Grave n' Claw

## Content Information

The lake gleams blindingly under the setting sun. Yes, the same lake within which a terrible monster is said to slumber and many a dastardly secret has been sworn beneath the waters. Yet, this lake also serves to take attention away from the woods that exist just nearby. A rather notable feature, since not long ago, it was the setting of a grisly scene. Murder or manslaughter, there was no denying that a man had just recently cried out and was killed in these very woods.

And yet, for as many people as that should drive away, there’s a fair share of people that are drawn towards such scenes, even though the body has long since been buried in a shallow grave. Perfect for the idiots out there who know what to do with that body.

“Damn, not a word of instructions on how much to apply?” Ludlow’s done this whole ritual of raising the dead a few times over. Naturally, it’s this very shaggy-haired, monochrome-dressed man who now stands over the rough dirt that covers the recently-dead body. In his two fingers, he holds a clear bottle of some clear, albeit green-tinted, oil.

“That’s the last time I buy one of these old bottles off of Etsy,” Ludlow complains. “Ah, well, I can probably guesstimate it.”

Ludlow begins pouring his oil out onto the shallow grave. He pours it in vertical lines, each one traced slowly and meticulously as if to form an invisible shape. The way he does it is almost like the brush strokes of an artist-- something he would otherwise not dare replicate.

Suddenly, a voice rings out from behind him, one full of anger. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” It was a voice he recognised, though he’d never heard it use this tone.

The voice nearly makes Ludlow’s steady hand falter. Someone’s not exactly pleased with his trespassing within these woods.

“Why, I’m pouring a mysterious special liquid atop a suspiciously uneven patch of ground, of course,” Ludlow flatly answers. His tired eyes turn to gaze over his shoulder. “Did it look like I was doing something else?”

The voice revealed itself to have come from Lily Pond. The last time they had seen each other was during an ultimate frisbee contest, which ended with Ludlow starting a fight. Lily was crossing her arms, clearly upset. “I knew you were a weirdo, but stooping so low as to disturb a grave?”

“Well, duh.” Ludlow caps and pockets his little bottle of oil. “How else am I supposed to, I dunno, raise the god damn dead without a dead person? And now I’m not even sure how well it’ll work now that you’ve thoroughly scared the piss out of me.”

Seeing Lily’s familiar form only makes Ludlow scratch his head. “Say, why *did* you come in so loudly, anyways? I’m not even sure I know who you are.”

“Raise the dead?” Lily asked, completely ignoring Ludlow’s question. “You’re a necromancer? Most people wouldn’t just admit that to someone they barely know.”

Ludlow shrugs. “Best other excuse I’ve got is planting flowers over this shallow little grave, and I clearly have those on me. What’s yours? Got business with a dead lover or something?”

“I…” Lily grabbed her arm and looked away. “I just came to give my respects to the dead. That’s all.”

“In the woods?” Ludlow asks, narrowing his eyes. “How’d you even know anything was out here? What, were you just hanging out near the lake and you decided to come out and pay respects to the dead in the woods?”

A large, mocking grin spreads across Ludlow’s cheeks. “Or did you already know it was out here, by chance?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “No, I came to pay my respects to a dead guy I didn't know at a grave I didn’t know existed. What do you think, asshole?”

With a chuckle, Ludlow beckons the werewolf towards the grave. Rather volatile, this girl, isn’t she? Lud’s smile only widens at the calamitous amount of possibilities.

“Thankfully, you’ve caught me in a good mood,” he claims, knowing that his good mood played little part in his actions. “I take it you’ve already seen this dead body. Wanna see it do a little dance?”

Lily stared at him in disbelief. “A-are you kidding? That’s sick! What’s wrong with you?” As her anger boiled, she felt the tell tale feeling of an imminent shift. Quickly grabbing her pendant, she leant against a tree and took a few deep breaths to try and calm down.

Ludlow just keeps on smiling, as if he’s used to it by now.

“Depends on the day.” His casual, couldn’t-be-bothered tone doesn’t at all match his deadly grin. “You called it as you saw it, I can raise the dead. And today I felt like raising the dead, so I’m gonna go ahead and raise the dead, okay? You watch at your leisure.”

