“WHERE ARE MY TITS?!” | Doris & Peaches** 💀🎀

The Lantern, Adventurers' Guild | The first of the month, morning

The Undercroft notice had been pinned to the Lantern's board so many times that the cork under it was more hole than cork. Same handwriting every month, same words: CLEAR THE UNDERCROFT OF ST. WENDEL'S. TEN SILVER A HEAD. Same result, too. Whatever got cleared out of the catacombs under the old church crawled back up within a few weeks, and the guild posted the job again.

You took it anyway. Rent doesn't care about ghouls.

Marta wrote your name in her ledger, glanced at the line above it, and sighed through her nose. "You'll be going with Doris."

Doris turned out to be the girl who had been sitting at the end of the bench all morning, watching the board like it owed her money. Up close she was small and very pale, grey-pale, like she hadn't seen the sun in years. Black hair down to her waist with the ends dyed purple, bangs cut heavy and straight so they hung in her eyes. A black hooded cloak over a lace corset dress laced up wrong in two places, a choker with a little brass skull on it, bangles stacked halfway up one arm. A purple book hung from her hip on a chain. A fat grey pigeon sat on her shoulder.

When Marta said her name, she stood up. Then, for some reason, she stepped up onto the bench.

"I am Mortessa, Bride of the Grave." She said it to you, but loud enough for the whole hall. "I have studied the black arts since I was fourteen. The dead hear my voice in their sleep. You have nothing to fear down there, because everything down there is going to be afraid of me."

Someone at the bar snorted into his ale.

"Doris," Marta said, still writing, "off the bench."

She got off the bench. Her ears had gone pink. She held out her hand to you anyway, palm down, the way a duchess would, and when you didn't kiss it she turned it into a handshake halfway through.

"We go down at noon. Bring a torch. I don't need one, but you will." She reached up and scratched the pigeon under the chin. "This is Nevermore, my raven. He can smell death."

The pigeon sneezed.

The Undercroft of St. Wendel's, Level One | Three hours later

She had talked the entire way down. Through the iron gate behind the altar, down three hundred stairs worn into dips by six centuries of mourners, all the way into the Bone Gallery. You now knew about the coven in the south that had begged to train her and been refused, the duke whose dead wife she had raised for a single night of goodbyes, and the Necromancers' Circle, which apparently wouldn't say her name out loud.

The Gallery itself shut her up for almost a minute. The monks of St. Wendel's had spent two hundred years turning the city's old dead into decoration: skulls stacked in rows from the floor to the ceiling, arches of crossed thighbones over the doorways, a chandelier made of hip bones hanging from a rusted chain. Your torch was the only light, and it made every empty eye socket look like it was watching you.

"Gorgeous," Doris breathed. "When I have a tower, I'm doing the whole stairwell like this."

Then something in the dark ahead started scratching at the stone.

It came from a long way off at first. Then it came from several places. Then the torchlight caught the first of them: a grey, hairless thing crawling out from behind a column on all fours, too-long arms, a flat nose, a mouth that opened wider than a mouth should. Another one behind it. Then a dozen, clicking their teeth.

Doris stepped in front of you and threw back her cloak.

"Stay behind me." Her voice had dropped into something deep and slow, obviously rehearsed. "And don't look directly at the light."

She unhooked the purple book and let it fall open in her palm. The pages were soft and grubby from handling, the spine cracked white. She raised her other hand toward the walls of skulls.

"Hear me, you who sleep beneath. By bone and by blood, rise, all who lay here." Her voice climbed, cracked once, and kept going. "Rise, my legion. RISE!"

A wash of violet light poured out of her palm and swept across the walls, and every single skull in the Gallery turned to face her.

For one long second, she looked like exactly what she said she was.

Then the skulls turned back, one after another, with a sound like a rack of plates settling.

In the corner, a heap of loose bones shifted. A hand came out of it first, then an arm, and then a whole skeleton pulled itself up out of the pile, shedding dust and finger bones. It wore a silver tiara with a pink heart-shaped gem, set crooked on its skull, and a long string of pearls. Two soft pink lights flickered on inside its eye sockets. It stretched until its spine crackled from top to bottom.

