The pair of recorded men clad in white stopped by the crystal to seemingly wait for something. Though with their hoods up, their looks were almost perfectly matching, the mood given off by each couldn’t have been more different. The cheery one kept constantly moving around to briefly inspect anything that caught his eye, full of curiosity and delight at the smallest of details he could find in his surroundings. The other remained still and quiet, only sparsely answering the other one’s questions and keeping an eye on him. The quiet one’s presence itself felt menacing, even if he wasn’t actually there anymore, the recording conveyed the frightening aura of constant vigilance and power being barely contained.

However, Anastacia was more interested in the four simulacra escorting the two men, especially one that had posted itself in front of the path they had used to enter the square. All four would have seemed identical to even an expert, but when it came to one simulacrum in particular, Anastacia was far more than that. A familiar glimmer of the glowing eyes, slightest movements and tiniest unique details in the posture confirmed to Anastacia that the recording of a simulacrum before her was no other than the one that was now called King. The armor he donned in the recording was a pristine version of the scuffed one he had worn for the past few thousand years. Judging by the other three wearing the same thing, it wasn’t unique to him, but more like a uniform of sorts.

“So you were just as handsome back then, huh?” The necromancer smirked and tried to touch the simulacrum’s chest in vain.

Preoccupied by what she thought to be far more interesting than the people who were likely the last two to enter the ancient fortress until Eminence and the adventurers had arrived, Anastacia didn’t notice the more curious of the two recorded visitors making his way to the same simulacrum.

“What goes through that mechanical noggin o’ yers?” The man said suddenly and almost gave Anastacia a heart attack by snapping her back from her thoughts. “Is it calculations? Love? Philosophy? Do ye dwell in the past? Hope for the future? Live ye in the moment? Got any goals in life?” He kept interrogating King and circled around him.

“They are nothing but rocks and scrap, and dream as such. Might as well inquire a bucket about its preferred pastimes.” The other man scoffed gruffly from the center of the square.

“I’ll make a note to ask one later then.” The cheery man laughed in a way you just knew he was actually going to do it. Though barely tall enough for it, he wrapped his arm around King’s shoulders and nodded towards the other man. “Ye may be all stone an’ metal, but don’t ye dare to listen to the grump over yonder. One o’ these days, when the world’s all fixed an’ proper, go out there an’ find yerself one of them pretty things – like him but less o’ a sourpuss. Find someone who fancies ye for what ye are an’ help them become the best version o’ themselves, they’ll do the same for ye an’ you’ll both live better for it. Also get kittens, them’s some outstanding buggers.”

“Could you, perchance, cease giving the enemy life advice? They do not need more intel than they already have.” Commented the more serious of the two visitors.

Anastacia took a swipe or two at the one touching what would in the future be her simulacrum, as if it somehow changed the past and made the recording step away from King.

The man by King laughed. “As ye can see, I’ve my work cut our for me as well.” He whispered and gave King one final pat on the shoulder, to which the simulacrum didn’t react to in any way.

Suddenly a new voice appeared from one of the roads leading to the square. “As if we cared what pathetic goals you have chosen for your stunted little lives. Under Erratic Judgement, war is all we need.”

Even before seeing the recorded form of the speaker, Anastacia recognized the overly confident and spiteful way of speaking as it was identical to the custodian they had met earlier, though somewhat deeper.

And surely, one of the male members of the third artificial children stepped into the square with a scroll of some kind in one hand and something wrapped in linen in the other. He wore the same stone armor as unit twelve and scanned the square with the same callous stare on his face. Neither of the visitors seemed surprised to see him and turned into his direction even before he made himself known, like they both had already sensed him.

“I presume you two are the so-called Great King Alabaster and Ivory the White? I am designated unit seven of the Wrath Core, and here in behalf of the Great One Erratic Judgement. We believe there is a chance of a truce of sorts between us and whatever ragtag herd of mortals you call your kingdom.” The custodian explained and walked right up to the more uptight of the men, who was apparently the ancient necromancer king, Alabaster the White, whose skeleton Anastacia had dethroned some months ago.

