Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 621: Happy to Be Dead

“The same way you’re talking, I imagine.” Argrave studied him, trying his best to act as though this situation wasn’t abnormal.

Just then, Garm started to tip over, and Argrave lunged forward to catch him. As Garm laughed maniacally, he gently lowered him down to the floor of the rocking boat.

“I feel quite useless,” Garm said with a big smile on his face. “But this body is a nicer decoration than a stake piercing the bottom of my skull where my spine ought to be.”

Argrave studied Garm’s eyes intensely. Just from their way of talking, it was impossible to mistake Garm for Durran. “Why are you here? What did you two do?”

“Why? That’s quite abstract. If I knew, I wouldn’t have written you that stupid letter. ‘I don’t care for sappy stuff, but I wish for you to know I consider you a friend.’ Bleh.” He fake-vomited. “Why did I ever think to write that? Still, did you cry?”

Argrave looked away.

“Ahhh, I can see it. You cried like a bitch. Hahahahaha!” Garm laughed happily. “I’m here because the universe decided Durran is incompetent, and he can’t do the job alone. Why else?” He paused. “The man is very angry at me for saying so, but it’s true. You see, rummaging around in his body, I’ve figured things out about our powers. Oh, yes—powers.”

Argrave was alarmed by the possibility there might yet be more yet unpacked, but said nothing to draw attention. “Such as?”

“I understand how to listen to the voices of the dead. He doesn’t,” Garm explained simply. “If you take me back to where we were, with that woman crying over him—she looked a little like you, come to think of it—I could stand upright amidst the waves of death and decay, and parse the mystery from the misery.”

“You can’t stand upright now,” Argrave pointed out, thought felt disquieted when he wondered how they might explain this to Elenore.

“I’ll get the hang of it,” Garm coped. “Mastery over death—that’s what I bring to the table. It’s my power. Mine. Durran wasn’t man enough to use it—me, though, I’ve seen deaths uncountable. I’ve taken baths in blood—which is a rather ineffective skin treatment, despite rumors to the contrary. It seems he’s made a habit of tossing away perfectly good gifts. It’s quite the wasteful thing, to bestow the grandest necromantic soul of the age upon one who nigh entirely disregards his specialty.”

Argrave had been an attentive listener, and so asked a pertinent question. “You say that’s your power. What’s Durran’s?”

“His? He would know better. Oh!” Garm looked down at his hands. “I’m moving my fingers! No, they’re not ‘your fingers,’ Durran. At worst, I can call them ‘our fingers.’”

“Have him describe it,” Argrave pressed the issue. “You saw your power, locked within. What’s his?”

Garm listened, then relayed, “He says he doesn’t yet fully know yet, but he knows that it’s useful in combat, and it’s quite powerful.”

“Well…” Argrave nodded. “Maybe there’s someone I know that can help us out with this whole dilemma.”

“Who might that be?” Garm smiled pleasantly.

“You’ve met him,” Argrave replied simply. “As a matter of fact, you struck a deal with him behind my back. Do you remember that?”

“Durran?” Garm narrowed his eyes.

“Taller,” Argrave said, and took some joy in watching Garm’s face harden.

#####

“It’s difficult to say if they could be parted,” Raven mused while examining Garm. The man stayed eerily still with extreme trepidation, not knowing just how much Raven had lightened up. Argrave was content to keep him ignorant.

“What’s difficult?” Argrave pressed for explanation.

“Garm’s soul does not exist. It was destroyed and melded with Durran’s, and that hasn’t changed. The being that inhabits his shell is a manifestation of the imprint left behind, sustained by the Fruit of Being’s ability. Therefore, it’s difficult to say if he could exist independently of Durran’s ability to witness the imprint left behind by the dead.”

“He’s wrong,” Garm said with some vim, then shrunk as Raven turned his withering gaze back toward him.

“Explain,” Raven demanded.

“I saw this power. I saw it. I know there’s a way to leave. I saw the exit.” He looked at Argrave. “Bring me a corpse.”

“A corpse?”

“Do you need an explanation?” Garm condescended. “It’s like you, but more interesting. Go fetch one. Fresh, and humanoid.”

Argrave sighed, both enraged and amused at this man’s sudden return. He contacted Elenore, asking, “Do you have any fresh, largely intact corpses?”

“What?! I thought you said you had everything under control!” She answered back, panic still lining her tone.

“I do. I just need a corpse,” he answered her.

“…wait a moment,” she said.

Argrave looked at Garm. “I ordered a corpse. Delivery driver is on the way. Estimated delivery time is thirty minutes.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Why not bring someone, have them killed?” Garm proposed.

“Because people aren’t lobsters.” Argrave glared at him. “We don’t cook with living ingredients, here.”

“Peak freshness,” Garm pointed out.

#####

Argrave looked down at the corpse that Elenore had managed to rummage up. He was rather glad to see no fresh wounds inflicted by Elenore’s agents in their haste to procure a body.

“It’s so old,” Garm complained. “Wrinkly, and sad. And what’s that smell?”

“He was a beggar. No family far as we can tell, and died in the streets less than an hour ago in Dirracha.” Argrave turned his gaze away from the old man’s rheumy, dead eyes. “I’m not going to kill some twenty-something year old for your twisted purposes.”

Garm grumbled, looking at the corpse. He gingerly raised his hand, then cast a B-rank spell. Argrave could tell at once that it was necromantic, and surely enough, the corpse shambled upward. Its eyes turned to black and gold.

“Alright.” Garm tried to stand, but stumbled a bit. Argrave caught him. “Bring me to it. Bring me,” he commanded.

