He should have died—when the creature of nightmares descended down on him and pierced his throat with simply a hand, Sir Knight knew that there was no other outcome besides him dying.
And he probably did.
There was no way that he didn't get himself killed after what appeared to be a legendary threat to their kind—he was a decently strong knight but didn't know what had hit him until it was too late.
So he died... but then he was reborn again.
It just wasn't at the state that he expected himself to be.
When he died, he thought he saw a tunnel of light and he rushed towards it, eager for that taste of freedom and to be relieved from the burden of his mortal shell and life, but then all of a sudden he felt something snake around him.
In the state of an afterlife, there wasn't quite much of a physical body and yet since his mind had warped around having a body—his soul took on a similar form and that was how he had felt it.
Sir Ilmus Knight looked down and saw that there was a dark cord that wrapped around his foot and entangled his body.
He tried to cut it down with his sword and call out for a mighty Skill to deliver a finishing blow against the tendril of darkness, but he didn't have any weapons with him, much less the ability to call upon his powers—so before he knew it, a scream escaped from his throat and he found himself dragged back the same way he had come from.
"Ngh... what a terrible fucking nightmare," he groaned aloud and then paused.
The voice was supposed to be his and yet it didn't seem to match.
Was it just gravely?
No.
He repeated himself and there was the cadence that said it didn't belong to him.
More than that, even the language it was spoken in and the voice that said it aloud was strange and foreign.
Disembodied.
Hollow.
Empty.
And yet that wasn't all of it. His eyelids—No, his entire body was incredibly heavier than what it seemed before. He swayed more than what a land dweller like him did when he had boarded on the Lovcruse Ship, as if he weighed and moved like a drunken and cantankerous Troll who was sluggishly guarding a weak bridge, but more important than that, was the need for him to stay on guard and be alert.
Which was why, despite the lack of his most sharpest mental and physical acuity, Sir Knight looked around to find himself located within a dark forest.
"Did we get captured?" He spoke again in that infernal language, nothing that he had learned—but it was instinctively familiar and understandable despite all the growls and guttural sounds in his tone.
At long last, his vision finally seemed to have gotten used to his environment. He blinked a couple more times, each one strained, but then the familiar shapes of his colleagues, fellow people who had been on the hunt for the Cursed Princess of Averon filled his gaze and he tried to move towards them, but it proved to be a difficult endeavor.
Both of his legs felt like they had a great amount of weights tied to each one of them or someone had replaced his bones with wood or another material that made him feel so wobbly and disoriented. He was absolutely worse than that hammered Bard in the Wisdream Tavern and yet he finally managed to make out one of his friends.
What was even more infuriating was that thick fog that separated him with the rest of his group. A fog should have been cold, but he was too focused on trying to approach his friends to notice how even the cold temperatures did not affect him. If anything, it seemed like a normal thing.
But at long last, he finally drew close enough to see them.
Sir Knight recognized the beautiful wave of dark curls that belonged to no other than his dear friend.
"Trisha!" He tried to speak again, but found his words slurring over in that strange and guttural way.
And yet instead of her, someone else shifted and approached at the sound of his voice, his friend Isaac turned towards him—the deep and heavy fog that was on his brain suddenly cleared out in shock, much more than the physical one.
He saw his friend and yet it wasn't his friend at the same time.
It was an unholy creature! All of his companions were turned into undead!
Sir Knight tried to reach for his sword, forcing his limbs to move but as he looked down at his gauntleted hand, made from the best of metals in their kingdom—he saw his reflection there.
It was the same moppy brown hair that his mother cursed him about and yet his eyes were no longer that brilliant blue. Instead, what glinted was an unholy light about them and the healthy flush of his skin was now completely drained away from his face—or it might have drained away if he was still human, but he was not.
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The pallid and pale color was truly his.
Sir Knight had woken up and become a zombie... or rather a ghoul.
He let out a string of curses, now being used to the language of the deceased and soon looked at his friends helplessly. Were they of the same station as he was? Also forced to dwell in their bodies that no longer deserved to be called alive? He looked at their faces and then realized that they did not have intelligence within them or even a sense of awareness in their eyes—it was only him who had come back.
Sir Isaac may have moved earlier, but it seemed to have been more of an instinctive reaction to that of Ilmus being his superior, not out of true recognition.
The only one who regained consciousness to have known and made aware that their bodies had been defiled... was him alone.
Maybe he was wrong?
No other human voice, or intelligible filled the entire forest, only the quiet sounds of insects and other fauna traversed through the area and made him realize his situation.
