Fred cooked three small plucked ducks skewed to the same stick. It was a bleak night with both moons absent from the sky and very dark out of bounds of the campfire. The jungle sounded still, windless and quiet, until a branch broke nearby putting those not sleeping on alert. Some still tried playing cards on a large stump betting the last of their individual schlock rations.

“Did we lose anyone in the mountaintop explosion?” A mysterious voice boomed from the trees.

"It's a ghost," cried a soldier, falling off his chair, looking for danger in every direction, and stealing a peak at others' hands.

Fred fumbled the food, almost dropping it in the fire until he knocked it into the sand. He cursed dusting off the meat while those who had been sleeping also dusted themselves off. The pink flamingo-like flowers along the camp's edge were pushed aside as the troops readied their weapons for a fight.

"Why the long faced gang. HEY don't friendly fire on your friend now," called a disheveled wizard, riding in on his steed.

“Good to see you again Ned,” said Jed, greeting him into camp for the night. “We traveled by day and slept in the trees at night working back to civilization slowly. I'm sure there were similar struggles on your path,” he finished guiding the animal away from the middle of camp, and helping his friend to climb off.

"Yes except I didn't sleep haha for that crystal gas I was exposed to has kept me wired all night long," laughed Ned, holding out his hands next to the crackling fire.

He shook his body out trying to wake his feet that had fallen asleep.

"I knew you would be back, Ned. I found a dead body near the tracks I want you to inspect, a knight,” said Fred in a monotone voice, with a heavy frown locked into place long before he had stumbled upon the latest scene of violence that was adding to a lot to handle.

The wizard twitched and tweaked pacing around the camp while the rest of the party were growing tired. He circled Fred and started whispering into his ear again.

"You must take me to the body quickly," he told him.

“Ned, follow me will show you it ain't far from here," sighed Jed, who had been eavesdropping.

"Take the meat stick from me,” said Fred, handing over the fowl charred to the knight sitting next to him at the campfire.

Ned rode his stead until he was forced to dismount due to low clearance of the off beaten path. He held the flickering light following Fred and Jed on a path of wild grass besides cattails. The soggy bottom of a nearby bog close to the field threatened to eat their boots, and the beasts hooves. The trees had long died from the bog over moisturizing their roots. A row of crows had gathered on dead branches. They began to descend the exposed roots near a small pond on the last small hill of three. At the edge of darkness a body sprawled in armor, with its head submerged in the water.

"A dead knight all the way out here, and not one of us," said Fred, pointing.

"Must have gotten lost on the way to the battle at dwarf mountain, and fallen off the steed when they hit mud at too high a speed," said Ned, dismounting.

“No, I'm afraid her chest has been cut awash with wounds, many stabs going straight through the armor into the breast, no doubt something that was done by a blade composed of sharp crystal,” said Jed.

“A very interesting case we have here,” said Ned, He took out a sketchpad beginning on his latest project under the candle lantern held by his donkey, nearing for a closer inspection of the crime scene.

“Yes, a death that is most peculiar," stated Fred.

"So much experience in matters of war and yet still dead in the end," grunted Ned, pausing his artwork.

“Closer, we need more vision” said Ned beckoning over his shoulder.

Fred took the lamp in his trembling arms but stood far back to avoid getting his feet wet.

Ned latched onto the body. Jed joined him in trying to fish out the dead from the brown waters full of sediment. They tried lugging it together, but it was a slow job weighed by carrying the fully armored body stuck in the mud.

Finally they tied a rope around the neck attached to the donkey that easily pulled it out. The dead were dumped into the dry grass. Fred’s light shook fiercely as he approached them until Jed untied the corpse.

"Did any of you take the helmet off, and put it back on?" Ned asked.

"No," the men said, shaking their heads in the dim light.

The crickets played tunes into the dark sky that surrounded them.

"Fair enough," said Ned.

He bent and struggled to pull off the dead’s helmet.

"Wow this thing is really stuck on."

The other two men nodded many times in agreement until a squishy pop as the helmet popped off the waterlogged head of the dead. The corpse had long black hair, with thick black eyeliner, lipstick, make-up and a featured sharp choker around her neck with the edge tipped spikes in it made of zombie crystal.

"A full blown necromancer witch" gasped Fred.

"Makes sense she was murdered and then dumped instead of the never before seen phenomenon of a witch drowning," declared the wizard.

"A sound theory here maybe but look at her breastplate is the royal crest of a knight from the empire" said Jed.

"Both a witch, and a knight at once. Gulp," said Fred.

"Not possible for such a thing, she conjured the crests on the armor as a replica. Looks like it's really Elf constructed which no knight would ever have.. Must have been on some scheme that got her killed," said Ned, fist above his chin thinking.

