The total count of Vey’s fellows in the dungeon is as follows,

2 Zombie Dogs

3 Smallfolk Zombies(no equipment)

5 Zombies(no equipment)

1 Zombie(chain shirt + battleaxe)

11 Skeletons(assorted simple weapons and light armors)

6 Smallfolk Skeletons(assorted crossbows and bows)

1 Zombie Rat(unintentionally created and thus pending termination on principle)

This amount is actually quite significant by Vey’s estimation of the necromancer’s abilities, until it remembers that he achieved this amount by performing dark rituals instead of raising them by his own power. After commanding all of the undead to the hall before the ritual chamber and swiftly terminating the zombie rat with a single swing of its heavy mace, Vey makes a vow to not treat its fellows as disposable meatshields as its former master would have done. Vey may not yet understand the concept or the emotions guiding it to this conviction, but it feels kinship and pity for its unminded fellows.

Vey ultimately decides that if it finds a way to grant its fellows the same mindedness that Vey currently has, it will. It knows this is unfeasible for all of them, as some will likely be destroyed the next time adventurers or bandits try to raid or claim the dungeon respectively, and Vey knows that the only way it will survive such an event without the de-buffing magic the necromancer had used to assist its minions is to form a single, impenetrable wall of undead.

Vey changes the tone of its commands to be more like suggestions or requests, it knows this doesn’t actually do anything, but it feels better about doing it now. Vey has the smallfolk skeletons relinquish their ranged weapons to six of the normal skeletons, and Vey fetches two more short-bows that it pilfered out of the corpse pile when it had organized them and gives them to two more skeletons. It instructs the smallfolk skeletons to wear any pieces of armor they can find in the corpse-room, even if they are damaged or nearly falling apart, any armor is good armor. It gives blunt weapons to all of the zombies, spears or other longer-ranged melee weapons to the smallfolk skeletons.

Vey even collects and redistributes the ammunition for all of the projectile weapons, so that each of the eight archer skeletons has an equal amount. It sets aside half of the ammo for practicing, and half for defense purposes only. It knows that the undead can’t gain skills without minds, but it also knows that they can improve proficiencies from experience, so Vey plans to have all of the undead practice their skills with their weapons on the apparently limitless rat supply the rotting meat in the corpse-room attracts.

Vey sets each of the zombies to form a sort of shield wall using their bulkier forms, with two smallfolk zombies on either wing, and has the spear-wielding smallfolk skeleton stand behind them in a staggered formation, so that they can attack through the gaps in the zombie wall. Vey has the zombie dogs and two of the remaining melee skeletons guard for the ranged skeletons, which is positioned so that the archers can fire over the melee formation, and the crossbowmen can fire around the formation into the enemy ranged attackers or casters. To the remaining three melee skeletons and remaining smallfolk zombie, it has a simple task. Patrol the entire dungeon, and if hostiles are encountered, the smallfolk zombie is to fight to the end, and the skeletons are to run and raise the alarm.

Vey’s rudimentary defense plan, reorganization, gear recommissioning, formation planning, and other assorted tasks takes nineteen hours before Vey even steps foot back into the ritual chamber.

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In this time, Sera has slept underneath the furs for warmth, done a healthy amount of crying, an unhealthy amount of self-loathing and self-deprecation, put on her clothes, eaten a small amount of the salted pork from the necromancer’s stores, thrown up into the now-properly recognized waste drain in the ritual chamber, emptied the chamberpot into said waste drain, and generally nosed around the living chamber and ritual room.

Sera flips to the next page of the notebook Vey had been using for its notes on magic, and marveling at both the inanity and genius Vey’s writings display in equal measure on each page. Sera is beginning to understand why Vey wants her knowledge of the outside world, as it seems to her that Vey is like a toddler; immensely curious, rapidly developing, and completely clueless as to how things work. That is, until she reaches the most recent page of Vey’s notebook, where Vey has evidently decided to use it for its intended purpose.

Sera feels the contents of her near-empty stomach bubble up into her throat, and that feeling of revulsion and violation returning as she reads Vey’s deadpan description of Sera’s body, and all the things it had seen the necromancer doing to it, all with a tone of genuine frustrated confusion at its lack of understanding of the situation. Even after its notes on that, it has made vivid descriptions of her body, and numerous hypotheses on why Sera acted in the ways she has in their very few interactions. The notes apparently stopped at the point it told her to wash herself. She briefly wonders whether it is better or worse to be treated like an unwanted pet or science experiment, or a plaything for a sadistic rapist.

She puts the notebook back onto the table where she found it, and tries to do something, anything else to distract her from what she read and the uncomfortable memories it dredged up, but found only menial chores remaining to occupy herself with. She hopes, somewhat hysterically, that Vey might end up appreciating her housekeeping enough to sway its decision on her life or death, and Sera fully understands that thinking like that is probably not a good thing for her mental state.

She manages to successfully consume what she assumes is a meal-sized portion of salted pork, and a single lump of rock-hard bread using water from the fountain and a wooden mug she found on the floor next to the nightstand. She still feels hungry, and desperately wishes for some of her mother’s beef stew or those sandwiches her father used to make.

Sera cries for an entire hour after remembering her parents, and only mopes and cries more at the realization that even if she does get rescued or escapes, her father still won’t be anywhere but in a grave.

“If it wasn’t for that fucking asshole of a priest, then…” Sera’s shout trails off to nothingness as it dawns on her. The priest that had taken her father away from the village over a year ago… didn’t he have the same face as the one that had- The food she just swallowed ended up in the drain once more at record pace, and Sera had barely managed to start cleaning herself up by the time Vey re-enters the ritual room.

“I thought you already cleaned yourself?” Vey’s grating voice asks as it walks into the room, and glances around. Aside from Sera’s halfnaked form washing her shirt, the second thing he notices is that the furs have been taken off of the post and have been put up as new drapes for the living chamber, and the post has been moved away from the drain again. The next thing it notices is a wooden mug resting on the fountain’s edge once more, which sends a tingle of relief down Vey’s spine that Sera is able to drink the water without issue. The third notable change is simply a matter of how clean the floor is, as though Sera had been washing the bloodstains, grime, and other assorted nastinesses into the drain area. The fourth thing it notices that Sera is once again holding her arms over her chest in lieu of continuing to wash her shirt, which confuses Vey. Vey points at her and asks rather frustratedly, “Why do you do that whenever I look at you?”

Sera’s only response is a blank stare and her cheeks getting redder, so Vey supposes it’s probably something that falls under the category of ‘keep me alive and I’ll tell you’, which is a game Vey assumes Sera is attempting to play. Quite the contrary, as Sera struggles to find words to explain why she doesn’t want a skeleton with no reproductive organs and presumably no sex drive to see her boobs.

“Habit? I guess?” Sera responds shyly, and she exhales rather heavily, before letting her arms down, trying to let her embarrassment fall out of her by simply ‘getting used to it’. She reaches into the bucket and starts washing the vomit out of her shirt once more.

“You mean like the way the zombies shamble around in place, regardless of how I command them? What exactly gives you that habit? Is it an elf thing?” Vey asks after a moment of silence, once again disrupting her work.

“It’s more like… You understand that I’m a female, right? It’s a female thing.” Sera tries to sound as neutral and not-at-all condescending as possible, but fails completely, but notices that this evidently goes entirely over Vey’s head.

“I see. Are there any other of these ‘habits’ you could tell me of?”