Chapter 28: Chapter 23- Dealing with the Law

For better or for worse, laws in cities around the Vast Dust are very broad. For example, even in a strength-based city like Green Oasis murder is illegal. But that begs the question: what is murder? Is it the cessation of all functions of living? Is it the removal of the soul from the body? Is it the (hypothetical) destruction of the soul?

Most cities work off of the definition that murder is the process of stopping a person from living as they were born, grew, and became through Traits. The only city with a different definition is Gribnik, who’s definition is all of the above, except nobles are incapable of murder.

-Excerpt from ‘Interpreting Law,’ By Grivas Fulkan

 

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Witla, along with his comrades in the Guard Corp, stood stunned at the sight of the battle before them. They had expected some sort of active gunfight, some sort of continuous combat. Instead, they arrived to find a gang of thugs, mostly dead, surrendering to bullet-ridden, stab-filled undead. To top the whole affair off, a lich was overseeing the mess as it stood on the front bow of a skiff. 

Witla and his comrades, along with the hunters who had followed them, surrounded the site, trying to ensure that the lich understood that it was pointless to attack them. The lich, talking with someone behind it, did nothing to react. As they approached, the zombies turned and stared at them, seemingly wary. They seemed ready to attack, some of them ready to pounce, when the lich shouted from the bow of the ship, “Calm down!” she said to them, “They’re the guards; don’t attack them.” The zombies, receiving the command, backed down. They stood away from the survivors, handing them over to the guards, but kept their weapons on them. 

Slightly unnerved, Wilta took a deep breath and led four other guards to the lich’s skiff. They ascended the gangplank, wary of every creak and moan from the metal. Wilta expected decor that screamed ‘Necromancer’ —some hanging bodies, a skull motif, maybe even a talking severed head on a pike that screamed at every living thing that passed it— but what he found was not what he expected. It was far worse. 

While the skiff itself was normal, if a bit bare, the seven undead monsters that looked like a child tried to imagine what the child of a mantis and a dragon would be more than intimidated the guards. In spite of the obviously dangerous undead mulling about, their pride stopped them from getting help and they marched up to the lich with as much confidence as they could muster. Wilta, being the most sociable and, more importantly, actually coherent to those not versed in orcish common, was the one who would speak to the people in question. As he walked up to the woman and lich, they turned around, waiting for him. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he was finally able to speak to them, “Good evenin’...” he said, unsure of what else to say, “We were called over to deal with a gunfight and uh… well we need to know what happened.”

The woman smiled while the lich laughed, “We get it,” the lich said, “I knocked out the one leading them. She’s over there.” She pointed at a lizardman woman, a chunk of her leg burned out and unconscious. 

Witla reluctantly nodded, “I… I see. We’ll take care of it, but we’ll have to confine you to the city and have a guard accompany you until this whole thing can be sorted out. Is that fine?” he asked, almost fearfully.

The woman nodded, “Of course. We already rented a mod dock from the quartermaster, Olga, that should be ready tomorrow. Do you mind if we move our skiff there by then?”

Witla secretly sighed in relief, using every ounce of his willpower along with [Emotive Control] to keep it from showing on his face, “Of course. For now, I’ll have to send a runner to get someone to accompany you. Now then… Do either of you happen to have a necromancer’s license?” he asked.

Both of them shook their heads, “We got here today, you know,” the lich said, “Besides, Admiral Yutrad asked the same thing and said that I’m in a grey zone.”

Witla looked at the lich, from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head, and could guess why a lich not having a necromancer’s license could be a grey zone, “I… Yeah, that makes sense. Though, even if you did… you can’t raise anyone who isn’t an outlaw or has signed a waiver. I can waive the issue in this case, because it was in self defense, but please do not raid a hospital or a morgue,” he asked, feeling a bit more confident in dealing with the calm, almost personable lich. 

The lich in question sighed, “Yeah… I wasn’t planning on it, but I’ll keep that in mind-” Just then, some sort of chimeric monstrosity burst through the door of the cabin. It was as if some sort of humanoid monster was haphazardly jammed into the body of a Clockwork. The creature screeched and twitched, stumbling forward to kneel before the lich. The lich, seeing it, sighed and leaned into its ‘ear.’ The creature fell over with a clatter of metal on metal, dead. She turned to them and Witla could have sworn that her eyes were glaring into their souls, “Sorry about that. This is a project I am trying to perfect, but… I have to study something a bit more. Just… ignore it, alright?” she asked, quickly ordering the mantis-dragon monsters to carry it back into the hold of the skiff. 