"Sound theory again wizard, but we better keep this body hidden and give it a proper burial by morning tomorrow to avoid tricks, or being bitten by zombies,” said Jed.

"Stand behind me I have a much better plan. I will bring her back from the brink with a new experiment," said Ned.

"Zombie shards defile a corpse in my opinion with how brainless they become on resuscitation," said Jed, frowning.

Fred looked away blankly into the jungle night as a monkey howled.

"Nonsense the cadaver is still fresh, look at those rosy cheeks under her foundation. Besides boys, this new combination of crystals I have made in my lab, a fusion of two melted together, is much different than a plain zombie. Nope I've combed zombies, Farc teleportation, and even ground in some of my healing swords," said Ned, hunting through his animal's saddlebags.

"Your call I guess, but I don't want to fight an army of the dead tonight," Jed hollered.

"When I stab her, she will be teleported to the core which may fix the issues found when only using zombie crystal, nothing like it brought back from the brink before. This is the only chance we probably have of ever figuring out the killer," said Ned, removing things from hidden pockets of his robes as he searched.

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"I suppose if she has speech or memories we will see at once who the killer is," mumbled Fred.

"This dead will always stay that way," said Jed, looking in the other direction.

Ned removed his new technology flashing it to turned backs.

"See guys I got it right here" he said before stabbing it directly into the dead eye.

"POOF!"

"So let me get this right, the wizard is gone yet again, took the deceased knight with him, but he left his donkey behind this time" said Uhla, eating a duck at the campfire.

Jed, and Fred heated up his hands in the fire. The other soldiers sitting on logs munched away on grub.

"Yup, and how long did it take us to return from our trip to the core do you remember? With this information we can guess when he will be back to fetch his animal" said Fred, feeding the donkey with a spoon out of one of the many cans of beans it had carried.

"I don't know if I like being dumped with another mouth to feed, but I suppose it can carry enough to make up for it," said Jed.

"I feel much better, as the wizard said all my ailments have been removed. I have a brain that's been deep cleaned, the blanket of dust growing inside my soul is gone, I am no longer plagued with crippling fear and anxiety" said Fred.

"Hmm, a place of ice, snow, a bright full moon penetrating the lands at all hours,and crystals everywhere" said Uhla.

"Yes, that's just the spot. How did you guess?" Jed leaning forward. "Well it felt like an eternity stuck in a bad dream. I didn't like it, the mind fuzz is just going away sobering from the experience" said Jed.

"The Crazin tradition details the afterlife taking place in another compartment of the planet where the greatest warriors' bodies will be frozen inside crystals preserved for when they are called on to defend the rest of the weaker spirits," said Uhla.

"Fascinating" said the other soldiers together.

"Lightning strikes whenever they are working overtime," explained the heavily tattooed warrior.

Ned hung onto Nancy as they traveled through time and space. They fell forever and through the box of the sky entering the core. The corpse's head began to rotate midair while clicking in the wind.

"AAAA" he screamed free-falling into a land of ice.

They crashed and smashed into a snowbank breaking apart on impact. Ned went tumbling down a mountain. The inertia too much he fell hand over foot down smacking into small furs that slowed him grabbing at his garments. The full grown trees loomed ahead, he dodged a ledge the top of which was covered in icicles before he smashed into more brush. Ned dug his arms in, slowing himself down as he saw his feet approaching a sharp drop, a cliff edge.

“OOOOO” he looked down at a massive drop below.

His arm jerked sore as it snagged onto a little tree, some roots already pulled out and more coming every second. He was hanging from a cliff edge. Ned slowly slipped himself around not looking at the drop. He began to climb the tree back up the steep incline one hand over each other, working himself back to safety. The wind whipped around the mountain blowing through a pass this cliff overlooked. Ned was blown side to side as the tree slowly pulled out by the roots. He kept on going, while not looking down at the ground.

The wolves were howling, and his hands were already begging to numb from the cold. His head peaked over the ledge, while the rest of his body still dangled in the wind below a drop to the death. The core's single moon shone blinding light at him.

The edge of the cliff was covered in a topping of powdery snow. Ned tried grabbing at it, but he was smart to have held on to the tree. The last root breaking sounded as the tree began to plummet over the cliff edge and the wizard now found himself hanging from just his shoulders, dug into snow.

Frantically he worked upwards with every motion of the wind threatening him. It was laborious but his body found the energy to hold on and keep climbing. He hit the top and rolled over to safety, a small ledge going back in a bit, the snow falling off the overhang instead of entering within. The cavity had some snow, but it would have been blown in, as some did now as Ned entered.

Things were very cold in the core. Ned scrambled looking through the hundred or so pockets of his wizard robe to find the crystal he was looking for. At last magma crystals were in hand, but what about the starter? It was another scramble, until he remembered to calm himself and breathe each breath as they came to him. The pocket where he usually kept the flint was empty except for a gathering of lint. Time was ticking in the arctic with no gloves on his hands.

