In a lonely dark room, chairs were placed in an orderly manner. I, along with a few others, was seated but most of the chairs remained empty. Some of us looked longingly at the empty chairs, sighing with disappointment or sadness.

“This can’t be all of us…” The oldest person in the room was the first to speak up. He got up to the front of the room, addressing the increasingly depressed crowd. On his coat was a badge with a crossed-out tree, the badge of the traditionalist rebel group. All of us had the badge, too, but some of the chairs had a badge lying on top of it.

“Many of us have already died in our long struggle, some had given up and succumbed to the tyranny of the unionists. There wasn’t much we could do, not after we failed the last few raids…”

“We did not fail! We just had to tactically retreat to attack another day.”

“Don’t lie! You lost your brother in the last raid! This princess isn’t worth all of our lives!”

“Are you giving up?!”

“Silence!” The oldest one knocked his cane upon the floor, silencing the younger ones who were arguing. The old elf turned to me and scratched his beardless chin. He disdained how the elves started growing beards which would have been heretical in the old elven society.

“Ruslan, you’re the one with the most combat experience. In your opinion, what are the chances of any successful future prison raids?”

I shook my head dejectedly, hesitating to answer for a moment, “At this point, it won’t be a stupid thing to say that we’ve finally lost. There’s nothing more we could do, especially since one of the vocal speakers of the group got arrested recently.”

The morale of the elves dropped to the lowest when they heard that. I wished I could lie to them, but I am an honest person. Some of the elves was crying as they slowly took off their badge and placed it on their chair.

The old man nodded at the revelation, sighing. He looked up on the ceiling of the room and had a sense of nostalgia in his eyes. He wanted to say something, anything that would keep the elves fighting. However, he knew it was foolish to fight any longer.

“What’s wrong, babuyiskiv? Wouldn’t you say something like ‘Back in the old days, the elves would’ve kept fighting in guerrilla warfare!’?” I joked as I gave him a tired smile.

“I would say something like that, but…these are elves we’re fighting against. We can’t fight fire with fire, you know? Ah…It’s been such a long time. Perhaps it’s time to cut my hair and live my life out…” The old man shook his head and slowly made his way towards the exit.

The door opened suddenly, revealing two elves carrying some sacks. Unlike us, they actually looked energetic and motivated. Their grin could be seen from cheek to cheek, making me curious.

“What’s wrong with you two, Birchsander and Oleh?”

“Ruslan! You must try this pie! We got these when we were strolling past the poorer areas of the city.”

“I don’t know about potato pie, Birchsander. Last time I tried one…”

“NO! This is not made of potato!”

At Birchsander’s exclamation, all of the elves froze in place and was shocked. I didn’t even realize my mouth was already watering until drool started falling onto my coat. Food…that’s not potato?! Impossible! I silently held out my hand, impatiently waiting to check the truth.

Surely enough, Birchsander took out a piece of pie out of his sack and handed it to me. The smell by the freshly baked pie invaded my nostril and I unconsciously let a whimper out with a tear on my eye.

I faced the pie and bit down on it, each bite gave me memories. The groves, the peaceful days, the sun shining down on us, the grass…Grass everywhere…

“Mmmhmm Uhhgmmm mm…” I cried while biting.

“Ruslan, swallow what you’re eating before you…Ugh…give me some of that…” The elderly took one of the pies in Birchsander’s sack and also bit down.

“This is…my home…” He unintentionally muttered with his eyes closed.

As we lost ourselves, the other elves couldn’t help but join us. There was more than enough pie for everyone and each of us had reasons to cry. The older ones remembered the good old days, some of the younger ones finally realized the true meaning of what they were fighting for.

“I…I have a reason to live…” One of the young elves said, wiping his snot off his teary face.

“Where did you get this?! Imported ingredients are hard and expensive so you must have spent a lot on these!” The elderly shook Birchsander by the shoulders hard.

“Calm down, babuyiskiv. This was very cheap. In fact, with just a week’s worth of savings, I managed to buy these much. Even with that, I had no regret buying this much!”

“But even with the ingredients…This is old elven cooking. The art of properly cooking was long gone! Who could’ve done this?”

“I don’t know, babyiskiv. There might have been some elves that escaped the revolution and one of their descendants had managed to sneak back into the Union.”

“The possibility is slim because I know that every elf that escaped had eventually died, but I’m not narrow-minded enough to believe I know everything. I have found my strength again! I realized why the old elves were so stubborn…Ruslan, if you could please.” The elderly turned to me with determination in his eyes. I knew, no…Everyone knew what we had to do.

