Maid with Necromancy

Morning  light greeted the eight as they crawled out of the sunken labyrinth that five had been dropped into.

It was hard to call the mission a success, even when it wasn't a failure. The Ascendant Games notification made it even more pressing to find a solution to identifying impostors. She'd counted each eyelash on the temporary triplets.  Checked them with all versions of her vision.  Tried to necromantically assess the rate at which their cells were dying and being replaced.

Testing the [Claims the Remains of Power] captured [Prismatic Barrier] had Harmony inspecting Owlsley.  The skill reacted as well as any freshly harvested one.  Stamina sent the skill’s energy through a path, creating a roughly person-sized wall of shielding. "That should have been a weak point," she murmured.

​"Everything alright?" Tyler asked.

He was doing his own inspection through Jessica. She brushed her ghostly blue hand through each Kenny's. Her help in the boy's recovery during his first near-death experience might yield more information.

"I'm concerned about the reception we'll receive when we arrive with so many extra bodies. I can tell Hyacinth is anxious, a position he doesn't like to be in."

"Loap won't even answer. It was, "not hopping now!" For the last response. As busy as they are, maybe we'll be the least of their problems."

This whole trip was partially born of the self-delusion that she could, with a single wave of her hand, solve this problem when given an example to work from. Faced with the triplets, this would be more difficult than that, and dropping this new situation on the red tribe’s lap wouldn't make anyone happy, regardless of their current issues. No one liked having a pile of gnome shit dropped on their doorstep.

Staring at a mess never got it clean. While there was potential to make it worse, grinding it into the carpet,  so to speak, doing nothing wasn't a solution.  Time to get messy.

Picking one of the three at random

"Kenny, I need a sample."

"What?"

"This will hurt."  Turning her nails into claws. Harmony plunged her hand into his side.

Not even a pound of flesh. A handful, careful not to take any vital organs, but [Claims the Remains of Power] and [Manipulate Dead] were key. It wasn't just flesh she wanted, but a chunk of container and soul as well, the most complete that she could make it. [Disintegrate] helped guarantee a seam of dead flesh to excise the sample. Inside that sample, a living, yet dying piece of Kenny.

“Burning bricks that hurt!” They yelled.

It didn't give her a lot of time. The way the dead fully transformed mimics worked is that they probably solidified into whomever they copied.  Which the borrowed [prismatic barrier] demonstrated. While alive, the living copy shouldn't be so stable.

[Mend] to stop the hemorrhaging, [Renew Spirit] to extend the life of the sample. Now to get it to react.  The tip of her new sickle went into the lump.  An extension of her, the finger on the scale.

[Shadowed Graves] burst forth, just a point where the flesh was at its epicenter. Fear, the kind you couldn't ignore, where one reacts on an instinctive level.

None of the groups' detection skills alone would spot the mimic; with this new level of deception, the impostors believed they were the person, making them able to get past any interrogation.  Harmony refused to believe that there wasn't some aspect inside that would allow the multitentacled, infinitely toothed monster to come out, some fear it had, or one deep in the person it copied.  

The way these copies were built, with multiple mouths on a humanoid body that slowly morphed into a target, provided the inspiration that this might be a weak spot. Detaching one piece from the more complex whole could have less resistance.

Harmony pressed down on the scale with her inserted blade, tweaking the rippling [Shadowed Graves], turning the skill on and off to get different targeted fears. The mana cost of deactivating and reactivating the field-level skill on such a tiny point had nausea rising with each big dip in mana.

​Which fear? Not death, with the way they charged in. Not oblivion or abandonment. Options came and went as the necromancer tested. What would a…

Reaching forward at a bit of inspiration, Harmony drew from her personal memories and experiences rather than the gifts necromancy bestowed upon her.  Starving with that fear of not knowing when or if the next meal would come.

The bit of flesh sustained by magic wasn't much at that point. The sudden sharp pain across her palm, and Harmony crushed the sample, wiping her hand clean with [Manipulate Dead. On her palm, a circular bite swelled up, not unlike what you'd see from a lamprey.

Violence exploded like a pyromancer drunkenly stumbling into a fireworks factory.  It was the kind of violence born from a farce of civility, but with the deadly seriousness of built-up tension, the kind where the pressure had ached for quick release.

Tyler’s maul crashed down where Mimic-Kenny would have been if he had not moved.  Even the word moved was deceptive, as its body twisted bonelessly to the side. A flick of one of Kenny's magical darts slowed the descending mass to give the mimic extra wiggle room as it did so.

Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, with the ruse up, the other impostors acted as well.  The once captured Milo-mimic dashed to the side. A skill, trying to give him space from the original and Owlsley, whose eyes hadn't left the thing since Harmony ordered its release. The bonds she’d sealed him with easily morphed open to grab his sword.

Mimics had no problem copying solid materials like clothes and accessories, and all of Milo’s dangerous skills required a blade.  [Final Silence] slammed into that target.  With a flash of frustration, his form shifted to gain a lot more pointy teeth, acting like defensive spines out of his body, and even his blade opened up to become a half-metal and half-mouth extension of his arm.

That was all the help Harmony could spare the pair as she turned her attention to the now two rampaging Kenny's just as one of their darts hit her between the eyes.

Damn it stung, but it was still non-lethal. Kenny’s skills made up for that in utility, speed, and repeatability. As mouths with many rows of teeth formed on the Mimic who'd attacked her forearms, it seems like he'd solved the lethal issue with a whole new set of ways to kill.

A second dart traveled her way. Harmony moved left to dodge, but her body moved right instead, allowing it to hit the center of her chest. That first one had been a mirroring curse. Obvious in hindsight, only when you had time to think. But time to think was something they all had a precious little amount of

Tyler and Jessica were taking on the other Mimic-Kenny.

That left this one to her and... Kenny, the one not turned into a horrible monster. He'd fallen to the side, apparently shocked by the violence, and was still getting to his feet. ​

Not that she spared him more than a glance to assess his position and usefulness.

The second dart's effect was a slow localized to her center mass, causing her heartbeat and breathing to be labored. The mirror effect was a bit more annoying.

[Style and Grace] worked with [Poise and Bearing]  to control her movements, flipping them appropriately, though not without mental strain.

That allowed her to dodge darts three and four. Hungry teeth were coming, and whatever clumsiness Kenny had was lost with these mimics new forms, even if they kept the stolen skills.  Always adapting.

Not trusting throwing [High Kick] into the already complicated  physical mix, [Cold Touch] met the incoming teeth. It didn't change the sharpness but locked away the flexible way a mimic could move, making them stiff and brittle. Stepping in, [Small Armor] forcibly blocked the attempted bite. Teeth shattered, and Harmony [Manipulate Dead] sent the detached pieces back into the maws they came from.

The damage was light, but it forced the abomination back for some breathing room, which, with her chest slowed, came out with a wheeze.

Another dart came in fast. Moving to dodge, the mirrored effect ended bringing her back in line with the attack. This one hit and shoved her backwards.  Cursed luck continued as two steps back to readjust her balance, Harmony’s foot hit a patch of ground slick with blood, and she found herself slipping into a fall. The slowing of her chest ended, making her heart race at its sudden recovery and flushing her system with stamina and a punch of blood.

Chronostais flipped on to buy time to recover as Harmony made her way to the ground. This was Kenny’s newest ability earned during the Games, forcing luck turned wrong. Her first taste of experiencing it. More of a twist on messing with her timing than actually making things less random with a favor toward unfortunate events.

Twisting as she fell, she hit the ground with a hard, awkward roll, scraping  herself in the process but avoiding two more darts.

The Kenny , who wasn’t looking like a twisted gooey monster managed to enter the fray. Two darts missed, and one hit the thing's right arm. Bands of energy whipped about, tying its jaws shut.

One less mouth to deal with.

As if to prove it wasn’t lacking its chest split open at the sternum, the rips turned into a row of teeth and intestines into a barbed, snaking tongue.

The unstabilizing of Kenny’s form had it lose a couple of inconsequential skills as it reverted away from the form it had previously committed to. To do that, the body had to go to war with itself.

An opening that Harmony fully planned to use. On her hands and knees, she used [High Kick] to propel her straight into those jaws. [Renew Spirit] mixed with [Recall] to force that creature's body back into the lie it was telling itself that it really was Kenny.  A physical existential crisis, as Kenny’s chest and guts struggled, reverting to that “real” state, which made the mouth an actual evisceration rather than what it wanted to be as it stiffened, bled, and went limp. Her sickle carved into that space, [Disintegrate] dancing along its edge to make it a tool of unmaking rather than merely sharp, allowing it to part bone and flesh with equal ease.  This completed the damage the mimic had caused to itself, allowing it to fall into quarters on the ground.

Kenny, watching this, threw up.

Tyler had his opponent pinned to the ground, teeth trying and failing to swallow his stone maul as Jessica burned any tentacles that tried to lash out while the man twisted and ground it to paste.

Milo and Owlsley had numerous cuts and scratches and were breathing hard as they stood over their target. Even silenced, it had clearly been a rough fight.

Kenny sat up and wiped his mouth clean with his arm. “We got them. You figured it out.”

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