4

Survival step one: Determine the number. 650115. A little over a hundred souls in that ruin, then. Some wouldn’t call it even a dent in the grand scheme of things, but little numbers also added up.

Survival step two: Location. Easier this time… She had been here before. Many times. With a city as large as the capital Kindu, there was a history of death. Souls bubbling up from the metaphorical below had fruitful ground here. Yet she hadn’t been teleported there in a while.

Every time she appeared in Kindu, people died. They called her The Elusive Witch in other parts of the world, but The Messenger of Death in the capital. The church took care of random undead appearances, so when the spell deemed it suitable for Tallulah to make an entrance, it was already a deadly situation.

Still… couldn’t forget survival step three: Crash first, seek undead later.

Tallulah looked around the attic she had appeared in. It was large, with a high ceiling. The window also confirmed she was high above a city street, but it was night, so she couldn’t make out much more. Night, huh? So the last location was further west, since it had still been light. She pulled out the map and made an educated guess about her last location based on those facts and Huldrych’s name.

Huldrych, huh? She wouldn’t have to worry about him eating her snacks in the bag, but why did his soul cling to life that much?

She was tempted to pull the skull out and interrogate him, but she thought better of it. What did it matter? It would only serve to make her sentimental. Make him harder to purify.

Connections were once everything to her. Now they were just nails that dug into her skin and hurt when they were ripped out. The people she had saved through her bargain were dying of old age in some remote part of the continent. She couldn’t even visit them, with her contract partner teleporting her about wherever she was needed to collect souls.

No, it was the one place she could never even go again, since the very land around her family was pure now—too pure for any undead to even come close. She would never be needed there again.

Better to forget they ever existed.

At least Kindu was full of snacks. Desserts. Even chocolate—cultivated in the royal greenhouses. These things were a poor excuse for the human suffering and rejection she experienced every time she ended up in the city, but they were the only joy she had left. Besides, the spells pulled a lot of energy out of her. If she wasn’t constantly eating, her body grew even slimmer than it already was.

The attic was full of cupboards and shelves, stacked with boxes and other storage. She found a chest full of clothes, which made a comfortable cradle.

“Better than the castle…” she whispered and fell into a deep sleep.

—

For once, Tallulah wasn’t woken by force. No teleporting, no undead, no talking skulls. Of course there were many times she had woken up naturally during her decades of travel, but the bad times stuck more easily in her memory.

She sat up and breathed in the stale air of the attic, watching the dustmotes dance in the sunbeams filtering in through warped windowglass.

There was a definite absence of what she was usually teleported to a location for: Screams of terror about an undead invasion. Especially with so many people in the capital city, she expected a panic. There was nothing.

Huh.

As always, the markings on her hand were no help. They couldn’t even talk. Only make her life difficult. Tallulah sighed.

Time to investigate.

She picked through the clothes in the attic until she found some that fit her and didn’t stand out too much. It was a bit of an outdated style, but it wasn’t unusual to wear something older. Personal expression was valued quite highly in Kindu, especially among the higher class people, through whose clothes she was searching. Who else had the money to stash away so many things and forget about them?

With her red dress packed safely into her bag, Tallulah was ready to brave the streets. She had chosen a beige day dress with light blue accents, just as a young lady would wear on a stroll through the city. Her hair was curled up on her head, half hidden beneath a wide sun hat. It was still summer in Kindu, and the hat hid her face quite well—not that she would expect anyone to recognise her without her signature clothes, jumping across the rooftops.

“No hints this time?” she asked the markings. “You know I’m doing this for you.”

Her hand moved on its own, reaching into her bag, returning with a pencil. She walked towards one of the cupboards and the hand wrote out “UNDERGROUND” on the wooden side of the furniture.

“Much obliged.”

—

The streets weren’t busy during noon, owing to the strong sunshine and hot air caught between the houses. Tallulah jumped down from the attic window and merged with the few people out and about despite the daytime heat.

It had become more extraordinary to her to walk the city as a normal person. Kindu was the capital of the southern continent, bordering the ocean. Tradehub, melting pot, at the center of the global south. Out here, humans, elves and even beastkin lived in relative harmony. Monsters had been vastly eradicated. The only real threats in this world were wars between the tribes. And the undead, of course. Everyone was still scrambling to find the head of the undead army.

Tallulah knew their resurgence wasn’t targeted. It was a whim of the universe, a natural weakening of the barrier between the living and the dead. It happened sometimes, but never as long as this time.

She glanced at the hands she had hidden inside long, silken gloves. The marking of her bargain and the number of her contract. She was like a person doomed to walk along the edge of the ocean, pushing back the fish that jumped out of the water and destroyed their surroundings by flopping around in panic.

No, that wasn’t completely true. They didn’t jump out on purpose. They fell out by accident.

The city of Kindu was made up of several districts, and Tallulah found herself inside the middle class residential area. The buildings were tall and close, but the streets were paved and clean. Built from the local stone mines, everything was so dark, it was almost black, making the trees and flowers planted along the streets stand out even more. Colorful murals were painted on the walls, and…

Well, that wasn’t important right now. Tallulah had been to this area many times, and down the street was her favourite cafe. With the aftertaste of the souls still lingering in her mouth, there was nothing she wanted more than stock up on treats.

Treats never let her down.