After cleaning up most of the mess left behind by the unknown attackers, Norman really had nothing to do but sit and stew. Nobody he had asked knew who these purple-skinned humans were, let alone where they came from.
Although Norman could make a guess based on what he knew about the zone. North was Grothlosburg so that was out, the gron wouldn’t tolerate people like that in their city. With the fog lands portion of the deadlands wrapping around the entire west side of the deadlands zone and a bit of the east, it meant that was an unlikely direction for the living to come from. That left the south and southeastern edge of the zone, which was hundreds of miles away.
Norman supposed they could have come through the fog lands, but he doubted it. He had barely survived the trip through the zone to the north and that was fifty miles wide. Their little expedition had lucked out and come through one of the narrower portions. From what Grobert had told him, the other sections to the east and west were even wider, some as wide as one hundred miles.
He couldn’t see anyone wanting to risk that trip without a whole lot of preparation, and the people that attacked hadn’t seemed all that well prepared. They certainly weren’t immune to the undead, as he had proven with his feral zombies.
It might have been feasible by car if there was a road, but by animal or by foot, that’s a day of travel at least, if not more. Norman doubted men in full armor had crossed the land on foot and Eugene agreed to the point he was out looking for how they arrived.
It was good Grobert had spent time exploring this zone, otherwise, Norman would be completely in the dark. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in the fog lands and their spectral denizens or the surrounding zones. It was just that they added little to his knowledge at the moment. He had studied the specters on his passage through the fog lands and concluded that they were much like the feral zombies. While not completely mindless, the specters really weren’t of any use except as a deterrent to the living.
“Ugh!” Norman yelled in frustration.
There was just too much Norman didn’t know, he really wished he had a way to contact Grobert and ask him. Even the magically enhanced gron communication network wasn’t capable of crossing hundreds of miles of terrain without some sort of repeater. And while the President was accommodating to some trade, he wasn’t willing to part with their technological secrets. They only had a teleporter because the President couldn’t stop Grobert from making them even if he wanted to.
He would just have to wait until Grobert returned from his trip to see if he knew who these men were.
***
It was a few more days before Grobert returned from his trip to Grothlosburg.
During that time, Eugene had found the attackers ‘horses’. Norman really didn’t know what else to call those ugly-looking animals, but they mostly resembled horses. If horses had the heads of snakes.
The things were creepy as all hell, with their tounges flicking out to test the air and their slit pupils that made them look like they were sizing you up as a snack. They also had really bendy necks like a snake and no fur, just scales, clearly an adaptation to a hotter environment. Which helped narrow down where these men could have come from.
Eugene had been bitten a few times by the temperamental animals, but their venom did not affect the undead. The snake horses behaved after Eugene crushed the skull of one of them with his bare hands after he got sick and tired of them biting him. As a side note, snake horse meat is one of the most disgusting meats Norman had ever sampled.
Another thing that happened during Grobert’s absence was the start of a wall. The wall somehow annoyed Norman even more than the attack by an unknown enemy did. He liked the unobstructed view, but the attackers had shown it was much too easy to enter their little community unseen.
Grobert strode into the hall looking equal parts annoyed and angry. Norman completely understood the man’s feelings, he was pissed too, but probably for a different reason. Grobert stopped at the edge of the melted stone where the attacker had burst into flame.
Norman didn’t expect what occurred next. The man got on his hands and knees and licked the deformed stone. Grobert smacked his lips a few times before spitting out and standing back up.
“Eugene filled me in on what happened.”
Norman nodded from his seat. “Any idea who these men were?”
“I haven’t run across them before, or that icon he showed me. Although they seem to be an offshoot of hum.”
Norman sat up straighter at that. It was a bit awkward being the only one seated at a long wooden table in the room. A room that Grobert called a hall, but Norman knew was a throne room, meant for him. But Norman refused that headache on principle alone. He had no wish to rule anything.
It was getting harder to avoid that responsibility though as everyone in town looked to him in times of trouble. He needed to find out what the people were smoking because he could use some right about now. If they weren’t all undead, he might have suspected everyone in town was mentally deficient or under some weird spell. Norman banished those thoughts for later as he focused back on Grobert.
“What about the lands to the south and east? Are any of them hot and arid? That could help narrow our search down.”
Grobert rubbed his chin with his meaty and dirt-stained hand. “Could be from the south. The land is rather hot and dry on one of the zones that border it.”
“There is more than one?” This was the first time Norman had heard this.
“Yeah, we either got lucky or unlucky with this zone depending on how you look at it. It borders six other zones, not including Grothlosburg to the North. I haven’t explored more than a mile into each zone but one fits the description.” Then he sighed, “I do know who might know more but you aren’t going to like it.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Norman had to think about who would annoy him enough to make Grobert hold back. He had resurrected just shy of two thousand undead, although he supposed he should call them by the moniker they had chosen, greykin. Not all of the greykin had stuck around, although most had, deciding that creating their own village was preferable to going back to their old homes where they might be ostracized or worse. The gron especially were less stiff as undead, if you could believe it.
There were the lizna, a race of thin lizard-like bipeds that reminded Norman of those little tree lizards that pervaded the southern United States. Eugene hadn’t found many of them in the halls of the dead, so only about twelve of them existed as greykin. They were a rather odd species and preferred to stick to themselves as much as possible.
How they ended up in Grothlosburg never came up and Norman didn’t ask. He found out rather early on that using his Glimpse from Beyond spell too often on a corpse rendered the brain unfit for conversion to an undead. And even just one use could lead to severe issues when being brought back.
