“I remember fighting a necromancer. The guy was… difficult to deal with. Armies of bone shields with barely any malice in them, but still used to flood everything. It’s… terrifying, you know. Facing death and death looking you in the eyes…”
-Words of an anonymous hunter after battling a rogue necromancer
*=====*
Mori looked over the desert before her, gazing into the horizon and wondering what lay beyond that line where the sky met the ground. With a sigh, she pulled her hand from the desiccated husk of a Clockwork, spraying scraps of metal around, “Pride, how many is this?” she called over the remains of the battlefield.
“This is the third, mistress,” he replied, skittering over to her, “I am surprised they are not sending more considerable forces to deal with us. It has already been a day since our battle with the infiltrators. I had assumed there was another way of communication between Clockworks, but that does not seem to be the case.”
“Yeah…” Mori mumbled, “We’ve been widening the exit for a few hours now and I’m surprised we haven’t been flooded yet. Frankie, do you see anything up there?” she shouted up at her zombie-husk hybrid as he stood tall on a mountain cliff above them.
With Mori’s enhanced sight, she could see him shrug at her, to which she grumbled. When he shrugged, he did not know what she was talking about, despite her orders of ‘stay there and keep watch’ being simple. Just another of her undead’s ‘moments,’ she decided. “Mistress,” Desire called, making her way up to her from the almost-entirely widened tunnel entrance, “We’re almost done! But, there’s something else. I’ve been hearing something over the horizon, over that way,” she reported, pointing towards the Aekan Pass, “I think they’re fighting.”
“Perhaps,” Pride said, “But they could also be probing for weaknesses with hit and run attacks. We cannot assume.”
Jel, coming up from behind him, elbowed him in the ribs, “Semantics. They’re still shooting at each other, which means they’re fighting. I kinda wanted to see the necromancers in action, see how powerful their undead are!”
“Quite, in some cases, but the emotional linkage would limit most necromancers,” Pride replied.
“Wait, ‘emotional linkage?’ What the hell is that?” Mori asked, “Is this yet another thing I don’t know about despite being a lich?”
“Mistress, I thought you already knew, but you just knew it doesn’t really apply to us much at all,” Desire replied, “It’s sort of a basic, foundational thing for us undead. And! You already described it once!”
Mori thought for a long moment, eyes still scanning the horizon for threats as she did so, “It’s how we’re even ‘alive,’ right? We’re going off of the pure power of wanting to be alive. Self preservation?”
“Yes mistress,” someone said from beside Desire. Aerolat suddenly manifested beside her, sketching a quick bow, “It is through the power of desires such as self preservation that create us.”
Mori smacked her metal palm, grinning from ear to ear beneath her face plate, “Oh! I get it! If the emotions aren’t strong enough, then the undead isn't strong!”
“Something to that effect, mistress,” Aerolat answered, smiling a bit.
“And that’s why it doesn’t affect us,” Jel explained, “Pretty much everything has self preservation instincts, so you won’t have problems making more of us, nor will any of us be weak. Unless there’s something out there that puts something above its own life instinctually.”
“Like ants…?” Mori asked.
They paused for a minute, “Not worth worrying about,” Desire said, “I mean, the Clockworks have self preservation instincts, and we aren’t fighting an ant colony or anything, so it’s not worth worrying about.”
Mori sighed, rubbing her temples, “I have a feeling that we’re going to run into something someday that just can’t care about its life. Then I won’t be able to raise it as an undead.”
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“Even then,” Aerolat began, “You wield a much more powerful and compelling death mana than most others do, apart from the gods themselves.”
“Mori!” someone shouted from the tunnel. The lich turned, eye-flames widening to see Fara running towards her. Trailing behind the woman, Mori saw the fourth prototype of their warcasket project. It was a large, deceptively quick brute, though it was still not very fast, covered in sloped clocksteel and normal steel armor designed to deflect small-arms fire. In its hand, it wielded a short sword, a kite shield in its other hand to match. Though Mori thought of it as a ‘short sword,’ it was as large as Mori’s torso and sharp as anything Mori could buy in the bazaar of Green Oasis to match.
The thing that really completed the ten foot tall metal war machine to Mori was the helmet, which looked like something a greek hoplite would wear rather than a zombie welded into a massive suit of armor. “Fara! Why are you out here!? It’s dangerous!” Mori called back as the woman ran towards her.
