(It is somehwat longer than the first chapter, I think... I hope you enjoy this chapter; the real story will begin in the next chapter though. Enjoy this little piece of amateur literature! :P )

"Hehehehe...", I tried not to but the chuckle involutarily escaped my non-existent vocal cords.

I looked down my body, watched ashen bones crack into place, harked the rattling. I was bewildered, not every day are you able to see your own ribcage, your pelvis, femur, simply everything. I was nuder than I had ever been and honestly, it was getting uncomfortable.

What idiocy has my old self come up with?!

I was beyond mummified, I was a bare skeleton! No tendons, no muscles, only volatile magical energy holding this golem corpus together and obeying my every command. Ascending the mortal plane? What a fallacy! What an idiot I was!

Well, in a sense I did ascend the mortal plane and literally discarded my flesh and body in the process. What a shame... I really liked my old body. But heck, what was I even expecting?!

Handling dangerous amounts of magic, able to flatten a whole continent, and then imbue it into my body?! I consider myself as decently intelligent but that?! Oh God.... I am such an idiot.

A conceited moron.

Guess pondering won't do it for now, lest I want to spent the rest of my -I bravely presume- immortal life inside this suffocating tomb; but I have no lungs... My sense of humor didn't die with me, I see...

The act of freeing myself was less strenous than I had anticipated, a bit of wriggling here moving a few bones aside there and then, presto! I was free.

With my skeletal fingers I felt over the rough surface of what I assumed was the lid of the tomb, a literal tomb. It felt heavy at first but after giving it a slight nudge I felt the stone above me rumble and break. I realized the graciousness and care I handled myself with, I hadn't even tried to act with this body fueled by all the magic it had assimilated. Right now I was only working on small vesiges of mana and yet I was able to heave this massive stone cover aside with ease.

What a strength.

The rectangle slid down numerous stairs and then came to a devastating stop on the ground. The room shook as the heavy weight smashed against its marbled base.

I was inside my personal chambers it seems, a throne room of sorts but without the whole pomp and more functionality. The throne in this case was a tall altar with carvings of exalted times, veins filled with liquid mana cursed over its surface and bathed the wide hall in blue sheen.

For those that wondered -yours truly also- about the reason why I had no trouble in moving with this body shall be enlightened. Let's just say I had less savoury hobbies in my old life, one of those was the creation of a particular kind of army, an undead army. But not just any kind of undead army, a skeleton army. 

Undeads were easy to recreate, but what happens if you take away their flesh, their brain; how will they move then?! The answer to this question was an artificial web of mana encassing the bones for minute movements while a compressed orb of mana with preimplanted orders sent out the commands. Dodge an attack with all means possible. Strike forward. Strike diagonal. Such were the orders you could implant into a skeleton. In all honesty, it was a wasteful project. Zombies did a much better work for less energy.

Yet I felt this same system revolving around this longst dead body. But some pecularities were different.

For example, I was still conscious, I could control my own movements, I retained my meories; I was in a way... very much alive.

Just maybe my old self expected such an outcome and prepared for it? Maybe it was my subconsciousness that created this construct to salvage the rest of my being at my moment of failure? Maybe maybe maybe... so many question and no answers.

But what to do with those informations?

I was a skeleton with a free will, and a mana capacity hiding behind my thick brow that could topple whole kingdoms. And if I search hard enough I was sure to find some contraptions that were neither broken nor stolen, hopefully.

Somewhat humerous that in my new life I start of as one of the dead, how lucky am I even?

My steps were still a bit unsteady but through my insights into the laws of mana I could easily navigate through the room. The moment you are able to see the beating of this aethereal energy you have no need for simple eyes any more. Those balls of weak flesh would only hinder your movement in this world of cosmic beauty; until you find that person. Then you will wish you could look at her forever with your own pair of eyes and not some sixth sense.

Again I was tumbling into the depressing corners of my mind. Better get these thoughts out of my head real quick.

Damn, now I was downcast once again.

The fleeting moment of conflict passed and the rage I felt for the old Arkxius passed by rather quickly. Now it laid all in the past, this I had to make myself clear.

