3th day of Zun’s Rest, twelfth month of the year, 983:

….he had always liked fire, it warmed him, it erased the things he wanted it to erase, it danced with the same anger and was unforgiving. It had been a gift from her mother, the art that had gotten him admitted in the University of the capital. He still remembered when he had dried his sister after she had fallen in a nearby small stream.

The tens of houses bathed in flames, home to hundreds of screams, were so warm they had melted all the nearby snow. Some bodies launched themselves from the windows, engulfed in flames. Pale and carbonised mockeries of the people they once were, were crackling with the same intensity as high quality wood. Some weakly twitching, some frantically rolling around, some already quieting down as fire feed of them. Some thin, some wide, some short, some tall. It didn’t matter to the fire and it had not mattered to him. The air drying up, he felt euphoric.

None mattered but flaunting the nether he had brought upon them with his manic laughter. “Serve you right!!”, he screamed in his mind, unconsciously trying to drown the guilt he didn’t know he felt but which was already battering his mind to be known. Some traitors ran towards him, not all were ‘sleeping’ in their homes.

They had declared his rebellion after all, they had to be prepared. Most with pitchforks, a few with swords, and three with bows, hidden inside the nearby forest and armed with enchanted crossbows capable of reaching from that long distance, almost eight hundred meters.

He also had a plan, a most cruel one. When they tried to reach him in the middle of the village, he casted the spell he had been carving on the ground, and the smoke that was running away, trying to fly away to warn anyone of the crimes committed here, got trapped back inside, as if a giant was sucking it back down. He had prepared defences for it, but the attacking men were not so lucky, their lungs burning from the ardent breaths they had to take to live, their very bodies betraying them to their agonising deaths.

“Only the bowmen were far enough.” He extended the shadows at his feet, and dived in them. Two of the bowmen had started to run, the first one had fallen to his knees after witnessing the reddish black storm that had taken his home. He was quickly impaled when the black wizard rose from the shadows he was projecting on the ground below him. His face reflected the most pure hopelessness the black wizard had ever seen, for seeing one’s loved ones burn alive was a curse not many could endure.

…..

On and on he slashed, dancing a death’s dance against people he never wanted to fight. Alone, behind enemy lies, in a cacophony of metal, grunts and screams, he cleaved, evaded, tanked and parried. Blood had already tainted the little clearing near the forest he had emerged, pursued by the rebels of his Countess. Already, the bodies endangered his high mobility fighting style. Nonetheless, he was, after all, a magic binding mage, and both his armour and magic barriers withstood yet another test of blood and fury. His sword was his biggest creation as a craftsman, not that he could stop to think about his dark blade. The reinforcement magic maintaining his stamina, he murdered and butchered until the last man dropped to the ground. A pitiful youngling, son of one of the men he had killed that day, and not the first he had killed in this conflict. His face was stained in blood, gore, tears and dirt. With a shaky voice, he tried to plead for them to find solace in whatever afterlife waited them, not knowing he could have rather have begged to the Nether, for the demons would have, at least, heard him.

…..

”I hate you big brother!” ran crying, his sister. He had carried his demons from the battlefield with him, things he never wanted to expose to her sister. His hate and anger against the world he hated, what right did he have to slash at the only person he loved? Could he be called nothing but a monster? The looks that the soldiers that had seen him in battle agreed, his victims too. Why was he still fighting, what did the throne, the barony, everything, mattered to him? He looked at his sword, the illusion of a blood coated scabbard laughing at him. ‘Are you even asking that?’ It seemed to ask, its black blade making him lose control. He picked up his wooden chair and smashed it onto the wall. That acted as the spark that lit a blaze, and the debris was soon expanded with the table, the bed frame, the windows, the paintings. The mirror he smashed with a punch.

Laying, with hands bleeding, on the ground, he looked at the sword he had stabbed in the wall. His dark gaze toying with the edge which had extinguished so many souls, maybe one wouldn’t be…

Screaming, Noct woke up, sweating bullets. Nobody ever heard him, the walls were too thick and few lived in the castle. Taking slow breaths, he looked outside the window. Dawn had not come yet and he was already sick of the day. Standing up, he casted a spell to clean himself from the cold sweat and got dressed in his training gear. Tired from his restless sleep, further complicated by him staying up late to finish some paperwork, he casted a ‘recovering stamina’ spell, grabbed some food from the kitchen and started training.

