The Paladin's Shadow; Scene of the Crime

Credits; Petra, Zink,

"Ah, I see they kept the Michaelangelo."
It had been nearly three thousand years since ZInk had last visited the Arcane Academy.  They'd let her visit when Petra had been a student, since she'd been a rather involved parent.  Since then, and in part because of it, they hadn't let her back into the school. 
Which was not to say that she had not visited the school several times a year despite their best efforts.  There was no way to bind Death in the performance of her duties.  Litterally, Petra, and her father while he had been alive, had attempted it many times.  They'd never managed it, for all intensive purposes only the rather curious time slip that let near-death, and post death, experiences take place in an instant allowed her to have any life at all.  And it did seem to give her a lot of spare time.  Besides writing and reading she did nothing but look for things to read and write about.  Outings like this were about as exciting as her life got.  Especially since there had been no demons sighted since the war.
"Well, they could hardly afford to get rid of something like that.  But did you have to model it in..well.."
"Man was gay Petra, it was like changing clothes and stopping to look at yourself in the mirror."
"MOM!  I meant did you need a statue of yourself in the altogether to be on display in a school?"
"I didn't need any statues of myself at all, I just felt like it was a rare oppurtunity that had to be taken advantage of.  Simple as that.  I have no idea where you get this prudishness."
"You mean a sense of common decency?'
"Decency just means not being a tease.  I knew perfectly well he didn't care.  Besides, he's one of the finest artists of all time.  It's not like I was posing for a first year art class."
Petra sighed.  She knew she wouldn't win.  Her Mom was just a product of a vastly different era.  She may have developed spiritually, but she hadn't really developed all of the things that normally accompanied it, like a sense of decency or a habit of regular worship.  Of course, she did have that thing about cursing so her behaviors rarely lined up nicely. 

"Petra!" She felt her knees lock and she watched her mother continue as though she had heard nothing.  "Petra, what are you doing with..."
"That's..that's my mum."
She could feel Shad standing just past her right shoulder.  He seemed oddly tense.  He was normally relaxed even when they would spar, something that had become a regular occurence lately. 
"That's...Zink?  The Zink?"
"Yeah, the one and only, Death Herself."
"Huh."  He was quiet for a moment and then continued.  "I thought she was bigger than that."
"You thought my mother was fat?"
"Not fat, plump."
"You're saying my mother is overweight?"
"Well, all the books always say that she filled out after she died."
"Have you seen what she looked like when she was alive?  You wouldn't have known she was alive if she hadn't still been moving around."
"Well if you put it like that..."
"I do put it like that." 
"Alright, alright; your mother is a normal weight, sorry."
"Apology accepted."  She grinned smugly.  It was nice to have won one today. 

Suddenly there was a scream from further up the hall.  Petra sprinted towards it.  She saw Shad keeping pace with her out of the corner of her eye.  For a healer he certainly had good combat reflexes.  They turned the corner and saw her mother knelt over a body.  Normally this was nothing surprising, she was Death after all.  But the body looked like it had been attacked by a great monster.  Judging by the state of the corpse, it would have needed jaws as wide as a trash can and teeth like razors.  Entire limbs had been devoured, clothing and all, and there was gore and splatter everywhere.  They had all seen worse, or at least she and her mother had, but it was definitely top ten on the gruesome things list.  A few of the hall monitors turned the corner down at the end of the hall and started coming towards them.  Then Petra realized where she recognized the victim from; it was Miss Abernum, the chief hall monitor.