Turning back to him, Lily let out a growl. “And what if I stop you?”

Ludlow silently turns his back to Lily. From his pocket, he pulls a knife, though it’s far too small to be much of a weapon.

“Let’s just say I trust fate to kill me when the right time comes,” Ludlow boldly claims. “That’s kind of why I’m always tempting it, not that you’d know that about me.”

He gently slices his finger open, and the blood of the wound drips down onto eight separate points on the shallow grave. If a line were to connect them, it’d look like an octagon.

“Besides, what do you even have against this ritual?” The necromancer inquires. “Not like it’s anything that hasn’t been done before, unless… ooh, is there a connection between you and this dead person that I’m not aware of?” Just saying that fills Ludlow’s full voice with anticipative energy.

“That’s none of your business.” Lily growled as she clutched her arm, seemingly in pain. “Either way, you should leave the dead to rest. Not use their bodies as toys!”

There’s a short silence. The final drip of Ludlow’s blood into the center of his little ‘octagon’ resonates throughout the woods.

“Meh.” Again, Ludlow shrugs, though this time with a playful energy. “No harm in asking. Oh, speaking of asking, if you’re as squeamish as you’re making yourself out to be, you might wanna turn around.”

Finally, Ludlow drops his knife into the center of the octagon of blood. It’s faint, but a strange sigil, probably drawn by the oil, appears in red on the dirt. A circle, actually, with eight arrows pointing out of it-- a literal symbol of chaos. How subtle.

Glancing down at the symbol, Lily growls once more. This time, her clothes bulge outwards, the seems letting out sounds of stress as they struggle to keep the fabric together. “I’m giving you one last chance. Leave the body in peace.”

Ludlow’s eyes shift from the grave back to Lily’s bulging body. Seems like it’s more for comedic effect than out of any sort of fear.

“I mean, you can’t stop the process once it’s started. I could go, but one, I’m not going to, and two, it’s not changing anything at this point.” His head tilts in mock apology. “Sorry.”

Lily stepped forward, but halted as she noticed the soil over the grave start to shift. “N-no!” Looking back to Ludlow, she asks one simple question. “Why? Why would you do this?”

One of Ludlow’s eyebrows raises. He stares at Lily like she’s the crazy one. “If you’re just angry because of this whole moral issue, then spoiler alert, I don’t care about that stuff. Having essentially a hyper-devoted friend at your beck and call is both practically AND sentimentally useful!” His arms cross. “Frankly, I don’t see what’s wrong with taking the resources the world gives me.”

In truth, Ludlow knows exactly what’s wrong with what he’s doing. Desecrating a grave, tombstone or no tombstone, is probably one of the more wrongful things a man can do, and that’s not even counting the god-play aspect of raising a walking corpse. This is so wrong on so many levels. Maybe it’d have been a little funnier to see Lucy go with it, but in that sense, no agent of chaos can control their own lives-- for better or worse!

Lily waited, eyes on the ground. She had never seen a walking corpse before and a small part inside of her was curious. Besides, if he was telling the truth and he couldn’t stop it, there was no point getting violent, yet.

The marked ground suddenly bursts open. A singular clawed hand rises up, just like in one of those old zombie flicks. With just the one arm, the battered body drags itself out of the ground. First, the head, which stares at Lily with eyes far too lifeless to be human. It crawls out stiffly, less like a man and more like the construct it really is.

“Aw, yeah.” Ludlow smiles proudly. “Pure artwork, just as it should be.” Until, that is, he notices the corpse’s one glaring quirk.

“Say, assuming you saw this guy die,” he asks, “do you happen to know where their, erm… entire right arm went? It appears to be missing.”

“Unless someone else decided to go grave robbing, it should be in the grave. Just… separated.” Lily looked at the corpse, feeling guilty once more. “I’m sorry.”

