To warm a dead heart.

It is not uncommon for wandering scholars like myself to travel with a bodyguard. Only a fool goes entirely without practicing with a blade, of course, but nevertheless, most of us prefer to entrust our safekeeping to another so we might concentrate upon our studies. Orcs are particularly favoured for their loyalty and physical prowess, though simple availability - and, perhaps, the comfort that comes with having one of your own race by your side in foreign lands - makes other humans the most common.

What is less common, is for that companion to be a revenant; one of the undead.

I met - though, perhaps 'discovered', or more morbidly, 'raised', would be more accurate - Diabushi in the southern Caliphates. In truth, it was only my distant blood relation to the long-fallen dynasties of those lands which allowed to be conduct research in those lands; the Sultan was a deeply superstitious man, and though the fearsome gods which had ones ruled there had long fallen into obscurity, he feared any possible curse that might fall upon him by turning me away. So it was that I began conducting an exploration of a number of linked tombs sited along the Dejah river, and while the endeavour quickly exhausted most of my research grants, it wasn't long number of artifacts dating from centuries before the current Sultan's rule had been cataloged and removed for study. Sadly, many of my fellows had already lost their lives to the many traps set to dissuade grave-robbers, and so the final act of breaking through to the inner chambers fell to me alone.

As the last sandstone blocks gave way, I was met not with the piles of gold and precious stones I had expected, but with something much more akin to an armoury. A rune-inscribed black casket stood in the center of the burial chamber, surrounded by racks of ornate weapons and the dessicated remains of what I assumed had once been trophies - some humanoid, others clearly great beasts. While my peers might have been disappointed at the lack of riches to plunder, I had to restrain myself, for fear of my excitement carrying me blindly into any final traps placed around the casket.

With no mage on-hand, I was forced to explore the chamber at an agonizingly slow pace, my heart in my throat as I tested each floor tile in turn for concealed triggers. And yet, I found nothing, and as my anxiety dissipated I saw fit to call in the rest of my team. Once they realized that the way was clear, the surviving members of my team began to move into the spaces I had established as safe, examining the weapons and judging whether any of the trophies could be salvaged. My own attention, however, was upon the central casket; it was cool to the touch, and I traced the runic symbols with shaking fingertips, whispering to myself as I translated their meaning.

"Diabushi," I muttered, "The Gorgon." She had apparently been a mighty warrior and a lesser princess, which explained the contents of her tomb. As I worked my way over the stone, my fingers caught on something. There was a sudden bite of pain, and a quiet click echoed through the chamber.

My blood turned cold and every soul within the room froze. I could feel blood dripping down my finger, and in the total, terrified silence, I could hear it pattering softly against the floor. For thirty long seconds we stayed like that, not daring to move, simply staring at the black monolith and waiting to see what final trap I had unleashed upon us. Until, finally, with the sound of stone grinding upon stone, the lid of the casket crunched forwards and tumbled away to smash upon the floor. And the occupant stepped forth.

She - it was unmistakably a she, the bandages wrapped tightly around her body doing little to hide the curve of her hips or the swell of her bust - staggered at first, like a drunk, or a person awakening suddenly from a very deep sleep. She was tall, with ornamental, golden armour upon her broad shoulders, and a sweeping headpiece worked to resemble a mass of twisting serpents where a living woman's hair would have been. She carried a mighty glaive which she used to prop herself upright, leaning against the haft and letting it take her weight while she scanned the room. Finally, at long last, she turned to me - her face was a serenely beautiful death mask carved from the purest white marble, and she stared silently at me, the rest of her as still as any statue. That mask held, just as it does today, no hint of expression, but her blank, endless gaze held me in place just as surely as a spear through the gut would. I felt like I was being studied, evaluated, taken apart and examined and reassembled before the eyes of my terrified expedition. In times to come, she would explain that her title was a reference to the intensity of her stare, which had reduced many potential suitors to stuttering wrecks. It seemed like a little of that potency had carried across the veil, despite the immobility of her new stone face.

The revenant made a strange, rasping noise, then spun her glaive with an elegance I would not have expected from one of the undead. I thought my life was about to be cut short - strangely, I remember feeling distantly annoyed that I would never finish my current research papers - but it came to rest, blade-down, at my feet, with the revenant knelt before me.

