Gideon started swearing again.

"Fuck!"

The blood in on her forehead was starting to drip along her eyebrow, tickling
as is grew ready to flow along the bridge of her nose and right into her eye.
She tried to use her right arm, without dropping her enormous sword, to wipe
the it off of her forehead before it dripped into her eyes. But the shredded
sleeves of her cultist robes were already soaked through and the gesture only
smeared sanguineous sludge over her nose and mouth.

"Fuck. FUCK!" Gideon swore. In frustration she started to use the back of her
other, less slimy hand,  to do the job, forgetting about the razor sharp
obsidian knuckle knives strapped to her left wrist. She stopped herself only a
pube's breadth away from gouging the last pair of functioning eyeballs out
of her skull. She still needed those.

"Did I say fuck yet? Because seriously, fuck this ... Oh FUCK NO!"

Moving her left hand had made her lose her grip on the princess's body. It
slipped out from under her arm and fell back further into the pit, dislodging
other precariously piled corpses and threatening to start a charnel avalanche
which would bury Gideon in fresh human remains.

"OMG Gideon what are you doing!? You let it go!  I swear on the eternal rotting
goddess, if you don't bring my body back in one piece I'll personally feed your
fingers to the ommigrindr. I'm not bluffing!"

The dead princess was bluffing, but calling her bluff would be nearly as
painful as the actual omnigrindr, so Gideon said nothing. Instead, she craned
her neck to keep her still-functioning eyeballs glued to the desiccated royal
corpse as it continued to slide deeper into the pit, closer to the aperture.
Aiming from memory, she then swung her great sword backwards, tossing it up and
out of the pit. With normal luck it should land in something soft, (hopefully a
priest), and stay put. With Gideon's luck it would definitely spin in three
perfect circles before plunging straight back down through her skull. At least
that would shut the princess up.

"OMG Gideon, what are you doing? That was your sword!" the once and former
princess pronounced helpfully.

"It's okay your highness. I'm sure you'll buy me a new one as soon as we bring
you back, right?"

"OMG Gideon what are you thinking? I can't... we can't afford... there is
absolutely no... Oh... Ha. Ha."

Death, (or death 2.0 as it might be), must have improved the princess's powers of
perception because it was typically the next day before she detected sarcasm,
if ever. 

"OMG Gideon what are you doing!?  Ahh! Look! It's going to fall in.  Get it!
Why aren't you looking!? Get it! Save me!"

No matter how many times she had haunted Gideon, the princess couldn't, or
couldn't be bothered more like, manage to understand the basics of parasitic
possession.  She never absorbed hat she could only ever see exactly what
Gideon was seeing with her own, adequately functioning, eyeballs no more no
less. Right now what Gideon was seeing was this:  the precious corpse was
starting to come unwound, its linen strips unravelling as it slipped and rolled
over fresher, more fetid, human remains on its way toward the aperture at the
bottom of the huge conical pit that Gideon had descended on a rescue
mission for the terminally damned. The aperture was a narrow choke point
exactly like the throat of an hourglass. But instead of sand measuring
minutes, the gently used, previously owned, second hand flesh-houses of humans
measured eternity as they periodically tumbled into a stinking scarab-infested
cavern below. 

The bodies came from all over. Most were offered by devout descendants of
lately devout worshippers of Derketo, the queen of death, fertility, and rancid
body fluids apparently. The Emperor Undying sent a steady supply of
'retired' slaves from the arena or the mines. The army contributed a regular,
though surprisingly modest---all things considered, share. But not all deceased
homo-sapiens were appropriate offerings to the pit.  For example the mummified
corpse of the unholy princess of misery was a completely inappropriate
offering---as the princess herself had been quick to point out.  The
bureaucratic error that had led to the present scenario was one of such gravity
that mere death (even if preceded by unspeakable torture) would not have been
sufficient punishment. However justice is blind, stupid and utterly
corruptible; the very office that originated this unforgivable sin had managed
to arrange things so that it became entirely Gideon's problem. The ghastly
princess herself seemed to lose all interest incriminating the actual guilty
party upon realizing she had obtained the opportunity to nag and torment
Gideon, albeit briefly if the swordswoman was not successful. 

Gideon blinked. Sand scratched the inside of her eyelids. She wished devoutly
that the princess could feel that too. Holding her breath and moving slowly she
gingerly bent her knees and reached down to take hold of the end of the
princess's linen wrappings which extended like a long fuse toward the regal
stiff which was still unravelling slowly. 

Gideon swore again. 