Ned was up jumping around doing jacks as his eyes scanned. A pile of stones, and more strewn all over the floor. He picked through the pile until he found the best he could figure and got back to his magma smacking the rocks together.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon” said Ned.

“Smack, smack, clack, clack” said the rocks smacking and tiny sparks emitting off them.

“Wooosh!”

The magma lit up a block of hot as Ned dropped it and stuck his hands down above it.

“Aaaah” he said, his heart warmed with heat, and the knowledge that he had not died yet today.

Ned dropped his body on a sprawl onto frosted granite.

His vision blurred back, his limbs were burning, the magma still alive in front of him the whole time he had slept. Thunder as lightning cracked in the sky outside, what sounded like monkeys took up howling, it could not be mistaken that it was hundreds of animals fighting over something no matter the variety; perhaps it was over a single scrap of food. Who knows why anything would have the purpose to fight and die here with so many crystals everywhere. I suppose that is the main difference between animals and I thought Ned to himself inspecting and taking some small crystals of all different varieties, stuffing them into his pockets.

Lighting sparked again, and the wind blew a full gust into the cavity, ripping into eardrums. A figure cloaked in armor stood at the entrance as thunder boomed beside it.

“ZAAAAP!”

The lightning came into contact with the metal armor electrifying the figure. It smelled of burnt flesh as the zombie lurched forward towards Ned, and he jumped back. Her armor was blackened, her hair was soot, and her face was shrunk, wrinkled or ripped off from the frost and flame.

“Do you have a name?” asked the wizard.

“Nancy,” stated the deceased.

“Can you tell me your killer?”

“Prince Edward Longbottom, he is a killer and cannibal who has rampaged all over the kingdom killing millions and eating thousands all covered over by the crown, I will have my revenge ending his life with what little reincarnation I have here” she said.

“Now I do not know this man or how bad of a sadist he truly is at heart, but with my short military career so far morally I've got a lot of things I could be doing better, but I believe you should journey with me and the soldiers at once where you will present the account of your own murder to the council of the kings court, and the prince will be sent to the dungeon after for sure,” said Ned, inching a bit closer to rewarm his hands.

“I will kill him myself; a corpse doesn’t have time for those things,” said Nancy’s zombie going back out where it rested back on the entrance wall.

"I am a pacifist, I cannot put my stamp of approval on any of your plans for the murdering of murderers, I have my own ideas about justice, only once we have given it an honest try first in the courts," said the wizard.

At the same time in a land on the other side of Tenare the elves were celebrating, especially the executives on top of the pyramid. The crystal stock was amassing faster than ever anticipated. The slave mines had tripled output this season. It came with much death, which created harder working slave zombies. There was always more to do for boss Elf no matter your status.

Their recent success was secretly under the table. The crystals had started to flow from the center of the planet. The elves already scouted it last year when they had found a way to harness the power of teleportation to bring things back.

The Elves had the best scientists, and they had worked long and hard hours to harness the power of every kind of crystal. Several seasons ago the number of known crystals had only been 10 but now it was 12. Some of the lesser designs had been sold for even more crystals to the human empire: those idiots only ever seemed to mess with Magma. Nobody except the Elves would ever harness the power of mass teleportation, or any of their other advanced technology only they had access to. The rules on sharing things were very strict and only done in the pursuit of amassing more in the end. The rules are engraved in the stone on every street by the Elvin high council who usually govern from the top of the pyramid, but not tonight.

"How are you today, senior elf?" said the servant as more were taking bags inside the hotel at once.

T.I.B got out of a carriage and strutted over to the lakeside in a business suit constructed of crystal fiberglass. They reached the point where six executive elves had gathered. A traditional Elven airship of wood carving was sailing right by as everyone gawked. Fresh cedar bark, sap, armored scales on the weakest parts of the hull, and science to power her engines forward with crystal.

"There you are," said the oldest elf of the group.

They put an arm on the last to join back as they formed a circle at the end of the path by the river.

"Ok I brought you all out here for a reason, the pair of you can come out now," said the elder.

Two heads half human, and half fish stuck themselves out from the water with a splash.

"Ahh nice to meet you, looks to be a nice pair of bootlickers you've got there," said T.I.B (short for Them Investigative Brains).

An elder Elf snapped their bony fingers loudly several times in a row.

"Servants get these fish some food to feast, I wouldn't want them to be hungry when they tell the investigator here all about the latest news from the planet."

"The human king's death sure has been swell for us huh guys," laughed the top of the hierarchy elf executive, standing above in the highest heels.

"Bootlickers tell us all the latest gossip about this damaged prince who wishes to take over the business from his mother."

The rest of the Elves bowed praying for the best gossip by staring into the three great balls of fire on the horizon.