Hm. One day I’ll get one that’ll just sit down and take the tea, thought Efrain as he looked at the yellow-orange liquid in the mug. That being said, he currently had more important things to be worrying about. As much as he would hate to admit it he was in a spot of trouble right now. She’d caught him unaware, without equipment or preparation, and had already closed most of the range advantage he may have held.

Efrain’s mind began churning as he thought of how best to escape. Her crashing through his ceiling and surviving the resulting impact told a story of physical ability that far exceeded his own. Staying and fighting was not particularly appealing, given the lack of advantages he had. Distraction then, at least until he could get to the armoury and figure out something more permanent. Her eyes wouldn’t have quite finished adjusting yet, so the light he could make would be more than enough to blind her for a moment or two.

Then, like his entire morning, she went and wrecked his plan. It started as a mutter, a whisper then rose to a full on chant as she roared scripture at him. Her sword pulsed, ripples of reds and yellows pulsing along its length, molten metal dripping onto the floor. That’s concerning, thought Efrain as he saw the flow of magic circle across the metal. Her considerable arms flexed as the sword blurred into a horizontal arc. Efrain had already hit the floor some moments ago, the impact rattling his ribs as a wave of heat and molten metal passed above his throne.

Pillars burst in two as the magic hit them, buckling with a cacophony of cracking and crashing worthy of a rock slide. After some of the sound receded, Efrain raised his head in the dust. The paladin was standing there, looking quite exhausted but very pleased with herself.

Efrain turned over to look at the the sword embedded in the wall behind his throne. Metal splattered across the walls and floor was going from yellow to red as it cooled. At the thought of the time required to scrape it off, another fit of anger prompted him to turn back to call out toward the paladin as he scrambled away.

“That’s not fair! I only threw a book at you.”

She started at him standing up to brush himself off, then she rolled her shoulders.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re just another monster I have to kill. Your traps and creatures couldn’t stop me, and now-”

Her voice was silenced as a groan as stone and metal and wood split and cracked. More pieces of rubble trickled down to bound and clatter on the remains of the tiles. All time allowed for the woman was a brief look of confusion, twisting from the left or right to determine the source of the sound. There was a moment of a silence, like bated breath.

Steel sheared and crushed through air, metal, flesh, and bone. Finally, it met stone with a resounding crash that quaked the whole hall and knocking Efrain back onto his back. As soon as his bones stopped reverberating and the aftermath had slightly settled, Efrain stood. He stopped dusting when he realized was a pointless endeavour - he, as well as most of the room, was well and truly coated.

He set his empty sockets to gaze at the second crater in the floor, this one punctuated by a great slab of steel. I liked that pendulum, he thought mournfully. Among the stacked rubble, he also saw a pale but well-muscled arm that was certainly no longer attached to a body.

Parking his hands on his hips, he looked at the abject mess that his hall had become.

“Wellllll…” He remarked to the dusty air, “Shit.”

Several hours later, Efrain watched with all the patience dissatisfaction of a cat as the Goliaths slowly carried the mess out of the hall. Well, if nothing else good came out of this affair, there was at least an excuse to use them again. Their joints locked up and their muscles atrophied in the long winters when they did nothing else but stand menacingly on the ramparts. He’d considered getting gargoyles, but the expenses for carving and fixture, as well as the lack of their ability to do anything made it a less-than a ideal solution.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He knelt to pick up a triangular piece of purple tile and tossed it despairingly into the gloom. He needed to invest in some hardier floors, they always seemed to be the first to go when people came looking for trouble. He sighed as he glanced up toward the ceiling, beams of sunlight arcing through the dust laden air. Now that was a new one - he wondered how much money he would have to expend to fix this. His heart fell as he considered the crews, the scaffolding, the camps he’d have to finance…

It was possible he had the mint, a staff largely comprised of undead cut down on expenses considerably, after all. Even with that being the case, it would likely put a significant hole in his coffers. The Frozen Vale didn’t have much of a population to levy taxes on, and what few there were would’ve probably not paid them anyways. The habits of the flesh took over as he scratched his skull, pondering his options.

