Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia woke up during the night. Hot sand was spilling out of her pendant and trickling down her neck.

“Crap, I need to empty that thing.” She tried to get rid of the sand on her and got up to empty the pendant.

“If the church really wants to track me down they just need to follow the damn sand.” As she got rid of the unwanted yellow grains she felt the other things stored in the item.

Still need to learn this identification skill. I have two potentially magic items to examine now.

She thought over everything that had happened the last two months while she took care of her earthly needs. And all I wanted was to summon neat skeletons, she mentally complained, chewing on a piece of dried meat.

Sofia observed the undead and his ethereal halo of light, dutifully guarding the room.

“Alright, Pareth, it’s high time we added someone else to the team. Today, we’re summoning our second hero.”

Hopefully they are a bit more talkative.

She climbed back to the desk’s floor, she would summon the banshee in the ritual circle she had carved. It wasn’t useful in any way but she felt it was cooler.

Her mana started leaving her in droves, much like when she had used [Angel’s bolt]. She activated the bone armor, just to be safe, noticing that from the 80 kg of stocked bones previously, only 26 were left.

A thin gray mist permeated through the room, getting thicker and thicker. The mist turned to fog, and before she knew it, it had faded, unceremoniously leaving behind a frail looking girl, lying unconscious in the circle.

She had dirty long black hair, as long as Sofia’s which was impressive considering she was only about two thirds her height. Her face was rather sharp, she looked malnourished and her skin was deathly pale. Her pointy nose and two moles under the left eye were the only standout features. Her body lacked any kind of curves in all the ways that Sofia’s didn’t. If not for her decidedly feminine face and small frame, she might even have been mistaken for a boy.

She was wearing an old black cotton robe of the simplest design, it had been mended many times, along with very worn wooden clogs. It was all she had on her. If Sofia had to guess, she was around her age.

This… I had expected many things but not that. This is my banshee? The terrifying specter of death?

Sofia grabbed the girl’s wrist, alive, good.

“Hey, wake up.” She shook the girl gently.

The girl’s eyelids opened, revealing deep green eyes, full of terror. The muscles of her whole body cramped up as if she was in severe pain, she screamed.

“I’M NOT A WITCH! I’M NOT A WITCH! I’M NOT A-” Her body convulsed, tears flowed down the sides of her face. Not a second later, as Sofia was still processing what she was seeing, the girl collapsed again.

What? Sofia looked at Pareth for support, but he stood unmoving. Useless pile of bones!

“Shit, what do I do? It’s dangerous to feed her anything like this.”

The girl was her summon, so much like with Pareth, she had a general understanding of her current status. It was not looking good at all, and was worsening by the second.

She looked outside. It was still raining. Fuck…

Sofia rummaged through her backpack, pulling out a large but thin canvas tarp.

“Grab this.” She stuck the rolled up tarp inside of Pareth’s ribcage, and proceeded to open one of the room’s windows. The vines here were quite thinner than down below but they still reached all the way up there. “Climb down the vines, when we’re down, protect her from the rain with the tarp.”

She was alone with the girl. She barely weighed anything. Sofia grabbed her and jumped out the window. She fell down the tower, a few meters above the ground, she activated the slow fall ring. It cushioned her landing a bit, her boots still sunk deep into the grassland’s cold mud. Pareth was quick to cover her and the passed out girl by holding up the tarp above them.

The shit this dumb skill makes me do already. [Heal Undead].

A bright column of light pierced the night sky. It had to be visible from kilometers away, were it not for the rainstorm.

The light had no problem healing the ‘banshee’ even through the tarp. Her skin was gaining newfound colors, her cheeks grew a bit less sunken, even her hair looked healthier. After about thirty seconds, the girl stopped showing any improvement. The ‘banshee’ still looked malnourished, but no longer on the verge of death as she had been a few instants prior. But she wouldn’t wake up.

Is this a joke of the system? Am I getting punished for having broken spells? I'm not amused.

Sofia and Pareth worked to get the girl back up into the spire. The dungeon entrance prompt didn’t show up this time. Using the crumbly furniture that she hastily broke and threw in the fireplace, she started a fire.

She washed the girl and dressed her in some of her own clothes. They were way too large but this was better than what she had been wearing before, which was closer to rags covered in mud than actual clothing. She had taken care of the sick younger kids just like this many times at the orphanage. It was back when it was still a cramped and run down place, before the church’s sponsoring program had reached them.

Sofia had spent the last few hours trying to learn the [Identify] skill from the scroll. It was a lengthy and tedious task. Merely glancing at the scroll was like looking at a soup of wriggling words, the more she focused on it, the less she could make out. She managed to understand bits and pieces but it would take her a while to get the full picture. The only real gain she made for now was a huge headache.

