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Chapter 6 - Miner Trouble
Corpsescrew turned to see the ghostly apparition of a woman dressed in layers of dark fabric and skulls. Way too many skulls; she must have been overcompensating for something. The strange glowing purple energy surrounding her gave credence to the assumption that she wasn’t actually present at this location.
“Mistress Death,” a couple of the zombies hissed in reverence, perhaps trying to bow if their bodies would have allowed it.
“Be at ease, my little ones,” the voice cooed through the ether. “You have done well to bring me [redacted] - this could certainly turn the tide of war in our favour.”
Corpsescrew shook his head; the weird whining sound when the necromancer said some name was irritating him for some reason - whatever it was escaping his recognition. “We are on the way to your castle,” he grunted.
“That is probably a good idea,” her head shook back and forth in contemplation, the blur of arcane energy surrounding the necromancer clouding her face.
“Any beasts or bad guys you want me to procure along the journey?” Corpsescew wasn’t really the type to run shopping errands, but if negotiations turned sour, it might be an idea to have a few more allies on his side.
“How considerate of you. There’s a mine full of chaos-dwarves about half a day travel from here. They have been digging up evilstone and won’t share it.” Her pout wasn’t as convincing as she may have hoped.
“Evilstone, huh.” The death knight had heard of it before, he thought? It certainly sounded like something that sounded real… maybe in a terrible fantasy novel. He ran his tongue across his teeth; there was an uncomfortable taste in the air.
“Think of all the evil things we could build… together.” The last words of the necromancer faded and eked away along with her visage, leaving the uncomfortable feeling lingering in her absence.
“Ooh, it has been too long since I last attended a wedding,” one of the zombies gushed, partly literally.
“No,” Corpsescrew shook his head. Despite his decaying sense of his previous self, if there was one thing that still carried over, it was that his love could not be tied down. That said, ‘love’ for him had always been about sticking his large sword into those that threatened the weak. So perhaps this wasn’t that far a stretch.
The sun twisted its rays across the top of the lethargic tree line, casting warmth that blinded the death knight briefly and taking him out of his thoughts. Focus on the task at hand, he reminded himself, whatever it actually was.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Into the cave, everyone,” he commanded. “At dusk, we march for the dwarven mines.”
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Sharing the cave with over two dozen corpses, some dire wolves, and a very large dead bear was uncomfortably warm. Also boring. Corpsescrew had positioned himself at the front of the cave just in case anything came close - but it had the benefit of a slight cool breeze too. After countless hours of the sun beating down on the rock cave, eventually, the reddish tones of dusk began to highlight the surroundings.
“Time to move.”
Being the leader of a small army wasn’t too bad. Sure there was the micromanagement of keeping everybody together, sometimes literally, but to command a group to do your bidding was a different power trip than he was used to. Although, he couldn’t remember what he was used to. Once he had hopped up atop the giant bear to ride as a mount, things were really starting to come together.
It was perhaps just a slice of narrative coincidence that the mines of the chaos-dwarves were not too difficult to find. Indeed, as they approached into the clearing, the soft loam of the woods turning into rough gravel and loose stone, it almost felt like destiny. Maybe not even destiny, just predetermined fated, as if he was following the letter of the-
“Back, foul undead,” a dwarven foreman shouted from the mine entrance, a couple of fellow chaos-dwarves flanking him.
“I don’t think we will,” Corpsescrew shrugged. “Unless you plan on turning over all your evilstone. And probably a way to transport it, as we don’t really have the capacity for it. Overall a fool’s errand.”
“We told Mistress Death herself, we will stop providing her with the goods once she can ensure our safety and worker’s rights.”
The death knight hummed to himself, a threaded pattern weaving in his mind. “So the issue is bureaucratic, at its heart?”
“Essentially,” the horned chaos-dwarf nodded. “We just want guarantees in writing for a fair trade agreement - she just wants all the stone, like some kind of greedy Groak’lor.”
Corpsescrew hated Groak’lors. “My unmerry band and I are travelling to the castle to negotiate better union terms and the like,” the death knight waved his hand in the air to gesture to all the things he imagined they would discuss but couldn’t think of on the spot. “If you care to send a group with me, it would save me the trouble of killing you all and getting you to carry evilstone the rest of the way.”
The dwarf briefly murmured with his brethren before turning back to the undead warband. “We will send a dozen of our strong miners, armed, if you can vouch for them during the negotiations.”
“Sure.” Corpsescrew wondered why their miners didn’t have arms by default - maybe they had tentacles? “I will watch over them while they are under my care.”
“Then it is settled… ?”
“Corpsescrew,” the death confirmed, realising now that it sounded more like he had relations with the undead, rather than shredded them up. With violence. “It’s a work in progress.”
“Oh, I thought you were saying you had a Corpse Crew,” one of the zombies chimed in. “Like you were talking about us in a nice way.”
“I totally was,” Not-Corpsescrew smiled unconvincingly. Far be it for him to lose the respect of his underlings at this stage; a new name wouldn’t be a terrible ask of him. “My name is actually-”
“Goreblaster!” the name rang out from above, the tone causing the death knight to wince in pain as the noun buried its way uncomfortably through his ear canal.
He looked up to see a golden armour-clad paladin with flowing white hair standing atop the hill, surrounded by figures dressed in white and silver.
Good Guys.