“Alabaster? Ivory? What were they doing here?” The necromancer suddenly perked up and got interested in the main event of the recording.

“So this has been a waste of time then… The aureun and everything else residing within their cowardly hideouts signed their own death warrants when they did not cease their operations in areas under my control. You were warned once, and it was more than you deserved.” Alabaster stated uninterestedly and immediately turned away to leave.

Unit seven laughed haughtily. “The aureun are not a part of this truce, it only concerns Mournvalley and the artificial children, that is to say, beings like me as well as the simulacra, as you call them. We are fully aware of the countless losses your forces have suffered just against the knights of Erratic Judgement alone, so what we are offering is that every single simulacrum in the world stands down for ten years and the knights here for a thousand – effective immediately. All that, for the low price of finding every single aureun this world has and tearing them apart, limb by limb.” He explained his position.

Alabaster stopped but didn’t turn back to face the custodian. He briefly glanced at Ivory, who nodded approvingly. “What good will such a trade do me? The demise of aureun in my hands is a matter of time and I have seen no evidence for their creations deserving anything less, if anything, their hands have more of my people’s blood on them. As far as I am concerned, I am already granting you a favor by not turning this glorified dungeon into a tomb.” He inquired. It was clear that King Alabaster would have rather just done things the hard way, but every now and then he peeked at the other White One and decided to not decline the truce just yet.

“We have one more gift to entice you, one that we have developed recently through careful analysis of the deeper workings of necromancy and the technology used in the creation of the simulacra. Our conclusion is that the driving force behind both is will. Necromancy allows imbuing your own to overwrite that of someone else’s or simply restoring will to something that once had it or controlling it in further detail. Eerily similar to it, is the basic principle behind all aureun constructs, but they can not overrule what was once there, only grant will to material that never had one to begin with. It also comes at a high cost and is in no way reversible.” Unit seven explained, hoping to hook the ancient king for good. Though Alabaster himself only stood still and listened, his words did draw in the other two necromancers present, in recording and present time, as both Ivory and Anastacia stared to drift towards the custodian, intrigued. “It’s needless to say that the two are almost identical in every way, but necromancy appears far stronger, being able to affect material over a long distance with nothing to aid it, whereas the control aureun have over stone and metal only functions on contact and through specialized patterns and materials that ease the flow of power…”

“So you use the patterns with necromancy!” Both Anastacia and Ivory exclaimed in unison, barring some differences in accents.

Unit seven nodded and held out the scroll he had. “A vocal agreement to our truce is all we need, a recording shall serve as proof, and the exact details behind the patterns are yours, written in your primitive alphabet.”

“We accept!” Ivory immediately agreed and excitedly snatched the scroll from the custodian before hearing out what the actual king of necromancers had to say about it.

“Good. The truce is effective immediately, the knights of Erratic Judgement will return here and seal themselves away for a millennium, and the other simulacra will cease all operations and wait for a decade before returning to their duties. You have until then to hold your end of the bargain, and what happens after it, depends on what the world is like after the aureun have been destroyed.” Unit seven accepted Ivory’s authority on the matter and took a step back to leave. “With our business concluded, I have more important matters to attend to and the knights can escort you back to the surface. May you always find wars to fight.”

With the same constant hurry in his steps that unit twelve had, unit seven marched off to do whatever custodial jobs he had lined up for the next thousand years. The two ancient necromancers were left with the four knights and their newly acquired information, which Ivory began immediately to browse.

“Have we not agreed that political decisions should be left for me to conclude?” Alabaster asked sourly after being ignored.

Ivory opened the lengthy scroll entirely, or at least as much as he could, as there was still plenty of the roll left after it hit the ground. He read a few lines before answering. “Aye, we might’ve, but we also agreed that yer a big dumb dumb at times. What them short, horned fellers have written here might save lives down the road. Turn that frown upside-down and I’ll bake ye an apple pie once we get out of this here cellar.” He laughed cheerily and returned to reading.

Anastacia tried to read the scroll as well, but the haziness of the recording made it impossible to see the text at all.

