Norman stepped out of the castle where he found Nolix and Lohr picking themselves up off the ground.

Lohr groaned. “What happened? Feels like I’ve been on a week-long bender.”

Norman had seen the spell in the necromancer's book so he knew how the man had controlled so many undead. It was rather disgusting and he was glad he had never gone down that path. “You had your souls forcefully removed and then replaced again.”

“Ugh… that feels about right. Sorry, we couldn’t stop him, Sir.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I should have done a better job anticipating his plan. But we can discuss my shortcoming later. For now, I have a whole bunch of new greykin to speak with. And they are all probably suffering much like you two.”

As Norman was speaking, Grobert flashed into existence a few feet away. “Good, you survived. I assumed you were able to defeat the necromancer. We got a real mess in the city. Quite a few dead, and a massive number of confused and angry undead. Seeing as some appeared from nowhere, I assume they were invisible? There could be some that are still invisible. Not quite sure what made them appear”

Norman nodded. “Not invisible. Hidden from the undead. Get the guards to gather everyone they come across outside the front gate. When everyone is in one place I will address these new arrivals. I don’t think any place inside the city has enough room.”

He wasn’t quite sure what to do about the invisible undead. Then a thought struck him. “Gather any of the living and have them point out any undead you aren’t able to see. Then hose down the area with a water mage and that should be sufficient to ruin the spell.”

Grobert nodded and flashed away again.

He doubted the necromancer had crafted amulets for all of his undead. If the man had actually crafted amulets for all of his undead, they were in serious trouble. Speaking of the amulet, Norman pulled the one he got off the necromancer out of his pocket. The fact that it still worked said a lot about the item's construction. It was a simple circle made from what looked like gold with all of the symbols Norman was familiar with but slightly changed. The spell circle was attached to some unknown material. It didn’t feel like metal when Norman scratched at it. Maybe a type of plastic or ceramic. Some sort of insulator perhaps? Norman tucked it back into his pocket, he would have to look into it later.

The walk from the castle hill to the city was slow. Mainly because more guards took up a defensive role around Norman. They weren’t taking any chances that an unseen assailant was nearby.

That turned out to be a wise decision as something slammed into their formation and tried to carve its way through Norman’s defenders to get at him. Whatever it was, the regular guards weren’t able to do much to slow it down. But his two Death Knights, Lohr and Nolix were able to damage the creature, finally revealing what it was.

Even looking at it, once the spell that cloaked it had been broken, Norman still couldn’t say for sure what it was supposed to be. But he recalled another spell he saw in the recovered grimoire. This creature had to be a bone horror. It looked like a cross between a bear skeleton and a praying mantis.

Despite the magical spears carving deep rents into the beast's bones, the thing did not give up. It lashed out with its scythe-like arms, trying to tear into his armored knights just as they were doing to it.

Norman’s Bone Armor had been upgraded for himself and all of his soldiers, however, and the condensed armor shrugged off the creature's powerful blows with only minor damage. Not wanting to waste time dealing with this mindless abomination of bone and anger, Norman simply tossed a Stasis spell anchor at the creature, causing it to vanish inside the storage bone. He would figure out a way to deal with the thing later.

After collecting the dead guards for revival, Norman and his entourage continued toward the city. To say it was chaos was an understatement. There were corpses strewn about everywhere. The sight of all the dead made Norman extremely annoyed. It hadn’t been more than a few months since the city had been rebuilt and all of his people restored. And now he had to go through the process once again. And once again Norman resisted the urge to pull the soul of his enemy back and torture him somehow.

He had wanted to rebuild the array that stored the dead, but he didn’t have the sort of resources he needed to power it anymore. Last time he used his magic blood dust to prime the spell, but it would have taken hundreds of bottles of the substance to actually activate the spell. This is why Norman used the life force of the invaders to power the array the first time around. And while he could still do that, he was not about to. Not with the Alacala merchants and other living people now roaming about the city.

It’s a good thing he hadn’t done that. Because the merchants were now being put to use rooting out all the undead that were invisible to other undead. Norman had to admire the simplicity of the plan this necromancer had come up with. He would also need to look into that spell. If it could be made to make anything completely invisible to the undead. There may also be a way to make the undead invisible to the living. A horrifying prospect if a necromancer with malicious intent figured it out.

Norman’s group came across one more bone horror slicing its way through the city. This time the group didn’t even stop. Norman hit the creature with a spell anchor before it even noticed them. As they ran past where the creature had been, one of the guards scooped up the bone and handed it to Norman.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

That wasn’t the only issue they encountered though. As they rounded one corner, they came upon a group of guards fighting against what looked like a troll. Only this was an undead troll, which kept healing its spear wounds and taking swipes at the soldiers trying to take it down.

Norman began to cast that cage spell, not sure if he could even make it large enough to contain the eight-foot-tall creature. But before he finished casting it, Grobert appeared on the back of the creature and shoved his arm into its neck. With a crack of displaced air, the creature's entire skeleton was teleported ten feet away. This caused the rest of the creature to collapse into a quivering heap of muscle and skin.

