Chapter 50: The Limits of Unlife
"Hm? What’s wrong? Get up, soldier! You are serving your master yet again!"
Slowly, the undead man stood. Immediately, Aleric realized that something 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 name, servant?"
The undead man groaned.
"Name... Name... Don’t know..."
"What’s MY name?"
"Name..."
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 remember yesterday?"
"Yes..."
"What were you doing back then?"
"Ter... day..."
Aleric covered his face with a hand.
"Servants! Someone, take this one away. Put him with the slaves. Give him only simple tasks," he said, gesturing at the soul-damaged zombie.
"This moment, Master Fenn!" one of Aleric’s lieutenants said, approaching.
By this moment, there were way too many of them for Aleric to remember his names. Samuel had some 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 some 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 extremely slowly. Of course, undead has all the time in the world, but this one will probably wear his body into a skeleton much faster than he reaches his former capacities."
Aleric nodded darkly.
It was a sobering thought—even if he could throw the bodies into the fray until they become 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, met 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 same time, countless other people started their day as normal, not suspecting that something was amiss in the city.
A farmer 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: some 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.
Something about them made the farmer’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 farmer.
"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 same toll—five counts."
Nodding, the farmer 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 names of specific nobles and the amount of precious metal in a coin varied from place to place.
However, the farmer didn’t hurry to give the coins to the guard.
"Uh... Did something 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 Supreme 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 farmer.
A fly flew closer to the guard, attracted by the faint smell 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-supreme Necromancer?" the farmer 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 farmer 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 farmer away..."