“I am the King of Mournvalley and much of the lands outside of it, hundreds of chefs of every mortal race under the sun have pledged allegiance to me. If I so chose, I could drown cities in pasties and pies. I am not motivated by baked goods!” Alabaster declared grandly.

“Alabaster, my dear, it has been seven years, twelve weeks an’ three days since yer pasty buns stumbled on my cabin, one’d think ye’d have figured that the tyrant act don’t do nothing for me. Kiss on the cheek an’ a slice o’ pie with a dollop o’ whipped cream will have ye all chummed up again.” Smirked Ivory and continued reading as Alabaster approached him.

“Preposterous!” The king of necromancers exclaimed and lowered his hood. “It has been seven years, eighteen weeks, four days and eleven hours! How can you not remember that?!”

“I knew ye’d remember so I didn’t have to.” The necromancer that would come to be known as Ivory the Mad remarked as the recording came to its end and the image flickered and dimmed along with the crystal.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Anastacia contemplated what she had seen and sat down to lean against the stone pedestal housing the crystal to eat one of the fruits she still had left. Though she had learned something that would have shaken most of Mournvalley down to its core, it was something she had suspected to be the case ever since seeing King’s bare frame and her thoughts focused elsewhere. Supposedly, she had just seen the two most powerful necromancers in the world, far more powerful than her, yet they seemed oddly normal by her standards and remarkably not pointlessly evil. Legendary necromancers were always nothing short of horrific monsters in the books she had read in her long imprisonment, they paved their roads with corpses and flayed entire towns before breakfast. Yet, Alabaster the White of all people had traveled all the way into the fortress to hear out an offer and let the other side of the negotiations walk off completely unharmed. She herself had immediately tried to fight the first custodian she had seen, and more than once contemplated snapping the backs of their relatives in Valor over then endless spiral of bureaucracy they forced her to partake in. Regardless, seeing them go about their lives in such a mundane manner made her feel better about being their current equivalent.

“Well, apple pie is pretty great… Shame he didn’t leave the recipe in the book I have. At least they seemed kind of happy.” She muttered to herself while melting some of the ice Leggy hauled for her. “I wonder if King remembers any of that. He doesn’t really tell me anything about his past.”

As they rested and waited for the other half of the party to maybe catch up with them, Anastacia’s attention was drawn to the mediocre temple in one end of the square, the door of which she hadn’t noticed to be slightly ajar before. After the recording had ended, the boredom caused by the model town had slowly set back in and by then she was ready to move on.

“Let’s go check if they have any average relics we can take as souvenirs for the goblins. Most churches have like fancy goblets and stuff, it’d be neat to drink coffee from one of those.” She decided and set course for the central building of the model town.

The temple itself was just like any other small town temple, build from a random assortment of stones instead of fancy tiles of marble the ones in larger cities were made of, no statues or carvings to decorate the exterior, a couple of humble stained glass windows with relatively basic patterns on them. It, as they often did, had a paltry bell tower that rose above the rest of the rooftops but was mostly used to warn the townsfolk of bandits or nearby monsters. A few stone steps led to the admittedly sturdy-looking wooden doors that were unlocked and slightly open.

Anastacia peeked between the doors but couldn’t really see anything in the thin line of light let in by the gap, so she grasped her dagger to be sure and yanked the door open, which took a bit more force than she was prepared for and was a lot less of a surprise for anyone potentially lurking inside than she had intended.

“What the duck…” The necromancer uttered when the light of the fake sun reached inside the temple properly.

There were no rows of pews, no religious art of any kind, no proper altar or any other piece of architecture or decoration small churches usually had. Instead, the entire interior was lined with the same gray tiles as most of the fortress, they quickly flickered awake and lit the chamber after the door was opened. In the middle of the room was yet another pedestal of stone and metal, but instead of a crystal, its flat top housed a wide array of controls. Small switches, tempting buttons, blinking lights, a few sliders and of course, a big button that was just asking to be pressed.

“Umm… Leggy, can you do me a favor and make sure those doors don’t close on us and seal us inside?” Anastacia asked and stepped into the temple.

The simulacrum did as she was asked and proceeded to break the iron hinges by kicking them into submission. The heavy wooden doors toppled over and caused a massive racket on their way down the stairs.

