With silent but firm step I traversed halls, rooms, the armory, all in direction to the gargantuan mound of death that any willing necromancer would feel calling for them in the loins of the castle. All the mortal remains of the pits had to be taken somewhere, and I would find that somewhere. A turn, a step, a hidden passage had to lead to a pet cemetery that I was approaching, slowly, as if I were falling in a spiral towards it. Through red lit corridors of black brick and dead candlewax I homed into the calling mass of remains.

“Master is overly serious today,” commented one of the belts.

“We need to crack a joke to cheer him up.”

“Knock knock.”

“Come in.”

They exploded laughing to their own terrible sense of humor. I didn’t expect zombies to get the nuances of a joke, but they were just terrible.

I reached a wall behind which I could feel it. Hundreds, no, thousands of dead animals awaited at the other side. That was another thing as a necromancer: a dead tree, a dead, fungus, a dead cockroach, a dead dog, all felt different. The closer they were to the human experience, the easier it was to discriminate them. This essentially correlated with taxonomical closeness, as far as I was aware. Tons of things were dead in the castle, in the garden, in the pit of pits, everywhere. But this place was full of dead dogs.

“Search for an entrance. If not found in half an hour, we make one, for the dawn shall meet a new me.”

“Will you fuck the corpses?” asked one of the belts.

“Only if your mother is to be found among them. Go!” I barked, and he slowly slithered away.

Another one was crawling in circles around me. I raised an eyebrow as I stared at her.

“What are you doing, Lo?”

“I AM A CLOTHES DRYER,” said what amounted to, probably, one of the last remains of an innocent calf.

“You’d dry more clothes if you make the circle larger, wouldn’t you? Maybe if you find a big room?” I said, caressing her leather.

“Right right!” And she playfully went to search for the room.

I could have erased their personalities, bound the leather completely to my will. But that would eliminate their autonomy and cost me several hours of mentally battling them. I preferred them as idiots volunteering for my cause, rather than mindless slaves.

That made me wonder what would be the personality of the thing I planned to raise. Would it be submissive like the desert’s catgirl? Stubborn as a door? Would it hate me enough to try murder-suicide?

Eventually, I heard Lo celebrating on the other side of the wall.

“It’s slick in here,” her telepathy came through the wall.

“Well done, Lo, can you lead me in? I will make a puppy for you to play with.”

“Puppy!” she reacted, and shoot back on her tracks.

----------------------------------------

Flesh. Muscle, sinew, marrow spilled from broken bones. Flesh. Fluids welling out of infested wounds, putrefaction crawling up my nostrils. Flesh, in a circular room dark as a coffin and cold as a summer tundra, but blinding and welcoming for a necromancer.

Lo happily frolicked around, her personality that of a slightly more rational Mariana.

“Where is the puppy?” she asked.

“I will raise it now. Patience, little one. I am a Master of my word.”

“Stay away from her, old degenerate,” exclaimed Lo’s twin brother. They were in a 2x1 sale back when I bought them, the fact they were siblings was just a coincidence. His name was Behold.

“She’s a belt,” I deadpanned.

“I have seen your reveries with Final Fantasy 10’s Lulu.”

I decided it was high time to inflict unbearable amounts of pain upon Behold. He squirmed like the little worm he was not. I felt like a Reddit mod banning a user for slightly questioning his faulty political opinions. Exerting power over the defenseless was delightful.

Back to my business, I immersed myself into the ocean of death around me. Every femur, tibia, ulna, tarsal, carpal, frontal, carnassial, rib, and vertebrae called to me. And I could keep naming bones all day, because I could feel every single one in that body dumpster. It was harder to revive animals without touching them in normal circumstances, but this place was a necromancer’s paradise. Death was thick on the atmosphere, my power extended beyond my normal range. Raising one hand dramatically, I ordered the souls to return from beyond the veil and do my bidding. The flesh started throbbing, the broken dogs crawling aberrantly amidst a murk so thick it concealed the horror.

The scarce light coming from the narrow entrance behind me revealed almost nothing but two clumps of bright dots. From the freshest cadavers the eyes had lumped together, intertwining into two big, composite ones. Most conserved the tapetum lucidum intact. Sinful sapphires of the purest blue in a sea of smoke. The beautiful image made me want to sing.

“Weaving my underlings from many colored coats, shaping fleshier, viler, further into the veil. Weaving some dogs into an effigy of unlife, not a single Golden in my charnel,” I desecrated Nightwish’s My Walden as much as the bodies of the dogs.