Grobert teleported off the pile and appeared next to Norman. “Ugh, fucking hate trolls. It’ll heal even from the loss of its skeleton, but that should take a day or so. It needs to be burned completely so it can’t regenerate.”

Still a bit shocked at the casual display of Grobert removing someone’s skeleton from their body, it took a moment for Norman to respond. “…Right.” Norman pointed to the guards that had been attacking the creature. “Drag this outside the city and burn it. Get a fire mage to assist you if possible. I don’t want any scrap of this creature left.”

After giving the orders, Norman turned toward Grobert. “So your people call them trolls too?”

He nodded. “Trolls are one of the few creatures that seem to resonate through the realms in the subconscious or nightmares. Much like dragons and other such magical creatures.”

“That was a magical creature? Wait… dragons exist!”

“Yes to both. Trolls are almost impossible to kill because they regenerate from any wound very quickly. As for dragons, stay away from them and they will leave you alone. I don’t know where this necromancer got his hands on a troll corpse. But that would have been a very dangerous creature to let roam free. Even more so in its undead state. We should ensure no other magical creatures are running about.” With that, Grobert vanished again.

Norman was so going to grill the man about dragons when he got a chance.

The group didn’t come across any more fighting as they made their way to the gate. But they did store another forty or so bodies. Most looked to have been cut down by spears. Norman would need to ask Eugene about this later. He was sure Eugene was busy corralling the host of undead outside the city at the moment.

As his group turned onto the main street, he could finally see the main gate. The outer door had been shut and the portcullis dropped into place. Four Death Knights stood at the ready behind the portcullis, while there were another dozen guards with crossbows standing on the battlements.

Norman dismissed most of the guards following him, keeping only Nolix and Lohr by his side as he made his way to the top of the wall.

Once at the top, Norman was saluted by a man wearing a reserve armband that designated him as a wind mage. “I was told to await your arrival, Sir. I can augment your voice so it will be heard over the entire crowd.”

Norman nodded and gestured toward the wall. “Then let’s get started. I’m sure the situation outside the wall isn’t getting any better.”

“It is not, Sir.”

The man followed Norman to a spot above the main door. There he finally got his first look at the mass of people. A circle of Death Knights surrounded the much more numerous group of undead. Not that that meant anything. His Death Knights were all classers.

But the groups seemed mostly fine waiting each other out. That could also have something to do with the corpses that were strewn on the ground between the two groups.

After getting a good look at the situation, Norman nodded toward the mage. “Silence!” Norman shouted, his voice booming over the area like a cannon shot.

The rowdy crowd quieted as they turned toward him. He waited a moment to ensure he had everyone's attention. At least everyone that hadn’t used the opportunity to try and rush through the line of Death Knights. Norman ignored those idiots as he addressed the crowd that outnumbered all of Ashvale by more than three to one.

“I would like to be the first to welcome you all to my humble city, Ashvale. I know you may be confused as to how you got here. But rest assured I will explain what happened. As for why you are being treated this way, we need to ensure you are not hostile.”

He could see confusion in many faces. But mostly fear and a healthy dose of anger.

“You see, you have all died. Your bodies were then used as soldiers for a necromancer. To what end, I don’t know. The person that was controlling you came here to try and take my city. As you may realize by me standing here, and you having control of your bodies again, that man failed.”

“If that’s the case, let us go!” one man shouted. This call was taken up by others.

Norman gave them time to vent before he whistled, gaining quiet once again. “Before you decide, let me tell you why that wouldn’t be a good idea for you. If you still want to leave after that, I will not stop you. But I will warn you. If I hear that you are causing issues in my country or neighboring ones, you will be hunted down and eliminated. I will not have you besmirching our reputation.”

Insults and threats were thrown his way, but Norman ignored them. He almost forgot how tiring it was dealing with humans. He let them vent for a bit before continuing. “As undead, you will be seen with suspicion and scorn in most places outside of Normenia. This is one of the reasons I built Ashvale. As you may have noticed, the majority of the citizen are undead. I see some ooraki, some lizna, and even some ratar amongst you gathered here. All are welcome to join my city as long as they contribute and act as upstanding citizens within our laws. If you wish to divide yourselves and live within your own communities within my kingdom’s borders. You are free to do so. There are areas within this zone, I have claimed as my kingdom, for those that wish to strike out and build their own cities. You are welcome to live anywhere within my borders so long as you follow the laws and pay a set tax.”

“We don’t want to be undead. Can you return us to life? Fix us!” And other such questions and demands were hurled toward Norman.

“SILENCE!” Norman’s roar silenced the crowd once again.

“You have no right to come here and demand anything from me. You should be thankful I was generous enough to restore your souls to your bodies. I could just as easily have vaporized you all.” Norman knew he was being harsh. But he didn’t owe these undead anything. They weren’t like his people. “As I was saying. You may leave if you so choose. But you will likely end up as a slave, killed, or experimented on. But here you can live in relative freedom and safety. The choice is yours, and it’s time to make it.”

Nobody noticed the random and out-of-place crow as it took off from a distant tree and flew west after the speech ended.