While Afia suffers from the aftermath of her nightmares, Magpie is celebrating his success in sinking his cws even deeper into Vaza (metaphorically, of course).

  What better way is there to celebrate than grave robbing?! Now, most people would probably have devised a mile long list of things, such as eating cake or pying with pi?atas, in the time it took to read this question. (Notable outliers may include archaeologists, taxidermists, snake oil entrepreneurs, mummy powder peddlers, and medieval doctors.)

  As the Holy Imanjar of the Deity of Death, the Dead, and such things, Magpie has no fear of disturbing the rest of the corpses. If they didn’t want to fall into his Goddess’s hands, they shouldn’t have made the mistake of dying. Magpie chuckles to himself. That’s the mistake he made— being mortal, being able to die. Unfortunately, it’s a fault all of humanity shares. His shovel thumps into the wood of a casket. Satisfied, he climbs down into the hole and tosses the lid aside.

  “Well! Are you going to help haul up the goods or not?” Magpie gestures at a skeleton with scraps of flesh and leathery skin fking off. Mangy hair in greasy clumps fall off the skull as he tilts it up into a sitting position.

  “My Spirit did not command my hands to dig nor my back to bend.” Silnarion is standing at least three feet away from the edge of the grave. Cloaked in light blue, they seem to belong to the skies and the freedom it gives, rather than the heavy earthiness of the flesh with which they are surrounded.

  “Silnarion, you are the most frustrating person ever. Do you know that?” Magpie is as the scavenger bird is when feasting among the maggot ridden corpses of creatures much stronger than it. He is the personification of morbid joy, as rotten as his treasured prize.

  The simirity between living and dead is not lost on Silnarion. Their eyes are filled with pity as they whisper back, “Bold of you to assume I am a person at all.”

  “Alright, genius. What are you then?” Magpie’s words drip with sarcasm, but his eyes only ever seem to grow wider, his maw of a mouth twisted into a smile.

  “I am a vessel for my Spirit, the Holy Imanjar of Loneliness, and now, most recently, your Sect Leader, Lord of Nothing.” Silnarion throws their hands out wide, as if to embrace the nothingness over which they reign. Their light blue robes ripple and billow as if affirming the truthfulness of the master’s word.

  “It’s a lot more than nothing.” For a hint of moment, Magpie’s eyes seem to glisten with human sadness rather than avian curiosity and greed. The grain of sand falls to the bottom of the hourgss, and the moment is over.

  Silnarion’s arms are returned to their previous position, folded and csped into the form a Saint would use to pray. “I would rather not be associated with rotting corpses.”

  “They won’t be rotting corpses for much longer.” A Devil’s anger fshes in the bck marble eyes.

  Silnarion turns, exiting the garden of worms and flies and insignificant lives ended too early and yet still too te. Their voice is swept away in the wind, away from Magpie’s deaf ears. “They all are, they will always be, as too are you.”

  “Hey wait— annnnd you’re gone. Fine, I’ll do all the work.”

  Pcing his hands on the withered corpse’s ribs, Magpie speaks in a voice as intimate as a kiss, as quiet as a breeze, and as inescapable as death.

  “Death breeds more death. Life breeds more death. Member of the legion of the dead, regain the image of life in order to inflict the reality of death. Mother Death seeks your aid in reciming her lost children.”

  Sheep that flee the beautiful fields will be lead to the sughtering block just the same. The death will just be all the more violent for the struggle.

  The struggle that is currently occurring between the undead creature and the coffin is much less terrifying than expected. Instead of an angry and vengeful reanimated dead, Magpie is saddled with a zombie of toddler-level abilities. Its attempts to cmber out of the decaying wood box keep leading to failure. A monster against the natural order of the world is born, with its first evil act consisting of… upsetting a family of termites.

  Magpie sighs. At this rate, he should have carried the corpse out while it couldn’t fil about. He cmbers out of the dirt hole, brushes himself off, and grabs the arm of his new ward. “Come on, let’s go catch up to the Sect Leader before someone sees you, bones and all.”

  Silnarion leans against the railing of the cemetery, mask now in pce. It is not as if anyone here would recognize them; they had never visited the capital outskirts. Those people who could identify them even with a mask consisted of Vaza and other Imanjar who usually stayed in the more affluent Capital Core, home of the Temple of Victory and Noble Court.

  The outskirts of the capital was more commonly referred to as The Gutter. It was aptly named for it was perpetually squalid, damp, and filled with rats of both the human and animal variety. Scavengers, thieves, and quite a few Holy Imanjar had originated from this pce. Those who lived here had great hatred, jealousy, and fear for those living in the Core.

  Those that died here had their pockets emptied before being dumped unceremoniously into boxes and buried and, occasionally, dug back up. Usually, the digging was left to starving, abandoned mutts or other desperate animals. Lately, however, the digging was all due to Magpie (who is, arguably, another desperate animal). No one around here particurly cared. They just dumped the next body into the coffin Magpie unearthed to save the hassle of getting a new box or digging a new hole. In fact, some of the cemetery workers have been building up the courage to ask the mysterious visitors to just take the corpses when they were fresh to save the work of digging them up again.

  Silnarion gnces back at the gates as Magpie emerges, dragging the reanimated corpse behind him. “Come on Sect Leader and Mr. Bones, let’s go convene with the rest of the Cult.”

  “Mr. Bones?” Silnarion asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hey now, I’m allowed a few dad jokes! I’m his father figure.” Magpie states a little too proudly.

  Silnarion follows behind the newly named Mr. Bones. Shaking their head, they understand how Vaza can be so blind towards the festering evil in that chaotic man. Magpie is not devoid of love or kindness, he just is able to adopt and abandon the sentiments at will. Not unlike themself, Silnarion realizes with a pang. They grasp at their chest. They had abandoned so, so much.