Tsa arrives as she usually does when a new corpse arrives at the funeral home run by her family. Her job, as everyone within the family has one is to search for magical items, and repair any clothing for the family requesting work for the presentation during the memorial service.
Tsa has always been a mortician. It’s her family’s lot in life. History has gone back far enough, and that is all the family is renowned for. She’s used to the smell, the touch, and even horror’s that have been done in duels, but this, this is new. She is intrigued.
Tsa steps forward and peers down at the corpse, and she casts Detect Magic and peers at the corpse. “Wow, there’s an aura, a flow of magic, it seems to be emanating from the chest area.” she says with curiosity in her voice to no one in particular as she leans across the edge of the table looking intently at the corpse’s chest.
Tsa starts to say, “I think it gahhh!” and stops as a hand reaches up from the table and grabs her about the throat. Tsa’s hands immediately go to her own throat to try and pry the undead hand off but she’s young, too young, and weak. She’s but a child, barely educated, and only partially trained in the magic arts by an old retired mage of the realm. She was trained to be a mage of frost due to its uses in preserving corpses for a few days while a family gathers for the funeral. The corpse draws the blade on its hip as it stands up.
Unable to cast a spell she fumbles to dig out a wand. ‘Use what you know.’ she remembers her master say. While she may not know undead or the Scrouge, she does know corpses and she swings the end of the wand upward and it spears into his armpit. She watches the sword start to descend in her direction and she chokes out the command word from a strangled throat. The magic of the wand flares out the end. Like a firecracker in a closed hand, the shoulder explodes. The choking hand forcing her mouth open gives her no opportunity to close her mouth as a piece of rotting flesh and a lump of black ichor splatter into her mouth. The two separate, Tsa stumbling back and tripping over a stool to the ground and the corpse falling backwards as it is not able to compensate for the sudden loss of balance. She rolls over onto her hands and knees and fights off nausea while repeatedly spitting out the flesh and days old blood. She continues to spit even though it’s out.
‘Trust not, what you know not.’ her master’s voice says in her head as she remembers his lessons well. She scrambles to her feet quickly, and then cusses an unladylike curse while making note to hug her master in thanks for her lessons. The corpse is indeed not defeated and starts to rise.
She casts a frost bolt and finishes the spell just as the corpse stands. It doesn’t seem bothered at all by the loss of its arm. The frost bolt slams into the head of the corpse and half the face is partly blown off and the head is snapped violently backwards. The head comes forwards and skin hangs from the edge of the jaw line. It takes a step forward raising the sword to within range of striking her.
Fearing death, and even more so pain, she screams her next spell more than casts it and the Fire Blast impacts the corpse in the head and neck area. The resulting explosion is a gory mess that literally showers the area in days old blood, brain matter and rotting flesh. One would imagine that it would be bad enough with a fresh kill, but this corpse has been rotting for days. It rains down onto her. It’s in her hair; it makes her shoulders and upper part of her dress soggy in a foul stench of wet decaying black undead ichor. She looks down seeing what she is feeling. Looking down at her chest she sees what appears to be a red bloody tail sticking out the top of the dress betwixt her bosom. She reaches up and with a hand she lifts the tail out. Attached to the tail is a rotting yellowish leaking human eyeball. She holds it out to one side and lets it fall to the ground. “Ugh, gross. So gross.” she says as a shiver runs up her spine causing her to shiver and twitch as she tries not to think of it anymore.