Haylen led the way through the camp, taking me towards the largest of the tents. I was slightly unsteady when I first stood up, but regained my balance quickly once I started walking. I definitely shouldn’t have drunk as much as I had, but refused to feel bad about it, and tried to work myself into a “don’t give a fuck” mindset.
From somewhere in the upper part of the stadium, I heard a horn blow, but Haylen only gave a passing glance in its direction.
“A baiting party’s returning,” she told me. “The next wave of the cursed will be here soon.”
She said it casually, and I could understand why. The zombies in this world weren’t infectious, so fighting them up close didn’t carry the same risks as the ones from the lore of my memories. The bites and scratches they could give you were still pretty nasty, but they weren’t an automatic death sentence. On my way into the stadium I had seen the dense barricades and fortifications the expedition had set up, and I fully believed Corlo when he said the entrance would choke before the defenses would fall.
On the zombies at least.
Peninsula was large, and there were more than just brainless undead lurking in the fog. It was good that the expedition stuck to the edge of the city, because I could think of several things capable of making it through their defenses. If they thought Flock was scary, they had obviously never met Tank. That asshole would probably just skip the gate entirely and crash right through the walls.
“They probably know about Snake though,” I thought.
That one never left the subway tunnels, but there was probably a station nearby, so I’d be surprised if they weren’t at least aware of him. The zombies may have been everywhere, but aside from Flock, most of the real monsters stuck to their own little territories.
“I wonder how they handle respawn day.”
The odds of any single expedition being here during a respawn day was low, but if they had been coming here every year, they must have seen it a few times.
I hated respawn day. Once every month or two, the mists of the city would thicken. Anything that had been killed would reappear, and the zombies changed. They would look like they had before they died, and they went on an absolute rampage. Even the surplus of mana it made available wasn’t worth gathering if it meant putting up with all that.
On any other day, I could walk through the city, confident that I could handle anything it threw at me. Respawn day however, was a nightmare simply to witness, and I usually spent it hiding in the water tower I used as my home. It was specifically because of respawn day that I had chosen it in the first place. My guess was that the zombies reformed in the places they had been when they had first died, and since nobody ever went into a water tower, it was a fairly safe place to live.
I would have rather gone outside on respawn day than go into the tent Haylen led me to. A guard outside ducked in for a moment, before coming back out to tell us that we were expected. I reminded myself that I would only have to deal with this once, and stepped through the flaps.
The tent was about the size of a small apartment. I was surprised to note that most of the furniture looked like it had come from here in the city, maybe even the stadium itself. It was sensible though, because it meant they didn’t have to carry it all here, and could leave it behind when they left.
My attention was immediately drawn to a large square table near the center. It had a slightly beat up map of the city laid out on the surface, and a dozen chairs sat around it.
Three men were at the table. Two sitting, and one standing. I could guess who each were, but Haylen introduced them anyway.
“Father Gregor, Knight-Paladin Damfeld, Archmage Verdis, this is Indigo.”
She gave a slight bow to the priest, a salute to the paladin, and a nod to the mage.
The standing man was the archmage, Verdis. He was indeed wearing robes, and they were a bright scarlet red, but they were largely hidden beneath a long grey waistcoat that was covered in pockets and pouches. He had been frowning when I entered, but upon seeing me he arched an eyebrow and smiled. It wasn’t a welcoming smile, and it made me feel like I was something on display again. I could tell he was going to be trouble.
Gregor was obviously a priest of some kind, but I was ignorant as to which religion it could be. He wore simple vestments of grey and black with a rust orange sash over one shoulder. If Haylen hadn’t called him Father, I would have thought he was a traveling monk rather than someone leading a small-scale crusade against a necropolis. He was surprised at my appearance, but his smile was warm and welcoming, and raised my hopes a bit that this wouldn’t be as difficult as I thought.
The third man was the paladin with the fancy title. Damfeld was shorter than the others, but highly muscular. He was dressed in a manner similar to Kearse, with a linen shirt and brown pants, but his clothes were much more finely made. Compared to Paladin Corlo, who stood tall out of confidence, this man was sitting like he had a stick up his ass that he refused to remove. His frown was more serious than unfriendly, but I didn’t think he was happy to see me.
I nodded to each and introduced myself.
“Hello. My name is Indigo. Thank you very much for saving me. Do you mind if I sit?”
Father Gregor held out his hands invitingly.
“By all means. Sit. Be welcome.”
I sat down across from him, and Haylen took a seat next to my own. Verdis too, chose that moment to sit himself down at the corner closest to me.
“I understand that you have been though quite a bit,” Gregor continued. “But don’t worry. You are among people now, and we will help you in any way we can.”
“I just want to leave this place,” I confessed. “I… I’ve been so focused on getting out that I haven’t even thought about what I’ll actually do afterwards. I just want to leave.”
“We can help. The empire is a place of many people, and many cultures. Even with your… unique circumstances, I’m sure that you will be able to make a life there as well.”
