Chapter Text
“We need to have a talk,” said Lup, when she and Barry got home. They had been on a “date”, which Kravitz strongly suspected meant that they’d gone to the quarry just outside of town to a) kiss and b) blow things up.
“Ugh,” said Taako. “Hard conversations? No thanks.”
“Think of it as… a planning session,” Kravitz said. “I’m not up for more of … the same, vis a vis forcible shapeshifting.”
Lup grimaced. “Me either. You oozed on me. I’ve had a lotta people die on me, but putrefaction glop? Not a fan.”
Kravitz shifted his face into corpse mode and blew a raspberry at her. She blew one back. He refocused. “I did have a, hmm, question — Angus seems to assume you killed those kids.”
Lup shrugged, movement trying for casual but coming out threatening. “Yeah, I did.”
“I was sent to give them a warning,” Kravitz said. “We can’t just kill people who we don’t like. There’s a trial and a sentencing. You know, rules. You have the book.”
“Mags n’ Merle an’ I do it all the time,” Taako mumbled.
“I wish you wouldn’t, sir,” Angus said.
“I think, the, uh, the crux of the matter, is that the whole thing was, kind of, our fault,” Barry cut in. “Like I think that that is possibly the issue here.”
“Oh trust me, babe, I am fully aware,” Lup said.”Like definitely one hundo percent aware.” Her hands, laid flat on the beautiful cherry wood table, started to smoke. Barry pulled them into his own and she left behind the charred marks of her palms and fingers.
“You can’t retract the article or some shit?” Taako asked. “Make an announcement that people shouldn’t read it?”
Angus shook his head. “It’s already been in print for too long. We’d have to track down all the copies, which would only make it much more interesting.”
Lup tapped a finger on her lips, pensive. “I do like the way you think, though, Ko. We could put out a press release. ‘Please be nice to Kravitz, he’s a narc but he’s nice about it,’ yknow?”
Taako shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Same problem. Some necromancers prob’ly wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise. You’d give them ideas and shit. They’re not gonna stop if you ask nicely.”
“I’d stop if someone asked nicely,” Barry said.
“Did you, babe?” asked Lup. “Did you?”
“It’s -- it’s just,” Barry started. “It’s a fine line! A fine line between necromancy and healing, you know that, I’m not -- I never raised anyone. At least not recently.”
“I really appreciate you not explicitly disobeying your employer,” Kravitz said. “Really. Super grateful for that basic work tenet being followed. Thank you for following the bare minimum.”
Lup cackled. “I’ve disobeyed Cap’nport so many times,” she said. “Obedience is not the brand.”
“It really, really should be,” Kravitz said. “These are basic tenets of life and death!”
“Sounds like something a narc would say,” said Lup.
“It’s not a narc thing to have principles,” said Taako, “He’s just lawful, is all, lawful and petty. It’s only a narc thing if you’re a fucking tattletale, which he isn’t, and—”
“I just think—” Kravitz started, but his voice was lost in the clamor of Lup yelling that he was a narc, and Taako yelling back that she couldn’t say that without admitting that she too was one. The twins had been spoiling for a row for a week, it seemed like, eager for an excuse to blow off steam.
“I just think!” Kravitz tried again. The twins had devolved into yelling about Lup being a “normie,” which was apparently Taako’s word for someone who took the last name “Bluejeans” instead of remaining mononymous. Barry, equally loudly, was attempting to defend his wife’s (and, by extension, his) surname and was being soundly ignored.
Kravitz drew on all his training in projecting his voice, pulled as much air into his lungs as he could, and bellowed, “WILL EVERYONE PLEASE BE QUIET?”
They all looked at him with varying levels of shock.
“Damn,” said Lup.
“I didn’t think you had it in you, bud!” said Barry, clapping his shoulder.
“That was very impressive, sir! I’m proud of you!” said Angus, apparently uncaring that Kravitz was over 100 times his age.
Kravitz thanked him, and then added, “I think it’s too late to expect anyone to not pay attention to it. Those kids were very clear that they’d studied the paper. What the next step is is probably, hmm, shoring up the ol’ defenses, I guess? Really making it hard, to do that again.”
“If you have any ideas on how to do that, reaper boy, I’m all ears,” said Lup. “For now I think you’re just gonna have to have a babysitter.”
“I’ve gone centuries without a fleshbody,” Kravitz said, offended.
“Yeah,” said Lup, “And we know you’re a Real Boy even when you don’t wear your skin. I just dunno about the general public anymore.”
They were all of them a tad cautious around Kravitz. He could tell Lup at least was feeling guilty; she commandeered the record player and put on bouncy, rhythmic music as soon as they had all settled.
Kravitz did little hand dances to the music, mostly to make her relax, but partially because he really did enjoy hand dances. Angus joined him, briefly, and having someone else to dance with made Kravitz throw his whole body into the music-listening, which was great fun, as always.
