A carriage clad in the guild’s colors and emblems stopped on the sparsely traveled road only a stone’s throw away from the recently briefly besieged city of adventurers. On its left side, a dense frozen forest with no signs of life to be hear or seen; on the right, a field of grass and dried weeds with the thinnest of snow layers on them.
The poor horses pulling the carriage had been pushed to their limits at the behest of one of the passengers, and the driver immediately jumped down from his post to tend to them. Though they were definitely among the hardiest of their species, the journey from Vassund in the winter was no easy feat. The thick bank of snow covering everything combined with the freezing winds made it both slow and agonizing for everyone involved. So when they had finally reached the comparatively temperate and far, far less snowy climate in the south, it felt as warm as an early summer day.
Suddenly the door of the carriage slammed open, shattering the small window on it as it swung and hit the side of the carriage itself.
Anastacia hopped out and stretched her back after several days of being cooped up inside with only a few breaks here and there to further hasten their return. Everything in the settlement seemed peaceful as usual, which was a huge relief to her.
“You coming?” She asked from the guild official she had been stuck with.
Huddled in the corner of the carriage, surrounded by increasing amount of filled out forms and reports, Strawberry lifted his gaze only to shake his head briefly before returning to work. He had become noticeably more wary of the necromancer after she had managed to trigger a species-wide trauma by grabbing the crystalline horn on Strawberry’s forehead, imbued into them by Coquelicot on her last visit to Valor, where she viciously stabbed an official with their own horn for trying to stop her from entering the city to bring back Anastacia. Not only was the severing of the horn a torturous, scarring experience that was immediately shared by the entire race, the official himself had later succumbed to the effects of losing their connection with the rest, marking the first death of an official in centuries.
Of course, all of this was beyond classified information, but the new signs telling people to not touch the horns under any circumstances did spark some conspiracy theories among the adventurers.
“Suit yourself, nerd.” Scoffed the necromancer and put on her crown. She walked across the frozen grass towards her castle, every now and then stopping to greet a few of her subjects, who had begun to gravitate towards their ruler from all over the area.
The cold breeze no longer bothered her and even felt refreshing as it found its way under her violet cloak. She complimented the goblins on their frankly stellar work on constructing the roof for the castle while looking at the trampled field around it. Though a tiny bit of snow had fallen over the tracks left by the foot traffic in the area, using the teachings given to her by Gilbert, she could pick up on a few things.
First and foremost, the most abundant footprints were the ones left by goblins, they covered the entire field without any apparent paths they would frequently use. The second set of tracks were deep and large, no doubt left by King. Third set of prints was more generic, though still large and deep, they were left by something roughly human-sized, but Anastacia knew these tracks well; she had spent an awful lot of time walking in them in the past months.
“Gilbert was here?” She asked and picked up a piece of wood that had been smoothed out with a knife.
“Man of huge make fire and spoon. Lady of bags come too!” One of the goblins revealed.
“Lady of bags? I don’t think I know anyone like that.” Muttered the necromancer. “But I swear, I’ll kick his dick off if he starts bringing women here.”
The goblin proudly presented its queen one of the hearts Iris had failed to recover, now with clear signs of gnawing and stuffed full of stones and mud. “Bags!” It croaked.
“What the fuck…” Anastacia groaned under her breath and turned back to the tracks, so she didn’t need to stare at the mutilated human organ anymore.
There were a lot of tracks from regular shoes from people the necromancer couldn’t tell apart from each other, but different enough to tell that there were at least ten or more people that had been stomping her lawn.
Since her worries over her goblins’ well being had clearly been well-founded, she did a quick headcount on them. Taking into account the usual participation percentage, there didn’t seem to be much of a dip in the total number of goblins at least. Her tribe had naturally balanced itself around fifty to sixty individuals and the flock around her consisted of thirty-two, since it was safe to assume about as much were scattered around the area but out of earshot, no outside harm had likely befallen on them.
