‘Gerald, lets name him Gerald!’ Fei coo'd.

‘Since when do you get to name him? Its my power that gave us the control-’

Fei cut him off, ‘Yeah, but who went through all the effort to build him into what he is today? Me! I practically gave birth to him.’

‘How do you give birth to something that's already died?’ Xei sneered at her.

'Doesn't matter, his name should be Gerald!'

'What about Magnus?' Dei finally interjected herself into the conversation.

'Hmm, i'm not opposed.' Fei answered.

'You know we don't always need to agree with her just cause she was the first flame right?'

'I agree with her because she's usually right, unlike you.' Fei cut back.

Dei looked over her newly risen soldier as her inner void settled into the near constant bickering that she was starting to view as common between the other flames. His bare skeletal bones matched hers in a way, only different in the fact that they appeared to be tied together by patches of glue that shone orange as he walked instead of her customary blue and purple.

Some simple tests that morning had revealed that the skeleton, her neweset guard as she liked to think of him, was able to be controlled directly as well as via commands. Without that direct control he reacted to things rather awkwardly, rellying on brute force to accomplish whatever goal had been set for him. But when Xei put in even the barest of effort to loosen up the joints, the body responded well as he gave the skeleton more direct task and purpose.

Add to that the fact that the flaming trio had made several alterations to the bones over the course of the morning, lengthening and enlarging the bones where they could without completely distorting the human shape. They had tried bending the bones into unnatural shapes as well, sharpening the right arm and fixing the bones together until it resembled more of a blade than a human appendage, but then the corpse had stopped responding to basic orders. More testing over the course of the night had left the trio fairly sure that whenever the guard stopped resembling human anatomy, it hampered his ability to recieve and follow orders without direct control.

Sure, Xei could use the sword arm when he was totally focused on controlling the body himself, but that didn't do them any good when it served them just as well to have the guard trailing Dei under a FOLLOW command while looking far more natural. Regardless of their disapointment with the restrictions placed upon their control, there was more than ample time to expiriment on the guard while her more mortal followers slept after the night's events.

Tonight was honestly the first time that Dei realized just what a lack of sleep might mean for her after she had spent several hours playing around with the new body at her control. It was tht realization, half way through the night, that even though she had taken what felt like several hours to selfishly commit time to her own pursuits, even then her companions were still asleep.

Judging by the angle of the moon at this point, she likely had another four or five hours before even the lightest sleepers rose with the morning sun, yet still she had time. It would almost be lonely, if it wasn't for the constant chatter between the other flames in the background of her head, audible to her now even outside of the confines of the void. But tonight was the night that Dei realized just how much free time she was going to have to herself in a world of mortals, and she couldn't have been any more happy about it as she got to work figuring out every single detail to the extent of her powers.

------

The group rose with the morning dawn as several of the monks peeled off to start the daily chores. The sound of wood chopping echoed across the courtyard as goats bleated in the background as they were cared for in the faint sunlight. As for Charity, John, Matthew, and Dei, they crowded around the large table at the back of the church after Charity had pulled out a rough map of the surrouding countires.

She pointed out the different kingdoms surrouding them, giving a brief orientation to the area that Dei had a distinct feeling was primarily for her bennefit, even though it was directed at the group.

"To the west here you have the marshlands that comprise most of the Golden Kingdom's domain. iIts nor particularly well populated there except for the major cities allong the coast line over here." She pointed at a vast coast line that lined the majority of the western side of the map. "To the north of the golden kingdom lies the Princedom Federation, mostly comprised of rolling hills and home to the army that seems to be chasing you down, Herald."

John frowned at that, but said nothing as Charity continued, "To the northeast we have the Frelands, dominated by the Searing Moutain range that takes up most of their territory before you get up north to the frozen wastes. It may seem like the Free People's Cult is in charge of the greatest territory on the map, but the majority of it is useless land."

"South of them, allong the eastern wastes lie the Broken Tribes and their craggy canyons lined by the endless desert on the eastern edge of the map. Then, finally, we have the Southern marches and their massive grassland run by the Conqueror."

Charity began to point at a massive forrest that broke up the center of the map, spreading out like a cnacer to border all the nations. "The Marren Forest. Largely considered to be a no man's land situated in the center of all these groups. And here's where we are, on the western edge of the forest between the golden lands and the princedoms."

Looking done with her small speech, Dei nodded, the mismatched embers of her eyes going up and down in appreciation of the general layout of the area. John then took the moment to question Mathew across the table, "So, why are we going to the Golden kingdom again?"

Matthew replied evenly, like he had been ready for the question. "Two reasons. First, to get Dei away from the Princedoms now that they're actively hunting for her. And second, because the golden king is the shard-bearer least likely to kill her the moment they meet."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

It was Charity's turn to question him, "You think the Greedy King is really going to let another shard bearer just set up shop in his land's without questioning it?"

"Oh, he'll question it for sure. But as long as we can get to him in person I think he'll see reason if we propose that Dei works with him, tipping the scales in the stalemates that plague these lands."

"He wont just see her as another rival?" John asked

"Would you? Dei's retinue has a total of what, eight people to her name? King Logan might have forged his kingdom piece by piece, but its not like it happened overnight."

"King Logan? You talk as though you know him." Charity responded.

"I did know him, at least a little bit." Matthew's lips settled into something of a grimace. "I watched him take over the golden lands, one noble at a time while I was still John's age. He's ambitious as hell, sure, but he's also not stupid enough to let an opportunity like Dei pass him by. We just have to pitch it the right way."