He liked dancing, liked hurling his physical form bodily into whatever motions he felt matched the music. He liked the raw sensations it brought with it, even when it was just him swaying back and forth in time with the beat.
He talked to his ravens, stepped out a few times to take on small but important jobs; soothing the souls of a family, dead in a house fire, shepherding the lost soul of a small child wandering in the woods, unaware their body lay under a willow tree, victim to heat stroke. A psychopomp rather than a reaper, at least for now.
A “real boy,” Lup had called him. He wasn’t a real boy all the time, was the problem. It took work, effort. Sometimes he forgot how physics worked when people had actual mass, moved like he was lighter or heavier than he should, or like he had the wrong number of bones. It was frequently easier to not breathe, especially recently. He liked possessing houses or coffee shops and letting the noisy hum of life thrum through him, like he was leeching off vitality. Sometimes he hopped places instead of walking because it was more fun that way (although he thought he might have done that when he was alive, too.)
Kravitz ended up spending a lot of time with his instruments that weekend. The bells were coming along quite nicely; he’d determined what he wanted each of them to do, begged a few books full of artificer notes off of Lucretia, and sung to them as he worked.
There was only one thing he had trouble with; as he had plenty of ways of dealing with living necromancers (most of which involved their death), his bells focused on controlling, soothing, or otherwise manipulating the undead. This was a category that he, unfortunately, was a part of, as he was reminded several times after putting himself to sleep or causing strange, full-body judders as his construct tried to obey the compulsion to move but had no direction. At least he was certain that they could stop a thrall or lesser construct in their tracks; Kravitz was an incredibly powerful undead being, having been formed from the hands and mind of a goddess instead of being pulled from the earth by a mortal necromancer.
Mostly he got around this by going skeletal and dialing the sensitivity on his artificial hearing way, way downwards. Lup and Barry, in their fleshbodies, were not affected, so he didn’t feel too bad about leaving the door open partway so someone could theoretically hear him if something went really wrong.
He picked up one of the bigger bells, one meant to trap a spirit in whatever home it had found until it was released by a Reaper, and the bell tolled softly, and Kravitz—
Well. He felt very solid, all of a sudden. Like his feet were firmly planted on the ground. Like physics was more than just something abstract. He could float still, yes (he tried it, levitated a few inches off the ground), but he didn’t feel like he had to guess how much he weighed and adjust his motions based on that.
He rang it a couple more times, flexed his fingers, and then took it downstairs.
Taako was stuffing peppers in the kitchen and wriggled his fingers at Kravitz when he poked his head in.
“What’s up, sweetcheeks?” he said.
Kravitz tolled the bell very slightly in answer, thinking, and then added, “I need… easy access to this, or something like it, in all my forms. Do you know some way I could attach it to me?”
“You mean hang it on a belt style, or you mean instant summons?”
“The latter,” Kravitz said. “Although… a belt or cord is a good idea.”
“You could soulbind it,” Taako said, considering. He tapped the handle of his long wooden spoon on the counter. “I know Ango’s been looking into that because he’s jealous of Jess the Beheader.”
“The beheader? Like, killing people?”
“Fantasy wrestler. She’s kinda touchy about getting accused of murder, actually.” He slid all the peppers into a pan and then bent to put it in the oven. “Gimme like, five secs to wash my hands, and we’ll go snoop through his stuff.”
When his hands were dry he led Kravitz towards the bookshelves and hummed to himself as he scanned the spines. He pulled several out, flipped through them to find the indexes, and then, with a wink and a finger to his lips, dog eared a few pages in various ones.
“There ya go,” he said. “You’ll probably need help with the actual spell, but read up and come get me with any questions, yeah?”
“You found that fast,” Kravitz commented, impressed.
Taako tossed his braid. “Ch’yeah, it’s called knowing how an index works, I’m very smart.”
He was being sarcastic, but Kravitz kissed the top of his head anyway. “Thank you, love,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Taako. “Go read your book. I convinced Merle to let me cater the Solstice dinner and I gotta plan the menu, I’m busy, shoo!”
Kravitz shooed.
He read through all the books and began to evaluate his original plans. If he made the same bell, but much smaller, he could loop it through something in his default form, and have it easily accessible everywhere else.
It was a good plan. He just had to carry it out.
“I’m going out on assignment,” Kravitz announced three days after he’d returned to the Prime Material Plane, still sparking with the sensory newness of the world.
But now he had a plan, and an assignment, finally, and he was going to do his job again, damn it.
“We’re coming too,” Lup said
“Listen, it’s going to be fine,” Kravitz said. “The three of us are the most powerful undead beings in Faerun, if I do say so myself.” He paused. “Ugh, that makes it sound like I’m bragging instead of stating facts.”