The final, clearly unique set of prints were deeper than any, but extremely small and round. It took a second for Anastacia to recognize them, but when she did, she immediately grabbed the nearest goblin from the ground for interrogation. “Thunder thighs was here?! Where is she?!” She almost shouted at the confused critter that produced nothing but drool as a response.
After carefully placing the goblin back down, she dashed into the castle, only to halt as soon as she got through the entrance.
King was sitting cross-legged next to a messy pile of ashes that had once been Gilbert’s campfire, upon noticing his queen, he attempted to stand up but was interrupted by the necromancer slamming into him.
While still annoyed that he had tried to keep the contents of the message secret, Anastacia found her anger and annoyance vanish entirely for a moment when she actually saw King again after a while. Using her ice magics, she further cooled the air around them to scrape together what little heat there was to be found, and in the absence of her dearly beloved staff, deposited it into the calm and cooled down body of the simulacrum. She then sat down on his warmed lap and closed her eyes.
“I’m still mad at you for being a secretive ass by the way, but I did miss you while I was away. I so was worried about the goblins since Valor got attacked or something, did you watch over them with that other simulacrum or did you try to kill her again?” She asked while resting her eyes. “Oh! Did you know that politics are bullshit? Also, I have another simulacrum with me, but they got shut down after trying to kill everyone.”
King detached a small pouch that was tied to the same strap he carried the pouch full of pebbles he gave out to goblins. He handed it to Anastacia and hummed slightly.
“What’s this?” The necromancer wondered and opened to pouch. Inside it was seven simulacrum cores, just like the one that powered King himself. She rolled one of the finger-sized stone cylinders in her hand and inspected the makings on it. While at it, she happened to notice the diamond-tipped metal spike affixed to the simulacrum’s arm. She knew enough to guess its purpose. “I’m not the one to say anything about killing your own kind, but you need to calm down.”
While fiddling around with the cores, Anastacia spent a while recounting the events of her quest and a bit about the people she had met. Though their conversation was more of a monologue, she had a tendency to pause, sometimes for minutes at a time, just in case the simulacrum had something to say. He never did, of course, but Anastacia often derived some meaning from the silence regardless, whether it was her own imagination or actual minute cues in his behavior, it was only for the two to know.
“You’ve got a family reunion coming, by the way. Because you were such an ass about it, I went ahead and had one of those pearls translated by the guild, and it turns out, someone wants to meet me here tomorrow. The guild dumbass I had with me thinks it might be another simulacrum, and he wants to be there as well.” The necromancer explained and scraped off some of the dirt from a groove in King’s arm. “Chances are, the cloaked cute one will be there as well, so I need you on your best, non-murdery behavior. Actually, no matter who it is, you can’t kill them. I know you tried to keep this as a secret, and trust me, you’ll get an earful for that later, but absolutely no murdering allowed. We’ll hear out what they have to say and then act accordingly.”
After resting for a while longer, Anastacia jumped up from King’s embrace and dusted off the bit of dirt that had gotten on her from the simulacrum’s unkempt armor. She looked at the sorry state he was in and shook her head. With their disagreement and the quest, it had been a while since King had been properly cleaned.
While Anastacia preferred to have him in pristine condition, King himself had never made an effort to clean up or even really avoid getting dirty in the first place. Sometimes it flat out seemed like he would go out of his way grapple onto whatever was the grossest thing available.
This was counteracted by the necromancer spending countless hours cleaning and polishing the stone and metal parts whenever she got the chance. Gilbert and Emilia had quickly learned that pointing out that King needed to be cleaned was a good way to keep her still for a while and in relatively good spirits. Something about slowly working on the infinite nooks and crannies of the simulacrum design was endlessly satisfying to Anastacia, and she often found herself losing track of time and place. However, the most pleasing effect of it was that it had absolutely nothing to do with necromancy, and the moments she spent cleaning King, were the only moments of her life where her senses completely silenced themselves.
“I can still smell the ancient corpse juice on my hair, and you look like you’ve killed a small hill with your bare hands, we both need a bath – let’s go.” She said and nodded towards the carriage.