The word “father” fit Gregor well. I let myself get wrapped up in his comforting words, and the kindness of his smile pushed back the apprehension I felt from Damfeld’s stern glare and Verdis’ leers.
Damfeld chose that moment to raise my first hurdle, and spoke up.
“Commander Haylen has told us a bit about you, but I would like to know more. The empire does welcome you, but it is best for us to know who it is we are welcoming.”
He cut right to the chase and didn’t sugarcoat it. The knight-paladin might not be the same kind of trouble as Verdis, but I’d have to be careful with my words around him none the less.
“I’m a homunculus,” I said, and turned to face the mage. “You know what that is, yes?”
He nodded slowly and the greedy look in his eyes intensified.
“It means you are a mage’s creation. Most homunculi are failed attempts at creating life through magic. Most mages have tried at least once, but they all failed, while you are a success. Why? How? Who is your master?”
He had started off speaking quietly, but by the time he was done, the archmage was practically shouting, and he was standing again, leaning over the table towards me.
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“Um. Uh…”
I had been expecting him to provide context, but was wholly unprepared for his outburst.
“Verdis. You’re scaring her. Sit down and let her speak.”
Father Gregor came to my rescue, and even Damfeld’s glower was now directed at the man.
I used the moment to regain my train of thought and started my story from the beginning. Almost the beginning.
Telling them about waking up in the witch’s house was easier than expected. I kept it brief, and was able to leave out the parts where I woke up as a skeleton, found out about my soul, and the little part about my horns being demonic. I left in some of the irrelevant details as a distraction, and for some reason, Verdis found my fixation with my belly button to be very interesting. He tried to interrupt at several points, but I continued to talk over him and didn’t stop.
When I told them about my journey through the forest, Gregor and Damfeld nodded solemnly, as if they had already heard it before. It was possible that they had met other people who had been lost in the mist, and I was just reconfirming things they already knew.
Despite taking up the vast majority of my life, my time spent in the necropolis was probably the shortest part of my story. I ran. I hid. I killed zombies. I ran again. I hid again. I killed more zombies. Over and over for two years. I was able to play off my knowledge of the city as coming from being stuck here so long. For some of their questions, I was either able to feign ignorance as to how I knew something, or claimed that it was so obvious it would be impossible for me to not figure out.
I didn’t try to hide the fact that I could use magic because they’d notice that eventually. I used simple spells out of habit so frequently now that it would have been impossible for me to keep it a secret.
I had talked myself into a corner at that point though. Verdis knew about the city’s mana draining qualities and demanded to know how I had gotten around it. At first he was intrigued when I told him that I collected mana from the zombies I had killed, but became annoyed when I was unable explain it to his satisfaction.
“It’s just some basic mana manipulation,” I told him. “When a zombie is still… alive, the mana is solid and stuck in place, but once you kill it, the mana becomes loose and you can move it fairly easily.”
Father Gregor didn’t seem to like the idea of using any magic that had been involved with a zombie, but for once Verdis seemed to be on my side and started giving a long winded explanation on the purity levels of mana and the stability of the blah blah blah.
“Mana is mana,” I interrupted. “Some sources are harder to control, but they’re no less useable.”
Verdis stopped monologue to glare at me.
“Yes. Well. That’s a highly oversimplified way of putting it, but the homunculus is correct. Gregor, if we can figure out how to reclaim even tiny portion of the mana from the cursed, then the mages of the expedition will become immensely more useful. We could actually do something instead of just lighting corpses on fire and summoning water.”
Gregor still didn’t seem too happy about it, but acquiesced.
“You’re the mage in the room, so I’ll defer to your expertise in the matter. However, if you’re going to be poking at corpses, make sure you do it somewhere out of sight. Or more specifically, somewhere we can’t smell it. The pyre out front is already bad enough.”
The derailing of the conversation ended up serving to my benefit, and I was allowed to end my story there.
“If you all agree, I believe that’s enough for today,” Gregor said, pausing for any potential disagreements. “Miss Indigo, I’m sure you have many questions, and I would like to talk to you again later, but we still have an expedition to manage, and I’m sure you would like to get some rest. Commander Haylen, could I trouble you to see to her living arrangements? You-”
“Actually,” Verdis interrupted, “I will see to that Gregor. There is no need to bother the commander with it.”
Everyone looked to the archmage with surprise. So far he hadn’t seemed to like me, and I hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that the feeling was mutual.
“You will?” was all Father Gregor could say. He was as confused as the rest of us.
“Of course. She is a homunculus. A magical construct that has no master. It is only natural that I claim her.”
The room went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop on a rug.
“Claim her?” Gregor asked it like he wasn’t sure what he had heard.
I most certainly knew what I had heard, and I was livid.
“Claim me?! You can’t claim me! I’m a person, not some magic talking doll!”
Beside me, Haylen looked aghast, but remained silent. I didn’t blame her. This was something above and beyond her. She had no authority in this room, and I couldn’t depend on her to help me in this.
Verdis ignored me and continued speaking to Gregor and Damfeld.
