Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-A-Villain — Villain who is collecting ingredients for bone soup
"The thing they don't tell you about necromancy," the Butcher of Red Oast says genially, "is that necromancy isn't really a thing. Not one thing, that is."
She's shorter than Gavelle expected. Rounder. The word necromancer comes sort of cloaked in an expectation of sharp cheekbones and angularity. Tallness. Gauntness. Pointiness. Not a...cuddly middle-aged armful.
This is absolutely no excuse for the way Gav's currently tied to the hitching-post with her own rope, but assuming she lives through this, may form part of her shamefaced explanations.
"I understand the commonality to be dead things," Gav says, as stoically as she can manage.
"Well, not even," the Butcher says. "Not really. I mean, take bones."
"I'd rather leave them," Gav says, and the Butcher throws her head back and laughs.
"Since when do they turn your sort out with a sense of humour?" she says delightedly. "Consider bones. Would you say they're within the purview of a wretch like me?"
"Somehow," Gav says, "I don't think wretch is your own word for yourself."
"And yet kinder than the one you probably have in mind." The necromancer's smile dims a little. "Humour me."
Her life is entirely within the woman's hands. "Skeletons," she allows. "Seems necromantic enough."
"What if some wicked sort were to animate the skeleton right inside some unfortunate's flesh? Have it fight its way out of its former fleshly garment?"
"This is sounding like the kind of trick question they love at Turris Et," Gav says. "But suppose I give you the fool-falling-in-a-trap answer you're looking for: evil skeleton. Necromancy for sure."
"But bones are alive," the Butcher says, obligingly smug. "Just as much as your flesh, and they die along with it."
"I'll take your word for it," Gav says.
The Butcher hesitates. "I don't suppose," she says, lingering over the words, "that you'd care to tell me the story of a bounty killer's familiarity with the pedagogic foibles of the Turris Eternum?"
"Would you believe me if I said it's truly nothing personal that I don't care to?"
The necromancer looks at her for a little while, then huffs a little sigh. "Lass," she says, in a resigned sort of way, "if I could trust you in the slightest to leave, I'd cut you loose. But you're not the kind to simply take your life as a gift and be thankful and go, you'd be all honour-bound and heroic and we'd have to fight and, truly, I've no need to see your entrails." She gestures at the man bound hand and foot, some distance away, laying on the ground. Unconscious, by the seems; another bounty killer, from the look. "This one, in ways I don't care to go into, has wronged me."
"You're the bloodiest, most notorious necromancer in living memory," Gav says steadily. "For all I know, you're mortally offended by nothing more than the continued breathing of we mere flesh fodder."
"Look me in the eye and tell me you think that," the Butcher says, with a core of cold metal to it, and Gav dares enough to meet her gaze, but not enough to say a word while she does it. "No, my brave and merry brigand, that one's known to me, and I to him, of old; it's personal. And he pursues me as you do, but not from duty. I forgive you your pursuit, lass, for I know it's duty you answer, much as it makes us opposed. But that one—"
She falls silent, brow darkened.
"I'm afraid," she says after a pause, "you won't think any better of me for what I'm about to do."
"Oh?" Gav says, with a brave nonchalance she wishes she actually felt.
"Eating things is the oldest magic," the necromancer says. "Absorbing them. Making them a part of you. If someone made a soup of your marrow, and they ate it—"
"Sympathetic link," Gav blurts, horrified, mind sparking over the possibilities. "But — why, and how, what link could you need to someone already gone, someone you ate—"
"I don't mean to kill him," the necromancer says simply. "Just thwart his pursuit of me. And so you see, there's a double purpose: if I raise just a few bones to wriggle out of his flesh, and leave his legs limp, that should slow him quite a deal; and then if I make a bone soup from them, I can bind an awareness of him to me, that he can never surprise me again—"
Gav yanks at her bonds. "No," she says forcefully. "No. You cannot possibly force me to bear witness to your monstrosity—"
"I can't turn you loose," the Butcher says, with horrible sympathy. "Lass, I can blindfold you, and make the soup over a fire outside, but...."
"Why would you do this." Gav wrestles at the professionally inescapable tie on her arms. "Why would you make me see this — I was almost feeling sympathy for you—"
"I could have let you," the Butcher says. "Kept him quiet a while. Played on your feelings. Maybe in a while, let you loose after all, let you walk away, and you'd have done it. Would you prefer that?"
"Not now," Gav snaps. She gradually forces herself to be still, not to rip her wrists raw struggling. To save her energy.
"I do terrible things," the necromancer says quietly, and squats in front of Gav and her tight lips and averted eyeline. "I try not to lie about that. I have my reasons, which clearly I believe in, but I do...terrible things. Worse than this, lass." She pauses. "Do you want the blindfold?"
Yes. "No," Gav says, stomach already clenching queasily. Raise his bones to wriggle out of his flesh, she hears in her mind, over and over. Raise his bones to wriggle—
"There's that duty again," the Butcher sighs. "Promise to tell me if you change your mind, at least."
Gav stares at her, then, jaw clenched; and finally, curtly, nods.
The necromancer nods back to her, stands, and walks slowly across to the prone man. "You see?" she mutters, sounding more to herself than Gav. "Living bones; primitive sympathy. Necromancy; really no such discipline."