Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Adventurer who seeded colonies of termites all around the necromancer's keep last year and is coming back to see how it's looking now
The necromancer undoubtedly set up shop in the Plains of Verdaire because they're within the Treaty Territories, and covered by the Law, and the Law is an ass; because the time to smash a necromancer is always now, but the Law deems the time to be sometime after drawing up the articles to convene a committee on the applicability and impact of smashing.
Warsister Vilify-the-Wicked is here to represent the Most Holy Order of the Sisters of the Blazoned Mace, and her mission is simple: cut through the talk, get to consensus on smashing, and leave with the relevant paperwork for the Warsisters to march on the necromancer. And she is being thwarted.
The Coalition of Ecologically Integrated Soviets' Wintermoot has sent their latest Spokesperson, and she is terrible. She has very long legs and refuses to sit them properly on anything, either curled up strangely or stretched way, way out in front of her. Her hair is long and red and curly. She wears roughspun trousers and an animal hide, slung around her shoulders like a cape, fur against her skin; a single zigzag rectangle of cord lacing it togteher across her collarbones. She wears no garment underneath; Warsister Vilify-the-Wicked can see muscles and navel and something of the curves of things Warsister Vilify-the-Wicked shouldn't be seeing. And she keeps arguing, when very obviously the only thing to do is smash the necromancer, because he's a necromancer and he's amassing an undead army and that calls for smashing.
Warsister Vilify-the-Wicked has spent three entire days glaring at her across the conference tables, filled with un-nunly hate. She feels like an hourglass filled with burning treacle, a slow but heat-accelerating drip of flame pooling low within her, because she is being thwarted. And what kind of terrible person thwarts smashing necromancers? Terrible people with delicate bone earrings and long, fine hands and freckles in places Warsister Vilify-the-Wicked shouldn't be able to see, that's who.
This is exactly why all the orders of La Cattédrale revile druids.
And so day three or argument ends with everyone tired and annoyed and nobody getting what they want, despite the fact they all essentially agree that necromancers should be smashed, except the terrible druid. Vilify-the-Wicked clenches her fists, shoving her chair back, and stamps off in the direction of her allotted room.
"Warsister," a voice behind her calls down the corridor. "Excuse me — Warsister," and she halts and stiffens and turns, glowering.
"Do you think," the druid says, smiling, "that we could walk a little way in the gardens, and talk about something?"
"Have we not done enough talking in the chamber?" Vilify-the-Wicked snarls, and the druid's smile falls, leaving her looking suddenly weary, and she sighs.
"So much talking," she agrees, and for once there's no humour at all in it. "It wastes time, Warsister; if we argue less with each other, the more time we have to argue everyone else into line. I know you don't see it, but we're allies."
"You're correct," the Warsister says. "I don't see it."
"And so I'd like to speak to you." The druid's smile limps back onto her face. "Because if I can get you to see it, then tomorrow we can attack the problem together. The necromancer needs to be dealt with."
"Then why do you keep arguing—" Vilify-the-Wicked starts, louder than she means, and the druid presses a quick hand into her chest, casting a glance over her shoulder.
"I'd rather not give the impression of fighting with you in the halls," she says, and Vilify-the-Wicked chokes down any further words into the angry, flaring treacle-heat inside her. "The garden, Warsister? Please?"
"I thought we were talking," the Warsister huffs, following the druid down yet another path, the twistiest, narrowest, most overgrown one yet. They're surrounded by trees, now, and Vilify-the-Wicked isn't sure that there even are trees within the gardens of the stately house in which the talks take place; how far afield has she been led?
"I'd like to convince you of something," the druid says, over her shoulder. "I'll do some talking, but also show you something — ah, here."
The path opens into a little clearing, the grass strewn with budding spring flowers — and also, currently, scraps of rabbit fur.
The druid walks a little way, then turns to face Vilify-the-Wicked, with what little is left of a rabbit carcass at her feet. "Dead things," she says, gesturing at it. "This was taken by — probably a fox. And what the fox didn't eat, the crows have picked at. And now, if you come over here and look close, even smaller mouths; beetles and flies."
Vilify-the-Wicked doesn't take a closer look. She folds her arms. "So?"
"Sister Wicked—" the druid says.
"That is not my name!"