"You fucking better have something on under those bandages, your dehydrated
highness. If I have to see your sun-dried titties or your fossilized fanny I'll
rip each of my eyes out and throw them in the pit after you."

"OMG Gideon what are you talking about!  I'm ravishing and you know it. You
should be so lucky."

This was not the first time the princess revealed that despite seeing through
Gideon's completely operational eyeballs, her vision was gravely flawed. And
who the hell says 'ravishing' anyways? By the goddess's gritty cooch, the princess 
was hello old!

Gideon, still holding her breath, gently tugged at the cloth, the body
started to roll faster.  She gave a tremendous pull, hoping to snap the regal
corpus back up towards her like a yo-yo.  The force of it did flick the
morsel of dried princess meat into the air for just a second ... before it
tumbled neatly through the aperture into the void below.

The immortal soul of the dead princess screamed like a summer solstice 
sacrifice victim from out of the depths of Gideon's skull.  Gideon hadn't
thought her head had such impressive acoustics but the spirit of the princess
of misery's miserable shriek was reverberating through her brain like an
amphitheatre.  The linen wrap in her hand went momentarily slack as the body
tumbled through space but then snapped taught with a sickening crack. Surely,
the princess's body should have crumbled into dust at that shock.  But no, the
conscientious embalmers of yesteryear must have done a good job of converting
the petulant bitch's remains into some sturdy taxidermy because it merely flexed
slightly and held together. The same clever embalmer, bless her spleen, must
also have had the fortuitous foresight to tie the shroud tightly around
something, probably a dainty little neck, as insurance against exactly today's 
turn of events.

Gideon held firmly to the thin linen ribbon and could feel the body begin to
swing at the other end.  It was light at least. It hadn't caused her to lose
her footing only a few yards away from the gaping hole. Slipping now would mean
falling, with the corpse, into a vast cavern.  With good luck, she'd break her
neck. With Gideon's luck she'd definitely break her back but stay conscious as
the scarabs ate out her functional eyeballs, tongue, and tonsils before using
her warm body to incubate scarab eggs. Eventually they'd get around to eating
the princess's chewy cadaver too but no doubt they save if for last so
Gideon would have some shrill complaining company during her last hateful 
days of life.  Though, come to think of it, the princessly poltergeist was
strangely quiet right now. Gideon decided not to think about what that might
mean and dutifully started winding her catch back in.

Angling for the dead like this had to be done slowly; to avoid slipping; for
reasons that are now plainly established. So Gideon had time to think. That was
unfortunate because this is what she thought about:

They're going to kill me.
Inexplicably this hurt Gideon's feelings. Eighteen years of abuse, contempt, scorn and downright shitty treatment was bad, sure. Even years of completely unsubtle and unrelenting hints that she should kill herself, rude of course. But never before now had it occurred to her that collectively, or individually, the vile cult in service to Derketo, the fetid and divine bitch of fecundity and decay was embarked upon relentless program whose destination was Gideon's own annihilation. They would not kill her ceremonially, the way they killed thousands every year for their gross goddess's glory. They would not kill her judicially as punishment for her legitimately blasphemous sins against their bullshit theological code. They would not even do her the courtesy of hiring even a fourth-rate guild member to stab her in the back (as if, lol) or poison her (not that the cult kitchen wasn't coming pretty close on daily basis). No, the slimy low-life clergy of the half-baked cult of Death was going to murder Gideon through pure bureaucracatic apathy. They would collectively, but apparently without any organized design, asign and re-assign Gideon to a series of posts, offices and obligations which would inevitably and unstoppably lead to her death. Her current assignment was case and point. Even now, in this moment of relative stability, having killed seven revenant guardians and arrested her charge's plunge into the abyss without joining her, Gideon's prospects of surviving this errand were hovering at about 37 percent. If she fell now she would die. If she failed (to retrieve the precious royal mummy) but lived, she would be sent on a worse quest immediately. If she succeeded, she would also be sent on a worse quest almost immediately.  

"Well fuck" Gideon broke her 47 second non-swearing steak. by coincidence she happened to be holding the crown cadaver right up to face level as she said this. The thing had, as her worst fear predicted come competely unraveled so Gideon found herself staring into the dry holes in the dead princess's head where eyeballs once resided, centuries ago. Also in accordance with her worst fears, the naked corpse, stripped of bandages wore nothing else. Thankfully time had rendered the princess of misery's mamaries and putenda into pure, utterly un-suggestove abstraction protecting Gideon's innocent eyes from terminal psychological trauma.

"I'm starting to feel seriously unappreciated around here." she confided to the nude dead body.
"I don't think any of you are making even the slightest effort to pretend you don't pray daily for my demise"