To say the village of Blackwood had overcome the night without any major losses would be an overstatement.

Surprisingly, all of the villagers had survived the night, though many have sustained injury from either the attack, or the fire. Some of the villagers had inhaled quite a bit of smoke, however, so the next few hours would prove crucial.

The buildings closest to the forest, mainly the church and the inn, had sustained damage that would not allow the villagers to take on their usual MO for quite some time. As most of the capable village-people were out in the forest when it was set on fire, no one really was able to stop it from reaching the buildings. Then again, any attempt to put out the fire single-handedly most likely would have proven futile.

Those were the kinds of thoughts Sasha had as she watched the events of the night unfold through a crystal ball. It hurt Sasha to see her former home like that, but sacrifices had to be made and their little experiment had proved successful. A tinge of pride mixed with relief hit her as she watched her little sister take the initiative and guide the villagers to use a rain spell to put out the fire. In the end, she really hadn’t needed to worry about leaving her on her own.

“So, what you say, Rudolph??” She asked the person opposite.

“I guess we can let that pass. Though, honestly, we should probably dispose of the pastor in some way, not that he would be of any more use from now on.”

“Agreed, so we can report this as successful?”

“That is not our decision to make.”

“Well, we couldn’t have possibly guessed that there would be a Grimoire user involved.”

“A blessing in disguise, really ...”

“What makes you say so?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“If Ebony hadn’t messed up seizing the Grimoire back then, we most likely wouldn’t have any witnesses left to report the whole ordeal.”

“What about it? We’re not the first ones to try our hands at necromancy.”

“Yes, but this might well be the most successful recorded attempt. This could end up becoming a matter at national level.”

“You are at national level too, you’d be able to do something about that, right?”

“Sasha, you really have no idea what politics is about.”

“What, I am just some country bumpkin after all.”

“A country bumpkin that ended up being too powerful to not join our ranks,” the way Rudolph said this had a certain sting to it.

“Hahah, how flattering!”

Sasha knew that Rudolph had whatever suspicions about her. Maybe it was because she was new, maybe because she had gathered astounding power over the past three years that she had been studying magic, or maybe because her motives were rather elusive.

Rudolph on the other hand had everything that you needed to either be an upstanding citizen, or a crooked savant. At least that is the impression she got from him, without having known him that much. Except for their “business meetings” as she liked to call them, they barely exchanged any words. Although, from rumors she knew that studying magic is only a side dish to his big serving of revenge that he craved.

“Well,” Sasha said, ripping herself out of her own thoughts, “what else can we do other than report? It was only a test run after all, and even if you consider being unable to wipe out the entire village a failure, what we were really after was how an undead army would perform.”

“Exactly.”

“Not every day you get that kind of magic field test, hahah.” Sasha let a grin slip, thinking back to what she had witnessed over these past few hours.

“Then hopefully we will soon be able to move on to the next stage,” Rudolph said in a rather cold manner, and lifted himself from his seat.

“Are you coming with me?” He asked her, though at first, she didn’t respond, only eyeing her younger sister.

“I have a younger sibling as well.”

“So, I’ve heard.”

“I love him with all I have.”

“So do I.”

“And I like being able to show him that.”

“...”

“Which is why I don’t understand how you could be so cruel to your sister.”

“It is because I love her that I wouldn’t want her to know what I am doing.”

“... My brother would hate me if he knew.”

“See?”

“You shouldn’t overuse Alabaster like that, it might arise suspicion.”

“I’ll call him back. She will most likely think that he got lost in the fire.”

“Of course.”

Sasha spent the next couple minutes looking through the crystal ball, getting a few final glimpses of her sister.