"Jandalar, my lord, my king. I am returned, as prophesied long ago." The words were a far cry from the ugly noise it had so recently made - they were eerie and echoing, yet possessed an ethereal beauty that no mortal throat could match. "I pledge myself to you, as I did in life, in this, the end of times."

At length we were able to bring her back to our camp, though a handful of my companions departed in the the desert, muttering about curses and evil spirits. Diabushi was just as confused as we were when she saw the surface - she had expected to see great armies of the living and dead alike, marshaled against a coming apocalypse. Her people, she explained, had believed that there would come a time when their gods waged war upon them. In preparation for this, every member of the royal or military castes were ritually mummified and enchanted so that, at the touch of their king's blood, they would reawaken to take their place in the final war.

Which, of course, left us both in a rather awkward situation. I wasn't a king, just distantly descended from one, and it certainly wasn't the end of the world. Diabushi going back to her tomb wasn't an option - the magic that had reanimated her would only dissipate with her complete physical destruction, and, as she politely but firmly informed the man who had suggested it, she had no intention of sitting alone in her tomb waiting for an apocalypse that might or might not show up.

It was Diabushi herself who finally suggested the solution. She shrugged one of her shoulders and turned her pale death mask towards me, and in her strange, echoing voice, offered to guard me on my travels. She had been a bodyguard in life, she said, and I since I was the closest thing she had to a King...

Well, in her own words, "You'll do."

Of course, our relationship changed over time. Diabushi spoke little at first, following and fighting in a manner more like a golem than a sapient being. As she absorbed the world and the changes mankind had worked upon it, however, she began to talk more - especially when something reminded her of her previous life, of which she remembered surprisingly little beyond her position, her duties, and a few other fragments which had survived through her long sleep. It was a source of great frustration for her, but while she would grown sullen and introverted at times, the moments where something dragged a new memory back to the surface were a source of great joy for us both. During those times, she would become passionate, talkative and physically animated, and we whiled away many evenings eagerly talking over her latest recollection to see if anything more would arise. She would often place her cool, dry hand upon my own, or on my knee or shoulder, though at the time I thought nothing of it. Stupid, perhaps, though a scholar's life tends not to build a great deal of familiarity with the fairer sex.

Our relationship truly became worthy of that name just over a year after we had first met. We had left the Caliphates far behind and were working our way through the Seven Cities, and had just arrived in the merchant-city of Swyndel. Diabushi had been in one of her more animated moods, the sight of a golden-eyed Tiefling girl having her armour repaired sending her on an eager explanation about how the fiend-folk had been viewed as semi-divine in her old culture, and we were settling down together in our rented rooms. Free-willed undead are not entirely unknown in the Seven Cities - some pass through from the dead city of Ulthesh to the west - so we had encountered little difficulty in finding lodgings.

Diabush sat on her bed behind me, examining one of the glowing Elven crystals that lit the room with its soft, warm light while I undressed. In truth I'd never concerned myself with bathing or undressing before her - for all her sapience, she was still undead, and I had assumed that her sexuality had died with her. I tossed my shirt aside, examining my bare chest in the mirror; we had skirmished with a pack of Goblins on our way to the city, and a badly-timed parry had let one strike a glancing blow against my side. My armour had taken the worst of it, fortunately, though it had left me with an angry bruise up my side.

I heard the soft rustle of fabric on fabric as she shifted behind me, and her voice drifted across the room.

"I remember who you remind me of, now."

She had spoken of this before, in her darker moods - she reminded me of someone from her past. Not her old King, as I had initially suggested, but someone whom she had been very close to.

"That's good." I replied, a smile breaking out across my face as I examined the athletic muscles that were forming across my chest and arms, the rewards of a life spent walking, fighting and digging. "I know he was important to you. You don't have to tell me if it's too personal."

The bed creaked as she stood. "He had your hair." Diabushi said. I could see her approaching in the edge of the mirror, her blank, pale mask visible over my shoulder. "Long, blond, like corn. I always thought it looked beautiful in the sun."

I turned, slightly nonplussed, my mouth working as I tried to formulate a response. Diabushi stood before me, tall and powerful, looking down at me with her blank, stony gaze.