Ludlow crouches down to hoist the rest of the walking corpse out of the dirt. It stands on its own with ease, swaying constantly like a drunk person on a turntable. Oddly enough, it looks more alive than a traditional zombie, more like an extremely jaded human. Probably because he just died yesterday, come to think of it.

“Ah, I somehow knew you would’ve had something to do with this guy’s death.” He dusts himself off with filthy hands, counterintuitively enough. “That said, I don’t exactly feel like digging like a dog through this dirt to find the other arm, so… eh, it’s not important anyways. Not for my purposes.”

Lily let out a deep sigh as she took a step forward. In between steps she grows, clothes bursting at the seams, revealing the form of a werewolf. “I warned you.” She growled as she moved closer to the necromancer and his new friend with purpose.

“That’s fair.” Ludlow stares Lily dead in the eyes. If he’s afraid, he’s hiding it well. “Only thing I’ll ask you is why. Again. Entertainment, some kind of monetary gain? Hell, do you just not know why *I’m* doing whatever I’m doing?”

“Because it’s wrong!” Lily shouts rushing forward. She swiped an arm towards Ludlow, knocking him out from between her and the corpse.

The hybrid wolf’s heavy strike blows Ludlow aside and into the dirt. Almost into a tree, in fact. Though he can’t stop himself from tumbling to the ground, he easily stands back up as though he was struck by a mere pillow.

In his place, however, the one-armed walker raises its arm up for a tough attack.

“Stand down,” Ludlow calls out. “She’s within her rights.”

The corpse steps back and lets its arm fall limp.

“As much as I do like this fiery temper of yours,” Ludlow admits, “let’s put aside this idea of anything being morally right or wrong or any matters of opinion for a sec. Now, without mentioning any of that, why waste your energy on my little scrub ass before you even know what I’m gonna do next?”

“Why does that even matter?!” Lily shouted back at him. She reached up, getting ready to put this zombie out of it’s short re-lived misery. “Whatever you’re going to do, you defiled a corpse to do it!”

“Better question.” Ludlow lightly taps Lily on her shoulder. His shifty little smile is back, though it’s not the same eccentric grin it used to be. “Why does THAT matter? I don’t care that I messed with a pile of dead flesh and bones to make something useful out of it. Don’t you at least want to know what I was doing with it first? Maybe see if you could get a little entertainment, even some benefit out of it? Feels pretty stupid to pass up an opportunity to ruffle some feathers just because you didn’t like how it’s done.”

Lily glared down at the necromancer. “Get fucked.” With one quick motion, Lily crushed the dead man’s head, letting the corpse fall to the ground.

In an instant, the corners of Ludlow’s mouth drop into a shallow frown. His eyes, once reflecting his snakelike excitement, dullen with disinterest.

“Well, there’s a good bit of blood and oil down the drain,” he complains. “If it’s any consolation, you remind me of my old pal, Cynthia. That temper, that mindset of taking your stance and sticking to it, even the massive fucking *killjoy* that sleeps in your brains.”

With a single, inaudible heel turn, Ludlow decides to turn his back on Lily, as if he never even noticed her towering transformation. Still, he doesn’t choose to run or even walk away from the scene quite yet.

“If you wanna hate on me so bad, that’s fine. Just make sure you either know what you’re getting into or, if you’re anything like me, you’re okay with not knowing, ‘cause if you’re throwing a fit about this, I can imagine this isn’t the worst thing your naïve ass will get you into. Also, if you’re not gonna do anything with it, could you do me a solid and drop that cracked skull off by that B-D-E sorority? I was gonna go see what happened if I scared their balls-or-lack-thereof off, but… well, you can see how that went.”

Sighing, Lily started to dig the grave once more for the man she killed, twice now if re-killing counted. As she dug she couldn’t help but ruminate on Ludlow’s words, even if she didn't trust the man who said them. One thing was true, if she was going to try and do the right thing in the supernatural world, she was going to have to learn a lot more about it.

After burying the corpse, Lily sat down against a tree and relaxed, letting her body shift back to her human form. One last thing went through her mind before she started the trek back to campus.

*“Fuck… Now I have to buy a new set of clothes… AGAIN!”*