You snap awake.
Cultists, fucking cultists. Occult vermin. You expect a few to go running whenever you start kicking rocks over; they're not usually brave enough to try anything on with a real arcane talent.
You hadn't seriously considered for a moment that a spate of dead wizards was a cult thing. Else you'd have been more careful; left Monica behind, for a start.
You lever yourself up on your elbows. The sickening crack of the lead pipe across the back of your head was the last thing you were conscious for; if they've hurt her in the meantime—
Your eyes aren't working right. You gingerly grope for the back of your head.
You've had worse, but it's not great. Shattered shards rattle around in the base of your skull as you move. They must have had a real fucking shock; you carefully put your hand in the back of your empty head, where they smashed it open like a dust-filled eggshell, feel around the rough-textured back of your face until you locate where one of your mother of pearl-and-malachite eyeballs has popped loose, and lever it firmly back into its socket with a satisfying billiard-ball clack.
If you had a mirror, you'd be able to see the glamours that soften the lines of your face smear it back to lifelike.
You blink a couple of times at the dark, and then—
"Ah," you say rustily, looking into the corner of whatever shitty impromptu cell they've stuffed you into while you were inert. You and Monica, who seems unhurt, except that she's been shut into a dark room with an imitation person she's previously thought of as human and her friend, who's she's watched have its head bashed in, then lie there lifelessly for probably hours, then abruptly stick its hand in the back of its entirely hollow skull.
She looks extremely fucking freaked.
She's a necromancer. The way you not-even-died but were suddenly visible as never-actually-alive, followed after hours by the instantaneous reassertion of the enchantments that fake it, is probably upsetting her even worse than if you were real and had been murdered in front of her.
You cradle the back of your skull, to prevent the fragments from falling out; it'll repair itself quicker if you glue as much as possible back into place, but you'll probably need to take it easy for a week or two.
Fuck.