“I see not much has changed for you, even with a body,” Argrave ribbed as he brought Garm over. “Still relying on others to haul you around.”

“Old habits die hard,” Garm jested without taking offence. He seemed bright and cheery, all things considered.

Once Argrave brought him near the corpse, he leaned forward and clung to it. The wizened corpse’s body resisted feebly, barely staying upright with the large body of Durran leaning against it.

“So, uhh…” Argrave looked around, not wanting to witness this strangely indecent scene of Durran clinging to some old man. “You have a plan?”

“I’m trying some things,” Garm answered back, crawling up the old man’s body. Argrave looked around again. He did not care to explain this to Elenore, and only hoped her agents weren’t watching.

“Trying to get aroused, looks like,” Argrave commented. “This is what you’re into?”

“No. I much prefer dead women. A lot less speaking and cuddling, but you can still do the fun part.” Garm continued for a few moments, then looked over with regret etched on his face. “That is a joke, I hope you realize.”

“Sure.” Argrave nodded. “A joke. You’re not a necrophiliac. I have no doubt.”

“Well, I did have a son, if you want some evidence. His mother may have been a terrible cunt, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a zombie. The dead, for all their virtues, can’t give birth. Plenty of my colleagues with zero charisma tried… I, however, was quite the looker. I had no need to rely on such methods,” Garm said distantly as he focused on the task. “Oh. Oh! I think this is it,” Garm said excitedly.

“You had a son?” Argrave asked in surprise.

“Yes. He’s the one that put me on the stake.” Garm stared into the corpse’s eyes. “I think I just…”

Both Durran and the recent-arisen zombie fell to the ground, and Argrave gaped for a moment before rushing forward. Garm blinked open his eyes—or rather, Durran did, given the fact the blackness had faded from his sclera.

“Are you there? Garm, Durran, whoever?” Argrave grabbed his face.

“Durran,” he answered, swatting away Argrave’s grip over his head. “And Garm… Garm’s voice… it’s not…”

Movement to the side drew both their attention. The beggar’s corpse was moving again, and Argrave watched cautiously. It suddenly sat up with intense vigor.

“By the gods…” the corpse said, in a tone identical to that which had been coming from Durran moments before with a different, aged voice. “This feels so much better than that idiot’s body. I feel alive! I feel whole!”

The once-sluggish corpse rose up with incredible speed, rolling its arms about. Garm laughed vigorously as he jumped from foot to foot, doing a slight dance. Argrave couldn’t help but join him in some mirth despite the morbidity of this endeavor. Then, he looked back at Durran.

“Still bothered?” he asked.

“…less so,” Durran admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s less intense, less vivid. Enough so that I can speak to you. But there’s still a lot there.”

“That’ll fade.” Garm kneeled down before Durran and Argrave. “But in order for it to do so, you need to do something for me.”

“Second life’s not enough?” Argrave asked him.

“It’ll benefit all of us.” Garm shook his head. “I need more corpses. A lot more corpses. If you want for the intensity of Durran’s experience to be lessened, I imagine I need to remove the rest of myself from his body. I won’t accept beggars, anymore. I want powerful people. High-ranking spellcasters. Perhaps we can butcher those sentinels in the Low Way?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Argrave shook his head. “Not a chance. Not only is wanton slaughter a mite morally objectionable, but creating necromantic things only presents a vulnerability when Gerechtigkeit descends.”

“Pah. Do you think anyone could break my hold over this body? I would love to see them try.”

“How would you know?” Argrave scoffed.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Garm spread his hands out. “I don’t feel undead—I feel alive, totally in control. Have you ever seen an undead being on the same level I am? If Gerechtigkeit can commandeer the undead, and this Fruit of Being chose me… it stands to reason that my ability might be one of the counters you need to defeat him.”

Argrave didn’t want to act with conviction, but what he suggested was a good enough idea that he hoped it was true. It would explain why the fruit had chosen Durran. He took a deep breath, and thought of another matter that Garm had appeared for, as if by providence.

“I can do that. Powerful corpses—you want them, you’ll get them. But you have to extract memories from a dead person, and help me with a certain matter.”

“And what might that be? Not that I’m agreeing, of course,” Garm said.

“Come on.” Argrave stood up.

#####

“This is the spot where a man called Llewellen died,” Argrave explained, standing with the risen corpse in the room where they’d retrieved the dwarven music box teaching his method of ascension.

“Mmm.” Garm looked around. “And who might this chap be?”

“Our strongest lead into discovering psychic magic,” Argrave explained. “And an invaluable source of magical knowledge that made Anneliese one of the strongest spellcasters in the world.”

“That woman?” Garm looked over. “You two sleep together yet, or did the big, strong, thoroughbred elven vampire sweep her off her feet and leave you seething and crying in the sand dunes?”

Argrave stared ahead blankly and said, “We’re married.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Argrave laughed. “I feel rather sorry for Durran.”

Garm laughed too, then knelt. “Alright. Llewellen, is it? I’ll see what I can find.”

“See what you can get,” Argrave tapped the beggar’s body. “Then, come join the research team.”

“Just get me bodies,” Garm nodded. “Good bodies. That’s all I ask. For now, at least. Oh,” he looked back. “Is there anyplace a man can have fun in your city?”

“…I suppose.” Argrave nodded. “I’ve never tried.”

“Give me a stipend, too,” Garm said. “I think I’m long overdue for some fun. And I need to figure out where the blazes I am, and what the hell I’m doing. Damn, this feels good.” He inhaled deeply through his teeth in anticipation.