Chapter 98: Chapter 85 – A Dish best served Cold

"To date, all the experiments we did to volunteers amongst the Unliving that had sought refuge in Ptolodecca had been limited in nature, for not even grandpa Aarin would have sought to truly endanger them.

 

Having an Unliving subject that was also our enemy on the other hand, handily removed that limitation, and the moment I saw that decapitated head move again, I actually felt pity for him. At least until I found out he was the one responsible for most of our woes of late." - Diary of Aideen Fiachna, the First Unliving, circa 68 VA.

After the initial ruckus and slight panic over the reanimated head, the situation soon fell under control, as they realized that the head was unable to actually cast magic, or even speak, and it just looked around with evident panic on its expression, as well as obvious pain.

 

Maebh recognized the head as the necromancer she herself took down on the wall earlier that day, the one who had injured her badly in the process, and just to be safe, they restrained the dead bodies in the room so even if the head managed to work its necromancy it wouldn't do a thing.

 

By then the noncombatants had reached La Fiachna, and while Akeshia helped the Templars reassure the people, the attached operative from the Death's Hand went straight to where Aideen and Maebh was, and shortly after, confirmed that the reanimated head did indeed belong to Flesh Artisan Ascendant Beragonys, the reported leader of the Antemeian force.

 

So it was with an extra decapitated head and body in tow that Aideen and Diarmuid returned to Tohrmutgent along with the majority of the Ptolodeccan force. They kept the head and the body secured, trussed and bound, in separate carriages, with soldiers constantly on guard, just in case.

 

The precaution taken proved to be excessive in the end, as the unliving Beragonys failed to cause them any noteworthy trouble during the journey back to Tohrmutgent. The expedition returned to a celebration of triumph, and their leaders headed straight to the Palace of Bones to report their success in person.

 

When they arrived at the throne room, they found the Bone Lord awaiting their presence. The leaders of the expedition were soon dismissed after their reports and some praise, leaving Aideen, Mimia, and Diarmuid's whole family with the Bone Lord.

 

Grandpa Aarin asked them about their experiences in a more intimate tone, and they recited their story. He was especially interested when he heard about how they brought back an unliving enemy with them, and muttered that it would give him a subject to try things he had been loath to do to people under his protection.

 

Both the Junoran captives and Beragonys were soon brought to the Bone Lord's dungeon, where Myrddin was in charge of interrogating the conscious Junoran. The comatose man on the other hand, was placed under observation, with Ariadne - a middle aged woman by now - and Mimia regularly visiting to see if they could discern anything from his condition, since they were the earliest, and by now most experienced, soulweavers around.

 

The Bone Lord handled Beragonys personally, and Aideen was asked to help, which she did. She soon found that she was mostly needed to fix the damage done by the "experiments", many of which caused her to pale, and she was glad that grandpa Aarin was kind enough to not have done this to someone who wasn't his enemy.

 

It was not torment done for cruelty however, as they actually discerned many new insights on unliving physiology from the results, many of which Aideen and some volunteers confirmed using their own bodies even.

Among other things they learned, was that even should the corporeal form of an unliving be utterly destroyed, their bodies would eventually regenerate over time, right where they were last located, or wherever their remains were.

 

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When they tested it, reducing Beragonys to ashes resulted in his "revival" wherever the larger portion of his ashes were after approximately a week. On the other hand, utterly annihilating his corporeal body took a week longer before visible bits regenerated out of thin air within his prison.

 

What benefited Aideen the most was the realization that her corporeal body was literally disposable in every sense of the word, and she often trained to do things without the senses she was used to. Sensing things through her soul was a difficult task to get used to, and it took her years before she finally showed progress, and managed to do things even with her five senses magically sealed.

 

Over a few more years, she honed that sense to the point that she could navigate and fight entirely relying on it. Mimia amusingly also took to learning it, and did so at a much faster pace, probably because her magic was already attuned to the soul as it was.

 

In the end, the comatose Junoran they brought back never regained consciousness before he perished from natural causes. Their observation mostly determined that Mimia's instinctive lashing against the man's detached soul, split and outside the protection of his corporeal body, had somehow irreparably damaged it.

 

Normally magic wouldn't work well on things inside another person's body, as their mana would innately reject the foreign mana. The Junoran's soul had been outside his body when it happened, however, and thus lacked that innate protection.

 

From the other Junoran they received confirmation that there were a few more of them that had escaped the fall of their nation and sought refuge in Antemeia since, but not that many. He sadly offered little more of value otherwise.

 

On the other hand, Beragonys proved to be a treasure trove of knowledge as the Bone Lord's research became more and more creative and specific as the years passed, and his greatest contribution, was to offer them one last boon of knowledge in the end.

 

Gallus Beragonys proved that an unliving could actually die.

 

He had naturally suffered greatly over the years of experiments, but his newfound immortality had given him hope at first. That hope turned to despair with time, to the point that he wished for death instead to relieve him of the torment he was subjected to.

 

In the end, the Bone Lord theorized that he must have wanted to die badly enough that his soul dispersed, and died a true death in the end. It was a mere hypothesis, since none of the unliving were keen to test or prove it themselves.

 

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