It took almost a minute before the zombie began to move. When he did, he sat up smoothly, then rose to his feet without looking around. He stood and faced forward without so much as a glance to the side.
To Serenity, he looked like a puppet. More accurately, he looked like a controlled undead who was following some sort of default command. Serenity watched him for a long moment as he hoped there was still something of the original person left; without that, there was no point in trying to revive the corpse.
To be fair, that wasn’t quite true. Serenity knew how to use a body to attract the original soul. He simply didn’t choose to do so without a reason; most of the common methods of necromancy wouldn’t strip the soul unless it wanted to leave. Several of them deliberately bound the soul to the body to help maintain its intelligence. Serenity didn’t practice those forms of necromancy, but that was by choice rather than because of lack of knowledge.
Serenity watched the eyes. They were the easiest part for a trapped soul to move; they were also the hardest for a necromancer to block. This wasn’t because they were the window to the soul, despite the saying; instead, it was because the eyes had to blink to stay functional. That meant they had to move. Beyond that, the eyes had to function for most of the necromancer’s commands to work. Interfering with them without compromising the quality of the zombie even more was difficult and generally pointless.
The zombie’s eyes roamed around the area and observed as much as they could, even though the face stayed resolutely still. Serenity relaxed a little; there was someone in there to raise, someone he could ask for permission.
Serenity moved around the circle to the point for the next piece of the ritual. He could skip most of it, but it would be better if he didn’t; this step was very important and he didn’t want to set the expectation that it could be skimped. He set his hand in the activation circle and ran in some mana while he chanted and shaped the ritual. “Omvi rhastala koribi staleve…”
It took a good bit of mana to energize the second portion of the ritual. It was a step that might well require more than one person, which was the true reason behind the chant as far as Serenity was concerned: it would let the various people working on the ritual synchronize themselves properly. He paced his mana input carefully; it was best to keep it steady and in time with the words. “....bvi klom tirrink storreka.”
Serenity turned his attention back to the zombie instead of the ritual. For the moment, the ritual could take care of itself; it should also take care of the zombie. He was no healer, but he did know how to design a ritual to deal with the undead.
Serenity watched as the ritual shifted the zombie’s broken bones out to where they belonged, then the remaining flesh. It couldn’t actually heal anything, but something as simple as getting everything in the right place then supporting it so it wouldn’t break again was huge for healing and that was something the ritual could manage for a zombie.
Serenity reached out to Ita and asked her to send Blaze down to the new dome. He was going to need a proper healer and Blaze was better than anyone else he knew here. Truthfully, Blaze was better than anyone else he knew as Serenity.
When that part finished, the ritual moved on to the difficult part of the second stage: freeing the zombie enough to talk. It wasn’t necessary for the revival ritual any more than the protective barrier was, unlike the minor physical restoration, but it was necessary if he expected the dryads to actually ask the undead if they wanted to be revived. He could easily take over control from another necromancer, but the dryads couldn’t. The ritual would handle that by eroding the control itself and directly fueling the undead if necessary, at least for the duration of the ritual.
He really couldn’t expect the dryads to deal well with undead who wanted to stay undead and yet didn’t have any method to fuel themselves. He did expect them to let other undead go, to allow the ones who wanted to die to pass on, and to help those who wished to live return to life. The important thing was that the person needed to be allowed to choose.
Serenity watched the zombie. Nothing seemed to happen after his body was restored for several minutes, until the zombie sat down. That encouraged Serenity; the zombie stood immediately once he awoke. Serenity stepped onto the ritual circle again; it was once again safe, since the second step of the ritual was stable.
“Who are you?” The zombie greeted Serenity with a question when Serenity stepped into the circle that stood about two feet outside the one the zombie sat within. It was nothing more than an insulation layer, but the zombie apparently couldn’t see past it. “Where did you come from?”
“My name is Serenity. What’s your name?” Establishing personal facts was a way to anchor the zombie’s spirit in his body. It wasn’t a great method, but it was far better than nothing.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The zombie looked blank for a long moment before he managed to dredge a name out of the recesses of his past. “Dav. My name is Dav. Dav Thirangi.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dav.” Serenity smiled at the undead. He didn’t return the smile; Serenity suspected he didn’t entirely recognize it. Undead had some fairly severe limits and they didn’t react the same way as the living. “Do you know that you’re undead at the moment?”
Dav didn’t take long to nod. He clearly knew that much.
