The inside of the tower was bare and spartan, but it was warm. To Naruto, it was a damn palace, especially when the first floor of it appeared to contain a kitchen, a long table, and a wonderfully warm stove! It also contained ten more undead. These ones bleach white, bare of flesh, and spread out evenly over the room. He wouldn't even know they were mostly orcs if not for the tusks jutting up above their jaws. Well, maybe the size would give that away.
The living orc paid them no mind, strolling through and retrieving a serated knife from one of the various drawers.
"What have you been eating?" she asked with a seriousness that made him focus.
"Uh… trail biscuits and diced roots mostly, entirely for these last two weeks,"
"You eat normal human food, yes? And it has standard effects on you in your experience?"
"Yes,"
A cabinet was opened and a jar retrieved. Then the orc opened it, lifting the lid off with her nail, unbothered by the pop of its unsealing. Naruto was unsure what to think when she placed it in front of him and immediately went back to rummaging through her food stores. Probably why she called over her shoulder.
"It's jam, blackberry. Eat it. Being malnourished could negatively affect my data,"
This was presumably the reason she lifted a large squash out next, examining it closely before sawing it in half and mashing the innards out into a pot. Okay, yeah! Thanks… miss?"
"Karin,"
"Thank you, Karin; I'm Naruto," he replied, only earning a soft hum and a nod. "…I'm surprised you don't make one of… them do that," he offered as he struggled to scoop the last morsels of sweet, delicious, purple-black goop out of the small glass container with his clunky wooden spoon. The small noises this made silent against the hearty pounding she made against the metal with her work.
"A bit of a health hazard, that would be," she replied sarcastically.
"Oh right. Is that why these ones have all the… meat removed? So they don't stink or make you sick or whatever?" his medical knowledge was limited, but even he knew that loitering long around bodies was dangerous. Would that affect a necromancer though? That just seemed ridiculous, and he didn't even know that stripping them to the bone would make them safer.
"You're sharp. That is exactly the reason, to keep rot out of my home," she acknowledged, finishing her work with the stove and leaving the pot of whatever-it-was to cook, strolling over to the table to join him. She still held the knife in her off-hand but he was no longer worried.
This would be the reason the piercing, echoing shriekhe let out only lasted a couple seconds before devolving into a fit of swearing and wide eyed questions.
"FUCKING FUCK! What in all the hells!?" he demanded, only to have the hand that was covering the new hole in his palm yanked away while so she could stare. The bleeding stopped before it was even dripping off the table, much faster than a full-on impalement should have. He sucked in a breath. She wanted proof; that was understandable; he even sort of suggested it earlier. Still. "Gods above and below, you couldn't have warned me?"
"Suffering is lessened by taking pain suddenly and by surprise, isn't it?" she defended, though not sounding especially apologetic. Naruto said nothing else. Not until a minute passed and she asked another question. "How long will this take to heal? Fully heal?"
Well, a cut that deep is probably going to take at least an hour, fuck," he cursed to himself as his mangled palm twitched.
"Damn. Well, it's no matter; you'll just have to tail me as I work," she said, getting up and returning to the stove without further comment. She was similarly silent as she cooked, and even as they ate the lightly seasoned mush ravenously; although, to be fair, she was reading for the latter. A handwritten leatherbound book that she snapped shut as he set his bowl down. "Upstairs then, but first-,"
She pointed a hand at each of the skeletons surrounding them in turn, repeating her order down to the word with each of them.
"Go pick up a corpse with all four of its limbs securely attached, grab the closest one you can find not being carried by another undead, and carry it to the second story of this tower carefully,"
Naruto drummed the fingers on his non-mangled hand for the next nine verses. He then followed without comment, gritting his teeth further as she led him to the stone staircase that, as it turns out, was outside. There wasn't even a fucking railing! Though the pain had faded a fair bit, the young man was still sore in more ways than one towards the woman, you might imagine.
By the time they reached the platform built along the side of this strange brick structure, there were already skeletons following up the bottom of the stairs. It was a relief when they didn't follow inside. It was a relief that there was an inside, though not half as warm. At least the messy lab offered something to look at.
A few stone desks with those mini fire pits people used to heat their tea or soup, a tall shelf lined with books mostly unlabled, and a massive spread of strange bottles or elixers. She immediately began fiddling with two of these things. Specifically, moving a strange glass bottle and lighting a fire under it.
"Stand closer," she commanded without looking up from her work. Hesitantly, he obeyed, but she only lifted his palm to stare briefly at the wound she'd made again. It might have been the first time he got a look at those bright red eyes up close; they were really something, a shade lighter than his raven with her magical boon. Almost identical to her hair color no less, made him wonder if there was something supernatural or divine about Karin too.