No one else seemed particularly happy with the plan, but they also weren't bringing up any other ideas at the moment so Dei just nodded along. In her opinion it didn't matter much where she was going either way, since she was far more concerned with finding more people to grow her ranks. This Golden King didn't sound like he would enjoy her plans very much no matter what she did in the long run, but maybe he would be willing to work with her for the short term.

Matthew and Charity settled into a discussion about the logistics of which route to take through the marshland as they all settled into the idea of making their way to the city of Portsmouth.

-----

After half a day of preparations the group had decided to delay their travel plans for one more day and leave the next morning. The rationale was that at this point they were already going to be traveling behind the groups searching for Dei so they might as well wait a bit so they weren't chasing on the forward group's heels.

Matthew took the chance to slink back into his customary solitude, taking a pew to rest the day away. Chastity, for her part tried her best to settle things at the manastery as she reorganized the daily tasks for the monks and restructured their purpose after the sudden changes. Meanwhile John seemed to just disappear entirely after he told Dei he was going for a walk.

As for Dei, she found herself annoyingly voiceless as everything started moving around her. It was like she was a ghost in truth as she roamed around the grounds observing the people around her. The monks would all bow slightly as she passed by, but then awkwardly stand up after they seemed to realize she wasnt going to say anything and returned to work. One team was working on the front door while the other tackled the broken cellar entrance, mostly focused on just clearing up the remnants of the last evening first.

Eventually she started to get bored again and started taking a round about the complex just to find something to do. The previously plodding footsteps that used to follow her had changed since the last day, no longer as heavy with leftover body parts. As she started to focus on her guard's footsteps, Dei was suddenly facing the fact that her own walk wasn't all that much better. Sure, she had had practice since working with Matthew those first couple days, but she honestly could have been doing more. If only the old man wasn't so intent on studying that book of his.

Twirling on her foot, she turned around to face her guard perhaps ten feet away from the courtyard wall as they had been slowly making their way around the outside perimeter.

'Xei, how would you feel about getting a little fighting practice in?'

'Oh, I thought you'd never ask.' He'd moved some portion of bone marrow to the inside of the skull's mouth and it started twisting up with a flash of orange until it resembled something at least resembling a smile.

Fei audibly made a note to herself about wanting to work more on the whole smiling thing as Dei unsheathed her sword and started taking off the set of monk's robes she had been wearing that day. Xei had already raised his own sword that they had taken from the monastery store room the other day, marking the begining of the spar as the two of them started to circle each other.

Dei gave the unspoken command to the skeleton to 'FIGHT' as they had discovered the other night that the command system allowed Xei to focus on making minute adjustments for precision instead of having to worry about each and every movement.

Xei opened their exchange with a short horizontal strike from the side that Dei casually parried and used to step further into the man's range. He quickly read the situation and threw out a forward kick at her stomach which she tried to side step but failed, pushing her back several feet as she slid across the ground.

Xei had only just started to raise his sword back into a guard position when the gruff voice of Matthew interrupted them.

“No, if you're going to practice you're not going to practice against another novice that will only teach you bad habits. Dei, don't try to close in to your opponents guard unless your weapon is free to actually take advantage of the situation, otherwise they'll just overpower you with their weight. And you,” he turned to face Xei, “you need to lean in to the strengths of the body you're using right now. Bigger builds change the dynamic of your approach so the agile style of things i've been pushing Dei into wont quite work for you.”

The two of them had lowered their swords to look at him when he spoke as Dei realized there were still things in this world worth occupying her time. As for Xei, he took the chance to bend down with what he was quickly starting to claim as a permanent body to write his name on the ground for Matthew to see.

“Huh, did she choose that name for you or did you honestly think that was a good choice for yourself?”

Dei started clutching at her ribcage while bending over in mock laughter as Xei stomped his foot in indignation before shooting a glare at the girl.

—--

The team had settled in for another night of silence as Dei was left alone once again. Things didn't feel quite so bad as that first night though as Xei had seemed to have taken to inhabiting their new body pretty much permanently at this point. Dei had long since stopped giving orders herself to the body as Xei constantly sent out a light heared list of instructions. ‘FORWARD, STOP, LIFT, PLACE, CARRY, DROP’ could be heard over the mental link as Xei tested out different wording and variations to figure out which command's worked best without any major adjustments from his own control of the body.

As for Fei, it seemed that she was doing her own testing as well as Dei started to notice purple flashes of light among both of the bodies in quick succession as Fei simultaneous adjustments to multiple bones at the same time. Dei was keenly aware of the fact that over time she had gotten more and more comfortable manipulating multiple of her own bones in sync, but the fact that this could be used across bodies opened up multiple ideas within her head.

Dei started to wander away from the rest of the group as they slept, perhaps because she was finally starting to get more confident in her own abilities after the last couple days, but mostly because she was curious about something. Stepping outside the cloisters’ thin walls, she opened her vision to look for bones, and quickly found something quite interesting allong the far side of the manastery.

Small columns of stacked stones rose in a haphazard row some fifty meters away from the rest of the monastery allongside thin trails in the forest floor that indicated that many people had come by and through the area over the years. Decayed flowers could be seen at the base of some of the stones, obviously having been placed there long before the fall weather had started to settle in to the area as Dei looked down on a row of white forms laying below the surface of the ground.

Keenly aware that what she was doing was quite possibly wrong, or at the very least rude, Dei had made up her mind on the matter long before in the day as she spotted this location halfway through her sparring session with Xei and Matthew. Even still, the bone marrow she had laced through the gaps in her teeth started to shine a soft glow of a burning blue smile as she looked out into the dark night.

‘RISE’ she ordered, and she could feel the attention of Fei and Xei immediately return to her body as the cult of the sixth god started to grow once more.