After saying their farewells to their subjects, Anastacia and King climbed into the carriage and their journey towards Valor continued – now with the added weight of a large simulacrum that didn’t do any favors for the burned-out horses.
King stared at the lifeless remnants of the simulacrum the necromancer had torn off the hag’s body. Not appearing to be particularly bothered with it, he soon moved his intense gaze to the official, who only reacted to his presence by flashing the crystalline horn once more.
Slowly heading towards the end of its long and arduous journey, the carriage arrived at the scene of the recent massacre outside the walls of Valor. Now covered in a thin layer of ice and snow – and miraculously free of bodies and gore.
Anastacia frowned at the scene, she wasn’t exactly pleased with how the events had unfolded after her drunken adventure, but wasn’t willing to take the blame for the countless deaths it had culminated in. What bothered her almost as much was the current state of the field; she had spent entire days meticulously removing all the previous remains from below the ground, and somehow, there was still none. The abandoned and broken equipment, snapped banners and crushed trebuchets were still all there, and there was a fair bit of blood that had seeped into the ground, but no bone, flesh or fat to be found.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Who cleaned this field?” She asked from the official.
Strawberry glanced out of the window. “To be entirely honest, we were hoping you would do it for a fair compensation. The viscera cleanup agreement is very in favor of the guards, so having them do it would have been expensive, especially when there’s a necromancer around. But by the looks of it, someone has spared you from the trouble.” He explained. “There has been no paperwork filed about it. Rather curious…”
“It was a necromancer.” Blurted out Anastacia, now visibly annoyed. “There isn’t one nearby, but no other person or animal that I know of can polish a battlefield like this in a matter of days.”
“And why would one do this?” The official asked and took out a new form to fill on the matter.
“Who knows?” Anastacia shrugged. “Maybe they’re running low on corpses to desecrate?” She suggested, always assuming the worst from her kind. “They have scouts who can cover unimaginable amounts of land and tell if there’s a battle, after that it’s just a matter of sending a few capable necromancers to shoo away the other vultures and roll the corpses to the closest outpost or Mournvalley. Wouldn’t even take an entire night for a concentrated, open field like this.”
Strawberry scribbled down what he had just learned. “Ah… Thank you for the insight. Should we be concerned about this?” He asked to be sure.
The necromancer stared out of the window and intentionally fogged it up with her breath. “You should be concerned that necromancers exist.” She mumbled bitterly.
After they had passed most of the carnage, there was a fair patch of completely undisturbed field between it and the wall, making it clear that the army never even got close to the gate. The single stone they had managed to hit the wall with still laid next to it as a pile of rubble, and the mark it had made on the strange stone the wall was made out of was pitiful at best.
The gate guards posted outside the wall were huddled next to a fire and only stood up seconds before the carriage reached them. Having to stand around an open field on a slightly breezy winter day was not anyone’s favorite assignment, and the only people these two men didn’t envy, were the handful of guards posted up on the wall.
They stopped the carriage despite knowing well where it was coming from and who was on it; in fact, the official being present made it all the more important to check the carriage, as consistency and acting according to the guidelines given to them was infinitely more important to the guild than whatever convenience the officials would have won for demanding special treatment when it came to matters of security.
While one of the guards chatted with the driver, the second one calmly walked around the back of the carriage and quickly squatted to take a look under it. He then continued on his path and looked inside through a window. Noticing that one of the frames was shattered, he was about to ask about it, but deemed that unnecessary when he noticed the infamous necromancer onboard.
“Cold one today, eh?” The guard asked cheerfully and tipped his helmet at the passengers.
Strawberry scanned the guard with his eyes, clearly making note of how properly he was wearing the guild issued kit. Appeased by what he saw, he the scribbled something on a paper and hastily stamped it with a small guild insignia. “Regrettably. Here is a payment agreement for some additional firewood and meals for the current watch. You are hereby freed from your post for the time it takes for you to fetch them.” He said and handed the paper to the guard through the broken window.
“Thank you, sire!” The guard said, nodded happily and gestured for the other guard to let the carriage through.