"Mandulak. He was my favorite concubine."

She took another step forwards, close enough now that I could smell the rich, spicy scent of the preservatives that had been used to mummify her. She reached out and placed one of her hands against my chest, and I let out a small gasp as she ran it down, tracing her fingers over the growing muscles, her bandages rough against my skin.

As if in a dream, I reached for her as well, placing a trembling hand upon her hip, exploring the womanly curve of her preserved body. It was cool - not cold, like a corpse, and her linen wrappings gave a little as I gave her a gentle squeeze. She was so still - like a statue, not breathing, possessed of none of the subtle little motions of the living. A little voice in the back of my head chanted, over and over, that this wasn't right - that she was dead, possessed of sapience but no less of an animated corpse for it - but as we stood there, silently touching one anothers bodies, it felt right. Right enough that the nagging voice was pushed further and further to the corner of my mind until it finally fell silent altogether.

But for Diabushi, apparently, it did not. She pulled away with the ugly rasp of air over dead vocal chords - a sound she very rarely made, much preferring the ghostly magical speech lent by her enchantments - stumbling backwards and collapsing onto her bed with her back to me.

"That should not have happened." The revenant said, her head hung, as if in shame. "I apologize. I just - for a moment, it was...I almost remembered..."

She trailed off. I licked my lips, rubbing a hand over my narrow chin, then went and carefully sat next to her. "Remembered what?" I asked.

Diabushi didn't answer right away. She sat there, the magical light playing off her golden headdress, staring out into the night. "Life." She said. "More than remembering history. What it was like to..." another pause. "Live. To feel."

She fell silent again. I shuffled closer to her, placing a reassuring hand upon her arm. "Love." She eventually finished.

"Do you feel this?" I asked softly, squeezing her arm. She nodded.

"But it doesn't matter." Diabushi replied. Her voice was strange and beautiful, but carried little more emotion than her blank death mask did. "This body is dead. We would be - I mean, even if we were to - it wouldn't work."

This time, it was my turn to hesitate, and I wondered if she was really trying to convince herself - desperately trying to back off, to clamp down upon something that had blossomed out of her when she touched me. I remembered all the little ways she had touched me over our year together, written off as nothing at the time, and silently cursed myself for a fool.

"Well," I started, speaking slowly, picking my words carefully. "If it did. Just...say, if it did. Would that change anything?"

She turned to me then, swinging her carved face towards me. She could have been overjoyed, enraged, or in the depths of misery for all the still, serene mask gave away.

"Dead hearts can still be broken." Diabushi whispered, her ghost-voice echoing little louder than a soft breath. Glancing down, I could see a little of the linen around her lip had come away. Her skin, once a deep and luxurious brown in life, had faded to a blotchy grey. She took my hand. "Do not take me down this path if you will not see me to its end."

I paused, then nodded. "Lean back." I said. "Let's just...I mean, we'll see what happens."

Diabushi swung her long legs up onto the bed and spread them at my gesture, shuffling backwards to lean against the wall. I moved around to kneel between her thighs, placing my hands upon her hips and slowly drawing them down across the lines of criss-crossing bandages. I couldn't help but keep flicking my gaze up to her mask, searching for any signs that she was enjoying - or even feeling - what I was doing, even though I knew there would be none. My fingers worked their way down her upper legs, then doubled back, running along her inner thighs, moving teasingly towards her groin.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of her hands curl around the bedsheets. Diabushi rolled her head back, her blank gaze turned up towards the ceiling, and I could imagine how a living woman might begin to breath deeper as her body began to respond to my touches. My fingers finally finished their journey, one hand cupping her mound through her bandages, the other poised to slip under them.

"May I?" I asked, looking tentatively up at her. Diabushi's head swung back down, and she nodded.

Slowly, I began teasing the bandages over her groin apart. As a student, I'd observed the unwrapping and dissection of a recovered mummy, and felt a strange wash of shame at the jealousy I'd felt then at not being able to take part. Pushing the memory away, I carefully shifted the lengths of linen aside, the scent of old spices growing stronger as more of Diabushi's preserved body came into view. Her grey flesh was dry and pulled tight, but it was not as unyielding as I had expected, and the coolness was strangely pleasent against my warm skin as I moved the final wrappings away to reveal her slit. It was little more than a narrow cleft in her skin, the lips shrunk and pulled tight, but they parted a little as I probed them with a fingertip.