Lup shrugged. “We are pretty bomber.”
“Well, b—by any reasonable metric, also the most, the most powerful undead beings in Faerun,” Barry added. He pulled his scythe from the air, twirled it gently. “Where we goin’?”
“Someone’s been out robbing graveyards, and it’s something like his fiftieth offense,” said Kravitz. “He’s got a weird little cabin out in the woods, and the watcher-ravens just finished tracking him there.”
“Which graveyard?” asked Barry, a bit too eagerly.
Kravitz squinted at him. “Classified,” he said “Let’s go.”
He opened a rift straight to the man's (weird, creepy) porch.
Kravitz wanted to sneak in through the tin chimney, so he did. Neither Lup nor Barry could fit, so they both waited outside the thick wooden door.
"I'm gonna bust this thing off its hinges the minute you finish reading the charges against him," Lup told Kravitz, leveling her wand towards them, and he believed her. Barry examined the carvings on the thick logs that made up the cabin with interest.
Kravitz turned spherical, hummed his way along the metal walls. It was "In the Hall of the Mountain King," appropriately dramatic and threatening. It echoed in the small space.
"Who's there?" yelled the necromancer, alarmed. Peering through the grate let Kravitz see that he was standing over a skeleton, possibly working on raising a thrall. He held a ceremonial athame threateningly and turned so that his back was against a large ornate bookshelf.
Kravitz set up a little spell to keep playing his humming and then spoke through the grate.
"Yarrow Tyelpe, you have been accused of ten counts of major necromany, several dozen counts of minor necromany, and attempted counterfeiting via the creation of nabrók, illegal for its use of human skin. Do you have anything to say to counter these charges?"
"I -- who are you? How do you know --?"
That was as good as a confession.
"By the power vested in me, I sentence you to six centuries in the Eternal Stockade. You may petition the Raven Queen for clemency if you so desire. It is rarely granted but will not affect your punishment otherwise."
"Come out and face me!" the necromancer demanded.
"I would prefer not to," Kravitz said, levitated the bookshelf, and then dropped the entire thing on his head just as Lup blasted through the entryway.
"Gross," she said, looking at the hand sticking out from beneath the wood and books. “Why do you take so much joy in making nasty corpses, boss?”
Barry walked over to one of the skeleton and inspected it. There was a stone shoved in its mouth, large enough to dislocate the jaw. He tapped it curiously.
“This is strange,” he said. “Hey, Krav, you seen this before?”
Kravitz nodded. “Yes, I know what it is. It's still odd, though -- an old superstition says that placing stones in someone's mouth prevents them from rising, but people stopped using that technique about a thousand years ago. Why would a necromancer deliberately prevent someone from being resurrected? It doesn't make sense.”
Barry looked fascinated. “They used to bury people with rocks in Faerun? Were there many necromancers?”
“Less about necromancy than you might think,” Kravitz told him. “To keep them from rising again on their own, from spreading disease or sating their hunger. Old superstition about vampires, you know. It doesn't make a lot of sense. They did it often to people who looked… touched by death, by the Raven Queen, who you would think would be least likely to become undead.”
“I'm gonna ask you a rude question,” Lup declared.
“Yes. I’m fairly certain I did have a stone if that's what you want to know,” Kravitz replied. “Arguably my existence proves its inefficacy, but I was very clearly Touched.” He waved his hands vaguely around his face, explanatory, but also people had worried his persistent illness had been possibly communicable via a bite.
Lup laughed. “Words right outta my mouth, dude.”
“Did it hurt?” Barry asked.
Kravitz cocked his head at him. “Did what hurt?”
“The rock,” he said like it was obvious. “Seems painful.”
“You're asking if I could feel what people were doing to my corpse?” Kravitz asked. “I didn't feel anything! I was dead!”
“I just figured…” Barry started.
“Barry,” said Kravitz, “You’ve died. Did you feel anything happening to your dead body?”
“Well, I figured it might be different, is all… I never became undead right away when I was still in my body. And the other times were just a destroyed, uh, phylactery. Did you become undead right away? I guess I, hmm, assumed…”
“Not right away,” said Kravitz. “I died in Her temple, though, and that sped the process some. Undead speedrun. Also contributed to the rock.” He tilted his head, thinking. “I pity whoever found me,” he said, finally. “But I was gone, by then. Something new.”
“Could this dead dude be... you?”
“No, I died several thousand miles from here, but…”
“They’re digging up skeletons from your general time period,” Barry said. “I’m fairly certain of it. I don’t have the proper equipment here to do a radiometric dating spell on these other skeletons, but I’d guess they’d be within the same general time period of your death.”
“Now aren’t you glad we came along?” Lup asked, arch.
