I was quite eloquent as the sickly white hand of necromantic flame passed through my flesh and found the essence of my being.

My utterance of brilliance would be sung in the halls of kings forevermore.

In fact...

I would need to remember what I said, and write it down, "Yech!"

My essence attempted to leave my body via mouth and nose. The newly born worms in my nasal cavity did not appreciate the sudden rushing of my non-corporeal self and they wriggled as they were sent spewing outwards with the rush of my energy.

Philosophers and poets will wax on and on about the spirits of man. Writers will talk about the angst of a soul and attempt to put words to the essence of a soul. Me, I am not all that fancy at words. I know when the maggots squirm into my spine that it is gonna rain. I know snow is near when a Warren beneath my bed attempts to drive a dagger through the mattress and kill me. I know that Ursula will laugh and smile just like she did when she was alive, the one being among us once mortals that made it through the transition of undeath without losing her humanity.

These are all bizarre things that I don't really question or try to make sense of.

They just are facts of life...

Well I guess now it would be unlife.

It was interesting to have all these thoughts passing through my mind as my soul shot through the air towards another being of my race. Time was slowing around me; sort of to be expected in this type of situation. You only got a few seconds to have your life flash before your eyes and boy it would be rude to be interrupted before you could enjoy seeing all the scenes of your life before the final curtain drops.

Can you imagine little Timmy only getting to enjoy his first ice cream but gets squashed by the rampaging Twa before he gets to relive his first tumble with Margaret?

It would be a true travesty. That sort of thing that gets someone sent to another world... And I gotta be honest I don't have time to get to another world. I have a farm that is finally some sort of semblance of sanity in this stupid place of undeath. As I thought of my farm (with its glorious brain plants, clucking chickens of doom and the grumpy Twa waiting to have leeches put on them) my resolve firmed. I sank the last threads of my spirit into my flesh, an anchor to move my bluish flesh and sent the necessary signal to muscles.

My body responded to my mental command and leapt forward, caught an excellent foothold when it landed and launched with the speed of a hawk towards my soul stealer.

Unfortunately, once my body was in the air and moving forward it didn't really know what to do, it scrabbled in the air, then turned end over end like a puppet tied to a windmill.

I inwardly groaned as I sailed towards my soulnapper.

This was going to look ridiculous.

The Wight's sneering expression of triumph changed to one of confusion as she saw a corpse cartwheeling through the air towards her. It took another second for her brain to realize this was not a random affect of my soul being stolen. This was an attack! She shifted her weight to take a step back, my body passed through me and slammed into her. I did have a moment of triumph was the spinning effect of my body caught the undead female at the head and slammed her into the ground.

My elation was however short lived, the anchors in my body snapped taut and I was back in my rotting flesh. My happiness was further dampened as my senses returned and I was forcibly reintroduced to all the panicked things thriving within the flesh of my body. I was also given a great big heaping dose of vertigo. Gee! Thanks gravity, what would I do without you bringing me gifts all the time?

SMASH!

"ARGH!" I shouted. I gotta say I was all sorts of clever with the words today.

The Wight was stunned; I appreciated this and showed my appreciate by introducing her face to my boot. It was not really all that chivalrous, I was still laying prone. My limbs all sorts of tangled up with the limbs of my attacker. It was just a good ol' punt to her face like I was driving a shovel into the ground to dig a hole for a new Sanguis sapling. But she did attack me first and once someone starts a dance with me I see it to the last chord of the banjo.

"What is wrong with you!?" I grumbled. Her neck snapped on the third kick. It flew off on the fifth. I decided my name for her was gonna be Headless.

I rolled to my side and got up with only a little bit of cursing. The critters dwelling within me finally subsided as I patted the dust and dirt off my clothes. Ursula handed me the straw hat that had been lost in my abrupt and unappreciated attempt to fly.

Bozo walked over and prodded Headless with his sword. "Is she dead?"

"She's already dead! She is an undead being, she can't die again. Come on, Bozo. We've been over this like..." I paused to count in my head.

"At least sixteen times." Ursula offered.

"Sixteen and change!" I said giving up on the counting. My head was still trying to get the right parts of my soul connected to the correct section of my decaying brain. My mind did grab the bit of info that did matter. "Get away from Headless!"

Bozo stared up at me with a blank expression through his long blonde eyelashes. His bright blue eyes perfectly caught the light through the corrupt forest and made his irises look brighter. His blonde hair stirred slightly as he tilted his head to the side as he pondered my urgent words. I felt a foreboding. It was clear he was still hopped up on adrenaline and needed a gentle nudge to help him understand my words.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

I knew I must be kind and soft to one coming down from battle lust.

I was both kind and soft as I moved towards him like a galloping horse.

I was as tender as a mother with a newborn child as I landed a donkey kick to his chest and sent him fifteen feet away from the Wight. I congratulated myself on the delicate handling of a brain addled warrior as Headless's head reformed onto her neck.

I gave myself a mental pat on the back as I curb stomped the Wight's head into a pulp. I promised myself a soothing bath of fermented Ossis berries when I got home; I deserved such a reward I thought as I scraped the opponent's bone slivers and brain matter from my worn boots.

"What is wrong with you!" Bozo shouted, he did not sound like he was going to be helping with my soothing bath. "You almost killed me!"

Ursula drove her sword into Headless's chest. "We are trying to keep you alive. If you took five seconds to pay attention you would make our work a lot easier!"

"Steady now." I said with a slight shard of rebuke in my voice. "Being a curmudgeon is my schtick. Find your own personality quirks."

