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21 — Corpse Garden
🕑 Added 2025-06-18 12:01:21 +0000 UTCAfternoon light leaked into the decaying tavern, and Rennia shielded her eyes from the sunrays blasting through holes in the rooftop. She stood in fresh clothing, clad in some dead adventurer's gambeson. Ishmere had assured her that ownership issues were no longer a problem, nor would it smell since someone had stored it away for years ago. It did, however, smell of dust and old wood.
She sheathed her sword in the belt around her waist. While she lacked a shield, she had improvised by taking an old black metal pot as a makeshift one. It was a dumb idea in retrospect, but she didn't have much choice or reason not to. Cloth armor made her uncomfortable.
Ishmere watched her, arms folded, hovering off the floor. Her ethereal form appeared practically solid at the moment—less hovering cloud, more stern and angry woman. While she wasn't naked, her semi-erect cock was hard to ignore. Rennia found her sexual mania absolutely disgusting, and to add to her disgust, Ishmere circled her like an impatient cat.
"Well, are you going to get a move on or what? I see zero reason for all this effort. Just run into the cave where I hid it. Get it out, come back, and then we do the ritual."
Rennia stared at her, frowning. "You said nothing about a damn cave. You just said it was north of here, in the forest out there, and you think I'm supposed to go unarmed?"
The ghost shrugged. "Of course not, my dear Rennia. But you have no skill with a shield, much less a pot lid. My body should be light as a feather. You might not need the lid at all. Just go find body and run back."
"What happens if I fail to find your body? What then?"
"I guess I'll just revert into a sex-crazed specter, start forgetting my name until I can leech off the energy of some wandering beasts. Maybe I'll lose hope, sever the connection to my body, turn into something foul, weep and haunt an unhelpful brat whose name starts with R."
Rennia bit her lips. "Well, just point me in the right direction. Don't waste time speaking in diatribes. Are you aware that giant rats have settled into the local area? They're living under your tavern."
"Rats! No. Really? That might be bad for customer perception. No matter, we'll deal with this when I get the chance."
Rennia shuddered at the thought of dealing with the hairy oversized rodents. She'd seen what happened when you let an infestation grow. A year of unwarranted negligence, and you could have several rat kings chewing on unsuspecting victims. Best to deal with them as soon as possible.
Rennia turned to the door, and just as she prepared to leave, she caught Ishmere stroking herself. Penis rock hard. Not seductively either. She was moving away from Rennia, hovering off the ground, shamelessly doing that.
She seemed to have less control than Rennia herself, what could Rennia possibly learn from her.
She can't be doing that. No, that was going to be a severe problem.
"Don't do that," Rennia shouted.
"What?"
"Stop stroking. This is supposed to be a public lobby. What if you do this when you have your body back? You want to run a tavern. What if you stroke in public?"
"I'm falling apart, Rennia." Her voice cracked. "There's no one here but you. Clinging to old desires keeps me awake."
Rennia's face heated up, but she swore up and down that this needed to be addressed. "Well, stop that. It's distracting. I can't help but look. Don't do that when I get back."
Ishmere did stop the stroking, but then started mock crying instead. Rennia watched the spirit climb into a round table and stick her head through it, weeping about bygone days.
Rennia shook her head, then stared at the wall. A tab stuck to a ledger displayed names printed for nights unpaid and unaddressed. She wondered if these were the names of the cadavers in the room. She wondered if that was why the ghost was crying. Perhaps she had companionship with each and everyone of them.
She shrugged it off and stepped out the doorway.
The trail into the woods was narrow, almost overgrown. A clear path used to exist here, but Rennia could see the remnants: little bits of the path, almost too clear. Cobblestone and chipped-off wooden bits of a sign. It posed danger for a lost traveler, probably even her. The density of the trees would kill an inexperienced person overnight—and she meant without the intervention of monster.