“She is not a person. She is a thing. An item. Her ability to talk changes nothing. By law, the mage’s guild has the right and duty to control masterless constructs like her. She said herself that her creator was dead, and so I will be her new keeper.”
“Hello! Do I not get an opinion on this? I’m a person. I am my own master!”
Gregor and Damfeld were looking at each other, gauging the other’s opinion. Haylen, not sure what to do, was trying to look at everyone at once.
“Archmage Verdis,” Gregor began, “We are an expedition meant to protect people, not a group of roaming slavers.”
“She is not a person,” Verdis repeated. “She is not people. You said it yourself Gregor, I’m the mage, and she is very much a mage issue. Even if you countermand me here, the moment we get back to Orlis, the matter will be out of your hands.”
“You asshole! You know perfectly well that I’m a person. Tell them! Tell them what a homunculus is!”
At that, Damfeld spoke up again.
“Can you explain that Verdis? I am aware of the law you’re talking about, but she seems to believe she is an exception. Why?”
Verdis glared at me before responding.
“She is simply being stubborn. I’m sure she will adjust in time. Once I unlock her enchantments, she will be quite happy in my care.”
“Damn right I’m being stubborn! I didn’t survive two years in this hellhole just to become some wizard’s brainwashed pet! Tell. Them. What. A homunculus is.”
I had stated my demand enough times now, and everyone was looking at the archmage, waiting for an answer to the unspoken question.
“A homunculus is…,” he began, “They are crafted simulacrums of complex life. Usually they end up as little more than lumps of half living meat.”
“Ha!” I shouted. “Do you think I’m stupid? Those are just fancy words for “artificial person.” And I’m a success! Not some soulless meatbag. Yes, I’m artificial. But an artificial person is still a person. You have no claim on me, and I wouldn’t respect it, even if you did.”
“Now listen here you upjumped little golem, I am an Archmage of the guild, and you would be wise to listen to me!”
Verdis’ face was red with anger and he was standing again, doing his best to loom over me. My heart was pounding, but I managed to stay in my seat and respond as calmly as I could.
“I survived two years in a necropolis. You. Do. Not. Scare me. And you would be wise not to fuck with me.”
Making threats, vague as they were, certainly wasn’t the best way to deescalate the situation. The wine I had drunk earlier though, said escalation was quickly becoming an acceptable alternative. Luckily, Gregor and Damfeld interrupted before things could go any farther.
“Verdis!” Gregor shouted.
“You have no claim,” Damfeld continued for him. “You wouldn’t find a single court in the empire that wouldn’t agree she’s a person, and none of them would care that it’s based on a technicality.”
Knight-Paladin Damfeld continued to speak over the now spluttering archmage.
“Commander Haylen, I’m transferring your platoon to guard duty. For now, take Miss indigo back to your tent. Dismissed.”
Haylen practically leapt from her chair as she gave a Damfeld a quick salute and a, “Yes sir.” Then she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me from the tent as quickly as she could. Over my shoulder I could see that Verdis had returned to arguing with the other leaders. Just before I passed back outside, Gregor looked my way and gave me a look small commiserating smile. He probably felt a bit guilty what had happened.
Kearse had been waiting outside of the command tent, and had to race to keep up with Haylen. She didn’t slow down until her and I were both inside of her tent, and when she noticed Kearse’s absence, she reached out and pulled him in too.
She embraced me in a hug, and while she wasn’t crying, I could see tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through that and I... I couldn’t do anything to help. I’m so sorry.”
I patted her on the back, suddenly feeling like I was the one consoling her.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ve been through worse.”
Kearse looked like this was a bit awkward for a young man to be around, so he went to the corner of the tent and sat down on one of the folding stools at Haylens small table. He couldn’t leave the tent, but wanted to put some distance between himself and the clear display of emotions.
“No. No it’s not okay.” Haylen was clearly more distraught then I was. “We’re supposed to be rescuing you. Not locking you up all over again.”
Reluctantly, I broke off the hug and sat down at the table with Kearse.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I doubt he’d be able to keep me in check for long anyway. Worst case scenario… I’d just sneak out of the camp and hide in the city.”
“But then you’d be stuck here again,” Haylen tried to counter, but my grin gave her pause.
“Didn’t you see the map on the table?” I asked, and my grin grew wider. “It had the exit marked. And even if I couldn’t find it, I could just follow the expedition to see where it is.”
I started bouncing in my seat, buzzing with excitement as the thought took hold.
“I am now officially free,” I said, not bothering to hide my excitement. “I can leave. I’m free.”
My smile got bigger and I bounced higher each time I said the words.
“I’m free. I’m free! I’mfreeI’mfreeI’mfreeeeeee!”
I leapt from the stool, fists raised in triumph. Reaching into my storage, I pulled out another bottle of wine. Kearse and Haylen gasped as my hand momentarily disappeared into the black void.
Raising the bottle high I shouted, “Victory for the expedition! Freedom for the Indigo! Tonight, we drink!”
Unfortunately, it was still only afternoon, and Haylen wouldn’t let me open the bottle.