Let's Practice Medicine!

accept that no pun is actually Good, but that the true nature of a good pun is to be so terrible that it becomes good.

say every pun that occurs to you. i’m so serious about this, sometimes the most well received puns will be ones you considered not saying.

ALWAYS laugh at your own puns, even if nobody else is. (especially if nobody else is.)

The sun was setting over Hearthglen, but she knew at least one person who would still be up. The evening shift guards at the gates of Mardenholde Keep barely spared her a second glance as she strode in, soft-soled shoes scuffing on the stone. They didn’t notice the way she shivered.

Lunathiel should have been placed in the barracks with the other soldiers. Instead, he’d been given a room to himself at the end of a corridor. It made her grimace as she approached. Poor guy. But they won’t forget about him here, not if I have anything to say about it.

She made sure to knock first. “Sir Embermirth?”

After a moment, the door opened and the sin’dorei death knight blinked down at her, ears twitching. His brown hair stuck up in the back where his hair tie had proved to be looser than needed, and his lichfire-blue eyes showed clear bafflement.

She tried not to think about what lay beneath the high collar of his shirt. She’d seen it once and it wasn’t pretty. “Can I come in? I need your advice about…a thing.”

He made a quiet sound and stepped back to let her in. There wasn’t much to his room—a barely-rumbled bed, a few stands for sets of armor that had more than their fair share of skulls and spikes, a long trunk she instinctively knew she didn’t want to get near—and a desk. A desk piled high with stacks of paper. As she perched nervously at the edge of the bed, he settled himself on the chair next to her and picked up a pencil.

She cleared her throat. “Um. Okay. So I just got back from…um. From a funeral. For a friend of mine. And I found out that the deceased…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Viletta. Beautiful, funny Viletta, gone cold and strange and those glowing eyes—right. Deep breath, Tan. “The deceased was a death knight.” Lunath made a sound; she barely heard him. “A—Sir Embermirth, I just saw her a month ago! And she was alive, she was smiling, she didn’t look good but she said she had healers, I thought—“ I should’ve helped, I thought it was none of my business, I could’ve talked her out of it— “I don’t know what to do.”

Lunath rasped, all but throwing the paper he wrote on at her. His handwriting must have been fine once, but now it was slightly lopsided—whoever had sewn his fingers back on hadn’t done the best job. ‘Please do not cry. I will help.’

She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of a hand. “Sorry. Sorry. But…I knew she was sick, she said she was getting help…” She sucked in a deep, slightly shaky breath. “And then I find out that ‘sick’ meant she was fucking dying and ‘help’ meant ‘oh, I’m just going to get someone to kill me and raise me as a sadistic walking corpse.’ And she threw. A. Fucking. Party. To celebrate her undeath. I thought I was being invited to a funeral.”

The death knight looked at her, stricken, before bending his head to the next scrap of paper. For a long time, there was only the scratch of his pencil before he handed it over. ‘I would never have chosen this state myself. But then, I was young and hearty when I was slain. You say your friend was dying?’

Tanryn nodded, handing it back. “She didn’t tell me exactly what, but—I got the impression it wasn’t curable.” There was a dingy painting hung on the opposite wall and she fixed her gaze on it, studying the identical somber expressions on the two brown-haired boys and the proud gleams in their parents’ eyes. It was better than looking at Lunath. “…I would have tried. I would’ve tried, but…if she was right…” She took a breath. “She has two young sons. At least now—hey, at least now she’ll live to see them grow up, huh?”

He grunted softly, ears laying back against his skull for a moment before returning the paper with slightly more forceful handwriting. ‘She will suffer. Being a death knight is not fun unless you are already a very twisted sort of person. But … unlife is better than no life at all. Your compassion does you credit, L—‘

She gave him a dirty look. “Hey, what’d I tell you about the ‘lady’ stuff? It’s just Tanryn to you. Or Bubbles if you feel like giving Aethan a heart attack.” She paused. “…Besides. Between you and Crusader Bladesworn, who am I to judge the living-impaired?”

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Bubbles?’

“Bubbles. See, because I was a priest before I was a paladin, and shields are my specialty, so…yeah.”

He nodded; when he handed her the paper again, the words written on it made her blink. ‘It is good you do not judge. Are you planning to find the people who raised her and slay them as they deserve?’

Oh. Oh, I hadn’t considered… A shudder ran through her. Just as quickly, the Light within her surged, a faint prickling of her flesh and heat gathering under her skin. I should. Necromancy is wrong, it goes against everything the Light teaches…but… “She wanted to be…raised. As a death knight. And her husband is a death knight too, he says he’ll help her deal with the whole…thing. So…really, they almost did a good thing? Because otherwise, either she’d…die slowly—“ An image flashed into her mind—Viletta wasting away, coughing her lungs out on white sheets and bruising under skin gone ashy with pain. She rubbed her arms. “Or she’d go find someone else to bring her back. And then probably I’d never even see her again.” Or she’d wind up something even worse than a death knight.

Lunathiel reached out and laid a cool, comforting hand on her forearm. The contact barely lasted a second before they both jerked away—him with a rasping croak and her with a panicked yelp. “Sorry! I’m sorry, I forgot to warn you—are you alright? I didn’t burn you, did I?”

He frowned at his palm, poking at it experimentally for a bit before shaking his head and snatching up the pencil again. ‘I am alright. But are you alright?’

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I’m gonna head back to the rectory now, thanks.”

The door swung shut behind her with a soft click, and she made her way back home.

Wasn’t that what she’d said months ago in her unfaltering arrogance? She had been so sure, so certain, after years of living with death as a constant companion that her end would come with ease.

Dying hurt.

There was no denying it, no keeping a stiff upper lip and faking a smile through her suffering this time. The death wound hurt more than she ever could have anticipated. Her neck burned where the vein had been severed but it wasn’t the gushing of blood that had her feeling hollow. Collin’s face, the guilt he tried to hide, was the last thing she could focus on. If this didn’t work-

There was hardly time to ruminate on the consequences now. Dying hurt but it was quick. Her body had betrayed her and gave up the ghost so fast. Was that screaming? Was that her screaming? All the pain was so distant and as it faded so went the guilt. There was simply nothing.

And, after one last ragged breath, so too was Viletta nothing.

A sense of urgency nagged at her, robbed her of the peace of death. It wanted - no it demanded - something from her. It didn’t ask her to focus. It ordered her submission. Darkness was ripped away from her by an unholy green light. A part of her, perhaps the only sensible shred that remained, fought against it.

Dying had been easy - it was rising once more that was truly hard.

For every drop of resistance in her there was a rising tide of unwavering obedience, of willingness. This was meant to be. This was the plan! That sense of urgency grew tired of her fighting; a howl of rage tore through her mind and robbed her of any other thoughts. There was the command and she would dare to ignore it? The fury inside her screeched at that. It burned inside her but, even as it coursed through her, there was a sense of it also outside. The anger was a part of her but, at the same time, it was not. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t remain tied to a motionless, stupid corpse for a second longer. It was not meant to fizzle out! It was fearsome, it was monstrous! It was more than this!