It was better to just let the greykin retain their knowledge and if he need to know he could just ask them about it. Anyway, the lizna moved into the fog lands as they preferred the hot sulfuric atmosphere and rocky bluffs to the open plains.
Norman didn’t try stopping them, he had no reason or authority to do so. They did come to trade occasionally, due to needing the potions to remain alive. Norman was glad he had outsourced that issue to a few alchemists he resurrected. If not, he would have run out of blood quite some time ago.
The only other group that left and hadn’t gone back to Grothlosburg was the ooraki. What Norman had mistaken for two separate races, orcs, and goblins, turned out to be one race. They were a matriarchal society led by the larger females that Norman thought of as orcs. Norman had resurrected about forty of the ooraki with only three being the larger females.
It was probably for the best, they did not get along well with the other greykin. Not due to any physiological differences or anything. They just felt that the rest of the greykin didn’t worship the Life Bringer properly, which just so happened to be what they called Norman. Their society was very superstitious and tribal as far as Norman could tell.
Norman was quick to discourage the practice of worshiping him, he didn’t want to be a leader, and he had even less desire to be a figure of worship.
The ooraki persisted, despite his best efforts. Not that the ooraki were dumb. They had some of the most impressive magic at their disposal that Noramn had seen since he first encountered the jorik. Norman just wished they weren’t so stubborn in their ways. In the end, the ooraki set out to create their own village somewhere in the deadlands. That’s when Norman realized who Grobert was referring to.
Norman groaned, “You mean the priestess, don’t you?”
Grobert nodded.
Norman rubbed at his temples, already not looking forward to this meeting. “Ok. I know she probably won’t talk to you because she sees you as beneath her, but do you think you could convince her to come here?”
“Aye, I should be able to convince the stubborn woman, I just gotta mention it's by your request,” Grobert smiled, enjoying Norman’s discomfort about the upcoming meeting more than he should. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour. I set up a teleporter near their village to help them come to trade on occasion.”
An hour later, Grobert arrived with a tall green-skinned ooraki trailing behind him. Norman had to give the priestess credit. She looked rather fetching and way overdressed in her massive feathered headdress and sleek green and gold robe. When most people thought of orcs, they pictured big ugly brutes with more brawn than brains. But the priestess could almost pass for a human, if not for the small tusks that protruded upward from her lower jaw and a slightly pronounced cranial ridge that reminded Norman of neanderthals. If the neanderthals had not died out but continued to evolve like homo-sapiens he could easily picture them looking like the priestess here.
Like most greykin, she had lost most of her original coloring, but Norman could still see the green tint among the grey of her skin.
She immediately got on all fours and bowed her head until it touched the ground, making Norman shift uncomfortably at the table. “Great Life Bringer, how may this lowly servant help you?”
It took Norman a moment to remember the woman’s name. He hadn’t seen her in over nine months and had pushed her out of his mind after they packed up and left. “Please rise, Noorani. I told you before, you are not my servant, and owe me nothing.”
She looked like she wanted to argue with him, but she stood quietly. Norman took that as a small win.
“Grobert, could you show her the symbol.” Norman had given the cloth to the man, in case he came across anyone he could ask. The fact that the ooraki would practically ignore the man until they were in front of Norman was quite an annoyance.
The priestess looked at the cloth and snorted in derision. “Heathens,” she spat. “They claim only their god is the true god. Yet we know the truth, Life Bringer.”
Norman groaned. “Don’t tell me you got into a conflict with them.”
“No, Life Bringer, we have followed your precepts and avoided conflict. We only traded with the small town past the border. After we left, a few men wearing these trappings of their false god accosted us. We simply defended ourselves and left. That was months ago and we have not been back to trade since.”
Norman leaned back in his chair. If what Noorani said was true – which he had no reason to doubt – this could be a big issue. Then again, Norman thought something was missing from her explanation.
“There was no other encounter with these men prior to that?”
“Only the one where I corrected their false statements in the town.”
And there it was. She had effectively told some zealots that they were in fact wrong. And as history would reveal, that never ended well.
Norman turned toward Grobert. “I know I have no reason to ask this of you, but could you accompany me to this town so we can set matters right?”
Noorani hissed in opposition to Norman’s question. “You cannot debase yourself to these heathens, Life Bringer. Let my people fix this.”
It was a tempting offer, the easy way out. He decided to ask a clarifying question before he agreed. “How would you go about this?”
“Simple, Life Bringer, we would purge the town and all heathens, therefore eliminating the problem.”
“…Uh, huh. Let’s table that for later. I think I would like to try my approach first… if that’s ok with you?” Norman knew he was using the woman’s faith in him against her, but he didn’t need the ooraki slaughtering an entire town for something a few zealots did. Besides, it was about time he set out to see this land and the surrounding zones.
“I would never assume to tell you what to do, Life Bringer. Please, if you would let me accompany you on this mission I would be eternally grateful.”
Norman decided not to bring up the fact that she had just tried to tell him what he could and couldn’t do. Her presence might not be ideal but he could use her as a guide and if things went sideways her magic would be welcomed.
“Very well, If Grobert has no qualms, you can join us.”
Grobert just shrugged. “I’ll go fetch Eugene, then we can head toward the teleporter.”
“Sounds good, I’ll pack my bag with some supplies. Should we return their mounts?”
Grobert didn’t even need to think about it, “Nah, those are spoils. We could use them in the negotiations if we need to but don’t offer them up for nothing.”
Norman nodded, once again glad that Grobert had accompanied him to the deadlands. Norman was way over his head here, but he was the one that resurrected Noorani and her people so he was sort of responsible for this mess so he would do his best to try and make things right. Thankfully, Grobert knew a thing or two about diplomacy after running an entire country for nearly two centuries.