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I sat on the edge of the tomb, its lid broken intwine and lying on the cold, hard ground. For some it may look like what I had just described but for me it was so much more.

I 'breathed' in the stale air, inhaled the essence of the air into my very being. I was alive again! Skeleton or not, it felt good.

My jaws clicked into an askew grin, an heinous smile with devilish grey teeth and sanguine twinkling eyes. Ohhhh it felt so good to be alive again...

After the first wave of euphoria my mind swiftly sorted itself. There were questions that needed answers.

How long was I gone? What changes happened in the world? Had my experiment truly succeeded or failed -however you want to look at it.

Ah! The thrill of the unknown! I never knew being dead made one feel so alive! Hehehehe...

I clicked my discarnate tongue and lifted my hands to the ceiling. It's playtime!

My mana burst forth like tidal waves, crashing into the brittle obsidian and suffusing it with energy on the molecular level. My senses reached for the magical fulmination and together they pinged through my trusty castle.

In seconds the waves upon waves of highly concentrated mana permeated my fortress in a steady glow of cerulean, activated the hidden seals and spells that would activate its slumbering heart. For some it may look like a simple core of mana, carved with intricate runes. But I knew that this little orb held the power of hundreds of cities, manasprings and even souls of the living, naught but sustenance for this monstrous structure.

Minutes passed in silence, my hearing focused on the rythmic thrumming in the background. It was a nigh inaudible whirr from somewhere deep underground but my senses fortified by magic could pick it up with levity.

The ground began rumbling in unison with the steady drumming, my footing turned faint as the earth shook in agony and fear of what was about to come. I tumbled to the side, nearly falling down the steep stairs before I took grip of the tomb's edge with undead tenacity. My body was thrown to and fro by the sudden trembles but my grip remained shut around the obsidian rim.

I smiled -I think I did- as the cyclopean golem, hidden behind an innocuous pretence of a castle, began to dawn and wake and although my situation looked pathetic, dire maybe, I could not hide the glee.

Rending the earth, reaching for the skies. My castle 'Íylyia' fulfilled its duty and rampaged through the confinements that we were set inside.

I listened to the turbulentic charges of energy that burst us upwards, the engines that clawed their way through debris and... sand. The typical rustling of fine grains against hard rock floated into my sphere of influence, a minute sound sensed like rolling thunder.

A sheer ascent ended by an abrupt and brusque stop, the cold swamping the hall attacked by boiling heat.

So I was really inside a desert, buried beneath at least a mile of sand. That didn't bode me well.

The shifting of the continental landmasses, layer stacking upon layer. What if hundreds, nay, thousands or millions of years have already passed? My castle buried by the shifting lands. No... That can't be!

I expected a few years, a dozen at most. But thousands? Millions?! Change was bound to happen, but I couldn't even imagine the possibilities now.

Kneeling, no, slumping down I contemplated. My hand reached for my chin and scratched -how I missed this oh so familiar gesture. The feeling passed on by the mana network was not how I imagined it. My chin felt less rough, now smooth even. Pah, this body!

No, no, no! I was being distracted again.

I smacked my sunken cheeks. Concentrate!

Order your actions, weigh the chances, strategize!

What about my voice?

"Ehem! *Cough* EHEM!", yes that works, I can still talk.

But what if the natives can't understand me, what then? It is impossible that some eccentric language survives the millenia, absolutely impossible. Then what?!

With magic I could at least analyze their thoughts and purposes, conect it to the spoken words and recreate their language. But what if they could pick up my magical interference? What if they see me as an aggressor? It doesn't matter in which timeline or culture we are, the moving dead are a vile and repulsive notion.

What about my physique? The components that make up my skeleton? OH NO! Pathogens, germs and diseases! What if the native populace has no resistance against those? I am a walking disaster, a living epidemic!

Ah! Ice! Ice always works well against those microbic vermins. I need to desensitize the whole castle, absolute zero preferably, staying on the safe side.

Yes! I need to hurry. Scratch one task from the list.

And in all my agitation and anxiety the thought didn't occur to me that a frozen castle in a desert looks a tad bit suspicious...