It triggered a traumatic memory for Rennia. It had happened when she was kindling learner. She had gotten ahead of herself and cocky too. She and Lyanna had gone foraging for Maelstorm flowers at the backside of Kibblestadt, where the trees grew dense and the forest seemed to whisper to naughty idiots brats such as them. Typically, teachers instructed them to mark their direction so they could remember the way they came—almost every quarter mile, a significant and observable mark. She had forgotten to do that. One thing led to another, and someone had found her starving on the ground at 3 in the morning. She guessed it was telling in a way. Her excursions with friends to dungeons, tundras, and open steppes had been great, but forests seemed like her bane.
She put the memory out of her head. Let bygones be bygones. She couldn't make the same mistake. She had taken the effort to carve the numbers 1, 2, 3 into trees. Although she could see the tavern from here, she didn't want to deal with being lost.
The trees wept thick sap that smelled like old sweetened honey. Birds chirped in rhythm. But she had seen no sign of any immediate large animal or little wild goblin men. The cave was supposed to be no more than another half mile ahead.
The forest had an uncanny aspect. It wasn't quiet—no, and that threw her off. No prowling monster or predator lurked in the vicinity, just nothing. She pushed through thick underbrush and then stopped.
In front of her stood a rock-like structure, likely a natural formation. It was hollow from the outside; not much sunlight penetrated inside, but she could see just fine. That had to be the cave, though it wasn't much of one.
She walked forward, stepping on something. A branch. It snapped. She stared down at the weirdly spaced grass. Something big had moved here, something about the size from her feet to her chest. Couldn't be a deer. No, too many prints existed. More likely a crowd of warthogs or something. But it looked like it had carried something.
She followed the tracks into the cave, half cringing at what she was doing. Certainly a death sentence. She moved deeper, slowly taking a step into the dark interior. A skeleton lay against the wall, half of its bones missing and its jaw mostly dislocated. Another, goblin-sized, with a very big club next to it, lay lifeless, its skeletal hand reaching out for the weapon.
She stepped deeper.
A bear. Or some kind of wendigo. That was reason enough to retreat. Anything that hunted sentients posed a severe threat, a threat that any party might struggle with. Yet she was curious and confident that she needed to get it over with.
Turning into another chamber past the damp tunnel of the cave, she stopped cold.
There, mid-air, hung a body frozen in place, eyes wide open, half floating and stuck between webbing. It was Ishmere's physical body. Bare and seemingly still full of life. It breathed in and out, but no light shone in her eyes. Rennia's was suprised at the appearance, it seemed very much like a construct or a doll. And the more smaller tits did catch eye, so did the penis. It was a work of art.
She snapped out of it.
Rennia looked around. A giant spider must have kept her here near the corpse. Most were nocturnal or stayed internal. It didn't seem to be around.
She made haste. She started cutting at the webbing, making sure to start with the highest points, forcing the webbing to sag and let the body drop. Rennia grimaced as the body floated to the ground. Cutting through the last parts of the webbing, she didn't waste time on moral and ethical thoughts and picked Ishmere up from the ground. The corpse twitched but didn't respond any more than that. The body was lightweight, like someone had drained all the weight from her, but it showed no sign of malnourishment. She was perfectly healthy.
How was that possible.
Rennia put her on her back, tied her resting arms around her shoulder. Since changing and morphing, Rennia's new physique had proven physically helpful, though that just made her more self-conscious. If her body was pushing her into being the thicker, stronger [warrior], why didn't Ishmere look like that?
Her [Sixth sense] alerted her. It also leveled up, but the living system could wait.
[Sixth Sense lvl 2] > [Sixth Sense lvl 3]
Then she heard movement behind her.
A spider stood there. Massive, almost the size of Tiamael's horse. Pale white, like Ishmere's hair. Its limbs were segmented, twitching and slamming on the ground. It clicked at her, spat on the ground. Venom burned where she had stood a moment ago, and then it went still, watching her.
It turned to her and to where Ishmere's corpse had been.
Rennia the pot lid on the ground grabbed her sword in her left hand and ran like hell.