Witla watched the monsters carrying the chimeric undead and was suddenly thankful for  his choice of [Emotional Limit] as his third Trait, or else he would be freaking out. “Well… don’t worry about it. I don’t think it was a citizen, so… I guess you can do whatever you want to it. Just… I don’t even know, just don’t do that to people and it’ll be fine. Anyway, I’m going to send a runner to the guard post and the one who’ll be watching you can take it from there…” he said, not even waiting for a response before marching away and down to the docks. His comrades followed him quickly, “I need a drink,” he said quietly as a young man and woman rushed past him.

 

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Norta huffed and puffed as she followed her younger brother Mokan through the city. She had an inkling that he had been hanging around the wrong types of people, but the fact that he was bringing her to what sounded and looked like an active war zone was the smoking gun to the mystery. They weaved their way through the busy night time streets of the city, doing everything in their power to dodge the heavy foot traffic by ducking into alleys and side streets. Just as they reached the outskirts of the city, near the docks, the gunfire ceased. Mokan did not seem to mind it, as he ran up one of the grand staircases and onto the docks proper. 

As she caught up to her brother, he darted off, going closer to where the gunfire was before. After yet more running, they finally reached wherever Mokan was bringing her. As it turned out, she was entirely right in calling their destination a war zone; bodies littered the ground, bullet holes were spread out across everything around them, and undead wandered, seemingly ignoring the guards. Mokan, and thus Norta, rushed past a few guards and boarded a skiff. 

The scene on the skiff’s deck was not very noteworthy were it not for the mantis-lizard monsters wandering around. Norta jumped back, nearly falling off the skiff, but steadied herself with Mokan’s help. As she stood, she turned a boring glare at him, “What the hell have you been doing!?” she whispered furiously, “Last I knew, you were just picking pockets, but now you’re strolling onto a necromancer’s skiff like you own the place! What’s the matter with you!?” 

Just then, she heard a chipper, but nonetheless husky, voice called out, “Mokan! You’re finally here!” Norta turned, ready to tell off whatever scoundrel was being so familiar with her brother, only to have her words catch in her throat. Instead of an old woman, an effeminate man, or anything else, she saw a lich approaching them. She could tell it was a lich; after all liches are the only undead that have a crystalized soul. While no expert in undead, she knew that liches were dangerous, chaotic at best and actively genocidal at worst. 

She was clueless as to why her brother brought her there, but, to her surprise, he stood up and waved. Someone sighed and she finally noticed the human woman, physically identical to a level 0 adult, standing next to the lich. She gave a sad smile as she looked at them, “Sorry, but the show’s over. Those thugs are gone, Mokan. Either dead or imprisoned,” the woman said.

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Mokan gave a big grin, but he could not hide the glint of sadness from her sister’s eyes. The lich walked over and gave Mokan a pat on the shoulder, “So, where do we go from here?” she asked. Mokan’s face twisted in confusion as the lich spoke, “Ah, sorry about that, miss. I can get ahead of myself sometimes. You can call me Mori. You?”

Norta was caught off guard by the lich’s question and she stumbled in her speech, “I-I u-uhh -I’m Norta. Um… what happened?” she asked. 

The lich, Mori, put a finger, wrapped in a metallic gauntlet, on her chin, “Hmm… well, your brother used to work with that gang of thugs over there, but then Fara beat them up by shooting them with ice bullets. I really need to learn how those work. Anyway, she beat them up, and told him to show her the way to the quartermaster and then did something —I don’t know what because I was making undead and-”

“He asked us,” the woman, Fara, said, cutting Mori off, “to help protect him and you from the aforementioned gang. They were threatening him to help them by threatening you, so we were going to take you in. Mori’s the one who did the whole ‘talking with him’ bit, so I don’t know what they talked about specifically,” she succinctly explained. 

Norta nodded along with the explanation, but confusion flashed across her face when Fara mentioned ‘talking.’ She turned to Mori, “What do you mean by ‘talking?’”

“Ah, that’s-” she caught herself and coughed an airy cough, “That’s something I can’t tell you about. Maybe another time. Anyway, as I was saying. What’s next?”

