Maid with Necromancy

“Sorry, Pet.” Harmony grabbed the end of the arrow and shoved it half an inch deeper. It wasn’t only a physical shove; Harmony pushed the point deeper into his soul. Adric’s material was uniquely strong against chaos as it had been inoculated against the effects of that energy by maintaining Saccerate’s cage in his body. The arrow sat positioned nearly at the spirit's prison.

Saccerate was nearly skeletal, but the necromancer couldn’t let it have the power yet. “I need you to swear an oath to be mine and Maxwell's,” Harmony demanded with the authority of death.

It was so weak that Harmony could read the spirit’s emotions through her bond with Adric. It was a ridiculous question, because who would trust an oath of a spirit known for lying, cheating, stealing, using other people’s bodies, souls, and skills? As desperate as the spirit was, it was searching for a catch other than the trust of a naive necromancer. Authority and even necromantic energies were manageable. There was no oath skill in her to be bound with. Silly maid.

“I, Saccerate, swear my immortal soul to serve and work towards the greatness of Lady White and Agent Maxwell.” The cage flinched with fear as the words of the chaos spirit echoed in the prison she’d been bound in.

Harmony put the true fear into that stolen piece of Max’s soul container as she shoved the arrow in. The same technique she used to reveal the mimics with borrowed bits of a person’s self. The soul and life that had been part of Max stared into the darkness of [Shadowed Graves] and reactively grasped at its nature. It was in the name. Max was singularly sworn, and oaths were baked into his evolved existence. As that fear gripped and lashed Saccerate’s words of promise into her presence, chaos flooded the space to revitalize her lifeforce. Not that the cage would do now that greater chains bound the spirit, so Harmony dismantled it with [Manipulate Dead], [Renew Spirit], and [Disintegrate], working together to dissolve the bars, letting that power join the energy stolen back from The Arrow of Many Things. This spirit would be free to move, possess, and live up to its oath. The spirit was too busy screaming to do any of those things, or to confirm that this part of the plan would work.

Maxwell was too scarred where the cage had been removed. It was never going to go back in the old way without the risk of both spirit and man having a final death. Pulling out the arrow, Harmony let her fingers reach into the wound with [Claim the Remains of Power] and yank the foreign entity out of her pet prince while using [Mend] to seal him back up.

This wasn’t too different from fixing that spirit in the deadlands, except this one burned in her fingers and wasn’t quite a skill. She still needed a place to put it in Maxwell’s soul.  Many bonds were paired with skills, and one needed to be revitalized.  Harmony shoved Saccerate and all the missing chaos energy into the [Chaos Seed]; the dried roots that had branched out from the skill pulsed back to life. Maxwell started screaming to match Saccerate.

The unfathomable energy fought this new intrusion and, even silenced, the chain circlet burst into action, sending threads deeper into the agent to counteract it.

“No, you don’t,” Harmony growled and tried to yank the ring off Princess Rose's head. It jerked the girl's neck severely but remained attached to her head. Luckily, she’d used some restraint, or she might have ripped the new Heir’s head from her body, and then what would the kingdom think?

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Jenny cried, carrying her slug Horatio under her arm, late to the party. “That bit of armor is attached to her body. Hooks or wires into her skull. Let me help.” She dropped her slug onto the princess's head. “Get to work.”

Horatio blew bubbles at that. The smell of burning hair started to rise.

“She’ll lose her hair, of course. But I need to soften the links for removal. Since our little deal, I’ve been putting thought into how to solve this problem when you mentioned the circlet. You owe me a good dismemberment, right at the shoulder, in the future.”

“The silence will be ending soon. She has a command skill.”

“The smith waved her hand absentmindedly. Don’t worry about that.” Touching the princess, the girl stiffened and stilled.

“How did you? And how did you know I’d need to remove this?”

“Forgemaster is my profession, but my evolved class is cursebreaker. Can’t have patients fight you while you’re breaking curses; there are some restrictions on the skill, but we have more time now. As for the circlet, it’s metal.  I watched all the bonded metal items in the competitions; that thing never budged a bit. It had to be fused to her head somehow.”

“This counts as a curse?” Harmony asked.

“Not enough for most of my skills, but it will be a pleasure to watch a professional eraser work.”

Max convulsed as Adric pinned him down. Pink started to seep in through the roots of his hair. Saccerate was fighting the influence, good because Harm only had so many hands. “Scoot a smidge,” Harmony ordered Hyacinth.

