8 - UNDEATH

I watched, in a state of shock, as Justinia calmly went about the process of removing the nomarch from her horse. Then she grabbed hold of the horse’s reins and steered it back to the other two horses—the fourth had bolted at some point during the chaos. She drove an iron spike into the soft earth where she tied two of the horse’s leads. The third horse she patted down, removing the saddle bag and doing something else I didn’t see, though later she would tell me she was making sure that the horse would carry no identifying signs, symbols, or documents of its original rider. Then she slapped the horse’s rump and sent it galloping away.

Then—and I was still seated cross-legged in the grass, utterly useless—she dragged all four corpses together and laid them out side by side. She started to rummage through their possessions, laying out everything with a level of care and neatness that seemed particularly cold given the murderous situation.

“What are you doing?” I asked weakly. A silly question, really.

“Going through their belongings.”

“Right,” I said. “Looking for money?”

“Amongst other things.” She glanced up at me, her hands deep in the nomarch’s pockets. “You alright?”

“Oh, you know,” I said faintly. “I’ll live.”

“How’s the head?”

“It doesn't feel great,” I admitted.

“No,” she said, “it wouldn’t. You have quite the lump.”

“Splendid.”

“Aurion?”

“Yes?”

“Stand up. Walk around a little. Get your blood flowing and clear your mind. Drink some water. You’ll be fine. Congratulations on your first scrap. Won’t be the last.”

“I hardly did anything.” I protested weakly.

“No, you didn’t do anything at all. But that’s often how it goes the first time.” Justinia started to unbuckle the nomarch’s breastplate. “Can’t say this sort of thing ever gets easy, but it gets easier.”

“I pissed myself.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I know.”

I closed my eyes. “I feel like a fool.”

“Uh huh. Do what I said.”

I obeyed, rising to my feet and pacing around. Flies were already gathering around the corpses. They didn’t bother me as they were now, dead and cold and still—I was used to the dead. And now that I was paying attention to them, I could feel the beating, throbbing power dwelling in the center of each of them. Their souls were so freshly departed that their corpses were full of necromantic energy. It called to me.

And before I even knew what I was doing—before I had time to consider whether or not it was an intelligent thing to do—I fixated on the nomarch and linked my aura to hers.

Rise, I commanded her.

The nomarch stirred. Her hands twitched, fingers curling inward.

She sat bolt upright.

And began to scream.

Justinia jolted so violently it was like she’d been physically struck. In a single, smooth motion, she drew an ax from her belt, pivoted on one heel, and threw it, full force, at the nomarch’s head.

The ax thudded into the side of the nomarch’s skull with a sound like wood splitting.

But the nomarch remained, and her screaming continued.

Be silent, I commanded.

The nomarch closed her mouth.

“Justinia,” I held out my hands, coming closer, “don’t worry, she’s just—”

Justinia stormed toward me, eyes blazing. “You did that?”

“Yes, I was just—”

“You scared the fucking shit out of me,” she hissed, coming to a stop. For a moment, I thought she might even slap me. Instead, she just stared into my eyes, breathing hard, shoulders heaving as though she was struggling to control herself.

“Whatever you did to that woman,” Justinia said slowly, “undo it.”

“I am testing my abilities,” I said, heat rising to my cheeks. “If you aren’t comfortable with a simple reanimation, our time together is going to be fraught with difficulties. Better you get used to this as soon as possible.”

Justinia pursed her lips. She seemed about to say something but then thought better of it, turned on her heel, and stormed away from me.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I approached the nomarch and squatted down in front of her. Her eyes were open, her face slack. There was nothing in those dead eyes. It’s a funny thing, really, and hard to explain unless you’ve seen a corpse in person. There’s an emptiness to their eyes. A sense that whatever had occupied their physical vessel in life had now fled and gone elsewhere. The nomarch blinked. In many ways, she appeared to once again be alive, but it was purely superficial. In such a state, she was little more than a hollowed out shell controlled and directed by my will.

I commanded the nomarch to her feet. Then I shrugged off my travel bag and slung it over the nomarch’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Justinia asked, crouching next to one of the other bodies.

“She’s going to carry my belongings,” I explained.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Justinis said slowly, as though explaining something very simple to a child, “we are going to try very hard not to draw any more attention to ourselves. And, in case this isn’t obvious—and it should be obvious—having a groaning, drooling corpse stumbling along behind us has a very high chance of attracting a lot of attention. Besides, we have horses now, one each.”

I frowned, but saw the wisdom in her words and took my bag back. Then, with little effort, I dismissed the nomarch from my service, and she toppled down lifelessly in the grass.