She certainly looked divine.
Though there was something terrifyingly mundane about the way she lifted and impaled her own left hand with only a small wince, carefully comparing it side by side with his own partially healed hole. Of course, this only brought her closer, both the body and the face that boured its gaze down on their hands.
"You have healing magic you said, yes?"
"Uh yeah, but it just kind of radiates from me; it's similar in speed to how I heal,"
"Hm," she said, continuing to stare. Afraid that they'd be standing in this awkward position for the next two or three hours, he added something. Clearing his throat to get her attention back first.
"There is one thing I can do that might speed it up; I've never really timed it or anything, so I can't say for sure," he started off, delicately placing his hand over her palm. When she didn't stop him he began massaging the injury with four fingers, rubbing up and down over it.
"Oh that's… that's remarkable. It feels quite nice," she admitted, her eyes even widening in surprise. "I suppose I didn't need to stab you to test your claims,"
"You don't say!" he spat without thinking. It might have been his imagination but her frown seemed to deepen a little at the words! All the same, her response was a warning.
"I remind you that your life continues entirelyat my discretion," her words brought his healing to a pause. It also made him look over the host looming over him. Nearly a head taller and at least a little bulkier, not to mention holding a knife, or the small legion of surrounding undead.
He bit his tongue.
The next two hours consisted of her carefully measuring miniscule amounts of various liquids and powders in her heated beaker, also shifting said beaker miniscule amounts in accordance with this process. It was a riveting show. Only marginally more interesting than watching his hand heal.
Though her own wound finished first, and she paused to make notes in her journal about this, he at least had proof that rubbing the wounds helped.
"Can you heal fully severed limbs?" she asked far too abruptly. The terror of the question wasn't helped by the fact she was dousing her little potion's fire and checking the sharpness of a bone-saw. He lied instantly.
"Nope!" he assured.
"How do you know?"
"What?"
"If you can't, then you would have learned that when you lost one, yes? So how do you know?" she demanded, voice not angry but very skeptical. "You don't know exactly what you are, do you?"
"…No but-"
"-this might help me identify you. It might even help you unlock new powers you didn't know you had; we'll start with a knuckle," she insisted, sounding conciliatory with her offer. Still, she wasn't asking, and they both knew it.
Naruto placed his hand on the table and tried not to look at the saw. This was how he caught the sudden whipping of her right hand less than a second too late to notice the bigass cleaver that he'd somehow not seen yet.
This time he screamed and cursed for a good thirty seconds.
Karin was so kind as to not chastise him as she watched the bleeding stop. At least she'd stuck to her word and only severed the topmost knuckle of his left pinkey. At least the bleeding stopped. Naruto sucked in a deep, shuddering breath before Karin spoke again.
"Are you well enough to follow me if I go outside? You won't pass out?"
"I…don't think so, no," another deep breath, and he admitted to himself that the pain was almost gone. She released his hand and strolled outside, taking the bonesaw with her as well as the fizzing potion she'd finished brewing. It was a bit more of a show, this process, watching her kneel down on the stone and saw the lid off an orc corpse's head with practiced monotony.
Propping it up and seeing the exposed brain made him squirm a little, but watching her pour the elixir over it? Hearing it bubble and fizz and hiss and, after a deceiving pause, yank the stationary corpse into motion? That made him jump.
"By all gods old and new," he muttered as he dared not look away.
"You'll get used to it. I need to do all that at least ten more times, thanks to you," she grumbled, not hiding her annoyance. "That's two days of delay on my research, easy,"
"What's your research?" he asked without thinking, earning an exasperated stare.
"This. Restoring life to the dead? It's been my family's life work for at least four generations,"
"Why though? What do you need an army f-"
"-I am not building an army; I'm building a garrison to protect me while I research. While I make them better. My great-grandfather is the one who perfected the elixir enough to make undead able to understand simple commands; since then, we've made them able to practically retain their entire language!"
"So like….what's the end goal though? Why do we need better undead?"
She scoffed.
Well, aside from the practical applications being endless, it would be really swell to revive those who've died prematurely. I believe one day we will conquer death entirely on this path. That is my family's quest, my destiny, to free all of the mortal plane from the fear of death," she spoke with more emotion than he'd heard yet, defensiveness but… also pride.
Naruto smiled.
Wow, that's actually incredible, dedicating yourself to a goal like that even with…." He trailed off as he glanced around, from the grimy workshop to the strange tower to the frozen hostile wasteland surrounding it.
Karin blinked at that, and then she did something else for the first time.
She smiled at him.
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