"Hm? What’s wrong? Get up, soldier! You are serving your master yet again!"
Slowly, the undead man stood. Imdiately, Aleric realized that sothing was wrong.
The man was staggering on his feet slightly, as if he was drunk, and his eyes were utterly blank. He also still didn’t say a thing.
"Oh, master... I think this is just what I feared," Spine Staff muttered. "This man’s soul was torn by repeated summoning... And, well. The force with which you snatched it was incredible, but it certainly didn’t help the matters. In the future, you will undoubtedly learn more elegant ways of summoning."
Aleric glanced at the Staff, then looked at the undead servant again. His eyes narrowed.
"What’s your na, servant?"
The undead man groaned.
"Na... Na... Don’t know..."
"What’s MY na?"
"Na..."
Aleric winced and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Walk in a circle over here."
The man’s circle, to Aleric’s relief, was still round. And he understood what a "circle" was.
"Do you rember yesterday?"
"Yes..."
"What were you doing back then?"
"Ter... day..."
Aleric covered his face with a hand.
"Servants! Soone, take this one away. Put him with the slaves. Give him only simple tasks," he said, gesturing at the soul-damaged zombie.
"This mont, Master Fenn!" one of Aleric’s lieutenants said, approaching.
By this mont, there were way too many of them for Aleric to rember his nas. Samuel had so chain of command running—he would tell Aleric later whether the soul-damaged zombie was anyone important before.
"Staff, do you think this man can still recover so wits?" Aleric asked, watching the zombie in question stumble away.
"I doubt it, master. The ways of souls are still barely studied, of course, but all of the great Xarvain’s studies show that any damage to them, if recovers, does that extrely slowly. Of course, undead has all the ti in the world, but this one will probably wear his body into a skeleton much faster than he reaches his forr capacities."
Aleric nodded darkly.
It was a sobering thought—even if he could throw the bodies into the fray until they beco dust, the skills and personalities of his undead servants could still be destroyed.
’So even unlife isn’t a path to true immortality...’ Aleric thought. ’But then, what is? Ah, it’s pointless to think about deaths of illness and old age when I can still die from templars before this year even ends. I should raise more undead instead. Damn, whom am I going to use as sacrifices? I am almost regretting the promise to not kill random people’
***
The night passed.
Sunrise dawned on Oakdale, and hundreds of the citizens who were still afraid to leave their houses, t it with desperate prayers to Light. Even more were praying in the Temple of Light, twice as desperate as they were before—they were hoping that their prayers would help Chaplain Lodimar.
However, even under the bright sunlight, the divine didn’t reply.
At the sa ti, countless other people started their day as normal, not suspecting that sothing was amiss in the city.
A farr loaded a cart with his pumpkins and traveled to Oakdale, planning to sell them on the local market earlier than anyone else would arrive. But when he approached the open gates, his horse suddenly grew nervous.
Then he got nervous, too.
The bodies were removed from this battleground, but many traces remained: so scattered bones in the dirt, a few arrows...
But worse were the guards holding the post at the gate.
They were deathly pale, and their clothing was dirty with strange dark stains. One had a deep, entirely bloodless cut on his cheek.
Sothing about them made the farr’s skin crawl. But he still needed money, so he whipped the reins of his horse.
It reluctantly pulled the cart closer to the gates. Seeing this, the guard with the cut on his cheek approached the farr.
"Halt! About to sell these pumpkins in the city? Well, I don’t think you will get a lot of trade today, but it’s still the sa toll—five counts."
Nodding, the farr pulled out five small bronze coins with an image of the late Count Arstain, Danit Arstain’s father.
This was a ’count’, the smallest coin commonly used in Aleshat and other human kingdoms. Other popular ones were also silver dukes and golden kings. The nas of specific nobles and the amount of precious tal in a coin varied from place to place.
However, the farr didn’t hurry to give the coins to the guard.
"Uh... Did sothing happen in the city, sir? A plague?"
The guard shook his head.
"Oh, thank the Light, no plagues! But there was a bit of fighting. Lord Arstain swore fealty to the Supre Necromancer Aleric Fenn, and the living folks aren’t too happy about it." The guard shrugged. "Eh, they will calm down. It’s not any worse than any other big shot’s attempt at getting another guy’s crown. Better, I’d say! After all, I got to keep my job instead of lying dead in a mass grave!"
The zombie guard laughed, ignoring the horrified expression of the farr.
A fly flew closer to the guard, attracted by the faint sll of rot coming from the open wound. Then it sensed the Dark energy inside the undead, changed its tiny insect mind, and flew away.
"A... S-supre Necromancer?" the farr repeated, not believing his eyes and ears.
"Yes! He’s... Wait, he’s an enemy of the crown and the Church—should I be just telling the living about him?" The guard scratched his cheek.
Before he could reply, the farr grabbed the reins of his horse. He didn’t even care that his coins had fallen out of his shaken hands as he commanded the horse to turn around and pull the cart away as fast as possible!
The whole-faced guard who watched this entire exchange shook his head and sighed.
"Gregor, you really gotta sew that cut on your cheek before you scare every farr away..."
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