Initially Anastacia had meant that Leggy should have found something to wedge under them but getting rid of the problem altogether worked just as well. She gave the simulacrum a quick thumbs up and proceeded to the pedestal inside.

The controls were clearly divided into five separate groups. A single large button on the left with no icons or special patterns to it. To the right of it were two metal pieces that slid smoothly along vertical grooves made for them, above them were what seemed to be an icon for a sword and a shield. Third control from the left was simply two smaller buttons, each was labeled with an icon that resembled a house in the most remote recognizable way possible, on the topmost button, there was an arrow pointing at the house and on the bottom one a circle drawn around it. The fourth group of controls consisted of eight metal switches that weren’t labeled at all beyond the patterns that powered them being slightly different. The final group of controls on the right was nothing but three buttons labeled one, two and three with the number of straight lines on them. Above the three buttons was a single blinking light that likely suggested that it was operational at the time.

Taking her time to inspect the buttons and knobs on display, Anastacia weighed the chances on touching them doing something irreversible or horrible. Ultimately, she couldn’t come up with all too many downsides to at least trying one or two, but that may or may not have been a matter of not actually trying to do so terribly hard. The odd location made her think that they were just the controls to the fake sun or some other part of the boring town, so that whoever built it could change some aspects to match their mood.

“Alright, unless you understand any more of this than I do, I’m going to start fiddling with things.” Anastacia said and immediately pressed the button labeled with three lines.

A quiet ring sounded as the blinking light above them lit up permanently and the one above the metal switches began blinking. Since none of the patterns by them even hinted at what any of them did, Anastacia simply flicked a few at random and waited for the ringing sound to activate the next set to the left. Out of the two buttons, she chose the on with an arrow pointing at the house for no particular reason at all, but it still seemed to answer whatever the pedestal was asking, as the next set of controls activated soon after. Not really knowing what either of the sliders did, she simply set the sword one to its highest position and the shield one to the lowest.

As the ringing sound confirmed the selection for the fourth time, several of the stone tiles on the room’s walls slid out and revealed an entire arsenal’s worth of weapons. Much like the selection in King’s quarters, but all of it decidedly smaller in scale. In fact, the weapons were somewhat small even for an average sized man, but perfect for the necromanced who had discovered them. At first the compact size didn’t really make sense, but when Anastacia saw the stone helmet placed on one of the hidden shelves, or the hole in its forehead to be exact, she managed to put the pieces together.

“These are for the custodians.” She explained to the simulacrum with her just to prove she had realized it on her own. “But why are they here?”

Neatly arranged next to the helmets were three full sets of the stone armor both unit twelve and seven had worn. Though both of them had some sort of dark leathery under armor with them, they didn’t seem to be available at the armory the adventurer had discovered.

A bit disappointed because she would have much rather worn anything on top of what was effectively her night gown and some pants, Anastacia picked up one of the stone plates that would have worked as a vambrace of sorts and placed it on her left arm. A sudden flicker of blue light under the plate caused a bit of a tingle, but not enough to hurt. Startled nonetheless, she tried to shake the piece of armor off.

“Uh oh.” Was all she could say when she realized that the plate of stone was now stuck on her arm.

It wasn’t wrapped around her arm with anything, nor had it burned itself into her skin, it was simply stuck there and trying to pry it off made it feel like it was somehow attached to the bone in her arm. Trying to poke it with her other arm, the one with a simulacrum core embedded into it, didn’t do anything either. Leggy giving it a gentle nudge did just as much, as did everything else they could come up with.

After calming down from the initial concerns the armor had caused, Anastacia stopped to consider her options. Potentially having stones attached to her body the rest of her life was definitely on the lower end of options, but there was a good chance that King or one of the custodians would know how to remove them. At the same time, death was definitely lower on the list of desirable outcomes, and not having any of her gear left her wholly unequipped for anything they might run into. Figuring that the benefits outweighed the possible downsides, the necromancer attached the armor pieces onto her arms and legs one by one, until only the backplate and cuirass were left on the shelf.