“Well I killed him pretty easily,” replied Kravitz, knowing that he sounded petulant but unable to stop himself.
“Mmmmhmmm,” Lup hummed, moving behind them. She sounded profoundly unconvinced.
“I have a plan,” Kravitz said. “I’m working on it. Leave me alone.”
“I’ve got my eyes on you,” she called.
“Are you holding a jar of eyes?” Kravitz sighed. “Do you have a jar of eyes, in your hands, right now as you are speaking to me?”
“A big ‘un!” said Barry.
Kravitz was really quite pleased that Angus wanted him to do his hair. Imitation, flattery, etc, etc. The main problem was that he really hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t know how to give someone locs. When he was still alive, he had bound his curls back with a series of ribbons, letting it fall long, thick, and heavy down his back -- even in life, he’d had a lot of hair.
He asked the Raven Queen about whether or not he had any memories that might help, and she gave him child Kravitz wriggling as his mother pulls his hair back into two milkmaid braids, so tight his eyes water, and also — there, there it is, his older brother’s hair, one big blur of sensations and thoughts and feelings, and he thanked her. It was a good start, at least. He felt much more confident.
He also didn’t know whether or not he was surprised that he’d had a elder brother -- maybe siblings, plural? It slotted neatly into his perception of his past self, but felt like it should maybe be something meaningful. As it was, though, there were millions of dead people in existence who had once been elder brothers, and Kravitz wasn’t sure whether or not he mourned this particular one any more than the others.
Angus was the lab instructor for two separate undergraduate summer classes. He sat on the floor by the couch, working on grading the worksheets spread out on a lap desk in front of him, and stayed quiet even when Kravitz accidentally pulled too hard.
Taako had a basket of whole apples to his left, a knife in his hand, and a bowl of cut and peeled apples to his right. He would slice the peel off in a long curve and hand it off to Angus to eat, although periodically he would use one to give himself a mustache.
“Look at me, I’m a human person,” he’d say, in a voice possibly meant to be an (extremely uncharitable) imitation of Lucas Miller. Then he’d give it to Angus, who would eat it.
Personally, Kravitz thought that this was a little disgusting (who knew where the underside of Taako’s nose had been?) but also had to admit that he was probably being a tad hypocritical here. Merle had eventually successfully explained “germs” to him. Kravitz was probably covered by Taako germs.
“You sure this isn’t gonna make you sick?” Taako asked once the pile of peeled apples was bigger than the pile of whole ones. “That’s a lot of peel, pumpkin.”
“Nope!” said Angus, cheerfully. “I’m still hungry.”
“Shush, Taaks, he’s trying to get yolked,” said Lup, ruffling the half of Angus’s head that sported the starting phase of his new hairstyle.
“I am yolked,” said Angus, proudly, although he really wasn’t. “Magnus picked me up a few days ago and said ‘oof.’”
“When’d you see Magnus?” asked Lup.
“Oh, the BOB called me in to consult on a crime spree they’re trying to assist with. Magnus was visiting because he’s slowly replacing all the furniture on the entire moon and also he and Ms. Carey are planning something. It was lots of fun. And Madam Director gave me a bottle of luminol, which is very exciting!”
Taako rolled his eyes. “Oh, luminol, huh, she gave you luminol? She bribed you with luminol? You, a good and honest detective boy, taking bribes?”
“It is my favorite chemical, sir, and honestly I was running a little low and didn’t know if I had enough for the job that needed doing.”
“You have a favorite chemical?” Taako cackled.
“And you don’t, sir?”
“I have a least favorite chemical,” Taako sniffed. “That’s different. Fuck phenolase, honestly, who looks at an apple and thinks ‘great, but make it brown and gross?’ No one. The worst enzyme in the world.” He brandished both the apple and knife he was holding. “'Catalyzes enzymatic browning.’ Fucker. 'Oh I’m polyphenol oxidase and I like being the direct cause of a bunch of food waste.’ What's its damage.”
“That’s fair, sir,” said Angus. “But I’m sure there’s one you like.”
Taako thought about this briefly and then launched some elaborate story about one of his recent adventures with Magnus and Merle, where he had heroically saved them all from a horrible demise via suffocation, which he achieved by transmuting his socks into oxygen. It was all very dramatic. Kravitz followed approximately none of the chain of logic.
Angus, apparently, did, and took issue. “Why didn’t you just try to escape?”
“Sue me, so I wanted a little bit of a sitdown. Also, oxygen is an extremely reactive element and can cause combustion with most any flame given a little bit of heat, and you know cha’boy was planning on lighting the place up as soon as we left, it was the best choice, and sure, maybe my toes were a little cold —”
“Do you ever think about reducing property damage?” Angus replied. “Maybe you wouldn’t have needed to lose your socks if you’d transmuted a bit of the wall to hydrochloric acid and then…”
“Ohh, you badmouthing me, kid? You think you could do better?”