With a wiggle, the shadow toad moved just enough to get Hargreaves' head out from under his large toady ass.  The head slowly reformed back to its normal shape from the flattened melon it had become.

“What are you doing, White? You were supposed to save Rose. I don’t know why I put any faith in you!” The servant demanded coldly.

There it was. Rather than answer him. Harmony reached inside the undead servant's container. Those who were once living would always be easier to see, touch, and work on. They also had the additional benefit of having resistance to actions that would kill the living. Layers of unfathomable astral energy flickered in the servant, built into commands ordered by the princess. With his seals, he didn’t have enough power to fight the influence or Harmony. [Claim the Remains of Power] worked with claws of attuned energy crafted from a blend of [Renew Spirit] and [Manipulate Dead].  “This might pinch a little.” The talons dug in, gripping the astral energy, and [Claim] allowed her to yank it back.

Hargreaves howled.

Reasonable since she was pulling out one of the layers of his undead soul and not  only the foreign influence inside of it. As explained by Pappi, a soul was made up of many aspects on different frequencies of reality; the majority of an undeads was protoplasmic but had layers of Astral, paired, and other energies blended in.  The hooks weren’t subtle enough to grab only what was the foreign influence, so she was taking the ancient undead’s piece as well. It was the start of getting a feel of it.

[Claim] gave it a more manipulatable structure, the way she’d pluck out skills like they were gems she could place in that empty spot inside of herself.  It felt like writhing invisible tentacles trying to both squirm out of her fingers or dig into her body. Hargreaves' astral energy was still there as a placid sheet underneath the unfathomable, only noticeable because of the practice she’d done on Milo’s bonded spirit. Separating the two with her off hand using [Style and Grace] to add dexterity to snatch it away, she shoved the good part back into the servant.

[Disintegrate] erased the squirming mess.

Even under Jenny’s calming effect and her slug working on the iron circlet, the bonded item sent new threads of energy shot back into Hargreaves, the same way it was biting into Max. But with the majority of the old influence gone, it had to work to regain ground. Now it was splitting attention.  

Muthu had warned about how it would reassert dominance unless it was all removed at once from all of the people strongly under the unfathomable’s control.

Hagreaves' anger faded. “Thanks. You can let me go now.” He answered roughly.

Harmony rolled her eyes. “Just sit pretty. This is going to get rough.”

“I’m better now. It would be best if you let me serve Princess Rosaline.”

“You can serve her with your flat ass under Hyacinth’s warty behind.”

With a jerk of her head, she had Hyacinth go back to silencing the man. She had what she needed from him. There was no time for distraction.

Horatio’s secretions removed all of Rose’s hair until he sat on her now bald head. The princess would be pissed about that; she’d always seemed to care about her appearance. No time to feel guilt.

“How much more time do we need?” Harmony asked Jenny.

"Shouldn't be too long, let me show you the power of soul metal.” The small blade she’d crafted out of the metal recovered from the instinctive fear reaction on pieces of her body was no bigger than a scalpel. In her hand, it merged into her body, soul, and container. scootting her slug to make the links visible, Jenny carefully cut through the ends connecting a link, freeing one from the chain.  “You’ll need to brace her head as you pull one out. We’ll need to do this one piece at a time.”

Following that guidance, Harmony held her head secure as she grabbed the bit of chain. When pulling gently didn’t work, she put some muscle into it. It came out with a splurt of blood and the two-inch spike that had anchored it into Rose’s brain.  

Tyler winced at the sight. The big guy could sometimes be a big squeamish.

Harmony used [Mend] to seal the wound.

The threads of unfathomable astral energy worming into Hargreaves and Maxwell pulled back a little at that. “We have to do this for each one?”

“This will only remove the physical apparatus. You’ll need to deal with the bonds inside of her, otherwise it will only be half done. Not too different from removing cursed items.” Jenny advised. As she cut another link.

Harmony's hand shook as she approached the next one. That wasn’t her. With a beat of [Eternal Fable’s Heart], she swallowed a bit of fate, only to get a bit of true sight, tangling everyone up in threads of fate, except Tyler and Jessica, whose natural fire burnt it away.