“That’s awfully charitable of you.” Anastacia commented as their ride nudged forwards.
Returning to his report on the possible necromancer threat near the city, Strawberry glanced at the adventurer. “You take care of your equipment, do you not? The guard is our suit of armor; we hope that it will remain untested, but if our sword and shield falters, it will have to take the blow. That is why it is absolutely imperative to take good care of it, there is no better way to make sure it is able to do that.” He said and for some reason, stared at King as he spoke, as if he was at least partly talking to the simulacrum.
“I suppose that makes sense. Honestly, I’ve never seen a guard doing much besides leaning on their weapons and walking about in the city, so I don’t know how good they are.” The necromancer shrugged and waved at the other guard they passed by the gate.
Strawberry chuckled. “You don’t get to see them in action because others already have. Keep that in mind.”
Inside the city, it was business as usual. Merchants defying the cold to have their best shot at the adventurers, whose pockets were now lined with the payment for the black order, craftsmen trying their best to not drown in new orders to replace the absurd amount of ordinance the adventurers had burned through in minutes, and of course, people leaving and arriving from quests.
As usual, Anastacia was immediately overtaken by the familiar sounds and scents of the city and cheered up considerably. When the carriage finally stopped in front of Rosie’s inn, she was already loading all of her luggage on King and almost entirely ignoring the guild official.
“I will personally come here and pick you up for the proposed meeting tomorrow. Please rest well and prepare accordingly.” Strawberry said and offered her a small list of things the adventurer should remember based on their agreement, but by then, she was already halfway into the inn and only waved as a response before closing the door.
The mood inside was perhaps even a bit cheerier than usually and no one really paid attention to the necromancer or the simulacrum arriving. Part of the reason might have been that they were considered a frequent sight in the inn by then, but most likely it had a lot to do with the considerable number of empty bottles and tankards lining the tables. No doubt a lot of the black order money would end up in Rosie’s pocket as well.
Strangely enough, no one was behind the counter. Anastacia would have loved to greet Rosie before heading upstairs, but the innkeeper appeared to be in the kitchen with Emilia. She could have gone for a drink before heading to the bath, but for some reason Yulia was nowhere to be found either. Still a bit ashamed how blind she had been to the relationship between the innkeeper and the priestess, she didn’t wish to interrupt them and simply grabbed a bottle of juice from behind the counter before quietly disappearing upstairs.
“Let’s just toss my stuff into my room and head into the baths. They should be empty around this time, so we’ll have a bit of peace at least. Rosie keeps complaining that we stay there too long, so how about we just sort of soak you for a while and th-“ Anastacia was about to suggest as they opened the door to her room, but her words failed her as soon as she saw inside. “King, can you pinch me? I have to make sure this isn’t a dream.”
The necromancer’s room was as messy as she had left it for the most part, but what had made her heart skip a beat was the familiar cloaked simulacrum laying down on her bed. Anastacia quietly snuck closer to the bed while King followed her, making about as much noise as he could by walking and obviously trying to alert the other simulacrum.
“Is she sleeping?” Anastacia asked and glanced at the cloaked simulacrum’s unlit face, that appeared just as lifeless as the one King had been tasked to carry from the carriage. “Hello? What are you doing in my room and also can I rub your legs?” She tried but it caused no reaction.
Next step was to poke at the simulacrum and attempt to wake it up like that, but it yielded no new results and neither did tugging on the metallic cloak or almost yelling at it. Slightly worried, Anastacia started to look for the tiny slot the simulacrum core belonged to and if her guest had hers missing.
King had his high up in his chest, but the cloaked one barely resembled him and didn’t even appear to have the piece of armor the slot was supposed to be in. None of the parts in the area had anything resembling the socket, nor did a cursory inspection of the rest of the body reveal one either.
“Yeah… This is going to get inappropriate, isn’t it?” The necromancer sighed. “Well, it is a medical… mechanical… medichanical emergency. So I’m sorry and please don’t think ill of me for this.” She said and took off her cloak, gloves and shoes.