Norta, not wanting to intrude on the business of a lich, went along with her subject change, “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Agreed, what do you mean?”  Fara asked, “I was under the impression that we were going to take them in to protect them, but now that it’s all said and done with, they’re free to do as they please. Is there something I’m missing?”

Mori shrugged, “I dunno. I just thought that they could join us,” she offered.

Fara raised a quizzical brow, “You want them, two strangers who we just met, to join us on our little adventures? I vote no.”

Mori’s eye-flames rippled, “Why? I mean, the way you put it, it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but you know how my power works. I think it’s a good idea,” she replied.

Fara gave a flat stare, “Look,” she said, “Even if you trust them, I don’t. How about we compromise?” 

Mori, reluctantly, nodded, “Fine… They can stay with us while we’re in Green Oasis and help with your ship remodeling. How’s that?” she asked. Fara took a moment, but nodded nonetheless. Norta had the impression that the lich would smile if she could, “But,” she said, “They both have to agree with the plan.” Mori turned to her, “So, do you want to live with us for a while?” she asked, “Mokan is already on board, so you’re the one who decides.”

She narrowed her eyes at the lich, glancing between her brother and the lich, “Does he really?” she asked. Mokan gave a resounding nod, looking at her with puppy dog eyes right after. They both knew it was her weakness, and she could not say no when he did it. With a groan, she nodded, “Fine, I’m in. So, where do we start, boss?”

Mori’s eye-flames flickered, “Great! This way!” she said as she walked into the cabin. Norta shared a glance with her brother and followed her in. Inside, a relatively large dining hall awaited them, with a few lines of tables going up and down the room. Most of them were empty, but a few things, like two hilja bug shells, a book on basic mana types, and a blood slime were on the tables. Mori led them down to the next floor, which was a common room. In a hallway from the room, Mori opened a door and showed them inside. It was a barrack with relatively comfortable beds and footlockers at the foot of the beds, “Alright, normally I would try to give you some better rooms, but this skiff was a pirate skiff before we got our hands on it, so there aren’t any other bedrooms apart from Fara’s. I’ll ask Fara to make some more bedrooms for you guys when we remodel the skiff. Anyway, I’m sure you two want to get some shut-eye so I’ll leave you alone. G’night!” she said as she closed the door behind her. 

For a long moment, neither of them moved, but Norta slowly turned to Mokan, “What the hell have you gotten us into…?” she asked. Mokan had the decency to look guilty, but the expression melted Norta’s heart, “Alright, alright, I get it. I know you did this to help me, but I am strong enough to help you too. Just… remember to stay safe when you’re dealing with dangerous people, alright?” Mokan nodded, meeting her warm, affectionate gaze, “Good. I’m going to sleep  —Two Creators know I need it. You should get some rest too; we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” Mokan nodded, choosing a bed in the far corner of the room while she chose the closest one. She barely had the time to think about her little shack in the cranney between buildings before she fell asleep.

 

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Mori stood on the deck of the Kharon, leaning over the railing and looking out on the battle site with Fara, when an orc in light, leather armor walked up the gangplank and onto the skiff. They turned to him, but he did not flinch away from their gaze like the other guards did. He walked up to them and leaned on the railing next to them, “Good evening, ladies,” he said, “So I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you.”

They nodded, “Seems that way,” Fara agreed, “I don’t think we’ll be able to get you a bed until tomorrow, though. Our guests are in the only barrack with any and we don’t want to wake them up,” she explained.

The orc snorted, “How kind of you. Anyway, I’ve already looked at your files. According to it, you two slew almost every Sand Scale, broke a full-strength attack on your skiff, and indirectly caused a major legal debate in the Green Blood Hall,” he laughed, “I think we’ll get along just fine!”

“I remember the first two,” Mori said, “but what did we do to cause the last one?”

“Existing, skelly,” he laughed, “There’s some sort of apparent clause in the Necromancy Regulation Statute of 301 that states that the law only applies to mortals. There’s some sort of debate going on about whether or not a lich is a mortal, so congratulations on that!” he laughed, “Anyway, I already know your names, Mori Athanatos for skelly and Fara Notchings for miss mechanic, so I may as well introduce myself,” he said, bowing dramatically, “Zubov Rilig, at your service.”

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