Archer who has ended countless adventuring careers prematurely with their knee-shooting ways
The six of them watched a lone zombie, caught on a low-hanging tree branch and left behind by the mindless horde, flail miserably in their direction.
"Well?" Lagakh said, gesturing at it. "Go... detect magic."
"Um, no?" Lunaeris scoffed. "It'll bite me or scratch me or... something. Cut off its limbs first."
"Right, cuttin' his limbs off." Grunted Hrok as he hefted his axe.
"Please don't cut it's limbs off. This poor corpse has been desecrated enough." Said Sophia.
"Seconded. Sorry love." Agreed Kallixenia.
"Right, not cuttin' his limbs off."
"Okay, well, I don't want to get chomped, so..." Lunaeris shrugged.
Ryse silently drew her bow, and before anyone could ask what she was doing sank an arrow into both of the zombie's knees. She walked up to it and shot another two into its elbows, severely limiting its movement.
"Good enough?" She asked.
Lunaeris grimaced. "I suppose. Let's see..."
She got to work examining the zombie, giving its head a wide berth.
"Okay, remember that this isn't my area of expertise." She said, poking at it with her faintly glowing staff. "But as far as I can tell it's just your bog standard raise zombie spell underneath the modifications. Well, the one modification. I don't see anything aside from what I assume is the recursive casting, no long range command, nothing. It's just a regular zombie."
"And the impossible recursive aspect?" Sophia said, crooking an eyebrow.
"Incomprehensible. An awful tangle of triggers, timers- I'm fairly certain attempting to cast this would instantly kill me, it would drain so much mana so quickly. I don't even think it's looking for bodies before it tries to raise them, it's just casting at nothing every few seconds. I'd have to see the original spell to be sure, which altogether brings us to the next point."
Lunaeris gestured in the direction they has been heading.
"It's tethered way off over there, drawing mana from something. They didn't even try to hide it." She said, frowning.
"What does that mean?" Lagakh asked.
"I don't know yet. Nothing good."
"A trap?"
"Maybe. I don't know, it-" Lunaeris furrowed her brow as she stepped away from the zombie. "It feels unfinished."
"What's it going to do when it's finished?" Sophia asked.
"I don't know."
"How close is it to being finished?" Asked Lagakh.
"I don't know!"
"What can-"
"She doesn't know." Rumbled the paladin, protective. "I suggest we keep moving, find the answers to all your questions at the other end of that tether."
"Ugh. Lagakh grunted, getting back on her horse. "Nothing's ever fucking simple, is it? Can't just be an impossible disaster, has to be one that's going to get worse."
"Oh, it might not. Maybe it's a really nice spell that's built on making unlimited zombies forever." Ryse said, leaping onto her own steed and stretching her arms above her head. "Wouldn't that be something?"
"Oh, sure." Sophia grumbled. "Maybe once the wizard has ransacked enough graves, all the zombies will do a fun little dance."
"See, that's the spirit."
The journey was unsettlingly uneventful, the nature of the horde leaving its trail devoid of life as it swept everything it encountered into its mass.
Still, as they set up camp after the day's travel, Lagakh assigned the night's watch. Getting complacent got you killed, better to lose some sleep over nothing than to lose your life. She would take second shift with the wizard, and Ryse and the paladin would take first. She settled in for a short rest, and fell asleep almost as soon as she closed her eyes.
She awoke to Ryse batting at her shoulder.
"Shift change." She said, and Lagakh grunted and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She donned her armor almost on autopilot, going through the motions with half-lidded eyes until she finally grabbed her sword and trudged out to the campfire, where Ryse was splayed out waiting.
"Alright, I'm up, you can wake the wizard and sleep." She yawned, and Ryse just rolled over and looked at her quizzically.
"I just got up? Lunaeris wanted to switch shifts, you're with me."
Lagakh exhaled slowly through her nose, and tossed a log on the dwindling fire.
"You know, I just may have put the two of them of separate watches for a reason." She said.
"You don't want to stay up with me?" Ryse asked coyly.
"I don't want to get ambushed because the married couple can't keep their eyes off eachother."
"Oh, please. The paladin? You're more likely to slack off." Ryse said, getting off the ground in a graceful cartwheel that saw her flop back down directly in Lagakh's lap. "Besides, we're alive, aren't we?"
Lagakh made a noncommittal grunt.
"You worry too much!" Ryse chided, stretching. Lagakh stole a glimpse of her exposed midriff before looking away as the cat continued. "All business all the time, it's like you never left the army. Learn to live a little, boss! Have some fun! Like me!"
Oh, were it that simple.
Lagakh would love to have fun, preferably with Ryse, but it was... difficult to know how serious the cat was, about anything she said or did. Everything she did was couched in layers of irony and deception.
Lagakh wasn't used to this level of confusion when dating. Between orcs these things were very simple, if you liked someone you killed a large boar and loudly offered to feast upon it with them and that was it.
She had the feeling Ryse would... not appreciate that.
"Ryse?" She asked, and the feline flicked her eyes to her with an interested mrrp? "Can we... talk plainly, with eachother, about something?"
Oh gods, she felt pathetic.
Ryse sat up, giving her her full attention. "Sure." She said, blinking slowly.
"It's just..."
Oh gods.
"I, I know that you, joke around, a lot, about things-"
She was sweating, and Ryse just watched her flounder through her words.
"It, uh, I like you, quite a lot, and you act sometimes as if you like me too and I was just wondering if you were serious about that or if it was just another one of those things you do to mess with people."
Nailed it.
Ryse's eyes widened, and she just stared at her silently, her expression unreadable. Seconds ticked by, and Lagakh's blood ran cold.
"I-"
"I should watch from a different vantage point, we'll cover more area." Ryse mumbled, and Lagakh felt like she could die.
"No, listen, forget it forget I said anything-" She sputtered, as Ryse swiftly darted into the shadows, her black fur melding seamlessly into cover of night.
"Gahh. Fuck." Lagakh swore, burying her face in her hands.