“Would you like to return to life? I should warn you that there is a cost.” Serenity wasn’t certain what the cost would be. He hadn’t actually set a cost yet. Even if there wasn’t one in Etherium, though, there was always a cost to returning to life. He’d paid a very large cost to become Serenity; it was completely worthwhile and Serenity was happy to have paid it, but he wasn’t about to pretend there wasn’t a cost.
“Return to life?” Dav sounded stunned, as much as a zombie could sound stunned. “I’m dead, there’s no coming back from death. That’s why I’m undead; Mak wanted to make use of my body after I died.”
Serenity really didn’t want to get into Dav’s history or how he felt about Mak’s actions. He did need to convince Dav that he had a choice. “That may be true where you come from, but here we know better; it is possible to return an undead being like yourself to life. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. I need to know if you want to live again or not.”
Dav seemed to frown. That was huge progress; expressions were hard for the undead. To someone other than Serenity, it would probably have seemed like a small shift, but Serenity knew just how hard even a small movement like that was. “Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?”
Serenity barked a quick laugh at that. “More than you’d think, but that is a discussion for another time. Stay where you are and remember your past; that will make this easier.”
It would have very little impact on the ritual itself, but it would have a large impact on Dav’s mental state which would indirectly help the ritual. Reviving an undead who was “doing something” and quietly sitting in the middle of the ritual was vastly different from reviving an undead that was attacking the protective barrier full force because he felt hemmed in and claustrophobic. The ritual could handle either one, but the quiet undead was easier. It would also be easier on Dav to keep himself busy.
Dav folded his hands and looked at them in his lap.
With the evidence that the zombie was going to follow his advice, Serenity stepped back outside the ritual. Elder Lizven’s eyes were fixed on Serenity, so he stared back at her. “Do you have a question?”
“You asked him if he wanted to live again after you started the ritual. Does that mean you would stop if he said no?”
Serenity sighed. Wasn’t that the entire point? He’d told them they had to ask; how could they ask while the undead was unconscious? “Yes. The first two stages of the ritual will free the undead of outside influences. In some cases, this will deanimate them; in that case, they were nothing more than a flesh puppet, with nothing other than the necromancer’s power keeping them animate, more like a golem than a true undead. If there’s more to them, the ritual will take over the support and allow you to ask them questions after it performs minimal physical repair.”
“After you’ve gone to that much effort, why would you stop?” Elder Lizven sounded like she actually wanted an answer.
Serenity wasn’t sure how to answer something that was so completely obvious to him. He wasn’t really that good with words and times like this made that extremely obvious to him. “Choice is important. There are reasons to want to remain undead; I don’t expect it to be common but it can happen. There are also people who would prefer to be dead. I didn’t present that option to Dav.”
Serenity decided not to elaborate on why he hadn’t given Dav the option of death. Realistically, he probably wouldn’t have offered it to most undead; for all that he recognized that sometimes it felt like the best option, Serenity still had a bit of a bias against suicide. It felt like giving up and Serenity didn’t like to give up.
If Dav had asked about it, he’d have agreed that it was an option. Serenity wasn’t certain if he’d have tried to discourage Dav or not. He was glad he hadn’t needed to make that choice.
“But the cost…” Elder Lizven waved at the circle.
“What cost? I’ve spent some mana and less than an hour. That’s not much to make sure that he gets a choice. If he says he wants to stay undead, you can kick him off Berinath; that’s reasonable. All I ask is that you ask and respect his choice.” Serenity knew he was overstating things a little; “some mana and less than an hour” of his time as an experienced ritualist with a pre-prepared ritual circle would have a cost measured in multiple Etherium if he were to charge for his services. That still seemed relatively small when all Dav had done was follow the commands of the necromancer who raised him.
Elder Lizven sighed and looked at Serenity’s feet. “If they came and asked to be raised, do we have to ask them as part of the ritual?”
Serenity shook his head. Perhaps he shouldn’t admit that it wasn’t actually a part of the ritual, but there was no reason to be that paranoid. Hopefully. “As long as they asked freely, there’s no need.”
Serenity watched Elder Lizven, but when she didn’t seem to have any more questions he turned back to the ritual. He had several hours of work ahead of him before he was done for the day; the ritual was neither easy nor quick.
It was, on the other hand, reliable. When Serenity finished, he released Dav into Blaze’s waiting hands to properly heal the damage to his chest and extremities before he headed back to the hotel to rest. It had been a very, very long day but a good one.
He’d get to leave Berinath soon. Serenity was well past ready.