RESOLUTIONS AND THE BENEFITS OF FREEDIVING AS AN UNDEAD.
Once Mitch came up for air and returned to the real world (albeit with a floaty window to the network only visible to him beside him,) he looked around again.
“It can’t be true, it just can’t be” he was making gentle rocking motions to soothe himself, and by the looks of things, his reaction to the news could go very well, or very very badly, on a scale of one to ten, with one being a little shook up, and ten being full-blown zombie apocalypse.
Rosalind gently placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder (Mibbet tried, but as previously mentioned, she did not like cold things in this chassis; they really freaked her out. Of course, a cold, clammy undead limb was not Rosalind’s favourite thing in the world either, but beating the hell out of something often goes a long way towards tackling a phobia. Or a phobe depending on the situation.) “Why not?” She asked.
“All these years I’ve lived to make these bastards pay, and now you’re telling me that they already did, centuries ago. Where’s my revenge? I laid there with a sword through my ribs for two bloody centuries, and if some little git of a grave robber hadn’t nicked my sword, I’d still be down there, trapped. Now nobody gets to pay for that? ”
“Well, you did raise the orphan who finished off the empire for good; I really hope that helps.” Rosalind tried; it wasn’t the most comforting thing, but really there isn’t a section in Princess training for counselling the undead on waking from torpor; as extensive as the training was, it for some inexplicable reason acted like this was a situation they would never encounter, despite it feeling like his kingdom had more undead than living these days, what was with that? Once all this was over, Rosalind was writing that bloody module, gods damnit.
“Question is, all these years, I’ve lived for nothing but revenge, planned for nothing but revenge, even dreamt of nothing but revenge.” His voice got quieter and quieter, “so what do I do now?” What’s my purpose?”
“Well, I do have an idea.” Rosalind said, almost hesitantly, “Nah, it’d never work, forget I said anything; it’s a really big job.”
“What? What is it? Do you have an idea? Please tell me, I don’t want to sit in an old tomb forever bored out of my skull, and even my chess set is missing pieces, so I would really rather avoid ending up losing it, a lich maybe people will put up with these days, stranger things have happened, but a crazy lich? That’s how you get infested with adventurers looking for your core; they don’t seem to get that not every place full of the living dead is a dungeon.
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“Alright, I may have a solution; if you and your little army follow this path and keep going eventually you’ll come to a massive stone bridge over a valley, can’t miss it, well not unless you forget to put your eyes in, it’s full of light crystals. They need workers of a less flammable persuasion, not to mention a whole undead proto dragon to look after, that and they just got rights, they can probably expect a few people showing up and trying to drag them back to enslavement. So what they need right now is friends, support, and maybe if you’ve got time when all that is done, they could use a hero to help them get others to safety.”
“I’m no hero”, Mitch muttered angrily.
“Then maybe it’s time to start, hero or not they need help, and you’re no stranger to starting changes. Also, I’d advise you offer your army there the choice, because if I see them again and they’re still bound to your command, then as a Princess, and the one who banned it personally, I will track down and end you as a slaver if the other constructs haven’t done it already. Your allies are to have complete agency in future as citizens of the kingdom, not your lackeys, are we clear?”
At that, there was a dangerous edge to her voice, and definitely not one he wished to argue with, especially not from a person who had a proto dragon on their friend's list. So he did the wisest thing he could in the situation and gave a nod.
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It took most of the day to reconfigure all those spell matrices one at a time, but the dead are nothing if not patient, and eventually, after hours and hours of magicoding, the control algorithm was removed. It would have taken much, much longer, but he had taken to talking to Schrodinger’s human, who, as you can imagine having resurrected a cat was something of an expert on making sure those they raised did exactly what they pleased. Then came the hardest bit for Mitch, letting go.
A decent number of them chose upon learning the plan to travel with Mitch, and for those raised sans the luxury of ocular equipment, it was agreed with the other constructs that they could use sun crystals which would be fitted by Mitch as compensation. A small group decided to go their own way (they would later become quite the famous naval adventurer's team, under the name “the skeleton crew.” Of course, they were also inclusive of other construct types and specialised in marine salvage jobs. They saved a fortune on the diving gear, of course, though it turns out bone varnish was a little pricey. They were led by a real silver-tongued rogue of a skeleton, and he earned it, cost him 6 salvage jobs in finest sterling.)
Their weapons were dutifully returned, and to Errol's delight (at least they thought that was why he was squealing so much), the tibia was in there. Of course, Elvira added googly eyes upon realising he was not getting rid of it, and after much thought, he decided it wasn't worth overthinking and named his new weapon DONK.
Then it was time to say goodbye, as Mitch and his skeletal army (at least the bits that went with him) trudged along the muddy trail towards their new home. They didn’t know what was waiting for them, of course, but they were needed, so they would go. It was time they learned to be real heroes.