After the fiftieth time the sheet snags on something, drawing them to a halt, Achillea finally throws her hands up in frustration. “Don’t you have anything to cover yourself with?!” she snarls.

Mordecai spreads his arms, making the sheet trailing behind him sort of flap like a pair of wings. “This is all I’ve got. If I’d had something before, I’d have been wearing it when we met.”

“So despite the fact that the sun burns you, you’ve been walking around exposed for—how long?”

“About eleven days or so.”

Her face twists into a portrait of sheer annoyance before she takes a deep breath and relaxes. “So,” she says evenly. “You’re recently risen then?”

“Yup. Haven’t had time to find anything.” The closest thing he’s found to civilization was the farm, but between rushing to the shade and running for his life he hadn’t been able to search for any clothing or such.

“Where’d you get this then?” She pulls at the neck of his armor, making the metal rattle against his bones and reminding him of how ill-fitting it is.

He shrugs. “I was wearing it when I woke up, so I must’ve died in it.”

Achillea pulls her hand away as quickly as if she’d been burned, wearing a look of utter disgust and horror as she does so. The spectacle of an orc warrior, whom Mordecai has witnessed killing people, doing so is…honestly hilarious. Although he suspects Achillea might put him down for good if he laughs, so he doesn’t. Out loud.

She grumbles, straightening up to try and save face. “We’ll have to get you some new gear then…” She trails off, swearing softly and muttering to herself. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Before what?” Mordecai begins to ask, but Achillea just turns away and starts walking. Mordecai rolls his eyes and follows, bunching the sheet up in his hands to try and keep it from dragging behind him so much.

Over the last 24 hours he’s learned a bit from Achillea, and a bit about her as well. She’s usually amenable to answering his questions, such as:

“Why were those people surprised that I can talk?”

“There’s a lot of different kinds of undead. You’re a soul that got stuck in its corpse. There are some types out there that are just the dead parts forced to walk around and do some necromancer’s bidding. They can’t talk or do anything they’re not told to, they’re just mindless slaves. Those are more common than your type. You’re a bit of a rarity.”

“Why did you and that woman both call me boneman?”

“It’s a superstition thing. People don’t like to think about how the risen dead used to be alive. It’s like looking into your own future. Calling them skeletons would be acknowledging that they used to be a living person, so people call them bonemen.”

“How do you know so much about the undead and the supernatural?”

“I told you, it’s just common knowledge. Some church somewhere started studying dark and holy magic in earnest, and there’s been a big surge of new information about that stuff going around for the last ten years or so. Even the orc villages know about it.”

Sometimes, though, he’ll ask something that’s either too personal or she just doesn’t feel like answering. When that happens she’ll just pretend he said nothing and keep going. Questions like:

“Why were those people after you?”

“What’s the deal with your name?”

“So you’re from an orc village, huh? What’s it like?”

All are ignored. Mordecai doesn’t press for answers. Between her silence and his own nebulous suspicions, he can guess at what they may be.

Briefly, he contemplates whether or not to play the ‘Will Achillea Answer’ game before deciding to just ask the question currently begging his attention. Mentally, he places his money on ‘no’. “Where exactly do you plan on getting new gear? It’s not like I can go into town, and you can’t just walk into a smithy and ask for a breastplate to fit a skeleton.”

Achillea also won’t answer questions that she doesn’t know the answer to. It’s like she’s physically incapable of admitting ignorance.

To his surprise, though, she does answer him. “There’s an apothecary near here that owes me. We’re gonna pay him a visit.”