“If we are to die, we might as well die standing like true elves. Tonight, we raid the prison one last time. This time, we are not running around. It’s do or die,” I announced as our fury inside of us expanded. The fires of the counter-revolution were being fanned and anger was our only drive.

I held the last piece of my pie and bit down on it with victory in my mind.

*

*

*

It was the middle of the night and two figures were silently entering the prison complex within the Kreylin. Wearing skin-tight, no…Bone-tight black clothes from head to toe, they were almost unseen while hiding within the shadow. They were armed and geared to the teeth, prepared for almost anything – Rope, multi-purpose pickaxes, daggers, throwing knives, soap, scrolls of enchantment and potions.

Of course, those two figures were Beor and I, expert prison raiders!

“Boss, you’re terrible at directions. Let me be in front,” Beor tapped my back and nagged at me.

“Fine. But if you mess this up, I’ll spread rumors about you being incompetent in the group. Once I research how to use vampiric telepathy, you’ll regret the day you asked to be in the front!”

“Dirty, very dirty but the possibility of that happening is very low. I have strategized many plans and I have foreseen everything in this mission.”

“Would you perhaps use your overly amazing keensight on the elves moving an entire section of the Kreylin wall?”

“I-…Quiet!”

Beor and I stuck our bodies against the wall, blending in. With our meatless bodies, we were able to look like nothing but cracks on the walls or weird bumps. Having no muscles, tendons or pain receptors was a major plus if one was an assassin or an infiltrator.

“…and then I heard that we would be joined by some dumb humans. Filths, I tell you. I heard they still have a monarchy.”

“Vidam, are you dumb? There’s a lot of nations ruled by humans. You can’t just say all humans are the same. What about the Vallen Empire? I heard they employ many non-humans and…”

The two patrolmen passed by, not noticing us. When the light of their lamps were no longer visible, Beor and I started moving again, this time in silence. The Kreylin was guarded heavily but not heavily enough to stop an Archlich from sneaking in.

Upon reaching the prison entrance I was so familiar with, we started climbing up on the building where there were blind spots. Going through the main entrance was dangerous as it was well lit and guarded by watchful eyes. I cursed whoever did those previous prison raids as the security here was extra tight.

The building walls had spikes, but there was nothing but bones to poke. There were acids to melt the flesh off, but Beor and I had no skin to melt. There were invisible smoke coming out of small holes in the walls which would melt the eyes of anyone foolish enough to climb, but again…Beor and I had nothing.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

We climbed at a very fast pace, almost like we were running up the walls instead of climbing it, due to our light weight body. The entire building was also a huge tree which meant that the walls weren’t smooth and had bumps, which allowed us to grab onto them.

Upon reaching a window, we cut through the window and snuck in. Beor and I huddled together, planning our next move. Beor placed his hand onto the floor and projected a glowing map using magic.

“We’re here. Guards pass by this corridor here, and here. The problem here is that the prison is underground and we’re a few floor above,” Beor explained.

“I see there’s no blind spots for us to sneak past…oh wait, there is.” I shrugged mockingly.

“Where?”

“Beor, we’re undead. Fuck normal ways.”

*

*

*

“…that trial was a blast, I tell you. Niviko, you should’ve watched it. There was a huge apeman who turned out to be…”

I was looking ahead, watching the two guards pass by us without noticing us. In fact, they passed below us. I turned rotated my head upside down, orienting it properly. My body propped up from where it was buried in and started moving again.

“Right…climbing the ceiling. In all my years as an undead…Hah. Old habits die hard.”

“Couldn’t be helped. We locked ourselves in the stronghold when we started to turn into the undead so obviously your rusty skills have to be polished once more.”

Without the risk of staying upside down for too long, Beor and I could practically stay like this the entire time.

“This is it. The underground prison entrance is right through that door,” Beor whispered to me as we hung at the ceiling, sneaking a glance from a corner.

“There are 6 guards. This is messed up, they don’t play around with security here. Too bad that won’t keep an Archlich and its spy master out,” I said as I dropped down. I took out a scroll and ripped it into two. The pieces of paper vibrated in my hand and I dashed towards the guards.

“Huh? Why does that wall look like…” The first guard had his last sentence cut short as I slashed his throat with a knife. The guards were distorted by the effect of the scroll which ‘blinded’ the guards by making the scenery not change in their vision as long as they don’t blink. To them, it was just an empty hall with nothing in it. By the time they saw two freaky assassin skeletons coming at them, they were too late.

“AH SESKA…”

I quickly covered another elf’s mouth and stabbed him in the gut repeatedly. Using the same knife, I threw it at an elf who was about to swing his sword at me while Beor took care of the other three elves without any problems.