Angus shrugged. “I’m just saying that…”
“No, no,” said Taako. “No, no. Square up, little man. You insult my methods, you insult my honor.”
He dropped his paring knife, snatched his Casual Everyday Wand from the side table, and leveled it at Angus. Kravitz removed his hands from Angus’s hair and scooted away from the danger zone.
“Sir,” said Angus, sounding infinitely tired, “We don’t have to duel every time…”
“Square the fuck up!” Taako hissed.
Angus rolled his eyes and then, quick as a flash, had whipped out a mage hand, snatched Taako’s wand, and was reaching out a real hand to catch it as it flew towards him.
He turned on his heel and sprinted out of the house.
Taako screamed in incoherent rage (possibly shock, too, it was hard to tell) and charged out after him. They all watched him go in silence. The door slammed shut behind them.
Lup picked up Taako’s abandoned knife and apples and started peeling them herself. She wasn’t quite as good as Taako, not quite as skilled at removing the peel in one go. Barry stole a few chunks from the peeled bowl. Kravitz, after a bit of thought, started to do the dishes.
"Five minutes until he calls one of us to pick him up," said Lup. "Five gold on it."
Kravitz shook his head. "Five gold on… ten minutes," he said. "He's really mad about Angus cheating."
"Fifteen," said Barry.
"Fifteen?" chorused Lup and Kravitz in incredulous unison.
"Seven to chase Angus," said Barry. "Five to sit and be angry. Three to start to walk back before he gives up."
"Specific and detailed," said Lup. "I like it. You gonna put your money on it?"
“Pay up, Barold,” said Kravitz. “Put your mouth where your dollars are.”
“Fine,” said Barry. “Five gold. A- and I’m not going to pay up, because I won’t lose.”
“Not to, to change the subject, but while they’re gone,” Kravitz said, “I have an, uh, request for you.”
“While they’re gone?” asked Lup.
“Taako won’t like it,” explained Kravitz. He wiped his soapy hands on a dishtowel.
“Ah,” said Lup.
“I have what I think is a pretty solid, uh, plan, for the whole” — here he gestured to his construct, trying to encompass all that being the physical manifestation of a soul entailed — “situation, and I would prefer to, shall we say, test it, in a non-lethal scenario.”
“You want Barry to zap you,” Lup summarized.
“I can do that,” said Barry.
“That’s… reassuring,” said Kravitz. “I do remember a lot of the circle itself, but maybe you could… recreate it? Or do something similar?”
“Yeah, I remember a lot of it too,” said Barry. “Gimme a few days and—”
They were interrupted by Lup's stone of farspeech crackling to life.
"I am disowning Agnes," came Taako's voice, lightly distorted with magic and stone-static. "He's a fuckin' cheat. He doesn't deserve any apple fritters." He was slightly out of breath.
"Okay, babe," said Lup. "You wanna be picked up?"
"No!"
Lup and Kravitz exchanged looks. Barry dabbed, very slowly.
Kravitz couldn't distinguish if he was being ironic or if he really thought that was how one did it. It was hard to tell with Barry sometimes.
"You sure?" Lup pressed.
"AbsoLUTEly," said Taako. The stone shut off.
"Twist of the century," Lup commented into the silence.
"Sweet lady," said Kravitz. "I think Barold's just won this thing."
"I get ten GPs now, right?"
“Only if he calls back,” Kravitz said.
Lup nodded.
“You were saying?” Kravitz prompted.
“Oh, I forget what I was saying,” Barry shrugged. “I was thinking that I could maybe, improve, the design some? They really weren’t all that elegant in their casting. I could make a better one.”
“We know, babe,” said Lup. “I think if Krav can escape one of your spell circles he could escape any.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” said Kravitz. “I guess it’s a plan then.”
“We gotta wait a week or so,” said Lup. “After the solstice, capisce?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Kravitz.”You need any help with those apples?”
“Sure, can you grab some lemon juice? Keeps ‘em from browning.”
Kravitz pulled the correct bottle out of the cabinet Lup had spelled to stay cool and handed it to her, watched her pour it over the skinned apple chunks. Barry snuck one.
Lup’s stone rang again. It was, as expected, Taako.
“I changed my mind. Maybe I do want a lift home.”
The Seven Birds, Extended Family Version, knew how to throw a party. Or perhaps that was just Merle. In any event, preparations were in full swing when Kravitz and the others stepped through a rift. They’d opened it straight into the Merlegaritaville kitchen, so Taako could ferry anything he needed from his kitchen to this kitchen (or chivvy Angus into doing it for him.)
Merle had a large field with tables set up for close friends and family, and there was a festival with many tents and activities in the town nearby. It was cheerfully noisy chaos.