“Jessica, I need you to light us all up and sink into Rose’s soul the way you worked on Kenny, if possible.“

The spirit winked and set the area ablaze in blue fire that caught everything that wasn’t people on fire. The picnic blanket went up, as did Max’s new pants and Rose’s entire outfit, turning to ash on their bodies, leaving them naked. As the fires died out, Jessica slipped inside Rose, the princess’s body squirming at the additional intrusion but not waking yet.

Free of those strings of fate. Harmony removed the next link, ripping it out and using [Mend] to make sure the princess didn’t bleed out from a head wound.

The unfathomable energy wasn’t happy with this step-by-step removal. Pappi’s crash course in spiritually related medical procedures was key in monitoring what was going on. Even with only two removed, Rose’s heart fluttered erratically, and her body heat spiked only to be brought down as Jessica drained the excess heat into herself before it got dangerously hot.

The level of planning that went into this had already gone off the rails several times. The biggest problem was now to crack into the princess’s soul and past its natural defenses to get to the bonds that needed to be removed. Bringing the princess to the brink of death was an option, but problematic for many reasons.  Rose wasn't coming out of this unscarred.  But having an unfathomable whispering into her ear had already twisted the princess's personality one suggestion at a time, twisting her memories against herself.  That was the real danger, Pappi insisted.

Four more links and Jenny reapplied her medical sleep to the princess. Blood covered Rose’s eyebrowless face, making the scene look quite gruesome.  Horatio switched from softening to healing slime for additional stabilization. Max and Hargreaves weren’t much better as they struggled against the intrusions. What Harmony needed was two more of herself.  With a flask of the healing water to quench her throat, she grinded on, splitting attention among the three patients.

The math wasn’t mathing. Too much work to do, even with assistance from Jessica and Jenny. One link left, and there was more work to do after removing the last bit of chain.

Harmony pulled out the last link, twisting Rose's head to the side to get the one at the very back of it.

A dam broke. The three patients roared to life. Rose’s backhand caught Harmony by surprise, sending her tumbling off her.

Hyacinth was similarly tossed to the side, the giant toad flying like he was a ball, “Groooooooooak!”  he cried, his  croak fading into the distance.

The much smaller undead servant rose up from where he’d lain flattened. His hands quickly adjusted his uniform to Bate’s like perfection.

“Bleeding women!” Maxwell roared at the same time, his naked body twisting under Adric until he tossed the man aside and stood up. His pale skin now flushed, and beard having regained its color, now had little red leaves decorating it like they were growing off vines rather than hair.  “You’ll Pay!” He yelled.

Tyler moved to restrain him, only hesitating when his glare was clearly solely on the now focused on the Princess, who was getting up, and with a sneer forcefully ejected Jessica from her body. The flaming spirit looked exhausted from all the effort she’d put in until this point  

“Don’t complain you agreed to this, Lover. You just need to come back to your senses.” Rose snapped back at the former knight.

Harmony rolled to her feet, sluggish from the hit, and raced toward Hargreaves. Tossing her familiar hadn’t been a friendly act. He hadn’t been faring as well against the astral energy as the Max with his support from Saccerate, and Harmony’s attention had mostly been on Rose.

“As Heir Rosaline’s servant I [Ev…]”

Harmony slapped [Final Silence] on the spirit, interrupting the skill he’d used way back in The Deadwoods to stop an ambush that nearly finished them.

Several centuries of undead Ire turned its attention toward the Maid. It only had that level of skills if Rosline broke her seals. Not quite a worst-case scenario, but close.

Maxwell squeezed his head with both hands and screamed. “Enough! My oaths are clear!”

“You can’t choose her over me. With our engagement, you’re fated to marry ME! You’re now sworn to ME!” Rose screamed back.  

Max’s seals shattered. Harmony found her perspective split as the part of her connected to him was summoned to his side. Night fully covered this pink-haired copy of Harmony in tiny black scales lit up by bioluminescent pink lights along her contours.  With its new diet, the flat, skin-tight surface had disappeared, making it almost a full suit of proper armor.

The rage at the pain in her Agent of Chaos swirled in that copy, with an even crisper picture of the damage done to his soul and mind by the unfathomable influence.

The new her solidified her plans as the original triggered chronostasis in the face of Rose’s charging undead servant. Losing wasn’t an option.

Break Seals? After 100 seconds, you will be removed from the Ascendant Games if broken. Yes/No?

Absofuckinglutely.

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