Meetings Good and Bad 2

It hadn't taken any explaining, actually. Not yet, anyway.

She'd laboriously dragged his body over the hill, and let it roll down. It had soon rested against his former sword, and Tanya had needed to rest for an hour.

Relatively refreshed by her quick rest, she had blown a hole in the side of the hill and buried both there, Hopefully, neither would be noticed until she could figure out what to do with them. Axel had a pauper's cemetery, apparently.

She might have to make an anonymous… donation.

She'd gotten back to the guild in record time, after that, and received her reward for the quest.

Luna had mocked her for looking so beat up after her earlier confidence, and Tanya had agreed with her. Let her think Squirrels had done so much damage to her.

The reward had been less than expected, after the costs of transporting their bodies and the trees she'd destroyed with her Explosive Vaporization had caused. She hadn't complained, though.

Sighing, Tanya made to head out, when she glanced at the board. Requests filled it, taking up every inch of space.

"Hey Luna," Tanya said, calling to the receptionist. "Why are there so many quests?"

Eternal smile ever-present, Luna launched into an explanation. "The Eris Thanksgiving Festival is coming up soon, so the number of quests to make sure it goes well have skyrocketed recently."

Tanya sighed. She'd have to take one. None of them had a party limit, since large groups of Adventurers were going, so they'd be good experience for as long as she didn't have a party.

Working to help glorify some lying existence irked her, but money was money, and since the Blacksmith was likely to be enjoying the festival, it was unlikely she could just work there for however long it took.

Grumbling, Tanya left the Guild. She had a body to take care of.

-OxOxO-

A quick stop at the general store, where she'd purchased a nondescript burlap sack and a shovel – how she had forgotten to get that useful tool, she'd never figure out – and Tanya had taken to the hills, stripping the body of its modern clothes and placing it in the bag.

Reinforcement spells had been used liberally, to ensure she could carry the thing. He may not have looked like it, but the kid was heavy.

A few hours of dragging the body around the city of Axel and deciding to take the long route to ensure she wasn't interrupted had passed, and Tanya was there, wishing she had a flashlight to explore the place she'd found.

It was the pauper's cemetery, where everyone who wasn't rich or who hadn't saved up enough was buried. People could come back as many types of undead, depending on how powerful they were in life and if they had any lasting grudges, so they usually had rights performed for them so that didn't happen.

If you were poor, however, you got put on a list, which meant your body could become an undead while the Priests performed the rights for those who paid and the long list of everyone else.

This meant that no one would notice a single unmarked grave, and Tanya would have been fine just digging a shallow grave, dumping the bag inside, and calling it a day.

That had been her plan.

Tanya snarled as she looked at the figure in the graveyard. Why didn't any of her plans ever go well?

She couldn't see them clearly, but she could make out their silhouette just fine. They were tall and were wearing some sort of long garment, which could have been anything from a dress to a trench coat.

She should have done more research. No one was supposed to be here, so why was this person?

Suddenly, the entire cemetery began to glow. Tanya, laying on the ground and peering over a particularly large mound of dirt, saw that they were at the edge of some sort of magic circle. Several silhouettes stood around them, standing guard.

They were speaking. Not loud enough for Tanya to make out the words, but just loud enough to be able to distinguish it from the relative absence of noise in the rest of the graveyard.

Tanya tilted her head. Were they sending off souls to their next life, praying all the while?

Tanya grinned. An opportunity, then. She'd just bury the body underneath someone else's grave, and they wouldn't notice them at all. Any lingering pieces of their soul would be sent onwards, and Tanya wouldn't have to worry about the body rising again and causing trouble.

She looked around for a grave that looked freshly dug. She found one, soon enough. No one here could even afford a gravestone, but she could tell well enough from the upturned Earth. Perfect.

Digging as fast as she could and still not fast enough, Tanya wished that she'd had more practice digging trenches with the rest of the infantrymen. It would have helped.

Soon, she'd displaced the old body, dug down another couple feet, and threw in the bag with the body in it. Tanya couldn't hear much of that person's speaking anymore, which meant she was probably finishing.

Just as the crunch of feet over dead leaves and gravel reached her ears, Tanya finished, ducking behind the largest mound of dirt within leaping distance. Sweat, accumulated from her work, continued to build on her forehead, but no sounds of alarm were raised.

Tanya breathed a sigh of relief, dropping her shovel. Then, something grabbed her shoulder and threw her over the tombstone.