Kravitz attempted to lurk on the sidelines, but unfortunately, people wanted to talk to him.
He had to do things like “small talk” with some people, which made being accosted by someone as straightforward as Magnus a welcome reprieve. Magnus also hugged him so hard that Kravitz felt his ribs creak and hefted Angus into the air (without difficulty, but definitely using more technique than he’d had to in the past.
He talked about his dogs at length, then clapped Kravitz on the shoulder before pausing.
“Wow, you’re lukewarm today. I'm glad you're not so different anymore,” he told Kravitz. “It was confusing.”
“Different?”
Magnus floundered a little. “Like, your facial expressions don’t match your skin touch?”
“My facial expressions don't match my skin touch,” Kravitz repeated flatly.
Magnus groaned.
“I think what Mr. Magnus means to say,” said Angus, apparently taking pity on them, “Is that you have a very warm smile, but touching you is often, hmmm…”
“Like touching a dead fish!” said Magnus, cheerfully.
“I don't know how. How to take that,” said Kravitz honestly.
Angus cocked his head a little to the side, which he had started doing lately, copying Kravitz's body language or, possibly, copying Lup's copy of Kravitz's body language, and then nodded in agreement. “I think it's a compliment, sir,” he said. “You do have a very nice smile.”
“Thank you,” Kravitz said.
“Oh, there’s Carey!” said Magnus. “I gotta run. Good to see ya, Krav.”
“I’m going to find Mavis and then go see if there are any more pretzels,” Angus said, tugging Kravitz’s sleeve.
“Didn’t you just eat two?”
“Yes!”
Kravitz talked to several more people, but the party rapidly got slightly overwhelming, so he wandered off, casually stealing a nearby bird feeder as he headed for the treeline.
He nearly quite literally ran into Killian on his way out. She was carrying a fantasy fire extinguisher in one hand and a plate of chocolate covered strawberries in the other, although when she tried to dodge him a strawberry toppled off the little tower she'd built.
He caught it in his free hand before it could hit the ground and proffered it to her.
"Keep it," she said, "I think I took too many of these, anyway. You want any more?"
"Oh," said Kravitz. "Sure. Are you, uh, are you expecting a fire?"
Killian made a vague gesture across the lawn. Kravitz followed her gaze to the weeping willow tree, where Carey and Magnus were huddled and whispering next to a pile of what looked like junk.
“Is that--” he started, “Should we be worried?”
“I… trust… my wife,” Killian said, slowly and deliberately.
“All right,” said Kravitz. He waited.
“I just hope it's nothing illegal this time,” she added eventually. "It's nearly always something illegal. I can't believe her best friend is also a rogue."
"Didn't she. Didn't she teach him?"
Killian nodded, dragged a hand down her face. Over by the tree, Magnus threw his arms in the air, gesturing big and loud, while Carey laughed and shook the shiny purple cylinder in her hand. She grabbed something that might have been a fantasy PVC pipe, and Magnus hefted a sack of -- ah.
"I think they're making a potato cannon. I also think they're using Taako's hair spray as the detonant."
"Ah damn," said Killian. "Any guesses on what they're planning to shoot?"
"Several, and none of them good," Kravitz said. "I'm gonna just... go now."
"You do that. Strawberry for the road?"
Kravitz accepted.
He looked over his shoulder once during his tactical retreat and saw her hefting the extinguisher and heading off across the quad. And then he sat, and set out a few shiny baubles he kept in his pockets, and spread out a little bit of birdseed, and waited.
The boom of the cannon almost rattled Kravitz out of his skin, but he was far enough away to have avoided the worst of the noise and pulled his bones back inside himself. The magpie watching him warily from the treeline also startled but did not fly away.
Kravitz settled a little further into himself, smoothed his hair back a few times, and smiled as the magpie fluttered to a stop in front of him.
He’d acquired quite a collection of avian friends by the time Taako found him. He was in high dudgeon, bristling.
“Magnus has no conception of restraint,” he announced. “He and Carey stole my hair spray! That shit was expensive, you know.”
“I know,” said Kravitz. “But you are very rich; you can buy more.”
“That’s not the point,” Taako said. “The point is, you don’t waste shit. Even if I wasn’t gonna use it for hairspray I got like fifty goddamn scholarship funds I’m paying for. I gotta feed Ango and he could eat the contents of a whole farm. You don’t waste shit!”
“I know, dove,” Kravitz said. “What did they end up shooting?”
“Wasp's nest,” Taako said. “Blasted a big ol’ hole in it. It was nasty.”
He flopped to the ground and gestured vaguely at the birds slowly acclimating to his approach.
"I thought ravens were your Thing, whatcha doin' with magpies?"
"Corvids as a whole are my thing," said Kravitz, "Although, clearly, I have favorites. But magpies are so spritely. And they're still portents, sometimes."