Scary skeleton assassin [https://i.imgur.com/Fyo0dsH.jpg]

I grabbed each of the corpses and poured my will into them. Their lifeless eyes glowed black and returned to normal. Slowly, the dead elves rose.

“Ugghhh…Mmm-…” One of the zombies groaned and I plastered my hand on its mouth.

“SHHHH, you idiot! Clean yourselves and look as normal as possible!”

Upon my command, the elves started wiping off all the blood to no avail. In fact, they were making it worse my smearing themselves with more blood.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have spilled too much blood,” Beor concluded.

“Wait, Lucia has been teaching me some of her vampire tricks…” I opened my palm and held it up. The blood on the elves flew onto my hand and converged into one big ball of blood. With this, the elves looked like they were normal guards except for the lifeless expressions they carry. I slowly absorbed the ball of blood, turning it into what Lucia would call ‘essence of blood’ or something. I wasn’t a vampire so I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Quit hanging your mouths. Stop groaning and stop rolling your eyes up! There we go. Now you look less dead. Let’s go, Beor.”

Running deep into the prison, we had to ‘recruit’ more guards as our watchdogs. We passed by many cells and none of them had Rookie. I fixed my senses, trying to detect his undead presence but couldn’t.

“Damn this place. Its anti-magic influence is getting stronger the deeper we go. Even the zombies I’m making are getting dumber and dumber,” I cursed.

Beor and I happened upon another guard and we made short work of him. Injecting mana into his lifeless body, I ordered it to stand. However, it barely did that and was just humping the air while its body lied down.

“This one can’t even stand…”

As Beor and I studied the air humping zombie, we heard shouts all over the prison.

“Wha…were we caught? Damn those zombies! I didn’t pay them to screw up!”

“It was a good thing you didn’t pay them, then.”

The prisoners started waking up one by one as the entire prison alarm went up. There was chaos all over the place so Beor and I decided to ditch the sneaking part of the mission.

With our swords out, we charged deeper into the prison, cutting down all of the guards without caution. As I was about to turn a corner, I bumped into somebody. I raised my sword and the person I bumped into also raised their knife.

“Wait!” Someone shouted and both us of stopped. The person who I bumped studied me as I studied him. It would’ve appeared that this person also had equipment for infiltration.

“Who the hell are you guys supposed to be?!” I shouted.

“We’re the Traditionalist Elven Front! Who are you guys and why do you look so skinny?!” They responded.

I looked behind me to Beor and held my non-existent breath. I faced him and said, “We’re the…ugh…Hungry Elves…Front…Yeah. We’re also rebels and stuff…”

“I’ve never heard of that group but I’ve heard of Elves Hungry for Freedom Front, is that you guys?”

“Yah…yah...” I nodded my head like an idiot.

“We’re here to free the princess, you should join us.”

“Oh ugh..we’re…actually going to do that along with freeing a key member of ours. Very influential member.”

“Ruslan, can we trust these guys?” One of the figures asked the one I was talking to.

“They have the same goal. Now is not the time to make enemies out of friends. This is the deepest we’ve gotten into and our resolve helped us defeat the prison guards that blocked our path. With these people, we’ll be able to go deeper down the prison,” The person called Ruslan hushed his subordinates and welcomed me to his prison raid group.

…These were the idiots that caused the noise? Wait, don’t tell me these guys killed my zombies…

I wanted to facepalm but we had to keep moving. I allowed the traditionalists to move ahead of us. They did most of the heavy work – The killing and dying.

“Cough…Ruslan…please promise me…that..you…” One of the rebels coughed blood as he lied down, dying on the floor. Ruslan crouched with tears in his eyes.

“I’ll remember you. Say your last wish.”

“Please…keep…my sister….sa-“

“Hey, can we get a move on?” I tapped Ruslan’s shoulder as I impatiently waited for the dying elves to finally die. I needed to raise them as zombies to fight off any incoming guards.

“Go..Ruslan…the hungry elves…are right. Keep…her safe….Now, I rest…” The elf gave his last breath. Finally!

We started moving and once the elves were too far from the bodies, I snapped my fingers. Every time they die, I would bury my will deep into their corpses and once out of sight, I activated my magic. Sorry, but there was no resting for you yet, elf stranger!

After a few more fights, we finally reached the princess’ cell along with Rookie’s. Apparently after the trial ended, they just shoved Rookie to a random cell which happened to be near the princess’. While the elves have a happy reunion and I quickly made my way towards Rookie’s cell.