The gaze of the abomination rose, first a meter above my head, then two. Flesh, bone and fur coalesced under my command. The minds of a hundred deceased dogs jerked, pulled, refused to cooperate. They fought me and fought against each other, feeling the presence of their brothers as mind-numbing parasites. It thrashed around like it was suffering a seizure, trying desperately to control limbs made out of whole repurposed bodies as if they were normal legs and arms.

A paw was extended and slammed before me, an attempt to crush the nexus between existence and their new shape. The broken skulls thart took on the role of claws snarled at me, their teeth scratching against the floor.

“There is grandeur in this use of unlife, with its several downsides, having been originally learned into a few dorks or into one, and that, whilst Planet has gone leveling according to the whims of deities, from so simple a conjuring, endless forms most hateful and most foul have been, and are being, returned!”

“He has finally lost it,” said a belt. “He’s parodying The Origin of Species. A biologist can’t do that. It ought to be illegal.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Shut up, let me have my moment,” I groaned, and they went silent.

“Let us remain dead,” a rough, tortured voice came from the mass of dogs.

“I don’t feel like it. Besides, I make the rules here.”

The flesh shook violently, “No, Lord Mateo makes the rules here.”

I backed into the light, ordering them to follow, “You are under new management.”

The face of the abomination was revealed by the radiance. Amalgamated eyes with irises of all colors stared from sockets lined in ribs. Broken bones, with their marrow exposed, fulfilled the role of teeth. And among the bulging flesh of its surface, of the skin, if you would concede that artistic naming of the mound exterior, was littered in baculums that sprouted out like quills.

“Why? Why do we obey you?”

I checked my nails. Ugh, something grimy had gotten under them. “Necromancer’s privilege. You’ll get used to it, pet.”

“We’ll maul you until you are minced meat,” they growled.

I flicked their nose made out of noses with my index finger. “Plop.”

“Stop that!”

I was bored, my unique skill was still locked.

“I give the orders here. You all can start by kneeling and…”

A finger touched me in the shoulder. I turned violently, thinking it was Mateo or one of his daughters.

Instead, when I turned and faced the molten mask, I backed against my newest undead harem addition, not out of fear, but of caution.”

“You should be sleeping, Walter,” joked Fernando, with a shit-eating grin under his mask. I mean, not that I could see it, but his tone couldn’t mean anything else.

“I could say the same. How bold of you, to face a necromancer in a chamber of death.”

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants “I have not come looking for conflict. I am not even on Escapist duty right now.”

“So you came just to bust my balls?”

“Yes, I was doing my nightly round around the castle and saw you wandering, so I followed,” he let out casually.

“Your what?”

“Nightly round. I come here every night while you sleep and wander the halls, hide a few flowers here and there, pet some of the dogs, check out the old library in the basement, borrow some book you guys would not mind…” he listed, walking side to side along the corridor, disappearing from the doorframe just to then reappear again. This went on for a solid five minutes, which I diligently used to place myself and my new minion on a more comfortable position. I even gave him the longest femur I found in the chamber, to use as a cigarette. Fernando’s presence engendered camaraderie between I and my new zombie. A common enemy is, perhaps, the best way to catalyze a friendship.

“Do you want us to attack the flower motherfucker?” the mound telepathed.

“No, no need, it would be useless, he would just teleport away and come back to keep droning on about what he does at night.”

The mound of dogs chuckled “It’s better than what you do at night.”

I looked at them and raised an eyebrow. “Necromancy?”

“The other thing you do at night.”

“Sleeping.”

The latest addition to my army mumbled a volley of insults comparable to the average meeting between fans of rival football teams.

“Nevermind. What do we do about the intruder?” asked the mound.

“I cannot be forcefully removed; I can teleport back in,” informed Fernando. Thanks, Fernando.

I scratched my chin and grinned. What were the unkillable good for, if not for target practice?

“Fernando, would you mind helping your dear enemy?” I readied my fingers for a snap.

“Depends. The other Escapists may get angry, but if it makes you appreciate this world a little more and doubt your mission, I am willing to cooperate.” He got his hands out of the pockets and spread his arms to the sides in a welcoming, unpreoccupied gesture.

“Good, good. I need help with dog training. Canaver, attack!”

“Canaver?” the zombie asked, indignant.

“Obey, there will be ample time to complain in the future! Attack!”

The mass of death jumped over me, dripping foul, sour substances upon my marveled face. It goes unsaid, but I wasn’t marveled at the sticky goo that left me crying and retching.