Over the months of inspecting King’s body, Anastacia had gathered some knowledge on how the ancient machines worked. She still had no idea what it was that made them move or the inner workings of their details, but by the direction of the lines in their armor and the shape of the patterns, she could more or less understand how any given piece worked and how the mysterious power flowed through them. While they didn’t necessarily look much like each other, it was as if the basic theory behind them and the control patterns used by necromancers appeared to be largely the same; like they were two languages with the same grammatical rules and most of the words in common, but using a different set of letters, which in some weird way made sense to her.
For reasons she didn’t care to admit at the time, Anastacia started her inspection from the large piece of armor on the cloaked simulacrum’s thigh. “I think I’m going to call her Leggy.” She muttered and ran her hand across the smooth stone, looking for imperfections. Since the simulacrum now named ‘Leggy’, didn’t have the patterns of light on most of her body, but likely still needed them to function, Anastacia figured that they were merely hidden somehow. By closing her eyes and gently gliding the tips of her fingers over the armor, she could tell that there were parts that felt different, almost like the grain of the stone in them suddenly changed and slightly increased the friction the surface caused.
“Found you.” She smirked and started following the path of one of these odd parts towards the source it channeled the power from.
On the metallic parts, the difference was easier to see in the way it reflected light than try to feel it. After learning that, finding the spot for the core was just a matter of following the paths over Leggy’s hips and waist – or that was at least what Anastacia had hoped, but having found her way back to the chest armor, she kept losing the thread constantly. As far as she could tell after a good while of rubbing, the armor on Leggy’s chest wasn’t powered in any way and was simply a slab of the stone-like material the simulacra were largely made from. The patterns all just ended when they reached it.
Scratching her head and thinking through the issue, Anastacia noticed a large gap between the armor and the metallic skeletal structure supporting it. Easily big enough to fit an arm through and suspiciously close to the points where the hidden patterns ended, the hole seemed like it could have been some kind of a maintenance access.
“I’m going to shove my arm in there, so if I scream, just pull me off by my legs or something.” She advised King before hopping on top of Leggy and warily shoving her arm into the gap she hoped wasn’t full of finger crushing gears or spikes.
Blindly feeling around, she slowly made it deeper inside armor and started picking up traces of the patterns once more, but only once she was elbow-deep in it, did she find anything worth noting. A strange, squishy orb that felt nothing like the materials the simulacra were made out of. As she moved it around slightly, the lump detached from the piece of metal it had been stuck on.
Curious but only really expecting it to be a moldy piece of fruit or something else that had accidentally found its way in, Anastacia pulled out what she had found and held it up in the light. “I have found a… meatball?” She guessed and stared confusedly at the peach-sized lump of what was clearly slightly dried meat – or at least looked and felt exactly like meat, but based on her necromancy, wasn’t. “Do… do you have a secret meatball?” She worriedly asked from King.
King shook his head was obviously fighting the urge to drop the other simulacrum in his arms and just stomp the lump Anastacia had found. His humming became more agitated by the second and the light patterns on his body flared up.
“Do you hate her because of the secret meatball?” The necromancer suggested.
King nodded.
“Huh…” Anastacia wondered and rolled the lump between her fingers.
Suddenly, her thumb sank into the orb and a stinging pain took over her hand. Screaming more out of fright than pain, she shook her hand and whacked it against a wall a few times before ball of meat let go willingly – only leaving behind a small row of tiny puncture marks that barely bled at all.
The lump then fell on Leggy’s chest and shoved itself back inside the simulacrum through the small cracks and gaps in her armor. Seconds later, a quiet humming sound emanated from within the simulacrum’s chest and her light blue eyes lit up brightly.
With a sharp nudge, the cloaked simulacrum woke up and inspected her surroundings, visibly confused. The first thing she noticed was the one who had chased her for days on end and likely the reason for her state, but just as Leggy was about to make her escape, she noticed the small necromancer sitting on top of her and staring at her beyond excitedly.
“Hi again!” Anastacia greeted her. “We’re going to take a bath, want to come along?” She suggested and immediately got flicked on the forehead by King.