bring Deneir and Oghma back to this library.
The chapel was empty.
Thick soot covered the intricate designs on the massive, arching pillars closest to the doors, but little else seemed out of place. The altar across the way seemed intact, all the items, the bells, the single chalice, and the twin scepters atop it exactly where they belonged.
Their footsteps resounding, the three huddled close together and made their way toward the front
Ivan saw the body first, and pulled up to a quick stop, holding out a strong arm that bent Cadderly over at the waist and forced him to hold as well.
Pikel continued forward a step, came around when he realized that the others were not following, and used their stunned expressions to guide his own eyes.
"Oooo," the green-bearded dwarf muttered.
"Banner," Cadderly explained, recognizing the burned corpse, though its skin hung in flaps away from the bone, and its face was half skull and half blackened skin.
The eyes rotated in their sockets, settling on Cadderly, and a grotesque smile erupted, the remaining flaps of the body's lips going wide.
"Cadderly!" Banner cried excitedly, and he catapulted to a standing position, bones rattling, arms bouncing wildly, and head bobbing about
"Oh, Cadderly, how good of you to return!"
Ivan and Pikel gasped in unison and fell back. They had fought undead monsters before, alongside Cadderly in the catacombs of this very building. Now they looked to the young priest for support for this was his place, his chapel. Cadderly, stunned, overwhelmed, fell back, too, and grabbed his hat and, more particularly, the holy symbol set in its front
"I knew - I simply knew! - that you'd come back," the grotesque Banner rambled on. He clapped his hands, and one of his fingers, held by a mere thread of ligament, fell from the others and dangled in midair several inches from his hand.
"I keep doing that!" the exasperated thing wailed, and he began reeling in his dropped digit as though it were some empty fishhook.
Cadderly wanted to talk to Banner, to ask some questions, to get some answers. But where to begin? This was too crazy, too out of place. This was the Edificant Library, the sanctuary of Deneir and Oghma! This was a place of prayer and reverence, and yet, standing here before Cadderly was a creature that mocked that reverence, that made all the prayers sound like pretty words strung together for no particular purpose. For Banner had been a priest, a well-respected and high-ranking priest of Cadderly's own god! Where was Deneir now? Cadderly had to wonder. How had Deneir allowed this grim fate to befall one so loyal?
"Not to worry," Banner assured the three, as if they were concerned about his finger. "Not to worry. I've become quite good at putting the pieces back together since the fire, actually."
Tell me about the fire," Cadderly interjected, seizing that one important event and holding on to it like a litany against insanity.
Banner looked at him weirdly, the bulging eyeballs rolling this way and that. "It was hot," he replied.
"What started it?" Cadderly pressed.
"How would sleeping Banner know that?" the undead thing answered bruskly. "I have heard that the wizard..."
Banner paused and smiled widely, and began waggling his finger in the air before him, as though Cadderly had asked a question that was out of bounds. That waggling finger, like the one before it, dropped free, this one falling all the way to the floor.
"Oh, where did it go?" Banner cried in desperation, and he whipped himself to a crouched position and began hopping about the pews.
"Are ye wanting to talk to this one?" Ivan asked, and the dwarf's tone made it obvious which answer he preferred.
Cadderly thought for a moment. Banner had stopped short of an answer - and the hint he had offered did not settle well with Cadderly! But why had the wretched thing stopped? the young priest wondered. What had compelled Banner to hold back? Cadderly did not know exactly what Banner was. He was more than an unthinking zombie, Cadderly knew, though the young priest wasn't well versed in the various versions of undeath. Zombies, and others of the lowest form of animated undeath, didn't converse, were simply unthinking instruments of their masters, so Banner apparently ranked somewhere above them. Cadderly had once battled a mummy, but Banner didn't seem to fit that mold either. He seemed benign, almost, too foolish to be a threat
Yet, something, some impulse, had held Banner from answering.
Cadderly eyed the scrambling creature directly, presented his