Desperation sank into his chest.
"Nonono—this can't be possible," he said, but the words that left his mouth and throat were groans of something inhuman.
He hated it.
The Knight despised it enough that he wanted to end himself. Perhaps he could just stab himself in a tree's branch and then end his pathetic life—until he suddenly saw a figure move past the group, stop in her tracks and then look him directly in the eyes—Rose Goodhill stared at them with a look of both horror and shock.
She was completely alive and had scratches all over her face, injured beyond a great number but her gaze fell on them and she fell silent.
"They really do look like they're still alive," Rose said as she paused and took out something from her satchel. She sipped some of her remaining healing potion and eyed them warily, the wind behind her blowing . "And like he said, they won't attack me because I came from the manor. I... "
Sir Knight actually wanted to attack her—this treacherous whore!
However, as he tried to run into her without any abandon, something in his body paralyzed him from moving.
There was something embedded in his mind, in his very core that reiterated what Rose said to be true. Despite all of his pent-up rage and desire to strangle her neck between his hands, and then devour her to feed the hunger within him... his body did not move according to his desires.
He couldn't attack her.
Despite the fact that he felt a desire far more deeper than what he had before of killing her—presumably the extraordinary hatred of undead towards those of the living, there were instructions deep within him that overrode the desire of bloodshed. Rose was something that he needed to protect and that only made him realize something.
However, it did not change his feelings.
Even if he couldn't move, he still lashed out at her—words.
"You have eaten at the same table as that monster! Desecrated ones!" Sir Knight raged at her. If he had been a Bard, perhaps he may have been able to wound her by merely speaking against her, but there was nothing but spittle or something else flying out of his mouth.
Rose only eyed him and then let out a sad smile. "Even when he's already dead, he still doesn't know how to shut up doesn't he?"
That kind of reaction silenced Sir Ilmus, because he didn't think that she'd sound so sad—she didn't need to, it wasn't her trying to deceive him or change his mind at all... Rose thought he was dead, so that reaction of her was genuine.
After that happened, Rose went on her way. It was an incident that happened around two days ago—but it didn't mean that he learned how to make peace with his new situation.
However, it had made him think through everything.
There was not much else to do when you were undead after all... so he thought.
Sir Knight wrestled with his mind and contemplated what this new life offered him, of whether he'd simply give into the desire of servitude or what else could probably break his spirit than being an unwilling slave... but that was only until he saw his beloved Master—NO, his murderer leapt past right at him as the foul being tried to chase down after a rabbit.
He should have been filled with rage—adoration—seething anger!
And yet something else filled his chest.
Or whatever actually allowed him to process these emotions.
But in the man's eyes... as he gazed upon the Vampire that tried to hunt down the rabbit, the only way he could describe it was pained curiosity to watch upon and witness the scene.
How exactly did the man succeed before?
Frankly, this was the most idiotic thing that Sir Knight had ever seen in all of his life.
It sent a great whiplash into his poor mind.
Was this really the fiend that had mercilessly killed him and his entire party in his rampage?
It was impossible to put the current man and his murderer together, imagining the two side by side, and then come to a reasonable conclusion that they were the same person—this had to be some kind of trick or there were actually two of them.
But then he was suddenly addressed.
"What are you looking at? You didn't see any of that."
His Master—the monster snapped at him and looked particularly annoyed until his master's gaze shifted back towards the rabbit that had teleported away into another location. This fiend let out a huge smile, his fangs finally revealing themselves in that moment as he became distracted once more.
"There you are, shadow bun. Your evasive skills and ability to detect my bloodlust may be superior, but I am far better than you."
The Vampire suddenly arrived in front of the rabbit and swiped, but the rabbit vanished in the thin air and avoided the death swipe that had killed Sir Knight when he was alive.
Sir Knight's chest would have had beat wildly in his chest if it weren't for the fact that he was dead though.
Had he been figured out?
No, he hadn't been, because the monster had only been talking to himself.
The monster soon chased away after the rabbit, which was good.
Think away. Think away.
Sir Knight attempted to think of something else, but then realized that maybe it was far better not to think of anything at all.
Yes, he could see it now. He would survive and make plans. But yes, the direction seemed simple enough. He'd aim to become a stronger undead, grow and tap into this power afforded of him, try to break free from the stupid command spells etched into his very soul and then make his grand escape or get revenge on this one who had humiliated him—
"Did you know that your thoughts are so loud? It's starting to distract me." Out of nowhere, the vile monster clasped Sir Knight's shoulder and gave him a sinister smile.