“Mori, the engineers in the warehouse are saying that this version might be combat ready. We already made two of them, this one being one of them. I call him Foursy One,” Fara explained, patting the metal brute on the shoulder, “I wanted to run an… experiment by you.”
“Go ahead. As long as we're not sending it in to fight any allies, it should be fine.”
Fara laughed a bit, “I know, Mori. I’m not dumb. Anyway, the test was a long-term deployment test, whose goal is to test the endurance of this big guy. They’re guessing he can go on indefinitely, with a bit of rest here and there to feed his soul-”
“These ones are hungry bastards,” Mori giggled.
“-and some time to repair from battles. Though… can I ask you something of a personal favor?” Fara asked, “I know that most of our engineers don’t mind this whole project, save for a few, but I for one know what kind of reaction this will get. Before we start putting them into full production, can you make a sort of dummy-healer? Maybe a husk-undead that ‘repairs’ one of these guys, so people don’t freak out over it?”
Mori was about to mindlessly agree, something she was not the least bit concerned about when it came to Fara, but a thought came to her as she thought about it more, “Well, we could make a dummy-healer. Or… we could make a suitable companion for a walking war machine. Something able to do the delicate work that they can’t. Something to act as a ying to their yangs. Something like… dammit, I don’t know what to name it!” she lamented.
Fara chuckled, patting Mori on the back, “Names later, design first. For now, though, can you give the green-light on sending this big guy out on a vague mission to test his limits?”
“How would we get data, though,” Jel asked, “He can’t talk, he might even die, so we’ll lose a prototype if he dies.”
“Firstly,” Mori said, “I can just do that,” she whispered, looking around to watch the diligent fortification mages put the final touches on the tunnel and began making featureless stone buildings, “To get information from him. If he dies, though… well, we can’t just go out there and waste time doing nothing. Maybe I’ll have him come back in two days, see how he did, and judge from there.”
“That works,” Fara added.
Mori nodded, taking a stride to arrive in front of the war machine, “Alright, first order: go out into the desert that way and look for people who survived after all this time. If you find anyone, bring them back immediately. Secondly, if you find any Clockworks, figure out if you can kill them. If you can, then do so. If you can’t, sneak away. If you find a person being attacked by Clockworks after all this time, help no matter what. If you don’t find anyone, start heading back after two days. Alright, you’re good to go!” she said, quickly sending some information of what a Clockwork was to the creature, just to make sure there was no error in the translation.
As the thing began marching into the desert, heavy feet thudding on the sand, Mori turned to Fara as she sighed, “People? Really? No one would be out here after so long,” Fara sighed, watching the undead go.
“Better safe than sorry. I don’t want anyone left alone out there because he wasn’t told to bring people back.” Mori stopped speaking when Desire’s worried eyes peered into her, “Desire? What’s wrong?”
“Mistress, I heard something really, really loud from the Pass. I’m surprised none of you heard it. I may have special ears and whatnot, but you’re all still undead. Sorry Fara.”
Fara shrugged as the other undead strained their ears to listen. All of them shook their heads at once, none hearing anything. Mori strained her (non-existent) ears to listen for pounding artillery, but something else caught her attention instead. Mori turned to Desire, who’s face betrayed that she heard the same thing. “Alright, what’s that-”
A sudden roar broke their conversation, one so loud and violent that it shook the very air around them. Mori looked up to find the source, seeing a coal-black blur cutting across the sky above them. It moved so quickly that Mori was momentarily in awe of it, watching it as it flew and flew, finally going over the horizon a few minutes later. A hand grabbed onto Mori’s shoulder. Turning, Mori saw Fara shaking a bit. Her undead seemed a bit more resilient, but nonetheless affected by the passing of the blur. “Good job not getting nervous on your first time seeing a dragon,” she commented.
“That was a dragon!?” Mori shouted, her eye-flames practically sparkling from excitement. She’d always wanted to see a dragon up close. Since a few weeks before, anyway.
“Work, then play,” Fara commented, knocking Mori’s helmet with her knuckles. Mori rolled her eye-flames, nodding. She still wanted to meet the dragon, but that could come later. If it decided to visit them.