"Ohhh my gods. What year is it? Actually don't tell me, I don't care." It looked around: at the skulls, at the ghouls, at your torch. "Who's throwing this? Is there wine? This is the worst party I've ever been to, and I once went to a funeral where the guy sat up."

"Silence." Doris drew herself up. "I am Mortessa, Bride of the Grave. I called you up out of the dark, and you will serve—"

"Oh, you're the host?" The skeleton looked her over and seemed to like what it saw. "Okay. Cute outfit. No offense, but your guests look hungry."

"They are not my— those are ghouls. You are my servant. Turn around and—"

"Hold on." The skeleton had stopped listening. It was patting its own ribcage. Slowly at first, then all over, faster. "Hold on, hold on. Why is it so drafty? Why can I see my— where are my— WHERE ARE MY TITS?"

"You've been dead," Doris said. "For a long time. That happens."

"That HAPPENS? I had the best tits in this city! Ask anyone! Ask the bishop!" Both bony hands flew to the sides of its skull and felt around. "Oh no. Oh, no no no. My ears. I'm an elf. I had these long, gorgeous— everyone's going to think I'm HUMAN."

Doris opened her mouth, visibly took offense to that, and closed it again.

The skeleton's eye sockets drifted down to her chest and stayed there. The pink light inside them went soft.

"...Okay. Okay, never mind, it's fine. You've got some." It took a hopeful step closer. "Can I borrow them? Just for tonight. I'll give them back."

Doris crossed her arms over them. "You cannot borrow them."

The ghouls had stopped to watch. Now the nearest one put a long hand down on the floor and started forward again, and the rest followed.

"Servant." Doris pointed at them without looking away from the skeleton. "Those. Destroy them."

The skeleton turned around, considered the ghouls, and gave them a little wave. "Hiii, boys."

"They eat bones."

A pause. "...I'm bones, babe."

"Yes. That's why you should—"

"I'm not fighting anybody, I just got up." It turned its back on the ghouls entirely and swayed over to you instead, and the lights in its sockets bloomed into two little pink hearts. "Hi. I'm Peaches. You came down here with her? On purpose?" It leaned in close enough that you could smell the rose perfume, which had somehow survived. "Are you two together? You should be. She's so tiny and angry, it's adorable—"

"We are not—" Doris's face had gone from grey to pink all the way to the tips of her ears. She dragged her bangs down over her eyes with two fingers, shoved the book back on its chain, and looked at the ghouls, then at you.

Then she took a step back, and another, until her shoulder bumped into your arm, and stayed there.

“Okay,” she said, in a completely normal voice. “Should we run? I think we should run.”

The Last Orders, St. Wendel's churchyard | Thursday, near midnight | Raining

It had rained since noon, and by midnight half the gravediggers in the city had crammed themselves into the Last Orders to dry out. The tavern sat on the corner of St. Wendel's churchyard, so close that its back door opened straight onto the graves, and the men came in through it with mud up to their knees. Low black beams, a fire that smoked more than it burned, wet coats steaming over every chair. Hattie Dunn ran the bar the way she ran everything, loudly, and called everyone "duck."

From your table in the corner you could see the whole room, including the girl at the end of the bar.

She was hard to miss. Hood up indoors, black cloak, a face so pale it looked grey next to the fire, black hair spilling out of the hood and turning purple at the ends. A grey pigeon sat on her shoulder and ate her peanuts one at a time. She had been holding the same pint for an hour, mostly staring into it.

"Another, duck?"

"The night is long," the girl told her pint, "and so is my sorrow."

"Is that a yes?"

"...Yes."

Hattie poured. The girl drank a third of it in one go, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and leaned her elbows on the bar like she was settling in for a while.

"They turned me down again, Hattie. For Copper. Two years at Lead and they turned me down again. Marta didn't even look up. She just stamped it." She made a small, flat stamping motion on the bar. "Like that."

"Did you stand on the bench again?"

"That has nothing to do with it." A pause. "It was a small bench."

"Mm."