"I can't call you Sister Vilify." The redhead shrugs. "It makes you sound belligerent."
"I'm called Vilify-the-Wicked."
"I generally don't work my mouth so hard for women unless they like me."
The Warsister scowls. "I'm not certain I know what you mean," she says, "but I don't like being made fun of."
"I'm not—" the druid checks herself, and sighs. "No, I'm laughing a little, you're right, but not at you. La Cattédrale's orthodoxy sits uncomfortably with me, and I ease past my discomfort with laughter." She steps back over the bits of rabbit, and right up to Vilify-the-Wicked. "This," she says, and puts a finger on one of the embroidered patches sewn to the Warsister's robe, with its skull motif and numeral and acronym for a religious phrase. "This is for participation in the Woldmere campaign, against that necromancer, and I know how hard-fought that one was. I admire you, Warsister; you have great determination."
"I didnt fight in Woldmere," Vilify-the-Wicked says stiffly. "I was in supply."
"No disrespect intended, but you haven't quite the shoulders for swinging a warhammer," the druid says. "And you're here for your ability to deal with bureaucracy. And Woldmere was won on logistics."
Vilify-the-Wicked looks away; Woldmere damn near wasn't won at all.
"That's why I think you might listen to me," the druid says softly. "The Holy Order is an unparalleled warhammer; but some battlefields are more apt for the hammer than others. You could sweep onto the Plains and have at him. You would ultimately prevail. You ultimately prevailed at Woldmere; for how many dead?"
"Say what you mean," Vilify-the-Wicked snaps, not looking at her.
"The myth of the thousand-year recurring Dark Lord stems from the practise of opportunistic necromancers raising temporary armies by finding old battlefields filled with angry bones," the druid says. "To raise a self-sustaining army for a campaign, that's different. That's complex. That takes logistics. You need a supply of the dead — an ongoing one, preferably. Armies actively pitted against you will do. Corpses with flesh on them still, make for zombies; without, skeletons. There's a certain span of time when a necromancer's newly-fallen foe can be put to service as one, then another span where it can be the other. Without advanced magics, a limited working span as either, and with only one necromancer, there's only so many advanced magcis to go around. A self-sustaining army of the dead usually takes large-scale geoengineering to establish an invasive necrotrophic ecome."
"I don't understand you," the Warsister huffs.
"Establishment of a realm of the dead, in which the undead don't properly decay," the druid says patiently. "And while there are natural such realms of the dead, making one on purpose where there was none is an invading kind of nature. A deliberately created imbalance—"
"—Which is druid work to fight," Vilify-the-Wicked says, finally on a solid footing, and looks at the rabbit. "Corpses. Corpses are eaten by scavengers, and druids command animals—"
"Command," the druid says laughingly. "Crows are clever, you know, they can simply naturally learn that you're a friend who leads them to food—"
"Logistics," Vilify-the-Wicked says. "The necromancer relies on so-much service per head of zombie; if the crows pick it clean, he gets less, and has to re-raise them as skeletons sooner — do things eat bones?"
"Things eat bones!" the druid assures her. "And whatever he builds of wood, things eat that; things even burrow and weaken stone. So he's forced to rebuild often, or pour resources into building of other things, or spread his magics even further to enchant them—"
"He can't raise an army of the same size. Or not near as quick—"
"And as he's in overstretched disarray," the druid says, suddenly wolfish and not at all laughing, "just three or four of ours, who know how to go unseen. All it takes is a knife, Sister, if you can get it there quiet."
Vilify-the-Wicked takes a deep breath of clean garden air. "The Order won't like it," she says eventually.
"No," the druid agrees. "The Order's a warhammer; all it knows is swinging and glory."
The Warsister finally turns her eyes back to the redhead. "The quicker we wear the other delegates down, the quicker it begins," she says, and cracks her knuckles. "Tomorrow. Fresh at the table. Allies," and the druid beams at her.
"Thank you," she says, and takes a step within arms' reach, hops up on her toes, and plants a quick kiss on Vilify-the-Wicked's cheek. "On the morrow, Sister Wicked!" she adds gaily, and is strolling back along the path before the War-nun can react.
"Bones of old," Vilify-the-Wicked curses under her breath, not sure whether to cradle her cheek or her belly, which is suddenly full of exploding treacle.