Worried that a slab of stone of her chest might have made breathing difficult or that it would make changing the bandage on her shoulder impossible, she hesitated for a while and tried to figure out how tightly it would fit. While she was holding the cuirass in front of her, ten or so centimeters away from her chest, it suddenly snapped into place, but instead of snuggly pressing against her skin, it briefly hovered a few centimeters away while the blue light under it flashed more than once. It was as if the armor was trying to find something to attach onto but kept failing. Eventually the hunk of stone gave up and lifelessly fell on the floor, almost flattening Anastacia’s toes.

“Why do I feel insulted?” She wondered out loud and tried to press the armor against her chest, but it just wouldn’t stick there like the other pieces.

Annoyedly discarding the cuirass, she took one look at the helmet with a hole in the forehead and decided that there was no way she would even try it on if there was a chance that it got stuck too. She could already imagine the maddening need to scratch her head that would set in only seconds after putting it on.

Now mostly armored, but still only somewhat armed, Anastacia moved on to the selection of weapons. Urging Leggy to pick something for herself as well, she tested a few here and there by spinning them wildly. She was still relatively useless with anything larger than a dagger, and outside of her specialty spears, polearms were among the worst ones she could have taken.

The first one she showed actual interest in was a rather worrying three-headed flail with heavy spiked metal balls hanging from it. Leggy immediately confiscated it from her and placed it on one of the top shelves where the necromancer couldn’t reach it again. Further disgruntled, Anastacia continued browsing the selection until her gaze happened upon what looked an awful lot like a scythe.

Reenacting the motions she had seen people do with them when cutting grain, she swung it about for a while. “How am I supposed to do anything with this? Do I just… attack their ankles?” She muttered to herself before deciding that the weapon was useless, at least in her hands.

The third and final weapon that piqued her interest was a rather simple-looking metal stick with a somewhat war hammer-like head to it, though the actual hammer part was rather piddly, but in turn, the curved spike on the other side was far more pronounced and menacing than usually. For what it was, it was remarkably light and easy to swing around haphazardly, but the long shaft and weighed tip still made the hits have some heft to them, regardless of the lack of physical prowess Anastacia had.

Leggy on the other hand appeared to know exactly what she was looking for. She picked up a spike-like dagger with next to no cutting edge to it, but an oddly flat and wide pommel. Anastacia had seen similar ones in the blacksmith’s shop, but never really paid attention to them because if she was going to get a dagger, she wanted the sharpest one available.

“We’ve still got one more button to press, maybe it’ll reveal the really good stuff?” Anastacia remembered, returned to the pedestal and without hesitation slammed her fist on the largest button that now had a blinking light above it.

Instead of revealing any additional caches of equipment, the button caused the temple’s bell to ring exactly ten times. Wondering what it was about, the necromancer was about to head outside to get a better look at the bell tower, but the sight of the square made her freeze completely even before she made it past the broken doors; the previously abandoned fake town was now swarming with spindly, almost skeletal simulacra. A dozen or so were on the square itself, more patrolled the streets and there were quite a few on the rooftops as well. Though they were unquestionably simulacra of some type, they most definitely weren’t knights of stone, but more akin to the hollow ones that were besieging the town of Ruvenstead aboveground. They appeared frail even compared to Leggy, but were still armed with spears, shields, swords and the like. Their patrol movements appeared predetermined and purposeful, so them being hollow ones that had somehow leaked in from the surface seemed like a farfetched theory.

“Ohh! Now I get it, this must be some kind of a combat drill for the custodians!” Anastacia realized and was somewhat concerned about how real the simulacra’s weapons appeared for something that was supposed to be practice.

Standing there, out in the open, Anastacia suddenly heard a sound that still echoed in her nightmares at times: the sharp twang of a crossbow bolt being released. Already almost feeling the sharp point of the bolt tear into her neck once more and in disbelief that she would yet again die on the steps of a temple, her mind went blank. An eternity passed in a fraction of a second as she was unable to do anything but wait for what was coming, yet, it never came.

Crash-landing back into the present, Anastacia stumbled back and fell on her ass with her hand on her still intact throat. Before her, stood the Venator with the crossbow bolt she had caught midair in her hand.