“Huh? Boss, is that you?” Rookie asked as he got out of his small bed.

“Heya, buddy. We’re getting you out of here illegally, if you don’t mind.”

“How delightful! I do not mind getting out of here illegally or otherwise. I have a project to complete! My pride as the abomination of the companionship is on the line here!”

“Can you break the bars?”

“It would’ve appeared that they’re enchanted with some kind of magic. I spent my time here researching it. Time well spent, I must say.”

“Ah well, Beor’s got it anyway.”

Beor finished working on the lock as we talked and Rookie delightfully got out. We also had to help the traditionalists break the princess out.

“Why didn’t you guys bring someone who could pick a lock?” I questioned them.

“We used to, but they were usually the first one to die. After that, there was no one to train the new recruits,” Ruslan explained.

“Has anyone told you how skinny you look?” One of the elves threw a question back at me. I pretended to cough a bit.

“Well, you see, I just don’t like potato…”

“We know a place that doesn’t sell potato! In fact, we plan to celebrate by buying a lot from there!”

“Oh really? That’ll be nice once we get out of…”

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” A commissar shouted as he charged in with a group of prison guards.

The guards had the numerical advantages but couldn’t use it to the fullest potential as the swords and batons began to clash against each other in the narrow corridor.

“Ruslan! Run away with the princess! There might be hope somewhere! A few of us will stay here and hold them off!”

“Birchsander, you can’t!”

“Damn you, Ruslan! I’ve already tasted the best damned pie out there. Don’t let my last taste be bitterness!”

“Ok, since you’re offering, bye.” I waved goodbye at the elves who were foolishly offering themselves to be my zombies and started running the opposite direction with Beor and Rookie in tow. Confused, most of the traditionalists also followed me.

“W…we’ll never forget your sacrifice, Birchsander!” Ruslan hesitated to run but finally joined the rest of the traditionalists. A few moments later, we could hear a few elves screaming in agony.

“Rookie, use your strength. Break the ceiling and all the way up,” I ordered as I ran and pointed at the ceiling.

“Right-o.” Using his enormous raw undead strength, he jumped up and broke through the ceiling and into the floor above. Prison guards were surprised by this as we jumped up from freshly made hole.

“Ayo, seska bleet! You’re all dead to me-…” A commissar brandished his sword at us but a corpse got up and hugged him.

“AH! THIS ONE IS REALLY DEAD!” was his last words as the corpse exploded into many bits, taking the commissar with it. Corpses started getting up, hugging the nearest prison guard and exploding. This caused confusion and panic among the guards as they started running away from the prison.

We continued to punch through all the way to ground floor while the zombies cleared a path for us. The elven guards blockaded the entrance but I didn’t feel like playing by their rules so I had Rookie break a wall.

“My, speaking of my luck…” I laughed as there was nothing in front of us as we rushed out of the hole in the wall - As in literally nothing. This part of the wall was where that crazy commissar brought the entire section of the Kreylin wall into the trial. That section of the wall was probably still at the main street and what substituted it was just a flimsy wooden barricade.

Rookie roared as he charged through it, breaking through the elves guarding the barricade. The prison raid group dispersed into the dark streets with the elven guards attempting to chase us in vain.

“Rookie! Beor and I can’t take you with us. We’ll have to be at the embassy or else they’ll suspect us and we can’t really have you at the embassy.”

“Where do you suggest I go, Boss?”

“Ruslan, you owe us a damned favor! Take Rookie with you! He should be safer with you!”

“I see no problem with that, all rebels against the unionists are allies in my book!” Ruslan agreed and his group took off into the distance while Beor and I hid in the shadows for a while. We snuck into a dark alley and changed our attires to what we were wearing most of the time. By now, security would be at its highest and there was little point to sneaking back into the embassy, which was inside the Kreylin.

I casually walked out of the dark alley and made my way back into the embassy. Though the guards raised a few questions, they weren’t suspicious of me because they were on the lookout for ‘suspicious elves wearing black’.

I quietly entered my quarters and sighed. When I looked up, I was surprised to find my apprentice-in-magic, Kendra, sitting on my bed while reading a book.

“There you are, master. Your companions went off to sightsee the mess going on outside and I assumed you did, too. Where have you been? Honestly, I’ve been asking this question a lot recently which makes me think you’d make a terrible husband for any unfortunate woman out there. But then again, only an idiot would fall in love with you.” Kendra chuckled to herself and I snapped at her. I would’ve tossed a fireball at her but I was tired so I just grabbed her and tossed her out of my bed.

“You wouldn’t believe what I went through…” I said as I lied down in my bed with peace in my mind.