leave.” Harmony informed him.

“Ah, but at least no one is talking about the su-primus and her being the golden keyholder. Mayor Bell is doing you a favor. Why is this improvement bothering you anyway?” The man asked.

That’s the thing about a secret only she knew. It was hard to vent properly. Adric kind of knew, but never met the creature, because one visit to the lab he called the “hole” was enough for him. Being dead apparently made you dislike locations that could be considered a windowless and doorless tomb. Hyacinth knew, but left her to deal with problems of her own making most of the time. There was Bantz, but he was the damned fool who stole her.

Randy was charmed to keep her secrets while he dived with her; despite that, it was hard to tell him everything. Not being able to communicate certain things didn’t mean there weren’t loopholes.  How he’d gotten here so quickly was a mystery that could only be answered by the fact that he had extra ways of keeping tabs on her. The dungeon wasn’t quite abandoned while people explored the new legendary language that was Marci, but it was cursedly close.

“I’m involved with it being here.”

“Did your parents give it to the Mayor? World Elites finally showing some favor to you? Or disfavor- was this a household version that was a nursemaid to you or something?”

The bloody fool was following the false rumors around her. Probably hadn’t even figured out she was a necromancer. “Something like that. Distract me with what you know of The Tournament of Future Worthy; you promised me that and the weeks are winding down.”

The older man grunted uncomfortably and got to harvesting the corpses, as if that process would make it easier to speak. “I was unlucky and didn’t even make it through the first round. Pets, familiars, and others that end up teleported with you have their own suites and ways to support you, just not in the arena. Before my brand of failure, I had three that the tournament’s hosts whisked away, so they could judge me as the man I was— cocky and foolhardy, after being just made su-primus. They laughed as they assigned me to a group of similar competitors who needed to defy expectations. Rumor was we’d face those they called dooms, elites who needed to cut their teeth on the weakest.”

“You mentioned factions, and the dooms are one?”

“That’s my assumption. The thing is, I didn’t even see my opponent when they defeated me. Smoke filled the arena, and bam, I was down. Branded and sent away. I was level forty-nine, four full years at The Academy, having visited the prisoner’s doors with my team, and I still barely lasted a second. I don’t care if you haven’t quicked yet. I know you won’t suffer the same fate as me.”

“You know that, Randy?” Harmony stared down the broken old man. “I think you hope that.”

All of them have these false ideas about who and what she was. Her family gifted Marci? The undead was a bleeding mistake, but one she made. One she’d studied. And now that mistake saw everything and everyone in the city in a way that shouldn’t be possible. While she chewed up Oorty’s Tomb’s Guards, [Keen Investigative Awareness] picked at the problem that was bothering her. Bantz talked a good game, but Harmony carved the lines on that poor forgotten woman’s skull, mapped the spirit contract on a debtor's piece of skin,  and built the container it animated. There was no way Ms. Winters could spread so far without major changes.

Mr. Zeddiah Antna Bell had a necromancer on his payroll. The question was who, where, and why. Did she want to poke that crate of skulls? Had the person really fixed the problem she feared— that one day Marci Winters would decide every living thing would be better as a hat?

“You ready to back up, Randy, so I can take on four guards?”

“Are you sure you don’t want Hyacinth to take them? You didn’t bring your pet and his dragon this time.” Randy counseled.

“Smoke and Bam. If I’m going to keep up with that speed, I need to practice before I get to the tournament. I want you to actually know I’ll get past the faction you call dooms before then.”

The blood-red sickle shivered in her hand in anticipation of going all out. If Hyacinth and Adric wouldn’t be allowed with her, she needed to practice this as though they wouldn’t be here to save her.  Marching forward, she activated[Shadowed Graves], causing a shadow fear to spread out around her. It was time to get creative. No holding back.