Justinia was taking off her leather armor piece by piece. Then, with no sense of self-consciousness or modesty, she began to strip naked.

“Uh,” I said, averting my gaze through sheer force of will, “what are you doing?”

“We’re taking their clothing and their armor,” she said coldly. “If we look like Autarchy officials, we’re far less likely to be troubled by anyone we might come across on the road. It may also get us through a checkpoint or two, assuming our acting is passable.

We dressed quickly, although I needed Justinia’s help buckling all the various pieces and getting everything on. None of it fit me particularly well. I was, at the time, quite thin and even—I say this with a straight face—skeletal. Didn’t fit Justinia either, but for the opposite reason—the woman truly was a mountain of muscle, the true extent to which was revealed as she changed. Despite the poor fit, she seemed remarkably familiar with Autarchy armor and wore it as though she’d done so a thousand times before.

“If we’re at any point questioned,” she said, “then—”

“Let you do the talking?”

“Ah, you catch on quick.”

I tapped the side of my head.

Then I said, “About these bodies…”

Justinia didn’t even glance at them. “What about them?”

“Should we do something about them? Bury them, maybe?”

Justinia squinted. “You in the mood to dig a grave deep enough for all of them? Not as easy as it looks, I can tell you that much. A lot of dirt to move. Your lower back will be sore for days. Wouldn’t recommend it.”

I frowned down at the bodies. They glowed faintly with the remnants of their auras.

Power still trapped within their already-rotting flesh and bones.

I couldn’t just leave it all there. As the bodies decayed, so too would their soul-energy, until only the faintest amounts of it remained, impossible to perceive even for a necromancer. There was something beautiful about it. About the dissipation of the spirit. The return of one’s fundamental being to the very universe that gave us all life in the first place. Here was the underlying beauty to all necromancers, the elegant, yet simple system that my Order had grown to worship.

“There’s something I need to do,” I said. “You might not want to see it.”

Justinia stared at me for a long moment. “If it’s what I think it’s going to be, it’s probably for the best that I start getting used to it. Sounds like it’s going to be a regular occurrence.”

I nodded slowly. “Has to be done.”

“Has to be done,” Justinia echoed.

I approached the corpses and closed my eyes. I could still see them—their auras. The burning brightness of them penetrating the thin darkness provided by my eyelids. Something inside of me woke up. There was a pull—a sense that something at my very core was suddenly ravenous, raving, desperate to get its hands on this, this feast, this afterglow of the human soul, this wellspring of energy and the pure power of life itself.

I came to a stop, exhaled.

My hands curled into fists.

This was my destiny. There could be no shying away from it. No turning back.

And yet…

I was away from the Withered Isles. I was as free as I’d ever been. Justinia was there, yes, and I doubted she’d simply let me go, but I could run when she turned her back, could slip away in the middle of the night when we made camp.

I didn’t have to walk this path.

It wasn’t too late.

But if not this, then what?

I fixated on the souls. I called them to me.

Streams of myriad colors flowed up and out of the corpses.

Toward me.

Into me.

Infusing me. And, eyes still closed, I began to eat. To gorge myself on the bodies and what still lurked in the hollows of their bones, in their cooling blood, in their shriveling organs.

Power.

It felt good.

No—it felt great.

Ecstasy. I shuddered. My hands uncurled, curled, spasming rapidly. My breathing became heavy. My heart pounded in my chest. And, when I opened my eyes, I saw that the corpses around me were undergoing sudden and drastic decay, days, weeks, even months worth of rot ravaging their remains in the space of mere moments.

Until they were little more than gray, husky bones and desiccated, tattered flesh. Dried-out and shrunken eyes stared vacantly out of leering skulls.

Warmth coursed through me. Warmth, vitality, and a feeling that I could run a hundred miles without rest, could climb mountains, and never sleep, and never stop, and throw myself endlessly at the world until it had no choice but to accept me—to submit to me.

I’d done it. I’d consumed their souls.

I turned hesitantly toward Justinia.

Her face was almost unreadable. She was doing a commendable job at hiding her emotions.

But she was nonetheless failing.

Her eyes were a little too wide, her lips slightly parted. And her right hand had inched its way toward the handle of one of her small axes.

“Well,” I said, uneasy, unsure of what to feel, say, do, or think.

Justinia forced down her horror. Without another word, she mounted one of the horses.

Evasion. Emotional distance. Pretending something hadn’t happened. That was how my life had always been—with my father, with the other necromancers of the Isles.

And so it seemed it would be the same with Justinia.

In the moment, I found that that suited me just fine.