Before the sun reared its ugly head, Noct finished his training and evaded Mulia by phasing to ‘The Forge’. She had been awfully pushy since he had almost fired her 3 weeks ago. So friendly and happy that it was blinding; he truly appreciated the effort she put in to try and close the distance, but he neither wanted nor believed himself worthy of it. There was also the unspoken fact of him revealing himself as a necromancer in front of her. He knew she was not going to black mail him, not that he knew why she still stayed. Raising from the shadows, he arrived at the underground of the castle.

Well, it was underground of the castle, but it was not connected to the castle itself. It was an isolated floor under the city, full of mushroom farms and with his private library. It expanded almost parallel to the city above, acting as a good platform to repair and maintain the sewer system. What’s more, it was home to his army of undead.

As quickly as he opened his eyes, his army laid in wait, living for the next orders that had yet to arrive. A thousand and five hundred skeletons armed with personally crafted iron armour, swords, spears, axes and shields.

They stood silently in the center of the floor, resting in a chamber that the eyes could badly see the walls of. Their eyes shone with glee, having met their creator again after so long. Most of them were akin to puppets, some, the ones in the front rows, acted with personality. Eyes darting, hands moving, the mask of undeath hiding the excitement of seeing Noct back. He almost looked away, shame forming thanks to those bright looks. He had created a few on a wim, when he had been all along. He had created them because he wanted someone to talk, a family he could hinder with his presence, with his demons. They had grown splendidly, but they had looked so alone. ‘A few more would not hurt.’, ‘A highly skilled special force would surely be useful.’, ‘The underground city is too big, I need more for proper maintenance.’, the excuses he had used sounded so empty now. Still, they were also his vassals, and he was sworn to protect them.

Looking at the middle of the mega room, he saw an incredible complex spell decorated, engraved, the stone of the ground. Tens of different circles that harmonised into a chorus of ‘grey mana’, the mana used in necromantic spells. It was a corrupted energy that would be dissolved and turned into mana by nearby, ‘pure’, normal mana, also called blue mana.

The world was not as kind as to permit weakness, so the trick to its survival laid in where it resided. In bodies with lifeforce, it festered, able to corrupt the normal mana after fusing itself with the lifeforce of the host and integrating it, ‘killing’ it in a way. The dying body could now feed on blue mana, attacking the ambiental mana and bringing it inside for its conversion into grey mana and undead lifeforce, boosting its quantity and granting the host more power. This unknown fact was the meaning behind the reality of only withered and old warlocks marching with their army of undeads, as grey mana was a double edge sword. The more it grew and the more it was used, the more its host turned into another undead and the less healthy lifeforce remained in them.

More powerful but trickier to use, its power could only be rivalled by the fear and hate it was looked at with. With a distinct sickly and diseased green colour, it used both its inherent power and the lifeforce it was used to bring spells so powerful a simple spark spell could burn down a house, as the conflicting reaction between blue mana and grey mana in symbiosis with lifeforce forced a rasher reaction. Together with the forced expansion and restoration of lifeforce, the true reason behind the immortality and strength of undead beings, it grows slowly with time only on undead beings. Older undead were more dangerous as they had more ‘undead’ lifeforce to burn.

The way of spell casting also greatly varied. A normal spell could be casted by the mana inside one's body to grant a near instantly cast or by the construction of spell circles to call upon the atmospheric mana, giving them all the power it needs. A spell of grey mana, on the other hand, could only be casted with grey mana, which wasn’t easily available.

While it gave a permeated buff to their physical performance, as the grey mana was always active, being this phenomenon which granted skeletons the ability to walk and vampires and other fleshy undeads their superhuman strength; on the other hand it prohibited the ability to call upon atmospheric mana. It had to be converted to grey mana before being usable and requiring the spell to be activated fast, as it was a volatile mana when not implanted in a body. It was a complex and slow progress if only using formulae. Using living sacrifices fastened the progress, as it gave the construct the life force needed to quickly corrupt blue mana. This method was commonly used by warlocks or young undead to attend to their wicked deeds who were incapable of having the swiftness of a seasoned wizard.

Returning to the spell, its functionality resided in its ability to create undead skeletons from human bodies. The normal variants of those spells were fairly simple, the problem laid in the type of creation that would sprung from it. A normal, lowly skeleton or zombie would bring with it its terrified soul, giving it a twisted personality and making it difficult to control, as well as give it an anger for every living thing, for the hate of being themselves prisoners inside their bodies turned them mad.