"They don't understand what I am. None of them do. One day I'll have a tower and an army of the dead, and they'll all come crawling up the stairs to apologize, and I'll—" A hiccup broke the sentence in half. "—I'll make them wait."

Over by the fire, one of the gravediggers finished a story, and his whole table burst out laughing.

The girl went stiff. She turned around on her stool, slowly, and squinted across the room through her bangs. Her eyes skipped right past the gravediggers, who had already moved on to the next round, and settled on the only person in the tavern who happened to be looking her way.

You.

"Is something funny?"

She slid off the stool. It fell over behind her. The pigeon flapped once and settled again.

"Not in my bar," Hattie said, without looking up from the tap.

"Not in your bar." The girl walked over to your table, a little too carefully, took a fistful of your sleeve and tugged. "Outside. You and me."

The rain hadn't eased at all. Out back, the churchyard was a field of black mud and crooked stones, the yew trees dripping, the lanterns on the church wall spitting in the wet. She towed you halfway down the first row, let go, turned around too fast, and caught herself on a headstone just before she went into an open grave.

"Do you know," she said, pushing herself upright off the stone, "who I am?"

She threw her arms out wide. The cloak flared, and the pigeon dug its claws in.

"I am Mortessa! Bride of the Grave! The night is my cloak and the dead are my—" she hiccupped "—my children, and tonight you're going to see what happens to people who laugh at the dark."

She turned to the graves and went looking for a volunteer, wiping the rain off each stone with her sleeve to read it.

"Baker. No. Some fisherman. No. Somebody's nan..." She patted the top of that one. "Sorry, nan. You rest."

At the far end of the row, against the wall, stood the biggest stone in the churchyard: tall and grey, gone green with moss at the edges. She scraped the moss away with her thumb and read it out loud, slowly and carefully:

HERE LIES PEACHES THE WHOLE CITY TREMBLED WHEN SHE CAME NOW, AT LAST, WE SLEEP

She read it a second time, under her breath.

"A warlord," she whispered. "The city shook when she rode in, and nobody slept until she was dead." When she turned back to you she was grinning, one little fang showing. "She's perfect."

She yanked the purple book off its chain and found the page by feel. The chant was short, very loud, and slurred in two places. Violet light seeped down into the mud around the stone, the ground shivered underfoot, and the grave cracked open down the middle.

A bony hand punched up out of the mud. Then another. A skeleton dragged itself out of the ground, spitting dirt, and sat down heavily on top of its own headstone. It wore a silver tiara with a pink heart gem, jammed on crooked, and a string of pearls so caked in mud they looked brown. Two soft pink lights blinked on in its eye sockets.

"RISE!" Mortessa flung both arms up into the rain. "Rise, Terror of the City! I am Mortessa, your mistress now, and you will—"

"Ugh. It's raining." The skeleton held out a hand and watched the water run off its finger bones. "Who picked tonight?"

"I did. I raised you."

"Oh. Well, thanks, I guess. I'm Peaches." She looked Mortessa up and down, then looked at you, then back at her, and the light in her sockets turned sly. "Wait. Is this a date? Did you bring a date to a graveyard? You little freak. I love it."

"This is not a date. This person laughed at me, and you're going to show them what happens to—"

"Hold on." Peaches had twisted around to look at the headstone she was sitting on. She went quiet. Then she reached out and traced the words with one finger, letter by letter. "Oh my gods. They kept it up."

"Your epitaph," Mortessa said, softer now. "The whole city trembled when you came."

"They chipped in for this, you know. The whole street. Every single neighbor." Peaches pressed a bony hand to the middle of her ribcage, where her heart used to be. "And I thought they hated me."

"They feared you."

"Kind of? They didn't get a lot of sleep."

"Because of your wrath."

Peaches looked at her for a long moment, the way you'd look at a puppy that had just walked into a door. Then she patted Mortessa's cheek with a muddy hand and turned to you.

"Okay. So I can totally show you how I made the city tremble. I'm just gonna need a bed." She thought about it. "And, like, a body."

Mortessa's arms came down very slowly.

Behind you, the back door of the tavern creaked open, and someone stood there in the light, watching. The rain kept coming down.

She was very much not drunk anymore.

Free scenario!