The dark haired girl sleeping on her bedroll woke up.

She didn’t scream this time. Rather, she sat up and looked around, face full of unconcealed shock. Her gaze stopped on Pareth, then on the voluptuous blonde girl whose shoulders the skeleton was busy massaging.

“A- Am I dead? Is this Hell?”

“Whether you’re dead is a tricky question. But as far as I know, this isn’t hell, no. This is the Skyreach kingdom, well, some people would still consider this place hell, but it's not all that bad.”

“Skyreach? Is it far from F̸͎̾̔̿̐͂̆̃̊̕r̴̡͓̘̜̳̪͐͂͆͋̋̕͝ą̷̺͖̯̯͍̂̆̔̀͐̌́͝͝n̸̨͕̣͕͖̘̺̺͕͔̽̽̎̓̒͘͠͝c̶̜̭̞̎͋̐̀̋̑̈̏̕̕ͅͅe̷̷̺̤͈̙̰͚̟͍̬͖͒̇̍̽?”

Wh-... Oh. That’s what the heroes call the censor. I read about it in the church’s books about summoning. They think the system prevents us from hearing things that are against God's will. In particular anything related to the heroes’ planes' history and technology.

So she’s really a summoned hero from another world!

“Ah, sorry for spacing out,” Sofia started, “You’re very far from where you were. This is a different world. I summoned you here,” she answered, trying her best to sound friendly.

“Summon? Like summoning a devil? Are… are you a real… witch?” the girl asked, her whole body had slightly spasmed at her last word. She was shuffling away from the fireplace.

“Not really? I can do some magic. That’s how I healed you.”

“Hmm.” The girl closed her eyes. Her expression changed a few times and she was biting her lower lip.

“Thank you,” she exclaimed as she opened her eyes. “I don’t understand everything but I get that you helped me recover so I’m grateful. You saved me.”

“Well. Sorry to break it to you like this, but as I mentioned, you aren’t quite alive right now.”

“I feel very alive though?” the girl answered as she poked her own cheek.

“See this skeleton behind me? That’s Pareth, you’re like him, undead. More precisely, you’re a banshee, which is a kind of specter,” Sofia explained slowly, making sure the girl had time to understand everything.

“Then I’m a ghost?” the girl asked tentatively.

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Alright.”

“You’re taking it rather well…”

“I don’t feel too bad about it. Ghost or not I think I’m very alive if you ask me, and that’s much better than where I was heading to before you summoned me.” As she answered, she placed her palm in front of her right eye. “My left eye even recovered! In fact, I honestly haven't felt so alive for a long time,” she elaborated, sounding downcast, recalling some bad memories? I know the feeling...

The girl’s green eyes locked with Sofia’s. “So, why did you summon me?” she inquired. "I'm no legendary warrior or anything. I guess I do make some great soup, if that's what you're looking for."

Sofia and the girl ended up talking about their lives for several hours, getting to know each other and how they had ended up like this. The girl’s name was Emi, the same as her mother and her mother’s mother. She used to live as a herbalist in the small remote house of her late grandparents. Her world’s religion had gone crazy about hunting witches and she had somehow ended up as a target. Her memories of the last few days were blurry at best, stories of fleeing and fires, then she had awoken here.

When asked what she wanted to do, Emi expressed that following an actual witch in another world sounded like an exciting journey. Not that she had any idea of what else she could possibly do. Especially if the plants here weren't the same as her world's.

The sun was already high in the sky when they stopped talking. They had personalities that didn’t clash at all, it was like two old friends finding out about each other’s latest whereabouts.

“Say, Sofia, about this whole name thing. Can I just pick a new one?”

“Yeah of course you can, I named Pareth because he can’t think for himself but I’d feel weird giving you a name, I’m not your mom,” Sofia answered as she prepared a dried meat stew using the fireplace. It’s so relaxing having someone to talk to after all this time. FINALLY! I don’t even care if she hogs a skill slot and a quarter of my mana, please take more if that means you're going to stay!

“Well It’s not like my mom’s any livelier than yours…" she interrupted herself to advise Sofia to add more wood to the fire. "We might as well become sisters at this point, I’d like to exchange some physical traits… Want me to keep the ‘reth’ theme?”

“I don’t mind whatever you choose, it's your name, not mine.” As long as you don’t choose anything ridiculous.

“Hmm. Then, from today forth, there’s no more herbalist Emi.” She took a deep inhalation and continued in a pretend solemn tone. “I shall forever be known as the great Saint’s loyal retainer, Alith the Banshee!” she held her empty cup and spoon high in the air in celebration.

[Congratulations, you have baptized your second hero!]

Sofia cringed at the petite girl’s description of her, it did little to mask her smile.

I need to seriously revisit my definition of the word undead... How is she a Banshee, even?

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