The small runic spell circle in the midst of the spell’s tapestry was that very spell, the rest of the overcomplicated work was the protection necessary to let the soul rest in peace while still creating a new artificial soul to animate the undead with. This had its drawbacks, as the memories of the undead would be nonexistent, requiring a period of acclimating to learn common knowledge, language, basic arithmetics, and a lot more; together with the unbelievable amount of mana it burned and the time that it needed to cast it was a very low efficiency spell. The only benefit was a completely new and independent being, which could learn and reason.

Once he started to walk to his study and after he had nodded to them, three of the skeletons that resided here strolled forward and kneeled in front of their master.

The racket caused by the skeleton of the right, cladded head to ‘toe’ in heavy plate armour engraved with symbols to the God of Justice and Order, Zun, greeted Noct first.

“It is always a pleasure to serve you, Lord Ashen. If I may brief you on the status of your forces, the training is going good. Soon they will be an army even the Empire couldn’t scoff at.” Greeted Latraz, bowing his head. Its tower shield colliding against the ground.

The second ‘skeleton’ who spoke was but a woman that appeared to be in his early 20s, clothed on the robes of high nobility that it had handcrafted. White hair, red eyes and the physical appearance of a too unnaturally beautiful lady, not used to working for his own bread, she butted in.

“Noct, we all have missed you! I finally managed to master that phasing spell of yours!!” Excitedly, Eve started talking.

The skeleton at the left, dressed on the clothes of a mage in training, all of them dyed in white, shaked his head and simply nodded towards Noct,

Without realising, Noct was already smiling. He started dealing with his first skeletons he had brought to live, and his best friends, and he felt his fatigue disappear. Every time he saw them he felt unworthy of their affection, not that he was strong enough to push them away. Maybe he loved them less than his sister and the people on the surface, as he had been able to push her away, he didn’t know.

“Please, hold it. Can you wait a bit, Eve? Let’s get work done first.”

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………………….

“....the last batch of mushrooms has already grown. It is as we had hoped, m’lord. They work.”

Noct could have kissed Kal if he had a mouth; as life had turned more complicated on the surface, it had been hard at work coauthoring his research. And they had finally bred a type of mushroom that had a life cycle of days. It matured in hours and its metabolism was unthinkable quick. The problem was that it generated a lot of heat and used a lot of water. Those problems were of no concern, as it would be employed on the sewer system to decompose the sewage and turn it into fertiliser, which the north lacked the capabilities to mass produce. He started to write a letter and answered.

“I can’t thank you enough, Kal. Is the comestible breed still toxic?”

“Slightly, it will take more trials to develop.”

“I see, we still have a lot of work to do.”

Kal nodded and cleaned the table of the research room of experimental samples. An almost dark room illuminated by both the small greenish glow of the fire of the eyes’ sockets of Kal and the crystal lamps that shone the same as sunlight. His barony had been able to find a vein of them inside the forest and, as they had started to exploit it, he had started the construction of fuelless lanterns and lamps. “They illuminate little, but it is enough to see something, once we have made enough of them I will upgrade the city. I really should thank the craftsmen, they have done wonders with the books of crafting I smuggled here. The problem will be teaching the Guilds above.” Though Noct.

Once he got up from the chair, a green smoke came from the small cracks of the room’s stone walls and turned into Eve.

“See? And you didn’t believe me.” She messed with Noct.

“You really crush all my expectations to dust. How did you manage it? It's beyond me, I started to teach you shadow magic two years ago and you are already at this level. You are going to leave me behind at this pace.” Softly laughed Noct, pride overflowing him.

“Well, I do have a lot of time in my hands.” Said with a happy smile.

Cooling down after that casual reply, he sobered up, “Yeah. That is certainly right. I am sorry for bringing it up, I still can’t let you live under the sun.” Sadly remarked Noct.

Flustered, Eve tried to console him after realising her blunder, “It wasn’t in that way, Noct! I truly am delighted to be here, and to exist with you and all of my siblings. You really can’t do more.”

“I could always let you go up, damn the consequences.” Drily said Noct, cursing his inability to tackle the issue without being tried for heresy. “It still pains me to remember your cheerful face when I gave you the appearance of a human, knowing I cannot remove the special aura your mana gives, a run of the mill mage could detect it easily enough.”

“You made it for me after I asked you to. I wanted to feel the air currents hit me, I wanted to be able to eat and taste food, I wanted to sleep and dream; and you granted me that greedy wish of mine. There’s nothing you ought to apologise for.” It had the unwavering gaze of something that had truly made peace with itself.

“....” Despite his dark thoughts, Noct felt himself lifting up a bit.

