Amidst the ravaged fields, a consciousness stirred. Despite the mind still being foggy after the awakening, Its senses snapped to life within moments of It regaining a semblance of higher thought. Immediately, the surrounding area was stripped bare before Its mind’s eye. Exact layout and texture of the landscape were observed, categorized, and filed within the being’s memory. Mutilated half-rotten bodies whose bits and pieces covered the ground as far the It could sense were thoroughly examined down to the shattered bones and deemed potentially useful. Tears in bent metal plating that was wrapped around some of the corpses and trenches dug into the earth were matched to sharp appendages of metal that were either strewn between the corpses unattended or tightly clenched in hand of bleached bone and decaying flesh.

After surveying Its initial surroundings, the being tried to extend Its senses even further but was met with a sharp spike of pain. Changing the course of action, It looked below instead of sideways, and found that the soil, too, was tightly packed with buried bodies. Of course, they were analyzed as well and added to the rapidly growing catalog of resources available to the newly woken entity.

Reconnaissance completed, but unsure of what to do next, the mind turned onto itself, digging through the acquired information in hopes of finding anything of use. Examining and discarding memory after memory, the being was too engrossed in the process to notice movement in Its environment. A rusted sword, covered in notches and chipped at the edges, was shoved aside by a passing breeze, causing it to fall from atop a mound of bodies it was resting on.

The decrepit weapon slid down, clanking against armor and body alike, before finally finding its new resting place in someone’s gutted stomach. The pile of bodies and metal shuddered after being disturbed in such a rude manner, before promptly collapsing. Armored bodies rolled in every direction as various weapons gleefully took this opportunity to stab, pierce, and tear flesh one last time.

The vibrations, as well as the sudden change in Its surroundings, immediately attracted the mind’s attention. Surprisingly, this time It found something that wasn’t there before as far as Its memory as concerned.

There, half-concealed by a corroded breastplate, a tiny gem of sickly green color found its resting place between someone’s ribs, held in place by what remained of lungs and muscles. Intrigued, the mind focused all of Its being on the gemstone, recording every neatly cut edge and polished surface into Its imaginary archive.

The gem itself didn’t seem very special, a trimmed octahedron that looked rather oddly among all the blackened blood and rusted metal. After some consideration, the entity realized that It didn’t spot even a single gem anywhere else within Its field of perception, which made this one unique.

Following some deeply ingrained instinct that It wasn’t even aware It had, the mind willed Its newly acquired treasure to be protected. It was special, after all, because losing it would leave It with no other items such as this one. There was no calculation or grand plan behind the action, It simply deemed it irrational to not protect something that was irreplaceable.

Surprisingly, it worked, and the entity watched with renewed curiosity how bone melded together and flesh stitched itself back in one piece, securely hiding the precious stone within the confines of rotten meat.

Its job done, the consciousness returned to browsing Its memories in search of something to do. This time, however, the process was going much slower than before. Pausing, the entity switched Its goal to finding the reason for Its inefficiency. Almost right after, It came to the conclusion that the gem wasn’t protected enough. Seeing the corpse piles scattered all over the fields, It quickly matched them to the cause of the gem being revealed. Especially after another one collapsed under Its own weight, swords, and spears whistling through the air once again.

The mission established, It still wasn’t sure how exactly the gem was supposed to be protected. Metal scattered all over the place, while sturdy, clearly wasn’t good enough judging by its current state of existence. Building another pile of bodies atop the gem was a viable idea, but not without its flaws. How to prevent the mound from collapsing and damaging the stone? How to make one in the first place, considering that It had no way of interacting with Its environment?

Or did it?

Recalling Its previous desire to secure the gemstone, It decided to give the plan a chance and tried to will the bodies to move. This time nothing happened. Undeterred, It continued attempting to impose Its will on the still corpses. Somewhere along the line, the mind felt Its surrounding change in some way It couldn’t comprehend, but It filed the question for later in fear of breaking concentration and continued willing the bodies to move.

After a couple more shifts in Its vicinity, the being finally decided to pause Its current project and analyze the rather distracting occurrence. It turned out that every once in a while, something changed about the items around It. After careful observation, It reached the conclusion that there were two phases to the world around It, one of which caused the objects to heat up, and the other to cool down.

Satisfied with the feeling of a successfully performed analysis, It returned to Its former obsession. The desire to protect the gem was growing with every ‘cycle’ and Its inability to provide said protection was only amplifying the need.

After cycles upon cycles of intense focus and maddening hunger for positive results tearing and clawing Its mind, after scrutinizing every dot of energy that composed both flesh and metal and every instance of interaction between the two It could find, progress was finally made.

It sensed something. A barely perceptible, fleeting feeling of an ephemeral substance brushing against Its consciousness. Invigorated, It latched onto this feeling and greedily devoured every bit of information It could find. How it felt, how it behaved, the way it interacted with the gem and the environment. The resulting knowledge caused the entity to fill Its mind with an anguished cry of frustration before getting to the long-desired work.

The newly discovered energy was everywhere. It danced in the air, seeped through the earth, latched on to flesh, and hid in armor and weapons. But above all else, it was practically radiating from the gem. There was so much of it that the entity nearly shut itself down from a roiling cocktail of emotions that arose when It realized how much information It had missed.

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Instead, the re-energized mind went into overdrive. It quickly discovered that the energy emanating from the gem could be easily controlled and directed. Wasting no time, It tried to coat the gem itself in this energy but only ended up saturating the body around it. Fortunately, it turned out that protecting the stone was easier this way.