"Portents, huh," said Taako. He stretched out his hand, and the magpies regarded it with suspicion.
"One for sorrow, two for mirth, you know."
Taako cocked an eyebrow. "'Mirth' doesn't rhyme with 'boy'," he said. "It's gotta be joy, then ‘three for a girl, four for a boy.’"
"No, it's ‘three for a death and four for a birth,’" Kravitz said.
Taako glared at him. "Sorrow, joy, girl, boy!"
Kravitz gave in. "Planar cultural differences, let's leave it at that. Unless you want to quarrel over a poem."
"Poh-ehm," said Taako, laughing at him. "Let's argue about you giving the word poem like five extra goddamn syllables." He pronounced the word short and choppy, pohm.
“You say it like you choked on a pomegranate seed halfway through saying the name of the fruit,” Kravitz said.
“Well, you say it like you forgot the final consonant and are drawing the word out to give yourself time to think!”
Kravitz stuck his tongue out at him, then tossed a sparkly piece of glass that had been left by some pious traveler at a small hidden shrine about twenty years ago. It landed in Taako's lap, and a magpie nearby perked up, hopping closer. Taako's eyes widened.
"Shimmery boy," he said, reaching out. "Look at those green hues! Bet I’d look great in a magpie dress, huh?"
Kravitz watched him coo over the bird. He wasn’t dressed up, per se, but he was as always intensely aware of the image he projected even as he wore whatever the hell he wanted. He and Lup were both wearing the same soft, casual leggings and tunic combo in different colors; it was somehow both exactly the right thing to wear to an extended family gathering and also very clearly Taako. He and Lup would link arms and then look like they had stepped out of a painting.
Kravitz could tell Taako and Lup apart instantly and effortlessly. They had different personalities, different body language, different speech patterns. Different souls.
But they were also both consummate performers, both always aware in some way that they were being observed. He wasn't quite sure either of them was comfortable with that. Even alone, their literally alien beauty turned heads; together they seemed to revel in inviting passersby to play "compare/contrast."
So many of their visible differences seemed deliberately calculated to highlight their identical aspects. It was probably habit by now, something they did by default, perhaps started when they were young in that way people try to distinguish identical twins. Lup, in warm tones, gold hoops in her ears and a soft orange dress, a sun charm dangling from her necklace. Taako, all cool colors, with silver jewelry and a purple tunic, moons embroidered on his hat. Lup, her hair braided over her left shoulder, the same side as her blue eye; Taako with his braid laying over his right, opposite to his brown eye. Lup, three for a girl, Taako, four for a boy, with their mirror image faces and bodies shifted into distinct directions by different dominant hormones.
Situs inversus, their heterochromia flipped, Taako’s heart in the wrong side of his chest. Taako, alone, was a reflection without a mirror. A fearful symmetry, broken.
Taako liked the reliability of Kravitz’s vitiligo. For every pale patch on the right side of his body, an identical one grew on his left. The magpie, on the other hand, liked the shiny embroidery on Taako's hat.
They wandered back to the main party eventually; Taako had made a lemon lavender cake specifically because Kravitz liked it.
The Midsummer Solstice proceeded in a blur of colors and smells and people talking. Kravitz knew he was warmer than usual, fueled by the friendly faces around him. He did several more Live Person things over the course of the festival, some more pleasant than others.
On the one hand, Angus taking a nap on his shoulder made Kravitz, usually able to get tired but not sleepy, close his eyes and fall asleep, which was nice, even if he did wake up feeling like someone had stuffed his mouth and eye sockets with cotton.
On the other, he got slightly tipsy, forgot to pay attention to his surroundings, and got swept away in the crowd, unable to think straight enough to find his family. By the time Lup located him he had a pounding stress headache from all the noise and chaos.
He had enjoyed himself, certainly, but was also very glad to be leaving.
They’d unpacked with varying levels of efficiency; Kravitz had been conscripted into laundry duty, and he’d also been trapped for some time under four living people who wanted a hug-sized ice pack.
But now he had a tiny bell threaded on a silver hoop earring, a necromantic spell circle drawn in chalk in the basement of his house, and a recently-completed soul-binding ritual.
Lup thread the earring gently through the hole in his ear, settling the bell right next to the cartilage. Then she lit her fingers white-hot and pressed down on the ring, welding it closed. Instinctively, Kravitz flicked his ear away from her touch, but she held on, and the jolt made the bell tinkle softly. It was right next to his ear, so quiet Lup probably hadn’t heard it, but Kravitz did.
Immediately, his fleshbody form felt more solid. He took a deep breath, felt his lungs fill easily, flexed his fingers to check the range of motion. Lup and Barry watched him intently, Barry with his pencil poised over his notebook.
“How do you feel?” Lup asked.