Raiding was an option - some fast and strong undead to grab what they could and run for the hills under cover of night. A bit hit-and-miss, especially here, but it had worked in the past. That being said, he’d spent a long time ignoring the natives of the Vale, and they him. A few raids might just cause him more headaches if they decided to take up arms in retaliation. Not to mention that the nearest villages where in the northern pass through the Giant’s Spine. Muphestfelm was about two or three weeks away by foot, with maybe one or two villages along the way.Maybe leave that option on the shelf for now.

What about some good old swindling? Perhaps a bit of stage-craft as well? He’d need to procure something he could use as an ‘elixir of life’ or some such. Curiosity began to niggle at the back of his skull - it’d been a good while since he’d set foot in a town. That was one of the perks of being beyond death - if the current time bored you, you just went off and did something else for a decade or two.

In any case, he didn’t think he’d be leaving until the castle was patched up, but still, he considered it. It also occurred to him that he may have left some investments in one of his many aliases. As he watched the last of the giants wander out of the hall into the courtyard, a mass of gangly limbs with an oddly smooth head ‘walked’ to his side.

It gurgled at him inquisitively as it pulsed.

“You got the remains? Well, I have no idea what to do with them,” Efrain shrugged, “burn them or something.”

The castle ‘staff’ might not be susceptible to disease nor could many of them smell, but leaving rotting meat around would spoil his sense of decorum. Someone had to have standards, even this far from civilization. The creature did an wavering action reminiscent of a nod, and set out in the direction of the doors.

“On second thought, don’t do that.” Efrain called after him, “Stick her into an ice cell, I’ll be around soon to cast an preservation enchantment. I’m sure we’ll find a use for her later.”

The creature gave a bob of acknowledgement, ‘walking’ away in his bizarre, multi-stepping manner. Efrain still didn’t know how in the world he’d managed to get that pile of flesh a level of sentience, even now.

Efrain turned around to look at his throne, now shorter by half and splattered with molten metal. The wall behind it bore a great gash, now partially filled with rubble and held together by phlegm. While the pale worms from Nieth were a pain to keep with prodigious amount of vegetation they consumed, the silk and adhesive they secreted made it well worth it in the long run. After checking that the lock-boxes behind the throne were sound, Efrain departed to the kitchen.

The room was large, clean, and completely empty. It had been designed for a full retinue of cooks, for the previous rulers of the castle. A intriguing surprise to someone who had theorized that the warlords had lead a simple, nomadic lifestyle. He had restored it more out of a sense of completeness rather than necessity - undead required little food and what sustenance they did eat required little preparation.

In one corner a small ball of flesh and wings drifted aimlessly, long, feathery tendrils dusting the surfaces below it. Efrain sighed as he plucked the thing from the air and gave it a little shake. The gas ports that helped propel the things sometimes got occluded by crystals that dissolved easily enough. With a little poof of air, the thing floated out of the room to visit some other area of the castle.

Efrain opened the glass cabinet to retrieve the set he’d gotten as a gift from Plesco, back when it had only two arms and was a rather accomplished military officer from Karkos. It didn’t remember of course, memory-crafting was such a tricky business.

He didn’t get why some people believed that necromancers would have an army with generals or even a ranking system in particular. While they did often had field commanders, those were almost always apprentices or co-conspirators. It had taken Efrain decades to create just one servant with some degree of sentience.

Even after the thing had arose off the slab, Efrain hadn’t managed to even construct a personality or any real emotions. Even with his prodigious patience, he couldn’t stomach the failure after failure of trying to adapt a voice box, let alone a tongue and lips to his work. He’d had given up on that particular project a long time ago.

Sliding open a drawer, Efrain reached into one of dozens of clay pots to retrieve a handful of leaves. It was a two cup morning.