Following the mind’s will, the body twitched before shakily lifting itself up. Unsecured pieces of armor dropped down from the rising corpse like rain, striking the metal that rested on the ground. Eager to finally quench the burning desire to protect the stone, It ordered the puppet to curl on itself, thus encasing the gemstone in even more layers of flesh and metal. Observing as the body dropped back on the ground and followed the given order to the letter, It turned Its will to the other bodies.

One by one, the corpses were saturated with energy and commanded to pile themselves atop the first one. At one point, It noticed that the energy coming from the gem was diminishing, It attempted to use the energy contained in the Its environment, but failed miserably. So It settled on leading the ‘free’ energy into the core of the rapidly growing pile of flesh and metal first, where it was quickly converted into similar but different energy that It could use.

Engrossed in playing with Its new toys, the entity reached further and further into the fields of death, until every single corpse that It could observe was on the way to Its precious stone. There were some difficulties, however, because the bodies refused to attach to each after the mound reach some critical point, and continuously ordering them to grab and hold each other was too much strain on the young mind. So, It directed Its influence to the one other thing It was intimately familiar with – metal.

On their way to the final destination, every corpse was ordered to pick up as many metal items as it could carry and deliver them to the core. There, flesh was merged with flesh, and resulting openings and air pockets were filled with rusted steel. Weapons and armor pierced the bodies, firmly locking them in place, as those dots of energy It found during Its earlier attempts to protect the core were linked together. Soon, the fields were clear of corpses, revealing dried blood and mutilated, blackened earth. 

The being, however, felt nothing but pride at the sight of a rising monument to death. The pile quickly became a hill that, over the course of several dozens of cycles turned into a small mountain. Snapped spears and broken swords were intermixed with remains of various banners, some of which were still fluttering in the wind as if begging the winds to rip them out of their new home. Decaying flesh was weaved into the armor that once protected it, and bones were elongated and restructured to reinforce each individual ‘cell’ of the united undead organism from the inside.

Finally, Its new home was complete. By now, It couldn’t refer to the gem as anything but ‘Core,’ and this masterpiece as ‘home.’ For the first time since Its awakening, the entity felt satisfied. The fields were cleared and It had done everything in Its power to protect the designated Core. It was finally at peace.

Except it wasn’t.

Its instincts were screaming at It to slumber, Its mind felt so oversaturated with energy that it was about to shut down on its own. And yet, something prevented the desired outcome. Groggily, It carefully observed the fields once more, but nothing caught Its attention. It did the job perfectly, using all available resources to complete the mission. So what was the problem?

The desire to shut down began to intensify, akin to the time when It wanted to protect the Core. With rising desperation, It buried itself into the mental archive, trying to find something, anything, that could help. Eventually, It determined that the problem didn’t come from the ingrained instincts, like the first time around. This time, the fault was truly on It.

Feeling the familiar hunger to do something start to prod at Its mind, the being tried Its best to separate itself from any and every distraction, and focused on the task at hand. Cycles went by until It could barely prevent the feeling of hunger overwhelming Its mind. Salvation came from one of the older observations that It made when It first awakened.

The ground, It realized. There were still corpses left underground. With a gleeful wail unheard by anything but the entity itself, It commanded Its puppets to dig.

The mountainous construct shuddered. Metal snapped and was reconnected, bones shattered and were repaired, flesh tore and was fused back, as the colossus of death lifted itself on hundreds of appendages. The earth cracked as dozens of them were lifted and the weight redistributed. Crooked fingers twisted at unnatural angles, continuously breaking and rebuilding bone, as arms reached deep into the walking mountain and returned holding an entire arsenal.

Winds picked up and the earth trembled and cried as thousands of corpses ravenously tore into the ground, searching for their buried kin. The moment a body was unearthed, It immediately directed Its energy to take over it. Arms from below rose to clasp the arms from above, as bodies were pulled and absorbed into the new home.

Despite the progress It was making, however, the desire to sleep didn’t disappear. Natural instincts clashed with a conscious mind that yearned for perfection, and the latter managed to prevail time after time. But It was aware that soon It would be too weak to resist, so time was of the essence. 

After unearthing every body It could sense below the Core, It ordered the amalgamation of corpses to move above the next batch of buried bodies. That was a mistake. After moving the Core, It sensed Its field of perception shift in accordance with it. Which, in turn, revealed more of the field of fallen bodies, further fueling Its desire to finish the job as well as it could. The command to stop moving and drop down followed immediately after that realization.

The entity ignored another earthly groan as it frantically searched for answers. Absentmindedly, It ordered the newly discovered corpses to join Its masterpiece. As the new additions were heading towards the Core, one of them happened to stumble into one of the trenches that scarred the fields. Undeterred, it clawed at the walls of its improvised prison, until Itordersr one of the nearby bodies to help it out.

The event did give one idea though.

Inspired, the entity restructured some of the construct’s innards to allow more flexibility, and ordered it to dig once more. Except this time, instead of holding itself above the excavation site, the corpse mountain oozed into the wounded earth. It shrank in size until only a tiny portion of it was located above the ground, the rest branching in every direction below the surface, connecting to and collecting every corpse the entity could sense. 

A small mound of bodies was the only thing that remained visible to the outside observer, not unlike to piles that were originally scattered across the fields. Urged by a sudden flight of fancy, It twisted fused and twisted the corpses into a column. A column that was higher than the corpse piles, it noted.

After some consideration, It decided to add a practical side to Its decoration, willing a few spears to extend from the sides, and ordering corpses to drag themselves to the spear tips. Now, if It needed to survey the fields outside of Its perception, It could simply send out these puppets instead of uprooting the whole construct.

Satisfied at last, the entity allowed Its instincts to take hold and was promptly pulled into the center of the massive underground undead complex where the glowing gem of sickly green was kept in safety.