“Talking about eating, it’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it?” It said with a devilish smile.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot” Answered half hearty Noct. He started to undress his neck and continue to ask, more to himself, while Eve stalked towards him. “Still, I cannot but think that I was selfish creating you all those years ago. It was but a desire of not wanting to be alone, was it truly something as noble as you put it?”

Stopping in its tracks, it asked with a bit of fear in his voice. “Everything’s alright, Noct? You have been awfully depressed these past months. It’s not like you to ask for validation nor to be so idiotic.” It resumed its stalk and neared his mouth to his ear, whispering softly, ”Of course what you did was selfish, but living is selfish, birthing a child is selfish, eating another living being is selfish. The key is if you intended to hurt it. You gave us, me, a home, do not dare to step all over our happiness. You are our family because you made it so, and, if it gives you the validation it appears you lack, we chose to be a part of it, every single day.” Once it finished, it softly bit into his neck and started to suck the red nectar its physical form required to sustain itself.

An artificial vampire was what Eve was, but a vampire nonetheless. An undead with undead lifeforce in the guise of a normal body, one which acted like one of the living beings of the world. And that life was what gave its grey mana more power, for a partially alive host was a better catalyst for the corruption of blue mana. Skeletons, liches and corporeal undeads, unlike wraiths and the more, only had the lingering lifeforce that their old bodies still had when they died, so the grey mana lacked substance to latch into. It slowed the process substantially, requiring a lot more time to grow and expand, but the lack of the necessities of a living being let them ‘live’ ascetically, only focusing on their goals. It also gave them an incredible slow slog to sentience, diminishing the intelligence and sentience of younger, true undeads.

In exchange for their powers and human look-alikeness, vampires needed to feed upon living tissue. Their degraded digestive system could only handle liquids, thus choosing blood as their preferred food. Cunning predators, they stalked living populations in their own cities, seducing their prey by their heavenly looks grafted by the form altering spells that ‘resurrected’ them, highly harmful to true living beings, and slaving them to them by the euphoria and addiction that their bites generated.

This was the true reason Eve had asked Noct to give it a human body, hence transforming it, or she as Eve wanted to be, mainly because Noct was attracted to those ‘females’, into a vampire. She wanted to chain him with her in the world that, she knew, deserved him. Not those meatbags who had wronged him and not that fake family that had brought their fates onto themselves. It had always loved Noct since he had created them, and it was the only one that truly loved him. He had treated them all, even the mindless bone puppets they commanded, with respect and love. A family, And it would stay with him forever, no matter the cost, no matter how or what it would have to do.

Seductively moaning as she stopped biting him, she smiled at him and said. “We are here thanks to you, we live as we want thanks to you, never forget it or Kal will get really angry.”

Kal nodded from near the chest he had uploaded the samples, looking at Noct with the loyalty that could only be gained through actions over petty words.

A bit flustered from the feeding, Noct took a breath and answered, now tranquil, “...I see, thank you. I really do not deserve this world I have crafted here, in the dark.”

………………..

Noct went back to the ‘training area’, the initial room where he had sprung from, and checked on the training

Latraz was there, as always, training the skeletons on the noble art of warfare. He was also the one who oversaw the maintenance of the sewers and the living rooms of all skeletons, together with their education.

Noct sat on the ground, a bit further away to avoid disturbing them, and watched them for a few hours. Perfect discipline, perfect and practised movements and a perfect formation. Damned be he, Latraz hadn’t been exaggerating, not that he had ever caught him lying since his creation. “He was a truly honest and good man.”

“My Lord Noct, it is always a pleasure to see you on the training grounds.” Noct almost jumped from the scare, ‘He still has the bad habit of being very sneaky when he wants.’ Noct would never admit it, but he liked the pranks sometimes it put on him.

“I see. The living rooms?”

“All according to your code, m’Lord”

“That’s good to hear; anyone on a name basis yet?”

“Well, only another three hundred, the rest are younger than 5 years.”

“Great, bring them to the front, I will name them. Remember to tell them they can pick whatever job they want, I will manage.”

“Yes, m’Lord!” It's fist hitting its chest plate,it called upon the fortunate ones.

…………..

“It is almost time for you to leave us, m’Lord” Said Latraz, as it passed him a wineskin full of cleaned water.

“Regretfully…so” Said Noct, tired.

“Having trouble on the surface, m’Lord?” Looking ahead towards where the gaze of Noct was lost, it asked.

“Eve played the stalker?”

“She would never. You looked too solemn, grazing over them all with the highest of prides. You have started to build escape tunnels, m’Lord, and I am starting to fear you are preparing for a near death.”

“I took myself more subtle with these kinds of things. How did you find out?”