A yelp of surprise escaped her throat, but that was all. Tanya pushed her attacker away and grabbed her shovel, brandishing it steadily.

The attacker's rotting face greeted her. Tanya ducked its swing, and made to slash it.

Hair ruffled by the passing spell, Tanya could only watch warily as the undead was torn to pieces. She whirled around, towards the spells source.

The bewildered face of a beautiful woman meet Tanya's eyes. Tanya took a moment to take her in, never lowering her shovel and slowly moving her hand to her blade's sheath.

Tanya licked her lips as she gazed at her. A cloak squeezed the figure of the woman, her gorgeous body almost hidden by the thing. Brown hair drifted down passed her shoulders, and the woman's pale skin glowed, even with the limited light provided by the half-full moon and stars.

"Are you alright?" the woman asked, Tanya nodded hesitantly. This must have been the person who'd been muttering by the graves.

Her guards were nowhere to be seen, however. Tanya lowered her shovel, but didn't dare drop it. Things could get messy if they wanted to quiet her, for whatever reason.

"Yeah. Thanks, by the way," Tanya replied. The woman lowered her hands towards her sides, likely in an attempt to put her at ease.

"Were you helping their souls?" Tanya asked.

The woman nodded hesitantly. "Y- Yes. The people here didn't have the money for a proper burial, so they can't move on. Eris cultists don't often come here, since they focus on people who pay them. So I-"

Tanya waved her hand. "It's no problem."

A silence stretched on, and Tanya shrugged, finally. "Well, I think I'll be heading back. It seems like you've got everything covered here," Tanya said as she turned away, hoping the woman wouldn't inquire as to her reason for being there.

"Wait a second. Why are you here?" the woman asked, and Tanya's shoulders lurched.

She spun back around. "Well…" Tanya trailed off, trying to think of an excuse.

It was best to weave in a kernel of truth, right? "I don't have a party, so I thought I'd patrol the graveyard for undead and try to level up that way," she supplied.

The woman nodded, and began to talk, nervously casting her gaze about. "Um… it really isn't recommended that you do that. Undead can start to swarm if they think they'll have a chance at killing, and panic and fear can wake them."

"Plus, Priests can easily level up using undead, since even healing magic is effective against the undead, who have gone against the Gods' will. The guild used to ask that adventurers leave them for new Priests…" she trailed off, tapping the tips of her fingers together and looking at Tanya apologetically.

"Oh…" Tanya said, attempting to sound sorry for having made a mistake while filing away the important information. She felt an odd kinship with beings who had defied the so-called gods, even if they had to die before they could do it effectively.

Feeling it would be prudent to introduce herself – the woman, if she could help the undead and use the magic Tanya had seen, was at least magically powerful – Tanya held out her hand. "Tanya von Degurechaff. Adventurer."

Wiz tilted her head, muttering something that included the word 'noble,' until she shook her head and holding out her own hand and smiling. "I'm Wiz. I run a magic items shop."

Tanya perked up. "Can you give me directions?"

The woman, seemingly overjoyed, forgot how suspicious the circumstances were and the odd fact that she was carrying a shovel and gave her the directions. Tanya made to leave. Hopefully, no one would discover that body for a nice, long while.

She sighed as she left the graveyard. That had been close. She wouldn't be able to use this place as a hiding spot for long, either.

Wiz could get suspicious. Maybe there was a lake she could just throw bodies and equipment into…

-OxOxO-

Tanya sat at one of the tables in the Guild, enjoying her breakfast of porridge. She'd visit the Blacksmith today, and get that attachment to her scepter made, at least.

Using her Seitengewehr as a sword wasn't horrible, but she'd been trained to use blades as an extension of her gun. Clipping it onto a scepter would be similar, right?

As she ate, the sound of the room washed over her. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was eating in the mess hall of her days-in-training, where she'd learned to be the ideal soldier.

Dust sat in a corner, drunk as usual. Others, from newbies who'd just started to veterans who really should have moved on, ate, conversed, and enjoyed themselves.

And Tanya sat close to the counter, wishing she could go on better quests and hoping for a teammate.

"I happened to see your recruitment poster. Are you still recruiting party members?"

Tanya nearly spat the food in her mouth out from surprise, but she recovered. She hurriedly chewed her food and turned sharply to the voice behind her.

What met her was… a beauty.

--OxOxO--