"I felt - " Diabushi's voice drifted down from above. "I don't know, something." There was a moment, and she shifted, rolling her hips a little closer towards me. "Do it again."

Her ghost-voice was as strong and authoritative as it could get. I wondered if she had spoken with her concubine like that, and felt myself stirring within my trousers at the thought.

I began to work her cool flesh with my fingers, rubbing and massaging the taught skin of her thighs, brushing my fingers over her slit. She was too tight to slip into right away, but there was something deeply satisfying in the way her dead body began to become warmer and more pliant under my touch, and the way my exploring fingers were able to creep deeper into her passage with every attempt. Like the rest of her body, it was cool and smooth, dry but slightly pliant - like leather, almost, but the comparison felt somehow disrespectful.

Diabushi was silent - so utterly silent as I worked, but she was no longer quite so still. She didn't writhe or tremble as a living woman would, but instead made slow, deliberate motions as I worked my finger in and out of her. Her back began to arch and her serpentine headdress came to rest against the wall with a dull clunk, and I admired the beautiful, feminine curve of her body in the warm light.

"I can feel you." The revenant said, one of her hands running through my hair, her bandaged fingers caressing my scalp as she spoke. "It's - it's like an echo, coming from a long way off, but...but I can...I can feel..."

She never finished her sentence, leaving the thought hanging. I didn't mind. The fact that whatever I was doing was working filled me with a sudden, eager joy. I had little experience with women, but Diabushi wasn't my first, and I could imagine how her body would heave with deep, needy breaths, could imagine the slick heat as my fingers slid in and out of her sensitive passage, could imagine the way her breasts would sway in time with the way her body would rock back and forth in pleasure. At that thought, I reached up to cup one of her breasts, only to find it was as firm as the rest of her. Probably mostly padding, I thought, to make sure she kept her shape after death, but as her hand covered mine and squeezed my fingers, I realized I didn't care. My cock felt like an iron bar trapped within my trousers, straining desperately for release.

And then, all of a sudden - Diabushi breathed, her linen-wrapped body heaving as a dry croak echoed out from behind her still, serene mask. She gripped my hand, still around her breast, with a sudden and desperate strength, and while her body remained otherwise utterly still, I knew she had just came - or had remembered the feeling of an orgasm from her previous life. There was another rasp as she exhaled, then slumped backwards against the bed. My fingers slipped free, utterly dry but covered in her warm, spicy scent.

"That was...ah, nah'jalan, that was..." Diabushi said. "I do not - do not have words. Even if it was a fraction of what a normal woman would feel, that I felt it at all means more than I can say. But..."

She turned towards me and sat up, cocking her head and looking down to the rather obvious bulge in my trousers. I coughed nervously, and she laughed softly.

"I will not have it be said that the Gorgon is so selfish as to leave her lovers unsatisfied." Diabushi said. She placed a hand upon my chest and gently pushed me backwards, slinking forwards until I lay on my back with the revenant on her hands and knees above me, her death mask no more than a few inches from my face. She leaned in, brushing the cold, carved stone lips of her mask against my forehead, then crawled back down the length of her body and eased herself flat onto the bed. Her legs kicked lazily back and forth in the air, and I thought it was the most natural, lifelike motion I had seen from her outside of battle - her motions always seemed so slow, so carefully chosen, seeing something so utterly lifelike from her felt strangely intimate.

Her fingers brushed and bumped against the hard length of my cock as she untied the laces holding my trousers together, drawing a low groan from my throat. I had been so engrossed in exploring the dead woman's body and working out how to bring it pleasure, I had barely paid my own needs the slightest attention, and it seemed like an agonizingly long time before Diabushi finally pulled my trousers back and let my cock spring free of its prison.

"Beautiful." She murmured, her blank, stone gaze running up my hard, trembling length. She reached for me, wrapping her dry fingers around my cock, and I wondered if she could feel my desperate, pounding heartbeat. And then she released me, leaving me limp and helpless, a desperate, needy pressure already building within me. The undead woman must have caught my pleading gaze, because she reached back and ran a rough, linen-clad finger up my bare thigh. The rough material pulling at my skin was strangely pleasurable, but the idea of it jerking up and down my length...