“You insult me my lord,'' Laughed Lantraz. “These are the lands you entrusted me with. Nothing gets built on them without being inspected and up to the code you mandated, m’Lord.”

“Well, it is always better to have second plans, right?”

Turning to look at him, its green eyes lightly illuminating the face of Noct, Lantraz declared, “This is no second plan, Noct. Know that I would rather forsake my faith, and all you have teached me, to drench the surface in a sea of flames and blood if it dared to harm you, m’Lord.”

“Your faith and ideals shouldn’t be so shallow, Lantraz.” Spat Noct

A slap resounded over the room. Noct, surprised, grabbed his bleeding cheek, as bones hurt way more than meat, but hard, cold steel beat them both.

“They aren’t, Noct. Stop angering me, you already know I would die for them.”

Noct started to regret his snarking remark, and asked.

“Do you ever regret them?”

Lantraz looked forward again, the sight he took in was a shadow covered stone wall, fifty meters in front of them. “.....Well, I have never been tested by the world. Maybe I would cover and run away if my life was in danger. Maybe I would really be a fickle and unjust man,“ It slowly unsheathed his longsword, a golden blade engraved with the mantra of the Zun faith ‘The Shield of the Weak’, forged my Noct, and watched as it catched the silent and white flames common to the weapons of paladins of Zun.

“But I will fight everyday to meet the expectations I have of myself. I truly do believe every life is sacred and that it is our duty to protect them, no matter what they are, or what they have done. If you would break a hundred chances, Noct, I would give you a hundred and one. I know what you did, I know of how many times you have fallen to the ground, almost surrendering and ending it all.” Stabbing the sword on the ground and letting the flames lick his gauntlet, beneath it a clenched bone hand, it let its words sink.

“And yes, I will beat you, I will admonish you, I will scream at you for your wrongdoings, but when you are on the ground, when you have lost your faith,“ Raising up to his feet and lending Noct a hand, ”I will be there, like I am now, silently waiting for you to grab my hand. I will not let you surrender, m’Lord, nor will I let you give up and fall to evil. Never I will let you stop walking the path of good, but I will be here for both the bad and the good, Noct. I may not forgive, that’s, in the end, something you must work for yourself, but I will never hate nor leave. A hundred and one chances Noct, and I will stay for the hundred two.”

“I see not the silence you boasted about when waiting for me to grab your hard, you clown.” Said Noct in a mocking tone, his eyes watering a bit, “You are always going to be that upright bastard you always were, right?” Continued, grabbing his friend's hand.

“Damn right I will be. And just you wait, your cynic personality won’t hold out. You will gladly enter the ranks of the faithful, even If I have to continue to pester you for a millennium.” Chuckled Lantraz

As Lantraz raised him, Noct smirked and opposed that resolution, “Keep dreaming you white ass zealot.”

……………….

A light knock resounded in the room of Kal. It was as plain a room could be. A simple bed, a simple wooden chair and a simple table full of books on light magic. It had always loved light, the dancing of the fire, the shining rays of the sun, the magical emanations of the crystals, the glossy appearance of a true smile, the green painting of the forest of ‘the above’, it all gave him peace and hope. He also hated lies, the fake smile Noct had every time he came from ‘the above’, the lies Eve tried to tell herself to justify her avarice, the lies Noct always told them about his state of mind.

It had learned to distinguish and how to bring both the things it loved most and the ones it hated. How to shine and light the way and how to lie and mask, all to try to help the one who had let it find meaning in hope. When it had lost hope of living outside, under the natural light and forest he so craved, Noct had sworn to build it a future. It still remembered when Noct had presented her a Dryad, he was but a bone puppet by them, but still he remembered the beautiful scenery of the forest.

He desired a tree house, a fluffy mascot, a garden, and Noct would deliver. That he believed. But Noct also was part of that future, a home of them 4 on a simple life on the outside, on the so called ‘countryside’. It would rather help Eve in its schemes than to let Noct die.

It silently opened the door and met Noct with a nod, which Noct answered with a smile and wordlessly sat on a chair and opened a book. Kal sat on his chair and continued studying. A few minutes passed and Kal went to Noct and asked a doubt it had on a spell, which Noct solved. A few minutes later, Noct rose up and made a nod to Kal, who put a hand on his shoulder and applied a bit of force to convey his feelings. Noct smiled again and promptly phased.

“This,” blissfully thought Kal “this is the life I want.”

A silent goodbye, but not an emotionless one, for when trust and affection grew above a degree, words stop mattering.

…………………………………