Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Sword for hire with a "Do not resurrect" clause in their contract
"Khari," the wizard says as they're laying out their bedrolls and sorting out the night's watch rotation, "could you give me a hand with...my grimoire, for a minute? There's a tricky translation from the Old High Vorrmannic...."
She gives him a deeply sceptical look, and trundles over to where he's clutching a thick leather-bound book.
"Is that seriously your best excuse?" she mutters. "Ooh, please, Miss Cleric, come over here in privacy away from the light of the fire and read my book to me? They already think we're playing hide-the-stave because of your ridiculous little huddles, you silly bastard."
"It's important."
"Yes, yes, it's always important, with you. Ooh, I've got the collywobbles, I don't like the atmosphere, it's dreadfully urgent."
"Seems the newbie's quite taken with you after the fight earlier."
"Pfah." She scratches her neck. "So he's fresh off the turnip barrow. Give it five minutes and a barmaid with some cleavage out, he won't remember my name."
"It's not that," the wizard says. "Although. You do remember the last time a sellsword got too keen on you? But it's not that. You know he's from Blenchwold?"
"I don't remember any of their heartwarming hometown tales from down on Bumfuck Farm, no."
"Blenchwold. Hot flaming shit, woman, comparative theology? Blenchwold is Continuitite country."
"Oh. Ohhhhhhh." She pauses. "Mate, I'm a priestess of the Dun Bitch. I can't even remember whose fucking heretics the Continuitites are—"
"They believe in an ineffable soul, separate from but colocated with and spiritually ennobling the living body," the wizard says pointedly. "And they believe—"
"Oh yeah, they're the 'teleport spells make you an evil zombie' nutters!"
"A living but ruined and soulless natomy, yes. So — and this is important — when you say you got everyone back on their feet after the fight, and it was fine because he was 'only out for a few minutes'—"
"Ohhhhh. If he'd, like, if I'd used the blessings of the Dun Bitch to shove his life back in him—"
"His religion would count him as a soulless monstrosity now, yes."
"And he might snap, like a nutter, and murder us all in the night."
"That's a concern," the wizard agrees.
"Good job that didn't happen, then, eh?" Khari says, giving the biggest, shiftiest grin imaginable.