"Wait. I have an idea." Diabushi said. She rolled momentarily aside, tugging her travel-bag out and withdrawing the vial of oil she treated her glaive with. So armed, she began to unravel the bandages around her hand. It was a slow process, and I had to fight the urge to wrap my own hand around my pulsing, aching length and finish myself off, but there was something fascinating about it. It was almost ritualistic, and the strange way she turned half towards me, one blank, carved eye cast towards me, made her look almost coy - like a girl stripping for her partner. When the last bandage was set aside, she rolled back into position and flexed her bare fingers. They were thin, the nails and joints looking disproportionally large, but her greying skin was just as smooth as the rest of her.

"This is the most flesh-that-was I have shown anyone since you brought me back." The revenant said, casting her blank gaze up towards me. I nodded.

"I know." I gasped, my cock jumping in anticipation as she spread a dollop of oil across her fingers. "Thank you."

As if sensing my need, she didn't reply, but wrapped her cool, slick fingers around my hot, desperate cock and pulled it towards her. The revenant leaned in and pressed her cold, carved lips against the red, swollen head of my prick, holding it there in a strange parody of a kiss before pulling back and sliding her palm up to replace it. I let out a half-sigh, half-whimper at the waves of pleasure that began to course through me as her slippery hand glided up and down my length, pumping me with a slow, relentless rhythm, driving the pressure building within me to fever pitch. All the while she stared at me, the beautiful stone face watching me as I gasped and sighed and humped my hips upwards, desperate for release, as if she were reacquainting herself with the sight of a lover long-since torn from her.

"Oh, uh, gods, I'm not gonna last -" I gasped out, as her hand slithered up my length, her bony fingers rubbing my sensitive head before sliding back down to the base of my shaft. Diabushi made a strange, dry noise - in the future, I would learn it was the sound of her laughing with her real voice - and suddenly paused in her attentions.

"Tell me what you need." She said, dragging her smooth palm, now warmed with my own body heat, up to the top of my cock. "Tell me. Tell me, and I may let you have it."

Her words echoed from the walls. They swirled around me like mist, and her hand descended once more, sending another wave of pleasure coursing through me.

"I need to come." I gasped, her hand creeping back up my shaft. My whole body felt tight and strung out, vibrating to the tune of the desperate, needy pressure swelling within me as the revenant drove me towards my peak.  "Oh, holy - by all the gods, I need - I need to come."

"Then come, nah'jalan. Come for me." She whispered. Her hand slid back down, then up, then pumped my hot, throbbing cock once, twice, three times more until I finally came. Diabushi had barely moved during her orgasm, but my whole body convulsed, thrusting upwards into her palm as the desperate swell of pleasure finally erupted, flooding up my aching, twitching cock and pouring forth in long, pearly streaks, splattering against Diabushi's death mask. She made no move to get out of the way, relentlessly pumping my cock as I ejaculated upon her, milking me for everything I had until the last drops had been squeezed out onto her fingers.

I collapsed back upon the bed, my body still shaking, even as my length began to soften against my belly. Diabushi raised her hand, webs of sticky oil and come stretched between her fingers, then cast me a sideways look. If a blank, stone mask could look sultry, I thought, then that would be what it looked like.

"Perhaps I should keep this hand unwrapped?" Diabushi asked. She plucked up her discarded bandages and wiped the worst of the mess from her mask, then dropped them disdainfully over the side of the bed and settled down next to me, her slippery fingers playing across my chest.

"What was that word you used?" I asked, once I'd recovered enough to speak. "Nah'jalan, was it?"

"Oh. It doesn't translate well." The revenant replied. I turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. She stared expressionlessly back at me, then shrugged, and I thought it looked a little embarrassed.

"The closest translation would be 'rare gem', or 'precious flower'." She said. "It means...it's a term of endearment. Between lovers. I may have misspoke."

I reached out and took her hand. "No, I don't think you did." I said, nestling in against her dry, dead body, letting her rich scent fill my nostrils as she squeezed my hand back. "I don't think you did at all."