After using my own hair to wipe out what I could off my face, I concentrated on what the zombie saw. A funnily colored Fernando ran away in the dark, and the abomination followed, with skulls scratching the floor with each step, with an open mouth that reminded of a primitive pitfall trap with the bottom covered in bone spikes.

Fernando touched his own head and a ball of shadow formed on his hand. It was high time for things to get serious.

My hopes were the first casualty, when the sphere off darkness bulged into the shape of a bottle, and then the characteristic, transparent hue of a blue sports drink made itself apparent. Motherfucker mind-torrented a Gatorade.

He downed the drink in about two seconds, boasting an expertise commonly seen only in drunkards and engineering students. All of this while running and checking on the abomination every few seconds.

Of course, if trying to outrun a dead dog is a moot point… wait, no, actually, it’s one of the few ways to outrun a dog. Shoot the fucking thing, save your leg, get sued by the local crackhead dogmommy, as lawyers are way easier to outrun. Believe me, I would know, I have escaped my fair share of…

Pardon me, for I digress.

Fernando ran through halls that every with turn became narrower. This would have been a problem for the living, whose muscles and bones aren’t adept to folding to fit into every nook and cranny. Canaver didn’t have that weakness. His mass was able to be crumpled and compressed, reshaped to my whim and need.

After a fifth turn to the left, Fernando disappeared. Canaver looked around, the hundreds of eyes covering every possible angle, even those inside the dog of dogs itself. The only thing to be found was a small flower, lying delicately over the cold brick of the floor.

I opened my own eyes and saw Fernando in front of me, leaning against the wall of the corridor, sipping a shadow energy drink.

“Can you extract any item you remember from your mind?”

“No, messing with my own cognition is dangerous, I could break my mind if I toyed with it out of caprice or convenience,” He made a pause and touched his forehead with two fingers. “Want a coffee?”

I crossed my arms. “So you can poison me?”

“I would need to have drunk poison and remember the experience for that to work.”

I remained in silence, letting my expression speak for me.

He grabbed the bridge of his nose. “For the love of God, Walter, I have never drunk poison.”

“That’s exactly what a poison drinker would say… after I revive him to do my bidding.”

“I am pretty much not dead, for your disgrace. Cream?”

“Want to change that?” I offered, hands behind my back, and took a confident step in his direction. He backed one in turn. “To milk, I mean.”

“Your threats have no effect on me. Come on, I just hope you can see the beauty of this place and change your ways. Help us stop Mateo, atone for your crimes.” What had started as a declaration of bravery ended up as a pathetic plea.

I raised my upper lip in annoyance and let out a light snarl. “We have a duty to go back home, Fernando. No spell, fantastical creature or big breasted monstergirl will change that.”

He raised a hand. “What about a petite thousand-years-old demon whose courting is immoral, yet dubiously legal?”

I had to remember myself that call forth shotgun was not a spell that worked. At least operation Sneaky Canaver seemed to be almost concluded.

I recalled all my belts and prepared for serious battle. “Listen here, you human scum. I may be okay with entertaining individuals guilty of pillage, incest, murder, racism, sexism, genocide, sexual assault, asexual sault, mockery of people with Down’s syndrome, and even animal cruelty. I am guilty of some items on that list, even. But there is a line I don’t cross, and that’s pedophilia.” Then I rushed towards him, as Canaver did the same from the darkness of the corridors.

“Oh, good to know. I was just offering; you know? We prefer a pedophile rather than a world ender. Easier for someone else to deal with, too.” He looked to the side and disappeared fractions of a second before the bones in the mouth of Canaver stabbed the wall he had been leaning against.

He didn’t appear again, leaving me in the uncomfortable position of having to tell Canaver that, no, he could not follow me to my room.

Then I had an idea.

I de-animated the mound of dead pitbulls and mentally dragged him into my inventory. Then, I read the item description:

“Canaver remains

You should not be able to carry this, but the systems that govern this universe make no fucking sense. Just make sure to read the upcoming reality patch notes once in a while in case I decide to fix this mess the Brazilian demiurge left behind (I don’t think I can, it’s all programmed in Portuguese), you don’t want to die crushed by it because of an unexpected change. Or maybe you do want, weirdo.”

I pulled up the patch notes in my mind. I had never noticed them before, as you had to specifically think about them.

Reading through old entries and summaries I discovered that, every a few months, max level increased a bit. The cycle went on until it reached five digits, and then levels along the board were reduced by a couple zeros and stats adjusted accordingly.

That made me chuckle in the middle of the dark, smelly room. This place was closer to home than I ever imagined.

When I finally returned to my room, I found a steaming coffee cup on my night table.