Volunteering As A Corpse

How hard could it be right? You get killed and then you float around whatever afterlife awaits until the students can work their magic, literally.

Surely if things went truly wrong, the teacher would step in, so no matter what you’ll be back in this mortal coil 15 gold richer.

And so you trek your way to the **** magic home room, held in the top of one of the many spires dotting the academy.

It takes some work but you finally make it, standing outside of the room, the door doesn’t appear to be wood, stone or metal, it appears to be made out of flesh.

An eye spouts from where the nob would be and blinks at you a couple times, expectantly.

“Um… I’m here to volunteer….?” You say not entirely sure how to proceed when confronted with such a sight.

It glances you up and down before retracting back into the wall and stretching open, creating a space wide enough for you to slip through before closing behind you.

The room is empty, save for the lone teacher who sits at the desk, if memory serves, she was also the professor for war magic.

“Yes?” She asks, not looking up from the time she is currently writing in, her boney fingers gripping the pen tightly.

“I’m here to volunteer… for the necromancy students…?” She merely grunts before pointing a skeletal digit at a stone table at the center of the room, several intricate runes carved into the stonework of the floor around the table.

You don’t know the intricacies of necromancy but this seems rather intuitive, you step over, slowly crawling onto the table before lying on your back.

You wait a moment, preying this won’t take too long and then… blackness, you don’t know what happened, maybe the table was enchanted? Or you never saw the teacher coming until it was too late.

In any case, you are quite certain you lie dead now, floating along an inky void not unlike the one that surrounds the academy with various multicolored stars in the far distance.

You can also make out other shapes floating along the void, mumbling to themselves as they travel to the other side towards whatever afterlife they so chose.

You hesitate to travel to any such destination, fearful that it would seal you in on this side of mortality, forbidding you from returning to the other side.

And so you float there in the space between realities, waiting for a sign of your soul being pulled back into your own body.

It’s impossible to measure time here, even if it’s the only thing to preoccupy yourself with, seconds meld into each other, hours lose any sense of meaning as they stack up in your mind.

And then, right when you fear your mind will drift from you, losing your sense of self, you feel a tugging at the back of your mind.

So faint, you almost don’t notice it at first, as you focus on the feeling it grows stronger, your attention increasing its pull, the distant stars begin to fade away leaving you in inky blackness and then…

Your eyes open.

Your skull hurts as you slide sit up from the table, your eyes taking some time to adjust to your new surroundings, you’re alone in the room, save for the Professor who towers above you.

“Your name, speak it now” her rasping, croaking voice is filled with a stoic suspicion, as though questioning if you’re a friend or foe.

You state your name and her guard lowers, before dropping entirely, she creeps back towards her desk, before haphazardly tossing a small purse of coins to you.

It takes a moment but you eventually summon up the strength to pull yourself to your feet, stumbling your way to that strange meat door.

You feel like you had been torn apart and put back together, though given the nature of your sabbatical from this mortal coil, that may have actually happened at some point.

You return to your dorm, every muscle exhausted and aching as though you ran a marathon, perhaps that’s why undead tend to limp so stiltedly?

Your musings on the state of undead hosts are what your mind focuses on as you drift into a much needed slumber, not what you saw on the other side of the veil between life and ****.

[Gained 15 Gold]