“Good,” said Kravitz, surprised at how much he meant it.
“Try shifting forms now,” said Barry.
Kravitz did. It was like swimming through treacle, heavy and viscous. Once he managed to take his raven form, though, it felt substantial and real, the bell and link snug around one ankle. He ruffled his feathers, shook his talons a bit, heard the surprisingly deep ringing. When he pushed his way incorporeal, the bell vanished as well.
He solidified back into his default shape and ran his fingers over the earring. It was… strange. He felt simultaneously less formless and more synthetic.
He thought his hands might be cold again. He wasn’t struggling to breathe, because he didn’t feel the need to breathe.
“Still good, boss?” Lup asked.
“I think it worked,” Kravitz said, in lieu of answering.
“Try the circle now,” said Barry. “That’s the real test.”
Kravitz, warily, stepped one foot and then the other into the sigil. The barriers went up instantly, dust motes trapping him, but he didn’t have that same immediate dissipation. It was like touching lightning, a little bit, but he stayed whole and solid, his form consistent and unwavering.
He rubbed a hole in one of the lines and the barrier fell.
“Well, another job well done for the corvid crew!” Lup crowed, throwing her hands up. “Easy-peasy, huh?”
Kravitz smiled and said nothing, but he did not fully agree.
He slipped back to the Astral Plane fairly quickly after that conversation, wandered the records halls for a bit, and then made his way to the central chamber. He showed the Raven Queen his new jewelry with a small amount of trepidation. He had changed his form, possibly permanently; this physicality he had was new, and full of tradeoffs, and not what She had designed.
She was wearing humanoid form today. It was Her favorite quasi-mortal shape; Her half mask shielded Her face, but what parts of Her were visible looked a lot like Kravitz.
He thought that maybe She was trying to tell him something. He liked seeing himself in the shape of Her mouth, the proportions of Her hands matching his own. The way her cheekbones curved like his curved.
She ran her fingers over the tip of his ear, and he knew She heard the bell chime.
She said nothing, but words mattered little to the dead. He laid his head against Her leg as She tied his hair up and the darkness settled around him like peat and mist.
He didn’t fade into it like he used to.
It was fine, really it was. It was just that, brilliant arcanists though they were, necromancy was not the twins’ specialty. They didn’t quite understand how unusual Kravitz was, how unusual Lup and Barry were. Liches were inherently unstable, often lost themselves to the magic, lost their morals and their values until they were pure self-interest. The … situation… in the Felicity Wilds had only been unusual in the power of the liches running it, the length of time they’d evaded being caught. The complex cruelty was par for the course in the cruelty aspect, unusual in its complexity. Barry understood, but Barry also didn't really care.
Death changed you. Kravitz himself was mostly unrecognizable from who he had been as a live person. He had just managed to turn into someone he liked. Most people called him lawful neutral (except Taako, who called him “lawful chaotic”), but he was sure he was doing the right thing.
Kravitz didn’t think Lup had quite connected that her lich form was much more similar to Kravitz’s entire existence than her fleshbody. She tended to focus on the corporeality aspect — Kravitz was tangible. But he was a memory, an emotion, light, much like a lich was pure magic.
Lup knew what it was like to change your physical form into something that better represented who you were. A spell, some hormones, and she’d never looked back because she experienced no downsides. The indisputably correct choice for her, though she’d never presumed to tell others how to handle their transition.
She and Barry sometimes forgot that they were dead. They remembered that they were liches, sure; Barry had perfected the art of repressing his emotions until he could process them glacially slowly. Lup hated small spaces, slept with a nightlight on, no blinds on her windows, and music playing. But they each had settled into corporeality again like their cloned bodies were never empty. They now existed physically much like anyone else.
Kravitz could have probably possessed a dead body. He had never tried.
“I wanna go for a walk,” Taako told him when he got back.
“A walk?” Kravitz asked.
“A mosey, a stroll, a promenade,” Taako waved his hand vaguely. “There’s a new arcane bookshop I wanna check out. I heard there was a cello choir at the park today, too.” He hooked his arm through Kravitz’s and tugged him out the front door.
“Do I have a choice in this?” Kravitz asked.
“Nope!” said Taako, cheerily.
He steered Kravitz down the street. The cello choir was quite loud, and the wind blew the sound right towards them so that it was perfectly audible by the time they reached the hill overlooking the park.
It was a very nice wind. There were a few ravens chasing each other through the sky, using it to boost their speed. Kravitz’s fingers twitched.
Taako looked at him, at the ravens, and back at him.
“Oh, go on,” he said. “I’ll get my own books. Go play with your birds. Menace an eagle or something for me, okay?”
Kravitz grinned at him and took off running down the hill, the wind whistling through his hair and the bell, and then he shifted, hurtling through that viscous pressure, and caught the next updraft with his wings.