She shot me a withering look "There are lots of trees around, I can introduce you to a 'schtick' if you want." A strand didn't stir on her head when the Wight became whole again and lashed out with long claws to tear at the Plain One. The broadsword pinned Headless came just short of reaching Ursula. The trapped enemy's claws twitching so close that the white fabric stirred but didn't touch. "We have a motherfreaking Wight here!!! What part of this concerning development are you missing here?!"

I inwardly sighed, this epic story was clearly getting momentum.

I stopped paying much attention to her insistent inquiry.

My attention drifted to the chickens all clucking around Bozo with concern. The roosters (of course) expressed their concern by screeching loudly into his dirt covered face. The hen had lifted her head up from the helmet nest and made a little warbling, motherly cluck towards the knight. She made a gentle peck to check if he was okay, he yanked back a bleeding finger as he hissed, "Holy mother of--"

"Elric!"

I turned back to Ursula. She was looking at me with her patient 'I-will-dismember-you-and-bury-you-in-a-not-very-shallow-grave-with-a-boulder-on-top-so-you-will-be-digging-yourself-up-for-a-month' expression.

I sighed again. Couldn't I just enjoy a few moments without this quest towering over me?

Couldn't I enjoy watching my poultry torment Bozo, the idiot that had attacked me on my farm and started this whole unholy debacle.

I did have a sense of self preservation and knew I needed to respond to the deadly Ursula of the Bone Order. "What did you say?"

"This is a much bigger deal than Warren..." She stopped as she had a realization. She giggled (the same giggle she always had, the one she kept even after she bonded with the ancient, time immemorial undead entity that made her part of the Bone Order.) and took a step back from the thrashing Wight. She giggled so hard that she had to sit on a rotting log.

"What's so funny?" I snapped.

"OH! MY! EVERLOVING ABETH!" She shouted this out between her bubbling mirth. "YOU AREN'T GOING TO MAKE HARVEST SEASON!"

"I don't see how missing harvest season is funny." I folded my arms, far from amused.

Headless had stopped attempting to reach us and was instead trying to pull herself up on the sword to escape. It was not going well, her fleshless fingers kept getting seared off by the sharp edged blade. The Plain One threw a rock at the Wight in an amused distracted gesture as she kept her eyes on me. "This is the funniest thing I have ever seen. You are actually angsting like a teenager that has discovered that they can't go to the festival until they finish all their work for the day!"

"You shouldn't be taking the name of your god in vain." I grumbled in an attempt to deflect the conversation (I was realizing she was unpleasantly correct) "Abeth is a not one to tolerate her name being thrown about like dice."

Bozo was running around in the background being chased by the screeching roosters. I was impressed he knew so many words to combine into cursing.

Ursula threw another pebble at our captive, this one was better aimed and pinged into Headless's mouth, the projectile stuck perfectly between the strings that kept the lips sewn shut. "I am eternally in her good graces, I have been giving Abeth souls for ages, she wouldn't bat an eye if I collapsed a few of her worship pits."

Headless changed tactics and pressed her long skeletal fingers on the flat sides of the broadsword and started to pull herself upwards.

I could see that line of discussion was pointless, it was time to just confront the situation head on "This isn't going to be an easy fix is it?"

"What do you think?" The Bone Order woman asked with a gesture around us, the few remaining Warrens that were looking at us with malice; With only a few puppets to control to control the original Warren could better focus and actually make them move in a more dangerous fashion."

"Warren, I am in the middle of a conversation!" I planted the butt of my pitchfork in the dirt and let a Warren impale himself on it. "Go away!"

"No, it isn't going to be easy." The tall woman stated, returning to our original conversation. "A Wight means that we have an actual threat. Especially if they figured out a way to pin all of this on Warren." Ursula didn't even get up from her perch, she pushed back her long hair, the red color that transitioned down to blue flowed over her pale fingers. She used that hair as a garrote to strangle her attackers. Headless watched us with her one eye that was sewn open. The lids pulled back to the point where I could see her entire eyeball swivel between me and the Plain One as she inched her way up the blade.

There was only one Warren left and that allowed him to speak with actual focus "There is only one true and living goddess, all others are false and corrupt. I will rend down churches--"

"--HELP ME!" Bozo shouted as he ran pass the yammering bird.

Warren glared over his shoulder at the interrupter before turning back towards us, his words were actually more verbose than expected, "SQUAWK!"

The roosters (in their pursuit of chasing Bozo) tore through the remaining Warren without losing a single measure of momentum. The undead, leather clad bird exploded in bones and flesh and clung to the two undead chickens like macabre streamers.

"That was interesting." I commented.

Ursula looked at the leather and pieces of tattered fabric floating through the air "You could say that."

Headless was still working on sliding the blade through her ribcage. I could hear the barely perceptible scrape of metal on bone. It was not a pleasant sound.

"Too bad I wasted all my stored up power building that new farm back with Harquin." I mused to myself. Regrets weren't going to help but it was nice to lament for a moment.

There was a twang as some of the stitches that held Headless's body together became severed.

Ursula was cleaning bits of Warren out of her hair; she used a long elegant brush (one that had been given to her by her lover back when they both were alive.) with swirling waves carved along the back. "I think we both were a little frivolous with our powers on this journey; neither of us is used to having an actual threat. Not in a long, long time."

"Speak for yourself." I waited until Headless was about a foot up before I planted my foot on her chest and pushed her back down.

"Really?" Ursula asked with a raised eyebrow

"Yeah!" I retorted "You didn't have to deal with any barrow wyrms trying to eat your crop!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT!" Headless finally shouted, the strings around her lips were pulled tight like violin strings, the skin stretching around her teeth as she spoke.

I looked down at her and smiled with my own undead grin "Welcome to the conversation, Headless. Let's start with some simple questions."