Char: "I am writing about botany. I plan to put in a detailed description of the tree I just summoned. I also hope to find some interesting roots and herbs in the witch's kitchen. But I am principally writing an adventure botany book, an entirely new genre, the significance of which probably goes right over her art."

Char suffered for her art. No one understood her.

Especially not this man, who was going on some stupid tirade about how nobody was literate nowadays. That was a fine and dandy argument, until you considered that Char had never deigned to write for the inferior masses in the first place. No, Char wrote for scholars. Char had never met any scholars - her life story consisted mosty of a meager upbringing on the mean streets followed by a random event in which she was imprisoned by a rich and greedy thief (from whom she learned that it is not particularly clever to use the person you have imprisoned as your bodyguard, mostly because when a desperate situation occurs they are not exactly motivated to guard you) - but she imagined that scholars were the intelligent kind of audience she wrote for.

As she participated in this conversation, vines ripped through the zombies that surrounded her. Then there was the assassin, complaining about the undead. Char turned to him with a strained smile. She was losing her patience.

"I'm sorry. I invited you on this quest because I thought you could handle whatever came your way. If this is not the case - if it is too scary - then you are free to leave."

Carol: Finally! Carol sensed the life force of intruders. Well, actually, Carol had no powers of sensing life forces, but he could hear them - hear them as they argued, as they ripped through rooting flesh, as swords clanged. He stopped swinging his sword and strained his ears. Then he grinned.

Finally! Something to divert me from my boredom!

He ran from the entrance deeper into the graveyard. There he found his adversaries. A motley crew embroiled in a battle with the undead. Carol was so excited that he ripped his sword through a couple undead himself, before he remembered that they were on the same side.

"Finally!" He yelled to them. "I have been waiting all day for you! But I must admit that you are foolish children for thinking of challenging me. Shiver in fear, dear children! I am Carol the evil overlord - feared tyrant of the planet Laosduagh - and I have come to stop you from entering this castle here and rescuing the prince! To do so, I shall now take your lives!"

__________________
Love the hue.